Daughters of the Winter Queen

by Nancy Goldstone

  In the end, of course, Fraulein Lisgen’s connections were no match for the princess’s. Her patience exhausted, Elizabeth simply had Frederick William, who as overlord of Herford held the ultimate authority, threaten to withdraw his financial and military support from the abbey unless Elizabeth was accepted as successor to the abbess. “The Elector is very docile and she very free with him,” Sophia observed of her sister by way of explaining this transaction.

  It had taken more than two years, but by the summer of 1661 Elizabeth had succeeded in her quest and was installed at the abbey of Herford, having traveled to her new home in a coach and six horses thoughtfully provided by her benefactor the elector. She seems to have lost no time in reorganizing the order to her taste, as her brother Edward in Paris mentioned in a letter to Karl Ludwig at this time that she had been in recent communication with their sister Louisa. “La Grecque [‘the Greek,’ the family nickname for Elizabeth] has written to ask her [Louisa] for the Rule of the Convent and for a pattern of the habit. I don’t know whether it is to make a similar foundation in the place where she is but I doubt if they could live in such harmony as ours do,” he remarked.

  He knew his eldest sister’s character well. After this inauspicious beginning, upon the death of the old abbess from consumption in 1667, Princess Elizabeth took over at Herford and within two years found herself at the center of a political firestorm.

  IT’S EASY TO SEE why she had fought so hard to be named her cousin’s successor. The venerable abbey of Herford, founded in the eighth century, was perhaps the most prestigious—and certainly the most ancient—women’s institution in Germany. In recognition of the importance of its mission and its influence on the surrounding community, in the twelfth century the abbey had been raised to the status of an independent principality within the empire, which put it somewhat on the level of a duchy, albeit a very, very small one. Practically, this meant that, as abbess, Elizabeth was responsible not simply for the welfare of the other women in her order but also for the administration of the neighboring farms and mills that fell within her religious jurisdiction. More important, she had authority over the town of Herford itself, which numbered approximately 7,000 inhabitants at the time she assumed control. As a result, she had her own seat at the governing imperial diet and was officially accorded the satisfyingly impressive title “Princess and Prelatess of the Holy Roman Empire.”

  There is no question that Elizabeth was prodigiously qualified for her position. She was by far the best-educated and most intelligent candidate, and her high birth had accustomed her to decision-making. Like Karl Ludwig, her impoverished upbringing had made her careful with money, which added to her skills as an administrator, and she was conscientious, organized, and responsible. She brought experience and knowledge of the outside world to the provincial community at Herford.

  The one small drawback was that she was a Calvinist, and those who fell under her jurisdiction were decidedly Lutheran. Even so, this need not have been a problem; the former abbess had also been a Calvinist and had gotten along well enough with her subjects. But the difference in religion meant that the townspeople were somewhat wary of Elizabeth, at least at the beginning of her tenure, and less likely to give her the benefit of the doubt. Nor were their suspicions entirely misplaced, for the evidence suggests that Elizabeth did find her Lutheran charges to be a little less pious than might be hoped for, and regarded it as part of her job to help them along the path to righteousness.

  And so, when her old friend Anna Maria van Schurman (the internationally renowned intellectual prodigy and author of the paper defending the right of women to pursue higher education) wrote to her asking for sanctuary for herself and a band of young women who sought to devote themselves to God but had found themselves persecuted for it in Holland, Elizabeth leaped at the entreaty. “An opportunity occurs, without doing injury to anyone, of much benefiting this Abbey and Your Grace’s state,” Elizabeth wrote excitedly to Frederick William, whose approval she required for decisions on larger issues. “Your Grace will have surely heard how the learned Anna Schurman, with certain Dutch ladies, commenced the foundation of a convent in Amsterdam,” she observed. “Two preachers, however, are with them whom the people of Holland hate, and pursue with calumnies… They therefore wish to put themselves under my protection and establish a house on my land,” she explained. “In all this, we can desire only to work for the glory of God… increasing the number of our Calvinist subjects, of who we have too few,” she continued, giving it away, before hurrying to add, “It is likewise much to be wished that so many waste lands in our dominions should have the advantage of being built upon, and that by the establishment of small colonies in these various spots trade may be activated,” she concluded firmly.

  Faced with so reasonable a request, in his return letter of September 6, 1670, the elector (also a Calvinist) granted his permission, “so long as the sectaries showed themselves conformable to the worship of the Reformed Church and caused no scandal.” Having followed procedure and obtained the elector’s approval, Elizabeth lost no time in inviting Anna Maria and her entire congregation to Herford. “The Princess wrote to me direct, informing me that she was well acquainted with my intention of freeing myself from the world in order to devote myself entirely to the practices of the true Christian religion, and to end my days calmly and happily in communion with pious spirits,” Anna Maria recorded in her diary. “She was good enough to say she recalled our former friendship, and therefore offered to me and our whole community the free and public exercise of our religion throughout the whole of her little state of Herford… It was evident to us all that this was a special manifestation of Providence in our favor, and we immediately set about profiting by it,” Anna Maria marveled.

