ON CALVARY.
SUGGESTED BY A PAINTING BY J. L. GÉRÔME.
In the strong sunshine lies Jerusalem,
Undarkened yet by shadow of the doom
That hideth in the terror-freighted gloom
Lying afar along the low hills’ hem.
Twinkle the silver-leavèd olive-trees,
Resting in garish light ’neath heaven’s cloudy seas.
From Calvary’s Mount descends the winding train;
Glitter the Roman eagles in the sun,
Leading the soldiers and the people on
To tread the city’s dolorous streets again,
Whose blood-tracked stones would cry, had they but breath,
“Woe! woe! Jerusalem, for this day’s deed of wrath.”
Almost unheeding passes on the crowd,
Save, here and there, turned from the populace,
Rests look of doubting or malignant face
On That we see not in death’s anguish bowed.
Wild cries of hate mount up and break the still
And ominous glare that broodeth dumbly o’er the hill.
Our sad hearts hear the very footsteps fall,
The horse-hoofs striking hard against the stones,
And distant echoes of heart-broken moans—
Jerusalem’s daughters mourning so the thrall
Of Him, their fairest one, to death betrayed,
The hands that blessed their little ones so sore arrayed.
Where is the dying King the cross uplifts?
We cannot see him, and our upraised eyes
Meet but the awful gloom in far-off skies,
The lurid moon dull gazing through the rifts
Of gathering darkness; here the waiting glare
Of cruel sunshine making all the city fair.
Fain would we kneel with Magdalen and weep,
Clasp wounded feet in passionate embrace,
Win with the loved disciple word of grace,
Vigil with God’s woe-stricken Mother keep:
We cannot find Him, and blaspheming cries
From that retreating train still in fierce chorus rise.
Is He not here? Lo! sadly looking down,
Just at our feet a shadow strange we trace
Falling across the sunlit grassy place—
The likeness of three crosses darkly thrown,
And His, the centre one, e’en so most fair
Through semblance of a form divine it dim doth bear.
Here, ’gainst the sunshine traced, lie those bent knees
That knew the sorrow of Gethsemani
As trembled they ’neath its dread mystery;
Here droops the thorn-crowned head in silent peace,
And here, in the unswerving shadow lined,
Are stretched the arms that bear the ransom of mankind.
So rests unseen the presence of the Lord
Whose shadow seems as blessèd aureole,
A holy writing on a sacred scroll,
Rich oil from consecrated vessel poured—
All merit his, the Infinite Son of God,
Whose death so lightly falls on earth’s poor, soulless sod.
Within the painted shadow is no life,
Save in the grassy sward whereon it falls.
Beyond arise the city’s firm-built walls.
With spring’s swift-coursing sap the boughs are rife
Of the gnarled olives with their silver leaves
Shining against the dusky veil the storm-wind weaves.
We see the wild-faced moon in skies far-off,
The bare and weary light of undimmed sun,
And Caesar’s glittering eagles leading on
The thoughtless people, who, with jeer and scoff,
An abject God in proud derision scorn,
Alike from barren shade and living presence turn.
O weary thought! hath earth lost sight of Him?
And do her children with dulled vision grope,
With fain-believing heart and doubting hope,
His cross a parable with meaning dim?
A shadow resting in the feeble clasp
Of them that fear the bitterness of truth to grasp?
Is all that sorrow of the Son of Man
A dreary darkness shutting out the light?
Poor human pain dwarfing eternal might?
An o’ergrown bramble with its prickly span
Piercing the delicate leaves of earth-born flowers,
And blighting with harsh touch kind nature’s generous powers?
Alas! that men that Infinite Love should fear,
Should dread its glory and its shade despise,
Banish its semblance from imploring eyes,
Give men but empty shadow to revere—
Blind beggars leaving them unto whose cry
None answereth when He of Nazareth goes by.
Of this sad modern world of ours to-day
The artist’s picture seemeth counterpart,
When men erase old lessons from the heart,
Striving who farthest from the cross may stray—
Swift, swift descending ’neath the eagles’ shine,
Some longing face still turned to meet the gaze divine.
