by Anne Boileau
Nevertheless, little by little small seeds of restlessness began to germinate within me, within many of us younger nuns. It was as if the restlessness in the outside world was infecting us imperceptibly. Ave received a letter from her youngest brother, who is a student of Theology at Leipzig University. He was all fired up having made a trip to Wittenberg with some fellow students, and heard a sermon by Dr Luther. We read (illicitly) his sermon on Indulgences and Grace. It made us look with new eyes, even with some scepticism, at the few relics we had at the convent: a fragment of the baby Jesus’ swaddling clothes; a phial of blood from Saint Bernard; a thorn from the crown of thorns. Were they forgeries, not true relics, we wondered? Another pamphlet that came in with a sack of rice was a sermon by Dr Luther on the state of marriage, and how valuable was the role of a mother. It was Sister Clara, keeper of provender, who made it possible for us to read such things; she was more modern minded than the Abbess, and had a friend in Torgau who was able to slip them in with deliveries for the convent.
One day, a delivery of oriental spices arrived. Sister Clara signed for the delivery. She invited me and Elisabeth to join her in the pantry to help her transfer the spices from sacks into earthenware pots for safe-keeping.
I love the smell of spices. Caraway, cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, nutmeg, and cloves; above all I love cloves, and I will tell you why. That day, Dr Luther’s September Bible, a new and wonderfully readable translation of the New Testament, arrived hidden in a sack of cloves. Even now the smell of them reminds me of that book. We read it in secret, handing it round, taking it in turns, tucking it into the pockets under our habits. “Who’s got the Bible now?” we would mime to each other, and with our eyes, point to the sister who was currently in possession of the book, the hot book, the fragrant, clovey book, so hot and powerful it might have burnt a hole in our habit. It is difficult for me to describe to you the thrill of reading the Bible stories in our own tongue. We knew them already, but they were always through a smoky glass, cloaked in the mystery and distance of a dead language, Latin. Now, these stories came alive, as if they had happened yesterday. Jesus really was at the marriage at Cana, really did change the water into wine. They spoke German to each other. They were ordinary, everyday people. The scribes and Pharisees, and the crowd who gathered wanting to stone the adulteress, according to the old law, were ordinary people, like the priest and the church elders and the peasants we met in the village at festivals. The New Testament was a book about people like us!
We shared that forbidden Bible for four weeks. We took it in turns. Sometimes, in our recreation time, we found a secluded place and one of us would read out a passage to the others, very quietly. One evening we were sitting in the tapestry studio, working on the wall hanging. We were supposed to work in silence, but Brigitte said:
“You carry on sewing, and I’ll read to you, very quietly, from the September Bible. Nobody’ll know.”
So we stitched and drew and knotted and heard the story of Revelation, so familiar in the Latin, but so much more real and immediate in our own mother tongue: And there appeared a great portent in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and crying out in birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth.
Then another portent appeared in heaven: a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth: then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born. And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was snatched away and taken to God and to his throne…
We never did hear the end of the story. The door of the tapestry room opened abruptly and in walked Sister Charity.
“What’s going on here? I heard talking. Why are you not working, Sister Brigitte? What have you got under your kirtle? Let me see. Give it to me please.”
“It’s nothing, Sister Charity. I was just reciting some Latin prayers for my sisters’ piety.”
“I think you were reading something. I think you have a book on your person. What’s more, I heard that it was German, not Latin. Do not lie to me, Sister Brigitte.”
At that, as if as one, without prompting, we all stood up. Ave said:
“We are all complicit in this. We have a New Testament in German. We share it out. We wish to speak the Abbess.”
In a rare gesture of rebellion, we refused to give her the September Bible. Instead, we all left our needles in the tapestry, our threads where they were, and walked very fast through the cloisters, up the stairs to the Abbess’s apartment and knocked on her door.
“Come.”
We trooped in, afraid but defiant and prostrated as we always must when coming into her presence. The Abbess bade us get to our feet. Then Sister Charity arrived, out of breath from trying to keep up with us.
“Good Mother,” she said, in between her gasps for breath. “These young women have defied your authority and gone behind our backs. They are in possession of one of those books, printed books, I think it’s one of that Luther’s translations.”
“I see.” The Abbess paused, looking at all of us with her inscrutable face.
“And where is this inflammatory book?”
Brigitte stepped forward, fished under her gown and presented it to her with both hands, giving a curtsy.
“You may leave us now, Sister Charity. Thank you for your vigilance.”
Silence. We stood before the great lady. She got to her feet, laid the offending book on a table and went to the window. Her black cat was sitting on the windowsill and she picked him up and turned round to face us, holding him in her arms. Her back was to the light, so it was difficult to see her expression. She said:
“You know it is forbidden, not only within these walls, but by the Church. You are exposing us all to great danger. Go now, and do not speak to anyone about this. I do not even want you to mention it at Confession, it is too dangerous. Meanwhile, you will return to your duties and repent of your disobedience. I shall summon you again in a day or two and decide what is to be done.”
