But one of the principal charms of our travellers' residence in Seville has

not yet been mentioned; and that was their acquaintance, through the kind

Bishop of Antinoe, with Fernan Caballero. She may be called the Lady

Georgiana Fullerton of Spain, in the sense of refinement of taste and

catholicity of feeling. But her works are less what are commonly called

novels than pictures of home life in Spain, like Hans Andersen's

"Improvisatore," or Tourgeneff's "Scènes de la Vie en Russie."

This charming lady, by birth a German on the father's side, and by marriage

connected with all the "bluest blood" in Spain, lives in apartments given

her by the queen in the palace of the Alcazar.

{457}

Great trials and sorrows have not dimmed the fire of her genius or

extinguished one spark of the loving charity which extends itself to all

that suffer. Her tenderness toward animals, unfortunately a rare virtue in

Spain, is one of her marked characteristics. She has lately been striving

to establish a society in Seville for the prevention of cruelty to animals,

after the model of the London one, and often told one of our party that she

never left her home without praying that she might not see or hear any

ill-usage to God's creatures. She is no longer young, but still preserves

traces of a beauty which in former years made her the admiration of the

court. Her playfulness and wit, always tempered by a kind thoughtfulness

for the feelings of others, and her agreeableness in conversation, seem

only to have increased with lengthened experience of people and things.

Nothing was pleasanter than to sit in the corner of her little

drawing-room, or, still better, in her tiny study, and hear her pour out

anecdote after anecdote of Spanish life and Spanish peculiarities,

especially among the poor. But if one wished to excite her, one had but to

touch on questions regarding her faith and the so-called "progress" of her

country. Then all her Andalusian blood would be roused, and she would

declaim for hours in no measured terms against the spoliation of the

monasteries, those centres of education and civilization in the villages

and outlying districts; against the introduction of schools without

religion, and colleges without faith; and the propagation of infidel

opinions through the current literature of the day.

Previous acquaintance with the people had already made some of our

travellers aware of the justice of many of her remarks. Catholicism in

Spain is not merely the religion of the people; _it is their life_. It

is so mixed up with their common expressions and daily habits, that, at

first, there seems to a stranger almost an irreverence in their ways. It is

not till you get thoroughly at home, both with them and their language,

that you begin to perceive that holy familiarity, if one may so speak, with

our divine Lord and his Mother which impregnates their lives and colors all

their actions. Theirs is a world of traditions, which familiarity from the

cradle have turned into faith, and for that faith they are ready to die.

Ask a Spanish peasant why she plants rosemary in her garden. She will

directly tell you that it was on a rosemary-bush that the blessed Virgin

hung our Saviour's clothes out to dry as a baby. Why will a Spaniard never

shoot a swallow? Because it was a swallow that tried to pluck the thorns

out of the crown of Christ as he hung on the cross. Why does the owl no

longer sing? Because he was by when our Saviour expired, and since then his

only cry is "Crux! crux!" Why are dogs so often called Melampo in Spain?

Because it was the name of the dog of the shepherds who worshipped at the

manger at Bethlehem. What is the origin of the red rose? A drop of the

Saviour's blood fell on the white roses growing at the foot of the cross

and so on, for ever! Call it folly, superstition--what you will. You will

never eradicate it from the heart of the people, for it is as their flesh

and blood, and their whole habits of thought, manners, and customs run in

the same groove. They have, like the Italians, a wonderful talent for

"improvising" both stories and songs; but the same beautiful thread of

tender piety runs through the whole.

One day, Fernan Caballero told them, an old beggar was sitting on the steps

of the Alcazar: two or three children, tired of play, came and sat by him,

and asked him, child-like, for "a story." He answered as follows: "There

was once a hermit, who lived in a cave near the sea. He was a very good and

charitable man, and he heard that in a village on the mountain above there

was a very bad fever, and that no one would go and nurse the people for

fear of infection.

{458}

So up he toiled, day after day, to tend the sick, and look after their

wants. At last he began to get tired, and to think it would be far better

if he were to move his hermitage up the hill, and save himself the daily

toil. As he walked up one day, turning this idea over in his mind, he heard

some one behind him saying: 'One, two, three.' He looked round, and saw no

one. He walked on, and again heard: 'Four, five, six, seven.' Turning short

round this time, he beheld one in white and glistening raiment, who gently

spoke as follows: 'I am your guardian angel, and am _counting the steps

which you take for Christ's poor_.'"

The children understood the drift of it as well as you or I, reader! and

this is a sample of their daily talk. Their reverence for age is also a

striking and touching characteristic. The poorest beggar is addressed by

them as "tio" or "tia," answering to our "daddy" or "granny;" and should

one pass their cottage as they are sitting down to their daily meal, they

always rise and offer him a place, and ask him to say grace for them,

"echar la benedicion." They are, indeed, a most lovable race, and their

very pride increases one's respect for them. Often in their travels did one

of the party lose her way, either in going to some distant church in the

early morning, or in visiting the sick; and often was she obliged to have

recourse to her bad Spanish to be put in the right road. An invariable

courtesy, and generally an insistence on accompanying her home, was the

result. But if any money or fee were offered for the service, the indignant

refusal, or, still worse, the _hurt_ look which the veriest child

would put on at what it considered the height of insult and unkindness,

very soon cured her of renewing the attempt.

Another touching trait in their character is their intense reverence for

the blessed sacrament. In the great ceremonies of the church, or when it is

passing down the street to a sick person, the same veneration is shown. One

day, one of the English ladies was buying some photographs in a shop, and

the tradesman was explaining to her the different prices and sizes of each,

when, all of a sudden, he stopped short, exclaiming: "Sua Maestà viene!"

and leaving the astonished lady at the counter, rushed out of his

shop-door. She, thinking it was the royalties, who were then at the

Alcazar, went out too to look, when, to her pleasure and surprise, she saw

the shopman and all the rest of the world, gentle and simple, kneeling

reverently in the mud before the messenger of the Great King, who was

bearing the host to a dying man. On the day when it is carried

processionally to the hospitals, (one of which is the first Sunday after

Easter,) every window and balcony is "parata," or hung with red, as in

Italy at the passage of the Holy Father; every one throws flowers and

bouquets on the baldachino, and that to such an extent that the choir-boys

are forced to carry great clothes-baskets to receive them: the people

declare that the very horses kneel! The feast of Corpus Christi was

unfortunately not witnessed by our travellers. Calderon, in his Autos

Sacramentales, speaking of it, says:

"Que en el gran dia de Dios,

Quien no está loco, no es cuerdo!"

Here is indeed "a voice from the land of faith." The choir on the occasion

dance before the host a dance so solemn, so suggestive, and so peculiar,

that no one who has witnessed it can speak of it without emotion. Fernan

Caballero talked much also of the great purity of morals among the

peasantry. Infanticide, that curse of England, is _absolutely unknown in

Spain_; whether from the number of foundling hospitals, or from what

other reasons, we leave it to the political economists to discover. A

well-known Spanish writer describes the women as having "Corazones

delectos, minas de amores," and being "puros y santos modelos de esposas y

de madres." (Exceptional hearts, mines of love, and being pure and holy

models of wives and mothers.)

{459}

They are also wonderfully cleanly, both in their houses and their persons.

There are never any bad smells in the streets or lodgings. Fleas abound

from the great heat; but no other vermin is to be met with either in the

inns or beds, or in visiting among the sick poor, in all of which they form

a marked contrast to the Italian peasantry, and, I fear we must add, to the

English!

Their courtesy toward one another is also widely different from the

ordinary gruff, boorish intercourse of our own poor people; and the very

refusal to a beggar, "Perdone, Usted, por Dios, hermano!" [Footnote 143]

speaks of the same gentle consideration for the feelings of their neighbors

which characterizes the race, and emanates from that divine charity which

dwells not only on their lips, but in their hearts. One peculiarity in

their conversation has not yet been alluded to, and that is their passion

for proverbs. They cannot frame a sentence without one, and they are mostly

such as illustrate the kindly, trustful, pious nature the people. "_Haz

lo bien, y no mira á quien._" (Do good, and don't look to whom.)

"_Quien no es agradecido, no es bien nacido._" (He who is not

courteous is not well born.) "_Cosa cumplida solo en la otra vida_."

(The end of all things is only seen in the future life.) And so on _ad

infinitum_.

[Footnote 143: "Forgive me, for the love of God, brother!"]

No description of Seville would be complete without mention of the "patio,"

so important a feature in every Andalusian house; and no words can be so

good for the purpose as those of Fernan Caballero, which we translate

almost literally from her "Familia de Alvareda:"

"The house was spacious and scrupulously clean; on each side of the door

was a bench of stone. In the porch hung a little lamp before the image of

our Lord, in a niche over the entrance, according to the Catholic custom

of placing all things under holy protection. In the middle was the

'patio,' a necessity to the Andalusian; and in the centre of this

spacious court, an enormous orange-tree raised its leafy head from its

robust and clean trunk. For an infinity of generations had this beautiful

tree been a source of delight to the family. The women made tonic

concoctions of its leaves, the daughters adorned themselves with its

flowers, the boys cooled their blood with its fruits, the birds made

their home in its boughs. The rooms opened out of the 'patio,' and

borrowed their light from thence. This 'patio' was the centre of all--

the 'home,' the place of gathering when the day's work was over. The

orange-tree loaded the air with its heavy perfume, and the waters of the

fountain fell in soft showers on the marble basin, fringed with the

delicate maiden hair fern; and the father, leaning against the tree,

smoked his 'cigarro de papel;' and the mother sat at her work; while the

little ones played at her feet, the eldest resting his head on a big dog

stretched at full length on the cool marble slabs. All was still, and

peaceful, and beautiful."

------

{460}

From Once a Week.

Sir Ralph De Blanc-Minster.

The Vow.

Hush! 'tis a tale of the elder time,

Caught from an old barbaric rhyme,

How the fierce Sir Ralph of the haughty hand

Harnessed him for our Saviour's land!

"Time trieth troth!" thus the lady said,

"And a warrior must rest in Bertha's bed;

Three years let the severing seas divide,

And strike thou for Christ and thy trusting bride!"

So he buckled on the beamy blade,

That Gaspar of Spanish Leon made,

Whose hilted cross is the awful sign:

It must burn for the Lord and his tarnished shrine!

The Adieu.

"Now a long farewell! tall Stratton tower,

Dark Bude! thy fatal sea:

And God thee speed, in hall and bower,

My manor of Bien-aimè!

"Thou, too, farewell! my chosen bride,

Thou rose of Rou-tor land:

Though all on earth were false beside,

I trust thy plighted hand.

"Dark seas may swell, and tempests lower,

And surging billows foam;

The cresset of thy bridal bower

Shall guide the wanderer home!

"On! for the cross! in Jesu's land,

When Syrian armies flee,

One thought shall thrill my lifted hand,

I strike for God and thee!"

{461}

The Battle.

Hark! how the brattling trumpets blare!

Lo! the red banners flaunt the air!

And see! his good sword girded on,

The stern Sir Ralph to the war is gone!

Hurrah! for the Syrian dastards flee:

Charge! charge! ye western chivalry!

Sweet is the strife for God's renown,

The Cross is up and the Crescent down!

The weary warrior seeks his tent:

For the good Sir Ralph is pale and spent;

Five wounds he reaped in the field of fame,

Five in his blessèd Master's name.

The solemn leech looks sad and grim,

As he binds and soothes each gory limb;

And the girded priest must chant and pray,

Lest the soul unhouseled pass away.

The Treachery.

A sound of horsehoofs on the sand!

And ha! a page from Cornish land.

"Tidings," he said, as he bent the knee;

"Tidings, my lord, from Bien-aimè.

"The owl shrieked thrice from the warder's tower:

The crown-rose withered in her bower:

Thy good gray foal, at evening fed.

Lay in the sunrise stark and dead!"

"Dark omens three!" the sick man cried;

"Say on the woe thy looks betide."

"Master! at bold Sir Rupert's call,

Thy Lady Bertha fled the hall!"

The Scroll.

"Bring me," he said, "that scribe of fame,

Symeon el Siddekah his name;

With parchment skin, and pen in hand,

I would devise my Cornish land!

"Seven goodly manors, fair and wide,

Stretch from the sea to Tamar-side,

And Bien-aimè, my hall and bower,

Nestles beneath tall Stratton tower!

{462}

"All these I render to my God!

By seal and signet, knife and sod:

I give and grant to church and poor,

In franc almoign for evermore!

