most conspicuous South American dramatists we can now call to mind.
Magarinos Cervantes was born in Montevideo in 1825, and, besides the
novels of _Caramuru_ and _The Star of the South_, has written the
dramas of _Vasco Nuñez_ and the _Two Passions_, besides the comedy of
_Percances Matrimoniales_. He was one of the principal editors of an
artistic and scientific cyclopædia printed in Madrid, and was once
described as the youngest and most productive of well-known South
American writers. Sanson, who was born in Santa Cruz de Teneriffe,
1815, has written ten or eleven dramas, among them _Abenhamet_ and
_Herman Peraza_, and has been an exceedingly industrious editor and
translator. Señor Marquez, who was noticed fifteen years ago as a
young poet of Lima, but twenty-three years of age, yet of exceeding
promise, was known as the author of a drama which derived its title
from the beautiful legend of _The Flower of Abel_.
This flower of dramatic poetry, as its warm admirers regard it,
contains a charming and even what we might call a religious moral.
One of the best known of its Peruvian critics described it as among
the most spiritual creations of the day; a defense of innocence and
charity in a heroic combat against the worldly selfishness which
devours us; and Markham, to whose good taste we are indebted for
information respecting the ancient and modern literature of Peru,
affirms that its plot is original and ingenious, and that it is
full of good passages. Abel, the first victim of selfishness, is
described as "the mysterious messenger of celestial compassion,"
an angel of innocence. The innocent daughter of a proud and aged
veteran becomes the possessor of the angel's flower of Abel--in
other words, the blossom of innocence. This the heavenly visitor
presents to her in a vision, warning her never to lose nor abandon
it, nor let it leave its place in her bosom. But, eventually, the
fair girl loses the flower, and wanders far and wide over the world
in search of it, passing through many dangers, for she is unprotected
and very beautiful. At length, she reaches her mother's grave, and,
wearied and imploring, falls at the feet of an image of the Blessed
Virgin, in whose hands she once more beholds her lost Flower of Abel.
Prostrate before the altar of the Queen of Heaven, the spirit of
Elena abandons the body, and is conducted to the skies by Abel, who
recovers the mysterious flower and the pure soul of the maiden.
Reflecting that our own American dramatic literature can claim not
many successful writers, the portion of Spanish America, in respect
to the dramatists we have described, cannot be deemed contemptible.
We have much yet to learn of our sister republics, painful though
their problem be to democratic thinkers; and we cannot look through a
more necessary and suggestive medium than their literature to become
acquainted with their moral capacities and possibilities.
ALBERTUS MAGNUS VINDICATED.
A most striking embellishment to the text of a literary article is
a deep row of citations at the foot of the page. The effect may be
likened to that of a broad trimming of lace to articles of dress.
A lace of true point enhances the rich appearance of the costliest
tissue, and a common stuff may be so set off by a Nottingham
trimming as to attract the gaze of all who are passing. If unable to
distinguish the true from the false, the gazer is astonished by the
display.
Struck by the deep trimming of an article that appeared in a recent
number of the _American Journal of the Medical Sciences_, we examined
it thoroughly from the beginning to the end. After perusal, we laid
it down with a warm recollection of the speech of the country member
in the Wisconsin legislature, who, after listening to an eloquent
oration filled with classical quotations, arose, and said: "Mr.
Speaker, the honorable gentleman has roamed with Romulus, soaked with
Socrates, ripped with Euripides, and canted with old Cantharides, but
what has all that to do with the laws of Wisconsin?"
It would, however, be entirely out of place in us to call attention
to this article, were it not for a most extraordinary sentence which
it contains, and upon this we feel bound by many considerations,
amongst which our reverence for truth and love of propriety, to make
some observations. The sentence referred to is as follows:
"About the year 1240, at the solicitation of an inquisitive priest,
Albertus Magnus, the Bishop of Ratisbon, wrote a very unepiscopal
work on the _Secrets of Women_. It contains much prurient matter
which will hardly bear translation, and yet was deemed worthy of a
commentary by so devout an ecclesiastic as St. Thomas Aquinas."[157]
In this sentence, in which two great and good men are thus spoken of,
we maintain that there are at least three glaring misstatements: the
first, that the work _De Secretis Mulierum_ was written by the Bishop
of Ratisbon, Albertus Magnus, about the year 1240; the second, that
Albertus Magnus wrote the work--positive affirmation of that fact, as
if there were no doubt of its authenticity; and the third, that St.
Thomas Aquinas ever wrote a commentary on it.
_First Misstatement._--That the work was written about the year 1240,
by Albertus Magnus, Bishop of Ratisbon, and therefore that it was the
production of a bishop, although very unepiscopal in its nature.
We premise a short sketch of his life, compiled from the Protestant
Cave (_Historia Literaria_, Sæculum Scholasticum, §1260): Albertus,
surnamed the Great, a German, was born in the year 1205. He studied
at Padua. In the year 1221, he joined the Friar Preachers. He was
considered the greatest theologian, philosopher, and mathematician
of his day. He excelled especially in mathematics. In the year 1236,
on the death of the general of the order, he governed the same for
two years as vicar. He afterward became provincial of his order in
Germany, fixing his residence at Cologne, where also he taught with
great applause. In the beginning of the year 1260, he was appointed
Bishop of Ratisbon by Alexander IV., and was obliged, against his
will, to undertake that responsibility. He held the same for only
three years, when, wearied out by its duties, he resigned the
dignity, and returned to his beloved monastery of Cologne, where he
spent his old age in the delights of study. He died in the year 1280.
Such is the substance of Cave's biography. Although there is some
doubt as to the date of his birth, all agree that he was made bishop
in the year 1260, and that during that time he had enough to do in
the affairs of his diocese. The work in question, written about the
year 1240, cannot, therefore, be rightly styled unepiscopal. Besides,
all the editions that attribute the work to Albertus say that it was
written by him whilst stopping in Paris. Thus, in the notes added by
some unknown author to the editions of 1601 and 1637 these words are
found: "Ego Albertus morans Parisiis"--"I, Albert, staying in Paris."
The first words of the text are, "Dilecto sibi," etc. As a bishop, we
have no record of his ever having been in Paris, much less stopping
there for a time. As a very old man, it is said that he made the
journey once more from Cologne. After resigning his episcopate, he
always lived and taught at Cologne. We may therefore, with justice,
put down the word _unepiscopal_ as inaccurate.
_Second Misstatement._--The positive affirmation of the fact that
Albertus Magnus was the author of the work on the _Secrets of Women_.
Admitting that our examination has not been as exhaustive as it
might, owing to the want of facility in consulting many authorities
we should have desired to, what we shall produce we hope will be
sufficient to place beyond doubt this one fact, that, if the work
is not wholly to be rejected as that of Albertus Magnus, it must at
least be granted that it is very doubtful. Our opinion is that it is
wholly supposititious. We have not found a single authority which
does not admit that it is doubtful whether Albertus Magnus was the
author of it; and the vast majority of critics and several intrinsic
arguments prove that his name, as the famous one of the age, was
affixed to it to give it notoriety. These propositions we will now
substantiate by negative and positive arguments, some extrinsic and
others intrinsic, drawn from the character of the author and of the
writing in question.
All admit that the authenticity of the work is called in question. We
have consulted at least eighteen distinct authorities in matters of
bibliography, and have not found one making the positive affirmation
of the fact; and some of our authorities, as, for instance, Cave
and Fabricius, refer to every critic of note up to their time (Cave
to no less than three hundred and seventy-two authors). Almost all
positively deny that the work belongs to Albertus Magnus. Some make
no mention of it at all when speaking of his life and labors. Others
say in general that many writings have been ascribed to Albertus, in
order to give them notoriety, which, however, must be rejected as
supposititious. Thus, the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, art. "Albert,"
vol. i., p. 171, says: "A detailed list of Albert's works, the
genuineness of many of which it is impossible to determine, is to be
found in the _Scriptores Ord. Prædicatorum_ of Quétif and Echard."
Moreri, in his grand _Dictionnaire Historique_, has nothing at all
about the book, and yet he speaks at length of Albertus and his
works. Appleton's _American Encyclopædia_ makes no mention of it;
neither does Hallam, who would not have passed by such a book, for
he speaks expressly of Albertus's influence on medical studies.
The Regensburg _Universal Realen Encyclopedie_, edition 1850, art.
"Albertus Magnus," says: "Sehr viele Schrifter wurden ihm später
fälschlich beigelegt"--"Very many works were at a later period
falsely ascribed to him."
These authorities are, however, purely negative. We shall now bring
forward the positive proofs for the same fact: _a._ Critics. _b._
Brunet. _c._ Encyclopædias. _d._ Historians. _e._ Biographies. _f._
Editions.
_a._ _Critics._--It will be enough to bring forward Fabricius, Boyle,
and Cave, all unexceptionable authorities. Fabricius, Lipsiensis
Professor, _Bibliotheca Latina mediæ et infimæ ætatis_, after
referring to all the subjects treated of in the twenty-one folio
volumes of the Lyons edition, the only complete one ever published,
speaks of the works which must be rejected, and among them he
places "_Liber de Secretis Secretorum, sive de Secretis Mulierum,
sæpe editus sed suppositus Alberto, qui plus simplici vice in eo
citatur_"--"The book on the _Secret of Secrets_, or on the _Secrets
of Women_, often published but fathered on Albertus, who is more
than once quoted in it." Boyle certainly will not be accused of any
partiality for the great Catholic doctors of scholasticism. In a long
article on Albertus Magnus, he has these words: "I shall particularly
mention some falsities that have been reported about him. It has been
said that he delivered women, and it was taken very ill that a man of
his profession should do the office of a midwife. The ground of this
story is that there was a book under the name of Albertus Magnus,
containing several instructions for midwives, and so much knowledge
of their art that it seemed he could not have been so well skilled in
that trade if he had not exercised it. But the apologists of Albertus
maintained that he is not the author of that book, nor of that _De
Secretis Mulierum_." He here refers to a note in which he explains
as follows: "The book _De Secretis Mulierum_, wrongfully ascribed
to Albertus, is the work of one of his disciples, who is called
Henricus de Saxonia, with whose name it has been printed more than
once. Here are Simler's words: '_Henricus de Saxonia, Alberti Magni
discipuli, liber de Secretis Mulierum impressus Augustæ_,' A.D. 1498,
per Antonium Surg.; and in the _Catalogue of Thuanus's Library_ you
will find, '_Henrici de Saxonia, de Secretis Mulierum, de virtutibus
herbarum, lapidum quorumdam animalium aliorumque_, 12mo, Francof.,
1615.' It is plain that Albertus's name, more famous than that of
Henry, gave occasion to that supposition." Thus far Boyle.
Cave in his _Historia Literaria_ makes no mention of the work as
belonging to Albertus.
_b._ Brunet, the great authority on books and editions, in his
_Manuel du Libraire_, says: "_De Secretis Mulierum_, opus 1478,
in 4o, première édition de cet ouvrage, _mal-à-propos attribué_ à
Albert-le-grand"--"_De Secretis Mulierum_, 1478, 4to, first edition
of this work, wrongfully attributed to Albert the Great."
_c._ _Encyclopædias._--_Edinburgh Encyclopædia_, conducted by David
Brewster, edition of 1832, art. "Albertus Magnus:" "The treatise _De
Secretis Mulierum_, etc., generally ascribed to him, was written by
one of his disciples, Henricus de Saxonia." _Penny Encyclopædia_,
London, 1833: "There are also collections of supposed _secrets_ which
have erroneously been published under his name; among others, one _De
Secretis Mulierum et Naturæ_, printed at Amsterdam, in 1655, which is
believed to have been written by one of his disciples." _Chambers's
Encyclopædia_ rejects the work also as supposititious.
_d._ _Historians._--Natalis Alexander, _Hist. Ecc._, Sæculum
XIII., on "Albertus Magnus," concludes his notice thus: "Liber _De
Mirabilibus_ vanitate et superstitione refertus, Alberto Magno
suppositus est, inquit Debrio, _Disquisitionum Magicarum_, cap. 3.
