Oh! do not look at me. Stop! Turn your face away! I thought all such

shame was dead, but there are moments when it overwhelms me with its

sting. Did I say or dare to think that _God loves me_? Wait, wait, till I

can remember what it means!

Yes, I know now. Through all that night, while the torches glared, and

wrathful faces looked curses at me, and lips shouted them, ever through

all I saw, as it were, One sinless but reputed with the wicked; stripped

of his garments as I of my pride; made a spectacle to angels and to men;

mocked, reviled, scourged, crucified; and through the wild tumult I heard

a voice say, as of old to the repentant thief on the cross: “This day

thou shalt be with me.” And through all my heart was answering to his

most Sacred Heart, “I, indeed, justly; for I receive the due reward of

my deeds: but this man hath done no evil.” How could I wish to be spared

a single pang or lose one hour of shame with him? What part could any

Christian take but to suffer with him, having made him suffer? And when

one has said “with him,” one has explained all. But, somehow, people do

not always seem to understand.

* * * * *

Understand? Ah! no. It is a story, not of two versions, but of many. Some

called James Brent a fool, and some a madman, and some said he should

have saved his honor and his name at all hazards; and some, that he had

no right to entail such suffering on his household. But there is one

light by which such stories should be read, that is truer than these.

When time is gone, and wealth is dust, and earthly honor vanishes like

smoke, then, by the standard of the cross of Christ, wealth, and pomp,

and pleasure, and business shall be duly tried. Shun humiliation here

as we will, there shall be after this the judgment, when the Prince of

Glory, who pronounces final sentence, will be he who, while on earth,

chose for his portion a life of suffering and a death of shame.

ANTI-CATHOLIC MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES.

Like commercial panics, periodical outbursts of irreligious fanaticism

seem to have become regular incidents in the history of the United

States--occurrences to be looked for with as much certainty as

if they were the natural outgrowth of our civilization and the

peculiarly-constituted condition of American society. Though springing

from widely different causes, these intermittent spasms have a marked

resemblance in their deleterious effects on our individual welfare

and national reputation. Both are demoralizing and degrading in their

tendencies, and each, in its degree, finally results in the temporary

gain of a few to the lasting injury and debasement of the multitude.

In other respects they differ materially. Great mercantile reverses

and isolated acts of peculation, unfortunately, are not limited to one

community or to the growth of any particular system of polity, but are

as common and as frequent in despotic Asia and monarchical Europe as in

republican America. Popular ebullitions of bigotry, on the contrary,

are, or, more correctly, ought to be, confined to those countries where

ignorance and intolerance usurp the place of enlightened philanthropy and

wise government. They are foreign to the spirit of American institutions,

hostile to the best interests of society, and a curse to those who

tolerate or encourage them. The brightest glory of the fathers of the

republic springs, not so much from the fact that they separated the

colonies from the mother country and founded a new nation--for that is

nothing strange or unheard-of in the world’s history--but that they made

its three millions of inhabitants free as well as independent: free

not only from unjust taxation and arbitrary laws, but for ever free to

worship their Creator according to the dictates of their conscience,

unawed by petty authority and unaffected by the shifting counsels of

subsequent legislators.

From this point of view the Revolution appears as one of the grandest

moral events in the records of human progress; and when we reflect on

the numerous pains, penalties, and restrictions prescribed by the

charters and by-laws of the colonies from whence our Union has sprung,

it challenges our most profound admiration and gratitude. This complete

religious equality, guaranteed by our fundamental law, has ever been

the boast of every true American citizen, at home and abroad. From the

halls of Congress to the far Western stump-meeting we hear it again

and again enunciated; it is repeated by a thousand eloquent tongues

on each recurring anniversary of our independence, and is daily and

weekly trumpeted throughout the length and breadth of the land by the

myriad-winged Mercuries of the press. This freedom of worship, freedom

of conscience, and legal equality, as declared and confirmed by our

forefathers, has become, in fact, not only the written but also the

common law of the land--the birthright of every native-born American, the

acquired, but no less sacred, privilege of every citizen by adoption.

Whoever now attempts to disturb or question it, by word or act, disgraces

his country in the eyes of all mankind, and defiles the memory of our

greatest and truest heroes and statesmen.

So powerful, indeed, were the example and teachings of those wise men who

laid broad and deep the foundations of our happy country that, during the

first half-century of our national existence, scarcely a voice was raised

in opposition or protest against the principle of religious liberty

as emphatically expressed in the first amendment to the Constitution.

A whole generation had to pass away ere fanaticism dared to raise its

crest, until the solemn guarantees of our federal compact were assailed

by incendiary mobs and scouted by so-called courts of justice. The

first flagrant instance of this fell spirit of bigotry happened in

Massachusetts, and naturally was directed against an institution of

Catholic learning.

In 1820 four Ursuline nuns arrived in Boston and established there a

house of their order. Six years later they removed to the neighboring

village of Charlestown, where they purchased a piece of ground, and,

calling it Mt. St. Benedict, erected a suitable building and reduced the

hitherto barren hill-side to a state of beautiful cultivation. In 1834

the community had increased to ten, all ladies of thorough education

and refinement. From the very beginning their success as teachers was

acknowledged and applauded, and their average attendance of pupils was

computed at from fifty to sixty. Of these, at least four-fifths were

Protestants, the daughters of the best American families, not only of New

England, but of the Middle and Southern States. Though it was well known

that the nuns had ever been most scrupulously careful not to meddle with

the religious opinions of their scholars, and that not one conversion to

the church could be ascribed to their influence, the fact that a school

conducted by Catholic religious should have acquired so brilliant a

reputation, and that its patrons were principally Protestants of high

social and political standing, was considered sufficient in the eyes of

the Puritan fanatics to condemn it.

Its destruction was therefore resolved on, and an incident, unimportant

in itself, occurred in the summer of 1834 which was eagerly seized upon

by the clerical adventurers who then, as now, disgraced so many sectarian

pulpits. It appears that an inmate of the convent, a Miss Harrison,

had, from excessive application to music, become partially demented, and

during one of her moments of hallucination left the house and sought

refuge with some friends. Her brother, a Protestant, having heard of her

flight, accompanied by Bishop Fenwick, brought her back to the nunnery,

to her own great satisfaction and the delight of the sisterhood. This

trifling domestic affair was eagerly taken up by the leaders of the

anti-Catholic faction and magnified into monstrous proportions. The nuns,

it was said, had not only driven an American lady to madness, but had

immured her in a dungeon, and, upon her attempting to escape, had, with

the connivance of the bishop and priests, actually tortured her to death.

Falsehoods even more diabolical were invented and circulated throughout

Boston. The following Sunday the Methodist and Congregational churches

rang again with denunciations against Popery and nunneries, while one

self-styled divine, a Dr. Beecher, the father of a numerous progeny of

male and female evangelists, some of whom have since become famous in

more senses than one, preached no less than three sermons in as many

different churches on the abominations of Rome. All the bigotry of Boston

and the adjacent towns was aroused to the highest pitch of frenzy, and

threats against the convent were heard on every side.

To pacify the public mind the selectmen of Charlestown, on the following

day, the memorable 11th of August, appointed a committee to examine into

the truth of the charges. They waited on the nuns, and were received

by Miss Harrison, who was alleged to have been foully murdered. Under

her personal guidance they searched every part of the convent and its

appurtenances, till, becoming thoroughly satisfied with the falsity of

the reports, they retired to draw up a statement to that effect for

publication in the newspapers. This was what the rabble dreaded, and, as

soon as the intention of the committee became known, the leaders resolved

to forestall public sentiment by acting at once.

Accordingly, about nine o’clock in the evening, a mob began to collect

in the neighborhood of Mt. St. Benedict. Bonfires were lit and exciting

harangues were made, but still there were many persons reluctant to

believe that the rioters were in earnest. They would not admit that any

great number of Americans could be found base and brutal enough to attack

a house filled with defenceless and delicate women and children. They

were mistaken, however; they had yet to learn to what lengths fanaticism

can be carried when once the evil passions of corrupt human nature are

aroused. Towards midnight a general alarm was rung, calling out the

engine companies of Boston, not to quell any fire or disturbance, but,

as was proved by their conduct, to reinforce the rioters, if necessary.

The first demonstration was made by firing shot and stones against the

windows and doors of the main building, to ascertain if there were any

defenders inside; but, upon becoming satisfied that there were none, the

cowardly mob burst open the gates and doors, and rushed wildly through

the passages and rooms, swearing vengeance against the nuns.

Trusting to the protection of the authorities, the gentle sisters were

taken by surprise. The shots of their assailants, however, awakened

them to a sense of danger. Hastening from their beds, they rushed to

the dormitories, aroused the sleeping children, and had barely time

to avoid the fury of the mob by escaping through a back entrance in

their night-clothes. Everything portable, including money and jewelry

belonging to the pupils, was laid hold of by the intruders, the furniture

and valuable musical instruments were hacked in pieces, and then the

convent was given to the flames amid the frantic cheers of assembled

thousands. “Not content with all this,” says the report of Mr. Loring’s

committee, “they burst open the tomb of the establishment, rifled it of

the sacred vessels there deposited, wrested the plates from the coffins,

and exposed to view the mouldering remains of their tenants. Nor is it

the least humiliating feature, in this scene of cowardly and audacious

violation of all that man ought to hold sacred, that it was perpetrated

in the presence of men vested with authority and of multitudes of our

fellow-citizens, while not one arm was lifted in the defence of helpless

women and children, or in vindication of the violated laws of God and

man. The spirit of violence, sacrilege, and plunder reigned triumphant.”

The morning of the 12th of August saw what for years had been the quiet

retreat of Christian learning and feminine holiness a mass of blackened

ruins; but the character of Massachusetts had received even a darker

stain, a foul blot not yet wiped from her escutcheon. It was felt by

the most respectable portion of the citizens that some step should be

taken to vindicate the reputation of the State, and to place the odium

of the outrage on those who alone were guilty. Accordingly, a committee

of thirty-eight leading Protestant gentlemen, with Charles G. Loring

as chairman, was appointed to investigate and report on the origin and

results of the disgraceful proceeding. It met in Faneuil Hall from day

to day, examined a great number of witnesses, and made the most minute

inquiries from all sources. Its final report was long, eloquent, and

convincing. After the most thorough examination, it was found, those

Protestant gentlemen said, that all the wild and malicious assertions put

forth in the sectarian pulpits and repeated in the newspapers, regarding

the Ursulines, were without a shadow of truth or probability; they

eulogized in the most glowing language the conduct of the nuns, their

qualifications as teachers, their Christian piety and meekness, and their

careful regard for the morals as well as for the religious scruples of

their pupils. They also attributed the wanton attack upon the nunnery to

the fell spirit of bigotry evoked by the false reports of the New England

press and the unmitigated slanders of the anti-Catholic preachers, and

called upon the legislative authorities to indemnify, in the most ample

manner, the victims of mob law and official connivance.

But the most significant fact brought to light by this committee was

that the fanatics, in their attack on Mt. St. Benedict, were not a mere

heterogeneous crowd of ignorant men acting upon momentary impulse, but

a regular band of lawless miscreants directed and aided by persons

of influence and standing in society. “There is no doubt,” says the

report, “that a conspiracy had been formed, extending into many of the

neighboring towns; but the committee are of opinion that it embraced

very few of respectable character in society, though some such may,

perhaps, be actually guilty of an offence no less heinous, morally

considered, in having excited the feelings which led to the design,

or countenanced and instigated those engaged in its execution.” Here

we find laid down, on the most unquestionable authority, the origin

and birth-place of all subsequent Native American movements against

Catholicity.

