ITALIAN
YESTERDAYS
BY
MRS. HUGH FRASER
Author of “A Diplomatist’s Wife in Japan,”
“A Diplomatist’s Wife in Many Lands,”
“Reminiscences of a Diplomatist’s
Wife,” etc.
VOL. II
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1913
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
Published November, 1913
CONTENTS OF VOL. II
CHAPTER I
PAGE
SAINTS OF THE CHURCH 1
A Friend in Rome—A Story of Two Ways of Loving—Aglaë
and Boniface—Become Christians—A New Life—Boniface
Endures Terrible Tortures—Martyrdom—Death of
Aglaë—Church of St. Boniface—Alexis, the Pilgrim—His
Travels—Return to Rome—A Ragged Beggar—His Death and
Burial in St. Boniface’s Church—St. Alexis’
Monastery—Trials of the Church After Constantine—Rome’s
Lowest Ebb—Growth of the Spiritual City—Benedict the
Blessed, and Scholastica.
CHAPTER II
FOUNDER OF MONASTICISM 15
Norcia in the Sabines—A Matrona—The Twins, Benedict and
Scholastica—Benedict Goes to Rome—Conversion of
Placidus—Benedict’s Retirement to La Mentorella—Life in
a Cave—Temptations—Visit of St. Francis—Benedict’s
Ministering—Real Founder of Monastic Life—Growth of His
Order—Placidus and Maurus—St. Benedict’s Personality and
Conversions—His Ideal of the Religious Life—His Greatest
Miracles—His Sister, Scholastica—The Last Day
Together—His Ascension.
CHAPTER III
ST. GREGORY THE GREAT 37
Birth and Lineage of St. Gregory—Path from the World to
the Cloister—Prayer, Study, and Charity—His Cat—A
Prophecy—A Cardinal Deacon—Mission to
Constantinople—Eutyches’ Heresy—Rome in
Pestilence—Gregory Elected Pope—His Unbelievable
Accomplishments—His Life as Pope—Championship of
the Oppressed—Bond with English-speaking People—The Great
Procession During the Pestilence—Gregory’s Successors.
CHAPTER IV
MEMORIES OF THE PANTHEON 52
The Pantheon—Hadrian’s Best Monument—Long Idle—Consecrated
as St. Mary of the Martyrs—The Cathedral, the Symbol
of the Soul—Its Purification—Continuity of the Church—A
Priest’s Visit—The Alabaster Square—Procession of the
Martyrs’ Relics—Giovanni Borgi, the Workman—Italian
Guilds—Giovanni’s Selflessness—His Rescue of the Forsaken
Children—Care of Them—Crusade in Behalf of All the Waifs
of Rome—His Work of Love—Giovanni’s Successor,
Later Pius IX.
CHAPTER V
EARLY LIFE OF FATHER MASTAI 70
Birth in 1792—A Happy Family—His Youth—Epilepsy—The
Church at the Time of Napoleon—Abduction of Pius to
Avignon—Napoleon’s Downfall—Return of the Pope to
Rome—His Reception—Prophecies Regarding Pius IX—His
Journey to Chile—Ocean Trip—Across the Andes—Failure
of Mission—Rounding Cape Horn—English Settlement on the
Cape—“Love-of-the-Soil”—The Falkland Islands.
CHAPTER VI
POPE PIUS IX 91
Director of Ospizio di San Michele—A Splendid
Record—Archbishop of Spoleto—A Turbulent
Populace—Order Restored—Revolution in Europe—Spoleto
Saved—The Earthquake in Umbria—New Post at Imola—Secret
Societies—A Cardinal—Attack upon the Three Prelates—The
Cardinal’s Bravery—How the Saints Forgive—Pope Pius
IX—His Charity and Justice—Defenders of the Poor—Anecdotes
of the Cardinal’s Generosity.
