Volume 21 — CHAPTER III. AU REVOIR.—THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS. (continued 3)

This work, owing to the unbounded energy and devotion of its reverend director, had immensely increased in efficiency and extent. More than eleven hundred children were here receiving the elementary instruction, religious and professional, of which no other model existed. But although his courage never failed, his strength declined, and, to save the work, he gave it up, in 1858, into the hands of the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Morlot. A document exists which proves it to have been necessary to resist the will of the holy priest, in order that, after having given up the value of about a million and a half of francs, without asking either board or lodging, he should not be left utterly without resources. The archbishop, after treating with the members of the council of administration and obtaining the consent of Brother Philip, who threw himself heartily into the work, placed S. Nicolas in the hands of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, who for the last fifteen years have admirably fulfilled this additional responsibility then confided to them. At the time of their installation the Brothers appointed to S. Nicolas were seventy in number; they have now increased to a hundred and thirty, for the direction of the three houses, one of which is at Paris, another at Issy, and the third at Igny. The house in the Rue Vaugirard alone contains about a thousand boys, who are there taught various trades; there are carpenters, cabinet-makers, carvers, opticians, watchmakers, designers of patterns for different manufactures, etc., etc. At the end of their apprenticeship these lads can earn six, seven, or even eight francs a day. The most skilful enter the schools of Arts et Métiers—arts and trades—the most brilliant efforts being rewarded by the rank of civil engineer.

The large and fertile garden of Issy is a school of horticulture, and at Igny the boys are taught field-labor and farming, as well as gardening; the fruits and vegetables of Igny forming a valuable resource for the house in the Rue Vaugirard, at Paris. The Sisters of the Christian Schools have charge of the laundry and needle-work of the three establishments. Once every month two members of the council inspect these schools to the minutest details—the classes, the workshops, the gardens, the house arrangements, the neatness of the books, etc.—and interrogate the children.

Instrumental as well as vocal music is taught at S. Nicolas as a professional art. A few years ago might be seen on the road from Issy to Paris two battalions of youths who passed each other on the way, the one that of the “little ones,” clad in blouses of black woollen; the other the pupils and apprentices of the Rue Vaugirard, in dark gray, each with its band of music. The passers-by called them “the regiments of S. Nicolas.” In the French expedition into China the band of the flag-ship was chiefly composed of former pupils of these establishments, who, faithful to their old traditions, had with them the banner of their patron saint, which was duly displayed on grand occasions, to the great satisfaction of the admiral commanding the expedition.

The idea of the celebrated Dr. Branchet, of placing blind and also deaf and dumb children in the primary schools of the Brothers, has been attended with the happiest results. These children enter at the same age as those who can speak and see, and, like them, remain until they have made their first Communion, and leave just at the period when they can be received into special institutions, where they are kept for eight years longer. The rapid improvement in these poor children, who are under the care of the Brothers, and of the Sisters of S. Vincent de Paul and of S. Marie, is truly wonderful. Mistrust, timidity, and reserve speedily give place to cheerfulness, confidence, and affection; the habitual contact with children who can see and hear being a great assistance to the development of their intelligence and capabilities.

In 1841 the Minister of the Interior, acting by desire of the local authorities, requested that the Brothers should be sent to certain of the great central prisons of France. The first essay was made at Nîmes, where three Brothers were placed over that portion of the prison appropriated to the younger offenders, in whom so great a change for the better soon became apparent that a general desire arose that all the prisoners, twelve hundred in number, should be put under their charge. Brother Philip, after taking the matter into careful consideration, gave his consent, to the great joy of the prefect of Nîmes; and in the same year, 1841, the rough keepers were replaced by a detachment of thirty-seven Brothers of the Christian Schools. In the course of two months the new organization had effected a complete change in the prison, not only as regarded the docility and general improvement of the prisoners, but their health also, from the alterations made by the new managers in the sanitary arrangements of the building. Brother Facile, a man of great intelligence, firmness, and good sense, was the director of the Brothers, who had various trials to undergo in the exercise of their present functions. In spite of various difficulties, most of which were occasioned by the conduct of lay officials, the Brothers remained at Nîmes until 1848, when the revolution cut short their work, not only there, but also at Fontevrault (where they had the charge of fourteen hundred prisoners), at Aniane, and at Mélun.

The institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, being of French origin, naturally developed itself first in France. At the beginning of 1874 it numbered nine hundred and forty-five establishments in that country, more than eight thousand Brothers, and above three hundred and twelve thousand pupils. From the commencement of the congregation it has had a house at Rome; and at Turin their schools are attended by more than three thousand five hundred children. They easily took root in Catholic Belgium, where their pupils are above fifteen thousand in number. They are in England, Austria, Prussia, and Switzerland. Passing out of Europe, we find them honored and encouraged in the little republic of Ecuador, where they were first planted in 1863, under Brother Albanus, a man of great prudence as well as of activity and zeal. Two years later four Brothers embarked for Cochin-China, the Admiral of La Grandière having requested Brother Philip to send them to teach the children of the new French colony. Their first house there was at Saïgon, to which others were added in different parts of the country, as more Brothers arrived. They have establishments in Madagascar, the Seychelles, the East Indies, and the Isle of Mauritius, and have been in the Ile de la Réunion ever since 1816. They are at Tunis, where they teach the children in Italian (that language being the one most usually spoken there); and in Algiers, where for years the bishop, Mgr. Dupuch, had been begging that they might be sent. Brother Philip was both ready and willing, but the delays and difficulties raised by the French Minister of War, would not allow him to accede to the request until 1852, after the death of M. Dupuch, who had begun the negotiation ten years before. When, in 1870, contrary to the entreaties of the bishop, Mgr. de Lavigerie, and the protest of the inhabitants of the place, the Brothers were forced out of their schools—their only offence being that they were Christian—they opened free schools, independent of any government arrangement, and had them filled at once by three thousand of their former pupils; the same thing being done at other towns with the same result. A change for the better took place in the ideas of the home government in 1871, and at the present time, thanks to the rule of Marshal MacMahon, the Christian Schools of Algiers have been restored to their rights.

In concert with the Lazarists the Brothers opened schools at Smyrna in 1841, and soon afterwards at Constantinople, with the authorization of the government. They are settled also at Alexandria under the protection of the bishop, and under that of the vicar-apostolic at Cairo, where they have received marked proofs of interest from the Viceroy of Egypt.

But it is not of the children of the Old World only that the Brothers have so largely taken possession; the spirit of Christianity is a spirit of conquest, and the missionary, the Sister of Charity, and the Christian Brother are of the conquering race.

The infant foundations of the latter have a particular interest in the vast American continent, where either all is comparatively of yesterday, or else the vast solitudes of ages still await the footstep of civilization, or even of man. Religious orders prosper in this land; and the children of La Salle first settled in Canada in 1837, at the earnest invitation of M. Quiblier, Superior of the Seminary of S. Sulpice at Montreal, and of Mgr. Lartique, the bishop of that city. Four Brothers of the Christian Schools were sent by the packet-boat Louis Philippe, which sailed on the 10th of October in that year, reaching New York on the 13th of November. The curés of S. Sulpice at Paris were the earliest supporters of the venerable De la Salle; and it is interesting to notice, at a distance of two centuries and on the other side of the Atlantic, the sons of the same house faithful to the same traditions. The work spread rapidly in Montreal, where in a short time twenty-five Brothers were occupied in teaching eighteen hundred children. Four of their pupils of this city, who had become postulants, took the habit on All Saints’ Day, 1840. The same year brought them a visit from the Governor-General of Canada, Lord Sydenham, who, after entering with interest into the details of their work, gave them the greatest encouragement. In the course of the following year they held their classes in presence of the bishops of Montreal, Quebec, Kingston, and Boston, numerously accompanied by their clergy, and received the congratulations and benediction of the prelates. They opened a school at Quebec in 1843, and later, on the invitation of the Archbishop of Baltimore, Brother Aidant went to found one also in that city. It was he who was authorized by Brother Philip, in 1847, to go to Paris in order to give an account of the work which had been carried on in America during the previous ten years, and who returned thither, accompanied by five more Brothers.

When, in 1848, the members of the institute were withdrawn from the central prisons of France, their superior felt that the energetic Brother Facile would be an invaluable superintendent of the Christian Schools in the New World. Brother Aidant had done great things during the eleven years that he had occupied the post of director and visitor of the province of Canada and of the United States. Five principal houses, employing fifty Brothers, had been established there—namely, those of Montreal, Quebec, Three Rivers, Baltimore, and New York; but the work received a new and extensive development during the twelve years of the directorship of Brother Facile, who, when summoned to France by Brother Philip in 1861, left behind him 78 schools, 24,532 pupils, 368 Brothers, and 74 novices; and this wonderful increase has subsequently continued.

