"That from information of trustworthy persons, it being manifestly apparent that the monasteries, abbies, priories, and other places of religious or regulars in Ireland are, at present, in such a state that in them the praise of God and the welfare of man are next to nothing regarded, the regulars and others dwelling there being addicted, partly to their own superstitious ceremonies, partly to the pernicious worship of idols, and to the pestiferous doctrines of the Roman Pontiff, that unless an effectual remedy be promptly provided, not only the weak lower order, but the whole Irish people, may be speedily infected to their total destruction by the example of these persons. To prevent, therefore, the longer continuance of such religious men and nuns in so damnable a state, the king, having resolved to resume into his own hands all the monasteries and religious houses, for their better reformation, to remove from them the religious men and women, and cause them to return to some honest mode of living, and to true religion, directs the commissioners to signify this his intention to the heads of religious houses," etc.[39]
It is unnecessary to say that this measure of wholesale spoliation was promptly and thoroughly carried out. The thousand ruins that dot the island attest it, and the title-deeds of many a nobleman's broad acres bear date no earlier than this edict of the greatest monster that ever disgraced the British throne.
From this time forth, the lord chancellors found their best passport to royal favor in devising measures for the destruction of the popular faith. Being generally needy adventurers, with nothing but their legal knowledge and facile consciences to begin the world with, they neither loved the country nor respected the people, and their titles and wealth depended simply on their zeal for Protestantism. Of the hundreds of penal laws which disgrace the statute-book of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, every one of them owes its inception and enactment to one or another of those subtle-minded officials who, as the head of the lords, president of the privy council, and the dispenser of vast judicial and executive patronage, had a potent influence in all public affairs. They continued industriously to carry out the designs of Henry during the successive reigns of his worthy daughter Elizabeth, the Stuarts, William, Anne, and the House of Brunswick. Even when the fears of foreign invasion in 1760, and the noble resistance of the fathers of our republic some years later, had awakened the fears of the British authorities and induced them to relax somewhat the chains of the Catholics, the voice of the lord chancellors was still for war. Apart, however, from this spirit of intolerance which seemed to be naturally attached to the office, it must be confessed that from the days of Henry the great seal was held by many able lawyers and distinguished statesmen, some of whom were not unknown in the world of letters as authors and liberal patrons of learning and science. The names of Curwan, Loftus (who founded Trinity College University), Boyle, Porter, Butler, Cox, Broderick, Bowles, and many others, occupy honored positions in the legal annals of Great Britain and Ireland, and their lives, full of incident and variety, are fully and fairly placed before us by Mr. O'Flanagan.
The treaty of union in 1800, by which Ireland lost her parliament, and legislatively became a province, deprived the Irish chancellors of much of their original political power; though, strange as it may appear, this object was effected mainly through the exertions of Lord Clare, who at that time held the office. In this man's character, distinguished as it was for many private virtues, and for every public vice that it is possible to conceive, were united the good and bad qualities of all his predecessors, joined to a wonderful mental capacity which far surpassed them all. Born in Ireland, he was of English extraction and more than English in feeling, and, though of an exemplary Catholic stock, he was the son of an apostate clerical student, a most violent Protestant and a rancorous proscriptionist. A profound jurist and an upright judge in purely legal matters, his anti-Catholic prejudices seemed totally to have warped his judgment whenever the question of religion presented itself, and, though a steadfast friend in private of those who agreed with or did not care to differ from him, he never failed to carry into official life the hatreds and animosities engendered in political struggles or domestic intercourse. A powerful orator, full of strong legal points, logical propositions, and keen, and sometimes coarse, sarcasm, he ruled his party with a rod of iron, and, when persuasion and threats failed, he hesitated not to use bribes and cajolery. His mental energy was equal to any amount of labor, and his physical courage was beyond question, even in a country and age where bravery was ranked among the highest of virtues. Such was John Fitzgibbon, first Earl of Clare, born near Dublin in 1749, a man pre-eminently fitted by Providence to adorn his country and benefit mankind, but who perverted his great gifts and employed them with too much success in destroying that country's remnant of independence, and in devising new methods of persecution for his Catholic relatives and countrymen. He died in the plenitude of his power in 1802; his name when mentioned is reprobated by all good men in the nation he betrayed; his title, so ingloriously won, is extinct; and his bench in Chancery and his seat in the House of Lords are filled by one of that race and creed which he so cordially detested and so ruthlessly persecuted.[40] Sic transit gloria mundi.
Mr. O'Flanagan brings down his Lives to the time of George IV., but this latter portion of his valuable collection of biographies belongs more to the domain of law than of history. Indeed, the entire work is full of curious and interesting information which will be highly prized by the legal profession. What the late Lord Campbell has done so well for the English chancellors, the author has endeavored to do for those of Ireland, and with equal success, notwithstanding the scarcity of materials and the loose manner in which the Irish records have been kept. One of the most attractive features of this book is the total absence of passion or prejudice in the narrative of events and estimation of character; but every necessary circumstance is detailed in a plain, lucid, and intelligible style, and with something of judicial gravity and impartiality befitting so important a subject. As far as the author's own political predilections are concerned—and we suspect that they are by no means intensely national—the tone of the book may be said to be colorless, a peculiarity in modern biography which, while it may detract from its vivacity, will certainly add much weight to its value as an authority. We are promised a sequel to the chancellors, containing the lives of the lord chief-justices, which we hope will soon appear, for the more light that is shed on those darkened pages of Ireland's history, the better for the cause of truth, justice, and humanity.
GOTTFRIED VON STRASSBURG'S GREAT HYMN TO THE VIRGIN.
The period of the German Minnesinger, dating from about the middle of the thirteenth to the middle of the fourteenth century, witnessed probably the intensest and sincerest devotion to the worship of the Virgin Mary in the whole history of the Catholic Church. Intense and sincere pre-eminently, because so expressed in the vast number of paintings and poems in her glorification whereof we have record. That whole period, indeed, was one of fervent religious feeling, stimulated by the Crusades, and naturally choosing the Virgin for the chief object of worship, as the whole knightly spirit of that age was one of devotion to woman. The pure love—for Minne is pure love—of woman has never, in the history of literature, been so exclusively made the topic of poetry as it was during that century of the Minnesinger; it is the absorbing theme of the almost two hundred poets of that time, of whom we have poems handed down to us, and its highest expression was attained in those poems that were addressed to the woman of all women, Mary, the mother of Jesus.
The German language in the thirteenth century had attained a development which fitted it pre-eminently for lyric poetry in all its branches. What it has since gained in other respects it has lost in sweet music of sound. Furthermore, the true laws of rhythm, metre, and verse for modern languages, as distinguished from the rules that governed classic poetry, had been discovered and fixed; rules and laws the knowledge whereof subsequently was lost, and which it gave Goethe so much trouble, as he tells us in his autobiography, to find again. The purity of rhyme has never since in German poetry attained the same degree of perfection, not even under the skilful hand of Rueckert and Platen, which the Minnesinger gave to it; and thus altogether those matters, which constitute the mechanism of poetry, were in fullest bloom.