But the sequel to the destruction of the Charlestown convent was

even more shameful than the crime itself. Thirteen men had been

arrested, eight of whom were charged with arson. The first tried was

the ringleader, an ex-convict, named Buzzell. The scenes which were

enacted on that occasion are without a parallel in the annals of our

jurisprudence. The mother-superior, several of the sisters, and Bishop

Fenwick, necessary witnesses for the prosecution, were received in court

with half-suppressed jibes and sneers, subjected to every species of

insult by the lawyers for the defence, and were frowned upon even by

the judge who presided. Though the evidence against the prisoner was

conclusive, the jury, without shame or hesitation, acquitted him, and he

walked out of court amid the wildest cheers of the bystanders. Similar

demonstrations of popular sympathy attended the trials of the other

rioters, who were all, with the exception of a young boy, permitted to

escape the penalty of their gross crimes.

Even the State legislature, though urged to do so by many of the leading

public men of the commonwealth, refused to vote anything like an adequate

sum to indemnify the nuns and pupils for their losses, amounting to over

a hundred thousand dollars. The pitiful sum of ten thousand dollars was

offered, and of course rejected; and to this day the ruins of the convent

stand as an eloquent monument of Protestant perfidy and puritanical

meanness and injustice.

The impunity thus legally and officially guaranteed to mobs and

sacrilegious plunderers soon bore fruit in other acts of lawlessness

in various parts of Massachusetts. A Catholic graveyard in Lowell was

shortly after entered and desecrated by an armed rabble, and a house

in Wareham, in which Mass was being celebrated, was set upon by a gang

of ruffians known as the “Convent Boys.” A couple of years later the

Montgomery Guards, a regular militia company, composed principally of

Catholic freeholders of Boston, were openly insulted by their comrades on

parade, and actually stoned through the streets by a mob of over three

thousand persons.

As there were no more convents to be plundered and burned in the

stronghold of Puritanism, the war on those glories of religion was kept

up in a different manner, but with no less rancor and audacity. Taking

advantage of the excitement created by such men as Lyman Beecher and

Buzzell, a mercenary publisher issued a book entitled _Six Months in

a Convent_, which was put together by some contemptible preacher in

the name of an illiterate girl named Reed, who, the better to mislead

the public, assumed the title of “Sister Mary Agnes.” “We earnestly

hope and believe,” said the preface to this embodiment of falsehood,

“that this little work, if universally diffused, will do more, by its

unaffected simplicity, in deterring Protestant parents from educating

their daughters in Catholic nunneries than could the most labored and

learned discourses on the dangers of Popery.” Though the book was

replete with stupid fabrications and silly blunders, so grossly had

the popular taste been perverted that fifty thousand copies were sold

within a year after its publication. The demand was still increasing,

when another contribution to Protestant literature appeared, before the

broad, disgusting, and obscene fabrications of which the mendacity of

“Sister Mary Agnes” paled its ineffectual fires. This latter candidate

for popular favor, though it bore the name, destined for an immortality

of infamy, of Maria Monk--a notoriously dissolute woman--was actually

compiled by a few needy and unscrupulous adventurers, reverend and

irreverend, who found a distinguished Methodist publishing house, not

quite so needy, though still more unscrupulous, to publish the work for

them, though very shame compelled even them to withhold their names from

the publication. And it was only owing to a legal suit arising from this

infamous transaction many years after that the fact was revealed that the

publishers of this vilest of assaults on one of the holiest institutions

of the Catholic Church was the firm of Harper Brothers. True to their

character, they saw that the times were favorable for an assault on

Catholicity, even so vile as this one; and true to their nature again,

they refused to their wretched accomplice her adequate share in the wages

of sin. Though bearing on its face all the evidences of diabolical malice

and falsehood, condemned by the better portion of the press and by all

reputable Protestants, the work had an unparalleled sale for some time.

The demand might have continued to go on increasing indefinitely, but,

in an evil hour for the speculators, its authors, under the impression

that the prurient taste of the public was not sufficiently satiated with

imaginary horrors, issued a continuation under the title of _Additional

Awful Disclosures_. This composition proved an efficient antidote to

the malignant poison of the first. Its impurity and falsehoods were so

palpable that its originators were glad to slink into obscurity and their

patrons into silence, followed by the contempt of all honest men.

Just ten years after the Charlestown outrage the spirit of Protestant

persecution began to revive. Premonitory symptoms of political

proscription appeared in 1842, in the constitutional conventions of Rhode

Island and Louisiana, and in the local legislatures of other States; but

it was not till the early part of 1844 that it became evident that secret

measures were being taken to arouse the dormant feeling of antipathy to

the rights of Catholics, so rife in the hearts of the ignorant Protestant

masses. New York, at first, was the principal seat of the disorder.

Most of the newspapers of that period teemed with eulogistic reviews of

books written against the faith; cheap periodicals, such as the Rev. Mr.

Sparry’s _American Anti-Papist_, were thrust into the hands of all who

would read them by the agents of the Bible and proselytizing societies;

and a cohort of what were called anti-papal lecturers, of which a

reverend individual named Cheever was the leader, was employed to attack

the Catholic Church with every conceivable weapon that the arsenal of

Protestantism afforded.

The popular mind being thus prepared for a change, the various elements

of political and social life opposed to Catholicity were crystallized

into the “American Republican” party, better known as the Native

Americans. On the 19th of March, 1844, the new faction nominated James

Harper for mayor of the city of New York, and about the same time William

Rockwell was named for a similar office in Brooklyn. The platform upon

which these gentlemen stood was simple but comprehensive: the retention

of the Protestant Bible and Protestant books in the public schools;

the exclusion of Catholics of all nationalities from office; and the

amendment of the naturalization laws so as to extend the probationary

term of citizenship to twenty-one years. The canvass in New York was

conducted with some regard to decency; but in the sister city, the

Nativists threw off all respect for law, their processions invaded the

districts inhabited mainly by adopted citizens, assailed all who did

not sympathize with them, and riot and bloodshed were the consequence.

In Brooklyn the Nativist candidate was defeated, but Harper was elected

triumphantly by about twenty-four thousand votes. The ballots that placed

such a man at the head of the municipality of the American metropolis

were deposited by both Whigs and Democrats, though each party had a

candidate in the field. The former contributed upwards of fourteen

thousand, or three-fourths of their strength; their opponents somewhat

less than ten thousand.

But the action of the city politicians was quickly repudiated and

condemned throughout the State. On the 13th of April the Whigs assembled

in Albany and passed a series of resolutions denouncing in unequivocal

terms the tenets of the Native Americans; and in two days after, at the

same place, and in, if possible, a more forcible manner, the Democracy

entered their protest against the heresies and evil tendencies of the

persecuting faction. Still, the “American Republicans” showed such

signs of popular strength in various municipal elections that year

that the lower classes of politicians, of all shades of opinion, who

dared not openly support them, were suspected of secretly courting

their friendship. The nomination of Frelinghuysen with Henry Clay at

the Whig presidential convention of May 1, 1844, was well understood at

the time to be a bid for Nativist support, and eventually defeated the

distinguished Kentucky orator.

It is difficult to imagine how far the madness of the hour might have

carried ambitious political leaders and timid conventions, had not the

scenes of sacrilege and murder which soon after disgraced the city of

Philadelphia, and stained its streets with innocent blood, sent a thrill

of horror throughout the entire country.

Philadelphia had followed, if not anticipated, the example of New York

in sowing broadcast the seeds of civil strife. Early in the year secret

Nativist societies were formed; sensational preachers like Tyng, in and

out of place, harangued congregations and meetings; cheap newspapers were

started for the sole purpose of vilifying Catholics and working upon the

baser passions of the sectarian population of the country. The motives

of those engineers of discord were the same as those of their New York

brethren, and their method of attack equally treacherous and cowardly.

One of the principal charges against their Catholic fellow-citizens was

that they were hostile to free schools and education generally. To this

unjust aspersion Bishop Kenrick, on the 12th of March, publicly replied

in a short but lucid letter, in which he said:

“Catholics have not asked that the Bible be excluded from the public

schools. They have merely desired for their children the liberty of using

the Catholic version, in case the reading of the Bible be prescribed by

the controllers or directors of the schools. They only desire to enjoy

the benefit of the constitution of the State of Pennsylvania, which

guarantees the rights of conscience and precludes any preference of

sectarian modes of worship. They ask that the school laws be faithfully

executed, and that the religious predilections of the parents be

respected.… They desire that the public schools be preserved from all

sectarian influence, and that education be conducted in a way that may

enable all citizens equally to share its benefits, without any violence

being offered to their conscientious convictions.”

So deliberate and emphatic a denial had no effect on the wretched men who

tyrannized over the second city in the Union, except that it was resolved

to substitute brute force for reason, and to precipitate a collision

with their comparatively weak victims. Accordingly, on the 5th of May, a

Nativist meeting was held in Kensington. The design of the managers of

the meeting was evidently to provoke an attack; for, finding the place

first selected for the gathering unmolested, they deliberately moved to

the market-house, in the actual presence of several adopted citizens.

This trick and the insulting speeches that followed had the desired

effect. A riot took place, several shots were fired on both sides, and

four or five persons were more or less seriously wounded. The Nativists

retreated, and made an unsuccessful attempt to burn a nunnery.

The most exaggerated reports of this affair were immediately circulated

through Philadelphia. The next day the Nativists, fully armed, assembled

and passed a series of resolutions of the most violent character.

Preceded by an American flag, which bore an inscription as malicious as

it was untrue, they attacked the Hibernian Hose Company, destroyed the

apparatus, and broke the fire-bell in pieces. Twenty-nine dwellings were

burned to the ground, their hapless occupants, mostly women and children,

fleeing in all directions amid the insults and shots of their savage

assailants. The citizens were now thoroughly aroused, the military, under

Gen. Cadwalader, was called out, and Bishop Kenrick addressed a public

admonition to his flock to preserve peace, and, notwithstanding the

provocation, to exercise forbearance. But the demon of fanaticism, once

let loose, could not be easily laid. Rioting continued throughout the day

and far into the night. Early on Wednesday morning S. Michael’s Church,

the female seminary attached to it, and a number of private houses in the

neighborhood were ruthlessly plundered and destroyed. “During the burning

of the church,” said one of the Philadelphia papers, “the mob continued

to shout; and when the cross at the peak of the roof fell, they gave

three cheers and a drum and fife played the ‘Boyne Water.’”

The burning of S. Augustine’s Church took place on the evening of the

same day. This building, one of the finest in the city, was peculiarly

endeared to the Catholic inhabitants as having been one of their oldest

churches in Philadelphia. Many of the contributors to its building fund

were men of historic fame, such as Washington, Montgomery, Barry, Meade,

Carey, and Girard. It had adjoining it extensive school-houses and a

commodious parsonage, and the clock in its tower was the one which had

struck the first tones of new-born American liberty. But the sacred

character of the building itself, and the patriotic memories which

surrounded it, could not save it from the torch of the Philadelphia mob.

“The clock struck ten,” wrote an eye-witness, “while the fire was raging

with the greatest fury. At twenty minutes past ten the cross which

surmounted the steeple, and which remained unhurt, fell with a loud

crash, amid the plaudits of a large portion of the spectators.” A very

valuable library and several splendid paintings shared the fate of the

church.

But bad as was the conduct of the rioters, that of the authorities was

even worse. The militia, when ordered out, did not muster for several

hours after the time appointed, and when they did arrive they were only

passive, if not gratified, spectators of the lawless scenes before them.

When S. Michael’s was threatened, the pastor, Rev. Mr. Donohue, placed

it under the charge of Capt. Fairlamb, giving him the keys; yet the mob

was allowed to wreak its vengeance on it undisturbed. The basement of

S. Augustine’s was occupied by some armed men who had resolved to defend

it at all hazards; but on the assurance of Mayor Scott and the sheriff

that they had troops and police enough to protect it, it was agreed, in

the interests of peace, to evacuate it. This had scarcely been done when

the militia and civic guard fell back before a thousand or more armed

ruffians and left the church to its fate. For nearly sixty hours the

rioters were left in undisputed possession of the city; everything the

Catholics held sacred was violated; men were dragged out of their homes,

half-hanged and brutally maltreated, when not murdered outright; the

houses of adopted citizens were everywhere plundered, an immense amount

of property was destroyed, and over two hundred families left desolate

and homeless, without the slightest attempt being made to enforce the

law. How many fell victims to Nativist hate and rage on this occasion has

never been known, but the killed and wounded were counted by scores.