Librum _De Secretis Mulierum_ nec ipsius est nec docti cujuspiam esse
censuerunt Medici Lovanienses, ut refert Molanus in _Bibliotheca
Sacra_"--"The book _De Mirabilibus_, filled with nonsense and
superstition, has been falsely ascribed to Albertus Magnus, says
Debrio in his work _Essays on Magic_, cap. 3. The Medical Faculty of
the University of Louvain gave as their opinion that the book _De
Secretis Mulierum_ is not his nor that of any learned man, as Molanus
relates in his _Bibliotheca Sacra_."
Raynoldus, in his _Cronaca_, the great continuation of the _Annals
of Baronius_, under the year 1260, paragraph 15th, says: "Hic vero
lectorem diligenter monitum velim plura passim Alberti Magni nomine
scripta circumferri, quæ ab ipso nunquam emanasse exploratum est;
cum magica superstitione sint fœdata, sed ad conciliandum rei vel
frivolæ vel scelestæ auctoritatem, piissimi et sapientis viri nomine
subornati simplicibus obtruduntur"--"We wish here particularly to
warn the reader that there are many writings extant attributed to
Albertus Magnus, which, it is clear, never emanated from his pen; for
they are filled with magical superstition; but to gain some authority
for a trifling or wicked work, they are palmed off on the ignorant
under the name of a most pious and learned man." Prof. Hefele, the
German historian, in an article on Albertus Magnus in Wetzer and
Welte's _Kirchen-Lexicon_, concludes thus: "Dem Albertus sind viele
Bücher unterschoben worden, z. B. _De Alchymia_ und _De Secretis
Mulierum_, u. dgl."--"Many books have been fathered on Albert, _e.g._
_De Alchymia_ and _De Secretis Mulierum_, etc." Cantri, the Italian
historian, in his _Universal History_, expresses the same opinion in
his chapter on the "Natural and Occult Sciences."
_e._ _Biographies._--Feller, in his _Biographie Universelle_, says:
"Enfin, on a lui attribué de ridicules recueils des _Secrets_,
auquels il n'a pas eu la moindre part. On y trouve même des
indécences et des recherches aussi vaines que peu dignes d'une
religeux"--"Finally, a ridiculous collection of _Secrets_ have
been attributed to him, with which he had nothing to do. Even
obscene things are found in this collection, and investigations as
frivolous as they are unworthy of a religious." The French and German
biographies consulted by us agree in this same opinion.
_f._ _Editions._--Dr. Atkinson, in his _Medical Biography_, mentions
all the editions of the work from the first in 1478 to 1760. The
first edition, 1478, is without the name of the place in which it
was printed; and of it we have seen the judgment of Brunet. The
editions of 1480 and 1481 are without the name of either printer or
place. The edition of 1484, Augustæ, comes out with Henry of Saxony
as its author. Those of 1488 and 1498 also. The earliest editions,
therefore, cannot be quoted as making Albertus the author of the
work. It was only the editions of 1600 and those which followed that
ascribed the work to Albertus, and they were almost all printed in
Germany or Holland. Does it not look as if party spirit had much to
do with these editions? The only complete edition of the works of
Albertus is that of the Rev. A. P. Peter Jammy, S.T.D., in twenty-one
folio volumes, printed at Lyons, 1651. This edition contains no
mention of the book.
In the authorities thus far quoted, we have studiously avoided
bringing forward any but those which are universally admitted as
standard. But even should the extrinsic testimony thus far given
not have been all on our side, we think the intrinsic evidence
would be quite sufficient to settle the question. To this point we
will now briefly direct attention. These intrinsic arguments are
drawn from the work itself and from the well-known character of
Albertus Magnus. The book or document was written somewhere about
the year 1240 or 1250, and was first printed in the year 1478. Its
composition shows evidently that it was intended only for the person
to whom it was directed; that it was merely a letter to a friend
in answer to an obscure question proposed by him; in fine, that it
was not a treatise intended for preservation, but merely a familiar
correspondence on the part of the writer to satisfy, as far as he
was able, the inquiries of his friend. Naudé, the critic, makes use
of these two proofs to show that Albertus could not have written
the work. First, Albertus did not name himself in the beginning of
the work. He who commented upon it affirmed without any proof that
Albertus was its author. The text begins with these words: "Delecto
sibi in Christo socio et amico," etc.--"To his beloved companion
and friend in Christ. In the notes added to the edition of 1601 and
1637 these words have been placed as a title: "Ego Albertus morans
Parisiis"--"I, Albert, staying in Paris." The title has been affixed
gratuitously and arbitrarily. The work is therefore anonymous.
Second, Albertus could not have written it, for his own authority is
often made use of. We must remember that the document in question
was only a letter from one friend to another; and it certainly
would be strange for a man to quote his own well-known works at any
time, much less in a familiar correspondence. If he introduced them
at all, it would be in some such form as this: "as you will find
in my work on," etc. The author of this letter quotes Albertus's
authority at least five times. We have verified the following in the
edition of 1637, Argentorati: Page 49: "That this may be understood,
we must note that there are four states of the moon, according to
Albertus in his treatise _De Statu Solis et Lunæ_. Page 69, showing
the impossibility of a universal deluge, the author says: "And we
must know that these things are not imaginary, because Albertus, on
the _Action and Effect of Lightning_, mentions," etc. Page 97, "For
Albertus mentions just as," etc. Page 109, "As Albertus says in his
book on," etc. We do not argue from the fact of the authority of
Albertus being used to prove that he could not have been the author,
but from the manner in which that authority is introduced. The reader
will judge for himself if our inference be correct. But to us the
convincing proof of the falsity of the work is to be drawn from the
character of Albertus himself and the subject matter of the work.
The testimony of antiquity has brought him down to us as venerable
for his piety and goodness as he was illustrious for learning. He
was truly a good man. He was really an exceedingly learned man. The
work ascribed to him could have been written by neither a good man
nor even a moderately well-educated man. There are principles laid
down in it which contradict the first ideas of morality and inculcate
unbridled license. And shall the well-known works on morality of the
great doctor not be allowed to cry out in his defence? Shall we say
that he has not only glaringly contradicted himself, but become the
open advocate of immorality? When the illustrious Protestant critic
Cave tells us that Albertus was considered the greatest theologian,
philosopher, and mathematician of his day, he does but re-echo the
voice of each past generation; and shall we say that he could have
written the work in question, so full of nonsense and superstition,
and contrasting so strongly with his other writings? Is not the
opinion of the Medical Faculty of the University of Louvain more just
when they maintain that the work _De Secretis Mulierum_ is neither
that of Albertus nor indeed of any learned man at all? These few
reflections should be enough to settle the matter. We could bring
forward other and far more convincing reasons in vindication of this
great doctor; but from what has been said, we think we are justified
in placing the positive affirmation of the writer ascribing the work
to Albertus Magnus as a glaring misstatement--as blot number two.
The third misstatement was that St. Thomas Aquinas wrote a commentary
on it. We challenge the writer to bring a single authority to prove
that fact. We never heard or saw anything about it before. None of
the great standard critics ever hint at it; so, not to lose patience,
we affirm that it is the most glaring misstatement made--blot number
three, in almost as many lines.
The reader might here naturally ask, Where, then, did the writer
obtain any information on which to base his so positive statements,
so injurious to the characters of two justly celebrated benefactors
of the human race? We have met with but one phrase which could have
suggested the lines in question, and they are taken from a writer who
should not be brought forward as authority in a matter of criticism;
for the scurrilous, filthy, and flippant manner in which he speaks
of authors and books renders him unworthy of an answer. This author
is Dr. James Atkinson, who published a _Medical Biography_, one
volume, A and B, London, 1834. After admitting that the authorship
of the book _De Secretis Mulierum_ is a contested matter, he has
these words: "It may be a question whether the editions (of which
I have one in Gothic characters) of this _Libellus de Secretis
Mulierum_ were not originally written by Albertus, and published with
a commentary (which is annexed to it in my edition) by St. Thomas
Aquinas (although usually 'non est inventus') or Henricus de Saxonia.
Is it possible?" The character of the author Atkinson, as manifested
in his work, and these words themselves, are a sufficient answer
to any proof to be drawn from his authority. We must say candidly
that these are the only words we could find even to suggest the
remarkable lines we have quoted in the beginning of this article; and
we conclude that we might have hoped for the sincerity of Atkinson in
one who shows that, if he has tried to read much, he has read neither
wisely nor well.
FOOTNOTE:
[157] The citation is from _Medical Bibliography_. By James Atkinson.
London. 1854.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
A HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN COUNCILS.
From the Original Documents, to the close of the
Council of Nicæa, A.D. 325. By Charles Joseph Hefele,
D.D., Bishop of Rottenburg, formerly Professor of
Theology in the University of Tübingen. Translated from
the German, and edited by William R. Clark, M.A. Oxon.,
Prebendary of Wells and Vicar of Taunton. Edinburgh:
T. & T. Clark, 38 George Street. 1871. New York: The
Catholic Publication House, 9 Warren Street.
The merits of Dr. Hefele's great but still unfinished work are well
known and universally appreciated. Certain portions of it rise to the
excellence of a masterpiece, and really exhibit a genius almost, if
not quite, equal to that which is shown in the _Athanasius_ of Möhler
and the _History of the Arians_ by Dr. Newman. We refer especially
to the parts treating of the Arian and semi-Arian controversies, and
of the history of the Council of Constance, with the other synods
preceding and connected with it. We cannot, however, consider the
work of Dr. Hefele as faultless. In our opinion, he has signally
failed in his treatment of the celebrated cases of Liberius and
Honorius. In the present volume there are, as it appears to us, two
manifest errors in regard both to fact and doctrine. The first one
is found in the statement that confirmation by a schismatical or
heretical bishop is invalid, and was judged to be so by Pope Stephen
and the bishops of his time. The second is the assertion that
the baptism of the Paulianists was rejected because of the heresy
professed by them, and not because they had vitiated the baptismal
formula. It is strange that so learned a professor could not see
that, if baptism in the name of the Trinity was made invalid by the
fact that the Paulianists understood by the terms Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost something different from the true, Catholic sense of the
church, the baptism of the Arians, and of all sorts of Unitarians,
would be made invalid by the same reason. Almost all German authors
have a tone and an air as if everything has to be proved from the
beginning anew, and this proof sharply criticised by an infidel
professor in the next room. Dr. Hefele has this air about him
whenever he writes about the constitutive principles of the Catholic
Church, and only loses it when he has fairly plunged into his subject
and become carried away by it. There is, moreover, a perceptible,
though not very deep, tinge of what we may call ante-Vatican theology
in the introduction, although one passage has been corrected by
the author since the council. The learned and illustrious author
was always animated by an orthodox and pious spirit, which he has
manifested by a truly apostolic exercise of his episcopal authority
in sustaining and enforcing the decisions of the Council of the
Vatican. Notwithstanding the accidental defects of his great work,
it is a monument not merely of ecclesiastical learning, but of
sound Catholic doctrine, in which the supremacy of the Holy See,
and the justice of its cause as against all heretics, schismatics,
and rebels, are maintained with victorious logic and overwhelming
evidence. Its critical character makes it especially valuable for
those who are studying the history and constitution of the church,
and we are, therefore, sincerely glad that one volume has been
translated into English and published, and can only hope that the
others may follow.
The translation has been made by a Protestant dignitary and published
by a Protestant firm, as the title at the head of this notice has
already informed our readers. This seems rather odd. We are glad to
see a taste for works like this arising in the educated world, but
can scarcely understand what could induce a Protestant, sincerely and
firmly attached to his own doctrine, to promote their circulation.
The author's motives are, however, his own affair, and the affair
of his own ecclesiastical connection. We have only to criticise the
manner in which he has done his work, and for that we are bound to
accord him great praise. Most judiciously, and to our very great
satisfaction, he has refrained from giving us his own opinions
in prefaces or notes, and has left Bishop Hefele in the state in
which he found him of pure, unadulterated text. The translation is
undoubtedly substantially correct, and, so far as we have seen, exact
and accurate in detail, while at the same time it is smooth, readable
English. We have noticed only one mistranslation, and that is one
which is wholly indefensible. This is the substitution of ROMAN
CATHOLIC for CATHOLIC. We protest against this alteration of Bishop
Hefele's language, and condemn it as contrary to literary honesty,
and a real falsification of the text. The volume is admirably
printed, and is for sale at The Catholic Publication House, and
we most cordially recommend it to the attention of all students of
ecclesiastical history who are unable to read the work in German or
French.
