For about three centuries and a half this church was well frequented. We have records of gifts sent to it, precious vestments, etc., by Pope Gregory III., who reigned from 715 to 741. But in 755 the Longobards came down upon Rome; they desecrated the churches and cemeteries around the city, and then began the siege of Rome. After peace was made, the pontiff of the period, Paul I., transferred the relics and remains of the saints to safer custody, and the Church of S. Petronilla became deserted. From unmistakable signs it seems that this desertion was conducted in a most regular manner, and that it was closed and despoiled of its precious objects. The door which entered the left aisle was found walled up; the altar, the seats of the choir, the episcopal chair, and the ambons or marble pulpits ware all removed and transported elsewhere. The floor of the church, so far below the level of the surrounding soil, formed a resting-place for the water which drained through the neighboring lands after rains had fallen, and this undoubtedly formed the strongest reason for the abandonment of S. Petronilla. Nothing was left in it but sarcophagi and sepulchres, the pavements with their marble epitaphs—so valuable to-day in revealing history—some columns with their beautifully-carved capitals, which time or an earthquake has overturned and hidden within the dark bosom of the earth for more than a thousand years.
The hundred pilgrims who came from America, with a hundred new-found friends, assembled on the 14th of June, 1874, to pray in that disentombed old church. They had come from a world unknown and undreamt of by the pilgrims who had formerly knelt within these walls; and as they looked around on the wide and desolate Campagna, and on the monument of Cecilia Metella shining in the distance white and perfect, in spite of the nineteen centuries that have passed away since it received its inmate, and at the blue, changeless sky overhead, and then turned their eyes upon the church, decorated that morning with festoons of green branches and gay flowers, the same as it may have been on other festive occasions a thousand years ago, they may have felt that time has effected almost as little change in the works of man as in those of nature, and that all things in Rome partake of Rome’s eternity.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
Le Culte Catholique ou Exposition de la Foi de l’Eglise Romaine sur le Culte du aux Saints et a leurs Reliques, a la bienheureuse Vierge Marie, aux Images, etc., en réponse aux objections du Protestantisme, suivie d’une dissertation historique et critique sur le celibat du clergé. Par l’Abbé Louis-Nazaire Bégin, Docteur en Théologie, Professor à la Faculté de Théologie de l’Université Laval. Quebec: Typographie d’Augustin Cote et Cie. 1875.
Le Culte Catholique is another valuable addition to controversial literature, by the author of The Bible and the Rule of Faith.
It is true that the days of controversy seem to be drawing to a close. The Greek schism still holds itself aloof in sullen isolation; but the controversy is exhausted, and all that is left of a church has become the mere unfruitful appanage of a northern despotism.
As to Protestantism, it never had any positive existence as a confession. Three hundred years have exhausted its theological pretensions. As a religion it has ceased to exist, and it lies buried beneath the weight of its own negations. The only formidable enemies of the church now are the disowners both of Christ and God, and they seek her destruction because they know that she alone offers an insuperable obstacle to the universal atheism which they hope to bring about.
Under such circumstances works like Dr. Bégin’s are chiefly useful for the information of Catholics, and for the support they render to their faith.
Le Culte Catholique is, the writer tells us, “an exposition of the faith of the Roman Church in the matters of the worship of the saints and of their relics, of the blessed Virgin Mary, of images, etc., in reply to the objections of Protestantism, followed by a historical and critical dissertation on the celibacy of the clergy.” On these trite subjects little that is new can be said. But the work before us is a terse and lucid summary of Catholic teaching on the above points.