The Cloister
THE Dominicans, or preaching friars, once the most powerful order in
Europe, were now on the wane; their rivals and bitter enemies, the
Franciscans, were overpowering them throughout Europe; even in England,
a rich and religious country, where, under the name of the Black Friars,
they had once been paramount.
Therefore the sagacious men, who watched and directed the interests of
the order, were never so anxious to incorporate able and zealous sons,
and send them forth to win back the world.
The zeal and accomplishments of Clement, especially his rare mastery of
language (for he spoke Latin, Italian, French, high and low Dutch) soon
transpired, and he was destined to travel and preach in England,
corresponding with the Roman centre.
But Jerome, who had the superior's ear, obstructed this design.
"Clement," said he, "has the milk of the world still in his veins, its
feelings, its weaknesses; let not his new-born zeal and his humility
tempt us to forego our ancient wisdom. Try him first, and temper him,
lest one day we find ourselves leaning on a reed for a staff."
"It is well advised," said the prior. "Take him in hand thyself."
Then Jerome, following the ancient wisdom, took Clement and tried him.
One day he brought him to a field where the young men amused themselves
at the games of the day; he knew this to be a haunt of Clement's late
friends.
And sure enough ere long Pietro Vanucci and Andrea passed by them, and
cast a careless glance on the two friars. They did not recognize their
dead friend in a shaven monk.
Clement gave a very little start, and then lowered his eyes and said a
pater noster.
"Would ye not speak with them, brother?" said Jerome, trying him.
"No, brother: yet was it good for me to see them. They remind me of the
sins I can never repent enough."
"It is well," said Jerome, and he made a cold report in Clement's
favour.
Then Jerome took Clement to many death-beds. And then into noisome
dungeons; places where the darkness was appalling, and the stench
loathsome, pestilential; and men looking like wild beasts lay coiled in
rags and filth and despair. It tried his body hard; but the soul
collected all its powers to comfort such poor wretches there as were not
past comfort. And Clement shone in that trial. Jerome reported that
Clement's spirit was willing, but his flesh was weak.
"Good!" said Anselm; "his flesh is weak, but his spirit is willing."
But there was a greater trial in store.
I will describe it as it was seen by others.
One morning a principal street in Rome was crowded, and even the avenues
blocked up with heads. It was an execution. No common crime had been
done, and on no vulgar victim.
The governor of Rome had been found in his bed at daybreak,
_slaughtered_. His hand, raised probably in self-defence, lay by his
side severed at the wrist; his throat was cut, and his temples bruised
with some blunt instrument. The murder had been traced to his servant,
and was to be expiated in kind this very morning.
Italian executions were not cruel in general. But this murder was
thought to call for exact and bloody retribution.
The criminal was brought to the house of the murdered man, and fastened
for half an hour to its wall. After this foretaste of legal vengeance
his left hand was struck off, like his victim's. A new killed fowl was
cut open and fastened round the bleeding stump; with what view I really
don't know; but, by the look of it, some mare's nest of the poor dear
doctors; and the murderer, thus mutilated and bandaged, was hurried to
the scaffold; and there a young friar was most earnest and affectionate
in praying with him, and for him, and holding the crucifix close to his
eyes.
Presently the executioner pulled the friar roughly on one side, and in a
moment felled the culprit with a heavy mallet, and falling on him, cut
his throat from ear to ear.
There was a cry of horror from the crowd.
The young friar swooned away.
A gigantic monk strode forward, and carried him off like a child.
Brother Clement went back to the convent sadly discouraged. He confessed
to the prior, with tears of regret.
"Courage, son Clement," said the prior. "A Dominican is not made in a
day. Thou shalt have another trial. And I forbid thee to go to it
fasting." Clement bowed his head in token of obedience. He had not long
to wait. A robber was brought to the scaffold; a monster of villainy and
cruelty, who had killed men in pure wantonness, after robbing them.