In her long-ordered way the earth moves on,
The moon doth change with steady law her face,
Swift-growing grass still hides our footsteps’ trace,
And dew falls softly when the day is done:
All nature’s tale seems old, but one thing strange—
The Christ of God a shade the westering sun shall change!
Nay, fear not! Stand to-day as e’er of old
The faithful Maries, who brave vigil keep,
The loved disciple with a love as deep
As in old days lay shrined in heart of gold;
And rests God’s patience till from shadowed sod
The piercing cry break forth, “This was the Son of God.”
A BISHOP’S LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE IN THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE.[[9]]
The diocese of Paderborn is one of the largest in Germany. Its bishop, Dr. Conrad Martin, has just published a little work[[10]] which may vie with Silvio Pellico’s Le mie Prigioni, being an account of a three years’ banishment from his see. It is not “poetry and truth,” remarks the writer of this pamphlet in his preface, “but only the truth which is written down in these pages.”[[11]] And true to his statement, the bishop tells us in dispassionate language of his captivity, of its joys and sorrows, of the friends who were so true to him in his adversity, of the whole Catholic Church, who shared his banishment in a measure, and of that most august prisoner whose sympathy is so freely given to his suffering brethren, and whose captivity is in itself, perhaps, a pledge that they too must taste of his own chalice.
With the presentiment of future events, or rather of the storm which was about to break over their pastor on account of the Kulturkampf, the people of Paderborn came in large numbers in the spring of 1874 to assure him of their love and devotion. The demonstration began on the 25th of March, when the train deposited five thousand pilgrims in the ancient city of Paderborn. They repaired to the bishop’s house, and terminated the meeting by simultaneously falling on their knees to recite aloud the Apostles’ Creed. These deputations lasted for two months, and on one occasion the number of deputies amounted to fifteen thousand. It is not an insignificant fact to see how well and bravely the flock stood by the pastor in his hour of need. But at last the cloud burst. Repeated infringements of the May Laws were laid to the bishop’s charge; and the fine in proportion rose to a sum altogether beyond his means, and a corresponding term of imprisonment was the only alternative. Here an unknown, and therefore doubly generous, benefactor interposed, and paid the money required without the bishop’s knowledge. But, to use his own simple language, Dr. Martin, “from higher considerations, thought he could not accept the benefit,” and protested against it,[[12]] whereas the local authority said that he could. At last an answer came from Berlin deciding that he should submit himself to imprisonment. As the bishop would not consent to that, force was used, and on the 4th of August, 1874, he was taken from his house through a dense crowd of sympathizers to his prison, where he was witness of a scene “not to be described by words.” Bouquets of flowers fell at his feet from all sides, and the steps leading up to the abode of his sorrow were thick with them. Two works had been near his heart as a pastor—the establishment of ecclesiastical institutions for the fitting education of the clergy, and the labor of love which is expressed by the perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. This touching devotion was therefore one of the first-fruits of his own workings, and it has become widely known through the world. But never before had the bishop of Paderborn shared the prison common to malefactors of every degree. The prisoner was then conducted to his two cells. One he describes as “certainly not roomy, but still not wholly unpleasant”;[[13]] the second was to serve merely as a bed-room. Loneliness is the prisoner’s trial, and when first the bishop heard the lock and key tell him of his utter solitude, sad thoughts pressed themselves upon him. Many years before he had paid a pastoral visit to this same prison, and his own encouraging words spoken then came home to him now. “Could you only have imagined then,” he said to himself, “that you yourself should be confined in the same dungeon, and come to need the recommendation to resignation and patience which you gave to those prisoners? Oh! what a change, what a comparison then and now—then, when there was no Kulturkampf, but an undisturbed and joyous peace. O tempora, o mores!”[[14]] But the angel of consolation was at hand. The thought of that divine Providence whose care of us is so beautifully specified in Holy Scripture brought peace. “Every hair of our head is numbered.” The bishop determined upon active endurance, and during those first few hours of his imprisonment planned for himself an order of duties for the coming solitary days. That night the breaking of a pane of glass in his bed-room window, caused by the hurling of a stone from an unknown hand outside, was a little alarming, and, in spite of inquiries on the subject, it could not be discovered whether the missile was directed by a friend in a serenading spirit, or by a foe who might have taken umbrage at the demonstrations of intense affection on the part of the people of Paderborn.