CHAPTER VII
CAPTIVITY OF POPE PIUS VII 108
Lebzeltern, the Ambassador of the Austrian Emperor—Origin
of His Mission—Napoleon’s Anger Against Pius VII—Arrest
of the Pope—Protests from the Church—Napoleon
Excommunicated—Vain Efforts to Evade the Bull—Instructions
for the Mission—“Do All, or Else, _Do Nothing_”—Pius
VII in His Sixty-eighth Year—The Interview—The Pope’s
Position—His Generosity—Message to Napoleon—Continued
Captivity—Return to Rome—Napoleon’s Expiation.
CHAPTER VIII
IN SABINA 131
Castel Gandolfo—Its Gardens—The Sabine Hills—The
Reverendo—An Expedition into the Hills-The Campagna in the
Early Morning—“Our Lady of Good Counsel”—Ancient
Præneste—Italy’s Landscape—Struggles of the
Colonna—Destruction of Palestrina—Boniface’s Revenge
and Expiation—Olevano, the Haunt of Artists—“Picturesque
Utility”—The Wrong Train—Romance of a Pebble—The Work
of the Saints.
CHAPTER IX
PEOPLE OF THE HILLS 152
The Apennines—View from a Peak—Real
Hospitality—Polenta—Woods of Sabina—A Hill Family—The
Cook—A Queer Adventure—People of the South—A Night
Festival in the Abruzzi—The Journey—The Old Organ—Marion
Crawford’s Boys—Juvenile Theatricals.
CHAPTER X
A STORY OF VENICE 172
A Follower of the Condottieri—The Raw Recruit—Division of
the Dukedom of Milan—Carmagnola’s Turn—Growth in
Wealth and Power—Disaffection—Venice Acquires His
Services—War with Milan—A Leisurely Campaign—Carmagnola
at the Height of His Glory—Fortune Turns Against the
Venetians—Stirrings of Suspicion—Reception in Venice—The
Senate Chamber—Growing Dusk—The Attack—End of His Part in
the World—Another Story of the North—St. Raniero, the Patron
of Pisa—The Power of Temperance.
CHAPTER XI
QUEEN JOAN OF NAPLES 191
A Conspicuous Feminine Sinner—Marriage of State—Her
Beauty—Her Hungarian Husband—Petrarch and the Monk—Joan’s
Ascent to the Throne—The Naples Succession—Her
Favourites—The Churches of Naples—Joan’s Lovers—Factions
of Naples—Charles of Durazzo—A Bold Proposal—Charles’
Ambitious Plots—War of the Factions—Disappearance of
Maria—Becomes the Wife of Charles—Joan’s Horror.
CHAPTER XII
A MEDIÆVAL NIGHTMARE 208
Pact Between Charles and Andrew of Hungary—Joan’s Homage
to the Papal Legate—Andrew Ignored—Arrival of Andrew’s
Mother—Andrew Upheld by the Pope—His Reprisals—“The
Man Must Die”—The Queen’s Conspiracy—Last
Meeting of Charles and Andrew—The Hunting Expedition—The
Banquet in the Monastery—The Murder—Tempest Breaks
over Joan’s Head—An Evil Blow at Charles—Trial of Andrew’s
Murderers—A Nightmare of Cruelty and Fear.
CHAPTER XIII
THE VAMPIRE-MONARCH FROM HUNGARY 233
Charles’ Further Acts as Dictator—Rise of the Favoured
Louis of Taranto—Civil War—A Scheme of the Empress of
Constantinople—Interference of the King of Hungary—The
Empress Again to the Rescue—Hungary’s Advance—Death of
the Empress—Flight of the Neapolitan Nobles—Joan and
Her Husband in Provence—Charles’ Well-merited Fate—The
King of Hungary’s Vengeance—Government by Execution.
