In the Papal Registers—Avignon, 1 August 1346—there is an entry of an absolution to Thomas de Courtenay and his wife, to take effect at death, and therefore covering all sins committed meanwhile. They were the owners of this place—Wreyland—and probably were scared by the Black Death. The disease was spreading westward, and its victims died too suddenly for the priests to shrive them.
In the Middle Ages it was the fashion to bring earth home from the Holy Land for burial, and there is still a fashion for bringing Jordan water home for baptism. I was down by the Jordan with my mother and a friend of mine, 21 March 1882, and she insisted on bringing some water home. So we filled up some empty soda-water bottles from this uninviting stream. (The rivers of Damascus are better: there is no doubt about it.) A year or two afterwards there was a birth in some friend’s family, and she sent a bottle for the baptism. But the child was not baptized in Jordan water after all. When the water was uncorked, it sent forth such an overpowering smell, that it had to be poured down the sink at once.
I was on the French mail-steamer Tage at anchor in the Dardanelles, a little way below the Narrows, on Friday 30 April 1880. There were many Mohammedans on board; and, when prayer-time came, they unrolled their prayer-rugs, and laid them out on deck, pointing them to Mecca. Just as they began to pray, the current caught the ship, and she began to swing; and, as soon as they looked up, they saw that they had got their bearings wrong. So they slewed round, and put their rugs straight; and then, of course, the same thing happened again. And it went on happening till they had finished their prayers.
They had a procession at Thebes in Bœotia, when I was there, 11 April 1888. They were badly in want of rain, and reckoned on getting some, if they marched solemnly round the place in honour of Elijah. They were of the Greek Church, and had greater faith in him than in the saints of later times.
There is a pleasant procession in Rome on Christmas morning, the True Cradle being carried round S. Maria Maggiore. I saw that done in 1909, and somehow in the clouds of incense I saw the cradle of Romulus and Remus carried in procession through the Forum.
The high-altar at St Peter’s is scrubbed on Maundy Thursday; and, as I was in Rome, 14 April 1892, I went to see it done. This rite comes after Miserere, and therefore in the twilight. St Peter’s is not lighted up, and looks the vast size that it really is, as one cannot see the details that impair it. The dignitaries of the church come down in procession, each one carrying a candle and a mop; and they throw oil and wine upon the altar, and then begin to scrub. I was close by, and noticed how differently they all did it. Some evidently thought it symbolical, and merely waved their mops across the altar, hardly touching it. And others would scrub hard, and then put their heads down and look carefully through their spectacles to see what they had done, and then go on scrubbing again till they were satisfied that they had done their bit.
I was in Rome with my father and my mother in 1876, and Monsignor Stonor arranged that we should be presented to the Pope. There were about a hundred other people to be presented, 22 September, and we were all ranged in groups round one of the big rooms in the Vatican. And then the Pope came in, and went leisurely round the room, saying a few words to each of us. Stonor told him that I had just left Harrow, and was going up to Cambridge: whereupon he beamed, and said he hoped that I should be a good historian. It was an odd remark, for nothing had been said of history, and that was not my line. But some years afterwards I took to writing books on history.
Pius IX was then in his eighty-fifth year, and was altogether a most pleasant person to behold—tall, big and genial, with nothing ecclesiastical about him but his dress. He had a judge’s face, rather than a bishop’s.
The next time I was here, I was talking to Mrs *****—she was of an earlier generation than the Mrs ***** of whom I spoke just now—and I told her that I had been to Rome and seen the Pope. She asked me eagerly, “Well now, maister, what be he like? I reckon he be a proper tiger to fight.” As a thoroughgoing Protestant, she knew no difference between the Devil and the Pope.
Her husband always felt that a great chance had been missed, when the Devil came into Widdicombe church on Sunday 21 October 1638. My grandfather pressed him as to what he would have done; and his reply was, “Dock’n, maister, dock’n—cut the tail of’n off.” I imagine that the Devil’s tail at Widdicombe would have drawn more pilgrims than all the relics of the saints at other places.