GOTTFRIED VON STRASSBURG'S GREAT HYMN TO THE VIRGIN.
The period of the German Minnesinger, dating from about the middle of the thirteenth to the middle of the fourteenth century, witnessed probably the intensest and sincerest devotion to the worship of the Virgin Mary in the whole history of the Catholic Church. Intense and sincere pre-eminently, because so expressed in the vast number of paintings and poems in her glorification whereof we have record. That whole period, indeed, was one of fervent religious feeling, stimulated by the Crusades, and naturally choosing the Virgin for the chief object of worship, as the whole knightly spirit of that age was one of devotion to woman. The pure love—for Minne is pure love—of woman has never, in the history of literature, been so exclusively made the topic of poetry as it was during that century of the Minnesinger; it is the absorbing theme of the almost two hundred poets of that time, of whom we have poems handed down to us, and its highest expression was attained in those poems that were addressed to the woman of all women, Mary, the mother of Jesus.
The German language in the thirteenth century had attained a development which fitted it pre-eminently for lyric poetry in all its branches. What it has since gained in other respects it has lost in sweet music of sound. Furthermore, the true laws of rhythm, metre, and verse for modern languages, as distinguished from the rules that governed classic poetry, had been discovered and fixed; rules and laws the knowledge whereof subsequently was lost, and which it gave Goethe so much trouble, as he tells us in his autobiography, to find again. The purity of rhyme has never since in German poetry attained the same degree of perfection, not even under the skilful hand of Rueckert and Platen, which the Minnesinger gave to it; and thus altogether those matters, which constitute the mechanism of poetry, were in fullest bloom.
Now this mechanism and the wonderful language which it operated upon being in the possession and under the full control of such men as were the poets of that day, the result could be only poems of perfect form, and yet at the same time naïve, earnest, intense, and enthusiastic in their character. For those poets were not—like those of our modern poets who have completest control of the mechanism of poetry, as Tennyson, Swinburne, etc.—poets of a cold, reflective bent of mind, but they were simple knights, with great enthusiasm in the cause of the Crusades and of ladies; at the same time gifted with a wondrous power of versification. A considerable number of them, some of the best, as Wolfram von Eschenbach, Ulrich von Lichtenstein, etc., could not even write and read, and had to dictate their poems to their Singerlein, or sing it to him—for these poets invented a melody for each of their poems—which Singerlein again transmitted it in the same manner until, in the course of time, these unwritten Minnelieder were, as much as possible, gathered together by the noble knight, Ruediger von Manasse, his son, and the Minnesinger, Johann Hadlaub, put into manuscript, and thus happily preserved for future generations.
The songs that these Minnesingers sang are of a threefold character: either in praise of the ladies, usually coupled with references to the seasons of the year; or of a didactic character; or, finally, in praise of the Virgin.
Their form is only twofold: either they are lays or songs proper. The song or Minnelied proper has invariably a triplicity of form in each stanza, that is, each stanza has three parts, whereof the first two correspond with each other exactly, whereas the third has an independent, though of course rhythmically connected, flow of its own. The lay, on the contrary, is of irregular construction, and permits the widest rhythmical liberties.
Of the many Minnelieder addressed to the Virgin we have presented to us examples of both kinds, lays and songs. Chief among them are a lay by Walther von der Vogelweide, and the Great Hymn by Gottfried von Strassburg.
The latter is probably the finest of all the Minnelieder—worldly and sacred—of that period. Ranking next to these two there is, however, another poem to the Virgin, not to be classified strictly under the general title of Minnelieder, but still the production of a famous Minnesinger, and withal a poem of wondrous beauty, which for two centuries kept its hold upon the people. This is Konrad von Wuerzburg's Golden Smithy—a poem that is written in the metre of the narrative poem of that age, namely, in lines wherein every line ending in a masculine rhyme has four accentuations and every line ending in a female rhyme has three accentuations, the syllables not being counted—a metre that Coleridge has adopted in his poem Christabel.
In this Golden Smithy the poet represents himself as a goldsmith, working all manner of precious stones and gold into a glorious ornament for the Queen of Heaven, by gathering into his poem all possible images and similes from the world of nature, from sacred and profane history and fable, and from all the virtues and graces of mankind. It is a poem of wonderful splendor, and has a great smoothness of diction. "If," says the poet in the opening of the poem, "in the depth of the smithy of my heart I could melt a poem out of gold and could enamel the gold with the glowing ruby of pure devotion, I would forge a transparent, shining, and sparkling praise of thy worth, thou glorious empress of heaven. Yet, though my speech should fly upward like a noble eagle, the wings of my words could not carry me beyond thy praise; marble and adamant shall be sooner penetrated by a straw, and the diamond by molten lead, than I attain the height of the praise that belongs to thee. Not until all the stars have been counted and the dust of the sun and the sand of the sea and the leaves of the trees, can thy praise be properly sung."
