DANTE’S PURGATORIO.
CANTO SECOND.
This Canto of the Purgatorio is the one which contains that episode of the music-master, Casella, to which Milton alludes in his celebrated Sonnet to Henry Lawes, and perhaps all the more celebrated from this allusion to the passage in Dante.
Casella was a dear friend of Dante’s, and used to set his canzoni to music, and sing them with a voice which it must have been delicious for Dante to have made immortal. Dante supposes in the poem that Casella had gone to Rome in the year of the Jubilee, and, coming thence by sea, had perished near the mouth of the Tiber.
For Canto I. of this translation, see Catholic World for November, 1870.
Now that horizon whose meridian arch
Hangs o’er Jerusalem its topmost height
The sun had reached: while opposite, her march
Holding in countercourse, the circling Night
Walked forth from Ganges, bearing in her hand
The Scales that she lets fall with her advance,
So that the morning’s cheeks where I did stand
From white and red grew orange to my glance.
Beside the sea we made a brief delay,
Like lingering men, that on their journey dream,
Who go in spirit, but in body stay:
And lo! as when, surprised by morning’s beam,
Through the gross vapors Mars doth redly burn
Down in the west upon the ocean floor;
A light appeared—oh! may that light return—
So rapidly those waters travelling o’er,
That to its motion flying were but slow:
Then, having momently withdrawn my gaze
To question of my Guide, I looked, and lo!
Larger it burned, and seemed almost ablaze!
Soon from each side thereof, although I knew
Naught what they were, something appeared of white,
And underneath another of like hue
Little by little grew upon my sight.
My Master spake not: I meantime could spell
Wings in those first white objects at the side:
Soon as he recognized the pilot well,
“Behold God’s Angel!—bend thy knees!” he cried:
“Lift up thy palms to him—now in thy ken
See one of heaven’s high ministers indeed!
Look, how he scorneth all device of men;
He nor of oars nor any sail hath need
Save his own pinions (while he beats the air
And heavenward stretches those eternal pens),
From shore to shore so distant—plumes that ne’er
Moult like the changing tresses that are men’s.”
Then as more near and nearer to us drew
That divine bird, so grew the splendor more
Till scarce the eye could bear a closer view:
I bent mine down, and he arrived ashore
With a fleet skiff, so light upon the flood
That without wake it skimmed the water’s breast:
High on the stern the heavenly helmsman stood,
In aspect such as Holy Writ calls Blest.[110]
More than an hundred spirits in one band
Within sat blending in one voice their strains,
“In exitu Isràel—From the land
Of Egypt”—and what else that psalm contains.[111]
The sign of holy cross he made them then,
Whereat they bounded all upon the strand,
And he, swift as he came, sped back again.
The crowd that stayed looked wildly round, and scanned
The place like strangers coming to things new.
Now on all sides had Phœbus pierced the day
With his keen arrows, which so fiercely flew
That Capricorn was chased from heaven’s midway,
When the new-comers raised their brows to us,
Saying: “Show us the pathway, if ye know,
Up to the mountain.” Virgil answered thus:
“Perchance you think us dwellers here? Not so.
We, like yourselves, are only pilgrims here:
Just before you, and by another way,
We came, a road so rugged, so severe,
That climbing this will seem thereto as play.
The spirits, by my breathing who could guess
That I was living, wan with wonder grew;
And just as people round a herald press
Who comes with olive wreaths, to hear what new
Tidings he bears, regardless how they tread,
Thus gathering round, those favored souls eyed me;
Each one, as ‘twere, forgetful how he sped
Towards where they go, more beautiful to be.
One I beheld before the rest, who came
As to embrace me, with such look intense
Of love, it moved me to return the same.
Oh! save in aspect, shadows void of sense,
Three times my hands around his form I threw,
And thrice received them back upon my breast.
I think my face was tinged with wonder’s hue;
For the shade smiled as after him I pressed,
And, I still following, he so sweetly said:
“Follow no longer;” whose that voice must be
I knew full well, and begged him, ere he fled,
To stay a little while to speak with me.
He answered me: “As in my mortal part
I loved thee once, I love thee loose from clay,
And therefore stop; but thou—why wandering art?”
“My dear Casella, I come not to stay,
And must return where I am dwelling still.
But tell me what has so delayed thy bliss?”
“If he who taketh whom and when he will
Refused my passage oft, no wrong was this,”
The shade replied: “To Heaven’s his choice conforms:
These three months freely he hath carried o’er,
At their own pleasure, the peace-parted swarms:
Whence I, too, coasting homeward by the shore,
Where Tiber’s waves grow salt, with gracious hand
Was gathered. Titherward he now has gone,
Bending his pinions towards the sacred strand
Where all those meet who seek not Acheron.”
Then I: “Unless the new laws here forbid
Memory or use of that love-laden style
Which all my longings once full gently chid,
Soothe with one song, beseech thee, for awhile
This soul of mine, which, dragging here its clay,
Is so worn out.” Directly he began
“Love reasons with me,” in so sweet a way
That the same sweetness I could hear—I can.
We stood, my Master and myself, as though
Naught else possessed us, and that shadowy swarm,
Rapt, listening round him to his notes: and lo!
That noble old man’s venerable form[112]
Came crying: “How now, tardy spirits—why
This negligence? why lingering do ye plod?
Run to the mountain, that from every eye
The scales may fall that seal your sight from God.”
As doves in barley, gathering grain or tares
(Busy at pasture in a single flock,
Quiet, nor showing their accustomed airs),
If aught approach the timid tribe to shock,
Fly from their food, assailed by greater care,
So quit the song this new-come troop, and started
Hillward, like one who goes unknowing where:
And with no less a pace we, too, departed.
[110] “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”
[111] Psalm cxiv.
[112] The spirit of Cato of Utica, introduced in the First Canto.
THE LATE GENERAL CONVENTION OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH.
The doings of a body so large, and in a worldly point of view so respectable, as the Episcopal Church, ought to be of some consequence to the public. Unfortunately, however, the negative character of its legislation prevents it from reaching the wants of the day, or speaking to the heart of a restless age which is bent on physical progress. The gentlemen who form the convention meet together every three years, and spend three weeks in moving the interesting machinery of legislation, without doing anything whatever, and in disappointing every one who asks for a positive statement in matters of doctrine or discipline. Their body is formed after the plan of the United States Congress, and has no counterpart in any period of ecclesiastical history. The bishops form the upper house or senate, and the clerical and lay deputies constitute the lower or more popular house, one half of which is composed of ministers and one half of laymen. Each house acts as a restraint upon the other, and no law can be passed without the agreement of the two branches. The bishops might be disposed to change the creed or make some new article of faith for their communion, but they cannot do so without the consent of the deputies. The same thing is true of the ministers in the convention. The laymen have a veto upon their pastors, who in turn can tie up the legislation of their flock. A negative lay-vote in the lower house will nullify even the action of the bishops in council, as well as the wishes of the reverend clergy. If, for example, the Episcopal body should propose to pass a law on ritual, and the ministers were agreed to it, the lay deputies could defeat it by an adverse vote. There is something very peculiar in this equalization of ecclesiastical prerogatives between ministers and laymen, which strikes the unpractised eye as unique and strange. The constitution of the Protestant Episcopal Church was formed, as we have intimated,
after the model of the American Republic. There is, however, no executive, the presiding bishop being only a chairman of a meeting; and the power of putting into effect the action of the convention lies wholly in the convention itself, which has no existence after it adjourns sine die. We believe, however, that the different dioceses feel bound to a certain kind of obedience, the nature of which will depend upon individual bishops.
In regard to the late convention, we have little to say, and yet some good may result from putting on record what Catholics think of a body of Christians which makes such large pretensions, and at the same time is so utterly helpless, and useless as a teacher of truth. Our purpose in this article will be accomplished by a brief view of the impressions produced by this council upon the Episcopalians and the world; by a consideration of what has been done negatively and positively; and a few remarks upon the position in which the Protestant Episcopal Church stands before mankind.
I. The impression produced upon Episcopalians, as far as we can learn it from themselves, is very singular, and seems to differ with different minds. The only satisfaction expressed in any of their journals is that the convention did not do any more harm. The Church Journal, of November 1, speaks of the “tomb of the Capulets” to which so many important measures were consigned. “That vast mausoleum,” it says, “well stored at the close of the session of 1868, received a large accession in 1871.” It also terms the whole thing a fiasco, and pitifully remarks that “the mind of the church must be well informed in 1874 if we would not pave the way to another fiasco.” “In the matter of tone, temper, and decorum, with slight exceptions, the convention
was worthy of the respect of the church.” There were, therefore, exceptions in which it is not deserving of any respect. The Church Weekly rejoices that no great evils have come from this council of their branch of the one (invisible) church, and attributes this to the good sense of the deputies, who generally were “wise and conservative men.” “It was only by the non-concurrence of orders that action was not had on ritual, and in the form proposed by the House of Bishops.” The same journal says that the bishops are utterly unfitted for action on any of the subjects which came before the convention. “They are chosen,” it remarks, “for any reason rather than knowledge of liturgies, ritual, canon law, or theology.” What these reverend fathers are expected to know we are left to imagine, and it is a great strain upon our powers; for we are somewhat bewildered by the observation “that they are chosen for their practical common sense, which is American English for success in life.”
The Christian Witness feels happy that there is “such elaborate discussion on the smallest points, and that questions of order take much of the time in their disposal.” The result, however, is not so pleasant, because “the most important subjects are left to the end of the session, when the haste of the members to return home cuts short the discussion, and dissatisfaction is the result.”
The Protestant Churchman is the only paper we have seen which seems really gratified. The convention did not do anything, but showed a spirit which, if not quenched, will yet accomplish much:
“No one who was present could fail to be struck with some very remarkable developments, the full significance of which does by no means appear in what the convention actually did or left undone.
Although the convention did not pass any of the proposed canons against ritualism, it is yet true that an anti-ritualistic spirit was disclosed, which was entirely unexpected, and in the presence of which scarcely any one, in either house, dared to avow himself a ritualist. Although the convention did not repeal the restrictive and exclusive canons, still the evidence was most marked of the progress of liberal sentiments. If the questions involved in these canons had come fairly before the convention, we believe that the result would have surprised every one, and satisfied those who have been hopeless of favorable action.
“In our view, this convention has marked a transition period in the history of the Protestant Episcopal Church. The old ruts have been obliterated, and new paths of progress have been opened. It is our profound conviction that there has not been a convention for many years which has revealed a prospect so encouraging for truly liberal and evangelical principles.”
The internal spirit of a legislative body is, however, hard to understand except from its public acts, and when there are no such satisfactory acts, honest observers may differ in their judgment. The High Churchmen felicitate themselves that their tenets were not pulled to pieces, while Low Churchmen see a spirit which accords with their sentiments, and so take courage for the future.
In spite of all these causes of happiness, the advanced ritualists find much to complain of, because the bishops, though apostles, did not realize their dignity, and the ministers, though actually Catholic priests, did not seem to know it. Besides their ignorance of “liturgies, ritual, canon law, and theology,” they were not reverent in the house of God, nor did they seem to feel that they were, what the Churchman calls them, “apostles, occupied with the faith and practice of the apostolic age, and framing their conduct and teaching according to a model seventeen
hundred years older than the systems represented by Protestant names.” In church they seemed to forget the “real presence,” and to be only polite and sociable gentlemen, very glad to meet their friends of the nineteenth century. So says the Church Weekly:
“Men and women seem too tired and excited for reverent devotion; and not merely was loud talking and laughter going on at one end of the building before the blessed sacrament was consumed, but, within the very sanctuary, even bishops were seen exchanging the courtesies of society with one hand, while with the other they were holding the Lord’s body and blood. The truth is, there cannot be proper reverence when a building which is during one hour the scene of exciting debate and the arena of unrestrained conversation is, during the next, devoted to what ought to be the solemn worship of Almighty God. Nearly all the clergy and laity, ritualists included, seemed at times to forget that Emmanuel Church, though used as a convention hall, was a consecrated house of prayer. Constant introductions, subsequent chattings, mild flirtations with ladies, and the frequent use of opera-glasses, did a great deal towards destroying reverence for God’s sanctuary; and I could not but feel the evil habit engendered there found its way into many of the churches in which divine worship was held on the following Sunday.”
As for the impression produced upon the world, we can take the spirit of the press, which has amused itself much in studying the science of using words, and saying nothing, which the Protestant Episcopal council possesses in the highest degree. Every one of the other Protestant bodies has a distinctive character, and uses words according to the received interpretation of the dictionaries. The Episcopalians, however, sit upon the fence, and turn their faces now to the north, and now to the south, and speak like the Sibyl, so as to be on the safe side with every one. No one would venture
to abridge their liberty, or even laugh at their peculiarities, if they did not pretend to be above their brethren, and ape the exterior of the old church. Their phylacteries are many and large, and so not a few of them carry a sign to prove that they are what they profess to be. In spite of what the world thinks, they are priests and bishops, and theirs (O tempora, O mores!) is the only pure branch of the Catholic church. Their coats and cassocks beat us out-and-out, and they are Catholics, the only true Catholics, while we are Romanists.
When we behold such a remarkable body, which claims, through its ardent children, to be the most primitive and only pure church in existence, we naturally are curious to find out what the doctrine of this church is. Then, when it speaks enigmas, and has a language of its own, with no published dictionary, we are somewhat bewildered. Seriously, we think we have not exaggerated the sentiment of the journals of the day. They are amused at the spectacle of three weeks’ work which has accomplished nothing, and at definitions of doctrine which can be construed in two contradictory senses. We do not believe there is a living man who can tell what the doctrine of the Episcopal Church is, nor a single member of that communion who has any clear ideas on the subject. Each one may tell us what he believes for himself, but his private opinion is not necessarily the creed of his church. If the Redeemer of men has left his religion in such hands, we can only say that he has not shown human wisdom, and that his Gospel will be of little use to mankind. Our further remarks will justify these conclusions, and show that never since the creation has there been a body with so
great pretensions and so little foundation for them. This is not because the authorities do not sometimes speak plainly, but because the members of the church insist on interpreting whatever they say according to their own ideas, and there is no final tribunal.
2. With the exception of a few local canons on matters which have no general interest, the convention, as such, has done nothing. We shall try to give a fair synopsis of its doings, and let them speak for themselves. As the Christian Witness tells us, great attention has been paid to points of order, and the rules for the trying of bishops and ministers. This would lead us to conclude that either these canons had been very imperfect, or that there are many and difficult cases of delinquency. We incline to think, however, that there are not many bad ministers, but that the wish to make laws and to speak on them is the parent of all these emendations of their code. Very few of the resolutions referred to the committee on canons have seen the light, but are consigned to that “tomb of the Capulets” of which the Church Journal speaks.
The different dioceses in the State of New York have been desirous of having a “federate council” of their own, and some action was taken on this subject. Not much satisfaction has been derived from this, because the journal most interested is acutely grieved. “It is sad,” it says, “to think that what is called the mind of the church is not yet ready for the Provincial System, or even a court of appeals. The federate council of New York is granted sufficient power to keep it from dying of atrophy or inanition, but we fear it will prove only a sickly sort of existence after all.” The particular benefit of the provincial system in the Episcopalian
hierarchy we do not see; but this is none of our business. Our sympathies are with those who want it, and are unable to get it.
A joint committee of bishops and ministers has been appointed or continued on religious reform in Italy.
As far as we can learn, the labor of this committee will be very arduous. They are to watch for Catholics and infidels in Italy who turn Episcopalians. There are not many of these converts, but for this very reason they will be all the more difficult to find and provide for.
We would humbly suggest that a branch of their branch of the one church be established there, with a bishop whose travelling expenses should be prepaid, no matter what the cost may be. A committee in the United States can hardly be adequate to this critical work, for if there is no Episcopalian minister at hand when a man or woman is at the point of converting, he or she may be gathered in by a sect of Protestants who have no bishops. We should also have recommended that this committee have power to act in Bavaria, especially as there is no time to lose. Still, as our advice may not be understood, we do not press the subject. Old Dr. Döllinger has valid orders, and so has poor Father Hyacinthe, and might possibly be saved for the cause of Episcopacy.
Another thing which moves us very much is the magnitude of the work again thrown on the committee who are to seek for union with the Eastern heretical churches. So little has been accomplished beyond an exchange of courtesies that we fear the means are not adequate to the end.
Anglicans have already signified their willingness to throw the “Filioque” out of the creed, and to give up thus the doctrine of the Trinity,
but this does not seem to bring the two or four bodies any nearer together. The Eastern churches still call the Anglicans heretical, and say they have no orders, while in all humility they prostrate themselves before the walls of Constantinople or St. Petersburg, and ask for the smallest smile of recognition. We do not think the committee have done their duty, and, as the prophet urged the priests of Baal, we beg them to persevere. These venerable patriarchs may possibly be asleep, or absent on a journey. If they would ordain one of the Episcopal ministers, he would certainly be a priest, and perhaps the American Branch might be ordered to adopt the Russian Pontifical. It is very like the Roman, but then it could be translated into English. The same doctrines are more palatable in Russian or in Greek than they are in Latin, and the Eastern is a “Holy Orthodox Church,” while the Roman Catholic Church is schismatical and in great error. The Holy Orthodox Church, having anathematized the Thirty-nine Articles, has touched rather severely the Anglican pretensions, but our good friends here are able to bear more than this without being discouraged. Before these words reach the public, we trust the Episcopal Committee will have had the opportunity to wait upon the Grand Duke Alexis and offer him Trinity Church for his cathedral during his stay in New York. A branch that has been cut off from the parent trunk can be carried even some distance to shade a sprout that comes out of the ground of its own responsibility and from its own little root. “How good and pleasant a thing it is to see brethren dwelling together in unity!”
At the next convention, we hope to hear something of the effect of the regular resolutions which have been
passed the last fifty years, and to hear if the old branch will at last recognize the new branch planted by Henry VIII. and his daughter Elizabeth, and watered by Luther and Calvin and their friends. A small casket containing the ashes of Cyril Lucar might be carried in procession on this grand occasion, still in the future, with a tablet bearing in bold relief the canons of the Synod of Bethlehem.
We pass to another of the doings of the convention, which has our unqualified approbation, accompanied only with the fear that the project may not be successful.
We refer to “the revival of the Scriptural diaconate of women,” as the bishops call it in their pastoral.
The Scripture here alluded to is probably the ninth to thirteenth verses of the fifth chapter of the First Epistle of St. Paul to Timothy:
“Let a widow be chosen, not under threescore years of age, who hath been the wife of one husband; having a testimony of her good works, if she have educated children, if she have exercised hospitality, if she have washed the saints’ feet, if she have ministered to them that suffer tribulation, if she have diligently followed every good work. But the younger widows shun, for when they have grown wanton in Christ, they will marry, having damnation because they have made void their first faith. And withal being idle, they learn to go about from house to house, not only idle, but tattlers also, and inquisitive, speaking things which they ought not.”
The bishops do not say whether they propose to carry out these rules of St. Paul literally, but they seem to “feel an earnest desire that prudence and good sense may preside over every effort.” The committee, whose report was substantially accepted, do not fix any rules as to the age of the postulants, nor do they
utter one word about widows. They use the term “sisterhoods” in connection with remarks upon “the Phœbes and Priscillas of apostolic times,” while without explanation they condemn “the false and pernicious system of the Church of Rome.” (A rose under any other name will not smell so sweet.) These sisterhoods are to be established everywhere in hospitals and benevolent homes, and a central house or training school is recommended to fit the candidate for the various works of mercy. These sisters are to be without vows, and so free to come and go, leave their various convents, and marry whenever they please.
The rule of obedience depends upon their own consent, and so they are their own masters, even when they live in community. We confess a great anxiety to see this system thoroughly tried, and to know, in the course of a few years, how many will remain and die in their conventual habit. Even if it fail, it is a step in the right direction, and we are glad the committee did not rigidly adopt the rules of St. Paul. For if they were restricted to widows over sixty years of age, they might not find many subjects, and in this climate the deaconesses might be incapable of much work.
The action of the convention in regard to ritualism is so remarkable that we hardly know how to describe it.
The bishops in their pastoral have something to say on it, which we shall notice afterward. They, however, are only one-third of the convention, and cannot of themselves pass any laws which shall have binding force. It seems that, three years ago, when the matter was discussed, a committee was appointed to examine the subject, and report a canon or canons to be enacted which might produce uniformity. This committee
reported very plainly, and gave an opinion which can be understood. They recommended a canon which should forbid all the peculiar actions of the ritualists, such as “the use of incense, the placing or retaining a crucifix in any part of the church, the use of lights about the holy table, the elevation of the elements in holy communion for the purpose of adoration, the mixing of water with the wine, the washing of the priest’s hands, the ablution of the vessels, the celebration of holy communion when there is no one to receive, and using any prayers or services not contained in the Book of Common Prayer.” This recommendation was referred to a joint committee, who, not being able to agree perfectly, brought forth as the result of their labors the draft of a law which makes the rule of ritual the Prayer-Book and “the canons of the Church of England in use in the American Provinces before 1789, and not subsequently superseded, altered, or repealed.” Then, as few seemed to know about these canons, it was determined to appoint a new committee to find out about them, and inform the next General Convention. In the meantime, all mixed questions were to be settled by the bishops in their various dioceses, should it please them to interfere, or should any brother be offended by excess or defect of ritual. The evident result of all this legislation was to leave the whole matter just where it was before. This canon did not, however, seem to please. Some of the members wished to know what these “customs before 1789” were, before they could intelligently act, and on a division of the house the project was lost. Substitutes a little more decisive were offered, and they did not meet with favor. The bishops, anxious as it would seem to have
some action taken on the subject, sent down to the deputies the following resolution, which they had passed, and for which they asked the concurrence of their brethren:
“Resolved (the House of Clerical and Lay Deputies concurring), That the following canon be adopted and enacted, to be entitled Canon ——:
“The elevation of the elements in the holy communion in such manner as to expose them to the view of the people as objects toward which adoration is to be made, in or after the prayer of consecration, or in the act of administering them, or in carrying them to or from the communicants, and any gesture, posture, or act implying such adoration, and any ceremony not prescribed as part of the order of the administration of the Lord’s Supper or holy communion in the Book of Common Prayer, and the celebration or reception of the holy communion by any bishop or priest when no person receives with him; likewise, the use, at any administration of the holy communion, of any hymns, prayers, collects, epistles, or gospels other than those appointed in the authorized formularies of the church or under § 14 of canon 13, title 1, of the Digest, are hereby forbidden.”
This resolution was put to vote, and lost by a small majority on the clerical vote. The following proposition was then offered and adopted unanimously, which, so far as we know, was the end of the matter in the convention:
“Resolved, That this convention hereby expresses its decided condemnation of all ceremonies, observances, and practices which are fitted to express a doctrine foreign to that set forth in the authorized standards of this church.”
A slight review of this remarkable action on the subject of ritual will show that the bishops were anxious to pass a law against the practices peculiar to the few good people who are called ritualists, but that they were outvoted by the clerical deputies,
and that nothing has been done which will have any weight. For who knows what the doctrine set forth in the authorized standards of the Episcopal Church is? And who will determine when ceremonies contravene the doctrine about which no one is certain? The Thirty-nine Articles speak plainly enough when they tell us that “the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was not by Christ’s ordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped,” and that “the sacrifices of Masses were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits.” Yet we are told that these words do not mean anything which could forbid the elevation and adoration of the Holy Eucharist, or the private celebration of the sacrifice of the Mass.
We are moreover informed that these articles are of no authority, although confessedly they are the only creed which the Protestant Episcopal Church possesses. So, when men can thus seriously argue, and quietly look each other in the face, we despair of finding any words which cannot be misinterpreted. So, as they say, with thanks to God for his great mercy, our ritual friends will go on,
and do as they have done, interpreting the standards to suit themselves, and, above all, taking advantage of that blessed Use of Sarum which has been to them a source of so great consolation.
Appropriately of all this, we give an extract from the Church Weekly, regulating the order of service for the third week of November.
[Column Header Key:
A = Day of Month.
B = Day of Week.
C = Concordance.
D = Observance.]