"Choose ye seven men among the just,

And bid them hold my lands in trust,

On Michael's morn and Mary's day

To deal the dole and watch and pray!

"Then bear me, coldly, o'er the deep,

'Mid my own people I would sleep:

Their hearts shall melt, their prayers will breathe,

Where he who loved them rests beneath.

"Mould me in stone, as here I lie,

My face upturned to Syria's sky;

Carve ye this good sword at my side,

And write the legend, 'True and tried!'

"Let mass be said, and requiem sung;

And that sweet chime I loved be rung:

Those sounds along the northern wall

Shall thrill me like a trumpet-call!"

Thus said he and at set of sun

The bold crusader's race was run.

Seek ye his ruined hall and bower?

Then stand beneath tall Stratton tower!

The Mort-main.

Now the demon watched for the warrior's soul

'Mid the din of war where blood-streams roll;

He had waited long on the dabbled sand

Ere the priest had cleansed the gory hand.

Then as he heard the stately dole

Wherewith Sir Ralph had soothed his soul,

The unclean spirit turned away

With a baffled glare of grim dismay.

But when he caught those words of trust,

That sevenfold choice among the just,

"Ho! ho!" cried the fiend, with a mock at heaven,

"I have lost but one I shall win the seven!"

------

{463}

Original.

Guettée's Papacy Schismatic. [Footnote 144]

[Footnote 144: The Papacy: Its Historic Origin and Primitive Relations

with the Eastern Churches. By the Abbé-Guettée, D.D. Translated from the

French, and prefaced by an original biographical notice of the author,

with an Introduction by A. Cleveland Coxe, Bishop of Western New York.

New York: Carleton. 1867, pp.383.]

This volume purports to be the translation of a late French work entitled,

"The Papacy Schismatic; or, Rome in her Relations with the Eastern

Church--_La Papauté Schismatique; ou Rome dans ses Rapports avec I'Eglise

Orientate_." Why the translator or editor has changed the title we know

not, unless it has been done to disguise the real character of the work,

and induce Catholics to buy it under the impression that it is written by a

learned divine of their own communion.

Whether equal liberty has been taken with the text throughout we are unable

to say, for we have not had the patience to compare the translation with

the original, except in a very few instances; but there is in the whole get

up of the English work a lack of honesty and frank dealing. On the

title-page we are promised an Introduction by the Protestant Episcopal

Bishop of Western New York, but in the book itself we find only the

"Editor's Preface" of a few pages. Even this preface lacks frankness, and

seems intended to deceive. "The author of this work," writes the editor,

"is not a Protestant. He is a French divine reared in the communion of

Rome, and devoted to her cause in purpose of heart and life." This gives

the impression that the author is still a member, and a devoted member, of

the communion of Rome, which is not the case. "But his great learning

having led him to conclusions contrary to those of the Jesuits, he fell

under the ban;" that is, we suppose, was interdicted. This carries on the

same deception, making believe that he was interdicted because he rejected

some of the conclusions of the Jesuits, while he remained substantially

orthodox and obedient to the church, a thing which could not have happened,

unless he had impugned the Catholic faith, the authority, or discipline of

the church in communion with the apostolic See of Rome.

We read on: "Proscribed by the papacy, ... he accepts at last the logical

consequences of his position, ... receiving the communion in both kinds at

the hand of the Greeks in the church of the Russian Embassy at Paris." Why

not have said simply: The author of this work was reared in the communion

of Rome, but, falling under censure for opinions emitted in his writings,

he left that communion, or was cut off from it, and has now been received

into the Russian Church, or the communion of the non-united Greeks, and has

written this book to prove that the communion, that has received him is

not, and the one in which he was reared is, schismatic? That would have

told the simple truth; but we forget, the editor is a poet, and accustomed

to deal in fiction.

The editor, who has a rare genius for embellishing the truth, tells us that

"the biographical notice prefixed to the work ... gives assurance of the

author's ability to treat the subject of the papacy with the most intimate

knowledge of its practical character." It does no such thing, but, on the

contrary, proves that he never was devoted in purpose and life to the

communion of Rome, and that even from his boyhood he assumed an attitude of

real though covert hostility to the papacy. His first work was a history of

the church in France, the plan of which was conceived and formed while he

was in the seminary, and that work is hardly less unfavorable to the papacy

than the one before us.

{464}

Its spirit is anti-Roman, anti-papal, full of venom against the popes, and

he appears to have carried on his war against the papacy under the guise of

Gallicanism, till even his Gallican bishop could tolerate him no longer,

and forbade him to say mass.

His biographer gives a fuller insight into his character, perhaps, than he

intended. "From a very early age," he says, "his mind seems to have

revolted against the wearisome routine" of instruction prescribed for

seminarians, "and, in its ardent desire for knowledge and its rapid

acquisition, worked out of the prescribed limits ... and read and studied

in secret." That is, in plain English, he was impatient of direction in his

studies, revolted against making the necessary preparation to read and

study with advantage, rejected the prescribed course of studies, and

followed his own taste or inclination in broaching questions that he lacked

the previous knowledge and mental and spiritual discipline to broach with

safety. There are questions in great variety and of great importance which

it is very necessary to study, but only in their place, and after that very

routine of studies prescribed by the seminary has been successfully

pursued. Most of the errors into which men fall arise from the attempt to

solve questions without the necessary preparatory knowledge and discipline.

The studies and discipline of the college and the seminary may seem to

impatient and inexperienced youth wearisome and unnecessary, but they are

prescribed by wisdom and experience, and he who has never submitted to them

or had their advantage feels the want of them through his whole life, to

whatever degree of eminence he may have risen without them. It is a great

loss to any one not to have borne the yoke in his youth.

It is clear from M. Guettée's biography that he never studied the papal

question as a friend to the papacy, and therefore he is no better able to

treat it than if he had been brought up in Anglicanism or in the bosom of

the Greek schism. He is not a man who has once firmly believed in the

primacy of the Holy See, and by his study and great learning found himself

reluctantly forced to reject it; but is one who, having fallen under the

papal censure, tries to vindicate himself by proving that the pope who

condemned him has no jurisdiction, and never received from God any

authority to judge him. He is no unsuspected witness, is no impartial

judge, for he judges in his own cause. His condemnation preceded his change

of communion.

The editor speaks of the great learning of the author, and says "he writes

with science and precision, and with the pen of a man of genius." It may be

so, but we have not discovered it. His book we have found very dull, and it

has required all the effort we are capable of to read it through. To our

understanding it is lacking in both science and precision. It is a book of

details which are attached to no principles, and its arguments rest wholly

on loose and inaccurate statements or bold assumptions. A work more

deficient in real logic, or more glaringly sophistical, it has seldom been

our hard fortune to meet with. As for learning, we certainly are not

learned ourselves, but the author has told us nothing that we did not know

before, and nothing more than may be found in any one of our Catholic

treatises on the authority of the see of Peter and the Roman pontiff. All

his objections to the papacy worth noticing may be found with their answers

in The Primacy of the Apostolic See Vindicated, by the lamented Francis

Patrick Kenrick, late archbishop of Baltimore, a work of modest

pretensions, but of a real merit difficult to exaggerate.

Though M. Guettée's book is far from bewildering us by its learning or

overwhelming us by its logic, we yet find it no easy matter to compress an

adequate reply to it within any reasonable compass.

{465}

It is not a scientific work. The author lays down no principles which he

labors to establish and develop, but dwells on details, detached

statements, assertions, and criticisms, which cannot be replied to

separately without extending the reply some two or three times the length

of the work itself, for an objection can be made in far fewer words than it

takes to refute it. The author writes without method, and seems never to

have dreamed of classifying his proofs, and arranging all he has to say

under appropriate heads. Indeed, he has no principles, and he adduces no

proofs; he only comments on the proofs of the papacy urged by our

theologians, and endeavors to prove that they do not mean what we say they

do, or that they may be understood in a different sense. Hence, taking

these up one after another, he is constantly saying the same things over

and over again, with most tiresome repetition, which require an equally

tiresome repetition in reply. Had the author taken the time, if he had the

ability, to reduce his objections to order, and to their real value, a few

pages would have sufficed both to state and to refute them. As it is, we

can only do the best we can within the limited space at our command.

The author professes to write from the point of view of a non-united Greek,

who has little quarrel with Rome, save on the single question of the

papacy. He concedes in some sense the primacy of Peter, and that the bishop

of Rome is the first bishop of the church, nay, that by ecclesiastical

right he has the primacy of jurisdiction, though not universal

jurisdiction; but denies that the Roman pontiff has the sovereignty of the

universal church by _divine right_. He says his study of the subject

has brought him to these conclusions:

"1. The bishop of Rome did not for eight centuries possess the authority

of divine right that he has since sought to exercise;

2. The pretension of the bishop of Rome to the sovereignty of divine

right over the whole church was the real cause of the division," or

schism between the East and the West. (P. 31.)

These very propositions in the original, to say nothing of the translation,

show great lack of precision in the writer. He would have better expressed

his own meaning if he had said: The bishop of Rome did not for eight

centuries hold by divine right the authority he has since claimed, and the

pretension of the bishop of Rome to the sovereignty of the whole church by

divine right has been the real cause of the schism. We shall soon object to

this word _sovereignty_, but for the moment let it pass.

These two propositions the author undertakes to prove, and he attempts to

prove them by showing or asserting that the proofs which our theologians

allege from the Holy Scriptures, the fathers, and the councils, do not

prove the primacy claimed by the bishop of Rome. This, if done, would be to

the purpose if the question turned on admitting the claims of the Roman

pontiff, but by no means when the question turns on rejecting these claims

and ousting the pope from his possession. The author must go further. It is

not enough to show that our evidences of title are insufficient; he must

disprove the title itself, either by proving that no such title ever

issued, or that it vests in an adverse claimant. This, as we shall see, he

utterly fails to do. He sets up, properly speaking, no adverse claimant,

and fails to prove that no such title ever issued.

It suffices us, in reply, to plead possession. The pope is, and long has

been, in possession by the acknowledgment of both East and West, and it is

for the author to show reasons why he should be ousted, and, if those

reasons do not necessarily invalidate his possessions, the pope is not

obliged to show his titles. All he need reply is, _Olim possideo_.

That the pope is in possession of all he claims is evident not only from

the fact that he has from the earliest times exercised the primacy of

jurisdiction claimed for him, but from the council of Florence held in 1439.

{466}

"We define," say the fathers of the council, "that the holy apostolic see

and the Roman pontiff hold the primacy in all the world, and that the Roman

pontiff is the successor of blessed Peter, prince of the apostles and true

vicar of Christ, and head of the whole church, the father and teacher of

all Christians, and that to him is given in blessed Peter, by our Lord

Jesus Christ, full power to feed, direct, and govern the universal church;

_et ipsi B. Petro pascendi, regendi, et gubernandi plenam potestatem

traditam esse._"

This definition was made by the universal church, for it was subscribed by

the bishops of both the East and the West, and among the bishops of the

East that accepted it were the patriarchs of Constantinople and Alexandria,

and the metropolitans of Russia, with those of Nicaea, Trebizond,

Lacedaemon, and Mytilene. We know very well that the non-united Greeks

reject this council, although the Eastern Church was more fully represented

in it than the Western Church was in that at Nicaea, the first of

Constantinople, Ephesus, or Chalcedon; but it is for the non united Greeks

to prove that, in rejecting it and refusing obedience to its decrees, they

are not schismatic. At any rate, the council is sufficient to prove that

the pope is in possession by the judgment of both East and West, and to

throw the burden of proof on those who deny the papal authority and assert

that the papacy is schismatic.

Before producing his proofs, the author examines the Holy Scriptures to

ascertain "whether the pretensions of the bishop of Rome to a universal

sovereignty of the church have, as is alleged, any ground in the word of

God." (P. 31.) The translation here is inexact; it should be: "Whether the

pretensions, etc., to _the_ universal sovereignty of the church have,

as is alleged, _their_ foundation in the word of God." The author

himself would have expressed himself better if he had written "the

sovereignty of the universal church," instead of "universal sovereignty of

the church." But the author mistakes the real question he has to consider.

The real question for him is not whether the primacy we assert for the

Roman pontiff has its ground in the written word, but whether anything in

the written word denies or contradicts it. The primacy may exist as a fact,

and yet no record of it be made in the Scriptures. The constitution of the

church is older than any portion of the New Testament, and it is very

conceivable that, as the church must know her own constitution, it was not

thought necessary to give an account of it in the written word. The church

holds the written word, but does not hold from it or under it, but from the

direct and immediate appointment of Jesus Christ himself, and is

inconceivable without her constitution.