But even this poem is far surpassed in beauty every way by Gottfried von Strassburg's Great Hymn. Indeed, Konrad himself modestly confesses this in his Golden Smithy, when he regrets that he does not "sit upon the green clover bedewed with sweet speech, on which sat worthily Gottfried von Strassburg, who, as a most artistic smith, worked a golden poem, and praised and glorified the Holy Virgin in much better strain."
There is, indeed, a wondrous beauty in this hymn of Gottfried von Strassburg, a beauty much akin to that of his own Strassburg Cathedral, which was begun about the same time.
"It is," says Van der Hagen, "the very glorification of love (Minne) and of Minnesong; it is the heavenly bridal song, the mysterious Solomon's Song, which mirrors its miraculous object in a stream of deep and lovely images, linking them all together into an imperishable wreath; yet even here in its profundity and significance of an artistic and numerously-rhymed construction; always clear as crystal, smooth and graceful."
The poem separates into three parts: in the first whereof the poet exhorts all those who desire to listen to his song of God's great love to endeavor to gain it by unremitting exertion; and furthermore to pray for him, the poet, who has so little striven to attain it for himself. In the second part, the poet calls upon the heavens and Christ to bend down and listen to his truthful lays in praise of Christ's sweet mother. Then in the third part begins the praise of the Virgin, followed by that of her Son, and the poem reaches its supreme fervor when it breaks out finally in praise of God himself. Thence it gradually lowers its tone, and finally expires in a sigh.
I suppose it is impossible to give an adequate idea by translation of the melodious sound of words, the perfect rhythm, and the artistic gradation of effect which this poem has parts of the poem, and so selected as to give a general idea of both the manner and the matter of the poem. The selection opens with the first and ends with the last verses of the whole poem; but the whole itself being composed of ninety-four stanzas, it was necessary to take from in the original. I can say only that I have done my best in the following stanzas, selected from the various the intermediate ones only specimens. The imagery may often seem far-fetched, but it must be remembered that the men of that period likened God and the God-begotten unto everything on earth and in heaven, for the simple reason that they deemed it irreverent and impossible to characterize them by any single predicate or word.
Of the poet himself we know very little. His name indicates him to have been a citizen of Strassburg. His title Meister (master) shows that his station in life was that of a citizen and not of a noble or knight, their title being Herr. He was undoubtedly the foremost poet of his age, and—together with Wolfram von Eschenbach—was then and is still so considered. His greatest work is the narrative poem, Tristan und Isolde; but that he left unfinished. We have no other work of his handed down to us except three or four small Minnesongs.
HYMN TO THE VIRGIN.
Ye, who your life would glorify
And float in bliss with God on high,
There to dwell nigh
His peace and love's salvation;
Who fain would learn how to enroll
All evils under your control,
And rid your soul
Of many a sore temptation:
Give heed unto this song of love
And follow its sweet story;
Then will its passing sweetness prove
Unto your hearts a peaceful dove,
And upward move
Your souls to realms of glory.
Ye, who would hear what you have ne'er
Heard spoken, now incline your ear
And listen here
To what my tongue unfoldeth.
Yea, list to the sweet praise and worth
Of her who to God's child gave birth;
Wherefore on earth
God as in heaven her holdeth.
E'en as the air when fresh bedewed
Bears fruitful growth, so to man
She bears an ever-fruitful mood:
Never so chaste and sweet heart's blood,
So true and good,
Was born by mortal woman.
I speak of thee in my best strain:
No mother e'er such child may gain,
Or child attain
So pure a mother ever.
He chose what his own nature was;
His glorious Godhead chose as case
The purest vase
Of flesh and bone's endeavor
That woman ever to her heart
'Tween earth and heaven gave pressure.
In thee lay hidden every part,
That ever did from virtue start;
Of bliss thou art
The sweetest, chosen treasure.
Thou gem, thou gold, thou diamond-glow,
Thou creamy milk, white ivory, oh!
Thou honey-flow
In heart and mouth dissolving;
Of fruitful virtue a noble grove,
The lovely bride of God above—
Thou sweet, sweet love,
Thou hour with bliss revolving!
