which we are about to treat, we shall mention only the saints and holy
men and women given by Italy to the Church: St. Bernardine of Siena, of
the order of Minorites, whose eloquence won for him the title of
“Trumpet of Heaven and fountain of knowledge”; around him are grouped
his holy brothers in religion, Saints John Capestran and Jacopo della
Marca. St. Antonius, whose unexampled zeal was displayed in Florence,
the very centre of the Renaissance, had for his disciples blessed
Antonio Neyrot of Ripoli and Constanzio di Fabriano. In the order of St.
Augustine are the following who have been beatified: Andrea, who died at
Montereale in 1497; Antonio Turriani, in 1494. In 1440 St. Frances, the
foundress of the Oblates, was working at Rome. The labors of another
founder, St. Francis of Paula, who died in 1507, belong in part to this
period. These names, to which many more might be added, furnish the most
striking proof of the vitality of religion in Italy at the time of the
Renaissance. Such fruits do not ripen on trees which are “decayed and
rotten to the core.”
Indeed, it is astonishing what nonsense is talked about this period of
the Italian Renaissance, especially as it influenced the religious life
of the people. In one breath our would-be professors will tell you that
the Italian Renaissance movement swept the Catholic Church into a vortex
of paganism—pope, cardinals, bishops, and all; and in the next they
will lead you to believe that the Catholic Church set its face against
the new revival of classical learning, fearing that the development of
the intellect would be prejudicial to the faith of the people. Either
slander will effect its end.
As we write we have before us two historical works of somewhat recent
publication: “Books and Their Makers During-the Middle Ages,” by George
Haven Putnam, A.M., and “A General History of Europe,” by Professors
Thatcher and Schwill, of Chicago University. As the latter is now used
as a text-book in many American High Schools, we will deal with its
worth and wisdom first.
There is but one Chicago University in the world, and we might expect
its distinguished professors of medieval and modern European history to
understand at least the elementary truths of the Catholic Church and
something of its spirit and policy.
Let us examine for a moment some of the statements contained in this
“General History of Europe,” by Professors Thatcher and Schwill. Here is
a choice morsel which will amuse the student of Church history. The
topic is “The Church and Feudalism.” The author says: “As late as the
eleventh century it was not at all uncommon for the clergy to marry.
Since fiefs were hereditary, it seemed perfectly proper that their
children should be provided for out of the Church lands which they held.
But unless all their children became clergymen these lands would pass
into the hands of laymen and therefore be lost to the Church. _One of
the purposes of the prohibition of the marriage of the clergy was to
prevent this alienation and diminution of the Church lands._”
And this little paragraph dealing with the Italian Renaissance, found on
page 264 of the same work: “Medieval life knew nothing of the freedom,
beauty and joy of the Greek world. . . . The medieval man had no eye for
the beauty of nature. To him nature was evil. God had indeed created the
world and pronounced it very good, but through the fall of man all
nature had been corrupted. Satan was now the prince of the world. _As a
result no one could either study or admire nature._” Pray note the force
of the auxiliary “could.”
Just think of it! A Catholic—a medieval Catholic—was forbidden to look
at or admire a flower, a forest, or a mountain peak. How so much of
nature got mixed up in the singing of “Old Dan Chaucer,” a Catholic poet
of the fourteenth century, we know not. ’Tis a mystery. Chaucer is
essentially the poet of the daisy, and robed it in verse long before
Burns turned it over with his plough.
Then we have the brown-hooded and gentle Friar, St. Francis of Assisi,
who was wont to call the birds of the air and the beasts of the field
his brothers, and who composed canticles to the winds, the flowers and
the sun. Did the erudite professors of Chicago University ever make a
study of Gothic architecture, the distinct inspiration and creation of
medieval times? If so, they will remember that plants and flowers play,
in symbolism, an important part in ornamentation. The hatred of nature
as well as the hatred of art imputed to the early Christians is simply a
“_fable convenue_,” manufactured by the partisan and superficial
historian who is either too dishonest or indolent to state or reach the
real facts.
