A remarkable peculiarity, and one that belongs to both kinds of

marriage, is that the bride and bridegroom do not know each other, do

not even see or speak to each other, until it is too late to draw

back. This is the decision of custom, and has its good and bad side,

like many other things in this world. "Why have you come here?" I

asked the other day of a little girl hardly twelve years old, who was

led into church. "My father said I was to be married, so I came," she

replied. A few hours later arrived the young man, pale, exhausted, and

writhing in the grasp of pangs unutterable. Begging me to serve him

first in the quality of physician, he told me his story: "I had just

done dinner and was going out to my palm-trees, when my father told me

to go to the church, and be married; so I took my bath of oil

immediately, which interfered with my digestion and caused my

illness."

The bath of oil is a necessary preliminary on these occasions. That

over, the bridegroom arrays himself in his finest garments. Two

cloths, about one foot three inches wide, and four or five times as

long, ornamented with a fringe, compose his costume; one covers his

loins and the other is wrapped around him; a red kerchief is rolled

about his head, and three pendants, nearly two inches long, and wide

in proportion, adorn each ear. If he is too poor to own these jewels,

he borrows them of his neighbors, and thus apparelled, goes to the

church and presents himself before the sonami, (missionary.)

The maiden also lavishes oil or butter upon her toilette, but on the

wedding day, she is so completely swathed in the ten or eleven yards

of cloth that form her raiment, that neither her jewels nor her face

can be distinguished. Not only is she invisible, but she is supposed

to see nothing herself, and when she wishes to change her place, the

person who accompanies her, often a poor old woman hardly able to

stand leads her by clasping her round the waist. I have sometimes

beheld the singular spectacle of a score of little girls from twelve

to fifteen years of age, muffled in cloth and crouched against the

wall of the church, repeating their prayers to satiety as they waited

for me to come and hear them recite.

They pass their examination; both bride and bridegroom know

faultlessly the pater, ave, credo, the commandments of God and the

church, the act of contrition, the confiteor, etc.; they {636} recite

the seven chapters, that is to say the little catechism, quite well; I

hear their confessions, and the next morning at mass I bless their

union, following in every respect the rubrics of the church, so that

there is nothing especial to notice excepting that the married pair

have no wedding-ring. In its place they have a golden jewel, rather

clumsy in form, through which passes a cord intended to be fastened

round the bride's neck. This jewel is called _tali_. It is the sign of

matrimonial union, and every married woman wears one; when her husband

dies, the relations assemble, and remove the _tali_ from the widow's

neck by breaking the cord.

But pardon me for carrying you without transition from a wedding to a

funeral--let us leave the graveyard and return to the church. Having

blessed the _tali_, applying to it the prayer indicated in the ritual

for the blessing of the ring, I return it to the young man who

presents it to the maiden; she receives it on her out-stretched hands,

and her companion, or if the latter is too old, any other woman

present, fastens it about her neck. Mass is celebrated; the bride and

bridegroom receive communion and the benediction, and then withdraw.

The bride remains hooded through the whole of the festive day; on the

next day after she shows her face, and the husband can for the first

time behold her features: a young man of my acquaintance learned

twenty-four hours after marriage, that his wife had but one eye.

I forgot to mention another custom, which is quite generally observed,

and seems to me charming. The bridegroom buys a _nuptial cloth_, which

is blessed by the priest at the same time with the _tali_, and in this

the bride arrays herself, when the marriage ceremonial is ended. She

wears this cloth during the days of festivity, but the husband gives

her no other garments, and the parents continue to furnish their

daughter's wardrobe until she brings her first child into the world.

But it is time I arrived at the ceremonies of the _grand marriage_

that I blessed on the eleventh of this month.

The young man belonged to Anacarei, and the maiden to Santancoulam, a

little town where we have a Christian settlement. As she had been

baptized only two years before, she still numbered many pagans among

her circle, a fact which made me willingly accede to the desire of her

parents that the marriage should be celebrated in the presence of her

family.

Even before dawn, two bands of musicians, making their instruments

resound in noble emulation of each other, announced to the whole town

that on that day there was to be a grand festival in the Catholic

Church. On their side, with one accord, the Christians devoted

themselves to the preparation of the church and altar; the only outlay

in decoration was upon flowers, but of those there were enough to load

a coach. At last all was ready, and wearing the alb and stole, I went

forward to receive the consent of the betrothed, who were accompanied

by their relations and friends. They joined their right hands, and I

pronounced over them the sacramental words, after which the _tali_ was

blessed and given first to the bridegroom and by turn to the bride,

but without being fastened about her neck, as that ceremony was to

take place afterward at home. I began mass. In the lectern, two

chanters were shaking the walls of the church with a clamor most

delightful to Indian ears, for singing is valued here in proportion to

the volume of voice brought to bear upon it. Indeed never before at

Santancoulam had anything so admirable been heard.

After mass the husband and wife withdrew in different directions, and

the whole day was spent in festive preparations. In the house of the

young girl a great tent was built of the branches and leaves of trees,

draped with cloth of various colors. In the middle of this tent, which

is called the _Pandel_, upon a mound a {637} foot and a half in

height, and about eight square feet in extent, arose an elegantly

decorated pavilion supported on four little columns. It was truly an

exhibition of painted cloth and parti-colored paper of every hue and

every shade, surpassing the rainbow in brilliancy. There, upon this

mound and under this pavillion, the bridegroom was to give the _tali_

to his bride.

In the mean time a palanquin had been constructed elsewhere, even more

elegant and magnificent than the pavilion of the _Pandel_. At ten

o'clock in the evening, by the light of thirty or forty blazing

torches, the bridegroom entered the palanquin, and, borne upon the

shoulders of four men, made the tour of the town, a band of music

opening the way and summoning the curious who hastened at the call.

After promenading the principal streets with slow steps for two or

three hours, they turned toward the bride's home. The young man

ascended the mound and seated himself, upon the ground, you

understand, for among Indians there are neither chairs nor lounges.

But do not be afraid that he soiled his fine clothes--a litter of

straw covered the whole surface of the mound. In this country they

know no better way of making an apartment presentable, and all Indian

_parquets_ are polished after this fashion. The bride came in her

turn, her father leading her by the hand. When he had seated her face

to face with the young man who had been his son-in-law for twenty-four

hours, he declared in a loud, clear voice that he had given his

daughter in marriage to so and so, living in such and such a place,

that he announced it to her relations and friends, begging them to

give their consent. The assistants standing about the mound extended

their hands in succession, and touched the _tali_ with the tips of the

fingers in token of approval. The catechist intoned the litany of the

Blessed Virgin, to which the Christians made the responses, then he

gave the _tali_ to the husband, who held it near his wife's neck, and

the bride's sister-in-law, standing behind her, took the cord and tied

it. The ceremonies and festivities were ended for that night, and

every one withdrew to take a little repose.

The next evening there was a grand wedding collation, after which the

festival, properly speaking, the grand festival, began. The newly

married pair seated themselves in the palanquin, facing each other,

but separated by a little curtain. The bride, freed from her veil now,

held the curtain with both hands, trying to conceal her face with it.

By the light of torches even more numerous than the night before, and

to the sound of music quite as vociferous, they went to the church,

where all the candles were lighted. The chanters and myself intoned

the litany of the Blessed Virgin and the _salve regina_; the catechist

recited a few prayers. I gave the benediction to the assembly with a

crucifix, having no statue of the Blessed Virgin, and the ceremony

closed with a _tamoul_ chant. The husband and wife re-entered the

palanquin, and then began in the streets a veritable triumphal march

called here _patana-pravesam_ (entrance into the town,) which ended

only when the day began.

What lends to this march a character of beauty and originality is the

_calliel_, a dance accompanied by songs and the clashing of little

staves, and performed before the palanquin for the whole length of the

march. Do not imagine anything resembling a French ball; here dancing,

so called, is a disgrace, and is only permitted to the Bayadères

engaged in the service of the pagodas. The _calliel_ is quite another

thing. Fancy a dozen well-formed, robust young people, with turbaned

heads, and loins girt with a long strip of cloth draped like a scarf,

some of them wearing rings of bells upon their arms and legs, and all

carrying in each hand a little staff about a foot long, with which

they strike the staves of the dancers, whom they meet face to face. On

leaving the church, our young dancers begged me to {638} witness their

gambols in the presence of the bride and bridegroom, who were looking

down upon the assembly from their high palanquin. The clashing cadence

of the staves, the monotonous but purely harmonious chant of the

dancers, their free, elastic bounds and graceful twirls, the passing

and repassing of this troop, who spring forward and draw back, falling

and rising as they drop on their knees and rear themselves up again,

this whirlwind where all is ordered, timed, and measured---all

presents a spectacle that enchants Hindoos and may well delight a

Frenchman.

Meanwhile the big drum, tambourine, tam-tam, clarionet, bagpipe, etc,

etc., announced with joyous din that the crowd must turn their steps

elsewhere, and show to others all this paraphernalia of rejoicing. The

palanquin was borne toward the streets. From time to time the march

was suspended, the music ceased, and the young dancers resumed and

continued for nearly an hour their agile feats of strength.

So the night passed, and the first rays of the sun announced that it

was time to end it all. The husband and wife descended from the

palanquin to hear mass, and then entered upon real life; the wedding

was over. In the evening a car drawn by two magnificent oxen,

transported the bride, accompanied by several relatives, to the

village of her husband, who escorted the family, mounted upon a pretty

white horse.

