James Fenimore Cooper: THE HEIDENMAUER

James Fenimore Cooper

THE HEIDENMAUER:
THE BENEDICTINES,
A LEGEND OF THE RHINE
(1832)

Paperback: 474 pages
Scholarly Publishing Office,
University of Michigan Library
(December 21, 2005)

ISBN-10: 1425552552
ISBN-13: 978-1425552558

reviewed by Patrick Killough

I. for barnesandnoble.com

TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: "These friars of Limburg ... say the shortest prayers of any monks in Christendom!"

REVIEWER'S RATING of THE HEIDENMAUER: * * * * FOUR STARS

Posted 11/26/2008:

The appearance in September 1832 of James Fenimore Cooper's THE HEIDENMAUER has been described by Hugh MacDougall as "an instant flop." It was not much read then and is less so now. It is a novel but feels more like a collection of not at all bad tracts on themes historical, religious, moral, political and psychological. As a novel it has wisps of the Gothic about it: worldly monks, castle dungeons, ghost sightings and ruins of an old Roman camp high above the Rhine better not visited at night.

What do scholars and general readers alike find in THE HEIDENMAUER? It is clearly a project to explain Europe and its history to Americans of 1832. It is also an effort to unravel why many in Germany in the 1520s went over to the ideas of Martin Luther and why many did not. What is the psychology of loyalty and disloyalty to ancient institutions: to the Catholic church, to the feudal order? The demand for purer living by professedly Christian men and women is part of any reform impulse in any religion. Two young friends, Gottlob, cowherd of Count Emich of Leiningen and Berchthold, forester of the Benedictine Abbot of Limburg, are discussing Gottlob's allowing his cattle to feed illegally in the pastures of the monks. Gottlob argues in his defense:

"Look you, Master Berchthold, these friars of Limburg eat the fattest venison, drink the warmest wine and say the shortest prayers of any monks in Christendom! Potz-Tausend! There are some who accuse them, too, of shriving the prettiest girls!" (Ch. 1)

Later, as the Count and his Luther-leaning followers from the village of Bad Duerkheim lay waste the abbey, local love and respect for the abbey's Prior/second-in-command, a Christian true to his high principles, Father Arnolph briefly stayed the destruction. Author Fenimore Cooper speculates:

"All near the Abbey of Limburg had felt the influence of these high qualities in Father Arnulph, and it is more than probable that, as in the case of the city of Canaan, had the community counted four of his spiritual peers, the abbey would not have fallen" (Ch. 21).

At tale's end Cooper invokes Aesop to provide the moral for the political fate of the villagers of Duerkheim who had supported the efforts of Count Emich to replace the abbot as their ruler. It was a case of King Log being replaced by King Stork. Zeus's appointed King Log had left the peaceful frogs alone. But when they asked for a more powerful ruler, Zeus gave them a stork who at his leisure devoured them one by one (Ch. 31).

So what is this novel beyond a simple tale of a Count who successfully scatters his Benedictine rivals in a bid for supreme local power? Cooper tells us, in the very last words of the novel:

"Our object has been to show, by a rapidly traced picture of life, the reluctant manner in which the mind of man abandons old, to receive new, impressions -- the inconsistencies between profession and practice -- the error in confounding the good with the bad, in any sect or persuasion -- the common and governing principles that control the selfish, under every shade and degree of existence -- and the high and immutable qualities of the good, the virtuous, and of the really noble" (Ch. 31).

The HEIDENMAUER does not feel like a novel. But it is a book well worth reading and rereading for its attempts to explain Europe and Catholicism to Protestant Americans of the depressing year 1832. -OOO-

ALSO RECOMMENDED: Sir Walter Scott: THE ABBOT, THE MONASTERY.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Heidenmauer-or-the-Benedictines/
James-Fenimore-Cooper/e/9780548184608/?itm=1

=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-

II. for amazon.com

TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: Passions and Reason collide with Historical Inevitability in the Rhineland of the Reformation,
December 1, 2008

Reviewer's Rating of THE HEIDENMAUER: * * * * FOUR STARS

Cooper's 1829 novel THE HEIDENMAUER can be read on four or five levels:

for its inmost core plot,
for the full plot and subplots,
for the history of Germany in the 1520s, for political theory,
for the psychology of loyalty and disloyalty,
for Luther's Reformation of Christianity,
for not so subtle nor infrequent comparisons of Europe and early 19th Century America.

