1. All Prussian citizens who wish to receive ecclesiastical functions

must matriculate at the state university. After matriculating, they

must attend the university course for three years. On concluding their

ecclesiastical studies, they must pass another state examination; that

is to say, at the university. _No candidate can be admitted to the

priesthood unless he satisfy the state in this examination._

2. The creation of new (ecclesiastical) seminaries, great or small, is

prohibited. The seminaries already existing shall be placed under state

surveillance, and are forbidden to receive new scholars.

3. The candidate for the priesthood who is nominated by the bishop

must be approved of and installed in his office by the president of

the province. The bishop who nominates a candidate otherwise than

in accordance with the law, shall be punished by a fine of from 750

francs to 3,750 francs ($150 to $750). The candidate submitting to such

nomination shall be punished by a fine of from 3 francs (75 cts.) to

375 francs.

4. Ecclesiastical disciplinary power can only be exercised by

ecclesiastical authorities _of German nationality_. The ecclesiastical

functionaries who, by exercise of their functions, transgress the laws

of the state or the ordinances of the civil authority, may, at the

demand of that civil authority, be deposed, if the maintaining of their

functions prove incompatible with public order.

A single question may not be inappropriate here: Why all this? Why must

all Prussian citizens who wish to embrace the ecclesiastical state

matriculate at the university? What special advantages are either they

or that undefined thing called the state likely to derive from this

matriculation? Matriculation is a very small thing at the best, and

Catholics do not object to it even in a state university, as in London,

where they do not possess one of their own. But why must ecclesiastical

students be compelled to pass it? The matriculation examination as it

obtains at the London University embraces a hodge-podge of study, a

great part of which is of no absolute service to the clerical student

in his career. All the subjects are touched upon more or less in his

college course; but he naturally devotes his attention particularly to

those which relate more especially to his vocation. And when the state

forces a man who is studying to be a priest to attend a university

course of three years, it steps out of its province, and commits a

useless and tyrannical act.

As for the final examination at the end of the course, S. Paul

certainly could never have passed it to the satisfaction of the

present Prussian state—a man who taught such dangerous doctrines as

that Christ was “above all principality, and power, and virtue, and

dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but

also in that which is to come.”

There is no need to pursue this part of the subject further. It must

be plain to everybody that this provision of the bill is simply aimed

at preventing candidates from aspiring to the priesthood at all,

and hindering those who are perverse enough to aspire from becoming

priests—a view which is strengthened by the clause following.

The candidate for the priesthood whom the bishop wishes to ordain and

appoint must first meet with the approval of the president of the

province, and not only meet with his approval, but be installed in his

office by him. That is to say, the candidate must not be what the state

would call an ultramontane—in other words, a Catholic; and ordination

is practically transferred, if that were possible, from the bishop to

the state. What can the president of the province possibly know about

the candidate, an utter stranger to him? Or how is he to judge of his

fitness or unfitness for the divine vocation? Is the president of the

province for the future to undergo a course of theology, so as to be

“up” in his duties? But it is needless to pursue this inquiry.

Jesus Christ, when he called his apostles, never consulted Pilate or

Herod. He sought not men for the ministry who were learned in the

wisdom of the schools: poor, ignorant fishermen were the foolish

ones whom he chose to confound the wise and convert a world. Humanly

speaking, and to human eyes, the Son of Joseph the carpenter was

himself an ignorant man. There is no record of his studying, as did S.

Paul, “at the feet of Gamaliel.” The apostles asked no man’s permission

to preach; they consulted no powers in “the imposition of hands”;

they carried on all the business of the church, they ordained and

excommunicated, without ever consulting the president of the province

in which they happened to be. Their successors will continue to do the

same.

In military matters, for instance, which are purely state affairs,

the interference of the president of the province would be resented.

Courts-martial try offenders—the civil law may not touch them, and no

president is ever called in to sanction the appointments to the various

military grades. Why not? Simply because, in plain words, it is none of

his business.

It seems foolish to examine this theme so closely, so flagrant

is the violation of all common sense even, not to speak of

legal right. Nevertheless, here is the _Pall Mall Gazette_, an

ultra-liberal organ—so _ultra_, indeed, that it despises “commonplace

liberalism”—giving its hearty concurrence to these measures, on

the ground that priests are out of date, and the fittest judges of

education are men of the world, statesmen, lawyers, and business men,

who are more clever, better educated, and brisker in every way than the

clergy—with much more to the same effect. Regarding its charge that

the clergy are less fitted to cope with the question of education than

men of the world:

In the Catholic Church, the Society of Jesus is the principal teaching

order of modern times. But outside of it there are plenty of teaching

orders and societies—the Benedictines and others—possessed of

excellent colleges and schools. There are also the colleges belonging

to each diocese under the control of the respective bishops. Moreover,

all education has come to us through the hands of the clergy; and the

Catholic writers who have come out from Rome, and Louvain, and other

purely clerical centres, even in these enlightened days, might possibly

stand the trying test of comparison with the writers on the _Pall Mall

Gazette_. But not to wander into so wide a field as this, the _Pall

Mall_ may be referred to its own columns for a refutation of at least a

great part of this charge.

Writing last year on the expulsion of the Jesuits from Germany by the

same power which has framed these laws for the education of the clergy,

and which, as it confesses, are “almost enough to take one’s breath

away,” the same journal said: “One of the most remarkable traits of the

Society of Jesus has always been its literary productiveness. Wherever

its members went, no sooner had they founded a home, a college, a

mission, then they began to write books. The result has been a vast

literature, not theological alone, though chiefly that, but embracing

almost every branch of knowledge.”

And of their work in the particular profession which the _Pall Mall_

itself graces at present—there is no knowing what it may not come to

be in the future if its principles are only carried out—it said: “In

Italy, Germany, Holland, and Belgium, the most trustworthy critics are

of opinion that there are no better-written newspapers than those under

Jesuit control.”

This is only _en passant_; and, as it is often more satisfactory to

let those outside of the church answer themselves, here is the opinion

of the London _Spectator_ upon this particular point, given in direct

answer to the _Pall Mall_:

“Is an age of the world in which few men know what is truth or whether

there be truth, one in which you would ask statesmen to determine its

limits? We suspect that a race of statesmen armed with such powers

as Prussia is now giving to her officials would soon cease to show

their present temperance (!) and sobriety, and grow into a caste of

civilian ecclesiastics of harder, drier, and lower mould than any of

the ecclesiastics they had to put down.... To our minds, the absolutism

of the Vatican Council is a trifling danger compared with the growing

absolutism of the democratic temper which is now being pushed into

almost every department of human conduct.”

On the larger question of the dangers of modern universities, the

opinion of one of the keenest of living English statesmen was given

in unmistakable language at the annual meeting of the Church Congress

last year at Leeds. The Marquis of Salisbury is quite as true an

Englishman as any writer on the _Pall Mall Gazette_, and his words

may be considered to possess at least equal weight with those of the

distinguished journal mentioned.

Referring more immediately to the abolition of the “Test Acts,” by

which the state had hitherto guaranteed to overlook and prevent the

teaching of infidelity, he said: “All hindrance to the teaching of

infidelity has been taken away, and that is the great danger of

the future. The great danger is that there should be formed inside

our universities—especially, I fear, inside Oxford—a nucleus and

focus of infidel teaching and influence; not infidel in any coarse

or abusive sense, but in that sense in which Prof. Palmer used the

words ‘heathen virtue.’ _I fear that the danger we have to look to is

that some colleges in Oxford may in the future play a part similar

to that disastrous part which the German universities have played in

the dechristianization of the upper and middle classes._” And the

only advice he can give to England now is: “If the parents of England

who send their sons to these colleges will be alive to the heavy

responsibility which is now laid upon them, then perhaps we may have a

better security, a better guarantee, than we have had that Oxford shall

not be the means of uprooting the Christian faith which they had learnt

at home.”

These words of the real, if not the nominal, leader of the conservative

party in the British House of Lords, who at the same time is, or was

when he delivered the speech, chancellor of the university of Oxford,

are worthy of attention, and may be commended to that fussy little

termagant, the _Pall Mall Gazette_. They have been doubly corroborated

since by another British statesman whose testimony on such a subject

is of at least equal weight with that of the ultra-liberal journal,

inasmuch as he is the leader of the liberal party—the present Premier

of England, in his recent great speech at Liverpool, which was

principally devoted to exposing the errors of Strauss.

Passing on to the other laws, why, considered merely from a financial

point of view, should the creation of new seminaries, great or small,

be prohibited? This is controlling the private purse with a vengeance.

The Prussian state, or Prince Bismarck and the professordom, forbid

Prussians or anybody else to erect ecclesiastical seminaries. Of

course, this means that Prussian or German youth are in future to be

educated only in the state schools and universities. If they want to

become priests, they must learn their theology as best they may; at

least there shall be no schools or colleges for them to study in, for

those already in existence are to be placed under state surveillance,

to receive no new pupils—in a word, to be closed, or converted from

the purpose for which they were founded by private funds into state

schools with state professors at their head, which is just as though

Gen. Grant swooped down on all the banking-houses in the United States,

set them under government control, and bade the bankers go about their

business. And yet Catholics who find some reason to object to this

summary mode of dealing with their property and what they considered

were their rights, are told that they are traitors to the state,

conspirators against the empire, and that they only object in slavish

obedience to a mandate from Rome.

This measure was well devised. Its framers said: We have banished the

Jesuits; we have banished religious societies of every description; we

have abolished the sacrament of marriage; we have banished religion

from the schools; we now proceed to abolish ecclesiastical seminaries

altogether: that is to say, we abolish the priesthood, we abolish

God as far as Germany is concerned, and men shall worship us and us

only—the supreme power.

What else does this law mean? It strikes out the priesthood, root and

branch, as effectually as did the penal laws in England; nay, more so.

The next clause fits in neatly. The bishop who nominates a candidate

otherwise than in accordance with the law is fined heavily. As there

are a good number of bishops, and as they are likely to disregard the

law in this respect, this will ensure a constant revenue to the state

as long at least as they are allowed to remain in the country.