We left her presence in disgrace and felt very afraid. What punishment awaited us? Was she really very angry? It did not seem that she was. All the same, we were fearful and awaited her summons in trepidation. As it was, she surprised us with her leniency.
Again, we stood in a row in her room. The sun was slanting low through the lattice window. She sat at her great desk, the September Bible in front of her. Then she went to her bookshelf and brought down another, almost identical book and laid it beside our Clove Bible.
“I have thought and prayed long and hard about the matter of reading and hearing the New Testament in the vernacular. You may be surprised to hear that I have a copy of my own. This does not mean that you have not transgressed: you have been disobedient and dishonest. However, we cannot deny that times are changing.
“The Book itself? It is well done. Dr Luther is a poet as well as a scholar. I have to admit I enjoy reading it as much as you do. In fact, I have been praying and consulting with my senior sisters and the Abbot as to whether to allow it to be read out at meals. What do you think? I am always interested in the views of young people.”
“It’s wonderful, Good Mother,” said Ave. “It brings it all to life. The parables, the Sermon on the Mount, the feeding of the Five Thousand. The people seem so real, like ordinary Germans. And Jesus is real too, as if we might meet him on a road or in an inn and talk to him as a real human being.”
“I am considering allowing the German Bible to be read out loud in the Refectory instead of Latin; we may sometimes use it in Chapel too. I am taking a risk, allowing this. If the Cardinal should hear about it, we shall all be in trouble. Please be discrete and do not write home about this yet.
“So, my daughters, you have transgressed but I will not punish you. I think
I know who has been bringing in these printed items. I shall not punish her either. You may go now. Repent of your dishonesty and pray for forgiveness. Times are changing, and we cannot keep floodwaters from rising. I suppose one could say it is progress. Printing and plentiful paper is changing the world more than we could have ever imagined. God be with you.” She opened the door and bowed at us as we filed out.
How relieved we were, to have been found out, but not to be punished! It was almost as if a crack had appeared in the walls of the convent. The walls were high, the gates firmly shut, but they could not isolate us entirely from what was going on outside. We heard of insolent peasants defying their feudal lords and their own parents, leaving the homes where their families had lived for generations, roaming the country roads in ragged bands. They came into towns and cities, usually without permits; they were hungry and defiant and lacked all deference to those in authority.
A band of young ‘pilgrims’ invaded our convent one evening a few months after this. The youths came into the village banging drums and playing pipes, and demanding food and lodging for the night; the village elders came to beg our Abbess to take them in, and she agreed. Imagine, a hundred hungry youths, fired up, aggressive, defiant! They had left home and were begging their way across the country to a shrine somewhere in Thuringia where it was said that miracles happened.
The Abbess admitted them herself, showed them the barn where they could sleep on straw, and instructed the kitchen staff to kill six capons; some of us helped chop up vegetables and we made three cauldrons of stew for them, which they devoured, and washed it down with plenty of beer. They had their own bowls and spoons and mugs; then they fell asleep on straw in the barn. Some of them were no more than ten years old. But seeing these defiant children and young men unsettled us. We wondered why they were roaming the land like this, and how they dared to kick over the traces, leaving their parents, their landlords, their homes and travelling without papers. We were, I think, a little envious of their boldness.
Another group were also questioning the old order. Intellectuals like Dr Luther and Philip Melanchthon and Erasmus of Rotterdam were defying the authority of the church. The atmosphere of change blew in like cold draughts through the cracks in the walls and affected us young nuns profoundly. Turbulence in the streets, dissent in the church. The older sisters tried to keep these things from us, tried to stop up the cracks, but we heard about them in letters from home, in pamphlets smuggled in by complicit tradesmen, simply by listening to lay people who came and went. We exchanged news and opinions in bed at night, whispering in the dark, or in our recreation hour if we were alone.
One particular day stands out in my mind as being the point when my acquiescence was swept away for good. It was my twentieth birthday, 29th January 1520. I was sitting on a high stool in the library with three others, engrossed in my task of copying out a Latin script. We all had head colds, it was a bleak time of year. Sister Clara came in quietly and touched me on the sleeve, whispering “Sister Katharina, you have a visitor.” I left my work and followed her to the entrance gate, to a little meeting room where we are allowed to receive visitors. Sister Clara indicated before we entered that she would sit quietly in the corner reading, as was the rule. As she pushed open the heavy door I saw a young man waiting for me. He got to his feet as we entered.
Who was it? He stood there awkwardly, his eyes sliding away from my gaze. His hands were large and red like a peasant’s, the sleeves of his leather jerkin were too short. His leather breeches were worn and patched up and his boots old and scuffed. For all that, he was tall, strong and good-looking; I stared at him in confusion as Sister Clara looked at me as if to say: do you know him? The stranger made a tentative step towards me and said:
“Don’t you remember me, Käthchen?”
I knew at once who it was.
“Sebastian! Of course I do, how could I forget?”
