STRIKING OBJECTS IN ROME.
The Baths of Caracalla--The Catacombs--Evidence thence arising
against Romanism--The Scala Santa, or Pilate's Stairs--Peasants
from Rimini climbing them--Irreverence of Devotees--Unequal Terms
on which the Pope offers Heaven--Church of Ara Caeli--The Santissimo
Bambino--Conversation with the Monks who exhibit it--The Ghetto, or
Jew's Quarter--Efforts to Convert them to Romanism--Tyrannical
Restrictions still imposed upon them--Their Ineradicable
Characteristics of Race--The Vatican--The Apollo Belvedere--Pio
Nono--His Dress and Person--St Peter's--Its Grandeur and
Uselessness--Motto on Egyptian Obelisk--Gate of San
Pancrazio--Graves of the French--The Convents--Exhibition of
Nuns--Collegio Romano and Father Perrone--An American Student--The
English Protestant Chapel--Preaching there--American
Chaplain--Collection in Rome for Building a Cathedral in
London--Sermon on Immaculate Conception in Church of Gesu--Ave
Maria--Family Worship in Hotel--Early Christians of Rome--Paul.
I have already mentioned my arrival at midnight, and how thankful I was
to find an open door and an empty bed at the Hotel d'Angleterre. The
reader may guess my surprise and joy at discovering next morning that I
had slept in a chamber adjoining that of my friend Mr Bonar, from whom I
had parted, several weeks before, at Turin. After breakfast, we sallied
out to see the Catacombs. I had found Rome in cloud and darkness on the
previous night; and now, after a deceitful morning gleam, the storm
returned with greater violence than ever. Torrents swept the streets;
the lightning was flashing on the old monuments; fearful peals of
thunder were rolling above the city; and we were compelled oftener than
once during our ride to seek the shelter of an arched way from the
deluge of rain that poured down upon us. Skirting the base of the
Palatine, and emerging on the Via Appia, we arrived at the Baths of
Caracalla, which we had resolved to visit on our way to the Catacombs.
No words can describe the ghastly grandeur of this stupendous ruin,
which, next to the Coliseum, is the greatest in Rome. Besides its
saloons, theatre, and libraries, it contained, it is said, sixteen
hundred chairs for bathers. As was its pristine splendour, so now is its
overthrow. Its cyclopean walls, and its vast chambers, the floors of
which are covered to the depth of some twelve or twenty feet with fallen
masses of the mosaic ceiling, like immense boulders which have rolled
down from some mountain's top, are spread over an area of about a mile
in circuit. The ruins, here capped with sward and young trees, there
rising in naked jagged turrets like Alpine peaks, had a romantic effect,
which was not a little heightened by the alternate darkness of the
thunder-cloud that hung above them, and the incessant play of the
lightning among their worn pinnacles.
Resuming our course along the Appian Way, we passed the tomb of the
Scipios; and, making our exit by the Sebastian gate, we came, after a
ride of two miles in the open country, to the basilica of San
Sebastiano, erected over the entrance to the Catacombs. Pulling a bell
which hung in the vestibule, a monk appeared as our cicerone, and we
might have been pardoned a little misgiving in committing ourselves to
such a guide through the bowels of the earth. His cloak was old and
tattered, his face was scourged with scorbutic disease, misery or
flagellation had worn him to the bone, and his restless eye cast uneasy
glances on all around. He carried in his hand a little bundle of tallow
candles, as thin and worn as himself almost; and, having lighted them,
he gave one to each of us, and bade us follow. We descended with him
into the doubtful night. The place was a long shaft or corridor, dug out
of the brown tuffo rock, with the roof about two feet overhead, and the
breadth two thirds or so of the height. The descent was easy, the
turnings frequent, and light there was none, save the glimmerings of our
slender tapers. The origin of the Catacombs is still a disputed
question; but the most probable opinion is, that they were formed by
digging out the pozzolana or volcanic earth, which was used as a cement
in the great buildings of Rome. They extend in a zone round the city,
and form a labyrinth of subterranean galleries, which traverse the
Campagna, reaching, according to some, to the shore of the
Mediterranean. He who adventures into them without a guide is infallibly
lost. They speak at Rome of a professor and his students, to the number
of sixty, who entered the Catacombs fifty years ago, and have not yet
returned. Certain it is, that many melancholy accidents have occurred in
them, which have induced the Government to wall them up to a certain
extent. I had not gone many yards till I felt that I was entirely at the
mercy of the monk, and that, should he play me false, I must remain
where I was till doomsday.
But what invests the Catacombs with an interest of so touching a kind is
the fact, that here the Christian Church, in days of persecution, made
her abode. What! in darkness, and in the bowels of the earth? Yes: such
were the Christians which that age produced. At every few paces along
the galleries you see the quadrangular excavations in which the dead
were laid. There, too, are the niches in which lamps were placed, so
needful in the subterranean gloom; and occasionally there opens to your
taper a large square chamber, with its walls of dark-brownish tuffo and
its stuccoed roof, which has evidently been used for family purposes, or
as a chapel. How often has the voice of prayer and praise resounded
here! The Catacombs are a stupendous monument of the faith and constancy
of the primitive Church. You have the satisfaction here of knowing that
you have the very scenes before you that met the eyes of the first
Christians. Time has not altered them; superstition has not disfigured
them. Such as they were when the primitive believers fled to them from a
Nero's cruelty or a Domitian's tyranny, so are they now.
These remarkable excavations were well known down till the sixth
century. Amid the barbarism of the ages that succeeded, all knowledge of
them was lost; but in the beginning of the sixteenth century, when the
art of printing had been invented, and the world could profit by the
discovery, the Catacombs were re-opened. Most of the gravestones were
removed to the Vatican, and built into the _Lapidaria Galleria_, where I
spent a day copying them; but so accurately have they been described by
Maitland, in his "Church in the Catacombs," that I beg to refer the
reader who wishes farther information respecting these deeply
interesting memorials, to his valuable work. They are plain, unchiselled
slabs of marble, with simple characters, scratched with some sharp
instrument by the aid of the lamp, recording the name and age of the
person whose remains they enclosed, to which is briefly added, "in
peace," or "in Christ." Piety here is to be tested, not by the
profession on the tombstone, but by the sacrifice of the life. A palm
branch carved on the stone is the usual sign of martyrdom. I saw a few
slabs still remaining as they had been placed seventeen centuries ago,
fastened into the tuffo rock with a cement of earth. When the Catacombs
were opened, a witness rose from the dead to confront Rome. No trace has
been discovered which could establish the slightest identity in
doctrine, in worship, or in government, between the present Church of
Rome and the Church of the Catacombs.
