It is not surprising that, with daily High Masses and a perpetual round of imposing services, the people of Aubiet should feel the change when the place became impoverished, the number of priests diminished, and most of the churches destroyed at the invasion of the Huguenots. We are told that when the vicar was unable to sing High Mass on the festival of St. John the Baptist in 1623, there was universal murmuring, and the magistrates drew up a solemn protest against so unheard-of a scandal, which document is still extant.[59]
But the church of Notre Dame de Pitié, although profaned, was left
standing. The admirable confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament soon revived, and with it many of the former solemnities. Père de Mongaillard tells us the Kyrie eleison farci was still chanted in his time.
We find a similar confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament at Touget, another village of Gascony, which suffered horribly from the religious wars. It was for a long time in possession of the Huguenots, who abolished the Catholic religion and ruined the churches. To repair these profanations the association was established, the statutes of which are still extant in the Gascon tongue. By these we learn that there were nine chaplains in honor of the nine choirs of angels; twelve laymen in honor of the twelve apostles; seventy-two other lay members in memory of the seventy-two disciples (husband and wife being counted as one); and seven pious widows in honor of the seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin. They were all to be natives of the place, but “no ruffian, renegade, public usurer, or vicious person admitted among them.” Every Thursday all the members were to attend High Mass in the parish church, robed in their surplices. They were to accompany the Host in solemn procession through the village, at stated times, tapers in hand; sing the Office of the Dead before the door of any deceased member, and attend the requiem Mass for his soul. These and various other pious obligations were encouraged by the bishop of Lombez, who granted certain indulgences of vray perdon, especially on the festivals of St. Germain, St. George, St. Vincent, and St. Fritz, whose relics were honored in the church.
Such is the spirit of love, sorrow, and reparation which perfumes a few of the countless chapels of Our Lady of Pity in southwestern France, where so many hearts have forgotten their own grief before that of Mary! In all these sanctuaries, wan and desolate, she seems to plead for the nation. So pleads she all over the earth. Every mystery of religion is perpetuated in the church. Christ is always crucified somewhere on the earth. Mary is always sorrowing over his bleeding wounds.
We have seen her weeping over the door of many a tabernacle in Italy, as if over the Saviour wounded anew in the sacrament of his love. Who can turn away from the affecting appeal in this day of profanations in that unhappy land, where the very angels of the church
veil their faces before the agony of the divine Sufferer—before Mary’s woes?… Around the altar sacred to her grief let us echo the ancient Planh referred to at the beginning of this article:
“I conceived thee without corruption; to-day my heart is broken with grief: thy Nativity was exempt from all suffering; now is the day of my travail—
“Alas! my Son, on account of thy torments!
“When thou wert born the shepherds came singing with joy, dancing to the sound of their pipes; now traitorous and cruel Jews come to seize thee with horns and cries, staves and swords.