In 1863 Brother Philip considered it advisable to divide North America into two provinces, namely, those of Canada and the United States; Brother Ambrose, director of the schools of St. Louis, Missouri, being named visitor of the province of the United States, in residence at New York; and Brother Liguori, of Moulins, in residence at Montreal, visitor of the province of Canada.

The Brothers of the Christian Schools in America are recruited not only from France, but from all the nationalities of the country. Among them are Franco-Canadians, Anglo-Americans, Irish, Belgians, and Germans. The visit of Lord Young, the Governor-General of Canada, in 1869, to their principal school in Montreal, was a sort of official recognition of their teaching on the part of Great Britain. He praised their work as being the “type and model of a good education.” Amongst those who were presented to him, the governor-general saw with particular interest Brother Adelbertus, the only surviving one of the four who were sent to Canada in 1837. They now have schools in all the six provinces of Canada, and since 1869 have been established also at Charlottetown, the capital of Prince Edward’s Island. A Protestant writer who visited their schools at Halifax, in giving an account of what he had seen, stated that he was greatly struck by “the perfect discipline of the pupils, their silence, their prompt obedience and great assiduity, their neatness, and the good expression of their countenances, whether Catholic or Protestant.” He did not take offence at the short prayer said at the striking of every hour. “Each child,” he observes, “can repeat to himself the prayer learnt at his mother’s knee.” But what most of all excited his wonder were the difficult exercises in geometry, trigonometry, land-surveying, algebra (and other sciences, of which he gives a list), which he saw accomplished by the class of advanced pupils under the direction of Brother Christian. According to his account, the so-called Ignorantins are almost alarmingly scientific.

When we bear in mind that Canada, although its present population does not amount to four millions, is one-third larger than France, and that its natural resources are equivalent to those of France and Germany combined, we can understand the importance of its future when once those resources shall be made available; and also we perceive the wisdom of the Christian Brothers in doing their utmost to prepare the way for this result to be attained by a well and religiously instructed generation.

But to return to Europe. The work of the Christian Schools began in Ireland, in 1802, when Mr. Edmund Rice, of Waterford, founded one in his native town, with great success. Another was established in 1807, by Mr. Thomas O’Brien, at Carrick-on-Suir, and a third at Dungarvan; but it was not until 1822 that the Irish Brothers adopted the rule of the venerable De la Salle. The institute in Ireland is the same in spirit as it is the same in rule, with some slight modifications; but it does not depend upon the French institute, although connected with it in friendly and fraternal relations, its separate existence being especially adapted to the wants of the people of Ireland.

In tracing some of the widespread ramifications of his work we seem to have lost sight of the toiling Brother to whom so much of its success was due. The fact of having the responsibility of so extensive an administration did not prevent his personally working at the classes like any other Brother of the institute. He possessed in a remarkable degree the gift of imparting knowledge, whether in things human or divine. From the time of his entrance into the institute his manner of teaching the catechism had been remarked; and it was always with the liveliest enjoyment that he fulfilled this important portion of his duties. Nothing of all this teaching has been written down; but there remains a book written by Brother Philip, of which the title is Explanations in a catechetical form of the Epistles and Gospels for all the Sundays and principal festivals of the year, in which the varied depths of religious thought of the pious writer are presented with a precision and yet readiness of expression in themselves constituting a simple and earnest eloquence. This book is considered a model, both with regard to the substance and the art of teaching; the writer does not fit the truth to his words, but his words to the truth.

Thus far we have sketched the origin and progress of the institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools in times of comparative peace, with brief exceptions; in the second and concluding part of our notice the members of this institute will appear under a new aspect—on the battle-fields where these men of prayer and peace showed themselves to be, in that which constitutes true heroism, the bravest of the brave.

TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.

THE LADY ANNE OF CLEVES.

Anne of Cleves, the fourth queen and third wife of Henry VIII. of England, is one of the least known personages in history. Fortunately for herself, she never gained the sad celebrity of his victims, Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, and Catherine Howard. As virtuous and sedate as the former, she was less high-spirited and dangerously fearless. At the same time, her gentleness was much the same as that of her only royal predecessor, and, like her, she won the respect and love of the people. If she submitted somewhat too passively to the sentence of divorce, or rather of nullification of her marriage, as pronounced by Cranmer, it must be remembered that, unlike Catherine of Aragon, she had reason to dread the consequences of opposition to the king’s despotic will. Her husband’s brutal treatment of her during the short time they lived together, his coarse expressions of disrespect and loathing, his utter want of consideration towards her as a princess, and lack of gentlemanlike behavior towards her as a woman and a stranger in his realm, were enough to dispose her to consent to any conditions which left her alive and safe, even had she not had before her eyes the sad experience of several judicial murders committed just before and after her ill-omened wedding. Among the strange circumstances of her—in a sense—obscure life is this: that, having been brought up a Lutheran, and proposed as a wife to Henry VIII. as a means of conciliating the league of powerful Protestant princes in Germany, she died a Catholic in her adopted country. Her sister, Sibylla, had married John Frederick, the Elector of Saxony, who uniformly befriended Luther. Whether Anne’s convictions were very strong or not it is not easy to say; a terror of her future husband was enough to explain her making no demur at being married according to the Catholic form, which was done with great pomp and solemnity; but she did her best while queen to save Dr. Barnes, the Reformer, probably on account of her sympathy with his opinions. In this she was unsuccessful; indeed, she never had any influence with the king. This is perhaps the only decided evidence of her being attached to the doctrines in which she had been educated, and probably the religious impressions she received in England were all in favor of Catholicity. At this time neither court nor people had changed in doctrine, though there was a real Protestant party, quite distinct from the king’s time-serving prelates and obsequious courtiers. Still, Henry was unswervingly attached to the forms of the church of his fathers, and in many points to its doctrines, and, indeed, would have been by no means flattered by becoming the head of a “church” without outward symbolism and stately ceremony, such as the hidden body of Puritans already desired.

The portrait of Anne of Cleves—i.e., of her disposition and character—is very winning. Her mother, who, says Nicolas Wotton, was a “very wise lady, and one that very straightly looketh to her children,” had evidently brought her up, as most Flemish and German girls, in a womanly, modest, and useful fashion. She is described as “of very lowly and gentle conditions, by which she hath so much won her mother’s favor that she is very loath to suffer her to depart from her. She occupieth her time much with her needle. She can read and write her own, but French, or Latin, or other language she knoweth not; nor yet can sing or play on any instrument, for they take it here in Germany for a rebuke and an occasion of lightness that great ladies should be learned or have any knowledge of musick.”

It is not surprising that they should have had such a prejudice at that time, considering how polite learning was fast becoming the all-atoning compensation for the lowest morals and most shameless intrigues in the courts of Italy, of France, and of England. Later on the English annalist Holinshed, who wrote of her after her death, praised her as “a lady of right commendable regard, courteous, gentle, a good housekeeper, and very bountiful to her servants.” Of her kind heart her will is a striking instance; for her heart seems more set on her “alms-children” than on any other of her pensioners and legatees. Herbert, the author of a short sketch of her life, gives his opinion as follows: “The truth is that Anne was a fine, tall, shapely German girl, with a good, grave, somewhat heavy, gentle, placid face”; but he goes on to add up her deficiencies in beauty, style, and accomplishments, and calls her “provincial” as compared with the “refined, volatile beauties of the French and English or the stately donnas of the Spanish courts.”