Will the reader accompany me to another and very different scene? We
leave these midnight vaults, and tread again the narrow lava-paved
Appian road; and through rural lanes we seek the summit of the Caelian
mount, where stands in statued pomp the church of St John Lateran. Here
are shown the _Scala Santa_ which were brought from Jerusalem, and which
the Church of Rome certifies as the very stairs which Christ ascended
when he went to be judged of Pilate. On the north side of the quadrangle
is an open building, with three separate flights of steps leading up
from the pavement to the first floor. The middle staircase, which is
covered with wood to preserve the marble, is the _Scala Santa_, which it
is lawful to ascend only on your knees. Having reached the top, you may
again use your feet, and descend by either of the other two stairs.
Placed against the wall at the foot of the Scala Santa, is a large
board, with the conditions to be observed in the ascent. Amongst other
provisions, no one is allowed to carry a cane up the Scala Santa, nor is
dog allowed to set foot on these stairs. On the pavement stood a
sentry-box; and in the box sat a little dark-visaged man, so very
withered, so very old, and so very crabbed, that I almost was tempted to
ask him whether he had been imported along with the stairs. He rattled
his little tin-box violently, which seemed half full of small coins, and
invited me to ascend. "What shall I have for doing so?" I asked.
"Fifteen years' indulgence," was the instant reply. There might be about
fifteen steps in the stair, which was at the rate of a year's
indulgence for every step. The terms were fair; for with an ordinary
day's work I might lay up some thousands of years' indulgence. There was
but one drawback in the matter. "I don't believe in purgatory," I
rejoined. "What is that to me?" said the old man, tartly, accompanying
the remark with a quick shrug of the shoulders and a curl of his thin
lip.
I turned to the staircase. Three peasant lads from Rimini--where the
Madonna still winks, and good Catholic hearts still believe--were
piously engaged in laying up a stock of merit against a future day, on
the Scala Santa. Swinging the upper part of their bodies, and holding
their feet aloft lest their wooden-soled shoes should touch the precious
marble, or rather its wooden casing, they were slowly making way on the
steps. In a little they were joined by a Frenchman, with his wife and
little daughter; and the whole began a general march up the staircase.
Whether it was the greater vigour of their piety, or the greater vigour
of their limbs, I know not; but the peasants had flung themselves up
before the lady had mastered five steps of the course. It occurred to me
that this way of earning heaven was not one that placed all on a level,
as they should be. These strong sinewy lads were getting fifteen years'
indulgence with no greater effort than it cost the lady to earn five.
The party, on reaching the top, entered a room on the right, and dropt
on their knees before a little box of bones which stood in one corner,
then before a painting of the Saviour which hung in the other; muttered
a few words of prayer; and, descending the lateral stairs, commenced
over again the same process. In no time they had laid up at least a
hundred years' indulgence a-piece. The Frenchman and his lady went
through the operation with a grave face; but the peasants quite lost the
mastery over theirs, and the building rung with peals of laughter at
the ridiculous attitudes into which they were compelled to throw
themselves. Even in the little chapel above, bursts of smothered
merriment interrupted their prayers. I looked at the little man in the
box, to see how he was taking it; but he was true to his own remark,
"What is that to me?" Indeed, this behaviour by no means detracted from
the merit of the deed, or shortened by a single day the term of
indulgence, in the estimation of the Italians. _Their_ understanding of
devotion and _ours_ are totally different. With us devotion is a mental
act; with them it is a mechanical act, strictly so. The mind may be
absent, asleep, dead; it is devotion nevertheless. These peasants had
undertaken to climb Pilate's staircase on their knees; not to give
devout or reverent feelings into the bargain: they had done all they
engaged to do, and were entitled to claim their hire. The staircase, as
my readers may remember, has a strange connection with the Reformation.
One day, as Luther was dragging his body up these steps, he thought he
heard a voice from heaven crying to him, _The just shall live by faith._
Amazed, he sprang to his feet. New light entered into him. Luther and
the Reformation were advanced a stage.
From the Scala Santa in the Lateran I went to see the Santissimo Bambino
in the church of Ara Caeli, on the Capitol. This church is squatted on
the spot where stood the temple of Jupiter Ferretrius of old. It is one
of the largest churches in Rome, and is unquestionably the ugliest. A
magnificent staircase of an hundred and twenty-four steps of Parian
marble leads up to it; but the church itself is as untasteful as can
well be imagined. It presents its gable to the spectator, which is
simply a vast unadorned expanse of brick, the breadth greatly exceeding
the height, and terminating a-top in a sort of coping, that looks like a
low, broad chimney, or rather a dozen chimneys in one. The edifice
always reminded me of a short, stout Quaker, with a brim of even more
than the usual breadth, standing astride on the Capitol. Entering by the
main doorway in the west, I passed along the side aisle, on my way to
the little chapel near the altar where the Bambino is kept. The wall
here was covered with little pictures in thousands, all in the homeliest
style of the art, and representing persons falling into the sea, or
tumbling over precipices, or ridden over by carts. These were votive
offerings from persons who had been in the situations represented, and
who had been saved by the special interposition of Mary. Arms, legs, and
heads of brass, and in some instances of silver, bore testimony to the
greater wealth or the greater devotion of others of the devotees.
Passing through a door on the left, at the eastern extremity of the
church, I entered the little chapel or side closet, in which the Bambino
is kept. Here two barefooted monks, with not more than the average dirt
on their persons, were in attendance, to show me the "god." They began
by lighting a few candles, though the sunlight was streaming in at the
casement. I was near asking the monks the same question which the
Protestant inhabitants of a Hungarian village one day put to their
Catholic neighbours, as they were marching in procession through their
streets,--"Is your god blind, that you burn candles to him at mid-day?"