Let me simply make the story line somewhat transparent.

First the geographical setting and the inmost core plot:

The novel plays out in June and July of 1523 -- so far as I can make out. The place is Germany, ten miles west of the Rhine, just where the Vosges Mountains shade into the Palatinate plains. Four neighboring places are the scenes of the legend's action:

the Benedictine Monastery of Limburg,
the castle of Hartenburg (today's Hardenburg),
the village of Deurckheim (today's Bad Duerkheim) and
a pre-Christian, pre-Roman Celtic fortification called the Heidenmauer (Pagans' Wall). Local legend makes it a Roman legionary camp, and later an overwintering base of Attila the Hun.

THE CORE PLOT.

Fifty something Emich, Count of Leiningen-Hartenburg, chafes at restrictions on his freedom of action imposed by feudal obligations he owes to Wilhelm of Venloo, whose name in religion is Abbot Bonifacius. Emich mobilizes his own dependents and citizens of Deurckheim to join him in a sacrilegious surprise attack on nearby Limburg monastery, which is burned to the ground, with loss of life. His superiors within the feudal Holy Roman Empire fine him heavily for his misdeed but let him keep the fruits of his victory. Count Emich's bishop sends him on a penitential pilgrimage to Einsiedeln. The monks are dispersed to other Benedictine houses. END OF CORE PLOT.

CORE PLOT ENLARGED.

Initially both the Count and the Abbot are backed by allies preserving the armed peace. The Abbey temporarily houses hundreds of troops sent by the Elector in 20 miles distant Heidelberg. Their sudden removal to defend their prince assures a victory to the town and the castle.

The Abbey is also overwhelmingly supported by the wives of the malefactors. But all female advice is ultimately ignored by the male conspirators. The Count succeeds in winning over the townsmen to the false notion that he will make them a better ruler than the Abbot. It is King Stork replacing King Log -- as in Aesop's fable of the frogs. Framing the story more broadly are the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in distant Madrid, the Pope in Rome, other German princes and rebellious Augustinian monk Martin Luther.

A TASTE OF THE SUBPLOTS.

The novel's proclaimed heroine is Ulricke Frey nee Hailtzinger. She is the wife of Deurckheim's burgomaster Heinrich Frey and mother of their only child, Meta. Ulricke was born well off, Heinrich poor. But he was allowed to marry her because her father saw potential in him. A non-stop talker in her seventies is Ilse, nurse of both Ulricke in her day and later of Meta.

Earlier Ulricke had been wooed unsuccessfully by Count Emich and successfully by Odo von Ritterstein. Twenty years earlier, however, Odo, carousing with drunken friends, had desecrated a Host (wafer) in the church of Limburg Abbey. He then broke off their engagement, abandoned but saved his estates by paying a heavy fine and began a wandering life that has in recent years turned penitential. He now lives alone and incognito in the Heidenmauer ruins where local people, including Ulricke, visit him for spiritual counsel.

Ulricke Frey's childhood friend is long widowed Lottchen Hintermayer. Lottchen and her husband had once been prosperous but she is now poor. Her young adult son Berchthold Hintermayer is the trusted forester and chief huntsman of Count Emich. Berchthold and Meta love each other but are not permitted to wed, because Meta's father, the Burgomaster, is miserly and wants her to marry wealth.

Another dependent (his cowherd) of the Count of Hartenburg is young Gottlob Frinck, foster brother of forester Berchthold Hintermayer. Gottlob fancies Gisela, daughter of the Count's lamed chief watchmen. In the absence while traveling of the Count's wife Ermengarde, young Gisela presides at the Castle.

