The Count of Swabia's son
Jul. 20th, 2005 08:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fpbA few days ago, I published an article against creeping eugenicism, and mentioned St.Hermann of Reichenau in comments as one of the great disabled people in history. Most of you will not have read of him, so here is a brief account written in the 1920s by the English Jesuit C.C.J.Martindale. I cannot recommend Father Martindale's style, but those of you who know what the Society of Jesus has sunk to in recent decades will be glad to be reminded of a time when a Jesuit could write like a man and like a Christian.
Saint Hermann of Reichenau - 1013-1054
St. Augustine died in 430, so that nearly six hundred years went by before Hermann of Reichenau, of whom I am going to speak, was born. Yet there is the queerest link between them - a book, written before the birth of Christ, by the pagan Roman Cicero, was read and re-read by St. Augustine, and was a favourite of the little cripple Hermann. And now it is lost. All we can do is to read scattered quotations from that book Hortensius, written two thousand years ago, which lit visions five hundred years later in the mind of the man who gave her new soul to Europe, and that was so precious, on his deathbed, to Hermann after another five hundred years.
On July 18th, 1013, a son was born to Wolfrad, Count of Altshausen in Swabia, and his wife Hiltrud. They belonged to gorgeous families, and noblemen, crusaders, and great prelates provide names that jostle one another in those pedigrees. Yet none of them do we remember, save the little fellow who was born most horribly deformed. He was afterwards nicknamed `Contracted,' so hideously distorted was he; he could not stand, let alone walk; could hardly sit, even in the special chair they made for him; even his fingers were all but too weak and knotted for him to write; even his mouth and palate were deformed and he could hardly be understood when he spoke. In a pagan world he would, without argument, have been exposed, at birth, to perish; modern pagans, especially when they observe that he was one of fifteen children, would announce that he never should have been born; when they become still more logical, they will announce that such an abortion should be painlessly put out of the way. And twice over would they say so, when I tell you that he appeared, to the judges of nine hundred years ago, to be what we would call Defective. What did these people, skulking in the murk of those `Dark Ages' (as we have the steely nerve to call them) do ? They sent him to a monastery, and they prayed.
If you remember what I said about St. Anthony you will recall that it was monasteries that took over what they could from the ancient culture, and developed it. Into Germany, that culture came not only from the Latin South, but by way of England (St. Boniface of Devon) and most certainly from Ireland. But it was popular. The rather hard Latin culture was softened by charming elements from Germany. German translations of the gospels were appearing; German sermons were being preached; hardly a great name in Latin or Greek literature but became known in this way, and always, need I say, through those monasteries - like St. Gall, Fulda, Reichenau - that formed vast libraries, and also schools that moved about along with Emperors; indeed, Duke Bruno, brother of the Emperor Otto I, did not disdain to act as professor; and, you may say, every student also taught. Would that they did so, or could do so, now ! Let me just add that this was not a merely masculine culture. The nun Hrotswitha of Gaudesheim had Otto's niece for abbess and as instructress in the classics. Hrotswitha proceeded to write all sorts of literature, including comedies, one of which has been quite recently acted before an intensely interested audience in England.
To one such monastery the defective freak was sent. Reichenau was on a lovely little island in Lake Constance where the Rhine runs strong towards its cataracts. It had existed before Charlemagne - for some two hundred years, that is - by the high road on the shore opposite. Italian and Greek, Irish and Icelandic travellers passed to and fro. It sheltered famous scholars; it had its school of painting; tenth century paintings as at Oberzell, eleventh as at Niederzell, exist, made by monks with the heart, if not yet the hand, of Fra Angelico. Here the boy grew up. Here the lad that could hardly stammer with his tongue, found his mind developing under who knows what manner of religious psycho-therapy ? Not once in his life can he have been `comfortable' or out of pain; yet what are the adjectives that cluster round him ? I translate them from the Latin biography. Pleasant, friendly, easy to talk to; always laughing; never criticising; eagerly cheerful; trying as hard as possible to be - ah ! here is a word I find difficult - to be `thoroughly decent' would be, I think, our equivalent. And the result was, that `everybody loved him.' And meanwhile the courageous lad - never, remember, at his ease in a chair nor so much as flat in bed - learnt mathematics, Greek, Latin, Arabic, astronomy and music. He wrote a whole treatise upon Astrolabes. I believe that you found the Equator, or measured the height of the stars with astrolabes. . . . In his preface he says: `Hermann, the least of Christ's poor ones, and of amateur philosophers the follower more slow than any donkey, yes, than snail . . . ' has been persuaded by the prayers of `numbers of my friends' (yes, `everybody' liked him) to write this scientific treatise. He'd keep wriggling out of doing so, making all sorts of excuses, but really through his `lumpish laziness'; but at long last he offered to the friend to whom he dedicated his booklet at any rate the theory of the thing, and said that if he liked it he would work it out in practical detail later on.
