The Catholic World, Vol. 27, April 1878 to September 1878

by Various

ROSARY STANZAS.

PROLOGUE.

Mulier amicta sole, et luna sub pedibus ejus, et in capite ejus corona stellarum duodecim.—Apoc. xii. 1.

Cloudless her early dawn, more pure, more bright

Than the blue sapphire of the eastern sky

Above her head. To the prophetic eye

All the long future lay in folds of light.

Her noontide sun thick darkness veiled from sight,

Prelude of rushing storms that moan and sigh

Among the forest-leaves, then fiercely fly

In wrath and ruin, burying all in night—

To die in silence. See! the light returns,

A gathering splendor in its peaceful ray,

And all the western heaven at sunset burns

And kindles to a golden after-glow,

Bidding the tender hearts that love her know

The fuller glory of her perfect day.

JOYFUL MYSTERIES.

I.

Luke i. 38.

And does the crownèd one ever look back

On her long sojourn in the vale of tears?

Whate’er of earth her simple home might lack,

Her blissful Fiat filled those far-off years,

Doubling their joys and calming all their fears.

Her faithfulness to grace divine how great!

In the early time as when the goal she nears,

As the Lord’s handmaid, or in queenly state,

Content on his command expectantly to wait.

II.

Luke i. 43.

Bride of the Holy One! of all his grace,

At the beginning, full! God’s Mother blest!

Hope of the world, the glory of her race!

When Be it done was said, awhile to rest

Within her quiet home were it not best?

She her aged kinswoman a kindness owes;

Nor daunted by the desolate mountain-crest,

To sanctify the unborn infant goes:

Better to love and serve than holiest repose.

III.

Luke ii. 16.

Long ago full of grace, what is she now?

Her time has come, her God upon her knee—

Reward how rich for her all-perfect vow!

Fountain of grace unlimited to be;

Every heart-pulse an act of worship free

To Him who visited his world forlorn.

Mother of his divinest infancy,

Bid our dull souls be as the Newly-Born,

Living henceforth his life who came that Christmas morn.

IV.

Hebr. x. 7.

With lowly willingness and simple awe

The sinless Mother and her sinless Child

Offered themselves at bidding of the law:

She to be purified, the Undefiled!

While he on his redemption-offering smiled.

Obedience! never did thy secret power

Brood calmer o’er a world of passions wild

Than to God’s temple, in that silent hour,

When Son and Mother came, wearing thy lowly flower.

V.

Luke ii. 48.

Three days and nights the Mother for her Son

In sorrow sought and self-upbraidings meek;

The joy of finding him her patience won:

She sought, and he was found. But for the weak,

The wandering, his patient love must seek

’Mong thorny by-ways of the world to find.

Deign to the King for them a word to speak,

Pray something for them of thy constant mind,

For ever to his Heart all wayward souls to bind.

RELATIONS OF JUDAISM TO CHRISTIANITY.
I.

The Catholic Church, founded by Christ to be the depositary, the guardian, and the interpreter of his word, was from all eternity in the mind of God, not in the same manner as the other things that were made by him, and which constitute the visible universe, but as a creation apart, far superior to the world that we see, the completion of the designs of love which he entertained for men, and the reason of the existence of everything else inferior to it. It is the sublime theology of St. Paul: “All things are yours,” he writes to the Corinthians—“the world, life, death, things present and things to come. And you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” From this it is easy to see the rank which the church holds in the divine plan. Christ stands first in the scale; he is the link, the Supreme Pontiff by whom all creatures are united with God; the church, his spouse, is for him and forms one with him, and has been ordained for the good of the elect and the sanctification of souls; she is the mother of the living. As Christ is first in the intention of God, the church, which is so intimately connected with him, is conceived along with him in the Divine mind, and has in it the precedence over all other things. Thus she can apply to herself the words of the inspired writer: “The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his ways. I was set up from eternity, and of old before the earth was made. When he established the sky above, and poised the fountains of waters; when he compassed the sea with its bounds, and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their limits, I was with him forming all things.”

Such being the case, it is not astonishing to see the whole drama of human history turned towards a central figure, Christ and his church, which are the grand objects contemplated by God in the universe. Nations rise and fall, empires are founded which are succeeded by other empires, each having a special mission, that of preparing the way for the kingdom of God; and when that mission is accomplished they disappear from the scene. The barriers set up to divide nationalities are forcibly broken down; conquest, commerce, the sciences and arts form a link between them; languages are modified, ideas are interchanged, intellectual systems are brought in contact; efforts are made sometimes in the right, sometimes in the wrong, direction; men grope in the dark, but some ray of light, however faint it may have been, is still there to urge them in their researches after truth; views are conflicting, but their very conflict paves the way to a broader spirit and more universal conceptions. When we glance at the state of the human mind before the coming of Christ, it seems that all is confusion and a perfect chaos from which there is no possible issue; but an attentive observer will easily discern, even when obscurity is most intense, the Spirit of God, as of old, brooding over the vast abyss and ordering all things so as to make light finally shine out of darkness.

The providential action of God manifested in the gradual preparation of the world for the acceptance of Christianity has always been considered one of the most striking proofs of its supernatural character, and modern rationalism has completely failed in its attempt to destroy it. To confine ourselves to the theories invented for that purpose, and bearing on the subject which we have undertaken to treat in the present article, the relation of Judaism to Christianity, they may be briefly summed up as follows: they peremptorily deny all supernatural agency in the march of events recorded in the sacred writings; they equally deny the divine mission of Jesus Christ; the apostles were, it is affirmed, men of their age, and did not escape the influence of popular opinions, which they knew how to use for their own ends; as to Christian dogmas, they followed in their formation the law of progressive development and growth; Christianity is nothing else but an evolution of Judaism or its various sects by a natural process and under the pressure of circumstances and prevailing ideas. Now, every page of the Jewish history contains a refutation of these doctrines. There we see a people especially chosen by God, among all others, to be the authentic and accredited witness of the truth among the nations; to keep alive in the world the belief in one true God and the hope of a future Redeemer already promised to our first parents after the fall; to be the depositary of that promise and the organ of its promulgation. Judaism, therefore, is related to Christianity, not as the seed to the plant, but as the well-prepared soil to the harvest; as the figure to the reality, as the prophecy to its accomplishment; as the harbinger to the King whose coming he announces to the populations that are to receive him. It is, as Isaias expresses it, “the voice of one crying in the desert: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the wilderness the paths of our God” (Isaias xl. 3).