THE PRIEST ON THE MISSION. A Course of Lectures on
Missionary and Parochial Duties. By Frederick, Canon
Oakeley, etc. London: Longmans & Co. New York: The
Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren Street. 1871.
Whoever has the happiness of knowing Canon Oakeley will think he sees
him and hears him talking when he reads this book. Canon Oakeley was
well known many years ago as a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and
one of the most distinguished of the brilliant band of converts from
that university. As a Catholic priest, he has been one of the most
laborious and successful among the parochial clergy of London. His
long experience and eminently practical mind make him unusually well
fitted for writing a work like the present. It is full of admirable
directions and suggestions, among which those on preaching especially
attracted our attention. Canon Oakeley's very remarkable merits as a
writer are too well known to need our commendation. The style of the
present volume is well worthy of the venerable author's best days,
and makes the book delightful reading. We think it is one which even
the most experienced pastors will find useful and interesting, and
which will be found to be of the highest value to young clergymen and
ecclesiastical students.
CATHOLIC HYMNS AND CANTICLES, TOGETHER WITH A COMPLETE
SODALITY MANUAL. By Rev. Alfred Young. Sixth edition.
New York: The Catholic Publication House. 1871.
Father Young's hymn-book, well known to many of our schools and
confraternities for the past eight years, is now enlarged by the
addition of twenty-four hymns to its first edition. The best
thing we can say of the collection is that, of the one hundred and
thirty-one hymns which it contains, not more than half a dozen are
beyond the capacity or unsuited to the tastes of the youth for whom
it was designed. The majority of the melodies are original, and not
to be found in any other book of the kind. Every season and festival
of the year is represented by a choice selection of appropriate
hymns, and the present edition is enriched with the popular
congregational hymns sung in the church of the Paulists during Lent,
and at the meetings of their Rosary and Christian Doctrine Societies.
We have no hesitation in saying that it is the most complete and
satisfactory hymn-book for our schools and sodalities that has been
issued in the English language.
AMERICAN RELIGION. By John Weiss. Boston: Roberts
Brothers. 1871.
Precisely what it was that Mr. Weiss proposed to himself in writing
the series of essays which he dignifies by the title of "American
Religion," we do not find it easy to say. He is one of those more
unhappy admirers of Mr. Emerson who, in paying him the ready tribute
of a more or less perfect imitation of the style of his speech
and the manner of his thought, have so far beggared themselves as
to leave their readers in doubt as to what their own thinking and
their own statement might have been, had they in fact retained that
individuality the rights of which it seems now only a part of their
imitation to assert. Mr. Emerson's style, which is the fit expression
of the character of his mind, and in its way perfection, has the
unfortunate peculiarity of being so mannered that the least of his
disciples can successfully, and apparently unconsciously, travesty
it. Just what it was, therefore, that Mr. Weiss had in his mind
concerning the new religion which he desires to see adapted to the
supposed needs of America, we do not know; but through the fog in
which his readers are perforce doomed to flounder, it seems as if
he believes that the three thousand miles of sea-water which lie
between his native land and the Old World were a sufficient layer of
regeneration for those born on the hither side of it. The sense of
sin, the need of an atonement, the efficacy of prayer, are effete
ideas which have served their purpose in the past, but which an
American citizen is better without. Why should Yankee Doodle, who,
as all the world knows, is the latest and fullest expression of what
Mr. Weiss likes to call the "Divine Immanence," bewail sins which
are after all either purely imaginary or the result of a defective
organization for which he is not to blame; or think himself in need
of a mediator with an offended God, when the real truth is that he
has only to step up to the nearest square inch of looking-glass to
behold the Divinity in himself and settle all outlying accounts by
word of mouth? Perhaps we do Mr. Weiss an injustice, and, in the
twelve essays which form this volume, he may have embodied more and
better ideas than the only one which a tolerably attentive reading
has enabled us to gather from them. But to us his book seems likely
to be as barren of suggestion to those who would willingly agree
with him as it is to ourselves. Its prevailing cloudiness is here
and there broken in upon by a sort of inane audacity of expression
when he refers to our Lord and his miracles; but otherwise it offers
an unbroken uniformity of platitude. It betrays, too, an amusing
ignorance of all modes of thought alien to either the orthodoxy or
the rationalism of New England, the provincialism of which is in very
pretty keeping with the significant title which Mr. Weiss has chosen
for his work.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XIII., No. 78.--SEPTEMBER, 1871.[158]
THE REFORMATION NOT CONSERVATIVE.[159]
Dr. Krauth is a man highly esteemed in his own denomination, and,
though neither very original nor profound, is a man of more than
ordinary ability and learning, well versed in Lutheran theology,
and, we presume, a trustworthy representative of it as contained in
the Lutheran symbolical books, and held by the more conservative
members of the Lutheran Church--a church, or sect rather, of growing
importance in our country, in consequence of the large migration
hither from Germany and the north of Europe, and in some respects the
most respectable of all the churches or sects born of the Protestant
Reformation, or, rather, the Protestant revolt and rebellion against
the church of God. Yet he will excuse us if we refuse to follow him
step by step in his exposition of the Lutheran theology, for all that
is true in it we have in the teaching of the Catholic Church, without
the errors and falsehoods Luther mingled with it. It were a waste of
time to study it, unless we were called upon to refute it in detail,
which we are not.
That there is much that is true mingled with much more that is false
in Lutheran theology, we do not dispute, and we readily admit that
Dr. Krauth means to hold, and in his way does hold, most of the
fundamental principles, if not dogmas, of Christianity; but this is
no more than we might say of any other system of false theology, or
of any heathen religion or superstition, ancient or modern, civilized
or barbarous. There is no pagan religion, if we analyze it and trace
it to its fountain, in which we cannot detect most, if not all, of
the great primary truths of the Christian religion, or the great
principles which underlie the dogmas and precepts of the Catholic
Church, and which could have been obtained only from the revelation
made by God himself to our first parents before their expulsion
from the garden. Yet what avails the truth false religion conceals,
mingled as it is with the errors that turn it into a lie? It serves,
whether with the lettered and polished Greek and Roman or the rude,
outlying barbarian, only as the basis of barbarous superstitions,
cruel, licentious, and idolatrous rites, and moral abominations. The
fundamental ideas or principles of civilized society are retained in
the memory of the most barbarous nations and tribes, yet are they
none the less barbarous for that. They lack order, subordination;
neither their intelligence nor their will is disciplined and
subjected to law; and their appetites and passions, unrestrained and
untamed, introduce disorder into every department of life, and compel
intelligence and will, reason itself, to enter their ignoble service,
and as abject slaves to do their bidding. Civilization introduces the
element of order, establishes the reign of law in the individual, in
the family, in the state, in society, which is not possible without a
religion true enough to enlighten the intellect, and powerful enough
over conscience to restrain the passions within their proper bounds,
and to bend the will to submission.
All Protestant sects hold much of truth, but, like the heathen
religions, they hold it in disorder, out of its normal relations and
connections, out of its unity and catholicity, and consequently no
one of them is strong enough to recover the element of order, and
re-establish and maintain the reign of law in any of the several
departments of life, spiritual or secular; for the very essence of
both consists in rejecting catholicity, the only source of order. We
therefore make no account of the principles, truths, or even Catholic
dogmas retained by the various Protestant churches or sects from
Catholic tradition. Held as they are out of unity, out of their
normal relations, and mingled with all sorts of errors and fancies,
they lose their virtue, become the basis of false religion and false
morality, pervert instead of enlightening reason, and mislead,
weaken, and finally destroy conscience. They are insufficient to
preserve faith and the worship of God, and naturally tend to revive
in a lettered nation the polished heathenism of Greece and Rome.
Their impotence is seen in the prevailing disorder in the whole
Protestant world, and especially in the singular delusion of modern
society, that the loss of Catholic truth, Catholic authority,
of spirituality, is a progress in light, liberty, religion, and
civilization--a delusion which counts the revolutions, the civil
commotions, the wars between the people and the government, between
class and class, and capital and labor, the insurrections and
terrible social disorders of the last century and the present, only
as so many evidences of the marvellous advance of the modern world in
freedom, intelligence, religion, and Christian morals. Is not this
the delusion that goeth before and leadeth to destruction?
Dr. Krauth has not advanced so far, or rather descended so low, as
have some of his Protestant brethren. He has strong conservative
instincts, and still retains a conviction that order is necessary,
and that without religious faith and conscience order is not
possible. He has a dim perception of the truth, that unless there
is something in religion fixed, permanent, and authoritative, even
religion cannot meet the exigencies of society or the needs of the
soul; but, a child of the Reformation, and jealous of the honor
of his parentage, he thinks it necessary to maintain that, if
religion must be fixed and permanent, it must at the same time be
progressive; authoritative, and yet subject to the faithful, who
have the right to resist or alter it at will. Hence he tells us, page
viii., "The church problem is to attain a Protestant Catholicity, or
a Catholic Protestantism," and seeks to establish for Lutheranism
the character of being a "conservative reformation." The learned
doctor may be a very suitable professor of theology in a Lutheran
theological seminary, or a proper professor of intellectual and
moral philosophy in the University of Pennsylvania, but he seems
either not to have mastered the categories or to have forgotten them.
Contradictory predicates cannot be affirmed of the same subject.
The Lutheran Reformation and conservatism belong to different
categories. That only can be a conservative reform of the church that
is effected by the church herself or by her authority, and which
leaves her authority and constitution intact, by no means the case
with the Lutheran Reformation, which was a total subversion of the
constitution of the church and the denial of her authority. In the
sense of the author, conservative reformation implies a contradiction
in terms.
Logicians, at least those we have had for masters, tell us that of
contradictories one must be false. If there were ever two terms each
the contradictory of the other, they are _Catholic_ and _Protestant_.
One cannot be a Catholic without denying Protestantism, or a
Protestant without denying Catholicity. "Protestant Catholicity"
or "Catholic Protestantism" is as plainly a contradiction in terms
as a square circle or a circular square. If Catholicity is true,
Protestantism is false, for it is simply the denial of Catholicity;
and if the Protestant denial of Catholicity is true or warranted,
then is there nothing catholic, no catholicity, and consequently
no catholic Protestantism. Dr. Krauth has, we doubt not, a truth
floating before his mind's eye, but he fails to grasp it, or to
consider to what it is applicable. "The history of Christianity," he
says, page vii., "in common with all genuine history, moves under
the influence of two generic ideas: the conservative, which desires
to secure the present by fidelity to the results of the past; the
progressive, which looks out in hope to a better future. Reformation
is the great harmonizer of the true principles. Corresponding with
conservatism, reformation, and progress, are the three generic types
of Christianity; and under these _genera_ all the species are but
shades, modifications, or combinations, as all hues arise from three
primary colors. Conservatism without progress produces the Romish and
Greek type of the church; progress without conservatism runs into
revolution, radicalism, and sectarianism; reformation is antithetical
to both--to passive persistence in wrong or passive endurance of
it, and to revolution as a mode of relieving wrong." That is,
reformation preserves its subject while correcting its aberrations,
and effects its progress without its destruction, which, if the
subject is corruptible and reformable, and the reform is effected by
the proper authorities and by the proper means, is no doubt true; and
in this case reformation would stand opposed alike to immobility and
revolution or destruction.
But is the learned and able professor aware of what he does when he
assumes that Christianity is corruptible and reformable, that it
is or can be the subject either of corruption or of reformation?
Intentionally or not, by so assuming, he places it in the category
of human institutions, or natural productions, left to the action
of the natural laws or of second causes, and withdraws it from the
direct and immediate government and protection of God. Not otherwise
could its history be subject to the laws that govern the movement
of all genuine history, be either perfectible or corruptible, or
ever stand in need of being reformed, or of intrinsically advancing.