KALENDAR FOR THE WEEK.
| A | B | NOVEMBER. | C | D | Altar Color. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sarum. | Rom. | |||||
| 19 | S. | 24th after Trinity, | .. | Feast. | R. | G. |
| 20 | M. | [S. Edmund, K. M., | A[113] | .. | R. | R. |
| 22 | W. | [S. Cecilia, V. M., | C[113] | .. | R. | R. |
| 23 | Th. | [S. Clement, Bp. Rome, M., | .. | .. | R. | R. |
| 25 | S. | [S. Katharine, V. M., | C[113] | .. | R. | R. |
| 26 | S. | Sunday next before Advent,[114] | .. | Feast. | .. | G. |
It must be observed that “Calendar” is spelt with a K, which is more ancient, and that the “authorized standards” of the Episcopal Rite have nothing about S. Edmund, S. Cecilia, S. Clement, nor S. Catharine (spelt with a K). The “altar color” is also very useful, especially as they give at the last column the Roman Rite. A friend of ours told us of a very solemn marriage which he witnessed in Trinity Church the other day. The Rev. Dr. Dix was the celebrant (as he thought), with a deacon and subdeacon, all beautifully vested, and the candidates were a young priest and a young lady, who in this most impressive manner was to become his wife. Oh! what will the Greeks say to this? We fear they will be scandalized, and that even the giving up of the “Filioque” will not
prevent them from staring with eyes wide open. The priest said the nuptial mass, and the other priest and his wife received the holy communion and the sacrament of matrimony. How does this compare with the services before 1789?
We cannot, however, pass over the action and language of the bishops in this matter. We suppose our Anglican friends will admit that neither priests nor laymen are by any rule of ecclesiastical antiquity allowed to judge in council on points of faith. This has generally been left to the episcopate, to which, in union with its head, Christ committed the government of his church. Now, for the advanced High Churchmen it is a sad fact that the bishops of their church have unqualifiedly condemned them. They have done this, first in the canon which they passed and sent down to the House of Deputies, and, secondly, in the language of their pastoral, which is the accurate expression of their doctrine. We know that their words can be explained away, but we respectfully submit that this time the attempt to do so will be dishonesty. If these reverend fathers in God can speak at all, then they have spoken. We give their words, and pray they may fall upon the open ears of their children who bow down before them as “apostles”: “The doctrine which chiefly attempts to express itself by ritual, in questionable and dangerous ways, is connected with the Holy Eucharist. That doctrine is emphatically a novelty in theology. What is known as eucharistical adoration is undoubtedly inculcated and encouraged by that ritual of posture lately introduced among us, which finds no warrant in our ‘Office for the Administration of Holy Communion.’” They then go on to say that whatever presence of Christ there may be is such as does not allow him to be there
worshipped, and that to adore the elements is “an awful error.” We give an extract from a writer in one of our New York journals, who seems, up to this time, to be honest in his understanding of his spiritual fathers:
“3. There are bishops and—bishops; there are doctors and—doctors. Here is the Bishop of Arizona, for instance, who says that ‘that doctrine (eucharistic adoration) is a novelty in theology.’ But there is St. Ambrose, whilom Bishop of Milan, who says, ‘We adore the flesh of Christ in the mysteries.’ Here is the Bishop of Central New York, who declares that ‘the doctrine and the practice which it implies are most certainly unauthorized by Holy Scripture, and entirely aside from the purposes for which the holy sacrament was instituted.’ But there is St. Gregory of Nazianzum, not recently, indeed, but most truly Bishop of Constantinople, who used this expression, ‘Calling upon him who is worshipped upon the altar.’ Here is the Bishop of Delaware, who unites with the Bishop of Connecticut in saying that ‘the doctrine and the practice which it implies are most dangerous in their tendencies.’ But there is the poor Bishop of Hippo, Augustine by name, who, unfortunately for his reputation, committed himself to the declaration that ‘no one eateth that flesh till he have first adored.’ And how many other bishops, great and small, there are who have acted upon that dictum of the misguided African, God only knows!”
His appeal is from bishop to bishop, and from doctor to doctor, according to his own private judgment. We are pained more than we can express at the malicious quibbles which distort words so emphatically plain. We submit that, if Jesus Christ is present in the Eucharist, he must be adored by all but infidels; and, secondly, that, if the bread is his body, as he said it was, it cannot at the same time be bread, since two substances cannot coexist in the same space. All changes of words upon the terms “spiritual and corporal” are only the unfortunate sophistries of
a deceiver or of the deceived. If our ritualistic brethren have any doubt as to the meaning of the bishops, let them go and ask Dr. Smith, or Drs. Lee and Coxe, Potter and McIlvaine. They will give a clear reply, we do believe.
We approach another and most important act of the Council of Episcopal bishops which will certainly render this convention memorable for all time. They have, in the most solemn manner, given their definition of the term “regeneration” which is used in the offices of their church. The Twenty-seventh of the Thirty-nine Articles was probably framed to suit different opinions among the followers of the Reformation of Luther. There baptism is called “a sign of regeneration,” though it is not declared to be the instrument of regeneration, and may be only a mere sign without the substance. But the Office for Baptism in the Prayer-Book is in no way equivocal. There it is distinctly taught that the child baptized is regenerated by the Holy Spirit. According to all the received acceptation of words and the doctrine of formularies from which this office was derived, regeneration means the new birth by which through divine mercy the child, naturally born of Adam, is supernaturally born again of water and the Holy Ghost, receives the new life of grace, and becomes really the child of God. Such are our Lord’s words to Nicodemus, wherein he instructs him concerning baptism: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”
Ever since the formation of the Episcopal Church the great majority of her members have found the words retained in the baptismal service onerous and out of place. For they do not believe in any such doctrine, since they have adopted the heretical notions of Calvin and Luther concerning
the new birth. Only a few High Churchmen have ever held to baptismal regeneration, yet they have had the language of the Prayer-Book to sustain them in controversy. One of the best and most learned of the Episcopalian ministers, for many years professor in the General Theological Seminary, taught that “regeneration” in the baptismal service, by a special use of terms, meant only a “change of state,” and that the doctrine that baptism was the new birth was utterly untenable in the Episcopal Church, and contrary to the whole spirit of its creed. The united voice of the bishops now comes to declare the same opinion, and to make of the regeneration taught in their offices only such an external change by which the child is promised unto God, and, without any interior operation, is adopted into the visible fold of Christ. We give the language of this most remarkable definition:
DECLARATION OF THE BISHOPS IN COUNCIL, OCTOBER 11, 1871.
“We, the subscribers, Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, being asked, in order to the quieting of the consciences of sundry members, of the said church, to declare our convictions as to the meaning of the word ‘regenerate’ in the ‘Offices for the Ministration of Baptism for Infants,’ do declare that in our opinion the word ‘regenerate’ is not there so used as to determine that a moral change in the subject of baptism is wrought in the sacrament.”
To this declaration are appended the signatures of forty-eight bishops, all but two, we believe, of the whole of their hierarchy. Now we were somewhat prepared for attempts to wrest the meaning of these very plain words, but not for the flagrant dishonesty of some of the High Church journals. Let us call things by their right names, and speak the truth, if need be, in all sadness. We were not prepared to hear that “the bishops were not asked
nor did they profess to say what regeneration means”; that in saying what it was not, they aimed to give no explanation whatever of the word. We give two short extracts, one from the Churchman, and the other from the Church Weekly, which for candor and sincerity certainly deserve the first premium:
“The object aimed at was ‘the quieting of the consciences of sundry members of the church.’ It was not to give an exhaustive definition of the word. Certain persons claimed that the term might be interpreted to signify a moral change in the subject of baptism. They knew that many would so understand it. And so the bishops, being asked, stated what no sound churchman ever denied, and no well-read theologian and respectable student of the meaning of language ever denied, namely, ‘that the word is not so used’ in that connection. The thing asked for was granted. The object aimed at was accomplished, and those who represented the unquiet consciences have acknowledged their grateful appreciation.
“We can illustrate this point by a single example. Some readers of the Bible may think that, whenever the word ‘day’ occurs in the first chapters of Genesis, it must mean a period of twenty-four hours. Common people have come to understand it in that sense. Now, suppose that the question has been raised in some Baptist or Congregational ‘Sabbath-school.’ The teachers think a declaration from their pastor or bishop—if they please to call him so—to the effect that the word does not of necessity imply a period of time limited to twice twelve hours, would quiet the consciences of some of their pupils who have studied geology. Suppose the thing asked for is granted: are we, therefore, to conclude that the pastor has pretended to give a definition of the word ‘day,’ and to state exactly ‘what it does mean’? Shall we speak of him as having ‘grappled with’ the creation question, and yet ‘failed to tell a waiting’ Sabbath-school what the exact time indicated by that word ‘day’ was—whether ten thousand years, as some believe, or, as others think, ten million?”
“Alas! the House of Bishops have put forth a definition which is no definition! They pretend to define, and yet they do
not define! There is not a churchman, however ignorant of theology, who does not laugh in his sleeve at this pseudo-definition, which will have the effect, however, of making manifest either the ignorance or the insincerity of ‘Evangelicals,’ provided that they remain in the church. For, if the latter remain therein after this, it must be either because they cannot tell a definition from an evasion of a question, or because they are in search of some excuse for not carrying out those boisterous threats with which they have been for some time past making both day and night hideous to all peaceful churchmen.”
The respect here shown to these right reverend fathers in God is nearly as great as their honesty. Now, we insist that the new birth of water and the Holy Ghost implies a moral change of the most important kind, and that even the forgiveness of original sin cannot take place without such a change. We will take the words of the Episcopal Catechism, and leave it to any just mind if regeneration determines a moral change. There we are taught that the inward grace, inseparable from baptism, else it is no sacrament, is “a death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness; for, being by nature born in sin, and the children of wrath, we are hereby made the children of grace.” To be made the child of grace surely requires a moral change, which the bishops deny. They will, therefore, have to put out a new catechism or a new dictionary. As for the quibbles upon the sense of the word “determine,” as if the venerable prelates meant to sport with the common sense of their constituents, they are too paltry to deserve the notice of any respectable man. The plain fact is beyond dispute, that the supreme authority of the Protestant Episcopal Church has formally denied the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, which is contained in the Catechism and Office for
Baptism. In this they have only spoken the real feeling and belief of the great majority of their religious communion since the time of its formation. Of this wonderful declaration, they say in their pastoral that “they have, with an extraordinary unanimity, set forth a definition touching their offices for the baptism of infants.” The declaration, they inform us, “was made in the loving hope that many consciences might thus be for ever freed from false impressions concerning the teaching of the church, as respects spiritual religion and personal piety.”
We have no right to expect any accurate use of terms in the language of those who, according to the testimony of many of their children, know nothing of canon law or theology; yet here we have a plain statement which admits of but one interpretation. The bishops at the next convention may retract it or deny it, and individuals among them may gravely say that they do not receive a doctrinal definition which they signed. Stranger things have happened. The two who did not sign it are, we are told, High Churchmen of the old, dry school, while the hopeful abettors of ritualism have gone down under this cloud, from whose darkness they can never clear themselves before an honest public.
We pass on to notice the further action of the reverend prelates in council, since to us ecclesiastics they are the only part of the convention who are properly judges in doctrine or discipline. Having denied regeneration in holy baptism, and the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, they have, with like unanimity, attacked and forbidden, as far as they may, private confession. Sometimes, they inform us, a soul is so burdened with its sinfulness as to desire “an authoritative assurance of
forgiveness.” This, however, in their view, is by no means necessary, nor is it “the duty of Christians, or essential to any high attainments in the religious life.” “Pardon,” according to them, “is granted to any child of God, on his repentance, accompanied by prayer, and reliance upon the promises of Christ, as well as on the use of the means of grace.” What means of grace are here intended does not appear. To make confession, therefore, “a thing customary, not exceptional, enforced, not free, is to rob Christ’s provision (what provision?) of its mercy, and to change it into an engine of oppression and a source of corruption. History demonstrates this, and the experience of families, and even of nations, shows that the worst practical evils are inseparable from this great abuse. To pervert the godly counsel and advice which may quiet a disturbed conscience into the arbitrary direction which supplants the conscience, is to do away with that sense of moral responsibility under which every man shall give account of himself to God.”
This is not the place to point out the gross ignorance and prejudice of the Episcopal bishops. They speak of what they know nothing, having never confessed their own sins, nor felt the need of any “authoritative assurance of pardon.” To assert a wholesale slander of one of the most sacred institutions of Christ, hallowed by the practice of three-fourths of all who call themselves Christians, which is really the great source of the little purity left in the world, is a fearful crime before heaven. We acquit them, therefore, in charity, of the intention to slander, and hold them culpably ignorant. All this is, however, beyond the scope of our present purpose. We have only to say that they have forbidden,
as far as their words go, the ordinary practice of confession, and that they deprecate it as “an engine of oppression and a source of corruption.” It remains now to be seen whether these counsels of the chief pastors of the Protestant Episcopal Church are to be followed by their children who think them to be successors of the apostles and fathers in God. Will the Right Rev. Dr. Potter, who once published, as we have been informed, a manual for the examination of conscience, to whom a prayer-book, with directions for confession, has been publicly dedicated, now interfere and put a stop to this great abuse? Will the handful of ritual priests in this city cease to sit in their pews or their libraries to hear and absolve penitents? To speak our honest opinion, the words of the bishops will have no influence whatever, and things will go on precisely as they did before. We only venture to wish, for the sake of propriety, that confessionals might be erected in all these churches, where at least the female penitents might be heard. We assure our friends that this advice comes from a good heart. If they cannot hear confessions in public, they would do well for themselves not to hear them at all.
The most reverend prelates go on to condemn “the tendency towards saint-worship, and especially its culmination in the worship of the Blessed Virgin.” “The bare suggestion that the intercession of the Virgin Mary, or of any other saint, is in any way to be sought in our approaches to the throne of grace, is an indignity to the one only Mediator and Intercessor which we, his apostolic witnesses, cannot too strongly nor distinctly forbid in his holy and all-sufficient name.” Is this language plain enough for our ritualistic friends?
Do they think these words equivocal? They as apostles have forbidden any one to seek the prayers of the Mother of God or of any other saint. To do so is to offer indignity to Christ, according to their theology. On the same principle, Episcopalians must not ask the prayers of each other, unless they wish to insult the one Intercessor. The reason why the saints cannot intercede for us is that Jesus Christ alone may do it. We cannot, therefore, suppose that living men or women are in a different position in this respect from their departed brethren, especially from the great heroes of Christianity. We really blush at the stupidity of men who call themselves teachers and wear episcopal robes, but it is not our business to criticise their directions to their flock. We simply put before the world what they have so plainly said. All invocation of any one but Christ is to be stopped within their communion by their solemn decree, if, indeed, it was ever practised.
From this restriction of prayer, they pass on to condemn the devotional books which “have been insidiously multiplied of late years in England and America, and are alien in their character to the whole spirit of the Liturgy.” We presume they here refer to the translations of Catholic books of devotion which have become for some time past the pious nourishment of all the advanced Episcopalians. We have seen many of these works ourselves, and have even seen the Book of Common Prayer bound up with parts of the Missal, and preparations for communion and confession taken from well-known Catholic authors. This, to say the least, is an acknowledgment that their own church does not feed their souls, and that they seek a life it can neither give nor support. This alone ought to be sufficient to send them where
they can find a religious system according with their wants. Certainly they can do as they like in the matter. They can put on all our vestments, and their bishops may wear rings and crosses, and bear mitres and crosiers, and they may cross themselves with the left hand, and bow down before an altar which is only wood or stone. They may call themselves the only Catholics in the world, and out-herod Herod himself, and quietly put us Romanists in the shade. But we think the bishops are right to tell them that all this is inconsistent with Episcopalianism, and that they ought to be either one thing or the other. A man has a right before the law to play the Harlequin; but has he a moral right to do so? Is it an honest or fair thing to remain in a church and use devotions and teach doctrines which it condemns? Much is said of “that liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.” But can that be a liberty to contradict ourselves, to profess to be what we are not, and to carry private judgment to absurdity? We are forced in reason to commend the advice of the bishops, and to say with them to our good friends, “Gentlemen and ladies, if you wish to use Catholic books, be kind enough to go where they belong. Please do not attempt to foist upon our people a spirituality which is foreign to our Protestant communion.” From our past knowledge, however, we do not believe that the counsel of the reverend fathers will produce much effect. We shall still as ever have Catholic books of devotion luxuriously bound (the binding goes a great ways), “and adapted to the use of the American Church.” For our own part, we hope that this will be the case, since the recitation of our prayers, and the reading of the masters of the spiritual
life, may do much to lead souls to the one true faith.
3. A few remarks will now suffice to show the position in which the Protestant Episcopal Church has placed herself by the action of this convention. If we regard the whole body, including the laymen as well as the clerical deputies, we can see how true to its birthmarks has been the legislation of a communion which glories in the non-committal character of its creed and profession. Two or three parties, with views diametrically opposite, are thus kept together, and in the diversity of opinions is the safety of the whole. When the Episcopal Church begins to have anything like a faith, then will it fall to pieces, and new sects will arise of its component parts. How long it will go on holding together High Church and Low Church, Broad Church and no church at all, we do not know. But this we think, its Protestant character is now well established to all mankind. Not one single link which could bind it to the doctrine or practice of the past has been left. If it will not baptize itself with the names of Luther, Calvin, or Zwingle, it can boast of no father or mother. In the words of its Bishop Lee, if it is not a Protestant church, it disowns its birth, and has no right to be called a church. Through the most solemn action of its supreme authority it has denied the real presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, the regeneration of children in baptism, the intercession of the saints, and the practice of confession. As for the ritualists, they have been handled without mercy, and their whole system of faith and worship summarily condemned. It will be of little avail to them to say that the bishops only have pronounced a decision, and that the division of the clerical and lay
vote in four or five dioceses saved them from a prohibitory canon of the whole convention. Are the presbyters and lay deputies the successors of the apostles, whom the Lord instituted to govern the church of God? Who made the sheep of the flock the judges in ecclesiastical causes?
We have no heart to believe that the condemnation of the bishops will do any good with the majority of them. A few earnest souls will come, one by one, into the true fold of the Good Shepherd, where a man has to receive and obey Christ, and not make a religion for himself. Yet we fear, and with sadness we say it, that no power whatever could open the eyes of many. If their church should deny the Holy Trinity or the incarnation of God the Son, they would explain away the denial. Blow after blow with a rough hand has been given to these so-called Catholics within the past few years. Many are not shaken, but in spite of all the decisions of their councils and the admonition of their pastors, they go on insisting on vanity, erecting an idol which their own hands have made, and blindly falling down to worship it. Who shall reason with men who have histories and even grammars and dictionaries of their own? Who but God in his infinite mercy can roll away the darkness of hearts which walk in a vain shadow and disquiet themselves for naught, calling evil good and good evil? Here logic is wasted, and the past, with its lessons, ignored, as if the Word made flesh had never been on earth, nor quickened with divine grace our fallen humanity. Fellow-Catholics, let us to prayer, that such souls may not die eternally out of their Father’s house, strangers to the Bread of Life. In their great need, the pitying heart of Jesus crucified will hear, and scales shall fall from many eyes. Oh! how sad to travel long and far in this weary life, and then only to see from a distance the promised land, but never to rest in the tabernacles of the God of Jacob.
[113] Except in American Church.
[114] Give notice of S. Andrew’s Day.
CHATEAU REGNIER.
A CHRISTMAS STORY OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY.
I.
A proud man was the Baron Regnier. In the old days of Charlemagne, the Chateau Regnier had risen, a modest mansion on the pleasant banks of the Garonne. That great monarch died; his empire fell to pieces; the lords became each one an independent sovereign in his own castle, making perpetual war on each other, and electing kings who could enforce neither respect nor obedience. Then the Chateau Regnier was enlarged and fortified, its retainers and vassals became numerous, and, as was the method of growing rich in those times, large parties of horsemen would sally from its gates, as suited their pleasure or necessities, to plunder neighboring lords or defenceless travellers.
The Barons Regnier were brave men; never was there a brilliant or dangerous expedition wherein some scion of the house did not distinguish himself. When the first preaching of the Crusades stirred the soul of Europe, there was bustle of preparation and burnishing of weapons at the château; even in the motley company of Peter the Hermit went one of the younger sons of the family, who did his part of plundering in Hungary and Dalmatia, and perished on the shores of the Bosphorus; and in the more orderly expedition that followed, the reigning baron himself led a brave array under the banner of Raymond of Toulouse.
The return of the crusaders brought more refined tastes into France, though not more peaceable manners. The Château Regnier was enriched and beautified; troubadours gathered there; feasts were continually spread; still plunder and anarchy were the order of the day till the reign of Louis le Gros. That energetic king devoted his life to establishing law and order in France. Then the house of Regnier, having plundered all that it conveniently could, took part with the king to prevent all further plundering, so it grew strong in its possessions.
With such a line of ancestry to look back on, no wonder that the Baron Regnier was proud. He himself in his youth had shared in the disasters of a crusade. After his return home, he had married a beautiful wife, whom he tenderly loved; but his happiness had been of short duration; in three years after their union she died, leaving him an image of herself—a frail and lovely little being, the last flower on the rugged stem of that great house.
A lovely land is the south of France. Two thousand years ago
the old geographer of Pontus[115] called it the Beautiful, and its soft langue d’or is the very language of love. It was on the shores of the Garonne, in the twelfth century, that the troubadours sang their sweetest songs. Among them was found Pierre Rogiers, who wearied once of the cloister, and so wandered out into the world—to the court of the beautiful Ermengarde of Narbonne, to the palaces of Aragon, at last to the shores of the Garonne, and, finding everywhere only vanity of vanities, once more entered the gates of the monastery and lay down to die.
Here, too, lived Bernard de Ventadour, who loved and celebrated in his songs more than one royal princess. Here he dwelt in courtly splendor, till he too grew weary of all things earthly, and yearned for the quiet of the cloister, and, wrapping the monk’s robe around him, he too died in peace.
No wonder if Clemence Regnier, growing up a beautiful girl in the midst of these influences, should yield her soul to the soft promptings of affection. She was the favorite companion of her father; no wish of hers was ungratified; her sweetness of temper endeared her to all around her. She was sought in marriage by many rich nobles of Toulouse; she refused them all, and gave her preference to the younger son of a neighboring baron—a penniless and landless knight.
When the old baron first discovered their mutual attachment, he was at first incredulous, then amazed, then angry. He persistently and peremptorily refused his consent. The De Regniers had for so long married, as they had done everything else, only to augment their power and wealth, that a marriage where
love and happiness only were considered, was an absurd idea to the baron.
“This comes of all these jongleurs and their trashy songs!” he exclaimed; “they have got nothing to do but wander about the world and turn girls’ and boys’ heads with their songs. I’ll have no more of them here!”
So the baron turned all poets and musicians out of his château, but he could not turn love and romance out; the young heart of Clemence was their impregnable citadel, and there they held their ground against all the baron’s assaults.
Four years went by; Clemence was pining away with grief, for she loved her father and she loved her lover; at last, her love for the latter prevailed, and, trusting to win the old baron’s forgiveness afterwards, Clemence fled from the château with the young Count de Regnault.
Baron de Regnier was a man who, when moderately irritated, gave vent to his wrath in angry words, but when deeply wounded he was silent; and here both his pride and his affection had been wounded most deeply.
He signified to the guests at the castle that they might depart; he closed the grand halls, keeping near him a few old servants; dismissed his chaplain, whom he suspected, though falsely, of having married the runaway couple, and who had been their messenger to him, begging for his forgiveness and permission to come to him; closed his chapel doors; and shut himself up, gloomy and alone, in a suite of rooms in a wing of the château.
Many loving and penitent messages came to him from Clemence. At first he took no notice of them: at last, to one he returned an answer—“He would never see her again.”
II.
The summer came and the winter, and many a summer and winter passed, and the dreariest domain in all France was the once merry Château Regnier. Year after year the old man brooded alone. If friendship or chance brought guests to the château, they were received with stately formality, which forbade their stay; rarely did a stranger pass a night within its walls. The retainers kept their Christmas holidays as best they might; no great hall was opened and lighted, no feast was spread. They wondered how long the baron would live such a life, and what would become of the château should he die, for he had no heir to take it.
Ten years passed: the old man began to grow tired at last of his solitude; he listened to the voice of conscience—it reproached him with ten long years of neglected duties. The first thing he did was to open the doors of his chapel. He sent for artisans and ordered it to be repaired and refitted, then he sent a messenger to the Bishop of Toulouse, asking him to send a chaplain to the Château Regnier.