The tapers lighted, one of the friars dropped on his knees, and fell to
praying with great vigour. I fear my deportment was not so edifying as
the place and circumstances required; for I could see that ever and anon
the monk cast side-long glances at me, as at a man who was scarce worthy
of so great a sight as was about to be shown him. The other monk,
drawing a key from under his cloak, threw open the doors of a sort of
cupboard that stood against the wall. The interior was fitted up not
unlike the stage of a theatre. A tall figure, covered with a brown
cloak, stood leaning on a staff in the foreground. By his side stood a
female, considerably younger, and attired in an elegant robe of green.
These two regarded with fixed looks a little cradle or casket at their
feet. The background stretched away into a hilly country, amid whose
knolls and dells were shepherds with their flocks. The figures were
Joseph and Mary, and the vista beyond was meant to represent the
vicinity of Bethlehem. Taking up the casket, the monk, with infinite
bowings and crossings, undid its swathings, and solemnly drew forth the
Bambino. Poor little thing! it was all one to it whether one or a
hundred candles were burning beside it: it had eyes, but saw not. It was
bandaged, as all Italian children are, from head to foot, the swathings
enveloping both arms and legs, displaying only its little feet at one
extremity, and its round chubby face at the other. But what a blaze! On
its little head was a golden crown, burning with brilliants; and from
top to toe it was stuck so full of jewels, that it sparkled and
glittered as if it had been but one lustrous gem throughout.
Two women, who had taken the opportunity of an Inglise visiting the
idol, now entered, leading betwixt them a little child, and all three
dropped on their knees before the Bambino. I begged the monk to inform
me why these women were here on their knees, and praying. "They are
worshipping the Bambino," he replied. "Oh! worshipping, are they?" I
exclaimed, in affected surprise; "how stupid I am; I took it for a piece
of wood." "And so it is," rejoined the monk; "but it is miraculous; it
is full of divine virtue, and works cures." "Has it wrought any of
late?" I inquired. "It has," replied the religioso; "it cured a woman of
dropsy two weeks ago." "In what quarter of Rome did she live?" I asked.
"She lived in the Vatican," replied the Franciscan. "We have some great
doctors in the city I come from," I said; "we have some who can take off
an arm, or a leg, or a nose, without your feeling the slightest pain;
but we have no doctor like this little doctor. But, pray tell me, why do
you permit the cardinals or the Pope ever to die, when the Bambino can
cure them?" The monk turned sharply round, and gave me a searching
stare, which I stood with imperturbable gravity; and then, taking me for
either a very dull or a very earnest questioner, he proceeded to explain
that the cure did not depend altogether on the power of the Bambino, but
also somewhat on the faith of the patient. "Oh, I see how it is," I
replied. "But pardon me yet farther; you say the Bambino is of wood, and
that these honest women are praying to it. Now I have been taught to
believe that we ought not to worship wood." To make sure both of my
interrogatories and of the monk's answers, I had been speaking to him
through my friend Mr Stewart, whose long residence in Rome had made him
perfectly master of the Italian tongue. "Oh," replied the Franciscan,
"_all Christians here worship it_." But now the signs had become very
manifest that my inquiries had reached a point beyond which it would not
be prudent to push them. The monk was getting very red in the face; his
motions were growing quick and violent; and, with more haste than
reverence, he put back his god into its crib, and prepared to lock it up
in its press. His fellow monk had started to his feet, and was rapidly
extinguishing the candles, as if he smelt the unwholesome air of heresy.
The women were told to be off; and the exhibition closed with somewhat
less show of devotion than it had opened.
Here, by the banks of the Tiber, as of old by the Euphrates, sits the
captive daughter of Judah; and I went one afternoon towards twilight to
visit the Ghetto. It is a narrow, dark, damp, tunnel-like lane. Old
Father Tiber had been there but a day or two previously, and had left,
as usual, very distinct traces of his visit, in the slime and wet that
covered the place. Formerly it was shut in with gates, which were locked
every night at Ave Maria: now the gates are gone, and the broken and
ragged door-posts show where they had hung. Opposite the entrance of the
Ghetto stands a fine church, with a large sculpture-piece over its
portal, representing a crucifix, surrounded with the motto, which meets
the eye of the Jew every time he passes out or comes in, "All day long I
have stretched forth my hands unto a gainsaying and disobedient people."
The allusion here, no doubt, is to their unwillingness to pay their
taxes, for that is the only sense in which the Pope's hands are all day
long stretched out towards this people. Recently Pio Nono contracted a
loan for twenty-one millions of francs, with the house of Rothschild;
and thus, after persecuting the race for ages, the Vicar of God has come
to lean for the support of his tottering throne upon a Jew. To do the
Pope justice, however, the Jews in Rome are gathered once a-year into a
church, where a sermon is preached for their conversion. The spectacle
is said to be a very edifying one. The preacher fires off from the
pulpit the hardest hits he can; and the Jews sit spitting, coughing, and
making faces in return; while a person armed with a long pole stalks
through the congregation, and admonishes the noisiest with a firm sharp
rap on the head. The scene closes with a baptism, in which, it is
affirmed, the same Jew sometimes plays the same part twice, or oftener
if need be.
The tyrannical spirit of Popery is seen in the treatment to which these
descendants of Abraham are subjected in Rome, down to the present hour.
Inquisitors are appointed to search into and examine all their books;
all Rabbinic works are forbidden them, the Old Testament in Hebrew only
being allowed to them; and any Jew having any forbidden book in his
possession is liable to the confiscation of his property. Nor is he
permitted to converse on the subject of religion with a Christian. They
are not permitted to bury their dead with religious pomp, or to write
inscriptions on their tombstones; they are forbidden to employ Christian
servants; and if they do anything to disturb the faith of a Jewish
convert to Romanism, they are subject to the confiscation of all their
goods, and to imprisonment with hard labour for life; they are not
allowed to sell meat butchered by themselves to Christians, nor
unleavened bread, under heavy penalties; nor are they permitted to sleep
a night beyond the limits of their quarters, nor to have carriage or
horses of their own, nor to drive about the city in carriages, nor to
use public conveyances for journeying, if any one object to it.
