with the Arms of the Gruthuyse Family, dating from 1502.--From
a painted Curtain preserved among the Collection of Engravings
in the National Library. The picture refers to the life of St.
Lazarus. In the middle are the Virgin and St. Lazarus, the latter
with traces of the sores which the dogs licked. In the top
medallion to the left is the rich man driving Lazarus from his
door. Opposite, Lazarus is standing at the rich man’s door, while
a dog licks his sores. Below, the rich man is upon his death-bed,
with an evil spirit waiting to carry off his soul. Upon the
opposite side, Lazarus is lying dead upon the bare ground, but a
dove is bearing his soul to heaven. The donors of the banner are
kneeling before the Virgin and St. Lazarus. The clapper (which
was used to announce the approach of the lepers) is depicted
eight times in the border.]
Richard Cœur-de-Lion, King of England, also supported the Order of St.
Lazarus, which he had seen doing good service during the Crusades.
The Lazarists, both men and women, who had taken up their abode at
Jerusalem, Acre, Jericho, and Bethany, were looked upon with admiration
even by Saladin, who permitted them to remain in the first-named
city a year after its capture. They were also favourably treated by
the Emperor Frederick II., who, in his fierce disputes with Rome,
had occasion to notice their pacific and conciliatory spirit. His
contemporary and friend, Andrew II., King of Hungary, and father of St.
Elizabeth, combined with his daughter and with his son-in-law, Louis
VI., Landgrave of Thuringia, to increase the lazarettos throughout
Germany. The hospital of St. Mary Magdalene at Gotha, which was founded
by St. Elizabeth, and richly endowed by her family, was administered
by the Lazarists, who “received travellers and needy wayfarers.”
Detachments of the same order gave succour in Saxony, Poland, the
banks of the Elbe, the Danube, and the Maine. Wherever the brethren
were established they recognised the authority of the grand-master,
who resided at Boigny, in France, and the sovereignty of the King of
France. They all followed the rules of St. Augustine, and lived in
conformity with the statutes which commanded them to visit the sick
with pious zeal, to tend, feed, and clothe persons afflicted with
incurable diseases, and to receive charitably the pilgrims, the poor,
the desolate, and those who were unable to earn their livelihood. The
order, though at times a warlike one in the Holy Land, was never any
but a hospitallers’ order in Europe.
During the latter half of the thirteenth century, various papal bulls,
decisions of councils, and official sentences testify very clearly to
the eminently hospitable character of the Lazarists; and these good
brethren, far from confining themselves to the care of the lepers whose
numbers diminished daily, relieved every variety of infirmity and
sickness, and succoured all kinds of misery and suffering.
The downfall of the Knights Templars, who had been rivals of the
Knights of St. Lazarus, in respect both of fortune and influence,
proved advantageous to the latter. The greater the severity shown
towards the Templars, the greater was the protection accorded to the
Lazarists, the Knights of St. John, and all the orders designated in
the papal bulls as _hospitalarii milites_, that is, warriors or
knights of hospitality and charity.
In the time of St. Louis, a Languedoc knight called Nolasque,
touched with pity for the fate of the unhappy captives, men, women,
and children, who were daily falling into the hands of the Barbary
corsairs, and sold like cattle in the Eastern slave-markets, conceived
the philanthropic idea of instituting an order of “Mercy,” or Ransom.
He died in 1236, after having had the satisfaction of seeing this
charitable undertaking make great progress. The Brethren of Mercy
preached and collected arms for the ransoming of the captives; they
then crossed the seas with the produce of their appeals to buy them
back, and, if the sum was insufficient, they gave themselves to slavery
in exchange for the unhappy prisoners. The Christian religion was alone
capable of inspiring such feelings of self-devotion.
[Illustration: Fig. 273.--The Seven Christian Virtues, with
their Symbols.--From a Miniature in the “Ethics of Aristotle”
(Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century), Rouen Library.