  And so, in the fall of 1670, sixty-three-year-old Anna Maria and her young female companions—all fifty of them, plus five male pastors—packed up their belongings, embarked from Amsterdam, and descended en masse upon the little, walled, out-of-the-way Lutheran municipality of Herford.

  EVEN HAD THE VISITORS’ reputation not preceded them, the citizens of Herford would have taken one look at this band of eccentric, hymn-singing, ragtag refugees and understood right away that these were not Calvinists, or at least not any variety of Calvinist they’d ever seen before. As it was, though, even before they landed, Herford had heard plenty about the group, whom the locals derisively nicknamed “the Hollanders” but who were in fact Labadists.

  Labadists were the followers of a renegade pastor named Jean de Labadie. Originally a Catholic trained by Jesuits, Labadie had converted to Protestantism in 1650 at the age of forty after reading John Calvin’s bestselling work Institutes of the Christian Religion. But over the years Labadie had begun to see visions and hear voices. There being no psychiatric medication available in the seventeenth century, he naturally attributed his hallucinations to God and worked them into his religious philosophy.

  The Labadist sect, scandalously for the period, eschewed personal property and instead lived communally, men and women all together in the same house (although not on the same floors and certainly not in the same rooms or beds). They didn’t care what they wore or what they ate; they prayed only when the spirit moved them, and then only silently. Conversely, they were given to much frantic dancing and singing as a means of precipitating the sort of personal, one-on-one, mystical revelations from God that Labadie insisted was the only real form of spiritual enlightenment. (“All made merry, not in eating and drinking, but in the Holy Ghost,” Anna Maria noted.) In Holland, Labadie had acquired a small but devoted following, particularly among well-born women, with Anna Maria representing his most famous convert. But the vast majority of the Dutch considered the sect offensive and persecuted its members as disreputable. “We learned quickly enough how far our age had fallen from truth, for so few were willing to give themselves to Christ and to forego earthly comfort,” Anna Maria observed sadly.

  Unfortunately, the Lutheran citizens of He
rford felt every bit as threatened by the Labadists as had their Dutch counterparts. The town council complained vociferously about this throng of dangerous foreigners to the elector of Brandenburg, other Protestant princes, and even the imperial tribunal. Worried that the presence of religious radicals in these numbers could undermine their traditionally homogenous society, the town officials closed their borders to further immigration by shutting the gates, while local merchants refused to serve the Hollanders at their shops or allow them to drink from the public wells. The Labadists were harassed in public and someone even threw a rock through the window of the house where they had found temporary lodging.

  Elizabeth was mortified. These people were her invited guests! Although she must have known that the eccentric lifestyle of the sect did not conform to traditional Protestantism, she nonetheless dug in her heels and insisted that its members were Calvinists at heart. “Although much has been spread against them by their enemies, yet have many persons… at our desire, conversed lengthily with these people, and all admit that their creed and doctrines are those of… the ‘Institutions’ of Calvin, and the Catechism of Heidelberg,” she affirmed indignantly to Frederick William on November 6 in response to an official complaint sent by the Herford town council. When the controversy did not die down, and the elector of Brandenburg announced he would send his own ministers to examine the members of the sect, Elizabeth made the highly questionable move of soliciting the help of a local army commander and a troop of soldiers from a neighboring citadel to keep the peace while the city awaited the arrival of the Berlin envoys and their decision.

  Although Elizabeth was correct in her assessment that the Labadists were peaceful and meant no harm, beginning one’s term in office by high-handedly calling in an outside military force was perhaps not the optimal way to make this point to the local population. In fact, this escalation only confirmed her subjects’ worst fears that their new abbess intended to impose her religious views on them. Within two weeks of their arrival, the refugees found themselves at the center of a political tug-of-war, the result being that on November 20, Elizabeth found it necessary to appeal once again to the elector. “I hear that all manner of things have been reported to Your Grace touching my ‘Hollanders,’ and to me so much has been written on the subject, that, had I them not under my own eyes, did I not daily see the proofs of their exemplary conduct, I should myself be the first to drive them from my dominions,” she began. Then, to justify the presence of the troops, she reported in dismay that “already, when any of the ‘Hollanders’ walk in the streets, they are shouted at by the populace, and mud and dirt are flung at them.”

  News of the standoff over the Labadists and Elizabeth’s support of them reached Sophia in nearby Hanover, and she could not resist going to see for herself. In a spirit of mischievous good humor, she brought along her own minister as a reliable religious expert to quiz her sister’s visitors so she could hear their unorthodox replies. She arrived just as her twenty-year-old nephew Karl (Karl Ludwig’s eldest son by his first wife, Charlotte), who was going around Europe accompanied by his tutor, was also paying a visit to the abbey. Karl, too, was curious about the Labadists and asked to meet them. His tutor, who was responsible to Karl Ludwig for his young charge, penned a detailed description of this interesting educational opportunity to his employer.

  “Next morning, as soon as we were dressed, we all marched off to Labadie’s abode,” the tutor reported. “On the threshold almost we stumbled on Mademoiselle Schurman, in marvelous strange habiliments. She greeted the intruders with but indifferent courtesy. We were led to her room… [where there were] paintings done by the erudite virgin herself, which rivaled Nature; statues in wood and wax, extraordinary from their expression, and commanding our wondering admiration. Meanwhile, there glided slowly into the chamber an old man, with a busy and preoccupied air, not good-looking or imposing, but seemingly taken up with I-know-not-what pious speculations… this man was Labadie,” he affirmed.

