[136] After the battle of Gravelotte, the Christian Brothers carried eight thousand wounded from that sanguinary field.
[137] See Les Frères des Ecoles chrétiennes pendant la Guerre de 1870-71, par J. d’Arsac.
[138] See Vie du Frère Philippe, p. 296.
[139] “Forma erigendi seminarium clericorum:”—“Ut vero in eadem disciplina ecclesiastica commodius instituantur, tonsura statim atque habitu clericali semper utentur; grammatices, cantus computi ecclesiastici, aliarumque bonarum artium disciplinam discent,” etc.—Concilium Tridentinum: Sessio XXIII. de Reform, c. 18.
[In the letters of the Holy Father Pius IX. establishing the Seminario Pio, he ordered that the students should be taught Gregorian Chant, and no other. “Cantus Gregorianus, omni alio rejecto, tradetur.”—Ed. C. W.]
[140] The approbation of the Missa Papæ Marcelli was based upon the fact that the music most nearly approached in gravity to the ecclesiastical song, not that it was better.
[141] It may not be unworthy of remark that the composers of modern church music have uniformly thought a different style of composition becoming, whenever occasion required the introduction of a sham prayer into their operas; as may be seen in Mozart’s chorus of Egyptian priests in the Zauberflöte, and many other similar instances. To real prayer, and to the true adorable sacrifice, it is the operatic effects that are exclusively dedicated, as in Mozart’s No. XII. and Haydn’s No. II.
[142] The following anecdote is told in the Breviary lections of S. Felix of Valois, founder of the Congregation of the Most Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives (his day occurs the 20th of November):
“S. Felix received a remarkable favor from the Blessed Virgin Mother. All the brethren remaining asleep, and, by the disposition of God, not rising for the celebration of Matins, which were to have been recited at midnight on the Vigil of the Blessed Mother’s Nativity, Felix awoke, as was his custom, and entering into the choir before the time, found there the Blessed Virgin herself, clothed in a habit marked with the cross of the order, and in company with a number of angels habited in the same manner. Felix, taking his place amongst them, sang through and finished the entire Office, the Blessed Mother herself acting the part of precentor.”—Breviarium Romanum.
This is but one specimen, among the many others which are to be found in church history, of the light in which angels and saints regard the chant of the Ritual.