Ecclesiastical disciplinary power can only be exercised by

ecclesiastical authorities of German nationality. This, of course, is a

blow struck directly at the Pope in his capacity of universal head of

the church; indirectly at whoever may hereafter be appointed as bishops

of the church in Germany. It simply forbids the Catholic bishops and

priests to obey the commands of the Holy See, and, if carried out,

would be subversive of the whole edifice of Christ’s church, which its

divine Founder made one, indivisible, and CATHOLIC. “Go ye, therefore,

and teach _all_ nations.” Prince Bismarck aims at carrying out what

Bolanden calls “the Russian idea”—the erection in Germany of a state

popedom. And again, Catholics are traitors to the state for objecting

to it, though it is an amendment introduced into Article 15 of the

Prussian constitution for the purpose of nullifying that truly liberal

and wise measure, which was to the following effect:

The Evangelical and the Roman Catholic Churches, as well as all other

religious societies, may administer and regulate their affairs in

perfect freedom. All religious societies may continue in the possession

and enjoyment of their institutions, foundations, and funds destined

for worship, instruction, and charity.

This is the law that works in England, in this country, and wherever

else the name of freedom is known. It left the Catholic Church

little to desire in Prussia. The justice, the wisdom and necessity

of substituting for this law those which appear at the head of this

article, will be apparent.

Moreover, that same article very wisely and fairly provided that the

state right of nominating, proposing, electing, and confirming in the

offices of the church be suppressed, with the single exception of

ecclesiastical appointments in the army and in public establishments.

That law worked to the satisfaction of all parties—the state, the

Evangelicals, and the Catholics. The state never complained of it; the

Evangelical Church never complained of it; the Catholic Church never

complained of it. Why reverse this order now? Why, after handing the

disciplinary power over into the hands of the church, and after having

proved it so satisfactorily for half a century, do you now forbid the

exercise of that power by authority which is not of German nationality?

The constitution of the Catholic Church is exactly the same now as

it was when that article was drawn up. The Catholic bishops were not

self-appointed. Who conferred ecclesiastical disciplinary power in the

first instance? The church through its head, the representative of

Jesus Christ, who is not of German nationality; who, as head of the

Catholic Church, is of no nationality; and to whom in that capacity the

question of nationality does not apply: for the laws of which he is the

keeper refer to the spiritual part of man’s nature, the moral order,

which in all men is the same, and which takes as little color from

the accidents of place or climate as it does from the darkness or the

whiteness of the skin.

This law cannot be obeyed: its framers evidently were assured of this

fact, for they provide that the ecclesiastical functionaries who,

by exercise of their functions, transgress the laws of the state or

the ordinances of the civil authority, may, at the demand of that

authority, be deposed, if the maintaining of their functions prove

incompatible with public order.

This means the destruction of the Catholic episcopate, or its total

subserviency to the state. “I will strike the shepherd, and the flock

will be dispersed,” said our Lord on a memorable occasion. That is

precisely what Prince Bismarck says: Take all power out of the hands of

the Pope; destroy the bishops if you cannot win them over to the state;

strive to set priest against superior, by telling him that, if he

disobey, the voice of his church is powerless to affect him whilst the

arm of the state supports him. Swell the ranks of the “Old Catholic”

party thus, and we shall force a schism on the church; after a short

time, the people will go this way and that; the true shepherds gone,

the flock will be dispersed, and the nation is ours to do as we please

with, for there is no longer the voice of religion to rise up against

us: the people are ripe for the worship of force.

Observe the steps which have led up to the present consummation from

the foundation of the German Empire two years ago. The Jesuits, the

vanguard of the church, are driven out. Why? For conspiring against the

empire. Proofs? None.

All the other orders are driven out for the same reasons, and with the

like proofs of guilt.

The universities are placed in the hands of infidels.

The schools are taken from the hands of religious, and placed

altogether in the hands of the state.

The solemnization (!) of marriage is placed in the hands of the state.

Ecclesiastical seminaries are suppressed, and given over to the state.

Ecclesiastical students are for the future to be educated and appointed

by the state.

Catholics must not subscribe money to build colleges of their own; if

they do, those colleges will, like all the others, be appropriated by

the state.

The bishops, the divinely appointed successors of the apostles, are

only allowed to hold office at the will of the state.

He who disobeys is deposed from office by the state. The church is a

thing of state. The human conscience is a thing of state. It has no

rights, no thoughts, no feelings, no desires, that are not absolutely

controlled by the state, “for in the kingdom of this world the state

has dominion and precedence.”

There is the whole doctrine out, plain and undisguised. Those last

words are taken from the speech delivered by Prince Bismarck to

the House of Peers in the debate of March 10 on the question under

consideration. And now that they are there, what is the state?

“The state is I,” said Louis XIV., and he was right in his estimate;

but the fact of his having been right at the time when he made the

boast did not prevent the French Revolution, rather helped it on, and

does not prevent us to-day from repudiating the doctrine.

What constitutes the state in Prince Bismarck’s eyes? Is it the

emperor, or himself, or Dr. Falk, or the German professordom? Is it

the representatives of the country as collected in the Lower and Upper

Prussian Houses? On the educational question, the Upper House, in which

lay the strength of the conservative party, gave an adverse vote to

the government, and the House was immediately dissolved. A number of

mushroom peers were hastily created in an unconstitutional manner, and

sent in as the creatures of Prince Bismarck, for the sole purpose of

passing these bills, in order to give a show of free discussion, and

make the measure of Prince Bismarck appear as the will of the nation.

But does the following read like the speech of a man who was likely

to favor free discussion, or rather, of one who pined for absolutism,

and was determined to have it? It is an extract from the speech of

the prince on resigning the premiership of the Prussian Parliament

to Count von Roon: “There is no fear that Prussia will lose her

legitimate influence in the federal government, even if the individual

members of the cabinet are not on all questions at one.... Prussia’s

territory making five-eighths of all Germany, she will always command

the authority naturally belonging to her. Besides, the identity of the

German and Prussian politics is guaranteed by the fact that the German

Emperor and the King of Prussia happen to be one and the same person.

_I do not deny that the premier should be invested with more extensive

prerogatives than are now his own._ He might, for instance, be accorded

the right of suspending the decisions of the cabinet until their

approval or otherwise by the king; or he might be granted some other

prerogative with a view to regulating the action of the administration.

_All this, I dare say, will come to pass in course of time_, but, not

being as yet conceded to him, he has to shift as best he may.... There

is too much talking over one’s colleagues involved in the premiership

to leave a man time for anything else.”

That speech was delivered some months ago. Since then, the speaker

has come nearer to the boast of Louis XIV. This is how the echo

of the German chancellor, the Berlin special correspondent of the

London _Times_, speaks of it, with a cringing tone that to free

stomachs brings an absolute nausea: “With a decisive struggle against

popery looming ahead, it would be a great mistake in this loyal and

king-loving country to strip the ministry of the authority it derives

from representing _the crown rather than the parliament_”; whilst the

_Times_ itself remarks editorially, with a mental blindness strange

indeed, if unintentional: “We do not anticipate any retrogression

in the development of Prussia, but it seems inevitable that there

should be some check in the progress of change, some slackening in the

audacity of legislation, some disposition to rest and be thankful.”

To show how far freedom of discussion prevails in the Prussian

Parliament over and above the speech quoted of Prince Bismarck, the

dissolution of the Upper House on refusing to go the length of the

government on the education question, and the creation of new peers

for the purpose of overcoming that opposition, may be added the very

significant announcement made by Dr. Falk on presenting the bill to the

Chamber in the first instance, before a word of discussion had taken

place on it, that his majesty’s sanction was certain beforehand; which

was saying practically: You may vote as you please, but this bill must

be passed, and he who opposes its passage is an enemy to the throne—no

small threat in a military nation.

So much for freedom of discussion! Where, then, is one to find that

mysterious body, the state, of which there is so much talk? Of course,

this bill has passed both houses; it has been debated and divided on,

and the divisions have gone with the ministry. Well, in representative

governments, such is the rule. Whatever the majority votes becomes law.

All looks fair. The bill has gone against the Catholics, and that is

all that can be said about it.

But how has it gone against them? It is a sweeping measure; of that

there can be no doubt. It is the most tremendous measure framed within

this century, perhaps in all time, for the suppression of the faith;

for, to any honest mind, these laws are absolute suppression of all

that constitutes the Catholic Church, so far as human enactments can

effect it. Prince Bismarck endeavored from the beginning of this

contest with the church to throw a false light over it. He banished

the Jesuits and the other orders on the plea that they were conspiring

against the empire. There was no trial, or searching, or investigation.

It was simply his _ipse dixit_: he commanded, and they were banished.

At that time his contest, as he and his organs and representatives in

the Chamber continued to assure the world, was one with conspirators,

and in no wise with the Catholic Church. The secularization, which has

been better called the dechristianization, of the schools, and the

abolition of the sacrament of marriage, had nothing whatever to do with

the Catholic faith. What mockery! Now he comes and forces this bill

through the parliament, which, if carried out, as it doubtless will be

to the letter—for Prince Bismarck does nothing by halves—simply and

absolutely stops the life of religion, not alone the Catholic, but all

religion with any pretension to the name, throughout Germany; and still

he persists in declaring that the contest is not with the church. In

his speech of March 10, which will be remembered in history, and in

calmer moments read aright by all, the prince chancellor said: “The

question in which we are at present involved is placed, according to

my judgment, in a false light if we call it a confessional religious

question. It is essentially political; it has nothing to do with the

conflict of an evangelical dynasty against the Catholic Church, as our

Catholic fellow-citizens are taught to believe; it has nothing to do

with the conflict between faith and infidelity: it has solely to do

with the ancient contest for dominion, which is as old as the human

race; with the contest for power between monarchy and priesthood—the

contest which is much older than the appearance of the Redeemer in the

world.”

Now, if this statement of the relative position of the opposing forces

be correct, Prince Bismarck makes the contest all the easier for the

Catholics. He professes to remove it altogether out of the region

of religion into that of politics, and thus the conflict, according

to him, is one between two purely political parties. As will be

shown, the party opposed to the present Bismarck policy is not at all

restricted to the Catholics; it embraces the greater portion of the

Evangelicals, most probably all of them, as well as those who, outside

of Germany, would be called democrats. Basing the contest, then, on

purely political grounds, the majority of the German Empire is driven

by sheer force of the will of one man or of a few men, backed by the

most powerful army in the world, into accepting a state of things

which it abhors, and against which it vehemently protests. The claims

of either party are to be decided purely on their own merits, and the

verdict of a fair mind cannot fail to side with that at whose head

stand the Catholics; for they claim nothing more than that the Prussian

constitution, under which all up to the present have lived happily,

be preserved inviolate. “Leave the Prussian law as it stood,” demand

the Catholics and the Evangelicals. “We are content with it; we demand

nothing more.” How such a plain and patriotic request can be contorted

into conspiracy against the empire it is hard to conceive. As for

the allegation that the relations of Catholics to the state have been

altered one jot by the declaration of infallibility, that is idle.

Catholics believe now precisely what they believed from the beginning.

