This last summer I revisited Oropa, near Biella, to see what
connection I could find between the Oropa chapels and those at
Varallo. I will take this opportunity of describing the chapels at
Oropa, and more especially the remarkable fossil, or petrified girl
school, commonly known as the Dimora, or Sojourn of the Virgin Mary
in the Temple.
If I do not take these works so seriously as the reader may expect,
let me beg him, before he blames me, to go to Oropa and see the
originals for himself. Have the good people of Oropa themselves
taken them very seriously? Are we in an atmosphere where we need be
at much pains to speak with bated breath? We, as is well known,
love to take even our pleasures sadly; the Italians take even their
sadness allegramente, and combine devotion with amusement in a
manner that we shall do well to study if not imitate. For this best
agrees with what we gather to have been the custom of Christ
himself, who, indeed, never speaks of austerity but to condemn it.
If Christianity is to be a living faith, it must penetrate a man's
whole life, so that he can no more rid himself of it than he can of
his flesh and bones or of his breathing. The Christianity that can
be taken up and laid down as if it were a watch or a book is
Christianity in name only. The true Christian can no more part from
Christ in mirth than in sorrow. And, after all, what is the essence
of Christianity? What is the kernel of the nut? Surely common
sense and cheerfulness, with unflinching opposition to the
charlatanisms and Pharisaisms of a man's own times. The essence of
Christianity lies neither in dogma, nor yet in abnormally holy life,
but in faith in an unseen world, in doing one's duty, in speaking
the truth, in finding the true life rather in others than in
oneself, and in the certain hope that he who loses his life on these
behalfs finds more than he has lost. What can Agnosticism do
against such Christianity as this? I should be shocked if anything
I had ever written or shall ever write should seem to make light of
these things. I should be shocked also if _I_ did not know how to
be amused with things that amiable people obviously intended to be
amusing.
The reader may need to be reminded that Oropa is among the somewhat
infrequent sanctuaries at which the Madonna and infant Christ are
not white, but black. I shall return to this peculiarity of Oropa
later on, but will leave it for the present. For the general
characteristics of the place I must refer the reader to my book Alps
and Sanctuaries. I propose to confine myself here to the ten or a
dozen chapels containing life-sized terra-cotta figures, painted up
to nature, that form one of the main features of the place. At a
first glance, perhaps, all these chapels will seem uninteresting; I
venture to think, however, that some, if not most of them, though
falling a good deal short of the best work at Varallo and Crea, are
still in their own way of considerable importance. The first chapel
with which we need concern ourselves is numbered 4, and shows the
Conception of the Virgin Mary. It represents St. Anne as kneeling
before a terrific dragon or, as the Italians call it, "insect,"
about the size of a Crystal Palace pleiosaur. This "insect" is
supposed to have just had its head badly crushed by St. Anne, who
seems to be begging its pardon. The text "Ipsa conteret caput tuum"
is written outside the chapel. The figures have no artistic
interest. As regards dragons being called insects, the reader may
perhaps remember that the island of S. Giulio, in the Lago d'Orta,
was infested with insetti, which S. Giulio destroyed, and which
appear, in a fresco underneath the church on the island, to have
been monstrous and ferocious dragons; but I cannot remember whether
their bodies are divided into three sections, and whether or no they
have exactly six legs--without which, I am told, they cannot be true
insects.
The fifth chapel represents the Birth of the Virgin. Having
obtained permission to go inside it, I found the date 1715 cut large
and deep on the back of one figure before baking, and I imagine that
this date covers the whole. There is a Queen Anne feeling
throughout the composition, and if we were told that the sculptor
and Francis Bird, sculptor of the statue in front of St. Paul's
Cathedral, had studied under the same master, we could very well
believe it. The apartment in which the Virgin was born is spacious,
and in striking contrast to the one in which she herself gave birth
to the Redeemer. St. Anne occupies the centre of the composition,
in an enormous bed; on her right there is a lady of the George
Cruikshank style of beauty, and on the left an older person. Both
are gesticulating and impressing upon St. Anne the enormous
obligation she has just conferred upon mankind; they seem also to be
imploring her not to overtax her strength, but, strange to say, they
are giving her neither flowers nor anything to eat and drink. I
know no other birth of the Virgin in which St. Anne wants so little
keeping up.