That she was not beautiful, and that Henry was purposely deceived as to her personal charms by the short-sighted Cromwell, is undeniable. Henry, who had so unfeelingly discarded his once beautiful and sprightly and his still loving, stately, and queenly wife, Catherine of Aragon, as soon as his wandering fancy had fixed upon a younger beauty, could not be expected to feel less than a sheer disappointment at the sight of Anne of Cleves. So fastidious was he that he had actually asked Francis I. of France to send him twenty or thirty of the most beautiful women in France, that he might pick and choose among them; and when the hapless ambassador, Marillac, had respectfully proposed that he should send some one to the court to choose for him, he had abruptly exclaimed with an oath: “How can I depend upon any one but myself?” Cromwell, to whose political schemes the alliance of the Schmalkalden League (as the coalition of German Lutheran princes was called) was necessary, duped the king by causing Holbein to paint a flattering miniature of Anne. This was enclosed in a box of ivory delicately carved in the likeness of a white rose, which, when the lid was unscrewed, showed the miniature at the bottom. Her contemporaries vary so greatly in their reports of her appearance that an exact description of an original pencil-sketch (unfinished) among the Holbein heads in the royal collection at Windsor may be of some value. Miss Strickland, in her Lives of the Queens of England, gives it thus: “There is a moral and intellectual beauty in the expression of the face, though the nose and mouth are large and somewhat coarse in their formation. Her forehead is lofty, expansive, and serene, indicative of candor and talent. The eyes are large, dark, and reflective. They are thickly fringed, both on the upper and lower lids, with long, black lashes. Her hair, which is also black, is parted and plainly folded on either side the face in bands, extending below the ears—a style that seems peculiarly suitable to the calm and dignified composure of her countenance.” What must have been most to her disadvantage was not the brown complexion of which Southampton, the lord-admiral, so dexterously spoke when the king asked him in anger, “How like you this woman—do you think her so fair?” nor her heavy features, but the marks of the small-pox, with which she was plentifully pitted. This, in itself, may have materially contributed to the clumsiness of her features. Her “progress” from her native city of Düsseldorf to the shores of England lasted two months, partly from stress of weather, which detained her nearly three weeks at Calais, partly from the state of the roads and the necessary pageantry which her own countrymen and her future subjects tendered to her on her way. Antwerp distinguished itself, as usual, by a lavish display of bravery. The English merchants of that town came out four miles to meet her, to the number of fifty, dressed in velvet coats and chains of gold; while at her entrance into the town, at daylight, she was honorably received with twice fourscore torches. Again, we find that she arrived at Calais between seven and eight o’clock in the morning, and that in mid-December. As she is said to have travelled generally at about the rate of twenty English miles a day, and each of these places, at which she arrived so early, was made the scene of rejoicing and feasting for her and her train, it is evident that much of her journey must have been performed in the chilly hours before the dawn of a winter’s day. In the train sent to welcome Anne of Cleves were kinsmen of five out of Henry’s six queens. The time was whiled away in the then English city of Calais in the usual festivities, and she was taken to see the king’s ships Lyon and Sweepstakes, which were decked in her honor with a hundred banners of silk and gold, and furnished with “two master-gunners, mariners, thirty-one trumpets, and a double-drum that was never seen in England before; and so her grace entered into Calais, at whose entering there were one hundred and fifty rounds of ordnance let out of the said ships, which made such a smoke that not one of her train could see the other.”[108] From Dover, after a quick and prosperous passage of the proverbially churlish Channel, she went to Canterbury and thence to Rochester, where, on New Year’s eve, 1540, the king, impelled by a boyish curiosity ill-suited to his years and antecedents, told Cromwell that he intended to visit the queen privately and suddenly. So he and eight of his attendant gentlemen dressed themselves alike in coats of “marble color” (probably some kind of gray), and presented themselves in her apartments. He was taken aback at her appearance, and for once “was marvellously astonished and abashed.” It was the first time he had had a queen proposed to him whom he had not seen beforehand, and he felt that, at least in the eyes of the people, he had gone too far to be able to draw back now. He, who had never been taught self-restraint in anything, was not the man to exercise forbearance towards his luckless bride; yet, for the first and almost the only time, it was noticed that he absolutely showed her some scant civility. Either she knew him from his portraits or the evident prominence of one of her visitors indicated to her who was her future husband; for she sank on her knees at his approach, probably reading his surprise by her own instincts, and wishing to propitiate him with the meekness and deep humility of her behavior. Still, it was not Catherine of Aragon’s dignified humility and Christian majesty of demeanor, as she had pleaded for herself as a stranger no less than as a loving and faithful wife. The chronicler Hall says that the king “welcomed Anne with gracious words, and gently took her up and kissed her”—which is likely enough; yet we cannot rely on Hall’s authority as a grave historian, in after-times, as we always find him a gossiping and complacent relater of court pageantries, and a blind admirer of the king’s every word and look. No doubt he was wise in his generation—for what else could contemporary historians do to save their heads?—and after three hundred and fifty years we are glad to have his gorgeous Chronicles to dip into. Strype, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Burnet, Lingard, and others agree that immediately after the king left Anne (with whom he had supped) he angrily called his lords together, and reproached them with having deceived him by false reports of her beauty; and, further, that he sent her the New Year’s gift, which he had intended to present to her in person, by his master of the horse, Sir Anthony Browne, with a cold, formal message, excusing himself to those about him by saying that “she was not handsome enough to be entitled to such an honor” as his personal offering.

The French ambassador, Marillac, preserved the record of many little details in his sprightly but gossiping correspondence with his superiors during the years 1539-40. These diplomatic gossipings seem to have been much the fashion; for the Venetian envoys also indulge in them. Courts and cabinets were more intimately connected then than the bourgeois improvements of the later domestic life in royal circles make it possible for them to be now. But if the French ambassador could be minute in his descriptions, he was not so good an adept at the mysteries of English spelling. He invariably spells Greenwich Greenwigs, and Westminster Valsemaistre. After Henry’s discourteous reception of his bride he returned to his palace at the former place, and there met the cunning contriver of the match, Cromwell, whom he upbraided coarsely for having yoked him with a “great Flanders mare.” The minister tried to shift the blame on Southampton, who had conducted the princess to England; but the latter bluntly replied that “his commission was only to bring her to England; and … as she was generally reputed for a beauty, he had only repeated the opinion of others, … and especially as he supposed she would be his queen.” Dealing with Henry VIII. involved a dangerous game, as no one knew for two days together to whom to look as the “rising sun.” The mild, gentle woman who was never to have any influence, and yet was to win all hearts save that of the brutal king, was perhaps an object of chivalrous pity to the lord high admiral, who thus prudently entrenched himself within the safe limits of his “commission.”

At length, after repeated, peevish outbursts of despotic ill-temper and such expressions as this: “Is there, then, no remedy but that I must needs put my neck into the yoke?” the king gave orders for his marriage preparations. It is curious to think of the now dense and unsavory city accumulations that cover the “fair plain” at the foot of Shooter’s Hill, on which were pitched the tent of cloth of gold and the gay pavilions where the slighted bride was publicly met and saluted by her future husband. To do him justice, he behaved with proper outward respect towards her. From Greenwich to Blackheath “the furze and bushes” were cut down and a clear road made, lined with the companies of merchants, English, Spanish, Flemish, and Italian, in coats of embroidered velvet, while “gentlemen pensioners” and knights and aldermen wore massive chains of gold. The princess and her retinue, consisting both of her English escort and her native attendants, met the king at some distance from the tent, and patiently listened to a long Latin oration delivered by the king’s almoner, and answered on her behalf by another solemn string of classical platitudes by her brother’s learned secretary, of neither of which speeches she understood one word. Anne wore a rich but somewhat tasteless dress, cut short and round, without any train, which rather shocked the fastidious eyes of the French ambassador and the English courtiers. The king, for his fourth bridal, wore a dress which, though rich, must have been unbecoming to one of his size and complexion. The chronicler Hall describes it as a sort of frock of purple velvet, “so heavily embroidered with flat gold of damask and lace that little of the ground appeared. Chains and guards of gold hung round his neck and across his shoulders. The sleeves and breast were cut and lined with cloth of gold, and clasped with great buttons of diamonds, rubies, and orient pearls, … his sword and girdle adorned with emeralds, … but his bonnet so rich of jewels that few men could value them; … besides all this, he wore a collar of such balas, rubies, and pearls that few men ever saw the like.” He was on horseback, but his “horse of state” was led behind him by a rein of gold, and wore trappings of crimson velvet and satin embroidered with gold. A multitude of gorgeously-dressed pages followed, each mounted on coursers with trappings to match. The princess was no less loaded with jewels, and her horse wore trappings which, together with the “goldsmith’s work” of the dress of her running footmen, was embroidered with the black lion of the shield of Hainaut. The king advanced and embraced her, and, to all outward appearance, did princely homage to her—all through an interpreter, however; and with more descriptions of wonderful clothes and ornaments, the old chronicler moves the whole pageant forward through the park to Greenwich palace. At one stage of the procession the princess seems to have exchanged her horse for a chariot of curious, antique fashion. A prominent place was assigned among her retinue to her three Flemish washerwomen, or, in the language of that day, her launderers. Then followed the great water-pageant on the Thames, where each city guild rivalled its fellows in display, every barge rowing up and down, proudly showing its streamers, pensiles, and targets, some painted with the king’s arms, some with her grace’s, and some with those of their own “craft or mystery.” Then there was a barge, made like a ship, called the bachelor’s bark, decked with the same streaming banners, besides a “foyst,” or gun, “that shot great pieces of artillery.” The barges also bore companies of singers and players, some concealed, some elevated on decorated platforms. This was the fifth time that they had been decked for a bridal, if we count Catherine of Aragon’s first wedding-day, when the Prince Arthur, who might have rivalled his legendary namesake, received the acclamations of a loyal people. The loyalty must have got sadly rusty by this time, however, as the unwieldy, bloated king rode past in his ghastly finery, escorting another perspective victim to a palace which only good-luck prevented from becoming her prison. Again Henry gave Cromwell ominous hints of his distaste to Anne of Cleves, as on the evening of this holiday he asked his opinion of her beauty. Cromwell answered that she had a queenly manner; and for Henry, whose two beheaded favorites, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, chiefly offended him by their indiscreet and familiar behavior, this ought to have been a source of satisfaction; yet even on that last day of his liberty he called his council together, and despotically ordered them to see if he could not, by any quibble, get rid of his bargain with the despised princess. Doubtless the indignity would have seemed rather a boon to the royal Griselda; but, such as it was, it was not granted. Things had gone too far. The Schmalkalden League might resent the insult; the English people, with their rough love of “fair play,” might even rise in insurrection. Tudorism had scarcely yet advanced to absolute Mahometanism, and the council decided that the marriage must take place. Henry sullenly acquiesced, but Cromwell’s fate was sealed. “I am not well handled,” exclaimed the king more than once, and alleged that his bride had been betrothed to the Prince of Lorraine in her childhood, though Anne, when required, solemnly denied that at present she was bound by any pre-contract. This she was forced to do in public before the whole council. When the marriage was fixed for the feast of the Epiphany, 1540, Henry, ignoring the right of her own countrymen, Overstein and Hostoden, to give her away, associated one of his subjects, Lord Essex, in the office which by every right, of custom as well as feeling, belonged only to the representatives of her family. The bridal robes were a repetition of the gorgeous apparel already described; but the round dress of the bride seems ungainly. She wore her long, luxuriant yellow hair flowing down her shoulders, says Hall; but, as in her portrait her eyes and hair are dark, Miss Strickland suggests that these “golden locks” were false. The contrast must have been unfavorable. On her coronal “were set sprigs of rosemary, an herb of grace, which was used by maidens, both at weddings and funerals, for souvenance,” say some MSS. of that day.