It is enough to say that Professors Thatcher and Schwill’s work is
actually teeming with historical inaccuracies and gross
misrepresentations of the Catholic Church. Whether by inference or blunt
statement, these two professors have written themselves down in the
pages of their history either as ignorant or dishonest historians, and
it is unworthy of a presumably great university, such as Chicago, to
give its _imprimatur_ to such unreliable and unscholarly works.
But lest we may not have convicted as yet Professors Thatcher and
Schwill of having misrepresented the truth, life and policy of the
Catholic Church in the pages of their history, we shall cite one more
paragraph found on page 172. It deals with monasticism. The author says:
“The philosophic basis of asceticism is the belief that matter is the
seat of evil, and therefore that all contact with it is contaminating.
This conception of evil is neither Christian nor Jewish, but purely
heathen. Jesus freely used the good things of this world and taught that
sin is in nothing external to man, but has its seat only in the heart.
_But His teaching was not understood by His followers._ The peculiar
form which this asceticism in the Church took is called
monasticism. . . . After about 175 A.D. the Church rapidly grew worldly.
As Christianity became popular large numbers entered the Church and
became Christians in name; but at heart and in life they remained
heathen. The bishops were often proud and haughty and lived in grand
style. Those who were really in earnest about their salvation,
unsatisfied with such worldliness, fled from the contamination in the
Church and went to live in the desert and find the way to God without
the aid of the Church: her means of grace were for common Christians.
Those who would could obtain, by means of asceticism and prayer, all
that others received by means of the sacraments of the Church. There
were to be two ways of salvation: one through the Church and her means
of grace; the other through asceticism and contemplation.”
There is assuredly something of the historical _naïveté_ of the
schoolboy in the above. Mark when the Christian Church became
corrupt—nearly one hundred and fifty years before it was upheld by the
arm of Constantine and when it had been hiding for more than one hundred
years in the Catacombs carving and painting in symbol the truths and
mysteries of God. This was the corruption, that as Christ had birth in
the lowly manger of Bethlehem so the Church, His Spouse, was cradled in
humility, hidden away from the purple rage of the Cæsars, and, like a
little child whose dreams are of the past and the future, was rudely
fashioning her life and soul in terms of eternity, in symbols of the
palm, the dove and the lamb.
Now let us cite from Putnam’s “Books and Their Makers in the Middle
Ages” an instance of historical contradiction within the compass of
three pages. It is said that he who misrepresents the truth must have a
good memory, but the author of “Books and Their Makers in the Middle
Ages” is evidently devoid of that faculty, otherwise he would not have
contradicted himself in almost succeeding pages of his work. Here is the
contradiction. He is speaking of book-making at the time of the Italian
Renaissance. On page 331, Vol. I., the author says: “A production of
Beccadelli’s, perhaps the most brilliant of Alfonso’s literary
_protégés_, is to be noted as having been proscribed by the Pope, being
one of the earliest Italian publications to be so distinguished.
Eugenius IV. forbade, under penalty of excommunication, the reading of
Beccadelli’s “Hermaphroditus,” which was declared to be _contra bonos
mores_. The book was denounced from many pulpits, and copies were
burned, together with portraits of the poet, on the public squares of
Bologna, Milan and Ferrara.”
On page 333 of the same volume Putnam writes—and we beg the reader will
compare carefully the two statements: “Poggio is to be noted as a free
thinker who managed to keep in good relations with the Church. _So long
as free thinkers confined their audacity to such matters as form the
topic of Poggio’s ‘Facetiae,’ Beccadelli’s ‘Hermaphroditus’ or La Casa’s
‘Capitolo del Farno’ the Roman Curia looked on and smiled approvingly.
The most obscene books to be found in any literature escaped the Papal
censure, and a man like Aretino, notorious for his ribaldry, could
aspire with fair prospects of success to the scarlet of a Cardinal._”
These are the kind of books that stuff the shelves of the libraries in
our great secular universities.