The author makes another mistake, in using the word _sovereignty_

instead of _primacy_. Roman theologians assert the primacy, but not,

in the ecclesiastical order, the _sovereignty_ of the Roman pontiff.

Sovereignty is a political, not an ecclesiastical term; it is, moreover,

exclusive, and it is not pretended that there is no authority in the church

by divine right but that of the Roman pontiff. It is not pretended that

bishops are simply his vicars or deputies. In feudal times there may have

been writers who regarded him as suzerain, but we know of none that held

him to be sovereign. He is indeed by some writers, chiefly French, called

_sovereign_ pontiff, but only in the sense of _supreme_ pontiff,

Pontifex maximus, or summus pontifex, to indicate that he is the highest

but not the exclusive authority in the church. The council of Florence, on

which we plant ourselves, defines him to be primate, not sovereign, and

ascribes to him plenary authority to feed, direct, and govern the whole

church, but does not exclude other and subordinate pontiffs, who, though

they receive their sees from him, yet within them govern by a divine right

no less immediate than his. The real and only sovereign of the church, in

the proper sense of the term, is Jesus Christ himself.

{467}

The pope is his vicar, and as much bound by his law as the humblest

Christian. He is not above the law, nor is he its source, but is its chief

minister and supreme judge, and his legislative power is restricted to such

rescripts, edicts, or canons as he judges necessary to its proper

administration. The sovereign makes the law, and the difference, therefore,

between the power of the sovereign and that claimed for the Roman pontiff

is very obvious and very great. Could the author, then, prove from the

written word that the pope or the Holy See is not the universal sovereign

of the church, he would prove nothing to his purpose. Yet this, as we shall

see, is all he does prove.

The author pretends, p. 32, that the papal authority, sovereignty he means,

is condemned by the word of God. The assertion, understanding the papal

authority as defined by the council of Florence, is to his purpose, if he

proves it. What, then, are his proofs? The Roman theologians, that is,

Catholic theologians, say the church is founded on Peter, and cite in proof

the words of our Lord, St. Matt. xvi. 18: "I say unto thee that thou art

Peter, and upon this rock will I build my church, and the gates of hell

shall not prevail against it." But this does not prove that Peter is the

rock on which the church is founded. The church is not founded on Peter,

or, if on Peter, in no other sense than it is on him and the other

apostles. The rock on which the church is built is Jesus Christ, who is the

only foundation of the church. St. Paul says, 1 Cor. iii. 11: "Other

foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ

himself."

That Jesus Christ is the sole foundation of the church in the primary and

absolute sense, nobody denies or questions, and we have asserted it in

asserting that he is the real and only sovereign of the church; but this

does not exclude Peter from being its foundation in a secondary and

vicarial sense, the only sense asserted by the most thorough-going papists,

as is evident from what St. Paul writes to the Ephesians, ii. 20, as cited

by the author: "You are built on the foundation of the apostles and

prophets, Jesus Christ being himself the chief cornerstone." The principal,

primary, absolute foundation is Christ, but the prophets and apostles are

also the foundation on which the church, the mystic temple, is built. The

author says, same page: "The prophets and apostles form the first layers of

this mystic edifice. The faithful are raised on these _foundations_,

and form the edifice itself; finally, Jesus Christ is the principal stone,

the corner-stone, which gives solidity to the monument." This is very true,

and we maintain, as well as he, that there is "no other foundation" in the

primary sense, "no other principal corner-stone than Jesus Christ;" but he

himself asserts, as does St. Paul, other "foundation" in a secondary sense.

So, though our Lord is the principal or first foundation in the sense in

which God is the first cause of all creatures and their acts, yet nothing

hinders Peter from being a secondary foundation, as creatures may be and

are what philosophers terms second causes.

But in this secondary sense, "all the apostles are the foundation, and the

church is no more founded on Peter than on the rest of the apostles." Not

founded on Peter to the exclusion of the other apostles certainly, but not

founded on Peter as the prince of the apostles, or chief of the apostolic

college, does not appear, and it is never pretended that Peter excludes the

other apostles. Our Lord gave, indeed, to Peter alone the keys of the

kingdom of heaven, thereby constituting him his steward or the chief of his

household; but he gave to all authority to teach all nations all things

whatsoever he had commanded them, the same power of binding and loosing

that he had given to Peter, and promised to be with them as well as with

him all days to the consummation of the world. There is in this nothing

that excludes or denies the primacy claimed for Peter, or that implies that

our Lord, as the author says, merely "gave to Peter an important ministry

in his church."

{468}

The author labors to refute the argument drawn in favor of the primacy of

Peter from the command of our Lord to Peter to "confirm his brethren," and

the thrice repeated command to "feed his sheep;" but as we are not now

seeking to prove the primacy, but simply repelling the arguments adduced

against it, we pass it over. He attempts to construct an argument against

the primacy of Peter from the words of our Lord to his disciples, St. Matt,

xxiii. 8: "Be ye not called Rabbi; for one is your Master, and all you are

brethren. And call none your father on earth; for one is your Father, who

is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters; for one is your master, Christ.

He that is greatest among you shall be your servant." "Christ, therefore,"

p. 48, "forbade the apostles to take, in relation to one another, the

titles of master, doctor, or even father, or pope, which is the same

thing." Why, then, does the author take the title of _Abbé_, which

means father, or suffer his editor to give him the title of Doctor of

Divinity? His non-united Greek friends also come in for his censure; for

they call their simple priests _papas_ or popes, that is, fathers;

nay, if he construes the words of our Lord strictly, he must deny all

ecclesiastical authority, and, indeed, all human government, and even

forbid the son to call his sire father. This would prove a little too much

for him as well as for us.

The key to the meaning of our Lord is not difficult to discover. He

commands his disciples not to call any one master, teacher, or father, that

is, not to recognize as binding on them any authority that does not come

from God, and to remember that they are all brethren, and must obey God

rather than men. God alone is sovereign, and we are bound to obey him, and

no one else; for, in obeying our prelates whom the Holy Ghost has set over

us, it is him and him only, that we obey. He commands his disciples to

suffer no man to call them masters: for their authority to teach or govern

comes not from them, but from their Master who is in heaven, and therefore

they are not to lord it over their brethren, but to govern only so as to

serve them. "Let him that is greatest among you be your servant." Power is

not for him who governs, but for them who are governed, and he is greatest

who best serves his brethren. The pope, in reference to the admonition of

our Lord, and from the humility with which all power given to men should be

held and exercised, calls himself "servant of servants." The words so

understood--and they _may_ be so understood--convey no prohibition of

the authority claimed for the Roman pontiff as the vicar of Christ, and

father and teacher of all Christians, by divine authority, not by his own

personal right.

Here is all the author adduces from the Scriptures, that amounts to any

thing, to prove "that the papal authority" is "condemned by the word of

God," and nothing in all this condemns it in the sense defined by the

council of Florence, which is all we have to show.

From the Scriptures the author passes to tradition, and first to "the views

of the papal authority taken by the fathers of the first three centuries."

He does not deny that our Lord treated Peter with great personal

consideration, and thinks Peter may be regarded in relation to the other

apostles as _primus inter pares_, the first among equals, but without

jurisdiction; and he says, p. 48, "We can affirm that no father of the

church has seen in the primacy of Peter any title to jurisdiction or

absolute authority in the church." But the first father he finds who, as he

pretends, absolutely denies the primacy Catholics claim for Peter, and

consequently for his successor, is St. Cyprian, who seems to us very

positively to affirm it.

{469}

The author has a theory, which he pretends is supported by St. Cyprian, and

which explains all the facts in the early ages which have been supposed by

Roman theologians to be favorable to their doctrine of the papacy. He does

not bring it out very clearly or systematically, and we can collect it only

from scattered assertions. He denies that Peter had any authority not

shared equally by the other apostles; or that the bishop of Rome had or has

by divine right any pre-eminence above any other bishop; or that the church

of Rome has any authority not possessed equally by the other churches that

had apostles for their founders. He concedes that Peter and Paul founded

the church of Rome, but denies that St. Peter was ever its bishop or bishop

of any other particular see. How, then, explain the many passages of the

fathers of the first three centuries, which undeniably assert Peter as "the

prince of the apostles," "the chief of the apostolic college," the

superiority and authority of "the see of Peter," "the chair of Peter." and

recognize the jurisdiction actually exercised in all parts of the church by

the bishop of Rome? No man can read the early fathers, and deny that the

church of Rome was regarded as the church that "presides," as St. Ignatius

calls it, as the root and matrix, as St. Cyprian says, of the church, as

holding the pre-eminence over all other churches, with whose bishop it was

necessary that all others should agree or be in communion. The author does

not deny it; but Peter meant "the faith of Peter," "the chair of Peter

meant the entire episcopate," which was one and held by all the bishops

_in solido_, and the pre-eminence ascribed to the church of Rome was

in consequence of her exterior importance as the see of the capital of the

empire. This is the author's theory, and he pretends that he finds it in

the Treatise on the Unity of the Church, by St. Cyprian.

"In fact," he says, p. 79, "he (St. Cyprian) positively denies the primacy

of St. Peter himself; he makes the apostle merely the type of unity which

resided in the apostolic college as a whole, and by succession in the whole

episcopal body, which he calls the See of Peter." "After mentioning the

powers promised to St. Peter, St. Cyprian remarks that Jesus Christ

promised them to him alone, though they were _given to all_. 'In order

to show forth unity,' he says, 'the Lord has wished that unity might draw

its origin from one only.' 'The other apostles certainly were just what

Peter was, having the same honor and power as he.' 'All are shepherds, and

the flock nourished by all the apostles together is one, in order that the

church of Christ may appear in its unity.'"

But to this explanation of St. Cyprian there is a slight objection; for we

are not able to see from this how the unity of the apostolic college or of

the church of Christ is shown forth, manifested, or made to appear, that

is, rendered visible, which is the sense of St. Cyprian, or how it can be

said to draw the origin of unity from one when it only draws its origin

from many conjointly. St. Cyprian says our Lord, "ut unitatem manifestaret,

unam cathedram constituit, unitatis ejusdem originem ab uno incipientem sua

auctoritate disposuit;" that is, that our Lord established by his authority

one chair, made the origin of unity begin from one, that the unity of the

body might be manifested or shown forth. St. Cyprian evidently teaches that

the unity of the church derives, as the author holds, from the unity of the

episcopate, and the unity of the episcopate from the unity of the apostolic

college; but that the unity of the apostolic college or apostolate may be

manifested, and hence the unity of the church be shown forth, or rendered

visible, our Lord made its origin begin from one, that is, Peter. All the

apostles, indeed, had what Peter had, that is, the apostolate, partook of

the same gift, honor, and power; but the beginning proceeded from unity,

and the primacy was given to Peter, that the church of Christ and the

chair, the apostolate, by succession the episcopal body, if you will, may

be shown to be one.

{470}

All are pastors, and the flock, which is fed by all the apostles in

unanimity, is shown to be one, that the unity of the church of Christ may

be demonstrated. "Hoc erant utique et caeteri apostoli quod fuit Petrus,

pari consortio praediti et honoris et potestatis, sed exordium ab unitate

profiscatur; et _primatus Petro datur_, ut una Christi ecclesia et

cathedra una monstretur. Et pastores sunt omnes, et grex unus ostenditur,

qui ab apostolis omnbus [omnibus?] unanimi consensione pascatur, ut

ecclesia Christi, una monstretur." [Footnote 145]

[Footnote 145: Opp. Cypriani, Migne's Edition, De Unitate Ecclesiae,

pp. 498-500. The words primatus Petro datur, are wanting in some

manuscripts, and are rejected by Baluze and some others as an

interpolation, and Archbishop Kenrick does not cite them in his

Primacy, when they would have been much to his purpose. It is thought

that they were originally a marginal note, and have crept into the text

through some ignorant copyist; but it is just as easy to suppose that

they were omitted from the text by some careless copyist, and placed in

the margin by way of correction, and afterward restored to their proper

place in the text. When several years ago we examined the question with

what ability we possess, we came to the conclusion that they are

genuine, or, at least, that there is no sufficient reason for regarding

them as spurious. They express what is obviously the sense of St.

Cyprian, and seem to us to be necessary to carry on and complete his

argument. Nevertheless, we have made none of our reasoning against M.

Guettée rest on their genuineness.]