The marriage was performed at Greenwich by Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, according to the rites of the Catholic Church. There was a solemn Mass, at the Offertory of which the king and queen went up to the altar and offered tapers. Then, returning to the gallery, they took wine and spices (i.e., comfits and preserves), and at nine in the morning (the marriage had been at eight o’clock) dined together. There was something terribly incongruous in the schismatic king, excommunicated for adultery, and the passive Lutheran princess, being joined together in matrimony by an archbishop whose complaisant character and loose morals made many, even of that day, consider him a false shepherd. And add to this that Queen Anne died a Catholic, and had as her chaplain and confessor a Spaniard, whom it is permissible to identify with the same Tomeo who was once in the service of the holy Queen Catherine of Aragon. The wedding-ring which Henry gave to his third and last lawful wife[109] had this motto engraved on it: “God send me weel to kepe,” in Old-English letters. In the evening of the wedding-day the royal pair attended Vespers in state and then supped together. These meals must have been characterized by the same barbarous etiquette as those on the occasion of Anne Boleyn’s coronation, during which we are told: “And under the table went two gentlewomen and sat at the queen’s feet during the dinner.” Their office was to hold the queen’s handkerchief, gloves, etc. Sometimes there were as many as four of these attendants. The queen publicly washed her hands in a silver basin full of scented water, and the basin and ewer were both held by the great dignitaries of the realm. Two countesses stood one on each side, “holding a fine cloth before the queen’s face whenever she listed to spit or do otherwise at her pleasure”—a most extraordinary office, but probably so old as to be still in form indispensable in that land of precedents and of tenacity concerning all old customs.

Anne’s short days with her ungallant husband were a sad trial to her; she never gained his affections nor acquired influence with him. She was too true to feign a love she did not feel or to use adulation to conquer power. Henry complained to Cromwell that she “waxed wilful and stubborn with him”; and her partial biographer, Miss Strickland, says of her: “Anne was no adept in the art of flattery, and, though really of ‘meek and gentle conditions,’ she did not humiliate herself meanly to the man from whom she had received so many unprovoked marks of contempt.”

The king, whether from ironical or politic motives, still called her “sweetheart” and “darling” before the ladies of her bed-chamber, but was already meditating a divorce. Their last public appearance together was at the jousts at Durham House, where a company of knights in white velvet took part in a tournament and a feast of good cheer which the king and queen honored with their presence. This was on the first of May, after they had been married but four months. The queen, whose conduct was so irreproachable that her direst enemy could find no link in this “armor of proof,” occupied her time in embroidery and needlework with her maids of honor, as the meek but dignified Catherine of Aragon had done, both in the days of her power and in those of her distress. Saving the beauty which had once been his first wife’s portion, and the majesty of character which never left her to her dying day, his third consort must have reminded him of the pure, domestic tie which had been his in his youth, of the blameless, gentle, yet stately courtesies in which his court had rejoiced under the sway of a royal mistress. But the unhappy Catherine had loved him, while the more passive Anne simply endured him. Even this was a surprise and a vexation to him, as appeared a few weeks later, when, on hearing that she gladly assented to the divorce, he wondered that she was so ready to part with him. When her ladies ventured to ask her if she had told “mother Lowe,” her confidential nurse and countrywoman, how the king neglected her, she answered truthfully, “Nay, I have not; but I receive quite as much of his majesty’s attention as I wish.” Henry meanwhile encouraged her English ladies to mimic and ridicule her in her dress, her foreign accent, her want of learning. He openly said that he had never given his inward consent to the marriage; that he feared he had wronged the Prince of Lorraine, to whom he persisted in considering her as “precontracted”; and further had the assurance to prate of his conscientious scruples as to marriage with a Lutheran![110] But the plotter whose schemes her marriage had served was doomed to fall before her. Cromwell was arrested a few days before she was dismissed from the court on the pretext of her health requiring change of air. She was banished to Richmond; he was confined in the Tower. The facile Cranmer for the third time “dissolved” a marriage he had made, and, obeying Henry’s changeful whims, pronounced both parties free to marry again. But the liberty so formally granted was by no means to be literally understood as regarded the queen. “The particulars of this transaction (the divorce),” says Miss Strickland, “show in a striking manner the artfulness and injustice of the king and the slavishness of his ministers and subjects.” A so-called convocation reviewed the case and pronounced the divorce, on the grounds already mentioned, dictated by the king, and the House of Lords cringingly passed the necessary bill. The very same Southampton who had escorted Anne of Cleves to England bore the message to her depriving her of her royal state. She swooned at first, thinking that the deputation had come to pronounce sentence of death upon her. As soon as she understood that her life was safe she showed an alacrity in stripping herself of her dangerous honors, which of itself was perhaps more dangerous. However, the king was too busy with his new toy-victim, the wretched Catherine Howard, to take notice of these symptoms of Anne’s joy at her safety. The terms were simply honorable imprisonment. She was not to leave the realm, and, in reality, was kept as a hostage for the good behavior of her relatives abroad, who might otherwise have been tempted to resent her wrongs. Here begins the uniqueness of her lot. She was adopted as the king’s “sister,” was to resign the title of queen, but to have precedence at court over every other lady, save the king’s future “wife” and his two daughters, and to be amply provided for out of the royal treasury. With Mary and Elizabeth she was on the most friendly terms, and at the beginning of her marriage endeavored, by every means in her power, to bring the neglected Mary into notice. From Anne’s expressions in her letters to her brother it appears that any hostile demonstration on his part to revenge her would have brought evil on her. She says: “Only I require this of you: that ye so conduct yourself as for your untowardness in this matter I fare not the worse, whereunto I trust you will have regard.” She humbly returned her wedding-ring to her dictatorial husband, and wrote a letter of submission in German, which the councillors sent to him in translation. A handsome maintenance was allotted her, and she evidently took kindly to her new position, even cheerfully acquiescing in the command to receive no letters or messages from her kindred. Thus the leave to “marry again” was in her case evidently only a matter of form. The king had the boldness to allude to her “caprice” as a woman, which might make her break these promises, and the meanness to order that measures should be taken to prevent the possibility of her breaking them. These are his words—a monument of despicable tyranny: “And concerning these letters to her brother, how well soever she speaketh now, with promises, to abandon the condition [caprice] of a woman, … we think good, nevertheless, rather by good means to prevent that she should not play the woman than to depend upon her promise; nor, after she have felt at our hand all gratuity and kindness, … to leave her at liberty, to gather more stubbornness than were expedient, … she should not play the woman [i.e., change her mind] if she would.… Unless these letters be obtained, all shall [i.e., will] remain uncertain upon a woman’s promise—that she will be no woman—the accomplishment whereof, on her behalf, is as difficult in the refraining of a woman’s will, upon occasion, as in changing her womanish nature, which is impossible.”[111]

Marillac, the ambassador, says on this occasion that “the queen takes it all in good part.” But the people had evidently grown to love her, and, as far as they dared, murmured at the indignity put upon her; for he adds: “This is cause of great regret to the people, whose love she had gained, and who esteemed her as one of the most sweet, gracious, and humane queens they have had; and they greatly desired her to continue with them as their queen.” No doubt the people had a greater sense of dignity than their king, and wished the sovereign lady of so great a realm to be of royal race and breeding. It was not for them to be subjects of a subject, while foreign kingdoms, and even small principalities, had queens-consort of royal degree. They had had sad experience, too, of the desolating rivalries produced among the great lords by these intermarriages with subjects, and therefore welcomed the gentle foreigner, so quick to learn English speech and English ways, but whose kindred was little likely to embarrass them.