On the left are the Theological Virtues: _Faith_, dressed
as a nun, is holding a church, a New Testament, and a wax taper;
_Hope_, in the garb of a peasant girl, has a ship upon her
head, a cage beneath her feet, a beehive and a spade in her
hands; _Charity_ is a young woman standing on a hot oven,
with a pelican upon her head, and her hair falling loose upon
her shoulders; she has in her hands a bleeding heart and the
monogram of Christ surrounded with flames of fire. Then come
the Cardinal Virtues: _Temperance_, balancing upon the
sails of a windmill, a bridle in her mouth, a clock upon her
forehead, and a telescope in her hand; _Justice_, standing
on the seat of justice, with scales at her girdle, and balancing
swords; _Prudence_ is in the garb of a nun, and is weighed
down under her symbols, viz. a coffin, a mirror, a sieve, and
the shield of faith; lastly, _Strength_, mounted on a
screw-press, and with an anvil on her head, is holding a donjon
in one hand, while she strangles a dragon with the other.]
Leprosy, however, still prevailed, and was, moreover, complicated
with strange and unknown epidemics which spread terror everywhere and
depopulated the cities of the West. It was then that Providence raised
up a few saintly women and holy confessors who, amidst sickness and
death, pursued their charitable mission--such as St. Catherine of
Sienna (1347–1380); St. Bernardin of Sienna, who was born in the same
year that Catherine died (1380–1446); St. Frances, a Roman matron; St.
Juliana of Florence, and many others, who taught men that God only sent
them trials in order to render them more worthy of Him. St. Catherine,
from her youth, was a member of the Order of St. Dominic; she
distributed amongst the poor the patrimony which her father had left
her, and devoted herself to teaching and preaching to the salvation of
souls. When she took upon herself the further task of tending the sick,
she selected the most painful cases, those in which the sores were so
contagious and so fearful to behold that no one had the courage to come
near them. During the great plague at Florence (1374), her heroism was
something sublime; divine inspiration made up for a want of medical
skill, and she cured a great number of the plague-stricken; she saved,
perhaps, even more of those who were hardened in sin--a double miracle
of nature and of grace.
[Illustration: Fig. 274.--Orphan of the Venice Hospitals in the
Sixteenth Century.--From the work of Cesare Vecellio: octavo,
1590.]
In spite of the terrible vicissitudes to which Europe and Asia were
exposed for two centuries, the Order of St. Lazarus never lost,
either in the West or in the East, its essentially _hospitable_
character. This it preserved, notwithstanding the impediments placed in
its way by the rivalry of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, and the
avowed preference of the Court of Rome for the latter--a preference
which was due to the fact that the Popes, who had never given up all
hope of recovering the Holy Land, were vexed to see the Lazarists
renouncing altogether their military functions to devote themselves
exclusively to the poor, the infirm, the sick, and the pilgrims. It
was, however, their purely charitable mission which obtained for them
the security, the protection, and the privileges which were everywhere
accorded them.
[Illustration: Fig. 275.--The Great Hospital at Milan, founded in
1456 by Duke Francis Sforza and his Wife.]
The chief authorities at Boigny, who had remained intact amidst the
ruin of the Order of the Templars, acted with extreme prudence; the
chapters were held very quietly, but always at fixed periods, and
the nature of their decisions, their choice of persons to direct the
branch establishments, their general administration of the property
of the poor, were such as to give no handle to hostile criticism and
malevolence. Moreover, it was the sole hospitable institution which was
in proper and continuous working order. The spirit which animated King
Louis and Queen Blanche had communicated itself to many of the lords
and ladies of their Court, who, as volunteer or auxiliary Lazarists,
devoted themselves to the service of the lepers and the sick. Such
were Elzéar de Sabran, Count of Arian, and his wife. Not only did
they assiduously frequent the lazarettos and do work as menial as it
was revolting, but they collected alms in concert with the Lazarist
brethren, and assisted them in the most painful of their duties.
[Illustration: Fig. 276.--Knights of the Order of the Holy Ghost
from pure intent.--“Ytem doyvent jeuner chascun jeudi de l’an si
veullent ou ont le povoir, et se n’ont le povoir ou la volonté
doyvent donner à mengier à trois poures en lonor du Pere, du Fils
et du Saint-Esprit ou leur donner tant qu’il puissent avoir leur
sustenance pour le jour” (old French).--From the Statutes of
the Order of the Holy Ghost from pure intent, or of the Union,
instituted at Naples in 1352, by Louis of Anjou, the first of
that name, King of Jerusalem, Naples, and Sicily.--Manuscript
of the Fourteenth Century, preserved in the Louvre (Musée des
Souverains), now in the National Library, Paris.]