I have explained in my book Ex Voto, but should perhaps repeat here,
that the distinguishing characteristic of the Birth of the Virgin,
as rendered by Valsesian artists, is that St. Anne always has eggs
immediately after the infant is born, and usually a good deal more,
whereas the Madonna never has anything to eat or drink. The eggs
are in accordance with a custom that still prevails among the
peasant classes in the Valsesia, where women on giving birth to a
child generally are given a sabaglione--an egg beaten up with a
little wine, or rum, and sugar. East of Milan the Virgin's mother
does not have eggs, and I suppose, from the absence of the eggs at
Oropa, that the custom above referred to does not prevail in the
Biellese district. The Virgin also is invariably washed. St. John
the Baptist, when he is born at all, which is not very often, is
also washed; but I have not observed that St. Elizabeth has anything
like the attention paid her that is given to St. Anne. What,
however, is wanting here at Oropa in meat and drink is made up in
Cupids; they swarm like flies on the walls, clouds, cornices, and
capitals of columns.
Against the right-hand wall are two lady-helps, each warming a towel
at a glowing fire, to be ready against the baby should come out of
its bath; while in the right-hand foreground we have the levatrice,
who having discharged her task, and being now so disposed, has
removed the bottle from the chimney-piece, and put it near some
bread, fruit and a chicken, over which she is about to discuss the
confinement with two other gossips. The levatrice is a very
characteristic figure, but the best in the chapel is the one of the
head-nurse, near the middle of the composition; she has now the
infant in full charge, and is showing it to St. Joachim, with an
expression as though she were telling him that her husband was a
merry man. I am afraid Shakespeare was dead before the sculptor was
born, otherwise I should have felt certain that he had drawn
Juliet's nurse from this figure. As for the little Virgin herself,
I believe her to be a fine boy of about ten months old. Viewing the
work as a whole, if I only felt more sure what artistic merit really
is, I should say that, though the chapel cannot be rated very highly
from some standpoints, there are others from which it may be praised
warmly enough. It is innocent of anatomy-worship, free from
affectation or swagger, and not devoid of a good deal of homely
naivete. It can no more be compared with Tabachetti or Donatello
than Hogarth can with Rembrandt or Giovanni Bellini; but as it does
not transcend the limitations of its age, so neither is it wanting
in whatever merits that age possessed; and there is no age without
merits of some kind. There is no inscription saying who made the
figures, but tradition gives them to Pietro Aureggio Termine, of
Biella, commonly called Aureggio. This is confirmed by their strong
resemblance to those in the Dimora Chapel, in which there is an
inscription that names Aureggio as the sculptor.
The sixth chapel deals with the Presentation of the Virgin in the
Temple. The Virgin is very small, but it must be remembered that
she is only seven years old and she is not nearly so small as she is
at Crea, where though a life-sized figure is intended, the head is
hardly bigger than an apple. She is rushing up the steps with open
arms towards the High Priest, who is standing at the top. For her
it is nothing alarming; it is the High Priest who appears
frightened; but it will all come right in time. The Virgin seems to
be saying, "Why, don't you know me? I'm the Virgin Mary." But the
High Priest does not feel so sure about that, and will make further
inquiries. The scene, which comprises some twenty figures, is
animated enough, and though it hardly kindles enthusiasm, still does
not fail to please. It looks as though of somewhat older date than
the Birth of the Virgin chapel, and I should say shows more signs of
direct Valsesian influence. In Marocco's book about Oropa it is
ascribed to Aureggio, but I find it difficult to accept this.
The seventh, and in many respects most interesting chapel at Oropa,
shows what is in reality a medieval Italian girl school, as nearly
like the thing itself as the artist could make it; we are expected,
however, to see in this the high-class kind of Girton College for
young gentlewomen that was attached to the Temple at Jerusalem,
under the direction of the Chief Priest's wife, or some one of his
near female relatives. Here all well-to-do Jewish young women
completed their education, and here accordingly we find the Virgin,
whose parents desired she should shine in every accomplishment, and
enjoy all the advantages their ample means commanded.