From the early dawn of their history the destiny of the Hebrews is clearly defined. They are a nation set apart to be a living protest against the prevailing idolatry of the times. From the vocation of Abraham to the promulgation of the law on Mount Sinai, and throughout the succeeding periods of their existence, the fundamental dogma of their religion is monotheism: “I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt not have strange gods in my sight. Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth. Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them.” Another article of their creed equally pre-eminent as their belief in one God is their expectation of One who was to be sent for the restoration of mankind. To Abraham, the progenitor of that race, it was revealed that “his posterity should be as the stars for multitude, and that from them a blessing should go forth to all other nations.” Later God had said to Isaac: “I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and I will give to thy posterity all these countries (that is, the land of Chanaan), and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” Jacob had heard a voice from heaven, saying: “I am the most mighty God of thy father: fear not, go down into Egypt, for I will make a great nation of thee there. I will go down with thee thither, and will bring thee back again from thence”; and when the aged patriarch is on the point of death, God bids him fix his eyes upon the lion of Juda, and shows him all the nations blessed in a prince who is to come out from his lineage. Moses, raised by the Almighty to deliver the numerous posterity of Jacob from the bondage of Egypt, had led to the threshold of the promised land that nation which God had chosen to give birth to the Redeemer, and to maintain upon earth faithful worshippers of his name. He also was divinely apprised that a prophet would rise from his nation and from among his brethren whose voice all should hear. Hence it is that the Old Testament religion was prophetic in its whole nature. “The guides of the Hebrew people,” says Dr. Fisher,[^[75]] “were ever pointing to the future. There, and not in the past, lay the golden age. The Jew might revert with pride to the victories of David and the splendor of Solomon, but these vanished glories only served to remind him of the lofty destiny in store for his nation, and to inspire his imagination to picture the day when the ideal of the kingdom should be realized and the whole earth be submissive to the monarch of Sion. The hopes of all patriotic Jews centred upon a personage who was to appear upon the earth and take in his hands universal dominion.” It is a most interesting study to follow the Hebrew prophets in delineating so many centuries in advance the history of the Messias, and the principal features of that kingdom which is to embrace the earth under its sway. The time and place of his birth, the circumstances by which it is accompanied, his character, life, sufferings, and humiliations, his death and final triumph—all is described with astonishing precision. They openly speak of the object of the kingdom he is to establish, which is the regeneration of man, of his mind as well as of his heart, the destruction of idol worship, the adoration of the true God, and the reign of holiness; and this at a time when all was God except God himself, when Greece deified nature and Egypt changed gods into beasts, whilst Babylon, more corrupt, fabricated impure monsters which they adored, and Gaul, more ignorant, saw the Deity on the summits of mountains and in the depths of forests. It was in this age of darkness that Isaias sang the glory of the new Jerusalem, the church like to a mountain on which will be broken the chain of iniquity that bound all nations and the web that had been woven around them. The universal diffusion of the Messianic kingdom is also foretold by the prophets. There is nothing more clearly expressed in the prophecies and so much insisted upon as this: that the new alliance is not to be local and limited to one nation, but that it will be extended to all nations. We have already alluded to the prophecy of Abraham and to that of Jacob. Later David proclaims all nations of the earth to be the inheritance of Christ. Isaias contemplates from afar a new sign, the standard of the cross raised before the eyes of all nations; he sees them bringing their children in their arms—that is, those barbarian tribes that come to prostrate themselves at the foot of the cross and present their sons to the baptism of the church; he announces the conversion of the kings of the earth and their submission to the spouse of Christ; he follows the apostles carrying the good tidings to the farthest ends of the world. “Who are those,” he exclaims, “who fly like clouds? The far distant islands are in expectation, and ships are waiting to carry them. I shall choose from among my people men whom I shall send to the Gentiles that are beyond the seas, in Africa, in Lydia, in Italy, in Greece, to the islands afar off, to them that have not heard of me and have not seen my glory.” Again, the reign of the Messias is everywhere represented as having no end; it is to endure for ever. We shall only mention the prediction of the Messianic kingdom contained in the book of Daniel, which was familiar to the Jews, and one in which they trusted. After a description of the four kingdoms, the last of which the Roman, as iron, breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things, the writer says that in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed.

These doctrines were not to remain the exclusive appanage of the Hebrews. Divine Providence willed that they should be diffused among the nations, and moulded the destinies of the chosen people for the furtherance of this design. It is a remark of Ritter that the Supreme Wisdom has allotted to nations their place on the globe in view of their destination. It was by such a providential disposition that Palestine was singled out as the habitation of God’s chosen people. Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia on the east and north; Egypt and Ethiopia on the south; Greece and Rome on the west—all the great empires of antiquity will successively come in contact with it. It is there, at the confluence of human affairs, in the centre of ancient civilization, that the sacerdotal race is placed, called to spread everywhere the true religion, the knowledge of God and of Christ the Redeemer. From that central point it will be easy to send messengers of the eternal truth to the most flourishing cities, establish prosperous colonies in the important states by which it is surrounded, and thus accomplish its mission to be “a light for the Gentiles.”

The prodigies which, under Josue, Heaven had wrought in favor of the children of Jacob, had already fixed the attention of the other nations upon Israel, and had predisposed them to adore the God whom that people worshipped. Bossuet, speaking of those miracles, which were occasionally renewed, and of the effect they produced among the heathens, says that they undoubtedly brought about numerous conversions; so that the number of individuals who worshipped the true God among the Gentiles is perhaps much greater than is generally supposed. In the times of the Judges the frequent incursions of the neighboring tribes, their partial occupation of Judea, their repeated strifes with the Hebrews on the one hand, and on the other intervals of peace, commercial relations, the advantages offered to those who were willing to embrace the Jewish religion, contributed to propagate with that religion the expectation of a Messias. Under the Kings, the wars of Saul, the conquests of David reaching as far as the Euphrates, his domination over the country of the Moabites, of the Ammonites, the Philistines, spread among those nations the knowledge and fear of the true God. From the prosperous reign of Solomon to the glorious days of the Machabees, the alliances contracted with Egypt, Phœnicia, and the neighboring kingdoms, the great number of workmen whom those states placed at the disposal of Israel for the cultivation of the soil, the construction of its cities and fortresses—all contributes to the propagation of the sacred truth. The Israelites who repair to other countries for the sake of commerce speak of their traditions and leave after them the notion of their worship. Whilst the ships of Israel go and deposit on far distant shores its consoling hopes, travellers, attracted by the beauty of the country, the richness of its vegetation, the mildness of its climate come to visit the hospitable people by whom it is inhabited, and return initiated in the true faith. They recount to other nations the magnificence of the monarchs of Juda, the justice of their laws, the splendor of the solemnities of Jerusalem. Kings, legislators, philosophers come to the holy city from all parts; and Solomon, in the census he took of foreign proselytes, found that their number amounted to more than a hundred and fifty thousand.

But it is not enough that the name of the Lord should be known by the nations in the vicinity of Judea; the most distant tribes must be brought to adore him. To this effect Assyria, whose domination extends to the remotest regions of Asia, successively subjugates the kingdoms of Israel and of Juda, and disperses their inhabitants over the whole of its vast provinces. It is expressly forbidden to the captives of Israel to concentrate themselves on one point; for Providence intends that they should spread all over the East the light of truth and the earnest of salvation. Hala, Habor, Rages in Media, Ara on the river Gozan, are made the residence of the Jews of the ten tribes. They advance beyond the Tigris and the Euphrates, through Armenia as far as Colchis and Georgia, where they continue to dwell after the captivity, unwilling to abandon their new home. Numerous families fix their abode in Khaboul, in the most important cities of Chorasan and in Herat. Others established at first at the sources of the Indus, descending that river, reach India, and give rise to the tribe of the Afghans. Some even will cross the mountains of Central Asia, and will found establishments in Tartary, and chiefly in China, where later their descendants, raised to the first dignities of the empire, will teach the Chinese the Jewish religion. Some fragments of the books of Genesis and of Kings, passages of the prophets, written in the characters of that remote epoch, sufficiently indicate that those exiles transmitted to their children and propagated the revealed truth in that country. Confucius, the legislator of China, in his travels towards the west, derived from one of those colonies his ideas on the Supreme Being, whom he designates by the Hebrew name of Jehovah, scarcely altered, as Abel Rémusat tells us. At a later period the Persian reformer Zoroaster derived from the same source those flashes of truth which shine in the Zend-Avesta by the side of glimpses of primitive revelation. The Jews of the kingdom of Juda, grouped, on the contrary, in the centre of Chaldea, establish colonies at Sova, at Nahar, and in other places as far as the confines of the desert; and likewise at Teredon, at the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates; at Machusa, Annebar, Nisibis, and on the spot where later Bagdad shall rise. All these colonies, and many others, which after the restoration will still remain in those countries, will open schools to become centres of light to the heathens. That permanent contact with the Chaldeans shall allow the latter to recover a portion of the treasure of primitive truths which they had lost. Also do all agree in considering the Chaldeans as the men of antiquity the most conversant with theological science. Whilst the Jews of Israel are carrying their faith to the extremities of the vast empire, those of Juda, assisted by the translation of their sacred books into Chaldaic, diffuse it abundantly in the thickly-populated provinces of the centre. Assyria had fallen before the superior valor and military skill of the Persians. It was the time of the deliverance of the Jews. The most zealous among them availed themselves of the edict of Cyrus to return to Palestine and to rebuild the sacred places. But their destiny was not altered; they still went on fulfilling their sacred mission among the Gentiles. Under the Persian domination Hebrew princes tell the monarchs of Persia of the future divine Liberator, and these have sacrifices and prayers offered in the Temple at Jerusalem for the prosperity of their reign. Providence makes use of the high functions they exercise at the imperial court to lead those princes of Juda to Ecbatana, to Persepolis and Suza, that they might initiate the nobility of those important cities in the knowledge of the true God, to speak to them of the Messias whom the Magi shall from that time expect. Distinguished Jews are entrusted with the archives of Ecbatana. A great number of priests continue after the restoration to live among the Persians, and are disseminated all over the empire. They spread their traditions and their dogmas among the heathen populations. That sojourn of Jewish priests in the land of exile, after liberty had been restored to them, and when honors awaited them in their own country, evidently shows that it is the effect of a merciful design on the part of God, who devises means for those populations to receive the light of truth. Ochus, one of the last Persian monarchs, irritated against the children of Israel, sends a certain number of them in exile into Hyrcania and on to the shores of the Caspian Sea, and by this he unwittingly helps in spreading among those abandoned tribes the consoling promises of salvation; for those violent measures, as Hecatæus remarks in Josephus Against Apion, far from discouraging the Jews, serve to revive their patriotism, their attachment to the faith of their fathers, and their religious zeal.