St. Cyprian endeavors to show not simply that the church is one and the

episcopate also one, but that our Lord has so arranged it that the unity of

each may be made to appear and both be seen to be one. The unity of the

apostles, of the pastors, or of the church, regarded as a collective body,

is invisible. How, then, if it does not arise from one, or if it has no

visible centre and beginning in the visible order, is it to be made to

appear? St. Cyprian evidently holds that the unity of the apostolic body

establishes the unity of the episcopal body, since he holds the bishops to

be the successors of the apostles; and the unity of the episcopal body

establishes the unity of the flock, which in union with the body each

pastor feeds, and therefore the unity of the entire church of Christ. But

he just as evidently holds that the apostolic unity in order to exist must

begin from a central point, or have its centre and source whence it

proceeds, and radiates, so to speak, through the whole apostolic body,

making of the apostolate not an aggregation, but a body really one, with

its own central source of life and authority; an organic and not simply an

organized body, for an organized body has no real unity. Hence, he makes

the unity start and radiate from one, as it must if unity at all. This one,

this central point, he holds, is, by the ordination of the Lord, Peter. Of

this there can be no doubt.

As we understand St. Cyprian, whose treatise on the Unity of the Church is,

perhaps, the profoundest and most philosophical ever written on that

subject, the church is an organism with Jesus Christ himself for its

invisible and ultimate centre and source of life. But as the church is to

deal with the world and operate in time and space, it must be visible as

well as invisible. Then the invisible must be visibly expressed or

represented. But this cannot be done unless there is a visible expression

or representation in the exterior organic body of this interior and

invisible centre and source of unity, life, and authority, which our Lord

himself is. To establish this exterior or visible representation, our Lord

institutes the apostolic college and through that the episcopal body,

through whom the whole flock becomes in union with their pastors, who are,

in union with the apostles, one organic body; but only on condition of the

unity of the apostolic college which unity must start from one, from a

visible centre and source of unity. Hence, our Lord chose Peter as the

central point of union for the apostolic college, and Peter's chair, the

"una cathedra," as the visible centre of union for the episcopal body, and

through them of the whole church, so that the whole church in the

apostolate, in the episcopate, and in the flock is shown to be one,

represented with the unity and authority it has in Jesus Christ.

{471}

The trouble here with the author's theory is, not that it makes Peter the

sign and type of the unity or authority of the apostolic college, and the

chair of Peter the type and figure, as he says, of the unity and authority

of the episcopate, but that it does not do so; for it recognizes no visible

apostolic or episcopal unity, since it recognizes no visible centre or

source from which it originates; and hence neither the apostolate nor the

episcopate, save as Jesus Christ, is a unity, but an aggregation, as we

have said, a collection, or at least, a sort of round robin. By denying the

primacy or centre and beginning of unity to Peter and Peter's chair

individually, it denies what St. Cyprian maintains was instituted to

manifest or show forth unity. It denies both the manifestation of unity and

external unity itself, both of which are strenuously insisted on by St.

Cyprian, who, indeed, says expressly in his letter to St. Cornelius, the

Roman pontiff, that "the Church of Rome," that is, "the chair of Peter," is

the centre whence sacerdotal unity arose.

The author says, p. 67, that "St. Cyprian was right in calling the Church

of Rome the chair of Peter, the _principal_ church, whence sacerdotal

unity emanated. But for all that, did he pretend that the bishop enjoyed

authority by divine right? He believed it so little that, in his De Unitate

Ecclesiae, he understands by the chair of Peter the entire episcopate,

regards St. Peter as the equal of the other apostles, denies his primacy,

and makes him the simple type of the unity of the apostolic college." The

Church of Rome "was the source of sacerdotal unity in this sense, that

Peter was the sign and type of the unity of the apostolic college." St.

Cyprian makes St. Peter, p. 79, "merely the type of the unity that resided

in the apostolic college as a whole, and, by succession, in the episcopal

body, which he calls "the see of Peter." "The see of Peter, in St.

Cyprian's idea, is the authority of the apostolic body, and, by succession,

of the episcopal body. All the bishops had the same honor and the same

authority in all that relates to their order, as all the apostles had the

same honor and authority as Peter." (Pp. 79, 80.)

Peter, then, is the sign and type of apostolic and episcopal unity, and

"the chair of Peter," or "the see of Peter," is the sign and type of

apostolic authority. But supposing this to be so, and Peter to have been in

no respect distinguished from the other apostles, or to have held no

peculiar position in the apostolic body, how came he to be regarded as the

sign and type of apostolic unity, and his chair as the sign and type of

apostolic authority? There is a logic in language as well as in the human

mind of which it is the expression, and there is a reason for every

symbolical locution that gains currency. If the fathers and the church had

not held Peter to be the prince of the apostles and his see the centre and

source of apostolic authority, would they or could they have made his see

or chair the symbol of apostolic authority, or Peter himself the symbol,

"the sign and type," of apostolic unity? Why the see of Peter rather than

that of Andrew, James, or John? or Peter rather than any other apostle? The

fact, then, that St. Peter and his see or chair were taken as symbolic, the

sign and type, the one of apostolic unity, and the other of apostolic

authority, is a very conclusive proof that the primacy was given to him and

his see by our Lord, and by succession to the holy apostolic see and the

Roman pontiff, as the fathers of Florence define and Roman theologians

hold.

Again, how could Peter be a sign and type of apostolic unity or his see the

sign and type of apostolic authority, if he, Peter, had no relation, and

his see none, to that authority not held equally by all the apostles and

their sees? In the church of God there are and can be no shams, no

make-believes, no false signs or types, no unrealities, no calling things

which are not as if they were. Signs which signify nothing are not signs,

and types which represent nothing are simply no types at all. The real

apostolic unity and authority are internal, invisible in Jesus Christ

himself, who, in the primary and absolute sense, as we have seen, is the

rock on which the church is founded, the sole basis of its solidity and

permanence, the sole ground of its existence and fountain of its life,

unity, and authority.

{472}

Peter and Peter's see, if the sign and type of this invisible unity, must

represent it or show it forth in the visible order. But how can Peter

represent that unity, unless he is in the visible order its real centre and

source, in which it begins and from which it emanates? Or how can the see

or chair of Peter be the sign and type of the invisible apostolic

authority, unless it really be its source and centre in the visible order?

The external can represent the internal, the visible the invisible, only in

so far as it copies or imitates it. In calling Peter the sign and type of

apostolic unity, the author then concedes that Peter represents our Lord,

and that he is, as the council of Florence defines, "the true vicar of

Christ;" and in making Peter's see the sign and type of apostolic

authority, he makes it the real centre in the visible order of that

authority, and consequently concedes the very points which he rejects, and

undertakes to prove from St. Cyprian are only the unfounded pretensions of

the bishop of Rome.

That the primacy here unwittingly conceded by the author is not that

absolute and isolated sovereignty which the author accuses Catholic

theologians of asserting for Peter and for the bishop of Rome as his

successor, we readily admit, but we have already shown that such a

sovereignty is not claimed. The pope is not the sovereign, but the vicar or

chief minister of the sovereign. He governs the church in apostolic unity,

not as isolated from the episcopal body, but as its real head or supreme

chief. His authority is said to be _loquens ex cathedra_, speaking

from the seat of apostolic and episcopal unity and authority. He is the

chief or supreme pastor, not the only pastor, nor pastor at all regarded as

separate from the church. He is the visible head of the church united by a

living union with the body; for it is as necessary to the head to be in

living union with the body, as it is to the body to be in living union with

the head. Neither can live and perform its functions without the other; but

the directing, controlling, or governing power is in the head. St. Ambrose

says, "Where Peter is, there is the church;" but he does not say Peter is

the church, nor does the pope say, "L'Eglise, c'est moi," I am the church.

Succeeding to Peter as chief of the apostolic college, he is the chief or

head of the church. The author's theory makes the church in the visible

order as a whole, acephalous, headless, and therefore brainless.

The author bases his assertion that St. Cyprian denies the primacy of Peter

on the fact that he says, "All the other apostles had what he had, the same

honor and the same power." This is with Mr. Guettée a capital point. His

doctrine, so far as doctrine he has, is that the church has no visible

chief; that all the apostles had equal honor and authority; that all

bishops as successors of the apostles are equal; that one bishop has by

divine right no pre-eminence above another; and that, if one is more

influential than another, he owes it to his personal character or to the

external importance of his see. And this he contends is the doctrine of St.

Cyprian. But, if he had understood St. Cyprian's argument, he would have

never done that great saint such flagrant injustice. St. Cyprian's argument

is, as is evident from the passage we have cited at length, that, although

all the apostles received the same gift, the same honor, and the same

power, yet, for the sake of manifesting unity, our Lord constituted one

chair from which unity should begin, and gave the primacy to Peter, that

the unity of the apostolic or episcopal body and of the whole church of

Christ might be shown. The author himself contends that the apostolate, and

by succession the episcopate, is one and indivisible, and held by the

apostles or bishops _in solido_.

{473}

Then, if all the other apostles had the apostolate, they must have had

precisely what Peter had, and if the other bishops have the episcopate at

all, they must have precisely what the Roman pontiff has, yet without

having another apostolate or another episcopate than that which they all

equally receive and hold in its invisible unity, or anything in addition

thereto. He may, nevertheless, be the head or chief of the episcopal body

and the centre in which episcopal unity and authority in the visible order

originate, and from which they radiate through the body, and from the

bishops to their respective flocks, and bind them and the whole church

together in one, which, as we understand it, is the precise doctrine of St.

Cyprian, and certainly is the doctrine of the Roman and Catholic Church.

The author, even if a learned man, does not appear to be much of a

philosopher or much of a theologian. There are depths in St. Cyprian's

philosophy and theology which he seems unable to sound, and heights which

are certainly above his flight. He is, we should judge, utterly unaware of

the real constitution of the church, the profound significance of the

gospel, the vast reach of the Christian system, its relation to the

universal system of creation, or the reasons in the very nature of things

there are for its existence, and for the existence and constitution of the

church. All the works of the Creator are strictly logical, and together

form but one dialectic whole, are but the expression of one divine Thought.

Nothing can appear more petty or worthless than the author's shallow cavils

to a man who has a little real theological science.

The author cites the controversy on the baptism of heretics, in proof that

St. Cyprian denied the jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome, or his authority

to govern as supreme pontiff the whole church, but unsuccessfully. St.

Cyprian found the custom established in Carthage, as it was also in certain

churches in Asia, to rebaptize persons who had been baptized by heretics,

and he insisted on observing the custom. He complained, therefore, of St.

Stephen, the Roman pontiff, who wrote to him to conform to the ancient and

general custom of the church. Whether he conformed or not is uncertain, but

there is no evidence that he denied the authority of the Roman pontiff, and

he certainly did not break communion with him, though he may have regarded

his exercise of his authority in that particular case as oppressive and

tyranical. It would seem from the letter of St. Firmilianus to St. Cyprian,

if genuine, of which there is some doubt, as there is of several letters

ascribed to Cyprian, and from the address of St. Cyprian to the last

council he held on the subject, which Mr. Guettée cites at some length,

that the question was regarded as one of discipline, or as coming within

the category of those matters on which diversity of usage in different

churches and countries is allowable or can be tolerated, and on which

uniformity has never been exacted. He insisted not that all the world

should conform to the custom he observed, but defended, as our bishops

would to-day, what he believed to be the customary rights of his church or

province. That he was wrong we know, for the universal church has sustained

the Roman pontiff.

We do not think the author has been very happy in placing St. Cyprian on

the stand against the primacy of the holy apostolic see and the Roman

pontiff. The saint is a much better witness for us than for him.

The author, unable to deny the preponderating influence of the Roman

pontiff and his see in the government of the church, and the importance

everywhere attached to being in communion with the bishop of Rome, seeks to

evade the force of the fact by attributing it not to the belief in the

primacy of the Church of Rome, but to the superior importance of the city

of Rome as the capital of the empire, as if the Catholic Church were merely

a Roman Church, and not founded for the whole world.

{474}

We, indeed hear something of this when Constantinople, the New Rome, became

the rival of Old Rome, and its bishop, on account of the civil and

political importance of the city, set up to be oecumenical bishop, and

claimed the first place after the bishop of Rome; but we hear nothing of it

during the first three centuries, and the author adduces nothing to justify

his assumption. All the fathers, alike in the East and the West, attribute

the primacy held by the Church of Rome not to the importance of the city of

Rome in the empire, but to the fact that she is "the church that presides,"

is "the principal" or governing "church," is "the see of Peter," holds the

chair of Peter, "prince of the apostles," is "the root and matrix of the

Catholic Church," and that Peter "lives" and "speaks" in its bishops. Now,

whatever our learned author may say, we think these great fathers, some of

whom were only one remove from the apostles themselves, and nearly all of

whom gained the crown of martyrdom, knew the facts in the case as well as

he knows them, and that there is every probability that they meant what

they said and wrote.