Of chastity thou whitest snow,
A grape of chaste and sure love,
A clover-field of true love's glow,
Of grace a bottomless ocean's flow:
Yea more, I trow:
A turtle-dove of pure love.
God thee hath clothed with raiments seven,
On thy pure body, brought from heaven,
Hath put them even
When thou wast first created.
The first dress Chastity is named,
The second is as Virtue famed,
The third is claimed
And as sweet Courtesy rated.
The fourth dress is Humility,
The fifth is Mercy's beauty,
The sixth one, Faith, clings close to thee,
The seventh, humble Modesty,
Keepeth thee free
To follow simple duty.
To worship, Lady, thee doth teach
Pray'r to drenched courage and numbed speech,
Yea, and fires each
Cold heart with heavenly rapture.
To worship thee, O Lady! can
Teach many an erring, sinful man,
How from sin's ban
His soul he still may capture.
To worship thee is e'en a branch
On which the soul's life bloometh;
To worship thee makes bold and stanch
The weakest soul on sin's hard bench;
God it doth wrench
From hell and in heaven roometh.
Then let both men and women proclaim,
And what of mother's womb e'er came,
Both wild and tame,
The grace of thy devotion.
Then praise thee now what living lives,
Whatever heaven's dew receives,
Runs, floats, or cleaves
Through forest or through ocean.
Then praise thee now the fair star-shine,
The sun and the moon gold-glowing,
Then praise thee the four elements thine;
Yea, blessedness around thee twine,
Thou cheering wine,
Thou stream with grace o'erflowing.
Rejoice, then, Lady of the skies,
Rejoice, thou God-love's paradise,
Rejoice, thou prize
Of sweetest roses growing!
Rejoice, thou blessed maiden, then,
Rejoice, that every race and clan,
Woman and man,
Pray to thy love o'erflowing.
Rejoice, that thou with God dost show
So many things in common:
His yea thy yea, his no thy no;
Endless ye mingle in one flow;
Small and great, lo!
He shares with thee, sweet woman.
Now have I praised the mother thine,
O sweet, fair Christ and Lord of mine!
That honor's shrine
Wherein thou wast created.
And loud I'll now praise thee, O Lord!
Yea, did I not, 'twould check my word;
Thy praise has soared,
And with all things been mated.
Seven hours each day thy praise shall now
By me in pray'r be chanted;
This well belongs to thee, I trow,
For with all virtues thou dost glow;
From all grief thou
Relief to us hast granted.
Thou of so many pure hearts the hold,
So many a pure maid's sweetheart bold,
All thee enfold
With love bright, loud, and yearning.
Thou art caressed by many a mood,
Caressed by many a heart's warm blood;
Thou art so good,
So truthful and love-burning.
Caressed by all the stars that soar,
By moon and sun, thou blessing!
Caressed by the great elements four;
Oh! ne'er caressed so was afore,
Nor will be more,
Sweetheart by love's caressing!
Yea, thou art named the God of grace,
Without whose special power, no phase
Of life in space
Had ever gained existence.
What runneth, climbeth, sneaketh, or striveth,
What crawleth, twineth, flieth, or diveth,
Yea, all that thriveth
In earth and heaven's subsistence:
Of all, the life to thee is known,
Thou art their food and banner,
The lives of all are held alone
By thee, O Lord! and on thy throne;
Thus is well known
Thy grace in every manner.
God of thee speaking, God of thee saying,
Teareth the heart its passions flaying,
And stay waylaying
The ever-watchful devil.
God of thee speaking, God of thee saying,
Much strength and comfort keeps displaying;
And hearts thus staying,
Are saved from every evil.
God of thee speaking, God of thee saying,
Is pleasure beyond all pleasure.
It moves our hearts, thy grace surveying,
To keep with love thy love repaying;
O'er all things swaying
Thus shines thy love's great treasure.
God of thee speaking repentance raises
When they, who chant thy wondrous praises,
Use lying phrases:
So purely thy word gloweth.
It suffers less a lying mood
Than suffers waves the ocean's flood,
So pure and good
Its changeless current floweth.
God of thee speaking doth attest
Pure heart and chaste endeavor,
It driveth the devil from our breast.
Oh! well I know its soothing rest,
It is the zest
Of thy vast mercy's flavor.
Ah virtue pure, ah purest vase!
Ah of chaste eyes thou mirror-glass!
Ah diamond-case,
With fruitful virtues glowing!
