Yes—allowing Messina and Reggio to be annihilated—the Saint in 1908 said to the seismic forces, “So far and no farther,” and ’tis not for me, whose umbrella he recovered on the very day I mocked at his pretensions, to resent his preferences. Three days of thanksgiving (mass in the morning at his altar and prayers and Benediction in the afternoon), “per lo scampato flagello del Terremoto,” rewarded his partiality for Ferrara. The town keeps doubtless a morbid memory of earthquakes, for from an old German book printed at Augsburg by Michael Manger, I learn that the terrible Terremoto of 1570, “in Welschland am Po,” started in Ferrara on a 16th in the night and lasted till the 21st, during which time two hundred people perished, and many houses with a dozen churches, monasteries and nunneries were destroyed in Ferrara alone. Why St. Antony nodded on that occasion is not explained. Nor why he should have limited his protection to the Jews, not a man of whom was injured. Perhaps he had not yet recognised the claim of Ferrarese Christianity upon him. There is a wistful note in the prayer placarded in the Ferrarese church of San Francesco. “O great saint, commonly called the saint of Padua, but worthy to be called the saint of the world. . . . You who so often pressed in your arms the celestial Bambino!”
Happy Paduans, to whom this chronological prodigy is securely attached, who indeed hastened to build a Cathedral round him in the very year of his canonisation (1232). Here amid crudely worked flowers, crutches, photographs and other mementoes of his prowess, the faithful may find remission of their sins or expiation of the faults of their dead. For what limit is there to his intercessory power? Let me English the prayer hung up in his chapel. Every religion has its higher and more sophistic presentation, but it is well to turn from the pundits to the people.
“Orazione a S. Antonio di Padova.
“Great St. Antony, the Church glories in all the prerogatives that God has favoured you with among all the saints. Death is disarmed by your power; error is dissipated by your light. They whom the malice of man tries to wound receive from you the desired relief. The leprous, the sick, the crippled, by your virtue obtain cure, and the hurricanes and the tempests of the sea calm themselves at your command; the chains of slaves fall in pieces by your authority, and the lost things are found again by your care and return to their legitimate possessors. All those who invoke you with faith are freed from the evils and perils that menace them. In fine, there is no want to which your power and goodness do not extend.”
Here the intermediary has practically superseded the Creator, even if dulia be still distinguished from latria.
Rimini was likewise safeguarded from the earthquake of 1908, but not by St. Antony. A saint of its own, the glorious Bishop and Martyr, St. Emidio, “compatrone della città, protettore potentissimo contro il flagello del Terremoto,” received the Three Days’ Solemn Supplication, and the Riminese were adjured in many a placard to repeat their fathers’ glorious outburst of faith before the thaumaturgic images when the city was delivered from the frightful earthquake of 1786. But on the whole the saints can scarcely have done their duty by the old towered cities, for all Italy is full of the legend of toppled towers.
In war-perils it is the Archangel Michael who is the power to approach. A prayer, ordered by Pope Leo XIII to be said in all the churches of the world on bended knees after private mass, pleads to that Holy Prince of the celestial legions to defend us in battle and to thrust Satan and other roving spirits of evil back to Hell. “Tuque, Princeps Militiæ Cœlestis, Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos, qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo, divina virtute in infernum detrude. Amen.”
That Satan still has the entry of the Catholic autocosm, I was indeed not unaware. But I was certainly taken aback to find the Plague still curable by Paternosters. Yet this is what I was told in a little church in Brescia devoted to Moretto’s works and monument, and summing up in letters of gold the whole duty of man.
“Christians!
Bless the most holy name of God and of Jesus,