* * *
The Harp Falls Silent
“RICH WAS THE ISLAND, when Pirmin the Bishop brought it the sacred grace of Christ …”
With many hesitations and falterings, Randolf read out the Latin hymn that he had written in honor of Saint Pirmin. It was the outcome of many hours of hard work, and he presented it timorously to the utterly honest verdict of the lame scholar. Hermann listened attentively. Taken as a whole, the verses had an excellent form.
After praising him sincerely, he added: “But there is one reservation I must mention, dear Brother. Have you not made Saint Pirmin too much a man of action, rather than a man of contemplation?”
“Yes and no, dear Brother. Pirmin was able to do so much for the kingdom of God because he was a man of silence, of contemplation. Great things grow in silence … Is that not what you read in the book that has come down to us, his Dicta Abbatis Pirminii?1 Believe me, it was from his intimate conversation with God that he drew the strength for his apostolic activity. And that must be so. We give what we receive. Look at our Father Abbot. He was very much a man of silence; and he was very much a man of action for four decades, here on Reichenau.”
Hermann suddenly fell silent. He looked down at his trembling hands, which were attempting in vain to stretch a string on a harp. The string escaped from his hands and sprang back into place.
“Abbot Berno was a man of silence, and that is why he was a man of action. Now, he is permitted to rest and to dedicate himself more and more to the silence that he has always sought and loved.”
Hermann spoke of the abbot as of one who was dead. “He was a man of silence.”
He took a deep breath and fastened the string on the harp. He touched it lightly, producing a bright tone. When he touched the other strings, they gave out a melody.
“Brother Randolf, I wonder whether Our Lord is answered by such tender sounds when he touches souls with the gentle breath of his Holy Spirit? Often, a heavy gale is needed, before we give him any answer at all. And is our answer then a harmonious melody? Far from it … discords, the braying of asses! Dear Brother, if only we were more sensitive and receptive to the light breathing of the Spirit!”
Randolf felt confused. If the sick man had such a low opinion of his own response to the call of God, what then was Randolf to think of his own efforts?
“Yes, are we not slower and more obstinate than snails and donkeys when God comes, Brother Randolf?”
The lame man did not wait for an answer. The harp resounded under his hands, which were very skillful, despite their lameness. It sang a melody that recalled the rushing of water, the murmuring of the wind, a kindly voice.
Then the melody changed. It became deeper, sadder … pouring rain, falling leaves, mist, loneliness. It was only now and again that a little ray of light pierced the gray clouds.
The music ended abruptly. While the last dark note died away, Brother Berthold said: “Father Abbot asks you to bring him your notes for the world chronicle.”
Hermann at once laid down the harp and reached for a bundle of parchment sheets. Berthold lifted him into his wheelchair.
Randolf opened the cell door for the vehicle. “May I come another time with the hymn, when I have altered it in accordance with your suggestions, Brother?”
“You are always welcome, Randolf.” The lame man smiled at him, but the soil from which his smile blossomed forth was a profound sadness.
Randolf took his parchment sheet despondently. Before he left the cell, he touched the strings of the harp. Discords shrieked like the weeping of an abandoned child.
“
The old linden tree in the inner courtyard was in bloom, and its sweet fragrance wafted into the cloister, but Hermann did not notice it. He asked his companion almost timidly, in a subdued voice: “Berthold, how … did you find Father Abbot?”
The Brother reflected carefully on how he should reply. What was the point of Father’s question, when he himself would shortly be meeting the abbot? And how was he to clothe his impression in words?
“Father, our Father Abbot is far away, somehow. I felt that he was still living in this world, and at the same time, that he was at home in the other world.”
Hermann pressed the bundle of parchment sheets to his breast. “You too had the feeling that …”
He did not continue, because the Lord Berno was approaching them in the cloister. In the interplay between light and shade, he seemed almost unearthly. His tall figure stooped forward. His eyes sought the ground. For some days now, his steps had changed their quality. They were more cautious, almost gingerly, as if he had first to test the surface to see whether it would support his feet.
The faithful worker in the Lord’s vineyard was tired. He had borne the burden and the heat of the day of Christ for far too long. He stood still and looked with a benevolent kindliness at the lame man and his young companion. Berthold would soon be a priest of the Lord … He would take up the chalice that Abbot Berno’s weary hands would no longer be able to hold. The one sacrifice of Christ would continue on Reichenau. It was good to bear that in mind, when one was tired …
The abbot’s faded hand pointed to the inner courtyard. “Has our linden tree ever bloomed as it does this year, Hermann? Come, we will look at your notes in its shade.”
The Lord Berno sat down, somewhat laboriously, on the round bench. Its wood was gray and brittle after many summers and winters. “I had it made in Anno Domini 1030.”2 He brushed the cracked wood with his fingers. “Anno Domini 1030 …” Memories overwhelmed him, until Hermann broke the silence by clearing his throat.
“Father Abbot, did you not want to look through the notes?”
“Forgive me, my son. I had forgotten that. Many things are slipping away from me these days, not only my ring.” The abbot took the sheets and read some passages at random. The plan Hermann had drawn up said a great deal about the future work.
“Despite all my efforts, some inaccuracies have escaped my notice …”
“That may be, Hermann. But do we not always leave material for those who come after us, so that they can continue the work and improve the building? Those who are reverent will gratefully receive every gift from the past, and those who are not reverent will laugh at such gifts as obsolete things. They are so poor that they do not grasp that while they are sneering, they themselves are becoming the past for others.”
The past …
The past …
“Anno Domini 1008: the monk Berno from Pruem becomes Abbot of Reichenau.”
“Forty years on Reichenau,” he murmured, “forty long years! How quickly they have passed!”
“Forty years of blessing for our abbey, an important and significant epoch for our island monastery, a new golden age of scholarship, of art, and of piety, to match the period when Walafried Strabo was abbot.”
Abbot Berno laid the sheets down. They rustled like dry leaves.
“Important and significant, Hermann? No, my son.” He shook his head gently, but deliberately. “Only one of the events that you will list in your world chronicle, when it is finished, is important and significant: Qui propter nos homines et propter nostrum salutem descendit de caelis et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine et homo factus est.3 That is what you must tell people loudly and clearly, because most of them think that they themselves are important and significant … And the coming of God is the event for all of us. It was toward that event that the millennia were hastening until the turn of the ages, and since that event, we walk in the power of his love until his second coming … the coming that we experience in the process our personal perfecting, and the coming that everyone will see at the end of the ages.
“Et iterum venturus est cum gloria.4
“Christ alone is important and significant. And it is important and significant that we belong to him, so that he can walk in us through the present age, through this short span of world time.
“The morning light of eternity already shines for the believing heart, which sees in the distance the New Jerusalem, the Eternal City of God.
“Faith, hope, and love are of God—so much so, that they make it impossible for any time to retain its ‘today,’ or any place its ‘here.’ The more we belong to the Lord, the more will we be persons who live close to eternity. Indeed, I might almost say that we will be persons who see eternity.
“The things of this time and this world, which can shackle those of an earthly disposition, become transparent to us. We can look through them and see eternity. It is not necessary to grow old, in order to experience this. But it is necessary to love.”
Berthold had been right. Abbot Berno was living in other spheres, nourished by a different view of things. In reality, he had already taken his departure.