Ah festive day to pleasure lent!
Ah rapture without discontent!
Ah sweet musk-scent!
Ah flower gayly blooming!
Ah heavenly kingdom where thou art!
On earth, in hell, or heaven!
Ah cunning o'er all cunning's art!
Ah thou, that knoweth every part!
Ah sweet Christ's heart!
Ah sweetness without leaven!
Ah virtue there, ah virtue here!
Ah virtue on many a dark and drear
Path, far and near!
Ah virtue e'er befriending!
Ah thou self-conscious purity!
Ah goodness, those that cling to thee
So many be
Their number has no ending.
Ah father, mother thou, and son!
Ah brother both and sister!
Ah strong of faith as Jacob's son!
Ah king of earth's and heaven's throne!
Ah thou alone
Our friend to-day as yester!
A WORD TO THE INDEPENDENT.
"A WORD TO FATHER HECKER.
"We address you, Reverend Dr. Hecker, in this public way because we recognize in you not only the ablest defender of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, but also the most progressive and enlightened leader of thought in that church. In the words we have to speak, we wish to speak not to Dr. Hecker, the antagonist of Protestantism, but to Father Hecker, a leader of Catholicism. We write in no polemical spirit. We have many things against the Church of Rome, and have spoken severely of Catholicism as you have of Protestantism. But we have also much veneration for many things in that church, and a very great admiration for some passages in its history. Enthusiastic as you are, sir, you cannot revere more sincerely than we the self-sacrificing benevolence of St. Francis of Assisi, the zeal of St. Francis Xavier, the piety of Fénelon and of Lacordaire, the eloquence of Bossuet and Massillon, or the courage of Pascal and Hyacinthe.
"We come to you for help. In all our great cities there are sections inhabited almost wholly by Roman Catholic people. It is a fact, as well known to you as it is to us, that Catholic sections of the cities abound in destitution, in ignorance, in vice, in crime. Children are here trained by all their surroundings to a life of wickedness. In many homes they learn profanity from the lips of their mothers, and they are familiar with drunkenness from their cradle, if they are so fortunate as to have one left not pawned to buy the means of drunkenness. We know how many honest and hard-working Catholics there are in these sections, and we know how many villanous non-Catholics there are. But you know as well as any one knows that the Catholic population furnishes vastly more than its proportion of paupers and criminals. The reform schools, the prisons, the alms-houses, are nearly full of Catholics. In the Catholic sections of the cities there are drinking-saloons, dog-pits, and brothels in abundance. The men who keep these places are, in undue proportion, Catholics. They receive extreme unction on their death-beds, and are buried in consecrated cemeteries with the rites of the church. We say these things not to wound your Catholic pride, nor to injure that church, but to ask one question: Cannot the Catholic Church herself do something to mitigate these evils?
"Protestants plant missions in some of these Catholic quarters. We are not sure that these missions are always conducted as they should be. Perhaps there may be too much of a spirit of proselytism in some of them; but, at any rate, there is a sincere desire to make men better. Drunkards have been reformed by these missions. Women of evil life have been reclaimed. Children have been taken from vile homes and taught the ways of virtue. Sunday-schools and reading-rooms have been established, and have contributed to the culture and elevation of adults and children.
"But you know, sir, how strong is the Catholic prejudice against Protestants. Broken windows, and sometimes broken heads, have testified to the appreciation the Catholic population has of such efforts on the part of Protestants. There are whole districts from which Protestants are practically excluded. For the worse the lives of these people are, the more combatively devoted are they to the Catholic Church. Of course, we believe that Protestantism is better than Roman Catholicism; but since the reaching of these people with Protestant missions is not possible, we come to you and ask you whether you, who have done so much for the enlightenment of the Catholic Church through its literature, will not lift up your powerful voice to plead with the church to use her almost unlimited influence for the regeneration of her people.
"We are never tired of praising Catholic charities. But Catholic charities, like many Protestant ones, are only half-charities. Of what avail is it that you build a House of the Good Shepherd for abandoned women, if you do not also take means to mitigate the ignorance and the wickedness of the children who are quickly to supply the places of those whom you have recovered?