If Asia, the land of great empires, was favored in a special manner, Africa was not forgotten. The Hebrews had long before initiated Egypt in the knowledge of the one true God and of a Redeemer whose birth in future ages had been revealed to it by Jacob in his last moments. This first initiation had produced its fruits; we know by the testimony of Holy Writ that when the Hebrews went out of Egypt a considerable number of Egyptians followed them in the desert. In the reign of Solomon a small Jewish colony followed the Queen of Saba to Abyssinia. According to Bruce, in his travels, not only do the kings of that country claim to descend from Solomon, but, furthermore, the annals of Abyssinia are full of details about the voyage which the Queen of Saba made to Judea. Ethiopia thus received the sacred books and the religion of the Israelites—a religion which they kept afterwards, as the Jewish Ethiopian treasurer of the Queen of Candace, whom St. Philip found reading Isaias and whom he converted to Christianity, seems to prove. At the time of the Assyrian wars and of the great captivity a number of Jews took refuge in Egypt. Some went to Abyssinia and other parts of Ethiopia, where they established powerful colonies by the side of those which already existed. At a later period Ptolemæus I. brought two hundred thousand Jews into Egypt, where they established in all directions colonies which soon became prosperous under the protection of his successors. Numerous schools for the propagation of sound doctrine; houses of prayer in cities; a Sanhedrim at Alexandria, the residence of learned Greeks; a temple near Bubaste, in which the ordinary sacrifices prescribed by the Mosaic law were offered—all contributed to make of Egypt a second native land for the Jews. The name of the Lord was publicly revered and the worship of the true God practised everywhere. The infidels had consequently full opportunity afforded them of knowing him and serving him; and Isaias affirms that, in fact, a great number embraced the true religion.

As the times approach for the coming of the Messias, the nation chosen to announce him to the world and to prepare his way multiplies its colonies and its schools. During the whole period of the Greek domination the Hebrews avail themselves of the protection accorded them by Alexander and his successors to extend in the east and west their beneficial influence, and spread their salutary doctrines, which shall predispose the Grecian mind to receive the light of the Gospel. We find them in Seleucia, at Ctesiphon, and at Chalcis, where St. Jerome subsequently repaired to take lessons in the Hebrew language; at Berea, where he met with Jews converted to Christianity. We find them at Antioch, where they shall soon suffer martyrdom for their faith; at Damascus, a city in which they are in continual intercourse with the Greeks who flock around the celebrated teachers of its schools; at Emesus, Nisibis, and Edessa. In the principal cities of Asia Minor: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamus, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea possess Jewish colonies. Delos, Miletus, Halicarnassus, Iconium have their synagogues. At Philippi, in Macedonia, there are houses of prayer for the Israelites. Athens, Corinth, Salamis, Paphos count such a considerable number of Jews mixed with their populations that, as it is stated in the Acts of the Apostles, synagogues are to be found in those places. Now, synagogues were not only used for prayer but also for the interpretation of the sacred books, and consequently as public chairs from which the revelation and hope of a divine Redeemer were announced to the inhabitants. The prophet Abdias tells us that after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans Jews had sought refuge in Sparta; and Arius, King of the Spartans, writes to the pontiff Onias that “it was found in writing concerning the Spartans and the Jews that they are brethren, and that they are of the stock of Abraham.”

During the period of the Roman domination Judea had colonies in all countries—in Parthia, among the Medes and Elamites, in Mesopotamia, Cappadocia, Pontus, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, Libya, Arabia, in the island of Crete, and at Rome. It is an opinion which found credit with several learned men that some Hebrews, at the time of the Assyrian invasions, came to Rome in the reign of Numa and suggested to him what is best in his laws; and, in fact, several of them seem to be modelled upon the Hebrew legislation. But it is certain that one hundred and forty years before Christ the Jews had erected public altars in Rome, and that a decree banished them from Italy; which is an indication that they must have been there in great numbers for a long time previous. In the days of the Machabees, when the Jewish nation, to use the expression of the Scriptures and of Cicero, was the friend of the Romans, the senate, at the solicitation of Jewish ambassadors, wrote letters in favor of the Jews of Lampsacus, Sparta, Delos, Myndos, Sicyonia; of those who inhabited Gortyna, Cnidis, Caria, Pamphylia, Lycia, Samos, Cos, Sidon, Rhodes, Avadon, the island of Cyprus, and Cyrene. No nation escaped the action of their zeal; and the Acts of the Apostles, enumerating the Hebrews assembled at Jerusalem on the occasion of the solemnity of Pentecost, tell us that “there were Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven.”

Such, then, was the mission of the Jews; they constitute the true church before Christ for the preaching of God’s future kingdom that shall have no end. We see them dispersed throughout the world; we meet them on all the highroads of humanity, confessing the only Lord of heaven and earth, and holding in their hands their sacred writings, showing to all that a peaceful Ruler would rise from the land of Juda and would restore all things. And when the times were accomplished, and the earth was to behold its Saviour, all nations were held in expectation of the mighty event.

We have here endeavored to give a brief sketch of the Jewish history. No one can deny that the very raison d’être of the Hebrew nation was the hope of a Messias who was to restore all things and establish upon earth the kingdom of God. The prophets speak of him and of his glorious reign; they predict his universal dominion; it will have no end in time, and its boundaries will be those of the universe. The destiny of the Jews is unique. After a comparatively short period of splendor which the conquests of David and Solomon shed upon Palestine, they lose their political independence, and henceforth they shall be forced to mingle with the Gentiles, whose social habits they will adopt, but at the same time unflinchingly adhering to their own religious tenets. The result is also an historical fact: a Liberator of the human race is expected by all nations, et erit expectatio gentium. Is it possible for an unprejudiced mind, for one who does not read history in the light of preconceived systems, not to see in that well-connected whole a design of Providence which ordains means to the obtaining of a clearly-defined end? Historical atheism refuses to recognize any such design, as atheism, in the conception of nature, refuses to recognize an intelligent Creator. It gives us, instead of life, dry bones and ashes, barren and unmeaning facts in history, and in nature phenomena with no intelligible cause for their production, and tending to no assignable end. In every sphere of knowledge atheism does nothing else but spread darkness and desolation all around. But as one who is not wilfully blinded will always discern by a kind of rational instinct the action of an infinitely wise and omnipotent Being in the order displayed in the world, so will he admit the action of God in the direction of human events in which a divine intelligence is no less clearly manifested. The ever popular argument of St. Paul with its consequence, against those men that detain the truth of God in injustice, holds good in both cases: “That which is known of God is manifest in them; for God hath manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made: his eternal power also and divinity: so that they are inexcusable” (Rom. i. 18-20).

