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Chapter 4


Himmelpforten

August 1634


If only he could have dispensed with Lutheran ladies so expeditiously.

This particular lady was named Gerdruth von Campe. From what he could decipher from her spate of words, since 1629, at least, the year that Ferdinand II, egged on by his ambitious confessor Lamormaini, had issued the Edict of Restitution to reclaim formerly Catholic church properties in Germany that had been taken over by Protestants since the 1555 Peace of Augsburg and contrary to the provisions of that treaty, she had been prioress of a little Damenstift named Himmelpforten, so she could not be young.

Neither was she elderly nor frail. From her extensive correspondence, she had seemed to be energetic and possessed by a spirit of determination in regard to the urgency of the matters she was bringing to his attention. In person . . . in New Testament times, the spirits that possessed people had often been demonic in nature.

Not that the lady was demonic. Just unyielding. One of those people who knew her rights and had every intention of standing on them.

Porta Coeli. The Gate of Heaven. Klooster Hemelpoorten, as it was called by the local people. It had been founded in the thirteenth century as a convent of Cistercian nuns. When Erzstift Bremen became Lutheran, the lower nobility of the region, having no wish to give up an institution so useful for their sisters and daughters, simply converted it into a Lutheran Damenstift.

A tiny, local, uninfluential, mini-Quedlinburg, he thought with some amusement.

The members elected a male provost as their legal warden and their representative at meetings of the estates of the Erzstift.

They chose a Vogt to manage the farms, the watermill that the inhabitants of ten or so neighboring villages were obliged to use, the sheep folds, whatever; to collect the rents due from the endowed lands that they leased out. All of the leased farms contained less land than a family needed to support itself; that was how the convent assured itself of a supply of hired men and maids.

The Vogt also arranged whatever military protection it might need in the normal course of events and exercised police functions in the abbey’s jurisdiction. This amounted to preventing hunters from poaching, farmers from pasturing livestock where they shouldn’t, lumber pirates from cutting trees, and fuel pirates from digging peat, as well as pursuing culprits who were observed doing such things. Once the Vogt caught the miscreant, the provost judged him.

While the provost and Vogt did their jobs (or shirked them, as the prioress was now vociferously complaining), each of the twenty or so conventual ladies, all daughters of the local lower nobility that had emerged from medieval ministeriales, had a home of her own, with her personal maid, in which she lived a comfortable, reasonably pious, unmarried life. The Stift also sponsored a village school, which usually employed an educated schoolmaster with a Latin School background and produced a reasonable number of graduates who met a higher standard than the products of most village schools managed to do and went off to Latin schools in their turn.

Porta Coeli’s provost was usually one of the canons of Bremen cathedral—not coincidentally because the canons had to confirm the Stift’s election of any candidate for the provostship.

Before the Edict of Restitution, the provost had been Franz Marschalck von Bachtenbrock, who was . . . considerably older than the prioress, having held the post since 1591, been evicted during the Restitution, and since restored to it. And considerably less energetic than the prioress. Nor, the prioress had written repeatedly in the letters that led to the arranging of this in-person meeting, was he displaying the initiative and steadfastness, perseverance and tenacity, that would be necessary if the Damenstift were to recover from the damage it had experienced in the war.

Frederik had observed in his dealings with the canons at Bremervörde that Marschalck evinced no evidence of being one of the chapter’s more alert and active members. He fell more on the somnolent end of the spectrum, having slept through most of the meetings. That was unfortunate, since the archdeaconry for which he was theoretically responsible was huge. He did not appear competent to exercise either his spiritual obligations or the secular administrative tasks that Frederik had offered as an option. Perhaps he could appoint a deputy . . . 

“It all started when the Leaguists overran the entire Erzstift in 1628,” Gerdruth von Campe was saying with a furious shake of her fist. “Then in September 1629 the Imperial Commission of Restitution ordered Himmelpforten to hand in a complete register of all its possessions and revenues,” she continued. “In short, Marschalck complied. In person. The farms had already been plundered by the Leaguist soldiers.

“Everything in the abbey church. Everything we had in storage in Stade. All the furnishings. Altars; religious paintings; vestments, communion sets—everything needed to perform the liturgical services. Ferdinand’s men took them all and handed them over to a Jesuit named Matthias Kalkhoven who usurped the position of provost. The Jesuits started collecting the tithes from the parishioners; they told the peasants that the Society of Jesus was their new lord. The restitution commission evicted us, since not one of us was willing to convert to Catholicism and take a pension from the Antichrist in Rome. And when the Jesuits fled from the wrath of Gustav Adolf’s armies two years later, all of those things disappeared with them! What do we have left? One chalice! And a lot of desolation.

“Which,” she declared, “the late Prince-Archbishop Johann Friedrich did not help by returning from exile so indebted that he persuaded the estates of the Erzstift to grant him the revenues from all its monastic institutions for his lifetime.”

She expected Frederik to fix things. Sooner rather than later.

If he had time, he could listen to versions of this story twenty times more.

Open the gate of heaven.

This was one little institution. There were so many more, every one with a similar story.

* * *

He wrote to his father.

He needed an allowance.

If the king would be so gracious.

Westphalia had no core with an existing province-wide bureaucracy such as Amalie Elisabeth could rely on in the new version of Hesse-Kassel, much less with Duke Georg’s comparatively intact and only modestly enlarged Brunswick, he pointed out.

Westphalia, as an entity, as a whole, had no revenue. As yet, he had neither the time nor the staff to arrange that some portion of the revenues accruing in each individual section should be diverted for support of a central provincial administration.

Once he could construct one.

* * *

Christian IV looked at his trusted private secretary for German matters and shrugged. “I did realize that Westphalia was going to be on its own. That Oxenstierna was not going to let the little victory that this appointment constituted come cheap to me.”

The secretary nodded. “It has not escaped my notice that since Torstensson’s victory, nobody in Gustav Adolf’s administration has even glanced that direction. It’s been pretty hard to miss, given that Ahrensbök is in Holstein and those armies who were marching around inside what was your jurisdiction and is now, under the USE, your son’s jurisdiction have gone off to other campaigns. The Swedish king focuses intently upon his interest of the moment.”

“Throw a little money at it. That will help for the time being.”

“So, what is he going to do if outside problems come up while Gustav Adolf is focused elsewhere? With the Low Countries? With Oldenburg, even?”

The king smiled a little bitterly. “Pray, perhaps. I sent him to my new military academy at Sorø, but his entire practical military experience has been with the Danish forces besieging Lübeck last spring. Where his major contribution was to help lead the retreat. After Sorø, I had him educated to become a Lutheran prince-bishop. In the long run, that’s going to be useful for the administrative end of things. For matters of offense and defense, not so much, but at least, thanks to Torstensson, nobody is actively attacking the Province of Westphalia at the moment. Nor is this son of mine likely to attack anyone unprovoked.

“Send money.”

Christian IV stood up. “While I think of some way to tweak Gustav Adolf’s tail.”

* * *

“I simply cannot stay here in the north smothering every smoldering peat fire that breaks out,” Frederik proclaimed to Lieutenant Meyer. “We’re heading over to Verden on Wednesday, but I’m not staying there more than a week. Get preparations under way for me to process through the land bridge and down to Münster. I have every intention of getting there within the month and setting up my headquarters for the winter.”


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Framed