Clement passed his last night in prison with him, accompanied him to the
scaffold, and then prayed with him and for him so earnestly that the
hardened ruffian shed tears and embraced him. Clement embraced him too,
though his flesh quivered with repugnance; and held the crucifix
earnestly before his eyes. The man was garotted, and Clement lost sight
of the crowd, and prayed loud and earnestly while that dark spirit was
passing from earth. He was no sooner dead than the hangman raised his
hatchet and quartered the body on the spot. And, oh, mysterious heart of
man! the people, who had seen the living body robbed of life with
indifference, almost with satisfaction, uttered a piteous cry at each
stroke of the axe upon his corpse that could feel nought. Clement too
shuddered then, but stood firm, like one of those rocks that vibrate but
cannot be thrown down. But suddenly Jerome's voice sounded in his ear.
"Brother Clement, get thee on that cart and preach to the people. Nay,
quickly! strike with all thy force on all this iron, while yet 'tis hot,
and souls are to be saved."
Clement's colour came and went; and he breathed hard. But he obeyed, and
with ill-assured step mounted the cart, and preached his first sermon to
the first crowd he had ever faced. Oh, that sea of heads! His throat
seemed parched, his heart thumped, his voice trembled.
By-and-by the greatness of the occasion, the sight of the eager upturned
faces, and his own heart full of zeal, fired the pale monk. He told them
this robber's history, warm from his own lips in the prison, and showed
his hearers by that example the gradations of folly and crime, and
warned them solemnly not to put foot on the first round of that fatal
ladder. And as alternately he thundered against the shedders of blood,
and moved the crowd to charity and pity, his tremors left him, and he
felt all strung up like a lute, and gifted with an unsuspected force;
he was master of that listening crowd, could feel their very pulse,
could play sacred melodies on them as on his psaltery. Sobs and groans
attested his power over the mob already excited by the tragedy before
them. Jerome stared like one who goes to light a stick; and fires a
rocket. After a while Clement caught his look of astonishment, and
seeing no approbation in it, broke suddenly off, and joined him.
"It was my first endeavour," said he, apologetically. "Your behest came
on me like a thunderbolt. Was I?--Did I?--Oh, correct me and aid me with
your experience, brother Jerome."
"Humph!" said Jerome, doubtfully. He added, rather sullenly after long
reflection, "Give the glory to God, brother Clement; my opinion is thou
art an orator born."
He reported the same at headquarters, half reluctantly. For he was an
honest friar though a disagreeable one.
* * * * *
One Julio Antonelli was accused of sacrilege; three witnesses swore they
saw him come out of the church whence the candlesticks were stolen, and
at the very time. Other witnesses proved an alibi for him as positively.
Neither testimony could be shaken. In this doubt Antonelli was permitted
the trial by water, hot or cold. By the hot trial he must put his bare
arm into boiling water, fourteen inches deep, and take out a pebble; by
the cold trial his body must be let down into eight feet of water. The
clergy, who thought him innocent, recommended the hot water trial,
which, to those whom they favoured, was not so terrible as it sounded.
But the poor wretch had not the nerve, and chose the cold ordeal. And
this gave Jerome another opportunity of steeling Clement. Antonelli took
the sacrament, and then was stripped naked on the banks of the Tiber,
and tied hand and foot, to prevent those struggles by which a man,
throwing his arms out of the water, sinks his body.
He was then let down gently into the stream, and floated a moment, with
just his hair above water. A simultaneous roar from the crowd on each
bank proclaimed him guilty. But the next moment the ropes, which
happened to be new, got wet, and he settled down. Another roar
proclaimed his innocence. They left him at the bottom of the river the
appointed time, rather more than half a minute, then drew him up,
gurgling, and gasping, and screaming for mercy; and, after the
appointed prayers, dismissed him, cleared of the charge.
During the experiment Clement prayed earnestly on the bank. When it was
over he thanked God in a loud but slightly quavering voice.
By-and-by he asked Jerome whether the man ought not to be compensated.
"For what?"
"For the pain, the dread, the suffocation. Poor soul, he liveth, but
hath tasted all the bitterness of death. Yet he had done no ill."
"He is rewarded enough in that he is cleared of his fault."
"But, being innocent of that fault, yet hath he drunk Death's cup,
though not to the dregs; and his accusers, less innocent than he, do
suffer nought."
Jerome replied, somewhat sternly:
"It is not in this world men are really punished, brother Clement.
Unhappy they who sin yet suffer not. And happy they who suffer such ills
as earth hath power to inflict; 'tis counted to them above, ay, and a
hundredfold."
