One must have been in a Catholic community, or else lived close to an important Catholic church, in order to form an idea of the great part the Church once played in the lives and thoughts of its members—the endless provision it made for the entertainment of unformed minds in the way of festivals, fasts, processions, curious observances, changes of costume, and special rites. There was always something going on or coming off. There was not a day in the year nor an hour in the day which had not its ecclesiastical name and character. In our flowery observance of Easter and in our joyous celebration of Christmas we have a faint traditional residue of festivals that once made all Christendom gay and jocund. And it was all so adapted to the limited abilities of our race! In an average thousand men, there is not more than one man capable of filling creditably the post of a Protestant minister, but there are a hundred who can be drilled into competent priests.
Consider, for example, a procession, which was formerly the great event of many of the Church festivals, gratifying equally those who witnessed and those who took part in it. In other words, it gratified keenly the whole community. And yet how entirely it was within the resources of human nature! Not a child so young, not a woman so weak, not a man so old, but could assist or enjoy it. The sick could view it from their windows, the robust could carry its burdens, the skillful could contrive its devices, and all had the feeling that they were engaged in enhancing at once the glory of God, the fame of their saint, the credit of their town, and the good of their souls. It was pleasure; it was duty; it was masquerade; it was devotion. Some readers may remember the exaltation of soul with which Albert Dürer, the first of German artists in Luther's age, describes the great procession at Antwerp, in 1520, in honor of what was styled the "Assumption" of the Virgin Mary. One of the pleasing fictions adopted by the old Church was that on the 15th of August, A.D. 45, the Virgin Mary, aged seventy-five years, made a miraculous ascent into heaven. Hence the annual festival, which was celebrated throughout Europe with pomp and splendor. The passage in the diary of Dürer has a particular value, because it affords us a vivid view of the bright side of the ancient Church just before the reformers changed its gorgeous robes into the Puritan's plain black gown, and substituted the long prayer and interminable sermon for the magnificent ceremonial and the splendid procession.
Albert Dürer was in sympathy with Luther, but his heart swelled within him as he beheld, on that Sunday morning in Antwerp, the glorious pageantry that filed past for two hours in honor of the "Mother of God's" translation. All the people of the city assembled about the Church of "Our Lady," each dressed in gayest attire, but each wearing the costume of his rank, and exhibiting the badge of his guild or vocation. Silver trumpets of the old Frankish fashion, German drums and fifes, were playing in every quarter. The trades and guilds of the city—goldsmiths, painters, masons, embroiderers, statuaries, cabinet-makers, carpenters, sailors, fishermen, butchers, curriers, weavers, bakers, tailors, shoe-makers, and laborers—all marched by in order, at some distance apart, each preceded by its own magnificent cross. These were followed by the merchants, shop-keepers, and their clerks. The "shooters" came next, armed with bows, cross-bows, and firelocks, some on horseback and some on foot. The city guard followed. Then came the magistrates, nobles, and knights, all dressed in their official costume, and escorted, as our artist records, "by a gallant troop, arrayed in a noble and splendid manner." There were a number of women in the procession, belonging to a religious order, who gained their subsistence by labor. These, all clad in white from head to foot, agreeably relieved the splendors of the occasion. After them marched "a number of gallant persons and the canons of Our Lady's Church, with all the clergy and scholars, followed by a grand display of characters." Here the enthusiasm of the artist kindles, as he recalls the glories of the day:
"Twenty men carried the Virgin and Christ, most richly adorned, to the honor of God. In this part of the procession were a number of delightful things represented in a splendid manner. There were several wagons, in which were representations of ships and fortifications. Then came a troop of characters from the Prophets, in regular order, followed by others from the New Testament, such as the Annunciation, the Wise Men of the East riding great camels and other wonderful animals, and the Flight into Egypt, all very skillfully appointed. Then came a great dragon, and St. Margaret with the image of the Virgin at her girdle, exceedingly beautiful; and last, St. George and his squire. In this troop rode a number of boys and girls very handsomely arrayed in various costumes, representing so many saints. This procession, from beginning to end, was upward of two hours in passing our house, and there were so many things to be seen that I could never describe them all even in a book."
In some such hearty and picturesque manner all the great festivals of the Church were celebrated age after age, the entire people taking part in the show. There was no dissent, because there was no thought. But the reformers preached, the Bible was translated into the modern tongues, the intelligence of Christendom awoke, and all that bright childish pageantry vanished from the sight of the more advanced nations. The reformers discovered that there was no reason to believe that the aged Virgin Mary, on the 15th of August, A.D. 45, was borne miraculously to heaven; and in a single generation many important communities, by using their reason even to that trifling extent, grew past enjoying the procession annually held in honor of the old tradition. All the old festivals fell under the ban. It became, at length, a sectarian punctilio not to abstain from labor on Christmas. The Puritan Sunday was gradually evolved from the same spirit of opposition, and life became intense and serious.
For it is not in a single generation, nor in ten, that the human mind, after having been bound and confined for a thousand years, learns to enjoy and safely use its freedom. Luther the reformer was only a little less credulous than Luther the monk. He assisted to strike the fetters from the reason, but the prisoner only hobbled from one cell into another, larger and cleaner, but still a cell. No one can become familiar with the Puritan period without feeling that the bondage of the mind to the literal interpretation of some parts of the Old Testament was a bondage as real, though not as degrading nor as hopeless, as that under which it had lived to the papal decrees. You do not make your canary a free bird by merely opening the door of its cage. It has to acquire slowly, with anguish and great fear, the strength of wing, lungs, and eye, the knowledge, habits, and instincts, which its ancestors possessed before they were captured in their native islands. It is only in our own day that we are beginning really to enjoy the final result of Luther's heroic life—a tolerant and modest freedom of thought—for it is only in our own day that the consequences of peculiar thinking have anywhere ceased to be injurious.
If there are any who can not yet forgive the Puritans for their intolerance and narrowness, it must be they who do not know the agony of apprehension in which they passed their lives. It is the Puritan age that could be properly called the Reign of Terror. It lasted more than a century, instead of a few months, and it was during that long period of dread and tribulation that they acquired the passionate abhorrence of the papal system which is betrayed in the pictures and writings of the time. There was a fund of terror in their own belief, in that awful Doubt which hung over every soul, whether it was or was not one of the Elect; and, in addition to that, it seemed to them that the chief powers of earth, and all the powers of hell, were united to crush the true believers.
Spayne and Rome Defeated. (London and Amsterdam, 1621.)