I have met with no traces of the Virgin during the years between her
Presentation in the Temple and her becoming head girl at Temple
College. These years, we may be assured, can hardly have been other
than eventful; but incidents, or bits of life, are like living
forms--it is only here and there, as by rare chance, that one of
them gets arrested and fossilized; the greater number disappear like
the greater number of antediluvian molluscs, and no one can say why
one of these flies, as it were, of life should get preserved in
amber more than another. Talk, indeed, about luck and cunning; what
a grain of sand as against a hundredweight is cunning's share here
as against luck's. What moment could be more humdrum and unworthy
of special record than the one chosen by the artist for the chapel
we are considering? Why should this one get arrested in its flight
and made immortal when so many worthier ones have perished? Yet
preserved it assuredly is; it is as though some fairy's wand had
struck the medieval Miss Pinkerton, Amelia Sedley, and others who do
duty instead of the Hebrew originals. It has locked them up as
sleeping beauties, whose charms all may look upon. Surely the hours
are like the women grinding at the mill--the one is taken and the
other left, and none can give the reason more than he can say why
Gallio should have won immortality by caring for none of "these
things."
It seems to me, moreover, that fairies have changed their practice
now in the matter of sleeping beauties, much as shopkeepers have
done in Regent Street. Formerly the shopkeeper used to shut up his
goods behind strong shutters, so that no one might see them after
closing hours. Now he leaves everything open to the eye and turns
the gas on. So the fairies, who used to lock up their sleeping
beauties in impenetrable thickets, now leave them in the most public
places they can find, as knowing that they will there most certainly
escape notice. Look at De Hooghe; look at The Pilgrim's Progress,
or even Shakespeare himself--how long they slept unawakened, though
they were in broad daylight and on the public thoroughfares all the
time. Look at Tabachetti, and the masterpieces he left at Varallo.
His figures there are exposed to the gaze of every passer-by; yet
who heeds them? Who, save a very few, even know of their existence?
Look again at Gaudenzio Ferrari, or the "Danse des Paysans," by
Holbein, to which I ventured to call attention in the Universal
Review. No, no; if a thing be in Central Africa, it is the glory of
this age to find it out; so the fairies think it safer to conceal
their proteges under a show of openness; for the schoolmaster is
much abroad, and there is no hedge so thick or so thorny as the
dulness of culture.
It may be, again, that ever so many years hence, when Mr. Darwin's
earth-worms shall have buried Oropa hundreds of feet deep, someone
sinking a well or making a railway-cutting will unearth these
chapels, and will believe them to have been houses, and to contain
the exuviae of the living forms that tenanted them. In the
meantime, however, let us return to a consideration of the chapel as
it may now be seen by anyone who cares to pass that way.
The work consists of about forty figures in all, not counting
Cupids, and is divided into four main divisions. First, there is
the large public sitting-room or drawing-room of the College, where
the elder young ladies are engaged in various elegant employments.
Three, at a table to the left, are making a mitre for the Bishop, as
may be seen from the model on the table. Some are merely spinning
or about to spin. One young lady, sitting rather apart from the
others, is doing an elaborate piece of needlework at a tambour-frame
near the window; others are making lace or slippers, probably for
the new curate; another is struggling with a letter, or perhaps a
theme, which seems to be giving her a good deal of trouble, but
which, when done, will, I am sure, be beautiful. One dear little
girl is simply reading Paul and Virginia underneath the window, and
is so concealed that I hardly think she can be seen from the outside
at all, though from inside she is delightful; it was with great
regret that I could not get her into any photograph. One most
amiable young woman has got a child's head on her lap, the child
having played itself to sleep. All are industriously and agreeably
employed in some way or other; all are plump; all are nice-looking;
there is not one Becky Sharp in the whole school; on the contrary,
as in "Pious Orgies," all is pious--or sub-pious--and all, if not
great, is at least eminently respectable. One feels that St.
Joachim and St. Anne could not have chosen a school more
judiciously, and that if one had a daughter oneself this is exactly
where one would wish to place her. If there is a fault of any kind
in the arrangements, it is that they do not keep cats enough. The
place is overrun with mice, though what these can find to eat I know
not. It occurs to me also that the young ladies might be kept a
little more free of spiders' webs; but in all these chapels, bats,
mice, and spiders are troublesome.
Off the main drawing-room on the side facing the window there is a
dais, which is approached by a large raised semicircular step,
higher than the rest of the floor, but lower than the dais itself.