Christianity itself is a revelation from God, the expression of
his eternal reason and will, and therefore his law, which like
himself is perfect and unalterable. The terms the professor applies,
can apply, then, only to men's views, theories, or judgments of
Christianity, not to Christianity itself, either as a doctrine or an
institution, either as the faith to be believed, or as the law to be
obeyed--a fact which, in the judgment of some, Dr. Newman's theory
of development overlooks Christianity embodied in the church is the
kingdom of God on earth, founded immediately by the Incarnate Word to
manifest the divine love and mercy in the redemption and salvation
of souls, and to introduce and maintain the authority of God and the
supremacy of his law in human affairs. It is not an abstraction, and
did not come into the world as a "naked idea," as Guizot maintains,
nor is it left to men's wisdom and virtue to embody it; but it came
into the world embodied in an institution, concreted in the church,
which the blessed apostle assures us is "the body of Christ," who is
himself Christianity, since he says, "I am the way, the truth, and
the life." Neither as the end nor as the divine institution, neither
as the law nor as the authority to keep, declare, and apply it, then
is the church imperfect, therefore progressive or corruptible, and
therefore reformable. This is the Catholic doctrine, which must be
retained by Protestantism if Protestantism is to be Catholic.
The learned professor either overlooks or virtually denies the
divine origin, character, and authority of the church, or else he
supposes that the divine founder failed to adapt his means to his
end, and left his work incomplete, imperfect, to be finished by
men. From first to last, he treats the church not as the kingdom
of God on earth, but as an institution formed by men to realize or
embody their conceptions or views of his kingdom, its principles,
laws, and authority. He thus makes it a human institution, subject
to all the vicissitudes of time and space. As men can never embody
in their institutions the entire kingdom of God, the church must be
progressive; as whatever is defective may be corrupted by the errors
and corruptions of the faithful, as what is subject to growth must
also be subject to decay, the church may from time to time become
corrupt, and men must be free, as she has need, to reform her. This
manifestly supposes the church is not divine, but simply an attempt,
as is every false religion of men, to realize or embody their
variable conceptions of the divine. If this were not the professor's
view, he could not talk of conservatism, progress, and reformation
in connection with Christianity, nor the correspondence of these
with "the three generic types of Christianity," for these terms are
inapplicable to anything divine and perfect, and can be logically
applied only to what is imperfect and human, to what is perfectible,
corruptible, and reformable. As there is but one God, one Christ,
the mediator of God and men, there can be but one Christianity, and
that must be catholic, one and the same in all times and places.
To suppose three generic types of Christianity is as absurd as to
suppose three Christs or three Gods, generically distinguished
one from another, that is--three Christs or three Gods of three
different types or genera.
Supposing the professor understands at all the meaning of the
scholastic terms he uses, it is clear that he understands by
Christianity the history of which moves under the influence of
two generic ideas--nothing divine, nothing fixed, permanent, and
immutable, the law alike for intellect and will, but the views
and theories or judgments which men form of the works of God, his
word, his law, or his kingdom. Christianity resolved into these
may, we concede, not improperly be arranged under the three heads
of conservatism, progress, and reformation, but never Christianity
as the truth to be believed and obeyed. We do not, however, blame
the Lutheran professor for his mistake; for, assuming his position
as a Protestant to be at all tenable, he could not avoid it, since
Protestants have no other Christianity. They have only their _views_
or judgments of Christianity, not Christianity itself as the
objective reality.
There is progress _by_ Christianity; and that is one great purpose
for which it is instituted; but none _in_ Christianity, because it
is divine and perfect from the beginning. There may be reformation
in individuals, nations, and society, for these are all corruptible,
but none of Christianity itself, either as the creed or as the body
of Christ, for it is indefectible, above and independent of men
and nations, and therefore neither corruptible nor reformable by
them. Not being corruptible or capable of deterioration, the term
conservative, however applicable it may be to states and empires
in the natural order or to human institutions and laws subject to
the natural laws, has no application to Christianity or the kingdom
of Christ, which is supernatural, under the direct and immediate
government and protection of God, an eternal and therefore an
ever-present kingdom, universal and unalterable, and not subject to
the natural laws of growth and decay. Dr. Krauth forgets the law
of mechanics, that there is no motion without a mover at rest. The
movable cannot originate motion, nor the progressive be the cause of
progress, or corruption purify and reform itself. If Christianity or
the church were itself movable, or in itself progressive, it could
effect no progress in men or nations, individuals or society; and
if it could ever become itself corrupt, it could be no principle of
reform in the world, or in any department of life.
The office of Christianity is to maintain on earth amidst all the
vicissitudes of this world the immutable divine order, to recover
men from the effects of the fall, to elevate them above the world,
above their natural powers, and to carry them forward, their will
consenting and concurring, to a blissful and indissoluble union with
God as their supreme good, as their last end or final cause. How
could it fulfil this office and effect its divine purpose, if not
itself free from all the changes, alterations, and accidents of time
and space? Does not the learned professor of theology perceive that
its very efficiency depends on its independence, immovableness, and
immutability? Then the conceptions of conservatism, progress, and
reformation cannot be applied to the church of God, any more than
to God himself, and are applicable only to what is human connected
with her. In applying these ideas to her, the professor, as every
Protestant is obliged to do in principle at least, divests her of
her divinity, of her supernatural origin and office, and places
her in the natural and human order, and subjects her to the laws
which govern the history of all men and nations deprived of the
supernatural and remaining under the ordinary providence of God
manifested through second causes. The professor's doctrine places
Christianity in the same category with all pagan and false religions,
and subjects it to the same laws to which they are subjected.
This being the case, Dr. Krauth, who is a genuine Lutheran, has no
right to call Luther's Reformation a _conservative_ Reformation. It
may or may not be conservative in relation to some other Protestant
church or sect, but in relation to the church of God, or to
Christianity as the word or the law of God, it is not conservative,
but undeniably destructive; for it subverts the very idea and
principle on which the church as the kingdom of God on earth is
founded and sustained. The church on the principles of Luther's
reformation is subject to the authority of men and nations, and,
instead of teaching and governing them, is taught and governed by
them, and instead of elevating and perfecting them, they perfect,
corrupt, or reform it. This is manifestly a radical denial, a
subversion of the church of God, of Christ's kingdom on earth if
it means anything more than a temperance society or a social club.
In this respect, the principle of the Lutheran reformation was the
common principle of all the Protestant reformers, as we may see in
the fact that Protestantism, under any or all of its multitudinous
forms, wherever not restrained by influences foreign to itself, tends
incessantly to eliminate the supernatural, and to run into pure
rationalism or naturalism. How absurd, then, to talk of "_Protestant_
Catholicity, or of _Catholic_ Protestantism"! The two ideas are as
mutually repellent as are Christ and Belial.
The church has, indeed, her human side, and on that side she may at
times be corrupt and in need of reform, that is to say, the heavenly
treasure is _received_ in earthen vessels, and those earthen vessels,
though unable to corrupt or sully the divine treasure itself, may
be unclean and impure themselves. Churchmen may become relaxed in
their virtue and neglect to maintain sound doctrine and necessary
discipline, and leave the people to suffer for the want of proper
spiritual nourishment and care, even to fall into errors and vices
more in accordance with the heathenism of their ancestors than with
the faith and sanctity of the Christian. Moreover, in a world where
all changes under the very eye of the spectator, and new forms of
error and vice are constantly springing up, the disciplinary canons
of the church, and those which regulate the relations of secular
society with the spiritual, good and adequate when first enacted, may
become insufficient or impracticable in view of the changes always
going on in everything human, and fail to repress the growing evil of
the times and to maintain the necessary discipline both of clerics
and laics, and therefore need amending, or to be aided by new and
additional canons. In this legislative and administrative office of
the church, not in her dogmas, precepts, constitution, or authority,
which, as expressing the eternal reason and will of God, are
unalterable, reforms are not only permissible but often necessary.
The councils, general, national, provincial, and diocesan, have
always had for their only object to assist the Papacy in suppressing
errors against faith in enforcing discipline, maintaining Christian
morality, and promoting the purity and sanctity of the Christian
community.
We do not deny that reforms of this sort were needed at the epoch
of the Protestant revolt and rebellion, and the Holy Council of
Trent was convoked and held for the very purpose of effecting
such as were needed, as well as for the purpose of condemning the
doctrinal errors of the reformers; but we cannot concede that they
were more especially needed at that epoch, than they had been at
almost any time previous, since the conversion of the barbarians
that overthrew the Roman empire, and of their pagan brethren that
remained in the old homesteads. Long, severe, and continuous had
been the struggle of the church to tame, humanize, and christianize
these fierce and indocile barbarians, especially those who remained
beyond the frontiers of the empire, and to whom the Roman name never
ceased to be hateful, as it is even to this day with the bulk of the
northern Germanic races. The evils which for eight centuries had
grown out of the intractable and rebellious spirit of these races
in their old homes, and their perpetual tendency to relapse into
the paganism of their ancestors, and which had so tried the faith
and patience of the church, had been in a great measure overcome
before the opening of the sixteenth century, and their morals and
manners brought into close conformity with the Christian ideal. The
church, through her supreme pontiffs and saintly bishops, zealous
and hard-working priests and religious, had struggled successfully
against them; and was even getting the better of the polished Greek
and Roman heathenism, partially revived in the so-called Revival of
Letters, or the Renaissance, and was pursuing, never more steadily
or more successfully, her work of evangelization and civilization;
and we can point to no period in her history since the conversion of
Clovis, king of the Franks, the missionary labors of St. Columbanus
and his colonies of Irish monks in Eastern Gaul and Italy, and of St.
Boniface and his Anglo-Saxon companions and successors in central
Germany and the Netherlands, when reforms were less necessary, or the
bonds of discipline were less relaxed, than at the epoch of the rise
of Protestantism.
But, granting that reforms of this sort were especially needed in the
sixteenth century, who had the right, on conservative and orderly
principles, to propose or to effect them? Certainly not private
individuals on their own authority, except so far as it concerned
their own personal faith and morals, but to the ecclesiastical
authorities of the time, as we see in the Holy Council of Trent.
Reforms, even if needed and proper in themselves, if attempted by
unauthorized individuals on their own responsibility, and carried
out without, and especially in opposition to, the supreme authority
of the church, are irregular, disorderly, and unlawful. A reform
attempted and effected in church or state by unauthorized persons,
and especially against the constituted authorities of either, is
unquestionably an attempt at revolution, if words have any meaning.
Now, was Luther's reformation effected by the church herself, or by
persons authorized by her to institute and carry it on? Was it done
by the existing authorities of the church in accordance with her
constitution and laws, or was it done in opposition to her positive
prohibition, and in most cases by violence and armed force against
her?
There is no question as to the fact. Luther had no authority or
commission from the church to attempt and carry out the reforms or
changes he declared to be necessary; and, in laboring to effect
them, he proceeded not only without her authority, but against
it, just as he does who conspires to overthrow the state or to
subvert the constitution and laws of his country. Luther, then,
was not a conservative reformer, but a decided revolutionist, a
radical, a sectarian, a destructive, and Dr. Krauth counts too much
on the ignorance or credulity of his readers in expecting them to
accept Lutheranism as "conservative reformation." A conservative
reformation, as distinguished from or opposed to revolution, is
a legal, constitutional reformation, effected under the proper
authorities and by constitutional and legal means. Dr. Krauth himself
would despise us or laugh at us if we should concede that such
was Luther's reformation. It was effected by persons unauthorized
to reform the church, against her constitution and laws existing
at the time, and to which they themselves owed strict fidelity
and unreserved obedience. They were conspirators against lawful
authority, against their spiritual sovereign, and their pretended
reform was a revolt, a rebellion, and, as far as successful, a
revolution. It is idle to deny it, or to attempt to defend Luther
and his associates on legal and constitutional principles. The
reform or movement he attempted was without and against law, against
the constitution and canons of the church, and was condemned and
prohibited by the supreme spiritual authority. This is undeniable,
and Dr. Krauth knows it as well as we do, and yet he has the
hardihood to call it a "conservative reformation"!
