Holy as this city necessarily must be, consecrated by relics of the
church's most holy dead, consecrated by the presence of her living Head,
I scarcely think religion is as deep in the hearts of these Italians as
of our poor Germans in the cold north.
But I may mistake; feeling of all kinds manifests itself in such
different ways with different characters.
Certainly the churches are thronged on all great occasions, and the
festas are brilliant. But the people seem rather to regard them as
holidays and dramatic entertainments, than as the solemn and sacred
festivals we consider them in Saxony. This morning, for instance, I
heard two women criticizing a procession in words such as these, as far
as the little Italian I have picked up, enabled me to understand them:--
"Ah, Nina mia, the angels are nothing to-day; you should have seen our
Lucia last year! Every one said she was heavenly. If the priests do not
arrange it better, people will scarcely care to attend. Besides, the
music was execrable."
"Ah, the nuns of the Cistercian convent understand how to manage a
ceremony. They have ideas! Did you see their Bambino last Christmas?
Such lace! and the cradle of tortoise-shell, fit for an emperor, as it
should be! And then their robes for the Madonna on her fetes! Cloth of
gold embroidered with pearls and brilliants worth a treasury!"
"Yes," replied the other, lowering her voice, "I have been told the
history of those robes. A certain lady who was powerful at the late Holy
Father's court, is said to have presented the dress in which she
appeared on some state occasion to the nuns, just as she wore it."
"Did she become a penitent, then?"
"A penitent? I do not know; such an act of penitence would purchase
indulgences and masses to last at least for some time."
Brother Martin and I do not so much affect these gorgeous processions.
These Italians, with their glorious skies and the rich colouring of
their beautiful land require more splendour in their religion than our
German eyes can easily gaze on undazzled.
It rather perplexed us to see the magnificent caparisons of the horses
of the cardinals; and more especially to behold the Holy Father sitting
on a fair palfrey, bearing the sacred Host. In Germany, the loftiest
earthly dignity prostrates itself low before that Ineffable Presence.
But my mind becomes confused. Heaven forbid that I should call the Vicar
of Christ an _earthly_ dignitary! Is he not the representative and
oracle of God on earth?
For this reason,--no doubt in painful contradiction to the reverent awe
natural to every Christian before the Holy Sacrament,--the Holy Father
submits to sitting enthroned in the church, and receiving the body of
our Creator through a golden tube presented to him by a kneeling
cardinal.
It must be very difficult for him to separate between the office and the
person. It is difficult enough for us. But for the human spirit not yet
made perfect to receive these religious honours must be overwhelming.
Doubtless, at night, when the holy father humbles himself in solitude
before God, his self-abasement is as much deeper than that of ordinary
Christians as his exaltation is greater.
I must confess that it is an inexpressible relief to me to retire to the
solitude of my cell at night, and pray to Him of whom Brother Martin and
I spoke in the Black Forest; to whom the homage of the universe is no
burden, because it is not mere prostration before an office, but
adoration of a person. "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty: heaven and
earth are full of thy glory."
Holiness--to which almightiness is but an attribute, Holy One, who hast
loved and given thine Holy One for a sinful world, _miserere nobis_!
ROME, _July_.
We have diligently visited all the holy relics, and offered prayers at
every altar at which especial indulgences are procured, for ourselves
and others.
Brother Martin once said he could almost wish his father and mother
(whom he dearly loves) were dead, that he might avail himself of the
privileges of this holy city to deliver their souls from purgatory.
He says masses whenever he can. But the Italian priests are often
impatient with him because he recites the office so slowly. I heard one
of them say, contemptuously, he had accomplished thirty masses while
Brother Martin only finished one. And more than once they hurry him
forward, saying "Passa! passa!"
There is a strange disappointment in these ceremonies to me, and, I
think, often to him. I seem to expect so much more,--not more pomp, of
that there is abundance; but when the ceremony itself begins, to which
all the pomp of music, and processions of cavaliers, and richly-robed
priests, and costly shrines, are mere preliminary accessories, it seems
often so poor! The kernel inside all this gorgeous shell seems to the
eye of sense like a little poor withered dust.