Prince Bismarck, then, was fully alive to the importance of the

question he was engaged in at the time. It was no insignificant measure

that might quietly sneak through the House almost without the House

being aware of its existence. The German Empire numbers 40,000,000 of

souls; of these 14,000,000 are Catholics; that is to say, more than

one-third of the entire population. Call the relation existing to-day

between these 14,000,000 of Catholics and the head of their church,

the Pope, between them and their bishops and clergy, what you please,

political or religious, the result of the passing of this measure is

one and the same—the total breaking up of that relation in all that

makes it what it is, in so far as it lies in Prince von Bismarck to

effect that result. And so the world understands it.

“There is no parallel in history,” says the _Pall Mall Gazette_,

“to the experiment which the German statesmen are resolutely bent

on trying, except the memorable achievement of Englishmen under the

guidance of Henry VIII.... Like all these measures, the new law

concerning the education of ecclesiastical functionaries, which is the

most striking of the number, will apply to all sects indifferently,

but, in its application to the Roman Catholic priesthood, it almost

takes one’s breath away.”

The London _Times_ of April 19, in a curious article on our Holy Father

which will call for attention afterwards, sums up the situation thus:

“The measures now in the German Parliament, and likely to become [which

since have become] law, amount to a secular organization so complete

as not to leave the Pope a soul, a place, an hour, that he can call

entirely his own. Germany asserts for the civil power the control

of all education, the imposition of its own conditions on entrance

to either civil or ecclesiastical office, the administration of all

discipline, and at every point the right to confine religious teachers

and preachers to purely doctrinal and moral topics. Henceforth there

is to be neither priest, nor bishop, nor cardinal, nor teacher, nor

preacher, nor proclamation, nor public act, nor penalty, nor anything

that man can hear, do, or say for the soul’s good of man in Germany,

without the proper authorization, mark, and livery of the emperor.”

The _Times_ is no special advocate of Catholic interests, so that, when

it puts the case thus, it is out of no love for them. But after such

a graphic picture of the situation, it is needless to reiterate what

has been maintained, that, call these measures what you please, they

simply involve and mean the legal suppression of the Catholic Church in

Germany.

The bill, then, required some consideration; for it could only be

regarded by one-third of the empire at least, and by the millions of

their co-religionists outside the empire, not simply as an outrage on

their conscience—that would be a weak word for it—but as a measure,

whether it passed or was defeated, to be resisted with all the power

that lies in man’s nature. In this light alone could it be looked upon

by the Catholics, and thus the hearts of one-third of the empire were

at once and, if freedom of conscience be not a meaningless phrase, most

justly alienated from the government of an empire scarce yet two years

old.

But the opposition was not confined to Catholics alone. The Evangelical

party, though a few of its members and organs had opposed the

intermeddling of the state with church affairs from the first, as a

whole accepted the expulsion of the Jesuits and the other arbitrary

measures as a good thing, and as a deadly blow struck at Rome. But

when these crowning measures appeared, it saw that, as usual, the blow

struck at Rome was a blow struck at all freedom, and strove to retract

when too late. To quote the _Pall Mall Gazette_ again:

“The difficulties of Prince Bismarck are not decreasing. The Jesuits

have found a fresh ally in Prussia, and the ranks of the enemies of

the new ecclesiastical legislation are swollen by combatants whose

loyalty hitherto has been unswerving. Herr von Gerlach no longer stands

alone as a Protestant opponent of the chancellor’s policy. A portion

of the Evangelical clergy and a section of the Protestant aristocracy

of the old provinces of the kingdom have passed over into the camp

of the enemy. In Pomerania and Silesia, a bitterness of antagonism

has revealed itself which was never suspected. The feelings that have

fed this opposition have evidently been long in existence, but only

now have they betrayed themselves openly. The occasion on which this

was done was the emperor’s birthday. It has been customary to have

religious services in the churches at such times, and they had come to

be expected by the population as a regular part of the celebration.

This year, however, many of the Evangelical clergy in different towns

omitted the usual services, and kept their churches closed. A letter in

the _Spener Gazette_ remarks upon the astonishment excited in Neusalz,

in Lower Silesia, because of the omission. Another letter from Wolgast

says neither in that town nor in Kammin or Schievelbein was ‘the divine

service held to which we have been always accustomed.’ The same thing

occurred at Wernigerode, where the only notice of the occasion was in

the prayers at the usual Sunday service the day after. These facts have

excited much comment in Germany. The official papers openly accuse the

Protestant clergy of the eastern provinces of becoming the allies of

the ultramontanes” (April 12).

Thus does this “loyal and king-loving” people manifest its gratitude to

the monarch for the forcing of this bill upon it. How is it that the

bill hurts them, the Evangelicals, who detest the Pope, most of them,

just as cordially as does Prince Bismarck? Alas for human nature! There

was a touch of the weakness of the flesh in it after all.

When this bill met their gaze, the eyes of the Evangelicals were at

last opened. They saw that its provisions were all-embracing, and that

there was no distinction made between Catholic and Protestant, so just

and righteous to all is the Gospel promulgated by Prince Bismarck—the

gospel of the state! They had thought to get off scot-free; they

lent no voice to the noble protest of the Catholic bishops at Fulda;

but at length their zeal is aroused, and they generously throw their

weight into the scale, praying that the new laws may take the form of

exceptional measures for the Catholic Church.

Such was the form which the Evangelical objection took—on purely

conscientious grounds, no doubt. While the internal budget was being

discussed, some of the progressionists were so stupidly logical as to

vote a refusal of the very respectable subsidy which this generous,

charitable, and conscientious body enjoys. But Dr. Falk, the liberal,

came to the rescue, and saved it.

The Prussian correspondent of the London _Times_ has an instructive

little paragraph on this subject, which may serve to throw some further

light on this eleventh-hour opposition:

“But the Catholic dignitaries are not the only ecclesiastics opposed

to the bill. The new measures applying not only to the Catholic

Church, but to all religious communities recognized by the state, the

Oberkirchenrath, or Supreme Consistory of the Protestant Church in the

old provinces, has also thought fit to caution the crown against the

enactment of these sweeping innovations. The principal reason given by

the Oberkirchenrath against the clause in the new laws facilitating

secession from a religious community, is that many a Protestant might

be tempted to forsake his faith on the eve of the building of a new

church. Rather than contribute his mite, as compelled by law, he might

prefer being converted to something else.”

If letters could blush, that last sentence ought to be of a scarlet

color. However, to keep to the question at hand: whatever may have been

the motive, certain it is that at length the Evangelical party, as a

party, a body, political or religious, as you please, is aroused, and

turns upon the government, of which it was ready to be the obedient

servant so long as all things went smoothly. A similar instance of a

great uprising of religious zeal against government innovation was

exhibited and is witnessed still in that “loyal and king-loving” body,

the Irish Protestants, on the disestablishment of what was called the

Irish Church. Here, then, are the Evangelicals protesting against the

government, and the Catholics protesting against the government; how

much of the nation is left? The Catholics are 14,000,000; the number

of the Evangelicals is unknown to the writer, but it probably doubles,

perhaps trebles, that of the Catholics—certainly in Prussia; at all

events, it may be safely said that the majority of the German Empire

protests against these laws. Where is the state to be found, then? The

state certainly does not lie in the majority of the people. On purely

political grounds, therefore, Prince Bismarck’s measure is tyrannical;

nevertheless, “in the kingdom of this world, the state has dominion and

precedence.”

“Ave, Cæsar! Morituri te salutant!”

Prince Bismarck expected this opposition. So powerful did he imagine

it would be that he even feared it, and in his own speeches and organs

mingled cajolery with threats. Whilst the ecclesiastical bills were

still being debated, the _Provinzial-Correspondenz_ (official), in a

flaring article on the protest of the Catholic bishops at Fulda, and

the Catholic opposition to the ecclesiastical laws, wrote:

“The state, of course, being responsible for the welfare of the

inhabitants in every measure adopted, will have to be guided by a

_strict regard for what is just and upright_. It will have carefully

to refrain from meddling with the creed or interfering with the

ecclesiastical institutions and usages immediately connected with

the sphere of religious belief. Only the other day, the Minister of

Education (Dr. Falk) expressed his conviction in the Lower House

that, directly the new bills became law, the Catholic subjects would

perceive that no one intended to injure their religious faith, oppress

their church, or interfere with the preaching of saving truth.” (Dr.

Falk’s convictions are of a piece with his notions of “truth.”) ...

“In carrying through their present task, government is prepared to

encounter serious resistance and much trouble; but it is also aware

that the bills now under discussion, if once they become law, will

supply it with effective means of exerting its authority.... If the

washes of the government and parliament are fulfilled, the bills under

discussion will be a work of peace.”

“That is, in case the bishops yield,” remarks the Prussian

correspondent of the London _Times_. “In the other event, they are sure

to be successively fined, deposed, incarcerated, and perhaps sent out

of the country. All this the new legislation empowers the government to

effect.”

The government, then, or the state, or whatever be the name by which

Prince Bismarck chooses to be called, dreaded a powerful opposition.

Nevertheless, it determined to pass these bills—which were absolutely

uncalled for, as far as the harmony of the relations between Catholic

and Protestant went, and that of either or both of these bodies with

what ought to be the state, the true representative rulers of the

people, and not a man or a few men elevated on the bayonets of a

million soldiers—conscious that it was doing what the conscience

of its people might of necessity endure for a time, but could never

consent to. How long, then, did it take to bring this stupendous

measure about, fraught as it was with all these consequences, and a

cause of alarm and anxiety even to the government itself with all its

bayonets?

The laws are dated January 8 of this year; they were presented to the

Chamber on the following day, and, by the 21st of the same month, their

first discussion is over. On April 25, they finally passed the Upper

House.

In three months! A bill which altered throughout the whole relations

between church and state in Germany, down to their minutest details;

which involved the appropriation to state purposes of every

ecclesiastical college or seminary subscribed for, and erected, and

founded by the money of private individuals; which, involving as it

does the suppression of the bishops and the clergy, as a necessary

consequence hands over to the state a vast amount of funded property

in churches and houses; which, above all this, meets religion at every

turn, and makes it bow down and worship the state; which threatens a

future of disturbance and danger of every kind—is pushed through both

Houses of Parliament, and supposed to be fully discussed and decided on

in a period of three months!

Why, a bill for the laying of a new line of railroad twenty miles in

length would have required longer time and called for more discussion.