  They listened to him pontificate for a while—“As though he had been the Delphian Oracle,” the tutor observed drolly—before Sophia’s minister pounced. There commenced a spirited debate on the temptations of “earthly love” (that would be sex) that continued for so long that Elizabeth tried to intervene by offering everyone breakfast. This attempt at distraction did not work, however, for no sooner had they all sat down at the table than they went right back at each other. “Here things got worse, and words ran high,” admitted the tutor. To try to settle the argument, Sophia’s nephew Karl suggested that Labadie preach a sermon so that they could “judge of his eloquence in the pulpit.” This was immediately arranged.

  “So forth we repaired to Labadie’s own house, and quickly the congregation assembled—women and young girls, a goodly lot—the prettiest little dolls imaginable!” the tutor exclaimed. “Then came a collection of tailors, boatmen, and furriers, covered with dirt; for it is to be remarked, that amongst this brilliant circle of women, not one well-dressed or apparently respectable man was to be seen.” A psalm was sung, a verse read, and a sermon full of hellfire and sin commenced. “Whilst he delivered all this with a loud voice and the affectation of holy inspiration, the most devout attention reigned throughout the assembly; some raised their eyes to Heaven, some smote their breasts and groaned, and some soft-hearted maidens dissolved in tears,” the tutor related. “During dinner, we talked of nothing else but of this absurd and quaking sort of piety to which people are sometimes brought; and our astonishment could scarcely find words when alluding to the number of young women of the best families, richly-dowered, brilliant with beauty and youth, who were insane enough to give up the conduct of their souls to this worst of men and most powerless of priests (only to be laughed at too by him in secret), and who were so riveted to their delusions that neither the prayers of their parents, nor the pleadings of their betrothed, nor the prospect of maternal joys, could tear them away!”

  Elizabeth, who had also rejected court life as frivolous and who, like Anna Maria, had not found spiritual peace in scholarship alone, was highly annoyed by the table conversation and continued passionately to defend the sect. In her frustration, the abbess lashed out angrily at her family. “But to this the Electress Sophia, a lady of extraordinary cleverness, found an answer which turned all bitterness into general mirth,” the tutor related with evident relief, “by asserting, with mock gravity, that her sister’s sole reason for holding to the Labadists was that they were stingy housekeepers, and cost little or nothing to keep!”

  Despite her determined sponsorship, which included a personal journey to the elector of Brandenburg to plead for her guests, the battle over the Labadists was not one the new abbess would win. No sooner had Elizabeth left Herford for Berlin than the townspeople renewed their persecution of the outsiders, and Labadie and his followers decided it was best after all to move on. By the time she returned, they were already established in Altona, nearly a hundred and fifty miles to the north.

  Elizabeth may have lost the contest with her subjects, but as a result of her generous treatment of the Labadists, she earned herself a reputation for religious tolerance and enlightenment that spread as far away as England, where it caught the attention of an idealistic young Quaker named William Penn.

  THE QUAKERS—OR THE Society of Friends, as they called themselves—were a much more thoughtful and considered sect than the Labadists. The movement had taken root in England as a reaction to what was considered to be the impious dissipation of Charles II’s Restoration court (which was itself a reaction to the pious austerity of the Cromwell years). Like the Labadists, Quakers were spiritualists who believed that God spoke directly to the individual, but they did not seek revelation through wild dancing and singing. Rather, they convened long, serious meetings where members preached as the spirit moved them. Quakers rejected ornamentation but not all material comforts; they lived quiet, industrious lives and certainly did not approve of unmarried men and women sharing property. Bu
t where the Quakers were truly revolutionary was in their pacifism and unshakable belief in equality, which took the tangible form of addressing everyone they met as thee or thou (rather than, for example, sir or Your Ladyship) and refusing to take off their hats to those of higher rank, as was then the fashion at court.

  Declining to doff one’s headgear might seem insignificant, but by taking direct aim at the entrenched class system, the practice turned out to be a potent symbol against social injustice. It infuriated the governing aristocracy, who interpreted the inaction as a challenge to its prestige and authority. Accordingly, being a Quaker took courage, a quiet but nonetheless steely courage, and no one had more of that quality than the Society of Friends’ most famous adherent, William Penn.

  William Penn was born on October 14, 1644, smack in the middle of the English civil war. His father, an admiral in the navy, became rich under Cromwell but hedged his bets and reached out secretly to Charles II, who much appreciated this unlooked-for (if covert) expression of loyalty. Consequently, the elder Penn found himself in favor upon the king’s restoration and was given a high position in the royal navy. Admiral Penn, who had great hopes for his outgoing, obviously bright eldest son and heir, sent him to Oxford (where John Locke was a fellow schoolmate) to prepare him for a life at court, only to have sixteen-year-old William fall under the influence of a Quaker preacher and get himself expelled for going to meetings of the Friends instead of attending the required university church services.