The church was in those days what she is now—the great republic of the world; but at that time she was the only republic, the one impregnable citadel where, through all the centuries that we call the middle ages, the liberties and the equality of men held their ground against hereditary right and feudal despotism. In the monastery the prior was often of lowly birth, while among the humbler brethren whom he ruled might be found men of patrician, even of royal lineage. Virtue and talent were the only rank acknowledged; the noble knelt and confessed his sins, and received absolution
from the hand of the serf. Thus, beside the princely-born Bernard we see the name of Fulbert, the illustrious Bishop of Chartres, raised to the episcopal throne from poverty and obscurity—as he himself says, “sicut de stercore pauper”; and the life-long friend and minister of Louis the Sixth, Suger, the abbot of St. Denis, and regent of France, was the son of a bourgeois of St. Omer.
So it happened that when the baron sent to the Bishop of Toulouse for a chaplain, a young priest, who was the son of a vassal of Château Regnier, threw himself at the prelate’s feet, and begged that he might be sent. The bishop looked on him with surprise and displeasure.
“Monseigneur,” said the priest, “you reproach me in your heart for what appears to you my presumption and boldness in making this request. I have a most earnest reason, for the love of God, in asking this; for a very brief time do I ask to remain chaplain at the Château Regnier, but I do most earnestly ask it.” So he was sent.
The young Père Rudal had been in his childhood a favorite with the baron. It was the baron who had first taken notice of the bright boy, and who had sent him away to the great schools of Lyons to be educated; and now, when he saw his former favorite return to him, the old man’s heart warmed again, and opened to the young priest.
It was with strange emotions that the Père Rudal stood once more in the home of his childhood. When a careless boy there, with no very practical plans for life, he had loved, with a boy’s romantic love, the beautiful Clemence. He was something of a dreamer and poet; she had been the queen of his reveries. He was the child of a vassal, and she of noble birth. This thought saddened
him, and many were the ditties wherein he bewailed, in true troubadour fashion, this mournful fact; but that he was a boy of twelve when she was a girl of seventeen did not at the time occur to him.
After he had gone to the university he heard of her departure from her father’s castle, and the old man’s unforgiving anger against her. The thought of her grief kept the remembrance of her in his heart, and now—though he could laugh at those old dreams of romance—he could love her with a nobler love. He knew the baron’s former predilection for himself, and he prayed daily to heaven that he might once more see her restored to her father’s halls.
At the château now he was the baron’s constant companion. He led the old man little by little to interest himself once more in the duties of life—in plans for ameliorating the condition of some of the poor vassals—in some improvements in the château. Before two years had passed the old man seemed to love him like a son. Yet often a cloud passing over the weary face, a deep sigh, a sudden indifference to all earthly things, betrayed the lifelong grief of the baron’s heart, and the thought still kept of her whom that heart so truly loved but would not pardon.
It was drawing near to the Christmas season, when one day Père Rudal said to the Baron:
“My lord, more than a year have I been with you, and although you have heaped many favors upon me, I have never yet solicited one; now I am going to ask one.”
“My dear friend and companion,” replied the baron, “whatever is in my power, you know you have only to ask.”
“In the old days,” continued the priest, “this château of yours saw many a gay feast, especially at the
Christmas-tide; then there were nobles and ladies here; now it has grown gloomy and silent. What I ask is, that this Christmas you will give an entertainment, but one of a novel kind; let the halls be opened and a banquet spread, and invite all your poor neighbors, your vassals, your retainers, their wives and children; let none be omitted: do this for the love of that little Child who was so poor and outcast for love of us. I myself will superintend the whole, and pledge myself for the good conduct and happiness of all; and moreover, you yourself will accompany and remain among your guests, at least for a little while. I know I am making a bold request in asking this, but I am sure you will not refuse it, and I promise you will not repent of it.”
The baron acceded to the request. Had he been asked to entertain grand company at his castle, in his present mood he would have refused at once and haughtily; but he was too generous to refuse anything asked in the name of the poor; besides, he felt in his heart the truth of what the young priest had said to him: “There is no solace for grief like that of solacing the sorrows of others; and no happiness like that of adding to their happiness.”
III.
Christmas Day came; and, after the Grand Mass was over, the great hall of the château was opened, and tables were spread with abundance of good cheer; there were presents for the little children too; and there were jongleurs who, instead of the customary love ditties, sang old Christmas carols in the soft Provençal dialect. Amidst the hilarity there was, what by no means was common in those
days, order and decorum. This was due in part to the restraint and awe inspired by the old château—opened for the first time in so many years; but more to the presence in their midst of the baron and the priest, who passed from one group to another with a kind word to each.
After a while the priest laid his hand on the baron’s arm:
“Let us retire to yonder oriel window—there we may sit in quiet and contemplate this merry scene.”
The baron gladly escaped from the crowd, but, as he seated himself, a sigh of weariness escaped him, and a cloud gathered on his brow.
“How happy you have made all these good people,” said the priest. “The merriment of children has something contagious in it, has it not?”
“What have I to do with the merriment of other people’s children—I, a poor childless old man?”
The baron spoke bitterly; for the first time in his life had he made an allusion to his griefs.
“But see these three pretty little children coming towards us,” the priest continued; “we did not see them as we passed through the hall.” And he beckoned them nearer—a little girl about eight years old, a little boy some two or three years younger, and the smallest just able to walk: beautiful children they were, but dressed in the ordinary dress of peasant children.
“Do not refuse to kiss these pretty little ones for the love of the little Child who was born to-day,” pleaded the priest, as he raised one on his own knee. “Now, my lord, if it were the poorest vassal in your domains, would he not be a happy man whom these pretty ones should call grandpapa?”
The baron’s face assumed a look of displeasure. “I want no more of
this; entertain your guests as you please, but spare me my presence here any further. I am glad if I can do anything towards making others happy, but happiness for myself is gone in this world.”
“O my lord!” said the Père Rudal, “why is your happiness gone? Because you have cast it away. When your daughter, your Clemence, threw herself and her little ones at your feet, and prayed you, for the love of the little Child born in Bethlehem, to take her little ones to your heart, why did you coldly turn away and refuse her?”
The baron turned to him with unfeigned surprise. “What do you mean?” said he. “I have never seen her since, and her children never.”
“But you see them now.”
“O father!” said a well-known voice, and his own daughter Clemence was kneeling in the midst of her little ones at his feet.
The old man sank back in his seat—his daughter’s arm was thrown around his neck—her head was resting on his heart—and after an instant’s struggle between love, the divine instinct, and pride, the human fault, his arm was clasped closely about her. Père Rudal lifted up the youngest child, and placed it on the baron’s knee, and then quietly stole away.
A merry place was the Château Regnier after that night; the rooms and halls were opened to the daylight—there was romping and laughing of children from one end of it to the other. The Count de Regnault was sent for on the very next day after that happy Christmas, and was embraced by the baron as a son—and evermore thereafter, with great splendor and merriment, was that feast held at the château; so that the Christmas festivals of Château Regnier became famous throughout France.
As for the young priest—that night, after he had seen Clemence once more in her father’s arms, he left the château and never returned to it. He went away to Toulouse, and wrote from thence to the baron, telling him that his love for him and his was unalterable, but his mission at the château was accomplished; the voice of duty called him elsewhere; and he begged the baron’s consent to depart. The baron gave his acquiescence reluctantly. Père Rudal soon after entered the order of the Trinitarians, for the redemption of captives, which had been recently established, and perished on a voyage to Tunis.
[115] Καλὴ δὲ καὶ ἡ τῶν Αὐσκίων—Strabo.
THE “BROAD SCHOOL.”
What is your “Broad School” now, Professor, say,
But the booking-office of the old “Broad Way”?
Aubrey de Vere.
THE LIQUEFACTION OF THE BLOOD OF ST. JANUARIUS.
NO. V.
The direct and positive arguments which we have presented in our last article, bearing on the miraculous character of the liquefaction, cover the ground so entirely that we might, indeed, rest our case on their presentation. We need, however, make no apology for going further, and examining also, and somewhat in detail, the difficulties and counter-statements which have been made, from time to time, by those who deny its miraculous character. Truth shrinks from no examination or proper test.
We are confident that, the more closely those objections are examined, the weaker they will be found to be; and their weakness is an additional argument for the truth of our conclusion.
The general charge is that this liquefaction is effected by some trick or other on the part of the priests. A vague charge by itself means nothing, and is of no value. To be worth anything, there must follow a “specification,” some indication or explanation of the precise mode or trick by which the liquefaction is effected. How is it done? This is the first question to which a reply must be given, before the objectors can come into court.
The replies to it have been numerous, very numerous—in fact, so numerous as to lose all real value: they are so wonderfully discordant and so contradictory.
The liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius has occurred, during
the last two hundred and fifty years—to go no further back just now—at least four thousand times; in public, without any attempt at concealment, under the eyes of believers and unbelievers alike, standing on every side and within a few feet, it may be, in immediate contact with the officiating clergyman, and, therefore, possessing ample opportunity for the closest and most critical inspection of everything concerning it. Under such circumstances, it is inconceivable that the precise trick, or fraud, or secret, if there were any, should remain undiscovered. Yet, that no such discovery has been made is perfectly clear from this striking disagreement among those who charge that there is fraud, as soon as they undertake to state distinctly in what the fraud or trick consists. What one proposes is scouted by another as so weak and so contrary to the facts of the case, that it is virtually a surrender of the cause. One declares it to be “one of the most bungling tricks he ever saw”; but he is entirely silent as to the nature of the trick so obvious to him. Another states it to be a trick “of great ingenuity,” as well as of “long standing”; but, with equal prudence, he also is mute as to its character. A third will explain the manner in which A. thought it was done; and the very different manner in which B. held that it was performed; while C. with equal shrewdness proposed a third mode. The reader is considerately left free
to select which he pleases. Which of them or whether any one of them be actually true is apparently a question of minor importance. The grand purpose aimed at—and for that, any one of them, even if a mistake, will, it is thought, be sufficient—is to find some passable or colorable pretext to relieve the reader from the exceedingly disagreeable necessity of admitting a popish miracle.
When two and a half centuries of keen and critical examinations, covering so many thousand instances of the liquefaction, have resulted only in such utter confusion and disagreement among those who profess to have discovered the fraud, we may legitimately conclude that in reality there has been no discovery of any trickery or fraud whatsoever.
Not to tax the reader’s patience too much, we will endeavor to classify the various modes in which we are assured by these discordant voices that the fraud is perpetrated.
The first class attributes the liquefaction, or seeming liquefaction, to some kind of jugglery or legerdemain practised by the officiating clergymen during the exposition of the relics.
But when, or how, it would puzzle Houdin himself, or the Fakir of Ava, to say.
Is it, as some have suggested, the adroit substitution of a second reliquary which contains a liquid, and which, at a suitable moment, is presented to the bystanders, instead of the original reliquary containing a hard substance?
Most certainly not. The officiating priest stands in front of an altar built of marble and bronze, without drawers or hiding-places. The reliquary in his hands is of considerable bulk—twelve inches high, five inches broad, and two and a half or three inches thick—entirely too large to
elude the keen eyesight of the hundreds close around, who intently watch it and scan every motion of the clergyman. Where could the second reliquary lie hidden until needed? Could he lay down the first one and hide it away, and draw forth the second one and exhibit it to the people, without some such movement of his hands and arms as must inevitably be seen? Can it be that never once in these four thousand times did any eye detect the act of substitution? Many of the chaplains and canons who officiate are aged men. Can their feeble or half-paralyzed arms do frequently, regularly, and always with perfect success, what the most expert and practised prestigitator would shrink from attempting? The thing is utterly impossible.
If it were possible and actually done, it would not answer the requirements of the case. In such a substitution, the liquefaction would always appear to be instantaneous—as instantaneous as the adroit substitution. But the real process of liquefaction is seldom so instantaneous. It is often gradual, occupying an appreciable, sometimes a long time. It may often be followed by the eye in the various stages from solidity to perfect fluidity.
Moreover, no substitution can account for the subsequent hardenings, or the alternations of hardenings and liquefactions, especially when these occur, as they sometimes do, while the reliquary remains untouched, mounted on its stand on the altar, in the sight of all, or during a procession in the streets when it is borne aloft, equally untouched, in its open frame, and is equally visible to all.
The idea of a substitution of reliquaries can only be entertained by one who is utterly ignorant of the circumstances of the liquefaction.
We set it aside. If nothing else can be said, the miracle must stand.
The publicity of all the movements of the officiating clergyman who holds the reliquary, and the unceasing inspection of the reliquary by so many observers on every side, are equally peremptory in excluding the supposition that the liquefaction may possibly be produced by inserting, during the exposition, some new ingredient into the ampulla, which, uniting with the hard substance already there, will give a third substance of a liquid character. How could this be done so many thousand times; and always under the eyes of a crowd of most attentive and watchful observers, without a single one of them ever, in a single instance, detecting this new substance while held in reserve for the proper moment, or noticing the act of inserting it, as this precedes the liquefaction? And what shall we say of those numerous cases in which the blood, having liquefied, becomes hard again, and, after a time, liquefies again? Is there an adroit withdrawal of this new ingredient from the ampulla in order that the liquid may harden again, and is there a fresh application of it, each time, for every renewal of the liquefaction, during the day? And what if these changes occur while the reliquary is not in the hands of the clergyman at all, but has been placed and remains all the while on its stand on the altar, or is borne aloft in its open frame during a procession? Does this wondrous ingredient of wondrous power wondrously manage, of itself, and without the aid of human hands, to find its way to and into the ampulla, or to withdraw from it, as often as needed?
The drollest attempt at a solution, in this line, which we remember to have met, was one put forward, with
the usual air of positive assertion, in a bitter anti-Catholic magazine, published years ago in the United States, which undertook to impugn this miracle. Hot water, the writer maintained, was stealthily introduced into the hollow metal stem or handle below the reliquary; the heat from which might pass, by conduction, through the intervening substances, and at last reach the substance itself within the ampulla and cause it to melt.
The stem aforesaid is just three inches and one-eighth in length, and seven-eighths of an inch in external diameter. Allowing the metal of which it is formed to be one-sixteenth of an inch in thickness—less it can scarcely be—and that the hollow extends the entire length—on which point we avow our ignorance—the cavity of the stem would hold about one-fifth of a gill—rather too small a quantity for the purpose in view.
Moreover, the opening or mouth of the hollow stem is at its lower extremity. Now, inasmuch as even hot water is subject to the laws of gravity and will fall downwards, we submit that for the hot water to remain in the stem or cylinder with its lower extremity quite open, for even ten minutes, would be as truly a miracle as the liquefaction itself is claimed to be. Even allowing some invisible plug to be used to close that opening and to prevent the water from falling down, would not the first and most powerful effect of the heat of the water be manifested in the thin metallic sides of the stem itself, scorching and blistering the hands of the priest that held it?
And again, when the liquefaction is delayed—which, on this supposition, would occur because the heat in the small quantity of water first introduced is not sufficient for the purpose, and has been absorbed by the
metal reliquary before producing the desired liquefaction—it would obviously become necessary to empty the stem and to take in a fresh supply of hot water. The same thing would, at least on a cold day, have to be repeated over and over again until the liquefaction finally does occur; and would have to be repeated still over again as often as the substance in the vial grows hard during the day, and a fresh liquefaction is required. Where is the vase into which they pour out the water that has lost its heat? Did any one ever see the kettle brought in with the fresh supply of water, steaming hot, as needed?
Perhaps the author of this explanation was a wag, making game of the gullible readers of the anti-Catholic magazine. If he was in earnest, we regret that he did not turn his brilliant talents to the task of discovering perpetual motion.
Lest the reader may think that we are not doing justice to the opponents of the liquefaction, we will quote the words of one who is or should be held as a high authority in their ranks. Bishop Douglas (of Salisbury, England) published A Criterion for distinguishing the Miracles of the New Testament from the Tricks of Pagan and Papal Priests. Speaking of the liquefaction, he says:
“The particular natural cause is not indeed absolutely agreed upon. Some have imagined that the heat of the hands of the priests who have been tampering with the vial of blood during the celebration of Mass will be sufficient to make it melt. Others, again, have been inclined to believe that the liquefaction is affected by the heat of vast numbers of wax tapers of enormous size with which the altar is decked out, and many of which are placed so conveniently that the priest can, without any appearance of design, hold the glass so near to them as to make it hot, and consequently dispose
the enclosed substance to melt. I should be inclined to subscribe to this opinion, had I not met with a more probable solution.
“I am informed (for I have never tried the experiment myself) that a composition of crocus martis and cochineal will perfectly resemble congealed blood, and, by dropping the smallest quantity of aqua fortis amongst this composition, its dry particles will be put into a ferment, till at last an ebullition is excited and the substance becomes liquid.
“That a glass may be so contrived as to keep the aqua fortis from the dry substance till the critical moment when the liquefaction is to be effected may be easily conceived. And indeed the vial containing the pretended blood is so constituted. It is something like an hourglass, and the dry substance is lodged in the upper division. Now, in the lower division of the glass, a few drops of aqua fortis may be lodged without furnishing any suspicion, as the color will prevent its being distinguished. All the attendant circumstances of this bungling trick are perfectly well accounted for by admitting this solution. Whenever the priest would have the miracle take effect, he need only invert the glass, and then the aqua fortis, being uppermost, will drop down on the dry substance and excite an ebullition, which resembles the melting. And upon restoring the glass to its former position, the spectators will see the substance, the particles of which have been separated by the aqua fortis, drop down to the bottom of the glass, in the same manner that the sands run through an hour-glass.
“Now, upon the supposition that I have assigned the real cause, the priests can prevent the success of this miracle whenever they please; and accordingly we know that they do actually do so, when they have any prospect of advancing their own interest, by infusing a notion into the minds of the Neapolitans that heaven is angry with their nation.”
Bishop Douglas with his reliquary “something like an hour-glass” deserves to stand next to him who filled the stem with boiling water. They both seem to value the dreamy supposition which they evolve out of their own inner consciousness as fully equal to undoubted and actual
facts demonstrated by experience or fully established by testimony.
We leave aside the chemistry involved in his supposition, since he candidly avowed that he never tried the experiment. It is a pity he did not make a similar candid avowal when speaking of the shape of the vial containing the blood. He should, for the sake of good faith, have warned his readers that he had never seen the vial itself, nor even an engraving of it; and should have let them understand that his whole explanation was based on his assumed ability to describe accurately and minutely the shape of a vial which, he must have been aware, and should have informed them, he was entirely ignorant of.
Any one who has seen the reliquary and the ampulla within it, or has even looked at the figure of it which we have given, or at engravings of it which are easily obtained in Naples and elsewhere, will see at a glance that the shape of the ampulla is just the reverse of an hourglass. In fact, in form it much more closely approaches a sphere. Not a single point set forth in the explanation is correct. There is no upper division in which the dry substance, compounded of crocus martis and cochineal, and perfectly resembling congealed blood, is or can be lodged; there is no lower division, unoccupied save by the few drops of aqua fortis, the color of which prevents its being discovered, even by keen, curious, prying eyes. There is in the liquefaction no sandlike fall, from an upper into a lower division, of a stream of particles of the dry substance, now separated or liquefied by the aqua fortis. The bishop has not only failed to hit the bull’s eye, he has entirely missed the target, every shot.
And yet, with what delicious complacency
he considers, and expects his readers to admit, that he, above all others, has correctly exposed the bungling trick, and has unmasked the fraudulent dealings of the priests, who can effect or prevent the miracle as they please! It is a genuine sample of the way in which a certain class of writers think they demolish anything Catholic. And how many, after reading this passage of the Criterion, may have closed the book in perfect confidence that, after such an exposure, so clear and detailed, by so learned and so respectable an authority, it would be waste of time to read another word on the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius!
Need we go back to the two previous explanations he mentions, but which he will not adopt, until he is forced by the failure of his pet explanation? So many others have urged them that we may not pass them entirely unnoticed.
The ordinary form of the first one is this: The officiating priest, who holds in his hands the vial containing the blood, rubs it with his handkerchief, and clasps it in his palms. The animal heat of his hands, and such heat as the friction may produce, suffices to bring about the liquefaction.
Let the reader cast an eye on the very correct figure of the reliquary which we give. The priest holds it by the stem below; sometimes, in turning it, he may put one hand on the crown above. He does not, for he cannot, touch the interior vials containing the blood. They are inside the case, held in position by the soldering above and below, and are enclosed and protected by the thick metal rim, and the plates of glass in front and rear. The heat of his hands, as he holds it, and the utmost heat that can be produced by the friction—as occasionally, every five or
ten minutes, he may, if he thinks it necessary, rub the plates of glass with his white handkerchief, in order to see better through them into the interior—cannot possibly affect the contents of the ampulla in any appreciable degree. As for causing them to melt or liquefy, one might as well expect the same animal heat of one’s hand to light a wax candle by simply grasping and holding the candlestick in which it stands, or that lightly rubbing the candlestick with a handkerchief, every five or ten minutes, to keep it bright and dry, would produce the same physical effect on the candle placed in it as ordinary mortals obtain nowadays by igniting a lucifer match and applying it to the wick.
No one who has ever witnessed the liquefaction can listen to this attempt at explanation without a smile of pity or of contempt. Even in those cases in which the liquefactions take place while the reliquary is in the hands of the priest, it is equally insufficient and absurd. It has no application whatever to the other many cases in which the liquefaction occurs while the reliquary stands on the altar or is borne in procession. Like the other solutions we have examined, it makes no attempt to account for the reiterated hardenings and liquefactions which may occur during the day, nor for the variations of volume and for the other phases which are presented. Yet we must bear in mind that all these are striking and characteristic points, which are to be strictly accounted for, equally with the simple fact of a solid substance becoming fluid.
As for the second mode of solution mentioned by Bishop Douglas, that which attributes the liquefaction to the general heat around the altar due to the “vast number of wax tapers of enormous size” burning on the
altar, and also, not to omit what others have said, to the crowd closely packed around the officiating clergyman—that attempted solution has already been disposed of. Thermometrical investigations by scientific professors, and the many times that the liquefaction takes place at the altar when there is little or no crowd, and also away from the altar and its “wax tapers of enormous size” during a procession in the streets, and while the reliquary is freely exposed to the open air of December—all alike combine to exclude this solution. As for the convenient position in which the bishop places some of those wax tapers, and the practice of the priests to make use of this position and, “without any appearance of design,” to “hold the glass so near to them as to make it hot, and consequently dispose the enclosed substance to melt,” we may ask, if he did not believe this to be true, why has he repeated the statement, and expressed his inclination “to subscribe to this opinion” even as a pis aller? If he did believe that the priest really so manipulated the vial in order to produce the liquefaction, ought not that to be sufficient? Why postpone the truth in favor of a pet theory about crocus martis, cochineal, aqua fortis, and the hour-glass? Evidently, his mind was rather cloudy on the subject. Seriously, the priest could not hold the reliquary so near to a lighted wax taper of enormous size, long enough to make it hot, without attracting the attention of hundreds each time he did it. Not to overlook the smallest point, we may remark that, on the six occasions when we were present at the liquefaction, on all of which it invariably occurred at the main altar of the Tesoro chapel, the lighted tapers on the altar were few. If our memory serves us right, they were just six,
three on each side of the crucifix over the centre of the altar, and all of them placed on tall and elevated altar candlesticks. The nearest blaze must have been, at least, seven feet away from and above the reliquary, as the chaplain held it in front of the altar. To achieve the feat which Bishop Douglas mentions, it would have been necessary to move back a portion of the crowd, near the altar, in order to get room, and then to bring in and make use of a good-sized step-ladder! The only burning light ever held in proximity to the reliquary is the single small taper, sometimes held by an assistant chaplain, and used on cloudy or hazy days, when the general light in the Tesoro chapel is not sufficiently strong to show through the glass plates of the reliquary and the sides of the ampulla, as distinctly as desired, the state of the blood in the interior of the ampulla. In such cases, this taper is now and then brought for half a minute or a minute within eight or ten inches of the reliquary, and is held a little downward, and behind it, in such position that its light may shine obliquely onward through the glasses, on the surface of the blood, and show, as we saw it show, the state of the interior with perfect distinctness. It is not applied to the reliquary in any way that can appreciably heat it. When the atmosphere is perfectly clear, the general light of the chapel is amply sufficient, and this taper is not needed nor brought forward.
What we have said of the modes thus examined is true of all attempted explanations based on some supposed feat of jugglery or legerdemain during the exposition. To one who has witnessed the liquefaction at Naples, and knows what is really done, they are simply ridiculous. We
repeat: if nothing else can be urged, the miracle must stand.