But the Protestant pretence is that Luther and his associates acted
in obedience to a higher authority than that of popes and councils,
and were justified in what they did by the written word of God
and Christian antiquity. An appeal of this sort, on Protestant
principles, from the decisions of a Protestant sect, might be
entertained, but not on Catholic principles from the decision of the
Catholic Church, for she is herself, at all times and places, the
supreme authority for declaring the sense of the written as well as
of the unwritten word, for declaring and applying the divine law,
whether naturally or supernaturally promulgated, and for judging
what is or is not according to Christian antiquity. Their appeal was
irregular, revolutionary even, and absurd and not to be entertained
for a moment. She authorized no appeal of the sort, and the appeal
could have been only from her judgment to their own, which at the
lowest is as high authority as theirs at the highest. Luther and his
associates did not appeal to a higher law or authority against the
popes and councils, but to a lower, as Döllinger has done in asking
permission to appeal from the judgment of a general council, to that
of a national or rather a provincial council. The appeal to Christian
antiquity was equally unavailable, for it was only setting up their
private judgment against the judgment of the supreme court. The
church denied that she had departed from the primitive church, and
her denial was sufficient to rebut their assertion. In no case, then,
did they or could they appeal to or act on a higher law or authority
than hers. They opposed and could oppose to her judgment, rendered by
popes and councils, of the law or word of God, written or unwritten,
or of Christian antiquity, only their own judgment, which at the best
was no better than hers at the worst.
The simple fact is, there is no defence of the so-called Reformation
on catholic, church, or conservative principles. It sought to reform
the faith, and to change the very constitution of the church, and
wherever it was successful, it proved to be the subversion of the
church, and the destruction of her faith, her authority, and her
worship. Dr. Krauth says that this was not originally intended by
the reformers, and that they had in the beginning no clear views, or
fixed and determined plan of reform, but were carried forward by the
logic of their principles and events to lengths which they did not
foresee, and from which they would at first have recoiled. But this
only proves that they were no divinely illumined and God-commissioned
reformers, that they knew not what manner of spirit they were of,
that they took a leap in the dark, and followed a blind impulse.
If the spirit they obeyed, or the principle to which they yielded,
led them or pushed them step by step in the way of destruction, to
the total denial of the authority of the church, or to transfer it
from the pope and hierarchy to Cæsar or the laity, which we know was
universally the fact, it is clear proof that the spirit or principle
of the Reformation was radical, revolutionary, destructive, not
conservative.
That conservative men among Protestants abhor the radicalism and
sectarianism which the whole history of the Protestant world proves
to be the natural and inevitable result of the principles and
tendencies of the so-called Reformation, we are far from denying;
but whatever of resistance is offered in the Protestant world to
these results is due not to Protestantism itself, but either to
Catholic reminiscences and the natural good sense of individuals, to
the control of religious matters assumed by the civil government,
which really has no authority in spirituals, or to the presence and
constant teaching of the Catholic Church. "What is bred in the
bones will out in the flesh." Everywhere the Protestant spirit,
the Protestant tendency, is to remove farther and farther from
Catholicity, to eliminate more and more of Catholic dogma, Catholic
tradition, Catholic precepts, and to approach nearer and nearer to
no-churchism, to the rejection of all authority in spiritual matters,
and the reduction of the whole supernatural order to the natural.
Faith in the Protestant mind is only a probable opinion, sometimes
fanatically held indeed, and enforced by power, but none the less
a mere opinion for that. The conception of religion as a divine
institution, of the church as a living organism, as a teaching and
governing body, as the kingdom of God, placed in the world as the
medium of divine grace and of the divine government in human affairs,
is really entertained by no class of Protestants, but disdainfully
rejected by all as spiritual despotism, _Romish_ usurpation, or
Popish superstition.
It is useless to say that this is a departure from or an abuse of
the principle of the Protestant Reformation. It is no such thing;
it is only the logical development of the radical and revolutionary
principles which the reformers themselves avowed and acted on,
and which carried them to lengths which, in the outset, they did
not dream of, and from which Dr. Krauth says truly they would,
had they foreseen them, have shrunk with horror. We do not find
that Lutheranism, when left by the civil magistracy to itself, and
suffered to follow unchecked its own inherent law, is any more
conservative or less radical in its developments and tendency than
Calvinism or Anglicanism, that prolific mother of sects, or any other
form of Protestantism. Every revolution must run its course and
reach its goal, unless checked or restrained by a power or influences
foreign to itself, and really antagonistic to it. The reformers
rejected the idea of the church as a kingdom or governing body, or
as a divine institution for the instruction and government of men,
and substituted for it, in imitation of the Arabian impostor, a book
which, without the authority of the church to declare its sense, is
a dead book, save as quickened by the intelligence or understanding
of its readers. Their followers discovered in the course of time that
the book in itself is immobile and voiceless, and has no practical
authority for the understanding or the will, and they cast it off,
some, like George Fox and his followers, for a pretended interior or
spiritual illumination, the reality of which they can prove neither
to themselves nor to others; but the larger part, for natural reason,
history, erudition, and the judgment of learned or _soi-disant_
learned men. Their work has gone on till, with the more advanced
party, all divine authority is rejected, and as man has and can have
in his own right no authority over man, reason itself has given way,
objective truth is denied, and truth and falsehood, right and wrong,
it is gravely maintained, are only what each man for himself holds
them to be. The utmost anarchy and confusion in the intellectual and
moral world have been reached in individuals and sects said to have
"advanced views."
Such have been the results of Dr. Krauth's "conservative reformation"
in the spiritual order, in Christianity or the church. It introduced
the revolutionary principle, the principle of individualism, of
private judgment, and insubordination into the religious order, and,
as a necessary consequence, it has introduced the same principle
into the political and social order, which depends on religion,
and cannot subsist without it. Hence, the great and damning charge
against the church in our day is that by her unchangeableness, her
immovable doctrines, her influence on the minds and hearts, and hold
on the consciences of the faithful, she is the great supporter of
law and order--despots and despotism, in the language of the liberal
journals--and the chief obstacle to the enlightenment and progress
of society, in the same language; but radicalism and revolution
in ours. Hence, the whole movement party in our times, with which
universal Protestantism sympathizes and is closely allied, is moved
by hostility to the church, especially the Papacy. Hence, it and
the Protestant journals of the Old World and the New are unable to
restrain their rage at the declaration of the Papal supremacy and
infallibility by the Council of the Vatican, or their exultation
at the invasion of the States of the Church, their annexation to
the Subalpine kingdom, and the spoliation of the Holy Father by the
so-called King of Italy. Why do we see all this, but because the
revolutionary principle, which the reformers asserted in the church,
is identically the principle defended by the political radicals and
revolutionists?
Having thrown off the law of God, rejected the authority of the
church, and put the faithful in the place of the pope and hierarchy,
what could hinder the movement party from applying the same
subversive principle to the political and social order? The right to
revolutionize the church, and to place the flock above the shepherd,
involves the right to revolutionize the state, and the assertion
of the right of the governed to resist and depose their governors
at will, or at the dictation of self-styled political and social
reformers. Protestantism has never favored liberty, as it claims, and
which it is impotent either to found or to sustain; but its claims
to be the founder and chief supporter of modern liberalism, which
results naturally and necessarily from the fundamental principle of
the reformers, that of the right of the people to resist and depose
the prelates placed over them, cannot be contested. If no man is
bound, against his own judgment and will, to obey the law of God, how
can any one be bound in conscience to obey the law of the state? and
if the people may subvert the constitution of the church, and trample
on her divine authority, why may they not subvert the constitution
of the republic, and trample under foot the human authority of the
civil magistrate, whether he be called king or president? It is
to Protestantism we owe the liberalistic doctrine of "the sacred
right of insurrection," or of "revolution" assumed to be inherent
in and persistent in every people, or any section of any people,
and which justifies Mazzini and the secret societies in laboring to
bring about in every state of Europe an internal conflict and bloody
war between the people and their governments. It deserves the full
credit of having asserted and acted on the principle, and we hold it
responsible for the consequences of its subversive application; for
it is only the application in the political and social order of the
principle on which the reformers acted, and all Protestants act, in
the religious order against the church of God.
The principle of revolution, asserted and acted on as a Christian
principle by the reformers, has not been inoperative, or remained
barren of results, on being transferred to modern political and
civil society. If the reformation, by drawing off men's attention and
affections from the spiritual order, and fixing them on the material
order, has promoted a marvellous progress in mechanical inventions
and the applications of science to the industrial and productive
arts, it has at the same time undermined the whole political order,
shaken every civil government to its foundation, and, in fact,
revolutionized nearly every modern state. It has loosened the bonds
of society, destroyed the Christian family, erected disobedience into
a principle, a virtue even, and reduced authority to an empty name.
It has taught the people to be discontented with their lot, filled
them with an insane desire for change, made them greedy of novelties,
and stirred them up to a chronic war with their rulers. Everywhere
we meet the revolutionary spirit, and there is not a government in
Europe that has any strong hold on the consciences of the governed,
or that can sustain itself except by its army. Even Russia, where the
people are most attached to their emperor, is covered over with a
network of secret societies, which are so many conspiracies against
government, laboring night and day to revolutionize the empire.
Prussia, which has just succeeded in absorbing the greater part of
Germany, and is flushed with her recent triumph over the French
empire and the improvised French republic, may seem to be strong
and stable; but she has the affections of the people in no part of
Germany, which she has recently annexed or confederated under her
headship, and the new empire is pervaded in all directions by the
revolutionary spirit to which it owes its existence, and which may be
strong enough to resist its power, and reduce the ill-compacted body
to its original elements to-morrow.
We need not speak of Austria; she may become hereafter once more
a power in Europe, but she is now nothing. Voltairianism, and the
spirit generated by the Reformation, have prostrated her, and sunk
her so low that no one deigns to do her reverence. In England the
government itself seems penetrated with the revolutionary spirit,
or at least believes that spirit is so strong in the people that it
is unsafe to resist it, and that it is necessary to make large and
continual concessions to it. It is a maxim with the liberals and most
English and American statesmen, or politicians rather, for our age
has no statesmen, that a government is strengthened by timely and
large concessions to popular demands. The government is undoubtedly
strengthened by just laws and wise administration, but in our times,
when the old respect for authority has gone, and governments have
little or no hold on consciences, there is no government existing
strong enough to make concessions to popular demands, or to the
clamors of the governed, without endangering its power, and even
its existence. The Holy Father, Pius IX., in the beginning of his
pontificate, tried the experiment, and was soon driven from his
throne, and found safety only in flight and exile. Napoleon III.
tried it in January of last year, was driven by his people into a
war for which he was unprepared, met with disasters, was defeated
and taken prisoner, declared deposed and his empire at an end by
a Parisian mob, before the end of September of the same year. The
policy of concession is a ruinous policy; one concession leads to
the demand for another and a larger concession, and each concession
strengthens the disaffected, and weakens the power of authority to
resist. But England has adopted the policy, is fully committed to it,
as she is to many false and ruinous maxims, and it will go hard but
she yields to her democracy, and reaps in her own fields the fruits
of the liberalism and revolutionism which she has, especially when
under Whig influence, so industriously sown broadcast throughout
Europe.
We need not speak of our own country. Everybody knows its intense
devotion to popular sovereignty, its hatred of authority, and
its warm sympathy--in words at least--with every insurrection or
uprising of the people, or any portion of the people, to overthrow
the established authority, whether in church or state, they can hear
of, without any inquiry into the right or wrong of the case. The
insurrection or revolutionary party, it is assumed, is always in the
right. There is no more intensely Protestant people on the globe than
the American, and none more deeply imbued with the revolutionary
spirit, in which it is pretended our own institutions originated,
and which nearly the whole American press mistake for the spirit of
liberty, and cherish as the American spirit. What will come of it,
time will not be slow in revealing.