Clement bowed his head submissively.
"May thy good words not fall to the ground, but take root in my heart,
brother Jerome."
But the severest trial Clement underwent at Jerome's hands was
unpremeditated. It came about thus. Jerome, in an indulgent moment, went
with him to Fra Colonna, and there "The Dream of Polifilo" lay on the
table just copied fairly. The poor author, in the pride of his heart,
pointed out a master-stroke in it.
"For ages," said he, "fools have been lavishing poetic praise and
amorous compliment on mortal women, mere creatures of earth, smacking
palpably of their origin; Sirens at the windows, where our Roman women
in particular have by lifelong study learned the wily art to show their
one good feature, though but an ear or an eyelash, at a jalosy, and hide
all the rest; Magpies at the door, Capre n' i giardini, Angeli in
Strada, Sante in chiesa, Diavoli in casa. Then come I and ransack the
minstrels' lines for amorous turns, not forgetting those which Petrarch
wasted on that French jilt Laura, the slyest of them all; and I lay you
the whole bundle of spice at the feet of the only females worthy amorous
incense; to wit, the Nine Muses."
"By which goodly stratagem," said Jerome, who had been turning the pages
all this time, "you, a friar of St. Dominic, have produced an obscene
book." And he dashed Polifilo on the table.
"Obscene? thou discourteous monk!" And the author ran round the table,
snatched Polifilo away, locked him up, and, trembling with
mortification, said, "My Gerard, pshaw! brother What's-his-name, had not
found Polifilo obscene. Puris omnia pura."
"Such as read your Polifilo--Heaven grant they may be few!--will find
him what I find him."
Poor Colonna gulped down this bitter pill as he might; and had he not
been in his own lodgings, and a high born gentleman as well as a
scholar, there might have been a vulgar quarrel. As it was, he made a
great effort, and turned the conversation to a beautiful chrysolite the
Cardinal Colonna had lent him; and, while Clement handled it, enlarged
on its moral virtues: for he went the whole length of his age as a
worshipper of jewels. But Jerome did not, and expostulated with him for
believing that one dead stone could confer valour on its wearer, another
chastity, another safety from poison, another temperance.
"The experience of ages proves they do," said Colonna. "As to the last
virtue you have named, there sits a living proof. This Gerard--I beg
your pardon, brother Thingemy--comes from the north, where men drink
like fishes; yet was he ever most abstemious. And why? Carried an
amethyst, the clearest and fullest coloured e'er I saw on any but noble
finger. Where, in Heaven's name, is thine amethyst? Show it this
unbeliever!"
"And 'twas that amethyst made the boy temperate?" asked Jerome,
ironically.
"Certainly. Why, what is the derivation and meaning of amethyst? [Greek:
a] negative, and [Greek: methyô] to tipple. Go to, names are but the
signs of things. A stone is not called [Greek: amethystos] for two
thousand years out of mere sport, and abuse of language."
He then went through the prime jewels, illustrating their moral
properties, especially of the ruby, the sapphire, the emerald, and the
opal, by anecdotes out of grave historians.
"These be old wives' fables," said Jerome, contemptuously. "Was ever
such credulity as thine?"
Now credulity is a reproach sceptics have often the ill-luck to incur:
but it mortifies them none the less for that.
The believer in stones writhed under it, and dropped the subject. Then
Jerome, mistaking his silence, exhorted him to go a step farther, and
give up from this day his vain pagan lore, and study the lives of the
saints. "Blot out these heathen superstitions from thy mind, brother, as
Christianity hath blotted them from the earth."
And in this strain he proceeded, repeating, incautiously, some current
but loose theological statements. Then the smarting Polifilo revenged
himself. He flew out, and hurled a mountain of crude, miscellaneous lore
upon Jerome, of which partly for want of time, partly for lack of
learning, I can reproduce but a few fragments.