"We point you to no Protestant example. We know of none so good as that of the illustrious St. Charles Borromeo. If the great Cathedral of Milan were the rudest chapel in Europe, it would yet be one of the most glorious of temples. We need not point the application of his example to the present subject. If the Catholic Church in America had one ecclesiastic of ability who possessed half the zeal of the illustrious successor of St. Ambrose, this stain upon American Catholicism might soon be wiped away. We need not remind one so learned in church history as yourself of his toilsome labor in the cause of education, and of his endeavors, which ceased only with his life, to remove ignorance and vice from his diocese. In suggesting to you, whose parish has already so admirable a Sunday-school, the good that might be accomplished by a thoroughly organized Sunday-school system, we do not need to suggest that in Sunday-school work Catholics are not imitators of Protestants. We are proud to trace the history of Sunday-schools to St. Charles Borromeo.
"By helping to improve the moral, intellectual, and religious character of the lower class of American Catholics, you can do more than by all your eloquent arguments to make Protestants think well of the mother church. Americans are very practical, and a good chapter of present church history enacted before their eyes will have more weight with them than all the old church history your learning can dig from the folios of eighteen centuries."
We depart from our usual course to reprint the above rather, long article, which appeared some time ago in the Independent, one of the leading Protestant papers of the country, not because of its intrinsic merits or special untruthfulness, nor yet for its assumed knowledge of the views and duties of the reverend gentleman to whom it is so pointedly addressed, but because we consider this a fitting time and place to answer the invidious attacks which, under one guise or another, are so constantly being made on the church in America by those who are neither able to meet openly our arguments, nor to arrest covertly the astonishing progress which our holy religion is happily making in every part of this republic. These assaults sometimes take the form of wholesale and mendacious assertion and passionate appeal to blind prejudice and unreason; while sometimes, like the one before us, they assume the thin disguise of personal courtesy and general charity to all men. The former are perhaps the more manly, the latter have the merit of permitting us, without loss of self-respect, to reply to them. The object in either case is the same: a vain endeavor to stem the tide of Catholicity which, in a succession of great waves, as it were, is fast spreading over the land, and an attempt to make our faith an object of aversion to those of our countrymen not yet in the church, by associating it with all that is impoverished, illiterate, and immoral.
It is true, as the writer says, that the Americans are a practical people; but we are not by any means a very reflective people, and are very apt to judge hastily of others without sufficiently considering the various causes which underlie the surface of society, or the effects which may be produced on a people less fortunate than ourselves by ages of misrule and persecution. Knowing this national failing very well, the writer in the Independent adroitly seeks to hold the Catholic Church responsible for the faults and vices of a certain class of nominal Catholics in our midst, when he is fully aware that these very vices, so far from being the growth of Catholic teaching, are not only in absolute contradiction to it, but are the direct and logical results of an elaborate system of penal legislation, designed to produce the very degradation of which he complains, and persistently carried out to its furthest limit by the leading Protestant power of Europe.
Take New York, for instance. Here the church is practically the growth of but half a century. There are some among us whose Catholic ancestors came to this country in the last or even in the seventeenth century; others who have sought refuge from the doubts and uncertainties of Protestantism in the peaceful bosom of mother church; but by far the greater number are immigrants of this century, and their children, who, glad to flee from famine and persecution with nothing but their lives and faith, have sought refuge on our shores from the tyranny of a hostile government, which the world has long recognized as both insincere, oppressive, and illiberal, but which, by virtue of its assumed leadership in the Protestant revolt called the Reformation, wantonly and tenaciously continued to persecute its subjects who dared to profess their devotion to the faith of their fathers. Any one, be he lawyer or laymen, who reads the penal acts of the parliaments of England, Scotland, and Ireland from the reign of Henry VIII. downward, must be satisfied that a more complete network of laws for the purpose of beggaring, degrading, and corrupting human nature has never been devised. Some of them, in fact, are almost preternatural in their ingenuity; and the wonder is how any class of people coming under their operation could, for any length of time, retain even the semblance of civilization. Everything that it was possible to take by legislation from the Catholics of Great Britain and Ireland was taken, every advantage arising from the possession of land or the acquisition of commercial wealth was denied them, and the avenues to honor and distinction were, and are partially so to this day, closed against them, generation after generation. That many of the descendants of these persecuted people who have come among us are uneducated is true, that they are generally poor is a fact patent to every one; but it ill becomes the Independent to taunt them with their ignorance and their poverty, knowing, as it does, that it was Protestantism, of which it is the expounder and the eulogist, that has robbed them of their birthright, and striven, with some success, it seems, to plunge their souls in darkness. Is it fair or generous to hold these people up to public contumely because of the scars they have received in their unequalled struggle for the freedom of conscience and nationality; is it just or American to try to steal from those who seek an asylum on our soil that for which they have imperilled and lost all else—their faith, which is to them dearer than life itself? Or is it more in keeping with all our ideas of true manhood and republican liberty that while we extend one arm to shield the victim of oppression, the other should be stretched forth in reprobation of his plunderer and persecutor? If they have vices—and what people have not?—let a share of the blame at least be laid at the doors of those who designedly and continually debarred them from all means of enlightenment and every incentive to virtue, instead of being attributed to the influence of the church.