For the rest the bishop, according to his own account, had small cause for complaint during his confinement at Paderborn.[[15]] His food was provided and sent from his house. He was allowed to read and write when and what he liked. Strict supervision was, however, exercised on his correspondence and on the visits which he received. These were permitted in the presence of a third person only, and letters might be read and sent under the same condition. The Holy Sacrifice, which was his daily refreshment, supplied many deficiencies in that lonely heart. But the “body of death” had still to suffer much from privation of air and exercise. It is true that once a day the prison bolt was withdrawn for an exercise of two hours in the court-yard. This had to be taken in common with the other prisoners, in a very limited space, so that the bishop often preferred to sit by an open window in his room, there to enjoy what air he could get.
On the 17th of August, the eighteenth anniversary of his episcopal consecration, the widowed cathedral of Paderborn was filled with an assembly of the bishop’s faithful children, who celebrated the occasion by heartfelt prayers for him to God. Flags adorned the houses of the Catholic inhabitants. But the pastor’s heart was further gladdened by the intelligence that from the very first day of his captivity a certain number of the faithful gathered every evening in the Gaukirche to offer up the rosary for their oppressed church. And now, after the lapse of three years, the same practice is kept up, and who would be so presumptuous as to say that the divine Head of the whole body will not allow pleading so constant finally to bring about the desired end? It reminds us of that supplication of the infant church to remove Peter’s chains, or of a case which was brought before our personal observation in Germany.[[16]] Our Lord’s presence in the Holy Eucharist had been banished from his sanctuary through the working of the May Laws, but the villagers succeeded each other during the day in unremitting prayer before the altar where he once dwelt.
Upon the bishop’s six weeks of confinement followed eighteen of custody. The only distinguishable difference between the two consisted in the non-bolting of the prison-door from the exterior. On the outset he was saddened by the command to surrender his office as bishop. The summons came to him through the Oberpräsident von Kühlwetter, whose attitude to Dr. Martin from the beginning of the Kulturkampf had been most hostile. One act in particular of the bishop’s seems to have roused the enmity of the non-Catholic party, but the principle of authority must fall to the ground where demands wholly contrary to his conscience are urged upon a spiritual ruler. The act in question had been a certain pastoral letter in the affair of the Old Catholics. The bishop replied immediately that “devotion to the Catholic Church had been his first love, and that it would be his last.” Ten days of respite were allowed for the reconsideration of the question, under the threat of ultimate expulsion from his dignity. But, thanks to an energetic nature and the quiet peace which is the fruit of a brave determination, it had small influence over the bishop. He labored to finish his work on the Christian Life, and time, which is so often the greatest trial of the prisoner, passed rapidly away. His feast-day was the next small event to break the monotony of his life. From his window he could see the festive appearance of some neighboring houses, and from far and wide came wishes of sympathy and affection. The telegraphic messages and letters of congratulation numbered over eight hundred on this day, and proved a provision of encouragement for several succeeding days. They were the flowers of persecution, and as such most dear to the bishop’s Catholic spirit.