There it stands now, law, and all Germany must obey it, because the

state calls it law. On April 24, Germany could be Christian; on April

26, to be Christian is a crime against the state; to obey the dictates

of conscience is a crime; to establish a school in the name of God is a

crime; to establish a college for the education of God’s ministry is a

crime; to obey the pastors, the priests, and bishops of God’s church,

whom to obey hitherto was a virtue, is now a crime; to acknowledge the

Pope as the head of the universal church, a crime; in a word, to be

anything but German, body and soul, mind and heart and thought, is a

crime, to be punished by all the rigor of the law!

Prince Bismarck, while he is about it, should go further. “To-day we

will proceed to create God,” said a countryman of his, a philosopher,

an enlightened man and apostle of the stamp of Dr. Falk, the putative

father of these bills. The chancellor should create a German heaven

to correspond with this German religion and reward its devotees, the

worshippers of the divine state. What German Dante will arise to give

us the Bismarck _Inferno_?

The steps which led up to this measure, the ingredients which compose

it, the manner in which it was forced through, the meaning of it, and

the effect, if carried out, it will produce on religion, have now been

set before the reader, and he may fairly pronounce for himself upon

the whole question. But the question asked at the beginning remains

still unanswered: _Why_ has all this come about? Why has so wise a

statesman as Prince Bismarck is reputed to be raked up these embers

of dissension, and fanned them into so fierce a flame? Is it to his

advantage to turn one-third, the majority even, of his empire against

him? Why, if the contest were not, as he and his supporters of the

liberal and religious press allege, in a manner forced upon him, should

he be so unwise as to run the danger of rending his empire asunder,

and opening up that bitterest of difficulties, the religious question,

which lay so quiet? In one word, was or was not the Catholic Church a

danger to the new empire?

This is becoming the question of the day; and what concerns Germany

concerns the whole world. The Catholic Church is a danger to the state.

Again, why?

Because you obey an infallible Pontiff, an absolute ruler, blindly and

implicitly. Matters were not quite so bad before the declaration of the

dogma of infallibility; but since that date, the Pope has taken a new

stand which governments cannot admit. They cannot endure to have any

portion of their subjects ruled by a foreign potentate. They cannot

have their measures thwarted and decrees opposed by a mandate, open or

secret, from Rome. They cannot admit the pretensions of a well-meaning,

no doubt, but rather unpractical and decidedly impracticable old

gentleman to the sovereignty over the whole world. Those whom he claims

as his subjects may venerate him as much as they choose; they may even

obey him, as far as believing in a God and all that sort of thing goes,

if it bring any unction to their souls; they may believe in any mortal

or immortal thing they please; but they must obey the laws of the land

in which they live, _whatever those laws may be_. Religious belief may

be anything you please, as long as it is confined to the individual’s

mental faith; but his conduct must not be ruled by it. Whenever

religion crosses the state, religion must give way. Governments cannot

admit the disloyal theory of “a Catholic first, a nationalist if you

will.”

It all lies there: the contest between Prince Bismarck and the church,

between Italy and the church, between the whole world and the church.

This contest did not begin with the German chancellor. There is a

power behind the throne that moves even him to this deed of violence

upon the sacred person of the spouse of Christ, his holy church: the

same old tempter that first whispered to man in Eden: “Ye shall be as

gods”; that drove the kings to stone and persecute the prophets; that

moved the Jews to crucify Christ; that directed the arm of the pagan

emperors of Rome. It is not in man of his own will merely to stir up

this strife, and wage war upon his brother for the matter of faith. The

spirit of evil is ever working; and his present chief representative,

unconsciously it may be hoped, is the powerful chancellor of the German

Empire. Here is his standpoint, as given by the Berlin correspondent

of the New York _Herald_, in the remarkable speech of March 10. In

the extract already given, the chancellor pronounced the contest he

has entered upon as having “solely to do with the ancient contest for

dominion, which is as old as the human race; with the contest for power

between monarchy and priesthood—the contest which is much older than

the appearance of the Redeemer in the world.” After endeavoring to

connect every great movement of recent and mediæval history inimical,

or supposed to be inimical, to Germany with the machinations of the

Papacy, he goes on to say: “It is, in my estimation, a falsification

of politics and of history when His Holiness the Pope is considered

exclusively as the high-priest of any one confession, or the Catholic

Church as representative of churchdom in general. The Papacy has been

in all times a political power which, with the determination and

with the greatest success, interfered in all the relations of this

world; which meant to interfere, and considered such interference

as its legitimate programme. This programme is well known. The aim

constantly kept in view by the Papal power (like the Rhine borders

before the eyes of the French)—the programme which, at the time of

the mediæval emperors, was very nearly realized—is the making the

secular power subject to the clerical—an aim eminently political, the

effort to attain which is, however, as old as humanity; for so long

have there been persons, whether cunning people or real priests, who

have asserted that the will of God was better known to them than to

their fellow-citizens; and it is well known that this principle is the

foundation of the Papal claim to dominion.”

Now, there is no denying that this is a very fascinating doctrine for

nations. The rulers studiously misrepresent the Papacy, setting it down

as a political power: as that most dangerous of political powers which

would clothe politics in the garb of religion, as Mahomet did, and give

to their selfish schemes the name of the cause of God, so as to arouse

an enthusiasm and fanaticism in their devotees which mere human powers

can never hope to enkindle. Mahomet was just one of those “cunning

people” who “asserted that the will of God was better known to him than

to his fellow-citizens,” if they could be designated by that title. And

the conquests that Mahomet achieved by that deceit are in the memory of

all. The Pope is the Mahomet of the XIXth century, according to Prince

Bismarck.

When Shakespeare put that famous sentence into the mouth of King John,

“No foreign power shall tithe or toll in my dominions,” he only said

the same thing. “You are about to disestablish the church in Ireland,

because it was imposed by a foreign power,” said Mr. Disraeli, during

the debates on the question of the disestablishment. “You will do so;

but what will you have in its place? A nation ruled by a foreign power;

for the Pope is an absolute sovereign.” The words are from memory; but

the aim and substance are correct, and he of all men understood the

fallacy of the argument; but he knew that it was a valuable party-cry

to stir the blood of the patriotic Englishman. So, recently, Mr.

Gladstone told the House of Commons that the Irish University Bill was

defeated by Cardinal Cullen, under mandate, of course, from Rome. And

so runs the cry through the world.

It buzzes around our ears out here even in certain quarters, though

much less, happily, than it was wont to do. Terror of Rome! is the

string to harp on. The Catholics wish to surrender the country into the

hands of the Pope!

Laying aside the consideration of the practical impossibility of such a

thing, suppose the Pope did reign as emperor in Germany to-day, would

the people be less happy than they show themselves to be under the rule

of Prince Bismarck? Would the Pope encircle his throne with a cordon of

steel, or reign in the hearts of his people? How much happier are the

inhabitants of the Papal States to-day under the rule of Victor Emanuel

than they were under that of Pius IX.? Let the correspondents of the

secular press answer with their periodical record of outrage and crime.

How is it possible to convince people that all these allegations are

utterly and maliciously false? The Pope is infallible; and so was Peter

when our Lord made him the rock upon which he should build his church.

Peter had the same conflict with Rome that Pius has with Germany, not

simply because he was Peter, the head of the church on earth, and

the vicar of Jesus Christ, but because he was a Christian. And every

Christian who is faithful to the law of his crucified Master is bound

to say to the state “I cannot” when the state would have him deny that

Master, and break loose from the teachings of the church. It is not the

Pope these men are fighting: it is Christianity. As far as the German

laws of making the divinely instituted sacrament of matrimony a merely

civil contract, of preaching disobedience to the pastors of the church,

go, were the Pope to die to-day, and, if possible, an interregnum,

which seems to be so desired by many, to ensue, that fact would not

make a bit of difference in the opposition of Catholics to these state

measures. Wrong would be wrong still; the laws of God would remain as

binding as ever; and to hinge the Catholic faith _in this fashion_ on

the Papacy is a transparent trick. The Pope teaches what Jesus Christ

bade him teach; and no pope has ever swerved from that line.

It is almost useless to discuss this theme, and yet it must be taken

up, though those violent opponents of what they call ultramontanism, by

which they mean Catholicity, will still continue to close their eyes to

the truth that the Catholic religion has no connection of any kind with

politics as pure politics. But where politics touches upon religion, of

course religion is to be taken into account. It would far overstep this

article to go into all the details and intricacies of this question;

but the statement of the position which Catholics take upon the subject

may serve best to put the matter before the reader.

Catholics read history differently from Prince Bismarck and the

scientific historians who surround him. For them all practical history,

if the term may be used, begins with Jesus Christ. All the rest, as

far as theories of government, of the relations of the state to the

individual, go, may be considered as blotted out, as a _tabula rasa_,

and the world, in the moral order, began anew. Before the coming of

our Lord there was no government, in the modern sense of the word,

outside of the Jewish nation: there was force. Jesus Christ laid down

laws which should enter into every relation of the life of man, and

could not be mistaken. These laws were just as binding on the monarch

as on the subject, on the government as on the governed; they did not

destroy government: they guided and helped it, and infused into it

the first principles of freedom. Men recognized this fact, and, as

Christianity advanced, governments began to fashion themselves closer

and closer upon the law of the Gospel, until at length what is known

as Christendom grew up, grounded, as its very name implied, upon

the religion of Christ—that is to say, upon the law of Christ. Of

course, in the various governments, many things remained contrary to

this law, not, however, as rights, but as wrongs which only time and

Christian influence could remove. However, governments were measured

as to their justice and injustice, not by a standard antecedent to

the Christian era, nor by any standard which they might choose to set

up for themselves, but by their assimilation to, their agreement or

disagreement with, the law of Jesus Christ.

Of course, to those who deny the divinity of Jesus Christ, all this

reasoning goes for nothing; but Prince Bismarck does not profess

to do so. Where, then, was this law to be found? Had it a keeper,

a guardian, a propounder, one to whose care its divine Founder had

entrusted it, guarded against the possibility of mistaking its

teachings, or did he leave the dead letter to commend itself in a

variety of ways to a variety of minds? Were all men blessed from birth

with perfect intelligence and personal infallibility, there would have

been no need of leaving anything more than the dead letter of the

law, as in that case all would have agreed as to its meaning. But as

men do not as a rule lay claim to perfect intelligence and personal

infallibility, without going further into the question here, it seems

obvious to common sense that, if Christ left a law to the world, he

left it in somebody’s keeping: he left a government and a head, as

the representative of himself. This representative is the Pope, whom

all Christendom recognized for so many centuries, not as king of this

mundane world, but as the supreme head of the universal church of

Christ.

