The young are in character prone to desire and ready to carry any desire they may have formed into action. Of bodily desires it is the sexual to which they are most disposed to give way, and in regard to sexual desire they exercise no self-restraint. They are changeful, too, and fickle in their desires, which are as transitory as they are vehement; for their wishes are keen without being permanent, like a sick man's fits of hunger and thirst. They are passionate, irascible, and apt to be carried away by their impulses. They are the slaves, too, of their passion, as their ambition prevents their ever brooking a slight and renders them indignant at the mere idea of enduring an injury. And while they are fond of honor, they are fonder still of victory; for superiority is the object of youthful desire, and victory is a species of superiority. Again, they are fonder both of honor and of victory than of money, the reason why they care so little for money being that they have never yet had experience of want, as the saying of Pittacus about Amphiaraus puts it. They are charitable rather than the reverse, as they have never yet been witnesses of many villainies; and they are trustful, as they have not yet been often deceived. They are sanguine, too, for the young are heated by Nature as drunken men by wine, not to say that they have not yet experienced frequent failures. Their lives are lived principally in hope, as hope is of the future and memory of the past; and while the future of youth is long, its past is short; for on the first day of life it is impossible to remember anything, but all things must be matters of hope. For the same reason they are easily deceived, as being quick to hope. They are inclined to be valorous, for they are full of passion, which excludes fear, and of hope, which inspires confidence, as anger is incompatible with fear, and the hope of something good is itself a source of confi- dence. They are bashful, too, having as yet no independent standard of honor and having lived entirely in the school of conventional law. They have high aspirations; for they have never yet been humiliated ADOLESCENCE IN LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY 5^3 by the experience of life, but are unacquainted with the limiting force of circumstances; and a great idea of one's own deserts, such as is characteristic of a sanguine disposition, is itself a form of high aspira- tion. Again, in their actions they prefer honor to expediency, as it is habit rather than calculation which is the rule of their lives, and, while calculation pays regard to expediency, virtue pays regard exclusively to honor. Youth is the age when people are most devoted to their friends or relations or companions, as they are then extremely fond of social intercourse and have not yet learned to judge their friends, or indeed anything else, by the rule of expediency. If the young com- mit a fault, it is always on the side of excess and exaggeration in defiance of Chilon's maxim ({xrjdev ayav); for they carry everything too far, whether it be their love or hatred or anything else. They regard themselves as omniscient and are positive in their assertions; this is, in fact^ the reason of their carrying everything too far. Also their offenses take the line of insolence and not of meanness. They are compassionate from supposing all people to be virtuous, or at least better than they really are; for as they estimate their neighbors by their own guilelessness, they regard the evils which befall them as undeserved. Finally, they are fond of laughter and consequently facetious, facetiousness being disciplined insolence.^ II. Keim, who has written one of the most comprehensive and scholarly of all the lives of Jesus, thinks that many, if not most, of his disciples, when he chose them, were adolescents. He says: Though some of the disciples, as well as of the women, may have been married, yet an age of not much more than twenty years is plainly indicated in the case of the four first called, notably of the sons of Zebedee, and also of James the younger, of the youth in Judaea and Gethsemane, nay, indeed, of most of them, for they are represented as coming directly from the houses of their parents, and Jesus cautions them against preferring their parents to their Teacher, against jealous fancies and ebullitions of temper, and administers to them truly pater- nal censures. Just such an attitude was assumed by the Scribes toward " the young "; and thus might Jesus hope — as did Luther in more modern times — to win the old and to tear up the deeply rooted Phari- saic bondage, by means of the fresh and vigorous youths whom Juda- ism itself looked upon as the guard of the coming Messiah. He might also hope to find in youth the next neighbor to that innocent and humble childlikeness to which he could promise and give the kingdom of heaven.* > Welldon: Rhetoric of Aristotle. New York, l886, pp. 164-166. ' Keim, Theodor: The History of Jesus of Nazara. Translated by Arthur Ransom. London, 1877, vol. iii, p. 279.