But France, so long the leader of modern civilization, and which she
has so long led in a false direction, shows better than any other
nation the workings of the revolutionary spirit introduced by the
Reformers. She, indeed, repelled, after some hesitation and a severe
struggle, the Reformation in the religious order; but through the
indomitable energy of the princely Guises and their brave Lorraine
supporters, whom every French historian and publicist since takes
delight in denouncing, she was retained in the communion of the
church; but with Henry IV. the _parti politique_ came into power, and
Protestantism was adopted and acted on in the political order. On
more occasions than one, France became the diplomatic and even the
armed defender of the Reformation against the Catholic sovereigns of
Europe. She was the first Christian power to form an alliance with
the Grand Turk, against whom Luther declared to be against the will
of God for his followers to fight, even in defence of Christendom;
she aided the Low Countries in their rebellion against Catholic
Spain, Protestant Sweden, and Northern Germany in their effort to
crush Catholic Austria, and protestantize all Germany; and saw,
without an effort to save her, Catholic Poland struck from the list
of nations. Twice has she with armed force dragged the Holy Father
from his throne, and secularized and appropriated the States of the
Church, and set the example which the Italian Liberals have but too
faithfully followed. Rarely, if ever, has she since the sixteenth
century, by her foreign policy, consulted the interests of the
church any further than they happened to be coincident with her own.
In an evil hour, she forgot the principles which made the glory of
the French sovereigns, and on which Christendom was reconstructed
after the downfall of the Roman Empire of the West, and severed her
politics from her religion. At first asserting with the reformers
and the Lutheran princes the independence of the secular order of
the spiritual, afterwards the superiority of the secular power, and
finally the sovereignty of the people or the governed in face of
their governers, as the reformers asserted the sovereignty of the
faithful in face of the pope and hierarchy, she made her world-famous
revolution of 1789, inaugurated the mob, and has been weltering in
anarchy and groaning under despotism ever since.
The accession of Henry IV., the beau ideal of a king with the French
people, marks a compromise between Catholicity and Protestantism,
by which it was tacitly agreed that France should in religion
profess the Catholic faith and observe the Catholic worship, while
in politics, both at home and abroad, she should be Protestant, and
independent of the spiritual authority. It was hoped the compromise
would secure her both worlds, but it has caused her to lose both, at
least this world as every one may now see. It is worse than idle to
attempt to deny the solidarity of the French revolution with Luther's
rebellion; both rest on the same principle and tend to the same end;
and it is the position and influence of France as the leader of the
civilized world, that has given to the revolutionary principle its
popularity, diffused it through all modern nations, and made it the
_Weltgeist_, or spirit of the age. The socialistic insurrection in
Paris, and which we fear is only "scotched, not killed," is only the
logical development of '93, as '93 was of '89, and '89 of Luther's
revolt against the church in the sixteenth century. Its success would
be only the full realization in church and state, in religion and
society, of what Dr. Krauth calls "the conservative reformation." The
communists deny the right of property, indeed, but not more than did
Protestants in despoiling the church and sacrilegiously confiscating
the possessions of religious houses and the goods of the clergy. No
more consistent and thoroughgoing Protestants has the world seen than
these French socialists or communists, who treat property as theft
and God as a despot.
We do not exult in the downfall of France, in which there are so many
good Catholics and has always been so much to love and admire, any
more than, had we lived then, we should have exulted in the downfall
of the Roman Empire before the invasion of the barbarians. Like
that downfall, it is the breaking up of Christendom, and leaves the
Holy Father without a single Christian power to defend his rights
or the liberty of the Holy See; but it deprives Protestantism of
its most efficient supporter and its great popularizer, and all the
more efficient because nominally Catholic. It is not Catholic but
Protestant and liberal France that has fallen. The Bonapartes never
represented Catholic France, but the principles of 1789--that is,
the revolution which created them, and which they sought to use or
retain as they judged expedient for their own interests. In the last
Napoleon's defeat we see the defeat, we wish we could say the final
defeat, of the revolution. Yet so terrible a disaster occurring so
suddenly to so great a nation, we think must prove the turning-point
in the life and tendencies of the nations of Europe, and pave the way
for the reconstruction of Christendom on its old basis of the mutual
concord and co-operation of the two powers. We think it must lead
the nations to pause and reflect on the career civilization has for
three centuries been running, and open their eyes to the folly and
madness of attempting to found permanent political and social order,
or authority and liberty, on the revolutionary principle of the
Reformation or of 1789. We look for a powerful reaction at no distant
date against the revolution in favor of the church and her divine
authority. It is sometimes necessary to make men despair of the earth
in order to turn their attention to heaven.
But to conclude: we have wished to show Dr. Krauth that the
Reformation in any or all its phases, in its principle and in its
effects, in church and state is decidedly revolutionary. He as a
Protestant has not been able to see and set forth the truth; bound by
his office and position to defend the Reformation, he has considered
what it must have been if defensible, not what it actually was,
and has given us his ideal of the Reformation, not the Reformation
itself. If it does not, he reasons, maintain all Catholic principles
and doctrines it is indefensible; but if it concedes that these
principles and doctrines, were held in their purity and integrity in
their unity and catholicity, by the church Luther warred against,
what need was there of it? Our good doctor must then assume that
they were not so held, that the church had erred both in faith
and practice, and that the Reformation simply restored the faith,
purified practice, re-established discipline, freed the mind from
undue shackles, and opened the way for the free and orderly progress
of the word. All very fine; only there does not happen to be a word
of truth in it. Besides, if it were so, it would only prove that
the church had failed, therefore that Christianity had failed,
and that Christ was not equal to the work he undertook. If Christ
is true, there must always be the true church somewhere, for she
is indefectible as he is indefectible. If the church in communion
with the See of Rome had become corrupt and false, as the reformers
alleged, then some other existing body was the true church, and
Luther and his associates, in order to be in the true church, should
have ascertained and joined it--a thing which it is well known they
did not do, for they joined no other church or organic body, but set
furiously at work to pull down the old church which had hitherto
sheltered them and to build a new one for themselves on its ruins.
We grant the Reformation should have been conservative in order to
be defensible, but it was not so, it was radical and subversive.
It rejected the Papacy, the hierarchy, the church herself as a
visible institution, as a teaching and governing body, and asserted
the liberty of the faithful to teach and govern their prelates and
pastors. It is the common principle of all Protestant denominations
that the church is constituted by the faithful, holds from them,
and the pastor is called not sent. This, we need not say, is the
subversion of all church authority, of the kingdom of God founded
by our Lord himself, and ruling from above instead of from below.
It reduces religion from law to opinion or personal conviction,
without light or authority for conscience. This principle, applied to
politics, is the subversion of the state, overthrows all government,
and leaves every man free to do "what is right in his own eyes." It
transfers power from the governors to the governed, and allows the
government no powers not held from their assent, which is simply to
make it no government at all. It has been so applied, and the effect
is seen especially in France, which, since her revolution of '89,
has had no settled government, but has alternated, as she alternates
to-day, between the mob and the despot, anarchy and military
despotism.
We so apply it, theoretically, in this country; and in the recent
civil war the North was able to fight for the preservation of the
Union only by pocketing for a time its principles and forswearing its
logic. The logic was on the side of the South; the force was on the
side of the North; on which side was the right or the wrong, it is
not our province to decide. We will only add that we do not agree at
all with journals that speak of the issues which led to the war as
being decided by it. War may make it inexpedient to revive them, but
the only issue it ever does or can decide is, on which side is, for
the time, the superior force. We deny not the right of the people to
resist the prince who makes himself a tyrant, if declared to be such
and judicially deposed by the competent authority, but we do deny
their right, for any cause whatever, to conspire against or to resist
the legitimate government in the legal exercise of its constitutional
powers. We recognize the sovereignty of the people in the sense that,
if a case occurs in which they are without any government, they have
the right, in concert with the spiritual power, to institute or
reconstitute government in such way and in such form as they judge
wisest and best; but we utterly deny that they remain sovereign,
otherwise than in the government, when once they have constituted
it, or that the government, when constituted, holds from them and
is responsible to their will outside of the constitution; for that
would make the government a mere agent of the people and revocable at
their will, which is tantamount to no government at all. The doctrine
of the demagogues and their journals we are not able to accept;
it deprives the people collectively of all government, and leaves
individuals and minorities no government to protect and defend them
from the ungoverned will and passions of the majority for the time.
We accept and maintain loyally, and to the best of our ability, the
constitution of our country as originally understood and intended,
not indeed as the best constitution for every people, but because
it is the best for us, and, above all, because it is for us the
law. In itself considered, there is no necessary discord between
it and Catholicity, but as it is interpreted by the liberal and
sectarian journals, that are doing their best to revolutionize
it, and is beginning to be interpreted by no small portion of the
American people, or as interpreted by the Protestant principle, so
widely diffused among us, and in the sense of European liberalism
or Jacobinism, we do not accept it, or hold it to be any government
at all, or as capable of performing any of the proper functions
of government; and if it continues to be interpreted by the
revolutionary principle of Protestantism, it is sure to fail--to
lose itself either in the supremacy of the mob or in military
despotism--and doom us, like unhappy France, to alternate between
them, with the mob uppermost to-day, and the despot to-morrow.
Protestantism, like the heathen barbarisms which Catholicity subdued,
lacks the element of order, because it rejects authority, and is
necessarily incompetent to maintain real liberty or civilized
society. Hence it is we so often say, that if the American Republic
is to be sustained and preserved at all, it must be by the rejection
of the principle of the Reformation, and the acceptance of the
Catholic principle by the American people. Protestantism can preserve
neither liberty from running into license or lawlessness, nor
authority from running into despotism.
If Dr. Krauth wants conservatism without immobility, and progress
without revolution or radicalism, as it seems he does, he must cease
to look for what he wants in the Lutheran, Calvinistic, Anglican,
or any other Protestant reformation, and turn his thoughts and his
hopes to that church which converted pagan Rome, christianized and
civilized his own barbarian ancestors, founded the Christendom of the
middle ages, and labored so assiduously, unweariedly, perseveringly,
and successfully to save souls, and to advance civilization and the
interests of human society, from the conversion of the pagan Franks
in the fifth century down to the beginning of the sixteenth century,
and which still survives and teaches and governs, in spite of all
the effort of reformers, revolutionists, men, and devils to cover
her with disgrace, to belie her character, and to sweep her from
the face of the earth. She not only converted the pagan barbarians,
but she recovered even the barbarian nations and tribes, as the
Goths, Vandals, and Burgundians, that had fallen into the Arian
heresy, which like all heresy is a compromise between Christianity
and heathenism, and even reconverted the Alemanni, Frieslanders,
and others who had once embraced the Gospel, but had subsequently
returned to their idols and heathen superstitions. God is with her as
of old, and lives, teaches, and governs in her as in the beginning;
and she is as able to convert the heathen to-day, to reconvert the
relapsed, and to recover the heretical, as she was in the days of
St. Remi, St. Amand, St. Patrick, St. Austin, St. Columbanus, St.
Willebrod, or St. Boniface. She is the kingdom of God, and like him
she cannot grow old, decay, or die. Never had her Supreme Pontiff
a stronger hold on the consciences, the love and affections of the
faithful throughout the world, than he has at this moment, when
despoiled of all his temporalities and abandoned by all earthly
powers, nor ever were her pastors and prelates more submissive and
devoted to their chief. Never did she more fully prove that she is
under the protection of God, as his immaculate spouse, than now when
held up to the scorn and derision of a heretical and unbelieving
world. Dead she is not, but living.
Let our learned Lutheran professor remove the film from his eyes,
and look at her in her simple grandeur, her unadorned majesty,
and see how mean and contemptible, compared with her, are all the
so-called churches, sects, and combinations arrayed against her,
spitting blasphemy at her, and in their satanic malice trying to
sully her purity or dim the glory that crowns her. Say what you will,
Protestantism is a petty affair, and it is one of the mysteries
of this life how a man of the learning, intelligence, apparent
sincerity, and good sense of Dr. Krauth can write an octavo volume
of eight hundred closely printed pages in defence of the Protestant
Reformation.
FOOTNOTES:
[158] Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by
REV. I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington, D. C.