An attempt to outrival Philadelphia in atrocity was made in New York

a few days after, but the precautionary steps of the authorities, the

firm attitude assumed by the late Archbishop Hughes, and the resolute

stand taken by the Catholic population, headed by Eugene Casserly--who

was at that time editor of the _Freeman’s Journal_--together with some

young Irish-American Catholic gentlemen, so impressed the leaders of

the Nativists that all attempts of an incendiary nature, and all public

efforts to sympathize with the Philadelphia mob, were abandoned. Nativism

staggered under the blow given it by its adherents in Philadelphia, and

soon sank into utter insignificance as a political power.

Another decade, however, passed, and we find it again rejuvenated.

This time it assumed the name of the Know-nothing party, and extended

its ramifications through every State in the Union. Its declaration of

principles contained sixteen clauses, as laid down by its organs, of

which the following were regarded as the most vital: 1st. The repeal of

all naturalization laws. 2d. None but native Americans for office. 3d.

A Protestant common-school system. 4th. Perpetual war on “Romanism.”

5th. Opposition to the formation of military companies composed of

“foreigners.” 6th. Stringent laws against immigration. 7th. Ample

protection to Protestant interests. Though partly directed, apparently,

against all persons of foreign birth, this new secret society was

actually only opposed to Catholics; for many of the prominent members

in its lodges were Irish Orangemen and Welsh, Scotch, and English

unnaturalized adventurers who professed no form of belief.

Like their predecessors of 1844, the Know-nothings employed a host of

mendacious ministers and subsidized a number of obscure newspapers to

circulate their slanders against Catholics, native as well as adopted

citizens; but they also added a new feature to the crusade against

morality and civil rights. This was street-preaching--a device for

creating riots and bloodshed, for provoking quarrels and setting neighbor

against neighbor, worthy the fiend of darkness himself. Wretched

creatures, drawn from the very dregs of society, were hired to travel

from town to town, to post themselves at conspicuous street-corners,

if possible before Catholic churches, and to pour forth, in ribald and

blasphemous language, the most unheard-of slanders against the church.

As those outcasts generally attracted a crowd of idle persons, and were

usually sustained by the presence of the members of the local lodge, the

merest interruption of their foul diatribes was the signal for a riot,

ending not unfrequently in loss of life or limb.

The first outrage that marked the career of the Know-nothings of 1854

was the attack on the Convent of Mercy, Providence, R. L., in April of

that year. Instigated by the newspaper attacks of a notorious criminal,

who then figured as a Nativist leader, the rowdy elements of that

usually quiet city surrounded the convent, pelted the doors and windows

with stones, to the great alarm of the ladies and pupils within, and

would doubtless have proceeded to extremities were it not that the

Catholics, fearing a repetition of the Charlestown affair, rallied for

its protection and repeatedly drove them off. In June Brooklyn was the

scene of some street-preaching riots, but in the following August St.

Louis, founded by Catholics and up to that time enjoying an enviable

reputation for refinement and love of order, acquired a pre-eminence in

the Southwest for ferocious bigotry. For two days, August 7 and 8, riot

reigned supreme in that city; ten persons were shot down in the streets,

many more were seriously wounded, and a number of the houses of Catholics

were wrecked.

On the 3d of September of the same year the American Protestant

Association of New York, an auxiliary of the Know-nothings, composed

of Orangemen, went to Newark, N. J., to join with similar lodges of New

Jersey in some celebration. In marching through the streets of that

city they happened to pass the German Catholic church, and, being in a

sportive mood, they did not hesitate to attack it. A _mêlée_ occurred,

during which one man, a Catholic, was killed and several were seriously

injured. The evidence taken by the coroner’s jury showed that the

admirers of King William were well armed, generally intoxicated, and that

the assault and partial destruction of the church were altogether wanton

and unprovoked. Early in the same month news was received of a succession

of riots in New Orleans, the victims, as usual, being Catholics.

But the spirit of terrorism was not confined to one section or particular

State. The virus of bigotry had inoculated the whole body politic. In

October people of all shades of religious opinion were astounded to hear

from Maine that the Rev. John Bapst, S. J., a clergyman of exemplary

piety and mildness, had actually been dragged forcibly from the house

of a friend by a drunken Ellsworth mob, ridden on a rail, stripped

naked, tarred and feathered, and left for dead. His money and watch were

likewise stolen by the miscreants. Father Bapst’s crime was that, when

a resident of Ellsworth some time previously, he had entered into a

controversy about public schools.

Yet, in the face of all these lawless proceedings, the Know-nothing

party increased with amazing rapidity. “Without presses, without

electioneering,” said the New York _Times_, “with no prestige or power,

it has completely overthrown and swamped the two old historic parties

of the country.” This was certainly true of New England, and notably

so of Massachusetts, where, in the autumn of 1854, the Know-nothings

elected their candidate for governor and nearly every member of the

legislature. In the State of New York Ullman, the standard-bearer of

the new army of persecution, received over 122,000 votes, and, though

defeated in the city, it was more than suspected that the Democrat who

was chosen as mayor had been a member of the organization. In many other

States and cities the power of the sworn secret combination was felt and

acknowledged.

Its influence and unseen grasp on the passions and prejudices of the

lower classes of Protestants were plainly perceptible in the halls of

Congress and in the executive cabinet. In the Senate William H. Seward

was the first and foremost to denounce the so-called American party. As

early as July, 1854, in a speech on the Homestead Bill, he took occasion

to remark:

“It is sufficient for me to say that, in my judgment, everything is

un-American which makes a distinction, of whatever kind, in this country

between the native-born American and him whose lot is directed to be cast

here by an over-ruling Providence, and who renounces his allegiance to a

foreign land and swears fealty to the country which adopts him.”

The example of the great statesman was followed by such men as Douglas,

Cass, Keitt, Chandler, and Seymour, while Senators Dayton and Houston,

Wilson, the late Vice-President, N. P. Banks, and a number of other

politicians championed the cause of intolerance as has since been

confessed, for their own selfish aggrandizement as much as from inherent

littleness of soul.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts was completely controlled by the Know-nothings.

Their governor, Gardiner, had not been well in the chair of state when

he disbanded all the Irish military companies within his jurisdiction.

These were the Columbian, Webster, Shields, and Sarsfield Guards of

Boston, the Jackson Musketeers of Lowell, the Union Guard of Lawrence,

and the Jackson Guard of Worcester. The General Court, too, not to be

outdone in bigotry by the executive, passed a law for the inspection of

nunneries, convents, and schools, and appointed a committee to carry

out its provisions. The first--and last--domiciliary visit of this body

was made to the school of the Sisters of Notre Dame in Roxbury. It is

thus graphically described by the Boston _Advertiser_, an eminently

Protestant authority: “The gentlemen--we presume we must call members of

the legislature by this name--roamed over the whole house from attic to

cellar. No chamber, no passage, no closet, no cupboard, escaped their

vigilant search. No part of the house was enough protected by respect for

the common courtesies of civilized life to be spared in the examination.

The ladies’ dresses hanging in their wardrobes were tossed over. The

party invaded the chapel, and showed their respect--as Protestants, we

presume--for the One God whom all Christians worship by talking loudly

with their hats on; while the ladies shrank in terror at the desecration

of a spot which they believed hallowed.”

Still, the work of proscription and outrage went on in other directions.

Fifteen school-teachers had been dismissed in Philadelphia because

they were Catholics; the Rev. F. Nachon, of Mobile, was assaulted and

nearly killed while pursuing his sacred avocations; a military company

in Cincinnati, and another in Milwaukee, composed of adopted citizens,

were disbanded, and on the 6th and 7th of August, 1855, the streets of

Louisville ran red with the blood of adopted citizens. In this last and

culminating Know-nothing outrage eleven hundred voters were driven from

the polls, numbers of men, and even women, were shot down in the public

thoroughfares, houses were sacked and burned, and at least five persons

are known to have been literally roasted alive.

A reaction, however, had already set in. Men of moderate views and

unbiassed judgments began to tire of the scenes of strife, murder, and

rapine that accompanied the victories of the Know-nothings. The first

to deal it a deadly blow, as a political body, was Henry A. Wise, of

Virginia, in his noble canvass of that State against the combined Whig

and Nativist elements in 1855; and to the late Archbishop of New York,

in his utter discomfiture of State Senator Brooks, is justly due the

merit of having first convinced the American people that the so-called

American party was actually the most dangerous enemy of American laws and

institutions, the advocate of spoliation and persecution under the guise

of patriotism and reform.

The decline of Nativism, though not so rapid as its growth, was equally

significant, and its history as instructive. In 1856 a national

convention was called by the wreck of the party to nominate Fillmore for

the presidency, after overtures had been made in vain to the Republicans

and Democrats. Fillmore was so badly defeated that he retired into

private life and lost whatever little fame he had acquired in national

affairs as Taylor’s successor. Four years later Bell and Everett appeared

on the Know-nothing ticket, but so far behind were they in the race with

their presidential competitors that very few persons cared to remember

the paucity of their votes. Gradually, silently, but steadily, like

vermin from a sinking ship, the leaders slunk away from the already

doomed faction, and, by a hypocritical display of zeal, endeavored to

obtain recognition in one or other of the great parties, but generally

without success. Disappointed ambition, impotent rage, and, let us hope,

remorse of conscience occasionally seized upon them, and the charity of

silence became to them the most desired of blessings. Perhaps if the late

civil war had not occurred, to swallow in the immensity of its operations

all minor interests, we might have beheld in 1864 the spectre of Nativism

arising from its uneasy slumber, to be again subjected to its periodical

blights and curses.

From present appearances many far-seeing persons apprehend the recurrence

in this year of the wild exhibitions of anti-Catholic and anti-American

fanaticism which have so often blotted and blurred the otherwise

stainless pages of our short history; that the centennial year of

American independence and republican liberty is to be signalized by a

more concerted, better organized, and more ramified attack on the great

principles of civil and religious freedom which underlie and sustain

the fabric of our government. We trust, sincerely hope, that these men

are mistaken. But if such is to be the case; if we Catholics are doomed

once more to be subjected to the abuse of the vile, the slander of the

hireling, and the violence of an armed mob, the sooner we are prepared

for the contingency the better. If the scenes which have indelibly

disgraced Boston and Philadelphia, Ellsworth and Louisville, are to be

again rehearsed by the half-dozen sworn secret societies whose cabalistic

letters disfigure the columns of so many of our newspapers, we must be

prepared to meet the danger with firmness and composure. As Catholics,

demanding nothing but what is justly our due under the laws, our position

will ever be one of forbearance, charity, and conciliation; but as

American citizens, proud of our country and zealous for the maintenance

of her institutions, our place shall be beside the executors of those

grand enactments which have made this republic the paragon and exemplar

of all civil and natural virtues, no matter how imminent the danger or

how great the sacrifice. In lands less favored Catholic rights may be

violated by prince or mob with impunity, but we would be unworthy of

our country and of its founders were we to shrink for a moment from the

performance of our trust as the custodians of the fundamental ordinance

which guarantees full and absolute religious liberty to all citizens of

the republic.

LOUISE LATEAU BEFORE THE BELGIAN ROYAL ACADEMY OF MEDICINE.[260]

I.

How is the name of Louise Lateau to be mentioned without immediately

calling up all the tumulta which that name has provoked? Books of science

and philosophy, official reports, academic discourses, reports of visits,

_feuilletons_, conferences, pamphlets, articles in journals, every kind

of literary production has been placed under contribution to keep the

public informed about the _stigmatisée_ of Bois d’Haine. For a year,

however, these studies have betaken themselves to a region that might be

called exclusively scientific, and have even received a kind of official

consecration from the recent vote of the Royal Academy of Medicine.

It may be of service to the reader who cannot occupy himself with

special studies to give a brief exposition of the affair of Bois d’Haine

in itself, to show the different interpretations of it that have been

attempted, and to indicate clearly the actual phase of the question from

a scientific point of view.