The dais is, of course, reserved for the venerable Lady Principal
and the under-mistresses, one of whom, by the way, is a little more
mondaine than might have been expected, and is admiring herself in a
looking-glass--unless, indeed, she is only looking to see if there
is a spot of ink on her face. The Lady Principal is seated near a
table, on which lie some books in expensive bindings, which I
imagine to have been presented to her by the parents of pupils who
were leaving school. One has given her a photographic album;
another a large scrapbook, for illustrations of all kinds; a third
volume has red edges, and is presumably of a devotional character.
If I dared venture another criticism, I should say it would be
better not to keep the ink-pot on the top of these books. The Lady
Principal is being read to by the monitress for the week, whose duty
it was to recite selected passages from the most approved Hebrew
writers; she appears to be a good deal outraged, possibly at the
faulty intonation of the reader, which she has long tried vainly to
correct; or perhaps she has been hearing of the atrocious way in
which her forefathers had treated the prophets, and is explaining to
the young ladies how impossible it would be, in their own more
enlightened age, for a prophet to fail of recognition.
On the half-dais, as I suppose the large semicircular step between
the main room and the dais should be called, we find, first, the
monitress for the week, who stands up while she recites; and
secondly, the Virgin herself, who is the only pupil allowed a seat
so near to the august presence of the Lady Principal. She is
ostensibly doing a piece of embroidery which is stretched on a
cushion on her lap, but I should say that she was chiefly interested
in the nearest of four pretty little Cupids, who are all trying to
attract her attention, though they pay no court to any other young
lady. I have sometimes wondered whether the obviously scandalized
gesture of the Lady Principal might not be directed at these Cupids,
rather than at anything the monitress may have been reading, for she
would surely find them disquieting. Or she may be saying, "Why,
bless me! I do declare the Virgin has got another hamper, and St.
Anne's cakes are always so terribly rich!" Certainly the hamper is
there, close to the Virgin, and the Lady Principal's action may be
well directed at it, but it may have been sent to some other young
lady, and be put on the sub-dais for public exhibition. It looks as
if it might have come from Fortnum and Mason's, and I half expected
to find a label, addressing it to "The Virgin Mary, Temple College,
Jerusalem," but if ever there was one the mice have long since eaten
it. The Virgin herself does not seem to care much about it, but if
she has a fault it is that she is generally a little apathetic.
Whose the hamper was, however, is a point we shall never now
certainly determine, for the best fossil is worse than the worst
living form. Why, alas! was not Mr. Edison alive when this chapel
was made? We might then have had a daily phonographic recital of
the conversation, and an announcement might be put outside the
chapels, telling us at what hours the figures would speak.
On either side of the main room there are two annexes opening out
from it; these are reserved chiefly for the younger children, some
of whom, I think, are little boys. In the left annex, behind the
ladies who are making a mitre, there is a child who has got a cake,
and another has some fruit--possibly given them by the Virgin--and a
third child is begging for some of it. The light failed so
completely here that I was not able to photograph any of these
figures. It was a dull September afternoon, and the clouds had
settled thick round the chapel, which is never very light, and is
nearly 4000 feet above the sea. I waited till such twilight as made
it hopeless that more detail could be got--and a queer ghostly place
enough it was to wait in--but after giving the plate an exposure of
fifty minutes, I saw I could get no more, and desisted.
These long photographic exposures have the advantage that one is
compelled to study a work in detail through mere lack of other
employment, and that one can take one's notes in peace without being
tempted to hurry over them; but even so I continually find I have
omitted to note, and have clean forgotten, much that I want later
on.
In the other annex there are also one or two younger children, but
it seems to have been set apart for conversation and relaxation more
than any other part of the establishment.
I have already said that the work is signed by an inscription inside
the chapel, to the effect that the sculptures are by Pietro Aureggio
Termine di Biella. It will be seen that the young ladies are
exceedingly like one another, and that the artist aimed at nothing
more than a faithful rendering of the life of his own times. Let us
be thankful that he aimed at nothing less. Perhaps his wife kept a
girls' school; or he may have had a large family of fat, good-
natured daughters, whose little ways he had studied attentively; at
all events the work is full of spontaneous incident, and cannot fail
to become more and more interesting as the age it renders falls
farther back into the past. It is to be regretted that many
artists, better-known men, have not been satisfied with the humbler
ambitions of this most amiable and interesting sculptor. If he has
left us no laboured life-studies, he has at least done something for
us which we can find nowhere else, which we should be very sorry not
to have, and the fidelity of which to Italian life at the beginning
of the eighteenth century will not be disputed.
