J^ii^Jki&iii&SlSimi':'di:amiiJ>li^lSiiaS^>^ i -ILHUYSMANS M'^^-S^^i'. Vl ':rs^:^'^^^j&r-.__ -i ' ' ' -" -~ '"- Pit!*'""*'''-' ?!!" '^~r'.-'r-.^*-->"'-^-^"'-T-'^*-'^''" ^A.u>.u,.v.Lu.uo:^i.u,...w.:T^i.ru.v,>aflugv:e SAINT LYDWINE OF SCHIEDAM NIHIL OBSTAT: G. H. Joyce. S.J., Censor Deputatus. IMPRIMATUR : Edm. Can. Surmont, Vic. Gen. Wfstmonast rii die 30 Novembris, ig2z. 6^^<^'i SAINT LYDWINE OF SCHIEDAM J By j-k: huysmans 'Translated froni the French by AGNES HASTINGS Dens carni illiiis sspe dolores infligit, quateiius Spiritus Sanclus ibi habilare possit. Sancta Hildegardis, Vifa^ lib.ii. London ' Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd. New York ; E. P. Dutton & Co. 1923 3X Aloo mi Printed in Great Britain by Mackavs Ltd., Chatham PREFACE The life of St. Lydwine has been written by three men of religion who were her contemporaries. Jan Gerlac, a relation of hers, was sacristan of the Augustine monastery of Windesem. He Hved many years near the Saint, even in the same house, and he tells of her daily Hfe from observation. " Jan Brugman was a lay brother of the Observance." He took up the work of Gerlac, translating it into Latin and amplifying it with details supplied him by Jan Walter de Leyde, the last Confessor of Lydwine. Thomas k Kempis was sub-prior of the Augustinians of Mount St. Agnes near Zwolle. His relation is abridged from that of Brugman, but adds details gathered at Schiedam from those who knew the Saint. " " Jan Gerlac had some fame as a writer, and his Soliloquies are still sought for. He was, according to his contemporaries, a very fervent and a very humble monk; and Jan Brugman, a friend of Denys de Chartreux, is quoted by Wading in the Annals of his of of order, as one the celebrated preachers his century ; admirable both for the elevation of his eloquence and for the number of his virtues. Thomas k one of the authors of the " Kempis, presumed Imitation of Christ," was born the same year as Lydwine and died, in the odour of sanctity, in 1471, after having written a whole series of mystical works of which several translations into French were attempted. These three who wrote the Ufe of the Saint are thus men of good repute and worthy, on account of their position and the probity of their soul, to be believed. One may add, too, that the details of their works can be compared with the official documents drawn up, after an attentive and detailed enquiry, by the contemporary Burgomasters of Schiedam, who passed her whole life in review. No history could therefore be presented under better conditions of good faith and certitude. It must be owned, however, that a history of Lydwine is, thanks to them, a very difficult skein to disentangle. It is, in effect, to a order. impossible" adopt chronological Brugman declares That he considered it inconvenient to do any- frankly " of of more thing the kind ; and under the pretext being edifying, he groups the scenes 01 the life of the Saint according to the list of qualities which he wishes to impress upon us. With this method, which is equally that of Gerlac and k Kempis, there is no means of kno^ving whether any event which they relate took place before or after any other. vi PREFACE This was the fashion of writing adopted by all the hagiographers of that period. They narrate anecdutes pell-mell, only troubhng to class the virtues, so as to have a store of commonplaces to draw upon in the case of any other saint. They interlarded these pious recitations with quotations from the Psalms, and left it at that. It would seem, at first sight, that there is a means of applying a remedy to this disorder, by extracting and comparing the dates scattered here and there in the three biographies and utihzing to the life of the Saint but this them as clues punctuate ; method does not secure the promised results. Gerlac and Brugman tell us sometimes of an adventure which they relate as taking place on or about the day of such and such a saint. With these indications one can, indeed, place the day and the month, but not the year, which they forget to specify. The more precise dates which Gerlac especially records, have reference often to episodes of Httle importance and do not always tally with those of Thomas a Kempis. Very scrupulous when it is a question of noting liturgical feasts and fasts, this writer furnishes us with a certain number of dates, but how axe we to trust them ? His dates, if one looks into them, are inexact : thus he places the death of Petronille, Lydwine's niece, In 1426, and also shows her assisting in her aunt's house at a scene in which she was wounded, in 1428. One of these dates is con- sequently false, in this case the