THE USURER'S FATE
(Caes. Heist. vol. I, p. 70.)

In the days when John the Master of Schools at Xanten, and Oliver, Master of Schools at Cologne, preached the crusade against the Saracens in the diocese of Utrecht (as I was told by brother Bernard, who was then Oliver's colleague and fellow-preacher) there was a certain peasant named Gottschalk, if I remember rightly, who busied himself with usury. He took the cross with the rest; not from devotion, as events showed, but through the importunate urgency of the bystanders. When, by Pope Innocent's command, the dispensators collected ransom-money from the aged, the poor, and the sick, this same usurer feigned poverty and gave one of the dispensators about the sum of five marks, thus deceiving the priest. His neighbours afterwards testified that he might have given forty marks without thereby disinheriting his children, as he pretended. But God, who could not be deceived, presently put a terrible end to his trickery. The wretch sat about in the taverns, provoking God and mocking His pilgrims with such words as these: "Ye fools will cross the seas and waste your substance and expose your lives to manifold dangers; while I shall sit at home with my wife and children, and get a like reward to yours through the five marks with which I redeemed my cross." But the righteous Lord, willing to show openly how great pleasure He took in the travail and cost of the pilgrims, and how hateful in His eyes were the fraud and blasphemy of this scoffer, gave over the wretched man to Satan, that he might learn not to blaspheme. As he slept one night beside his wife, he heard as it were the sound of a millwheel turning in his own mill that adjoined his house: whereupon he cried for his servant, saying, "Who hath let the mill-wheel loose? Go and see who is there." The servant went and came back, for he was too sore afraid to go further. "Say, who is there?" cried the master. "Such horror fell upon me at the mill-door," answered the fellow, "that I must perforce turn back." "Well!" cried he, "even though it be the Devil, I will go and see." So, naked as he was, but for a cloak which he threw over his shoulders, he opened the mill-door, and looked in: when a sight of horror met his eyes. There stood two coal-black horses, and by their side an ill-favoured man as black as they, who cried to the boor, "Quick! mount this horse, for he is brought for thee." He grew pale and trembled, for the voice of command sounded ill in his ears. While therefore he hesitated to obey, the Devil cried again, "Why tarriest thou? cast aside thy cloak and come.' (For the crusader's cross, which he had taken, was sewn on to his cloak.) In brief, feeling desperately in his heart the force of this devil's call, and no longer able to resist, he cast off his cloak, entered the mill, and mounted the horse - or rather the Devil. The Fiend himself mounted another; and, side by side, they swept in breathless haste from one place of torture to another, wherein the wretched man saw his father and mother in miserable torments, and a multitude of others whom he knew not to be dead. There also he saw a certain honest knight lately dead, Elias von Rheineck, castellan of Horst, seated on a mad cow with his face towards her tail and his back to her horns; the beast rushed to and fro, goring his back every moment so that the blood gushed forth. To whom the usurer said, "Lord, why suffer ye this pain?" "This cow," replied the knight, "I tore mercilessly from a certain widow; wherefore I must now endure this merciless punishment from the same beast." Moreover there was shown him a burning fiery chair, wherein could be no rest, but torment and interminable pain to him who sat there: and it was said, "Now shalt thou return to thine own house, and thou shalt have thy reward in this chair." Within a while the Fiend brought him back and laid him in the mill, leaving him halfdead. Here he was found by his wife and family, who brought him to bed and asked where he had been, or whence he came. " I have been taken to hell," he answered, "where I saw such and such tortures: where also my guide showed me a chair, which (as he said) was prepared for me, and wherein after three days I was to receive my reward." The priest was called forthwith, whom the wife besought to comfort his weakness, relieve his despair, and exhort him to those things which belonged to his salvation. But when the priest warned him to repent of his sins and make a clean breast in confession, saying that none should despair of God's mercy, he answered: "What avail such words as these? I cannot confess; I hold it useless to confess; that which is decreed must be fulfilled in me. My seat is made ready; after the third day I must come thither, and there must I receive the reward of my deeds." And thus, unrepentant, unconfessed, unanointed and unaneled, he died on the third day and found his grave in hell; and whereas the priest forbade him Christian burial, yet he took a bribe from the wife to lay him in the churchyard; for which he was afterwards accused in the Synod of Utrecht and punished I know not how. It is scarce three years since these things came to pass.

(Coulton I, p.58-62)