Enter the Ghetto, and you feel instantly that you are among another
race. An indescribable languor reigns over the rest of Rome. The Romans
walk the streets with their hands in their pockets, and their eyes on
the ground, for a heavy heart makes the limbs to drag. But in the Ghetto
all is activity and thrift. You feel as if you had been suddenly
transported into one of the busiest lanes of Glasgow or Manchester.
Eager faces, with keen eyes and sharp features, look out upon you from
amid the bundles of clothes and piles of all kinds of articles which
darken the doors and windows of their shops. Scarce have you crossed the
threshold of the Ghetto when you are seized by the button, dragged
helplessly into a small hole stuffed with every imaginable sort of
merchandise, and invited to buy a dozen things at once. No sooner have
you been let go than you are seized by another and another. The women
were seated in the doors of their shops and dwellings, plying busily
their needle. One fine Jewish matron I marked, with seven buxom
daughters round her, all working away with amazing nimbleness, and
casting only a momentary glance at the stranger as he passed. How
inextinguishable the qualities of this extraordinary people! Here, in
this desolate land, and surrounded by the overwhelming torpor and
laziness of Rome, the Jews are as industrious and as intent on making
gain as their brethren in the commercial cities of Britain. I drew up
with a young lad of about twenty, by way of feeling the pulse of the
Ghetto; but though I tried him on both the past and the present, I
succeeded in striking no chord to which he would respond. He seemed one
of the prophet's dried bones,--very dry. Seventy years did their fathers
dwell by the Euphrates; but here, alas! has the harp of Judah hung upon
the willow for eighteen centuries. Beneath the dark shadow of the
Vatican do they ever think of the sunny and vine-clad hills of their
Palestine?
I spent days not a few in the saloons of the Vatican. Into these noble
chambers,--six thousand in number, it is said,--have been gathered all
the masterpieces of ancient art which have been dug up from the ruins of
villas, and temples, and basilicas, where they had lain buried for ages.
Of course, I enter on no description of these. Let me only remark, that
though I had seen hundreds of copies of some of these sculptures,--the
Apollo Belvedere and the Laocoon, for instance,--no copy I had ever seen
had given me any but the faintest idea of the transcendent beauty and
power of the originals. The artist, I found, had flung into them,
without the slightest exaggeration of feature, a tremendous energy, an
intense life, which perhaps no coming age will ever equal, and certainly
none surpass. What a sublime, thrilling, ever-acting tragedy, for
instance, is the Laocoon group! But from these efforts of a genius long
since passed from the earth, I pass to one who represents in his living
person a more tragical drama than any depicted in marble in the halls of
the Vatican. One day as I was wandering through these apartments, the
rumour ran through them that the Pope was going out to take an airing. I
immediately ran down to the piazza, where I found a rather shabby coach
with red wheels, to which were yoked four coal-black horses, with a very
fat coachman on the box, in antique livery, and two postilions astride
the horses, waiting for Pius. Some half-dozen of the _guardia nobile_,
mounted on black horses, were in attendance; and, loitering at the
bottom of the stairs, were the stately forms of the Swiss guards, with
their shining halberds, and their quaint striped dress of yellow and
purple. I had often heard of the Pope in the symbols of the Apocalypse,
and in the pages of history as the antichrist; and now I was to see him
with the eye in the person of Pio Nono. After waiting ten minutes or so,
the folding doors in an upper gallery of the piazza were thrown open,
and I could see a head covered with a white skull-cap,--the Popes never
wear a wig,--passing along the corridor, just visible above the stone
ballustrade. In a minute the Pope had descended the stairs, and was
advancing along the open pavement to his carriage. The Swiss guard stood
to their halberds. A Frenchman and his lady,--the same, if I mistake
not, whom I had seen on the Scala Santa,--spreading his white
handkerchief on the causeway, uncovered and dropped on his knees; a row
of German students in red gowns went down in like manner; a score or so
of wretched-looking old men, who were digging up the grass in the
piazza, formed a prostrate group in the middle; and a little knot of
Englishmen,--some four of us only,--stood erect at about six yards from
the line of the procession.
Pio Nono, though king of the kings of the earth, was attired with severe
simplicity. His sole dress, save the skull-cap I have mentioned, and red
slippers, was a gown of white stuff, which enveloped his whole person
from the neck downwards, and looked not unlike a camlet morning
dressing-gown. A small cross which dangled on his breast was his only
ornament. The fisherman's ring I was too far off to see. In person he is
a portly, good-looking gentleman; and, could one imagine him entering
the pulpit of a Scotch Secession congregation, or an English Methodist
one, his appearance would be hailed with looks of satisfaction. His
colour was fresher than the average of Italy; and his face had less of
the priest in it than many I have seen. There was an air of easy good
nature upon it, which might be mistaken for benevolence, blended with a
smile, which appeared ever on the point of breaking into a laugh, and
which utterly shook the spectator's confidence in the firmness and good
faith of its owner. Pius stooped slightly; his gait was a sort of amble;
there was an air of irresolution over the whole man; and one was tempted
to pronounce,--though the judgment may be too severe,--that he was half
a rogue, half a fool. He waived his hand in an easy, careless way to the
students and Frenchman, and made a profound bow to the English party.
St Peter's is close by: let us enter it. As among the Alps, so here at
first, one is altogether unaware of the magnitudes before him. What
strikes you on entering is the vast sweep of the marble floor. It runs
out before you like a vast plain or strath, and gives you a colossal
standard of measurement, which you apply unconsciously to every
object,--the pillars, the statues, the roof; and though these are all
colossal too, yet so nicely are they proportioned to all around them,
that you take no note of their bulk. You pass on, and the grandeur of
the edifice opens upon you. Beneath you are rows of dead popes; on
either side rise gigantic statues and monuments which genius has raised
to their memory; and in front is the high altar of the Roman world,
towering to the height of a three-story house, yet looking, beneath that
sublime roof, of only ordinary size. You are near the reputed tombs of
Peter and Paul, before which an hundred golden lamps burn day and night.