Hermann did not let the stooped figure of the aged Father under the blossoming linden tree out of his sight. It was as if he was seeing him for the last time. He wanted to ask Berno to remain with him, but he knew that such a request was foolishness. The Lord Berno had already moved on. Might he ask God to be allowed to follow him soon? Or was this a selfish request on the part of a lame cripple?
“You are aware that most of the journeys I undertook were on the emperor’s business. Sometimes, I was permitted to accompany the Emperor Henry II to Rome. I was in the city that they call the ‘Eternal City,’ and I told you about it. The Eternal City … It is rightly given this name. Rome will pass away, like all the cities on this earth. But it is in Rome that the heart of the Church beats. What is the Church, if not Christ on earth, the love of the Lord, transmitted through those who are his, and in those who are his?
“While I was in Rome I met the Holy Father, the Pope. And I saw in him more than the Vicar of Christ, as canon law understands that term. For me, he is the heartbeat of the Church, throbbing life, a gift of the Holy Spirit. Even the unworthy men who have seized the Chair of Peter from time to time had to serve one and the same faith, without falsifying it …
“But who is worthy of such an office? Who could claim to be worthy? Indeed, which of us is in any way worthy of the grace of God, and, still less, of a special vocation? None of us, Hermann. None of us. To be called is always, always an unmerited grace of the Lord. It is nothing other than compassion on his part. It is pure mercy.
“In spite of all the human failings, I experienced in Rome how truly the Lord is with us. His love sustains the Church. He who is eternal is more clearly at work in Rome, and that is why it is the Eternal City for me.
“I spent many happy hours in Saint Peter’s at the tomb of Peter the Rock, hours that were radiant with joy and ardor in the faith!
“And I also saw the Romans’ love for Mary! They taught me what Mary’s sacred motherhood can mean for people. Mary, the Mother of the Church, the Mother of the Christ who is on our altars and in our souls, became my Mother in Rome, more than she had been before. Before I visited Rome, she had been too much the Queen. The heart plays a central role in the external form of the homage that her children in southern lands pay her. And we can certainly learn from them how to love Mary in a more childlike manner. You called her ‘vita, dulcedo, et spes’5 in your Marian canticle, and your love of Mary has much in common with the Romans, although you have a mind that imposes order on things and appears so unemotional.”
“Oh, Father Abbot, you know that when I impose order on things, when I try to identify a plan and a system, that is only a way of praising the One who has bestowed order, plan, and system on everything that exists. His law, which he has placed in all things, is love. And even the driest of the formulas that I use in my attempt to give an account of that law does not seek to be anything other than love. I impose order, so that others may be able to love better.”
“I know, my son. But you are happy when you have the chance to sing, to play, and to gather colored stones together like a carefree child who has no fixed plans. I wonder if I made you do too much serious work in imposing order on things, when you yourself wanted to create something freely. How many of your songs remained unsung?”
“Not every song got finished, Father Abbot. But I was more cunning than you think. I have made colored stones out of my serious and important activity. Whatever I did, I did it only with a view to the big picture. And my mosaic depicts the same face as in Aachen: Christ.”
“Christ. He lives. Everything finds its unity in him. The colored stones that we bring to him are the hours of our life, and the apparent variety becomes unity in him, becomes God’s own simplicity. We have often spoken about this, Hermann. We believe that all the moments of our life flow into his heart, into his love. Is that not a wonderful consolation at the end of one’s way? How great and sublime is the simplicity of God …”
After these words, the Lord Bruno rose abruptly, lifted his hand as if in blessing, and departed through the sunny inner courtyard. He walked laboriously, a stooped old man, through the superabundance of life.
Hermann, driven by a secret concern about the Father, had himself brought to the monastery church, where he found the abbot kneeling on the ground before the high altar. Abbot Berno’s face was peaceful as he prayed. Had he wanted to have a conversation just now, or did he only want Hermann to have a glimpse of his inner world?
“
At the monk Berthold’s ordination to the priesthood and his profession, Abbot Berno sat on a throne before the altar, in a dignity that was not of this world, but belonged to a higher sphere. The stiff ceremonial garments, embroidered with gold thread, emphasized the transparency of his figure, which had become smaller; but his voice was strong and vigorous. He preached like one who had power; like one who was permitted to see further than the others; like one who stood on the threshold and knew what would come after this life.
His old eyes lit up in his furrowed, pallid face, as he spoke about the New Jerusalem that was to descend from heaven like a bride.
“Rejoice in the truly ‘Eternal City,’ in which God himself will be the light. Let all that we do on earth be only a preparation for our homecoming into eternity.”
He described the New Jerusalem with warmth and youthful enthusiasm. Suddenly, in the midst of the sublime gravity of his sermon, he paused and smiled. The smile made his old face young and full of life. With a simple, profound gratitude, his eyes sought out the crippled monk in the first choir stall on the left-hand side.
“The Eternal City will nevertheless have its stars, my beloved sons in Christ. Naturally, those stars receive their light from the one light of God. Does not sacred Scripture say: ‘Starry-bright forever their glory, who have taught many the right way’? Accordingly, Our Lord Jesus Christ will give his light to those who have taught his son, the priest and monk Berthold, the right way.”
“What light will be yours, then, Father?” thought Hermann. “You have led many people to Christ for forty years. I am one of them.”
The closing words of the sermon made the entire monastic community shudder. The Lord Berno called out the well-known words of the Apocalypse of John in the monastery church: “Maran atha! Come, Lord Jesus, come soon!”
This was no pious formula. This was a prayer both personal and urgent.
In the meantime, however, the abbot went about his daily duties. His voice became steadily weaker, and his steps dragged more heavily. He forgot things. But his mind retained its freshness. He could still see and evaluate situations and persons clearly. He noted that some monks were huddling together; and it was not the best monks who were having weighty discussions and whispering secretly. They were discussing his successor. It did not take long for him to discover this, and that was painful enough; but what caused him great concern was that they were thinking of Udualrich in this context. Udualrich as Abbot of Reichenau?
Udualrich had the arrogant harshness of a self-righteous man, and quite apart from his intellectual capacities, he was a crude hedonist. Not even the studies that Abbot Berno had strictly imposed on him had helped to make him a man of the spirit. He treated the sciences as he handled his spoon at mealtimes. In his eyes, whatever promoted his well-being was good.
The Lord Berno had struggled for many years with this difficult character, without succeeding in changing him. Udualrich had indeed submitted to the abbot, but what motivated his submission? The abbot tried in vain to recall one single gesture of warm-hearted and self-forgetful brotherliness, or any indication of a deep religious emotion. Did Udualrich actually give God a place in his life?
One last great anxiety led the tired man to take up his pen. He wrote to the emperor, to the Pope, and to the bishop of Constance with the urgent request that they should do their utmost, for the love of Christ, to see that the abbey would once again receive a true father.
“… an abbot who carries out his office as a father, but in the spirit of the reform of Cluny …” He himself would soon have to leave his monks. He asked them humbly to forgive all the mistakes that he had made in his long period as abbot. He dispatched express couriers, but no answer came.