524 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE A radically different type and ideal of adolescence arose in the early Christian Church and persisted for centuries. The mental life was in many ways narrowed and impoverished by the intense struggles for purity of body and soul which the new religion had inspired. Instead of the harmony between them that pervaded Greek thought, soul and body were now violently sundered, and asceticism assumed that the transient life of the body must be subordinated to the eternal life of the spirit, and mortification of the flesh, visions, and ecstatic communion with the divine were the ideals. The most precious and abundant data for illustrating this new attitude are fortunately at hand.
The first two volumes of the Acta Sanctorum, or Lives of the Saints, by the Bollandists or Jesuit editors, appeared in 1643. Each contained twelve hundred pages in close print and double columns, and both were devoted to the Saints of January. Seven folios were devoted to May, eight to Sep- tember, and ten to October. Fifty-seven volumes had ap- peared in 1861. The new Belgian edition, finished in 1875, contained sixty-one folio volumes. Baring-Gould has se- lected about thirty-six hundred lives, mainly but not entirely from this source, and presented them to us in twelve volumes, one for each month. ^ He has eliminated many of the most improbable incidents. The various calendars and martyrolo- gies and modes of apotheosis have all been considered, but are not fully treated by the English editor. Indeed, compara- tively few saints have received formal canonization at Rome itself.
Although the historical character of the records may be questioned, in detail, they show how strong were the motives that impelled young men and women of all stations to take religious vows and enter upon Hves of sanctity. Hence, monotonous as these lives seem to a persevering reader, they are a precious thesaurus of data showing the profound im- pression which the medieval Church made upon the heart and mind of youth. Some intimation of this may be given by a list of names and incidents, as copious as our limits per- mit, taken almost at random to be the more representative.
» The Lives of the Saints, by S. Baring-Gould. Third edition, 1877.
ADOLESCENCE IN LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY 5^5 Theckla, so romantically enamored of St. Paul in the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Theckla, was seventeen or eighteen.
St. Martian (a. d. 300) at eigtheen retired to a mountain near Cae- sarea, where he lived for twenty-five years among holy solitaries, resisting incredible temptations, especially from women.
St. Agnes (303) was but thirteen, Augustine says, when she died, a martyr of purity and chastity. Rich and beauteous, she repulsed her lovers and overcame temptations.
St. Julian (310), of noble birth but precocious piety, when called to marry at eighteen refused for love of the devout life, but being compelled, chose Basilissa, and they kept together for life the vows of purity made in the nuptial chamber, with a supernatural odor of flowers although in midwinter.
St. Antony (356), of noble birth, well reared and exclusive, longed to dwell simply, being content to understand the blessed Word. At eighteen, meditating on the way to church how the Apostles had left all, he heard, "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast," etc. This he did and made himself poor, taking no thought for the mor- row, praying continually, and observing that if any man will not work neither shall he eat.
St. Hilarion (died 371) was reared among idolatrous Romans and well trained in grammar and rhetoric. He early turned from the madness of the circus, the blood of the arena, and the luxury of the theater, and was filled with longing to visit St. Antony in the desert. As soon as he saw him he changed his dress and the order of his life, became prayerful and humble, and returning gave away all he had. "Naked, but armed in Christ/' he entered the desert at the* age of fifteen and rejoiced in the terrible solitude and hardships, so that the devil who tempted his senses and tried to wear him out with hunger and thirst, cold, and horrid dreams of beasts and women, was himself finally tormented by finding that he was conquered by a boy, who at sixteen built a little cell, 4 X 5> ^^ot unlike a tomb, which is still shown.
St. Ephraem the Syrian (378) was a wild boy and indulged in various escapades, but at eighteen felt remorse, was baptized, and began to discipline his body and soul with great severity, fasting and lying on the bare ground all night in prayer.
St. Artemas was in a heathen school, but his heart was full of faith. When the master threatened, he defied, until his schoolmates stabbed him to death with the iron pens used on their wax tablets.