And now the mighty dome opens upon you, like the vault of heaven itself.
You begin to feel the wondrous magnificence of the edifice in which you
stand, and you give way to the admiration and awe with which it inspires
you. But next moment comes the saddening thought, that this pile,
unrivalled as it is among temples made with hands, is literally useless.
There is no worship in it. Here the sinner hears no tidings of a free
salvation. This temple but enshrines a wafer, and serves once or twice
a-year as the scene of an idle pageant on the part of a few old men.
Nay, not only is it useless,--it is one of the strongholds which
superstition has thrown up for perpetuating its sway over the world. You
see these few poor people kneeling before these burning lamps. Their
prayer is directed, not upwards through that dome to the heavens above
it, but downwards into that vault where sleep, as they believe, the
ashes of Peter and Paul. Rome has ever discouraged family worship, and
taught men to pray in churches. Why? To increase the power of the Church
and the priesthood. A country covered with households in which family
worship is kept is like a country covered with fortresses;--it is
impregnable. Every house is a citadel, and every family is a little
army. Or mark yonder female who kneels before the perforated brazen
lattice of yonder confessional-box. She is whispering her sins into the
ear of a shaven priest, who receives them into his own black heart. It
is but a reeking cess-pool, not a fountain of cleansing, to which she
has come. Such are the uses of St Peter's,--a temple where the _Church_
is glorified at the expense of _religion_. Its high altar stops the way
to the throne of grace, and its priest bars your access to a Redeemer's
blood.
And how was this temple built? Romanists speak of it as a monument of
the piety of the faithful. But what is the fact? Did it not come out of
the foul box of Tetzel the indulgence-monger? Every stone in it is
representative of so much sin. With all its grandeur, it is but a
stupendous monument of the follies and vices, the crimes and the
superstition, of Christendom in the ages which preceded the Reformation.
It has cost Rome dear. We do not allude to the twelve millions its
erection is said to have cost, but to the mighty rent to which it gave
rise in the Roman world. In the centre of the magnificent piazza of St
Peter's stands an Egyptian obelisk, brought from Heliopolis, with the
words graven upon it, "Christ reigns." Verily that is a great truth; and
there are few spots where one feels its force so strongly as here. The
successive paganisms of the world have been overruled as steps in the
world's progress. Their corruptions have been based upon certain great
truths, which they have written, as it were, upon the general mind of
the world. The paganism which flourished where that column was hewn was
an admission of _God's existence_, though it strove to divert attention
from the truth on which it was founded, by the multitude of false gods
which it invented. In like manner, the paganism that flourishes, or
rather that is fading, where this column now stands, is an admission of
the _necessity of a Mediator_; though it strives, as its predecessor
did, to hide this glorious truth under a cloud of spurious mediators.
But we see in this how every successive move on the part of idolatry has
in reality been a retreat. Truth is gradually advancing its parallels
against the citadel of error, and the world is toiling slowly upward to
its great rest. Thus Christ shows that He reigns.
From this silent prophet at the Pope's door, let us skirt along the
Janiculum, to the gate of San Pancrazio. The site is a commanding one;
and you look down into the basin in which Rome reposes, where many a
cupola, and tower, and pillared facade, rises proudly out of the red
roofs that cover the Campus Martius. If it is toward sunset, you can see
the sheen of the villas which are sprinkled over the Sabine and Volscian
hills, and are much struck with the fine amphitheatre which the
mountains around the city form. What must have been the magnificence of
ancient Rome, with her seven hills, and her glorious Campagna, with such
a mountain-wall! But let us mark the old gate. It was here that the
struggle betwixt the French and the Romans took place in 1849. The wall
is here of brick,--very old, and of great breadth; and if struck with a
cannon ball, it would crumble into dust by inches, but not fall in
masses: hence the difficulty which the French found of breaching it. The
towers of the gate are dismantled, and the top of the wall for some
thirty yards is of new brick; but, with these exceptions, no other
traces remain of the bloody conflict which restored the Pope to his
throne. Of old, when Dagon fell, and the human head rolled in one
direction and the fishy tail lay in another, "they took Dagon," we are
told, and, fastening together the dissevered parts, "they set him in his
place again." Idol worshippers are the same in all ages. Oftener than
once has the Dagon of the Seven Hills fallen; the crown has rolled in
one direction; the "palms of his hands" have been seen in another; and
only the sacerdotal stump has remained; but the kings of Europe have
taken Dagon, and, by the help of bayonets, have "set him in his place
again;" and, having set up _him_ who could not set up himself, have
worshipped him as the prop of their own power. What I had come hither to
see especially was the graves of those who had fallen. On the left of
the road, outside the gate, I found a grassy plateau, of some half-dozen
acres, slightly furrowed, but bearing no such indications as I expected
to find of such carnage as had here taken place. A Roman youth was
sauntering on the spot; and, making up to him, I asked him to be so good
as show me where they had buried the Frenchmen. "Come along," said he,
"and I will show you the French." We crossed the plateau in the
direction of a vineyard, which was enclosed with a stone-wall. The gate
was open, and we entered. Stooping down, the youth laid hold on a
whitish-looking nodule, of about the size of one's fist, and, holding it
out to me, said, "that, Signor, is part of a Frenchman." I thought at
first the lad was befooling me; but on examining the substance, I found
that it was animal matter calcined, and had indeed formed part of a
human being. The vineyard for acres and acres was strewn with similar
masses. I now saw where the French were buried. The siege took place in
the heat of summer; and every evening, when the battle was over, the
dead were gathered in heaps, and burned, to prevent infection; and there
are their remains to this day, manuring the vineyards around the walls.
I wonder if the evening breezes, as they blow over the Janiculum, don't
waft across the odour to the Vatican.