This was the final sacrifice that God demanded of him. He had to abandon all his anxiety about the future of Reichenau. It was no longer his task to form and to direct. All he had to do now was to go to God. Silence cloaked him. He understood the Lord, and he submitted willingly. He handed himself over to silence, even before he was welcomed into the silence of eternity. But as long as his heart continued to beat, his silence was a power in the abbey. And when that heart beat for the last time one June day, grief for the Father purged everything that was bad in the community of brethren. They wept for their Father like children; even Udualrich wept.
“
The lame man’s grief was so deep that he had no tears. Had the dead man bequeathed him his silence? A feeling of emptiness penetrated him and surrounded him. It was as if he hovered in an infinite space that had no boundaries, no light or darkness, no sound …
It seemed that he had lost the place that had been his. He leveled no accusation against God, nor did he rebel or protest in his mind. He knew that the Father was at home and safe. Was it for this that he had had to sacrifice his own security? He continued to believe with a childlike naturalness. But where were the hands of God that held him? He believed, but he felt nothing at all that could have made this act of faith light and joyful.
He felt as if he was penetrating further and further into this region of unlimited solitude, into a silence that was immense and impenetrable. It was as if he was falling, like a meteor in outer space. People and things fled from him and became strangely insubstantial. They faded into specters that could not alleviate his inner loneliness.
His hair turned white in these days. He was thirty-five years old.
He crouched without tears in his wheelchair beside the abbot’s bier. He spent many hours in the monastery church, looking steadily at the face of his dead abbot. His crooked hands were folded; his prayer repeated the words: “Lord, I thank you that you have given him peace.”
But his soul did not ascend with these words. He was recollected, but his recollection resembled the rigidity of a dead man’s face.
Were the strings of his harp torn out when the Lord Berno died? Had something in him died when the Father died?
He made no objection when Berthold brought him into his cell. He spoke and ate and worked. He was kindly and willing to help. But the young priest-monk listened attentively to the sound of Hermann’s voice, which seemed different.
Berthold could not understand why Hermann did not weep for a man whom everyone mourned—even those who had been his adversaries. Why had he let another monk compose the obituary notice for the Lord Berno that was to be sent to the other monasteries in the fraternal union of prayer? His words were logical enough, but did not Hermann speak like one who did not know what he was saying and doing?
Hermann revealed absolutely nothing of his inner experience to his companion. He found no words for it. How could he explain solitude and emptiness? How could he describe something that did not exist?
Was he really so little interested in what was going on in the abbey? Delegates from many monasteries were expected to attend the solemn funeral ceremonies. When Berthold told him about this, he listened with polite attention, without making any comment. The young monk was bewildered. “It is as if it had nothing to do with him,” he thought.
He merely noted down a few neutral sentences for his world chronicle about the long period of government of Abbot Berno, “who was distinguished for his great scholarship and piety.”
“
Hermann broke through the wall of his inner silence only once. The assembled brethren were discussing where the body of the departed abbot was to find its last resting place.
Brother Norbert, the abbot’s confessor, related the explicit wish of the dying man to be buried in the west-work of the monastery church: “I would like to rest where I spent such a long time, so many years of my life, building.”
Many monks murmured their approval, but Father Prior had serious doubts.
“My lords and Brothers, if we grant this wish, we must take up the new flagstones and destroy what has just been finished. The building activity lasted far too long as it is, and it has imposed heavy burdens on our abbey.”
The excitement ran like a flame across the gaunt face of the sick man. He straightened himself as far as was possible, put up his trembling right hand, and asked for permission to speak. His voice reached the furthest corners of the chapter room.
“Dear Brothers, ought not the last wish of our Father in Christ to be a sacred obligation?”
Udualrich spoke up. “The costs, Brother,” he pointed out. “You are a man who belongs to the other world. Is it necessary to remind you that it is rather unimportant where precisely the earthly body falls into dust?”
With the death of the Lord Berno, the time of Hermann of Altshausen was definitively past, and this celebrated man, this “favorite son” of Reichenau, was to get a taste of the new order of things without delay. Udualrich looked at him with undisguised antipathy, but the sick man’s blue eyes met his gaze without resentment or guile.
“You may be right, Brother, as far as the location of our last resting place is concerned. But ought we to refuse the tomb in the west-work to our Father Abbot Berno, who gave Reichenau for four decades his heart’s blood, his labors and cares, his suffering and loving, his prayer and his sacrifice? Nothing that he could do for us was ever too much for him. Would it not be a special grace if we were to be given a place of remembrance and of meditation there, a place where we can examine in future years whether we are still walking in the spirit of the great reform of Cluny, in the spirit of the Lord Berno, in the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the spirit of love? And precisely in this spirit, is it not essential for the grateful spiritual sons of such a Father to lay him to rest where he asked to rest?
“In order that this may not impose excessive costs on the abbey, Lord Prior, I should like to request your permission to ask the Lady Hiltrud at Altshausen to cover the costs. My lady mother always revered our Father Abbot.”
The prior looked in shock at the lame monk. His words had been bold, but they had been spoken in a modest tone. For the first time, he and the brethren in the chapter room noticed the cripple’s white hair.
Udualrich looked around uncertainly. He read assent on the faces of the monks. Hermann had won, and the dead man was still a power to be reckoned with.
The prior granted the lame man’s wish.
“
“How disgraceful, Father, that our rich abbey lets the burial crypt of its abbot be paid for by your lady mother!” said Berthold, once they were in Hermann’s cell.
The sick man silenced him with a weary gesture. “That will do, Berthold. Do not mention this again. Our Father Abbot will receive a worthy resting place. Many things will happen now, and we shall have to accept them.”
And Hermann let things take their course. He fell back into his inner detachment from the affairs of the abbey, and he did not display the slightest sign of unease when Udualrich was elected abbot.
When the monks formally promised him obedience, Hermann bowed in homage over the broad hand of the new abbot, which did not move one inch in his direction.
“I imagine you did not think I would be elected, Hermann?” asked Udualrich slyly.6
“I expected that you would be elected,” replied Hermann calmly.
His voice betrayed no fear, but only a quiet certainty, a great distance.
“Well,” said the abbot, with a rush of anger, “we will not hear much about you now. You will play no role, as far as I am concerned. And that means that you will play no role in the abbey.”
The blue eyes looked guilelessly up at him, and simultaneously past him. Hermann smiled a quiet, knowing smile that was free of bitterness.
“Thanks be to God, Father Abbot. I have always wished to be in reality what I in fact am, because of my sickness—the last of the poor ones of Christ.”
The abbot’s brows drew together, and his powerful chin jutted forward. “So … that is what you have wanted? What if I now take from you your Berthold, who is far too faithful? It is an indignity for a gifted priest to perform the most menial duties for a cripple.”
“Yes,” Hermann agreed, “that is what I told your predecessor many times. I asked him to give Berthold a more worthy task.”
A sound was heard from somewhere in the community of monks, the sound of barely suppressed anger. Berthold?
“Can my loneliness be increased?” asked the lame man. “Lord and Father Abbot, there is a loneliness that not even the most faithful person can banish.”
The monks stared at the little, white-haired brother with the shining blue eyes. They perceived that this poor handicapped man dwelt in an unattainable solitude and freedom.
