Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/96

 84 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE of Nuremberg.' Her sister Clara, who lived in the same convent, was celebrated for her learning and piety. Their contemporaries speak of both with patriotic pride. We must next mention the nun Clarissa Apolonia Tucher, whom Christopher Scheurl calls ' the crown of her convent, a lover of God's worship, a mirror of virtue, a pattern and example to the sisterhood.' Apolonia was the niece of the Nuremberg lawyer Sixtus Tucher, one of the ornaments for a time of the University of Ingolstadt, and no less valuable in his later capacity of imperial and papal councillor. From the year 1497 he resided at Nuremberg as Provost of St. Lawrence, where his blameless priestly life and his Christian benevolence were an example to everyone. The letters which he exchanged with Apolonia and her bosom friend, Charity, appeal to the reader by the depth and elevation of their sentiments, and are touching examples of true Christian humanism, which cannot separate knowledge from faith or learning from religion, and, as the best safeguard against the pride of intellect, clings fast to that beautiful motto of Trithemius : ' To know is to love.' Sixtus encourages his women friends to zealous study, and does not conceal his joyous wonder at the ' intellectual and artistic aptitude of the female sex.' ' But,' he adds once in a letter to Charity, warning her with fatherly solicitude, ' I would not that you should seek vain praise for your learning, but that you should ascribe it to Him from Whom every good and perfect gift proceeds. To His praise and glory, for your sisters' need, and for your own salvation, you should use the gifts bestowed on you, not forgetting the golden words