"We see," says the author, p. 48, "that as early as the third century the

bishops of Rome, because St. Peter had been one of the founders of that

see, claimed to exercise a certain authority over the rest of the church,

giving themselves sometimes the title of 'bishop of bishops'; but we also

see that the whole church protested against these ambitious pretensions,

and held them of no account." That the bishop of Rome was accused by those

whom the exercise of his authority offended of assuming the title of bishop

of bishops, by way of a sneer, may be very true, but that he ever gave

himself that title, there is, so far as we are aware, no trustworthy

evidence.

"The church protested against these ambitious pretensions." Where is that

protest recorded? That bishops were then as now jealous of their real or

supposed rights, and ever well disposed to resist any encroachment upon

them, is by no means improbable; and this, if the bishops generally held

that the Roman pontiff had no more authority by divine right over the

church than any other bishop, must have made it exceedingly difficult for

him to grasp the primacy of jurisdiction over them. Their power to resist,

in case they believed they could resist with a good conscience, must have

been, being, as they were in the fourth century, eighteen hundred to one,

somewhat greater than his to encroach. That the bishops or simple priests

whom the Roman pontiff admonished or censured protested sometimes, not

against his authority, but against what they regarded as its unjust,

arbitrary, or tyrannical exercise, is no doubt true, and the same thing

happens still, even with those who have no doubt of the papal authority;

but that the whole church protested is not proven; and in all the instances

in which protests were offered on the part of individual bishops that came

before an ecclesiastical council, the universal church uniformly sustained

the Roman pontiff. When St. Victor excommunicated the Quartodecimans, some

bishops remonstrated with him as being too severe, and others opposed his

act, but the council of Nicaea sustained it. Even before that council, the

author of the Philosophumena, whose work must have been composed in the

early part of the third century, treats the Quartodecimans as heretics,

although, except as to the time of keeping Easter, their faith was

irreproachable. So on the question of the baptism of heretics, the whole

church, instead of protesting against the decision of St. Stephen, approved

it, and follows it to this day. It will not do to say the whole church

treated the acts of these popes "as of no account."

The writers of the letters attributed to St. Cyprian and Firmilianus are

good evidence that the popes claimed and exercised jurisdiction over the

whole church in the controversy on the baptism of heretics, and Tertullian

affords no mean proof of the same fact at a yet earlier date.

{475}

In a work written after he had fallen into some of the heresies of the

Montanists, he writes, as cited by our author, p. 78, "I learn that a new

edict has been given, a peremptory edict. The sovereign pontiff, that is,

the bishop of bishops, has said: 'I remit the sins of impurity and

fornication.' O edict! not less can be done than to ticket it--GOOD WORK!

But where shall such an edict be posted? Surely, I think, upon the doors of

the houses of prostitution." This passage undoubtedly proves that

Tertullian himself, fallen into heresy, did not relish the papal decision

that condemned him, and perhaps that he was disposed to deny the authority

of the Roman pontiff; but if it had been generally held that the Roman

pontiff was no more in the church than any other bishop, and therefore that

his decision could have no authority out of his diocese or province, would

his decision have so deeply moved him, and called forth such an outburst of

wrath? If the claim to the primacy of authority in the whole church, and

therefore to jurisdiction over all bishops, was not generally recognized

and held, what occasion was there for so much indignation? What point would

there have been in the sneer, or force in the irony, of calling him the

sovereign pontiff, or the bishop of bishops? Tertullian's language, which

was evidently intended to exaggerate the authority claimed by the Roman

pontiff, plainly enough implies that he was generally held to have

authority to make decisions in doctrine and discipline for the whole

church, and that a censure from him was something of far more importance

than that from any other bishop or patriarch.

The author cites to the same effect as Tertullian the work published at

Paris a few years ago under the name of Origin, entitled Philosophumena,

"justly attributed," he says, "to St. Hyppolytus, Bishop of Ostia, or to

the learned priest Caius." The authorship of the work is unknown, and no

documents have yet been discovered that enable the learned to determine

with any degree of certainty by whom it was or could have been written. The

work, however, bears internal evidence of having been written by some one

belonging to the East, and who lived during the pontificates of St. Victor,

St. Zephyrinus, St. Callistus, St. Urban, and perhaps St. Pontian, bishops

of Rome, that is to say, from 180 to 235, certainly not later. The work,

when published by M. Miller at Paris, in 1851, attracted the attention of

English and German Protestants by its gross charges against the two

venerated Roman pontiffs and martyrs, St. Zephyrinus and St.

Callistus--charges which for the most part refute themselves. But though

Protestants have not been able to make much of it against the papacy,

Catholics have found in it new and unexpected proofs of the authority

extending over the church in all parts of the world, exercised by the popes

of that early period. "In his invectives," says the Abbé Cruice, "the

adversary of Callistus acknowledges his great power, and furnishes new and

unexpected proofs of the supremacy of the holy see." The Abbé Cruice, who,

we think, we have heard recently died Bishop of Marseilles, published at

Paris, in 1851, an interesting History of the Church of Rome under the

pontificates of St. Victor, St. Zephyrinus, and St. Callistus, in which he

has incorporated these proofs with great judgment and effect. As we are not

now considering the affirmative proofs of the primacy of the Holy See, but

the arguments intended to prove the papacy schismatic, we can only refer

the reader to this learned work and to the Philosophumena itself. We will

only remark that the unknown author is far more bitter against the popes

than his contemporary Tertullian, and leaves more unequivocal evidence to

the extent of the papal power. No one can read the Philosophumena without

perceiving in the complaints and incidental remarks of the author that the

hierarchy at the end of the second century was as regularly organized as

now, and precisely in the same manner, with the Roman pontiff at its

summit.

{476}

The author, p. 82, says Tertullian, who in several passages refers to the

Church of Rome as a witness to the apostolic tradition, "does not esteem

her witness testimony superior to that of others." Perhaps so, for in the

cases referred to Tertullian had no occasion to discriminate between one

apostolic church and another. He is using against heretics the argument

from prescription. Their doctrines are adverse to the apostolic tradition,

and therefore false. If any one would know what is the apostolic tradition,

he may learn it from any of the churches founded by apostles "where their

sees still remain, where their epistles are still read, where their voice

still resounds, and their face, as it were, is still seen. Is it Achaia

that is near thee? thou hast Corinth; if thou art not far from Macedonia,

thou hast the Philippians; if thou canst go to Asia, thou hast Ephesus; if

thou dwellest near Italy, thou hast Rome, whose authority is near us," that

is, near us in Africa. It is true Tertullian pronounces a eulogium on the

Church of Rome that he does not on the others, but no great stress need be

laid on that. Any one of the apostolic churches was sufficient for

determining the apostolic tradition, and there was no reason why he should

mention the primacy of the see of Peter if he held it, and it would have

weakened his argument if he had appealed to that primacy, doubtless then as

now rejected by heretics.

But this leads us to a remark which it may be well to bear in mind. All the

churches founded by the apostles were during the whole of the first three

centuries in existence, and preserved the apostolic doctrine or tradition,

and it could be learned from Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Ephesus, etc.,

without the necessity, at least on ordinary occasions, of recurring to the

supreme authority of Rome. The author quotes several of the fathers who

call the see of Antioch Peter's see; he might have gone further, and shown

that each of the four great patriarchal sees, Rome, Alexandria, Antioch,

and Jerusalem, were so-called, and because they were held to have been

founded by Peter. This is the reason why they received the dignity and

authority of patriarchal churches. Peter was held to survive and govern in

each one of them, but more especially in Rome, where he gave his life for

his faith, and where stands his tomb. It is Peter who governs one and

indivisible in them all, and consequently, to get Peter's authority, it was

not, except in the last resort, necessary to apply to his successor in the

see of Rome. It is this fact, misapprehended by the author, that has made

him assert that the see of Peter, or the chair of Peter, means the

universal episcopate which all the bishops, as St. Cyprian says, hold _in

solido_. Every bishop in communion with Peter's see, no doubt, was

regarded as _solidaire_ with the whole episcopal and apostolic body,

as we have already explained; but we have not found the "see of Peter," or

"chair of Peter" applied to any particular churches, except those tradition

asserted were founded by Peter, and only those sees had originally

patriarchal jurisdiction, and this fact is in itself no slight proof that

the primacy was held to be vested in Peter as we have already explained,

and the author has given us the opportunity of proving from St. Cyprian.

This fact that Peter was held to govern in the four great patriarchal sees,

though supremely only in the Church of Rome, explains why it is that in the

early ages we find not more frequent instances of the exercise of

jurisdiction beyond his own patriarchate of the West by the Roman pontiff.

The bishops of these Petrine churches were not originally called

patriarchs, but they exercised the patriarchal power long before receiving

the name, and probably from times immediately succeeding the apostles. So

long as these patriarchs remained in communion with the bishop of Rome,

their head and chief, most of the questions of discipline, and many of

those of faith, could be, and were, settled by the patriarch, or local

authority, without resort to the Roman pontiff.

{477}

But when these sees fell off from unity into heresy or schism, Peter

remained only in the Roman see, and all causes that had previously been

disposed of by the patriarchs of the East had to be carried at once to

Rome, before the supreme court.

Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch were the three chief cities of the empire,

and the capitals the first of the empire itself, and the others of its two

largest and most important prefectures. This fact may seem to favor the

author's theory that the ecclesiastical superiority is derived from the

civil superiority; but had this been so, Jerusalem would hardly have been

selected as the seat of the third patriarchate of the East. The

geographical position and civil and political importance of these cities

may have influenced the apostle in selecting them to be the chief seats of

the ecclesiastical government he under Christ was founding, but could not

have been the ground of their superior ecclesiastical jurisdiction, because

the church was not organized as a national religion, or with a view to the

Roman empire alone, and the apostles themselves carried the gospel beyond

the farthest limits of that empire, into regions never penetrated by the

Roman eagles. The church was catholic, and was to subsist in all ages and

teach all nations, as well as all truth. Our Lord said, "My kingdom is not

of this world;" it does not hold from the kingdoms of this world, and is

independent of them, both in its constitution and in its bowers. These

remain always and everywhere the same, whatever the revolutions or the rise

and fall of states and empire. The authority of the church is immediately

from God; her grandeur and glory are spiritual, and not derived from the

greatness, grandeur, wealth, or power of earthly cities. St. Augustine

makes the city of Rome the type of the city of the world, which he

contrasts with the church or city of God. The idea that the rank or the

authority of the bishop derived from the civil rank and importance of the

city in which he held his see was a Constantinopolitan idea not heard of

till the fifth century, and, as we shall see in its place, one of the chief

causes of the schism between the East and the West.

The author denies that St. Peter was ever, in the proper sense of the word,

bishop of Rome, or of any particular see. If he is right, how could the

unity of the church have a visible starting-point or centre? or how could

it be said to begin from Peter or the chair of Peter, as his own witness,

St. Cyprian, asserts? If Peter had no particular see, established his see,

or set up his chair, his cathedra, nowhere in particular, the whole

argument of St. Cyrian [Cyprian?] as to the origin and manifestation of

unity is baseless, and goes for nothing. Besides, it is contradicted by

universal tradition. The testimony that Peter had his chair at Rome is

ample, and leaves nothing to be desired. But this is not the point. It is

for the author to prove that he was not bishop of Rome; for he has

undertaken to prove the papacy is schismatic, and at every step he takes,

the burden of proof is on him. Where are his proofs?

The author says St. Linus was bishop of Rome when Peter first arrived in

that city. A church which has a bishop is already a church founded and

constituted. Yet the author allows and cites authorities that prove that

Peter was the founder, or at least one of the founders, of the Roman

Church! That St. Linus was the first bishop of Rome after St. Peter there

is no doubt; that he was the first bishop, or bishop of Rome, before the

arrival of St. Peter in the city, there is no evidence, but any amount of

testimony to the contrary. We say there is no evidence. The lists given by

the fathers sometimes enumerate him as first and sometimes as second, as

they do or do not include the apostle; but all make him the successor of

St. Peter. The fathers, in giving the lists of other apostolic sees, are

not uniform, and sometimes they include and sometimes they exclude the

apostle, and reckon only from his death.