This has been felt, and in consequence we have another class of proposed solutions, of a seemingly higher character. Chemistry is brought into service. Some compound is skilfully prepared, we are told, and inserted by the priests into the ampulla beforehand. It is of such a character that it appears more or less hard and solid at the beginning of the exposition, and, during the exposition, is made to melt or to appear to melt. Chemists, we are assured, can easily prepare such substances, and can thus reproduce the liquefactions at will. These experiments, it is claimed, settle the question. What the chemists do and acknowledge, the priests do, and pass off as a miracle.
Let us analyze these experiments, and see whether in reality they repeat and renew the liquefaction with its characteristic and essential phenomena, or in what respects and how far they fail to do so.
The first of these of which we have any account dates from Berlin, in 1734. On the 26th of January in that year—so we are told in a letter dated a few days after, and published in Paris—Gaspar Neumann, councillor of his majesty’s court, doctor in medicine, and professor of chemistry, entertained a party consisting of fourteen learned friends, assembled to dine at his festive board, with an imitation of the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius. The letter was written by one of the party to his friends at home. We carefully reproduce the facts which the letter states, omitting the badinage and sneering remarks with which it accompanies them—remarks quite characteristic of the school of Voltaire whenever religion or anything connected with it was
in question. In default of the original French, we quote from a translation published in England.
The professor, we are told, placed before his friends “a human skull.” He also produced from his laboratory “three vials of crystal or very clear and transparent glass, in each of which was contained a matter in a very small bulk, dry, black, and so hard as to produce a noise on the sides of the vial when shaken.” The first vial being brought near to the head, the matter in it “became of a deep-red color, liquefied, bubbled, increased its bulk, and filled the vial.” The second vial was also brought near to the head, and the portion of matter in it “bubbled but little.” But when the third vial was similarly brought near the head, the whole of its contents “remained dry, hard, and black.”
The writer evidently wished to convey the impression—perhaps he himself believed—that these vials, which the professor had carefully prepared in his laboratory and showed to his friends after dinner, correctly exhibited the liquefaction in all its chief phases. If the liquid in the first vial had also several times changed its color; if it had filled the vial, not by adding bubbles to bubbles, but by an actual increase of the volume of the liquid within, independently of that frothing or bubbling; if it had then similarly decreased in bulk; if the liquid had solidified without any diminution of temperature, and become fluid again without increase of it, he would have presented a far stronger case than he has done.
But those points are absent. Perhaps the writer did not know that they were necessary. The letter itself is written in a jocular and mocking tone, and evidently in a spirit that relished sharp epigrammatic
points, calculated to excite a laugh, far more than the humdrum reality of sober truth.
We find another account of this same experiment in a French work before us: La Liquefaction du Sang de S. Janvier, by Postel. This account is more calm and sober in style, and is based upon the Bibliothèque Germanique, a work to which we have not access. It varies considerably from the sportive account given in the letter. According to Postel, the contents of the first vial liquefied entirely; the contents of the second vial liquefied only partially; in the third vial there was no change whatever. The statement is distinctly made that neither in the first vial nor in the second was there any sign of ebullition. The variation is important.
As between the two accounts, we could scarcely hesitate a moment which to hold most worthy of credit on any point on which they differed. In neither account do we find any indication of the nature of the chemical compounds which Dr. Neumann had prepared in his laboratory and placed in the vials. But as the experiment was made known and repeated, especially in France, we may take it for granted that the material used in those repetitions is the same that he devised.
This material is a mixture of suet, or other similar fatty matter, and ether, the compound being brought to any desired tint—in this case, a deep or dark red—by a further admixture of any suitable pigment. The mixture or compound so prepared is solid at ordinary temperatures; but at about 92° F. it will melt. If a quantity of such a mixture be inserted in a small glass vial, and the vial be clasped in the palm of one’s hand, it will soon receive from the hand sufficient heat to bring about a total
or a partial liquefaction, according to the greater or smaller proportion of the ether used in originally compounding it.
Neither would it be beyond the art of chemistry, in preparing this mixture, to introduce other ingredients, the particles of which would be brought into contact with each other when the liquefaction has been effected and the chemical combinations of which would then give rise to a greater or less amount of frothing or bubbles.
All this, however, is very far from being a reproduction of the liquefaction which is seen at Naples. The differences, or rather the failures to imitate and reproduce it, are essential and evident. We point out the chief ones:
I. This liquefaction of the laboratory always and entirely depends on the application of the proper degree of heat. So long as its temperature is below the melting point, the substance in the vial remains hard and unliquefied. When the temperature, from whatsoever cause, is raised above that degree, liquefaction ensues. If the temperature again sinks below it, the substance, if not meanwhile decomposed, returns to its previous solid condition. The operators themselves inform us frankly how the required degree of heat is usually communicated to it; by holding the vial, if small enough, in the palm of one hand, or tightly pressing it, if somewhat larger, between the palms of both hands. If the general heat of the room be raised high enough to reach the melting point of the substance in the vial, this circumstance alone would suffice to bring the compound to a fluid condition.
On the other hand, being from Naples and not from Brobdignag, the chaplain or canon has a hand only of the ordinary size, and is altogether
unable to clasp in the palm of one hand, or even with both palms, an object so large as the reliquary. He is forced to hold it by the stem; in which position, the heat of his hand can have no appreciable effect on the contents of the vial within the reliquary.
Moreover, the liquefaction often takes place when the reliquary is not held in his hands at all.
II. We repeat it again. The real liquefaction does not depend on heat It takes place at various temperatures. There is no fixed melting point for the substance in the ampulla. It will often solidify at a higher temperature than that at which it stood liquid; and will liquefy at a temperature notably below that at which it became or stood solid. This is an essential difference, going to the root of the question.
III. The attempted imitation may, at the utmost, present a bubbling or frothing, produced in the way we have indicated. This may even go to such an extent as to fill the vial with froth or bubbles. But it can never cause the bulk or body of the liquid itself, free from those bubbles, and independently of them, to swell and increase in actual visible amount so as to completely fill the vial. The amount of the liquid obtained, when at rest and in its tranquil state, and at the same temperature, will always be the same. Precisely the reverse happens in the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius. The liquid blood may bubble and froth without increasing its bulk, or it may increase its volume with or without this frothing, or it may decrease its volume, again, with or without the frothing. And these changes of the bulk of the actual liquid in the ampulla do not depend on the temperature. Neither are they points on which a mistake is possible; for they reach, as we
have stated, to the extent of twenty per cent.
On those two cardinal points, the imitation entirely fails. We need scarcely note the facts that the preparation, when solid, does not resemble coagulated or hardened blood, and, when liquid, could never be mistaken for liquid blood, whether arterial or venous, nor does it present the changes of color so often seen in the real liquefaction.
IV. Ether is an essential ingredient of this artificial compound. Suet, or whatever other fatty substance is used instead, will dissolve in ether; while it will not dissolve in water or in alcohol. Now, ether is comparatively a modern discovery. Whether Paracelsus hit upon the discovery of it or not is a point mooted among those who have studied his life and achievements in chemistry. But, if he did, the knowledge of it was lost with him, and it remained unknown to the world until Künkel discovered or rediscovered it in 1681—early enough for Neumann, but entirely too late to be of any service in getting up a compound for the liquefaction at Naples, which, for the matter of that, runs back far beyond the days of Paracelsus himself.
This explanation, therefore, that the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius is in reality the liquefaction of a compound of ether and suet or other fatty substance, must be set aside, because entirely insufficient to meet the case, and because it involves a glaring anachronism.
It fails, too, in another point. The ether will, in course of time, gradually escape though the pores of the glass. When it is gone, the liquefactions are at an end. The fatty matters, too, will decompose in time. In fact, the whole preparation would have to be frequently renewed. On the other hand, as we shall see further
on, there is ample evidence that the ampulla remains unopened, and that the substance within it remains untouched and identically the same, from year to year, and from century to century.
These reasons were too patent to allow Dr. Neumann’s attempted imitation to hold its own in the estimation of those who seriously examined the question. It was thrown aside for others. We find an account of one of them, written by La Condamine, and presented to no less a body than the Academy of Sciences in Paris, in 1757. His article may be found among the various articles published in the Memoirs for 1763.
La Condamine explains, with no little glee, and some detail, an experiment which he had lately witnessed in company with others, and which he was allowed afterward to repeat and study out in private and at his leisure, and with the assistance and explanations of the inventor himself. He does not give the inventor’s name, but we know, from other sources, that it was San Severo.
There was a circular case of bronze or silver gilt. In front and rear, there were circular plates of glass. The whole stood on a richly ornamented foot, and was surmounted by a winged mercury. Within the case, between the plates of glass, was seen a vial. So far, the workman had prepared a vague imitation of the actual reliquary.
“The vial appeared half full of a stiff grayish paste, which, judging by its surface, seemed to be powdery or granulated. By inclining the case, alternately, from side to side, and shaking it for half a minute, more or less, the paste became liquid and flowing, sometimes only partially so; at other times, it grew hard again, and by shaking it anew it became liquid again.... I remarked beneath the vial two small cones, I do not know of what material, meeting by their points.
I was told (by the inventor) that there was a little passage through these points. He said, also, that the cones were hollow, and that, as the lower one was movable, it sometimes happened that its orifice exactly met the orifice of the upper cone, and sometimes did not; this was altogether a matter of chance.... As for the powder which I saw in the vial, I was told that it was an amalgam of mercury, lead, tin, and bismuth; that the bismuth, which amalgamated only imperfectly, hindered the mixture from becoming a pasty lump, and gave it rather the character of a powder too coarse to pass through the little opening which communicated with the cones. Finally, there was hidden, within the case, a circular tube communicating with the lower movable cone, and containing liquid mercury. In shaking the whole irregularly, whenever the openings of the two cones came together, more or less of this mercury made its way into the vial and liquefied the amalgam. It happened sometimes, in these various movements, that the mercury which had entered got out again, and then the amalgam returned to its previous condition and was fluid no longer.”
This is the account which La Condamine has given, after a long and careful private examination, aided by the explanations of the inventor, and which, he tells us, he wrote down the same day. The inventor promised to give him in writing a fuller account, with minute drawings of all the parts; but up to the date of publication (five years later) he had, for some unknown reason, failed to keep the promise.
La Condamine acknowledges that he had never seen the real reliquary, and had never witnessed the true liquefaction at Naples. He thought this substitute just as good.
Had he witnessed the reality, and had he examined it with one-half the care he bestowed on the substitute, he never would have written his report.
I. He would have instantly seen the difference between a true liquefaction—where
a substance previously hard is unmistakably seen to become gradually soft and then perfectly liquid, as is often the case at Naples—and this seeming liquefaction of the experiment, which consists only in making the loosened grains or particles of the amalgam swim in and on the fluid mercury which has been introduced, they themselves remaining hard and not at all liquefied, but ready to be heaped together again in a hard mass of grains or powder, whenever the liquid mercury is withdrawn. The difference between the two processes is as clear as light, and as great as the difference between the melting of icebergs and a movement of a fleet of ships on the ocean. A child could not mistake it. Fortunately, the icebergs melt and disappear as they are changed into water: with equal good fortune, the ships do not melt, but float on, until they reach their port.
II. He would see that this grayish amalgam, in its dry, powdery state, is totally unlike the hard, dark mass of blood in the ampulla, and, in its pretended liquid state, it is equally unlike the liquid blood. In fact, as the mercury enters below and permeates the mass, its silvery gleam may somewhat enliven the dull-grayish hue of the amalgam, but it can present nothing akin to the rubicund, the bright vermilion, or the dark hue of the liquid blood. Nor is there anything like the film which the liquid blood sometimes leaves on the sides of the glass, nor like the frothing, or the ebullition. On all these points, the experiment failed.
III. After sufficient mercury has been introduced to occupy the interstices in the granular mass, any additional supply will lift the particles, separate them, and allow that motion which the inventor passed off for fluidity; and this seeming fluidity
becomes greater as the quantity of fluid mercury so introduced for the grains to float in is increased in amount. But the mercury occupies space, and so increase of bulk and increased fluidity must go together. A hardening requires, on the contrary, a withdrawal of the mercury, and is consequently always connected with a decrease of bulk. This is directly contrary to one of the most striking features of the real liquefaction, on which we have already commented at length.
IV. It fails to account for the hardenings and the liquefactions which occur when the reliquary is not in the hands of a chaplain or canon to incline it never so coaxingly, but stands and has been standing for hours, untouched and immovable, on its pedestal on the altar. In this point the imitation again signally fails.
V. What we said of ether, we may almost repeat here concerning the bismuth. This is the important ingredient of the amalgam, the intractableness of which keeps the material in a state of powder or grains. When that is overcome, the whole mass coheres and becomes a hard lump; and the liquefactions, such as they were, are over. Now, bismuth was discoved by Agricola in 1529, centuries after the date when the liquefactions are known to have regularly occurred.
VI. The prying eyes of thousands have never discovered in the reliquary any trace of a circular tube containing mercury, nor of the all-important little hollow cones, meeting by their points. More than once, as we shall see, the reliquary has been in the hands of goldsmiths and skilled workmen. They found nothing of this nor of any other contrivance.
These two of Neumann and San Severo are the chief attempts made to
imitate the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, and they have signally failed. We need not examine, one by one, the various substances which have been proposed as the chemical substance craftily used no this occasion; from the “deep-red sublimate of gold,” which, one tells us, “being easily fusible by the heat of one’s hand, is exhibited by the Neapolitan priests for St. Januarius’s blood,” down to the theory that “the dark-red mass which melts in the ampulla is only a preparation of ice; for everybody knows that in Naples they are more skilful in preparing ices than even in Archangel.” By the way, we suspect that Aulic Councillor Rehfues, a German Protestant traveller, to whom we owe this last explanation, was only making fun of his brother Aulic Councillor Neumann, and of the other theorists, who were proposing, each one, his own guess as to the substance.
Anyway, the fact that the real liquefaction is not caused by the application of heat rules out all these suppositions. The fuller and more accurate our knowledge of chemistry, the more clearly do we realize the truth that all experimental liquefactions are governed by the laws of nature. The more conversant we are with the facts of the real liquefaction, the more clearly do we see that here those laws are set aside. We cannot shut our eyes to the opposition.
Sir Humphry Davy, who witnessed the liquefaction when he visited Naples, and who carefully examined it, made no secret afterwards among his friends of the deep impression it produced on his mind, and of his decided judgment that chemistry, so far as he knew it, could not account for the liquefaction. This may have been one of the causes of that inclination toward the Catholic Church
which, from the period of that visit, was manifested by that eminent scholar, and which led him to think seriously, at least, of entering her fold, even if he did not—as some thought he did—carry his purpose into effect before death.
And yet we are asked to believe that, “away back in the dark ages,” those “ignorant monks and priests in Naples” possessed a knowledge of chemistry which enabled them to do this! And, more wonderful still, that they have secretly handed down that knowledge and power, within their own body, and that they continue to this day to effect the liquefaction in some strange way entirely unknown to the scientific world!
We pass on to other views of the question.
This charge of fraud implies that the ampulla is tampered with from time to time; and that those who have charge of it—clergy and laity alike—and especially those who hold it at the time of the liquefaction, are all playing a trick.
Is the ampulla or vial really tampered with? Is it regularly opened for the insertion of some duly prepared material?
The ampulla stands within a case or reliquary, as our figure shows it. The case or reliquary, of silver and of glass, is kept in an Armoire, or closet, wrought in the solid stone wall of the Tesoro chapel, as strong and secure as a bank-vault. This Armoire is closed by metal doors, each secured by two strong locks, with different keys, one set of which is always in the possession of the municipal authorities of the city, the other in that of the archbishop and clergy. They have been so kept for just two hundred and twenty-four years; for we need not take account just now of the previous centuries, when the relics were in the exclusive custody of
the archbishop and clergy, and were kept in the old Tesoro, or strong room, still to be seen in the second story of the cathedral tower. During all these two hundred and twenty-four years, the locks have not been tampered with. The clergy have not charged any one with doing it. The municipal authorities have never suspected it.
Moreover, the reliquary, when brought out, remains exposed to public scrutiny for ten or twelve hours at a time, on eighteen days of each year; and there is no man, woman, or child in Naples, and no stranger in the city, who may not, if so minded, scrutinize it a score of times a day, at less than twelve inches’ distance. Any opening or closing of the case, any taking out or putting in of the vial, would leave some trace of the fact, either in the silver rim, or in the position of the vials within, or at least in the soldering at bottom and at top, which would have to be disturbed, if not broken, each time, and then restored. Among the special industries of Naples are working in jewelry and coral, retouching and repairing paintings, and—we are sorry to say it—fabricating Old Masters. The Neapolitans have eyes for signs and traces like these in question as quick, sharp, and unerring as an Indian on a trail. No change or trace of any tampering has ever been seen by them. The vials are in identically the same inclined position from year to year—the same as represented in engravings a century or two centuries old. The soldering, in which the bottoms and tops are immersed, is hard, old, black, through age, and evidently untouched. The outer case shows no sign of any opening by which a side can be unscrewed or lifted out, so as to allow the vials themselves to be touched. Probably, when originally made, five
hundred and fifty or seven hundred years ago, this could have been done. But the screw or the joint has long since rusted, and the whole thing is now one mass of dingy and rusted silver, holding two glass plates.
In the year 1649, Cardinal Ascanio Filomarini was Archbishop of Naples, a man of great culture and taste and of ample private fortune, and much given to the adornment of the churches of his diocese.
The new Tesoro had just been completed, and was shining in all the brilliant splendor of newness. The cardinal thought that the reliquary to contain the vials of the blood, for which the Tesoro had been built, ought to correspond, as the bust did, with the grandeur of the chapel itself. This the dingy old silver reliquary, in which they had been kept for so many centuries, did not do. He determined to replace it by another of gold, of excellent workmanship, and adorned with rich jewels. He had one made “regardless of expense,” and, when all was ready, on September 1, 1649, he came into the Tesoro with some of his clergy and the delegates from the city, and with public notaries, that proper legal record might be made of everything, and with chosen goldsmiths. Are not the names of them all duly recorded? The Armoire was opened, the reliquary was taken to the adjoining sacristy; and there, for several hours, in presence of his eminence and his clergy, and the honorable delegates, “and of us, the undersigned notaries,” the goldsmiths tried and essayed to open the reliquary. They failed and gave it up. They could break the reliquary, if so directed; but they could not open it. Accordingly, the reliquary was locked up again as it had been taken out. The cardinal was a persevering man. He got other goldsmiths, and came a
second time, on the 8th of September, with clergy, delegates, and notaries. For two hours again these goldsmiths tried to open the reliquary, and failed, as the first had done. They could break it, if required; but how could they open a case where all their trying could find neither joint nor screw? Again the reliquary was replaced in the Armoire. The cardinal’s heart was set on using his new grand reliquary on the festival near at hand, the 19th of September. He thought over the matter, again summoned the delegates and the notaries, and on the 16th came, a third time, with his clergy and yet other goldsmiths. A third prolonged trial was made with the same ill-success. The reliquary might be broken, if they wished; it could not be opened. To break it was not to be thought of; that might endanger the precious vials within. So, the old silver reliquary was put up again, that evening, and his eminence was forced to use it on the festival of the 19th for the exposition that year. It has been used ever since. And now, two hundred and twenty-two years later, it was again brought out on the 19th of September in this present year, 1871. The cardinal, it is to be presumed, devoted his rich reliquary to some other pious purpose.
But if his eminence had lived to the age of the olden patriarchs, and had retained it in his possession, he might have at last found a more favorable opportunity for again trying to change that reliquary. On the afternoon of Tuesday, May 5, 1762, one of the glass plates, by dint, of course, of being rubbed for so many hundred years by white handkerchiefs, became somewhat loose in its groove or socket, and threatened to fall inward, endangering the precious vials. Accordingly, early next morning, an hour and a half before the
time for the regular exposition (for it was in the May octave), the archbishop of that day, Cardinal Sersale, came with clergy, city delegates, notaries-public, and goldsmiths. The reliquary was taken out of the Armoire, and the glass was fixed again firmly in its place, and the reliquary was returned to its Armoire, before the hour for the public exposition. It does not appear, from the very succinct account we have of the occurrence, whether or not, during the work, the vials or ampullæ were taken out of the reliquary, within which they are held in their places by the old soldering. Nothing is said of this having been done, nor of the soldering being touched and then repaired when they were put back in their places. On the whole, considering the nature of the repair to be done, and that it was done in a few moments at the door of the Armoire, back of the altar, we are inclined to think that they did not find it necessary to move them, and that they were accordingly left untouched in their places.
These are the only occasions on which the diaries say anything bearing on the feasibility of opening this reliquary, or of its being repaired. In the archives of the cathedral, another incident is mentioned, of an ancient date. In the year 1507, nearly a century and a half before the building of the new Tesoro, the relics were kept in the old Tesoro or strong room of the cathedral, a strong vaulted chamber of stone, in the second story of the tower, which rises at the northeast corner of the church. That Tesoro was then approached by a winding stairway. A very aged canon was bringing down the reliquary from the Tesoro to the church for an exposition. At the very first step, he tripped and fell; and the reliquary rolled down, from
step to step, to the very bottom. All present feared it was broken, and gave thanks when it was taken up and found to be perfectly uninjured. Yet the alarm had been great; and Maria Toleta, “the pious wife of the viceroy,” who was present at the time and shared in the alarm, had the winding stairway taken down at her own expense, and replaced by another one, straight, broad, and easy, which is in use to this day.
We may take these facts as fair evidence that the reliquary is strong, and not very easily opened, and that they who know all about it do not believe that it is or can be regularly opened.
The same conclusion is also forced on us by considerations of an entirely different character. We have already drawn attention to the fact that, whatever the level at which the blood stands when the reliquary is locked up at night, at the close of one exposition—whether at its ordinary level, or somewhat increased, or very much increased, or full—it is invariably found at the same level when taken out the next time for the ensuing exposition, whether that time be next morning or after the lapse of months. The level is one of the points specially noticed and recorded. A variation would necessarily be detected. Yet, if on each one or on very many of the four thousand occasions we have spoken of, the old contents had been privately taken out between the expositions, and a fresh supply put in, would there not have been, not unfrequently, some appreciable inequality of level?
Again, sometimes the blood was hard when put up. How could a hard substance be extracted from a narrow-necked vial of glass without breaking it? According to our tables, on three different occasions the blood, after its usual liquefactions and
changes in September, filled the ampulla, and was so locked up at the end of the novena. It was found full and hard in December following, and, not liquefying at all, was again locked up in the same condition. It was found in precisely the same state when the reliquary was again taken out in the May following. Here, on three occasions, the contents of the vial, solid and completely filling it, must have remained unextracted from September to May, seven months. Yet in the May octaves that followed, the liquefactions went on as usual. No freshly inserted compound was necessary for the liquefaction. The same reasoning applies in a measure to the numerous cases in which such a fulness went over, four months and a half, from May to September, or nearly three months, from September to December.
Again, in quite a number of instances, as the same tables show, the condition of the blood, when locked up, is noted as liquid with a floating hard lump, as was the case on the 16th of December, 1870. When it was taken out, the next day, or after several months, though often found entirely hardened, yet not unfrequently—as on the 6th of May, 1871—it was found in precisely the same state in which it had been put up: liquid with a floating hard lump. In all these cases, the condition of the contents of the ampulla is a new and insuperable objection to the supposition that a newly prepared amount of matter had been inserted for the subsequent liquefactions. Did other circumstances allow it, we might conceive a liquid to be poured out of the ampulla, and a fresh liquid to be poured in. But how is the solid hard lump, that would not liquefy, to be got out? And if got out, how is another hard lump to be put in to replace it? Are the constituents of
this new hard lump poured into the ampulla separately, as liquids or powders that can pass through the neck? Then their character must be such that, instead of uniting with the liquid already there, or the constituents of the liquid portion, they will, on the contrary, combine apart to form the hard mass. But if so antagonistic to the liquid portion, how is it that, when the lump does liquefy during the ensuing exposition, these constituents at once intimately unite with the liquid, the whole forming a homogeneous mass, which without the least indication of any antagonism between its component parts will henceforth solidify and liquefy as a single mass?
The more carefully the facts of the case are studied, the more imperatively do they exclude every hypothesis save the simple one which so many other facts corroborate, that no attempt has been made to change the contents of the ampulla. Every- thing about the ampulla excludes the idea that it is regularly tampered with privately between the expositions.