Oppression does indeed often bring the work of the Lord to a timely and palpable development, and we may echo the prisoner’s words: “Would years of hard work have given evidence of so close a union as well as this short and fleeting sorrow?”[[17]] At the same time two other addresses reached him which were a source of particular joy: the one from a good number of Belgian noblemen, who thereby drew forth a remonstrance on the part of Prince Bismarck, the other from two imprisoned bishops of the far west who were themselves confessors of the faith, and protesting by their personal suffering against the evil spirit of Freemasonry. They were the bishops of Para and Pernambuco, who, profiting by the journey of a priest to Europe, took occasion to express their love and sympathy to the fellow-sufferer in Germany who was bearing the self-same testimony to Catholic truth as they themselves. Comfort, too, came from the Holy Father, who sent first a gold medal, and then, on the feast of St. Conrad, a telegraphic message of greeting and good wishes. But the price of these favors was suffering and greater suffering. The threat on the part of the secular power to depose the bishop was now carried out. Many and grievous had been his shortcomings, according to the standard established by the May Laws, and amongst the accusations brought against him was the erroneous charge that he alone amongst the German bishops had worked in favor of the Papal Infallibility at the Vatican Council. Extensive quotations from his pastoral letters were given in the indictment, whilst the words he had addressed on various occasions to his faithful children, their constant devotion to him, the legal measures recently carried out, and the cause now pending were alleged as the ground why he could not continue to exercise his office. He was invited to appear on the 5th of January, 1875, to answer these charges, after which day, and having simply refused to accept the act of deposition, it was nailed to his door inside. There it remained quietly hanging, says the bishop with dry German humor, “without my casting one single glance upon its contents.”[[18]] The feast of Christmas, which occurred in the midst of these cares, found him not altogether joyless. The prison chapel bore for him a resemblance to the lonely grotto of Bethlehem.
The bishop fancied that after enduring his twenty-four weeks of imprisonment he might hope for fresh air and liberty. That hopefulness was rather surprising. Instead of the accomplishment of this expectation, his house was stripped of its furniture (which was afterwards sold), and he himself was conveyed on very short notice to the fortress of Wesel, it being explicitly stated that this penalty was the consequence of the before-mentioned pastoral regarding the Old Catholics. The same sympathizing crowd met him on his way to the station, and his private secretary accompanied him by choice to the scene of his new imprisonment. It was on the 20th of January, 1875, that the bishop entered on the two months’ penalty at Wesel, and there he seems on the whole to have been better off than at Paderborn. He could walk freely on the ramparts, and enjoy to a certain extent social intercourse with the other prisoners, who were in most cases priests of his own diocese. Three cells were assigned to him for his use; the third was an act of thoughtfulness on the part of the commandant, who had reserved it for the bishop’s daily Mass. If, indeed, it had not been for the Holy Sacrifice—for every day, Dr. Martin remarks, “holy” Masses were said up till ten o’clock by the imprisoned priests[[19]]—the fortress would have borne a resemblance to the middle state where souls are detained for a time on account of their sins. The supervision exercised was slight, beyond the visitation of all the cells twice every day. Once when the bishop was taking exercise on the ramparts which overlooked the Rhine—in itself like the face of an old friend to Dr. Martin—some of the faithful who descried him in the distance knelt for his blessing. The act, the bishop knew not how, was communicated to the commandant, who forbade him in writing to repeat it. At Wesel correspondence was free, and even newspapers of all kinds were permitted. Feelers were sent out by the government to test the bishop’s sentiments with regard to his civil deposition, but his consent could never be obtained. And he was cheered and supported by an address which was brought to him towards the middle of March by a nobleman on the part of his diocese. It contained these words: “It is true that your lordship as bishop has been deposed by the Royal Court of Justice in Berlin, but you are, and will remain, our bishop, and we will be faithful to you until death.”[[20]] Two thick volumes bore the signatures to this statement, and they numbered ninety-six thousand.