AMACAREI, Sept 29th, 1865.

------

From the Dublin Review

ROME THE CIVILIZER OF NATIONS.

1. _Le Parfum de Rome_. Par Louis Veuillot. 3me edition. Paris: Gaume

Frères. 1862.

2. _Rome et la Civilisation_. Par EUGENE MAHON DE MONAGHAN. Paris:

Charles Douniol. 1863.

The useful little work which stands at the head of this article, by M.

Mahon de Monaghan, (whose name would, perhaps, be more correctly

printed M. MacMahon de Monaghan,) may be regarded as a supplement to

the more important volume of the Abbé Balmez. "The study of church

history in its relations with civilization," _he_ told us, "is still

incomplete;" and the writer before us seems to have taken this as a

hint, and to have conceived the laudable plan of pursuing further some

of the Spanish divine's arguments, and strengthening them by new

illustrations gathered from history. "Le Parfum de Rome" is a work of

another description, but bearing on the same subject. It consists of

many discursive reflections on Rome, as the residence of the Vicar of

Christ, and is full of point, brilliancy, and humor.

When a Catholic, who has enjoyed the advantage of a good education,

and is accustomed to habits of reflection, arrives for the first time

in Rome, he is usually overwhelmed by the multitude of objects offered

to his attention, and requires time to select, arrange, and analyze

them. The light is too vivid, the colors are too varied, the perfume

is too strong. Two thousand years, richly laden with historic events,

crowd his memory; the united {639} glories of the past and the present

kindle his imagination; the sublime mysteries of religion,

marvellously localized, exercise his faith; long galleries thronged

with the rarest productions of art court his gaze, and a presence

peculiar to the spot, which he feeds, but cannot yet define, completes

his pleading bewilderment in heart and brain. By degrees the tumult of

thought subsides, and order begins to rise out of chaotic beauty. The

traveller is resolved to render his sensations precise, and he asks

himself emphatically, "Whence springs the resistless charm of Rome?

Wherein does the true glory of Rome consist? What _is_ this nameless

presence that mantles all things with divinity? Where does the

Shekinah reside?"

Then more and more clearly, the voice of Rome herself is heard in

reply: "This is the home of the vicar of Christ, the throne of the

fisherman, the seat of that long line of pontiffs who, like a chain of

gold, bind our erring globe to Emmanuel's footstool. This garden is

fertilized by the blood of Peter and Paul, and of thirty Popes: hence

all its amazing produce; hence its exquisite fragrance and perennial

bloom. These are the head-quarters of the commander-in-chief of the

church militant; and Christ himself is present here in the person of

his viceroy, promulgating a law above all human laws, inflexible,

uniform, merciful, and strict. _He_ diffuses this grateful perfume;

_he_ colors every object with rainbow tints; _he_ sheds this dazzling

light which causes Rome to shine like a gem with a myriad facets. The

Lord loveth the gates of Rome more than of old he loved the gates of

Zion; he lives in the solemn utterances of his high priest, and speaks

by him as of old he spoke by the Urim and Thummim that sparkled on

Aaron's breast. Here he so multiplies sacraments, that all you see

becomes sacramental; and here you find, in the father of the faithful,

the most perfect representation of your Incarnate God, and the most

certain pledge of his resurrection."

If the peculiar presence of Christ thus hallows Christian Rome, it

cannot be matter of surprise that she also should be an enigma to the

world, and have a twofold character; that she should be one thing to

the eye and another to the mind; one thing to Gibbon and Goethe,

[Footnote 132] and another thing altogether to Chateaubriand and

Schlegel; that she should have her seasons of gloom and jubilee, of

persecution and triumph; should require in each to be interpreted by

faith; and that every page of her history should share in this double

aspect. Thus Rome resembles Christ; and in this resemblance lies her

glory and her strength. Other glories she has which do not directly

come from him. She had them of old before he came; the inroad of

barbaric hordes, age after age, could not trample them out, and they

endure abundantly to this day. These the world understands; these she

extols with ceaseless praises, and sends her children from every clime

in troops to do homage at their ancient shrines. The worldling,

enamoured of these, exclaims:

"O Rome! my country! city of the soul!

The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,

Lone mother of dead empires." [Footnote 133]

[Footnote 132: Parfum de Rome, p. 7]

[Footnote 133: Childe Harold, canto iv.]

But the orphan who turns to her as Byron did, remains an orphan. Rome

is no mother to him, and he finds no father in the patriarch who rules

there. To the devout Catholic she is the mother of arts and sciences

as truly as the Pope is the father of the Christian family. She is,

and has been for eighteen hundred years, the centre of true

civilization, because she is the central depository of the faith. From

her, as from a fountain, the streams of salvation have flowed through

all lands, and, having the promise both of this life and that which is

to come, they have indirectly produced a large amount of material

well-being, and also an infinity of {640} artistic and scientific

results. Rome civilizes as Christ civilized, by sowing the seeds of

civilization. She does not aim directly at material well-being; she

does not any more than he teach astronomy or dynamics; she propounds

no system of induction; she invents neither printing-press,

steam-engines, nor telegraphs; but she so raises man above the brute,

curbs his passions, improves his understanding, instils into him

principles of duty, and a sense of responsibility, so hallows his

ambition and kindles his desire for the good of his kind and the

progress of humanity, that under her influence he acquires insensibly

an aptitude even for the successful pursuit of physical science, such

as no other teacher could impart. He looks abroad into the spacious

field of nature, and finds in every star and in every drop of dew an

unfathomable depth of creative design. His heart quickens the energies

of his brain, and he says, smiling, "My Father made them all; he made

them that I may, to the best of my feeble powers, investigate and

classify them, and that he may be glorified in science as in

religion." He rises to higher studies than those of physical science;

he looks within, and analyzes his complex nature. He sees that human

minds in the aggregate are capable of indefinite development as time

goes on, and he concludes that, as the works of nature can be

investigated to the glory of the Creator, so may the mind of man be

developed to the glory of its Redeemer--be trained in philosophy, and

exercised also in the application of science to the wants and usages

of social life. Thus, to his apprehension, the links are clear which

connect Rome--the centre of civilization--with matters which appear

at first sight absolutely distinct from religion, with sewing-machines

and electric cables, with Huyghens's undulatory theory of light, and

Guthrie's researches into the relative sizes of drops and of bubbles.

But here, perhaps, we shall be met by an objection. "Science," it will

be said, "surely not merely _appears_, but _is_ independent of

religion, as the experience of ancient and modern times will show.

Still more is independent of Papal Rome, which has always been on the

alert to check its progress, condemned Bishop Virgil for teaching the

existence of the antipodes, and Galileo for maintaining the

heliocentric system. Egypt under the Ptolemies, Etruria and Mexico,

Aristotle, Lord Bacon, and Sir Isaac Newton, alike scatter your

assertion to the winds; and if any doubt on the subject could linger

in the mind of any one, the late encyclical would the sufficient to

disabuse him of his fond delusion."

To this we reply: We will not allow that even in ancient times

attainments in physical science were made irrespectively of religion.

Without religion, man lives in a savage state akin to brutes. Natural

religion, on which revealed religion is founded, exalts him in a

degree, and qualifies him for intellectual pursuits. Yet, even with

its assistance, so corrupt is his nature, that philosophy and science

can obtain no permanent command over his passions, and his highest

degrees of refinement are always succeeded by periods of degradation,

and no steady advance is made. As natural religion placed the heathen

in a condition somewhat favorable to the pursuit of science, so

revealed religion, or, in other words, Roman Catholicism, did the like

more completely, in consequence of its divine origin and perfect

adaptation to the needs of mankind. It brought society step by step

out of a state of semi-barbarism, and overcame the resistance offered

to its social improvements by the Roman people and Emperors, by Huns

and Vandals, by Islamism, Iconoclasts, and Feudalism. It covered

Europe with seats of learning, and kindled the student's lamp in the

monastic recesses of deep valleys and vast forests. It created a body

of theological science, and of philosophical in connection with it,

{641} which the more profound even of infidel thinkers admit to have

been among the most marvellous products of the human mind; and this

scientific system--over and above its higher purposes--was the very

best intellectual training possible under the circumstances of the

period. Then, as time went on, religion accepted gratefully and

employed in its own service the art of printing, and prepared the

human mind for those most energetic thoughts and often misdirected

efforts which have been made, from the fifteenth century downward, for

the discovery of physical truth. It is therefore manifest to all whose

thoughts reach below the surface of things, that the services which

Lord Bacon rendered to philosophy and Newton to Science, were

indirectly due to the Catholic Church.

Rome, the central civilizer of society, exerts an influence far beyond

her visible domain. The earth is hers, and the fulness thereof.

Whatsoever things are true and holy in faith and morals among her

truants, whatever portions of her divine creed they carry away with

them to build up their sects, whatever books or texts of the mutilated

scriptures they retain, whatever graces shine forth in them, and in

part redeem their delinquency, are all to be ascribed to her as the

primary channel of communication between earth and heaven, and all

belong to her as their chartered proprietress, although they have been

wrested from her hands. "There is nothing right, useful, pleasing

(jucundum) in human society, which the Roman pontiffs have not brought

into it, or have not refined and fostered (expoliverint et foverint)

when introduced." [Footnote 134] Heresy is always blended with truth,

and the truth is always Rome's, while the heresy is theirs who have

corrupted it. Whatever is good and true in Protestantism is of Rome;

and as Protestants would have no Bible but for the councils which

settled its canon, and the despised monks who transcribed it age after

age, so Protestant churches would never have been founded if the great

old church had not overspread Europe. Nay, the _Novum Organon_ and

_Principia_ would in all probability never have seen the light.

