CHAPTER I SAINTS OF THE CHURCH
A Friend in Rome—A Story of Two Ways of Loving—Aglaë and Boniface—Become Christians—A New Life—Boniface Endures Terrible Tortures—Martyrdom—Death of Aglaë—Church of St. Boniface—Alexis, the Pilgrim—His Travels—Return to Rome—A Ragged Beggar—His Death and Burial in St. Boniface’s Church—St. Alexis’ Monastery—Trials of the Church After Constantine—Rome’s Lowest Ebb—Growth of the Spiritual City—Benedict the Blessed, and Scholastica.
It was my good fortune, many years ago, to make friends with a woman whose name was as beautiful as her mind—Mary Grace. We met in another hemisphere, under the Southern Cross, and for many days lived together in Chile’s one little paradise, Viña del Mar. There, in shady patios trellised with jessamine and bougainvillea, we talked of the impossible—of meeting in Rome and going together to the holy places and making better acquaintance with the Saints. Two or three years later the impossible happened. My Mary, with her daughter Lilium, floated into my mother’s drawing-room in the Odescalchi one April afternoon, when the swallows were whirling above the courtyard and the house seemed all roses and sunshine. In the weeks that followed all our dream programme was realised; together we went to the Pope’s Mass, together knelt at his feet while Leo XIII laid his hand on Lilium’s golden head and blessed us and promised to pray for us and all our dear ones; and together we wandered from place to place in the Eternal City, I, who had known it all my life, learning many things from her who came there for the first time, as so often happens. Of all those pleasant inspiring hours the one we both remembered most appreciatively, I think, was that of our visit to a lonely spot on the Aventine—the hill that somehow has always kept its character and is even to-day very little hurt by the destructions that have defaced most of the other quarters of the town.
My friend was Irish, “pur sang,” and her appreciations were extremely individual ones; things that other people felt obliged to rave about left her quite cold; but, when she had caught and joined the links of some beautiful story that the world had overlooked or forgotten, she became a veritable flame of enthusiasm, and every tiny detail and souvenir she could connect with it had to be sought out and stored in the big warm shrine of her heart. I think, though I am not certain, that she knew the story of the house on the Aventine before she came to Rome. Anyway, it was she who took me there, and we went over story and house together, and were exceedingly loath to come away when the Ave Maria rang over the city and all respectable people turned their faces homewards.
Here is the story, a story of two ways of loving. It is in two parts, and I only learnt the first long after I was familiar with the second. The beginning takes us back to the last years of the Third Century, to the oft-mentioned reign of Diocletian. At that time, although the Aventine had never been one of the most distinguished quarters of Rome, it contained a few dwellings of nobles, who, doubtless, overlooked the mass of poorer houses that swarmed about its base, for the sake of the view, both over the city and towards the sea, from which comes always the pleasant west wind that we Romans love. I have spoken of the palace of the good Marcella, where in her old age she was so roughly treated by Alaric’s Goths; before Marcella’s time there lived another noble lady on the Aventine, with very different ideas as to the conduct of life. Her name was Aglaë, not a Roman name, and I fancy she must have come of Greek parentage, although she is spoken of as a noble Roman matron. Of her husband, who seems to have died before the story begins, we are told nothing; her whole existence was wrapped up in a quite unsanctified passion for a handsome pagan called Boniface, a man of generous heart, as the sequel shows, but a sensualist, like most of his class at that time. He adored Aglaë, and the two must have passed some enchanting hours wandering on the terraces of the Aventine villa or sitting hand in hand to watch the sun sinking red into the distant sea. No thought of the future seems to have come to them there, nor any gleam of a scruple as to their way of life. Youth and beauty and love were theirs; this world was sweet, and they had never heard of another.