{478}

Eusebius says, as cited by the author, p. 144, "After the martyrdom of Paul

and Peter, Linus was the first that received the episcopate at Rome."

Tertullian, as also cited by the author, p. 145, says that "Peter sat on

the chair of Rome;" but he contends that Tertullian "does not mean that he

was bishop, but that he taught there," that is, St. Peter was a professor

of theology at Rome! This might do if Tertullian had been treating of the

Sorbonne, or of the French university, but will not answer here. In

ecclesiastical language, _chair, cathedra_, means simply the seat of

the bishop, and, figuratively, the episcopal authority. To say Peter sat in

the chair or cathedra of Rome is saying simply he was bishop of Rome. The

presumption is, that Tertullian meant what he said, understood according to

the usages of the language he used. Besides, if chair _may_ sometimes

be used figuratively for teaching, it is the author's business to prove

that it must mean so in this particular case. This he does not and cannot

do.

The author pretends that the tradition which makes Peter seven years bishop

of Antioch and twenty-five years bishop of Rome is obviously false; for any

one can see by counting that there was not time enough for it between the

day of Pentecost and the martyrdom of Peter. We do not pretend to be very

good at counting, but as we count, seven years bishop of Antioch and

twenty-five years bishop of Rome make in all thirty-two years. The day of

Pentecost, according to the usual reckoning, was in A.D. 33, and St. Peter

suffered martyrdom at Rome under Nero, A.D. 66, or at the earliest 65.

Tillemont says 66, which leaves thirty-three, at least thirty-two years;

and we see no reason to suppose that the organization of the church at

Jerusalem and committing it to the care of James, its first bishop, and the

setting up of his chair at Antioch, might not all have been done before the

close of the year of the crucifixion. But even an error in the chronology

would not prove that Peter was not bishop of Rome.

The pretence that it was incompatible with the dignity of an apostle to be

the bishop of a particular see has nothing to sustain it. It is not

necessary to suppose Peter, by establishing his see at Rome, was obliged to

confine his whole attention and labor to that particular church, or that he

remained constantly at Rome. Indeed, it is very possible, and thought by

many to be very probable, that he committed the care of that church daring

his absences to St. Linus as his vicar, and there are several authorities

to that effect. Some of them join St. Anacletus, Cletus, or, as the Greeks

say, Anencletus, and St. Clement, successively bishops of Rome, with St.

Linus in the government of the Roman Church under Peter during his

lifetime; but, however this may have been, tradition is constant that St.

Linus was the immediate successor of Peter, which at least implies that

Peter was regarded as having held the see as well as having assisted in

founding it; for otherwise St. Linus could not have been regarded as his

successor, and no reason could be assigned why he was called the successor

of Peter rather than of Paul, who also assisted in founding it, and is

honored even to-day by the Roman Church as one of its founders.

We have taken up the author's theory point by point, and we find him

utterly failing to establish it in whole or in part. His allegations are

set forth with great confidence, but the authorities he cites do not

sustain them, and are either not to his purpose or, like St. Cyprian, point

blank against him. He may have demolished the man of straw which he himself

had set up, but he leaves standing the papacy as held by the Catholic

Church and defined by the council of Florence.

{479}

He has asserted in very strong terms the ignorance, the chicanery, the

sophistry, and the dishonesty of the Roman theologians, and leaves no doubt

in the minds of intelligent readers that he greatly excels them in the

qualities and practices he ascribes to them; but he adduces nothing beyond

his own assertions and misrepresentations against their fairness and

candor, and their intelligence and learning. His sneers at them are pointed

only by his own ignorance or malice, and present him in a most unfavorable

light. His cant, so abundant against them, is very stale and simply

disgusting. From first to last he proves that he lacks, we will not say the

humility of the Christian, but the modesty and reserve of real learning and

science, and that he is moved not by love of truth, but by a spirit of

hatred and revenge.

Here we might well close, for the author has refuted from St. Cyprian

himself, by proving by his own witness the primacy of jurisdiction by

divine right was possessed even in the third century, while he has left all

the arguments and authorities adduced by the Roman theologians from

Scripture and tradition to prove affirmatively the papal authority by

divine right, or by the positive appointment of Jesus Christ in their full

force. But the reasons which induced us in the first place to begin the

examination of the author's lucubrations induce us to go through with them.

The work has been translated and published here under Protestant auspices,

set up as an important work against the papal authority and the Church of

Rome, "the root and matrix of the Catholic Church," as says St. Cyprian,

and, were it left unnoticed or unreplied to, many people might take it to

be really what it is represented to be, and conclude that we cannot answer

it because we have not done it.

Besides, the controversy between large classes of Protestants and Catholics

is narrowed down to two questions, the honor we render to Mary the mother

of God, and the authority we attribute to the Holy See and the Roman

pontiff. M. Guettée, having been reared in our communion and gone out from

us because he was not of us, and having in this work done his best to prove

the papacy schismatic, and that its assertion has been the cause of the

schism between the East and the West, affords us as good an occasion as we

can expect to discuss the latter question, and to consider the arguments,

facts, and authorities alleged in their defence by those who refuse their

obedience to St. Peter in his successor. The work is rambling, and made up

of details most wearisome to read, and difficult to bring into a shape in

which its real value can be brought to the test, but it is a fair specimen

in spirit and arrangement of the works written against the Roman and

Catholic Church, and contains in some form all that schismatics allege

first and last against her. We may as well make it our text-book for the

discussion as any other. But we have already trespassed long enough on the

patience of our readers for this month.

------

{480}

Translated from the French.

The Crucifix of Baden.

A Legend of the Middle Ages.

Will you follow me to Baden? Not to that elegant and wild and whirling

Baden of painted faces and flashy toilettes, where gentlemen of the turf

display their horsemanship on the plain of Iffezheim; where the majesty of

old Germany elbows, in the Trinkhalle, the princes of Bohemia; but to the

fresh, dark, silent, almost unknown nooks of that Baden which God has made

and which man has yet left untouched; where the artist wanders for his

picture, the poet for his inspiration, the dreamer for his vision, the

Christian to murmur his prayer; for it is to a burial-ground that I am

about to lead you. But fear not on that account; this burial-place of Baden

has comparatively but little of the mournful in its appearance; it is

truly, as its name declares, the _Fried Hof_--the Court of Peace.

Under that green turf, under those flower-clad hillocks, there lie bodies

that suffer no more, but sleep in quiet; their souls may suffer, indeed,

and be in pain, but their souls are no longer there; and can repose alone

be frightful? Look around, and, as far as the eye can reach, what beauty

shines in the landscape, what a charm invests the distant meeting of earth

and sky! Look up to the gray blue heaven, pale and transparent, as is ever

that sky which stretches over the valley of the Rhine; to those pure white

clouds floating like distant sails on a stormless sea; to those distant

hills, with outlines softening as they recede; to the green woods that

fringe their sides; to those walls which time has breached; those crumbling

towers; those ruined castles which seem to overhang the plain of the

dead--man's work, and the hands that created it, becoming dust together.

These sights may, indeed, be melancholy, but they are peace-giving too; for

there in the midst hangs Christ bowing his weary head and stretching out

his bruised arms in yonder great crucifix of stone.

In a churchyard, nothing is more frequent, nor, so to speak, more natural,

than to see a crucifix. It is there like the flag on the bastion, the mast

on the vessel. Without it the place would be accursed and desolate, for

hope would be wanting there. All know and acknowledge this, but,

nevertheless, few passers-by bestow a glance on the holy image. Some

faithful ones may, when they see it, make the sign of the cross; others

bend slightly before it; well-bred people uncover; free-thinkers, with

proud look and step, with unbending knee and body erect, pass it by, they

who would bow so low before the coronet of a prince or even the key of a

chamberlain.

And certainly indifferent, timid, and free-thinking ones come to the

_Fried Hof_ of Baden; but _there_, few stop not and marvel, if by

chance their eyes fall upon its crucifix. There is upon that rigid

face--those features of stone--a look of life, of flesh and blood, which

enchains you, moves the depths of your heart, speaks to you. To understand

that gaze, it is not necessary to be a Christian; alas! it is enough to be

a man. Those lips, half parted in a sigh, tremble in the stone; those

half-closed eyes seem really to weep; agony sits upon every feature;

bitterness of soul has worn every one of those furrows, the arch of the

brows has been contracted, the pure lines of the profile broken, the calm

of the forehead destroyed by a sorrow, overwhelming, silent, inconsolable;

and you would have before you the image of human misery the most complete,

the deepest, the most horrible, if a ray from the Majesty on high did not

come to elevate and illumine that petrifaction of grief.

{481}

When you have long studied those features and contemplated their agony, you

involuntarily ask yourself: Where did the sculptor find so suffering a

face, so living an agony? whence came his model? for you feel that those

features once were the flesh of one to whom ordinary grief were as nothing.

That look of life, that pain so real, came certainly from a human heart

that once beat beneath them, and in them painted its wounds, its tortures,

and its agony. They were _seen_, and not merely created in the

artist's brain.

Yes; you are right. Those features are those of a suffering, repentant, and

miserable man. If you approach the base of the crucifix, you will see

graven in the once soft stone, in long Gothic letters, and in the Suabian

dialect of the fifteenth century, these short and simple words, which are

the explanation and the ending of its story:

"MINA, OTHO.

"May God receive you and pardon me."

Nothing more; no signature to the work, nor name added to the prayer. But

young souls, simple hearts, poetic spirits, which still may be found at

Baden, in spite of "sport" and "the turf," will relate to you the birth of

the work and the fate of the artist; for, alas! the story of the crucifix

is also the story of the sculptor.

----

Chapter I.

It was a populous, busy, and bright city, Baden of old, as it flourished in

the fifteenth century, in the days of the Margrave Bernard of Staehberg.

Less noisy than to-day, it was more picturesque. Where great hotels, white

villas, and regular edifices now rise, then only narrow crooked streets

were seen; where Gothic houses, those old German dwellings, of which a few

still stand at Augsburg, at Ulm, and especially at Nuremberg, reared their

sculptured gables and pointed roofs, wherein were set windows looking like

half-opened eyes, while beams projected from the wall beneath and supported

little balconies, and long, narrow windows with leaden sashes glistened in

the glory of their little, thick, greenish hued and diamond-shaped panes.

Nevertheless, those streets in which the sun-rays rarely penetrated,

(caught as they were in their way by the projecting fronts of the houses,)

were one day of the beautiful month of May, 1435, filled with people in

holiday dress, bearing curious and smiling faces, with fluttering pennons,

shining armor, and broad banners. It was the day of the tournament, and the

gossips grouped themselves together to see pass the barons of the mountains

and plains, and to relate to each other the high achievements of each

doughty noble and the traditions of his family, while they awaited the

return from the _burg_ of the proud victors or humbled vanquished.

But of the general joy, the cries that rang through the town, only a few

faint and expiring echoes reached a lonely and distant street, where the

houses, lower and more scattered, no longer stood close together, but began

to grow scattered through the fields. One of these houses, the largest and

almost the last, was distinguished from its neighbors by two peculiarities.

The front of the first story, instead of being cut by those narrow

leaden-sashed openings joined one to the other, through which the light of

day might scarcely enter, offered to the gaze a huge window with larger,

neater, and more regular panes than any around. Through the openings on the

ground floor a narrow spiral staircase might be seen winding its polished

steps and balustrade of stone, carved like lace, beneath a roof of wood

delicately cut in graceful flowers, branches, arabesques, and interlaced

figures.

{482}

Above all, in a little wooden niche, a little carved shrine, which

surmounted the pointed gable, was the form of an angel with folded wings,

chiselled in pure white marble. One might imagine that the heavenly

messenger had stopped there to rest in the middle of some long journey;

that he gazed calmly down and protected with his frail hands the high gray

house which he seemed to bless; so that the gossips, who all knew the

dwelling and held its master in high esteem, called his abode The House of

the Angel.

And the good burgesses wondered not to see the white statue on that gray

front, nor did they marvel at the graceful scrolls and arabesques of the

pretty staircase, and that huge dazzling window, for they knew that the

last served to light the studio of the sculptor Sebald Koerner, and that

the two ornaments of the house, the marble angel and the carved roof, were

his work.