CHAPTER XIV
END OF JOAN’S CAREER 246
Joan Detained at Aix—Greeted as a Queen—Joan Pronounced
Innocent—Plans to Regain Naples—Sale of a City—Return to
Naples—Indecisive War—Proposal for Personal
Conflict—Flight of the Royal Family—Maria’s Narrow
Escape—Hungarians Repulsed—Pope Clement as
Intermediary—Departure of the King of Hungary—Festivity
in Naples—Death of Louis and Joan’s Further Marital
Adventures—Joan in Trouble—Her Untimely End.
CHAPTER XV
NAPLES UNDER MURAT 263
Beauty of Naples—Figures of Its History—St.
Januarius—Murat, King of Naples—Achievements as King—The
Carbonari—England’s Promises—Napoleonic Diplomacy—Rise
of the Bourbons—Alliance with Austria—Murat’s
Indecision—Distrust of the Allies—Murat’s
Statesmanship—Talleyrand’s Diplomacy—Naples, the
Gay—Conspiracy in the Palace—The Escape from
Elba—Ideal Government—War Against Murat—Advance of
the Austrians—Murat Driven to Naples—Interview with His
Wife—Last Instructions to His Ministers—Escape.
CHAPTER XVI
MURAT’S LAST DAYS 299
Naples in Anarchy—Entrance of Austrians—Murat’s Repulse
by Napoleon and by Louis—His Demon of
Ill-luck—Ship-wrecked—Aid in Corsica—Emperor of Austria’s
Proposal—Attempt Against Naples—Murat Betrayed into
Ferdinand’s Hands—Murat’s “Trial”—Letter to His
Wife—Before His “Judges”—A Brave Death—Ferdinand, the
“Butcher King.”
CHAPTER XVII
ITALIAN SEAS 315
Our Moods and the Seas—Memories in Landscapes—The Healing
of the Sea—A Vision in the Bay of Naples—Marion Crawford’s
Yacht Expected—The Family Together at Leghorn—Lady
Paget—A Bathing Scene—Hugh Fraser—“Spannocchi” for
Dinner—The Avenging Boatman—Livorno, An Anomaly—Sunset
on the Mare Ligure—Bay of Spezia, a Splurge of Colour and
Light—A Hail Storm in Venice—The Joy of a Gondola—Moods
of Venice—A Giorgione Beauty—The Nurseries of Venice—Her
Shops—Saints and Heresies of the Thirteenth Century.
CHAPTER XVIII
SOUTHERN SHORES 339
Melancholy Ravenna—Early Byzantine Architecture—Forests
of Stone-pine—Smiles and Tears—The Need of a Little
Misfortune—Monte Gargano—Millions of Spanish
Merinos—Primæval Forest—A Forest Miracle—Church of the
Apparition of St. Michael—Other Apparitions of the
Archangel—The Revelation to St. Aubert—The Great Round
Church—Order of the Knights of St. Michael—A “Maiden”
Fortress of France.
CHAPTER I
SAINTS OF THE CHURCH
A Friend in Rome—A Story of Two Ways of Loving—Aglaë and
Boniface—Become Christians—A New Life—Boniface Endures Terrible
Tortures—Martyrdom—Death of Aglaë—Church of St. Boniface—Alexis,
the Pilgrim—His Travels—Return to Rome—A Ragged Beggar—His Death
and Burial in St. Boniface’s Church—St. Alexis’ Monastery—Trials
of the Church After Constantine—Rome’s Lowest Ebb—Growth of the
Spiritual City—Benedict the Blessed, and Scholastica.