The eighth chapel is that of the Sposalizio, is certainly not by
Aureggio, and I should say was mainly by the same sculptor who did
the Presentation in the Temple. On going inside I found the figures
had come from more than one source; some of them are constructed so
absolutely on Valsesian principles, as regards technique, that it
may be assumed they came from Varallo. Each of these last figures
is in three pieces, that are baked separately and cemented together
afterwards, hence they are more easily transported; no more clay is
used than is absolutely necessary; and the off-side of the figure is
neglected; they will be found chiefly, if not entirely, at the top
of the steps. The other figures are more solidly built, and do not
remind me in their business features of anything in the Valsesia.
There was a sculptor, Francesco Sala, of Locarno (doubtless the
village a short distance below Varallo, and not the Locarno on the
Lago Maggiore), who made designs for some of the Oropa chapels, and
some of whose letters are still preserved, but whether the Valsesian
figures in this present work are by him or not I cannot say.
The statues are twenty-five in number; I could find no date or
signature; the work reminds me of Montrigone; several of the figures
are not at all bad, and several have horsehair for hair, as at
Varallo. The effect of the whole composition is better than we have
a right to expect from any sculpture dating from the beginning of
the eighteenth century.
The ninth chapel, the Annunciation, presents no feature of interest;
nor yet does the tenth, the Visit of Mary to Elizabeth. The
eleventh, the Nativity, though rather better, is still not
remarkable.
The twelfth, the Purification, is absurdly bad, but I do not know
whether the expression of strong personal dislike to the Virgin
which the High Priest wears is intended as prophetic, or whether it
is the result of incompetence, or whether it is merely a smile gone
wrong in the baking. It is amusing to find Marocco, who has not
been strict about archaeological accuracy hitherto, complain here
that there is an anachronism, inasmuch as some young ecclesiastics
are dressed as they would be at present, and one of them actually
carries a wax candle. This is not as it should be; in works like
those at Oropa, where implicit reliance is justly placed on the
earnest endeavours that have been so successfully made to thoroughly
and carefully and patiently ensure the accuracy of the minutest
details, it is a pity that even a single error should have escaped
detection; this, however, has most unfortunately happened here, and
Marocco feels it his duty to put us on our guard. He explains that
the mistake arose from the sculptor's having taken both his general
arrangement and his details from some picture of the fourteenth or
fifteenth century, when the value of the strictest historical
accuracy was not yet so fully understood.
It seems to me that in the matter of accuracy, priests and men of
science whether lay or regular on the one hand, and plain people
whether lay or regular on the other, are trying to play a different
game, and fail to understand one another because they do not see
that their objects are not the same. The cleric and the man of
science (who is only the cleric in his latest development) are
trying to develop a throat with two distinct passages--one that
shall refuse to pass even the smallest gnat, and another that shall
gracefully gulp even the largest camel; whereas we men of the street
desire but one throat, and are content that this shall swallow
nothing bigger than a pony. Everyone knows that there is no such
effectual means of developing the power to swallow camels as
incessant watchfulness for opportunities of straining at gnats, and
this should explain many passages that puzzle us in the work both of
our clerics and our scientists. I, not being a man of science,
still continue to do what I said I did in Alps and Sanctuaries, and
make it a rule to earnestly and patiently and carefully swallow a
few of the smallest gnats I can find several times a day, as the
best astringent for the throat I know of.
The thirteenth chapel is the Marriage Feast at Cana of Galilee.
This is the best chapel as a work of art; indeed, it is the only one
which can claim to be taken quite seriously. Not that all the
figures are very good; those to the left of the composition are
commonplace enough; nor are the Christ and the giver of the feast at
all remarkable; but the ten or dozen figures of guests and
attendants at the right-hand end of the work are as good as anything
of their kind can be, and remind me so strongly of Tabachetti that I
cannot doubt they were done by someone who was indirectly influenced
by that great sculptor's work. It is not likely that Tabachetti was
alive long after 1640, by which time he would have been about eighty
years old; and the foundations of this chapel were not laid till
about 1690; the statues are probably a few years later; they can
hardly, therefore, be by one who had even studied under Tabachetti;
but until I found out the dates, and went inside the chapel to see
the way in which the figures had been constructed, I was inclined to
think they might be by Tabachetti himself, of whom, indeed, they are
not unworthy. On examining the figures I found them more heavily
constructed than Tabachetti's are, with smaller holes for taking out
superfluous clay, and more finished on the off-sides. Marocco says
the sculptor is not known. I looked in vain for any date or
signature. Possibly the right-hand figures (for the left-hand ones
can hardly be by the same hand) may be by some sculptor from Crea,
which is at no very great distance from Oropa, who was penetrated by
Tabachetti's influence; but whether as regards action and concert
with one another, or as regards excellence in detail, I do not see
how anything can be more realistic, and yet more harmoniously
composed. The placing of the musicians in a minstrels' gallery
helps the effect; these musicians are six in number, and the other
figures are twenty-three. Under the table, between Christ and the
giver of the feast, there is a cat.
