There is a little poem in Catullus (iii.) to console his mistress upon the death of her favourite sparrow; and Martial more than once alludes to the pets of the Roman ladies.
Compare the charming description of the Prioress, in Chaucer:—
“She was so charitable and so pitous,
She wolde wepe if that she saw a
mous Caught in a trappe, if it were ded or bledde.
Of smale houndes had she that she fedde
With rosted flesh and milke and wastel brede,
But sore wept she if one of them were dede,
Or if men smote it with a yerde smert:
And all was conscience and tendre herte.”
Prologue to the “Canterbury Tales.”
Durandus, a French bishop of the thirteenth century, tells how, “when a certain bishop was consecrating a church built out of the fruits of usury and pillage, he saw behind the altar the devil in a pontifical vestment, standing at the bishop's throne, who said unto the bishop, ‘Cease from consecrating the church; for it pertaineth to my jurisdiction, since it is built from the fruits of usuries and robberies.’ Then the bishop and the clergy having fled thence in fear, immediately the devil destroyed that church with a great noise.”—Rationale Divinorum, i. 6 (translated for the Camden Society).
A certain St. Launomar is said to have refused a gift for his monastery from a rapacious noble, because he was sure it was derived from pillage. (Montalembert's Moines d'Occident, tome ii. pp. 350-351.) When prostitutes were converted in the early Church, it was the rule that the money of which they had become possessed should never be applied to ecclesiastical purposes, but should be distributed among the poor.
Ruinart, Act. S. Perpetuæ. These acts, are, I believe, generally regarded as authentic. There is nothing more instructive in history than to trace the same moral feelings through different ages and religions; and I am able in this case to present the reader with an illustration of their permanence, which I think somewhat remarkable. The younger Pliny gives in one of his letters a pathetic account of the execution of Cornelia, a vestal virgin, by the order of Domitian. She was buried alive for incest; but her innocence appears to have been generally believed; and she had been condemned unheard, and in her absence. As she was being lowered into the subterranean cell her dress was caught and deranged in the descent. She turned round and drew it to her, and when the executioner stretched out his hand to assist her, she started back lest he should touch her, for this, according to the received opinion, was a pollution; and even in the supreme moment of her agony her vestal purity shrank from the unholy contact. (Plin. Ep. iv. 11.) If we now pass back several centuries, we find Euripides attributing to Polyxena a trait precisely similar to that which was attributed to Perpetua. As she fell beneath the sword of the executioner, it was observed that her last care was that she might fall with decency.
ἡ δὲ και θνήσκουσ᾽ ὅμως πολλὴν πρόνοιαν εἶχεν εὐσχήμως πεσεῖν,
κρύπτουσ᾽ ἂ κρύπτειν ὄμματ᾽ ἀρσένων χρεών.
Euripides, Hec. 566-68.
“Ille meos, primus qui me sibi junxit, amores
Abstulit; ille habeat secum, servetque sepulchro.”