[159] _The Conservative Reformation and its Theology; as Represented
in the Augsburg Confession, and in the History and Literature of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church._ By Charles V. Krauth, D.D., Norton
Professor of Theology in the Evangelical Lutheran Theological
Seminary, and Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy in the
University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.
1871. 8vo, pp. 800.
GENZANO AND FRASCATI.
What is interesting to visitors in Rome, and indeed in all Italy,
is not merely their stay in certain known localities, or their
sight-seeing within a certain beaten track; it is also the casual
observation of less famous and more intimate scenes, and the
residence in less crowded and more attractive, because more peculiar,
neighborhoods.
The curious festival, more carnivalesque than religious, that takes
place every Sunday in August in the Piazza Narona, in Rome, and
during which pedestrians and carriage-goers wade and splash through
a shallow, artificial lake, produced by the regulated overflowing
of the centre-fountain, is a sight unfamiliar to strangers and
tourists, yet none the less a very characteristic sport, and
interesting especially to such as view Rome chiefly in a historic and
antiquarian light. Again, the "Ottobrate," a species of christianized
bacchanalia, an innocent merry-making answering in some sort to our
dear old familiar gathering of "Harvest Home," is a thing more often
heard of than witnessed by flying visitors to the Eternal City. In
October, also, the Holy Father visits different convents, and a few
ladies not unfrequently procure the privilege, through "friends at
court," of following in his train, and thus gaining admittance to
strictly enclosed nunneries, and being present at touching little
ceremonies performed very simply by the Pope himself in the poor,
plain chapels of these voluntary prisoners of love. Sometimes he
says a few words of encouragement and advice; sometimes he gives
benediction while the untutored choir of nuns sing some simple hymn;
sometimes he assembles the community, and gives them his solemn
blessing. There are the "Celestines" (so-called from their blue veil
beneath the black one), whose convent is in a retired street not far
from St. John Lateran, and whose _enclosure_ does not necessitate a
grating, but compels them to wear their veils down while speaking
to strangers, and not to advance further than the threshold of the
inner house-door, while their visitor stands without the line, yet
face to face with them. There are the Dominicanesses, near the Piazza
Trajana, at "San Domenico e Sisto," whose profession is impressively
accompanied by the heart-stirring ceremony of prostration beneath
a funeral pall, while the choir sing the solemn dirge of the _De
Profundis_. When these nuns take the habit and first become novices,
they are asked, at a certain part of the service, whether they choose
the crown of thorns or the wreath of roses, both of which lie before
them on a table. Of course there is but one answer, but, the ceremony
over, the rose, or bridal wreath, replaces for the day the coronal
of thorns. There is a convent of a very severe order, called the
"_Sepolte-Vive_," or "buried alive," whose rule is almost inhumanly
severe, and has never received absolute confirmation from the Holy
See, but only toleration, or permission, for such as feel themselves
drawn to such appalling austerities. They dig their own graves,
and wear fetters on the wrist, and, when in fault, no matter how
slight, a placard on their backs indicating their peculiar failing.
When news is brought to the superioress of the death of a parent or
relation of any one of the sisters, the bereaved one is not told of
her loss, but it is announced that "one among us has lost a member
of her family;" and Masses are offered for the departed without
any further mention of him or her. Again, there is a Carmelite
convent in Rome, I forget where, in which a miraculous crucifix has
been preserved for about fifty years--a strange image, which seems
instinct with life and expression, seems to speak to and look at you,
fascinates the gaze, and stirs the least impressionable heart. It
is not much spoken of even in Rome, that city where marvels are no
longer marvels, and where miracles are more credible than business
negotiations elsewhere; but it is enough that in one of these Papal
October visits to convents, two persons of calm judgment, both
English, both converts, and one the sister of an eloquent and gifted
Anglican divine, saw it, and declared that there was something about
it far beyond the common run of even skilfully carved and elaborately
chiselled masterpieces.
To pass from convents to hospitals, the sight during the evenings
of Holy Week at the "Trinità de Pellegrini" is something not less
interesting than the oft-recounted glories of the Sistine Chapel and
the thrilling rubrics of the Pontifical High Mass at St. Peter's
shrine. Rome is still, in this century, a real centre of pilgrimage;
and what could be a greater proof of the truth of the faith she
teaches than this apparently incredible fact--this _anachronism_ in
the eyes of our enlightened progressists? Men and women, chiefly from
the rural and mountainous districts of Italy, but also from Hungary,
and Germany, and faithful Poland, come begging their arduous way, in
simple faith and fervent love, perfectly undisturbed by doubts they
have never heard discussed, by the "spirit of the age" they have
never dreamt of as being in antagonism with the spirit of the church,
by the childish and wilful gropings after religious reconstruction
which they, if they knew of them, would call madness, and pity as
such. They come with their strange tattered costumes, all incrusted
with dirt, and embroidered into perplexing patterns with accumulation
of unheeded dust, and knock at the door of this gigantic hospital,
where they find a real home and a ready welcome. Other men and women,
chiefly of the higher classes, and, like the pilgrims, of divers
nationalities, come to tend them and offer them literally the same
services Abraham offered to the voyager-angels when they stopped,
travel-stained and foot-sore, at the entrance of his tent. In an
upper hall are laid tables laden with abundant and wholesome food,
of which a portion is reserved by each wanderer for the morrow's
breakfast, and the disposition of which, from personal observation,
I know to be as follows: a small loaf of bread sliced in the middle,
and meat and sauce crammed as tight as possible between the two
halves thus making a substantial but somewhat ungainly sandwich. In
a large room on the lower floor are placed benches against the wall,
with a foot-board running along them, on which are rows of basins,
with the necessary adjuncts of soap and towels. The washing of the
pilgrims' feet is by no means a sinecure, or a graceful make-believe
at biblical courtesies. It is a very real and slightly unpalatable
business; but the grievance is far more the short time allowed to
each person than the washing itself. The unfortunate feet of the
weary pilgrims are more refreshed than thoroughly cleaned by one
layer of soap; and it is to be wished that the time allotted could
be sufficiently extended to allow the work to be well done, since
it is attempted at all. The self-denial of those who undertake this
most praiseworthy and mediæval charity must be enhanced by the fact
that many tourists come to see this done, as a part of their Holy
Week _programme_, and, being mostly curious and carping critics
of English or American origin, their comments are more sarcastic
than encouraging. Here are wildernesses of dormitories, into
which the pilgrims file in slow procession after supper, singing
litanies and hymns. Let any other country point to such a palace of
Christian charity, to such a freely supported and admirably managed
institution, and then it may have claim to talk of progressive
civilization! But instead of this, what do we see but poor-laws, that
treat God's poor as animals, and the state in which God himself chose
to be born, and live, and die, as a crime and a moral shame. "Till
when, O Lord, till when?"
On Christmas night, another beautiful scene takes place in the female
prison, on the "Piazza di Termini," opposite the baths of Aurelian,
between the railway station and the church of the Cistercians, "Santa
Maria degli Loyoli." Yet there is nothing to describe, no gorgeous
ritual, no impressive assemblage, no pageant to take the eye and
divide the attention. Four whitewashed walls, an orderly throng
of uniformly dressed women, a few hymns, in which the voices of
the nuns, in whose charge the prisoners are, lead and predominate;
a plain altar, an unpretending "Presepio," or representation of
the stable of Bethlehem, and that is all. Well! what is there to
say about this? No correspondent could fill a column with these
details; yet they fill the heart of God, and make the heart of his
sinless Mother glad, as she looks down on the repentant woman whose
welfare is so dear to her in whom there is found no spot nor stain
of guilt. And this is very different, no doubt, from the splendidly
illuminated altar in _San Luigi de Francesi_, where the lighted
tapers are pyramidally ranged in dazzling tiers of shining amber
brightness, and where the fragrance of incense struggles hard not to
be overpowered by the sweetness of the hot-house plants blooming in
clusters around the steps and communion rails. Very different, too,
from the artistic and elaborate "Presepio" at _Sant' Andrea della
Valle_, where a veritable stage seems miraculously poised over the
altar, and where all manner of wonderful details of Eastern scenery,
somewhat mixed with prevailing Western conceptions and incongruities
concerning the Orient, are displayed on a magnificent scale for the
edification of the peasantry flocking into Rome from all sides. Very
different, again, from the solemn ritual of "Santa Maria Maggiore"
(though _that_ has been for many years discontinued, on account of
the abuses of which it was the unhappy occasion), the ceremonies
that renewed most vividly the scene of the angels' announcement,
and the pastoral welcome, on the moon-brightened plains round the
stable of Bethlehem, the splendor of decoration gathered about the
precious relic of the rude crib, whose straw, still preserved in this
church, is now more glorious by far than conqueror's coat-of-mail or
emperor's robe of ermine. But what of this difference, after all?
Earth's costliness of display is earthly still, earth's poverty
and nakedness is almost divine, because, whenever earth became the
scene of any of God's choicest wonders, it was always in a state of
destitution, which he ordained beforehand as a mystical preparation.
God fashioned Adam out of common clay, and Eve from a bare rib; his
own birth was in a stable, cold and forlorn, his life in an obscure
artisan's shop, littered with common dust, filled with coarse tools;
his death was on a common gibbet, on a bare mountain. Common animals,
domestic drudges, and beasts of burden surrounded him at the dawn of
his being; common criminals, rough men, coarse-minded gazers, were
around him in his last hour. The only time he rode in any state, it
was upon an ass, not a fancy war-steed with trappings of oriental
magnificence, not even a stately mule, such as became later on a
recognized and legitimate bearer of great dignitaries. The first men
who welcomed him on earth were shepherds; the last who spoke to him
were fishermen. But it is hardly necessary to say more on a theme so
well known and so much canvassed; yet it is not unappropriate to the
frame of mind which this picture of the midnight Mass in the prison
induces and fosters. And just as it would be good for any Christian
country to be able to show a hospital as well managed as the
Pilgrim's Home we have glanced at, so would it be even better could
any one of the nations of Europe point to prisons where repentance
is taught by the rule of the Gospel and not by the regulations of
a board of magistrates, and where confinement for one species of
offence is not turned into a school of graduation for worse offences
still.
The reader will forgive this roundabout introduction to the two
beautiful reminiscences of which this paper is the subject, for these
are both among the class of events described at the beginning as less
famous, but more attractive because more peculiar.
One of them is of a private and purely personal nature, the other of
a public sort, but rarer than reminiscences of Rome usually are.
There is a village about twenty miles from Rome, and two beyond
Albano, the name of which is Genzano, and belongs, I believe, to
the Chigi family, as does Laricia with its wild woods of chestnuts.
It is an ordinary hamlet, with its church standing on a height
to which two side straggling streets lead up, and the front of
which is pretty well hidden by the block of irregular houses that
divide the road-ways. For many generations this village had been
famous for its Corpus Christi procession, and the peculiar way in
which the procession's track was more carpeted than strewn with
flowers. Strangers used to flock to see the floral festival, and
Hans Andersen, in his _Improvisatore_, once gave the most vivid
and picturesque account of it. Perhaps every one has not read
this description, and few in this country at least have seen the
procession. In 1848, the custom was discontinued, owing to the
unsettled state of the country, and the tendency of the Carbonari
to make disturbances at any popular gathering or demonstration,
especially of a religious kind. In 1864, things being somewhat more
stable under the protection of French troops and the promise of
non-intervention on the part of the King of Italy, the festival of
the _Infiorata_, as it is called, was again announced, and all Rome
hurried to see it.
It took place in the evening. No description can do it justice,
especially as its beauty was enhanced by that most hopelessly
indescribable of circumstances--the loveliness of a southern summer's
day. Albano looked from its puny heights over the wide plain that
stretches to Ostia and the sea, covered with dusky gray-green
olive-yards; the blue hills, where the chestnuts grow and overshadow
the ruddy wealth of wild mountain strawberries beneath, rose like
cupolas in the evening sky, that was alive with summer lightnings;
the bright red and blue costumes of the peasant women, with their
little tents of spotless linen squarely poised upon their heads, and
their massive chains of gold and coral vying with their wonderful
sword-shaped hair-pins for quaintness and for richness, stood out in
picturesque relief against the dark background of the common-looking
dwellings; through the bustle and clatter of an Italian crowd, there
could yet be discerned the hush and stillness so familiar to our
Northern hearts, so congenial to our idea of Sabbaths and church
festivals; the noise seemed a distant hum, the whole scene a vision;
and over it all, the spirit of faith that made it what it was, not a
mere idle show to awake idle people, but a living gathering of living
and believing souls, offering nature's purest gifts in their virgin
integrity to the God of love, to _Gesù Sacramentato_, as the Italians
so ingeniously and touchingly say.