THE LESSONS OF THE CAXTON CELEBRATION OF 1877.[^[76]]

England’s first printer was a Catholic. He lived and died in communion with the Holy See. He established his press in England beneath the shadow and on the grounds of the Abbey of Westminster, protected and encouraged by its monks. He translated and printed books of Catholic piety, and seems especially given to devotions for a happy death. He made bequests to the church, and the Requiem was said at his death.

Among all incunabula Caxton’s issues rank among the scarcest. Why? The Reformation made war upon them, so that many have perished utterly; six are known only by some scanty fragment preserved by being used to form part of a book-cover; of thirty-two more only a single copy has been preserved to our day. How many have perished and left no trace whatever, no man can tell.

“Be it therefore enacted by the king, our sovereign lord, the lords spiritual and temporal, and the commons in this present parliament assembled, that all books called antiphoners, missals, grailes (graduals), processionals, manuals, legends, piès, portuasses (breviaries), primers in Latin and English,[^[77]] couchers, journals (diurnals), ordinals, or other books or writings whatsoever, heretofore used for service of the church, written or printed, in the English or Latin tongue, other than such as shall be set forth by the king’s majesty, shall be by authority of his present act clearly and utterly abolished, extinguished and forbidden for ever to be used or kept in this realm, or elsewhere within any of the king’s dominions.

“And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid that if any person or persons, of what estate, degree, or condition soever he, she, or they be, bodies politic or corporate, that now have, or hereafter shall have, in his, her, or their custody any the books or writings of the sorts aforesaid, or any images of stone, timber, alabaster, or earth, graven, carved, or painted, which heretofore have been taken out of any church or chapel, or yet stand in any church or chapel, and do not, before the last day of June next ensuing, deface and destroy or cause to be defaced and destroyed, the same images and every of them, and deliver or cause to be delivered all and every the same books to the mayor, bailiff, constable, or church wardens of the town where such books then shall be, to be by them delivered over openly, within three months next following after the said delivery, to the archbishop, bishop, chancellor, or commissary of the same diocese (to the intent the said archbishop, bishop, chancellor, or commissary, and every of them, cause them, immediately after, either to be openly burnt or otherwise defaced and destroyed), shall for every such book or books willingly retained ... forfeit for the first offence ten shillings, and for the second offence shall forfeit and lose four pounds, and for the third offence shall suffer imprisonment at the king’s will” (Statute 3 and 4 Edward VI. c. x.)

Neglect on the part of the archbishops and the others named to burn the books involved a penalty of forty pounds.

Thus Protestantism destroyed Caxtons. “A glance at the titles of the uniques will show that the books most liable to destruction, probably owing in part to their being much used, and in part to the destructiveness of religious sectarianism,”[^[78]] says Blades, “are those directly or indirectly of an ecclesiastical character—such as ‘Horæ,’ ‘Psalters,’ ‘Meditacions,’ etc.”

Last year, 1877, being, it was believed, the fourth centenary of the first book printed by Caxton at Westminster, a Caxton celebration, proposed by Mr. Hodson, was carried out in London with no little pomp and display. Caxton imprints were brought together from many choice collections, with incunabula of all countries, and especially editions of the Bible, from Gutenberg’s to one printed for the occasion at Oxford.

The celebration was curious in the utter exclusion of any Catholic element, and in the machinery brought to bear to make the whole affair a glorification of the Reformation and of the stale prejudices against Catholicity. In the face of the books brought together and the lessons they told, this use of the first English printer, a Catholic, whose Catholic books the gentlemen of the Reformation had under severe penalties consigned to the flames, required in the managers no little assurance, or perhaps a well-founded knowledge of the voluntary blindness of the masses. They seem to have felt some sense of difficulty, or English exclusiveness never would have called in the Yankee adroitness of one of our countrymen rather inclined to play the buffoon in bibliography.

The English Catholic body seems to have felt some compassion for their Protestant fellow-countrymen in the strange attempt on which the latter were engaged. They did not seek to force themselves into the affair, nor greet them with merited ridicule. We do not know whether they acted under a sense of pity or were merely apathetic. Yet we wish they had celebrated the anniversary of Caxton’s death or deposition, or some day selected, by a solemn Mass of Requiem in the ancient church of St. Etheldreda, now happily restored to Catholic worship. The Holy See would perhaps have sanctioned pro hac vice the use on that occasion of the Mass for the Dead in the ancient Sarum Missal, such as was used at the obsequies of the good printer, whose translation of the Lives of the Fathers of the Desert was completed on the day of his death.[^[79]] We do not know but that we should have applied to Parliament for permission to celebrate a Mass of Requiem for Caxton in Westminster Abbey church, such as was said at his death. The proposition would probably have struck some dumb from sheer amazement; but Parliament would either have granted it, and permitted the funeral service of 1491 to be repeated just as it was said after his death, or they would have refused the request of the Catholic body, and made their bigotry one of the memorabilia of the Caxton celebration.

No such step was taken; and the managers of the Caxton anniversary were left at full liberty to give all the false color they could, to combine, suppress, distort as they chose, in order to give the public an impression that printing was one of the boons conferred on mankind by the Reformation. This was actually done directly and indirectly; and as Kaulbach, the painter, in his great canvas of the heroes of the Reformation, introduces Gutenberg and Christopher Columbus, so these gentlemen in England used the good, pious Catholic Caxton as the central figure in their tableau of the apotheosis of Protestantism.

Caxton left no dubious evidence of his practical faith as a Catholic. His Four Last Things, in French, ends with an exhortation to good works, “by which we attain to eternal life.”[^[80]] The English Cordyale, or The Four Last Things, ends: “Which Werke present I began the morn after the saide Purificacion of our blissid Lady, Whiche was the daye of Seint Blase, Bisshop and Martir. And fiinisshed on the even of thannunciacion of our said bilissid Lady fallyng on the wednesday the xxiiij daye of Marche. In the xix yeer of Kyng Edwarde the fourthe.” The Festial opens: “The helpe and grace of almyghty god thrugh the beseechynge of his blessed moder saynt mary.” It ends thus: “By the helpe of his blessid moder mary and his holy spowsesse saynt brygytte and all sayntes. Amen. Caxton me fieri fecit.” Then there is “the lyf of the holy and blessed vyrgyn saynt Wenefryde ... reduced in to Englysshe by me, William Caxton.” “A short treatyce of the hyhest and most worthy sacramente of crystes blessid body and the merueylles therof” certainly sounds orthodox. And the picture of the Crucifixion, inscribed: “To them that before this ymage of pyte deuoutly saye v Pr nr v Aues & a Credo pyteuously beholdyng these ar of Xps passio ar granted xxxij M. vii. C. & lv yeres of pardon,” shows a belief in the power of the church to grant indulgences.