In time, he came to have a patrimony of his own, which was freely given

him, and has been recently very freely taken from him. That patrimony

he did not rule infallibly as king. His policy as an earthly monarch

might even be defective, like that of any other ruler; but, in the

domain of faith and morals, he, when speaking _ex cathedrâ_, could not

err, and Christendom bowed to his decisions.

Here it is, then, that Catholics bind their faith in the Pope; not in

Pius IX. as ruler of Rome, but in Pius IX. as the successor of Peter,

as the vicar of Jesus Christ, as his living representative on earth.

When, therefore, Christendom departs from Christianity, from the law of

Christ upon which it was founded, and devises measures or promulgates

doctrines in opposition to the law of Christ, Catholics look to the

decision of him with whom the Word abides to say if this be true or

untrue, right or wrong. He pronounces, and they believe and obey. He

simply says this is or this is not the law of Christ—the law that

rules the government as well as the governed. If governments enforce

wrong with the strong arm, you must use all lawful resistance; but,

rather than deny the truth, you must die as your Saviour died.

The tendency of governments to-day is to say: “We bow to no law, we

recognize nothing higher than ourselves, and the laws we make must be

obeyed without question.” This is going back to the ante-Christian

era, and reviving the worship of force. Such is the tendency to-day:

disbelief in Christ; disbelief, consequently, in his doctrines, in his

church, in Christianity, in the head of his church. To be Catholic,

consequently, is to be anti-national, in the eyes of the state, when

in reality it is to be the truest citizen of the state. Home employed

a Christian legion, and, though in bravery and devotion to the empire

that legion knew no superior, many of its members were martyred because

they recognized a spiritual power higher than the state.

And therein Catholicity is compelled to oppose the state: dating from

Christ, believing in Christ, building itself upon Christ, its followers

members of the church of Christ, it follows the state in all things

save where it transgresses the commandments of Christ; hence the _non

possumus_.

Coming back, then, to the present question, Catholics believe the Pope

to be the infallible head of the Catholic Church, not the absolute

emperor of the kingdoms of this world. Jesus Christ, whose vicar he

is, himself proclaimed, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Nations may

assume what form of government best suits them; all that is nothing to

the Pope. A Catholic is absolutely free in this country, for instance,

to vote whatever ticket he may please, Republican or Democratic. As far

as those names and their meaning go, Catholicity has absolutely nothing

whatever to do with them. But a political party erects what it calls

a platform, raises a party-cry, and, as in the present instance in

Prussia, calls itself liberal, and its liberalism attempts to wipe out

absolutely the Catholic religion from the land and from the world if

it could. Is it in human reason to expect Catholics not to allow their

religion to influence their votes in such a case as that, or in such

a case as the Irish university question, or in any similar case that

might occur here?

What are votes given for? Surely to protect ourselves against tyranny

of every form, and to secure our proper representation in the body

to whose care is entrusted the government of the country. God forbid

that religion should not influence politics! Why should it not? Let

it alone; leave it free to do God’s work; leave it its churches, its

colleges, its schools, its hospitals, its asylums, its associations,

its free worship, its beliefs, and its institutions. But if you come,

as Prince Bismarck has done, to say to religion, I will take from you

your schools, which are your own private property; I will take from you

your sacraments, which you believe to have been instituted by Jesus

Christ; I will strip you of your ecclesiastical colleges, and educate

your students myself; I will take your ordination out of the hands

of your bishops, and ordain your priests myself; I will appoint your

bishops as I please, and they who displease me are no longer bishops;

I will take from you your head, the Pope, and make myself pope in his

stead: all this will I do, but still you are at liberty to believe in

and worship God—what must the answer be?

This is a mockery! This is paganism; it is violence, not law. We cannot

obey. There, says Bismarck, or the state, that is treason. Why cannot

you obey? Because the Pope, “that old conjuror of the Vatican,” forbids

you. That is just the point: either the Pope must rule or I.

Because conscience forbids me, because human reason forbids me,

because Jesus Christ forbids me, is the response of the Catholic.

Catholics cannot consent to the doctrine that in the dominion of this

world the state has precedence. What is the state? An accident. The

Czar of Russia, the Sultan of Turkey, Bismarck, the British Parliament,

the _Commune_, all these in turn call themselves the state. Government

indeed is supreme, and to be obeyed, _in its own sphere_; but if

there be no law higher than the material laws which men construct for

themselves, and change as occasion demands, good-by to all stable

government. If government be merely a creation of man, it must be

subject to the varying temper of man; it cannot fix absolutely the

rights of man; it can have no absolute title to his obedience. We

utterly repudiate this doctrine, and refuse to accept anything as final

which we construct for our own use. Its powers are limited as are those

of all human institutions: once it oversteps these boundaries, it

becomes tyranny. State to-day means Bismarck, to-morrow the _Commune_;

it is a case of circumstances; and, if there lie no law beyond all

this, no principles which are fixed and come from a Power above “this

world,” one is as good as another. This power is religion, and the

church is the embodiment of religion, and the Pope is the head of the

corporate body, infallible indeed when teaching the universal church,

else is he an accident the same as all the others.

Suppose our Blessed Lord were to come down in the flesh at this moment

into Germany, what course would he take upon this question? Would he

bow to Cæsar in this? Neither will his vicar nor his children. With the

army at his back, Prince Bismarck does this wrong. It is said that he

is driven to it for the unity of Germany. Germany was united without

it. All the states cheerfully submitted even to Prussian preponderance,

without thought of dragging in the religious question. The laws as they

stood on that point were satisfactory. Well, Germany is united now; but

it has become the union of galley-slaves, chained together, watched by

a hard taskmaster whose blow is death. The enemy of true German unity

to-day is Prince Bismarck.

There is the law, and it is sure to be carried out. Well, the bishops

will go to prison, will pay the fines, or become exiles. They will

continue to ordain priests and educate them, irrespective of that power

called the state. And the real difficulty begins now. The Catholics

cannot yield: sooner or later, the state must.

One fact has come out of it all which is worthy of notice. This XIXth

century, at least this latter half of it, has been lauded and glorified

superabundantly as the age of freedom, the liberal age.

Catholics began to forget their history. They began to think the era of

persecution for conscience’ sake over, when they heard it proclaimed

on all sides that perfect freedom of thought was the order of the day;

there was to be no such distinction as Catholic or Protestant, or Jew

or Gentile, any more; the lion was to lie down with the lamb, the world

to become a haven of brotherly love, and the dawn of the millennium was

seen in the heavens. The rack, the gibbet, the fagot, and the hurdle

were all to be banished out of sight and forgotten, or only preserved

in museums as evidence of what horrible beings our sires could become.

It was all very gushing and nice; the narrow lines of prejudice were to

be softened down, and old-fogy, stiff-kneed notions to be voted out.

Suddenly rang out the voice of Peter’s successor: _Liberalism_ is

false: beware of it. It is only a few years back since these words

startled the world in the Syllabus. A storm of hatred and malign fury

arose on all sides, endeavoring to drown the voice of the church. Who

are you who condemn us? asked the world.

The infallible head of the church! Men proclaimed that Catholics

themselves did not accept it; and the Catholic Church spoke out boldly

in these days, not to proclaim a new doctrine, but only to acknowledge

to a doubting world what it had always accepted and believed, that

the head of the church upon earth is infallible. There was no more

talk of softening down of lines: Catholics believed this, or were

not Catholics. Listen to the voice of one of the bitterest and most

persistent enemies of the Pope, speaking only the other day:

“It is impossible to imagine a belief more sincere, a vision more

intense, a life more consistent, than that of the man who has claimed

for more than a quarter of a century to be the lord and master of the

whole world. If there be neither folly nor sin in such a claim, then we

may admire Pius IX., _and indeed must worship and obey him also_.”[149]

Was the “intense vision” mistaken in detecting the poison which lay

at the bottom of liberalism? Prince Bismarck has just deserted the

conservative party to which he adhered so long—all his political

life almost—and thrown himself into the arms of the liberals. These

ecclesiastical bills are the result—such is liberalism. “We will

force your children to go to our schools and receive the education we

give them, which you call godless,” says Huxley, scientific liberal

like Dr. Falk. _La Commune_ was the essence of liberalism, and it shot

the Archbishop of Paris and the priests out of pure sport apparently.

“A free church in a free state” was the Cavour doctrine for liberal

Italy, and the bill for the appropriation of church property and of

that belonging to the religious orders has followed naturally upon the

appropriation of the Papal States and the imprisonment of the head of

the church. Switzerland, the liberal republic, banishes the Jesuits,

closes the convents, and follows Bismarck’s steps in its dealings with

the Catholic clergy. The South American states are doing the same in

the name of liberalism. The whole world may be traversed, and wherever

liberalism is strongest, there is violence done in the name of freedom.

And here in this free republic men are found, like the writers in the

_Nation_ and throughout the Protestant press, to approve of all this.

And they are republicans—Americans—lovers of freedom. If Americans,

they are traitors to their country, repudiators of the principles

of their sires. They forget their history. What brought the Pilgrim

Fathers hither? The refusal to take the oath of supremacy to the state.

Is what was right in them wrong in us? Freedom was the one word written

on the virgin brow of this yet young republic. You who approve of these

measures in Prussia would wipe that word out, and set in its place

slavery.

The effect which these measures have produced on the outer world is

significant. Those who hailed the first outburst on the part of Prince

Bismarck with such loud acclaim begin to hesitate and draw back. The

secular journals in this country and in England, as a rule, either

watch and pronounce upon the steps which have led up to this final

outrage with timid caution, or, in a few instances, with downright

disapproval.

“We deny entirely that Prince Bismarck himself ever adopted this policy

on its merits in the sense in which the _Pall Mall_ admires it. On the

contrary, we believe that, as a statesman, he distrusted it seriously,

_and has even now little confidence in its success_. We believe that

it will result in giving a new stimulus to Roman Catholicism, and that

the fanatical vehemence with which the German people have adopted it is

a sufficient evidence of _the rash and ill-considered character of the

policy itself_.”[150]

“This rough-and-ready method of expelling ultramontane influences ‘by a

fork’ can hardly fail to suggest to a looker-on the probability that,

like similar methods of expelling nature, it may lead to a reaction.

Downright persecution of this sort (we are speaking now simply of the

Jesuit law), unless it is very thorough indeed—more thorough than is

well possible in this XIXth century—usually defeats itself.”[151]

In this country, the secular press seems generally inclined to shirk

the question, or devotes an occasional paragraph to it from time to

time, as to a disagreeable subject which will force itself upon the

sight, but which it is better to get out of the way as speedily as

possible. The religious press among us has gone wild over it from the

beginning as a death-blow to Rome. But even they begin to distrust it,

and soften their jubilant notes to a mild _piano_, that they hope all

good from this measure—they do not exactly see what good, but they

live in hope, whilst one of their number, the New York _Observer_, a

fine hater of “Popery,” actually declared the other day that, in its

opinion, “Cæsar was going too far.”