As early as about the middle of 1868 vague rumors were heard of strange

events which were taking place in a little village of Hainault. Every

Friday a young girl showed on the different portions of her body

corresponding to the wounds of our Saviour Jesus Christ red stains from

which blood flowed in greater or less abundance. It was also said that on

every Friday this young girl, ravished in ecstasy, remained for several

hours completely unconscious of all that was passing around her. Such

were the principal facts. Over and above these rumor spread the story of

certain accessory incidents, some of which, though true, were distorted,

while others were pure fancy. Thanks to the daily press, the young girl

soon became known to the general public, and the name of Louise Lateau

passed from mouth to mouth. Here and there one read among “current

events” that large crowds rushed from all sides, from Belgium and from

without, to assist every Friday at the scenes which were being enacted in

the chamber at Bois d’Haine. Some journals profited by the occasion to

deliver themselves anew of declamations against “Catholic superstitions,

the stupidity of the masses, and the intriguing character of the clergy”;

while even many men of good faith were of opinion that the story told of

Louise Lateau might indeed be true, but ought to be attributed to some

trickery or another of which either the girl or her family was culpable.

Happily for the public, a light came to clear up this chaos of versions,

suppositions, and diverse and contradictory opinions. The _Revue

Catholique_ of Louvain reproduced by instalments, beginning in 1869, a

study by Prof. Lefebvre on these extraordinary events. Some time after,

this study appeared in the form of a volume. Here is how the eminent

physician expresses himself on the origin of his study:

“The story told by the first witnesses of these extraordinary

events produced a lively emotion in the public mind, and soon

crowds assembled every week around the humble house which was

their theatre. The ecclesiastical authorities took up the

facts. This was their right and duty. From the very beginning

they recognized that the different elements of the question

ought to pass through the crucible of science. The periodic

hemorrhage and the suspension of the exercise of the senses

were within the competence of physicians. I was asked to study

them, the desire being expressed that the examination of these

facts should be of the most thorough description, and that they

should not be allowed to escape any one of the exigencies and

severities of modern science.… I deemed it right, therefore,

to accept the mission which was offered me. As a physician, I

was only asked for what I could give--that is to say, a purely

medical study of the facts.”[261]

After having examined the events of Bois d’Haine in all their phases;

after having put to the proof the sincerity of the young girl in a

thousand different ways and by means of a variety of tests, the eminent

Louvain professor pronounced the facts of the stigmatization and ecstasy

to be real and free from deception. Passing, then, to the interpretation

of the events themselves, the author thus concludes:

“Studying first the question of hemorrhage, I have demonstrated

that the periodic bleedings of Louise Lateau belong to no

species of hemorrhage admitted in the regular range of science;

that they cannot be assimilated to any of the extraordinary

cases recorded in the annals of medicine; that, in fine, the

laws of physiology do not afford an explanation of their

genesis. Coming next to the question of ecstasy, I have

carefully gone over the characters of the standard nervous

affections which could offer certain traits of a resemblance,

however remote, to the ecstasy of Louise Lateau, and I believe

I have demonstrated that it is impossible to connect it with

any of the nervous affections known to-day. I have penetrated

the domain of occult sciences; those dark doctrines have

furnished us with no more data for an interpretation of the

events of Bois d’Haine than the free sciences which expand in

the full light of day.”

I do not hesitate to say that the appearance of this book was a

veritable event, and that it marked an important halting-place in the

study of the question of Louise Lateau. By those who knew the calm and

reflective spirit of M. Lefebvre, and the independence of his character

and convictions, the fact of the real existence of the extraordinary

events taking place at Bois d’Haine was no longer called in question;

and if some doubt still remained, it regarded only the sense in which

those events were to be interpreted. Was it, then, true that the union of

stigmata and ecstasies belonged to no known malady? Was it true that they

could find no place in the classification of diseases, under a new title,

with physiological proofs to accompany them?

Notwithstanding the immense credit allowed to the science of M. Lefebvre,

doubt still hovered around this question, and I make bold to say, in the

honor of the progress of science, that such doubt was legitimate. A loyal

appeal was made to the _savants_ of the country and of foreign countries,

urging them to go and study the facts at Bois d’Haine and publish their

opinion. Soon a study on Louise Lateau, made by a French physician,[262]

came to confirm still further the medical study of M. Lefebvre. Then a

German _savant_, M. Virchow, seemed to accept as true the conclusions of

the Belgian doctor by that famous phrase that the events of Bois d’Haine

must be considered either as a trick or as a miracle.

Meanwhile, certain persons seemed still reluctant to accept facts

which a hundred different witnesses affirmed in the face of the world.

Among the reluctant are to be ranked, first of all, those who are of

bad faith--with whom there is no reason to trouble; others who, for

philosophic motives, seemed to accuse the witnesses of those scenes

of sacrificing the interest of science to that of their religious

convictions. Nevertheless, M. Lefebvre’s book continued to make headway.

I do not say that it did not meet with some attacks here and there, and

certain objections in detail; but throughout the country no publication

of any pretension to seriousness affected either to deny the facts or to

give a natural explanation of them. This state of things continued up

to July, 1874. At this epoch Dr. Charbonnier, a physician of Brussels,

presented to the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine a work entitled

_Maladies et facultés diverses des mystiques. Louise Lateau._

M. Boëns, on his part, submitted to the same learned body, in the session

of October 3, 1874, a new production, entitled _Louise Lateau, ou les

mystères de Bois d’Haine dévoilés_.

II.

The events of Bois d’Haine continued to occupy public attention.

The scenes of the stigmatic flows of blood and of the ecstasies were

presented every Friday. It was even stated that from the middle of 1871

Louise Lateau had taken no sort of nourishment. The Belgian Royal Academy

of Medicine, whether because it dreaded to enter upon a question which

involved, beyond the scientific side, a side purely philosophic, or

whether also because a fitting and favorable opportunity of taking up

the question of Louise Lateau was not presented, remained mute as to the

events of Bois d’Haine.

The almost simultaneous presentation of two works treating on the very

subject indicated clearly that the question was ripe. Moreover, in the

session of October 3, 1874, the chief medical body of the country,

conformably with usage, appointed a special committee to make a report on

the works read in its sessions. This committee consisted of MM. Fossion,

president; Mascart and Warlomont, colleagues.

The important report of the committee was read in the session of the 13th

of February by M. Warlomont. That gentleman to show how the study of M.

Charbonnier’s work necessitated an examination into the affair at Bois

d’Haine, said:

“Ought the committee to confine itself to examining the

memorial placed before it from the simple point of view of

its absolute scientific value, without occupying itself with

the fact which gives occasion for the memorial? It would be

easier to do so, perhaps, but an opportunity would thus be

neglected of putting the Academy in possession of an actual

medical observation, as complete as possible, relative to a

fact of which, whether we like it or not, the discussion can no

longer be eluded. It assumed, therefore the task of inquiring

into the affair forthwith; resolved, however arduous might be

the mission thus undertaken, to accept it without regret, to

pursue it without weakness as without bias, and to set before

the society such elements as its investigation--one altogether

official--should have procured. This is the trust which, in its

name, I this day fulfil.”[263]

MM. Charbonnier and Boëns were the first in our country who undertook to

find fault with the conclusions of M. Lefebvre’s book, and to explain by

scientific data the events of Bois d’Haine. M. Boëns, almost immediately

after the reading of a portion of his work, withdrew it, and was able

by this means to escape the report of the committee. Was this disdain

for the judgment of his _confrères_ on the part of the distinguished

physician of Charleroi, or was it want of confidence in the solidity of

his own arguments? I know not. I state a fact and continue.

There remained, then, for the committee to examine the work of M.

Charbonnier. This memoir is voluminous. The theory of the author is

substantially as follows: The absence of aliment and the concentration of

the faculties of the soul towards one object have been the primary and

indispensable conditions of ecstasies and stigmata. As far as abstinence

is concerned, it is perfectly compatible, if not with a state of health,

at least with the maintenance of life. “The question of abstinence,” says

the author, “is the most important, because without it nothing happens.

It being well explained, there is no longer anything supernatural in any

of the physiological and pathological phenomena of the mystics.”[264]

But how is this abstinence compatible with life? By the law of the

substitution of functions and organs.

“The organs,” says the author, “are conjointly associated (_solidaires_)

one with another, working for the common health; so that when an organ,

for one cause or another, cannot adequately fulfil its functions, another

immediately supplies its place.”

Supposing all this admitted, here is what the author says of

stigmatization:

“Abstinence and contemplation are the causes of stigmatization:

i. Abstinence, in suppressing the vegetative functions, frees

both the nervous influx and the blood which were distributed

among the digestive organs. 2. Contemplation gathers together

the contingent of pain dispersed through all the body, to fix

and concentrate it on certain points which it sees, admires,

loves, in Jesus Christ. It suppresses all the functions of

the life of relation to devote itself exclusively to the

object of its passion. The bloody flux, which has been drawn

to the surface of the skin by the great functional activity,

follows to the end the nervous influx which is constantly

directed towards certain points, and the stigmatization is

effected.”[265]

Of the ecstasy, according to M. Charbonnier, “abstinence is the

principal, contemplation the secondary, cause.” We cannot, indeed, enter

into all the details furnished by the author of this strange theory. In

order to arrive at a judgment regarding it, we know of nothing better

than to cite the conclusions of the reader of the report on the work

itself:

“All this,” says M. Warlomont, “forms a whole which must have

cost the author long and laborious research. As far as the

inquiries of physiology are concerned, the source, respectable

though it may be, on which he has relied, must be a cause for

regret. His principal, almost his only, authority is that of

Longet, who is now many years dead. But the questions relative

to nutrition--those precisely which are at stake--have, since

Longet, been placed in an absolutely new light. The work which

we have just analyzed is altogether a work of the imagination.

The demonstration of the _à priori_ thesis which the author

has set up he has pursued by every means, clearing out of

his road the obstacles of nature which embarrass it, and

creating at will new functions whereon to apply his organs;

all this written in a lively, imaginative style, and bearing

the impress of conviction. There is only one thing which is

sadly wanting--experimental proof. A few simple experiments on

animals, logically carried out, would have informed him how

they withstand a progressive abstinence, and what changes this

abstinence effects in their organs and functions. It is to be

regretted that he has not instituted these experiments.”[266]

If the theory advanced by M. Charbonnier, based on such doubtful

physiological facts, finds no weight with the learned representative

of the Academy of Medicine, it is not because he himself admits the

conclusions arrived at in the study of M. Lefebvre on Louise Lateau.

For him, indeed, the events taking place at Bois d’Haine, apart from

the question of fasting, which has not been positively established, and

which, on that account, rightly passes beyond scientific discussion,[267]

are exempt from all fraud and deception. But let M. Warlomont himself

speak:

“After having analyzed,” he says, “the memoir which the

Academy has confided to our examination, and having refuted it

principally in the portions which concern Louise Lateau, it

remains for us in our turn to give our own ideas relative to

a fact of such interest which has formed the subject of the

memoir.

“And first of all, are the facts cited real? According to

our thinking, the simulation of the ecstasies is simply

impossible, accompanied as they are by functional troubles the

provocation for which would pass quite beyond the empire of the

will. As for the actual spontaneity of the stigmata, we have

demonstrated this experimentally.”

And now for the chief part of the report. It is that in which the learned

academician attempts to give a physiological explanation of the facts.

For him ecstasies are a species of double life, of a second condition,

such as may be presented in ordinary and extraordinary nervous states, as

well as in others: (_a_) in consequence of material injury to the brain;

(_b_) during the existence of well-determined neurotic disorders; (_c_)

under the influence of certain special appliances (magnetism, hypnotism);

(_d_) spontaneously, without the intervention of any external provocation

(as somnambulism or extraordinary neurotic affections).