The fourteenth chapel, the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, is without
interest.
The fifteenth, the Coronation of the Virgin, contains forty-six
angels, twenty-six cherubs, fifty-six saints, the Holy Trinity, the
Madonna herself, and twenty-four innocents, making 156 statues in
all. Of these I am afraid there is not one of more than ordinary
merit; the most interesting is a half-length nude life-study of
Disma--the good thief. After what had been promised him it was
impossible to exclude him, but it was felt that a half-length nude
figure would be as much as he could reasonably expect.
Behind the sanctuary there is a semi-ruinous and wholly valueless
work, which shows the finding of the black image, which is now in
the church, but is only shown on great festivals.
This leads us to a consideration that I have delayed till now. The
black image is the central feature of Oropa; it is the raison d'etre
of the whole place, and all else is a mere incrustation, so to
speak, around it. According to this image, then, which was carved
by St. Luke himself, and than which nothing can be better
authenticated, both the Madonna and the infant Christ were as black
as anything can be conceived. It is not likely that they were as
black as they have been painted; no one yet ever was so black as
that; yet, even allowing for some exaggeration on St. Luke's part,
they must have been exceedingly black if the portrait is to be
accepted; and uncompromisingly black they accordingly are on most of
the wayside chapels for many a mile around Oropa. Yet in the
chapels we have been hitherto considering--works in which, as we
know, the most punctilious regard has been shown to accuracy--both
the Virgin and Christ are uncompromisingly white. As in the shops
under the Colonnade where devotional knick-knacks are sold, you can
buy a black china image or a white one, whichever you like; so with
the pictures--the black and white are placed side by side--pagando
il danaro si puo scegliere. It rests not with history or with the
Church to say whether the Madonna and Child were black or white, but
you may settle it for yourself, whichever way you please, or rather
you are required, with the acquiescence of the Church, to hold that
they were both black and white at one and the same time.
It cannot be maintained that the Church leaves the matter undecided,
and by tolerating both types proclaims the question an open one, for
she acquiesces in the portrait by St. Luke as genuine. How, then,
justify the whiteness of the Holy Family in the chapels? If the
portrait is not known as genuine, why set such a stumbling-block in
our paths as to show us a black Madonna and a white one, both as
historically accurate, within a few yards of one another?
I ask this not in mockery, but as knowing that the Church must have
an explanation to give, if she would only give it, and as myself
unable to find any, even the most far-fetched, that can bring what
we see at Oropa, Loreto and elsewhere into harmony with modern
conscience, either intellectual or ethical.
I see, indeed, from an interesting article in the Atlantic Monthly
for September, 1889, entitled "The Black Madonna of Loreto," that
black Madonnas were so frequent in ancient Christian art that "some
of the early writers of the Church felt obliged to account for it by
explaining that the Virgin was of a very dark complexion, as might
be proved by the verse of Canticles which says, 'I am black, but
comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem.' Others maintained that she
became black during her sojourn in Egypt. . . . Priests, of to-day,
say that extreme age and exposure to the smoke of countless altar-
candles have caused that change in complexion which the more naive
fathers of the Church attributed to the power of an Egyptian sun";
but the writer ruthlessly disposes of this supposition by pointing
out that in nearly all the instances of black Madonnas it is the
flesh alone that is entirely black, the crimson of the lips, the
white of the eyes, and the draperies having preserved their original
colour. The authoress of the article (Mrs. Hilliard) goes on to
tell us that Pausanias mentions two statues of the black Venus, and
says that the oldest statue of Ceres among the Phigalenses was
black. She adds that Minerva Aglaurus, the daughter of Cecrops, at
Athens, was black; that Corinth had a black Venus, as also the
Thespians; that the oracles of Dodona and Delphi were founded by
black doves, the emissaries of Venus, and that the Isis Multimammia
in the Capitol at Rome is black.