Visiting the count is Master Latouche, a worldly abbe on the fringes of the court of King Francis in Paris. As is also Count Emich's kinsman Albrecht of Viederbach, a professed knight of Saint John of Jerusalem, not many months after being defeated in 1522 by Suleyman the Magnificent and the Muslim conquerors of Rhodes.

Among the Benedictine monks of the Abbey, most noteworthy is the Abbot Bonifacius, given to eating and drinking too well. His counterpoise who in some sense is the novel's hero, is Father Arnulph, the abbey's Prior/2nd in Command. Fathers Siegfried and Cuno are worldly Benedictines. They provide support to the Abbot during a long drinking bout with the Count. Finally, there is rigid, fanatical Father Johan who preaches after High Mass and who tries to save the convent from being burned by invoking its sacred relics.

In his sacrilegious assault on Limburg Abbey, Count Emich is supported, willy nilly, by Latouche and Albrecht of Viederbach, by scores of his own feudal dependents, especially young Berchthold and Gottlob and by the Burgomaster of Deurckheim and his admirer the stout blacksmith Dietrich. During the torching of more than 50 abbey buildings, Father Johan is burned to death and both young Berchthold and Odo von Ritterstein appear to die together.

The rest of the story answers several questions:

Will Berchthold survive to marry Meta? Will Gottlob wed Gisela?

Will Count Emich's sacrilege stand? Will the monks return to Limburg?

Will Lutheranism conquer the Palatinate?

Read DIE HEIDENMAUER and find out. -OOO-

http://www.amazon.com/Heidenmauer-Benedictines-legend-Rhine/
dp/1425552552/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227461956&sr=1-1

=-=-=-=-=-=

III. for epinions.com

TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: The Mass Psychology of Religious Revolution

REVIEWER'S RATING: * * * * FOUR STARS

by aohcapablanca, Dec 02 '08

James Fenimore Cooper's 1832 novel THE HEIDENMAUER was a publishing flop. The author and his family were nearing the end of a seven year stint in Europe. Nominally U. S. Consul in Lyon, the by then world-famous novelist made Paris his base. He also traveled widely, most pleasantly in the Catholic forest cantons of Switzerland and throughout Italy. It was in Switzerland that he wrote most of THE HEIDENMAUER.

Like Sir Walter Scott's earlier pair, THE ABBOT and THE MONASTERY, THE HEIDENMAUER is about how the earliest Christian Reformation took partial hold of men's minds. Sir Walter's locale was the Scottish lowlands around Melrose 40 or 50 years after Cooper's Rhineland Germany and Bad Duerkheim in June and July 1523. By the time he wrote this historical novel, Fenimore Cooper had far, far greater knowledge of Catholics and Catholicism than Sir Walter and he published in order to make that venerable faith seem less weird to American compatriots who might pass a lifetime without once seeing a then rare American Romanist in the flesh.

At this still early stage of the revival of scholarly and popular attention to and pleasure in the works of James Fenimore Cooper, it is hard to give reasons why an average educated American would choose to pick up and read cover to cover THE HEIDENMAUER.

The basic plot is straightforward and told by Cooper in a manner arguably too unimpassioned and detached to make the sacrilege and burning described entirely plausible. It is June of 1523, over five years since Martin Luther criticized indulgences and sent to his religious superiors in Wittenberg his 95 theses. The Augustinian monk's ideas trickle west and have reached the Rhineland. Younger Catholics find attractive Luther's call for clergy reformation and lessening the chasm between morality as professed and as lived. Older men and women, lay and clerical, are generally repelled by Luther. But German anti-clericalism is powerful and Emich, Count of Leiningen-Hartenburg, wants to expel Wilhelm of Venloo, the Abbot Bonifacius of nearby Limburg monastery.

Emich both mobilizes his own feudal dependents and persuades citizens of Bad Duerkheim that he would make them a better ruler than the Abbot. Their combined forces launch a sacrilegious surprise attack on Limburg Abbey and burn it down. The Empire demands a huge fine. A bishop orders a pilgrimage to Einsiedeln in Switzerland. Were there less worry about Luther and his ideas, treatment of the arrogant Count would have been far harsher.

