The celebration was curious in the utter exclusion of any Catholic element, and in the machinery brought to bear to make the whole affair a glorification of the Reformation and of the stale prejudices against Catholicity. In the face of the books brought together and the lessons they told, this use of the first English printer, a Catholic, whose Catholic books the gentlemen of the Reformation had under severe penalties consigned to the flames, required in the managers no little assurance, or perhaps a well-founded knowledge of the voluntary blindness of the masses. They seem to have felt some sense of difficulty, or English exclusiveness never would have called in the Yankee adroitness of one of our countrymen rather inclined to play the buffoon in bibliography.
The English Catholic body seems to have felt some compassion for their Protestant fellow-countrymen in the strange attempt on which the latter were engaged. They did not seek to force themselves into the affair, nor greet them with merited ridicule. We do not know whether they acted under a sense of pity or were merely apathetic. Yet we wish they had celebrated the anniversary of Caxton’s death or deposition, or some day selected, by a solemn Mass of Requiem in the ancient church of St. Etheldreda, now happily restored to Catholic worship. The Holy See would perhaps have sanctioned pro hac vice the use on that occasion of the Mass for the Dead in the ancient Sarum Missal, such as was used at the obsequies of the good printer, whose translation of the Lives of the Fathers of the Desert was completed on the day of his death.[[79]] We do not know but that we should have applied to Parliament for permission to celebrate a Mass of Requiem for Caxton in Westminster Abbey church, such as was said at his death. The proposition would probably have struck some dumb from sheer amazement; but Parliament would either have granted it, and permitted the funeral service of 1491 to be repeated just as it was said after his death, or they would have refused the request of the Catholic body, and made their bigotry one of the memorabilia of the Caxton celebration.
No such step was taken; and the managers of the Caxton anniversary were left at full liberty to give all the false color they could, to combine, suppress, distort as they chose, in order to give the public an impression that printing was one of the boons conferred on mankind by the Reformation. This was actually done directly and indirectly; and as Kaulbach, the painter, in his great canvas of the heroes of the Reformation, introduces Gutenberg and Christopher Columbus, so these gentlemen in England used the good, pious Catholic Caxton as the central figure in their tableau of the apotheosis of Protestantism.
Caxton left no dubious evidence of his practical faith as a Catholic. His Four Last Things, in French, ends with an exhortation to good works, “by which we attain to eternal life.”[[80]] The English Cordyale, or The Four Last Things, ends: “Which Werke present I began the morn after the saide Purificacion of our blissid Lady, Whiche was the daye of Seint Blase, Bisshop and Martir. And fiinisshed on the even of thannunciacion of our said bilissid Lady fallyng on the wednesday the xxiiij daye of Marche. In the xix yeer of Kyng Edwarde the fourthe.” The Festial opens: “The helpe and grace of almyghty god thrugh the beseechynge of his blessed moder saynt mary.” It ends thus: “By the helpe of his blessid moder mary and his holy spowsesse saynt brygytte and all sayntes. Amen. Caxton me fieri fecit.” Then there is “the lyf of the holy and blessed vyrgyn saynt Wenefryde ... reduced in to Englysshe by me, William Caxton.” “A short treatyce of the hyhest and most worthy sacramente of crystes blessid body and the merueylles therof” certainly sounds orthodox. And the picture of the Crucifixion, inscribed: “To them that before this ymage of pyte deuoutly saye v Pr nr v Aues & a Credo pyteuously beholdyng these ar of Xps passio ar granted xxxij M. vii. C. & lv yeres of pardon,” shows a belief in the power of the church to grant indulgences.
We know that the attempt has been made to persuade those eager to be deceived that Caxton must have had Lollard sympathies. Thus, the editor of the reprint of the Fifteen Os says: “This collection is noticed by Dr. Thomas Fuller as being the first book of prayers tending to promote the Reformation.” And again: “It is more than probable that this is the first book of prayers in English issued by the followers of Wickliffe, and cannot but be interesting as having prepared the way for the great moral and spiritual changes that ended in the Reformation.” Now, the volume closes thus: “Thiese prayers tofore wreton ben enprited bi the comaūdementes of the moste hye & vertuous pryncesse our liege ladi Elizabeth, by the grace of god Quene of Englonde and of Fraūce & also of the right hye & most noble pryncesse Margarete, moder unto our soverayn lorde the kyng, &c. By their most humble subget and seruaūt, William Caxton.”
There is certainly no suspicion of Lollardism attaching to these ladies. Now let us examine the prayers. The title Fifteen Os will not suggest to Catholics now any familiar devotion; but when we state that they are nothing more nor less than St. Bridget’s Prayers or Meditations on the Passion of our Lord, which have retained their place in our Catholic prayer-books to this day, they will utter at least fifteen “ohs” and be certainly hyely amused at the idea of their savoring of Wickliffe.
Caxton.
“O Jhesu, endless swetnes of louyng soules. O Jhesu, gostly ioye passing & excedyng all gladnes and desires. O Jhesu, helth and tendre louer of al repentaūt sinners that likest to dwelle, as thou saydest thy selfe, with the children of men. For that was the cause why thou were incarnate and made man in the ende of the worlde. Haue mynde, blessed Jhesu, of all the sorrowes that thou sufferedest in thy māhode, drawing nyhe to thy blessed passion.”
Garden of the Soul.
“O most sweet Lord Jesus Christ, eternal sweetness of those who love thee, joy above all desire, firm hope of the hopeless, solace of the sorrowful, and most merciful lover of all penitent sinners, who hast said thy delight is to be with the children of men, for the love of whom thou didst assume human nature in the fulness of time. Remember, most sweet Jesus, all those sharp sorrows which then pierced thy sacred soul from the first instant of thy incarnation until the time of thy solitary passion,” etc.