It was my good fortune, many years ago, to make friends with a
woman whose name was as beautiful as her mind—Mary Grace. We met in
another hemisphere, under the Southern Cross, and for many days lived
together in Chile’s one little paradise, Viña del Mar. There, in shady
patios trellised with jessamine and bougainvillea, we talked of the
impossible—of meeting in Rome and going together to the holy places and
making better acquaintance with the Saints. Two or three years later
the impossible happened. My Mary, with her daughter Lilium, floated
into my mother’s drawing-room in the Odescalchi one April afternoon,
when the swallows were whirling above the courtyard and the house
seemed all roses and sunshine. In the weeks that followed all our dream
programme was realised; together we went to the Pope’s Mass, together
knelt at his feet while Leo XIII laid his hand on Lilium’s golden
head and blessed us and promised to pray for us and all our dear ones;
and together we wandered from place to place in the Eternal City, I,
who had known it all my life, learning many things from her who came
there for the first time, as so often happens. Of all those pleasant
inspiring hours the one we both remembered most appreciatively, I
think, was that of our visit to a lonely spot on the Aventine—the hill
that somehow has always kept its character and is even to-day very
little hurt by the destructions that have defaced most of the other
quarters of the town.
My friend was Irish, “pur sang,” and her appreciations were extremely
individual ones; things that other people felt obliged to rave about
left her quite cold; but, when she had caught and joined the links
of some beautiful story that the world had overlooked or forgotten,
she became a veritable flame of enthusiasm, and every tiny detail and
souvenir she could connect with it had to be sought out and stored in
the big warm shrine of her heart. I think, though I am not certain,
that she knew the story of the house on the Aventine before she came to
Rome. Anyway, it was she who took me there, and we went over story and
house together, and were exceedingly loath to come away when the Ave
Maria rang over the city and all respectable people turned their faces
homewards.
Here is the story, a story of two ways of loving. It is in two parts,
and I only learnt the first long after I was familiar with the second.
The beginning takes us back to the last years of the Third Century,
to the oft-mentioned reign of Diocletian. At that time, although the
Aventine had never been one of the most distinguished quarters of Rome,
it contained a few dwellings of nobles, who, doubtless, overlooked the
mass of poorer houses that swarmed about its base, for the sake of the
view, both over the city and towards the sea, from which comes always
the pleasant west wind that we Romans love. I have spoken of the palace
of the good Marcella, where in her old age she was so roughly treated
by Alaric’s Goths; before Marcella’s time there lived another noble
lady on the Aventine, with very different ideas as to the conduct of
life. Her name was Aglaë, not a Roman name, and I fancy she must have
come of Greek parentage, although she is spoken of as a noble Roman
matron. Of her husband, who seems to have died before the story begins,
we are told nothing; her whole existence was wrapped up in a quite
unsanctified passion for a handsome pagan called Boniface, a man of
generous heart, as the sequel shows, but a sensualist, like most of
his class at that time. He adored Aglaë, and the two must have passed
some enchanting hours wandering on the terraces of the Aventine villa
or sitting hand in hand to watch the sun sinking red into the distant
sea. No thought of the future seems to have come to them there, nor any
gleam of a scruple as to their way of life. Youth and beauty and love
were theirs; this world was sweet, and they had never heard of another.
Then something happened. We are not told what it was—perhaps some
miracle witnessed by Boniface at the martyrdom of some obscure
Christian, one of those miracles which so often converted a crowd of
brutal, mocking bystanders into Christians on the spot. Whatever it
was, it rent his soul, summoned his intelligence, and claimed him for
ever. If Aglaë was not with him at the moment, he must have rushed
to her for one last visit to tell her of it, for her conversion was
simultaneous, and sudden as his own. From that moment the lovers
renounced each other for the love of Christ, and the remainder of their
lives was devoted to atoning for their guilt in the past. Aglaë, in her
lonely palace, gave herself up to prayer and penance; Boniface at once
joined himself to the band of Christians who made it their business to
gather up and bury the bodies of the martyrs. In no other way could he
assuage the tumult of pain and repentance that filled his heart at the
remembrance of his sins. Diocletian’s persecution was not confined to
Rome, but was raging in many other parts of the Empire, notably in Asia
Minor, and thither Boniface travelled with some devoted companions, in
order to help and cheer the poor Christians in their sufferings.