There is a rich supporting cast of monks, devout lay women, the Mayor of Bad Duerkheim, a Knight of St John, expelled a year earlier from Rhodes by the victorious Turks, a dissolute French abbe and others. There is young love, greed, self-interest, superstition, various Gothic elements, essays on politics, and Cooper's abiding efforts to explain Europe to America and America to Europe.

In a psychologically pioneering way, Fenimore Cooper clumsily but sensibly probes what it is that motivates masses of people to throw off one allegiance (either political or, in this case, religious) for another. And this psycho-sociological probing, I suggest, might by itself provide enough to make a contemporary American non-specialist reader open this fascinating novel.

Cooper sees a couple of elements at work behind loyalty shifts:

-- (1) A genius ahead of his time with new insights,

-- (2) An older generation come to maturity before it first heard of the genius's vision,

-- (3) A younger generation who grew up thoroughly exposed to the new proposals.

Regarding (1) a religious genius, in this case Martin Luther (it might as easily have been Paul of Tarsus or Mohammed or Joseph Smith), Cooper writes:

"... avant-couriers of thought ... prepare the way for the advance of nations ... but ... (are) utterly out of view at the effectual moment of the reformation, or revolution, or by whatever name these sudden summersets are called" (Ch 30).

Regarding elements (2) and (3) above, if they ever change world views and loyalties, the old will be the last to do so; to change is asking too much of them. But the young are another matter. Their parents may have grown up, for instance, with no one questioning good works as an essential component of salvation. But their children have heard the criticisms and now have the newly coined words to develop their own insights. Revolutions will inevitably come for many, tipping points in their thinking and acting:

"as respects the mass, they often occur by a coup-de-main; an entire people awakening, as it were, by magic, to the virtues of a new set of maxims, much as the eye turns from the view of one scenic representation to that of its successor. ... Our object in this tale is to represent society, under its ordinary faces, in the act of turning from the influence of one set of governing principles to that of another" (Ch 30).

Cooper goes on to argue that writing the biography of a revolutionary genius like Luther is one thing, but the psychology of ordinary men and women is something very different. Reason and logic are praised by all but have only a weak role, Cooper contends, in pressing through major revolutions. The man in the street must first have his attention grabbed, his personal self-interest piqued and the new ideas of others then seen as a means to get him what he wants. The Count of Leiningen, for instance, wants undisputed rule of his valley. The easiest way to gain power is to expel the rival monks, an act of sacrilege. But Luther preaches the priesthood of all believers, not just Benedictines. So partially embracing Luther makes it easier for Count Emich to get what he wants.

Other related themes are probed by Fenimore Cooper in THE HEIDENMAUER. Long monopoly of power -- religious or secular -- makes it too easy for the strong to oppress the weak. A monastery grows worldly in its mission of hospitality to all travelers by reaching out for ever more wealth to fund its role as host to the poor, to pilgrims, to all.

Cooper also draws lessons from the history of Europe, feudalism and the Reformation of Christianity. He straightforwardly applies them to Andrew Jackson's America. Many of the political, psychological, religious, socio-economic and cultural ideas in THE HEIDENMAUER are put into words in English almost for the first time by Cooper. And that he is a pioneer shows. The American novelist's thoughts will in later years grow clearer, sharper, more easily and tersely expressed. He now often uses 100 words where 15 might have served as well. THE HEIDENMAUER is like dipping into groping, poetic pre-Socratic philosophers like Parmenides or Anaximander after having first read the polished prose of Plato and Aristotle. It is easy to belittle the searching, immature efforts of the earliest writers. But to reconstruct Cooper's mind is also to reconstruct an important phase in America's coming of age. And to empathize with how hard it is to recast old history in newly emerging contemporary ways of expression. -OOO-

Pros:
Enter the minds of 1523 Germans wrestling with the revolutionary religious ideas of Martin Luther.