Let us descend the hill, and re-enter the city. There is a class of
buildings which you cannot fail to note, and which at first you take to
be prisons. They are large, gloomy-looking houses, of from three to
four stories, with massive doors, and windows closed with strong upright
iron stanchions, crossed with horizontal bars, forming a network of iron
of so close a texture, that scarce a pigeon could squeeze itself
through. Ah, there, you say, the brigand or the Mazzinist groans! No;
the place is a convent. It is the dwelling, not of crime, but of
"heavenly meditation." The beings that live there are so perfectly
happy, so glad to have escaped from the evil world outside, and so
delighted with their paradise, that not one of them would leave it,
though you should open these doors, and tear away these iron bars. So
the priests say. Is it not strange, then, to confine with bolt and bar
beings who intend anything but escape? and is it not, to say the least,
a needless waste of iron, in a country where iron is so very scarce and
so very dear? It would be worth while making the trial, if only for a
summer's day, of opening these doors, and astonishing Rome with the
great amount of happiness within it, of which, meanwhile, it has not the
least idea. I have seen the dignitaries entering, but no glimpse could I
obtain of the interior; for immediately behind the strong outer door is
an inner one, and how many more I know not. Mr Seymour has told us of a
nun, while he was in Rome, who found her way out through all these doors
and bars; but, instead of fleeing back into her paradise, she rushed
straight to the Tiber, and sought death beneath its floods.
But although I never was privileged to see the interior of a Roman
convent, I saw on one occasion the inmates of these paradises. During my
sojourn in that city, it was announced that the nuns of a certain
convent were to sing at Ave Maria, in a church adjoining the Piazza di
Spagna; and I went thither to hear them. The choristers I did not see;
they sat in a remote gallery, behind a screen. Their voices, which in
clearness and brilliancy of tone surpassed the finest instruments, now
rose into an overpowering melodious burst, and now died away into the
sweetest, softest whispers. Within the low rail, their faces fronting
the altar, and their backs turned on the audience, sat a row of
spectres. Start not, reader; spectres they were,--fleshless, bloodless
spectres. I saw them enter: they came like the sheeted dead; they wore
long white dresses; their faces were pale and livid, like those that
look out upon you from coffins; their forms were thin and wasted, and
cast scarce a shadow as they passed between you and the beams of the
sinking sun. Their eyes they lifted not, but kept them steadfastly fixed
on the ground, over which they crept noiselessly as shadows creep. They
sat mute and moveless, as if they had been statues of cold marble, all
the while these brilliant notes were rolling above them. But I observed
they were closely watched by the priests. There were several beside the
altar; and whichever it was who happened for the moment to be
disengaged, he turned round, and stood regarding the nuns with that
stern anxious look with which one seeks to control a mastiff or a
maniac. Were the priests afraid that, if withdrawn for a moment from the
influence of their eye, a wail of woe would burst forth from these poor
creatures? The last hallelujah had been pealed forth,--the shades of eve
were thickening among the aisles,--when the priests gave the signal to
the nuns. They rose, they moved; and, with eyes which were not lifted
for a moment from the floor on which they trod, they disappeared by the
same private door by which they had entered. I have seen gangs of galley
slaves,--I have seen the husbands and sons of Rome led away manacled
into banishment,--I have seen men standing beneath the gallows; but
never did I see so woe-struck a group as this. Than have gone back with
these nuns to their "paradise," as it is cruelly termed, I felt that I
would rather have lain, where the lost nun is, in the Tiber.
Before visiting Italy, I had read and studied the lectures of Father
Perrone, Professor of Dogmatic Theology in the Collegio Romano, and had
had frequent occasion to mention his name in my own humble pages; for I
had nowhere found so clear a statement of the views held by the Church
of Rome on the important doctrine of Original Sin, as that given in the
Father's writings, and few had spoken so plainly as he had done on the
wickedness of toleration. Being in Rome, I was naturally desirous of
seeing the Father, and hearing him prelect. Accompanied by a young Roman
student, whose acquaintance I had the happiness to make, but whose name
I do not here mention, I repaired one day to the Collegio Romano,--a
fine quadrangular building; and, after visiting its library, in whose
"dark unfathomed caves" lies full many a monkish gem, I passed to the
class-room of Professor Perrone. It was a lofty hall, benched after the
manner of our own class-rooms, and hung round with portraits of the
Professor's predecessors in office,--at least I took them for such. A
tall pulpit rose on the end wall, with a crucifix beside it. The
students were assembling, and mustered to the number of about an
hundred. They were raw-boned, seedy-looking lads, of from seventeen to
twenty-two. They all wore gowns, the majority being black, but some few
red. Had I been a rich man, and disposed to signalize my visit to the
Collegio Romano by some appropriate gift, I would have presented each of
its students with a bar of soap, with directions for its use. In a few
minutes the Professor entered, wearing the little round cap of the
Jesuits. With that quiet stealthy step (an unconscious struggle to pass
from matter into spirit, and assume invisibility) which is inseparable
from the order, Father Perrone walked up to the pulpit stairs, which,
after doffing his cap, and muttering a short prayer before the crucifix,
he ascended, and took his place. It may interest those who are familiar
with his writings, to know that Father Perrone is a man of middle size,
rather inclined to obesity, with a calm, pleasant, thoughtful face,
which becomes lighted up, as he proceeds, with true Italian vivacity.
His lecture for the day was on the Evidences; and of course it was not
the heretics, but the infidels, whom he combated throughout. In the
number of his students was a young Protestant American, whom I first met
in the house of the Rev. Mr Hastings, the American chaplain, where I
usually passed my Sabbath evenings. This young man had chalked out for
himself the most extraordinary theological course I ever heard of. He
had first of all gone through a full curriculum in one of the old
orthodox halls of the United States; he had then passed into Germany,
where he had taken a course of neology and philosophy; and now he had
come to Rome, where he intended to finish off with a course of Romanism.
I ventured to engage him in a conversation on what he had learned in
Germany; but we had not gone far till both found that we had lost
ourselves in a dark mist; and we were glad to lay hold on an ordinary
topic, as a clue back to the daylight. The young divine purposed
returning to his native land, and spending his days as a Presbyterian
pastor.