There is still another light in which we must view this charge of fraud. Ever since the opening of the new Tesoro, in 1646, there have been attached to that chapel twelve chaplains and a custos, with inferior attendants as needed. In the cathedral itself, at least from 1496, there have been twenty canons and beneficiaries, besides minor attendants. When the liquefaction takes place in the Tesoro, the reliquary is in the hands of the chaplains, who act in turn, or relieve each other as convenient. When it occurs in the procession or in the cathedral, or in some other church, the reliquary is in the charge of the canons, who similarly relieve each other. Hence, canons and chaplains, all alike, must
be cognizant of the fraud, if any there be, and must participate in it. Add to these the archbishops and their vicars-general in Naples since 1496. Add also those clergymen who, having been canons or chaplains, have passed to other dignities, or have retired from their office, but must of course still retain the knowledge of this fraud, if they once possessed it. We may say that there have been on an average, at all times, forty ecclesiastics, if not more, who had cognizance of the fraud, if there were any. The dignity of canon of the cathedral or chaplain of the Tesoro is ordinarily reached only after years of meritorious service in the lower grades of the ministry. Hence the canons and chaplains are usually men of mature and advanced age. We can scarcely give them more than fifteen years of average life. We have thus about a thousand clergymen since A.D. 1500, all charged with being cognizant of and participators in the fraud.
Now, what was the character of those men? Those among whom they lived, and who knew them, respected them as a body of men devoted to the service of God, pure and exemplary ecclesiastics, proved by years spent in the zealous works of the ministry. Some were men of honorable and noble families; others were men distinguished in the walks of literature and science; some had sacrificed all the world promised them, in order to spend their lives in the sanctuary. Some were revered in life, and remembered after death, as pre-eminently true servants of God, men of prayer, of strong faith, and of singularly pure and saintly lives. Of course, individuals here or there may indeed have been wicked or hypocritical. But this testimony of the people to their character must have been true of the great body.
Now, could such men have all united in this fraud? On their own principles and convictions, and according to the doctrines they taught and should themselves practise, there could scarcely be a more heinous sin against God and his holy religion, than to palm off a trick of crafty men as a miracle of God’s working. Could they bring themselves to it?
Is it possible that no one of them ever repented, even in the presence of death, and sought to save his soul, and to make reparation, by disclosing the fraud and arresting the evil? Could all have chosen to die impenitent, with the certainty of everlasting damnation before them, rather than reveal the blasphemous and, to them, henceforth useless trick? The thing is impossible.
Again, men, even though good and pious, may be garrulous. All men have their unguarded moments. How came it that the secret never leaked out from any one of them during all these years?
Again, among so many there must have been men wicked, avaricious, passionate, revengeful. How comes it that no one sought to make money by revealing the secret; that no one declared it through anger; that no one did so in retaliation when he was punished by his ecclesiastical superiors?
Nay, more, we fear that instances might be found in which, toward the close of the last century, some of them were carried away by the irreligious mania then prevailing, and became the companions of infidels, if not themselves infidels. And unless our memory is at fault, one or two yielded to the blandishments and the privileges of Protestantism. How comes it that, through such, the world has not learned how this antiquated trick is actually done? Obviously, they had no disclosure to
make. This is the only possible answer.
There is still more to be said on this point. The civil authorities of Naples are, and have been for two hundred and twenty-four years, joint custodians with the archbishop and clergy of the Tesoro chapel and of the relics of St. Januarius. They keep one set of the keys of the Armoire, or closet, which can never be opened save in the presence of one of their members, whom they send as a delegate, and whose sworn duty it is never to lose sight of the reliquary until it is placed in its closet, and he assists in duly locking it up. During these two hundred and twenty-four years, Naples has again and again changed masters. Austrians, Lombards, Spaniards, and French—Bourbon, Imperial, and Republican—have held, as the Piedmontese now hold, the city, which in fact has oftener been ruled by strangers than by Neapolitans. These rulers have been men of every character, from the best to the worst; often rough, ruthless soldiers, who brooked no opposition, and were ever ready with the sword; often keen, crafty civilians, ready to cajole, to bribe, and to deceive, and thoroughly practised to detect plots and ferret out hidden things; sometimes professed infidels and avowed enemies of all religion; oftener political enemies of the Neapolitan clergy, whose hearts, of course, were with their own oppressed people. How comes it that none of these rulers at any time have ever discovered and made known the fraud?
Can we suppose that those rulers, ill-disposed as they often were toward the clergy, could or would sacrifice their own interests, their policy, their jealousies, and their personal feeling, in order to co-operate in a fraud, the success of which would certainly be less agreeable, perhaps
far less profitable, to them, than its failure and exposure?
Would not the French infidels, in 1799, have gladly put this stigma on the odious cause of Christianity?
And, in these present years, would not Ratazzi, Garibaldi, and their party gladly do it if they could? What a triumph it would be for them if they could strike this blow at “clericalism”—a blow far more effective than fining, imprisoning, or exiling bishops and priests and religious! They would glory in doing it if it were possible. What holds them back? There are no limits to their hatred or to their powers of calumny. They are ever denouncing the ignorance and the blind superstition of priests and people. But the very gist and copiousness of their invectives prove that they themselves know and feel that the priests and people are alike sincere. It is the depth and earnestness of that sincerity which excites their rage.
Brought face to face, in Naples, with this manifestation of the supernatural, the civil government, whatever the political circumstances and whatever the private character of individual members of it, have always seemed struck with awe, and have never failed in respect. Nay, more, they have ever claimed and exercised their privilege of sending their delegate to intervene in the exposition.
And so, after all, on the 19th of this last September, as in times past, they did send a delegate, with his scarlet embroidered bag, and the two antique keys chained together; and the doors of the Armoire were opened; and the relics were reverently taken out and carried to the altar; and the blood was seen to be hard; and the clergy and the crowd prayed and waited for the miracle; “and, after eight minutes of prayer, the hard mass became entirely liquid.”
There is an anecdote current in the world on this subject which we have heard cited as peremptory against much of what we have just said. The anecdote, in passing from mouth to mouth, has become so vague and so full of variations that we would scarcely know how to present it, had we not found a precise and quasi authoritative form of it in the columns of the Coryphæus of French infidelity, the Siècle of Paris of the date of October 11, 1856:
“The history of Championnet did some damage to the miracle of St. Januarius in the minds of a great many. In 1799, the French army was in Naples, where it had been well received at first.... On the 6th of May, the crowd filled the chapel of the cathedral.... For more than half an hour the priest had been turning backward and foward, on his hands, the round silver lantern with two faces of glass within which is preserved the precious blood in a small vial. The little reddish mass would not quit its state of solidity.... The exasperated populace commenced to attribute the stubbornness of San Gennaro to the presence of the French. There was danger of a tumult, when an aid hastened to notify General Championnet of the suspicious conduct of the saint. In a few moments the aid returned, approached the priest politely, and said a few words in his ear. What he did say is not precisely known, but he had scarcely said it when the blood at once liquefied, to the great joy of the people, who at last had their miracle.”
Alexandre Dumas, in one of his novels, narrates the same story much more dramatically. According to him, “General Championnet saw that it was important for his safety and the safety of the army that the miracle should not fail that year; and he made up his mind that, one way or another, it should positively occur.” The first Sunday of May was near at hand. On the vigil (May 4, 1799), the procession marched, but between files of French grenadiers. That
night the city was patrolled by French and Italian soldiers jointly. All day Sunday the miracle was patiently waited for; but in vain. Six in the afternoon came—Championnet, with his staff, was in his elevated loggia or gallery. The people began at length to lose patience and to vociferate angrily. At 7 P.M. they were brandishing knives and threatening the general, who pretended not to understand or heed them. At 8 P.M. the streets around were filled with other crowds equally threatening. “The grenadiers waited on a signal from the general to charge bayonets. The general continued unmoved.” At half-past eight, as the tumult was still increasing, “the general bent over and whispered something to an aid-de-camp.” The aid left the stand, and passed up to the altar and knelt in the front rank, and waited. In five minutes the canon, bearing the reliquary, came round to him in his turn. He kissed the reliquary as others did; but, while doing so, grasped the priest’s hand in his.
“‘Father, a word with you.’
“‘What is it?’ asked the priest.
“‘I must say to you, on the part of the general commanding, that if in ten minutes the miracle is not accomplished, in fifteen minutes your reverence shall be shot.’
“The canon let the reliquary fall from his hands. Fortunately, the young officer caught it before it reached the ground, and gave it back with every mark of profound respect. Then he arose and returned to his place near the general.
“‘Well?’ said the general.
“‘All right, general,’ said the young officer. ‘In ten minutes the miracle will take place.’
“The aid-de-camp spoke the truth; nevertheless he made a mistake of five minutes; for at the end of five minutes only, the canon raised the reliquary aloft, exclaiming, Il miracolo è fatto. The blood was completely liquefied.”
We suppose we may take these as the best versions of the same story.
The other French and late English versions we have met of it, however they may vary in minor details, all agree as to the person—General Championnet, and as to the year, 1799. So far as we can judge, the Siècle and the other writers got their facts from the novelist. It is their way. When they attack religion, all manner of weapons are acceptable. Where the novelist got it we need scarcely inquire. Certainly, on a pinch, he was capable of inventing it out of the whole cloth. But we can only credit him with twisting and reversing an older story. In a work entitled Naples and Campagna Felice, printed in London in 1815, there is an earlier account of “the very recent experiment of General Championnet.”
“When this Champion of liberty entered Naples with his unhosed enfans de la patrie, his curiosity, or rather his infidelity, prompted him to direct the priests forthwith to perform the ceremony before him and his companions, the philosophic worshippers of the Goddess of Reason.... ‘The miracle must be exhibited this instant, or I’ll smash your vials and all your nonsense into a thousand pieces.’... Every devout effort of the priests proved vain; even the general’s active assistance and repeated trials to give fluidity to the indurated blood, by means of natural and artificial heat, were equally unsuccessful.”
This want of success, according to, the teller of the story, was due to the fact that the relatives of St. Januarius were not present. The general sent soldiers to arrest them, and had them brought into the church.
“A second experiment was now instituted in due form: which, to the utter amazement of the French part of the congregation, and to the inward delight of all the pious Neapolitans, succeeded almost instantaneously.”
Were it not for the identity of names and place, we could scarcely
recognize this earlier English version, with its characteristic contempt of French philosophers and enfans de la patrie, and its result of the experiment so satisfactory to the Neapolitans, as in reality the original form of the story, which Dumas, and after him many others, have dressed up and presented to the world with such different details, and with a result exactly opposite.
But a regard for truth obliges us to reject this earlier form, no less than those which followed, as, all of them, pure fictions. The evidence is clear and to the point.
I. On May 4,1799, General Championnet was not in Naples. He had entered that city with his army on the 28th of January preceding, and had established “The Parthenopean Republic”; but he had been relieved of his command before May; possibly on account of ill health, for he died at Antibes a few months later. His successor in the command at Naples was General, afterwards Marshal Macdonald.
II. The diary of the Tesoro chapel, and the archiepiscopal diary, in their accounts of the exposition on Saturday, May 4, 1799, both mention the presence of General Macdonald with his officers.
III. According to the same authorities, the liquefaction, so far from being long delayed, that day took place quite soon—after a lapse of only ten minutes.
IV. They indicate the very respectful demeanor of the French general, and his expressions of reverence; expressions which, by the way, he confirmed afterwards by presenting to the Tesoro chapel a beautiful silk mitre, rich in gold work and jewels, which is still shown in the sacristy.
V. Finally, to clinch the whole matter, we quote the following extract
from a contemporary letter, published at the time in the official organ at Paris—the Moniteur, No. 259, of date 19 Prairial, Year VII. (June 10, 1799).
“Naples, 21 Floréal (May 13).—The festival of St. Januarius has just been celebrated with the customary solemnity. General Macdonald (successor to Championnet), Commissary Abrial, and all the staff, witnessed the renowned miracle. As it took place somewhat sooner than usual, the people think better of us Frenchmen, and do not look on us any more as atheists.”
The writer little thought what a dramatic story a novelist’s imagination would conjure up, and some credulous people would believe, instead of the simple matter-of-fact statement he gave en passant of the solemnity he had just witnessed. A more complete refutation of the whole story could not be desired than that afforded by the words and tone of this letter.
We have been diffuse on the charge of fraud. But when we consider the persistence with which it is made, and the variety of forms in which it is presented; and that, after all, for most minds, the alternative is between a suspicion of fraud, on one side, and the recognition of the miraculous character of the liquefaction, on the other—it was proper to treat this charge at length and in all its aspects.
We have seen that the publicity of everything about the exposition peremptorily forbids every form of legerdemain during the ceremony. Equally inadmissible is the supposition of some chemical compound prepared beforehand. For no chemical compound which man can prepare will liquefy, as this does, independently of heat, and under such diverse circumstances, or will present the many
varying phases which are here seen. The most artistic attempts have utterly failed, and must ever fail. For they are all subject to the laws of nature; while, in this liquefaction, the laws of nature are clearly set aside.
Again, all testimony goes to show that the ampulla is not opened from time to time to receive any chemical preparation.
Moreover, if there were any fraud, it would have been known to nearly a thousand clergymen, and no one can say to how many laymen. Yet pious men were never heard to denounce it; repentant men never disclosed it; high-minded and honorable men never repudiated it in scorn, vile and mercenary men were never moved by anger, revenge, desire of pecuniary gain, or other potent motives, to betray it. Even political enmities and fierce party strife, so prone to indulge in charges of fraud, have failed in Naples to stigmatize this as a fraud. Evidently, there was no fraud known or suspected there. In fine, were there a fraud, this universal silence would be a greater miracle than the liquefaction itself.
It has been asked, sometimes jeeringly, perhaps sometimes seriously, if the Neapolitans are in such perfect faith and so sure of the character of the substance which liquefies in the ampulla, why are they unwilling to submit that substance to the test of chemical analysis? Is not their omission, nay, their unwillingness to do this, a confession on their part of the weakness of their cause?
To one who knows them, or who even reflects for a moment on the subject, the answer is obvious. It is their perfect good faith itself, and their consequent veneration for what they look on as sacred and specially blessed of God, and not any fear or doubt, that would make them rise in
indignation against what, in their eyes, would be a profane and unwarrantable desecration.
There are limits, they would protest, to the intrusive and irreverent meddling of men under pretexts of science. Are there not many points in pathology and physiology on which further knowledge is very desirable—a knowledge which some think can be reached best and most surely, if not only, by vivisection, especially of human subjects, whether in normal health or presenting peculiar developments? Shall we, therefore, in the interests of science, pick out such cases in a community, and deliver them over to be cut up alive, and their still living bodies to be explored by these science-seeking experimenters? Knowledge is good and profitable, undoubtedly; but human life is sacred, and must be preserved intact, even though these men remain in the dark on various obscure points.
So, too, holding as they do that the ampulla contains a portion of the veritable blood of St. Januarius, preserved by miracle of divine Providence, and miraculously liquefied on his feasts, the Neapolitans would shrink in horror from the sacrilegious profanity of delivering it over to the retorts and crucibles, and mortars and solutions, of a chemical laboratory.
Chemical experiments, they would say, are very respectable and very admirable in their place; but there are things too precious and too sacred to be submitted to them. In refusing to do so, the Neapolitans do not confess a sense of the weakness of their own cause. They rather manifest their sincere veneration for what they believe God has specially honored.
As for the plea that this test would solve the question, the Neapolitans
would reply that for some minds nothing is ever solved. If men wish really to know the truth, let them examine the evidences which were appealed to before modern chemistry was invented. Those evidences still exist, and are ample and irrefragable. “They have Moses and the prophets; if they will not hear them, neither will they believe, though one rose from the dead.”
One other objection remains: does God act uselessly? And of what possible use is this miracle? What is the benefit of wonderfully preserving from utter destruction, through so many centuries, a small portion of blood, and of causing it to soften or liquefy fifteen or twenty times a year, when brought, even if reverently, close to the head of the martyr from whose veins it flowed? What good does this do? Is it not so trifling and insignificant a thing as to be almost ridiculous, and entirely unworthy of the majesty of God?
Who shall presume to say that it is unworthy of God—of that God without whose knowledge and permission not a hair can fall from our heads—of that Saviour who mixed clay with the spittle of his mouth, and therewith touched the eyes of the blind man, that sight might be restored to them? It is not for us to decide what is becoming or unbecoming for God to do.
Who shall say that it is useless? Has not the faith of a simple-minded people been confirmed and strengthened by it, to such a degree that the truths of divine revelation and the obligations of man before God are to them verities as strong, as clear, and as real in their daily life as is the sunlight that beams down on their fair land? How many sinners have been led, through it, to repentance and amendment of life? How often have the indifferent been stirred up
to avoid evil and to do good, and the good animated to greater fervor and earnestness in deeds of piety and virtue? And, after all, are not these the grand purposes of all God’s dealings with men?
Nor is this miracle—for such we call it, although the church has never spoken authoritatively on the point—alien from doctrine. Wrought in honor of a sainted and martyred bishop, it is a perpetual testimony to the truth of the doctrines he preached, and of the church which glories in him as one of her exemplary and venerated ministers; it is a confirmation of the homage and veneration she pays to him because he chose rather to sacrifice his life than to deny the Saviour who had redeemed and illumined him. Wrought within her fold, it is a permanent evidence that she is in fact and in spirit the same now as in the early days of persecution—the ever true and faithful church of Christ.
It is a confirmation, likewise, of the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead—that special doctrine which the apostles put forth so prominently in the beginning of their preaching; which was ever present to the minds of the early Christians, cheering and strengthening them when this world was dark around them; which formed the frequent theme of their pastoral instructions and their mutual exhortations, and became the prevailing subject of their household and their sacred ornamentation in their homes and in their oratories, and over their tombs in the catacombs; which gave a special tone to their faith, their hope, and their charity and love of God, and was, as it were, the very lifeblood of their Christianity.
Nowadays, outside the church, how faint, comparatively, has belief in this doctrine become, or, rather,
has it not died out almost completely from the thoughts and the hearts of men? Within the church, the solemn rites of Christian sepulture, burying the dead in consecrated ground, tells us of it. The preservation and the veneration of the relics of saints and martyrs teach it still more strongly. Does not tangible evidence, as it were, come to it anew from heaven by this constant and perpetual miracle, showing that the bodies of the sainted dead are in the custody of him who made them, and who has promised that he will raise them up again in glory?
Finally, this miracle seems to us especially adapted to our own age, when over-much knowledge is making men mad. Men are so lifted up by their progress, especially in natural sciences, that they have come to feel that they can dispense with God and substitute NATURE in his stead, with her multifarious and unchangeable laws. They boast that, under the light of their newly-acquired knowledge, everything is already, or will soon be, susceptible of natural explanation. As for miracles—direct interventions of God in the affairs of the world, reversing or suspending, in special cases, these ordinary laws of nature—they scout the idea. All past accounts of miracles, no matter when or by whom recorded, they hold to be either accounts of natural events warped and distorted by excited and unrestrained imaginations, or else the pure fictions of superstition and credulity. They are sure that, in the first case, had there been present witnesses of sufficient knowledge and caution—such knowledge and caution as they possess—the accounts of those events would have come down to us in a far simpler garb, and unclothed with this miraculous robing. They are equally sure that, in the other case, education,
especially in the physical sciences, would have forbidden the creation of those numberless fictions.
Well, here, in the light of this nineteenth century, in one of the most polished, most delightful, and most accessible cities of Italy—centuries ago the largest, and even now the fourth largest, in Europe—there occurs an event to which their attention is invited. It is not an event of which a few only can be witnesses, and which all others must learn on their testimony. It occurs in public. It occurs fifteen or twenty times each year, and year after year. All may scrutinize it again and again, as often and as closely as they please. No mystery is made of anything about it. We admit it has come down to us from the middle ages, dark, ignorant, and superstitious as they are alleged to have been. But then, if it belongs to the past, it occurs still, and belongs equally to this nineteenth century. Moreover, it comes directly in contact with those physical sciences in which they think themselves strongest, and it should, therefore, interest them, and claim their attention.
Will they accept the invitation? We think very few will heed it.
Many would not dare to believe in a miracle nowadays, not even if it happened to themselves. They take their ground beforehand. Since miracles are impossible, any special one must of necessity be false—either a fraud or a delusion. They know from the beginning what the result of inquiring into this one must be—why give themselves unnecessary trouble? Such minds choose their own side, and implicitly choose the consequences that follow.
Others pretend to examine, but do it with a resolute and unshakable predetermination that this must not be found out to be a miracle. They foster a prejudice which may blind their eyes to the light; and they, too, make themselves equally responsible for their conclusion and its consequences.
But if any one—Catholic, Protestant, or Rationalist—will examine it seriously and candidly, no matter how closely and patiently—nay, the more closely and patiently, the more surely—he will come to the same inevitable conclusion to which such an examination has heretofore led so many other candid and intelligent inquirers: Digitus Dei est hic: The Finger of God is here.
THE NEW SCHOOL OF HISTORY.
If the ghost of Tacitus could return from the Acherontic shades, learn the English language, and spend a few weeks in reading the most popular modern works in that branch of letters of which he was in his day the conspicuous ornament, he would rend his toga in despair, and mourn over the ruin of one of the noblest of the sciences. The “dignity of history” was not an unmeaning phrase when kings, consuls, and military commanders moved with stately pace through the polished pages, and uttered the most heroic of sentiments in the most formal of addresses. Ancient authors would have deemed it the grossest indecency to quote familiar language from the lips of any historical character, or to let the
world imagine that men who concerned themselves with the destinies of states, behaved even in moments of relaxation like the men who buy and sell in the shops, and confine their cares to commonplace domestic matters. And yet what could be more absurd than to suppose that generals addressed their armies amid the heat of battle in a speech regularly compounded of exordium, argument, exhortation, and peroration; or that great men wore the grand manner to bed with them, and put on civic crowns before they washed their faces in the morning? It is not so very many years since Cato used to be represented on the English stage in a powdered wig and a dress-sword, which was not more incongruous than the spectacle presented by all the old statesmen and fighting characters of antiquity, mouthing orations, and posing themselves in the best of the classical histories. Perhaps it was something to be thankful for that, in the eclipse of learning during the disturbed middle ages, the art of writing history after the heroic manner was lost. The chroniclers of feudal times devoted infinite pains to the reeord of facts—as well as the record of many things that were not facts—but knew little of the graces of literary composition, and cared nothing for the dignity of history. They stripped off the heavy robes, and showed us the deformed and clumsy figures underneath. Lacking literary culture and the fine art of discrimination, they left us only the bare materials of history instead of the historical structure itself. Industrious but injudicious collectors, they were sometimes amusingly garrulous, sometimes provokingly uninteresting; but their labors were invaluable, and modern scholars owe them a debt which can never be repaid. It is only within a
hundred years that English writers have tried to combine the merits of the ancient and the mediæval schools, discarding the cumbrous and delusive garments in which Herodotus and Livy used to wrap up the Muse Clio, and draping the bare skeletons of the annalists with comely mantles. There was a portentous dulness in most of the earlier essays in the reviving art, scarcely interrupted until Hume embodied his sceptical philosophy in a history of England, and the infidel Gibbon threw a lurid splendor over the chronicles of the declining empire. Both these eminent writers brought to their work an elegance of style worthy of the classical period, and a vigor of thought so different from the unreflecting industry of their plodding predecessors, that the falsehood underlying their narrative was not readily perceived, or was too easily pardoned. Boldness of theory, and in Gibbon a sardonic wit, added interest to the charms of the well-told story. But Hume and Gibbon, as well as many of their less distinguished contemporaries, labored under a radically wrong theory. They accommodated historical narrative to the illustration of preconceived principles, instead of deducing the principles from the facts; and left us, consequently, volumes of sophistical argument, rather than chronicles of actual occurrences and pictures of actual society.