And, would you believe it, with those twisted fingers the indomitable lad made astrolabes, and also clocks and musical instruments. Never conquered; never idle ! And as for music - would that our modern choirs could read him ! He says that a competent musician ought to be able to compose a reasonable tune, or anyway to judge it, and finally, to sing it. Most singers, says he, attend to the third point only, and never think. They sing, or rather howl, not realising that no one can sing properly if his thought is out of harmony with his voice. To such songsters loud voice is everything. This is worse than donkeys, who after all do make much more noise, but never mix up braying with bellowing. No one tolerates, says he, grammatical mistakes; yet the rules of grammar are artificial, whereas `music springs straight from Nature,' and therein not only do men fail to correct their faults, but they actually defend them… The jolly little cripple could use, when he wanted to, a rather caustic tongue ! Yet it is practically certain that it was he who wrote the glorious hymn, Salve Regina, with its plain-chant melody, still used today all over the Catholic world, the Alma Redemptoris, and others. But besides this the active, vigorous brain of Hermann, who was not only in touch with every important family-tradition of that time, but in possession of many an ancient book now lost to us owing to the destruction of so many monastery libraries later on, wrote a Chronicon, or world-history from Christ's day to his own. Experts say that it was amazingly accurate, retailing, of course, tradition, yet objective and original. 1 Here, then, you have the crippled monk in his cell, alert, eyes wide open to the outside world, yet never cynical, never cruel (so many sufferers grow cruel), but making a complete perspective of the currents of life in Europe.
Well, the time came to die. I leave his friend and historian Berthold to relate that. “When at last the loving kindliness of God was deigning to free his holy soul from the tedious prison of this world, he was attacked by pleurisy, and for ten days was almost all the time in agony. At last, one day, very early in the morning, after Mass, I, whom he counted his closest friend, went and asked him if he felt a little better, "Do not ask me about that," he answered; "not about that! . . . Listen carefully. I shall certainly die very soon. I shall not live; I shall not recover.” And then he went on to say how during the night he had felt as if he were re-reading that Hortensius of Cicero's, with its wise sayings upon right and wrong, and all that he had himself meant to write upon the subject. "And under the strong inspiration of that reading, the whole of this present world and all that belongs to it - yes, his mortal life itself has become mean and wearisome, and on the other hand, the world to come, that shall not pass, and that eternal life, have become so unspeakably desirable and dear, that I hold all these passing things as light as thistledown. I am tired of living."' Berthold, when Hermann spoke thus, broke down completely, and, says he, “uttered agitated cries and kept no proper control of myself.” Hermann, after a while, `quite indignantly upbraided me, trembling, and looking at me sideways with puzzled eyes. "Heart's beloved," said he; "Do not weep, do not weep for me."' And he made Berthold take his writing-tablets and put down a few last things. `And,' he added, `by remembering daily that you too are to die, prepare yourself with all your energy for the self-same journey, for, on some day and hour, you know not when, you shall follow me forth - me, your dear, dear friend.' And on these words, he ceased.
Hermann died, after receiving the Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion, among a11 his friends, on September 24th, and was buried - hidden little monk as he had been - amid `great lamentation,' in his own estate of Altshausen that he had given up so long ago.
When I first came across this `life' in a crabbed old Latin book at Oxford, I felt as if a wave of sweetest air were turning a stuffy room into freshness and fragrance. For the written Life is so very much alive - Hermann lives so vividly ! Not just because he could write on the theory of music or mathematics, could compile laborious histories and knew so many languages, but because of his pluck, his fineness of soul, his gaiety in pain, his readiness to chaff and answer back, the sweetness of mood that made him `loved by all.' And I beg of you to stand no nonsense from those who suggest that a sickly body produces a sickly mind, that it is on physical heftiness, body-breeding, that we should concentrate if we would have good citizens, or that physical well-being, though desirable, is in any sense whatsoever necessary for happiness. Vulgarest confusion of mind with nerves ! Hardly one of those pedigrees of sickly and criminal families is worth anything at all. Hardly ever have the effects of environment upon the child or descendant of, say, two criminals, been disentangled from what is assumed to be their heredity. You are safe in doubting whether mental or moral characteristics ever are inherited. Proper bodily upbringing plays certainly its great but perfectly subordinate part; proper training for the mind plays a primary and enormous one - and this, believe me, must include as paramount two things - love and religion - and the two are intertwined. And in this twisted little fellow from the Dark Ages shines out the triumph of the Faith that inspired love, of the love that acted loyally by Faith, and Hermann provides the proof of how Pain does not spell Misery, nor Pleasure, Happiness.