After his life in the fortress the bishop was refreshed by a little breathing-time in a friendly house in Wesel itself. His host had just married and taken his bride to Rome. On their return they brought to the exiled pastor a new token of sympathy from the Holy Father in the shape of another gold medal. The days passed pleasantly for the bishop, as far as that was possible out of his diocese, until he made the discovery that he had not yet paid the entire penalty of the famous pastoral. He was sentenced to another month’s imprisonment in the fortress. “I had always thought,” he writes, “that for one offence it sufficed to be punished once. But the powers of the state said no.”[[21]] Summer had come, and a return to the fortress in that season was no small penance. The sun’s penetrating rays made the prisoner’s little cells almost intolerable, and the bishop’s health began visibly to decline. He lost his appetite and his sleep, and the only remedy, according to the doctor, to produce return of vital power would have been change of air and a course of sea-baths. But for this desired end he learned from the mayor of Wesel that it would be necessary to undergo an examination from the district doctor, and to procure a written statement that such treatment was necessary. Moreover, it was enjoined that the place chosen for the cure should be at least twenty miles distant from the diocese of Paderborn. A Protestant district doctor was accordingly consulted, and his opinion exactly corresponded with the bishop’s own account of his state, whereupon Dr. Martin gave himself up to the pleasant hope of soon being able to leave Wesel. “I wished for haste the more,” he says, “as my state became worse from day to day. The continual agitation in which I was kept helped to aggravate things. For day after day I received tidings of new ruins which the unhappy Kulturkampf worked in my poor diocese.”[[22]] In the autumn of 1873—that is, after the promulgation of the May Laws—the bishop had given faculties to four newly-ordained priests. This is the most natural and harmless action of a bishop, for what spiritual act can take place without that exercise of his jurisdiction? Pronouncing a priest competent for the care of souls is analogous to the action in law of giving a brief to a barrister. What if the church should require a barrister to present himself to the bishop for approbation before he received such a brief? But the May Laws completely confuse spiritual and temporal things. The bishop was accused of breaking article fifteen of those regulations, which runs that “spiritual rulers are bound to present such candidates as are about to receive a spiritual office to the Oberpräsident, whilst at the same time the office is specified.” If the barrister obtain briefs after he has been called, the bishop does not meddle with him; but because the priests in question had exercised their faculties Berlin thought well to condemn the bishop to a further imprisonment of six months.
But now a new phase began in the life of Dr. Martin. Having “waited and waited” for the permission to follow out the cure which a disimpassioned authority had pronounced absolutely necessary, he resolved to act in spite of the law, and to fly from Wesel. He considered this course not only allowable, but even obligatory, seeing two principal reasons. His health was seriously endangered, if he could not have the required treatment, and that health belonged not to himself but to his diocese. Furthermore, in Wesel his movements were so closely watched that one single act of the pastoral office might give the government a plea for still more rigorous measures. Therefore on the 3d of August he wrote an official letter stating his intended departure from Wesel on the morrow; and so, as the clock struck the hour of midnight, he was quietly crossing the bridge over the Rhine, and on the following day, the 5th of August, he was received at the Castle of Neuburg by the family of Ausemburg. How full his heart was of his appointed work we may gather from the attempt to return to Paderborn. At Aix-la-Chapelle two railway authorities recognized him, and he was counselled by a valued friend to go back to Holland in “God’s name!” The document which reached him a few days later proved the soundness of the advice. It was from the Minister of the Interior at Berlin, announcing to him the fact that he was from henceforth an outlaw in the eyes of his country. The May Laws further exhausted their bitterness against him by the warrant which was issued from the district court in Paderborn for another imprisonment of six months. But it seems that these punishments did not affect the bishop’s peace of mind. Amidst tokens of universal love and devotion he was spending his time chiefly with the Ausemburg family, occupying his leisure with writing on religious subjects, amongst which one was Devotion to the Sacred Heart. After his fruitless attempt to join his bereaved flock he had directed his efforts in the first place towards his own physical restoration. After a three weeks’ cure in Kattwyk, which worked a wonderful change for the better in his state, he visited the bishops of Haarlem and Roermond, and rejoiced his spirit by witnessing some of the fruits of the new and vigorous Catholic life which has been promoted in Holland by the re-establishment of the hierarchy. Whilst Dr. Martin was with the bishop of Haarlem he received intelligence of the dreadful fire which the “dear Paderstadt” had sustained.
These peaceful days, however, were not of long duration. They were shortened by one of the bitterest experiences which a pastor can be called upon to endure—that is, an unfaithful friend. A priest of his diocese (the only one besides Mönnikes, he remarks) had gone over to the enemies of the church, and vainly had the bishop tried the power of loving exhortation. He was obliged at last to use that spiritual weapon which has ever been obnoxious to a world impatient of restraint, and to pronounce excommunication, fully conscious of the possible consequences of the step, and therefore prepared to accept them. The government of Holland was too weak to protect an exile. It gave way under more powerful pressure, and the bishop was ordered to leave.