"The heathen blotted out? Why they hold four-fifths of the world. And
what have we Christians invented without their aid? painting? sculpture?
these are heathen arts, and we but pigmies at them. What modern mind can
conceive and grave so god-like forms as did the chief Athenian
sculptors, and the Libyan Licas, and Dinocrates of Macedon, and Scopas,
Timotheus, Leochares, and Briaxis; Chares, Lysippus, and the immortal
three of Rhodes, that wrought Laocoon from a single block? What prince
hath the genius to turn mountains into statues, as was done at Bagistan,
and projected at Athos? what town the soul to plant a colossus of brass
in the sea, for the tallest ships to sail in and out between his legs?
Is it architecture we have invented? Why here too we are but children.
Can we match for pure design the Parthenon, with its clusters of double
and single Doric columns? (I do adore the Doric when the scale is
large), and, for grandeur and finish, the theatres of Greece and Rome,
or the prodigious temples of Egypt, up to whose portals men walked
awe-struck through avenues a mile long of sphinxes, each as big as a
Venetian palace. And all these prodigies of porphyry cut and polished
like crystal, not rough hewn as in our puny structures. Even now their
polished columns and pilasters lie o'erthrown and broken, o'ergrown with
acanthus and myrtle, but sparkling still, and flouting the slovenly art
of modern workmen. Is it sewers, aqueducts, viaducts?
"Why we have lost the art of making a road--lost it with the world's
greatest models under our very eye. Is it sepulchres of the dead? Why no
Christian nation has ever erected a tomb, the sight of which does not
set a scholar laughing. Do but think of the Mausoleum, and the Pyramids,
and the monstrous sepulchres of the Indus and Ganges, which outside are
mountains, and within are mines of precious stones. Ah, you have not
seen the East, Jerome, or you could not decry the heathen."
Jerome observed that these were mere material things. True greatness was
in the soul.
"Well then," replied Colonna, "in the world of mind, what have we
discovered? Is it geometry? Is it logic? Nay, we are all pupils of
Euclid and Aristotle. Is it written characters, an invention almost
divine? We no more invented it than Cadmus did. Is it poetry? Homer hath
never been approached by us, nor hath Virgil, nor Horace. Is it tragedy
or comedy? Why poets, actors, theatres, all fell to dust at our touch.
Have we succeeded in reviving them? Would you compare our little
miserable mysteries and moralities, all frigid personification and dog
Latin, with the glories of a Greek play (on the decoration of which a
hundred thousand crowns had been spent) performed inside a marble
miracle, the audience a seated city, and the poet a Sophocles?
"What then have we invented? Is it monotheism? Why the learned and
philosophical among the Greeks and Romans held it; even their more
enlightened poets were monotheists in their sleeves.
'[Greek: Zeus estin ouranos, Zeus te gê Zeus toi panta],'
saith the Greek, and Lucan echoes him:
'Jupiter est quod cunque vides quo cunque moveris.'
"Their vulgar were polytheists; and what are ours? We have not invented
'invocation of the saints.' Our sancti answer to their Dæmones and Divi,
and the heathen used to pray their Divi or deified mortals to intercede
with the higher divinity; but the ruder minds among them, incapable of
nice distinctions, worshipped those lesser gods they should have but
invoked. And so do the mob of Christians in our day, following the
heathen vulgar by unbroken tradition. For in holy writ is no polytheism
of any sort or kind.
"We have not invented so much as a form, or variety, of polytheism. The
pagan vulgar worshipped all sorts of deified mortals, and each had his
favourite, to whom he prayed ten times for once to the Omnipotent. Our
vulgar worship canonized mortals, and each has his favourite, to whom he
prays ten times for once to God. Call you that invention? Invention is
confined to the East. Among the ancient vulgar only the mariners were
monotheists; they worshipped Venus; called her 'Stella maris,' and
'Regina cælorum.' Among our vulgar only the mariners are monotheists;
they worship the Virgin Mary, and call her 'the Star of the Sea,' and
'the Queen of Heaven.' Call you theirs a new religion? An old doublet
with a new button. Our vulgar make images, and adore them, which is
absurd; for adoration is the homage due from a creature to its creator;
now here man is the creator; so the statues ought to worship him, and
would, if they had brains enough to justify a rat in worshipping _them_.
But even this abuse, though childish enough to be modern, is ancient.
The pagan vulgar in these parts made their images, then knelt before
them, adorned them with flowers, offered incense to them, lighted tapers
before them, carried them in procession, and made pilgrimages to them
just to the smallest tittle as we their imitators do."