Both streets leading up to the church were paved with flowers, in
thick layers, symmetrically portioned out with squares corresponding
to the width of the houses on either side of the road. Patterns of
great delicacy were produced by these flowers, scattered into petals
as they were, and no leaves nor stems carelessly appearing anywhere.
Here, on one large space, were pictured the arms of the Chigi family,
there, the arms of the bishop of the diocese, further still, those
of the Holy See. In the centre of one of the streets, the grand
compartment was taken up by a colored representation of an altar with
candles and a monstrance, and the white Host within. A little lower
down was a tiny fountain, more like a squirt than anything else,
concealed in a mound of soft flower-petals. Patterns of geometrical
figures, of Persian carpets, of fanciful monograms, filled up the
many squares, while all along the sides, and supported by stakes, ran
a low festoon of box-wreaths, guarding the flower-carpet from the
feet of the eager crowd.
From above, from the many balconies and terraces, and from the roofs
of the tall, old-fashioned houses, the people look down and gaze
upon this wonderful tapestry, more elaborate and incomparably more
beautiful than the choicest produce of the looms of Genoa, and Lyons,
and the _Gobelins_--more precious and more fair than the silken
hangings woven of old by the hands of queens and sovereign princesses.
And this is all for an hour! In a few moments, the procession and the
following multitude will have passed over the floral tapestry, and
every trace of its beauty will be gone. But why not? Its beauty is
consecrated, and, when it has ministered to the greater glory of God,
its mission will be over.
Every one knows the incident in the life of Sir Walter Raleigh,
when, walking across a muddy road with his imperious and capricious
sovereign, Elizabeth of England, the gallant courtier's velvet
cloak, costly though it was, was not deemed too rich for a woman's
footstool, and doubtless the graceful homage was considered as very
little beyond an absolute necessity of courtesy. And shall this
display of rarest loveliness and natural treasures, called the
"_Infiorata_," be thought of otherwise than as a cloak thrown beneath
the weary feet of the pilgrim Saviour?
Our Lord walks through many lands, and the way of men's hearts is
very rugged here, very treacherous there, very uneven everywhere.
Let him pause here for a moment, as he rests his feet on the carpet
or cloak spread for him, and let him find in a few faithful hearts
a path ready prepared for him, as fragrant and as beautiful as this
floral "via sacra."
The procession leaves the church by one of the two diverging roads,
and returns by the other. It is a regular Italian procession,
somewhat grotesque in our eyes, unaccustomed to some little
peculiarities, such as winged angels represented by children in
scanty robes of tinselled muslin, and golden paper kites flying
from their shoulders, but on the whole it is edifying in its very
artlessness. There are many monks, walking two-and-two, and bearing
lighted tapers; children in companies and sodalities with gaudy
banners and streamers, priests in black and white, and cross-bearers
and thurifers, and, lastly, the swaying canopy under which is borne
the Lord of nature. While each person in the procession winds his way
among the flower patterns, and carefully spares the perfection of the
design as much as possible, the priest, on the contrary, carries the
Blessed Sacrament right over in the centre of the broad path, and the
crowd pour after him in heaving masses, leaving the track behind them
strewn with remnants of box and olive borders and blended heaps of
crushed flower-petals.
And so the sacred pageant is over. The sky is getting cloudy, and
thunder-drops of almost tropic rain are falling noisily to the earth;
people hurry home, but long before Albano is reached the storm is
already furious, and bursts over the darkening plain. Many are
detained at the inns of the white village whose _gallerie_ of elm and
ilex are so famous round Rome.
By the bye, these _gallerie_ lead from Albano to the neighboring
village of Frascati, an archiepiscopal see, and once the retreat of
the Cardinal of York, the last of the Stuarts. He himself, with his
unfortunate brother, is buried in St. Peter's; but in the village
church of which he was titular archbishop is a tablet to his memory,
recounting his many virtues, and the love and veneration in which his
flock ever held him.
Frascati is the scene of the second reminiscence I have once before
spoken of; one more domestic and more intimate than the last, and
very interesting as being the record of an unusual favor shown to a
foreigner by the Holy Father, Pope Pius IX.
There are a great many villas around Frascati, and one of the
prettiest as well as most historical is the Villa Falconieri, the
whilom abode of Santa Juliana Falconieri, to whom a chapel is
dedicated in the house. The grounds are, as in most Italian villas,
very badly kept (according to Northern ideas), but in their wildness
more beautiful than the trimmest garden of Old or New England.
A winding, steep road, bordered with box, leads to the mansion,
whose wide marble chambers re-echo the few footsteps they ever
bear, and whose best preserved ornaments are some marble busts and
old frescoes. To the front stretches a lawn dotted with Spanish
chestnut-trees, and beyond lies an alley of hoary and gigantic
cypresses that seem the enchanted genii of perpetual silence. There
is a peculiar odor about cypress-trees which can never be forgotten
by one who has been much among these groves of living columns; and
it is a well-known fact that the charm inherent in a familiar odor
is one of the strongest that exists. Not only in this alley, a mile
long, leading up through a maze of thickets to the ruins of Tusculum,
but also in a weird quadrangle planted round a stone-coped pond, do
these trees stand in their stern and sad majesty. Here, again, is
silence, reigning undisputed; the grand path is grassy with weeds;
the little cones drop into it and are never swept away; the brown
branches of the trees fall upon it in autumn, and remain there till
they decay into the soil; the water is stagnant, and the artificial
rock-work in the centre of the pond is neglected and overgrown with
crops of worthless yet not unlovely weeds. A landscape gardener
would form and draw out a new map of these _mismanaged_ acres;
a painter would shout for joy at this picturesque frame for a
historical love-scene, and would transfer the whole to his canvas,
adding only, according to his fancy, the pale moon silvering the
mysterious trees, or the setting sun, in its amethyst radiance,
throwing golden arrows through the glorious openings of the cypress
grove.
This villa of Santa Juliana Falconieri was once let, now many, many
years ago, to an Englishman, a recent convert, and a well-known and
zealous defender of his newly adopted faith. He was not unfrequently
a guest at the neighboring monastery of _Camaldoli_, a beautiful
hermitage embosomed in the woods, and where the white-robed monks
follow a strict and ascetic rule, very different from the lives of
hypocritical holiness that Protestants and _liberators_ would make us
believe is the present type of monastic perfection. One day, when the
temporary owner of the Villa Falconieri was dining at the Camaldolese
convent, the Holy Father, whose summer residence is close by, at a
little village called Castel Gandolfo, overlooking the classic Lake
Nemi, came with his retinue to visit the monks. He also stayed to
dinner, which in Italy and among religious is in the middle of the
day, and, the visit over, he spontaneously proposed to his English
friend to make another halt at his house. A message was sent down in
haste to prepare the villa, and so few were the servants there that
it was not before the cavalcade of the Pope was at the head of the
cypress alley that the end nearest the house was swept and cleaned.
The wife and little daughter were ready to welcome the Holy Father,
as his host introduced him into the pretty, picturesque dwelling.
A throne had been temporarily arranged at the further end of the
drawing-room, and a square of gold-edged velvet placed at the feet.
The "Noble Guard," part of the Pontifical retinue, took their places
around the room, seemingly a living wall, and other ecclesiastical
attendants grouped themselves in various corners. This was an honor
seldom bestowed on any but Roman princes, and then very sparingly, so
that it was all the more a distinguished mark of personal friendship
on the part of the good and fatherly Pope toward his English child.
Not long before, those three, the father and mother and little
daughter, had knelt before the Pope, and the parents had resolved and
promised to embrace outwardly the religion they inwardly believed;
the child had unknowingly played with its father's sword, and
prattled, as unconscious little ones do, in the midst of these grave
events.
Now, the child was not forgotten either, and the Holy Father kept
it near his throne, and bestowed especial attention upon it, even
while he conversed with the steadfast and happy parents. By-and-by,
the Noble Guard were dismissed, and bivouacked outside the house,
under the chestnut-trees, till it was dark. Then lanterns were hung
on the branches and on the tall gates, and a regular illumination
took place. When the Pope left, torches were carried around him
and his _cortége_, all through the woods that cover the ground
between Frascati and Castel Gandolfo. A tablet was put up in the
vestibule or _atrium_ of the villa, with the permission of the owner
of the property, in commemoration of this signal honor conferred
upon a stranger. These details are only a part of the many-sided
recollections of this day, but, such as they are, they come from the
lips of an eye-witness, and we are not conscious that they are in any
degree exaggerated.
Nearly twelve years after this memorable visit, the villa was
revisited by some of the persons who had been its temporary occupants
during that occurrence, and it was found to be in exactly the same
state as before; the dark cypress alley and the quadrangle, the
chestnut-shaded lawn and deserted-looking house, showing no sign of
the lapse of time. The former owner, however--a Cardinal Falconieri,
I believe--was dead, and the property was disputed by two or three
noble families. The chapel of Santa Juliana stood open to the
terrace, accessible from the outside as well as from the narrow inner
passage connecting it with the house; and on one side of its tiny
walls was the picture of the saint's death-bed, representing the
miraculous communion by way of viaticum, when the blessed sacrament
sank into her breast because her sickness was of such a nature as to
prevent her from receiving it into her mouth. Below the picture is a
long explanation of this fact, and a sort of laudatory epitaph in the
saint's honor.
The villa Aldobrandini occupies one of the most prominent positions
in Frascati, and commands attention from its tiers of stone
fountains, raised amphitheatre-like one over the other up the face of
the hill, and arranged so as to let an artificial waterfall spring
down the giant staircase.
Another notable building of this village is the white-walled Capuchin
convent, a nest among the trees and rocks, where the little chapel is
railed off by heavy gates from the poor vestibule, and where lived
once a very good and eloquent monk, Padre Silvestro. He too, like the
old cardinal, died within the years that followed the visit of the
Pope to the Villa Falconieri, but his kindness to little children
and his well-known powers of language alike cause him to live for
ever in the heart and memory of those whose happiness it was to know
him.
He always seemed to the writer the very type of Manzoni's renowned
"Padre Cristofaro," one of the noblest creatures of that author's
world-famed romance, _I Promessi Sposi_.
And with this mention of him and his quiet convent--which is now,
perhaps, a desecrated stable or barrack--let us close this little
sketch of a well-remembered and beloved spot, endeared to us by many
happy hours spent among its hills and woods, and by the memory of one
of God's best and purest creatures, one worthy of more gratitude,
more love, and more appreciation than our poor heart was ever able
to render her. To her, once our guide on earth, now our guardian, we
trust, in heaven, do we dedicate these few mementoes of our happy
companionship in a land whose beauty she always taught us to look
upon as the chosen appanage of the Vicar of Christ, and the Jerusalem
of the new law.
SONNET.
ST. FRANCIS AND ST. DOMINIC.
Francis and Dominic, the marvels twain
Of those fair ages faith inspired and ruled,
When Christendom, alike by darkness schooled
And light, served God, and spurned the secular chain.
Strong brother-saints of Italy and Spain,
The nations, Christian once, whose love hath cooled,
The sects pride-blind, the sophists sense-befooled,
Your child-like, God-like lowliness disdain!
But ye your task fulfilled! All love the one,
Christ's lover, burning with seraphic fire;
All light the other, from the cherub choir
Missioned, a clouded world's re-risen sun;
Warriors of God! for centuries three at bay
Those crowned lusts ye kept that gore his church to-day.
AUBREY DE VERE.
ROME--Convent of St. Buonaventura.
THE HOUSE OF YORKE.