We know that the attempt has been made to persuade those eager to be deceived that Caxton must have had Lollard sympathies. Thus, the editor of the reprint of the Fifteen Os says: “This collection is noticed by Dr. Thomas Fuller as being the first book of prayers tending to promote the Reformation.” And again: “It is more than probable that this is the first book of prayers in English issued by the followers of Wickliffe, and cannot but be interesting as having prepared the way for the great moral and spiritual changes that ended in the Reformation.” Now, the volume closes thus: “Thiese prayers tofore wreton ben enprited bi the comaūdementes of the moste hye & vertuous pryncesse our liege ladi Elizabeth, by the grace of god Quene of Englonde and of Fraūce & also of the right hye & most noble pryncesse Margarete, moder unto our soverayn lorde the kyng, &c. By their most humble subget and seruaūt, William Caxton.”

There is certainly no suspicion of Lollardism attaching to these ladies. Now let us examine the prayers. The title Fifteen Os will not suggest to Catholics now any familiar devotion; but when we state that they are nothing more nor less than St. Bridget’s Prayers or Meditations on the Passion of our Lord, which have retained their place in our Catholic prayer-books to this day, they will utter at least fifteen “ohs” and be certainly hyely amused at the idea of their savoring of Wickliffe.

Caxton.

“O Jhesu, endless swetnes of louyng soules. O Jhesu, gostly ioye passing & excedyng all gladnes and desires. O Jhesu, helth and tendre louer of al repentaūt sinners that likest to dwelle, as thou saydest thy selfe, with the children of men. For that was the cause why thou were incarnate and made man in the ende of the worlde. Haue mynde, blessed Jhesu, of all the sorrowes that thou sufferedest in thy māhode, drawing nyhe to thy blessed passion.”

Garden of the Soul.

“O most sweet Lord Jesus Christ, eternal sweetness of those who love thee, joy above all desire, firm hope of the hopeless, solace of the sorrowful, and most merciful lover of all penitent sinners, who hast said thy delight is to be with the children of men, for the love of whom thou didst assume human nature in the fulness of time. Remember, most sweet Jesus, all those sharp sorrows which then pierced thy sacred soul from the first instant of thy incarnation until the time of thy solitary passion,” etc.

Among the prayers following those of St. Bridget is this:

“O blessid lady, moder of Jhesu and virgyne immaculate, that art wel of comforte and moder of mercy, singuler helpe to all that trust to the, be now, gracyous lady, medyatryce and meane unto thy blessid sone our sauyour Jhesu for me, that by thy intercessions I may opteyne my desires, ever to be your seruaunt in all humylite. And by the helpe and socour of al holy sayntes herafter in perpetuell ioye euer to liue with the. Amen.”

Evidently Caxton would have had no difficulty in submitting to Pope Pius IX.’s definition of the Immaculate Conception.

The next prayer is one “To the propre angell”—guardian angel, as we now say. Further on we find a prayer to which indulgences for the souls in purgatory are attached. These prayers certainly show no trace of Wickliffe’s doctrines. The little book is one that any Catholic would use now, and which no Protestant would or could use.

Protestantism can lay no claim to the worthy, upright, laborious, and learned Catholic merchant who introduced printing into England, and chose the precincts of her finest abbey for his labors. His surviving friends shared his faith, as witness this note in a very old hand on a copy of the Fructus Temporum:

“Of your charitee pray for the soul of Mayster Wyllyam Caxton, that in hys time was a man of moche ornate and moche renommed wysdome and connyng, and decessed ful crystenly the yere of our Lord MCCCCLXXXXJ.

“Moder of Merci, shyld him fro thorribul fynd,

And bryng hym to lyff eternall that neuyr hath ynd.”[^[81]]

On the 17th of February, 1877, a meeting was held in the Jerusalem Chamber of the old Catholic abbey, not far from the presumed printing-office occupied by Caxton in the Almonry. Dean Stanley presided, and preparations were made for the exhibition. The Stationers’ Company offered their hall, but it was deemed too small, and a request was made for the Western Galleries at South Kensington. These were granted, and every facility given to arrange and display properly the works collected. One great object was to bring together and exhibit to the public as many copies as possible of works from Caxton’s press as could be obtained for the brief period from the public and private libraries, with such other books, especially of early date, as would tend to show the progress of printing from its discovery. The appeal was generously answered. No less than one hundred and ninety copies of books printed by the good Catholic William Caxton were contributed to the exhibition—a greater number, probably, than have ever been seen together since the Reformers made war on them, and greater than are at all likely to be again collected. They represented one hundred and four distinct works.

Lord Spencer sent fifty-seven Caxtons, early Block Books, a Gutenberg Bible, a Mentz Psalter; the Duke of Devonshire eighteen Caxtons; the Earl of Jersey and the Bodleian Library each seven; Sion College six, and the University of Göttingen six; Queen Victoria sent four and a Mentz Psalter.

The books were arranged in classes: (a) William Caxton and the Development of the Art of Printing in England and Scotland. (b) The Development of the Art of Printing in other Countries. (c) The Comparative Development of the Art in England and Foreign Countries, illustrated by specimens of the Holy Scripture and Liturgies. (d) Specimens noticeable for Rarity or for Beauty and Excellence of Typography. (e) Specimens of Printing. (f) Printed Music. (g) Book Illustrations. (h) Portraits and Autographs of Distinguished Authors, etc. (i) Books relating to Printing. (k) Curiosities and Miscellanies. (l) Type and Printing Materials. (m) Stereotyping and Electrotyping. (n) Copper-plate Printing, Lithography, etc. (o) Paper and Paper-making.

The great effort of the exhibition seems to have been directed to Class C. Noble collectors and commoners, universities and libraries, the British and Foreign Bible Society, archbishops and bishops, all contributed, and it was this department above the others that was to invest Protestantism with a peculiar halo. Yet the case presented difficulties of no ordinary character. Men like Stevens rant about “priestly dross and gloss” and similar claptrap expressions to keep alive old myths, but it required enormous assurance to advance these myths in the face of the collection gathered at London in 1877. They may talk of monkish legends and fables, but Protestantism rests on legends and fables which men who know better still continue to circulate in defiance of bibliography and common sense.

In the present case they desired to present to the public a glowing picture. There is a foreground in every picture, and there is a background also; there are clear lights which bring out the chief figures into bold relief, and there are shadows where figures lie almost unnoticed. The artists here knew well what to throw into the background and the shade.

Fable the first was that the Catholic Church had ever been the enemy of the Bible, opposed to its circulation. How is it, then, that when printing was invented the first book printed was the Bible? The church must have made the Bible known, or the early printers, who were not priests or monks, would have known nothing of such a book, would not have known where to get copies to print from, would not have known that anybody would know enough about the work to buy it if they printed it. But the fact is that people knew about the Bible, manuscripts were easily obtained, and many wanted them who could not afford to buy them. The fact that the Bible was selected to print shows that there was no impediment to its circulation, that there existed a well-known demand for it, and a call for cheaper copies.

Stevens reluctantly gives us aid to demolish this fable of Catholic darkness as to the Bible: “The Bible was the first book printed.” “Biblical bibliography proves that during the first forty years, at least, the Bible exceeded in amount of printing all other books put together; nor were its quality, style, and variety a whit behind its quantity.” And be it remembered that these forty years do not cover the whole period from the invention of printing to the commencement of the Reformation.

Bibles preceded all the Latin and Greek classic authors and all vernacular works, not in one place but in almost every place where a printing-press was set up.

“In a word,” says Stevens, “up to the discovery of America in 1492 Columbus might have counted upon his fingers all the old classic authors (including Ptolemy and Strabo in their unbecoming Latin dress) who could throw any geographical light on the questions which the great discoverer was discussing with the theologians of Spain; while, covering the same period, the editions of the Bible alone, and the parts thereof, in many languages and countries, will sum up not far less than one thousand, and the most of these of the largest and costliest kind.”