Jerome here broke in impatiently, and reminded him that the images the
most revered in Christendom were made by no mortal hand, but had dropt
from heaven.
"Ay," cried Colonna, "such are the tutelary images of most great Italian
towns. I have examined nineteen of them, and made draughts of them. If
they came from the sky, our worst sculptors are our angels. But my mind
is easy on that score. Ungainly statue, or villanous daub fell never yet
from heaven to smuggle the bread out of capable workmen's mouths. All
this is Pagan, and arose thus. The Trojans had oriental imaginations,
and feigned that their Palladium, a wooden statue three cubits long,
fell down from heaven. The Greeks took this fib home among the spoils of
Troy, and soon it rained statues on all the Grecian cities, and their
Latin apes. And one of these Palladia gave St. Paul trouble at Ephesus;
'twas a statue of Diana that fell down from Jupiter: credat qui credere
possit."
"What would you cast your profane doubts on that picture of our blessed
Lady, which scarce a century agone hung lustrous in the air over this
very city, and was taken down by the Pope and bestowed in St. Peter's
Church?"
"I have no profane doubts on the matter, Jerome. This is the story of
Numa's shield, revived by theologians with an itch for fiction, but no
talent that way; not being orientals. The 'ancile,' or sacred shield of
Numa hung lustrous in the air over this very city, till that pious
prince took it down and hung it in the temple of Jupiter. Be just,
swallow both stories or neither. The 'Bocca della Verita' passes for a
statue of the Virgin, and convicted a woman of perjury the other day; it
is in reality an image of the goddess Rhea, and the modern figment is
one of its ancient traditions; swallow both or neither.
'Qui Bavium non odit amet tua carmina, Mavi.'
"But indeed we owe all our Palladiuncula, and all our speaking, nodding,
winking, sweating, bleeding statues to these poor abused heathens: the
Athenian statues all sweated before the battle of Chæronea, so did the
Roman statues during Tully's consulship, viz., the statue of Victory at
Capua, of Mars at Rome, and of Apollo outside the gates. The Palladium
itself was brought to Italy by Æneas, and after keeping quiet three
centuries, made an observation in Vesta's Temple: a trivial one, I fear,
since it hath not survived; Juno's statue at Veii assented with a nod to
go to Rome. Anthony's statue on Mount Alban bled from every vein in its
marble, before the fight of Actium. Others cured diseases: as that of
Pelichus, derided by Lucian; for the wiser among the heathen believed in
sweating marble, weeping wood, and bleeding brass--as I do. Of all our
marks and dents made in stone by soft substances, this saint's knee, and
that saint's finger, and t'other's head, the original is heathen. Thus
the foot-prints of Hercules were shown on a rock in Scythia. Castor and
Pollux fighting on white horses for Rome against the Latians, left the
prints of their hoofs on a rock at Regillum. A temple was built to them
on the spot, and the marks were to be seen in Tully's day. You may see
near Venice a great stone cut nearly in half by St. George's sword. This
he ne'er had done but for the old Roman who cut the whetstone in two
with his razor.
'Qui Bavium non odit amet tua carmina, Mavi.'
"Kissing of images, and the Pope's toe, is Eastern Paganism. The
Egyptians had it of the Assyrians, the Greeks of the Egyptians, the
Romans of the Greeks, and we of the Romans, whose Pontifex Maximus had
his toe kissed under the Empire. The Druids kissed their High Priest's
toe a thousand years B. C. The Mussulmans, who like you, profess to
abhor Heathenism, kiss the stone of the Caaba: a Pagan practice.
"The Priests of Baal kissed their idols so.
"Tully tells us of a fair image of Hercules at Agrigentum, whose chin
was worn by kissing. The lower parts of the statue we call Peter are
Jupiter. The toe is sore worn, but not all by Christian mouths. The
heathen vulgar laid their lips there first, for many a year, and ours
have but followed them, as monkeys their masters. And that is why, down
with the poor heathen! Pereant qui ante nos nostra fecerint.
"Our infant baptism is Persian, with the font, and the signing of the
child's brow. Our throwing three handfuls of earth on the coffin, and
saying dust to dust, is Egyptian.