Will the reader go back with me to the point where we began our
excursion through Rome,--the Flaminian Gate? I invite the reader's
special attention to a building on the right. It stands a few paces
outside the gate. The building possesses no architectural attractions,
but it is illustrative of a great principle. The first floor is occupied
as a granary; the second floor is occupied as a granary; the third
floor,--how is it occupied,--the attic story? Why, it is the English
Protestant Church! Here is the toleration which the Pope grants us in
Rome. There are from six hundred to a thousand English subjects resident
in Rome every winter; but they dare not meet within the walls to open
the Bible, or to worship God as his Word enjoins. They must go out
without the gate, as if they were evil-doers; they must climb the stairs
of this granary, as if they meditated some deed of darkness; and only
when they have got into this garret are they at liberty to worship God.
The Pope comes, not in person, but in his cardinals and priests, to
Britain; and he claims the right of building his mass-houses, and of
celebrating his worship, in every town and village of our empire. We
permit him to do so; for we will fight this great battle with the
weapons of toleration. We disdain to stain our hands or tarnish our
cause by any other: these we leave to our opponents. But when we go to
Rome, and offer to buy with our money a spot of ground on which to erect
a house for the worship of God, we are told that we can have--no, not a
foot's-breadth. Why, I say, the gospel had more toleration in Pagan
Rome, aye, even when Nero was emperor, than it has in Papal Rome under
Pio Nono. When Christianity entered Rome in the person of the Apostle
Paul, did the tyrant of the Palatine strike her dumb? By no means. For
the space of two years, her still small voice ceased not to be heard at
the foot of the Capitol. "And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own
hired house [in Rome], and received all that came in unto him; preaching
the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord
Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him." Let any
minister or missionary attempt to do so now, and what would be his fate?
and what the fate of any Roman who might dare to visit him? Instant
banishment to the one,--instant imprisonment to the other. The Pope has
set up the symbol of intolerance and persecution at his gate. He has
written over the portals of Rome, as Dante over the gates of hell, "All
ye who enter here, abandon"--God.
I do not say that the place is incommodious internally. The stigma lies
in the proscription put upon Protestant worship. It is held to be an
abomination so foul, that it cannot be tolerated within the walls of
Rome. And the same spirit which banishes the worship to a garret, would
banish the worshipper to a prison, or condemn him to a stake, if it
dared. The same principle that makes Rome lock her earthly gates against
the Protestant now, makes her lock her heavenly gates against him
eternally.
There are, however, annoyances of a palpable and somewhat ludicrous kind
attending this expulsion of the Protestant worship beyond the walls. The
granary to which I have referred adjoins the cattle and pig market. In
Rome, although it is a mortal sin to eat the smallest piece of flesh on
a Friday, it is no sin at all to buy and sell swine's flesh on a
Sabbath. Accordingly, the pig-market is held on Sabbath; and it is
customary to drive the animals into the back courts of the English
meeting-house before carrying them to market. So I was informed, when at
Rome, by a member of the English congregation. The uproar created by the
animals is at times so great as to disturb the worshippers in the attic
above, who have been under the necessity of putting their hands into
their pockets, and buying food for the swine, in order to keep them
quiet during the hours of divine service. Thus the English at Rome are
able to conduct their worship with some degree of decorum only when both
cardinals and swine are propitious. Should either be out of humour,--a
thing conceivable to happen to the most obese cardinal and the
sweetest-tempered pig,--the English have but little chance of quiet.
Nor is that the worst of it. I read not long since in the public
journals, a letter from a Romish dignitary,--Dr Cahill, if I mistake
not,--who, with an immense amount of bravery, stated that there was no
Roman Catholic country in the world where full toleration was not
enjoyed; and that, as regarded Rome, any Roman might change his religion
to-morrow with perfect impunity. He might adopt Protestantism or
Quakerism, or any other ism he pleased, provided he could show that he
was not acting under the compulsion of a bribe. But how stands the fact?
I passed three Sabbaths in Rome; I worshipped each Sabbath in the
English Protestant chapel; and what did I see at the door of that
chapel? I saw two gendarmes, with a priest beside them to give them
instructions. And why were they there? They were there to observe all
who went in and out at that chapel; and provided a Roman had dared to
climb these stairs, and worship with the English congregation, the
gendarmes would have seized him by the collar, and dragged him to the
Inquisition. So much for the liberty the poor Romans enjoy to change
their religion. The writer of that letter with the same truth might have
told the people of England that there is no such city as Rome in all the
world.
I was much taken with the ministrations of the Rev. Francis B. Woodward,
the resident chaplain, on hearing him for the first time. He looked like
one whose heart was in his work, and I thought him evangelical, so far
as the absence of all reference to what Luther has termed "the article
of a standing or a falling Church" allowed me to form an opinion. But
next Sabbath my confidence was sorely shaken. Mr Woodward was proceeding
in a rich and sweetly pious discourse on the necessity of seeking and
cultivating the gifts of the Spirit, and of cherishing the hope of
glory, when, towards the middle of his sermon, the evangelical thread
suddenly snapped. "How are we," abruptly asked the preacher, "to become
the sons of God?" I answer, by baptism. By baptism we are made children
of God and heirs of heaven. But should we fall from that happy state,
how are we to recover it? I answer, by penance. And then he instantly
fell back again into his former pious strain. I started as if struck,
and looked round to see how the audience were taking it. But I could
discover no sign that they felt the real significancy of the words they
had just heard. It seemed to me that the English chaplain was outside
the gate for the purpose of showing men in at it; and were I the Pope,
instead of incurring the scandal of banishing him beyond the walls, I
would assign him one of the best of the many hundred empty churches in
Rome. The Rev. Mr Hastings, the American chaplain, conducted worship in
the dining-room of Mr Cass, the American Consul, to a little
congregation of some thirty persons. He was a good man, and a sound
Protestant, but lacked the peculiar qualities for such a sphere. He has
since passed from Rome and the earth, and joined, I doubt not, albeit
disowned as a heretic in the city in which he laboured, "the General
Assembly and Church of the first-born" on high.