St. Martin of Tours (401) was attracted in boyhood to a monastic life, though his parents were heathen. His father enrolled him in the army at fifteen. Here in the Roman camp he learned faithfulness and hardihood. At eighteen, one bitter winter's day, he saw a beggar naked, and cut his mantle in two and gave him half; but the next night he saw a vision of Jesus Christ on his throne, surrounded by a host of heaven, wearing his half mantle. Now his poor beadsmen wear as their livery a mantle half red and half white.
526 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE St. John Chrysostom (407) was carefully trained by his pious mother, and only her gentle influence restrained him from becoming a monk till she died, when he entered a cave till his health failed, and then he became a preacher.
St. Euphrasia (410) became austere at twelve and refused mar- riage, but her " youthful spirits and passions were in effervescence and she was cruelly tormented with vain imaginations and temptations "; humiliated herself by obedience to degrading commands, and gave away her property to the poor. Unlike many saints, she was denied martyrdom, but had special power of working miracles.
St. Euphrosyne (470) at twelve was taught by her father, and the fame of her good sense and beauty was wide-spread. At eighteen, visiting a monastery, " her heart began to be solicitous in the fear of God," and she soon had her head shorn and entered upon the de- vout life.
St. Benedict (543), of illustrious birth, was scarcely fourteen when he renounced fortune, family, and worldly joy, plunged into wild gorges over savage hills, put on monastic habit of skin, and took up his abode in a dark and inaccessible cave, drawing up each day with a cord, when warned by a bell, the loaf which a friend provided. Here he lived three years, and when shepherds found him was thought a wild beast till he instilled grace into their rustic souls. He was strongly tempted to voluptuousness, but stripping himself naked rolled in a clump of thorns and briers " till his body was all one wound, but also till he had extinguished forever the eternal fire which in- flamed him even in the desert."
St. Kentigern's (601) childhood abounds in legends. Robins perched upon his head and twittered as he chanted the songs of David, and when killed, revived when he made the sign of the cross over them. He early betook himself to a cave.
St. Columbanus (615) was well trained in the classics, but early resolved on the ascetic. Dreadful were his struggles to forget the pretty faces, bright eyes, and winning ways of the Irish girls, which were a great snare to his studies, so that he finally decided to fly from them to solitude, though to do so he had to step over the pro-rata body of his weeping mother.
St. Walaric (619), among the volcanic caves of Auvergne, learned letters from a psalter while pasturing his sheep. His cravings to know more of the Great Shepherd gave him no rest, and he fled to a monastery, carrying with him " the freshness of his mountain air, the sweetness of his thyme, and became a paragon of modesty, sweetness, and gentleness."
St. Isidore (636), with the exquisite sensitiveness of youth, one day when he had run away from school saw where the dropping water had worn a stone, and the sight was to him what the Bow-Bells were later to Whittington. Dull as he was, with diligence he became an accomplished scholar. These drops were God's messengers and gave to Spain an historian, and to the Church a doctor.
ADOLESCENCE IN LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY 5^7 St. Cuthbert (687) was a shepherd-boy of rare vigor and boldness, but prayerful and clearly a visionary. At fifteen he had begun his career as a knight attended by a squire, and when he entered the cloister showed rare aptitude for cenobitic life, surpassing all others in study, prayer, vigil, and labor, traveling and preaching far and near.
St. Werburga (eighth.century), well reared and preferring Church offices to the giddy whirl of pleasure, early resolved to devote herself to virginal purity. Her beauty drew crowds of suitors, wealthy and famous, but all her affections were weaned from earthly things and fixed on God.
St. Notker Balbulus (912) stammered, but excelled in music. The school songs at St. Gall had grown very corrupt, " for Alpine bodies with their thundering voices are not adapted to sweet modulations of tone." His youthful soul was absorbed in the rhythm, cadence, and words of Church music, which he reformed and to which he made great additions.
