_An Evening in Spring._
Now the noon,
Wearied with sultry toil, declines and falls
Into the mellow eve:--the west puts on
Her gorgeous beauties--palaces and halls
And towers, all carved of the unstable cloud
Welcome the calmy waning monarch--he
Sinks gently ’midst that glorious canopy
Down on his couch of rest--even like a proud
King of the earth--the ocean.
_Bowring._
[90] _Communicated_ by a scientific gentleman, whose daily
observations and researches in Natural History, stamp value upon his
contributions.
~April 16.~
_Eighteen Martyrs of Saragossa_, and _St. Encratis_, or _Engratia_, A.
D. 304. _St. Turibius_, Bp. 420. _St. Fructuosus_, Abp. A. D. 665.
_St. Druon_, or _Drugo_, A. D. 1186. _St. Joachim_ of Sienna, A. D.
1305. _St. Mans_, or _Magnus_, A. D. 1104.
“_The Venerable_
BENEDICT JOSEPH LABRE,
_Who died in the odour of sanctity_,
On the 16th of April, 1783.”
If such a creature as the _venerable_ B. J. Labre can be called a man,
he was one of the silliest that ever lived to creep and whine, and one
of the dirtiest that ever “died in the odour of sanctity;” and yet, for
the edification of the English, his life is translated from the French
“by the rev. M. James Barnard, ex-president of the English college at
Lisbon and Vicar General of the London district.”
From this volume it appears that Labre was born at Boulogne, on the
26th of March, 1748. When a child he would not play as other children
did, but made little oratories, and “chastised his body.” Having thus
early put forth “buds of self-denial and self-contempt,” he was taught
Latin, educated superior to his station, did penance, made his first
general confession, and found his chief delight at the feet of altars.
At sixteen years old, instead of eating his food he gave it away out of
the window, read pious books as he walked, turned the house of his
uncle, a priest, into “a kind of monastery,” observed religious poverty,
monkish silence, and austere penance, and, by way of humility, performed
abject offices for the people of the parish, fetched provender for their
animals, took care of their cattle, and cleaned the stalls. The aversion
which he entertained against the world, induced him to enter into a
convent of Carthusians; there he discovered that he disliked profound
retirement, and imagined he should not be able to save his soul unless
he embraced an order more austere. Upon this he returned home, added
extraordinary mortifications to his fasts and prayers, instead of
sleeping on his bed lay on the floor, and told his mother he wished to
go and live upon roots as the anchorets did. All this he might have done
in the Carthusian convent, but his brain seems to have been a little
cracked, for he resolved to go into another Carthusian convent, the
prior of which would not admit him till he had studied ‘philosophy’ for
a year, and learned the Gregorian chant. Church music was very agreeable
to him--but it was not so with regard to _logic_; “notwithstanding all
his efforts, he was never able to conquer his repugnance to this branch
of study;” yet he somehow or other scrambled through an examination; got
admitted into the convent; “thought its rules far too mild for such a
sinner as he looked upon himself to be;” and after a six weeks’ trial,
left it in search of admission into the order of La Trappe, as the most
rigid of any that he knew. The Trappists would not have him; this
refusal he looked upon as a heavenly favour, because the monastery of
Sept-Fonts surpassed La Trappe in severe austerities and discipline, and
there he became a “novice” till the life he fancied, did not agree with
him. “Having a long time before quitted his father’s house he could not
think of returning to it again;” and at two and twenty years of age he
knew not what to do. His biographer says, that “little fit for the
cloister, and still less fit for the world, he was destitute of the
means of getting a livelihood; and being now persuaded of what were the
designs of God concerning him, he resolved to follow the conduct, the
light, and inspirations of the holy spirit, and to submit himself to all
the sufferings and afflictions which might await him.” If in this
condition some one had compelled him to eat a good dinner every day,
made him go to bed at a proper hour and take proper rest, and then set
him on horseback and trotted him through the fresh air and sun-shine
every forenoon, he might have been restored; or if his parents, as in
duty they ought, had bound him apprentice at a proper age to a good
trade, he might have been an useful member of society. These thoughts,
however, never appear to have entered Labre’s head, and in the dilemma
represented “his love of humility, poverty, and a penitential life,
presented to his zealous mind the practice of that kind of piety which
he afterwards put in execution.” His first step to this was writing a
farewell letter to his parents, on the 31st of August, 1770, “and from
that time they never received any account of him till after his death.”
His next steps were pilgrimages. First he went to Loretto “from tender
devotion to the Blessed Virgin, whom he looked on as his mother;” next
to Assissium the birthplace of St. Francis, where he, “according to
custom, got a small blessed cord which he constantly wore;” then he went
to Rome where he sojourned for eight or nine months and wept “in the
presence of the tomb of the holy apostles;” afterwards “he visited the
tomb of St. Romuald at Fabrieno, where the inhabitants immediately began
to look upon him as a saint;” from thence he returned to Loretto; he
then journeyed to Naples, and had the pleasure of seeing the blood of
St. Januarius which would not liquify when the French entered Naples,
till the French general threatened the priests who performed the miracle
that the city would suffer, if the saint remained obstinate; “and in
short,” says the rev. Vicar General of the London district, “there was
hardly any famous place of devotion in Europe which was not visited by
this servant of God;”--the Vicar General’s sentence had concluded better
with the words “this _slave_ of _superstition_.” To follow Labre’s other
goings to and fro would be tedious, suffice it to say that at one of his
Loretto trips some people offered him an abode, in order to save him the
trouble of going every night to a barn at a great distance; but as they
had prepared a room for him with a bed in it he thought this lodging was
too sumptuous; and he therefore retired into a hole “cut out of the rock
under the street.” Labre at last favoured the city of Rome by his fixed
residence, and sanctified the amphitheatre of Flavian by making his home
in a hole of the ancient ruins.