Christianity, on the whole, keeps science alive; and but for the

popes, Christianity would soon vanish from the face of the earth. As

far as Bacon and Newton are indebted to Christianity for their

philosophy, just in so far are they indebted to Rome as its

fountain-head. Whatever stress is to be laid on the fact of their

being Christians, glorifies Rome indirectly as the source of

civilization. It is her very greatness and her perfect system of

doctrine which brings her into collision with every form of spiritual

rebellion; but those who fly off from her authority are still her

children, _in so far_ as they continue members at all of the family of

God. The prodigal son, amid all his degradation and wanderings, is

yearned over by his father, and belongs to his father's house in a

certain sense.

[Footnote 134: Pope Pius IX. Letter to M. Mahon de Monaghan.]

As to Rome being the enemy of physical science, it is not difficult to

see the causes which have led to so extreme a misconception. She has

ever protested, and that most energetically, against the prevalent

tendency to give physics a supremacy over theology, where the two seem

to clash; and she has also steadfastly resisted the pretension so

constantly made by physical science to thrust into a corner some

higher branches of human philosophy. Her conduct in the latter case

has been simply in accordance with what is now a growing conviction in

the philosophical world; while in the former case she has done nothing

more than uphold as infallibly certain the doctrinal deposit committed

to her charge. But with these most reasonable qualifications, she has

ever been active in stimulating the keenest physical researches. Well

may the present pope say that "it is _impudently_ bruited abroad that

the Catholic {642} religion and the Roman pontificate are adverse to

civilization and progress, and therefore to the happiness which may

thence be expected." [Footnote 135] To harp upon Virgil and Galileo,

proves how few and slender are the arguments which our accusers can

adduce in support of their charge. If we defer to facts, and regard

the entire history of Christendom, we can certainly name ten persons

distinguished for physical discoveries in our own communion, for every

one whom Protestantism can boast. In no Catholic country is such

science discouraged, but its professors are, on the contrary,

everywhere rewarded and honored. Nowhere among us has any recent

science, such as geology, been prohibited, or even combated, except by

individuals. Its conclusions, when really established, have been

admitted by all learned Catholics notwithstanding they appeared at

first sight to run counter to the words of inspiration. Cardinal

Wiseman's "Lectures on Science and Revealed Religion" abundantly

illustrate what is here stated; and his whole life was a refutation of

the calumny with which his creed is so often assailed. New arts, which

are each the visible expression of a corresponding science, have been

welcomed abroad as readily as in England; and Belgium could be

traversed by steam long before the Great Western line between London

and Bristol was completed. If it so happened that the greatest English

astronomer, naturalist, or mathematician, were a Catholic, his

co-religionists would be the most forward of all Englishmen to extol

his genius. His scientific pursuits would never make him an object of

suspicion with us, provided his loyalty to the church were complete;

nor would his zeal be damped by any ecclesiastical authority, so, long

as his conclusions involved nothing adverse to religion. The Catholic,

it is true, can never make the claims of science paramount to those of

faith, but the restraint thus imposed on him is of the most salutary

kind, and will be no real check on his liberty of thought; for science

and revelation, though it may for a while be difficult to harmonize

some of their statements, must ever be found to agree strictly on

closer examination.

[Footnote 135: Pius IX. Letter to M. Mahon de Monaghan.]

It would be easy to mark the successive stages in European

civilization by the pontificates of popes remarkable for their energy

of character and the brightness of their abilities. The average length

of the reigns of the first thirty-seven was rather less than ten

years; and during this time they had to struggle for something

infinitely more important than art and science. They were penetrated

with a deep sense of their sublime mission, and neither old age,

infirmities, nor persecution, paralyzed their labors. "They employed

their revenues in maintaining the poor, the sick, the infirm, the

widows, orphans, and prisoners, in burying the martyrs, in erecting

and embellishing oratories, in comforting and redeeming confessors and

captives, and in sending aid of every description to the suffering

churches of other provinces." [Footnote 136] Thus, in the wise order

of providence, papal civilization began in the moral world before it

extended to the intellectual. Yet in the middle of the fourth century,

the pope and his coadjutors in different quarters of the globe,

presented a striking spectacle, when considered merely in their

intellectual aspect. St. Damasus, the thirty-eighth pope, occupied the

see of St. Peter. While he zealously promoted ecclesiastical

discipline, he won for himself general admiration by his virtues and

his writings. His taste for letters carried him beyond the sphere of

theological labor; he composed verses, and wrote several heroic poems.

[Footnote 137] He was the light of Rome, while St. Augustine, the

brightest star that ever adorned the Catholic episcopate, shone at

Hippo. St. Ambrose, at the same time, was the glory of Milan; St.

Gregory taught at Nyssa; St. Gregory Nazianzen {643} wrote in

Constantinople; St. Martin evangelized the Gauls; St. Basil composed

his "Moralia" and his Treatise on the study of ancient Greek authors

at Caesarea; St. Hilary and St. Paulinus bore witness to the truth in

Poitiers and Trèves; St. Jerome unfolded the sacred stores of his

learning in Thrace, Bithynia, Cappadocia, and Pontus; St. Cyril wrote

beside his Saviour's tomb; and St. Patrick converted Ireland from the

darkness of Druidic paganism.

[Footnote 136: J. Chantrel, "La Royauté Pontifieale," p. 74]

[Footnote 137: St. Jerome, "De Illustr. Eccles. Script."]

Every faithful prelate at that period--nay, every true Christian;

however humble his condition--stood out more prominently from the mass

of society than we can now imagine. Christianity has produced among us

a certain general level of morality. But it was not so then. The

masses were still heathen, and Christians were often in a very small

minority. Their principles and conduct, therefore, were so distinct

from those around them, that each attracted attention, and exerted

more influence than he was aware of. Each Roman Catholic--for we

joyfully accept a designation which is erroneously supposed to limit

our claims--each Roman Catholic was then a light shining in a dark

place, and, in his measure, an apostle of civilization. He promoted

science, even though he had never heard its name, for he diminished

that amount of moral depravity, on the ruins of which alone science

can build her gorgeous fanes. He was member of a church, which,

wherever it was established, protested by its institutions against the

excessive indulgence of carnal affections. A celibate priesthood,

societies of monks and nuns, hermits, and vows of chastity observed by

persons living in the world, like St. Cecilia and St. Scholastica, and

expiring in the arms of wife or husband without ever having done

violence to the pure intentions which marked their bridal--these

things formed a spectacle so extraordinary to the heathen, who had

been accustomed to make sensual indulgence a feature in their

religious solemnities, that it could not but excite inquiry, and issue

in affixing a fresh stamp of divinity on the faith of Christ. What

would have become of society by this time if the elements of

decomposition which then existed had been allowed to work unchecked by

the laws of Christian marriage, the prohibition of divorce, and lastly

by monasticism--monasticism not forced on any one as a duty, but

freely chosen as a privilege--a higher and purer state, best suited

for communion with God and activity in his service!

In the fifth century, the efforts which had been made by Popes

Innocent, Boniface, Celestine, and Sixtus III. for the conversion of

the barbarians who overran the fairest portions of Europe, were

continued with extraordinary perseverance by the great St. Leo. He

formed the most conspicuous figure in his age. No element of greatness

was wanting to his character, and the complicated miseries of the

times only threw into stronger relief the energy of his mind and will.

His reign, from first to last, is a chapter in the history of

civilization. Attila, crossing the Jura mountains with his numerous

hordes, fell upon Italy. Valentinian III. fled before him, and Leo

alone had weight and courage equal to the task of interceding with the

resistless devastator. On the 11th of June, 452, he set forth to meet

him, and found him on the banks of the Mincio. Rome was saved, and

with it religion and the hopes of society. Three years after, Genseric

with his Vandals stood before its gates; and though Leo could not this

time altogether stay the destroyer, he saved the lives of the

citizens, and Rome itself from being burnt. If she had not been

possessed of a hidden and supernatural life, far transcending that

idea of a civilizing agent which it so abundantly includes, she would

already have been razed to the ground, as she was afterward by the

Ostrogoths under Totila, and from neither devastation would she ever

have been {644} able to revive. At this moment she would be numbered

with Nineveh and Sidon, the foxes would bark upon the Aventine as when

Belisarius rode through the deserted Forum, and shepherds would fold

their flocks upon the hills where St. Peter's and St. John Lateran now

dazzle the eye with splendor. [Footnote 138]

[Footnote 138: Monsignor Manning, "The Eternity of Rome."--_Lamp_,

Nov. 1863.]

