As the buildings which showed her utmost skill were chiefly exposed to lightning, she is invoked in defence from it; and our petition in the Litany, against sudden death, was written originally to her. The blasphemous corruptions of her into a patroness of cannon and gunpowder, are among the most ludicrous, (because precisely contrary to the original tradition,) as well as the most deadly, insolences and stupidities of Renaissance Art.
IV. St. Margaret of Antioch was a shepherdess; the St. Geneviève of the East; the type of feminine gentleness and simplicity. Traditions of the resurrection of Alcestis perhaps mingle in those of her contest with the dragon; but at all events, she differs from the other three great mythic saints, in expressing the soul's victory over temptation or affliction, by Christ's miraculous help, and without any special power of its own. She is the saint of the meek and of the poor; her virtue and her victory are those of all gracious and lowly womanhood; and her memory is consecrated among the gentle households of Europe; no other name, except those of Jeanne and Jeanie, seems so gifted with a baptismal fairy power of giving grace and peace.
I must be forgiven for thinking, even on this canonical ground, not only of Jeanie Deans, and Margaret of Branksome; but of Meg—Merrilies. My readers will, I fear, choose rather to think of the more doubtful victory over the Dragon, won by the great Margaret of German literature.
V. With much more clearness and historic comfort we may approach the shrine of St. Cecilia; and even on the most prosaic and realistic minds—such as my own—a visit to her house in Rome has a comforting and establishing effect, which reminds one of the carter in 'Harry and Lucy,' who is convinced of the truth of a plaustral catastrophe at first incredible to him, as soon as he hears the name of the hill on which it happened. The ruling conception of her is deepened gradually by the enlarged study of Religious music; and is at its best and highest in the thirteenth century, when she rather resists than complies with the already tempting and distracting powers of sound; and we are told that "cantantibus organis, Cecilia virgo in corde suo soli Domino decantabat, dicens, 'Fiat, Domine, cor meum et corpus meum immaculatum, ut non confundar.'"
("While the instruments played, Cecilia the virgin sang in her heart only to the Lord, saying, Oh Lord, be my heart and body made stainless, that I be not confounded.")
This sentence occurs in my great Service-book of the convent of Beau-pré, written in 1290, and it is illustrated with a miniature of Cecilia sitting silent at a banquet, where all manner of musicians are playing. I need not point out to you how the law, not of sacred music only, so called, but of all music, is determined by this sentence; which means in effect that unless music exalt and purify, it is not under St. Cecilia's ordinance, and it is not, virtually, music at all.
Her confessed power at last expires amidst a hubbub of odes and sonatas; and I suppose her presence at a Morning Popular is as little anticipated as desired. Unconfessed, she is of all the mythic saints for ever the greatest; and the child in its nurse's arms, and every tender and gentle spirit which resolves to purify in itself,—as the eye for seeing, so the ear for hearing,—may still, whether behind the Temple veil,[25] or at the fireside, and by the wayside, hear Cecilia sing.
It would delay me too long just now to trace in specialty farther the functions of the mythic, or, as in another sense they may be truly called, the universal, Saints: the next greatest of them, St. Ursula, is essentially British,—and you will find enough about her in 'Fors Clavigera'; the others, I will simply give you in entirely authoritative order from the St. Louis' Psalter, as he read and thought of them.
The proper Service-book of the thirteenth century consists first of the pure Psalter; then of certain essential passages of the Old Testament—invariably the Song of Miriam at the Red Sea and the last song of Moses;—ordinarily also the 12th of Isaiah and the prayer of Habakkuk; while St. Louis' Psalter has also the prayer of Hannah, and that of Hezekiah (Isaiah xxxviii. 10-20); the Song of the Three Children; then the Benedictus, the Magnificat, and the Nunc Dimittis. Then follows the Athanasian Creed; and then, as in all Psalters after their chosen Scripture passages, the collects to the Virgin, the Te Deum, and Service to Christ, beginning with the Psalm 'The Lord reigneth'; and then the collects to the greater individual saints, closing with the Litany, or constant prayer for mercy to Christ, and all saints; of whom the order is,—Archangels, Patriarchs, Apostles, Disciples, Innocents, Martyrs, Confessors, Monks, and Virgins. Of women the Magdalen always leads; St. Mary of Egypt usually follows, but may be the last. Then the order varies in every place, and prayer-book, no recognizable supremacy being traceable; except in relation to the place, or person, for whom the book was written. In St. Louis', St. Geneviève (the last saint to whom he prayed on his death-bed) follows the two Maries; then come—memorable for you best, as easiest, in this six-foil group,—Saints Catharine, Margaret, and Scolastica, Agatha, Cecilia, and Agnes; and then ten more, whom you may learn or not as you like: I note them now only for future reference,—more lively and easy for your learning,—by their French names,