And yet, in view of the gloomy history of these people—a chapter in the annals of England which the best of her Protestant statesmen are endeavoring to efface from the popular memory—the writer in the Independent appears to be surprised at what he calls Catholic prejudice against Protestant missions. No man, we are safe in saying, has less prejudice against his fellow-man than the American Catholic, in all the usual intercourse of life; but when a person under the garb of charity invades the sanctity of his home simply to abuse his religion, or waylays his children in the streets and inveigles them into mission-houses and Sunday-schools by the proffer of a loaf or a jacket, for the purpose of telling them that their fathers' faith is rank idolatry, is it not too much to expect that he will remain unmoved and uncomplaining? The writer should recollect that the class of so-called missionaries who infest the quarters of our poorer fellow-Catholics are not new to those people. They have seen their counterparts long ago in Bantry and Connemara, in the fertile valleys of Munster and on the bleak hills of Connaught, in the dark days of the great famine, when the tract distributer followed hard on the heels of the tithe-proctor and the bailiff, tendering a meal or a shilling as the price of apostasy. If heads are occasionally broken, they are not the heads of those who attend to their own affairs and let their neighbors attend to theirs, but of some intermeddling tract-scatterer, whose salary depends upon the number of copies he can force into the hands of Catholics without regard to their wishes or feelings. The provocation emanates from them, and they must take the consequences. If the law permits us to inflict summary chastisement on the burglar who enters our house to take our goods, shall we have no remedy against him who prowls about our doors to steal our children and abuse our faith?
If Protestant missions were properly conducted, they would have none of these difficulties to contend with. But are they properly conducted? The writer in the Independent seems to have some doubts on this point. We have none. Whoever will take the trouble to attend the Bible-classes, prayer-meetings, day-schools, and Sunday-schools of the Howard Mission and its adjuncts, will be satisfied that they are nothing but ingeniously contrived machines for the purpose of proselytizing Catholic children. Abuse of Catholicity of the most unqualified and vulgar kind forms the staple of the instructions there from beginning to end. Even the material relief is diverted to this purpose. The poor half-starved lad, as he eats his food, swallows it down with a draught of no-popery cant, and the ragged little girl, as she dons some cast-off garment, has her young mind polluted by aspersions on the name of her whom Holy Writ declared should be called blessed by all nations. We have before us a periodical issued from the Howard Mission, under the superintendence of a Rev. W. C. Van Meter, which is as full of that canting, snivelling, anti-Catholic spirit as ever characterized the days of God-save-Barebones or of John Wesley's unlettered disciples. As a specimen of the veracity of this modern apostle to the Fourth Ward, and for the benefit of the Independent, which has some doubts as to whether Protestant missions are properly conducted, we extract the following prominent article from its pages:
"Protestantism vs. Romanism.—In the Protestant countries of Great Britain and Prussia, where 20 can read and write, there are but 13 in the Roman Catholic countries of France and Austria. In European countries, 1 in every 10 are in schools in the Protestant countries, and but 1 in 124 in the Roman Catholic. In six leading Protestant countries in Europe, 1 newspaper or magazine is published to every 315 inhabitants; while in six Roman Catholic there is but 1 to every 2,715. The value of what is produced a year by industry in Spain is $6 to each inhabitant; in France, $7½; Prussia, $8; and in Great Britain, $31. There are about a third more paupers in the Roman Catholic countries of Europe than in the Protestant, owing mainly to their numerous holidays and prevailing ignorance, idleness, and vice. Three times as many crimes are committed in Ireland as in Great Britain, though the population is but a third. There are six times as many homicides, four times as many assassinations, and from three to four times as many thefts in Ireland as in Scotland. In Catholic Austria, there are four times as many crimes committed as in the adjoining Protestant kingdom of Prussia."[41]
Now, we ask, is the man or men who penned and circulated this atrocious calumny likely to command the respect of any class of Catholics, learned or ignorant? He or they knew, or ought to have known, that it contains several deliberate falsehoods. Take, for example, the portion of the extract relating to Great Britain and Ireland. By referring to the report of "Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools, August 31, 1868," we find that in England and Wales the average attendance at all the schools in the kingdom was 1,050,120, in Scotland 191,860, and in Ireland, at the model schools alone, 354,853, or nearly twice as many as in Scotland, and, in proportion to the population, one-seventh more than in England. From the official report of the statistics of crime in the same year (the latest published reports that have reached us), there