Happily great popes never fail. All are great in their power and

influence, and almost all have been good, while from time to time

Providence raises up some one also who makes an impression on his age,

and is acknowledged by friends and foes alike to be gifted with those

qualities which entitle him to the epithet "great." Pelagus I.

supplied the Romans with provisions during a long siege, and after the

example of St. Leo, obtained from Totila some mitigation of his

barbarous severities; John III. and Benedict I. ministered largely to

the Italians who were dying of want, and driven from their homes by

the remorseless Lombards; and writers the most adverse to the

papacy--Gibbon, Daunou, [Footnote 139] Sismondi--testify to the

disinterested benevolence of these and other pontiffs during the

church's struggle with northern devastators. Just a century and a half

had elapsed since Leo the Great's elevation, when St. Gregory ascended

the papal throne amid the people's acclamation. He was at the same

time doctor, legislator, and statesman; and the plain facts of his

pontificate might be so related as to appear a panegyric rather than a

sober history. In the midst of personal weakness and suffering, the

strength of his soul and intellect were felt in every quarter of

Christendom and while he composed his "Pastoral" and his "Dialogues,"

or negotiated with the Lombards in behalf of his afflicted country,

news reached him frequently of the success of his missions amongst

distant and barbarous people. [Footnote 140] To one of these we owe

the conversion of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers; and the results it

produced extort from Macaulay the admission that the spiritual

supremacy assumed by the pope effected more good than harm, and that

the Roman Church, by uniting all men in a bond of brotherhood, and

teaching all their responsibility before God, deserves to be spoken of

with respect by philosophers and philanthropists. [Footnote 141]

[Footnote 139: "Essai Historique," t. i.]

[Footnote 140: See Chantrel, "Hist. Populaire des Papes," t. v.]

[Footnote 141: "Hist. of England," chap. i.]

Sabinian, Boniface III. and IV., John IV. and VII., Theodore, Martin,

Eugene, and Benedict II., trod firmly in the steps of St. Gregory, and

encouraged the clergy everywhere in repairing the evils wrought by the

barbarians, and in re-establishing law and order. [Footnote 142] The

bishops became the natural chiefs of society, and the administration

of justice was often placed in their hands by common consent. Their

counsel was taken by untutored kings, and they gradually impressed

them with a sense of the distinction between temporal and spiritual

power, and of the right of the latter to control the undue exercise of

the former. They raised by turns all the great questions that interest

mankind, and established the independence of the intellectual world.

[Footnote 143] Such is the impartial testimony of writers unhappily

prejudiced against the institution they applaud.

[Footnote 142: Gibbon, "Decline and Fall," chap. ixv.]

[Footnote 143: Guizot, "Hist. de la Civilisation en Europe." "Hist.

de la Civilisation en France." t. ii.]

In their protracted conflict with Islamism, the Roman pontiffs were

the champions of social improvement. It needs only to survey the

opposite coasts of the Mediterranean, in order to gain some idea of

the paralyzing influence which the creed of Mohammed would have

exerted over human progress, if it had not been vigorously resisted.

Its prevailing dogma being fatalism, and its main precept sensuality,

it has, after a lapse of twelve centuries, failed to ameliorate the

condition of the tribes who profess it. If, in any respects, they

enjoy advantages unknown to their forefathers, these are due, not to

Mohammedanism, but to that {645} very anti-Saracenic movement which

the popes headed, and which, under different conditions, they carry

forward to this day. Permanent degradation was all that Islamism could

promise. The Arabs alone kindled for a while the lamp of learning, but

even their subtlety and genius did not suffice to keep its flame

alive. Everywhere, and with all the forces at their command, the popes

repelled its encroachments. More than once they girded on the sword,

and led their warriors to the charge against the Moslem host. During a

hundred and seventy years--from 1096 to 1270--they roused and united

the nations again and again in the common cause. Other statesmen were

unable to form extensive combinations, but _they_ were often

successful where diplomacy failed. In eight successive crusades, the

flower of Europe's chivalry was marshalled on the Syrian plains, and

if Catholic arms failed in retaining possession of the city of

Jerusalem and the sepulchre of Christ, they at all events saved the

cause of European civilization, and ultimately drove back the intruder

from the vineyards of Spain and the gates of Vienna, and sank their

proud galleys in the waves of Lepanto. When the zeal of crusaders died

away, the Roman pontiffs ever tried to rekindle it, constantly rebuked

the princes who made terms with the false prophet, and exhorted them

to expel the conquered Saracens from their soil. Such was the policy

of Clement IV., under whom, in 1268, the last crusade was set on foot.

[Footnote 144] Two centuries later, Calixtus III. was animated with

the same sentiments. He was appalled, as his predecessor had been, at

the progress the Turks made in Europe after the capture of

Constantinople, and made a strenuous appeal to the Catholic kingdoms

against the Mussulman invasions. At an advanced age he preserved in

his soul the fire of youth, sent preachers in every direction to rouse

the slumbering zeal of the faithful, and himself equipped an army of

60,000 men, which he sent under the command of Campestran, his legate,

to the help of the noble Hunyad in Hungary. Pius II. succeeded him in

1458. He was at once theologian, orator, diplomatist, canonist,

historian, geographer, and poet. He struggled hard to organize a

crusade against the Ottomans, formed a league to this end with Mathias

Corvin, king of Hungary, pressed the king of France, the duke of

Burgundy, and the republic of Venice into the cause, and placed

himself at the head of the expedition. He was on the point of

embarking at Ancona, and in sight of the Venetian galleys, waiting to

transport him to the foreign shore, when fever surprised him, and he

died. "No doubt," he said, "war is unsuitable to the weakness of old

men, and the character of pontiffs, but when religion is ready to

succumb, what can detain us? We shall be followed by our cardinals and

a large number of bishops. We shall march with our standard unfolded,

and with the relics of saints, with Jesus Christ himself in the holy

Eucharist." The spectacle would certainly have been grand, if Pius II.

had thus appeared before the walls of Constantinople; but Providence

had not willed it so.

[Footnote 144: See his letter to the King of Arragon. Fleury, "Hist,

Eccles." An. 1266.]

These are but a few of the great names which lent weight to the appeal

in behalf of the harassed pilgrims in Palestine, the outraged tomb of

the Redeemer, and the Christian lands overran by Saracens and Turkish

hordes. To whatever causes the worldly-wise historian may attribute

the overthrow of the Ottoman power in Europe, the Catholic will

ascribe it without hesitation to the untiring activity of the popes.

Divided as the petty kingdoms and principalities of the west were by

mutual jealousy and ceaseless warfare, they would never have been able

to oppose a compact front to the advances of Islamism, if they had not

been persuaded by popes and prelates, by Peter the hermit, St.

Bernard, and {646} Foulque, to lay aside their miserable disputes, and

unite against the common enemy. Thus, by the crusades, immediate

benefit accrued to European society, and the character of the church

as a ruler and leader was never borne in upon the minds of men with

greater force than when Adhémar, the apostolic legate, put himself at

the head of the Crusade under Urban II., "wore by turns the prelate's

mitre and the knight's casque," and proved the model, the consoler,

and the stay of the sacred expedition. [Footnote 145] The presence of

bishops and priests among the soldiery impressed on the Crusades a

religious stamp favorable to the enthusiasm and piety of the

combatants, and corrective of the evils which never fail to follow the

camp. [Footnote 146] Nations learned their Christian brotherhood,

which former ages had taught them to forget; minds were enlarged by

travel, and prejudices were dispelled; civilizing arts were acquired

even from the infidel, and brought back to western towns and villages

as the most precious spoil. As Rome had, at an earlier period,

resisted the superstition and rapacity of Leo the Isaurian, [Footnote

147] and rescued Christian art from the hands of the image-breakers,

so now she opened the way to commerce with the east and rewarded the

zeal of Catholic populations with the costly bales and rich produce of

Arabia and Syria.

[Footnote 145: Michaad et Poujouiat, "Hist. des Croisades."]

[Footnote 146: See Heeren, "Essai sur l'Influence des Croisades."]

[Footnote 147: "Parfum de Rome," t. i. p. 124.]

Having turned the feudal system to good account in its conflict with

Mohammedanism, the Church, with Rome for its centre, rejoiced to find

that system, at the close of the struggle, considerably weakened. It

had grown to maturity in a barbarous age, and was but a milder form of

that slavery which had so deeply disgraced the institutions of Pagan

Rome. [Footnote 148] It perpetuated the distinctions of caste, and

the privilege enjoyed by one family of oppressing others. It was

selfishness exalted by pride--the right of the strong over the weak.

It exacted forced tribute, and held in its own violent hands the

moral, mental, and material well-being of its subjects. It required

blind and absolute submission, and often refused to dispense justice

even at this price. Immobility was its ruling principle, and there was

nothing on which it frowned more darkly than amelioration and

progress. In all these particulars it was at variance with the

religion of Christ, and for this reason Rome never ceased to combat

its manifold abuses.

[Footnote 148: See "Rome under Paganism," etc., vol. 1. pp. 50-53.]

At the close of the Crusades the nobles began to learn their proper

place. Petty fiefs and small republics disappeared, and one strong and

regal executive swallowed up a multitude of inferior and vexatious

masteries. The barons became the support of the throne whose authority

they had so long weakened, and ceased to oppress the people as they

had done for ages. Cities multiplied, and rose to opulence; municipal

governments flourished, acquired and conferred privileges, and

afforded to the industrious abundant scope for wholesome emulation,

and laudable ambition. All the arts of life were brought into

exercise, and a new and middling class of society was called into

being. The merchants, the tradesmen, and the gentry obtained their

recognized footing in the community, and numberless corporations,

guilds, and militia testified to the growing importance of the burgess

as distinguished from the noble and the villain. [Footnote 149]

[Footnote 149: See Mably, "Observations sur l'Histoire de France,"

iii. 7.]

