Rome,
February 15, 1888.
We had a magnificent voyage, which made me feel immediately in a most robust and lively condition. I find, however, that a calm in the Bay of Biscay, such as we had, is considered ill-omened by the sailors; and one of the passengers committed suicide on the night before we left Gibraltar. Curiously enough, the same thing happened in the same circumstances on another occasion which I remember of a calm in the same spot. We landed at Naples last Saturday. The lewdness, cruelty, etc., of the Neapolitans seems as bad as usual; but some non-Neapolitan clergy have lately been introduced, who say Mass very reverently, and preach and pray in the vernacular. I hear they are beginning to do much good. We arrived here yesterday, and are fasting to-day (Ash Wednesday) in great discomfort. Rome is crowded. The Scotch deputation (about 140 persons) is to be received by the Pope to-morrow at 10.30 a.m.
Bute read the address to Pope Leo XIII. on behalf of the Scottish pilgrimage, which had come to Rome to join with the rest of Christendom in congratulating the venerable Pontiff on the celebration of his sacerdotal jubilee. From Sorrento, where he afterwards spent several weeks, he wrote to Dr. Metcalfe on Holy Saturday:
The people had their fill (I should hope) of services, and especially of preaching, yesterday (Good Friday). They began with a procession round the town at 4 a.m., which I did not join, commemorative of the procession to Calvary. The Liturgy began in the cathedral at 8, and ended at 11. At 1 a man began preaching in the cathedral and went on till 4.15—I wonder he could do it. The church was full, and all, even small boys and girls, very attentive. He preached nine sermons, or rather one enormous sermon in nine points, with short and very sweet Italian anthems sung between each. Many of the congregation were affected to tears. The service of Tenebræ began at 5 and lasted an hour and a half; then they began another procession through the streets, this time in commemoration of Christ being borne to the grave. A spectator said to me quite cheerily that this procession was going the round of seven churches; and that there would be a sermon in each. At 9.30 p.m. I heard from our garden the town band (which accompanied the procession) still playing in the distance sacred music and funeral marches. The people are now buying at the confectioners' small lambs made of the least indigestible sugar procurable, so that they may "eat the lamb this night" without violating the Lenten law of abstinence from flesh meat.
1888, Easter at Sorrento
A long letter addressed to the same correspondent on Easter Monday seems worth reproducing almost in its entirety. It affords testimony, more convincing than any words of a biographer could be, of Bute's extraordinary interest in the religious services of his Church, and of the vivid and even moving eloquence which inspired his pen when describing the worship and the devotion of the simple Campanian folk among whom he was temporarily sojourning:
The people go on hearing sermons. There were at least two delivered in the Cathedral on Sunday, at 7 and 10 a.m. These preachments have their peculiar features, besides their length. They seem very often to conclude with an extempore prayer. I call it extempore, although it is of course prepared beforehand, and, in the works at any rate of St. Alfonso Liguori, these prayers are printed along with the sermons to which they belong; but no MS. is used. When the prayer begins the people generally kneel down, and sometimes the preacher asks them to join with him, in which case he prays very slowly, and they repeat after him. One day I went into the large Church of the Saviour at Meta. There was barely standing-room. A man was preaching against blasphemous swearing. After a time he dictated to the congregation a sort of pledge never to commit this sin again, and many of them repeated it after him. He then, after the manner of old precentors I have heard of in the Highlands, when the people could not read, sang an hymn line by line, the people singing every line after him. After this he knelt down in the pulpit and offered a long and vehement extempore prayer; and when this was over he rose and began on the same subject again. I then left.
1888, Church services at Sorrento
On the Feast of St. Benedict there were special services in the Benedictine convent church here. Before Benediction, the Archbishop officiating, the whole congregation sang the Te Deum together by heart, in Latin. Then the Archbishop began to preach, from the altar—a series of puns on the name of Benedict (Benedetto, "Blessed"), very well done. He spoke of the blessedness of the servants of God, here and hereafter, and in reference, no doubt, to the nuns behind their grating as well as to the women in the church, made allusion to the special blessedness of the women who serve God. This was followed by a long extempore prayer, the people (who had stood while he preached) sinking on their knees. He besought a blessing on himself and his flock, naming the different classes of his people in turn with great simplicity and fervour. The final supplication that all—not one being missing from the flock—might at last be brought together in the glory of heaven, was very moving. Then he gave the Sacramental benediction.
The use of the vernacular seems to be very considerable. At the parochial Mass on Sundays, besides the sermon, and Italian prayers before Mass begins, at certain moments the whole congregation repeat Italian prayers together. The similarity of their language to Latin robs the latter of much of its terror. Many of the commoner Latin hymns, etc., they seem all to know by heart quite familiarly. I have spoken of the Te Deum. On Saturday they all sang the Litany, repeating every clause after the precentors. On Thursday, while the Sacrament for next day's Communion was being carried to the Chapel of Repose, the whole congregation sang on their knees the hymn of Thomas Aquinas upon the Last Supper; and the sublimity of the words, the spectacle of the kneeling multitude, and the solemnity of the procession moving through the church, made a very impressive whole. The clergy here are all extremely clean and respectable-looking, and very decorous and reverential, both out of church and in. And this remark applies also to the whole of the Divinity students, and the whole choir and staff of the Cathedral. The music—even when poor—is very grave and solemn; the services are conducted (and evidently prepared) with the utmost care, and a certain effect of subdued splendour is produced—with the air of being produced incidentally and unintentionally—by the real costliness and richness, combined with scrupulous cleanliness and neatness, of every object and garment employed, in their several degrees.