It was not until Macaulay arose in England, and Prescott in the United States, that the modern school of historical writing was fairly developed. Macaulay explained his own theory when he said that “a perfect historian must possess an imagination sufficiently powerful to make his narrative affecting and picturesque, yet must control it so absolutely as to content himself with the materials which he finds, and to refrain
from supplying deficiencies by additions of his own.” William H. Prescott, though he sometimes trusted authorities who did not deserve his confidence, and was swayed by religious prejudice and an inability to comprehend the spirit of Catholic faith, came nearer to the perfection of Macaulay’s ideal than any previous writer. His imagination adorned the romantic tales of conquest and adventure in the New World with a splendor till then unknown; yet no one could charge that he had been led away by the temptations of a too luxuriant fancy, or had heightened the effect of his narrative by a single touch unauthorized in the musty chronicles from which he drew his material. Prescott’s earlier histories are stories in which the actors stand forth with as much distinctness, and incidents follow one another with as much rapidity and as close connection, as in a well-constructed novel. In his unfinished Philip II., he entered upon a wider field, which required a different treatment. It was no longer sufficient to tell a story well; he had to paint the manners of an age, the life and character of a nation, and to unravel the network of intrigue which constitutes the political history of Europe during a long and stirring period of time. That he did this, so far as his labors extended, with consummate art, no American reader needs to be told. But the system which he pursued was carried to a greater length by Macaulay—the best type, upon the whole, of the new school of historians of whom we purposed speaking in this article. Macaulay assumed that history ought to show us not merely the revolutions of dynasties, the clash of armies, and the intrigues of cabinets, but the daily life and conversation of all ranks of the people, from the prince to the peasant. It ought to teach us their habits of thought
and their mode of speech. It ought to open for us their private homes, their workshops, and their churches. It ought to depict national habits and character, or it could not explain national tendencies and aspirations. To do this, it must pick up a multitude of little things which the older writers thought beneath the dignity of history. It must invade the province of the poet and the novelist. Otherwise, he who would understand the reign of King James must read half of it in Hume and half in The Fortunes of Nigel.[116] Macaulay made many mistakes in the execution of this noble plan. He picked up too many things which were not so much undignified as untrustworthy. The sketches of society which he drew with such a masterly hand may have been true in their general effect; but he blundered in details. Besides, he was as hot a partisan as Hume, as inveterate a theorist as even the author of The Decline and Fall.
Whatever his mistakes and shortcomings, Macaulay rendered an invaluable service to literature by the impetus which his brilliant example gave to the new principles of historical composition. He may be said to have dealt the finishing blow to the old style, and shown us how a minute, faithful, and vivacious story ought to be set before the world—how the historian must draw his materials, not only from state-paper offices and formal chronicles, but from gossiping diaries, ballads, pamphlets, and all other sources in which are preserved traces of the condition of society and the domestic annals of the people. The period which he undertook to illustrate offered peculiar advantages for the development of his plan. It was a period when a great change was taking place in English
customs and ways of thought. The revolution, which not only exchanged one dynasty for another, but metamorphosed the very system of English government, merely followed in the path of a remarkable intellectual and social transformation, without which the political reversal would have been impossible. The events of the reign of James II. could not be explained under the old plan of writing history on stilts. They were incomprehensible except by one who could mingle familiarly with the English people, and learn by what steps they had reached their new departure. Only one period in the history of England showed changes of equal importance. That was the period which witnessed England’s apostasy from the Catholic faith; and it is the period which one of the latest and most brilliant of English historians has chosen for the subject of a work planned (if not executed) after Macaulay’s model.
Mr. James Anthony Froude attempted to trace the development of the English nation, from the day of Henry’s formal separation from the communion of the Holy See to the final establishment of Protestant ascendency at the death of Elizabeth. This is by no means the task he has accomplished, but it is the task he set himself at the beginning of his work. He purposed to show the processes by which a people, devotedly and even heroically faithful to the Roman See, became first schismatic and then heretical; how their character under the change of faith took on a new color; how the foundations of the English supremacy over Ireland and Scotland were laid in blood and crime; and how the maritime ascendency which has lasted three hundred years was established by the daring and enterprise of English sailors during the latter half of Elizabeth’s reign. Never had historian a more tempting
theme. If Mr. Froude had been a man of philosophical spirit, acute insight, industry, and literary honesty, he might have produced a work that for brilliancy would have rivalled Macaulay’s, and for dramatic interest would have been almost unequalled in our language. There was no lack of material. Since Hume and Lingard—one the most misleading, the other the driest of modern English historians—had treated the same period, an immense store of records and official documents had become accessible to scholars. The British State-Paper Office abounded with historic wealth which the earlier writers did not know. The archives of Simancas disclosed secrets long unsuspected, and unravelled mysteries that had long baffled investigators. And from a thousand sources new light had been thrown upon the social condition of England, new illustrations given of the tendency of English thought, new explanations offered of the development of English strength and English character.
In his first volume, Mr. Froude seemed to appreciate the nature of his task, and to go about it with something of the proper spirit. He set before us a lifelike picture of England in the early part of Henry’s reign, and displayed admirable art in reproducing the manners, the conversation, and the tendencies of the common people, as well as the superficial characteristics of the chief actors in the historical drama. But even in the first volume he showed the glaring faults which vitiated all his later labors, and, increasing as the work went on, made his history at last one of the worst that the present generation has produced. Fired with the zeal of a blind partisan, he forgot all his earlier purposes and all his earlier pictorial art in the enthusiasm of a fierce religious bigotry. It became
his object to describe a conflict for the possession of England between the powers of darkness and the powers of light. On the one hand stood the Pope of Rome and his agents, Catharine of Aragon, Wolsey, Mary Tudor, Philip of Spain, and the Queen of Scots. On the other, arrayed beneath the banner of civil and religious liberty, fought those bright beings, Henry VIII., Anne Boleyn, and Queen Elizabeth. Naturally, when Elizabeth at last triumphed in the defeat of the Spanish Armada, Mr. Froude declared the battle over, and dropped his unfinished, ill-proportioned story. One qualification he certainly had. He shrank from no paradox. He carried his theory boldly over the most serious obstacles, and took even the nastiest fences in the life of Henry without an instant’s hesitation. The most fervent Anglicans were amazed at Mr. Froude’s admiration for the bluff, carnal-minded king, and wondered how he was to justify the new views of history which he set forth with such alluring boldness. It was not long before he taught them his method. “It often seems to me,” says Mr. Froude, in one of his collected essays, “as if history was like a child’s box of letters, with which we can spell any word we please.” Of course, when the historian takes the liberty of leaving out facts which do not please him, disarranging sequences which conflict with his preconceived theories, and giving his own peculiar coloring to incidents without caring what coloring actually belongs to them, it is indeed easy enough to make history spell whatever he pleases. At the very outset, Mr. Froude had an opportunity to try his skill in accommodating facts to theories. He began his story with Henry’s project for a divorce; and his starting-point was the assumption that
the king’s scruples were thoroughly conscientious, and no thought was given to Anne while he believed himself legally married to Catharine. To maintain this, the historian resorted to his characteristic vices—suppression and misrepresentation. He concealed the origin of Henry’s intercourse with Anne Boleyn, bringing her on the stage some years too late, with the air of one introducing a fresh arrival; and he grossly distorted the contemporary records from which he professed to quote. The king’s distaste for Catharine, he says, had risen to its worst dimensions before he ever saw Anne Boleyn. He adds that her first appearance at court was in 1525—which is an error, for she came to the court in 1522; and yet it was not until 1527 that we find Henry agitating the question of a divorce. That Mistress Anne during these five years was otherwise employed than in fascinating his majesty, Mr. Froude apparently wishes us to infer from the story that she was engaged to Lord Percy, the eldest son of the Earl of Northumberland. Lord Percy, to quote our author’s words, “was in the household of Cardinal Wolsey; and Cavendish, who was with him there, tells a long romantic story of the affair, which, if his account be true, was ultimately interrupted by Lord Northumberland himself.” This, if Cavendish said it, would indeed afford a fair presumption that Anne was not at that time (the date is given by other authorities as 1524 or 1525) the object of the royal attentions. But Cavendish really says something very different. He declared that the king sent for Lord Northumberland, and ordered him to interrupt the affair. Mr. Froude could not help seeing this statement if he read Cavendish at all, and we do not understand how he is to be acquitted of gross and intentional misrepresentation
in making his authority convey a meaning diametrically opposed to the one intended. After this, Mr. Froude goes on with the story of the divorce as if Anne had no existence, and she does not appear again upon the scene until the stage has been nearly cleared for her.
This is a fair specimen of literary dishonesty or recklessness from the first volume. Later instalments of the work, especially those devoted to the Queen of Scots, have been dissected by an able hand in the pages of this magazine. The series of papers in which Mr. James F. Meline examined in our columns Froude’s account of Mary Stuart, have now been incorporated with much additional matter in a volume entitled Mary, Queen of Scots, and her Latest English Historian.[117] No more thorough scarification of a literary offender has been published within our recollection. Mr. Meline has traced the historian’s authorities with admirable patience, disclosed his falsifications, his misconceptions, his suppressions, and his interpolations, and utterly demolished the case which Elizabeth’s advocate made against the unfortunate Mary. It is common to meet with uneducated people who cannot tell a story correctly, or repeat the words of a conversation without grossly distorting their meaning. Partly from defects of memory, partly from an intellectual deficiency which prevents them from apprehending things exactly as they are, such persons invariably misreport what they have seen and heard. What such people are to society, Mr. Froude seems to be to history. The Saturday Review says that he has not “fully grasped the nature of inverted commas.”
If he quotes a state paper, he leaves out essential passages, and inserts statements which rest upon no authority but his own. He gives his conjectures as if they were recorded facts. He disingenuously combines unconnected facts so as to bear out his private conjectures.
These are serious charges to bring against a writer of history; but they are all proved by Mr. Meline’s book. We do not purpose reviewing the whole story of the Queen of Scots, or reviving the endless controversy upon her innocence, so soon after the task has been performed in the pages of The Catholic World by the author of the savage little volume now before us. But we shall select and arrange from this record a few specimens of Mr. Froude’s sins, that our readers may judge for themselves how little claim this latest English history has to an honorable place on their library shelves.
1. Mr. Froude begins early to prepare our minds for Mary’s imputed profligacy. “She was brought up,” he says, “amidst the political iniquities of the court of Catharine de Medicis.” The fact is that Mary never was at the court of Catharine de Medicis at all. Catharine had no court, no influence, no position in history, until after Mary had left France. And, besides, Mary and Catharine cordially detested each other.
2. On the authority of Knox’s History of the Reformation, he relates that Knox had labored to save the Earl of Murray from the dangerous fascinations of his sister Mary, “but Murray had only been angry at his interference, and ‘they spake not familiarlie for more than a year and a half.’” But Knox gives an entirely different version of the quarrel. He writes that he had urged Murray to legalize by act of the parliament the confession of faith as the doctrine of the Church
of Scotland, but Murray was more intent upon his private interests—“the erledom of Murray needed confirmation, and many things were to be ratified that concerned the help of friends and servants—and the matter fell so hote betwixt the Erie of Murray and John Knox, that familiarlie after that time they spack nott together more than a year and a half.” There is nothing about Mary’s influence over her brother; the influence was all on the other side.
3. Mr. Froude assumes to quote from a dispatch of Randolph’s to Cecil a description of Mary’s luxurious habits. “Without illness or imagination of it, she would lounge for days in bed, rising only at night for dancing or music; and there she reclined with some light delicate French robe carelessly draped about her, surrounded by her ladies, her council, and her courtiers, receiving ambassadors and transacting business of state. It was in this condition that Randolph found her.” (Randolph to Cecil, Sept. 4, 1563.) There is no such description in the dispatch. On the contrary, Mary is represented at this period, both by Randolph and by other authorities, as industrious, active, energetic, and capable, but at the same time in bad health.
4. Mr. Froude thus travesties Randolph’s account of the return of Bothwell (1565): “Suddenly, unlooked for and uninvited, the evil spirit of the storm, the Earl of Bothwell, reappeared at Mary’s court. She disclaimed all share in his return; he was still attainted; yet there he stood—none daring to lift a hand against him—proud, insolent, and dangerous.” And he adds that “the Earl of Murray, at the expense of forfeiting the last remains of his influence over his sister, summoned Bothwell to answer at Edinburgh a charge of high treason.” What Randolph really
says is this: “The Queen misliketh Bothwell’s coming home, and has summoned him to undergo the law or be proclaimed a rebel.” It was the Queen therefore, and not Murray, who “summoned him to answer.” Moreover, Bothwell did not appear at court, but sought refuge among his vassals in Liddesdale.
5. Mr. Froude speaks of Lennox having “gathered about him a knot of wild and desperate youths—Cassilis, Eglinton, Montgomery, and Bothwell.” If he had read his authority (Randolph) with decent care, he would have seen that these were not the friends of Lennox, but, on the contrary, the strongest dependence of Murray and Argyle against Lennox. Moreover, Eglinton and Montgomery are one and the same person.
6. A blunder which has already excited some discussion is Mr Froude’s statement, on the authority of a letter from Randolph to Cecil, October 5, 1565, that Mary, “deaf to advice as she had been to menace,” said she would have no peace till she had Murray’s or Chatelherault’s head.” There is no such letter. It appears, however, from a letter of Randolph’s, dated October 4, that Mary was “not only uncertain as to what she should do, but inclined to clement measures, and so undecided as to hope that matters could be arranged.” The document to which Mr. Froude refers is a letter from the Earl of Bedford, who was not at Mary’s court, but at Alnwick, on the English side of the border, and who consequently had no such opportunities as Randolph for knowing the temper of the Scottish Queen. But even Bedford does not say what Mr. Froude reports. The earl merely relates the substance of information brought back from the rebel camp by one of his officers. According to this man, Murray and the other rebel
lords are dissatisfied with the little that England is doing to help them, and they say, “There is no talk of peace with that Queen, but that she will first have a head of the duke or of the Earl of Murray.”
7. One instance of Mr. Froude’s incorrigible propensity to blunder in that peculiar manner which is vulgarly called “going off at half-cock,” deserves to be mentioned, not for its importance, but because it is amusing. He describes Mary on a furious night-ride of “twenty miles in two hours,” at the end of which she wrote “with her own hand” a letter to Elizabeth, “fierce, dauntless, and haughty,” “the strokes thick, and slightly uneven from excitement, but strong, firm, and without sign of trembling.” It is a pity to spoil such a picturesque passage; but the very letter which Mr. Froude seems to have examined with such care contains the Queen’s apology for not writing it with her own hand, because she was “so tired and ill at ease,” and mentions, moreover, that the twenty-miles ride occupied five hours, not two.
8. In his account of the murder of Darnley, Mr. Froude pursues a singularly devious course, through which his reviewer follows him with inimitable pertinacity. The historian accepts without reserve the most notoriously untrustworthy authorities, distorts evidence, throws in a multitude of artful suggestions, and suppresses in a manner that is downright dishonest every circumstance that tells in Mary’s favor. We have no space to recapitulate here the numberless blunders and perversions of which he is convicted by Mr. Meline; but some of them are too ludicrous to be passed over. For instance, Mr. Froude finds it suspicious that Mary should have “preferred to believe” that she herself was the object of the lords’ conspiracy, though a
dispatch from Paris had conveyed “a message to her from Catharine de Medicis that her husband’s life was in danger.” The message was not from Catharine de Medicis, but from the Spanish ambassador in France, and wanted her to “take heed to herself,” for there was “some notable enterprise in hand against her.” Not a word is said of her husband.
9. It is again mentioned, as confirmation of her guilt, that “she sent for none of the absent noblemen to protect her,” and that “Murray was within reach, but she did not seem to desire his presence.” Now, Mr. Froude’s own authorities show that Mary did send for many of the absent noblemen, and in particular that she twice sent for Murray, who would not come.
10. When Elizabeth sent Killigrew to Scotland to inquire into the circumstances of the murder, Murray (as Killigrew himself relates) entertained the English ambassador at dinner, and invited to meet him Huntly, Argyle, Bothwell, and Maitland—all of them among the murderers of Darnley. This was strong circumstantial evidence of Murray’s guilt. Mr. Froude accordingly (referring to Killigrew as his authority) suppresses all mention of Murray, who gave the dinner and presided at it, and states that Killigrew “was entertained at dinner by the clique who had attended her [Mary] to Seton”—thus implying that Mary, instead of Murray, was in league with Bothwell and the others to prevent his getting at the truth. The whole substance of Killigrew’s letter is most outrageously misrepresented. Mr. Meline gives the original and the false version side by side.
But we must pause. We cannot follow Mr. Meline in his admirable discussion of the authenticity of the famous casket letters, or his exposure
of the extraordinary misstatements with which Mr. Froude has loaded this portion of his book. With the question of the innocence of the Queen of Scots, we are not now concerned. Our business is rather with the innocence of the Queen of Scots’ most notorious modern accuser. And whatever may be thought of the honesty of Mr. Froude’s motives, whether we decide that he blunders through sheer incapacity, or lies with malice aforethought, we believe candid students will admit that his reputation as a historical writer has been utterly ruined, and that his work will be remembered hereafter as a disastrous literary failure.
[116] See Macaulay’s Essay on History.
[117] Mary, Queen of Scots, and her Latest English Historian. By James F. Meline. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.
VENITE ADOREMUS.
It comes to us, as a messenger of peace and love, a memory of home, a voice of the past, with the echo of unforgotten joys, and the refrain of ever-silent sorrows; with the sacred thoughts of that most touching feast, Christmas, of that most tender mystery, the Infant-God; with the human thoughts of friends gone from us and loved ones far away—Venite adoremus!
It conjures up pictures before us of a happy, ignorant childhood, peaceful as a meadow-brook—a young life passed amid smiling hills, and fruitful vales, and woods where the honeysuckle twines round the old gnarled hawthorns, and the oak spreads its green, trembling tent over carpets of wild hyacinths. There, before the mind’s eye, rises the vision of a house, gray and picturesque, a broad, lovely terrace, and oriel windows looking down and beyond it into a sloping orchard. At the back, leaning on the grassy bank, dotted by firs and elms, lilacs and guelder-rose, and fragrant syringa and gold-blooming laburnum, stands a gaunt old tower, clad in dark purple-berried ivy—a ghost tower, the haunt of mystery, overshadowing the little cloister and the tall, gray roof of the chapel. But it is winter, and I have been forgetting that the Venite adoremus is a snow-flower of devotion, a “Christmas rose,” not a red June rose, regal in its dusky, velvety mantle of richest, warmest color; for now we hear the chant of the holy Christmas song, and the tapers are lighted on the stone-carved altar, where, on each side of the niched reredos, white angels kneel with their eternal torches, ever still, ever adoring, like some heavenly exile bound to earth’s temples by a divine spell, of which art holds the key. Above, the Annunciation is blazoned forth on the pictured window; but you cannot see it now, the night blots out its fairness. Angels, again, on the frescoed wall, bear scrolls, whose silent voices chant a ceaseless Gloria to the Babe in the tabernacle—Laudamus te, Benedicimus te, Adoramus te, Glorificamus te—and the rest of the narrow chapel is dark and voiceless, save where a taper glimmers on the desk of the little, humble harmonium, round which stand reverentially the few singers, whose only guerdon is the smile of the unseen but not unfelt God. Dark and dusky red are
the hangings that tapestry the wall, bearing over their surface thick growths of the white fleur-de-lis; while above the simple benches of stained wood, at the back, rises a long, dark gallery. It was there I heard the first Midnight Mass I ever heard in my life.
Venite adoremus! It brings back visions of a mother’s patient, doting love; of a gathering of friends; of pleasant, hushed talk of ghosts and spectres; of long, dark corridors, where the wind moaned like a soul in pain; of oriel windows, many-paned, through which came the distant sound of young owls hooting mournfully in the snow-covered plantations.
How kind a mother the church is! Are not all her feasts as many days of remembrances given to the past joys of home? Are they not a faultless calendar of our hopes and fears for years past? When the children, with earnest, unsuspicious gravity, debated upon the arrangements of the “crib,” what excitement! what interest! When the parents and the old retainers closed one room in mysterious silence, and decorated the glittering Christmas-tree, what wonderment! what whisperings!—and on the revelation, what delight! When piles of blankets and warm clothing were distributed among the poor, what curiosity to see which child got the petticoat Eleanor hemmed, or the jacket Frances put together!
All this is in the voice of the Venite adoremus as it sounds faintly now through a half-opened door, a Sunday surprise in a house hardly given to much solemnity—a house far away from the old gabled homestead and the snow-veiled chapel-roof.
But it has other scenes to show, other memories to waken. It tells of a Southern church, gaudy and bedizened, full of frivolous worshippers, whose Christmas vigil has been kept
in the ball-room they have hurriedly left to listen to the operatic orchestra preparing its musical pyrotechnics for the dread moment of the Elevation. But pass we on to more congenial remembrances. It tells of a simple, white-washed chamber, a prison-ward in the Holy City, where reclaimed and forgiven women are worshipping the divine Babe, who has wrought their salvation and sent them in their hour of need to the arms of his earthly angels, the Sisters of Mercy; it tells of a high dignitary of the Vatican, leaving his purple magnificence to come among the city prisons, and spend with them a more edifying Christmas than the display of the public churches promised his humble devotion. Venite adoremus! It swells up in sweet woman-tones from some recess of faithful memory, but the halls through which the hymn was borne that Christmas night echo only to the heavy tramp of the sentinel now, if not to worse, the blasphemies of the ungodly trooper.
It brings the mediæval glories of St. Mark’s to the mind of a lover of that unique basilica—that petrified dream of the heavenly Jerusalem, with its curious barbaric wealth, its golden mosaics, its Byzantine spoils of victories that were not merely the victories of civilization over decay, but the triumphs of faith over superstition. The glorious church is full, dark masses of human beings sway about its broad-reaching nave, and here and there, like fire-flies, like heart-stars, shine the little cerini—the rope-like coils of wax, the picturesque forerunners of garish gas-jets and dream-dispelling coronas. The Mass in Venice is not a real Midnight Mass, however, since, by special permission, it is celebrated at five o’clock in the afternoon of the vigil. It is sad to hear profane music even in this consecrated spot, whose dim,
suggestive beauty seems to inherit the vague and solemn halo of the veiled lamps of the Holy of Holies in the temple of Jerusalem; but corrupted taste certainly does reign in the Venetian basilica, and a Mass full of modern Italian fioritura is annually performed in it at the festival of Christmas. Still, the mind sees beyond the unhappy aberrations of the modern Euterpe out into the long vista of past centuries, when graver and nobler strains rang through the low-vaulted temple, and the stern and silent heads of the state came in procession to grace the triumph of the new-born Saviour. From Venice to Geneva there is a wide gulf, but the Venite adoremus bridges over that.
Once again Christmas comes round, and the same world-wide chant rises in the now half-converted stronghold of Calvinism. It leads us towards the older town, far from the noisy port hotels, into a winding labyrinth of steep, ill-paved streets, through rows of old houses, every one of which seems to have a history of its own, and whose old-fashioned windows, and wide portals opening into silent court-yards, remind one of time-worn parchment bindings round poems for ever new. But is this analogy not a little true? for is not the poem of the human heart as old and as changeless as the ancient romances of long-dead bards, and yet do we ever tire of its repetition, any more than we are weary of Chaucer and Shakespeare, of Homer and Virgil?
Venite adoremus! It lures us on to a dark church, dedicated to St. Germain, where there is nothing beautiful to strike the eye, nothing artistic to make the heart beat. Plain and even unsightly, tawdry and faded, as all churches are whose history lies between the dreaded persecution
of the sixteenth century and the Gothic revival of the nineteenth, St. Germain yet possesses that untold charm which the Italians so broadly but accurately describe by the word simpatico. Sympathy! yes, that is it. It breathes on us from every corner; it is the atmosphere of the little church; it softens every incongruity, and sweetly blinds us to every defect. After all, such churches, inartistic as they may be, are no unfit representatives of the church militant, while our glorious blossoms of stone, born of the Moses-like rod of Pugin, are types of the unfathomable beauty and jubilant repose of the church triumphant.