Anne always signed herself “Daughter of Cleves” after her dismissal from court, and her gayety seems to have revived as soon as she found her life safe. Scarcely a month after the divorce was pronounced Henry visited her at Richmond, and she entertained him so pleasantly, says Marillac, that he stayed and supped with her “right merrily, and demeaned himself with such singular graciousness that some … fancied he was going to take her for his queen again.” If his hostess had thought so, doubtless she would have abated her pleasant humor and appeared less ready to welcome him. As it was, she put on every day a rich new dress, “each more wonderful than the last,” fared sumptuously, held her little court like a noble English lady of that day, dispensing alms and bounties, and passing her time, as Marillac says, “in sports and recreations.” Her real self bloomed again in this atmosphere of safety and unrestricted mental freedom; for such this “honorable imprisonment” as a hostage certainly was when compared with the teasing, daily companionship with the treacherous king. A feint was made a little later to give her a choice as to whether she would live in England or abroad; but as the jointure was tied up in English lands and their revenue alone, and to the possessor of these residence in England was attached as a sine qua non condition, the liberty of choice was practically null.

Anne’s court at Richmond and her life of gentle charities and innocent merry-makings were suddenly startled, after sixteen months’ peace, by the news of the trial and execution of her unhappy successor, Catherine Howard. Immediately her partisan maids of honor, and indeed all her household, who were devoted to her, began to speculate as to the chances of Providence interfering to reinstate their mistress in her rights. Every one but herself wished for this restoration. One of her ladies was actually committed to prison for having said, “Is God working his own work to make the Lady Anne of Cleves queen again?” adding that it was impossible that so sweet a queen as Lady Anne could be utterly put down. But, fortunately for the queen’s peace of mind, there was no such possibility, even though her brother’s ambassadors rather inconsiderately urged her restoration to her rightful position. The Privy-Purse expenses of her step-daughter, the Princess Mary, mentions a visit made by her to Anne in the year 1543 and her largesses to the latter’s servants; also a present of Spanish silk sent by Anne to Mary. Their intercourse seems to have been pleasant and familiar; they were nearly of the same age and had many domestic tastes in common. The contact between them may have been in part the means of Anne’s becoming a Catholic, though there is but little to show at what precise time this took place. So English had the queen grown that when Henry died, in 1547, she did not care to go to her own country, but willingly cast in her lot with her adopted land. Wise in her widowhood, as she had been virtuous in her married life—no less during the seven years of her separation than the six months of her reign—she did not marry again nor in any way mix in political matters. Posterity has unjustly set her down as an ugly, ill-conditioned, unlearned woman, a person without taste and discernment, at best a mere puppet of Henry’s. But we venture to see her otherwise; though she may not have been learned like Mary Tudor or Jane Grey, she was yet sufficiently instructed in all womanly arts, and quickly learned English, adapting herself, with rare prudence and discretion, to the ways of life and even the gorgeous sports of her adopted land; a trustworthy friend to the king’s daughters, especially the spurned and ill-fated Mary; a benevolent and self-denying woman, a good mistress, a pleasant hostess, an admirable manager of her tenants, estates, and household, deft with her fingers, skilful at her needle, gentle towards all, and, though not handsome, yet so winning that her ladies—though it was the worst policy—had no other title for her than their “sweet queen,” their “dear lady,” their “sweet mistress.” She outlived her stepson, Edward VI., and assisted publicly at Mary’s coronation, sitting in the same chariot as Elizabeth. “But,” says Miss Strickland, “her happiness appears to have been in the retirement of domestic life.” Further on the same biographer adds that it has been surmised, from certain items in her list of expenses, that she sometimes made private experiments in cooking. “She spent her time at the head of her little court, which was a happy household within itself, and we may presume well governed; for we hear neither of plots, nor quarrels, tale-bearings nor mischievous intrigues, as rife in her home-circle. She was tenderly beloved by her domestics, and well attended by them in her last sickness.” She survived her husband ten years, and died calmly and happily at the age of forty-one. In her will she left almost all the money and jewels which she had at her disposal to those who had served her and to poor pensioners, besides scrupulously ordering every debt to be paid. She left marriage-portions for her maids of honor, and ended by beseeching her executors to “pray for us and to see our body buried, … that we may have the suffrages of holy church according to the Catholic faith, wherein we end our life in this transitory world.”

Accordingly, Queen Mary had her buried in Westminster Abbey with great pomp, and the procession was graced with a hundred of her servants bearing torches, many knights and gentlemen with eight banners of arms (her own) and four banners of “white taffeta wrought with gold,” then the twelve bedesmen of Westminster in new black gowns, bearing twelve burning torches and four white branches, her ladies on horseback and in black gowns, and eight heralds, with white banners of arms, riding near the hearse. At the abbey-door the abbot and other Catholic dignitaries in mitres and copes received the corpse with the usual solemn ceremonies, and, bringing her into the church, “tarried dirge, and all the night with lights burning.” This stands for the Vespers in the Office for the departed. “The next day,” says the chronicler Stow, “requiem was sung, and my lord of Westminster (the abbot) preached as goodly a sermon as ever was made, and the Bishop of London sang Mass in his mitre, … and all the gentlemen and ladies offered [alms] at Mass.… Then all her head officers brake their staves, and all her ushers brake their rods and cast them into her tomb, … and thus they went in order to a great dinner given by my lord of Winchester to all the mourners.”

There was more rest and peace in this funeral pageant than there had been in the ill-omened wedding ceremony of which she had been the object seventeen years before. Her tomb is near the high altar Westminster Abbey, at the feet of King Sebert, the original Saxon founder, before the restoration of the abbey by Edward the Confessor. It is a plain-looking slab, like a bench, placed against the wall, and on parts of the unfinished structure the curious inquirer can trace her initials, A. and C., interwoven; but, such as it is, it is more of a memorial than fell to the lot of any of Henry’s queens, not one of whom, says Stow, “had a monument, except Anne of Cleves, and hers was but half a one.”

The horror felt on the Continent for the excesses and cruelty of the Bluebeard of England was such that it was long believed that Anne had either died by unfair means or had escaped from her “cruel imprisonment.” An impostor, therefore, for a time was enabled to take her place at one of the German courts—that of Coburg, where she was treated with royal consideration—but the fraud was afterwards discovered. This is mentioned in Shobert’s History of the House of Saxony. Upon the whole, Anne of Cleves may be considered as the most fortunate among the many women whose lives were connected with that of King Henry VIII.

IN MEMORY OF HARRIET RYAN ALBEE.

THE ROMAN RITUAL AND ITS CHANT COMPARED WITH THE WORKS OF MODERN MUSIC.[112] INTRODUCTION.

ON THE DIVINE IDEA.

The Divine Idea, the Exemplar or Pattern, in conformity with which the intellect and free will of man, and whatever is their combined work, finds its perfection.

All persons are familiar with the expression “beau ideal,” and in judging of matters of taste nothing is more common than to appeal to the standard of an “ideal”; as, for instance, the statue of the “Apollo Belvedere” would be, and is commonly said to realize, the “ideal” of the human form. Of course the ideal thus appealed to, as existing generally in the minds of persons of education, is nothing in itself absolutely certain or determinate. But, as far as it goes, it is a natural indication that the standard and measure of all perfection is an “ideal.” For we see that an ideal which is generally recognized and acknowledged by persons of taste and refinement does, in point of fact, come to be a standard, the authority of which is accepted to a great extent by others.

What is, then, in a measure true of an “ideal” subsisting in the mind of persons of education, as a standard of perfection, must be infinitely true of the idea of creation subsisting in the mind of God from all eternity. But as this leads to a speculative portion of Christian philosophy which can scarcely be deemed popular, and might perhaps give rise in some minds to the feeling “parturiunt montes,” if they found that an abstruse foundation had been formally laid only for the superstructure of a discussion upon plain chant, the few remarks that have seemed necessary to explain and justify the ground on which the ensuing essay proceeds have been collected together, and are here given in the form of an introduction, for the sake of burdening the discussion as little as possible with reasoning that does not properly belong to it.

All creation, according to Catholic theology, is the work of the ever-blessed Trinity. For only inasmuch as the Godhead subsisting in a Trinity of persons is for itself a perfect and undivided whole (κοσμος τελειος) can God bring into being a creation external to himself, without becoming himself the world which he creates.

To God the Father theologians assign the eternal idea, or the conception from all eternity of the idea or form of creation;

To God the Son, the realization of the idea of the Father, or the act of bringing created things into being out of nothing, in conformity with the idea of the Father;

To God the Holy Ghost, the bringing creation to its perfection through the period of its development or growth.

S. Basil speaks to this effect in the following passage: “In the creation I regard the Father as the first cause of created being, the Son as the creating cause, and the Holy Ghost as the perfecting cause. So that spirits, through the will of the Father, are called into actual being through the operation of the Son, and are brought to perfection by the presence of the Holy Spirit. Let no one, however, think either that I assume the existence of three original substances or that I call the operation of the Son imperfect. For there is but one first principle (αρχη), which creates through the Son and brings to perfection through the Holy Ghost” (De Spiritu Sancto, c. 16).