There is perhaps no other period in the history of the world that
requires more careful investigation than that of the Renaissance in
Italy, and this because of its complex character. Speaking of this
complexity Dr. Pastor says: “In the nature of things it must be
extremely difficult to present a truthful picture of an age which
witnessed so many revolutions affecting almost all departments of human
life and thought, and abounded in contradictions and startling
contrasts. But the difficulty becomes enormously increased if we are
endeavoring to formulate a comprehensive appreciation of the moral and
religious character of such an epoch. In fact in one sense the task is
an impossible one. No mortal eye can penetrate the conscience of a
single man; how much less can any human intellect strike the balance
between the incriminating and the extenuating circumstances on which our
judgment of the moral condition of such a period depends, amid the whirl
of conflicting events. In a rough way, no doubt, we can form an
estimate, but it can never pretend to absolute accuracy. As Burckhardt,
author of ‘The Civilization of the Period of the Renaissance in Italy,’
says: ‘In this region the more clearly the facts seem to point to any
conclusion the more must we be upon our guard against unconditional or
universal assertions.’”
It were well assuredly if some of our professors of history in the great
secular universities—professors who assume to understand the Catholic
Church and her policy better than her own clergy and laity—it were
well, we say, if these would lay to their historical souls Pastor’s
judicial words ere they indict the “Renaissance Period” and blacken the
character of its popes, its prelates and its people.
The truth is that few if any non-Catholic students read Catholic
historical works to-day. Jansen’s great work, dealing with the social
and religious life of Germany in the period that preceded the advent of
Luther, is considered to be the last word on this debatable ground, and
yet how many non-Catholic students have ever opened its pages? The same
may be said of Pastor’s monumental work. “Lives of the Popes Since the
Close of the Middle Ages.” When this ignorance of Catholic fact is
supplemented by the reading of such misrepresentation as is found in
Browning’s poem, “The Bishop Orders His Tomb,” what hope can there be of
justice to Catholic truth and the Catholic faith in our great secular
universities?
We see, then, that not alone are the facts of history falsified, but the
genius of the poet is enlisted to give glamor and glow to the historical
slander.
Take again Tennyson’s poem, “St. Simeon Stylites.” This is a satire on
ascetic life. Tennyson was a Broad Churchman, and it is said that he was
particularly careful not to write anything that would offend the
religious feelings of any of his friends. He saw, however, at the time
of the “Oxford Movement,” the English mind in certain quarters look with
favor on monasticism, and he wrote “St. Simeon Stylites” as a rebuke to
the movement. But is it a true picture of the spirit and life of those
early hermits of the desert? Not at all. Tennyson as a satirist did not
aim at truth, but rather at exaggeration. So he puts into the mouth of
this pillar-fixed saint these words of pride:
“A time may come, yea, even now,
When you may worship me without reproach,
And burn a fragrant lamp before my bones,
When I am gathered to the glorious Saints.”
The essence of the Catholic faith is not “the torpidity of assurance,”
but the working out of one’s salvation in fear and trembling. That pride
should sometimes gain entrance into the cloister and assume the garb of
humility is no doubt true; but the self-renunciation which is the true
spirit of the cloister, giving up all for the service of God, is in
itself a mantle of virtue—a seamless garment of grace which neither the
false satire of a Tennyson nor the flashlight of a Browning monologue
can transform from a beauteous raiment of light.
It is true that the same pen which gave us “St. Simeon” gave us also
these beautiful lines in “St. Agnes’ Eve,” a poem which is stirred with
the loveliness and tenderness of religious life. St. Agnes on the very
eve of death utters these ecstatic words in beatific vision:
“He lifts me to the golden doors;
The flashes come and go;
All heaven bursts her starry floors,
And strews her lights below,
And deepens on and up! The gates
Roll back, and far within
For me the heavenly Bridegroom waits
To make me pure of sin.
The Sabbaths of Eternity,
One Sabbath deep and wide—
A light upon the shining sea—
The Bridegroom with his bride.”