second, for the date 1425 given by the two other writers appears certain. Even if the dates were correct and always agreed with one another, we should still straj' about at random among various correct facts dated by others who are not in the least ; and there is nothing to indicate how to class these facts. Whatever course one takes, one must, therefore, renounce all hope of chronological precision. Moreover, in the works of the three biographers several per- sonages appear who are the friends and nurses of Lydwine, but no details are given about them. These minor characters flit about the stage, coming one knows not whence and vanishing one not to three of knows how ; and finally, aggravate the confusion, the confessors of the saint were called Jan. Now, instead of adding the surname or the name of their birthplace to distinguish them, the three men of religion give us only the Christian name, so that it is impossible to tell if the confessor Jan of whom one hears in such and such an incident, is Jan Pot, Jan Angeli, or Jan Walter. There is, indeed, very little to go upon in this bewilderment. I do not flatter myself that I have thrown any light upon it. I have made use, in this Life, of the three texts of Gerlac, Brugman and k Kempis, completing their anecdotes by collation, and I have arranged the events according to the order which seemed to me, if not the most accurate, at least the most interesting and useful. CHAPTER I. The state of Europe during Lydwine's lifetime was terrible. In France, first Charles VI. reigned, then Charles VII. Lydwine was born in the same year that Charles VI., at twelve years of age, ascended the throne of France. Even at this distance of time, the of his call horrible memories years reign up ; they drip with blood and reek of licence in the of ; and light the old chronicles, behind the dusty veil of history, four figures pass by. The first is a man of weak intellect, with pale face and hollow cheeks, with eyes now dull, now full of fire. He vegetates in a palace in Paris, his clothes over-run with vermin, his hair and beard swarming with lice. This wretched being, before he became demented, had been a familiar figure, debauched, irascible and weak. It is the King, Charles VI., an imbecile taking part in the wild debauches of those afflicted like himself. The second is an intriguing woman, eccentric, unreliable and imperious, wearing a head-dress ornamented like a devil's head with two horns, and a dress cut very low in the neck, and trailing after her a train of she shuffles figured great length ; as she walks, shod in slippers with points two feet long. This is the Queen of France, the Bavarian Ysabeau, who, absorbed in the writings of some unknown author, takes her place by the side of the husband she abhors. The third is a vain gossip whom the ladies of the Court adore, and who shows himself, at one and the same time, cordial and rapacious, affable and cunning. He oppresses the people, drains the money from both countryside and town, and dissipates it in scandalous escapades. This is the Duke of Orleans, cursed of 7 8 SAINT LYDWINE OF SCHIEDAM the people, and denounced from the pulpit by a monk of the Augustinian order, Jacques Legrand. The fourth, a little wizened creature, taciturn, suspicious and cruel, is the Duke of Burgundy, familiarly known as John the Pitiless. All four wrangle, curse each other, quarrel and make it up, executing a sort of devil's dance in the decay of a country already half ruined by the insanity of its King. France is indeed convulsed. Paris is given over tO' all the atrocities of civil war, with butchers and cut-throats as dictators, who bleed the bourgeois as if they were beasts. The country is over-run with bands of brigands, who overwhelm the peasants, set fire to their crops, and cast the women and children intO' the furnaces of the mills. There are the criminal hordes of the Armagnacs, the rapacious crowd of Burgundians, and those who stretch out their hands to the English to help them to cross the Channel. The English do, indeed, disembark near Harfleur, march on Calais, and meet the French army on the way, in the county of St. Pol, at Azincourt. They attack, and have no' difficulty in overthrowing, like ninepins, the long files of heavy knights, prisoned, as it were, in sentry-boxes of armour and fixed astride their horses, which are motionless, fast stuck in the heavy clay; and, whilst that region is invaded, the Dauphin causes the Duke of Burgundy to be assassinated, who himself had had the Duke of Orleans decapitated on the very day after they had taken the communion from the hands of the same priest, and had been reconciled together.