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"Almost everything that is distinctive in the Roman form of Christianity is to be found in Buddhism: images, pictures, lights, altars, incense, vestments, masses, beads, wayside shrines, monasteries, nunneries, celibacy, fastings, vigils, retreats, pilgrimages, mendicant vows, shorn heads, orders, habits, uniforms, nuns, convents, purgatory, saintly and priestly intercession, indulgences, works of supererogation, pope, archbishops, abbots, abbesses, monks, neophytes, relics and relic-worship, exclusive burial-ground, etc., etc., etc."
The life of the great Henry, which I had celebrated in verse at Kottbus, became a reality to me here; and what a powerful influence a visit to the ancient cloister exerted on our young souls! The nearest relatives of mighty sovereigns had dwelt as abbesses within its walls. But two generations ago Anna Amalie, the hapless sister of Frederick the Great, died while holding this office.
We hasten from the hideous scene into the splendid cloister church, the blue church, as it is called, from the blue stones of which the walls are built and here, where the large stones of the floor cover great men, abbesses and queens, only one monument is noticeable, that of a knightly figure carved in stone, which stands aloft before the altar. It is that of the insane Duke Magnus.
When Matilda died in 1219, the old gallows on which the abbess had had the right of hanging offenders condemned by her court, fell into disuse, but the right was restored by the King to Amicia. Towards the end of the century, episcopal visitations began, and the Bishop of Winchester looked into various disorders that had grown up among the abbesses and sisters.
It is also thought that the book was written by a Franciscan friar for the use of some one in a Benedictine house. The fact that the death days added to the Kalendar in the sixteenth century are chiefly those of the abbesses of St. Mary's nunnery, Winchester, seems to indicate that the book somehow before that date had passed from Romsey to the nunnery at Winchester.
Thus it came to pass that while the stricken poor agonised in the grip of unknown horror, bishop and merchant, prince and chapman, fine ladies in gorgeous litters, abbesses with their train of nuns, and many more, fled north, east, and west, from the pestilent cities, and encumbered the roads with much traffic. One procession, and one only, did Hilarius meet making its way to London.
She herself took hold of Angélique, who was nearly torn in half between her friends and enemies, and pulled her out of the gate, all the novices pressing behind her. The moment the rival abbesses had passed through a strong young novice seized hold of madame d'Estrées and forced her to the ground, keeping her there until every one of her companions was on the outside.
It is said to have been in a very flourishing condition when the Danes came to destroy it; and there is no hint anywhere that there was not a continuous succession of abbesses during the whole period. S. Sexburga, the elder sister of the foundress, succeeded her as abbess.
That is because the Princes of Gerano first gave the linen to the convent after it was all stolen by the Turks in 1798. So, as they gave it, their abbesses take care of it." Dalrymple laughed at the extraordinary historical allusion compounded of the very ancient traditions of the Saracens in the south, and of the more recent wars of Napoleon. "So she takes care of the linen," he said.
Later and less worthy of notice are the coffins of the two first sainted abbesses of the convent of Lorvão, near Coimbra, in which elaborate acanthus scrolls in silver are laid over red velvet. The Moors occupied most of what is now Portugal for a considerable length of time. The extreme north they held for rather less than two hundred years, the extreme south for more than five hundred.
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