The work, then, of God the Father was the eternal idea of all creation; in the language of S. Gregory Nazianzen, εννοει ὁ πατηρ—και το εννοημα (idea) ἐργον ην, λογῳ συμπληρουμενον και πνευματι τελειουμενον (Orat. xxxviii. n. 9); and this thought or idea was a work brought into reality by the Word, and brought to perfection by the Spirit.

The eternal idea of creation is thus explained by S. Thomas, Summa, p. i. quæst. xv. art. 1 (Utrum ideæ sint):

“I answer that it is necessary to suppose ideas in the mind of God. Idea is a Greek word, and answers to the Latin forma, form. Whence by the term ideas we understand the forms of things that exist external (præter) to the things themselves. The form of a thing existing external to it may serve two purposes: 1. That it should be the exemplar (ideal) of that of which it is said to be the form, or that it should be, as it were, the principle of knowledge itself, according to which the forms of things that may be known are said to exist in the understanding. And in either point of view it is necessary to suppose ideas, as will be at once manifest. In all things that are not generated by chance, it is necessary that the production of some form should be the result of the act of generation. For an agent would not act with reference to a particular form, except so far as he was already in possession of the likeness of the form in question. In some agents the form of the thing to be produced already pre-exists in a natural manner (secundum esse naturale), as in those things which act by natural laws; but in others the form pre-exists in the intellect (secundum esse intelligibile). Thus the likeness or form of a house already exists in the mind of the builder, and this may be called the idea of a house; for the architect intends to make the house resemble the form which he has conceived in his mind. As, then, the world is not made by chance, it follows that there must exist a form (idea) in the mind of God, after the likeness of which the world was made.”

Quite similar to these words of S. Thomas are the statements of S. Augustine, Dionysius, and other fathers, who had to deal on the one hand with the philosophy of Plato, which taught that God created the world out of eternal matter, and according to an exemplar or ideal existing externally to himself (κοσμος νοητος); and on the other with the Gnostic Pantheism, which taught that the divine idea after which the world was created was identical with God, and creation consequently no more than an extension or manifestation of the Godhead.

Similar also is the following passage of the Abate Rosmini:

“‘Fide intelligimus aptata esse secula verbo Dei, ut ex invisibilibus visibilia fierent’ (Heb. xi. 3). What ever are these invisible things from which the things that are visible have been drawn? They are the conceptions of the Almighty, which subsisted in his mind before the creation of the universe; they are the decrees which he has framed from all eternity, but which remained invisible to all creatures, because these latter were not yet formed and the former not yet carried into execution. These decrees and conceptions are the design of the wise Architect, according to which the building has to be formed. But this design was never at any time drawn out on any external material, on paper or stone, but existed only in his own mind” (Rosmini, Della Divina Providenza, ed. Milano, 1846, p. 57).

Creation proceeds from the thought and will of God jointly exercised, and is something external to God, which he has brought into being out of absolute nothing, to quote Professor Staudenmaier: “The world is God’s idea of the world brought into being, and the perfection of the original world consisted in the fact that it absolutely corresponded to the divine idea” (Die Lehre von der Idee, p. 914). “Et vidit Deus quod esset bonum” (Gen. i. 10).

The creation which we see, and of which we are ourselves immediately a part, bears the appearance of being an organized system, far outreaching the powers of our intelligence; and we conclude intuitively that not only as an organized whole it answers to the idea of God, which contemplated system, order, harmony, and subordination of parts, but, further, that every several part, as it came forth from the hand of the Creator, was found good. In creation there are two principal parts, the material world and the world of spirits. Matter, from the first instant of creation, being without free will or mind, necessarily obeys the laws of its Creator, and at once absolutely answers to the divine idea. But spirits were created in the image of God, and were endowed with the likeness of his power of thought and will, and with a personality resulting from the possession of these gifts. To them, therefore, there is a moral trial or probation to be passed through before they finally correspond to the idea of their Creator. It is indeed true that from the instant of their creation they realize the divine idea, in so far as that idea contemplates them, about to enter upon probation; but their passing through this trial or probation to the attainment of their perfection is also contemplated, and of this perfection the divine idea is the exemplar or form.

Spirits, then, formed in the image of God, and endowed with created being, intellect, and will, in the present system of creation, pass through probation; and their probation consists in learning to possess these gifts in subordination to their Creator, who is absolute being, intellect, and will; and this trial is necessary to the perfection of their nature and to their passing into the possession of their permanent place (ταξις) in the great order and harmony of the universe. There is not, and cannot be, in the mind of God, any idea of evil. Evil has its sole origin in the rebellion of the created spirit when it refuses to possess and use its power of thought and will in subordination to the law and majesty of its Creator. And hence, although the rebel spirit answered equally with others at the first moment of its creation to the divine idea, yet, inasmuch as in its subsequent career it has placed itself against its Creator, it has ceased to answer to the divine idea; it has become a contradiction to it, and henceforward its existence is evil.

The case as regards the human creation does not differ at all in principle. Man is also a spirit, though his spirit be united to a body, and he is possessed of the same trinity of gifts—being, thought, and will—although from the circumstance of his coming into the world in the form of an infant, with his intellect and will in a state of germ, appointed to acquire their natural maturity only in process of time, his probation would seem to require a longer period than that of the angels, and to be subject to the fluctuation of rebellions, succeeded by repentances, and vice versâ—all which hardly seems probable in their case. Still man, like the angels, passes through his probation; and when he has passed through it, he is found either realizing the idea of his Creator, and happy, or fallen from it, and henceforward in contradiction with it, for an eternity of misery. The idea of the Creator is to man, as well as to the angels, the exemplar, or pattern, of his perfection.

Analogous to the first creation of the world is the second great work of God—the redemption or new creation. Its decree is from God the Father; the carrying into effect the Father’s decree is the work of God the Eternal Son; and the conducting it to perfection during the period of its growth and probation is the work of the Holy Ghost.

Nor is this work of redemption based upon any fundamental change in the eternal idea of God, after which man was created. The eternal idea of God is incapable of change, and the work of grace or redemption is the restoration to a state of grace of the whole race, which, in the person of Adam, fell into a condition of helpless although not total contradiction with the divine idea; and in his restored state of redemption the power has been again given to him of issuing out of his probation through the aid and guidance of the Holy Ghost, conformable to the unchanged, eternal idea of the Father.

To prevent misconception, it may be further remarked, in the words of Professor Staudenmaier, “The second creation (or scheme of redemption) builds itself, on the one side, on all that is indestructible in the divine idea of man, as intelligence and freedom, and at the same time labors to restore again that which was really lost by the original transgression, viz., the supernatural principle and the justice and holiness of life which stands in connection with it. Hence under the scheme of redemption man comes to the perfection of his nature, in the manner in which that perfection was contemplated in the divine idea (in der Idee gesetz war), viz., as the union of grace and free will (in der Einheit von Freiheit und Gnade).” (Die Lehre von der Idee, p. 923).

The divine idea, then, is the exemplar or pattern of perfection (προορισμος παραδειγμα, forma seu exemplar, das Musterbild) which, under the scheme of redemption, man is called to realize. And his term of probation, under the guidance and influence of God the Holy Ghost, is so constituted as to be the trial of both his intellect and will, which in man, as in God, are mutually co-operating and co-ordinate springs of action. But though in man intellect and will must ever move hand in hand and in mutual concert to determine his actions, yet it is possible for him to go astray through the special fault of one or the other, and to be found at the end of his probation not to be what he might and ought to have been, as well through some special error of the understanding as through some vicious act of the will. Hence, after that the sacrifice had been paid which purchased man’s restoration to a state of grace, God the Father, in the Son and through the Eternal Spirit, went on to provide the aid that was found absolutely necessary to protect the erring intellect and the infirm will, in order that men might be preserved in the state of grace, be guided in it onward to their perfection, and be furnished with the medicinal means of restoration in case they might fall from it.

To this end the great society of the Catholic Church was instituted by God the Son, and the command given to the Apostolic College to go forth to collect and organize it out of all the nations of the earth: “As the Father hath sent me, so send I you”; while the work of God the Holy Ghost is the invisible imparting of spiritual gifts to the baptized members of this society, according to the needs of their rank, position, ministry, and functions; and the whole work is directed to the end that man may issue out of his probation fulfilling and realizing the divine idea.

Now, as God recognizes, in the probation of man, the trial of both intellect and will, and wills that not without the free exercise of these he should attain the perfection of his nature, our first parents, in the state of innocence, would, from their then enjoying a communication with heaven, possess, perhaps, partly through intuition, partly from revelation, a knowledge of the divine Exemplar, into conformity with which they were called to bring themselves. But when man fell and lost the illumination of sanctifying grace, then the perception of the divine ideal would be obscured and would cease to exist, except in the way of the few mercifully-surviving glimpses of their higher destination, which the history of our fallen race seems to indicate were never wholly lost.