Well-ordered governments on a large scale involved of necessity the

cultivation of the soil. Myriads of acres which, before the Crusades,

had been barren or baneful, now smiled with waving corn, or bore rich

harvests of luscious grapes. The want of bulky transports to convey

large cargoes of men and munitions to the East had caused great

alteration and improvement in the construction of ships. {647}

Navigation and commerce gained fresh vigor; maritime laws and customs

came to be recognized, and were reduced, about the middle of the

thirteenth century, into a manual called _Consolato del mar_,

[Footnote 150] Venice, Genoa, Pisa, and Marseilles rose to wealth and

splendor; sugar and silks were manufactured; stuffs were woven and

dyed; metals were wrought; architecture was diversified and improved,

medicine learned many a precious rule and remedy from Arab leeches;

geography corrected long-standing blunders; and poetry found a new

world in which to expatiate. None of these results were unforeseen by

the prescience of Rome. She knew that it was her mission to renew the

face of the earth; nor, in pursuing her unwavering policy in reference

to Islamism, did she ever forget that it was given her from the first

to suck the breasts of the Gentiles, and to assimilate to her own

system all that is rich and rare in nature, wonderful in science,

beauteous in art, wise in literature, and noble in man. The Roman

Church had ever been the friend and patron of those slaves whom Cato

and Cicero, with all their philosophy, so heartily despised.

[Footnote 151] She did not indeed affirm that slavery was impossible

under the Christian law, but she discouraged it. "At length," says

Voltaire, whose testimony on such a point none will suspect, "Pope

Alexander III., in 1167, declared in the name of the Council that all

Christians should be (_devaient étre_) exempt from slavery. This law

alone ought to render his memory dear to all people, as his efforts to

maintain the liberty of Italy should make his name precious to the

Italians." [Footnote 152] Lord Macaulay has spoken frankly of the

advantage to which the Catholic Church shows in some countries as

contrasted with our forms of Christianity, and says it is notorious

that the antipathy between the European and African races is less

strong at Rio Janeiro than at Washington. [Footnote 153] On the

authority of Sir Thomas Smith, one of Elizabeth's most able

counsellors, he assures us that the Catholic priests up to that time

had used their most strenuous exertions to abolish serfdom. Confessors

never failed to adjure the dying noble who owned serfs to free his

brethren for whom Christ died. Thus the bondsman became loosened from

the glebe which gave him birth; many during the Crusades left their

plough in the furrow, and their cattle at the trough, and escaped from

service they had long detested; and many knights and lords who

returned from the Holy Land emancipated their serfs of their own

accord. Free hirelings took the place of hereditary bondsmen; and the

peasant's life assumed a pleasant and civilized aspect. In proportion

as Rome's genuine influence prevails in any country over clergy and

people, the traces of the fall diminish, and those of paradise are

restored.

[Footnote 150: E. M. de Monaghan, p. 219. ]

[Footnote 151: Cic. Orat de Harusp, Resp. xii. ]

[Footnote 152: Sur les Moeurs, ch. 83. ]

[Footnote 153: Hist. of England, chap. i.]

The Roman pontiff have often been accused of interfering in the

private affairs of princes. But the charge is unjust. It is part of

their mission to repress all moral disorders, and especially to punish

the licentiousness of sovereigns whose bad example promotes immorality

among their subjects. Their jurisdiction is fully admitted; their

right of granting or refusing a divorce no Catholic prince disputes

any more than their right of inflicting penances in case of adultery

or incest. To deny them, therefore, the opportunity of investigating

the very cases on which they must ultimately decide, would be

manifestly inconsistent and absurd. When Lothaire II. of Lorraine

drove away from his court the virtuous Teustberghe, and accused her of

disgraceful crimes, who can blame Nicholas I. for having espoused the

cause of this persecuted queen, and excommunicated in council her

unjust lord? Did the popes "interfere" in such matters otherwise than

in the interests of humanity; and if they had {648} consulted their

own ease and comfort, would they not have abstained from such

interference altogether? Let the world call it papal aggression,

usurpation, political scheming, or what other hard name it will, the

true Christian will see in it nothing but disinterested devotion to

the voice of conscience and the good of society. God himself seems to

have declared in favor of Pope Nicholas in the affair alluded to; for

when Louis le Germanique took up arms to avenge his brother, and

marched on Rome, the pontiff met his armies with fasting and litanies,

and with no other standard than the crucifix given by the Empress

Helena containing a fragment of the true cross. The victorious king

was overcome by these demonstrations, and, imploring the pope's

pardon, submitted to all his conditions. [Footnote 154] We hesitate

not to affirm that the "interference" of the popes in temporal affairs

has more than once saved Europe from Islamism, even as at the present

time they are saving her from total infidelity. Whether successful or

unsuccessful, they struggled with equal constancy and valor against

that formidable power. About the year 876 Mussulman hordes infested

the country around Rome to such an extent that at last scarcely a

hamlet or drove of oxen remained to suffer by the widespread disaster.

Three hundred Saracen galleys menaced the mouth of the Tiber, and John

VIII., deserted and betrayed by neighboring dukes, implored by letter

the aid of Charles the Bald and the Emperor Charles of Germany. Yet he

failed, and that not so much through the strength of the Mohammedans

as through the base conduct of princes called Christian, who cast him

into prison, and then drove him to find refuge in France. Often have

the popes been obliged to follow the example of John VIII., and look

forth from their retirement in foreign lands on the tempest they have

braved and escaped. His 320 letters show how much temporal affairs

occupied his attention, because God willed that his spiritual

authority should show forth its civilizing tendency in temporal

intervention. His conflict with Islamism, which seemed unproductive at

the time, bore fruit in after ages.

[Footnote 154: Milman's Hist. of Latin Christianity. ]

The differences which arose and lasted so long between the popes and

the emperors of Germany are constantly misrepresented by writers

adverse to the Church. Their origin lay in the attachment of the Roman

pontiffs to principles which they can never abandon. The investiture

quarrel was a long struggle of spiritual authority against imperial

aggression, and the apparent compromise in which it issued left the

divine prerogatives of the Holy See intact. Simony was one great

plague of the middle ages, and but for the popes the princes of Europe

would have filled the Lord's temple with impious traffic. But for the

popes, too, many of them would have been unchecked in their proud

dreams of universal empire, which, if realized, would have been as

injurious to the liberties of mankind as to the free action of the

church. Frederick II., who was born in Italy, and lived to spend long

years in its delicious climate, without once visiting his German

domains, desired to establish in her the throne of the Caesars. This

was the secret of all his disputes with the pope, and this ambitious

project every successor of St. Peter felt bound to resist. But amid

all these struggles, from Gregory VII. to Calistus II., the life of

the church was a continual child-bearing, and while the popes battled

with crowned princes, they labored also for the souls of the poor. If

you would find the inexhaustible mine of that salt which keeps the

whole world from corruption, you must seek it in the hill where Paul

was buried, and Peter expired on his inverted cross. Proceeding thus

by regular stages in the work of improvement, the Roman Church had the

satisfaction of seeing every formula of enfranchisement signed by

prince or baron in the name of religion. It was {649} always with some

Christian idea, some hope of future recompense, some recognition of

the equality of all men in the sight of God, that the strong

voluntarily loosened the bonds of the weak. Absurd and barbarous

legislation was gradually reformed under the same influence; and

trials by single combat, oaths without evidence, and passing through

fire or cold water as a test of innocence, were supplanted by more

rational processes. M. Gnizot has pointed out the great superiority of

the laws of the Visigoths over those of other barbarous people around

them; and he ascribes this difference to their having been drawn up

under the direction of the Councils of Toledo. They laid great stress

on the examination of written documents in all trials, accepted mere

affirmation on oath only as a last resource, and distinguished between

the different degrees of guilt in homicide, with or without

premeditation, provoked or unprovoked, and the like. If M. Guizot's

observation is well founded in the case of an Arian code, how much

more weight would it have, if made in reference to laws framed under

Catholic influence. Civilization and theology went hand in hand. Every

question was considered in its theological bearing. The habits, the

feelings, and the language of men continually bespoke religious ideas.

Barbaric wisdom was guided by the Star of the East to Bethlehem, and

matured in the school of Christ. The public penances imposed by the

church became the form to which penal inflictions were moulded by the

law; the repentance of the culprit, and the fear of offending inspired

in bystanders, being the twofold object kept in view. The progress

made by the nations under such tutelage has been allowed by many

Protestant historians, and it would be easy to cite the testimony of

Robertson, Sismondi, Leibnitz, Coquerel, Ancillon, [Footnote 155] and

De Muller, [Footnote 156] to the truth of our statements. Duels in

the middle ages, and even down to the time of Louis XIV., raged like

an epidemic, produced deadly feuds between families, abolished all

just decision of disputes, and gave the advantage to the more agile

and skilful of the combatants. From 1589 to 1607 no less than 4000

French gentleman lost their lives in duels. [Footnote 157] The genius

of Sully and Richelieu was unequal to the task of crushing this

two-fold crime of suicide and murder. But the church had never ceased

to denounce it, and, in the Council of Trent especially, launched all

her thunders against it. [Footnote 158] At length temporal princes

were guided by her voice in this matter. Charles V. forbade it in his

vast dominions; in Portugal it was punished with confiscation and

banishment to Africa; and in Sweden it was visited with death.