St. Dunstan (968) had a wondrous dream, when a boy, that he was driving off dogs, and rushed on to the roof of the church and nearly fell. He did not clearly recall it, but was afterward changed. As a page at court, his jealous mates ducked him and set the dogs on him. He fell desperately in love with a beautiful girl and repelled the entreaty of his friends that he should renounce her for the woolen smock of a monk, but soon a violent and irritating eruption impelled him to the Church. After saying the first versicles at Compline, a great stone fell near him, but the devil missed his aim. When he hung his harp near a window, it played faint ^olian music as a presage of his greatness and sanctity.
St. Peter Damiani (1072) as a boy was treated almost like a slave and made a swineherd, but was finally sent to scool. Here, to arm himself against the allurements of the devil, he began to wear a rough hair shirt under his clothes, and when temptations of concupiscence arose, would leave his bed and plunge into the river. He gave to the poor all he had.
St, Anselm (1109) in boyhood felt the common attractions of his age for monastic life. Then came a reaction for pleasure that banished religion and even his early love of study, especially when his Christian mother, who had been a great restraint upon him, died, " the ship of his heart lost its anchor and drifted off altogether into the waves of the world." His father's harshness drove him from home, but finally he followed Lanfranc to Bee, and his remarkable life was lived out as the world knows.
St. Bernard (1153) at the age of twelve had a vision in which his just dead mother urged him to become a monk, but his mind was expanding; the schools of Paris were stimulating; philosophy began to weave its wondrous spell; and it was only after a long struggle that he was able to " quell the fervent straining of his mind for intel- lectual activity " and condemn it to bondage to the soul, whose welfare 528 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE alone he resolved to cultivate. So, persuading a brother to desert his young v^ife, they fled to the desert and cloister.
St. Hildegund (1158) lost her clothes one night and had to put on those of a boy, which she came to retain all her life because of the freedom and protection they afforded her. She was hung and left for dead, but cut down, and had a strange vision. She was page and servant, but studied; received the tonsure; became a novice, and until her death no one knew her sex.
St. Ven (1158) early dedicated her soul and body to God and resisted her parents' efforts to make her marry. At the wedding, when asked if she would take this man, cried out before the whole church that she would not. When force was used and preparations again made, it was found that she had cut off her nose. Thus she had her way.
The austerities of St. Godrick (1170) knew no bounds. He lived on roots, leaves, flowers, and berries, and oft'ered the food his friends brought him in the wilderness to ravens. He watched, fasted, and scourged himself; sat even in winter in the cold waters where he had hollowed a natural bath of a sunk barrel; tilled a scrap of ground and ate his grain mingled with ashes. When asked to tell of his life, he declared he was a " gross rustic, an unclean liver, an usurer, a cheat, a perjurer, a flatterer, a wanderer, pilfering and greedy; now a dead flea, a decayed dog, a vile worm; not a hermit, but a hypocrite; not a solitary, but a gad-about in mind; a devourer of alms, dainty over good things, greedy and negligent, lazy and snoring, ambitious and prodigal, one who is not worthy to serve others, and yet every day beats and scolds those who serve him — this, and worse than this, you may write of Godrick." " Then he was silent as one indignant," says his biographer, " and I went off in some confusion," and the grand old man was left to himself and to his God.
St. Dominic (1221) as a babe would creep from his soft couch to lie on the hard ground; was trained as a student, and at fifteen en- tered the University of Palencia, but in a famine sold his clothes and then his books to feed the poor, for he said, " How can I/i^ursue dead parchment when breathing men are perishing?" So simple and pure of heart was he that he could find innocent pleasure "in the brignt prattle of young girls rather than in the querulous gossip of old women; but the sweet flower of his childlike modesty was never in- jured, as it never need be, by such associations."