This, it must be remembered, is no rash assertion, but the truth wrung from this writer by the fact that the collection exhibited before his eyes at least three hundred out of the thousand to which he refers; and this thousand—not thousand copies of the Bible, but thousand editions of the Bible, or parts such as New Testament, Psalms, etc.—includes only to 1492, thirty years before Luther issued his Bible. Yet the monstrous figment is kept up to this day that in those dark and benighted ages the people were kept in ignorance of the Bible, that the Catholic Church suppressed it and kept it hid away, and that it was only the “glorious Reformation” which brought it from its obscurity. Stevens, with all his assurance, must have blushed as he wrote the words: “The church managed to have small call for the Scriptures in the vulgar tongues which the people could read and comprehend.” He does not cite, and knew that he could not cite, any authority to show that the church did anything that could be construed into any such management. The Bible had come down in her keeping; she preserved it, diffused it, and handed it down from generation to generation, jealous of its purity and its traditional interpretation.

Next to the fable of the hostility of the church to the Bible, and connected with it, is the myth of Luther’s discovering an old copy of the Bible when he was a priest and a monk, that he thereupon set to work to translate it, and that he first gave the Scriptures to the people in the vernacular. It was a very pretty story, told down to our day by authors like D’Aubigné. The Caxton celebration, though it did not contain specimens of all the editions of the Scriptures printed before the Reformation, had enough to show how shamefully the Protestant public had been deceived and imposed upon by this fable.

Mr. Stevens’ list begins with the Gutenberg Bible, printed at Mentz between 1450 and 1455—for a copy of that magnificent work was there, lent by Earl Spencer, perfect, entire, with its six hundred and forty-one leaves, double column, “the earliest book known printed with movable metal type.” Then follows the Psalms, printed by Fust and Schöffer at Mentz in 1457, Queen Victoria lending a copy. Next comes the 1459 Psalter, the second, third, and fourth Latin Bibles, another Psalter, and then a complete Bible in German, printed, Mr. Stevens assumes, at Strassburg, by Mendelin, in 1466. Queen Victoria’s magnificent copy, richly illuminated in gold and colors, was there for all to admire, and beside it Earl Spencer’s, nearly as beautiful. Either by accident or design Caxton’s Psalter was not obtained, and this first known separate book of Holy Scripture issued in England between 1480 and 1483 was represented only by a fac-simile of a page of the copy in the British Museum. The various Books of Hours printed by Caxton were similarly unrepresented.[^[82]] Then with other Latin editions came the second German Bible, also in 1466; the third, Augsburg, 1470; and so on through the list, fourth, fifth, sixth, to the twelfth German,[^[83]] printed at Augspurg in 1490 by Henry Schonsperger; and two editions in Low German, Cologne, 1480, Lubec, 1491. There was also a German Psalter printed in 1492, described by Stevens as “a fine specimen of an early pocket edition of the Psalms in the language of the people.”

Thus the Caxton collection presented no less than sixteen Catholic Bibles and Psalters in German printed before Luther’s time; and as translations were not made on the spur of the moment, there must have been in existence many translations in manuscript, some of which never found their way into print at all. These sixteen volumes, publicly exhibited at once and together in London, are as many refutations of the Protestant fables and legends.

“Prior to the discovery of America,” says Stevens, “no less than twelve grand patriarchal editions of the entire Bible, being of several different translations, appeared from time to time in the German language; to which add the two editions by the Otmars of Augsburg, of 1507 and 1518, and we have the total number of no less than fourteen distinct large folio pre-Reformation or ante-Lutheran Bibles. No other language except the Latin can boast of anything like this number.”

The collection shows, too, that Bibles in the vernacular were not confined to Germany. It could show some in other languages:

628, Bible, Italian, 316, 331 folios. Venice, N. Jenson. 1471.

649, Bible, Italian. Venice, Bolognese, 1477.

652, New Testament, French. Lyons, Buyer, 1477.

653-4, Old Testament, Dutch. Delf, Zoen, 1477.

669, Psalms, Dutch, Delf. 1480.

688, Bible, Italian. Venice, 1487.

690, Bible, Bohemian. 1488.

706, Psalms, French (Polyglot). Paris, 1509.

725, Bible, French. Paris, Petit, 1520.

The language of Sir Thomas More leads us to believe that some one of the Catholic versions of the New Testament at least was printed; but if so, the copies were suppressed so completely that none has reached our times. The mere fact that no copy is now known does not prove that none ever existed, when we consider the wholesale destruction by law of all Catholic books of devotion.

These are not all the vernacular Bibles issued in that period, but, as they stood there in the South Kensington Loan Collection, they furnished an irrefragable proof that printing originated in Catholic times; that the church was the first to use and encourage it; that she multiplied editions of the Bible in Latin, the habitual language of the church, then the language of learning and science, as well as in German, Italian, Dutch, French, and Bohemian; she printed, too, as a copy here showed, the Bible, Pentateuch, and Psalms in Hebrew, the Bible and Psalter in Greek and Chaldee, and an Arabic Psalter. (See 682, 691, 706, 711, 718, 720, 721.) Catholic writers have frequently referred to these early-printed Bibles and portions of Scripture in the vernacular; but to cite Panzer or some other bibliographer is far different from referring to a copy of the book. Here in the Caxton collection the very volumes stood to speak for themselves, and the catalogue attests the fact that they were there, tells us who owns each copy, its condition and state. What as a Catholic argument seemed vague and hazy thus took solid form, and became too substantial to doubt.

Now, how does Mr. Stevens endeavor to elude the force of this array of solid proofs? It is absolutely comical to see to what straits he is put. The following platitude, false statement, and false deduction is about as curious as the Caxton celebration itself:

“As the discovery of America was the greatest of all discoveries, so the invention of the art of printing may be called the greatest of all inventions. But no sooner had Columbus reported his grand discovery through the press than the pope assumed the whole property in the unknown parts of the earth, and divided it (sic) all at once between the two little powers in the Peninsula, wholly disregarding the rights and titles of the other nations of Europe. The same little game of assumption has been tried, from time to time, with regard to this great invention, but the press has a protective power within itself which the church can smother only with ignorance and mental darkness.”

The figures are somewhat confused, and we cannot exactly picture to our minds the church, with the two pillows of ignorance and mental darkness which Mr. Stevens can doubtless supply from his well-furnished store, trying to smother a protective power. The smothering of the children in the Tower was nothing compared to it. As for the “little game of assumption,” we think the gentlemen of the Reformation have played it long and successfully. But we admit that we do not see what right and title the nations of Europe had in the unknown parts of the earth, or whence they derived any right and title. So far as we have read, no right or title was claimed except when based on discovery, and then it was in the known and not in the unknown. Spain and Portugal carried their rival claims to the Holy See as a recognized tribunal, and the line of demarkation in their attempts at exploration was a wise and peace-establishing provision. It did not operate, and was not intended, to exclude the subjects of the pope, France, Germany, Denmark, or England from exploring.

The whole question is foreign to the subject of printing—so foreign that none of the Columbus letters, or the bull of Alexander VI., was thought worth obtaining for the Caxton exhibition. We have looked carefully through the catalogue, and, if they are there, they have certainly escaped us.

The array of books presented here shows that Luther could not have received the education he really did in his monastery, making him conversant with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, without being aware of the existence in print of many of the more than a thousand editions in all languages that had already issued from the press. It is not pretended that Luther obtained his knowledge of languages by a miraculous gift; he acquired them in the monastic schools, and his attainments are a proof of the extent of their curriculum.

One of the great objects of the exhibition was to show the earliest English Protestant editions. Tyndale’s New Testament, supposed to have been printed at Worms by Peter Schöffer in 1526, was represented by the very imperfect copy owned by the dean and chapter of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and by the Antwerp edition of 1534; by the London edition of 1536, which had also at the end the “Epystles taken out of the Olde Testament what are red in the church after the use of Salsburye upon certen dayes of the year.”