After having examined each of these points in detail, the author thus

continues:

“This point established, what of ecstasies? Well, whatever

we may do, it is impossible for us not to class them in the

same order of facts, not to see in them the influence of a

neurotic perturbation analogous to that which controls neurotic

diseases. It is in both cases the passage of a human being into

a state of second condition, characterized by the suspension,

more or less complete, of the exercise of the senses, with a

special concentration of all the cerebral powers towards a

limited object. Among the ecstatics, as among the hypnotics,

there prevails a perturbation, diminution, or abolition of

external sensibility. All is concentrated in a new cerebral

functional department.”

So far for the ecstasies. Passing next to the production of stigmata,

the report admits in principle the theory of Alfred Maury. That is to

say, the imagination plays the principal _rôle_ in the production of

these phenomena. But to meet the brilliant member of the Institute, he

calls to his aid the physiological laws and most recent discoveries,

in order to show how the imagination can, by the irritation of certain

given parts, provoke a veritable congestion of those parts, and then a

hemorrhage.

“In virtue of what mechanism,” he asks, “are blisters first

produced, and bleeding afterwards? We have established the

genesis of stigmatic angiomata.[268] The attention has given

place to pain, and pain to repeated touchings; from this

proceeds the congestion which has brought on the arrest of

the blood in the capillaries, and, as a consequence, their

enlargement. Then comes the rush of blood, giving place to

congestive motions, determined by a hemorrhagic diathesis, and

the phenomena disclose themselves in all their simplicity;

the leucocytes[269] will pass across the capillaries, will

discharge themselves under the skin, and the blister is the

result. The accumulation of blood continuing in proportion to

the enlargement of the capillaries, the fleshly tegument will

end by bursting; then the blood itself, whether by traversing

the channels created by the previous passage of the leucocytes,

or by the rupture of the vessels, the likelihood of which can

be sustained, ends by an external eruption, and the hemorrhage

follows.”

But M. Warlomont goes still farther. He says that not only are stigmata

and ecstasies capable of explanation when taken apart from one another,

but that by their union they constitute what in pathology is called

aggregate of symptoms. According to this, stigmata and ecstasies would

constitute an altogether unique morbid state, to which the professor

gives the following name and definition: “Stigmatic neuropathy is a

nervous disease, having its seat in the base of the _medulla oblongata_,

the first stage of which consists in the paralysis of the vaso-motor

centre, and the second in its excitation.” Presented in this way, the

report of the distinguished member of the Academy was not only a report,

but a veritable original work. Thus this book, wherein the author had

joined loyalty of procedure to elegance of style and deep erudition,

produced a profound sensation. The theory which he advances might

well leave certain doubts with the reader relative to the solidity of

the bases on which it leans, but by its method it exercised a real

fascination on the mind. M. Warlomont’s conclusions were, as far as the

interpretation of the facts went, diametrically opposed to those of the

book which M. Lefebvre had published several years before, and it was not

without a very great curiosity that the public awaited the reply of the

latter.

The reply was not long in coming. M. Lefebvre’s discourse occupied, so

to say, exclusively the sessions of May 29 and June 26. After having

rendered due homage to the courtesy and science of the distinguished

reader of the report, the Louvain professor hesitated not to sustain the

first conclusions advanced in his book, and to demonstrate the small

foundation of the theory of his adversary on this question. It is to be

regretted that the limits at my disposal do not allow me to enter into

all the physiological details and pathological considerations on which

M. Lefebvre builds his conclusions. I regret it the more because the

brilliant words of the orator exercise a very special impression by the

clearness of their exposition, the logic of their reasoning, and the

exquisite charm which they give to even the driest questions.

First, as to the stigmatic hemorrhages, we cannot be astonished, after

having followed the proofs which the learned orator gives us, to find him

lay down the following conclusions:

“1. M. Warlomont is driven to admit a single vaso-motor centre;

the most recent researches are against this localization: the

vaso-motor centres are several and disseminated.

“2. The distinguished reader of the report constructs his

doctrine of the action of the imagination on a series of

hypotheses.

“The two chief ones are: that the imagination has the power,

every Friday morning, of completely paralyzing the vaso-motor

centre and the vaso-constrictor nerves; and after midday,

by a contradictory action, to excite violently this centre,

and consequently to close up the vaso-constrictors--pure

suppositions which have not only not been demonstrated by the

author, but which seem to me absolutely anti-physiological.

“3. Even admitting these hypotheses as well founded, it is an

established fact that the complete paralysis of the vaso-motor

centres and of the vaso-constrictor nerves is never followed

by bleeding on the surface of the skin; the experience of all

physiologists agrees on this point.

“4. This experience proves, on the contrary, that in such cases

there are sometimes produced suffusions of blood in the mucous

membranes; such suffusions never show themselves in Louise

Lateau.

“5. A series of hypotheses still more complicated than those

laid down as premises by the distinguished reader of the report

might be conceded--to wit, the paralysis of the arteries and

the simultaneous constriction of the veins. Experiment again

proves that even under these conditions bleeding on the surface

of the skin is not produced.

“6. M. Warlomont, in parting from the hypotheses which I

have just combated, admits that the bleeding produced by the

influence of the imagination is a bleeding by transudation.

But the characteristics of transudation, studied in the light

of modern physiology, are completely opposed to those of the

stigmatic bleeding of Louise Lateau.

“7. Finally--and this argument alone will suffice to overthrow

the thesis of the distinguished reader of the report--clinical

observation, in accordance with physiological induction, proves

that in circumstances where the imagination exercises its

greatest violence it never produces bleeding on the surface of

the skin.”

Regarding ecstasies, the orator, after having examined the different

states with which the reader of the report to the Academy compared the

ecstasies of Louise Lateau, concludes by saying:

“I believe I have demonstrated that the analysis of second

conditions, brought out with so much skill by the distinguished

gentleman, does not give the key to the ecstasy of Louise

Lateau. But, setting aside these states of nervous disease,

should not the imagination be made to bear all the burden of

the ecstasy, as it does of the stigmatization?”

After examining this question, the orator concludes in the negative. In

finishing his beautiful discourse he says:

“Our honorable colleague, in studying the causes of the

stigmatization and ecstasy, has given to them a physiological

interpretation. On this ground I have separated from him, and

I believe I have demonstrated that that interpretation is not

only insufficient, but also erroneous. I believed for a moment

that M. Warlomont was about to offer an acceptable scientific

theory. I do not say a theory complete and adequate--I am

not so exacting; I know too well that we do not know the all

of anything. If our eminent colleague had proposed to us a

physiological interpretation, satisfying the most moderate

demands of science, I should have accepted it, not with

resignation, but with joy and eagerness; and believe me,

gentlemen, my religious convictions would have suffered no

shock thereby.

“Our learned colleague, whom you have charged with examining

the events of Bois d’Haine, has not, then, in my opinion,

given to them their physiological interpretation. Other

physicians have attempted the same task; I name two of them,

because their works have been produced within these walls.

“First of all, Dr. Boëns. In withdrawing his memoir from the

order of the day of the Academy, he has withdrawn it from

our discussion. Nevertheless, I believe I am not severe in

affirming that the considerations which claimed his attention,

and the irony of which he has been so prodigal in my own

regard, have thrown but little light on the events of Bois

d’Haine. Dr. Charbonnier has submitted to your appreciation a

work of a more scientific character. M. Warlomont has examined

it with the attention which it deserves, and has refuted it. I

am thus dispensed from returning to it.

“I maintain, then, purely and simply, the conclusions of my

study: The stigmatization and the ecstasies of Louise Lateau

are real and true facts, and science has not furnished their

physiological interpretation.”

M. Crocq spoke after M. Lefebvre. Like M. Warlomont, the learned Brussels

professor believes that the interpretation of the facts positively

established about Louise Lateau belongs to pathological physiology. The

theory of M. Crocq differs but little from that of M. Warlomont. He

attaches more importance to abstinence than the learned reader of the

report, and thus comes nearer to M. Charbonnier; he believes, also, that

the bleeding is altogether caused by a rupture of the capillaries. Apart

from these small distinctions, it may be said of him, as of M. Warlomont,

that he is of opinion that the imagination, by its influence on the

nervous system, is the principal cause of the ecstasies and stigmata.

Here are the rest of his conclusions:

“I. The state of Louise Lateau is a complex pathological state,

characterized by the following facts:

“1. Anæmia and weakness of constitution, arising from

privations endured since childhood.

“2. Nervous exaltation produced by anæmia and directed in a

determined sense by the education and religious tendencies of

Louise.

“3. Ecstasies constituting the supreme degree of this

exaltation.

“4. Bleeding, having for its starting point anæmia and

exaltation of the vaso-motor nervous system.

“5. Relative abstinence, considerably exaggerated by the sick

girl, conformably to what is observed among many persons who

suffer from nervous disorders.

“II. This state offers nothing contrary to the laws of

pathological physiology; it is consequently useless to go

outside of that in search of explanation.

“III. It has the same characteristics as all the analogous

cases related by physicians and historians; mysticism

altogether, save cases of jugglery and mystification, ought to

enter into the province of pathology, which is vast enough to

contain it; and all the phenomena explain themselves perfectly

by taking as starting point the principles which I have laid

down.”

If we had to advance our own opinion on this important question, we

should say that, after the report in which M. Warlomont had treated his

subject with so much method and science, there remained few new arguments

which could be applied to the physiological theory of the phenomena of

mystics. It should be considered, however, no small advantage for the

latter physician to feel himself supported by M. Crocq, who had brought

to the debates the weight of his profound erudition and vast experience.

III.

By all impartial judges the case might be regarded as understood. It

was so in effect. The different orators who succeeded each other in the

tribune of the Academy had brought to their respective discourses the

strongest possible array of facts and of arguments. I shall astonish no

one, then, by saying that M. Warlomont could not allow the victorious

discourse of his colleague of Louvain to pass without some observations.

It is impossible for us here to give a _résumé_ of his discourse. In the

main it added no new proof to the substance of the debate, and confined

itself to the criticism of certain details.

It is enough for us to say that in this discourse the learned reader of

the report to the Academy gave new proof of the brilliancy of his mind

and the adroitness of his gifts.

M. Lefebvre, on his side, felt himself to be too much master of the

situation to need emphasizing his triumph any further. This is what he

did in the session of October 9, 1875. Without precisely entering into

the heart of the debate, he brought out more strongly certain of the

arguments which he had already used; he employed them to refute some of

the assertions made in the discourses of his adversaries, held up certain

inaccuracies, and concluded, as he had the right to do, by the following

words, which give an exact idea of the state of the question:

“Let us resume. M. Warlomont has studied with earnestness and

candor the events of Bois d’Haine. He has stated, as I have

done, the reality of the stigmatization and ecstasy; he has

demonstrated, as I have, that these phenomena are free from any

deception. M. Crocq, after having examined the facts on the

spot, has arrived at the same conclusions. The learned reader

of the committee’s report has built up a scientific theory of

the stigmatization and ecstasy; the eminent Brussels professor

has, in his turn, formulated an interpretation very nearly

approaching to that of M. Warlomont, but which differs from it,

nevertheless, on certain points. I have sought, on my side, a

physiological explanation of these extraordinary facts, and

I have arrived at the conclusion that science could furnish

no satisfactory interpretation of them. I have expounded at

length before the Academy the reasons which prevent me from

accepting the theories of my two honorable opponents; but my

position is perfectly correct. I confine myself to recognizing

my powerlessness to interpret the facts of Bois d’Haine. M.

Warlomont takes another attitude. He pretends that we have a

scientific explanation of these phenomena. We have not one--we

have had three or four; which is the true one? Is it that of M.

Boëns? Is it that of M. Charbonnier, to which, beyond doubt,

you attach some importance, since you have voted that it be

printed? Is it that of the learned reader of your report? Begin

by choosing. As for me, I hold fast to my first conclusions:

The facts of Bois d’Haine have not received a scientific

interpretation.”

After certain remarks made at the same session by MM. Vleminckx, Crocq,

Lefebvre, Masoin, Boëns, the general discussion closed. The printing

of M. Charbonnier’s memoir was decided on and a vote of thanks to the

author passed. With this should have ended the task of the Academy; and

those who had hoped for a physiological interpretation of the facts of

Bois d’Haine, as the outcome of these discussions, were in a position

to felicitate themselves on the result; for by its absolute silence the

Academy allowed a certain freedom of choice.

