“And then the organ sounds, and unseen choirs
Sing the old Latin hymns of peace and love
And benedictions of the Holy Ghost;
And the melodious bells among the spires
O’er all the house-tops and through heaven above
Proclaim the elevation of the Host.”
That is the Catholic autocosm at its loveliest, as seen by the poet of the Pilgrim Fathers when under the spell of translating Dante. And ’tis, indeed, no untrue vision of its ideal.
I saw an old statue of St. Zeno in his church at Verona, and the saint, who began life as a fisherman, appeared as proud of his fish pendent as of his crozier. Can one imagine a British bishop in a fishmonger’s apron? Even the Apostles are doubtless conceived at the Athenæum Club as a sort of Fishmongers’ Company, with an old hall and a ’scutcheon. For England combines with her distrust of High Church a ritual of High Life, which is the most meticulous and sacrosanct in the world.
Nor is there any record of a British bishop behaving like St. Zeno when the Emperor Gallienus gave him the crown from off his own head, and the saint requested permission to sell it for the benefit of the poor. True, British bishops are not in the habit of exorcising demons from the daughters of emperors, but neither are they in the habit of dividing their stipends among curates with large families.
St. Zeno, by the way, came from Mauretania, and St. Antony was not really of Padua, but of Portugal. ’Twas a free trade in saints. There was no protection against protectors. Virgil and Boëthius themselves enjoyed a Christian reputation. One does not wonder that even Buddha crept into the calendar by an inspired error. It is heartening to come on an altar in Verona to St. Remigio, “apostle of the generous nation of the French,” to find Lucca Cathedral given over to an Irish saint and honouring a Scotch king (“San Riccardo, Re di Scozia”), and to read of King Canute treating with Pope John and Emperor Conrad for free Alpine passes to Rome for English pilgrims. Universities too were really universal. The Angelic Doctor was equally at home in Naples, Paris, and Cologne.