On arriving at Tarsus, St. Paul’s city, he got separated from his
fellow-travellers, and, wandering around, found that a great number of
the Faithful were being cruelly tormented that day, in divers ways,
for the name of Christ, and his heart was both torn with compassion
for their pains and admiration for their heroism. Approaching them,
he kissed their chains and encouraged them to endure these passing
tortures for the sake of Him who would so quickly and splendidly reward
them by an eternity of joy. Of course he was at once arrested, and the
tormentors seem to have tasked their ingenuity in inventing agonies for
him to bear. His sins of the flesh were expiated by having his whole
body ploughed with hooks of iron, and by spikes of wood run in under
his nails and on his limbs; he had spoken sinful words; they poured
molten lead into his mouth; he had sinned in the lust of the eyes and
the pride of life; the executioners plunged him head downwards in a
cauldron of boiling pitch. But from this the Lord delivered him. When
they drew him forth, his eyes were clear, his brow unscarred, and he
looked once more—his last look—on the fair world where he had been so
sinfully happy, and through it all he praised God aloud, saying, “Lord
Jesus Christ, Son of God, I thank Thee!” Then came the order—so usual
when all the torments had failed and the dear spirit still clung to the
lacerated body—“Behead him!”
As the axe fell, there was a terrific earthquake, and many of the
bystanders were converted then and there, but no one was allowed
to touch his body. Meanwhile his friends, who had been seeking for
him everywhere, learnt of his martyrdom, and came to gather up his
remains. But a strict watch had been set, and it was only after paying
five hundred pieces of silver that they could obtain possession of
the dear corpse. With love and tears, they anointed it with precious
balms and wrapped it in costly coverings and transported it to Rome.
During these months Aglaë had been living a life of such whole-hearted
repentance that our dear Lord had taken her into great grace; and
now, by an exquisite, Divine bit of indulgence—one of those flashes of
hot sympathy that come straight from the Sacred Human Heart of Him in
Heaven to some poor, broken human heart on earth—He sent an Angel to
tell her that her Boniface’s body was returning to Rome and that she
could go and meet it. So Aglaë, in her sombre penitential dress, her
beautiful face covered with a veil, went forth, and, at a given place,
saw the little procession approaching from the sea. There was no danger
for her in looking at the beloved features now. Very quiet and strong
she seems to have been as she met the wayfarers, bade them pause with
their holy burden, and then led them back to her own house. There,
where he and she had loved and sinned, she received him, who was to
leave her no more. Those who had brought him told her of his glorious
end, and she thanked the Lord for it again—for the Angel had not let
her wait so long for the story. And when she had shown her gratitude
by most loving hospitality and precious gifts to those who had brought
his body, they went away and left her alone with her beloved. Ask any
loving woman what she did then! Which of us would not place our dear
tortured dead in our hall of honour, and burn sweet spices round them,
and light tall tapers, and fill the place with every fragrance and
loveliness that the garden has to give?
All this, we may be sure, Aglaë did for Boniface; but she did that
from which most women are debarred. She turned her palace into a Church
for his tomb, and prayed near it till she died, and then the poor and
suffering, who had been her one care from the day of her conversion,
came there and prayed for her soul. But we know that that went straight
to Heaven.
So there stood the Church of St. Boniface, and, some two hundred years
later, a most noble Roman family had established their own palace close
to it, and the Church, as we know it, now includes a part of the house
of Alexis. For this is where a great saint grew to manhood, the loved
son of rich and affectionate parents. Alexis had every gift of mind,
with beauty of countenance and strength of body; and, when the time was
ripe, his father and mother betrothed him to a bride of their choosing,
good and sweet, and very fair to see. In this they had, for the first
time, met with stubborn opposition from the boy, who had never opposed
them before. He told them that he had vowed himself to a single life
for God’s service, and that no earthly bride, however beautiful, should
make him swerve from that allegiance. But they, like many other good
parents, persisted in their project, convinced that they knew what was
good for their son; and the preparations for his marriage went merrily
forward, each day but adding to the young man’s grief and perplexity.