were convicted of crime in England 15,003, in Scotland 2,490, and in Ireland 2,394. Of those sentenced in England, 21 were condemned to death, 18 to penal servitude for life, and 1,921 for a term of years. In Scotland, one was condemned to death, and 243 to penal servitude, while in Ireland none were condemned to death, and but 238 to penal servitude. We find also that in England alone 118,390 persons are reported as belonging to the criminal classes known to the authorities, and but 23,041 in Ireland; and while the former country has 20,000 houses of bad character, the latter has 5,876. The number of paupers in each of the three countries shows even a greater disparity. England in 1868 had, exclusive of vagrants, 1,039,549, or one in every twenty of the population; Scotland, 158,372, or one in every 19; and Ireland, 74,254, or one in every 80![42]
If it were not foreign to our present purpose, we could prove that the managers of the Protestant missions are equally untruthful in their invidious comparisons instituted between other countries,[43] but we have shown enough to convince any impartial person that they are not fit to be entrusted with the care of youth of any class, much less of Catholic children. If the supporters of the Independent are sincere in their desire to benefit the destitute, the needy, and the vicious, let them first remove all suspicion of proselytism from their charities by appointing proper persons to administer them. If they have conscientious scruples against co-operating with the various Catholic charitable societies, who know the poor and are trusted by them, there are other ways of dispensing their bounty judiciously than by tampering with the poor people's faith, and their charity will then become a blessing to the giver as well as to the receiver. Then let them, above all things, advocate a fair and impartial distribution of the public school funds. It is well known that the Catholics as a body are far from being rich, and that while they are struggling hard to sustain their own schools, they are heavily taxed for the support of those to which they cannot consistently send their children, and from which, in many instances, the offspring of the rich alone receive any benefit. Can we not in this free democracy have laws regulating education at least as equitable as those of Austria and Prussia—countries which we are pleased to call despotic? Help us to the means to educate our children in our own way, as we have a right to do, and you will see how the stigma of ignorance and its consequences will be removed from the fair forehead of this great metropolis. We ask not charity, we simply want our fair share of that public money which is contributed by Catholic and Protestant alike for educational purposes, and the liberty to apply it with as much freedom from state interference as is enjoyed in the monarchies of Europe.
The writer in the Independent assumes, with a coolness approaching impertinence, that the clergyman whom he addresses knows that the Catholic population "furnishes more, vastly more, than its proportion of paupers and criminals." He knows no such thing, nor does any right-minded man in the community know it. That there are many and grave crimes committed by nominal Catholics is, alas! too true, but that many such are perpetrated, to any appreciable extent, by the hundreds of thousands of practical Catholics in this city, no sane man believes. Poor and ignorant, if you will, without capital, business training, or mechanical skill, many thousands of our immigrants are from necessity obliged to make their homes in the purlieus of our great cities. Disappointed in their too sanguine expectation of fortune in the New World, some seek solace in intoxication, and in that condition commit acts of lawlessness which their better nature abhors. But much as the commission of crime in any shape is to be regretted and reprehended, it must be admitted that most of the offences are comparatively trivial in their nature and consequences, and few, even of the darkest, are the result of premeditated villany. In searching over the criminal records of our state and country, we seldom find a contrived infraction of the law by the class to which the writer so ungraciously alludes. A gigantic swindle, a scientific burglary, a nicely planned larceny, an adroit forgery, a diabolical seduction, or a deliberate and long-contemplated murder by poison or the knife, is seldom committed by that class, but by those who were reared in as much hostility to Catholicity as the writer of the Independent himself. This higher grade of crime, this "bad pre-eminence," we might with some show of justice ascribe to the effects of the laxity of Protestant morals, but we have no desire to do so here; and with even much more truthfulness might we charge the sects who teach that marriage is merely a civil contract with the responsibility of those other vices which, striking at the very foundations of society and the sanctity of the family, are more lasting in their consequences and more demoralizing in their immediate effects, than all the others put together. The columns of this same virtuous Independent have obtained an unenviable notoriety by spreading the most shameful and corrupting doctrines on this vital subject. But we have no wish to retort: the records of our divorce courts will prove that this class of criminals is made up almost exclusively of non-Catholics.