He was my milk brother. I had not seen him since I was nine, since I had left home to come to the convent school. His voice was a man’s but the intonation, the way he moved, took me straight back to our childhood, when we had played together. I took both his hands in mine, and we laughed and cried; I wanted to throw my arms round him, but held back. We are not supposed to touch, beyond the initial handshake. My milk brother, the son of my wet nurse, Magdalena Blankenagel.
“What brings you here, Sebastian, tell me everything,” I said eventually, drying my tears and blowing my nose. I indicated a chair, and sat down opposite him on the other side of the little wooden table. Sister Clara took up a seat in the corner and began to read. I did not mind her being present. It was windy and through the high lattice window I could see the bare branches of elms shifting against a grey sky. Sebastian sat down and laid a package wrapped in grey linen on the table, pushing it towards me.
“It’s your birthday ain’t it? So I’ve come to see you. I took a ride in a wagon, then I walked, then I had another ride on a mule cart, and then I walked. So here I am. And they gave me soup when I got here. They say I can spend a night. And I brought you this, from Miss Irmingard.”
My little sister had married three years before and already had two babies.
“It’s so good to see you,” I said, looking at his chiselled face, slightly unshaven, and tried to reconcile the man before me now with the ten-year-old boy I had known. I longed to open the parcel, but decided to leave it so as not to waste my precious time with Sebastian.
“And I brought you something else, a present from me,” he said, wiping his nose on a foul rag. He leant back and fished out something from his trouser pocket and laid it on the table in front of us: a small parcel wrapped in green cloth. What I unwrapped and held in my hands took me back fifteen years. It was a stuffed mole. I took one look at it and burst into tears.
“Oh Käthchen, don’t cry, I never wanted to make you cry. I just wanted to make you another one, that’s all, like the one I made for you when you went away to school, do you recall? I missed you so much when you left, things weren’t the same after that, and Mother, she missed you too.”
“Thank you, Seb, it’s a lovely present.” I laughed through my tears and wiped my runny nose and tearful eyes.
“And thank you for bringing the parcel from my sister. How is she? How are the children, and her husband?”
We talked of home. My brother, now old enough to assume some of the responsibilities of the estate. Of my father and his wife, and their difficulties keeping up standards. So many young people had left the village, seeking a new life in towns and cities. Sebastian wanted to leave too.
“Could you ask your Mother Superior if she needs a handyman? I can do most things. I could work here, for the convent, be useful around the estate.”
“I can ask, but I think it’s unlikely. Where will you go otherwise? You might be able to find employment at the docks in Leipzig. But don’t you want to go back home?”
“No. I’ve finished with that place. My father’s killing himself with drink, my mother’s killing herself with work, and for what? Don’t you worry, I’ll make my own way now.”
The Abbey Bell tolled the hour and Sister Clara stood up, indicating that our meeting time was up. I asked her if she thought Sebastian might be able to find work here, and she told him to come with her and she would introduce him to the Mother. I clasped his hand and we said goodbye. As our eyes met, we were both thinking the same thing: shall we ever meet again? I picked up the package from my sister and left the meeting room.
We had no real privacy in the convent, but the nearest we came to having our own personal place were our beds, two rows of four simple cots in a long, high ceilinged room. The windows were too high to look out of and the floor was bare boards. They wouldn’t miss me in the library, I had been given time off for my visitor. So I took the parcel up to our dormitory, sat on my bed and laid it down beside me. A gift from my sister. What would it be? Something to eat probably, and perhaps a new inner bodice to keep me warm, or a pair of s
tockings. The packet was quite light. I undid the knot carefully, and folded up the string. The linen cloth fell away to reveal a shoe box. I prized off the lid which had no hinge or fastening, and inside, wrapped in fine paper, lay a pair of brand new dark brown leather shoes; the rich smell of high quality rawhide leather rose from the box and I lifted them out with joy. They were elegant but not too fancy, with a slightly raised heel and two goats horn buttons.
“Dear Kathe, I very much hope this packet will reach you in time for your birthday. I had these shoes made by our cobbler Focher, he used my last – I know our feet are almost the same size, because we’ve sent you shoes before, but I told him to make them a bit wider for you. So I do hope they fit and that you like them. You may need to adjust the soles. Fancy, you will be twenty years old very soon! I am sending this gift with Sebastian and pray he may have a safe journey. Christian sends his love, as do our two little ones, who are growing so fast, I sometimes look at them in amazement and think, are they really my daughters?
With all my love, your sister Irmingard.
I was thrilled with the shoes and tried them on straight away. They fitted perfectly, I walked up and down the dormitory, testing them for comfort, and being careful because the soles were slippery. I saw how worn my old shoes had become. But I longed for more news from my sister. I read her note again, and noticed the underlining when she mentioned the sole. So I slipped the shoes off, and peered inside each one; sure enough, as I lifted away the inner sole in the left shoe, I found a letter, neatly folded and tucked beneath it. A long letter on fine paper, in her best handwriting.