I have already mentioned that the priests boast that the Pope could say
mass in a different church every day of the year. Nevertheless there is
next to no preaching in Rome. In Italy they convert men, not by
preaching sermons, but by giving them wafers to swallow,--not by
conveying truth into the mind, but by lodging a little dough in the
stomach. Hence many of their churches stand on hill-tops, or in the
midst of swamps, where not a house is in sight. During my sojourn of
three weeks, I heard but two sermons by Roman preachers. I was
sauntering in the Forum one day, when, observing a little stream of
paupers--(how could such go to the convents to beg if they did not go to
sermon?)--flowing into the church of San Lorenzo, I joined in the
procession, and entered along with them. At the door was a tin-box for
receiving contributions for erecting a temple in London, where "their
poor destitute fellow-countrymen might hear the true gospel." Were these
"destitute fellow-countrymen" in Rome, the Pope would find accommodation
for them in some one of his dungeons; but with the English Channel
between him and them, he builds with paternal care a church for their
use. We doubt not the exiles will duly appreciate his kindness. Every
twentieth person or so dropped a little coin into the box as he passed
in. A knot of some one or two hundreds was gathered round a wooden
stage, on which a priest was declaiming with an exuberance of vehement
gesture. On the right and left of him stood two hideous figures, holding
candles and crucifixes, and enveloped from head to foot in sackcloth.
They watched the audience through two holes in their masks; and I
thought I could see a cowering in that portion of the crowd towards
which the muffled figures chanced for the time to be turned. I felt a
chilly terror creeping over me as the masks turned their great goggle
eyes upon me; and accordingly withdrew.
The regular weekly sermon in Rome is that preached every Sabbath
afternoon in the church of the Jesuits. This church is resplendent
beyond all others in the Eternal City, in marbles and precious stones,
frescoes and paintings. Here, too, in magnificent tombs, sleep St
Ignatius, the founder of the order, and Cardinal Bellarmin, one of the
"Church's" mightiest champions. Its ample roof might cover an assembly
of I know not how many thousands. About half-way down the vast floor, on
the side wall, stood the pulpit; and before it were set some scores of
forms for the accommodation of the audience, which might amount to from
four hundred to six hundred, chiefly elderly persons. At three o'clock
the preacher entered the pulpit, and, having offered a short prayer in
silence, he replaced on his head his little round cap, and flung himself
into his theme. That theme was one then and still very popular (I mean
with the preachers,--for the people take not the slightest interest in
these matters) at Rome,--the Immaculate Conception. I can give only the
briefest outline of the discourse; and I daresay that is all my readers
will care for. In proof of the immunity of Mary from original sin, the
preacher quoted all that St Jerome, and St Augustine, and a dozen
fathers besides, had said on the point, with the air of a man who deemed
these quotations quite conclusive. Had they related to the theory of
eclipses, or been snatches from some old pagan poet in praise of Juno,
the audience would have been equally well pleased with them. I looked
when the father would favour his audience with a few proofs from St
Matthew and St Luke; but his time did not permit him to go so far back.
He next appealed to the miracles which the Virgin Mary had wrought. I
expected much new information here, as my memory did not furnish me with
any well-accredited ones; but I was somewhat disappointed when the
preacher dismissed this branch of his subject with the remark, that
these miracles were so well known, that he need not specify them. Having
established his proposition first from tradition, and next from
miracles, the preacher wound up by declaring that the Immaculate
Conception was a doctrine which all good Catholics believed, and which
no one doubted save the children of the devil and the slaves of hell.
The sermon seemed as if it had been made to answer exactly the poet's
description:--
"And when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw;
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But, swollen with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread;
Besides what the grim wolf, with privy paw,
Daily devours apace, and nothing sed;
But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more."
When this edifying sermon was ended, "Ave Maria" began. A train of
white-robed priests entered, and gathered in a cloud round the high
altar. The organ sent forth its thunder; the flashing censers shot
upwards to the roof, and, as they rose and fell, emitted fragrant
wreaths of incense. The crowd poured in, and swelled the assembly to
some thousands; and when the priests began to chant, the multitude which
now covered the vast floor dropped on their knees, and joined in the
hymn to the Virgin. This service, of all I witnessed in Rome, was the
only one that partook in the slightest degree of the sublime.
I must except one other, celebrated in an upper chamber, and _truly_
sublime. It was my privilege to pass my first Sabbath in Rome in the
society of the Rev. John Bonar and that of his family, and at night we
met in Mr Bonar's room in the hotel, and had family worship. I well
remember that Mr Bonar read on this occasion the last chapter of that
epistle which Paul "sent by Phebe, servant of the Church at Cenchrea,"
to the saints at Rome. The disciples to whom the Apostle in that letter
sends greetings had lived in this very city; their dust still slept in
its soil; and were they to come back, I felt that, if I were a real
Christian, we would recognise each other as dear brethren, and would
join together in the same prayer; and as their names were read out, I
was thrilled and melted, as if they had been the names of beloved and
venerated friends but newly dead:--"Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my
helpers in Christ Jesus; who have for my life laid down their own necks;
unto whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the
Gentiles. Likewise _greet_ the church that is in their house. Salute my
well-beloved Epenetus, who is the first fruits of Achaia unto Christ.
Greet Mary, who bestowed much labour on us. Salute Andronicus and Junia,
my kinsmen and my fellow-prisoners, who are of note among the apostles,
who also were in Christ before me. Greet Amplias, my beloved in the
Lord. Salute Urbane, our helper in Christ, and Stachys my beloved.
Salute Apelles, approved in Christ. Salute them which are of
Aristobulus' _household_. Salute Herodion my kinsman. Greet them that be
of the _household_ of Narcissus, which are in the Lord. Salute Tryphena
and Tryphosa, who labour in the Lord. Salute the beloved Persis, which
laboured much in the Lord. Salute Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his
mother and mine. Salute Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermas, Patrobas, Hermes,
and the brethren which are with them. Salute Philologus and Julia,
Nereus and his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints which are with
them."
Uppermost in my mind, in all my wanderings in and about Rome, was the
glowing fact that here Paul had been, and here he had left his
ineffaceable traces. I touched, as it were, scriptural times and
apostolic men. Had he not often climbed this Capitol? Had not his feet
pressed, times without number, this lava-paved road through the Forum?
These Volscian and Sabine mountains, so lovely in the Italian sunlight,
had often had his eye rested upon them! I began to love the soil for his
sake, and felt that the presence of this one holy man had done more to
hallow it than all that the long race of emperors and popes had done to
desecrate it.