[Footnote 155: Tableau des Révolutions.]

[Footnote 156: Hist. Universelle.]

[Footnote 157: Bell on Feudalism.]

[Footnote 158: Sess. xxv. c. 19.]

The pitiless character of human legislation was exhibited for ages in

the practice of refusing those who were condemned to death the

privilege of confession; and it was not till the reign of Philip the

Bold, in 1397, that this cruel restriction was removed. The church had

always protested against it, and her remonstrances at last prevailed.

Chivalry itself owed something to her inspiration. Mingled as it was

with rudeness and violence, it had also many noble elements, which

religion encouraged. It was a step toward higher civilization, because

it vindicated the dignity of womankind; true gallantry sprang from

honest purposes and virtuous conduct, and if Sir Galahad said--

"My good blade carves the casques of men,

My tough lance thrusteth sure,"

he added--

"My strength is as the strength of ten,

_Because my heart is pure_."

Sir James Stephen, in a paper on St. Gregory VII., [Footnote 159] has

avowed his conviction that the centralization of the ecclesiastical

power did more than counterbalance the isolating tendency of feudal

oligarchies. But for the {650} intervention of the papacy, he says,

the vassal of the west, and the serf of eastern Europe would, perhaps

to this day be in the same state of social debasement, and military

autocrats would occupy the place of paternal and constitutional

governments. Feudal despotism strove to debase men into wild beasts or

beasts of burden, while "the despotism of Hildebrand," whether

consistent or no, sought to guide the human race by moral impulses to

sanctity more than human. If the popes had abandoned the work assigned

them by Providence, they would have plunged the church and world into

hopeless bondage. St. Gregory VII. found the papacy dependent on the

empire, and he supported it by alliances with Italian princes. He

found the chair of the apostles filled, when vacant, by the clergy and

the people of Rome, and he provided for less stormy elections by

making the pope eligible by a college of his own nomination. He found

the Holy See in subjection to Henry, and he rescued it from his hands.

He found the secular clergy subservient to lay influence, and he

rendered them free and active auxiliaries of his own authority. He

found the highest dignitaries of the church the slaves of temporal

sovereigns, and he delivered them from this yoke, and bound them to

the tiara. He found ecclesiastical functions and benefices the spoil

and traffic of princes, and he brought them back to the control of the

sovereign pontiff; He is justly celebrated as the reformer of the

profane and licentious abuses of his time, and we owe him the praise

also of having left the impress of his giant character on the history

of the ages that followed. Such are the candid admissions of a

professor in the University of Cambridge. The highest eulogies of Rome

are often to be found in the writings of aliens.

[Footnote 159: Edinburgh Review, 1845.]

Up to the time of the Reformation the Roman church was manifestly in

the forefront of civilization. After that terrible revolution she was

still really so, but not always manifestly. Her position was the same,

but that of society had changed. It no longer accepted her laws; it

cavilled at her authority, ort openly spurned it. People forgot their

debt of gratitude to the power which had always interfered in behalf

of the oppressed, and princes jibed at the restraints which the papacy

imposed on their absolute rule. The printing-press was wrested from

the church's hands, and made the chief engine for propagating

misbelief. A new and spurious civilization was set up, and was so

blended with real and amazing progress in many of the sciences and the

arts of life, that when the popes opposed what was corrupt in it and

of evil tendency, they often appeared adverse to what was genuine. Of

this their enemies took every advantage, and constantly represented

them as the mortal foes of the liberty, enlightenment, and progress of

mankind. Pontiff after pontiff protested against this wilful

misrepresentation, which has lasted three hundred years, and continues

in full force to this day. Seldom has it been put forward more

speciously than in reference to the recent Encyclical of Pius IX. We

shall endeavor to show its utter falsity in the remainder of this

article.

Thrown back in her efforts to evangelize Europe, the church turned

with more ardor than ever toward the other hemisphere. Already Alvarez

di Cordova had planted the cross in Congo. Idolatry vanished before it

almost entirely in the African territory recently discovered, and upon

its ruins rose the city of San Salvador. The ills inflicted on the

Americans by the first Spanish settlers were repaired by the

Benedictine Bernard di Buil, and other missionaries who trod in his

steps. The Dominicans set their faces sternly against reducing the

Indians to the rank of slaves, and Father Monterino, in the church of

St. Domingo, inveighed against it in the presence of the governor,

with all {651} the fervor of popular eloquence. [Footnote 160] The

life of Bartholomew de Las Casas was one long struggle against the

cupidity and cruelty of Spanish masters and in favor of Indian

freedom. The labors and successes of St. Francis Xavier are too well

known to require recapitulation in this place; it is more to the

purpose to remark that the missionaries of Rome, from Mexico and the

Philippine islands, to Goa, Cochin-China, and Japan, everywhere

exposed to adverse climate, hardship, and martyrdom, carried with them

the two-fold elements of civilization--religion and the arts of life.

The Jesuit who started for China was provided with telescope and

compass. He appeared at the court of Pekin with the urbanity of one

fresh from the presence of Louis XIV., and surrounded with the

insignia of science. He unrolled his maps, turned his globes, chalked

out his spheres, and taught the astonished mandarins the course of the

stars and the name of him who guides them in their orbits. [Footnote

161] Buffon, [Footnote 162] Robertson, and Macaulay have alike

extolled the missionary zeal of the Jesuit fathers, and have ascribed

to them, not merely the regeneration of the inward man, but the

cultivation of barren lands, the building of cities, new high roads of

commerce, new products, new riches and comforts for the whole human

race.

[Footnote 160: Robertson, Hist. of America.]

[Footnote 161: Génie du Christianisme.]

[Footnote 162: Hist. Naturelle de l'Homme.]

In teaching barbarous nations the arts of life and the elements of

scientific knowledge, the missionaries acted in perfect accordance

with the spirit of the papacy and the example of the religious orders.

Each of these had its appointed sphere, and each civilized mankind in

its own way. The templars, the knights of St. John, the Teutonic

knights, and half a dozen other now forgotten military orders,

defended civilization with the sword; the Chartreux, the Benedictines,

the Bernardines, in quiet and shady retreats, preserved from decay the

precious stores of heathen antiquity, compiled the history of their

several epochs, and gave themselves, under many disadvantages, to the

study of natural philosophy; the Redemptorists, the Trinitarians, and

the Brothers of Mercy devoted themselves to the redemption of captives

and the emancipation of slaves. Voltaire cannot pass them over without

a burst of admiration, when touching on their benevolent career during

six centuries. [Footnote 163] Some orders made preaching and private

instruction their special work, and among these were the Dominicans,

the Franciscans, the Carmelites, and the Augustines. The pulpit is the

lever that raises the moral world; and it civilizes city, village, and

hamlet the more effectually because its work is constant and

systematic. It explains, Sunday after Sunday, and festival after

festival, the sublimest and deepest of all sciences, while it guides

society, with persuasive might, in the path of moral improvement. With

all that social science has devised for the comfort and welfare of

mankind, nothing that it has ever invented is so essentially

civilizing, so dignified and lovely, so unpretending and strong, as

the self-denying labors of brothers and sisters of charity,

sacrificing youth, beauty, prospects, tastes, and indulgence, on the

altar of religion, and passing their days among the lepers and the

plague-stricken, the ignorant, the degraded, the squalid and the

infirm.

[Footnote 163: Sur les Moeurs, ch. cxx.]

And of these orders, none, be it observed, has railed against

knowledge. By no rule, in any one of them, has ignorance been made a

virtue and science a sin. All have admired the beauty of

knowledge--the fire on her brow--her forward countenance--her

boundless domain. All have wished well to her cause, and have

maintained only that she should know her place; that she is the

second, not the first; that she is not wisdom, but {652} wisdom's

handmaid; that she is of earth, and wisdom is of heaven; she is of the

world for the church, and wisdom is of the church for the world.

Severed from religion, they regarded her as some wild Pallas from the

brain of demons; but science guided by a higher hand, and moving side

by side with revelation, like the younger child, they believed to be

the most beautiful spectacle the mind could contemplate.

To repeat these things in the ears of well read Catholics, is to

iterate a thrice-told tale. But there are others who need often to be

reminded of facts of history which our adversaries are apt to ignore.

Besides the vast body of priests and religious orders, whose office

was to disseminate thought and piety through the world, the papacy

constantly sought new vehicles by which to promote science. The

greater part of the universities of Europe owe their existence to this

agency. Oxford, Cambridge, Glasgow, Naples, Padua, Vienna, Upsal,

Lisbon, Salamanca, Toulouse, Montpellier, Orleans, Nantes, Poictiers,

and a multitude beside, were made centres of human knowledge under the

patronage of the popes, and Clement V., Gregory IX., Engenius IV.,

Nicholas V., and Pius II., were among the most illustrious of their

founders.

The writings of Leonardo da Vinci were not published till a century

after his death, and some of them at a still later period. They are

more like revelations of physical truths vouchsafed to a single mind,

than the fabric of its reasoning on any established basis. He laid

down the principle of Bacon, that experiment and observation must be

our chief guides in the investigation of nature. Venturi has given a

most interesting list of the truths in mechanism apprehended by the

genius of this light of the fifteenth century. [Footnote 164] He was

possessed in the highest degree of the spirit of physical inquiry, and

in this department of learning was truly a seer.