St. Cajetan the Dominican, so celebrated in the fifteenth century
for his controversy with Luther, his clerical institutions, and the
energy of his proceedings with regard to teaching and benevolence,
sowed the germs of the charitable congregations which, under various
names, afterwards constituted a splendid body of religious and
hospitable establishments. At Naples he founded the immense Hospital
for Incurables, the Mount of Mercy for the poor belonging to the better
classes, asylums for orphans, and houses of refuge for penitent women.
Nor was this all,--with a view to suppressing usury, which had ruined
so many families and prevented the unfortunate debtors from recovering
themselves, he conceived the idea of founding pawn establishments, and
a lady, the Contessa di Porto, procured him the sum of four million
pounds (Italian) to establish the first house which lent money at the
legal rate of interest (1469–1534).
[Illustration: Fig. 277.--Margaret of York, third wife of Charles
the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, one of the most charitable princesses
of her time, who died at Mechlin in 1503.--She is represented on
her knees between the four Doctors of the Church, St. Gregory,
St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and St. Ambrose. In the background is
the Church of St. Gudule, at Brussels.--From a Miniature in a
“Traité sur la Miséricorde,” translated from Latin into French
by Nicholas Finet, Canon of Cambrai and Almoner to Margaret.
(Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Burgundian Library,
Brussels.)]
The saddening spectacle of human misery excited the sympathy of Jean de
Dieu, a Portuguese gentleman, who had successively fought against the
French, the Turks, and the Hungarians; after having led a licentious
life as a soldier, he devoted himself to healing the wounded and to the
care of the sick (1540). The wounds inflicted by fire-arms required
much more careful treatment than those caused by steel weapons, for
they were followed by suppuration of a contagious character, and other
dangerous consequences; they, moreover, entailed terrible operations,
which made an increase in the number of surgeons a matter of absolute
necessity. Jean de Dieu determined to make good this deficiency, and he
was the originator of the corps of hospital attendants and sick-nurses.
But the institution which he founded was not properly organized and
put in working order until after his death (1550), in the midst of the
Italian wars and the great struggles of France and Spain.
[Illustration: Fig. 278.--St. Vincent de Paul.--Reduced
Fac-simile of a Drawing by Edelmet (Seventeenth Century).]
Obregon and Jean de Dieu were both contemporaries of Philippe de Néri,
founder of the Order of the Oratory, a learned Florentine, animated
as much by the spirit of charity as by his fondness for religious
teaching. The beneficent institutions of St. Philip were perhaps but
the intelligent application upon a larger scale of the schemes of moral
reform so wisely conceived by St. Catherine of Sienna, St. Francis
the Roman, and St. Juliana. At about the same period, a Frenchman,
less celebrated than Philippe de Néri, but whose memory is cherished
by his compatriots in Provence, Antoine Yvan, inspired by the example
of the Somasques, the Crucifers, and the Scholopians (regular clerks
whose office it was to care for the orphans, the sick, and the poor),
endeavoured to collect in one institution, under the title of “Order
of the Religious Clerks of Mercy,” a staff entrusted with the task
of relieving these three classes of misery (1576–1653). And, lastly,
there appeared in France that great benefactor of suffering humanity,
St. Vincent de Paul, who, having taken orders in 1600, commenced his
apostleship just at the close of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
period, bequeathing to modern generations the admirable practice of
Christian charity, organized, regulated, and disseminated with wondrous
forethought amongst all grades of society in the Catholic world.
[Illustration]
PILGRIMAGES.
The first Pilgrimages to Jerusalem and Rome.--The
Worship of the Martyrs.--Pilgrims’ Hospitals.--Images of
the Virgin Mary.--Relics brought from the East by the
Crusaders.--Celebrated Pilgrimages of Early Days.--The Roman
Basilicas.--St. Nicholas de Bari.--Notre-Dame de Tersatz.--St.
Jacques de Compostella.--Notre-Dame du Puy, de Liesse, de
Chartres, de Rocamadour.--Pilgrimages in France, Germany,
Poland, Russia, and Switzerland.