The student, before accepting Tennyson’s poetic or, more correctly,
satiric picture of the hermits of the desert in the early centuries of
the Church as represented in “St. Simeon Stylites,” would do well to
study the condition of the Christian, or rather pagan, world at the time
when the hermits fled to the desert. It is a remote period in the life
of the world, and like all remote periods you must translate yourself
into it if you would clearly and justly understand it. But we warn you
that Kingsley’s “Hermits” will not enlighten you.
Catholics have no need to apologize for the life or policy of their
Church during its reign of nineteen hundred years. It is a book open to
the world, and every chapter in it is a record of the spiritual and
intellectual progress of man. There have been, indeed, twilight
epochs—spiritual eclipses—when man seemed to forget his divine
destiny; but the Church of God still stood at her altars waiting for her
people to kneel—waiting for the “_Introibo ad altare Dei_” to reach the
heart of king and noble, peasant and slave.
Therefore as a student of history and literature we protest against
every misrepresentation of Catholic truth, whether within the pages of
history, fiction or poetry, no matter who may be its author—a professor
in one of our New World universities, a Marie Corelli counting her gains
as she kneels at the shrine of a publisher, a Tennyson striking the
chords of falsehood and “looking down towards Camelot,” or a Browning
constructing his little monologue chapel by the wayside to seduce from
Catholic truth his poetic pilgrim—it is ever misrepresentation wearing
the specious garb of truth, whether it be in history or fiction or
poetry teaching falsehood.
THE STUDY AND INTERPRETATION
OF LITERATURE
THE STUDY AND INTERPRETATION OF LITERATURE.
The study of literature has of late years become somewhat sane and
rational in its aim and purpose. There was a time, and that not very
long ago, when literature was forced to yield up its spirit in the
class-room to mere analysis or a talk about grammar, philology, rhetoric
and sundry other irrelevant subjects.
To-day, however, in the best schools and colleges, this vicious method,
which has for years worked destruction to true literary culture, has
pretty well died out; nor is a through ticket by flying express down the
centuries from Chaucer to Tennyson any longer regarded as satisfactory
evidence that the privileged passenger knows much of the glory which
nestles on the way.
How any person can hope to become a literary scholar in the highest and
best sense of the word without assimilating the INFORMING life of
literature has always seemed to us a problem in dire need of solution.
We can well understand how one may possess himself of the literature of
knowledge without such assimilation, but how he can become possessed of
the literature of power without responding to the inner life of an art
product, is to us a question incomprehensible.
Nor has the old spirit, we fear, been fully and wholly exorcised, as
yet, from the class and lecture room. There are still to be found those
who believe that the analytical exegesis of literature should be the
main purpose of the teacher—that to elucidate the intellectual thought
which articulates a poem, precipitating it from a concrete creation into
a barren abstraction—this and this alone should be the aim and end of
all literary study in the school or lecture room.
The fault with such persons is, that they do not fully understand and
appreciate the true meaning and import of literature, mistaking its
lesser coefficient for its chief and primary one. No definition of
literature can be at all adequate which does not take into consideration
the spiritual element as a factor. The late Brother Azarias, whose study
of literature was most profound, clear and sympathetic, gives us a
definition in the very opening chapter of his charming little volume, “A
Philosophy of Literature,” which is entirely satisfactory. He regards
literature as the verbal expression of man’s affections, as acted upon
in his relations with the material world, society and his Creator.
Literature may therefore be defined as the expression in letters of the
spiritual co-operating with the intellectual man, the former being the
dominant co-efficient.
Knowing, then, that the spiritual element constitutes the INFORMING life
of a poem, how can teachers fritter their time away with brilliant
analytics which do little or nothing for true literary culture? Better,
far better, that the students under their charge be turned loose in some
library—there to browse at will, free to follow their literary tastes
and inclinations.