Abbot Udualrich passed the tip of his tongue over his dry lips and murmured: “Prepare the writing of the world chronicle, Brother, as has been arranged. You have done excellent preparatory work for it.”
Without noticing what he was doing, he had once again addressed the lame man with the honorific “Ihr” form. He had no desire to humiliate someone who was invulnerable to him. Accordingly, he left the priest-monk Berthold with him.
Where Are We at Home?
The new abbot never took the path to the lame man’s corner cell. He never spoke to him when they met. He overlooked him just as deliberately as he overlooked the burial crypt in the west-work, where most of the monks prayed zealously. Reports were brought to him of prayers at the tomb that were heard, and he consciously failed to hear them. The spirit of Abbot Berno was not to have any dwelling place on Reichenau.
Slowly and with great caution, Abbot Udualrich altered here and there a little of the inheritance of the Lord Berno. He warily loosened the reins of the monastic discipline. In the chapter meeting, he issued warnings against excessive asceticism. When no stimulus is offered, people sooner or later slacken. Abbot Udualrich counted on this, and time worked in his favor. The monks lacked the great model they had had in Abbot Berno, who exemplified the spirit of Cluny.
The new abbot now showed them how, with a certain amount of prudence, it was possible to organize religious life more comfortably, although he kept initially within the framework of the existing regulations. The human reason finds many grounds, apparently objective and just, for avoiding things that are laborious or unpleasant.
The softening began slowly, but it gathered speed and had a profound effect.
The liturgy lost its splendor. The meals of the monks were more ample. Gossiping and laughing monks often stood idly around in the corridors. Their work was not done, or else it was carried out quickly and superficially. The feudal subjects of Reichenau groaned under their increased burdens, and some estates in distant regions were mortgaged in order to cover the increased expenditure. Pilgrims brought the Cluniac Pope Leo in Rome news of the changes on Reichenau.
After one chapter meeting at which Hermann could not take part, Berthold came to him full of consternation. He performed the necessary services for the Father without saying anything, put him in his bed, and gave him something to eat. But the hand that moved the spoon was unsteady.
“Be careful, my son,” the sick man warned him in a friendly tone, “or you will spill the soup.”
Berthold could no longer contain himself. He threw the spoon down into the bowl so vigorously that the soup splashed.
“I cannot do it! I cannot do it!” he groaned.
The lame man, whose head rested on Berthold’s shoulder, as always when he had to feed him, asked tranquilly: “Tell me what is oppressing you. That may make it easier for you to bear.”
“He called your book about music bad and inadequate … I did not want to tell you, Father, but if I do not do so, others will take pleasure in telling you.”
Hermann’s face did not move. “Who is ‘he’?” he asked, although he could guess the answer.
“Udualrich … in the chapter meeting just now. And he is the last one who can judge your book!”
“Berthold, no matter what the case may be, you must not withhold the reverent form of address from our Lord and Father Abbot.”
The younger monk flared up suddenly: “And he, who himself lacks all reverence, is allowed to call you a superficial writer and a man who thinks he knows a lot? He said that since no one can be at home in every field of knowledge, anyone—like you—who tries to do so will not do justice to any one single field.”
The lame man pressed his lips together.
“Be quiet, Berthold, be quiet! Even if the consecrated one of the Lord has committed a fault, you must not speak thus. For us, he is still the one who bears God’s commission, the one to whom we owe reverence. God permits much that is all too human in those who are his representatives. We do not hold the office of judge.”
Berthold was embarrassed, and picked up the spoon again. But he muttered, in one last attempt at self-defense: “There are so many bad things that have happened in our abbey recently, things that are certainly not in accordance with the Lord Berno.”
“But they have a bad effect on us only when we refuse to give God what is God’s.”
The sick man finished his meal. Before Berthold laid him back to rest in the cushions, he had one final question:
“Father, what will happen if a yawning abyss of lovelessness opens up?”
“In that case, my son, you should trust in God and spring into that abyss. You should have the courage to go on loving.—We must pass through immeasurable abysses and endure endless nights, without experiencing with our senses that God is with us. But our trust …”
A short, hard knock on the cell door startled them. Abbot Udualrich entered the room. Berthold could not rise to his feet, because he was supporting the sick man.
“Are you better, Hermann?” asked the abbot diffidently.
“Thank you, Father Abbot. I am still somewhat weak, but my strength is gradually returning.”
The abbot was visibly embarrassed. Did the sick man know what he had just said in the chapter meeting about him and his book? When he had uttered those words, he did not yet realize that he would need this lame man.
“I have just received news that will bring you joy, Hermann, since you love holy Church.” He put on a winning smile. “Pope Leo IX has surprised me by accepting the invitation to come in person and consecrate the church on Ergat, which my blessed predecessor began to build. He will then spend some days on Reichenau. That is a great honor for our abbey, is it not?”
“Yes, Father Abbot,” replied Hermann briefly.
Udualrich rubbed his broad hands uncertainly. Could not this lame man come to his aid? He surely grasped what the abbot wanted. For if he had not needed him …
“It has occurred to me that you would want to use your talent, and that it would bring joy to your heart, to honor the Holy Father with little masterpieces of poetry and music. Pope Leo IX prizes the fine arts. When he was bishop of Toul, he wrote poems and composed music, in order to enrich the liturgy.”
“I did not know that, Father Abbot. I only heard that he was a Cluniac.”
Udualrich shot him a piercing glance. Did the lame man say this without any ulterior motive? Or did he sense that this fact diminished all the joy that a visit by the Pope should bring? A Cluniac Pope was coming to Reichenau. Abbot Udualrich shivered secretly.
“Draw up the program for the feast as you think right, Hermann. I trust your wisdom and your skill, and I rely wholly on your mastery. You will hit the right note that satisfies the Pope. What would you say to a Vita Sancti Adalberti?7 Saint Adalbert is the patron of the new church.”
“Saint Adalbert of Prague is a great figure, Lord and Father Abbot. There is a lot to be said about him.”
“Saint Adalbert of Prague …” The lame man spoke meditatively, as if the first images were already taking shape in his mind.
Berthold had followed the conversation with astonishment and irritation. Now he spoke out: “Father, do not let yourself be exploited. Think of what the abbot said in the chapter meeting. You are a ‘superficial writer and a man who thinks he knows a lot,’ and now you are to help him out of a difficulty. Surely you see that the task he has given you was not suggested by any kind of positive feelings toward you on his part?”
“My dear son, we must accept the demands of God without making any distinctions, and we must let ourselves be consumed in his service. Why should we reflect on the motivations of those who issue commands? We know the motivation of God in everything that happens—namely, love.”
Hermann was startled by his own words, and he paused, as if he had just discovered that he had done something wrong.
The motivation of God was always love … In that case, the tremendous loneliness in which he lived did not denote a lack of security. God’s motivation was always love.
Even in the unfathomable silence that had enfolded him since the death of Abbot Berno, there was a song that sang: “I am made for God, and God is love.” He was safe. The song of his life resounded, even if he did not hear it—or at least, not yet.
He breathed easily, like one set free. “The strings will be tautened anew.”
“What do you mean, Father?”
“The strings of my harp, my son. I will be able to sing again.”
“You must sing, because the Pope is coming.”
“I can sing because God is coming; because he is here.”