The first of the Christian pilgrimages were those made to the tomb
of Christ, when the apostles, the disciples, the mother of sorrow
(_mater dolorosa_), a few saintly women, and soon, no doubt,
many of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, paid their pious visits to the
sepulchre which the resurrection had robbed of its prey. Afterwards,
when the Gospel became known throughout the countries near Judæa, St.
Paul set the example of making a pilgrimage to the holy places--an
example which was followed by millions of the faithful in later ages.
[Illustration: Fig. 279.--St. Denis carrying his Head to his
place of burial: according to the old legend, he is supported by
two angels, and followed by a Christian lady, St. Catulla, who
is going to put him in his shroud. In the scene above, the body
of the martyr is being prepared for burial.--After a Miniature
in the “Vie de Monseigneur Sainct Denis,” Manuscript of the
Fourteenth Century (National Library, Paris).]
In the third century, but even more so in the fourth, Christian men
and women of all nations visited the places mentioned in the Gospel as
having been the scenes of some episode in the life of Jesus Christ,
from the stable at Bethlehem to the Calvary of Golgotha. Amongst this
host of pilgrims, history has handed down to us the names of St.
Hilarius, St. Basilius the Great, and his brother St. Gregory of Nyssa,
who wrote a discourse concerning the visitors to Jerusalem; St. Jerome
also, with the Scriptures in his hand, made the solemn pilgrimage,
accompanied by learned theologians such as the Bishop of Gaza,
Porphyrius, and Rufinus of Aquileia, and by several saintly women,
Melanie, Paula, Fabiola, Eustochia, who were scarcely less erudite than
the doctors.
We find the proofs of these early pilgrimages in the inscriptions
traced with the point of the stylus, or merely with charcoal, upon
the plaster of the walls of the Catacombs at Rome. There are many in
the cemetery of St. Calixtus which give expression to pious thoughts,
touching prayers, and some interesting events. In the crypt of the
old church at Montmartre, where, as there is reason to believe, the
martyrdom of St. Denis (Fig. 279) and his companions took place, there
were found many similar inscriptions, which would seem to indicate that
there, as at Rome, the pilgrims have left traces of their visits.
The Catacombs at Rome are full of images of saints, painted in fresco
on a groundwork of glass or mosaics in coloured stones; and many of
them, some dating from the second and even from the first century of
the Church, seem to mark the stations at which the primitive pilgrims
halted or knelt or prayed.
The memory of any act which has excited admiration, or has impressed
itself vividly, long remains indelible in the heart of the people, to
which fact must be attributed the origin and long duration of a number
of pilgrimages which date from the early ages of Christianity. The
commemorative marks of these pilgrimages remained unknown to posterity,
until recourse was had to consecrated standards (_signa_), to
images, and to amulets which generally bore the monogram of Christ or
the sign of the redemption. The cross was never of the shape which
it assumed in the fourth century, being rather the cross termed
_commissa_ or _patibulata_--in the form of the Greek letter
tau (T), which, as tradition tells us, corresponded exactly to the
shape of the cross upon which our Lord suffered death. This kind of
cross is, in fact, to be seen on amulets or reliquaries of the third
century; it was embroidered on garments and engraved upon tombs. The
cross was thus the symbol of pilgrimage, as it was afterwards the
emblem of the Crusades.
[Illustration: Fig. 280.--St. Barbara, a Maiden of Nicomedia, who
suffered Martyrdom in the Third Century.--Drawn with the pen and
pencil by John Van Eyck, called John of Bruges, in honour of the
building of a church dedicated to her.--In the Museum at Antwerp
(Fifteenth Century).]
The worship of relics, whatever be its origin, was a natural adjunct to
the worship of the tombs in which Christ’s confessors were laid, and
of the soil where their martyrdom had taken place; thus the smallest
fragment of a saint’s body, the most trifling piece of raiment, or
most insignificant object (_tantillæ reliquiæ_) that had belonged
to a blessed martyr, and more especially anything which represented a
material reminder of the glorious death which a Christian had won in
confessing the Gospel, was carefully preserved as a relic. Thus the
periods of persecution were the most favourable for the multiplication
of these relics. Almost before the martyr’s sufferings were over,
a crowd of believers invaded the amphitheatres and arenas, carried
off and concealed the mortal remains of the victim, collected his
precious blood in sponges, and almost fought for the very sand upon
which it was shed; and when the new saint had been laid in some sure
resting-place, they vied with each other in sprinkling sweet perfumes
over the body, in wrapping it up in white linen, and even in purple and
gold. His solemn interment afterwards took place in some sanctuary
(_loculum_) of the Catacombs, which was afterwards visited by
numerous and devout pilgrims who came to pay their pious homage to his
memory.