To the eye of _sense_! Yes, I forget. These are the splendours of
_faith_, which faith only can behold.
To-day we gazed on the Veronica,--the holy impression left by our
Saviour's face on the cloth St. Veronica presented to him to wipe his
brow, bowed under the weight of the cross. We had looked forward to this
sight for days; for seven thousand years of indulgence from penance are
attached to it.
But when the moment came Brother Martin and I could see nothing but a
black board hung with a cloth, before which another white cloth was
held. In a few minutes this was withdrawn, and the great moment was
over, the glimpse of the sacred thing on which hung the fate of seven
thousand years! For some time Brother Martin and I did not speak of it.
I feared there had been some imperfection in my looking, which might
affect the seven thousand years; but observing his countenance rather
downcast, I told my difficulty, and found that he also had seen nothing
but a white cloth.
The skulls of St. Peter and St. Paul perplexed us still more, because
they had so much the appearance of being carved in wood. But in the
crowd we could not approach very close; and doubtless Satan uses devices
to blind the eyes even of the faithful.
One relic excited my amazement much--the halter with which Judas hanged
himself! It could scarcely be termed a _holy_ relic. I wonder who
preserved it, when so many other precious things are lost. Scarcely the
Apostles; perhaps the scribes, out of malice.
The Romans, I observe, seem to care little for what to us is the kernel
and marrow of these ceremonies--the exhibition of the holy relics. They
seem more occupied in comparing the pomp of one year, or of one church,
with another.
We must not, I suppose, measure the good things done us by our own
thoughts and feelings, but simply accept it on the testimony of the
Church.
Otherwise I might be tempted to imagine that the relics of pagan Rome do
my spirit more good than gazing on the sacred ashes or bones of martyrs
or apostles. When I walk over the heaps of shapeless ruin, so many feet
beneath which lies buried the grandeur of the old imperial city; or when
I wander among the broken arches of the gigantic Coliseum, where the
martyrs fought with wild beasts,--great thoughts seem to grow naturally
in my mind, and I feel how great truth is, and how little empires are.
I see an empire solid as this Coliseum crumble into ruins as
undistinguishable as the dust of those streets, before the word of that
once despised Jew of Tarsus, "in bodily presence weak," who was beheaded
here. Or, again, in the ancient Pantheon, when the music of Christian
chants rises among the shadowy forms of the old vanquished gods painted
on the walls, and the light streams down, not from painted windows in
the walls, but from the glowing heavens above, every note of the service
echoes like a peal of triumph, and fills my heart with thankfulness.
But my happiest hours here are spent in the church of my patron, St.
Sebastian, without the walls, built over the ancient catacombs.
Countless martyrs, they say, rest in peace in these ancient sepulchres.
They have not been opened for centuries; but they are believed to wind
in subterranean passages far beneath the ancient city. In those dark
depths the ancient Church took refuge from persecution: there she laid
her martyrs; and there, over their tombs, she chanted hymns of triumph,
and held communion with Him for whom they died. In that church I spend
hours. I have no wish to descend into those sacred sepulchres, and pry
among the graves the resurrection trump will open soon enough. I like to
think of the holy dead, lying undisturbed and quiet there; of their
spirits in Paradise; of their faith triumphant in the city which
massacred them.
No doubt they also had their perplexities, and wondered why the wicked
triumph, and sighed to God, "How long, O Lord, how long?"
And yet I cannot help wishing I had lived and died among them, and had
not been born in times when we see Satan appear, not in his genuine
hideousness, but as an angel of light.
For of the wickedness that prevails in this Christian Rome, alas, who
can speak! of the shameless sin, the violence, the pride, the mockery of
sacred things!
In the Coliseum, in the Pantheon, in the Church of St. Sebastian, I feel
an atom--but an atom in a solid, God-governed world, where truth is
mightiest;--insignificant in myself as the little mosses which flutter
on these ancient stones; but yet a little moss on a great rock which
cannot be shaken--the rock of God's providence and love. In the busy
city, I feel tossed hither and thither on a sea which seems to rage and
heave at its own wild will, without aim or meaning--a sea of human
passion. Among the ruins, I commune with the spirits of our great and
holy dead, who live unto God. At the exhibition of the sacred relics, my
heart is drawn down to the mere perishable dust, decorated with the
miserable pomps of the little men of the day.