In Germany itself, as may be gathered from some of the extracts already

given, the state-god is not yet accepted as infallible and supreme

even in this world. Prince Bismarck marches very fast; and he would

make Germany march with him. Sedan was won by marching: but this moral

Sedan, as he would consider it, laughs at the snail’s pace of the

other. There is such a thing as “riding a gift horse to death”; and

Prince Bismarck seems intent on accomplishing that foolish feat.

And here a word may be devoted to the false allegation, which is

now beginning to be dropped, that the Catholics were foes to the

consolidation of the empire. The Jesuits were banished as conspirators

against the empire; the whole Catholic Church was in a conspiracy

against it; the Pope had gone further, and, with the rashness

characteristic of him, “openly declared war against Bismarck and his

ideas” (New York _Nation_). We have looked in vain for the details of

this mysterious conspiracy, which have not yet seen the light, though

it was so “well known.” Not a single scrap of evidence appeared, not a

single riot occurred, not a house was fired; there was no gun-powder

discovered, not even the traditional slouched hat and dark-lantern; the

supreme majesty of the law was never violated even in the sacred person

of a solitary policeman.

As for the other allegation, that Catholics were opposed to the unity

of the fatherland, they had ample opportunity to speak prior to the

war with France. There was no necessity for the Catholic German states

to join Prussia, and spend their wealth and the lives of their sons in

a terrible war. Why did not the Catholic clergy and bishops and the

Pope, who are nothing but a political power, use the vast political

power which they are supposed to wield in preventing the fatal alliance

between Protestant Prussia and the Catholic states? Then was the time

to pronounce, and how did they pronounce?

There was no doubt or hesitation on the part of either clergy or

people. Napoleon made the fatal mistake of endeavoring to throw a

religious color over his campaign, to win Catholic Germany to his

side. Catholic Germany stood by its homes and altars, and its bishops,

priests, and Jesuits stood with it. The Prussian Catholics gloried in

their country, and would yield the palm of religious freedom to no

nation, not even to ourselves. Mgr. Ketteler had long ago pronounced

for the unity of the German Empire. So let that allegation drop.

After the war, each state continued in full and free possession of the

right to manage its own home affairs: Prussia was the centre of foreign

policy alone. First the Prussian system of service in the army was

forced upon all, contrary to the wishes of the states, particularly

Bavaria. When Prince Bismarck made up his mind to force this

ecclesiastical bill upon Prussia, he saw clearly that, if it remained

law for Prussia only, and a dead letter for all the federal states

outside, it could not stand: it must be German or nothing. In order to

bring this about, he sounded the states for the transfer of the home

policy also to the hands of Prussia.

The proposition was vigorously opposed by all, chiefly by Bavaria.

Everybody understood the thing dead, when suddenly the announcement

came one morning that all the states, with the exception of Bavaria,

were in favor of placing the home policy also in the hands of Prussia.

Bavaria was left to do as it pleased, and now Prussia is the centre of

all power in Germany, so that the reins of absolute government over a

number of federal states, which two years ago were free, rest now in

the hands of a man whose chief doctrine is the natural preponderance of

Prussia.

The measures of the Bismarck régime in Germany have been from first to

last measures of violence, not simply as regards the Catholic Church,

but as regards the whole of the federal states; and their effects begin

to show themselves already in the disrespect shown the emperor on his

birthday, in the various riots which have taken and are taking place.

And be it marked, not one of these riots has been attributed to the

Catholics; they are too obedient to the religion which Prince Bismarck

would destroy to take this form of endeavoring to right their wrongs.

The riots have been generally called beer riots; but they are following

so fast one upon the other, and occurring in so many different cities,

that, however exciting a topic beer may be, people begin to hint at

something else as cause for them.

“The riots at Stuttgart, which were due, _apparently at least_, to

the hereditary quarrel with the Jews, were paralleled at Frankfort on

Monday by a great beer riot, said to be due to the high price of beer,

in which sixteen breweries were wrecked, twelve persons killed, and one

hundred and twenty arrested. A correspondent of yesterday’s _Times_,

who was in Frankfort and saw the riot, regards the deeper and more

remote cause as being the thorough dissatisfaction of the people with

the Prussian system of government.”[152]

Our readers will remember the very serious riot which took place in

Berlin at the meeting of the emprors last year right under the noses

of their imperial majesties. A _Herald_ correspondent, writing on

March 23, tells of a riot in Berlin on the birthday of the emperor; of

another which occurred on March 18, the anniversary of the Revolution

of 1848 in Berlin; and the correspondents both of the London _Times_

and of the _Herald_, describe the ferocity with which the mounted

police charged upon the unarmed mob, using their drawn sabres. The

_Herald_ correspondent concludes his letter thus:

“A slight demonstration on the part of the social democrats took place

at Brunswick.

“A feeling of dissatisfaction at an undefined something is constantly

gaining ground in Germany. There is a yearning after the freedom

promised with the united empire. ‘Germany is great, but she is not

happy!’ This seems to be the condition of the empire. The revolutions

that have just taken place in France and Spain, the declaration of the

republic, have had a positive influence in Germany. The democratic

element is again lifting its head, and a great meeting of democratic

leaders is soon to be held at Frankfort-on-the-Main, unless it be

prohibited by the authorities. The Catholic element of the German

population is also in a state of continual excitement.”

It is with no feeling of pleasure that these extracts are given here

from such a variety of non-Catholic quarters, showing the distrust and

growing dislike with which the Prussian rule is regarded. It is only to

show that Catholics, in battling for their religion, are only battling

for freedom and the rights of man. The mailed hand, red already with

the life-blood of three nations, which now smites the church, will not

hesitate to crush to powder every semblance of freedom which dares

stand in its path. He who attacks the rights of God will laugh at the

puny rights of man, simply as man. And you who bow down before the

state; you who set up this state above you, and surrender yourselves to

it absolutely—you have breathed life into the statue of Frankenstein;

you would rid yourselves of it if you could, but you have created

that which you cannot destroy, and forged for yourselves an agent of

self-destruction.

Happily, Catholics have faith in a God above it all. If it has done no

other good, it has brought out to the eyes of the world, in a wonderful

manner, at once the vastness and the unity of the Catholic Church.

Two years ago, the cry was: Catholics will not accept infallibility.

When the Jesuits were driven out from Germany, the cry was: “Catholic

Germany rejoices.” When the last remnant of the Papal States was

torn from the Holy Father, the world cried out: “Now is the Papacy

dead.” When a few disappointed and faithless men showed their heads in

Germany, with all the power of the throne at their back, men cried out:

“There is to be a new schism.” What do they say now?

Part of it has been seen already. M. John Lemoine, one of the

oftenest-quoted writers of the day, a Protestant, writes to the

anti-Catholic _Journal des Débats_ on the defeat of the Irish

University Bill: “From the depths of that palace which he calls his

prison, the now helpless old man (_le vieillard désarmé_), who reigns

only over consciences, has just shattered the most solid government of

Europe (the Gladstone ministry), and overthrown the greatest minister

of England. We would remark that never was the Pope more sovereign,

more a dictator, more omnipotent, than since he has relinquished the

command of subjects for that of the faithful only.”

After concluding that the stars in their courses have fought against

Pius IX., and that his failure is Heaven’s doom, the London _Times_

says:

“Indoors the whole universe is at his feet, but he cannot look out of

his windows without seeing a world in arms against him.... Pius IX. has

done all that devotees could dream, and suffered all that the world

could accomplish. He has achieved an absolute dominion over the human

intelligence, and lost every inch of his temporal power.... We may

concede, we may be even well content, that he still holds and rules the

most impulsive, the most imaginative, and the most sentimental races

of the civilized world, and that he himself is admirably adapted for

that empire over souls.... We envy the Pope his Irish, French, and

Peninsular subjects as little as we envy them their infallible guide.”

The _Times_ forgets the 14,000,000 German “subjects,” as it calls

them, and the other millions outside of the races it has mentioned.

From all it concludes, however, that “Rome will be Rome to the end of

the chapter,” and that indeed it would be a pity that it were not so,

though it ought to change a little with the world.

How, then, stands Rome to-day? Never more united, though never did the

whole world collect its forces with greater _animus_ to overwhelm it.

The state in Germany banishes the Jesuits, and takes infidels to its

bosom; in Spain, it banishes the Jesuits, and finds in their place

the _Descamisados_; in Switzerland, it ejects Mermillod, and embraces

Loyson; in Italy, it imprisons the Pope, and welcomes Victor Emanuel or

Garibaldi: _Non hunc sed Barabbam!_

Meanwhile, the Catholic world speaks out, and from the ends of the

earth comes back the protest, echoed from point to point, and gathering

volume as it goes: We protest as men, we protest as free citizens,

we protest as Christians! Protestation does little, say some. True,

but, if it has done nothing else, it has at least silenced the false

cry that Catholics approved of these measures. Protestation at last

tells; and when the interests of those who are now indifferent come,

as sooner or later they must come, to be affected by the policy to-day

so successful in Prussia, our voices and warnings will be remembered.

Catholics cannot at present take up the sword; they can only use,

then, the weapons at their disposal—the voice and the pen. They

must use them unceasingly and unsparingly until justice is done, and

Catholics are granted the rights of citizens, which Freemasons are

allowed to enjoy undisturbed. The rights of the state, whether monarchy

or republic, are sacred in their eyes, but they live for something

more than the state. All the armies in the world cannot coerce the

free soul of one man, for they cannot reach it: it is beyond their

province. There always will be two laws in this world—the law of God,

and the law of man. The first is equivalent to _right_, the second is

not necessarily so. The difficulty between states and the Catholic

Church lies in the fact that the states consider _legality_ synonymous

with _right_, and that what is legal therefore must commend itself to

the Christian conscience. Were men ruled by the law which makes the

Catholic proclaim himself “a Catholic first, and a nationalist if you

will,”[153] all difficulties would be at an end. We are Catholics

first, because to be a true Catholic is the truest patriotism, and the

perfection of citizenship; because to be Catholic is to be Christian,

and all civilized governments draw all that is sound and good in them

from Christianity, from Christ. When the state constructs no law which

is not right, then will Lord Denbigh’s famous sentence have lost its

meaning.

TO THE SACRED HEART.

“Ego dormio, et cor meum vigilat.”[154]—Cant. v. 2.