It must be obvious, then, that a clear and practical view of the divine Exemplar, which we are required to resemble, is as much the natural guide of the intellect in its probation as the view of the moral attributes of God is that which wins the heart and leads captive the will. It was, among other reasons, in order to place this Exemplar before us, that the Eternal Son became man, and thus laid before the intellect of man, in his own most sacred humanity, the incarnate Exemplar of that which humanity was to aim at becoming during the course and at the issue of its probation. And if a doubt could for a moment cross the mind as to the question, What is the likeness or ideal that a Christian, as far as the power is given to him, should seek to aim at bringing himself to resemble? it is answered by the fact of the Incarnation of the Son of God. He is the incarnate Exemplar, or Pattern, for our study. His sacred humanity absolutely answers to the idea of God the Father; and they who, through the aid of God the Holy Ghost, succeed in acquiring a resemblance to this incarnate Pattern, will be found at the issue of their probation so far to realize the end for which they were created.

The sacred humanity of the Eternal Son being now no longer visible in the same manner as in the days when he taught with his apostles in Judæa, the church which he has founded has come to supply his place, and, by her varied means of instruction, to bring the knowledge of this divine Exemplar home to the minds of all. In the words of an author quoted by Professor Möhler, the church is a continuation of Christ (ein fortgesetzer Christus).

And thus with the question of Christian song. The intellect must at once feel that it needs a guide, and cannot be safely entrusted to itself. Nor can this guide be any other than the divine idea. And here, of course, it would be a manifest impiety for a human mind to attempt to construct, à priori, an idea of music, and then to call its own work the divine idea; for the whole value of the inquiry that is to follow is built on the truth that the main features and the subsequently-detailed constituent parts of the divine idea, as they have been laid down, are what they claim to be; and so far as these are capable of being disputed, the comparison will of course fail of its effect. Professor Staudenmaier justly observes, in treating of the creation, “Both ideas, the divine and the human, stand in this relation to each other: that God realizes his own eternal idea of the world in the act of creation, while man has to acquire his idea of the world from reasoning and an experimental examination of the world as it exists after creation. As the idea, then, to God is the first, and the world last, so, on the contrary, to man the world is first and the idea last, as that, namely, which he has had to gain for himself, as the result of a scientific examination of the divine work” (Die Christliche Dogmatik, vol. iii. part 1, p. 42.)

But if it be possible for the human mind to obtain a view of the divine idea of the creation from the study of the world as it exists, it must be also possible, in an analogous manner, to gain a view of the divine idea of Christian music from the history of the church and the legislation of councils, from the doctrine of the apostles and fathers of the church, and, lastly, from the reason of the thing. The contrary supposition would involve the inadmissible alternative that our divine Redeemer, who had done so much to furnish our understanding with its needed measure of guidance in the fact of his Incarnation and his living example, has left us without any principle at all to serve as our guide in the choice and employment of sacred music. This cannot be. The divine Teacher of mankind cannot, for his mercy’s sake, have left us to ourselves in so important a matter, that so much concerns the adoration he has himself taught us to pay to his Father and the Holy Spirit. It must be possible, from his own sacred words, from those of his inspired apostles, from the doctrine of the fathers, from the history and legislation of the church, as well as from our own Christian reason and instinct, as has been humbly and imperfectly attempted in the ensuing inquiry, to gather a view of the divine idea sufficiently clear and intelligible, sufficiently trustworthy and decisive, to serve as a guide for the understandings of those who feel the deep and dear interest of the question and their own liability to fatal error, with all its destructive consequences.

And if the means of acquiring such a view be open, it need not be said how great a duty there is to search for it; and in whatever proportion there be ground for believing that it has been, even though imperfectly, attained, it becomes so far a duty—an element in our probation, as well as a sacred and meritorious work, by every tender, considerate, legitimate, and untiring endeavor, to seek to bring Catholic Church music into conformity with it.

I. GENERAL STATEMENT OF THE BASIS OF THE COMPARISON.

It would be surely a superfluous labor at the outset of an inquiry which it is desirable should be as short and condensed as possible to prove, in a learned manner, the great practical importance of the question, What, under our present circumstances, is the wisest, the best, and the most effectual use of music in the Catholic Church? The œcumenical and provincial councils that have made ritual chant the subject of their legislation; the authors, such as Cardinal Bona and Abbot Gerbertus, subsequent to the Council of Trent, not to speak of those who lived before it, who spent their lives in the study of all that Christian antiquity has thought and written upon it; the line of illustrious Roman pontiffs who made it their study, with a view to the true direction of its use in the church, need but to be recalled to mind to place in its true light the exceedingly practical importance of any controversy which affects its efficiency or mode of employment in the Catholic Church.[113] Moreover, if there were no such evidence of the importance of the question at issue to be found in the history of the past, still the mere obvious fact that vocal music enters so naturally into all the feelings of humanity, and domesticates itself so easily in every people, would be sufficient to explain its importance. People in any society are so insensibly moulded by all that surrounds them, are so much the creatures of the system in which they move, and grow up so naturally in conformity with it, that in such a society as the Catholic Church, organized by a divine wisdom, with a view to the training and instruction of its members, it is simply impossible that an agency such as music, possessed of such power for good or evil, could ever be regarded with indifference, or that there should be no definite views with regard to it, and its employment be abandoned to the indiscretion and caprice of individuals.

A question of individual taste, then, the present inquiry cannot for an instant be considered. Indeed, from the moment it were thus regarded it would have lost its whole value. Persons are no doubt to be found who would take a long journey and pay a large sum to hear Beethoven’s music for the Ordinary of the Mass sung among the performances of a music-meeting, who, as far as music was concerned, and setting aside the miracle, would hardly care to go across the street to hear S. Gregory sing Mass with his school of cantors, were they all to rise from the dead. So that if music in the Catholic Church could for a moment be considered as belonging of right to the dominion of individual taste, further controversy, it is plain, would be so far quite out of the question. The tastes of individuals, if not only devoid of rule, still do not go by any rule sufficiently clear to be made the subject of a formal controversy.

But in the Catholic Church the question is not, and cannot be, one of individual taste. When the divine Redeemer called his church to the work of training every nation and people under heaven, and gave to it the gift of sacred song, to be used as a powerful auxiliary agency in their work, we are bound to conceive that there existed in his divine mind a clear and definite intention, both relatively to the end it was intended to accomplish in the midst of Christian society, and to its application to this end as time should advance.

Sacred song has certainly a mission to accomplish upon earth, as well as the proper manner of its application to its proposed end; and both alike have been, in common with the whole work of creation, from the beginning contemplated and intended by Almighty God.

Now, the end intended by Almighty God, in his work of redemption in this world, as say theologians, is primarily the manifestation of his own glory; and, secondarily, the re-establishment of order and virtue, piety and sanctity, in human society, with a view to the life to come, or, in other words, with a view to the true and eternal, as distinguished from the false and fleeting, happiness of his creatures. From whence it would seem to result that the true character of the ecclesiastical song and its true application will be that in which it tends, in its own proper degree, to become an auxiliary in the accomplishment of this great end. Nor is it a second or a third rate efficaciousness that should be deemed sufficient. For if Almighty God, as many theologians seem with so much justice to say, not from any external necessity, but from his own perfections, in virtue of which he is a law to himself, freely chooses only those means that are most efficacious to the end he proposes, so, in like manner, the Catholic Church, filled as she is with the outpouring of the divine Spirit, and called to the imitation of the divine perfections, cannot but in like manner feel constrained to choose that alone for her music which tends, with the best and most certain efficacy, to the attainment of the end which God has designed in the gift.

The foregoing remarks have, I hope, now laid the foundation on which the proposed inquiry may be conducted. And I think I may be allowed to say in the outset that an inquiry which has for its object to ascertain what that may be in music and in the manner of its use which answers best to the idea existing in the mind of God, unless it very much belie its pretensions and profession, may justly claim respect; and that the whole investigation is thus at once raised beyond the horizon of anything like human partisanship, as well as the sphere of those little irritabilities with which discussions upon music may so easily be disfigured. And without at all presuming that the views here advocated ought necessarily to be adopted, the inquiry is still not a valueless service rendered to religion, if it succeed no further than in impressing upon the minds of those into whose way it may fall the fundamental idea upon which it is built, viz., that the mission of sacred song in the Catholic Church is to realize, not the ideas of men, which may and do differ in each individual, but the idea of the merciful and good God, who gave it for his own purposes of mercy and benevolence.

And since the idea, as it subsists in the mind of God, relative to the use of song in the Catholic Church, is made the sole keystone of the whole inquiry, as well to guard an avenue against possible misconceptions as also the more clearly to lay the basis of the discussion, it will be necessary to state, at a somewhat greater length, what the divine idea of sacred song, in its first broad outline, may be taken to be.