Cons:
This first grappling in English with a theme sometimes begets too many words and sentences.

The Bottom Line:
Read THE HEIDENMAUER if you are already keenly attracted to Fenimore Cooper the novelist, to European history, the Reformation in Germany or the psychology of revolution. Then you will rejoice.

Overall Product Rating:
Product Rating: 4.0 Above Average

Recommended:
Yes

http://www0.epinions.com/reviews/Book_The_Heidenmauer_Or_
the_Benedictines_A_Legend_of_the_Rhine_James_Fenimore_Cooper
_2040799688

=-=-=-=-=-=

IV. biblio.com

Fenimore Cooper's 1832 book THE HEIDENMAUER is a novel that doesn't feel like a novel. It is more like a series of lectures gently but didactically introducing to literate worldwide readers of English a small number of themes. The dominant theme (for Americans) is what Catholics at the time of Martin Luther were like and what they were like in 1832. One theme for all readers was how Germany's Rhineland felt to nobles and commoners, clergy and laymen, soldiers and farmers when Luther's thoughts were just beginning to make themselves heard. And Cooper also seemed to believe that his readers everywhere would benefit from dollops of political theory, history of Roman and medieval Europe, the advance across the Mediterranean of militant Islam, including the recent conquest of Rhodes, thoughts on how superstition inhibits action, why Germans hesitated to cast off Rome for uncharted religious waters of reform and other antiquarian highlights.

The novel's main story line is easily told. In the early 1520s the village of Duerckheim on the left bank (the onetime Roman side) of the Rhine owes allegiance to a nearby Benedictine abbey led by an aristocratic, easy-going abbot. But the prosperous village of Duerckheim and nearby farmlands are coveted by Count Emich. Calculating his odds, the Count persuades villagers to join him in a surprise attack to subdue the abbey. The latter is burned to the ground, with the supposed loss of life of a couple of leading characters of the several sub-plots. Count Emich gets what he wants and is willing to pay for his new possessions the heavy fine for sacrilege exacted by the Holy Roman Empire. The Benedictines are dispersed. End of main story.

Fenimore Cooper (1789 - 1851), already world famous for his 1826 LAST OF THE MOHICANS, served as American consul in Lyons, France from 1826 to 1833. He traveled widely in Europe and wrote much of THE HEIDENMAUER in Switzerland. I imagine him, like some others I have known, saying to himself:

"my vocation is to make America known to Europe and Europe to America. And I will constantly remind Americans that at its best America's culture and arts are in no way inferior to those of Europe." ***

Cooper was always an observer of religions and religious practices and attitudes. Over time, beginning with his six years in Europe he paid notably more sympathetic attention to Roman Catholicism. He realized that very few of his countrymen were likely ever to meet Catholics in the flesh and that they held strong inherited prejudices against Papists. These misconceptions Cooper tried to correct in THE HEIDENMAUER. He wrote:

"In this country, Catholicism, in its limited and popular meaning, is no longer catholic, since it is in so small a minority as to have no perceptible influence on the opinions or customs of the country" (Ch. 24).

James Fenimore Cooper theorized that revolutions are made by a handful of geniuses, like Luther, far, far in advance of the less brilliant masses. Somewhat clumsily he tried to imagine how varieties of Germans, lovers young and old, clergy and laity, pious and greedy might have slowly, ever so slowly adjusted their Teutonic minds and practices to the Reformation. The Rhineland and the area around the old Roman town of Duerckheim, just after the fall of Rhodes in 1522, are still only lightly touched by the new thinking of Augustinian monk Martin Luther. Feudal loyalties are strained. Religious fervor is far from universal among Catholics, lay or clerical. Cooper argues that regardless of how pure the stated motive may be behind a land grab or a challenge to feudal or church authority, men are in fact largely driven by worldly ends in view, greed, self-interest, lust, power.

