: longer?" Massillon was so profoundly impressed with a sense of the holiness which had distinguished the early queens of France, that in praying for the young king he could imagine no words more suitable to express his desire than these "Dieu de mes pères! sauvez le fils des Adélaïde, des Blanche, et des Clotilde."1 The devout care of these great princesses was not confined to their children; it extended to all over whom they had influence. Thus an old writer says of the Countess Delphine de Sabran, "Pour estre aux bonnes graces de Madame, il falloit estre aux bonnes graces de Dieu." The records of history abound with instances of the bounty with which women contributed to found and support the institutions of religion. The example of Anne, Countess of Dorset and Pembroke, heiress of the Cliffords, who founded two hospitals, and repaired or built seven churches, besides six castles; and that of the celebrated Countess Matilda, who governed Tuscany with such lustre, may be sufficient to adduce. But it was in days of adversity and danger that we should observe these women. What an answer Marguerite, queen of Louis IX., gave to the nurse who demanded whether they should waken her children when the ship was expected to perish in the storm off Cyprus, and all hope of safety seemed at an end! "Vous ne les esveillerez pas, mais les laisserez aller à Dieu doucement." What resignation marked the last hours of St. Margaret, Queen of Scotland, whose life had been a model of charity and meekness! Lying on her death-bed, when her son Edgard came home from the army, and she learned that her husband and son were slain, lifting up her hands to heaven she praised God, saying, "I thank thee, Almighty God, that in sending me so great an affliction in the last hour of my life, thou wouldest, as I hope, mercifully purify me from my sins." The Landgrave of Hesse, from motives of religion, took the cross to accompany the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa in the holy war to Palestine. His separation from the Margravine, St. Elizabeth, was a great trial, though moderated by the heroic spirit of religion with which both were animated. The Landgrave joined the Emperor in the kingdom of Naples; but as he was going to embark, he fell ill 1 Petit Carême. of a malignant fever at Otranto, and having received the last sacraments at the hands of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, expired in great sentiments of piety on the 11th of September, 1227. The history goes on to relate the train of afflictions with which Elizabeth was now visited. "Her younger child, Herman, being incompetent to govern the state, Henry, younger brother to the late Landgrave, usurped the principality. The ungrateful people joined with him, and gave him possession, and Elizabeth was turned out of the castle without furniture, provisions, or necessaries for the support of nature, and all persons in the town were forbid to let her any lodgings. The princess bore this unjust treatment with a patience far transcending the power of nature, and rejoicing in her heart, she went down the castle-hill to the town, placing her whole confidence in God, and with her damsels and maids went into a common inn, or, as others say, a poor woman's cottage, where she remained till midnight, when the bell ringing to matins at the church of the Franciscan friars, she went thither, and desired the good fathers to sing a Te Deum with solemnity, to give God thanks for his mercies to her in visiting her with afflictions." us reverse this picture. What pride and unpitying severity of judgment would consign to oblivion or infamy, religion taught men to regard with humility and tenderness. The world deceives, and then condemns without mercy; religion threatens, delays to strike, and on the first symptom of return, relents and receives to forgiveness. "Vera justitia compassionem habet, falsa justitia dedignationem." This is what that great Pope Gregory says.2 The Saviour of men has declared, that the frail humble penitents shall enter the kingdom of heaven before the proud and scornful trusters in their own virtue. "O Christian soul! take Mary Magdalen for thy mirror," said the holy martyr Southwell; "follow her affection, that like effects may follow thy own. Learn, O sinful man, of this once sinful woman, that sinners may find Christ, if their sins be amended; learn that whom sin loseth, love recovereth.” In the abbey of Jumiège died Agnes Sorrel: there, amidst magnificent ruins, I have seen her tomb, now covered with long grass and dis But let mal weeds, herbs that had on them cold dew of the night, strewings fittest for graves. Her death was a tearful scene: "Elle eut moult belle contrition et repentance de ses péchés, et lui souvenait souvent de Marie Magdelaine qui fust grant pécheresse. Ayant reçu les sacrements, demanda ses heures pour dire les vers de St. Bernard qu'elle avoist escripts de sa main : elle dist à ceulx qui l'entouroient, que c'estoit peu de chose orde et puant de nostre fragilité; et après qu'elle eust faict ung grand cry, en réclamant Dieu et la benoiste vierge Marie, se sépara son ame de son corps, le lundi 9 de Febrier, 1450, environ 6 heures du soir."1 It is most consoling to remark, amid all the dark scenes of history, how the influence of women, guided and strengthened by religion, was continually and often successfully exerted in the cause of humanity. The German historians give a beautiful description of Matilda, the second wife of the Emperor Henry I. the Fowler. He first saw her in the chapel of the convent, where she was brought up in the practice of all virtue. He came in disguise, and beheld her kneeling with the other sisters, her hands crossed upon her