Respect the Festas,
Keep the Fasts and the Abstinences!
In short, only by Prayer
And Penitence will cease
Great Mortality, Famine
And every Epidemic.”
I had regarded the Salute and the other Plague-Churches of Venice as mere historic curiosities, and written it down as an asset of human thought that the Plague of 1630 was due to the filthiness and congestion of the Levantine cities. That when 60,000 Venetians died—“uno sterminato numero” as the tablet in the Salute says—the Venetian Republic should with vermicular humility erect a gorgeous church in gratitude for the Death-Angel’s moderation—this might pass in 1630, like St. Rocco’s neglect in performing only the few desultory miracles recorded in the wooden bas-reliefs of his choir. In the seventeenth century one might even adore the angel of Piero Negri’s staircase-fresco of Venice Relieved of the Pest, tardily as he came to relieve those ghastly visions of the plague-pit which Zanchi has painted, facing him. But that in 1836 Venice should have decreed a Three Days’ Thanksgiving to the “Deiparæ Virgini salutari” for salvation from “the cholera fiercely raging through Europe” shows that two centuries had made no change in the Catholic autocosm, nor in the caprice of its Olympians. Venice had already passed under the Napoleonic reign of pure reason, and in an old poster of the Teatro Civico I read an invitation to the citizens to “democratise” the soil of the theatre by planting here the Tree of Liberty and dancing the graziosissima Carmagnola. But revolutions, French or other, leave undisturbed the deep instinct of humanity which demands that things spiritual shall produce equipollent effects in the physical sphere.
“E pur si muove,” as Galileo said a hundred and thirty years after his death. The Catholic autocosm and the objective macrocosm begin to rub against each other even in the churches. Quaintly enough ’tis over the popular practice of spitting that science and religion come into friction. The priest who convoyed me through the Certosa of Pavia seemed to regard his wonderful church as a glorified spittoon, and notices in every church in Italy make clear the universality of the offence. But whereas at Pavia you are asked “For the decorum of the house of God do not spit on the pavement,” in Brescia the deprecation is headed: “Lotta Contro la Tuberculosi,” as though the most penitent and pious might be rewarded for church-going by consumption. The Cremona and Lucca churches compromise: “Out of respect for the house of God and for hygiene please do not spit on the pavement.” In Verona the formula is practically the same: “Decency and hygiene forbid to spit on the pavement.” In Bologna the modern autocosm was, I gather, even more victorious, for in time of plague, some frescoes in S. Petronio were whitewashed over. I trust for the sake of symbolic completeness these were frescoes of St. Sebastian and St. Rocco, the protective plague-saints.
A false cosmos, I said, like a false coin, may be as useful as a true one, so long as it is believed in. As long as the attrition of the macrocosm outside does not wear a hole in the Catholic autocosm, it will keep its spheric inflation. For there is nothing to wear a hole from inside, nothing contrary to pure reason, nothing inconsistent with something else. There is no à priori reason why saints should not control the chain of causation by spiritual forces as engineers and doctors control it by physical forces at the bidding of intelligence. There is no formal ground for denying that penitence puts cholera to flight. It is merely a matter of experience—and even Popes and Cardinals remove to cooler places when the pest breaks out at Rome. There is no conceptual reason why there should not be a Purgatory, nor why masses and alms for the dead (or still more the emotions of love and remorse which these represent) should not enable us to assist the posthumous destinies of those we have lost, nor why our sainted dead should be cut off from all fresh influence upon our lives. It seems indeed monstrous that they should pass beyond our yearning affection. In these and other things the Catholic autocosm gives hints to the Creator and shows how the “sorry scheme of things” may be moulded “nearer to the heart’s desire.” Nor is there any reason why there should not be a Trinity or a vicarious Atonement. These concepts, indeed, explain obscurum per obscurius—
“No light but rather darkness visible—”