[Footnote 164: Estai sur lea Ouvrages Physico-Mathématiques de

Léonard de Vinci. Paris. 1797. Hallam's Literary History, vol. i.

pp. 222-5.]

Let the reader transport himself in idea to the beautiful borders of

the Henares, and there, in the opening of the sixteenth century, look

down on the rising University of Alcalá. Let him admire and wonder at

the varied energy of its founder--Ximenes, the prelate, the hermit,

the warrior, and the statesman. There, in his sixty-fourth year, he

laid the corner-stone of the principal college, and was often seen

with the rule in hand, taking the measurement of the buildings, and

encouraging the industry of the workmen. The diligence with which he

framed the system of instruction to be pursued, the activity of mind

he promoted among the students, the liberal foundations he made for

indigent scholars and the regulation of professors' salaries, did not

withdraw him from the affairs of state, or the publication of his

famous Bible, the Complutensian Polyglot. When Francis I., visited

Alcalá, twenty years after the university was opened, 7000 students

came forth to receive him, and by the middle of the seventeenth

century the revenue bequeathed by Ximenes had increased to 42,000

ducats, and the colleges had multiplied from ten to thirty-five.

[Footnote 165] Most of the chairs were appropriated to secular

studies, and Alcalá stands forward as a brilliant refutation of the

calumnies against Catholic prelates as the patrons of ignorance.

[Footnote 165: Quintanilla: Archetype. Prescott's Ferdinand and

Isabella, ii. 826.]

The same country and epoch which produced Ximenes gave birth also to

Columbus. It was neither accident nor religion, but nautical science

and the intuitive vision of another hemisphere, that piloted him

across the Atlantic to the West-India shores. Amerigo Vespucci

followed in his wake, emulous of like discoveries. He published a

journal of his earlier voyages at Vicenza in 1507, and gave his name

{653} to the continent of the western world. Thus, while two great

navigators, each of them Catholics, explored new lands on the surface

of our globe, Copernicus at the same time, and Galileo not many years

after, presaged the motion of the planets round the sun, and the

twofold rotation of the earth. To Galileo, indeed, far more is due. To

him we owe the larger part of experimental philosophy. He first

propounded the laws of gravity, the invention of the pendulum, the

hydrostatic scales, the sector, a thermometer, and the telescope. With

the last he made numberless observations which changed the face of

astronomy. Among these, that of the satellites of Jupiter was one of

the most remarkable. He came, it is true, into a certain collision

with the church, but it is remarkable, that all the provocation given

by Galileo never reduced authority to the unjustifiable step of

impeding the fullest scientific investigation of his theory. Nay,

those astronomers who taught on the Copernican _hypothesis_ were more

favored at Rome than their opponents. It was at Galileo's request that

Urban appointed Castelli to be his own mathematician, and the letter

in which the pontiff recommended Galileo to the notice of the Grand

Duke of Tuscany, after his condemnation, abounds with expressions of

sincere friendship. As to the dungeon and the torture, they are simply

fabulous. During the process Galileo was permitted to lodge at the

Tuscan embassy instead of in the prison of the holy office--a favor

not accorded even to princes. His sentence of imprisonment was no

sooner passed, than the Pope commuted it into detention in the Villa

Medici, and, after he had resided there some days, he was allowed to

install himself in the palace of his friend, Ascanio Piccolomini,

archbishop of Sienna. Subsequently he retired to his own house and the

bosom of his family; for, as Nicolini's correspondence with him

testifies, "his holiness treated Galileo with unexpected and, perhaps,

excessive gentleness, granting all the petitions presented in his

behalf." [Footnote 166] These facts are surely sufficient to prove

that physical science received all due honor at this period in Rome.

In due time--long after Galileo's death--his theory was scientifically

established; and not very long afterward the Congregational decree was

suspended by Benedict XIV. Galileo's famous dialogue was published

entire at Padua in 1744 with the usual approbations; and in 1818 Pius

VII. repealed the decrees in question in full consistory. What could

the church do more? It was her duty to guard the Scriptures from

irreverence and unbelief, and to prohibit the advocacy of theories

absolutely unproved which seemed to oppose them. To her physical

science is dear, but revealed truth is infinitely dearer. Already she

had opposed astrology as a remnant of paganism, and had studied the

motions of the moon and planets to fix Easter and reform the Julian

calendar. Already Gregory XIII. had brought the calendar which bears

his name into use; and the works of Aristotle, translated into Arabic

and Latin, had become the model of theological methods of disputation

and treatise. St. Thomas Aquinas had written commentaries on them, and

on Plato; and thus, as well as by his essay on aqueducts and that on

hydraulic machines, had proved how inseparable is the alliance between

sound theology and true science. "The sceptre of science," says Joseph

de Maistre, "belongs to Europe only because she is Christian. She has

reached this high degree of civilization and knowledge because she

began with theology, because the universities were at first schools of

theology, and because all the sciences, grafted upon this divine

subject, have shown forth the divine sap by immense vegetation."

[Footnote 167]

[Footnote 166: British Review. 1861. Martyrdom of Galileo.]

[Footnote 167: Soirées de St. Pétersbourg,

Xme entretien. ]

{654}

Voltaire has observed that "the sovereign pontiffs have always been

remarkable among princes attached to letters," and the remark is

equally true as regards science and art. Silvester II. was so learned

that the common people attributed his vast erudition to magic. He

collected all the monuments of antiquity he could find in Germany and

Italy, and delivered them into the hands of copyists in the

monasteries. St. Gregory VII. conceived the design of rebuilding St.

Peter's, and gathered around him all the first architects of his day.

Gregory IX. interfered in behalf of the University of Paris, and, as

Guillaume de Nangis says, "prevented science and learning, those

treasures of salvation, from quitting the kingdom of France." Nicolas

V. was a great restorer of letters, and Macaulay speaks of him as one

whom every friend of science should name with respect. Sixtus IV.

conferred the title of Count Palatine on the printer Jenson, to

encourage the noble art, then in its infancy. Pius III. enriched

Sienna with a magnificent library, and engaged Raphael and

Pinturicchio to adorn it with frescoes. Paul V. endowed Rome with the

most beautiful productions of sculpture and painting, with splendid

fountains and enduring monuments. Urban VIII. loved all the arts,

succeeded in Latin poetry, and filled his court with men of learning.

Under his pontificate "the Romans," as Voltaire says, "enjoyed

profound peace, and shared all the charms and glory which talent sheds

on society." Benedict XIV. cultivated letters, composed poems, and

patronized science. The infidel himself just mentioned paid him

homage, and professed profound veneration for him, when sending him a

copy of his "Mahomet." [Footnote 168] Every pope in his turn has been

a Maecenas. Not one in the august line has lost sight of the interests

of society and the prerogatives of mind. The useful and the beautiful

were always present to their thoughts; and even in those few instances

where they failed in good personally, they encouraged in their

official capacity whatsoever things are true, lovely, and of good

fame.

[Footnote 168: Letter to Pope Benedict XIV.]

Many names dear to science and religion occur to us in illustration of

these remarks--names of men who, in the two last and in the present

century, have devoted their lives to secular learning without losing

their allegiance to the Catholic faith, or confounding it with other

sciences which lie within human control for their extension and

modification. Of these honorable names we will mention a few only by

way of example, feeling sure that our readers' memory will supply them

with many others. Cassini, among the astronomers, enjoyed so high a

reputation at Bologna that the Senate and the pope employed him in

several scientific and political missions. Colbert invited him to

Paris, where he became a member of the Academy of Sciences, and died

at a good old age in 1712, crowned with the glory of several important

discoveries, among which were those of the satellites of Saturn and

the rotation of Mars and Venus. His son James followed in his

footsteps, and bequeathed his name to fame. André Ampère, again, a

sincere Catholic, was one of the most illustrious disciples of

electro-magnetism. He developed the memorable discovery of Oersted,

ranged over the entire field of knowledge, and acquired a lasting

reputation by his "theory of electro-dynamic phenomena drawn from

experience." When between thirteen and fourteen years of age, he read

through the twenty folio volumes of D'Alembert and Diderot's

Encyclopaedia, digested its contents wonderfully for a boy and could

long afterwards repeat extracts from it. But his reading was not

confined to such books. A biography of Descartes, indeed, by Thomas,

inspired him with his earliest enthusiasm for mathematics and natural

philosophy; but his first communion also left an indelible stamp on

his memory and character. The love of religion then, once {655} and

for ever, took possession of his soul, and fired him through life,

like the electric currents into which he made such profound research.

When his days, which were fall of trouble, came to a close at

Marseilles in 1837, he told the chaplain of the college that he had

discharged all his Christian duties before setting out on his journey;

and when a friend began reading to him some sentences from "The

Imitation of Christ," he said, "I know the book by heart." These were

his last words.

By the lives and labors of such men the church's mission on earth is

effectually seconded. They inspire the thinking portion of society

with confidence in religion, and though, from their constant

engagement in secular pursuits, they frequently err in some minor

point, and cling to some crotchet which ecclesiastical authority

cannot sanction, yet in consideration of their loyal intentions and

exemplary practices, the clergy everywhere regard them as able and

honorable coadjutors. True civilization, (observe the epithet,) far

from being adverse, must ever be favorable to the salvation of souls.