THE HEIDENMAUER is a novel that doesn't feel like a novel. In some ways it is a pretty good Platonic dialog with the psychological sauce of some of the writings of Sigmund Freud. Cooper himself draws on Aesop's fable of the once peaceful and contented frogs who grew restless and asked an amused Zeus to give them a king. First the Father of gods and of men tossed a log into the frogs' swamp to be their king. But the croakers demanded something more exciting and powerful. So Zeus gave them a second king, a stork, who at his leisure then proceeded to devour them one by one. The people of Duerckheim traded King Log (an abbot) for King Stork (Count Emich). And thus the plan of Zeus was fulfilled. -OOO-

11/25/2008

http://www.biblio.com/books/151436359.html

=-=-=-=-=-=

V. alibris.com

Title of this review: From Aesop and King Log to Martin Luther, November 25, 2008
By abuatticus, black mountain, NC

Customer rating: * * * * FOUR STARS

James Fenimore Cooper's 1832 historical novel THE HEIDENMAUER, or THE BENEDICTINES: A LEGEND OF THE RHINE is not likely to be picked up by a casual reader. This is rather a book for students of history, the Reformation in Germany, and the psychology of abandoning one loyalty for another. Great a writer as he is, Cooper is known mainly for his novels of North America on the one hand and the sea on the other. THE HEIDENMAUER is set amidst ruins of a Roman encampment west of the Rhine in the first quarter of the 16th Century, when the Reformation ideas of Martin Luther are still in their infancy. For the reformation in Scotland similar meditations had been undertaken earlier by Sir Walter Scott in his inter-connected novels, THE ABBOT and THE MONASTERY.

This book is not an easy read. As a novel it might rate only * * TWO STARS. But in some of its meditations on Catholicism, political power and shifts it loyalty it soars to * * * * * FIVE STARS. So far as I can make out, Fenimore Cooper's intention in THE HEIDENMAUER is overwhelmingly didactic rather than sheer story telling. He wants to show historically uninformed readers in England how masses of Germans slowly caught up with the ideas of Luther. He wants to show similar readers in America that Catholicism is nothing like as bad as their prejudices make it out to be. Other themes covered by the novel are these:

(1) leaders in both church and state must guard against the danger of abusing concentrated power of long standing;

(2) individuals abandon an old loyalty for a new one for many reasons, usually personal, materialistic and selfish; and

(3) superstitions abounded in 16th century Europe.

Legend has it that long, long ago Benedictines had tricked no less than Satan into lifting their building stones from a decayed Roman camp to another hill and using them to build their monastery. THE HEIDENMAUER (literally, The Heathens' Wall) is about the effort of a later German count to gain undisputed control of certain fertile lands along the Rhine in dispute between him and that nearby Benedictine Abbey. The setting includes a ruined Roman legionary camp and includes the Count's castle, a village controlled by the Benedictines and the nearby Monastery.

Count Emich and like-minded followers lightly, vaguely and half-heartedly justifying themselves by the new ideas of Martin Luther, attack and burn the abbey. Higher authority grants the Count some of his claims, but makes him pay a heavy fine and all parties go on a pilgrimage of penance to Einsiedeln. The monks, some very holy, some less so, are dispersed to other Benedictine foundations.

The rebellious villagers of Duerckheim exchange ecclesiastical masters for a new secular one and gain nothing for their support of the latter. Aesop had given a hint of such an outcome in his fable of frogs who asked Zeus to give them a king. He did: a log, King Log. They complained. Zeus then gave them a stork, who devoured them one by one (Ch. 31).

Subplots involve romances of old and young, struggles in Rhodes and elsewhere in the Mediterranean with rising Islamic power, political jockeying within the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, reactions pro and con to Luther and extended authorial asides to display, explain and to some extent justify Roman Catholicism to American readers most of whom would never see a Catholic face-to-face in a lifetime. -OOO-"

http://www.alibris.com/booksearch.detail?invid
=9093239415&isbn=9781425552558&qsort=&page=1

=-=--=-=-=
11/24/2008

http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/cooper_heidenmauer.html