"Our incense is Oriental, Roman, Pagan; and the early Fathers of the
Church regarded it with superstitious horror, and died for refusing to
handle it. Our holy water is Pagan, and all its uses. See, here is a
Pagan aspersorium. Could you tell it from one of ours? It stood in the
same part of their temples, and was used in ordinary worship as ours,
and in extraordinary purifications. They called it Aqua lustralis. Their
vulgar, like ours, thought drops of it falling on the body would wash
out sin; and their men of sense, like ours, smiled or sighed at such
credulity. What saith Ovid of this folly, which hath outlived him?
'Ah nimium faciles, qui tristia crimina coedis
Flumineâ tolli posse putetis aquâ.'
Thou seest the heathen were not _all_ fools. No more are we. Not _all_."
Fra Colonna uttered all this with such volubility, that his hearers
could not edge in a word of remonstrance; and not being interrupted in
praising his favourites, he recovered his good humour, without any
diminution of his volubility.
"We celebrate the miraculous Conception of the Virgin on the 2nd of
February. The old Romans celebrated the miraculous Conception of Juno on
the 2nd of February. Our feast of All Saints is on the 2nd of November.
The Festum Dei Mortis was on the 2nd of November. Our Candlemas is also
an old Roman feast: neither the date nor the ceremony altered one
tittle. The patrician ladies carried candles about the city that night
as our signoras do now. At the gate of San Croce our courtezans keep a
feast on the 20th August. Ask them why! The little noodles cannot tell
you. On that very spot stood the Temple of Venus. Her building is gone;
but her rite remains. Did we discover Purgatory? On the contrary, all we
really know about it is from two treatises of Plato, the Gorgias and the
Phædo, and the sixth book of Virgil's Æneid."
"I take it from a holier source: St. Gregory": said Jerome, sternly.
"Like enough," replied Colonna, drily. "But St. Gregory was not so nice;
he took it from Virgil. Some souls, saith Gregory, are purged by fire,
others by water, others by air.
"Says Virgil:--
'Aliæ panduntur inanes,
Suspensæ ad ventos, aliis sub gurgite vasto
Infectum eluitur scelus, aut exuritur igni.'
But peradventure, you think Pope Gregory I. lived before Virgil, and
Virgil versified him.
"But the doctrine is Eastern, and as much older than Plato as Plato than
Gregory. Our prayers for the dead came from Asia with Æneas. Ovid tells,
that when he prayed for the soul of Anchises, the custom was strange in
Italy.
'Hunc morem Ænæas, pietatis idoneus auctor
Attulit in terras, juste Latine, tuas.'
The 'Biblicæ Sortes,' which I have seen consulted on the altar, are a
parody on the 'Sortes Virgilianæ.' Our numerous altars in one church are
heathen: the Jews, who are monotheists, have but one altar in a church.
But the Pagans had many, being polytheists. In the temple of Paphian
Venus were a hundred of them. 'Centum que Sabæo thure calent aræ.' Our
altars and our hundred lights around St. Peter's tomb are Pagan. 'Centum
aras posuit vigilemque sacraverat ignem.' We invent nothing, not even
numerically. Our very Devil is the god Pan: horns and hoofs and all; but
blackened. For we cannot draw; we can but daub the figures of Antiquity
with a little sorry paint or soot. Our Moses hath stolen the horns of
Ammon; our Wolfgang the hook of Saturn; and Janus bore the keys of
heaven before St. Peter. All our really old Italian bronzes of the
Virgin and Child are Venuses and Cupids. So is the wooden statue, that
stands hard by this house, of Pope Joan and the child she is said to
have brought forth there in the middle of a procession. Idiots! are
new-born children thirteen years old? And that boy is not a day
younger. Cupid! Cupid! Cupid! And since you accuse me of credulity, know
that to my mind that Papess is full as mythological, born of froth, and
every way unreal, as the goddess who passes for her in the next street,
or as the saints you call St. Baccho and St. Quirina: or St. Oracte,
which is a dunce-like corruption of Mount Soracte, or St. Amphibolus, an
English saint, which is a dunce-like corruption of the cloak worn by
their St. Alban, or as the Spanish saint, St. Viar, which words on his
tombstone, written thus: 'S. Viar,' prove him no saint, but a good old
nameless heathen, and 'præfectus Viarum,' or overseer of roads (would he
were back to earth, and paganizing of our Christian roads!), or as our
St. Veronica of Benasco, which Veronica is a dunce-like corruption of
the 'Vera icon,' which this saint brought into the church. I wish it may
not be as unreal as the donor, or as the eleven thousand virgins of
Cologne, who were but a couple."