And then I return to the convent and reproach myself for censoriousness,
and unbelief, and pride, and try to remember that the benefits of these
ceremonies and exhibitions are only to be understood by faith, and are
not to be judged by inward feeling, or even by their moral results.
The Church, the Holy Father, solemnly declare that pardons and blessings
incalculable, to ourselves and others, flow from so many Paternosters
and Aves recited at certain altars, or from seeing the Veronica or the
other relics. I have performed the acts, and I must at my peril believe
in their efficacy.
But Brother Martin and I are often sorely discouraged at the wickedness
we see and hear around us. A few days since he was at a feast with
several prelates and great men of the Church, and the fashion among them
seemed to be to jest at all that is most sacred. Some avowed their
disbelief in one portion of the faith, and some in others; but all in a
light and laughing way, as if it mattered little to any of them. One
present related how they sometimes substituted the words _panis es, et
panis manebis_ in the mass, instead of the words of consecration, and
then amused themselves with watching the people adore what was, after
all, no consecrated Host, but a mere piece of bread.
The Romans themselves we have heard declare, that if there be a hell,
Rome is built over it. They have a couplet,--
"Vivere qui sancte vultis, discedite Roma:
Omnia hic esse licent, non licet esse probum."[7]
[Footnote 7: "Ye who would live holily, depart from Rome: all things are
allowed here, except to be upright."]
O Rome! in sacredness as Jerusalem, in wickedness as Babylon, how bitter
is the conflict that breaks forth in the heart at seeing holy places and
holy character thus disjoined! How overwhelming the doubts that rush
back on the spirit again and again, as to the very existence of holiness
or truth in the universe, when we behold the deeds of Satan prevailing
in the very metropolis of the kingdom of God!
ROME, _August_.
Mechanically, we continue to go through every detail of the prescribed
round of devotions, believing against experience, and hoping against
hope.
To-day Brother Martin went to accomplish the ascent of the Santa
Scala--the Holy Staircase--which once, they say, formed part of Pilate's
house. I had crept up the sacred steps before, and stood watching him
as, on his knees, he slowly mounted step after step of the hard stone,
worn into hollows, by the knees of penitents and pilgrims. An indulgence
for a thousand years--indulgence from penance--is attached to this act
of devotion. Patiently he crept half way up the staircase, when, to my
amazement, he suddenly stood erect, lifted his face heavenward, and, in
another moment, turned and walked slowly down again.
He seemed absorbed in thought, when he rejoined me; and it was not until
some time afterwards that he told the meaning of this sudden abandonment
of his purpose.
He said that, as he was toiling up, a voice, as if from heaven, seemed
to whisper to him the old, well-known words, which had been his
battle-cry in so many a victorious combat,--"_The just shall live by
faith._"
He seemed awakened, as if from a nightmare, and restored to himself. He
dared not creep up another step; but, rising from his knees, he stood
upright, like a man suddenly loosed from bonds and fetters, and, with
the firm step of a freeman, he descended the Staircase and walked from
the place.
_August_, 1511.
To-night there has been an assassination. A corpse was found near our
convent gates, pierced with many wounds. But no one seems to think much
of it. Such things are constantly occurring, they say; and the only
interest seems to be as to the nature of the quarrel which led to it.
"A prelate is mixed up with it," the monks whisper: "one of the late
Pope's family. It will not be investigated."
But these crimes of passion seem to me comprehensible and excusable,
compared with the spirit of levity and mockery which pervades all
classes. In such acts of revenge you see human nature in ruins; yet in
the ruins you can trace something of the ancient dignity. But in this
jesting, scornful spirit, which mocks at sacredness in the service of
God, at virtue in woman, and at truth and honour in men, all traces of
God's image seem crushed and trodden into shapeless, incoherent dust.