But the great pride of the exhibition was a series of Coverdale’s Bibles and Testaments, over which Mr. Stevens indulges in most rhapsodical eulogy. “Let no Englishman or American,” he exclaims, “view this (765) and the six following Bibles without first lifting his hat, for they are seven extraordinary copies of the Coverdale Bible, containing, with one important exception (the Marquis of Northampton’s copy), all the variations known of the most precious volume in our language.” We cannot altogether share his raptures over this Bible, “faithfully and truly translated out of Douche and Latyn into English.” Stevens sneers at the Rhemish Testament as “a secondary translation from the Vulgate,” but Coverdale’s, translated out of “Douche and Latyn” into English, elicits no such sneer. According to his theory, set forth at great length, this edition is due to “Jacob van Meteren, of Antwerp, printer and proprietor, and probably the translator, by whom Coverdale was employed to edit and see the work through the press,” and he gives Antwerp as the place of publication. The edition was bought by James Nicolson, of Southwark. Though Mr. Stevens elsewhere represents the English people at this time as hungering and famished for an English Bible, he admits “that the English printer and publisher seems to have had as much trouble in working off his books as Simmons had in selling Milton’s Paradise Lost, if we may judge by the number of new titles and preliminary leaves found in different copies.” It contains a long and fulsome dedication to Henry VIII. and his dearest just-wife, in some copies “Anne” (Boleyn), in others “Jane” (Seymour). The Bible bearing the name of Thomas Mathew as translator (London: Grafton & Whitchurch, 1537) he ascribes to the famous John Rogers, and maintains that it too was printed by Van Meteren at Antwerp.

The Latin-English Testament bearing Coverdale’s name (London 1538), which he repudiated on account of its errors, or perhaps the correction of some of his errors, and that really issued by him at Paris in the same year, were both in the exhibition, as well as that issued also in 1538 at London bearing the name of Johan Hollybushe as translator. These are very curious as being, we think, the only Latin-English Testaments ever issued, giving the Vulgate and a translation based upon it. No other has, to our knowledge, ever appeared in the lapse of more than three centuries since that year, 1538. As Caxton’s Psalter was perhaps the first book of the Vulgate printed in England, these Testaments of Nicolson were the last portion of the Vulgate printed there for more than two hundred and fifty years, when the edition printed for the exiled clergy of France made its appearance. Unfortunately we do not find a copy of that edition in the list of those included in the exhibition.[^[84]]

The first Testament professing to be translated directly from the Greek is that numbered in the catalogue 864, issued by Gaultier, 1550; and the first Bible from the Hebrew and Greek is that printed at Geneva by Rowland Hall in 1560. This shows how the people in England clung to the Vulgate. On the Continent Luther had abandoned it for such Hebrew and Greek texts as he could find, and so led the way to the host of errors that prevail to this day; but in England the versions were all based on the Vulgate, occasionally represented as compared with the Greek. It was not, indeed, till 1611 that the Church of England, by the translation then issued, formally abandoned the Vulgate, as the Calvinists had previously done. Mr. Stevens’ sneer at the Rhemish Testament of 1583, as being a secondary translation, applies with equal force to nearly all the English Protestant editions then in the hands of the people. Now that the Greek and Hebrew texts have by the aid of the best manuscripts been restored to some degree of purity and accuracy, Protestant scholars are revising the translation of 1611, and the one remarkable fact appears constantly that every change made to bring them to correspond to correct texts brings them back to the early translations from the Vulgate.[^[85]]

This fact of English adherence to the Vulgate shown in the collection of Bibles at the Caxton celebration goes far towards exploding another Protestant myth and legend; and that is that England welcomed the Reformation with open arms, that the whole nation went over to the new ideas, and that Catholicity was generally abandoned. This is inculcated in a thousand ways in all the histories and popular literature of the day, if not squarely asserted. The Caxton collection shows that for nearly a century the people of England clung to the old Latin Vulgate as a standard, and that translations from it alone were read officially in the churches. And to this day the Book of Common Prayer is based on the Vulgate. Although Henry VIII. broke off from Rome, he knew the temper of the people. The English nation was in a manner bereft of its wonted leaders. The civil wars of the Roses had swept away most of the old nobility, and had brought to the surface the worst, most unscrupulous and grasping adventurers. What this class was who clustered around the spendthrift Henry VIII. we can easily see by a study of our times, after our experience of civil war. They were men to whom nothing was sacred; men determined to grasp and hold rank and wealth at any cost to the state or conscience. The people, bereft of their old leaders, of the time-honored noble families, could not effectively resist the set of new men. To these the church offered a splendid field for plunder. The ill-concerted insurrections against them were put down with merciless severity. Yet the attachment of the people to the old faith remained. Every step of Henry VIII. was gradual. In his reign the Mass and other offices of the church were maintained. Even in the reign of his boy son the unscrupulous men who coined a new faith and worship did not venture to go too far from the old forms. Like the Chinese emperor, they sought to destroy all trace of Catholic worship by committing to the flame every book in England that could keep it alive. What havoc they made we can learn and imagine from a view of the Caxton collection. Mary’s reign was too short to undo the mischief, and Elizabeth threw her whole influence into the scale against the church, and, against her own convictions, upheld the Anglican establishment as organized in her brother’s name, and finally gave it form and power; but even she did not dare to bring it to the standard of the French, Swiss, Dutch, and Scotch Protestants. The Church of England, in obedience to the old Catholic instincts of even those who submitted to force, retained much of the old form, and non-jurors, Puseyites, Tractarians, Ritualists are simply natural products of this old element.

Yet, with all the power of Henry, Somerset, Elizabeth, the mass of the English people had not become Protestant or ceased to be Catholic. One of Harper’s Half-Hour Series is not likely to over-state the Catholic side; yet Dr. Guernsey, in his Spanish Armada, says:

“At the middle of the reign of Elizabeth the population of England numbered something less than five millions. Of these, according to the estimate of Rushton, one-third were Protestants and two-thirds Catholics. Lingard, with less probability, thinks that about one-half were Catholic. The Italian Cardinal Bentivoglio reckoned the zealous Catholics at only one-thirtieth part of the nation, while those who would without the least scruple have become Catholics, if the Catholic religion should be established by law, were at least four-fifths of the whole; and Macaulay thinks this statement very near the truth. We think a more accurate apportionment would be that one-fourth of the population were decided Protestants, another fourth decided Catholics, while the remaining half—the majority of them with a leaning to the old faith—were quite content with whatever form of religion should be ordained by the civil authorities for the time being.”

If this was the state of England in the middle of Elizabeth’s reign, after all connection with Rome had been broken off for two generations, all Catholic books committed to the flames, the Mass and the priesthood outlawed, how impossible to believe that the English people went as a body into the Reformation! If only one-fourth were then decided Protestants, how many were Protestants when Coverdale’s Bible was issued?

If England became Protestant, it was simply because the English people were dragooned into it by penal laws steadily and persistently applied. The decided Protestants from choice were few and their descendants are comparatively few. The mass of English Protestants are the descendants of cowards who yielded up their faith and their convictions to save property, liberty, or life. The poorest Irish Catholic has a noble ancestry of men who suffered confiscation, imprisonment, hunting like wild beasts, death itself, rather than abandon the faith they sincerely believed, and it is certainly not for the sons of poltroons to despise them.

The Caxton collection thus, by showing the adherence to the Vulgate till a Presbyterian king came to the throne, shows how reluctantly England accepted Protestantism, and dispels many of the fine theories with which Mr. Stevens mystifies the subject.