St. Christina the Wonderful (1224) was orphaned at fifteen and fell down in a fit; was laid out and taken on a bier, but in the midst of the funeral jumped from her coffin, ran after the mourners in her winding-sheet, and climbed up a pillar to the roof, where she sat " like a bird." In her trance she had been carried to hell and then to purga- tory, where she saw many acquaintances and friends, whom she warned and sought to liberate by doing all the absurd penances by which her friends' souls had found purgation in her vision. She had a hysterical loathing of the scent of mankind, especially of peasants, ADOLESCENCE IN LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY 5^9 to avoid which she was wont to climb tree-tops and the summit of church towers, sometimes balancing herself beside the weathercock. She would plunge into fire and scatter brands with her feet; dive under the sluice of a mill-wheel and go through the conduit; would suspend herself dangling between the corpses of criminals on the gibbet; scald herself with hot water; coil herself into a ball and straighten herself out with marvelous flexibility.
St. Francis of Assisi (1226) as a child acquired the French tongue so easily that it seemed a miracle, although he did not speak it cor- rectly. In early youth he was almost miserly; loved eating and drink- ing and cheerful society; and finally developed a taste for arms, but met a poor warrior vilely clad, to whom he gave his armor, being re- warded by a better one in a dream at night. He fell ill and heard a voice saying, " Francis, whom does it profit most to follow, the master or the servant? " And he replied, " Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do? " He gave up drinking, frolic, music, laughter, and wooed the muse of charity and self-denial.
St. Elizabeth of Hungary (1231) was espoused to Prince Ludwig when she was nine and he fifteen, but she was wretchedly treated by his mother Sophia. At a ceremonial before the crucifix she took off her coronet and knelt weeping in an ecstasy of devotion despite rude reproof. At ten, having thrice drawn St. John by lottery, he was chosen as her patron saiat. She dreamed that she was visited by her dead mother. She was long tormented by cruel hints that her prince was tired of her and would never return, although he was true and wedded her when she was fifteen, after which she devoted herself to the poor, giving from her own stock of clothing, miraculously renewed, and for years subject to the influence of an inquisitor, Conrad of Marburg. She died at the age of twenty-four.
St. Edmund (1242), when on his way to school, saw a beautiful boy who greeted him by name, who proved to be the child Jesus, and was told to write this name on his brow with his finger each night and he would be kept from sudden death. Seeing a flock of rooks, he made the sign of the cross and they flew off, and he saw that they were devils waiting to carry off the souls of sinners. In his teens the daughter of his host fell in love with him and stole into his room by night, but he grasped his birch rod and covered her back with purple wheals, which she had to endure, lest if she screamed her parents would find her out.
St. Clara (1253) in the middle teens heard the great Francis, and his voice and enthusiasm thrilled her heart and filled her with the vehemence of love and a passion of devotion that nothing could quench in after years. She had dedicated her life to the mendicants, and when she was eighteen the Bishop's eye rested upon her in the cathe- dral, modest, bashful, standing back and without a palm, and to the amazement of all he stepped down and handed her one. This was her consecration. She fell on Eer knees before the barefoot friars; tore off her jewels, brocade, and velvet; bowed her head to the shears and 35 53° THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE received the coarse gray; and enrolled herself among the champions of poverty. Thus, despite the entreaties of her friends, she persisted in the ascetic life and proceeded to develop her order — The Poor Clares.
St. Peter Nolasco (1256) had an early passion for matin soon after midnight and for charity. At fifteen, orphaned and rich, he began to strengthen in himself the Christian graces. Being urged to marry, he cast himself before the crucifix all night and vowed his patrimony to the Church and himself to celibacy.
St. Juliana (1258) fasted as a child, and when punished by an order to kneel a few minutes in the snow, did so so gladly that it was seen that she was born for a life of austerity. At fourteen, hearing the first strains of the Vexilla Regis, she shook with emotion; tears flowed, and she gave all her wealth and her life in exchange for the veil; and at sixteen began to have visions, and later became a famous Superior.
St. Louis (1270). This hero and ideal of youth, who pushed the virtues of king, hero, and man combined to so high a point, " allying the majesty of the throne with the holiness of the Gospel and the humiliations of penance," succeeded his father at the age of twelve. At fourteen he submitted to a hard tutor, who beat him. His expres- sion was so sweet that none could see him without love. His gentle- ness, sympathy, passionate love of justice, truth, and honor awakened very early. He observed all fasts; would taste fruit but once a year; wore sackcloth next his skin; submitted to the cruel discipline of wire; walked on pilgrimages with bleeding feet; washed those of beggars; and even bore reproaches with meekness.