Berthold did not understand him. He did not know about the deepest loneliness, about the harp whose strings had split when the Lord Berno died.
“
The sick man worked for weeks on end, until he was utterly exhausted. Berthold brought the abbot in good time the address of welcome and the address of homage that he had requested. Hermann’s Latin was mellifluous and easy to understand. The choir studied his canticles, and the Vita Sancti Adalberti was copied by several scribes onto fine parchment. Reichenau made ready to welcome the Pope, who was reputed to be a saint.
And then Pope Leo IX came, bringing rich blessings to Reichenau. He finally broke the spell of grief that had lain on the soul of the lame man and showed him the great breadth and holiness of his oblatio for the Missa orbis, the consecratio mundi.8 Hermann responded to him with the powerful faith and love of a man who had passed through silence and solitude to become more mature, emptier for God and for his grace. The real reason why Pope Leo IX had come to Reichenau was to meet the lame man, and he asked Berthold to write an account of his life for him.
“
By the time that Hermann had told his companion the story of his life up to the visit of the Pope, the world chronicle that he had written at Leo’s request had reached the year 1050. The account had been delayed again and again by other writings, and by illness and weakness.
“Now we have come full-circle. Once again, we are in early spring, dear son, just as in the year 1030, when the lame little bird flew away from Reichenau.”
Berthold had brought him to the Gnadensee, to help him recover from the long winter, which had caused him more pain. The waterfowl in the reeds were noisy, but the Gnadensee itself was at rest, silver and smooth with a blue sheen, under the delicate white and blue of the sky. Nature was starting afresh …
“And there is spring in the holy Church too,” said the lame man, happily. “Our Holy Father is like a Pentecostal storm that awakens new life everywhere.”
“The pilgrims from Rome related yesterday that the Eternal City is able only seldom to keep him inside its walls. He turns up all over the place and checks whether everything is in order.”
“He extends the walls of the Eternal City,” replied Hermann, “for wherever he is, the heart of the Church beats there.”
At the same time, he recalled Leo’s request, which went in the opposite direction: “Widen the walls of your cell, until it encompasses Rome.”—“Holy Father,” he thought, “what are your plans for a poor little monk like me? But I will love and suffer as best I may, without trying to see the significance of what I can contribute. I will dedicate myself without reserve to the Lord and to his Church. One who gives himself to God must no longer measure and weigh … with the secret desire of ensuring that he gets his own share.”
After the Pope’s visit, the monks on Reichenau had begun once more to live in this spirit. The Crucified Lord received incense and chants. All went with him as far as the breaking of bread, but only a few followed him as far as Golgotha. Were there blossoming thorn bushes on Reichenau? Many preferred to uproot the thorns, because sacrifices hurt.
“
In summer of 1030, the Lord Udualrich granted the sick man a favor for which he had not asked.
“Hermann, go with Berthold for some weeks to Altshausen. We wish to give your lady mother this pleasure, which she had in the days of Abbot Berno.”
The abbot basked in his own generosity. But inwardly, he was relieved to be rid for a time of the tiresome admonitions of a monk who reminded him constantly of Abbot Berno and of Pope Leo IX. The Lord Udualrich took no pleasure in remembering the serious exhortations of the Pope. In a letter to the Holy Father, he mentioned casually the permission he had given the man from Altshausen. The lame man enjoyed high prestige in Rome … But when he spoke with his counselors, the abbot groaned that he was obliged to yield to pressure from Hermann’s aristocratic family.
“It is very difficult in the long term for a community to have a sick man in its midst. One has to keep on granting him exemption from the Rule.”
Randolf objected, courageously: “Hermann is given only a few exemptions from our Rule, Father Abbot, only those forced on him by his illness.”
The abbot looked at him with displeasure. “No doubt you are right,” he said in a surly voice, “but they are more than enough.”
Must this Hermann continue to enjoy such prestige in the abbey? And this ungainly cripple was supposed to be great, free, and rich? The idea was intolerable!
“
“Eight years ago, we went together on our pilgrimage across Reichenau,” Hermann reminded his companion, when they sat in the wagon that traveled slowly northward. “It is summer once again, and the farmers are once again making hay …”
Berthold sighed loudly. “Oh, Father, how much has happened since those carefree days! If Saint Pirmin came out of his crypt in the imperial cathedral in Speyer, he would have to drive out the poisonous serpents from Reichenau all over again.”
The sick man laid a warning finger on his lips. He did not know the driver.
“Sometimes, I wonder why the Lord tolerates abuses in his sanctuary,” said Berthold quietly.
“God respects our free will. He wants the free gift of a free heart. Even those whom he has called retain the possibility of choice, and one who is bound with the fetters of the religious vows is free to say ‘no’ to God.”
They continued their conversation during a rest by the forest edge, where they need not fear that the driver would overhear them. They were alone. Hermann leant his painful back against the barky, gray-brown trunk of an old fir tree with broad branches, and rested. His eyes rested too, as they contemplated the bright and dark green of the meadows and trees.
Berthold crouched in the grass at his feet and looked up at his Master. The pallid face under the white hair looked as if it had been formed from finely chiseled marble. It made a striking contrast to the gray-brown of the trunk. In the aftermath of the visit of Pope Leo IX, this face displayed a lively interplay of emotions. It now looked directly at other human beings.
“Father, how can you see the abuses on Reichenau without being tormented and exhausted? Do they not cause you suffering? After all, you love Reichenau.”
The Master felt that he ought to ask his disciple if he did not yet know him.
“Berthold, one who loves must suffer. One who loves Christ, or who at least wants to love him, must suffer when he is so little loved by those who have consecrated themselves to him. One who does not suffer does not love either. Nevertheless, our suffering must bear the sign of peace and … of joy.”
Berthold plucked a long blade of grass and wound it artistically around his fingers.
“Joy, Father?” he asked, reflectively. “I have often pondered how it is possible for suffering and joy to coexist in a human heart. Saint Paul writes that he rejoices in tribulation. How can he do that? If I suffer, I suffer.”
Instead of replying, the lame man pointed to the twig of a wild rosebush. “Would you break that twig off for me?”
The young monk got up willingly, but it was not so easy to do what the Father had asked. He had to twist and tug, to break and to pull, until he held the twig in his hands.
“And I have pricked my hand too,” he noted, when he gave the sick man the prize of his endeavors.
“Blossoms between the thorns—you have felt the tips of those thorns—wild roses between the thorns. Does not that tell you something, my son?”
“Your prayer, Father? ‘Let blossoms bud on the dry branch of my thorns’?”
“Just as these thorns and these blossoms grow on one and the same branch, Berthold, suffering and rejoicing can coexist in a heart. Our Lord did not love suffering for its own sake. He loved suffering for the sake of love and of mercy, and of our redemption. He loved the thorns for the sake of the blossoms. That is why he was under constraint until it was accomplished. The joy that we can experience in suffering … it may be different in a saint …”
Hermann fell silent, and shook his head. A small smile played around his mouth, a smile that was very playful.