But during the session of July 10, 1875, which a family affliction

prevented M. Lefebvre from assisting at, two members proposed orders of

the day on the discussion of Bois d’Haine. Nevertheless, by a very proper

sentiment, which the distinguished president, M. Vleminckx, was the first

to advance, those orders of the day were not carried at that date.

That of M. Kuborn was thus conceived:

“The Academy, considering--

“That the phenomena really established about the young girl

of Bois d’Haine are not new and are explicable by the laws of

pathological physiology;

“That the prolonged abstinence which has been argued about has

not been observed by the committee;

“That no supervision, therefore, having been established, and

there having been no chance of establishing it, the proper

thing was not to pause on the consideration of this fact, but

to consider it as not having come up--

“The Academy follows its order of the day as far as concerns

the question of the stigmatization and exstasy.”

Here is the order of the day proposed by M. Crocq:

“The Academy, considering--

“That the phenomena established about Louise Lateau are not

beyond a physiological explanation;

“That those which are not established ought no longer to occupy

our attention--

“Declares the discussion closed, and passes to the order of the

day.”

The same resolutions, the small foundation for which, after the

discourses which had been made, every impartial mind ought to recognize,

were again brought up in the session of October 9.

M. Vleminckx, having induced the authors of the orders of the day to

modify their wording in such a manner as to render them acceptable, M.

Fossion proposed the following form, more soothing than its predecessors:

“The Royal Academy of Medicine declares that the case of Louise

Lateau has not been completely scrutinized and cannot serve

as a base for serious discussion; consequently, it closes the

discussion.”

M. Laussedat, after some preliminary remarks, finally proposed the order

of the day pure and simple, which was adopted.

The bearing of this vote will escape the mind of no one. In setting aside

the orders of the day which pretended that what had been positively

established in the question of Bois d’Haine might be solved by science,

the Academy has fully confirmed the conclusions of M. Lefebvre’s book.

Meanwhile, in ending, let us return to Bois d’Haine, to that young girl

who has become more than ever the object of the veneration of some, the

study of others, and the wonder of all.

Since 1868 Louise Lateau presents the phenomena weekly of the bloody

stigmata and the ecstasies, to which later on was added abstinence from

food.

Her first and chief historian, M. Lefebvre, after having watched the

young girl, affirms since 1869: She, whom a certain portion of the public

considers as a cheat or an invalid, really presents the phenomena which

are reported of her. These phenomena are exempt from trickery, and it is

impossible to explain them by the laws of physiology and pathology. We

omit the question of fasting, which remains to be studied.

Seven years after the appearance of the first phenomena, at the time when

the commotion which they produced had, so to say, reached its height, the

leading learned body in Belgium examined the mysterious scenes in the

humble house of Bois d’Haine, and, through MM. Crocq and Warlomont, made

an inquiry into the reality and sincerity of the facts, and brings in a

verdict that the facts are real and free from all fraud.

Finally, this same Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine, by its vote,

avows in the face of the world that, if it ought not to recognize a

supernatural cause in the facts about Louise Lateau, as little can it

demonstrate their natural origin and physiological genesis.

Such is the actual state of this extraordinary question.

ST. JEAN DE LUZ.

“Il s’imagine voir, avec Louis le Grand,

Philip Quatre qui s’avance

Dans l’Ile de la Conférence.”

--_La Fontaine._

Few towns are set in so lovely a frame as St. Jean de Luz, with its

incomparable variety of sea, mountain, river, and plain. In front is the

dark blue bay opening into the boundless sea. On the north are the cliffs

of Sainte Barbe. At the south are the Gothic donjon and massive jetty of

Socoa, behind which rises gradually a chain of mountains, one above the

other, from wooded or vine-covered hills, dotted here and there with the

red-and-white houses of the Basque peasantry and the summer residences

of the wealthy merchants of St. Jean de Luz, till we come to the outer

ramparts of La Rhune with its granite cliffs and sharp peaks, the Trois

Couronnes with their jagged outline, and still farther on a long, blue

line of mountains fading away into the azure sea. It is from La Rhune

you can best take in all the features of the country. To go to it you

use one of the modest barks that have replaced the sumptuous galleys of

Louis Quatorze, and ascend to Ascain, a pretty hamlet, from which the

summit of La Rhune is reached in two hours. It is not one of the highest

in the Pyrenean chain, being only three thousand feet above the sea, but

it is an isolated peak, and affords a diversified view of vast extent. To

the north are the green valleys of Labourd, with the steeples of thirty

parishes around; Bayonne, with the towers of its noble cathedral; and

the vast pine forests of the mysterious Landes. To the west is the coast

of Spain washed by the ocean. East and south are the mountains of Béarn

and Navarre, showing peak after peak, like a sea suddenly petrified in a

storm.

Such is the magnificent frame in which is set the historic town of St.

Jean de Luz. It is built on a tongue of land washed by the encroaching

sea on one hand and the river Nivelle on the other. The situation is

picturesque, the sky brilliant, the climate mild. It seems to need

nothing to make it attractive. The very aspect of decay lends it an

additional charm which renewed prosperity would destroy. The houses run

in long lines parallel with the two shores, looking, when the tide is

high, like so many ships at anchor. At the sight of this floating town

we are not surprised at its past commercial importance, or that its

inhabitants are navigators _par excellence_. Its sailors were the first

to explore the unknown seas of the west, and to fish for the cod and

whale among the icebergs of the arctic zone. In the first half of the

XVIIth century thirty ships, each manned by thirty-five or forty sailors,

left St. Jean de Luz for the cod-fisheries of Newfoundland, and as many

for Spitzbergen in search of whales. The oaks of La Rhune were cut down

for vessels. The town was wealthy and full of activity. Those were

the best days of ancient Lohitzun. But though once so renowned for its

fleets, it has fallen from the rank it then occupied. Ruined by wars, and

greatly depopulated by the current of events, its houses have decayed

one after another, or totally disappeared before the encroachments of

the sea. Reduced to a few quiet streets, it is the mere shadow of what

it once was. Instead of hundreds of vessels, only a fishing-smack or two

enliven its harbor. And yet there is a certain air of grandeur about

the place which bespeaks its past importance, and several houses which

harmonize with its historic memories. For St. Jean de Luz was not only a

place of commercial importance, but was visited by several of the kings

of France, and is associated with some of the most important events of

their reigns. Louis XI. came here when mediating between the kings of

Aragon and Castile. The château of Urtubi, which he occupied, is some

distance beyond. Its fine park, watered by a beautiful stream, and the

picturesque environs, make it an attractive residence quite worthy of

royalty. The ivy-covered wall on the north side is a part of the old

manor-house of the XIIth century; the remainder is of the XVIIth. The

two towers have a feudal aspect, but are totally innocent of feudal

domination; for the Basque lords, even of the middle ages, never had

any other public power than was temporarily conferred on them by their

national assemblies.

It was at St. Jean de Luz that Francis I., enthusiastically welcomed

by the people after his deliverance from captivity in Spain, joyfully

exclaimed: “_Je suis encore roi de France_--I am still King of France!”

It likewise witnessed the exchange of the beautiful Elizabeth of France

and Anne of Austria--one given in marriage to Louis XIII. and the other

to Philip of Spain amid the acclamations of the people.

Cardinal Mazarin also visited St. Jean de Luz in 1659 to confer with

the astute Don Luis de Haro, prime minister of Philip IV., about the

interests of France and Spain. The house he inhabited beside the sea

still has his cipher on the walls, as it has also the old Gobelin

tapestry with which his apartments were hung. He was accompanied by

one hundred and fifty gentlemen, some of whom were the greatest lords

in France. With them were as many attendants, a guard of one hundred

horsemen and three hundred foot-soldiers, twenty-four mules covered with

rich housings, seven carriages for his personal use, and several horses

to ride. He remained here four months. His interviews with the Spanish

minister took place on the little island in the Bidassoa known ever since

as the Isle of Conference, which was never heard of till the treaty of

the Pyrenees. All national interviews and exchanges of princesses had

previously taken place in the middle of the river by means of _gabares_,

or a bridge of boats.

It was this now famous isle which Bossuet apostrophized in his _oraison

funèbre_ at the burial of Queen Marie Thérèse:

“Pacific isle, in which terminated the differences of the two great

empires of which you were the limit; in which were displayed all the

skill and diplomacy of different national policies; in which one

statesman secured preponderance by his deliberation, and the other

ascendency by means of his penetration! Memorable day, in which two

proud nations, so long at enmity, but now reconciled by Marie Thérèse,

advanced to their borders with their kings at their head, not to engage

in battle, but for a friendly embrace; in which two sovereigns with their

courts, each with its peculiar grandeur and magnificence, as well as

etiquette and manners, presented to each other and to the whole universe

so august a spectacle--how can I now mingle your pageants with these

funeral solemnities, or dwell on the height of all human grandeur in

sight of its end?”

The marriage of Louis XIV. with the Spanish Infanta, to which the great

orator refers, is still the most glorious remembrance of St. Jean de

Luz. The visits of Louis XI., Francis I., and Charles IX. have left but

few traces in the town compared with that of the _Grand Monarque_. The

majestic presence of the young king surrounded by his gay, magnificent

following, here brought in contrast with the dignity, gloom, and splendor

of the Spanish court, impressed the imagination of the people, who have

never forgotten so glorious a memory.

Louis XIV. arrived at St. Jean de Luz May 8, 1660, accompanied by Anne of

Austria, Cardinal Mazarin, and a vast number of lords and ladies, among

whom was the _Grande Mademoiselle_. They were enthusiastically welcomed

by the ringing of bells, firing of cannon, and shouts of joy. Garlands of

flowers arched the highway, the pavement was strewn with green leaves,

and Cantabrian dances were performed around the cortége. At the door of

the parish church stood the clergy in full canonicals, with the _curé_

at their head to bless the king as he went past. He resided, while

there, in the château of Lohobiague, the fine towers of which are still

to be seen on the banks of the Nivelle. It is now known as the House of

Louis XIV. Here he was entertained by the widowed _châtelaine_ with the

sumptuous hospitality for which the family was noted. A light gallery was

put up to connect the château with that of Joanocnia, in which lodged

Anne of Austria and the Spanish Infanta. Here took place the first

interview between the king and his bride, described by Mme. de Motteville

in her piquant manner. From the gallery the Infanta, after her marriage,

took pleasure in throwing handfuls of silver coin to the people, called

_pièces de largesses_, struck by the town expressly for the occasion,

with the heads of the royal pair on one side and on the other St. Jean de

Luz in a shower of gold, with the motto: _Non lætior alter_.

The château of Joanocnia, frequently called since that time the château

of the Infanta, was built by Joannot de Haraneder, a merchant of the

place, who was ennobled for his liberality when the island of Rhé was

besieged by the English in 1627, and about to surrender to the Duke

of Buckingham for want of supplies and reinforcements. The Comte de

Grammont, governor of Bayonne, being ordered by Richelieu to organize an

expedition at once for the relief of the besieged, issued a command for

every port to furnish its contingent. St. Jean de Luz eagerly responded

by sending a large flotilla, and Joannot de Haraneder voluntarily gave

the king two vessels, supplied with artillery, worthy of figuring in the

royal navy. For this and subsequent services he was ennobled. His arms

are graven in marble over the principal fire-place of the château--a

plum-tree on an anchor, with the motto:

“Dans l’ancre le beau prunier

Est rendu un fort riche fructier.”

This château, though somewhat devoid of symmetry, has a certain beauty

and originality of its own, with its alternate rows of brick and

cream-colored stone, after the Basque fashion, its Renaissance portico

between two square towers facing the harbor, and the light arches of the

two-story gallery in the Venetian style. Over the principal entrance is a

marble tablet with the following inscription in letters of gold:

“L’Infante je reçus l’an mil six cent soixante.

On m’appelle depuis le chasteau de l’Infante.”