HEART of hearts, a love is thine

Madly tender,[155] blindly true!

Love in vastness so divine,

In excess so human too!

Seems it more a burning grief—

Pining, aching for relief.

Seems thou dost not, canst not live,

Save to sue us for thy rest:

While the all that we can give

Is as nothing at the best.

Wondrous Lover! Shall I say

Thou hast thrown thyself away?

Drench’d with anguish, steep’d in woe,

Thou must needs, insatiate still,

Linger wearily below,

Prison’d to thy creatures’ will:

While the current of the days

Murmurs insult more than praise!

Here I find thee, hour by hour,

Waiting in thy altar-home,

Full of mercy, full of power—

Mutely waiting till we come:

Waiting for a soul to bless,

Some poor sinner to caress.

Forth, then, from the fragrant hush,

Where I almost hear thee beat,

Bid a benediction gush—

O’er me, thro’ me, thrilling sweet!

Heart of Jesus, full of me,

Fill mine—till it break with thee!

FEAST OF THE SACRED HEART, 1873.

BRITTANY: ITS PEOPLE AND ITS POEMS.

FOURTH ARTICLE.—CONCLUSION.

LIKE the Cambrian bards, their brethren of Armorica sang the triumphs

and misfortunes of their country, and the deeds of her defenders,

during the twelve centuries that they were governed by chiefs of their

own race. The great names of Arthur,[156] of Morvan Lez-Breiz, of

Alan Barbe Torte, and of Nomenöe, offered stirring subjects for the

inspiration of the bards. In a former number, we gave “The March of

Arthur,” of which the original, with the exception of the last two

lines, bears every stamp of antiquity, and probably dates from the

VIth century. The epic of “Lez-Breiz,” of which we proceed to give a

translation of the fragments still extant, is about two centuries later.

Morvan, Machtiern or Viscount of Léon, son of a _Konan_, or crowned

chief, was famous in the IXth century as one of the maintainers of

Breton independence against the encroachments of the Franks under Louis

le Débonnaire, and received from his grateful countrymen the surname of

“Lez” or “Lezou Breiz”—the Stay, or the Hammer, of Brittany.

The story of Lez-Breiz, in a weakened and modified form, exists in

Wales in the fragmentary ballad of _Peredur_.

MORVAN LEZ-BREIZ.

PART I.

THE DEPARTURE.

I.

Wandered forth the young child Lez-Breiz

From his mother’s side,

Early on a summer morning,

Through the forest wide.

There the shade and sunlight glancing

On the armor played

Of a mounted knight, advancing

Through the greenwood glade.

Under spreading oaks and beeches

Rode the steel-clad knight,

Till his warlike splendors nearer

Flashed on Morvan’s sight.

“‘Tis the great Archangel Michael,”

Thought the child, and then

Straight he crossed himself devoutly,

Ere he gazed again.

Down upon his knees in wonder

Fell the trembling boy;

“O my lord! my lord S. Michael,

Work me not annoy!”

“Nay, boy, no more lord S. Michael

Than a serf am I;

But a dubbed and belted knight, sooth,

That I’ll not deny.”

“Never saw I belted knight, nor

Heard of, till this day.”

“That am I: say, hast thou seen none

Like me pass this way?”

“Nay, first answer me, I pray thee:

This, what may it be?”

“‘Tis my lance, wherewith I wound all

Whom it liketh me.

“But this weighty club far better

Than my lance I prize;

Whoso dares provoke my ange

With one blow he dies.”

“What this dish of steel, which thou, sir,

On thine arm dost wield?”

“Dish, child! ‘Tis nor steel nor dish:

It is my silver shield!”

“Mock me not, sir knight, for silver

Moneys more than one

I have handled: this is larger

Than an oven-stone.

What may be the coat you wear, like

Iron strong and hard?”

“‘Tis my steel cuirass: from sword-strokes

Safely this can guard.”

“Were the roes thus clad in harness,

Hard to kill were they!

Tell me, were you born, lord knight, just

As you are to-day?”

Thereupon the old knight, laughing,

Shook his sides with glee.

“Then what wizard clad you thus, if

So it might not be?”

“He alone the right who claimeth.”

“Who, then, has the right?”

“Me my lord the Count of Quimper

In my armor dight.

Now, boy, answer in thy turn: hath

One passed by this way

Like to me?”—“‘Tis even so, as

Thou, my lord, dost say.”

II.

The child ran home in eager haste;

Leapt on his mother’s knee.

‘Ma Mammik, ah! you do not know”

(He said, with boyish glee):

“You cannot guess what I have seen,

What I have seen to-day!

My lord S. Michael in the church

Is not so grand, so gay.

“A man so bright, so beautiful,

I ne’er before have seen.”

“Nay, son, more fair than angels are

No man hath ever been.”

“Pardon me, mother, but you err:

These knights (men call them so)

Are fairer. I would be as they,

And after them will go.”

Then thrice the mother, at these words,

Fell fainting to the ground:

While Morvan to the stable went,

Nor once his head turned round.

A wretched beast he found therein,

Then mounted, and away;

Bidding farewell to none, he sped,

He sped without delay.

After the noble knight went he,

Urging his steed forlorn

T’wards Quimper, from the manor old,

The home where he was born.

PART II.

THE RETURN.

Marvelled much Sir Morvan Lez-Breiz,

Now a knight renowned;

Famous, among warriors famous

All the country round,—

Marvelled much Sir Morvan Lez-Breiz,

When, in ten years’ time,

To his home once more returning,

In his manhood’s prime,

Brambles he beheld, and nettles,

Springing wild and free

In the court and on the threshold,

Desolate to see.

Thickly clung the clustering ivy

O’er the ruined wall,

And a poor, blind, aged woman

Answered to his call.

“Canst thou, worthy grandame, give me

Lodging for the night?”

“Willingly, my lord, but ‘twill be

Neither fair nor bright.

Ever since the child went wandering,

Wandering far away,

Young and headstrong, has the manor

Fallen to decay.”

Scarcely had she finished speaking,

When a damsel fair,

When a damsel fair came slowly

Down the broken stair.

And she sadly gazed upon him,

Through her tears she gazed:

“Wherefore, maiden, art thou weeping?”

Lez-Breiz asked, amazed.

“Why, my lord knight, I am weeping

Freely will I say:

Of your age I have a brother.

Long since gone away.

Forth he went to be a warrior,

Ten long years ago;

So, whene’er a knight I see, my

Heart is full of woe.

“Therefore ever am I weeping

When a knight I see,

For I think, my little brother,

Where, ah! where is he?”

“Had you, then, one only brother,

Gentle maiden? say:

And your mother? prithee tell me

Have you none, I pray?”

“Have I yet another brother

In the world? Ah! no;

But and if he be in heaven,

That I do not know.

Thither passed away my mother,

Who for sorrow died

When he left us. I have now my

Nurse, and none beside.

“There, beyond the door, my mother’s

Bed you still may see:

And her arm-chair by the hearth-stone,

Where ‘twas wont to be.

Her blest cross I wear—the only

Comfort left to me.”

Groaned so deeply Seigneur Lez-Breiz

That the maiden said,

“You, lord knight, have lost a mother?

Your heart, too, has bled?”

“Lost my mother have I truly:

Her myself I slew!”

“In the name of heaven, then, sir,

Who and what are you?”

“I am Morvan, son of Konan:

Lez-Breiz named am I,

Sister mine.” The young girl trembled

As one like to die.

Both his arms the brother folded

Round his sister dear,

And the maiden fondly kissed him,

Shedding many a tear.

“Long, my brother, have we lost thee,

Since God let thee go;

He again to me has led thee,

Having willed it so.

Blest my brother, blest be he,

Who has pity had on me!”

PART III.

I.

With Lez-Breiz be the victory!

Lez-Breiz the Breton knight

Goes forth with Lorgnez to engage

In single-handed fight.

Heav’n grant that in the combat fierce

Victorious he may be,

And send good news to gladden all

The folk of Brittany.

Said Lez-Breiz to his young esquire,

“Awake, my page; arise:

Furbish my helm, my sword, my shield

And lance, in heedful wise.

To crimson them with Frankish blood

Forth am I fain to go;

By help of heaven and my two arms,

The Franks to leap I’ll show.”

“Oh! bid me also, my good lord,

Go with you, I implore.”

“Ah! what would thy poor mother say,

Shouldst thou return no more?

If on the ground thy blood should flow,

Who then would be her stay?”

“Oh! if you love me, my good lord,

You will not say me nay.

“But let me follow in the fight;

The Franks I do not fear:

My heart is firm; my steel is sharp

And true, my master dear.

And let who list lay blame on me,

Where you go, there go I;

And where you fight, there I will fight,

Whether I live or die.”

II.

Forth to the combat Lez-Breiz went,

With his young page, till he

Came to S. Anne of Armor, when

Into the church went he.

“O blesséd lady, sweet S. Anne,

In youth to thee I came

To pay my homage, and to crave

The shelter of thy name.

“I had not reached my twenty years,

Yet twenty fights had seen,

And every one, O lady blest,

Won by thine aid had been.

If to my own land yet again

It may be granted me

Safe to return, I give this gift,

Mother S. Anne, to thee:

“With cord of wax encompassed thrice

These very walls shall be;

Thrice round the churchyard and the church,

When I my home shall see.

And I will offer thee, S. Anne,

A goodly banner fair

Of velvet and white satin wrought,

And staff of ivory rare.

“And likewise seven silver bells

Shall in the belfry swing,

Which merrily above thy head

By night and day shall ring.

And for thy holy-water stoup,

Thrice on my knees I’ll go,

Water to fetch from where the stream

Doth clearest, purest flow.”

“Go, Lez-Breiz, fearless to the fight,

I will be with thee, noble knight.”

III.

Hear ye? ‘Tis Lez-Breiz who arrives:

He comes, ye need not doubt,

With goodly number in his rear

Of steel-clad warriors stout.

Hold! on a small white ass he rides,

Bridled with hempen cord;

And all his suite one little page

Who followeth his lord!

And yet he is a mighty man

As any that draw sword.

Now, when the squire of Lez-Breiz saw

Them onward nearer ride,

He closer pressed and closer to

The knight his master’s side.

“See you, my lord? ‘Tis Lorgnez comes,

And with him warriors ten,

And ten surround him as he rides,

Followed again by ten.

“Round by the chestnut woods they come:

Alas, my master dear,

Against such fearful odds to fight

Will cost us much, I fear.”

“When once they taste my polished steel,

Then thou fell soon shalt see,

Though now they number thirty men,

How many left will be.

“Strike against mine thy sword, my page,

Then march we forward, and engage.”