Sebald Koerner was justly esteemed and even admired by the burgesses of

Baden. It was not that he was very famous or very rich; that he earned much

money or made much noise in the world. But it was because he was honest,

patient, true; at once pious and dreamy, modest and intelligent. He lived

only for his art, and scarcely partook at all of the passions, the aims,

the entrancements of the crowd. He did not place himself above it, but

without it, and men hold in high respect those who from a calm retreat

behold the torrent of human life rush by. As an artist, he had rivals, but

no enemies; as a man, he had his failings, but no vices; as a father, he

had a treasure, a fair-haired daughter, named Mina, who had seen the

flowers of seventeen springs bloom. Sebald Koerner might call himself a

happy man.

But he was not only a happy man, he was a wise one, and what God had given

him of strength, genius, calm, and happiness he guarded carefully, lest he

might lose it in the tumult of the life of men. Therefore the day of the

tournament, which had so stirred the peaceful city of Baden with rumors of

pleasure and joy, saw old Sebald shut himself up in his atelier. He had

worked since dawn, while the swords of others were clashing and shields and

breastplates resounding, while plumes and banners flashed through the air,

and horns and clarions awoke the echoes; and he had first prayed, for such

was his custom, and he imagined that prayer brightened his

inspirations--men were so ignorant and barbarous in those "dark ages"! Then

with a skilful and pious hand he wielded hammer and chisel through long

hours well employed, and now, although the sun was sinking behind the

mountains, he still worked, standing before his great stone bas-relief,

only interrupting himself from time to time to cast a glance full of

parental love on his daughter Mina.

Upon Mina fell the last ray of the sun, which, after kissing the verdure of

the mountain, shone through the panes and made her long silver-gray gown

glitter like silver itself, and seemed to light a beam of dark light in the

centre of each of her large black eyes. Those were splendid eyes, and

rarely seen in one so fair, for Mina was a blonde, and the golden threads

of her purse were not brighter than those her hair, but only less soft and

close. Nothing could equal the perfect purity and grace of her forehead and

cheeks, the whiteness of her skin, the delicacy of the lines of her face:

she seemed a beauteous statue, to which God, in reward to its designer, had

given life and motion, and a loving heart and golden hair.

The bas-relief which the old sculptor was finishing seemed indeed as if

long and difficult labor had been spent upon it. It represented a religious

subject, for any but religious subjects were scarcely known, in those times

when minds were so simple, imagination so quiet, and intelligence so

limited, according to our strong-minded ones of this age; in those times

when pilgrims marvelled at the beauty of a Child Jesus, or the chaste grace

of a Virgin Mary; when the Apollos, the Minervas, the Venuses and Adonises,

forgotten or unknown, were yet buried in the darkness of centuries and

under the dust of ruins.

{483}

What Sebald Koerner wished to represent was the dawn of the resurrection

day.

The cave of the sepulchre was there, rocky, vaulted, and low. At the

entrance knelt Peter, with wide-opened eyes and trembling lips, and

Magdalene wept, stretching forth her arms. Yes, she wept, for the sepulchre

was empty. The stone which closed the tomb moved to one side, allowed the

scattered bands which wrapped the sacred body and the abandoned

winding-sheet to be seen, and the angel seemed to announce to the two

faithful followers the glad and great tidings--the tidings of triumph and

of consolation--_Resurrexit: non est hic:_ words graven on the

banderole which hung from his hand.

Old Sebald's angel was noble, radiant, and beautiful, as became a messenger

of heaven. The sculptor, with something of artistic caprice, had placed a

golden star upon his forehead, and with the fond pride of a father had

given to his face the features of his beautiful Mina, so that, when he

smiled upon his angel, it seemed to him that he smiled upon his daughter,

and, when he turned to his daughter, he became grave, and moved as if he

looked upon a celestial visitant.

"I am satisfied with thee, my daughter," said he, after silently comparing

for some moments the two faces. "I find nothing to change in thy pure brow,

thy modest attitude, or thy soft gaze. All that I cannot copy is thy smile.

And thy smile is sweet, my Mina, but it is too lively, too childish, too

mocking; it is earthly, and not, I am sure, the smile of the bright ones

above."

"Marvel not that it should be so, my father," replied Mina, while her eyes

glistened: "Above, angels smile in ecstasy, love, and piety, while I here

can only bear the smile of youth and hope."

"Thou art right, my child; I would not blame thee. Hope is natural to the

young. Long years are before them; they may expect to see their projects

accomplished, their brightest dreams realized. Melancholy and weariness are

the lot of old fathers, old dreamers, and old workers such as I."

"And why, father," returned Mina gayly, "shouldst thou be sad? Hast thou

not an art which is better than a fortune? a name which is known throughout

Baden as well as those of our oldest barons and bravest knights? Thou art

never idle; thou lackest a companion never. Noble ladies and proud lords

offer thee a respectful salute as they pass the door of the House of the

Angel; and, when they are not here, thy little Mina remains; and thou

thyself makest holy companions for thyself when carving some beautiful

Virgin or sweet child-Jesus."

"'Tis that which often makes me tremble, my child. Hath my spirit enough of

inspiration, are my hands pure enough to reproduce those holy features? to

give to stone, or marble, or wood the charm and majesty of those divine

forms which from their golden halos call and smile on me? to express the

sweetness of the Christ-child, the tenderness of Christ the Mediator, or

the virginal motherhood of his holy mother? No; to inspiration must be

added the heart of a Christian; and if I have dared too much and but ill

succeeded; if to those sacred faces I have given too much of man's fall and

misery, then am I guilty, and then have I failed in my aim--in more than my

aim, for then my peace of conscience and repose of soul, too, are lost.

These, Mina, are the fears that weaken and the questions that disquiet me,

and so often render my hand unsteady, and mark care upon my brow."

"Thou art very wrong to be so troubled, my father," said Mina, lifting her

head with a little air of triumph. "From Strasburg to Nuremburg, from

Constance to Augsburg, all who have hearts and eyes and frequent the

churches say there is in this world no man like thee to carve angels and

saints."

{484}

"Ay; so say men," replied Sebald, "but God hath not yet said it, he who

sees and judges my works; and from him must come my courage and my

strength, for I would destroy all the works of my hands if by them I knew

that he was offended. Look, my child, this bas-relief is nearly completed,

and until now I was satisfied with it, but a scruple comes and weighs

heavily upon my mind. This angel is very beautiful, Mina, since he bears

thy face, but have I not presumed too much in giving him thy features? As

one of the host of heaven he is perfect, so far as aught beneath God

himself can be perfect. But thou art but a child of earth; thou art good,

thou art tender to thy old father; thou art his only treasure, and yet more

beautiful than this angel, but wilt thou be always calm, pure, and radiant

as he?"

"I will try, my father," answered Mina, with an air of half rebellious

resolution, mingled at the same time with deep tenderness.

"Promise me, Mina, that thou wilt ever seek to be angelic and joyous, and

in the midst of the world to live retired from it, that the weaknesses and

griefs of men may ever remain far from thee and never afflict thee. I am

old, and, when I shall rest in the tomb, thou wilt be the heiress of my

name and the guardian of my memory. Then learned men, princes, travellers,

who may perchance have heard of my fame, may come. Thou wilt salute them at

the threshold, and when they ask for old Sebald, thou, pointing to my

deserted studio and empty seat, wilt reply, '_Resurrexit: non est

hic_: He hath succeeded; he hath finished his years of toil, and

reposeth in his fatherland.' And I, my Saviour!" continued old Koerner, "I

will then know whether I knew thee on earth. After thou hast done this, my

daughter, dismiss the travellers and bid the princes farewell. Live in

simplicity and retirement with a few old friends, my poor child, for thou

hast no mother, or with some faithful companion whom thou mayest wed.'

"Father, father!"' cried the young girl, "why speak of sorrow and death in

the beautiful spring, when the sun shines so brightly, and when thou art

finishing the beautiful angel to whom thou hast given such radiance and

youth? If thou couldst give him youth, my father, it is because thou yet

possessest youth and long wilt possess it. And thinkest thou that, if thou

wert no longer on earth, many would give a thought to thy little Mina, who

is young and ignorant, and who is not a lady? No, those to whom strangers

would come to speak of thy fame, whom, after thy departure, they would

seek, are sure to be thy pupils Johann Muller, Franz Steinbach, and

even--and even--Sir Otho of Arneck, who carves so bravely, and wears such

glistening arms."

"As to the two first, thou art perhaps right, my daughter," said Koerner,

who had again begun to work, and was lightly polishing the tunic of the

angel with the edge of his chisel. "Franz hath ardor and Johann almost

genius. But for the knight, Sir Otho, he amuses himself with sculpture as

with training his hawks or with the wrestling of his varlets."

"Art not too severe?" asked Mina lowering her eyes and puckering her rosy

lips into a little pout. "I thought the knight of Arneck had something of

talent; that thou thyself saidst the day he modelled the great St.

Michael."

"In good truth, he might have talent, were he more pious, more humble, and

were he not a noble. Thinkest thou, Mina, that inspiration will come in the

midst of the clamors of a passage-at arms, the charms of a concert of

lutes, or of a circle of great ladies listening to the words of a handsome

cavalier, or the lays of a minnesinger? No; who would consecrate his labors

to the honor of God and the saints must seek his inspiration, looking

upward to heaven, studying the mountains and the fields, or praying in the

churches. Then let him return and work and adore, lest the holy vision fly

or the sweet fervor grow cold."

{485}

"Nevertheless, my father, the Chevalier Otho, is very assiduous, and I have

more than once heard thee marvel at his zeal."

"Assuredly, he has been zealous. But can he really bear that zeal in his

heart, wherein he bears the pride of his high lineage, the gallantry of a

courteous knight, and all the cares of his seigneury? No; his ardor is but

the flame of burning straw, which quickly dies. I cannot even understand

why the knight of Arneck should take up the chisel--he who should content

himself with the sword."

"Yes, yes, father, he wields it marvellously!" cried Mina, in a burst of

enthusiasm.

"And therefore should be content with it. But Sir Otho knows not what he

wants. To day he practises a new thrust, and to-morrow he cuts stone or

models a statue. See, he has not finished the fine armor of his archangel,

and yet he could not keep from the tournament. And nevertheless, he

promised to be here before evening."

Mina did not reply to these last words, but threw a vague, sorrowful glance

toward the sun, which yet shone, but was fast sinking.

Sebald, yet touching up various parts of his bas-relief, did not turn his

head, and for some moments silence reigned in the atelier.

Soon the fall of a light and vigorous step was heard on the little pointed

black stones which formed the pavement of the street.

"It is perhaps Sir Otho," said Sebald, and continued his work.

"If it were he, he would come on horseback," replied Mina, whose cheeks,

despite her, were covered with the blush of expectant happiness, and in a

moment she had left her seat, opened a portion of the large window, and was

leaning joyfully over the sculptured balcony.

But she soon returned, looking sad.

"No, father, it is not he; it is only Johann," said she, and she seemed to

awake from a dream.

"Then let him come up quickly," replied the old man, well pleased with the

news, but still working on.

A moment after he arose, as he heard the footfalls on the stair, and turned

to greet the most beloved and studious of all his pupils.

Chapter II.

The new-comer was a young man of perhaps twenty-eight years, pale,

delicate, and slightly stooped. His large blue eyes, candid and

intelligent, gave a charm to his young though thoughtful face, whence light

emotions seemed to be banished to give place to the workings of a vigorous

mind. Johann, at first sight, did not seem handsome, but he became more and

more interesting on acquaintance. The simplicity of this look and costume--

a dark gray doublet, leathern belt, and cap without either clasp or plume--

certainly neither attracted nor retained the gaze. Johann saluted the

beautiful Mina, who returned his greeting with a look of playful anger, and

then hastened to greet his master.

"Well, Johann, what news?" asked Sebald, advancing with outstretched hand.

"That I have not come alone, master. Your business is done; the prior of

the monastery of Fremersberg is here. I have spoken in your name, and he

binds you neither by designs nor advice. You will be at full liberty to

execute according to your own will the sculpture of the chapel. You need

only confer with him as to the time and conditions of the work. The prior

wished much to visit your atelier and see your beautiful bas-relief, of

which the fame has spread far and wide, but you know that he is old and

infirm. The stair was too steep for him to mount, and I left him in the

hall below, where he awaits you."

{486}

"Very good; I go, my brave boy and thanks to thee. Hast been in the city,

Johann?"

"Yes, master, I was carried away by the crowd and could not avoid the

tournament."

"Very well, then, amuse Mina with the story of all the fine things that

thou hast seen. An old father and his statues are not very joyous company

for a girl of seventeen."