In this “hole of sufficient depth to hold and shelter him in a tolerable
degree from the weather,” he deposited himself every night for several
years. He employed the whole of every day, “sometimes in one church and
sometimes in another, praying most commonly upon his knees, and at other
times standing, and always keeping his body as still as if he were a
statue.” Labre’s daily exercise in fasting and lifelessness reduced him
to a helpless state, that a beggar had compassion on him, and gave him a
recommendation to an hospital, where “by taking medicines proper for his
disorder, and more substantial food, he soon grew well;” but relapsing
into his “constant, uniform, and hidden life,” he became worse. This
opportunity of exhibiting Labre’s virtues is not neglected by his
biographer, who minutely informs us of several particulars. 1st. He was
so careful to observe the law of silence, that in the course of a whole
month, scarcely any one could hear him speak so much as a few words.
2dly. He lived in the midst of Rome, as if he had lived in the midst of
a desert. 3dly. He led a life of the greatest self-denial, destitute of
every thing, disengaged from every earthly affection, unnoticed by all
mankind, desiring no other riches than poverty, no other pleasures than
mortification, no other distinction than that of being the object of
universal contempt. 4thly. He indulged in rigorous poverty, exposed to
the vicissitudes and inclemencies of the weather, without shelter
against the cold of winter or the heat of summer, wearing old clothes,
or rather rags, eating very coarse food, and for three years living in
the “hole in the wall.” 5thly. To his privations of all worldly goods,
he joined an almost continual abstinence, frequent fasts, nightly
vigils, lively and insupportable pains from particular mortifications,
and two painful tumours which covered both his knees, from resting the
whole weight of his body on them when he prayed. 6thly. “He looked upon
himself as one of the greatest of sinners;” and this was the reason why
“he chose to lead a life of reproach and contempt,” why he herded “among
the multitude of poor beggars,” “why he chose to cover himself with rags
and tatters instead of garments, why he chose to place a barrier of
disgust between himself and mankind,” why “he abandoned himself to the
bites of disagreeable insects,” and why he coveted to be covered with
filthy blotches.
Labre’s biographer, who was also his confessor, says that his
“appearance was disagreeable and forbidding; his legs were half naked,
his clothes were tied round the waist with an old cord, his head was
uncombed, he was badly clothed and wrapped up in an old and ragged coat,
and in his outward appearance he seemed to be the most miserable beggar
that I had ever seen.” His biographer further says, “I never heard his
confession but in a confessional, on purpose that there might be some
kind of separation between us.” The holy father’s lively reason for this
precaution, any history of insects with the word “pediculus” will
describe accurately.
[Illustration]
Thus Labre lived and died; and here it might be supposed would end his
memoirs. But, no. In whatever odour he lived, as he “died in the odour
of sanctity,” an enthusiasm seized some persons to touch Labre dead,
who, when living, was touchless. Labre being deceased, was competent to
work miracles; accordingly he stretched out his left hand, and laid hold
on the board of one of the benches. On Easter-day being a holiday, he
worked more miracles, and wonders more wonderful than ever were wondered
in our days, as may be seen at large, in the aforesaid volume,
entitled--“The Life of the venerable Benedict Joseph Labre, who died at
Rome, in the odour of sanctity.” The portrait, from which the engraving
on this page is taken, was published immediately after his death by Mr.
Coghlan, Catholic bookseller, Duke-street, Grosvenor-square, from a
drawing in his possession.
_Miracle at Somers Town._
The authenticity of the following extraordinary fact can be verified.
Mr. H----, a middle-aged gentleman, long afflicted by various
disorders, and especially by the gout, had so far recovered from a
severe attack of the latter complaint, that he was enabled to stand, yet
with so little advantage, that he could not walk more than fifty yards,
and it took him nearly an hour to perform that distance. While thus
enfeebled by suffering, and safely creeping in great difficulty, on a
sunny day, along a level footpath by the side of a field near Somers
Town, he was alarmed by loud cries, intermingled with the screams of
many voices behind him. From his infirmity, he could only turn very
slowly round, and then, to his astonishment, he saw, within a yard of
his coat-tail, the horns of a mad bullock; when, to the equal
astonishment of its pursuers, this unhappy gentleman instantly leaped
the fence, and overcome by terror, continued to run with amazing
celerity nearly the whole distance of the field, while the animal kept
its own course along the road. The gentleman, who had thus miraculously
recovered the use of his legs, retained his power of speed until he
reached his own house, where he related the miraculous circumstance; nor
did his quickly-restored faculty of walking abate, until it ceased with
his life several years afterwards. This “miraculous cure” can be
attested by his surviving relatives.
[Illustration: ~Somers Town Miracle.~]