“You know, Berthold, a poor little monk like me can scarcely grasp what a saint thinks. I can never under any circumstances take delight in suffering, nor will I ever rejoice to suffer. Because of my limitations, I see no meaning in suffering. I rejoice in the love of God, which comes to meet me in his cross and also makes it possible for me to say ‘yes’ to the cross and to bear it. I trust that my suffering can become mercy for others. We will one day experience the full meaning in heaven; but I believe that there is such a thing as vicarious expiation, acting as the advocate of others, fetching other people back home through the oblation of a suffering that one accepts. Our ‘yes’ to the cross can bring help in situations where no word can help … and it can benefit those who are apparently beyond the reach of the grace of God.”
Hermann’s right hand lightly brushed the thorns of the wild rose twig. “Berthold, you must not misunderstand me. What I have just said to you is not about me, about my suffering. Our Holy Father exalted to the rank of an apostolic activity something that is in reality an act of accepting and enduring. I told you what he said to me. The one who loves, the one who loves while he suffers, is bread in the hands of the Lord, bread for the world.”
The priest-monk Berthold looked at the cripple, the poor, stunted man whose face was marked by suffering. How great must his faith and his love be, if he willingly entrusted himself to the Lord’s hands as bread and rejoiced that the Lord was permitted to distribute him—without ever receiving any confirmation of that in this life!
A squirrel darted down the neighboring tree, took its place on the carpet of fir needles not far from the lame man, and looked inquisitively at the monks.
“Father, there is a squirrel … right beside you!” Berthold, who was sometimes a very young man, cried out. The animal flinched at the sound of the loud human voice and scampered back up the tree trunk. Hermann had not altered his position; he could not look so far to the side.
“Forgive me, Father, I forgot …” murmured Berthold in confusion. But the lame man looked at him kindly, and then looked at the thorn branch in his hands. The blossoms were a hard red color, a red that almost screamed.
“
The people in the small villages in the hilly landscape welcomed the two monks cordially. Hermann avoided the castles and manors of his fellow aristocrats. He preferred the hospitality of the farmers. They displayed neither curiosity nor an exaggerated sympathy, and they shared the little that they had with the travelers.
In one larger village, with its own parish church, the priest caught sight of them and invited them to spend the night in his imposing house. Hermann accepted the invitation, because he was tired.
“You must feel at home in my house, reverend Brother,” said the country priest, when they were sitting in his parlor. “You come from Reichenau?”
He had doubtless learned this from the driver, so Hermann saw no point in not admitting it: “Yes, we are monks of Reichenau, and we want to go to Altshausen.”
“To Altshausen?” The parish priest shot the lame man a penetrating look. “Are you then the son of our gracious Lord Count Wolfrad, whom he brought to the island monastery as a small child?”
“You have guessed correctly,” replied the sick man, suppressing a sigh. That was precisely what he had wanted to keep secret.
“Our rooms are too modest for such an exalted guest, my Lord Count,” confessed the parish priest. His brown brow broke out into a sweat. Ought he now to stand up in the presence of a count, or might he remain seated?
“Sir Priest, pray do not forget that we are simple monks who have vowed poverty. Do not be concerned in any way. You will surely find a bed for my lame limbs somewhere or other …”
The parish priest sprang up in alarm. “You must go to bed after the long journey. Forgive me, forgive me, that I have been so thoughtless. My sister will get a chamber ready for you at once, my Lord …”
The lame man corrected him gently: “Brother …”
The priest rushed off, not without attempting a bow as he stood in the door frame. He crashed into the door frame.
“The poor man,” said Hermann, feeling sorry for him. “If I had suspected that our coming would put him out to such an extent, we would have continued on our way despite the invitation.”
“I wonder if your name is known here, your name as a scholar, Father? That may be why the parish priest was so impressed.”
“My father’s name is well known here, my son. As you have just heard, we are in the territory ruled by Altshausen. The honor that is shown to us is honor shown to him,” said the lame man soberly.
The parish priest’s sister, a maid, and an elderly female relative bustled in and out of the room, casting astonished glances at the lame monk while they worked. Finally, the oldest man in the parish arrived, an emaciated and deeply tanned figure with no teeth in his mouth. He greeted Hermann in a quavering voice as “the celebrated scholar from Reichenau, who is at the same time a son of our gracious Lord Wolfrad.”
Berthold was careful not to show the triumph he felt, since he saw how exhausted the Father was. The pains of his body and the attention that was paid to him meant that the sick man had only one wish: to go to rest soon.
Just as the parish priest was bringing the welcome news that the chamber was ready, the parlor door opened, and a young woman in a frilly dress entered.
The parish priest addressed her in a harsh tone: “Magdalen, what do you want here?”
She tossed her strawberry blond hair back. Her green eyes blazed maliciously, and her big red mouth smiled bitterly. “How very kind you are to your parishioner, Sir Priest. Is that Christian conduct?”
“How dare you talk about what is Christian?” The priest took a threatening step toward her, but she avoided him with a supple movement.
“Do not lose your temper. All I wanted to do was to greet the son of our most gracious Lord Count. I am surely allowed to do that?”
A strange danger vibrated in the woman’s voice. Her sparkling eyes fell on the young Berthold.
“Gracious Lord …,” she began in a cooing voice, and the priest-monk automatically recoiled.
“Madam, you are mistaken. I am Hermann of Altshausen,” said Hermann quickly. He guessed what would now happen: when the woman had spoken his Father’s name, her voice had been filled with hatred.
She stared at him, inspecting his poor crippled figure in breathless amazement and a curiosity that took no account of what he might be feelng. Then she flung her hair back with the same wild movement as before. “You …? You …? A cripple!” she laughed scornfully. But her contempt was accompanied by a visible satisfaction, and she went on: “Oh, I am very happy that the proud count has such a son! I am delighted for him!”
The parish priest tried to intervene: “Magdalen, be reasonable.”
She hissed like a cat. “Be quiet!” She stood directly before the sick man, and her green eyes stared at him.
“I would like you to know why I am so glad you are a cripple. Your father took my husband from me.”
“Your Bruno was a thief,” objected the priest. “He received his just penalty.”
“Just?” She pursued her big lips. “Just?” Her green eyes remained fixed on the lame man’s face. “Is that what you call justice, Sir Priest? I hope that your Lord God uses other measures when he judges. Listen, my Lord Count: my Bruno was a thief. He killed the boars, the wild boars of the count that ruined his fields, and he brought back the cow—the last cow that the henchmen of the Lord Count had taken out of his shed. He was desperate, because his wife was about to give birth to a child at home. So he took a sack full of corn, in order to bake bread for the other four persons, and two loaves. He gave the children milk from his own cow, and he gave them the bread as well. That is why he was hanged.”
“My God …” said Hermann quietly.
“At the very hour when my husband died on the gallows, I bore him his fifth child. And do you think that the noble Lord cared what happened to the wife and the children of the man who was hanged? Not in the slightest, my Lord. After all, they could surely go to the workhouse. Or else …”
For the first time, she lowered her eyes.
“So now you can despise me, if you want to. I have told what I wanted to tell you.”
“No, Mistress Magdalen, why should I despise you? I very much regret what has happened to you.”
She looked at him in surprise. This cripple had compassion on her, genuine human compassion. All she ever met in other persons was contempt …
“We all need much mercy from God, Mistress Magdalen. We are all sinners. I cannot undo what has been done. But you may be sure that you and your children will find help—I promise you! You will see that these are not empty words. Trust me, and try to overcome hatred and evil. God is waiting for you, Mistress Magdalen. He wants you to come back home.”