With these words Koerner left the room, and Mina, who until now had

remained silent and pouting, came forward with animated looks and flashing

eyes:

"Then you saw the tournament, Johann?" she began.

"Yes, Demoiselle Mina."

"Who were the victors?"

"There were three, as there were three encounters. The Gaugrave Siegfried

of Ehrenfels; the old Count of Arenheim; and our acquaintance, our fellow

of the studio, Otho of Arneck, who triumphed on foot and on horse, and

received the finest of all the crowns."

"Ah!" exclaimed Mina, with a joyous sigh, while a sudden blush overspread

her countenance.

"And," continued Johann, "it was the richest and most beautiful of the

ladies of the Margravate who gave it him--the Countess Gertrude of

Horsheim, whose father possesses the entire valley of the Murg."

"Ah!" exclaimed Mina again, but this time her sigh was one of anguish, and

she grew pale.

Johann Muller gazed on her a moment in silence, then turned away and walked

a few paces with the air of one who meditates some resolution or prepares a

discourse; then he returned, and stood with downcast eyes before the young

girl.

"Demoiselle Mina," said he, "we have known each other since infancy. Would

you, for the sake of our old friendship, allow me to ask you one question,

and then to offer you a single counsel?"

"I will reply to your question, if it be suitable for me to do so, and I

will list your counsel if it be good," replied the girl with a slight

haughtiness in her manner.

"You shall judge," said Johann. "Demoiselle, you take much interest in all

that passes in the city."

"I seek not to conceal it. I am young and full of life, and I love to gaze

upon brilliant cavalcades, shining breast-plates, floating plumes and

broidered doublets; I like to hear of the nuptials of such a baron, or the

mourning of such a castellan. My father forbids it not, nor think I that

you will blame it. Such tastes are far from marvellous at my age."

"Nor marvel I at them; but if they are imprudent, demoiselle?" asked Johann

with a look of affliction.

"Imprudent! Why?" returned Mina quickly, a flash gleaming from beneath her

long lashes.

"Because--because," stammered Johann, "to me it seemeth that the happiness

of a young maiden like thee, beautiful, good, and virtuous as thou art, is

better assured when it flourishes beneath the shadow of her home.

Baronesses and countesses may display their great names and fine apparel at

courts and tourneys; but for thee, demoiselle, _thy_ pride, _thy_

rich apparel, and _thy_ true dignity are thy sweet virtue in the first

place, and, after, the renown of thy father, and such gifts are but little

prized by the great ones of the world. Thou wilt better enjoy them and

better preserve them by not exposing them without thy dwelling."

"And have I not remained there?" cried Mina, almost in tears. "Go I ever to

rejoicings unless my father bears me company? Was I ever seen, while he

works here, to babble or even to smile without?"

"'Tis not that I would charge," replied Johann, "All see thee ever here,

tranquil, smiling, and pure, like yon bright marble cherubim, which hovers

over thy house, and, even if he were not there, still might thy dwelling be

called the House of the Angel.

{487}

But if thy thoughts wander abroad whilst thou remainest here; if thou dost

always desire ardently to see those rejoicings of which thou knowest

naught, or that world which thou scarcely knowest, thou wilt become

unhappy, demoiselle, and it is that evil I wished--that thou must escape."

"But why, my good Johann, disquiet thyself about my happiness?" asked Mina

in a kinder tone.

"Why, Mina, why? Because from childhood I have grown by thy side; because

for long years it seemed thou wert my sister; because later I thought thee

my friend; because I would gladly bear the burden of thy sorrows, and count

thy hopes as mine own."

"I thank thee, Johann; thy heart is good and true," replied the girl, while

her eye sought the distant mountain behind which the setting sun was soon

to sink.

"Sayest thou so, Mina? I know nothing of that; I but feel that I have a

heart that loves thee that would regard no effort, recoil from no sacrifice

that would bring to thee joy, glory, or happiness."

"Truly art thou generous, Johann," replied the girl, nodding her fair head.

"But I need naught; I am tranquil and happy, and will probably never find

occasion for the exercise of thy devotion."

"Ah! if some day thou mayst find aught of consolation in my tenderness!"

cried Johann, clasping his hands and fixing a timid glance full of emotion

upon her. "Mina--I sometimes dreamt--pardon me--but thy father was always

so affectionate to me, and thou hast often been so kind--I sometimes dreamt

that some day Sebald Koerner might call me son--that thou, Mina--thou

mightest give me a name dearer, tenderer, holier yet. But your looks tell

me I have hoped in vain before your mouth has spoken--and yet, to thee

would I have consecrated so much of devotion and love, if thou hadst become

my wife!"

The maiden motioned with her hand and turned away with a sigh.

"We would be neither rich nor powerful," continued Johann, "but

nevertheless I thought we might be happy. If thou shouldst desire fine

apparel, Mina, I would have given thee them from the rewards of my toil; if

thou shouldst desire glory, I would have worked until thou wouldst bear my

name with pride. For thee would I have strained my uttermost strength, what

talent I may own, my youth--and of thee I would have asked only that thou

shouldst remain joyous and beautiful, and shouldst love me a little. And

how peacefully would thy old father live--how happily die, seeing thee

happy and beloved, ay, adored! Yes--adored, Mina; I have said the word and

will not unsay it."

Uttering these last words, Johann lowered his eyes and bent his head before

her, as if to express by his mien the deep tenderness of his heart. She

stretched forth her hand, moved by these simple declarations of a love

almost hopeless, but yet so full of life.

"Dear Johann--faithful Johann," said she at length, "thou art good and

kind, but--speak no more thus. Thou hast said that in our childhood thou

lovedst me as a sister. Let me still be thy sister. I will never be thy

wife. I will neither lie nor forswear myself. I would shelter myself behind

the grating of the cloister of Lichtenthal or sleep in yonder cemetery

rather than give thee my hand, because with it I should not give my heart,

and thou wouldst not see remorse and regret in the heart of thy wife.

Johann! let us be friends, and, if thou lovest me, try to forget thy

dream."

"I may never forget it," murmured the young sculptor. "My love is as old as

I, Mina; it forms part of my life. But if God, some day allows its flame to

be quenched, it will be because he will light in its place a purer and

loftier one, and God alone may console me, Mina, when I shall have lost--"

At this instant the joyous notes of far off-trumpets broke the calm silence

of the air.

"What sounds are those?" asked Mina, turning to the window.

{488}

"Probably the departure of the vanquishers of the tourney. After the

distribution of the crowns, they were invited to the _burg_, and are

now separating, doubtless to change their costume for the ball of the

evening. Perhaps, too, some of the barons may be returning to their

castles, and, if so, their banners will soon appear at the end of the

street."

"I am very curious to see them pass," said Mina, and, leaving Johann alone

in the atelier, she pushed a stool upon the balcony, and there, leaning

upon the railing, her little head with its golden hair supported by her

white hand, she awaited the coming of the brilliant _cortege_.

Chapter III.

Toward evening, indeed, knights, bannerets, squires, and men-at-arms

scattered themselves through the roads and the streets of the town. One of

the most brilliant, though least numerous parties were making their way

toward where the town became confounded with the country. Two nobles rode

in advance, helmet on head and lance in hand, attired in brilliant armor,

over which were thrown pourpoints of fine velvet. Behind, their squires

bore their banners, one showing gilt battlements in a field gules, the

armorial bearings of the barons of Arneck, the other the green oak and

argent field of the rich counts of Broeck.

"My dear Otho," said the last named, throwing upon his young companion a

glance of almost paternal affection, "I am well satisfied with thee; thy

deeds shone bright in to-day's joustings. Thy brothers-in-arms had begun to

laugh at thee, and to say thou hadst become but an image-maker. But to-day

showed that the noble remained in thee."

"You are very kind, my lord count," replied the young knight.

"Not so, in sooth; I but look to thy interest, as in duty bound. Although

thy domains, my friend, be of limited extent, thou hast a name ancient

enough, a brilliant fame, and a brave enough form to make it a pleasure for

many a rich and proud demoiselle to give thee her hand and dowry, and to

change name and title for those of the barons of Arneck."

"You flatter me, lord count," replied Otho, raising himself in his saddle

and joyfully stroking his mustache. "Hath one of those fair ladies of whom

you speak deigned to cast a glance upon me?"

"More than one has done so, as well thou knowest," returned he of Broeck;

"and even to-day the richest and most beautiful of them all, Gertrude of

Horsheim, spoke and smiled graciously as she placed the crown upon thy

brows."

"Lady Gertrude," said Otho, "hath truly a sweet voice and teeth of

exceeding whiteness."

"Moreover, she hath two castles in the valley of the Murg and a thriving

village in the plain. Her father is a stout lord, who, I well know, will

not object to thee for a son-in-law. I know, Otho, that Master Sebald

Koerner has a pretty daughter, and that thou art sometimes charged with

wishing to espouse her. But wouldst thou truly, in the lightness of thy

heart, add to the battlements of thy shield the chisel of such a

father-in-law? They say that you make between you a complete company of

stone-cutters, and that thou art the mason and he the sculptor. I wish thee

well, my friend, and therefore do I scold and mock thee. I know that in thy

heart's depth thou art as proud as thou art brave. So far thou art Sir

Otho, Baron Otho, and all noble ladies smile upon and salute thee. Wouldst

be called Otho the citizen, Otho the image-maker, and have all ladies turn

their backs upon thee or point thee out as some wonder?"

"Truly, not so: and never will I give them reason for so doing," replied

the young knight, with a face scarlet with shame.

{489}

"Then," said De Broeck, "reply suitably to the invitation I am about to

offer thee. In a fortnight I give a festival at my castle. There will be

jousts in the great court, banquets in the great hall, balls and hunts,

tilting for the ring, and shooting with the bow. The Countess Gertrude will

be there, and thou canst enroll thyself among the number of her suitors.

Siegfried of Thunn will be there, too; he bore the ring from thee lately,

and thou hast thy revenge to take. All this, I hope, promises enough of

pleasure, and is better than thy statues and images. So, Otho, thou wilt

come? I may count upon thee!"

"Assuredly, my lord count, it is an honor and happiness to obey you,"

replied the young knight, taking leave of his protector with a courteous

inclination.

The two escorts separated, and Otho, dismissing his, took the direction of

the house of the old sculptor.

A few moments after, Mina and Johann saw him enter the atelier.

"Here I am at last, my dear master," said he, pressing the old artist's

hands with real affection. "Did you think I had forgotten you in the midst

of tiltings and passages-at-arms?"

"There was certainly reason that you might," replied Sebald, smiling. "In

the midst of thrusts of lance and crushing of helms, you could scarce think

of kneading clay or cutting statues."

"That may be, but a pupil can always find time to give his dearest, his

oldest friend and most excellent master pleasure. And what think you,

Master Koerner, I bring to-day?"

"Firstly, a crown, if rumor speaks truth," answered the sculptor;

"secondly, some broken casques and battered harness. Those, I believe, are

the gleanings of the tilt-yard."

"Then, master, you are wrong. I bring something different from all these.

Would you know what? An order from the margrave, written with his own hand

and sealed with his own seal, for Master Sebald Koerner to begin, with no

greater delay than a month at most, the decoration of the chapel and the

grand hall of his castle of Eberstein."

"How! The margrave choose me!" cried Sebald, his eyes lighting up with joy.

"And certes, my master, could he have made a better choice? After the

tournament we met in his castle, and he there spoke of his castle of

Eberstein and the embellishments he proposed, but he had not yet fixed his

choice upon a sculptor. In short, I brought forward your name; I praised

your St. Christopher; I recalled your Virgin Mary to his mind; some other

nobles seconded me, and--here is the order written upon parchment."

"Thanks! thanks! my true friend! my dear pupil!" cried the old master,

pressing the young knight's hand. "Through your good offices some memories

of me may remain in my country. The thick walls of the castle of Eberstein

will protect and preserve my statues, and they may perhaps be gazed on when

time shall have crumbled into dust the saints I have carved for the

pediments of the houses of the city, and the Christs I have raised by the

roadsides. And it is you, noble Otho, who have brought to me the brightest

crown, the sweetest joy, a sculptor can wear or taste--the assurance of the

duration--mayhap the glory of his works!"

"Dear master, why so much of compliment and gratitude? Would I not do much

more for the love of art and of you?"

And while he spoke, the knight's eyes sought those of Mina, smiling and

blushing in a corner, and repeated in their silent language, "And for the

love of thee, too, fair girl."