The writer in the Independent, throughout his appeal, assumes a tone of superior knowledge and a lofty contempt for details that might mislead some into the belief that the Catholic body of this city was an inert and helpless mass. He asks, "Will you not lift up your powerful voice to plead with the church to use her almost unlimited influence for the regeneration of her people?" Does the writer know, or has he attempted to ascertain, all that the church has done and is doing in this city, as in every other, for the "regeneration of her people"? If he does not, by what right does he assume that the voice of any one man or any number of men is required to plead with the church to do her duty? If he be ignorant of his subject, then by what authority does he take upon himself the office of mediator between the church and the people? If he be not in ignorance, then his carefully worded sentences and smoothly turned compliments merely cover, without concealing, a tissue of base insinuations, beside which downright falsehood were rank flattery.
Let him look at what the church has done in New York in the past generation! Forty churches and chapels have been built, with a capacity, it is said, to seat fifty-six thousand persons, but really equal to the accommodation of five times that number, as in every church the divine service is offered up at least three times each Sunday, and all are attended beyond the greatest capacity of the building. To many of our churches is attached a free day-school for boys and girls, and invariably a Sunday-school—thronged weekly by the youth of both sexes, to listen to the instruction and counsel of competent teachers. Every parish has its St. Vincent de Paul Society, counting hundreds and in some cases thousands of members, whose aim it is to visit the sick, the afflicted, and the needy; and its temperance society, the strength of which may be judged by the long line of stalworth men we see parading our streets on festal occasions. Colleges, schools, and convents there are in great numbers for the teaching of the higher branches of education. Hospitals for the sick and afflicted, asylums for the blind, the orphan, the foundling, and the repentant sinner, a reformatory for erring youth, and a shelter for old age. Almost every conceivable want of weak humanity has its appropriate place of supply among our charitable institutions.
All this grand system of charities is, however, lost on the writer in the Independent. His special attention is directed to the "dense Catholic sections." Well, we will take the Fourth Ward, which is blessed with the Howard Mission and the beneficent supervision of Mr. Van Meter. St. James's Church is situated in this ward, and its parish embraces all the Protestant missions so-called, and most of their offshoots. Upon personal inquiry, we find that there is erected in this parish a magnificent and spacious school-house, at a cost of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, attended daily during week-days by upwards of fourteen hundred boys and girls, taught by twenty-two teachers of both sexes. The tuition is entirely free, the expenses amounting to about twelve thousand dollars annually, being sustained by the voluntary contributions of the parishioners. The Sunday-schools of this church are attended by twenty-five hundred children, about one-half of whom, being employed during the week, are unable to attend the day-schools. Then there is an industrial school, attended by between one and two hundred poor children, mostly half-orphans, who are provided with dinner every day, and to whom are given two entire suits of new clothing every year, on July 4th and Christmas Day. In addition to these there is a branch of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, numbering several hundred members, forty of whom are constantly on duty, visiting the sick, counselling the erring, helping the needy, and performing other works of charity. This society alone expends annually at least five thousand dollars. Besides, there are two temperance societies, numbering nearly nine hundred men, who not only discourage intemperance by their example, but seek by weekly meetings, lectures, and other popular attractions to win others to follow in their footsteps. Now, these are facts easily verified by any one who may wish to do so, and may be taken as a fair specimen of the gigantic efforts which the church is making in every parish in this city for the conservation of the morals and the education of her people. St. James's Parish may be said to contain the largest proportionate number of our poorer brethren, who, though heavily taxed as tenement holders and retail purchasers of all the necessaries of life, contributing of course their quota to the public school fund, can yet afford, out of their scanty and often precarious means, to educate and partly feed and clothe over fifteen hundred children. Can the Independent show any similar effort on the part of any of the sects?
The writer in the Independent says, "We come to you for help." What sort of help? If it is assistance to prop up the decaying Protestant missions which have so long been sources of discord and bad feeling among our Catholic fellow-citizens, profitable only to their employees, we respectfully decline: if he is in truth and all sincerity desirous to devote a part of his leisure time and means to improve the condition of his less fortunate fellow-beings in the denser populated portions of the city, we cannot advise him to do better than to consult the pastor of St. James's or of any of the churches in the lower wards, who will give him all the help required for the proper disposal of both. And, in conclusion, let us suggest to him that no amount of politeness will justify the violation of the commandment which says, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."