We have long considered that examinations for certificates and degrees
are for the most part a detriment to literary studies—that they dull
the finer faculties of appreciation and magnify the importance of mere
acquisition. Assuredly, when a young man finds that in order to reach
his diploma or degree he must be able to discuss the Elizabethan English
as found in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” and “As You Like It,” or trace the
gerundial infinitive through Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” he will pay
little heed to either the spirit of Shakespeare or Chaucer as embodied
in their works.
In our great eagerness to fill our heads with facts, without any
co-ordination, we lose sight amid the stress and strain of our
educational work of the ONE GREAT FACT: That if we would be wisely
educated, we must seek it on the basis of a maximum of education with a
minimum of acquirement. It is impossible to play fast and loose with the
spirit of literature and not suffer for our insincerity. Literature is a
jealous mistress and will brook no rival. Those who woo her must come
with clean hearts and minds, setting aside all thought of mercenary
returns, for, as Mrs. Browning says:
“We get no good
In being ungenerous, even to a book,
And calculating profits—so much help
By so much reading. It is rather when
We gloriously forget ourselves and plunge
_Soul-forward_, headlong into a book’s profound
Impassion’d for its beauty and salt of truth—
’Tis then we get the right good from a book.”
Another fault which characterizes the literary studies of to-day is,
that we grasp at too much, and not a little that we fain would compass
is, as far as literary training and culture are concerned, entirely
unimportant. A few great literary personages—epochal men—who have
handed the intellectual torch down the centuries—these are worthy of a
devoted study. We think it is Ruskin who says that he who knows the
history of Rome, Venice, Florence, Paris and London has a full knowledge
of medieval and modern civilization. Twenty authors are not many, still
they largely cover the great masterpieces of poetic thought, both
ancient and modern. Homer, Virgil and Dante, Calderon, Molière and
Goethe, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth and
Tennyson—these contain much of the best poetic thought in all ages, and
yet we have but named little more than half of the twenty. There is a
flood of ephemeral literature—chiefly novels—day by day deluging the
land, which fashion and frivolity set up for literary study. How much
harm these novels do, lashing with their waves the moral shores of life.
God alone knows. To-day, in the minds of many, the novel has supplanted
the Bible, and the ethics of George Eliot take precedence of the Sermon
on the Mount. It is doubtful if either Cardinal Newman or John Ruskin
ever read a line of Tolstoi, Ibsen or Kipling, and yet both hold
respectable places in literature.
Passing now from the subject of literature in itself to a consideration
of its interpretation, we desire to touch upon a subject of vital
import: The Vocal Interpretation of Literature. The spiritual element in
a poem is indefinite and cannot be formulated in terms of x and y. No
examination on paper, be it ever so thorough, can satisfactorily reach
it. The only full response to this spiritual element, this essential
life of a poem, that can be secured by the teacher is through a vocal
rendering of it. But before he is capable of doing so he must first have
sympathetically assimilated the INFORMING life of the poem. This is why
no person need hope to become a great reader without a deep and
sympathetic study of literature, nor a great interpreter of
literature—which means a great teacher of literature—without the vocal
capabilities requisite for voicing the indefinite or spiritual element
which constitutes the soul of an art product. A true literary scholar is
one who grows soulward. It is not enough that he store his mind with
intellectual facts, he should grow vitalized at every point of his soul
in his literary studies.
“Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell.”
Knowledge is of the intellect, wisdom and reverence of the soul. We
should aim, in our study of literature, to pierce through the show of
things—to reach the vital, quickening, spiritual element, by breaking
through the baffling and perverting mesh of words which hide and blind
it. How true are the lines of the late Poet Laureate:
“I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the thoughts I feel,
For words, like nature, half reveal
And half conceal the soul within.”
Herein, then, comes the office of the voice in literary
interpretation—to aid in laying bare the soul within. When the same
time is given in preparing the voice for the high office of literary
interpretation that is now devoted to it in preparation for the operatic
and concert stage, then we may look for the best and highest results in
literary study. Then, indeed, will the throbbing pulse of poetry be felt
in the class and lecture room, and the divine infection of inspiration
will do its benign work, cheating the lazy and indifferent student of
his hours and days.