Rome was Rome still; he could protest, but he had to obey his father’s
direct commands, and obey he did; but his vow had been made to a still
higher authority, and he meant to keep it, and prayed for grace and
guidance to do so, nor were grace and guidance refused him, who, as the
Breviary puts it, “was of Rome’s noblest, but nobler yet through his
great love for Christ.”
On the night of his wedding, when the feasting and singing and
congratulating were over, and the matrons conducted the bride, probably
a child of thirteen or fourteen, to the lighted, perfumed bridal
chamber, Alexis would not so much as touch her hand, but, like one
Galahad of another time and clime, bade her farewell and departed,
having received from God a special command to go on a pilgrimage to
the “illustrious Churches of the Universe.” He left all behind, riches
and servants, and even his name, and for seventeen long years, with
no companion but the Lady Poverty, wandered, a nameless poor pilgrim,
through all the Holy Places, praising the Redeemer for His great
mercies and praying for the hastening of the Kingdom of Heaven.
At the end of those seventeen years, he was one day praying fervently
before an image of the Blessed Virgin in the great Church at Edessa,
when a voice came from the image, proclaiming his name and rank. The
people were greatly excited and wished to show him honour, both for his
own sake and because Our Lady Herself seemed to wish it. But Alexis
knew better. That strange, sweet voice had not rung in his ears to
lure him back to things of earthly pride, and for him the disclosure
of his identity was the command to depart from that land. He fled, and
boarded the first ship he could find to carry him away from Syria. He
never asked the vessel’s destination; it was enough for him that he was
obeying a command, but he was being led back to where the second phase
of his spiritual career awaited him—in his old home in Rome.
As the ship sped north and west, and one by one the lovely Greek
islands seemed to come floating towards him, like opals on the shifting
sapphire of the sea, he still kept silence, still prayed and praised.
What cared he whither her course was set? The white sails might have
been angel’s wings—so sure was Alexis that God was leading him. Then,
when the Apennines swam up blue from the bluer water, and scents of
violet and orange blossom were wafted out to greet the wanderer, he
knew that this was Italy—and home. Still he spoke not—questioned not;
past the isles of the Sirens, past Circe’s Promontory, still on, past
all that shore of coral and pearl, of palm and ilex and olive, with
Vesuvius’ dark smoke hanging like a menace in the background, the
little Syrian galley held her way, and at last the helmsman turned her
prow to the land, the sails were all furled but one; the enormous oars
worked her up against a rushing yellow current till the long quay was
reached, and with a rattling of chains the weary galley slaves shipped
their oars and bent down to look, each through his little opening, at
“the port of Rome.”
With the merchants and the free seamen, Alexis stepped on shore, and
gazed at the city of his birth. He had been brought back—for what?
Blindly, joyfully, obediently, he had gone forth, to fare alone with
God, and alone with God he was still to be. An hour or so later a
haggard mendicant stood at the gate of a palace on the Aventine, asking
for charity. That was never refused in that house, and the servants
brought him in, showed him a dark corner under a stairway close to the
entrance, where they told him he might sleep, and gave him some scraps
of food. Humbly and gratefully he accepted it all; he heard them speak
of the master and the mistress and the “widow” of the eldest son who
was long since dead; and that day or the next he must have seen his
father and mother, and the maid who had never been a wife, passing
through the courtyards or lingering in the garden. God’s ways are not
our ways. When He covets the love of certain souls for Himself, He
will not share it with any one, and that Divine jealousy leads the
chosen soul through hard paths. The hearts that love God intensely are
the very ones that are the most loving of their fellows, especially
of all who hold close to them in the sacred ties of family affection.