One of the earliest instances of this worship of the martyrs is
furnished us in the hagiography of St. Ignatius, who suffered martyrdom
at Rome in the reign of Trajan. We see therein how, in spite of the
armed attendants and heathen crowds which filled the amphitheatre where
the execution had taken place, some courageous Christians, at the risk
of their own lives, secured the remains of the prelate in order to
convey them to his own church at Antioch. In a letter concerning the
martyrdom of St. Polycarp, quoted by Eusebius, it is stated that the
faithful carried away his bones, more precious in their eyes than gold
and precious stones, and concealed them in a fitting-place (_ubi
decebat_).
The unanimous testimony of St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Leo, St.
Cyprian, St. Chrysostom, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, and of all the most
illustrious Fathers of the Greek, African, Eastern, Roman, and Gallican
Churches, proves that the worship of martyrs, of the places of their
nativity (_natalia_), of their burial-places, and of their relics,
was established in the Christian world before the close of the fourth
century (Fig. 280). The various liturgies, sacramentaries, missals, and
rituals confirm this testimony. Moreover, the primitive Church had,
in a measure, joined the worship of relics to the sacrifice of the
eucharist by celebrating the latter upon the tombs of the martyrs. This
ancient usage was raised into a liturgical law under the pontificate
of St. Felix (269), as St. Athanasius affirms in his biography of that
saint. When the persecutions had ceased, basilicas _sub dio_, or
under the open sky, were raised over the crypts which held the bodies
of the martyr-saints.
The enormous sum of five hundred golden sous, representing seven pounds
of gold, the price for the body of an obscure martyr in the third
century, fails to give an idea of the fabulous sums which were expended
at that period to obtain possession of the bodies of the saints. Men
hoped, to use an expression borrowed from the Acts of St. Firmus and
St. Rusticus, that by so doing they were laying up treasures for the
life to come; and this explains why Luitprand, King of the Lombards,
purchased the relics of St. Augustine for their weight in gold.
The flow of pilgrims into Rome, Jerusalem, and other places was so
great towards the close of the fourth century, and still more in the
fifth, that it became necessary to regulate this display of devotion
by some strict rules of discipline. Many ecclesiastical writers, while
deploring the abuses to which it gave rise, were unable to point out
any effectual remedy; it being difficult to separate the wheat from the
chaff, to distinguish the false pilgrims from the true, and to prevent
vagabonds, ever ready to rob any wealthy travellers they might fall in
with, from assuming the garb of piety and religion.
[Illustration: Fig. 281.--“Count Renier bearing the Body of
St. Veronica to the Church of St. Waudru, in Mons.”--After a
Miniature in the “Chroniques de Hainaut” (Manuscript of the
Fifteenth Century), Burgundian Library, Brussels.]
Every church, abbey, and chapel became at this period a place of
refuge, ever open for pilgrims, who were certain of being hospitably
received there at all hours, for their purse was generally light, and
they lived upon alms, if only for the sake of doing penance. Charity
devoted itself to the task of sheltering and feeding them during their
journeys, whence they often returned ill and weak, and poorer than when
they started, but always rich in indulgences, consolations, and relics.
Rome had, from the earliest times, an inexhaustible stock of relics
in the Catacombs, which served for the use of the whole Christian
world. By one of the canons issued by the fifth Council of Carthage,
it was decreed that no church should be consecrated until some
well-authenticated relics had been placed beneath the altar. In
after-days, it was further required that there should be relics visible
at each entrance to the church, on the diptychs fastened to the chapel
walls, in the sacraria, in a number of the private oratories, and even
on the cover of the books of the mass.
This continual removal of relics from one country to another gave rise
to many imposing and touching ceremonies. St. Chrysostom has related,
in one of his homilies, all the details concerning the translation
of the relics of St. Ignatius, who suffered martyrdom at Rome, to
his episcopal residence at Antioch, amidst a vast assemblage of the
faithful.