From such thoughts I often take refuge in the Campagna, and feel a
refreshment in its desolate spaces, its solitary wastes, its traces of
material ruin.
The ruins of empires and of imperial edifices do not depress me. The
immortality of the race and of the soul rises grandly in contrast. In
the Campagna we see the ruins of Imperial Rome; but in Rome we see the
ruin of our race and nature. And what shall console us for that, when
the presence of all that Christians most venerate is powerless to arrest
it?
Were it not for some memories of a home at Eisenach, on which I dare not
dwell too much, it seems at times as if the very thought of purity and
truth would fade from my heart.
ROME, _August_.
Brother Martin, during the intervals of the business of his Order, which
is slowly winding its way among the intricacies of the Roman courts, is
turning his attention to the study of Hebrew, under the Rabbi Elias
Levita.
I study also with the Rabbi, and have had the great benefit, moreover,
of hearing lectures from the Byzantine Greek professor, Argyropylos.
Two altogether new worlds seem to open to me through these men,--one in
the far distances of time, and the other in those of space.
The Rabbi, one of the race which is a by-word and a scorn among us from
boyhood, to my surprise seems to glory in his nation and his pedigree,
with a pride which looks down on the antiquity of our noblest lineages
as mushrooms of a day. I had no conception that underneath the misery
and the obsequious demeanour of the Jews such lofty feelings existed.
And, yet, what wonder is it! Before Rome was built, Jerusalem was a
sacred and royal city; and now that the empire and the people of Rome
have passed for centuries, this nation, fallen before their prime, still
exists to witness their fall.
I went once to the door of their synagogue, in the Ghetto. There were no
shrines in it, no altars, no visible symbols of sacred things, except
the roll of the Law, which was reverently taken out of a sacred treasury
and read aloud. Yet there seemed something sublime in this symbolizing
of the presence of God only by a voice reading the words which, ages
ago, He spoke to their prophets in the Holy Land.
"Why have you no altar?" I asked once of one of the Rabbis.
"Our altar can only be raised when our temple is built," was the reply.
"Our temple can only rise in the city and on the hill of our God. But,"
he continued, in a low, bitter tone, "when our altar and temple are
restored, it will not be to offer incense to the painted image of a
Hebrew maiden."
I have thought of the words often since. But were they not blasphemy? I
must not dare recall them.
But those Greeks! they are Christians, and yet not of our communion. As
Argyropylos speaks, I understand for the first time that a Church exists
in the East, as ancient as the Church of Western Europe, and as
extensive, which acknowledges the Holy Trinity and the Creeds, but owns
no allegiance to the Holy Father the Pope.
The world is much larger and older than Else or I thought at Eisenach.
May not God's kingdom be much larger than some think at Rome?
In the presence of monuments which date back to days before
Christianity, and of men who speak the language of Moses, and, with
slight variations, the language of Homer, our Germany seems in its
infancy indeed. Would to God it were in its infancy, and that a glorious
youth and prime may succeed, when these old, decrepit nations are worn
out and gone!
Yet Heaven forbid that I should call Rome decrepit--Rome on whose brow
rests, not the perishable crown of earthly dominion, but the tiara of
the kingdom of God.
_September._
The mission which brought Brother Martin hither is nearly accomplished.
We shall soon--we may at a day's notice--leave Rome and return to
Germany.
And what have we gained by our pilgrimage?
A store of indulgences beyond calculation. And knowledge; eyes opened to
see good and evil. Ennobling knowledge! glimpses into rich worlds of
human life and thought, which humble the heart in expanding the mind.
Bitter knowledge! illusions dispelled, aspirations crushed. We have
learned that the heart of Christendom is a moral plague-spot; that
spiritual privileges and moral goodness have no kind of connection,
because where the former are at the highest perfection, the latter is at
the lowest point of degradation.
We have learned that on earth there is no place to which the heart can
turn as a sanctuary, if by a sanctuary we mean not merely a refuge from
the punishment of sin, but a place in which to grow holy.
In one sense, Rome may, indeed, be called the sanctuary of the world! It
seems as if half the criminals in the world had found a refuge here.