The collection had some editions of special interest to us Catholics, yet it lacked many which we would expect to find in so pretentious a series of books. The Gutenberg Bible, that glory of the church, we have already noted. Few of our readers were or could well be present at the London exhibition, but when the Lenox Library opens in New York they will be able to see a fine copy of this first of printed books—proof that in Catholic times, when the church was undisputed mistress of Europe, the first work deemed entitled to the honor of being reproduced by the new invention was the Bible. A Catholic can point to it, and say: “That is the first book ever printed; it is our Catholic Bible, printed by the Catholic men who invented the art of printing.”

The Caxton collection contained also the first edition issued in the city of Rome in 1471, as well as the wonderful Polyglot of the great Cardinal Ximenes, and the Polyglot Psalter of Bishop Giustiniani with the first sketch of the life of Columbus. The Bible issued as a standard by Pope Sixtus V. in 1590 is represented by Mr. Stevens, most strangely, as “the first complete Latin edition published by papal authority.” He does not tell us in what respect the previous Latin Bibles were incomplete, or explain how none of them had any papal authority. This Sistine edition was contributed by Earl Spencer, as well as a copy of the edition issued under Pope Clement VIII., 1592, and the edition of the Septuagint from the Codex Vaticanus, issued at Rome in 1586. The Rhemish New Testament, 1582, and the Old Testament printed at Douay in 1609-10, were also there, but Mr. Stevens is clearly in error in saying: “It is a remarkable circumstance that, though these volumes bear the dates of 1609 and 1610 they had not reached the hands of the translators of the 1611 version when their long preface was written. There is distinct allusion to this work, as if to disclaim any knowledge of it.” Yet there is intrinsic evidence that they availed themselves of it before they put their own to press. Readings both in the Old and New Testament which had been preserved through the series of Protestant translations were abandoned in the King James Bible, and Douay renderings substantially, if not literally, adopted.

The King James Bible, of course, figures in the collection. But the question as to which is the editio princeps, the standard for those who bow down to that version, is a knotty one. There is a “Great He Bible” and a “Great She Bible”—two issues of the same year 1611 distinct through every leaf. Catholics will wonder at this distinction of sex in Bibles, and it may be well to state that in the endeavor to determine which of the two was the one originally issued by the translators, scholars found a discrepancy in Ruth iii. 15, one reading: “He measured six measures of barley, and laid it on her, and He went into the city,” while the other reads, “She went into the city”; and as each of these, although varying from each other in many places, was taken as a standard for subsequent editions, these Protestant Bibles are all He and She Bibles to those who wish to know from which of the two 1611 editions they sprang. Mr. Stevens decides that the He Bible, evidently incorrect in its rendering, was the original one.

He sets at rest another point in regard to this King James Bible, and that is the myth or fable of calling it “The Authorized Version.” He says: “We do not find any authority for calling it the Authorized Version, the words ‘appointed to be read in churches’ meaning not authorized, but, as explained in the preliminary matter, simply how the Scriptures were pointed out or ‘appointed’ for public reading.” In other words, to make the Bible go down with the people of England, who still clung to many old Catholic ideas, the epistles and gospels for the Sundays and many of the holidays of the year, as read from time immemorial in the Mass, were indicated or appointed in this Bible. This makes the King James Bible, whether a “Great He Bible” or a “Great She Bible,” a document to prove how slow the English people were to go over to the Reformers, and how they clung to what little they could grasp of their old Catholic faith and devotion. Mr. Stevens does not like it for this very reason, and wants the title purified by leaving out “appointed to be read in churches”; but leaving it out now will not destroy the force of the phrase as it stands on both the He and She Bible of 1611. He claims the King James as the Bible of all English Protestant churches. It has become so; but it was not so originally. He is historically wrong when he says: “It never was any more the Bible of the Church (i.e., of England) than of the Puritans.” It certainly was. Unfortunately there was no copy in this Caxton celebration of “The Souldier’s Pocket Bible: Printed at London by G. B. and R. W. for G. C., 1643,” or we could refer him to that constant companion of Cromwell’s soldiers to show that the Puritans stuck to the Geneva Bible as late as the time of the Commonwealth, and left the King James and the Bishop’s Bibles to the malignants. He knows the early writings of his own New England divines too well not to be aware that their sermons and tracts quote the Geneva and not the King James. The incorrect editions of the Geneva, and the appointment of king’s printers in the reign of Charles II. with the exclusive right of printing Bibles, stopped the issue of any but the King James, and it thus superseded the Geneva, and people took it as a matter of necessity, not of choice or preference. It is simply absurd to make it appear that the King James version was at once accepted and adopted generally.

The collection did very little in showing the various modifications of the Douay Bible. After the edition of 1635 there was scarcely anything in the Caxton exhibition—no copy of Nary’s New Testament, which is certainly remarkable enough. The first edition of the Protestant Bible printed in Ireland dates only from 1714, and certainly a Catholic Testament printed, in spite of penal laws and persecution, in 1719, only five years later, ought to have found a place there. There was no copy of Witham’s New Testament or of Challoner’s first Testament, or of the first edition of his Bible. Nor does Geddes appear. America is not at all represented. Not a copy of Eliot’s Indian Bible, or of Sauer’s German Bible, or the Congress Bible, or the first Catholic Bible of 1790; the Bay Psalm Book stands almost alone.

The Bibles sought for on account of curious renderings or strange blunders were pretty well represented, such as Matthews’ Bug Bible: “Thou shalt not nede to be afraid for any bugges by nyghte,” Ps. xci. 5. The second Genevan, 1562: “Blessed are the place-makers,” Matt. v. 9. Bishop’s Bible, 1568: “Is there no tryacle in Gilead?” Jerem. viii. 22. The Wicked Bible, London, 1631: “Thou shalt commit adultery.” Cambridge Bible, 1638: “Whom ye may appoint,” Acts vi. 3, for we. The Vinegar Bible, 1717: “The Parable of the Vinegar.” Oxford Bible, 1807: “Purge your conscience from good works,” instead of “dead,” Heb. ix. 14. Oxford Bible, 1810: “Hate not ... his own wife,” for life, Luke xiv. 26. Still these are of no value except as cautions against typographical blunders. But among the curious Bibles and Testaments we were surprised to see no copy of the now rare negro English Testament, published in London in 1829, Da Njoe Testament va wi Masra en Helpiman Jesus Christus. The Rev. Sydney Smith immortalized it, and Notes and Queries in 1864 devoted some space to it. Renderings like these from a copy before us: St. Matthew, vi. 7, “En effi oeni beggi, oene no meki soso takkitakki, leki dem Heiden, bikasi dem membre, effi dem meki foeloe takkitakki, Gado so harki dem,” or vi. 11, “Gi wi tideh da jamjam va wi,”[^[86]] are certainly as curious as anything exhibited.

An ingenious gentleman like Mr. Stevens might perhaps have deduced from it a proof that Caxton was a follower of Wickliffe, or that the Catholic Church showed no respect for the Word of God.

A catalogue of books such as we have taken up seems to afford little scope for any but dry bibliographical notes, but the Caxton celebration has its lessons that can be gleaned even from a catalogue, and if our readers have followed us we think that they will admit that the attempt to make Caxton other than a pious Catholic was a delusion; and the exclusion of the Catholic element, and the attempt to make Caxton a fulcrum for the exaltation of Protestantism, a failure.[^[87]] As Catholics we may be grateful for the unintentional evidence the collection afforded of the fact that the Catholic Church protected and preserved the Bible, made men esteem and desire it, gave it to the newly-invented art of printing as the first work to issue, fostered the publication of the original texts, the authentic Vulgate, and of translations in the vernacular; as well as incidentally of proof that the Luther romance was a figment, and proof that the Reformation was forced on the English people, that they clung to the Bible, liturgy, and dogmas of the Catholic Church with the utmost tenacity, and that they lacked only the courage of Ireland and Poland to have maintained their country Catholic.