Clement interrupted him to inquire what he meant. "I have spoken with
those who have seen their bones."
"What of eleven thousand virgins all collected in one place and at one
time? Do but bethink thee, Clement. Not one of the great Eastern cities
of antiquity could collect eleven thousand Pagan virgins at one time,
far less a puny Western city. Eleven thousand _Christian virgins_ in a
little, wee Paynim city!
'Quod cunque ostendis mihi sic incredulus odi.'
The simple sooth is this. The martyrs were two: the Breton princess
herself, falsely called British, and her maid Onesimilla, which is a
Greek name, Onesima, diminished. This some fool did mispronounce undecim
mille, eleven thousand: loose tongue found credulous ears, and so one
fool made many; eleven thousand of _them_, an you will. And you charge
me with credulity, Jerome? and bid me read the lives of the saints.
Well, I have read them: and many a dear old Pagan acquaintance I found
there. The best fictions in the book are Oriental, and are known to have
been current in Persia and Arabia eight hundred years and more before
the dates the Church assigns to them as facts. As for the true Western
figments, they lack the Oriental plausibility. Think you I am credulous
enough to believe that St. Ida joined a decapitated head to its body?
that Cuthbert's carcass directed his bearers where to go, and where to
stop; that a city was eaten up of rats to punish one Hatto for
comparing the poor to mice; that angels have a little horn in their
foreheads, and that this was seen and recorded at the time by St.
Veronica of Benasco, who never existed, and hath left us this
information and a miraculous handkercher? For my part, I think the
holiest woman the world ere saw must have an existence ere she can have
a handkercher, or an eye to take unicorns for angels. Think you I
believe that a brace of lions turned sextons and helped Anthony bury
Paul of Thebes? that Patrick, a Scotch saint, stuck a goat's beard on
all the descendants of one that offended him? that certain thieves,
having stolen the convent ram, and denying it, St. Pol de Leon bade the
ram bear witness, and straight the mutton bleated in the thief's belly?
Would you have me give up the skilful figments of antiquity for such old
wives' fables as these? The ancients lied about animals, too: but then
they lied logically; we unreasonably. Do but compare Ephis and his lion,
or, better still, Androcles and his lion, with Anthony and his two
lions. Both the pagan lions do what lions never did; but at least they
act in character. A lion with a bone in his throat, or a thorn in his
foot, could not do better than be civil to a man. But Anthony's lions
are asses in a lion's skin. What leonine motive could they have in
turning sextons? A lion's business is to make corpses, not inter them."
He added with a sigh, "Our lies are as inferior to the lies of the
ancients as our statues, and for the same reason; we do not study nature
as they did. We are imitatores, servum pecus. Believe you 'the lives of
the saints;' that Paul the Theban was the first hermit, and Anthony the
first Cænobite? Why, Pythagoras was an Eremite, and under ground for
seven years: and his daughter was an abbess. Monks and hermits were in
the East long before Moses, and neither old Greece nor Rome was ever
without them. As for St. Francis and his snowballs, he did but mimic
Diogenes, who, naked, embraced statues on which snow had fallen. The
folly without the poetry. Ape of an ape--for Diogenes was but a mimic
therein of the Brahmins and Indian gymnosophists. Natheless, the
children of this Francis bid fair to pelt us out of the church with
their snowballs. Tell me now, Clement, what habit is lovelier than the
vestments of our priests? Well, we owe them all to Numa Pompilius,
except the girdle and the stole, which are judaical. As for the amice
and the albe, they retain the very names they bore in Numa's day. The
'pelt' worn by the canons comes from primeval Paganism. 'Tis a relic of
those rude times when the sacrificing priest wore the skins of the
beasts with the fur outward. Strip off thy black gown, Jerome, thy
girdle and cowl, for they come to us all three from the Pagan ladies.