Many writers still living, or who have recently passed away, have

united happily Catholicism with science. Santarem, in his long exile,

gave his mind to the history of geography and the discoveries of his

Portuguese fellow-countrymen on the western coast of Africa. Caesar

Cantù, in his historical works, uniformly defended the cause of the

popedom in Italy, and persisted in holding it forward as his country's

hope. M. Capefigue, among his numerous works on French history, has

included the life of St. Vincent of Paul; and Cardinal Mai has

rendered incalculable service to the study of Greek MSS. But for his

diligence and sagacity, the palimpsests of the Vatican would never

have yielded up their all-but obliterated treasures. Saint-Hilaire,

eminent alike as a zoologist and natural philosopher, who demonstrated

so clearly the organic structure in the different species of animals

was destined in his youth for holy orders; but although he preferred a

scientific career, he retained his affection for the clergy, and saved

several of them, at the risk of his own life, during the massacres of

September, in 1792. Blainville, another great naturalist, and Cuvier's

successor in the chair of comparative anatomy, was deeply religious.

He felt the importance of rescuing physical science from the hands of

infidelity, by which it is so often perverted into an argument against

revelation. Epicurus is said to have maintained that our knowledge of

Deity is exactly commensurate with our knowledge of the works of

nature, and to have allowed no other measure of our theology out [sic]

physics. Lucretius devoted the whole of his beautiful but atheistic

poem, "De Rerum Naturâ" to the task of proving that the soul is

mortal, that religion is a cheat, and that natural causes sufficiently

account for all the phenomena of the universe. In our day the

disciples of Epicurus and Lucretius are legion, but they are not

always so plain spoken as their masters. Happily they are everywhere

opposed by men who recall physics to their true place, and make them a

corollary of revealed truth--the science of the Creator, as

Catholicism may be termed the science of the Divine Redeemer and

Ruler. But useful as such laborers in the field of secular learning

are, the truth cannot be too often repeated, that the vivifying

principle of civilization lies in the cross and the ministry of

reconciliation, of which the Pope is the head. No man whose knees have

never bent on Calvary is truly civilized. If his passions chance to be

tamed, his reason is rampant, or his conscience is asleep. He has no

clear perception of things divine, and his views of things earthly and

human are erroneous and confused. Oh! that philosophers would learn

that the glory of their intellect consists in its dutiful

subordination to the church! Then would she shine forth more

conspicuously in the sight of all men as the {656} civilizer of

nations. Then, and then only, should we be able to encourage without

reserve or misgiving the speculations of science and the enterprises

of art, and should join with loud voices and full hearts in the ardent

aspirations of the poet:

Fly, happy happy sails, and bear the Press;

_Fly, happy with the mission of the Cross;_

Knit land to land, and blowing havenward

With silks, and fruits, and spices, clear of toll,

Enrich the markets of _the golden year_.

That which delays the golden year, and prevents the knitting of land

to land in the bonds of religious brotherhood, is the want of unity

among nations called Christian. The terrible disruptions effected

under Photins, Luther, and Henry VIII., have rendered the conversion

of the world for the present morally impossible. But if the East and

West were again united under their lawful lord and pope; if Protestant

sects were deprived of regal support, reäbsorbed into the Catholic

body, or so reduced in numerical importance as to be all but inactive

and voiceless; if the vaunted utility of association were duly

exemplified; if European populations were emulous of spiritual

conquests in distant countries; if under the guidance and control of a

common idea each of them launched its missionary ships on the waters

in quick succession; if each town and university sent its quota of

zeal and learning to the glorious work; if missionaries in large

numbers went forth cheered with the apostolic benediction, and on

whatever shore they might converge found other laborers in fields

already white for the harvest, speaking with many tongues of one Lord,

one faith, one baptism--then would the heathen no longer be stupefied

by the feeble front and incongruous claims of those who now call them

to repentance, nor would infidels scoff and jeer at a religion which

has been made the very symbol of disunion; unbelieving nations,

astonished at the strict coincidence of testimony borne by preachers

arriving from every quarter of the globe, would distrust their

prophets, desert their idols, and seek admission into the one

ubiquitous fold. Then, also, the moral and intellectual energies of

European prelates would be no longer engrossed by resisting aggression

and weeding out disaffection nearer home, but would have leisure to

organize missions on a large scale, and to fortify them with every

auxiliary modern art and science can supply. The honor and glory of

civilization would then be given to her to whom it belongs of right;

and the nations, at length disabused of popular fallacies, would

perceive that Protestantism and spurious liberty really hinder the

progress they are supposed to promote.

------

{657}{658}{659}

[ORIGINAL.]

THE CURSE OF SACRILEGE.

[In the suburbs of the ancient and curious city of Angers in France is

a beautiful chateau, situated in the midst of extensive and fertile

grounds. The chapel contains some very remarkable pieces of statuary,

now nearly eight hundred years old. The place was formerly a convent

of monks, and wrested from them during the great revolution. The

family into whose possession it came, has ever since been afflicted

with the sudden death and insanity of its members. The death of the

last male heir, a youth of great promise, which occurred but a few

years ago, is described in the following verses.]

A youth of twenty summers

Sat at his mother's knee;

Ne'er saw you a youth more noble,

Nor fairer dame than she.

Half-reclining he swept the lute-strings,

Murmuring an olden rhyme;

While the clock in the castle tower

Rang out a morning chime:

"In the bright and happy spring-time

Ring the bells merrily;

When the dead leaves fall in autumn,

Then toll the bell for me."

The face of the lady-mother,

Writhed as with sudden pain:

"Oh! sing not, my son, so sadly,

Choose thou a happier strain."

Sang the youth, "When the summer sunshine

Falls o'er the lake and lea,

And the corn is springing upward,

Then you'll remember me."

The matron smiled on the singer:

"My dear and my only one

When I shall not remember,

The light will forget the sun."

Yet her eyes smiled not, but were standing,

Brimful of glimmering tears,

Tell-tales of secret anguish,

Dead hopes and living fears.

For he was the heir, and the only

Child of the house of La Barre;

A name that was known for its sorrows,

By all, both near and far.

Lay in a charming valley

Its rich and fair domain;

But a curse seemed to hang around it,

Worse than the curse of Cain.

For this was a holy convent

Of monks in olden time;

From God men had dared to wrest it,

Nor recked the awful crime.

The mild men of God were driven

Houseless and homeless afar:

And he who rifled their cloister,

Became the Lord of La Barre.

But a curse came down on his household,

That time did not abate:

And ne'er did the mourning hatchment

Pass from the castle gate

The Lord of La Barre fell suddenly

Dead in his banquet-hall;

And madness seized his first-born,

Bearing the funeral pall.

Calamity sudden and fearful.

Haunted the sacred place.

Striking the lords and their children,

And blighting their hapless race.

One is thrown from his saddle,

Dashing his brains on the ground;

One in his bridal chamber.

Dead by his bride is found;

One is caught by the mill-wheel.

And cruelly torn in twain;

One is lost in the forest,

Ne'er to return again.

Death-traps for wolves, the herdsmen

Set in the woods with care;

The wolves devour the master,

Caught in the fatal snare.

Killed by the forkèd lightnings;

Drowned in the flowing Loire;

Crushed by some falling timbers;

Conquered and slain in war.

Idiots and still-born children,

Come as the first-born heirs.

Those are seized with madness,

Whom death a few years spares.

Thus did they all inherit

A curse with the rich domain,

Who dared on the holy convent

To lay their hands profane.

The autumn winds are blowing

Across the lake and lea,

As the youth of twenty summers

Sings at his mother's knee.

He ceased, and from him casting

His lute upon the floor,

Listened, as sounds from the court-yard

Came through the open door.

Hearing the dogs' loud barking,

As their keeper his bugle wound;

"To-day I go a hunting,"

Said he, "with hawk and hound."

The rustling of dead leaves only

Heard the Lady of La Barre,

And thought of her lordly husband

Drowned in the flowing Loire.

The autumn winds were moaning

Among the yellow trees,

"Stay, Ernest," said she sadly,

"My soul is ill at ease.

"Shadows of dire mischances

Fall on my widowed heart;

I could not live if danger

Thy life from mine should part."

"Fear not," said he, while laughing

He kissed her sad fair face;

"I hear the hounds' loud baying

All eager for the chase.

"Over the hill by the river

I'll bring the quarry down,

And homeward pluck the roses

To weave for thee a crown."

"The rose-crown, my child, will wither,

'Tis but a passing toy;

But thou art the crown of thy mother--

Her only life and joy.

"Follow the hunt to-morrow--

With me, love, stay to-day;

For dark and sad forebodings

My anxious heart affray."

The autumn winds are blowing,

The dead leaves downward fall,

The lawn and flowers covering

Like a funeral pall.

But he heedeth not the warning,

And hies with haste away.

The lady seeks the chapel,

With heavy heart, to pray.

"May God and his blessed Mother

Spare me my only one.

Yet teach me and strengthen me ever

To say, Thy will be done!"

Well may the lady tremble,

Hearing the wind again;

The dead leaves are falling in showers

Like to a summer rain.

Hark! a sound from the court-yard

Blanches the lady's cheek--

The huntsmen call not surely

In such a fearful shriek!

Say, "Thy will be done," O lady!

As thou e'en now hast said,

For the last of thy race is lying

Stark in the court-yard, dead.

------

{660}

Translated from the Spanish

PERICO THE SAD; OR,

THE ALVAREDA FAMILY.