breast, and her eyes lifted up to the altar. From that hour he gave her up his heart; she became his friend, his counsellor, his minister; she accompanied him to battle, as well as presided in his court: she brought up her children to practise the virtues of nobility; and on his death-bed she received her husband's thanks. "Receive our thanks," said Henry, "for all the good you have done to me, for having so often appeased the fury of my wrath, and turned me to have compassion on the oppressed." When the burgesses of Calais had delivered their petition to King Edward III., they concluded, saying, "Sir, we be seech your grace to have mercy and pitie on us through your hygh nobles. Then all the erles and barons, and other that were there, wept for pitie; then every man requyred the kyng for mercy. Then Sir Gaultier of Manny said, 'A noble king, for Goddes sake refrayne your courage; ye have the name of soverayne nobles, therefore now do not a thyng that shulde blemysshe your renome, nor to give cause to some to speke of you villany; every man woll say it is a great cruelty to put to deth such honest 1 Monstrelet. 2 Voght, Rheinische Geschichte, i. 258. persons, who by their own wylles putte themselfe into your grace to save their company.' Then the quene, beyng great with chylde, kneeled down, and, sore wepyng, said, 'A gentyll Sir, syth I passed the sea in great parell, I have desyred nothyng of you; therefore now I humbly requyre you, in the honour of the Son of the Virgin Mary and for the love of me, that ye woll take mercy of these six burgesses."" Marchangy has remarked the beauty and simplicity of the feudal names, composed of the baptismal name joined to that of a fief, as Henri de Colombières, Pierre de Courtenay, in which the name of a modest saint announced the patron of the seigneur, while the name of his fief announced that he was protector to a multitude of vassals, both together conveying the idea of the protected and the protector, and the double bond of heaven and earth; besides, it was affecting to find the name common among the poor borne by the greatest princes, giving rise to one of the great moral harmonies of the Christian religion: but, observes this poetical writer, "it is particularly in the case of women that these feudal names had an inexpressible charm. Marie de Montmirel, Loïse de Surgère, Claire de Grammont, Agathe de Lorraine, Denyse de Montmorency, had nothing repulsive in their sound; they were in unison with religion, and simplicity and love. When Blanche and Mary are pronounced, you would think of the innocent love of some simple shepherdess, or of some woodman's daughter. Again, this woman, who goes to console the miserable in some secluded village, mounted on her hackney, and followed by a discreet page without livery, this woman, who dispenses her charity in prisons and hospitals, is only known, by those to whom her presence is a blessing, by the name of Alice, or Elizabeth, or Jane. There is nothing in such names to alarm the poor. They love the recollection of Saint Elizabeth and of the other holy women who knew and accompanied Mary; their children can easily repeat such names, and bless them; but when the lady returns under her own roof, when the dwarf sounds his horn, and the sergeants snatch up their halberds to fall into lines for her passage, the sénéchal and knights of honour come to receive, amidst the flourish of trumpets, Alice of Auxerre, Elizabeth de Blois, or Jeanne de Béthune." I shall not presume, with unhallowed steps, to approach those holy asylums, where beings of angel purity were devoted to the worship of God, to the education of female youth, and to works of the most exalted charity. There are sublime notions and high mysteries that must be uttered to unfold the principle of their existence, to apprehend which many in the present age have neither ear nor soul. In the sixth century, it was common for nuns, without going into a monastic community, to live in their family house, where they were secluded, unless on the festivals, when they went to the churches. St. Radegonde founded at Poitiers the convent of the Holy Cross, which was the first abbey of women that was seen in France. Who has ever stood on Mount Valerien and not thought upon Geneviève, that simple shepherdess, who used to watch her flock on the meadows below; where, on the banks of that winding river, she learned to love God in contemplating his works, and to catch that heavenly inspiration which was reflected in her eyes of azure; whence, while the daughters of Lutecia, with brows encircled with roses, were dancing in the wood, she, though young like them, would visit the dark prison, or the infected hospice, to console or to cure? Who can read Froissart and not feel an interest in the character of those princesses and ladies of quality who retired to spend their remaining years in devotion and works of charity? Such as Madame Jehanne, who, he relates, "s'en vint demourer à Fontenelles sur l'escaut, et usa vie la comme bonne et devote en ladite abbaye et y fit moult de biens;" or Isabella, sister of Louis IX., abbess of Lonchamp, whose life was written by a sister of the convent, and the simple account of whose death at midnight, and the feelings which it excited in the mind of the nun who records it, may be compared with the most sublime passages of antiquity. At the same time, it was with tears and a mournful reverence that knights and temporal men beheld these sublime examples of devotion. Philippe of Gueldres, queen of Sicily, widow of the magnanimous René II. of Lorraine, after devoting herself to the education of her children, spent the remainder of her life in the convent of St. Claire : 1 La Gaule Poétique, i. |