But these ties have to be snapped on earth when the Divine Lover so
wills—and Saints like Alexis, and poor sinners like the rest of us,
have to leave the broken ends in His Hands, knowing that the pain we
are made to cause our dear ones is as necessary for them as that which
we suffer is for us, and that every pang of theirs is a golden strand
in the garment of their immortality. Alexis’ parents had sinned against
him and Heaven in trying to force him to break his vow of virginity;
their son had long forgiven them, but Heaven in its mercy was allowing
them to expiate their sin here instead of hereafter, and, through their
obstinacy, the young girl who might, wedded to another spouse, have
become a joyful mother of children, had to spend her life in their sad
house, waiting upon them, and with the prospect of a very lonely age
before her when they should have passed away.
We may be sure that many and many a time Alexis longed to emerge from
his despised obscurity and comfort them all three, but it was not for
that God had brought him back. The command of silence was never lifted,
and so the son—the heir—lived on, a ragged beggar, laughed at and also
abused by his father’s servants, praying in St. Boniface’s Church by
day, sleeping in the cranny under the stairs at night, allaying his
hunger by the scraps the servants threw him, and always blessing them
and praising God, who thus satisfied His own servant’s hunger for
poverty and suffering and humiliation. This second trial, this exile of
the heart, lasted also seventeen years. At that time the very existence
of Rome was threatened by Alaric the Goth; once and twice, he had
turned from its gates laden with the ransom exacted for not entering
them; he was threatening to approach again, and this time he had sworn
to enter and destroy. The population was crowding the Churches to pray
for deliverance, when a mysterious voice rang out in each separate
Church, “Seek ye the man of God, that he may pray for Rome!” Terror
fell upon the suppliant masses, and none dared speak or move. Then the
same voice cried, “Seek in the house of Euphemian.”
There was a rush to the Aventine, for all knew the great noble’s
dwelling. The Pope, Innocent I, had heard the command and himself
went thither, followed by all his ecclesiastics and the Senators as
well. When they reached Euphemian’s house it was the Pope who led them
to the dark corner under the stairs—dark no longer, but flooded with
celestial light, where the nameless beggar lay dying alone. His hands
were already cold, but in one he held a crucifix, in the other a slip
of parchment which no one could make him relinquish, though many tried
to take it away from him. Then Innocent commanded him, in the Name of
God, to give it up, and immediately Alexis let him take it with his own
hand. And the Pope, standing up beside the dying man, opened the slip,
and read aloud therefrom the name and family of the beggar; and a great
cry went through the house that it was Alexis, the son who had been
mourned for dead these many years. And father and mother and wife threw
themselves down beside him, embracing him and weeping bitterly, for in
that moment his soul had gone to God.
Then Innocent buried him in the Church of St. Boniface, and it was
called both by his name and that of Alexis for many years. Both their
bodies rest there, and a chapel was thrown out at one side to take
in the stairway, which, now covered with glass, remains to this day.
Both Boniface and Alexis had travelled and prayed and suffered in the
East, and their Church came to be a heritage of both East and West;
for, five hundred years after the July day on which Alexis died, a
great monastery called after him and built close to the Church on the
hill of the “house of Euphemian,” sheltered monks of the Basilian and
Benedictine orders at the same time, an innumerable spiritual family
“to replace the fair family he had renounced to this world.”
The Aventine has been little touched by time and is still one of the
quietest and loveliest spots in Rome. At certain seasons it suffers
from malaria—blown up from the marshes near Ostia—and for that reason
both mediæval and modern builders have generally avoided it. But it is
full of gardens. That of St. Alexis’ Convent, now an Asylum for the
Blind, is famous for its orange and lemon trees; and one can trace
the dispositions of the terraces and courts of the old house in the
approaches to the Church. I do not think that when my friend and I
were wandering there we noticed one curious feature which, however,
still exists to give one a glimpse of old Roman domestic ways—the queer
little cells, one on each side of the inner porch of Euphemian’s house,
where the slave porter, and his companion the watchdog, were _chained_,
opposite to each other, to their respective posts! What queer and
sympathetic confidences they must have exchanged sometimes!