Let thy hair grow like Absalom's, Jerome! for the tonsure is as Pagan as
the Muses."
"Take care what thou sayest," said Jerome, sternly. "We know the very
year in which the church did first ordain it."
"But not invent it, Jerome. The Brahmins wore it a few thousand years
ere that. From them it came through the Assyrians to the priests of Isis
in Egypt, and afterwards of Serapis at Athens. The late Pope (the saints
be good to him) once told me the tonsure was forbidden by God to the
Levites in the Pentateuch. If so, this was because of the Egyptian
priests wearing it. I trust to his holiness. I am no biblical scholar.
The Latin of thy namesake Jerome is a barrier I cannot overleap. 'Dixit
ad me Dominus Deus. Dixi ad Dominum Deum.' No, thank you, holy Jerome; I
can stand a good deal, but I cannot stand thy Latin. Nay; give me the
New Testament! 'Tis not the Greek of Xenophon; but 'tis Greek. And there
be heathen sayings in it too. For St. Paul was not so spiteful against
them as thou. When the heathen said a good thing that suited his matter,
by Jupiter he just took it, and mixed it to all eternity with the
inspired text."
"Come forth, Clement, come forth!" said Jerome, rising; "and thou,
profane monk, know that but for the powerful house that upholds thee,
thy accursed heresy should go no farther, for I would have thee burned
at the stake." And he strode out white with indignation.
Colonna's reception of this threat did credit to him as an enthusiast.
He ran and hallowed joyfully after Jerome. "And _that_ is Pagan. Burning
of men's bodies for the opinions of their souls is a purely Pagan
custom--as Pagan as incense, holy water, a hundred altars in one church,
the tonsure, the cardinal's, or flamen's hat, the word Pope, the----"
Here Jerome slammed the door.
But ere they could get clear of the house a jalosy was flung open, and
the Paynim monk came out head and shoulders, and overhung the street,
shouting--
"'Affecti suppliciis Christiani, genus hominum
Novæ superstitionis ac maleficæ.'"
And having delivered this parting blow? he felt a great triumphant joy,
and strode exultant to and fro; and not attending with his usual care to
the fair way (for his room could only be threaded by little paths
wriggling among the antiquities), tripped over the beak of an Egyptian
stork, and rolled upon a regiment of Armenian gods, which he found tough
in argument though small in stature.
"You will go no more to that heretical monk," said Jerome to Clement.
Clement sighed. "Shall we leave him and not try to correct him? Make
allowance for heat of discourse! He was nettled. His words are worse
than his acts. Oh! 'tis a pure and charitable soul."
"So are all arch-heretics. Satan does not tempt them like other men.
Rather he makes them more moral, to give their teaching weight. Fra
Colonna cannot be corrected; his family is all-powerful in Rome. Pray we
the saints he blasphemes to enlighten him. 'Twill not be the first time
they have returned good for evil. Meantime thou art forbidden to consort
with him. From this day go alone through the city! Confess and absolve
sinners! exorcise demons! comfort the sick! terrify the impenitent!
preach wherever men are gathered and occasion serves! and hold no
converse with the Fra Colonna!"
Clement bowed his head.
Then the prior, at Jerome's request, had the young friar watched. And
one day the spy returned with the news that brother Clement had passed
by the Fra Colonna's lodging, and had stopped a little while in the
street and then gone on, but with his hand to his eyes, and slowly.
This report Jerome took to the prior. The prior asked his opinion, and
also Anselm's, who was then taking leave of him on his return to
Juliers.
_Jerome._] "Humph! He obeyed, but with regret, ay, with childish
repining."
_Anselm._] "He shed a natural tear at turning his back on a friend and a
benefactor. But he obeyed."
Now Anselm was one of your gentle irresistibles. He had at times a mild
ascendant even over Jerome.
"Worthy brother Anselm," said Jerome, "Clement is weak to the very bone.
He will disappoint thee. He will do nothing _great_, either for the
Church or for our holy order. Yet he is an orator, and hath drunken of
the spirit of St. Dominic. Fly him, then, with a string."
That same day it was announced to Clement that he was to go to England
immediately with brother Jerome.
Clement folded his hands on his breast, and bowed his head in calm
submission.