In this Midnight Mass at Geneva it was touching to see the crowds that flocked to the church through drifting snow and biting wind—real Christmas weather—and, without any attraction in the shape of noted preacher or imposing ceremonial, filled the church as full as the generous heart-blood does the bosom of the Christian martyr. Hundreds of silent worshippers were assembled there, and, when the last Gospel of the Mass had been said, the priests returned, in alb and stole, to give communion to the eager congregation. Hardly one present seemed to have left the church, and gradually the vast body of the faithful broke, like successive waves, at the foot of the altar. For one whole hour was this scene enacting, and no music was heard meanwhile, and, though few rules were enforced and little order reigned, yet the sight was as widely suggestive as any more carefully arranged demonstrations. Somehow these artless, unpremeditated outpourings of the heart of Christendom have a far higher power to interest, a far subtler charm to entrance, and leave a higher impression and a more healthful influence behind, than
those wonderful pageants which from year to year draw thousands of curious spectators to Rome. Here is everyday Christianity; here is the inner working of that silent, God-wielded mechanism whose outward robes and draperies only come to us in the shape of those glittering festas; here is the real work, the real core of things, the heart whose pulsation alone gives meaning to all that external magnificence, the sun of which those ceremonies are the radiance, the consuming fire of which that glorious ritual is but the outgoing heat and the coruscant light. And when we think of the darker and varied aspects, the inner complications of the lives of those who were crowding round the altar-rails of St. Germain, what a wonderful, manifold history, what a spiritual landscape of infinite shades of the most delicate pencillings, do we not see! Side by side kneel souls whose life-paths run in opposite channels: here is Martha, the busy household angel, whose faith is inwoven in her every daily movement, her every thought, though it be of toil and anxiety; there is the pensive Magdalen, whose sadness is her soul’s beauty, whose memory brings before her even more tokens of merciful forgiveness and unwearied love than of her own little past, her sins and her hard-heartedness; there kneels the widow whose child has just been given back to her from the very portals of death, and whose only altar for many dreary months has been the darkened chamber and the curtained sick-bed. Close to her is a maiden whose life is one long act of pure preparation for the bridal feast, the marriage supper of the Lamb, and who, when next Christmas-chimes sound, will hear in them the glad knell that proclaims her death to the outside world, and her life-long vow of obedience to her
Spouse. Here is a Monica, wrestling in prayer for a wayward son whose hopeless lapse from the narrow path of virtue is the heaviest cross her Saviour could have chosen for her burden; there again is the bride, kneeling by the side of the simple, joyous, boyish bridegroom, with whom she is just beginning a new stage on the road to eternal bliss. So rough, so uniform, so commonplace is the aspect of the crowd, that these things are only visible to spiritual sight, to the eye of the soul; and, if visible even to our darkened organs of spiritual understanding, how much more clearly and far more touchingly to the eye of eternal Wisdom and fathomless Love! What a rose-garden is a church full of humble communicants before the sight of God! How fragrant and varied the blossoms to his illumined perception! Men in every stage of conversion—those who have just timidly set their foot on the first round of Jacob’s mystic ladder; those who have struggled so far that they can dare to look down one moment, and measure the death from which God’s love has raised them, in order to gain additional grace to correspond with his future and more rapid calls heavenward; those who have left all sin and danger so far behind that they look upon them calmly, as one sees the rolling clouds far below from the crisp-breathing atmosphere of the highest mountains; those whose conversation is in heaven, and whose thoughts are silent angels walking ever with them as the living messengers of God. Such are the miracles of grace that crowd the lowly church; the mysteries that we can only guess at beneath the crust of materiality which we see; the wonders that jostle us in the swaying throng, and of which we have so little knowledge that we hardly even suspect what
angel’s robe has swept past our own garments a moment ago.
And as this scene fades away, while the silence is again broken by the sweet song of home, Venite adoremus! we see another and a last picture dawning from the gray mist of memory.
Not far from the old home where the first Midnight Mass of our childhood entranced our imagination is another house—a home, too, in some sense, yet not the home that the mother hallowed in the dear, olden days, for now she is only present in the spirit, and she never even saw the first Christmas snows in this new and stately hall.
But a church, fair and carven, stands above her grave, and her loving heart is the first stone, the foundation-stone of the new shrine. Close above her resting-place is the altar, and close below, the organ. There Christmas is enthroned again, the Venite adoremus echoes once more through wreathed arches and festooned pillars; there again a small household and a few newly-converted children of the faith of old England kneel in silent prayer, and mingle thoughts of the foundress of the church with those of the new-born King whose praises, whose Gloria, she is now singing in heaven. Thus the soul-stirring Christmas hymn links the past with the present, the memories of foreign lands with the dear thoughts of home, and binds them together as a sheaf of golden straw to lay in the crib of the Babe of Bethlehem.
Venite adoremus! It has been sung to our infancy when the nurse
rocked the cradle where slept the first-born; it has cheered our early childhood when the young mother-voice taught it to us at the Christmas fireside; it has thrilled our heart in youth when, far from the old home, we have listened to its solemn, familiar strains; it will stir a chord of memory through each succeeding year as our early associations grow dim and our path waxes more lonely; it will breathe a sweet farewell and echo in our ears on our very deathbed, linking the thought of our first earthly home to that of our expected eternal one in the bosom of our Jesus and the arms of our new-found, glorified Mother.
Those who are dear to us on earth, those who grew up round the same hearth, and knelt peacefully at the same father’s knee, and held his hand the day the mother-angel winged her way to her God, can never forget the Venite adoremus, the Christmas pledge of undying love and indissoluble union, which they learned and sang together for long, long years of joy, nor can they dream that, however far apart, that hymn does not make the heart beat and the eye grow dim with tears even as in the days of old; while—O happier thought even than that!—they never can forget that as on earth, so will it be hereafter, that the crown of song will lack no jewel, will miss no note, of all that once were in it, and that for ever and for ever one will be the undiminished chorus of father and mother, brethren and sisters, in the halls of the “Everlasting Christmas.” Venite Adoremus! venite adoremus Dominum!
MR. CLARKE’s LIVES OF THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC BISHOPS.[118]
“Like stars to their appointed heights they climb.”—Shelley.
The remark had become trite in the mouths of Europeans, that America has no history. Such was the inertness of our countrymen in the department of American history; such the want of works recounting the thrilling story of early adventure and colonization, the struggles of feeble colonies for existence and permanence, their long and steadfast preservation of free institutions inherited from the mother-country, and their gallantry in defending them against an unnatural mother; the birth and growth of a vast and mighty republic, maintaining at once order and liberty amid the convulsions and revolutions of European dynasties and empires, and eliciting from a European monarch, whose crown was afterwards torn from his head, the remark addressed to an American Catholic bishop, who told him of free and peaceful America, “Truly, that people at least understand liberty; when will it be understood among us?”—all these things remained so long an untold story, that it was believed but too generally that America was without a history to record. The subsequent works of Bancroft, Irving, Prescott, Parkman, and others have pretty effectually dispelled the delusion.
But it seems to have been equally thought, among the historians of the church, that her career in America
was also devoid of historical interest, so few and meagre were our published records and histories. In the general histories of the church, such as that by Darras, commencing with the earliest ages, and coming down to our own times, with but slight general allusions to America, no mention whatever is made of the rise and progress of the church in the United States. In the American edition of Darras, there is an Appendix, written for the purpose by an American author, Rev. Charles I. White, D.D., giving a Sketch of the Origin and Progress of the Catholic Church in the United States of America, and intended to supply, in some measure, the omission.
In our article on Bishop Timon, in The Catholic World of April, 1871, we remarked: “Sketches of local church history, more or less complete, have occasionally appeared—sketches, for instance, like The Catholic Church in the United States, by De Courcy and Shea; and Shea’s History of the Catholic Missions among the Indian tribes of America, and Bishop Bayley’s little volume on the history of the church in New York. But a work of a different kind, broader in its design than some of these excellent and useful publications, more limited in scope than the dry and costly general histories, still awaits the hand of a polished and enthusiastic man of letters.”
When we penned these lines, though we knew of Mr. Clarke’s long-continued and unwearied labors in that
department of American Catholic literature, had cheered at times his earnest and faithful studies, and had, by his kindness, been able to spread before our readers some of his interesting and admirably prepared biographical papers, such as the Life of Governor Dongan of New York, in The Catholic World of September, 1869, and the Memoir of Father Brébeuf, S.J., in the July and August numbers, 1871, still we scarcely hoped that we should see our desires so soon realized, or that we should so soon have occasion to hail the appearance of the splendid work now before us, the fruits of his accomplished pen and energetic industry, in the two handsomely printed and elegantly bound volumes, The Lives of the Deceased Bishops of the Catholic Church in the United States. The production of such a work, prepared during the broken and fleeting moments of leisure snatched from a life devoted to professional duties, and to an active participation in the Catholic and public-spirited enterprises of our busy metropolis, is something for which we, as a Catholic journalist devoted to literature, may be permitted to express our own thanks, and those of the Catholic community, and at the same time to commend it as an instance of successful literary toil in a rich but uncultivated field, and as, what we hope and believe it will be, a reward for long and painstaking researches, careful collation, and fine literary study. There were but few published works, as we have remarked, from which to draw the facts and information necessary for such a book. Hence the author had to seek, in a great measure, his materials from the archives of the various dioceses, the unpublished correspondence and journals of the deceased prelates, their pastoral letters and addresses, from the Catholic serial
publications and newspapers of the last half-century (a task of great and protracted labor and fatigue), from the personal recollections of surviving friends, co-laborers, and colleagues of the bishops, from family records, from his own correspondence with numerous witnesses of the growth of the church and of the labors of our apostolic men, and even from the silent but sacred marble records of the tomb. The frequency with which the author cites, among his authorities, unpublished documents and original sources of information, which were in many cases the individual narratives of living witnesses, committed to writing at his request, and for this work, is a proof of the industry and labor with which this work has been prepared, and give us the means of appreciating the services thus rendered to our American Catholic literature, in securing and preserving from decay, oblivion, or total loss many valuable but perishable traditions and documentary materials. We will refer to two only, among many instances throughout these richly stored pages, of valuable documents thus given to the public; these are the royal charter of King James II., guaranteeing liberty of conscience to the Catholics of Virginia in 1686, and the beautiful and touching letter addressed by Archbishop Carroll, in 1791, to the Catholic Indians of Maine, the remnants of the pious and faithful flock of the illustrious and martyred Rale—for the publication of both of which we are indebted to Mr. Clarke.
Mr. Clarke has devoted many years to these valuable and excellent studies and compositions, and those who have read our Catholic periodical literature during the last fifteen years, will remember his Memoirs of Archbishops Carroll and Neale, of Bishops Cheverus and Flaget, of the
Rev. Prince Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin, of Fathers Andrew White and Nerinckx, of Governor Leonard Calvert, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Commodore John Barry, the father of the American navy, and Judge Gaston; which were published in 1856 and 1857 in The Metropolitan of Baltimore. The favor with which these papers were received at the time, and the earnest recommendations of prelates, priests, and laymen, have, as we have learned, induced the author to enlarge his plans and undertake a series of works, which will give the American Church a complete biography of ecclesiastics and laymen, and, at the same time, literary monuments of classic taste and scholarship. The present book of the prelates will, as we rejoice to learn, be followed by the second work of the course, containing the lives of the missionaries of our country, such as White of Maryland, Marquette, Jogues, and Brébeuf of New York, Rale of Maine, the missionaries of the Mississippi Valley, of distinguished priests in later times, and of the founders of our religious houses, male and female. The remaining work of the series, more interesting probably than even the preceding ones, because not the least attempt has so far been made in that direction, will contain the lives of distinguished Catholic laymen, who have rendered signal services to our country, such as Calvert, Carroll, and Taney of Maryland, Iberville of Louisiana, Dongan of New York, La Salle and Tonty, explorers of the Mississippi River, Barry of Pennsylvania, Vincennes of Indiana, Gaston of North Carolina, and many others. The whole will form a complete series of Catholic biographical works, issued in the appropriate order of bishops first, priests and religious second, and finally of statesmen, captains, explorers, and
jurists. We cannot withhold the expression of our pleasure at the prospect of results such as these in a department of literature which it has ever been one of the objects of The Catholic World to encourage, promote, and cherish.
That valuable materials exist in the country for all of these important works, we feel quite sure. We hope care will be taken of them and that they will be freely placed at the service of our Catholic historians and authors. Their publication would be the best means of preserving them, while rendering them useful to the present generation. We will give an incident in the experience of Mr. Clarke, in preparing his Lives of the Bishops, related by him to us, as an evidence of the danger to which valuable historical matter is constantly exposed of being lost and destroyed. He applied, in one instance, to the custodians of the papers relating to the Catholic history of an important diocese and state, and was informed that the diocesan papers and documents had been for many years locked up in a strong chest or safe, before and for some time after the death of the first bishop, and, on being opened and examined, they were found to be in a state of complete decay from the damp, fell to pieces when handled, and that scarcely a line of the writing was legible. Other cases are related of valuable materials for American Catholic history lost or sent out of the country. We observe, in the first volume before us, a new and appropriate feature—a distinct and separate return of thanks by the author to a long list of prelates, priests, and laymen who have supplied him with materials or aided him in his labors. The appeal he makes, in his preface, for the assistance of such as possess materials, has our cordial sympathy; and we
hope the appeal will not be made in vain.
The book of prelates, whose appearance we now hail with so much pleasure, is the most important and valuable contribution yet made to our American Catholic biographical literature. It covers the ground of our entire church history to the most recent times, possesses the peculiar interest which attaches to personal and individual narrative, and is free, as we have said, from the dryness of the general history. Its pages teem with an ardent love of country and of our American institutions, and with a devotion to true liberty, which well accord with the traditions and education of one of the descendants of the Catholic pilgrims of Maryland, who constitute the theme of an honored chapter in our history, illustrating the magnanimity of a dominant Catholic majority in times when toleration was not the fashion, the harmony between Catholicity and liberty, and an unflinching faith through generations of Protestant persecution. Praise is freely bestowed, where praise was due, to our country and to our countrymen; and reproof is administered in the spirit of true affection, whenever there are errors or abuses to be corrected, or where there is conflict, in the civil or political order, with the sacred rights of religion and of conscience.
The antiquity of the Catholic Church in America, her struggles and triumphs, are well worthy of the study of all. Her struggles have ever been against vice and error, and in favor of liberty and virtue. Her triumphs have been the conquest of souls for heaven. No impartial mind can study the career of the Catholic Church in the United States without being convinced of the purity of her motives, and the sacredness of her aims. Her conservatism, her
sacraments, her defence of Christian marriage, her labors for religious education, her chastening influence over the consciences of her children, of which every day’s record affords examples, her maintenance of law and order, have made her in the past, what they will prove in the future, the mainstay of society, of liberty, and of the republic. Her growth in our midst has been the work of Providence, not of man; a growth which, as our author shows, has proportionately far outstripped that of the republic. While the country has increased from thirteen states to thirty-seven states and eleven territories in ninety-five years, the church has increased from one bishopric to sixty-four bishoprics, six vicariates apostolic, and four mitred abbots in eighty-one years. The population of the country has increased from 2,803,000 to about 40,000,000, while the children of the Catholic Church have increased from 25,000 to 5,500,000. The increase of the general population of the country has been 1,433 per centum in ninety-five years, and that of the church has been 22,000 per centum in eighty-one years. The Catholic clergy have increased from twenty-one priests in 1790 to about four thousand eight hundred priests in 1871; they dispense the blessings of religion in 4,250 churches and 1,700 chapels.
After giving these statistics, the preface proceeds thus:
“To Rome, the capital of the Christian world, Eternal City, destined in our hopes and prayers and faith to be restored to us again as the free and undesecrated Mistress and Ruler of Churches, and to the Sovereign Pontiffs therein, Vicars of Christ on earth, we turn with love and gratitude for the care, solicitude, and support bestowed upon our churches, and for the exemplary prelates bestowed upon them by the Chief Bishop of the church. To our venerable hierarchy,
bishops and priests, and to the religious orders, both male and female, we render thanks for their labors, their sacrifices, their sufferings, and their suffrages.
“To our prelates, especially, is due under God the splendid result we have but faintly mentioned. They were the founders of our churches, the pioneers of the faith, and the chief pastors of our flocks. In poverty and suffering they commenced the work, and spent themselves for others. A diocese just erected upon the frontiers, in the midst of a new and swarming population, to anticipate and save the coming faithful, the hope of a future flock, an outpost upon the borders of Christianity and civilization—such was the frequent work and vigilant foresight of the Propaganda and of the Councils of Baltimore—such the charge confided to a newly consecrated bishop. To the religious enterprise and untiring providence of the Catholic Church, in her prompt and vigorous measures for the extension of the faith in this country, may well be applied the striking lines of Milton:
‘Zeal and duty are not slow;
But on occasion’s forelock watchful wait.’
—Paradise Regained.
“To assume the task of creating, as it were, building up, and governing the infant churches thus confided to their care, was the work that was faithfully and zealously performed by our bishops. It was no uncommon thing for a bishop to be sent to a diocese where there was scarcely a shrine or a priest; where he not only had no friends or organized flock to receive him, but where he had not even an acquaintance; where he would not meet a face that he had ever seen before. In some instances, he had to enter a diocese rent with disunion or schism among the people; in others, he was compelled to reside out of the episcopal city by reason of disaffection prevailing within. In other cases, such was their poverty that they had not the necessary means to procure an episcopal outfit, to provide a pectoral cross and crosier, or to pay their travelling expenses to their dioceses. In many cases the humble log-cabins of the West were their episcopal palaces and cathedrals; and frequently church, episcopal residence, parish school, and theological seminary were all under the same contracted roof. In the midst of such difficulties, we behold examples of humility,
patience, cheerfulness, zeal, charity, love, poverty, and untiring labor. A study of such examples, and of lives so good, so heroic, has led us to undertake the work now presented to the public, in order to repeat and continue their holy influences, to preserve the memory of such deeds, to render a tribute to those honored names, and to rescue, as far as we could, our Catholic traditions from oblivion or total loss. We applied to ourself, and yielded to the spirit of, the poet’s appeal:
‘Spread out earth’s holiest records here,
Of days and deeds to reverence dear;
A zeal like this what pious legends tell?’”
The two volumes contain the lives of fifty-six American bishops, and to the second volume is affixed an appendix containing the lives of three prelates of other countries, who have a special connection with the American Church. The first volume, to which we will confine our present writing, contains the lives of twenty-nine prelates, a list of whom, with the dates of their consecration or appointment, and the religious orders to which they belonged, where such was the case, will in itself prove interesting.
The antiquity of our church in America is strikingly illustrated in this volume—an antiquity equal to that of the church in some of the old countries of Europe, extending back to the ages of faith, when the church was fighting her battles with paganism, and before the time when altar was raised up against altar by the Protestantism of the sixteenth century, and before the more modern phases of infidelity and communism had declared war against all altars and all religion. In the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, the Northmen of Iceland, hardy adventurers on the seas, pushed their exploits beyond the continent of Europe, and landed colonies on the shores of this continent. Coming from their ice-clad homes, our extreme north-eastern regions were to
them a country of enchanting verdure, and received the name of Greenland; and, pushing their cruises farther south, they entered our own Narragansett Bay, where, seeing the country festooned with vines teeming with grapes, they called it Vinland. Our poet Longfellow, aptly quoted by Mr. Clarke, has celebrated some of the exploits of Vikings and Northmen on sea and shore. They were the freebooters and highwaymen of the ocean;
“Joining the corsair’s crew.
O’er the dark sea I flew
With the marauders;
Wild was the life we led,
Many the souls that sped.
Many the hearts that bled,
By our stern orders.”
At the time of which the poet sings, both Iceland and Greenland were pagan. The mother-country owed her conversion to missionaries from Ireland, and she, in turn, sent out devoted priests, who converted her colonists in Greenland and Vinland to the faith. Convents and churches arose and resounded with the praises of God, chanted in Latin hymns three centuries and a half before Columbus discovered America. Pre-eminent among the Catholic missionaries was Eric, who, in the beginning of the twelfth century, commenced his exalted labors at Greenland, and afterwards particularly along the banks of Narragansett Bay. The site of the present city of Newport and its vicinity were the virgin fields of his apostolic labors. So important did these Christian colonies become, that a bishopric was erected at Garda, the episcopal city of Greenland, and Eric was consecrated its first bishop by Lund, a bishop of Scandinavia. He visited again his cherished flock at Vinland, to whom he was devoted, and, rather than leave them, he resigned his mitre and crosier, went into the ranks of the clergy, and gave his life for
his flock—the first of American martyrs.
The colonies of the Northmen were swept away, and the record of them, even, faded from the histories and traditions of mankind.
“I was a Viking old:
My deeds, though manifold,
No skald in song has told,
No saga taught thee.”
A glowing tribute is paid by the author to the Catholic faith and genius of Columbus, the unrivalled discoverer of America. In the very generation in which Columbus lived, the church established a bishopric within the present limits of our republic. Among the ambitious and hardy captains of that day was Pamphilo de Narvaez, who, in attempting the conquest of Florida, aspired to add to the Spanish crown a realm equal in extent and wealth to Mexico, and to rival the fame of Cortéz by his own exploits. The Franciscans were at his side, seeking a holier conquest, fired by no earthly ambition, but by a heavenly zeal. A bishopric was erected for Florida as the expedition was about to sail from the ports of Spain, and Juan Juarez, who had already won the title of one of the Twelve Apostles of Mexico, was appointed, in 1526, Bishop of Rio de las Palmes. He spent his brief sojourn in Spain in securing ample provision for his future flock, and in obtaining royal guarantees for the liberty and kind treatment of the natives. No time was left for his consecration; he hastened on board the fleet, and rushed to the spiritual relief of his children, whom he knew and “loved only in Christ.” After the disastrous termination of the expedition, he and his companions suffered shipwreck, and are believed to have perished of hunger—the second martyr of our church. Well has our author said of him, that he gave up
his own life that he might bestow upon others life eternal; and that he who died of hunger for God’s sake was greatly rewarded by that same God with celestial feasts, and replenished with seraphic delights; and has aptly applied to him those beautiful words of the Canticle:
“Esurientes implevit Bonis.”
We have dwelt briefly, but with particular pleasure, upon these the first two lives of the volume, because of their peculiar interest and beauty, but they must be read at length in the work itself to be duly appreciated. We rejoice that they have now been rendered a classic story in our language—an enduring monument in our literature.
We had marked out several extracts from the interesting and important life of Archbishop Carroll, and from the lives of other eminent prelates, for insertion, but the want of time and space deprives us and our readers of this pleasure. We reserve the remaining space allotted to this article for three extracts, the first of which is the historical sketch given by Mr. Clarke of an event which reflects untold honor and glory upon the American Catholic episcopate. The honor and merit of originating the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, which has ever since been and is now spreading the Gospel throughout the world, is due to an American prelate. Bishop Dubourg, of New Orleans, is the recognized founder of that illustrious society. And now we will let the author speak for himself:
“The most brilliant and fruitful service rendered by Bishop Dubourg to the church, not only in America, but throughout the most remote and unenlightened portions of the world, was the leading part he took in founding the illustrious ‘Association for the Propagation of the
Faith.’ It has been well said that ‘the establishment which M. Dubourg, while on his return to Louisiana from Italy, made at Lyons, is of itself enough to immortalize his name. He there formed, in 1815, the Association for the Propagation of the Faith. This single institution, which conveys benedictions unnumbered to millions, and which daily sounds the glad tidings of a Saviour to those who are seated in the silence of death, becomes a monument sufficient to eternize the memory of Dubourg, and to shed a full ray of brightness on any college associated with his name.’”
The following extract, from the Life of Archbishop Eccleston of Baltimore, relates to interesting and stirring events in the life of our Holy Father, Pius IX., and the history of our country and church, which are made to reflect upon events transpiring in our own times:
“The adjournment of the Sixth Council was soon followed by the death of Pope Gregory XVI. and the election of Pope Pius IX. The remarkable events that ensued are a part of the history of our age. Loud, long, and enthusiastic were the plaudits that greeted the first acts of the noble and saintly Pius IX. from every portion of the world, and especially from the United States. Popular meetings in the principal cities sent the most respectful and laudatory addresses to the Holy Father, and Congress sent a minister to congratulate him on his course and to reside at his court. It seemed as though the Protestant world were prepared to hail the return of the glorious ages of faith, when the Sovereign Pontiff was the universally recognized Father and arbiter of the Christian world. The loyalty of Catholics was manifested by the obedience of their souls and submission of their hearts to him whom they recognized as the Vicar of Christ on earth. To their Protestant fellow-citizens was left the work of giving utterance to the public voice of congratulation and praise. The address of a public meeting held in New York by six thousand persons, and presided over by the mayor, contained the following remarkable passage:
“‘And more formidable than all these, you must have girded yourself to encounter,
and by God’s help to overcome, that fickleness and ingratitude of multitudes just released from benumbing bondage, which could clamor in the wilderness to be led back to the flesh-pots of Egypt; which, among the contemporaries and even the followers of our Saviour, could leave him to bear in solitude the agony of the cross; and which in your case, we apprehend, will yet manifest itself in unreasonable expectations, extravagant hopes, impetuous requirements, and in murmurings that nothing has been earnestly intended, because everything has not been already accomplished.