Alexis surely prayed for his native city, but all the prayers of all
her Saints could not avert the trials that were to visit on Rome her
past sins. Constantine the Great believed that he had left the Church
in the West impregnable in strength and assured of peace; and for
nearly three centuries after his death she was forced to fight for her
existence almost as stubbornly as she had during the three centuries
preceding it. In 361, only twenty-four years after the death of
Constantine, Julian the Apostate reversed his edicts and strained every
nerve to reëstablish the worship of the Olympian deities. Paganism
was dead, and he failed in his iniquitous efforts to restore animation
to its corpse, but much suffering did he bring to the Church, and it
was only at the price of blood that she conquered in the end. After
Julian came the Barbarians—Alaric, Genseric, Odoacer, Totila—during the
short space of one hundred and thirty years Rome was taken and ravaged
five separate times, so that when, in 553, Narses, the prototype of
Napoleon, abolished the Senate and annexed the city to the Eastern
Empire, she had reached the lowest point in her history and was
scarcely regarded as a prize even by the Lombards, when, in response
to the invitation of Narses himself, they overran Italy from the Alps
to the sea, only to be finally expelled by Charlemagne some two hundred
years later.
But the Church had realised the truth of the saying that the darkest
hour comes just before the dawn. The high courage that had come
unscathed through such appalling conflicts rose gallant and audacious
in its certainty of final victory, and, at the very moment when Rome
seemed to be annihilated, decreed to it such a triumph as the world had
never seen before.
In 568, just a year after Narses, to gratify a personal spite, had
invited the hornet swarm of Lombards to cross the Alps, he died in the
city he had insulted. We must remember that there were two Romes: the
corporeal city, depopulated and impoverished, despoiled and dying—the
city of the government of the once proud “Senatus Populusque Romanus,”
which had failed signally at every point, and had crawled to the feet
of every conqueror; and the spiritual city, ruled by strong and holy
men, who patiently went on with their invisible building, adding stone
to stone with such calmness and patience that in contemplating their
work one is almost led to believe that they were unconscious of the
material ruin around them. During the forty years that followed the
death of Narses there was growing up in Rome a phalanx of learned and
holy ones to replace the leaders who had been found wanting, and we of
to-day are still the inheritors and possessors of the treasures they
amassed. While the grass grew unchecked in the streets and all who
could migrated to happier lands; while commerce and war turned aside
from the now worthless prize, and the poor tethered their few goats and
sheep in the courtyards of the great ruined houses, the Benedicts, the
Gregorys, the Bonifaces, with their clear-eyed, disciplined cohorts,
were building the Liturgy, building the monastic orders, building
the polity that guides and rules the Church and the Faithful to-day.
Nothing escaped them; whether it were a question of the right antiphon
for one of the psalms of a Nocturn, the placing on the Index some
doubtful legend of a Saint (like that of our St. George, which the
popular fancy was turning into a grotesque myth), the annihilation of
some startling new heresy which was raising its poisonous head, or the
question of bringing Constantinople to its senses by bold remonstrance
with the Emperor—to every detail was brought the thoroughness and
directness of trained minds, the compelling force of superior courage
and invincible intellect.
And this work had been going on silently and infallibly from the
moment that official persecution ceased. Through sieges and invasions,
desertions and desolations, the mills of God were grinding the grain
and filling the great storehouses with golden wealth. In 480, in
the little town of Nursia, high among the fastnesses of the Abruzzi,
where the snow lay thick in winter, as in the Alps, there was born
to the lord of the place a son, who was christened Benedict—“the
Blest,” and a little daughter, whom the father, a great admirer of
learning, called Scholastica. When these two passed away, sixty-three
years later, Literature and Saintliness were throned in Europe, and
hold their thrones still in the innumerable fortresses manned by the
spiritual descendants of the Nursian twins. Outside the Church few,
comparatively, knew their names when they died. Learning and piety
would scarcely exist for us had they not lived.