She would have liked to sneer and rebel once more, but his kindness had disarmed her, since she felt the truth in his words. She bowed her head deeply, and the strawberry blond covered her face. It seemed as if she wanted to kneel.
“My Lord, forgive what I said, and forget my words!” she pleaded in the thin voice of a child. Her endeavor to suppress her tears was audible.
“You have been forgiven long ago. But I will not forget you, nor your situation. May I bless you, in order that God may help you to continue on your path in goodness?”
As soon as the woman had left the parlor, the parish priest burst out:
“My Lord, you have converted this woman. How often have I tried in vain to do so …”
“With kindness?” asked the sick man calmly. “With harshness, all you do is to club people’s souls to death.”
The priest defended himself: “She was so obstinate …”
“Let him who is without sin throw the first stone at a woman like that.”
“
Berthold carefully got the Father ready for the night. The bed was hard, and the chamber had a low ceiling with heavy beams. All at once, Hermann felt the overexertion of the day, and the agitation caused by the conversation with the wife of the man who had been hanged, where he had needed all his strength in order to remain master of the situation. Ought he perhaps to ask his companion to spend the night in the room? But it was too narrow for a second bed, and it was important that Berthold should sleep. Accordingly, he said nothing about his distress, and dismissed him with his customary evening blessing.
When he closed his eyes, a slow sequence passed before his inner eye: the woods and fields, the mountains and hills that he had seen in the course of his journey that day. When he opened his eyes, he saw the little square of the open window. In the cold light of the moon, he saw a bare branch.
“Like a gallows,” he thought with a shudder. He prayed for Mistress Magdalen, for her husband, and above all for his father. That verdict could never be confirmed in God’s eyes. To hang a man for poaching and for stealing a little corn in his great need … the man went to the gallows, the woman to a life of disrepute. He had seen how the gaudily dressed woman earned the bread for herself and her children.
“Father, is that your fault? What have you done?” he thought, appalled. No man of his father’s rank would have dealt differently with the poacher and thief Bruno. But did that justify what he had done? What was the value of a human life in God’s eyes? The answer was: the blood of his Son, who had forgiven even a Mary Magdalene.
“Much is forgiven her, because she has loved much.” God would forgive Mistress Magdalen. He would do so! The parish priest was shocked that he had blessed her. God would forgive her …
The old floorboards creaked. Mice scampered up and down the beams. A cow mooed somewhere, long and miserably. A dog howled. Were the creatures singing a lament because there was so much hardness of heart in human beings?
“Lord, have mercy on us.”
The sick man was very tired, and he wanted to sleep. But he felt that this was one of those nights he would have to endure until the dawn came. He would not be allowed to rest and to forget the existence of his pains. His crooked breast rose and sank again in heavy, laborious breaths. His back hurt from sitting upright for such a long period. If only he could lie a little differently in bed!
“Tomorrow, I shall be in Altshausen,” he told himself. He attempted to think of the village, of the castle, and of his mother. But he could not prevent his thoughts from focusing immediately on the imminent conversation with his father.
The dry branch swayed, black in the moonlight … like a gallows.
He heard the woman’s shrill voice: “You? A cripple! I am delighted for him.”
He would have liked to cry out: “Father, what have you done?” But no words came from his mouth. The lameness once again took hold of his poor body, slowly and inexorably, but he still wanted to use the power of his will to get the mastery over what now awaited him.
“Ave praeclara maris stella / In lucem gentium Maria …”9 He prayed the first verses of his long Sequence in honor of the Most Blessed Virgin. But he got hopelessly lost in the multitude of words, and could not go on.
He experienced in the narrow chamber something that he had hitherto been spared in his attacks. A terrible fear seized him. He was completely unable to move, and stared with wide-open eyes at the black branch in the cold moonlight, the swaying “gallows,” while the fear made his heart beat very quickly.
He would have liked to cry out and call for help, but no sound came from his throat. His teeth were clenched, and the fear of death befell him in the prison of his silence. He felt as if a hand were clutching at his throat to strangle him. Was that the hand of Bruno, or of his wife?
Outside, the “gallows” swayed in the moonlight.
“I am delighted for him!” laughed the young woman with the red hair and the green eyes filled with hate.
A terrible burden lay on his breast, and pain hammered away in his head. He was being crushed in a vise. This was no longer his “Gnadensee,” the familiar ups and downs of the pains.
His mind was so clear that he could follow every phase of his state of health. He prayed silently the psalm that the brethren prayed by the bedside of a dying monk: “De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine …”10
He then prayed the Miserere, the psalm of repentance,11 and his own Salve Regina, and waited, waited for the Lord to set him free by saying to him: “Come!” He waited for the summons to come home.
But the Adversary too knew that this hour was propitious for him. Ugly thoughts made their appearance, and buzzed around the sufferer’s mind like nasty flies.
“What a glorious end for the learned Master of Reichenau! Alone and abandoned by all, dying without receiving the sacraments, reviled by a woman whose husband ended on the gallows …
“You blessed the witch, thereby putting your own father in the wrong. You blessed the woman who rejoiced to see your wretched existence. Is that love?
“Love! What good did love ever do you in your life, Hermann of Altshausen? Where is the One to whom you gave everything? Where is he now? And are you really sure of his love? For what has it brought you? Sickness, distress, pains, contempt, loneliness. What a truly kind love!
“And your works—your writings, your inventions? All your activity was nothing. It is nothing, nothing. Future generations will forget you as quickly as a leaf that falls from the tree. You have lived and loved in vain. There are some on Reichenau who will be happy if do you not come back.”
The night prayer of the monks included this passage of Scripture: “Brethren, be sober, and watch well; the devil, who is your enemy, goes about roaring like a lion, to find his prey.”
Hermann felt that he could almost feel the lion, his ferocious and seductive proximity. His mind was dull, benumbed. Logical thought was no longer possible.
“Your life is nothing, Hermann of Altshausen, nothing …”
Outside, the black branch swayed in the moonlight.
The lame man dredged up a thought to the surface: “If I am nothing, then I am God’s nothing.”
The words of the Lord Berno occurred to him, and he repeated them with a sense of liberation: “I am made for God, and God is love.”
The whispering of the ugly thoughts died down. When a person entrusted himself unconditionally to that love, evil had neither power nor space to act.
But his bodily distress increased. His head and his body jerked convulsively, as if invisible fists were tugging the sick man to and fro. Then the muscles contracted again. He could not close his mouth. Spittle ran down over his chin and onto his garment.
In the morning, Berthold found his Master in a state of complete exhaustion. His face was disfigured by struggle, pain, and distress, and bore witness to a terrible night. Berthold knew how embarrassing it was for the Father when he was powerless to wipe away the external traces of an attack. He washed and dressed him, and put him to bed again.
Hermann said nothing until Berthold lifted his head to pour a little wine into his mouth. Then the torments of the night found release in an unrestrained weeping. The priest-monk held the sick man’s body, which was shaken by violent sobs. This was the first time that the Father’s lamentation had revealed how painful an attack had been. Now, tears were coursing down his hollow cheeks, and the half-open mouth stammered a few fragments of words:
“Lord, Lord … why do you not come to fetch me? It … was … terrible … Lord … have mercy … and come!”