Then something happened. We are not told what it was—perhaps some miracle witnessed by Boniface at the martyrdom of some obscure Christian, one of those miracles which so often converted a crowd of brutal, mocking bystanders into Christians on the spot. Whatever it was, it rent his soul, summoned his intelligence, and claimed him for ever. If Aglaë was not with him at the moment, he must have rushed to her for one last visit to tell her of it, for her conversion was simultaneous, and sudden as his own. From that moment the lovers renounced each other for the love of Christ, and the remainder of their lives was devoted to atoning for their guilt in the past. Aglaë, in her lonely palace, gave herself up to prayer and penance; Boniface at once joined himself to the band of Christians who made it their business to gather up and bury the bodies of the martyrs. In no other way could he assuage the tumult of pain and repentance that filled his heart at the remembrance of his sins. Diocletian’s persecution was not confined to Rome, but was raging in many other parts of the Empire, notably in Asia Minor, and thither Boniface travelled with some devoted companions, in order to help and cheer the poor Christians in their sufferings.
On arriving at Tarsus, St. Paul’s city, he got separated from his fellow-travellers, and, wandering around, found that a great number of the Faithful were being cruelly tormented that day, in divers ways, for the name of Christ, and his heart was both torn with compassion for their pains and admiration for their heroism. Approaching them, he kissed their chains and encouraged them to endure these passing tortures for the sake of Him who would so quickly and splendidly reward them by an eternity of joy. Of course he was at once arrested, and the tormentors seem to have tasked their ingenuity in inventing agonies for him to bear. His sins of the flesh were expiated by having his whole body ploughed with hooks of iron, and by spikes of wood run in under his nails and on his limbs; he had spoken sinful words; they poured molten lead into his mouth; he had sinned in the lust of the eyes and the pride of life; the executioners plunged him head downwards in a cauldron of boiling pitch. But from this the Lord delivered him. When they drew him forth, his eyes were clear, his brow unscarred, and he looked once more—his last look—on the fair world where he had been so sinfully happy, and through it all he praised God aloud, saying, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, I thank Thee!” Then came the order—so usual when all the torments had failed and the dear spirit still clung to the lacerated body—“Behead him!”
As the axe fell, there was a terrific earthquake, and many of the bystanders were converted then and there, but no one was allowed to touch his body. Meanwhile his friends, who had been seeking for him everywhere, learnt of his martyrdom, and came to gather up his remains. But a strict watch had been set, and it was only after paying five hundred pieces of silver that they could obtain possession of the dear corpse. With love and tears, they anointed it with precious balms and wrapped it in costly coverings and transported it to Rome. During these months Aglaë had been living a life of such whole-hearted repentance that our dear Lord had taken her into great grace; and now, by an exquisite, Divine bit of indulgence—one of those flashes of hot sympathy that come straight from the Sacred Human Heart of Him in Heaven to some poor, broken human heart on earth—He sent an Angel to tell her that her Boniface’s body was returning to Rome and that she could go and meet it. So Aglaë, in her sombre penitential dress, her beautiful face covered with a veil, went forth, and, at a given place, saw the little procession approaching from the sea. There was no danger for her in looking at the beloved features now. Very quiet and strong she seems to have been as she met the wayfarers, bade them pause with their holy burden, and then led them back to her own house. There, where he and she had loved and sinned, she received him, who was to leave her no more. Those who had brought him told her of his glorious end, and she thanked the Lord for it again—for the Angel had not let her wait so long for the story. And when she had shown her gratitude by most loving hospitality and precious gifts to those who had brought his body, they went away and left her alone with her beloved. Ask any loving woman what she did then! Which of us would not place our dear tortured dead in our hall of honour, and burn sweet spices round them, and light tall tapers, and fill the place with every fragrance and loveliness that the garden has to give?
All this, we may be sure, Aglaë did for Boniface; but she did that from which most women are debarred. She turned her palace into a Church for his tomb, and prayed near it till she died, and then the poor and suffering, who had been her one care from the day of her conversion, came there and prayed for her soul. But we know that that went straight to Heaven.