Sometimes I have asked myself whether the Church does not intend to
suggest that the whole story falls outside the domain of history,
and is to be held as the one great epos, or myth, common to all
mankind; adaptable by each nation according to its own several
needs; translatable, so to speak, into the facts of each individual
nation, as the written word is translatable into its language, but
appertaining to the realm of the imagination rather than to that of
the understanding, and precious for spiritual rather than literal
truths. More briefly, I have wondered whether she may not intend
that such details as whether the Virgin was white or black are of
very little importance in comparison with the basing of ethics on a
story that shall appeal to black races as well as to white ones.
If so, it is time we were made to understand this more clearly. If
the Church, whether of Rome or England, would lean to some such view
as this--tainted though it be with mysticism--if we could see either
great branch of the Church make a frank, authoritative attempt to
bring its teaching into greater harmony with the educated
understanding and conscience of the time, instead of trying to
fetter that understanding with bonds that gall it daily more and
more profoundly; then I, for one, in view of the difficulty and
graciousness of the task, and in view of the great importance of
historical continuity, would gladly sink much of my own private
opinion as to the value of the Christian ideal, and would gratefully
help either Church or both, according to the best of my very feeble
ability. On these terms, indeed, I could swallow not a few camels
myself cheerfully enough.
Can we, however, see any signs as though either Rome or England will
stir hand or foot to meet us? Can any step be pointed to as though
either Church wished to make things easier for men holding the
opinions held by the late Mr. Darwin, or by Mr. Herbert Spencer and
Professor Huxley? How can those who accept evolution with any
thoroughness accept such doctrines as the Incarnation or the
Redemption with any but a quasi-allegorical and poetical
interpretation? Can we conceivably accept these doctrines in the
literal sense in which the Church advances them? And can the
leaders of the Church be blind to the resistlessness of the current
that has set against those literal interpretations which she seems
to hug more and more closely the more religious life is awakened at
all? The clergyman is wanted as supplementing the doctor and the
lawyer in all civilized communities; these three keep watch on one
another, and prevent one another from becoming too powerful. I, who
distrust the doctrinaire in science even more than the doctrinaire
in religion, should view with dismay the abolition of the Church of
England, as knowing that a blatant bastard science would instantly
step into her shoes; but if some such deplorable consummation is to
be avoided in England, it can only be through more evident leaning
on the part of our clergy to such an interpretation of the Sacred
History as the presence of a black and white Madonna almost side by
side at Oropa appears to suggest.
I fear that in these last paragraphs I may have trenched on
dangerous ground, but it is not possible to go to such places as
Oropa without asking oneself what they mean and involve. As for the
average Italian pilgrims, they do not appear to give the matter so
much as a thought. They love Oropa, and flock to it in thousands
during the summer; the President of the Administration assured me
that they lodged, after a fashion, as many as ten thousand pilgrims
on the 15th of last August. It is astonishing how living the
statues are to these people, and how the wicked are upbraided and
the good applauded. At Varallo, since I took the photographs I
published in my book Ex Voto, an angry pilgrim has smashed the nose
of the dwarf in Tabachetti's Journey to Calvary, for no other reason
than inability to restrain his indignation against one who was
helping to inflict pain on Christ. It is the real hair and the
painting up to nature that does this. Here at Oropa I found a paper
on the floor of the Sposalizio Chapel, which ran as follows:--
"By the grace of God and the will of the administrative chapter of
this sanctuary, there have come here to work --- ---, mason, --- ---
, carpenter, and --- ---, plumber, all of Chiavazza, on the twenty-
first day of January, 1886, full of cold (pieni di freddo).
"They write these two lines to record their visit. They pray the
Blessed Virgin that she will maintain them safe and sound from
everything equivocal that may befall them (sempre sani e salvi da
ogni equivoco li possa accadere). Oh, farewell! We reverently
salute all the present statues, and especially the Blessed Virgin,
and the reader."
Through the Universal Review, I suppose, all its readers are to
consider themselves saluted; at any rate, these good fellows, in the
effusiveness of their hearts, actually wrote the above in pencil. I
was sorely tempted to steal it, but, after copying it, left it in
the Chief Priest's hands instead.