“The address of the Philadelphia meeting, held January 10, 1848, contained the following earnest words: ‘May the Almighty grant you length of life, strength of heart, and wisdom from on high, in order to bring to a happy conclusion the beneficent reforms which you have begun! May he inspire the princes and people of Italy with the courage and moderation necessary to second your efforts! May he raise up to you successors, who will continue to extend the influence of peace and justice on earth; and the time will come when the meanest of God’s poor will, if oppressed, be able to summon the most powerful of his oppressors to appear at the bar of united Christendom; and the nations will sit in judgment upon him, and the oppressor, blushing with shame, shall be forced by their unanimous and indignant voice to render justice to the oppressed.’
“Similar addresses were sent from nearly every city of any importance in the Union to the Holy Father. But soon the prophetic language of the New York meeting was realized; the clamor of the disappointed populace was raised against their father and best friend; Count Rossi, his secretary, is assassinated, and the Holy Father himself is a fugitive from Rome. It was then that the devotion of Catholics manifested itself towards the Supreme Pontiff, and many and heartfelt were the testimonials of loyalty and affection received by the exile of Gaeta from his children throughout the world. The Catholics of the United States were not behind their brethren in these demonstrations, and the hope was entertained that the Holy Father would accept an asylum in our midst.... How vividly do the present wrongs of that same Holy Father, and of that same holy church, recall the events
of his glorious pontificate! When, oh! when, will the Catholic peoples of the world demand of their governments the restoration of the capital of Christendom, and the liberty of the Vicar of Christ?”
As we were about to close our article, our eye fell upon the following fine passages in the Life of Dr. England, First Bishop of Charleston, and we yield to the temptation of transferring them to our columns, both as a tribute to that illustrious prelate and as specimens of Mr. Clarke’s style:
“The great struggle of Bishop England’s life in this country seems to have been to present the Catholic Church, her doctrines and practices, in their true light before the American people. In his effort to do this his labors were indefatigable. His means of accomplishing this end were various and well studied. He endeavored, from his arrival in the country, to identify himself thoroughly with its people, its institutions, its hopes, and its future. He was vigilant and spirited in maintaining and defending the honor and integrity of the country, as he was in upholding the doctrines and practices of the church. In his oration on the character of Washington, he so thoroughly enters into the sentiments of our people, and participates so unreservedly in the pride felt by the country in the Pater Patriæ, that his language would seem to be that of a native of the country. There was no movement for the public good in which he did not feel an interest, and which he did not, to the extent of his opportunities, endeavor to promote. His admiration for the institutions of the country was sincere and unaffected. Though no one encountered more prejudice and greater difficulties than he did, he, on all occasions, as he did in his address before Congress, endeavored to regard the prejudices and impressions entertained by Protestants against Catholics as errors, which had been impressed upon their minds by education and associations, for which they themselves were not responsible. In his writings and public sermons and addresses, he travelled over the wide range of history, theology, and the arts, in order to vindicate the spotless spouse of Christ against the calumnies of her enemies. If Catholic citizens and
voters were attacked on the score of their fidelity to their country and its institutions, Bishop England’s ready pen defended them from the calumny and silenced their accusers. If a Catholic judge or public officer was accused of false swearing or mental reservation in taking the official oath, he found an irresistible and unanswerable champion in the Bishop of Charleston. He found the church in the United States comparatively defenceless on his accession to the See of Charleston, but he soon rendered it a dangerous task in her enemies to attack or vilify her; and many who ventured on this mode of warfare were glad to retreat from the field, before the crushing weapons of logic, erudition, and eloquence with which he battled for his church, his creed, and his people....
“Bishop England visited Europe four times during his episcopacy, for the interests and institutions of his diocese, visiting Rome, most of the European countries, and his native Ireland, which he never ceased to love. He was sent twice as apostolic delegate from the Holy See to Hayti. He obtained from Europe vast assistance for his diocese, both in priests, female religious, and funds. It was proposed to translate him to the bishopric of Ossory in Ireland, but he declined. The highest ecclesiastical dignity, with comfort, luxury, friends, and ease, in his native country, could not tempt him to desert his beloved church in America. He had become an American citizen and an American prelate, and he resolved to continue to be both as long as he lived. At Rome he was consulted on all matters relating to the ecclesiastical affairs of this country. The officials of the Eternal City were astounded at the great travels and labors of Bishop England. They heard him appoint from the Chambers of the Propaganda the very day on which he would administer confirmation in the interior of Georgia. The cardinals, in their wonder at all he accomplished, and the rapidity of his movements, used to call him ‘il vescovo a vapore,’ or the ‘steam bishop.’ We have seen with what an insignificant force he commenced his episcopal labors. He increased the churches of his diocese to over sixteen, and lef behind him a well-organized and appointed clergy, and numerous ecclesiastical, religious, educational, and charitable institutions. The Catholic families of his diocese might
have been counted, at the time of the erection of the See of Charleston, on one’s fingers; at the bishop’s death they were counted by thousands. But the good he accomplished was not confined to his own diocese. His elevating and encouraging influence was felt throughout this country, at Rome, and in many parts of the Catholic world.”
His dying words to his clergy, and through them to his flock, were as follows:
“Tell my people that I love them; tell them how much I regret that circumstances have kept us at a distance from each other. My duties and my difficulties have prevented me from cultivating and strengthening those private ties which ought to bind us together; your functions require a closer, a more constant intercourse with them. Be with them—be of them—win them to God. Guide, govern, and instruct them. Watch as having to render an account of their souls, that you may do it with joy, and not with grief. There are among you several infant institutions which you are called on, in an especial manner, to sustain. It hast cost me a great deal of thought and of labor to introduce them. They are calculated to be eminently serviceable to the cause of order, of education, of charity; they constitute the germ of what, I trust, shall hereafter grow and flourish in extensive usefulness. As yet they are feeble, support them—embarrassed, encourage them—they will be afflicted, console them.
“I commend my poor church to its patrons—especially to her to whom our Saviour confided his in the person of the beloved disciple: ‘Woman, behold thy Son; Son, behold thy mother.’”
The second volume contains the lives of thirty American bishops, and, in the Appendix, the lives of Right Rev. Charles Augustus de Forbin-Jansen, Bishop of Nancy, France, who visited this country in 1840, and rendered signal services to religion while here; of Right Rev. Edward Barron, who volunteered from this country for the African mission, was made Bishop of Africa in 1845, and died at Savannah, Georgia, in 1854,
“a martyr of charity”; and of Cardinal Bedini, whose visit to this country is in the recollection of our readers.
We cannot close our notice without again commending, in the most emphatic manner, this record of the labors of the self-denying prelates who were the means, under God, of planting the church in our beloved country—not only for its historical interest, and as an addition to our permanent Catholic literature, but for the incentive it furnishes to others, both cleric and lay, in their several spheres, to be unremitting in their efforts to extend the faith, thus happily transferred to our soil, to every nook and corner of this favored land.
[118] Lives of the Deceased Bishops of the Catholic Church in the United States, with an Appendix and an Analytical Index. By Richard H. Clarke, A.M. In two vols. Vol. I. New York: P. O’shea. 1871.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
The Vicar of Christ; or, Lectures upon the Office and Prerogatives of our Holy Father the Pope. By Rev. Thomas S. Preston, Pastor of St. Ann’s Church, New York, and Chancellor of the Diocese. New York: Robert Coddington, No. 366 Bowery. 1871.
We have here another series of the excellent Advent Lectures of F. Preston, which have done so much good in the instruction of the faithful and the conversion of numbers of persons to the true faith. Carefully prepared and solid discourses on the great Catholic principles, dogmas, doctrines, laws, and rites—in fact, on all the topics of religion universally—are especially necessary and useful in our time and country. Besides the additional good accruing to that which has been done by the preaching of these discourses through their more general dissemination among the laity, their publication is a great benefit to the clergy, as giving examples of the best kind of preaching, and furnishing a stimulus and a help to efforts of the same kind.
The present series of lectures on the Pope is fully equal to the former publications of the author in ability and excellence, if not superior to them. The subject, at any rate, makes it far the most interesting and important of any. F. Preston has merited well of the church by his zealous and efficient devotion to the cause of the Pope and the Holy See, and his continual efforts to instruct the Catholic laity in sound doctrine in this most essential matter. In this volume he has given us a lecture on the supremacy, another on the Papal infallibility, a third on the temporal sovereignty, and a fourth on the Pontificate of Pius IX. At the end, the decrees or constitutions of the Vatican Council and several recent allocutions of the Holy Father are given in Latin and English; and the whole is concluded by a carefully and critically prepared chronological list of the Sovereign Pontiffs, in which we are glad to see the Avignonian and Pisan claimants of the tiara relegated to their proper place on one side, while the succession is continued through the Roman line, which is unquestionably the true one. The lecture on infallibility is especially marked by solid learning and ample citations from the fathers, proving conclusively that this article of the faith was explicitly held and taught from the beginning. The style is grave and serious, copious and flowing, and warmed with a spirit of fervent love to the souls
of men. It is the style, not of a mere essayist, but of a preacher. It is, therefore, far more pleasing and popular in its character than that of most books on the same topic. Every Catholic in the United States ought to read it, and we doubt if any book has been published on the Pope equally fitted for general circulation in England and Ireland. Neither is there any so well fitted to do good among non-Catholics. We hope no pains will be spared to give it a wide and universal circulation.
It is most important and necessary that all Catholics should be fully instructed in the sovereign supremacy and doctrinal infallibility of the Pope, and the strict obligation in conscience of supporting his temporal sovereignty.
Mr. Coddington has published this volume in a superior manner, with clear, open type, on very thick and white paper, and adorned it with an engraved portrait of the beloved and venerable Pius IX. Once more we wish success to this timely and valuable series of lectures, and thank the reverend author in the name of the whole Catholic public for his noble championship of the dearest and most sacred of all causes—that of the Vicar of Christ.
Antidote to “The Gates Ajar.” By J. S. W. Tenth thousand. New York: G. W. Carleton & Co. 1872.
Mr. Carleton appears to be convinced that “de gustibus non est disputandum” by a bookseller, but rather that provision is to be made for all tastes. On the back of this little pious pamphlet we find advertised The Debatable Land, by Robert Dale Owen; The Seventh Vial, containing, we conjecture, a strong dose, by Rev. John Cumming; Mother Goose with Music, by an ancient, anonymous author; At Last, a new novel, by Marian Harland, etc. The Antidote is a rather weak and quite
harmless dose, done up in pretty tinted paper. The writer naively asks, on p. 23: “Who would not like to fly away in the tail of a comet?”—a question which any little boy would answer in the affirmative, but cruelly dashes our hopes to the ground by telling us that “all this is mere conjecture.” Again, on p. 26, he gravely reasons thus: “As to families in heaven living in houses together, as if they were on earth, that is simply impossible. When children marry here, they leave their parents, and have homes of their own; their children do likewise, and so on ad infinitum. Those who would live together in heaven would be only husbands and wives and the unmarried children. And as to the married who are not all happily united here, are they to be tied together for ever whether they like each other or not?” The little pamphlet is concluded by two pieces of poetry, one of which is pretty good, the other one of those cantering hymns which are such favorites at the week-evening prayer-meeting:
“We sing of the realms of the blest,
That country so bright and so fair,
And oft are its glories confessed;
But what must it be to be there?”
The doctrine of Miss Phelps’s antagonist is more orthodox than hers, without doubt, so far as it goes, but it is presented in such a way as rather to provoke a smile than to convince or attract the mind of any one who is not already a pious Presbyterian. Our Presbyterian and other Evangelical friends contrive to make religion as sad and gloomy as a wet afternoon in the country. Even heaven itself has but small attractions for those who are not depressed in spirits, when described in the doleful strain which is supposed to be suitable to piety. Miss Phelps, as well as other members of the gifted and cultivated Stuart family, and many of similar character and education, revolted from the dismal system of Puritanism. She yearned after a brighter
and more beautiful religion, which has in it something else than the valley of the shadow of death. Her striving to realize this ideal produced Gates Ajar and other similar works, whose immense popularity proves both her own power as a writer and also a widely-felt sympathy with the sentiments of her own mind. It is the Catholic theology alone which presents the true and complete doctrine respecting the beatific vision, the glorified humanity of Our Lord, Our Lady, and the saints, the angelic hierarchy, and the relation between the visible and invisible worlds; together with that element of the poetic and the marvellous after which the mind, the imagination, and the heart crave with an insatiable longing. We are tempted to close the present exercise, after the manner of the little book before us, with a few verses from an old hymn, written by one of the persecuted Catholics of Lancashire, at the close of the sixteenth or the beginning of the seventeenth century. The whole hymn may be found in the Month for September and October:
“Hierusalem, my happie home,
When shall I come to thee?
When shall my sorrowes have an end?
Thy ioyes when shall I see?
“Thy walls are made of precious stones,
Thy bulwarks diamonds square,
Thy gates are of right orient pearle,
Exceedinge riche and rare.
“Thy turrettes and thy pinnacles
With carbuncles doe shine;
Thy verie streets are paved with gould
Surpassinge cleare and fine.
“Thy houses are of ivorie,
Thy windoes cristale cleare,
Thy tyles are made of beaten gould
O God, that I were there!
“Thy gardens and thy gallant walkes
Continually are greene;
There grow such sweet and pleasant flowers
As noewhere else are seene.
“Quyt through the streetes with silver sound
The flood of life doth flowe,
Upon whose bankes on every syde
The wood of lyfe doth grow.
“Hierusalem, my happie home!
Would God I were in thee!
Would God my woes were at an end,
Thy ioyes that I might see!”
The Prisoners of St. Lazare. Edited by Mrs. Pauline de Grandprè. Translated from the French by Mrs. E. M. McCarthy. New York: Appleton & Co.
In this volume we have a rambling, desultory description of the prison of St. Lazare in Paris, and its inmates. It is a prison for women guilty of every variety of crime, and they are even incarcerated here on suspicion. But the majority of its occupants are women who have fallen from virtue more or less criminally. Two great unsolved questions of the age force themselves upon the attentive reader of this volume, filled with the pitiful tale of woman’s sin and shame: What can be done to succor unfortunates who have been ensnared and drawn away from the paths of virtue, and have a desire to return to an honest life; and what are the legitimate and proper employments of women outside of the family?
We are not competent to answer thoroughly either of these questions, which for many years have exercised the politician as well as the philanthropist; we can only express our opinion. We have no such place in this country as St. Lazare, but we have the abandoned women and their needs. Ah! that word abandoned expresses the state of the public mind toward those who have thus fallen; but the Catholic Christian cannot suffer any soul for whom Christ died to be abandoned, and the Catholic Church answers the first of these questions by opening her arms to the penitent, and offering her the refuge of “Houses of the Good Shepherd,” established in most of our large cities. By the support and multiplication of this order, whose lifework is to receive and help these poor children of sin, is the most effectual way in which Catholic women can reach the class in whose interest this book was written. We do not believe that women discharged from a prison like St. Lazare
could be preserved from future danger in an institution like the one proposed in the appendix to this volume. No place but a strictly religious house, in our opinion, could be a house of moral convalescence to these poor creatures. There is one way in which American Catholic women can lessen the number of these miserable outcasts. Watch over your servants, know where they spend their evenings, take them by the hand and give them loving, maternal advice as to their company, and endeavor to bring them often to confession and communion. The providence of God has committed these young girls to your care, and who knows but their souls may be required of you, negligent mistresses, in that day when we must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ? With regard to the employments of women, should not women be allowed to do any honest business that they can do well? Many new openings have been made for her of late years in telegraphic and photographic offices and stores. But, after all, to touch the root of this matter, why should not woman be so trained that she could, in any emergency, have a resource and support herself? A great deal would be gained if children were brought up to feel that “it is working, and not having money, that makes people happy.” “It is a noteworthy fact,” says the author of The Prisoners of St. Lazare, “that three-quarters of the inmates are without knowledge of a trade or of any means of making a livelihood for themselves. The support of husband or father failing, then destitution followed, and then vice.”
Prophetic Imperialism; or, The Prophetic Entail of Imperial Power. By Joseph L. Lord, of the Boston Bar. New York: Hurd and Houghton. 1871.
Mr. Lord writes like a thorough gentleman, a point which we notice in this distinct and emphatic manner
because it is a somewhat rare phenomenon in literature of this class. He writes, also, like a well-trained and cultivated scholar and thinker. It is, therefore, a pleasant task to read what he has written, more pleasant from the fact that his essay is a short one, and his thoughts are briefly as well as lucidly and elegantly set forth. Moreover, although a Boston lawyer, Mr. Lord really reverences the Holy Scriptures and believes the prophets. His spirit is pious and fervent, though sober, and he is alike free from cant and from unbelieving flippancy. The peculiar theory of Mr. Lord regarding the fulfilment of what we may call the imperial prophecies is not contrary to orthodox doctrine, and is in fact held by him in common with some Catholic writers, although diverse from the one held by the generality of sound interpreters. So far as all the empires preceding that of Christ are concerned, he agrees with the common interpretation. In respect to this last, he holds to a personal descent and earthly empire of our Lord. This is an hypothesis which, in our eyes, has no probability whatever. It is not wonderful, however, that a person who does not see the earthly empire of Christ in the reign and triumph of his Vicar and the Roman Church, should be driven to look for a personal descent and reign of the Lord in the latter times. In this respect, Mr. Lord agrees with a number of eminent Protestant writers, who, being disgusted with the fruits of the Reformation, and not so happy as to see the glories of the Catholic Church, fly for consolation to this brilliant but, as we think, baseless hypothesis.
Mr. Lord differs from most American Protestants in the very disrespectful esteem in which he holds democracy. It is curious to observe the very enthusiastic and adulatory language in which a number of divines express their conviction of the truth of his theory, imperialistic
as it is from top to bottom. They withhold their names, however, from a motive of prudence. Mr. Lord’s arguments have not convinced us that his theory is correct, but they prove their author to be worthy of esteem.
East and West Poems. By Bret Harte. Boston: James R. Osgood & Company (late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood & Co.). 1871.
Many of those who have enjoyed Bret Harte’s fugitive pieces have felt a vague suspicion that the word poetry was scarcely adequate to express their character. The sketches from nature have been unquestionably graphic, and, in some cases, not devoid of real humor or pathos—all which has led to their being considered by many as evidences of genius capable by its touch of ennobling humble and insignificant subjects. The volumes, however, which have succeeded one another since Mr. Harte has left California, persuade us that he not only calls his rhymes poetry, but sincerely believes them to be such, and takes for granted that everybody who knows anything at all agrees perfectly with him. We fear that there has been a mistake somewhere. Either the public have been betrayed into an incautious endorsement of the author’s opinion of his own work, or the author has mistaken the character of the sensation which he has created.
He seems to be just as eager as ever in his efforts to astonish the world; and we know not how many more volumes of “poems” we may expect before the public and he come to an understanding. For our own part, the present is just one more than we are prepared to welcome. In spite of kindly dispositions, we are painfully impressed with the fact that the mistake we have alluded to lies with the author. We are also unpleasantly relieved from a doubt as to whether the
character of his doggerel is, in all cases, due to the subject, and forced to conclude that there is a congeniality between the writer and his themes which is the secret of his success. We wish him well, and none the less in desiring space wherein to administer to the present volume the castigation which it deserves. In so doing, we would not deny him a certain amount of genuine talent, such as is shown in certain places in the “Greyport Legend” (pp. 7-10), or the “Lines on a Pen of Thomas Starr King” (pp. 65,66), or “A Second Review of the Grand Army” (pp. 95-99); nor would we be disposed to carp at a certain slovenliness which mars the beauty of other serious poems, but which did not detract from their merit on the occasions for which they were written—as was the case with the “Address” (pp. 78-81), and the poem of the “Lost Galleon” (pp. 82-93)—the latter, if we mistake not, having been composed for a social reunion of the Alumni of the Pacific Coast. But nothing could induce us to excuse the reckless vulgarity displayed in such pieces as “A White Pine Ballad” (p. 155); “In the Mission Garden” (p. 21). There is also enough nonsense in such lines as the “California Madrigal” (p. 127), “A Moral Vindicator” (p. 165), et alibi passim, to make the deliberate addition of “Songs without Sense” (p. 168), unwarrantably superfluous.
The author is not sufficiently aware of the distinction between coarseness and originality, or else prefers notoriety to fame. We cannot consent to the admission of his book into respectable libraries or drawing-room bookstands, still less to a place in American literature. If he should ever recognize and prune his defects, and cultivate a little more respect for those for whom he writes, as well as love for the purity of the idiom in which he deals, we shall be happy to give him that praise which would be at present most unmerited and inopportune.
Sermons by the Fathers of the Congregation of St. Paul. Vol. VI. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1871.
For obvious reasons, we have taken occasion to speak of this volume without the knowledge of the responsible editor. The great pressure on our columns this month, which has compelled the omission of several valuable articles already in type, will not permit, however, more than a passing notice. We have always considered these annual volumes as models of wise, simple, and earnest instruction, and see no reason to change our opinion in the present instance. Indeed, there is, perhaps, increased reason, during these troublous times, to admire the bravery with which our Paulist Fathers meet the various questions demanding solution, and we therefore take pleasure in commending the work to the attention of all interested in homiletic literature. C.
To and From the Passion Play, in the Summer of 1871. By the Rev. G. H. Doane. Boston: Patrick Donahoe. 1872.
This elegant volume contains not only an accurate description of the Passion Play—a spectacle to which, of course, none but a Catholic can do justice—but also a great deal of interesting matter about a number of things and places that the author saw on his journeys to and fro. As regards Paris, we have a sketch of some of the deeds of the Commune, and, in particular, the murder of the late archbishop.
It is worthy of remark that, when Father Doane describes whether a place or an incident, he avoids that elaboration and artifice which pall upon the reader in many books of travel, and gives us his thoughts and impressions in an easy and happy style. We congratulate him on his literary efforts; and thank him cordially for affording us so much valuable information in so pleasant a manner.
The “Catholic Publication Society” has in press, and will publish immediately, The Pastoral Address of the Archbishops and Bishops of Ireland on the School Question. It will be got out in a 12mo pamphlet, and will be sold for $3 per 100 copies.
The “Catholic Publication Society” will also publish, early in January, The Liquefaction of the Blood of St. Januarius; Lentent Sermons, from the Italian of Rev. Paul Segneri, S. J.; and Sermons on Ecclesiastical Subjects, Vol. II., by Archbishop Manning.
BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS RECEIVED.
From Charles Scribner & Co., New York: The Holy Bible according to the Authorized Version (A.D. 1611), with an explanatory and critical commentary, and revision of the Translation, by Bishops and other Clergy of the Anglican Church. Edited by F. C. Cook, M.A., Canon of Exeter. Vol. I., Part I. Genesis-Exodus. 8vo, pp. xii.,, 928.
From Hurd & Houghton, New York: The Last Knight: A Romance-Garland, from the German of Anastasius Grün. Translated with Notes by John O. Sargent. 8vo, pp. vi., 200.—The Church Idea: An Essay toward Unity. By Wm. R. Huntington, Rector of All Saints’, Worcester. 12mo, pp. 235.
From Roberts Brothers, Boston: Songs of the Sierras. By Joaquin Miller. 12mo, pp. 299.
From Carlton & Lanahan, New York: The Mission of the Spirit; or, The Office and Work of the Comforter in Human Redemption. By Rev. L. R. Dunn. 12mo, pp. 303.
From J. B. Lippincott, Philadelphia: The Resurrection of the Redeemed; and Hades. By James Boggs. 12mo, pp. 145, 69.
From Holt & Williams, New York: Art in Greece. By H. Taine. Translated by John Durand. 12mo, pp. 188.
From Patrick Donahoe, Boston: The Four Great Evils of the Day. By Henry Edward, Archbishop of Westminster. 18mo. pp. 207.—Review of a “Treatise on Infant Baptism” by Thos. H. Pritchard, D.D. Part I. By Rev. J. V. McNamara, Pastor of St. John’s Roman Catholic Church, Raleigh, N.C. Paper, pp. 46.
From Robert Clarke & Co., Cincinnati: Who is the Pope? And Who is Pius IX. among the Popes? By F. X. Weninger, D.D., S.J. Paper, pp. 15.
From The Free Press Association, New York: Appeal to the People of the State of New York, adopted by the Executive Committee of Citizens and Taxpayers for the Financial Reform of the City and County of New York, etc. Paper, pp. 16.
From D. Appleton & Co., New York: Philosophy of Style: An Essay. By Herbert Spencer, author of “First Principles of Philosophy,” etc. Pp. 55.
International Congress on the Prevention and Repression of Crime, including Penal and Reformatory Treatment. By E. C. Wines, LL.D., Commissioner of the United States. Paper, pp. 28.