When I think of Rome in future as a city of the living, I shall think of
assassination, treachery, avarice, a spirit of universal mockery, which
seems only the foam over an abyss of universal despair; mockery of all
virtue, based on disbelief in all truth.
It is only as a city of the dead that my heart will revert to Rome as a
holy place. She has indeed built, and built beautifully, the sepulchres
of the prophets.
Those hidden catacombs, where the holy dead rest, far under the streets
of the city,--too far for traffickers in sacred bones to disturb
them,--among these the imagination can rest, like those beatified ones,
in peace.
The spiritual life of Rome seems to be among her dead. Among the living
all seems spiritual corruption and death.
May God and the saints have mercy on me if I say what is sinful. Does
not the scum necessarily rise to the surface? Do not acts of violence
and words of mockery necessarily make more noise in the world than
prayers? How do I know how many humble hearts there are in those
countless convents there, that secretly offer acceptable incense to God,
and keep the perpetual lamp of devotion burning in the sight of God?
How do I know what deeper and better thoughts lie hidden under that veil
of levity? Only I often feel that if God had not made me a believer
through his word, by the voice of Brother Martin in the Black Forest,
Rome might too easily have made me an infidel. And it is certainly true,
that to be a Christian at Rome as well as elsewhere, (indeed, more than
elsewhere) one must breast the tide, and must walk by faith, and not by
sight.
But we have performed the pilgrimage. We have conscientiously visited
all the shrines; we have recited as many as possible of the privileged
acts of devotion, Paters and Aves, at the privileged shrines.
Great benefits _must_ result to us from these things.
But benefits of what kind? Moral? How can that be? When shall I efface
from my memory the polluting words and works I have seen and heard at
Rome? Spiritual? Scarcely; if by spiritual we are to understand a devout
mind, joy in God, and nearness to him. When, since that night in the
Black Forest, have I found prayer so difficult, doubts so overwhelming,
the thoughts of God and heaven so dim, as at Rome?
The benefits, then, that we have received, must be ecclesiastical--those
that the Church promises and dispenses. And what are these
ecclesiastical benefits? Pardon? But is it not written that God gives
this freely to those who believe on his Son? Peace? But is not that the
legacy of the Saviour to all who love him?
What then? Indulgences. Indulgences from what? From the temporal
consequences of sin? Too obviously not these. Do the ecclesiastical
indulgences save men from disease, and sorrow, and death? Is it, then,
from the eternal consequences of sin? Did not the Lamb of God, dying for
us on the cross, bear our sins there, and blot them out? What then
remains, which the indulgences can deliver from? Penance and purgatory.
What then are penance and purgatory? Has penance in itself no curative
effect, that we can be healed of our sins by escaping as well as by
performing it? Have purgatorial fires no purifying powers, that we can
be purified as much by repeating a few words of devotion at certain
altars as by centuries of agony in the flames?
All these questions rise before me from time to time, and I find no
reply. If I mention them to my confessor, he says,--
"These are temptations of the Devil. You must not listen to them. They
are vain and presumptuous questions. There are no keys on earth to open
these doors."
Are there any keys on earth to _lock_ them again, when once they have
been opened?
"You Germans," others of the Italian priests say, "take everything with
such desperate seriousness. It is probably owing to your long winters
and the heaviness of your northern climate, which must, no doubt, be
very depressing to the spirits."
Holy Mary! and these Italians, if life is so light a matter to them,
will not they also have one day to take death "with desperate
seriousness," and judgment and eternity, although there will be no long
winters, I suppose, and no heavy northern climate, to depress the
spirits in that other world.
We are going back to Germany at last. Strangely has the world enlarged
to me since we came here. We are accredited pilgrims; we have performed
every prescribed duty, and availed ourselves of every proffered
privilege. And yet it is not because of the regret of quitting the Holy
City that our hearts are full of the gravest melancholy as we turn away
from Rome.
When I compare the recollections of this Rome with those of a home at
Eisenach, I am tempted in my heart to feel as if Germany, and not Rome,
were the Holy Place, and our pilgrimage were beginning, instead of
ending, as we turn our faces northward!