Saint Hermann of Reichenau - 1013-1054
St. Augustine died in 430, so that nearly six hundred years went by before Hermann of Reichenau, of whom I am going to speak, was born. Yet there is the queerest link between them - a book, written before the birth of Christ, by the pagan Roman Cicero, was read and re-read by St. Augustine, and was a favourite of the little cripple Hermann. And now it is lost. All we can do is to read scattered quotations from that book Hortensius, written two thousand years ago, which lit visions five hundred years later in the mind of the man who gave her new soul to Europe, and that was so precious, on his deathbed, to Hermann after another five hundred years.
On July 18th, 1013, a son was born to Wolfrad, Count of Altshausen in Swabia, and his wife Hiltrud. They belonged to gorgeous families, and noblemen, crusaders, and great prelates provide names that jostle one another in those pedigrees. Yet none of them do we remember, save the little fellow who was born most horribly deformed. He was afterwards nicknamed `Contracted,' so hideously distorted was he; he could not stand, let alone walk; could hardly sit, even in the special chair they made for him; even his fingers were all but too weak and knotted for him to write; even his mouth and palate were deformed and he could hardly be understood when he spoke. In a pagan world he would, without argument, have been exposed, at birth, to perish; modern pagans, especially when they observe that he was one of fifteen children, would announce that he never should have been born; when they become still more logical, they will announce that such an abortion should be painlessly put out of the way. And twice over would they say so, when I tell you that he appeared, to the judges of nine hundred years ago, to be what we would call Defective. What did these people, skulking in the murk of those `Dark Ages' (as we have the steely nerve to call them) do ? They sent him to a monastery, and they prayed.
If you remember what I said about St. Anthony you will recall that it was monasteries that took over what they could from the ancient culture, and developed it. Into Germany, that culture came not only from the Latin South, but by way of England (St. Boniface of Devon) and most certainly from Ireland. But it was popular. The rather hard Latin culture was softened by charming elements from Germany. German translations of the gospels were appearing; German sermons were being preached; hardly a great name in Latin or Greek literature but became known in this way, and always, need I say, through those monasteries - like St. Gall, Fulda, Reichenau - that formed vast libraries, and also schools that moved about along with Emperors; indeed, Duke Bruno, brother of the Emperor Otto I, did not disdain to act as professor; and, you may say, every student also taught. Would that they did so, or could do so, now ! Let me just add that this was not a merely masculine culture. The nun Hrotswitha of Gaudesheim had Otto's niece for abbess and as instructress in the classics. Hrotswitha proceeded to write all sorts of literature, including comedies, one of which has been quite recently acted before an intensely interested audience in England.
To one such monastery the defective freak was sent. Reichenau was on a lovely little island in Lake Constance where the Rhine runs strong towards its cataracts. It had existed before Charlemagne - for some two hundred years, that is - by the high road on the shore opposite. Italian and Greek, Irish and Icelandic travellers passed to and fro. It sheltered famous scholars; it had its school of painting; tenth century paintings as at Oberzell, eleventh as at Niederzell, exist, made by monks with the heart, if not yet the hand, of Fra Angelico. Here the boy grew up. Here the lad that could hardly stammer with his tongue, found his mind developing under who knows what manner of religious psycho-therapy ? Not once in his life can he have been `comfortable' or out of pain; yet what are the adjectives that cluster round him ? I translate them from the Latin biography. Pleasant, friendly, easy to talk to; always laughing; never criticising; eagerly cheerful; trying as hard as possible to be - ah ! here is a word I find difficult - to be `thoroughly decent' would be, I think, our equivalent. And the result was, that `everybody loved him.' And meanwhile the courageous lad - never, remember, at his ease in a chair nor so much as flat in bed - learnt mathematics, Greek, Latin, Arabic, astronomy and music. He wrote a whole treatise upon Astrolabes. I believe that you found the Equator, or measured the height of the stars with astrolabes. . . . In his preface he says: `Hermann, the least of Christ's poor ones, and of amateur philosophers the follower more slow than any donkey, yes, than snail . . . ' has been persuaded by the prayers of `numbers of my friends' (yes, `everybody' liked him) to write this scientific treatise. He'd keep wriggling out of doing so, making all sorts of excuses, but really through his `lumpish laziness'; but at long last he offered to the friend to whom he dedicated his booklet at any rate the theory of the thing, and said that if he liked it he would work it out in practical detail later on.
