"No," he replied; "I was disgusted with a great many things; but I thought it my duty to write, or rather to repeat them, because, having been asserted so long ago, they are now known and believed by everybody."
"Now, my dear uncle, do not say by everybody, for there are ourselves in this very place, who believe nothing about them; and who knows how many others may not have the same good sense? Why should we, then, seek to deceive the ingenuous and simple-minded, particularly the young, who would no longer read the old trash about this said St. Rosa, unless it were dressed up in the pleasing garb of a good style, and written with a show of historical erudition? Is it not a pity—nay, a sin?"
"But if I were not to relate what has been already written and handed down, what would there be to make a life of?"
"Little, I grant; my friend; little, but good. I should give the simple truth. This same Rosa was a very worthy creature, and a woman of spirit for the age in which she lived; full of courage, and loved her country as much as any one. The priests represent her as devoted to the pope; but I, on the contrary, maintain that she was devoted chiefly to politics, and only in a secondary degree to matters of religion. In fact, the people of Viterbo were almost all Patareni;[51] and yet, between the pope and the emperor, they held most to the pope, because he did not, like the Emperor, threaten the liberty of the commune, by imposing upon them any particular code of laws, but allowed the people to govern themselves by their own institutions. In short, to me the actions of St. Rosa appear so entirely mixed up with the political events of her time, that if I were writing her life, I should connect it with the history of that period, merely as an episode."
"And who would you get to read it?"
"Everybody, except a few bigots; but perhaps it is for them you are writing?"
These remarks appeared so far to influence my good uncle, that he began to correct his great volume, which soon became reduced to half its size, but gained double in value. Still, I regret to say, that some stories were left which would have been far better away. The truth of the matter is, that although I no longer believed in the miracles of Rome's catalogued saints myself, yet I had not as yet acquired sufficient courage to wage a war of extermination against them. I was more severe with another relation of mine, Dr. Nicola Grispigni, who had written the life of Lucia di Narni, a bigot, beatified by Rome. He was at that time Professor of Rhetoric in the college at Viterbo, and is now Bishop of Poggio Mirteto, in Sabina. He too had followed the old biographies, and without any selection, had dressed up their worn-out falsehoods in elegant modern phraseology. The manuscript was sent to Rome, and duly approved, with the nihil obstat from two theological censors, and the imprimatur from the master of the sacred palace; and, as a matter of course, was about to be printed, when by chance it fell under my notice. Never in my whole life had I seen such a tissue of gross falsehoods. I immediately stopped the printing of it, and referred it again to the master of the palace, and received his authority to make all the corrections I might think necessary previous to its publication.
"My dear Dr. Nicola," said I to him, "where on earth did you find all the nonsense that you have put together in this volume?"
"In the biographies of the Beatified[52] Lucia, and especially in that written by a very reverend Dominican, under the approbation of the master of the sacred palace."
"I am delighted to hear it, but these relations are all evidently untrue, and some of them are absolutely immoral. Such, for instance, is that which states that a wife, in consequence of some vow, refused conjugal duty to her husband,—a thing quite at variance with sound morality. Here now is a story invented by some one in the first instance, repeated by others, and now related again by yourself; and which, having once more escaped the eyes of the censor, would have been in print in a very short time. Had I not happened to have seen it, the religious world would again have been regaled with the same lies and the same imposture! And what is all this nonsense about angels descending from heaven to minister to your Beata! and all the saints, and the Madonna, the mother of Jesus, coming down to hold conversation with her! Away with all these fables; we have already too many of them; they disgust even the most simple-minded. Religion holds such falsehoods in abhorrence; they are called pious, whereas they ought rather to be termed impious beliefs. For it is highly impious to mix falsehood with truth in order to mislead the understanding and deprave the heart. You surely are not so simple as to believe everything that is printed con licenza dei Superiori, under which authority you have admitted all these foolish stories about Beata Lucia. At any rate I cannot allow the reprinting of them. Revise your book, purge it of such ridiculous matter, and I will then give it my approval."