The letter L and the _fleur-de-lis_ are to be seen as we ascend the grand

staircase, and two paintings by Gérôme after the style of the XVIIth

century, recalling the alliance of France and Spain and the well-known

_mot_ of Louis XIV.:

“Il n’y a plus de Pyrénées!”

All the details of the residence of the royal family here, as related

by Mme. de Motteville and Mlle. de Montpensier, are full of curious

interest. The former describes the beautiful Isle of Conference and the

superb pavilion for the reunion of the two courts, with two galleries

leading towards France and Spain. This building was erected by the

painter Velasquez, who, as _aposentador mayor_, accompanied Philip IV.

to the frontier. This fatiguing voyage had an unfavorable effect on the

already declining health of the great painter, and he died a few weeks

after his return.

During the preliminary arrangements for the marriage Louis led a solemn,

uniform life. Like the queen-mother, who was always present at Mass,

Vespers, and Benediction, he daily attended public services, sometimes

at the Recollects’ and sometimes at the parish church. He always dined

in public at the château of Lohobiague, surrounded by crowds eager to

witness the process of royal mastication. In the afternoon there were

performances by comedians who had followed the court from Paris; and

sometimes Spanish mysteries, to which Queen Anne was partial, were

represented, in which the actors were dressed as hermits and nuns, and

sacred events were depicted, to the downright scandal of the great

mademoiselle. The day ended with a ball, in which the king did not

disdain to display the superior graces of his royal person in a _ballet

compliqué_. Everything, in short, was quite in the style of the _Grand

Cyrus_ itself.

The marriage, which had taken place at Fontarabia by procuration, was

personally solemnized in the parish church of St. Jean de Luz by the

Bishop of Bayonne in the presence of an attentive crowd. The door by

which the royal couple entered was afterwards walled up, that it might

never serve for any one else--a not uncommon mark of respect in those

days. A joiner’s shop now stands against this Porta Regia. The king

presented the church on this occasion with a complete set of sacred

vessels and ecclesiastical vestments.

The church in which Louis XIV. was married is exteriorly a noble building

with an octagonal tower, but of no architectural merit within. There are

no side aisles, but around the nave are ranges of galleries peculiar

to the Basque churches, where the separation of the men from the

women is still rigorously maintained. The only piece of sculpture is a

strange _Pietà_ in which the Virgin, veiled in a large cope, holds the

dead Christ on her knees. A rather diminutive angel, in a flowing robe

with pointed sleeves of the time of Charles VII., bears a scroll the

inscription of which has become illegible.

Behind the organ, in the obscurity of the lower gallery of the church,

hangs a dark wooden frame--short but broad--with white corners, which

contains a curious painting of the XVIIth century representing Christ

before Pilate. It is by no means remarkable as a work of art; for it is

deficient in perspective, there is no grace in the drapery, no special

excellence of coloring. The figures are generally drawn with correctness,

but the faces seem rather taken from pictures than from real life. But

however poor the execution, this painting merits attention on account of

its dramatic character. The composition represents twenty-six persons.

At the left is Pontius Pilate, governor of Judea, seated in a large

arm-chair beneath a canopy, pointing with his left hand towards the

Saviour before him. In his right hand he holds a kind of sceptre; his

beard is trimmed in the style of Henri Quatre; he wears a large mantle

lined with ermine, and on his head a _toque_, such as the old presidents

of parliament used to wear in France.

Below Pilate is the clerk recording the votes in a large register, and

before him is the urn in which they are deposited.

In front of the clerk, but separated from him by a long white scroll on

which is inscribed the sentence pronounced by Pilate, is seated our

Saviour, his loins girded with a strip of scarlet cloth, his bowed head

encircled by luminous rays, his attitude expressive of humility and

submission, his bound hands extended on his knees.

In the centre of the canvas, above this group, is the high-priest

Caiaphas standing under an arch, his head thrown back, and his hands

extended in an imposing attitude. He wears a cap something like a mitre,

a kind of stole is crossed on his breast, his long robe is adorned with

three flounces of lace. His face is that of a young man. The slight black

mustache he wears is turned up in a way that gives him a resemblance to

Louis XIII. It is evidently a portrait of that age.

At the side of Pilate, and behind Christ, are ranged the members of the

Jewish Sanhedrim, standing or sitting, in various postures, with white

scrolls in their hands, which they hold like screens, bearing their names

and the expression of their sentiments respecting the divine Victim.

Their dress is black or white, but varied in form. Most of them wear a

_mosette_, or ermine cape, and the collar of some order of knighthood, as

of S. Michael and the S. Esprit. They are all young, have mustaches, and

look as if they belonged to the time of Louis Treize. On their heads are

turbans, or _toques_.

Through the open window, at the end of the pretorium, may be seen the

mob, armed with spears, and expressing its sentiments by means of a

scroll at the side of the window: “If thou let this man go, thou art not

Cæsar’s friend. Crucify him! crucify him! His blood be on us and on our

children.”

The chief interest of the picture centres in these inscriptions, which

are in queer old French of marvellous orthography. At the bottom of the

painting, to the left, is the following:

“Sentence, or decree, of the sanguinary Jews against Jesus

Christ, the Saviour of the world.”

Over Pilate we read:

“PONTIUS PILATE JUDEX.”

The sentiments of the high-priests and elders, whose names we give in the

original, are thus expressed:

“1. SIMON LEPROS. For what cause or reason is he held for

mutiny or sedition?

“2. RABAN. Wherefore are laws made, I pray, unless to be kept

and executed?

“3. ACHIAS. No one should be condemned to death whose cause is

not known and weighed.

“4. SABATH. There is no law or right by which one not proved

guilty is condemned; wherefore we would know in what way this

man hath offended.

“5. ROSMOPHIN. For what doth the law serve, if not executed?

“6. PUTÉPHARES. A stirrer-up of the people is a scourge to the

land; therefore he should be banished.

“7. RIPHAR. The penalty of the law is prescribed only for

malefactors who should be made to confess their misdeeds and

then be condemned.

“8. JOSEPH D’ARAMATHEA. Truly, it is a shameful thing, and

detestable, there be no one in this city who seeks to defend

the innocent.

“9. JORAM. How can we condemn him to death who is just?

“10. EHIERIS. Though he be just, yet shall he die, because by

his preaching he hath stirred up and excited the people to

sedition.

“11. NICODEMUS. Our law condemns and sentences to death no man

for an unknown cause.

“12. DIARABIAS. He hath perverted the people; therefore is he

guilty and worthy of death.

“13. SAREAS. This seditious man should be banished as one born

for the destruction of the land.

“14. RABINTH. Whether he be just or not, inasmuch as he will

neither obey nor submit to the precepts of our forefathers, he

should not be tolerated in the land.

“15. JOSAPHAT. Let him be bound with chains and be perpetually

imprisoned.

“16. PTOLOMÉE. Though it be not clear whether he is just or

unjust, why do we hesitate: why not at once condemn him to

death or banish him?

“17. TERAS. It is right he should be banished or sent to the

emperor.

“18. MESA. If he is a just man, why do we not yield to his

teachings: if wicked, why not send him away?

“19. SAMECH. Let us weigh the case, so he have no cause to

contradict us. Whatever he does, let us chastise him.

“20. CAÏPHAS PONTIFEX. Ye know not well what ye would have. It

is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and

that the whole nation perish not.

“21. THE PEOPLE TO PILATE. If thou let this man go, thou art

not the friend of Cæsar. Crucify him! crucify him! His blood be

on us and on our children!”

On the large scroll in the centre of the picture is the sentence of

Pilate:

“I, Pontius Pilate, pretor and judge in Jerusalem under the

thrice powerful Emperor Tiberius, whose reign be eternally

blessed and prospered, in this tribunal, or judicial chair, in

order to pronounce and declare sentence for the synagogue of

the Jewish nation with respect to Jesus Christ here present, by

them led and accused before me, that, being born of father and

mother of poor and base extraction, he made himself by lofty

and blasphemous words the Son of God and King of the Jews, and

boasted he could rebuild the temple of Solomon, having heard

and examined the case, do say and declare on my conscience he

shall be crucified between two thieves.”

This picture is analogous to the old mysteries of the Passion once so

popular in this region, in which the author who respected the meaning of

the sacred text was at liberty to draw freely on his imagination. It was

especially in the dialogue that lay the field for his genius. However

naïve these sacred dramas, they greatly pleased the people. A painting

similar to this formerly existed in St. Roch’s Church at Paris, in which

figured the undecided Pilate in judicial array, Caiaphas the complacent

flatterer of the people, and the mob with its old _rôle_ of “Crucify him!

crucify him!”

We must not forget a work of art, of very different character, associated

with the history of St. Jean de Luz. It is a curious piece of needle-work

commemorating the conferences of the two great statesmen, Cardinal

Mazarin and Don Luis de Haro, and evidently designed by an able artist,

perhaps by Velasquez himself. It is a kind of _courte-pointe_ (it would

never do to call it by the ignoble name of coverlet!) of linen of

remarkable fineness, on which are embroidered in purple silk the eminent

personages connected with the treaty of the Pyrenees, as well as various

allegorical figures and accessory ornaments, which make it a genuine

historic picture of lively and interesting character. This delicate piece

of Spanish needle-work was wrought by the order of Don Luis de Haro as a

mark of homage to his royal master. He presented it to the king on his

feast-day, May 1, 1661, and it probably adorned the royal couch. But the

better to comprehend this work of art--for such it is, in spite of its

name--let us recall briefly the events that suggested its details.

Philip IV. ascended the Spanish throne in 1621, when barely sixteen years

of age. His reign lasted till 1665. He had successively two ministers of

state, both of great ability, but of very different political views. In

the first part of his reign the young monarch gave his whole confidence

to the Count of Olivares, whose authority was almost absolute till 1648.

But his ministry was far from fortunate. On the contrary, it brought

such humiliating calamities on the country that the king at length awoke

to the danger that menaced it. He dismissed Olivares and appointed the

count’s nephew and heir in his place, who proved one of the ablest

ministers ever known in Spain. He was a descendant of the brave Castilian

lord to whom Alfonso VII. was indebted for the capture of Zurita, but

who would accept no reward from the grateful prince but the privilege of

giving the name of Haro to a town he had built. It was another descendant

of this proud warrior who was made archbishop of Mexico in the latter

part of the XVIIIth century, and was so remarkable for his charity and

eloquence as a preacher.

Don Luis not only had the military genius of his ancestor, but the

prudence of a real statesman, and he succeeded in partially repairing

the disasters of the preceding ministry. He raised an army and equipped

a powerful squadron, by which he repulsed the French, checked the

Portuguese, brought the rebellious provinces into subjection, and

effected the treaty of Munster; which energetic measures produced such an

effect on the French government as to lead to amicable relations between

the two great ministers who, at this time, held the destiny of Europe in

their hands, and to bring about a general peace in 1659.

It was with this object Cardinal Mazarin and Don Luis de Haro agreed upon

a meeting on the _Ile des Faisans_--as the Isle of Conference was then

called--which led to the treaty of the Pyrenees.

As a reward for Don Luis’ signal services, particularly the peace he had

cemented by an alliance so honorable to the nation, Philip IV., in the

following year, conferred on him the title of duke, and gave him the

surname _de la Paz_.

It was at this time Don Luis had this curious _courte-pointe_ wrought as

a present to the king. He was the declared patron of the fine arts, and

had established weekly reunions to bring together the principal artists

of Spain, some of whom probably designed this memorial of his glory.

It was preserved with evident care, and handed down from one sovereign

to another, till it finally fell into the possession of the mother of

Ferdinand VII., who, wishing to express her sense of the fidelity of one

of her ladies of honor, gave her this valuable counterpane. In this way

it passed into the hands of its present owner at Bayonne.