Sacred song, it has been said, is to be regarded as the musical associate and auxiliary of the work of Christian instruction and sanctification in the church. It cannot be anything or everything that is luscious or pleasing in music; moreover, it is an idea that goes beyond the notion of mere tune or melody, or even of the richest combination of sound that art ever produced. Sacred song, in the divine idea, must be more than mere music. For though it be true that tunes and other works of art in music are so far things by themselves as to be capable of being written in notation, and thus preserved, still it seems impossible that mere tunes and mere music should answer to the divine idea of sacred song.

When music has ceased to be mere sound; when it has been taken up by the feelings and living intelligence of the human heart and mind; when these have wedded it to themselves, have created in it a dwelling-place and a home, and out of it have formed for themselves a second language and range of expression; when the charm of melody has become the organ of a living soul and an energetic intelligence, then there results the birth of an element of the utmost power for good or evil in the heart of human society; and it is in this power, Christianized and reduced to subservience to the church, that there may be seen the first outline of the divine idea of sacred song.

This principle is thus stated by Mgr. Parisis, Bishop of Langres:

“To preserve the true character of the ecclesiastical chant it is necessary to recall to mind the following essential maxim:

‘Music for words, and not words for music.’

This is not the principle of worldly music, in which the words are often nothing but the unperceived and insignificant auxiliary of the sound.

“In religion this cannot be, because articulate language is the essential basis of all outward worship, especially public worship. This is a certain truth of both reason and tradition. It is a truth of reason; for language, that marvellous faculty which the Creator has given to man alone, is exclusively capable of finding an adequate expression for a worship of spirit and truth. It is also a truth of tradition; for the Catholic divine Offices have always been composed of words either drawn from the Sacred Scriptures or consecrated by tradition and chosen by the church. It is superfluous to press the demonstration of a principle that has never even been contested by any sect of separatists and does not admit of serious doubt” (Pastoral Instruction on the Song of the Church, part ii.)

The three great social convulsions of France have given a remarkable proof of the above-mentioned power of song. Each called into being, and was furthered in its rise and progress, by a song, La Marseillaise, La Parisienne, and that whose well-known burden runs thus:

Separate the words of these songs from their melodies, and the result would probably be the insignificance of both. But unite them, see them pass into the mouths and hearts of convulsed multitudes, observe men, under the delirium of their influence, march up to the cannon’s mouth and plunge themselves headlong into eternity, and we have an instance of what is meant by saying that music, united to intelligence, is an agent of nearly unlimited power for good or evil in human society.

This, then, is the sense in which sacred song is to be viewed as contemplated in the divine idea, viz., as the union of music with thought, feeling, and intelligence; in the words of the apostle (1 Cor.), I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also—not, of course, as taking the understanding out of its natural medium, language, but as clothing this its natural expression with a superadded charm, and a charm too, as will be afterwards seen, which has the gift of absorbing and, to a certain extent, of reproducing the idea annexed to it. The church music which the divine idea contemplates is that vocal song which Christian truth, in all its varied range, has appropriated, has taken from the sphere of music and wedded to herself, with the view of using the song thus associated to herself as the instrument by which she may pass into the mouths of men, and in this way find a home in their hearts. Analytically, then, in the sacred song contemplated by the divine idea, two separate elements are to be acknowledged—song and truth—but practically only one; for in practice they are indissolubly linked together, and constitute one moral whole, as body and soul together make up but one living being, to which, even more than to the sacred architecture of a church, the beautiful sentiment of the Ritual may be applied:

Turning now, with this view of sacred song, to inquire what the Catholic Church possesses, after 1800 years of labor with the people of every variety of race and climate, in realization of the idea above stated, her various rituals, now for the most part withdrawn to make way for the beautiful Ritual of the Roman Church, present themselves to view. These rituals and their chant[114] have, we may be sure, at least in their day, been in the church the fulfilment, imperfect indeed and inadequate, as all that man does in this world necessarily is, yet still the fulfilment of the divine idea with respect to song. More cannot be necessary in support of this statement than the fact of the innumerable churches that have overspread Christendom, and the innumerable companies of saintly men whose lives were spent in the choirs of these churches—not, of course, to the exclusion of other duties and spheres of labor, yet mainly spent in the choral celebration of the offices of the Ritual and in all that accessory labor of musical study and tuition which the organization of a choir and the becoming celebration of the divine Office imply. The divine idea, in accordance with which sacred song has a fixed and determinate end to realize in the church, is the only way to account for this vast phenomenon in the history of Christendom. Nothing but an idea in the mind of God that sacred song is the living adjunct of the living truth, which the Catholic Church was sent to teach, could have had the power to call into being, not alone the rituals themselves and their song, but the innumerable choirs of Christendom which have been gathered together and governed by a more than human wisdom of organization for the purpose of their celebration.

Bearing in mind, then, that sacred song is the combination of music with the words of inspired truth, I propose, in the ensuing inquiry, to draw a detailed comparison between the Roman liturgy and its traditional chant, on the one hand, and the works of the modern art of music, which constitute the corps de musique, if I may use the expression now in use, adapted as they are to parts of the liturgy, and in their own way contributing to supply the want that is felt for sacred music; and this with the view to ascertain, as far as may be, from the result of the comparison, in which of the two the divine idea and intention is best answered and fulfilled. The human mind will not, and indeed ought not to, submit to any mere human idea, but ought willingly to accept the idea of God; and hence nothing but the divine idea, and this alone, is or can be the key to the present inquiry.

II THE COMPARISON CARRIED INTO ITS DETAILS.

It has been already laid down that sacred song is the union of music to the words of inspired truth, with the view of its thus becoming an auxiliary in the work of Christian instruction and sanctification.

Before passing on to the approaching details let us stop for a moment fairly to consider the result of this principle as it affects the comparison generally.

Here, on the one hand, we have the Canto Fermo, with its vast variety of music, embracing an equally varied range in the stores of divine revelation, inasmuch as it is the counterpart in song of the entire Ritual; on the other hand we have the works of modern music, of which I am speaking, embracing scarcely more than a fraction of the Ritual. With a vast numerical rather than a real variety in point of the one constitutive element of sacred song—viz., music—they are poverty itself as regards the other—viz., inspired truth—the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei, from the Ordinary of the Mass, and a small number of hymns, antiphons, and scattered verses from the Holy Scriptures, in the form of motets, being literally the sum-total of their possession in this element.

And now to carry the comparison into its details. The divine idea of sacred song could not have been known to us without a revelation, the very gift itself being, from its nature, the companion of a revelation. We are not, therefore, as has been remarked in the introduction, thrown upon our own natural powers of speculation either for our general knowledge of the divine idea itself or for gaining an insight into its constituent details; indeed, without revelation this would have been altogether beyond our natural capacities. But since God became man and founded his own society, the Catholic Church, and both taught himself and placed inspired teachers in it to succeed him, the ideas of God as to questions that concern the welfare of his church have, through the Incarnation of the Son, been brought to the level of our capacities, and are to be found in the Scripture and in Christian theology, and are there to be sought for as occasion may require. Thus examined, then, by the light of the Christian revelation, the divine idea of sacred song will, without urging that these are co-extensive with it, admit of being resolved into the ensuing points; the truth of which will be proved separately, as they come forward successively in the course of the comparison. They are as follows:

I. Authority: 1, ecclesiastical; 2, moral.

II. Claim to the completeness and order of a system.

III. Moral fitness: 1, as a sacrificial song; 2, as a song for the offices of the church.

IV. Fitness for passing among the people as a congregational song.

V. Moral influence in the formation of character.

VI. The medium or vehicle for divine truth passing among the people.

VII. Medicinal virtue.

VIII. Capacities for durable popularity.

IX. Security against abuse.

X. Catholicity, or companionship of the Catholic doctrines over the globe.

Upon these, then, the comparison may be now conducted.

TO BE CONTINUED.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

The Internal Mission of the Holy Ghost. By Henry Edward, Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1875.

Those who have read the most eminent prelate’s Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost will know what a spiritual and intellectual feast is before them in the present work, “which traces,” says the author, in his dedicatory preface to the Oblates of S. Charles, “at least the outline of the same subject.”

“The former book,” he explains, “was on the special office of the Holy Ghost in the one visible church, which is the organ of his divine voice. The present volume deals with the universal office of the Holy Ghost in the souls of men. The former or special office dates from the Incarnation and the day of Pentecost; the latter or universal office dates from the Creation, and at this hour still pervades by its operations the whole race of mankind. It is true to say with S. Irenæus, ‘Ubi Ecclesia, ibi Spiritus—Where the church is, there is the Spirit’; but it would not be true to say, Where the church is not, neither is the Spirit there. The operations of the Holy Ghost have always pervaded the whole race of men from the beginning, and they are now in full activity even among those who are without the church; for God ‘will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.’”