And, would you believe it, with those twisted fingers the indomitable lad made astrolabes, and also clocks and musical instruments. Never conquered; never idle ! And as for music - would that our modern choirs could read him ! He says that a competent musician ought to be able to compose a reasonable tune, or anyway to judge it, and finally, to sing it. Most singers, says he, attend to the third point only, and never think. They sing, or rather howl, not realising that no one can sing properly if his thought is out of harmony with his voice. To such songsters loud voice is everything. This is worse than donkeys, who after all do make much more noise, but never mix up braying with bellowing. No one tolerates, says he, grammatical mistakes; yet the rules of grammar are artificial, whereas `music springs straight from Nature,' and therein not only do men fail to correct their faults, but they actually defend them… The jolly little cripple could use, when he wanted to, a rather caustic tongue ! Yet it is practically certain that it was he who wrote the glorious hymn, Salve Regina, with its plain-chant melody, still used today all over the Catholic world, the Alma Redemptoris, and others. But besides this the active, vigorous brain of Hermann, who was not only in touch with every important family-tradition of that time, but in possession of many an ancient book now lost to us owing to the destruction of so many monastery libraries later on, wrote a Chronicon, or world-history from Christ's day to his own. Experts say that it was amazingly accurate, retailing, of course, tradition, yet objective and original. 1 Here, then, you have the crippled monk in his cell, alert, eyes wide open to the outside world, yet never cynical, never cruel (so many sufferers grow cruel), but making a complete perspective of the currents of life in Europe.
Well, the time came to die. I leave his friend and historian Berthold to relate that. “When at last the loving kindliness of God was deigning to free his holy soul from the tedious prison of this world, he was attacked by pleurisy, and for ten days was almost all the time in agony. At last, one day, very early in the morning, after Mass, I, whom he counted his closest friend, went and asked him if he felt a little better, "Do not ask me about that," he answered; "not about that! . . . Listen carefully. I shall certainly die very soon. I shall not live; I shall not recover.” And then he went on to say how during the night he had felt as if he were re-reading that Hortensius of Cicero's, with its wise sayings upon right and wrong, and all that he had himself meant to write upon the subject. "And under the strong inspiration of that reading, the whole of this present world and all that belongs to it - yes, his mortal life itself has become mean and wearisome, and on the other hand, the world to come, that shall not pass, and that eternal life, have become so unspeakably desirable and dear, that I hold all these passing things as light as thistledown. I am tired of living."' Berthold, when Hermann spoke thus, broke down completely, and, says he, “uttered agitated cries and kept no proper control of myself.” Hermann, after a while, `quite indignantly upbraided me, trembling, and looking at me sideways with puzzled eyes. "Heart's beloved," said he; "Do not weep, do not weep for me."' And he made Berthold take his writing-tablets and put down a few last things. `And,' he added, `by remembering daily that you too are to die, prepare yourself with all your energy for the self-same journey, for, on some day and hour, you know not when, you shall follow me forth - me, your dear, dear friend.' And on these words, he ceased.
Hermann died, after receiving the Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion, among a11 his friends, on September 24th, and was buried - hidden little monk as he had been - amid `great lamentation,' in his own estate of Altshausen that he had given up so long ago.
When I first came across this `life' in a crabbed old Latin book at Oxford, I felt as if a wave of sweetest air were turning a stuffy room into freshness and fragrance. For the written Life is so very much alive - Hermann lives so vividly ! Not just because he could write on the theory of music or mathematics, could compile laborious histories and knew so many languages, but because of his pluck, his fineness of soul, his gaiety in pain, his readiness to chaff and answer back, the sweetness of mood that made him `loved by all.' And I beg of you to stand no nonsense from those who suggest that a sickly body produces a sickly mind, that it is on physical heftiness, body-breeding, that we should concentrate if we would have good citizens, or that physical well-being, though desirable, is in any sense whatsoever necessary for happiness. Vulgarest confusion of mind with nerves ! Hardly one of those pedigrees of sickly and criminal families is worth anything at all. Hardly ever have the effects of environment upon the child or descendant of, say, two criminals, been disentangled from what is assumed to be their heredity. You are safe in doubting whether mental or moral characteristics ever are inherited. Proper bodily upbringing plays certainly its great but perfectly subordinate part; proper training for the mind plays a primary and enormous one - and this, believe me, must include as paramount two things - love and religion - and the two are intertwined. And in this twisted little fellow from the Dark Ages shines out the triumph of the Faith that inspired love, of the love that acted loyally by Faith, and Hermann provides the proof of how Pain does not spell Misery, nor Pleasure, Happiness.