Berthold prayed in silence. What could he say or do in face of such distress? It took a long time for the sobbing to ebb away. Hermann’s eyes, red with weeping, looked at his companion.
“Please forgive me!”
“What do I need to forgive, Father?”
“My lack of self-control. I ought not to whine like this.”
“Father, I am happy that this has shown me for once your real condition. You know that I want to help you, and you must allow me to do so. Let me remain with you in the evening, if you feel that your condition is worsening.”
“I would like to ask you do that, Berthold. It is then that I need a hand that holds me and a heart that prays for me. Let me tell the priest Berthold about this last night …” The lame man told his priest friend about the inner distress he had experienced.
They could not continue their journey that day. Hermann was still tired and weak, and Berthold was afraid that he would have another attack that night. He refused to be dismissed that evening; Hermann tried in vain to assure him that he would probably be able to sleep. This time, Berthold won the day.
The hours crept slowly by. The moon hid behind a wall of clouds. It was dark in the chamber. Berthold stretched himself cautiously on his uncomfortable stool.
“Please go to your bed, my son. The attack will not return tonight …”
“No, Father, I shall remain with you. Otherwise I will have no rest.”
The young monk hid a yawn with his hand. A screech owl hooted somewhere: “Tu-whit! Tu-whoo!” He yawned more copiously. A night like this was long and quiet. He rubbed his tired eyes.
After some time, deep and regular breaths could be heard from the bed. Thanks be to God, the Father had fallen asleep, and now Berthold too could go to his own chamber and rest. But what if there was a sudden repeat of the attack, and the Father was alone? He manfully resisted the temptation to go, but he did cross his arms on his knees and lay his brow on them. He would just rest a little, just close his eyes for a moment. Like this …
He woke up in the bright light of morning and saw the lame man’s eyes looking directly at him.
“So, did you sleep well, Berthold?”
“Sleep? Me? I did not intend to sleep at all.” He moved his cramped limbs cautiously. “I really did not want to sleep.”
“I believe you, my son. And that is why you slept twice as soundly as usual.”
“Did you not sleep, Father?”
“Yes, indeed … long and deeply, by my standards. And that is why I feel much better. I suppose that a monk who can sleep as well as you can drive out the devil thereby.”
“One can drive out the devil by sleeping? That is a thesis I have never heard.”
“You will not find it in any of the doctors of the Church, but I propose this thesis. You have assuredly driven out the devil by the way in which you slept, for you gasped and snored so furiously that even a spirit from hell could be stricken by fear.”
Berthold breathed a sigh of relief. The Father was his old self again. Despite his misery, he could make jokes.
“Just one little suggestion. When you are fully awake, Berthold, remember that I am hungry after yesterday’s fasting.”
Berthold stretched his stiff neck awkwardly and uncomfortably. His face, with his eyes full of sleep, did not seem particularly intelligent; the small eyes announced that he was still in need of sleep.
“That is the outcome, my son, of insisting on doing something other than what the Father thinks right,” said Hermann mischievously.
The young monk left the chamber quickly, before Hermann could say anything more. It was good that there was a well with clear, cold water in the courtyard of the priest’s house! Berthold let the bucket down, and wound it up on the long rope.
“How many hands have had to help me up to now,” thought Hermann, while his companion attended to him, careful as always. “Mostly, they were good and gentle hands. But how humiliating it was when the hands helped only reluctantly. Every touch that lacked reverence and mercy meant an inner torment.”
When Berthold had laid him down anew on his bed, he held him fast by the arm of his habit.
“Do you still lack something, Father?”
“No, my son, I only wanted to thank you!”
“You must not do that, Father. I am, and remain, in your debt. After God, it is to you that I owe the grace of my ordination to the priesthood. Tomorrow is the second anniversary of my ordination. That gives me a reason for gratitude.”
The lame man fell silent. When Berthold gave him his morning meal, he said: “We would give my lady mother a great joy, if you celebrated the holy sacrifice in our castle chapel on the anniversary of your priestly ordination. She regards you as one of her sons. And there is another reason why I am anxious to get to Altshausen. I must speak with my lord father.”
“About the thief Bruno?”
“About the thief Bruno, about his wife Magdalen, and about his children; and about the injustice and inadequacy of the human administration of justice.”
“You have a difficult task ahead of you, Father.”
“When my conscience makes demands of me as clearly as it does here, I must accept the difficulties. The uncomfortable situation makes it possible to accomplish the mercy of God, even for Count Wolfrad II of Altshausen. He needs that mercy more than does Mistress Magdalen. There will be no lack of human charity in Altshausen, because my lady mother will be glad to help the poor people and to do what she can to heal the wounds.”
“
On the evening of that day, the wagon from the monastery of Reichenau drew near to Altshausen Castle. The peace of evening lay over the green hill-country. The evening sun shone on the walls and roofs of the castle. The village huts crouched at its feet, like chickens under the wings of a hen.
Berthold had noted apprehensively the increasing pallor of the sick man. The journey had been too tiring. “You will soon be home now, Father,” he said, to console him.
“Home?” asked Hermann in surprise. “Home? Do you think that I regard Altshausen as my home? Even Reichenau seems far off, unreal like a mirage. Home? Berthold, we are wanderers who are not allowed to settle anywhere. We must take down our tents again and again, until we reach our home at last.”
“But where are we at home, Father, if not on Reichenau?”
“The Lord Berno is at home, my son.”
Altshausen stood under a thundercloud, a glorious white cloud shot through by the sun, grandiose and spreading wide. There was nothing threatening in its brightness.
Berthold cried out: “Father, look … the cloud is like a city … towers, domes, walls …”
They looked at the clouds, shot through by the sun.
“Do you remember the Lord Berno’s sermon at your ordination, Berthold? He spoke about the city that would come down from heaven, the Eternal City, the New Jerusalem …”
The monks saw the flagpole on the castle tower. The flag with the three red stag’s antlers on a gold ground flapped in the evening wind.
The shining cloud-city seemed to be descending, as it moved northward. Its radiant whiteness haloed first the flag on its own, then the tower, the roof of the private quarters, and finally the whole of Altshausen Castle.
The news of their arrival must have gone ahead of them. The slender figure of a woman appeared at the castle gate and raised her right hand in greeting. The Lady Hiltrud stood in the center of the light.
1. [Title: “The Sayings of Abbot Pirmin.”]
2. [“The Year of the Lord.”]
3. [“Who, for us human beings and for our salvation, came down from heaven and was made incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and became man.”]
4. [“And he will come again in glory.”]
5. [“life, sweetness, and hope.”]
6. [From this point on in the German text, Abbot Udualrich employs the “du” form when he speaks to Hermann. In other contexts, this form implies friendship, but here it is an expression of contempt.]
7. [Title: “Life of Saint Adalbert.”]
8. [“oblation”; “the Mass of the world”; “the consecration of the world.”]
9. [“Hail, most celebrated star of the sea, / Mary, (you have become visible) in order to be the light of the nations.”]
10. [“Out of the depths I cry to thee, O Lord.”]
11. [Psalm 51 in the Hebrew Bible (Psalm 50 in the Vulgate): “Have mercy on me, O God.”]