St. Ambrose of Sienna (1287) carved little crosses; imitated pro- cessions; furnished a room, where he lodged pilgrims; washed their feet; took them to mass; visited hospitals and prisons until the age of seventeen, when he entered the Dominican Order and went to Cologne to study with Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas.
The Blessed Oringa (13 10), a peasant girl, so kind that her cows became docile and obeyed her voice in all things, refused marriage; disguised her beauty with walnut juice, took service, ahd was devoted to ecstasy and prayer.
St. Frances of Rome (1440) from childhood longed for the con- vent, and when at twelve she learned that her father had promised her hand to a nobleman of great wealth and virtue was overwhelmed with grief and with great difficulty was persuaded by her director to yield. But her husband encouraged and even venerated her sanctity, and her life brought many to the true faith.
St. Colette (1447) at the age of seven yearned for the cloister; made herself a little oratory in the back yard where she spent hours in communion with God, and to this she fled to escape her youthful companions. She always gave her food to the poor, and at twenty-two became a voluntary recluse in an anchorite cell built against the church wall.
St. Catharine (1463) at eleven joined the Order of Poor Clares ADOLESCENCE IN LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY 53 1 and entered its convent. Her fervor of soul, gentleness, and obedi- ence, long hours of prayer, cheerfulness, and power to resist tempta- tion were themselves almost miraculous.
The Blessed Veronica (1497) worked in the fields all day and tried to study her primer at night until the first apparition of the Virgin told her to leave study and learn but three letters — white for purity, black for the dead world, and red for meditation on the passion, and thus she advanced on the way of perfection.
St. Francis of Paula (1508), at twelve in a convent, voluntarily denied himself the use of linen and meat; soon withdrew a mile from town to a cave in the face of a rock, where at fifteen he shut himself up with no bed than the rock, and no food but herbs and what his friends sometimes brought. Before he was twenty others had joined him, and the neighbors had built three cells and a chapel, where they sang God's praises, and a priest joined them and a new order was founded. His later history fills an important place.
St. Theresa's (1585) father delighted in books and bought them in Spanish that his children might read. Her mother was an invalid. The children's minds were steeped in the lives of the saints, and they once started for Morocco in the hope of being martyred. When Theresa was twelve her mother died, and with prayers and tears she adopted the Sovereign Virgin to be her mother, who afterward took care of her. She read romance secretly from her father, and much injured her modesty and caused her many hours of prayer by day and night. She was vain of her hair and hands and fond of perfumes. Her chosen friend was flighty and vain. At fourteen she was re- moved to a convent, where at first she was very unhappy, but soon grew tired of her vanities, confessed often, became beloved though was tempted of the devil. After eighteen months she fell ill and stayed with her uncle, who was very religious. She suffered from fevers and fainting fits, and longed to enter a religious order against her father's will, and at seventeen ran away and did so. At eighteen she became a novice in the Carmelite House of the Incarnation. The change injured her health, and she sought to convert a fallen priest, but soon had a cataleptic fit, which lasted four days, and at one time she was thought dead. She had bitten her tongue, and was full of nervous and hysterical pains. She had a vision of the Lord, who looked angrily at her. She perpetually changed her confessors. After reading Augustine's Confessions, her hysteria took the form of ecstasy and vision, and she at last found a confessor, who told her these raptures came from God, and she must henceforth converse with angels. Once she saw a seraph stab her with a dart whose point burned with fire. She often saw our Lord, gazing at his wondrous beauty and sweetness, as she said, " with his most lovely and divine mouth." Very vividly she saw and described the place the devils had prepared for her. Whenever she saw any one she liked, her in- stant and consuming desire was that he should give himself to God. She soon began to form her first convent of discalced monks, and in