On the upper part of this covering the power of Spain is represented by

a woman holding a subdued lion at her feet. In the centre are Nuestra

Señora del Pilar and S. Ferdinand, patrons of the kingdom, around whom

are the eagles of Austria, so closely allied to Spain. And by way of

allusion to the _Ile des Faisans_, where the recent negotiations had

taken place, pheasants are to be seen in every direction. Cardinal

Mazarin and Don Luis de Haro are more than once represented. In one

place they are presenting an olive branch to the powers they serve; in

another they are advancing, side by side, towards Philip IV., to solicit

the hand of his daughter for Louis XIV. Here Philip gives his consent to

the marriage, and, lower down, Louis receives his bride in the presence

of two females who personify France and Spain. The intermediate spaces

are filled up with allusions to commerce with foreign lands and the

progress of civilization at home. Not only war, victory, and politics

have their emblems, but literature, beneficence, and wealth. But there

are many symbols the meaning of which it would require the sagacity of a

Champollion to fathom.

This is, perhaps, the only known instance of a prime minister directing

his energies to the fabrication of a counterpane. Disraeli, to be sure,

has woven many an extravagant web of romance with Oriental profusion of

ornament, but not, to our knowledge, in purple and fine linen, like Don

Luis de Haro. We have seen one of the gorgeous coverlets of Louis XIV.,

but it was wrought by the young ladies of St. Cyr under the direction

of Mme. de Maintenon; and there is another in the Hôtel de Cluny that

once belonged to Francis I. The grand-daughter of Don Luis de Haro, the

sole heiress of the house, married the Duke of Alba, carrying with her

as a dowry the vast possessions of Olivares, Guzman, and Del Carpio. The

brother-in-law of the ex-Empress Eugénie is a direct descendant of theirs.

Opposite St. Jean de Luz, on the other side of the Nivelle, is Cibourre,

with its solemn, mysterious church, and its widowed houses built along

the quay and straggling up the hill of Bordagain. Prosperous once like

its neighbor, it also participated in its misfortunes, and now wears

the same touching air of melancholy. The men are all sailors--the

best sailors in Europe--but they are absent a great part of the year.

Fearless wreckers live along the shore, who brave the greatest dangers

to aid ships in distress. In more prosperous days its rivalry with St.

Jean de Luz often led to quarrels, and the islet which connects the two

places was frequently covered with the blood shed in these encounters.

The convent of Recollects, now a custom-house, which we pass on our way

to Cibourre, was founded in expiation of this mutual hatred, and very

appropriately dedicated to _Notre Dame de la Paix_--Our Lady of Peace.

The cloister, with its round arches, is still in good preservation, and

the cistern is to be seen in the court, constructed by Cardinal Mazarin,

that the friars might have a supply of soft water.

The Basques are famed for their truthfulness and honesty, the result

perhaps of the severity of their ancient laws, one of which ordered

a tooth to be extracted every time a person was convicted of lying!

No wonder the love of truth took such deep _root_ among them. But had

this stringent law been handed down and extended to other lands, what

toothless communities there would now be in the world!

THE ETERNAL YEARS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE DIVINE SEQUENCE.”

II.

THE PULSATIONS OF TIME.

The deduction we arrive at from the argument which we have laid down is

that the history of the world is a consistent one, and not a series of

loose incidents strung together. It is as much this morally, it is as

truly the evolution and unwinding of a high moral law and of a great

spiritual truth, as the life of the plant from the seed to the ripe fruit

is the development of a natural growth. This last is governed by laws

with which we are only partially acquainted; whereas the moral law and

the spiritual truth are revealed to us by the divine scheme of creation

and redemption. There is nothing existing, either in the natural or in

the spiritual law, and especially in this last, which is not more or

less, in one way or in another, by assertion or by negation, a revelation

of the divine Being.

He reveals himself directly by his volitions and indirectly by his

permissions. And we can only be one with him when we have learnt to

accept both and to submit to both; not in the spirit of quietism or

fatalism, but as actively entering into his intentions, accepting what

he wills, and bearing what he permits. There is no harmony possible

between the soul and God until we have arrived at this; and the history

of the world is the history of man’s acquiescence in, or resistance to,

the supreme will of God. The first disruption of the will of man from

the will of God, in the fall of man, wove a dark woof into the web of

time; and every act of ours which is not according to the will of God

weaves the same into our own lives, because it is a rupture of the law

of harmony which God has instituted between himself as creator and us

as creatures. Were that harmony unbroken, man would rest in God as in

his centre; for, being finite, he has no sufficiency in himself, but

for ever seeks some good extrinsic to himself. The same applies to all

creation, whose ultimate end and highest good must always be some object

beyond, and above itself; and that object is none other than God, “quod

ignorantes colitis,”[270]--the finite striving after the Infinite. Thus

the whole divine government of the world is a gradual unfolding of the

divine Will, according as we are able to receive it. And the degree

of receptivity in mankind, at various periods of the world’s history,

and in different localities, accounts for the variety in the divine

dispensations, and for the imperfection of some as compared with others.

The “yet more excellent way”[271] could not be received by all at all

times. The promise was given to Abraham. But four hundred and thirty

years elapsed before its fulfilment, for the express purpose of being

occupied and spent in the institution of the law as a less perfect

dispensation, and which was given because of transgressions--“propter

transgressiones posita est”[272]--thus showing the adaptive government of

God: the gradual building up of the city of the Lord, whose stones are

the living souls of men, which are “hewed and made ready,”[273] but so

that there shall be “neither hammer, nor axe, nor tool of iron heard”

while it is building. For God does not force his creature. He pours not

“new wine into old bottles,” but waits in patience the growth of his

poor creatures, and the slow and gradual leavening of the great mass.

A time had been when God walked with man “at the afternoon air”;[274]

and whatever may be the full meaning of this exquisitely-expressed

intercourse, at least it must have been intimate and tender. But when

the black pall of evil fell on the face of creation, the light of God’s

intercourse with man was let in by slow degrees, like single stars coming

out in the dark firmament. The revelations, like the stars, varied in

magnitude and glory, lay wide apart from each other, rose at different

intervals of longer or shorter duration, and conveyed, like them, a

flickering and uncertain light, until the “Sun of Justice arose with

health in his wings,”[275] and “scattered the rear of darkness thin.” The

degree of light vouchsafed was limited by the capacity of the recipient;

and that capacity has not always been the same in all ages, any more than

in any one age it is the same in all the contemporary men, or in each man

the same at all periods of his life. It is thus that we arrive at the

explanation of an apparent difference of tone, color, and texture, so to

speak, in the various manifestations of God to man. The manifestation is

limited to the capacity of the recipient; and not only is it limited,

but to a certain extent it becomes, as it were, tinged by the properties

of the medium through which it is transmitted to others. It assumes

characteristics that are not essentially its own. For so marvellous is

the respect with which the Creator treats the freedom of his creature

that he suffers us to give a measure of our own color to what he reveals

to us, so that it may be more our own, more on our level, more within

our grasp; as though he poured the white waters of saving truth into

glasses of varied colors, and thus hid from us a pellucidity too perfect

for our nature. And thus it happens that to us who dwell in the light of

God’s church, with the seven lamps of the seven sacraments burning in

the sanctuary, the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob hardly seems

to us the same God as our God. We see him through the prism of the past,

amid surroundings that are strange to us, in the old patriarchal life

that seems so impossible a mode of existence to the denizens of great

cities in modern Europe.

This is equally true throughout the history of the world. It is also true

of every individual soul; and it is true of the same soul at different

periods of its existence. He is the same God always and everywhere. But

there is a difference in the kind of reception which each soul gives

to that portion of divine knowledge and grace which it is capable of

receiving and which it actually does receive. For they are “divers kinds

of vessels, every little vessel, from the vessels of cups even to every

instrument of music.”[276] They differ in capacity and they differ in

material; and the great God, in revealing himself, does so by degrees.

He has deposited, as it were, the whole treasure of himself in the bosom

of his spouse, the church; but the births of new grace and further

developed truth only come to us as we can bear them and when we can bear

them. The body of truth is all there; but the dispensing of that truth

varies in degree as time goes on. God governs in his own world; but he

does so behind and through the human instruments whom he condescends

to employ. And as, in the exercise of his own free-will, man chose the

evil and refused the good, so has the Almighty accommodated himself to

the conditions which man has instituted. Were he to do otherwise, he

would force the will of his creature, which he never will do, because

the doing it would have for result to deprive that creature of all moral

status and reduce him to a machine. From the moment that we lose the

power of refusing the good and taking the evil, from the moment that any

force really superior to that which has been put into the arsenals of

our own being robs us of the faculty of selection, we lose all merit and

consequently all demerit. The Creator, when he made man, surrounded him

with the respect due to a being who had the power of disposing of his own

everlasting destiny. Nor has he ever done, nor will he do, anything which

can entrench on this prerogative. The whole system of grace is a system

divinely devised to afford man aid in the selection he has to make. There

lies an atmosphere of grace all around our souls, as there lies the

air we breathe around our senses. The one is as frequently unperceived

by us as the other.[277] We are without consciousness as regards its

presence, as we are without direct habitual consciousness of the act of

breathing and of our own existence, except as from time to time we make a

reflective modification in our own mind of the idea of the air and of the

fact of our inhaling it. We are unconscious that it is the divine Creator

who is for ever sustaining our physical existence. We are oblivious of

it for hours together, unless we stop and think. It is the same with the

presence of grace.

And though “exciting” grace, as theology calls it, begins with the

illustration of the intellect, it does not follow that we are always by

any means conscious of this illustration. It is needless to carry out

the theological statement in these pages. What we have said is enough to

bring us round to our point, which is that the action of grace on the

individual soul, and the long line of direct and indirect revelations

of God’s will from the creation to the present hour, though always the

same grace and always the same revelation, receive different renderings

according to the vehicle in which they are held--much as a motive in

music remains the same air, though transposed from one key to another.

Not only, therefore, does man, as it were, give a color of his own to

the revelation of God, but he has the sad faculty of limiting its flow

and circumscribing its course, even where he cannot altogether arrest

it. We are “slow of heart to believe,” and therefore is the time delayed

when the still unfulfilled promises may take effect. Our Lord declares

that Moses _permitted_ the Hebrews to put away their wives, because

of the hardness of their hearts; “but from the beginning it was not

so.”[278] God’s law had never in itself been other than what the church

has declared it to be. The state of matrimony, as God had ordained it,

was always meant to be what the church has now defined. But man was not

in a condition to receive so perfect a law; and thus the condition of

man--that is, the hardness of his heart--had the effect of modifying

the apparent will of God, as revealed in what we now know to be one of

the seven sacraments. The Hebrews were incapable of anything more than

a mutilated, or rather a truncated, expression of the divine will, as

it was represented to them in the law of Moses on the married state.

Nor could we anywhere find a more perfect illustration of our argument.

In the first place, it is given us by our Lord himself; and, in the

second, it occurs on a subject which, taken in its larger sense, involves

almost every other, lies at the root of the whole world of matter, and

of being through matter, and may be called the representative idea of

the creation. Now, if on such a question as this mankind, at some period

of their existence, and that a period which includes ages of time, and

covers, at one interval or another, the whole vast globe, could only

_bear_ an imperfect and utterly defective rendering, how much more must

there exist to be still further developed out of the “things new and

old” which lie in the womb of time and in the treasures of the church,

but which are waiting for the era when we shall be in a condition to

receive them! The whole system of our Lord’s teaching was based on this

principle. He seems, if we may so express it, afraid of overburdening

his disciples by too great demands upon their capacity. He says with

reference to the mission of S. John the Baptist: “_If_ you will receive

it, he is Elias that is to come,”[279] and in the Sermon on the Mount he

points out to them the imperfection of the old moral code, as regarded

the taking of oaths and the law of talion. Now, the moral law, as it

existed in the mind of God, could never have varied. It must always

have been “perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.” But it passed

through an imperfect medium--the one presented by the then condition of

mankind--and was modified accordingly.

We hold, therefore, in what we have now stated, a distinct view of the

way in which God governs the world; not absolutely, not arbitrarily,

but _adaptively_. And where we see imperfection, and at times apparent

retrogression, it is the free will of man forcing the will of God to his

own destruction, “until he who hindereth now, and will hinder, be taken

out of the way.”[280]