conversed with those who had seen her, and calls to witness ‘God and the elect angels,’ that he had inserted nothing but what he had either understood from religious and veracious persons, or read in approved writings, viz. ‘The Book of the Sayings of Elizabeth’s Four Ladies (Guta, Isentrudis, and two others)’; ‘The Letter which Conrad of Marpurg, her Director, wrote to Pope Gregory the Ninth’ (these two documents still exist); ‘The Sermon of Otto’ (de Ordine Prædic), which begins thus: ‘Mulierem fortem.’

‘Not satisfied with these,’ he ‘visited monasteries, castles, and towns, interrogated the most aged and veracious persons, and wrote letters, seeking for completeness and truth in all things;’ and thus composed his biography, from which that in Surius (Acta Sanctorum), Jacobus de Voragine, Alban Butler, and all others which I have seen, are copied with a very few additions and many prudent omissions.

Wishing to adhere strictly to historical truth, I have followed the received account, not only in the incidents, but often in the language which it attributes to its various characters; and have given in the Notes all necessary references to the biography in Canisius’s collection. My part has therefore been merely to show how the conduct of my heroine was not only possible, but to a certain degree necessary, for a character of earnestness and piety such as hers, working under the influences of the Middle Age.

In deducing fairly, from the phenomena of her life, the character of Elizabeth, she necessarily became a type of two great mental struggles of the Middle Age; first, of that between Scriptural or unconscious, and Popish or conscious, purity: in a word, between innocence and prudery; next, of the struggle between healthy human affection, and the Manichean contempt with which a celibate clergy would have all men regard the names of husband, wife, and parent. To exhibit this latter falsehood in its miserable consequences, when received into a heart of insight and determination sufficient to follow out all belief to its ultimate practice, is the main object of my Poem. That a most degrading and agonising contradiction on these points must have existed in the mind of Elizabeth, and of all who with similar characters shall have found themselves under similar influences, is a necessity that must be evident to all who know anything of the deeper affections of men. In the idea of a married Romish saint, these miseries should follow logically from the Romish view of human relations. In Elizabeth’s case their existence is proved equally logically from the acknowledged facts of her conduct.

 Prev. P 7/124 next