“I prayed to God for light,” he says. “I asked St. Joseph (it was in March, 1876) to lead me where I should go.”[[23]] His steps were directed to Catholic Belgium; but whatever the character of the population may be, that of the policy of its government is rightly defined by the bishop as the effort to keep out of the way of Prince Bismarck’s complications, which effort is the ne plus ultra of political wisdom. He was not, therefore, much astonished when he received orders to leave the Belgian frontier.
A homeless, houseless exile, the bishop once more wandered forth in strict incognito, we are not told where, but the place must have been wisely chosen, for there he remained in great retirement from April, 1876, till the following April. Then it was that Rome, the home of all Catholic hearts, once more awoke his desires; but, owing to the well-known sentiments of the Italian government, he was aware that the journey had its dangers for a bishop under the ban of the Kulturkampf. He set out, nevertheless, and on his journey through France experienced numberless consolations and the warmest reception from the French bishops. Persecution imprints on the heart the device, Cor unum et anima una.
On the 24th of May, 1877, the feast of St. Monica, he arrived in Rome for the fifth time. Men are trying to make even the Eternal City new, and as the bishop walked through the familiar streets he felt that the voice might indeed be the voice of Jacob, whilst the hands were the hands of Esau. The Colosseum, consecrated by remembrances so heart-stirring, now appeared to him as a dearly-loved face whence the spirit had fled. It is the nature of Rome to be the most conservative of cities, and never are natural laws overturned with comfort. These were the German bishop’s thoughts as again he compared what had been to what was, the more so as he found the improvement wholly exterior and material, and, along with finer streets in course of erection, was obliged to notice a lowering of moral tone in their inhabitants. Even the faces of the men he met seemed to have altered; for, he says, they are mostly not Romans, but a kind of heterogeneous mob gathered from all quarters of the globe.
When Pius VII. returned to Rome after the persecution which had threatened to annihilate his power, he invited his enemy’s family to partake of hospitality in that city, as the land of great misfortunes; but now the Holy Father, his successor, could offer nothing but an affectionate greeting to a bishop who had borne so noble a witness to the truth. The shadow of Pius IX.’s captivity must fall upon all his children. An exiled bishop sought refuge in Rome as the home of his father, and Rome could not give him what he sought. By the advice of several cardinals Dr. Martin changed his residence and went out only in secular dress, but not before he had been denounced by unfriendly papers as one who was under arrest. On the 24th of May, in consequence of continued persecution from the press, and in honest fear of more serious ill-treatment, strengthened by the loving farewell and the apostolical blessing of the Holy Father for himself and his diocese, the bishop of Paderborn set out for an unknown place of exile, happy at least in his resemblance to One who, coming unto his own, was not received by them.
The early church wrote the acts of her martyrs, in order that the remembrance of their deeds should never perish, and the church of the nineteenth century may be allowed to record the struggle of her confessors not only for a perpetual memorial of them, but also that others who are not in the fight may realize at once the presence of the battle-field and the nature of the warfare. We have seen that it exists; its nature cannot be better defined than by the words of him whose confessorship we are recording:
“The Papacy is in fact the one and only point round which the Kulturkampf is raging, and I am convinced that if the ‘deposed’ and banished bishops were to break off their connection with the Papacy to-day, to-morrow they would be re-established in all their honors and privileges.... On the 3d of August last it was three years since I parted from my beloved flock. After God that flock is daily my first and last thought. My prayers, my anxieties, my studies, and my occupations of whatever nature belong to it. I will be true to it till death, and I hope by God’s grace that it will be true to me. Hours of temptation come upon me sometimes, it is true—hours when the painful doubt suggests itself whether I shall ever return to it. But I take courage to myself again through a trusting look up to God. He has counted every hair of our heads, and, if my return is in accordance with his providence, no Kulturkampf will have power to prevent it. But should it be his good pleasure that I close my eyes to this world separated from my flock, I say with most humble resignation: May His will be done!
“But even supposing that all we ‘deposed’ and exiled bishops should die in banishment, the church, and the church in our German Fatherland, will finally conquer. He to whom all power in heaven and on earth is given is her protector; and, let her enemies be as numerous and powerful as it is possible to be, an hour will come when of them also it will be said: ‘They who sought after her life are dead.’”[[24]]