IV.

“Ha! Chevalier Lez-Breiz: good-day to thee.”

“Ha! Chevalier Lorgnez: the same from me.”

“Is it alone thou comest to the fight?”

“Nay, sooth, I am not come alone, sir knight:

S. Anne herself is with me, lady bright.”

“I from the king come forth to-day:

He bids me take thy life away.”

“Thy king I scorn, as I scorn thee,

Thy sword, and all thine armed menie:

Return ‘mid womankind to be,

And wear gilt garments gallantly

At Paris; and begone from me!

“Sir Lez-Breiz, say to me, I pray,

In what wood saw you first the day?

The meanest serf that eats my bread

Shall make your helm leap off your head.”

Then Lez-Breiz swift his good sword drew:

“The son shall make full well to rue

Him who the father never knew.”

V.

In friendly wise the hermit spake,

As at his door he stood—

To the young page of Lez-Breiz spake

The hermit of the wood:

“Thou speed’st apace the forest through,

Thine armor dashed with blood:

Come to my hermitage, my child,

Come in for rest and food;

Come in and wash thy stains away.”

Thus spake that hermit good.

“Nay, father, this is not the time

For me to eat or rest:

A fountain in all haste I seek

At my poor lord’s behest.

So sorely is my master spent

With most unequal strife

That well it is from this affray

That he escapes with life.

“Lie thirteen knights, Sir Lorgnez first,

Beneath him, slain to-day;

And I as many overcame:

The rest all ran away.”

VI.

Breton at heart he had not been

Who had not laughed to see

The green grass red with Frankish blood,

As red as it could be;

While near the slain sate Lord Lez-Breiz,

Resting him wearily.

And he had been no Christian, sure

Who wept not to behold

The tears from Lez-Breiz’ eyes that fell,

And dropped upon the mould,

All in the church of good S. Anne,

Where, on his bended knee,

Weeping he thanked the patroness

Of his own Brittany.

“Mother S. Anne, all thanks to you,

All thanks to you I give:

‘Twas in your might I fought the fight,

Still, thanks to you, I live.”

VII.

This combat fierce to keep in mind

Is sung this goodly song;

In honor of the brave Lez-Breiz

May Bretons sing it long!

Sing it in chorus everywhere,

And all men in the gladness share.

PART IV.

THE MOOR OF THE KING.

Said to his lords the Frankish king,

The Frankish king one day:

“True homage he will render who

For me shall Lez-Breiz slay.

Naught doth he but my warriors kill,

And aye, with all his might,

My power withstands, nor ceaseth he

Against me still to fight.”

Now, when the king’s Moor heard these words,

Before the king spake he:

“True homage have I rendered oft

And pledge of loyalty;

But since another pledge you crave

And warranty, O sire,

The knight Lez-Breiz shall furnish me

With that which you desire.

And if to-morrow I should fail

Sir Lez-Breiz’ head to bring,

With pleasure offer I mine own

Unto my lord the king.”

Now, scarcely had the morrow dawned,

When swift the young squire ran

To find his master. “O my lord!’

(The trembling page began,)

“The giant Moor defiance flings

Against my lord to-day.”

“Defiance? be it so: I’ll answer

Him as best I may.”

“Ah! my dear lord, then know you not

He fights with demon charms?”

“He doth? Then Heaven’s aid be ours,

And blessing on our arms.

Haste thee, equip my good black steed,

Whilst I my armor don.”

“Pardon, my lord, your charger black

You will not fight upon.

“Within the royal stables stand

Three steeds, and from the three

One must you choose: pray listen to

A secret thing from me.

I learnt it from an ancient clerk,

Right holy, sooth, was he,

A man of good and saintly ways,

If any such there be.

“Do not thou take the charger white,

Nor yet take thou the bay,

But the black steed between them both

Take forth and lead away;

For that the king’s own Moor himself

Hath tamed with his own hand:

Trust me, and mount it when you go

The giant to withstand.

“And when into the royal hall

The Moor shall enter, he

Will throw his mantle on the ground:

Let yours suspended be:

If under his your garment lay,

Doubled his might would be.

When the black giant draws anear,

Then fail not with your lance

To make the sign of holy cross,

Or ever he advance.

And when he rushes full of rage

And fury on my lord,

Receive him on its point, the lance

Will break not, trust my word.

By aid of heaven and your two arms,

Naught will avail his paynim charms.”

By aid of Heaven and his two arms,

The trusty lance brake not

When they against each other rode

In fierce encounter hot:

When in the hall they dashed amain

To onset, breast to breast,

Steel against steel, as lightning swift,

With lances firm in rest.

The Frankish king sat on his throne,

’Mid lords of high degree,

To watch the fight. “Hold firm,” he said,

“Black Raven of the Sea!

Courage! hold firm, thou Raven bold,

And plume this _merle_ for me.”

Then, as the tempest breaks upon

The corsair, so the Moor,

With furious might and giant weight,

Down upon Lez-Breiz bore;

His lance in thousand splinters flew,

And, with one mighty bound,

Unhorsed by that dread shock, he fell

And rolled upon the ground.

And when they found themselves afoot,

Then each, with all his might,

Fell on the other furiously

In close and deadly fight.

The sword-strokes, falling thick as hail,

Rang through the palace halls,

With sounding blows upon the mail

That shook the very walls.

At every clashing of their arms

A thousand sparks leapt out,

Like red-hot iron from the forge,

Beaten by armorer stout.

At last, through one unguarded joint,

The Breton’s sword made way

And pierced the giant’s heart. He fell,

And bled his life away.

Forthwith, when Morvan Lez-Breiz saw

His Moorish foe lie dead,

His foot he placed upon his breast,

And straight cut off his head.

He hung it by the grisly beard

His saddle-bow unto;

And, for its stains of Moorish blood,

His sword away he threw.

Upon his good steed then he sprang,

He sprang without delay,

And, followed by his page, went forth

Upon his homeward way.

When home, he hung aloft,

Upon his gateway high,

The hideous head with grinning teeth

In sight of passers-by.

And now the warriors said, Behold!

A mighty man indeed

Is Lez-Breiz, stay of Brittany

In every time of need.

Whereto Lord Lez-Breiz answered straight:

“I twenty fights have seen,

And twenty thousand armèd men

By me have vanquished been;

“Yet never was I so beset,

So hardly pressed before,

Until this last encounter when

I slew the giant Moor.

S. Anne, my dearest mother, thou

Dost wonders work for me,

Wherefore, ‘twixt Ind and Léguer, I

A church will build to thee.”

PART V.

THE KING.

Behold! Sir Lez-Breiz goes to meet

The king himself to-day.

Who brings five thousand horsemen brave

To aid him in the fray.

But, hark! before he rideth forth,

A peal of thunder dread

Rolls through the echoing skies, and breaks

Above Sir Lez-Breiz’ head.

His gentle squire lent anxious heed

That omen ill unto:

“In heaven’s name, my lord, I pray

Stay you at home. This opening day

Augurs not well for you.”

“What, then, my page? Abide at home?

Nay, that can never be.

The order I have given to march,

And, therefore, march must we.

And I will march while spark of life

Remains alight in me,

Until that king of forest land

Beneath my heel I see.”

This hearing, sprang his sister dear

Up to his bridle-rein.

“My brother, go not forth, for ne’er

Wilt thou return again.

Then wherefore, brother, thus to meet

Thy death wouldst thou be gone?

For wert thou slain, I should be left

Alone, thy only one.

“The White Horse of the Sea behold

I see upon the shore;

A monstrous serpent him around

Entwineth more and more.

Behind, his flanks are interlaced

By two terrific rings;

Around his body, neck, and legs

The hideous monster clings.

“The hapless creature, stifled, scorched,

On his hind feet uprears,

Turns back his head, and with his teeth

The serpent’s throat he tears.

The monster gaping wide, his tongue—

His triple tongue—darts forth,

Fiery and pois’nous, rolls his eyes

And hisses, mad with wrath.

“But, ah! his snakelings, venomous brood,

To aid him swarm around;

The strife is all unequal: fly

While thou art safe and sound.”

“Nay, let the Franks by thousands come;

From death I do not flee.”

E’en as he spake, already far,

Far from his home was he.

PART VI.

THE HERMIT.

I.

In his cell at midnight sleeping,

Lay the hermit of Helléan;

When upon his door three blows fell,

With a little pause between.

“Open to me, holy hermit,

Open unto me thy door;

Here a place of refuge seeking,

Let me lie upon thy floor.

“Icy cold the wind is blowing

From the bitter Frankish land;

From the sea it blows, ice-laden:

Bid me not without to stand.

“‘Tis the hour when flocks are folded,

Cattle herded in the stall:

E’en wild beasts and savage creatures

Cease to wander, sheltered all.”

“Who comes thus at midnight, seeking

Entrance at my lonely door?”

“One to Brittany, his country,

Known full well in dangers sore;

In her day of anguish, _Lez-Breiz,

Armor’s Help_, the name I bore.”

“Nay, my door I will not open;

A seditious one are you,

Who against the Lord’s anointed

Oft have earned a rebel’s due.”

“I seditious? Heaven is witness

None am I of rebel crew.

Whoso dares to call me traitor,

He the slander well shall rue.

Cursèd be the Frankish people,

Cursed their king, and traitors, too!

“Yes; the Franks are coward traitors!

Else the victory were mine.”

“Man, beware! nor friend nor foeman

Curse thou: ‘tis no right of thine.

“And the king, the Lord’s anointed,

Least of all be curst by thee.”

“Say you so? Nay rather, soothly,

Satan’s own anointed he:

Brittany by Heaven’s anointed

Devastated ne’er would be.

“But the silver of the demon

Goes the ancient Pol to shoe;[157]

Yet unshod is Pol, and ever

Silver is he fain to sue.

“Come, then, venerable hermit,

Open unto me thy door.

But a stone whereon to rest me,

This I ask, and ask no more.”

“Nay, I cannot bid thee enter,

Lest the Franks should work me woe.”[158]

“Open! or the door itself I

Down upon thy floor will throw.”

Hearing this, the ancient hermit

Sprang from off his lowly bed,

Lit in haste a torch of resin,

And forthwith to open sped.

Opens, but recoils with horror,

Back recoils with horror dread:

Lez-Breiz’ spectre slowly enters,

Bearing in both hands his head.

Of his eyes the hollow sockets

Gleam with fierce and fiery light,

Wildly rolling; pale, the hermit

Trembles at the fearful sight.

“Silence! then, old Christian, fear not,

Since ‘tis highest Heaven’s decree

That the Franks should take my head off

For a time: so let it be.