NOTE C.
“A little work that gave an amusing Miracle of the Virgin for every Day in the Year.” [p. 70].
The book alluded to in the text is the Año Virgineo. The moral tendency of this and similar books may be shewn by the following story—technically named an Example—which I will venture to give from memory:—A Spanish soldier, who had fought in the Netherlands, having returned home with some booty, was leading a profligate and desperate life. He had, however, bled for the Faith: and his own was perfectly orthodox. A large old picture of the Virgin Mary hung over the inside of the door of his lodgings, which, it seems, did not correspond in loftiness to the brave halberdier’s mind and demeanour. Early every morning he used to sally forth in pursuit of unlawful pleasure; but, though he never did bend his knees in prayer, he would not cross the threshold without a loud Hail Mary! to the picture, accompanied by an inclination of the halbert, which partly from his outrageous hurry to break out of the nightly prison, partly from want of room for his military salute, inflicted many a wound on the canvass. Thus our soldier went on spending his life and money, till a sharp Spanish dagger composed him to rest, in the heat of a brawl. “He died and made no sign.” The Devil, who thought him as fair a prize as any that had ever been within his grasp, waited only for the sentence which, according to Catholics, is passed on every individual immediately after death, in what they call the Particular Judgment. At this critical moment the Virgin Mary presented herself in a black mantle, similar to that which she wore in the picture, but sadly rent and slit in several places. “These are the marks,” she said to the affrighted soul, “of your rude, though certainly well-meant civility. I will not, however, permit that one who has so cordially saluted me every day, should go into everlasting fire.” Thus saying, she bade the evil spirit give up his prisoner, and the gallant soldier was sent to purge off the dross of his boisterous nature, in the gentler flames of purgatory.—A portion of the book from which I recollect this story, was, for many years, read every evening in one of the principal parishes at Seville. I observed the same practice at a town not far from the capital of Andalusia; and, for any thing I know to the contrary, it may be very common all over Spain. Such is the doctrine which, disowned in theory by the divines of the Roman church, but growing out of the system of saint-worship, constitutes the main religious feeling of the vulgar, and taints strongly the minds of the higher classes in Spain. The Chronicles of the Religious Orders are full of narratives, the whole drift of which is to represent their patron saint as powerful to save from the very jaws of hell. The skill of the painter has often been engaged to exhibit these stories to the eye, and the Spanish convents abound in pictures more encouraging to vice than the most profligate prints of the Palais Royal. I recollect one at Seville in the convent of the Antonines—a species of the genus Monachus Franciscanus of the Monachologia—so strangely absurd, that I hope the reader will forgive my lengthening this note with its description. The picture I allude to was in the cloisters of the convent of San Antonio, facing the principal entrance, so late as the year 1810, when I was last at Seville. The subject is the hairbreadth escape of a great sinner, whom St. Francis saved against all chances. An extract from the Chronicles of the Order, which is found in a corner of the painting, informs the beholder that the person whose soul is represented on the canvass, was a lawless nobleman, who, fortified in his own castle, became the terror and abhorrence of the neighbourhood. As neither the life of man, nor the honour of woman, was safe from the violence of his passions, none willingly dwelt upon his lands, or approached the gate of the castle. It chanced, however, that two Franciscan friars, having lost the way in a stormy night, applied for shelter at the wicked nobleman’s gate, where they met with nothing but insult and scorn. It was well for them that the fame of St. Francis filled the world at that time. The holy saint, with the assistance of St. Paul, had lately cut the throat of an Italian bishop, who had resisted the establishment of the Franciscans in his diocese.[66]
The fear of a similar punishment abated the fierceness of the nobleman, and he ordered his servants to give the friars some clean straw for a bed, and a couple of eggs for their supper. Having given this explanation, the painter trusts to the appropriate language of his art, and takes up the story immediately after the death of the noble sinner. Michael the archangel—who by a traditional belief, universal in Spain, and probably common to all Catholic countries, is considered to have the charge of weighing departed souls with their good works, against the sins they have committed—is represented with a large pair of scales in his hand. Several angels, in a group, stand near him, and a crowd of devils are watching, at a respectful distance, the result of the trial. The newly-departed soul, in the puny shape of a sickly boy, has been placed, naked, in one scale, while the opposite groans under a monstrous heap of swords, daggers, poisoned bows, love-letters, and portraits of females, who had been the victims of his fierce desires. It is evident that this ponderous mass would have greatly outweighed the slight and nearly transparent form which was to oppose its pressure, had not Saint Francis, whose figure stands prominent in the painting, assisted the distressed soul by slipping a couple of eggs and a bundle of straw into its own side of the balance. Upon this seasonable addition, the instruments and emblems of guilt are seen to fly up and kick the beam. It appears from this that the Spanish painter agrees with Milton in the system of weighing Fate; and that, since the days of Homer and Virgil, superior weight is become the sign of victory, which with them was that of defeat—quo vergat pondere lethum.