Volume 21 — CHAPTER IV. WE ALL MEET TO PART. (continued 2)

On this latter subject, M. d’Arsac writes as follows:

“They” (the Brothers) “knelt down upon the damp earth—in the ice, in the snow, or in the mud—raising the heavy heads, questioning the livid lips, the extinguished gaze, and, after affording the last solace that was possible, recommencing their difficult and perilous journey across the ball-ploughed land, through the heaps of scattered fragments and of corpses, amid the movements to and fro upon the field of carnage. Very gently they lift this poor fellow, wounded in the chest, raising him on a supple hammock of plaited straw, keeping the head high, and placing a pillow under the shoulders, avoiding anything like a shock.… Thus they advance with slow and even pace never stopping for a moment to wipe their foreheads. A woollen covering envelops the wounded man from the shoulders downward. Often his stiffened hand still clutches his weapon with a spasmodic grasp, … the arm hangs helplessly, and from minute to minute a shiver runs over the torn frame. He faints, or in a low whisper names those he loves. The Brothers quicken their steps. The ‘Binder’ carriage is not yet there; so they lay their burden gently down upon a mattress, in some room transformed into an ambulance, where a number of young men, in turned-up sleeves and aprons of operation, are in attendance. They pour a cordial through the closed teeth of the sufferer, complete the amputation of the all but severed limb, and do that to save life which the enemy did to destroy it.”

The Brother Director of Montrouge gives the following account of the night which followed the battle of Champigny:

“Being stronger and more robust than the rest, I got into one of Potin’s wagons, and returned to beat the country around Champigny, Petit-Bry, and Tremblay. On reaching the plateau of Noisy, where lay many wounded, uttering cries of pain and despair, a soldier, who was cutting a piece of flesh from a horse killed that morning, told me that the Prussians would not allow them to be removed, and that if I went further I should be made prisoner. I went on, notwithstanding, in the hope of succoring these poor fellows, but presently a patrol fire barred the way against me, and compelled me to believe the statement of the marauding soldier. It was one o’clock in the morning; and I went away, grieved to the heart at the thought of those unhappy men lying there on the cold earth, into which their life-blood was soaking, in the piercing cold, and under the pitiless eye of an inhuman enemy. The man who drove my conveyance was afraid, and his wearied horses refused to go a step further; I left them therefore in the road, and, lantern in hand, walked along the lanes, through the woods, across the fields, but found everywhere nothing but corpses. I called, and listened, but everywhere the only answer was the silence of death. At last I went towards the glimmering lights of the watch-fires of our soldiers, and learnt that on the hill, into a house which had been left standing, several men had been carried at nightfall; and there in fact I found them, twenty-one in number, lying at the foot of a wall whither they had dragged themselves from a ditch where they had been left, and patiently waiting until some one should come to their assistance. Happily I was soon joined here by others, who helped me to place the wounded in different vehicles, and we set out for Paris, where we arrived at half-past four in the morning. After seeing them safely housed, I set out again for Champigny, longing to know the fate of the poor creatures whose cries had pierced my very soul, without my being able to succor them. I hastened to the plateau of Noisy, and there found eighty frozen corpses. Some had died in terrible contortions, grasping the earth and tearing up the grass around them; others, with open eyes and closed fists, appeared fierce and threatening even in death; while others again, whose stiffened hands were raised to heaven, announced, by the composure of their countenances, that they had expired in calmness and resignation, and perhaps pardoning their executioners the physical and moral tortures they endured.”

During any suspension of arms, the Brothers buried the dead, digging long trenches in the hard and snow-covered earth, in which the corpses, in their uniforms, were laid in rows. A single day did not suffice for these interments, everything being done with order and respect. When all was ended, the falling snow soon spread one vast winding-sheet over the buried ranks, while the Brothers, having finished their sad day’s toil by torchlight, knelt down and said the De profundis.

Every fresh combat saw these acts of intrepid charity renewed. Brother Philip, although, on account of his advanced age, not himself on the field, was the moving spirit of the work. Daily, before the Brothers started for their labors, he multiplied his affectionate and thoughtful attentions, going from one to another during the frugal breakfast which preceded their departure, with here a word of encouragement and there of regard. He arranged and put in readiness with his own hands the meagre pittance for the day, and examined the canteens and wallets to see that nothing was wanting. His paternal countenance wore an expression of happiness and affection, not untinged with melancholy, and seemed to say, “They go forth numerous and strong, but will they all return?”

On the morning of the 21st of December, 1870, long before daybreak, Brother Philip and a hundred and fifty of his “children” were at their usual place near the Champ de Mars; others of their number, under the direction of Brother Clementis, having been sent on the previous evening to sleep at St. Denis. The roar of the cannon on this morning was terrible. It was the battle of Bourget. The Brothers, after reaching the barrier of La Villette, hastened to the points where men must have fallen, and were soon carrying the wounded in their arms to the ambulance-carriages, and returning for more, regardless of the hail of shot whistling around them. Two courageous Dominicans had joined the company led on by Brother Clementis, which was preceded by a Brother carrying the red-cross flag of the Convention of Geneva, and not attended by any soldier, when they received a charge of musketry. One of the Brothers, “Frère Nethelme,” fell mortally wounded, and was laid on the litter he was carrying for others, and taken by two of his companions to St. Denis, whither Brother Philip immediately hastened on receiving tidings of what had befallen him. Brother Nethelme was one of the masters at S. Nicolas, Rue Vaugirard, and thirty-one years of age. He lived three days of great suffering and perfect resignation, and died on Christmas Eve. His funeral took place on S. Stephen’s Day, December 26, in the Church of S. Sulpice, which was thronged with a sympathizing multitude. This death of one of their number, instead of chilling the zeal of the Brothers, kindled a fresh glow of their courageous ardor.

Other trials of a similar nature were in store for the Superior-General. When, in the midst of the bombardment of January, 1871, great havoc was made in the house of S. Nicolas by the bursting of a shell, it was with an aching heart that he beheld so many of the pupils killed or wounded, and that, a fortnight after the funeral of Brother Nethelme, he followed the young victims to their graves. This cruel bombardment on the quarters of the Luxembourg and the Invalides excited the minds of the people to vengeance, and led to the sanguinary attempt of Buzenval. Brother Philip having had notice the evening before, a hundred of the Brothers assembled in the Tuileries, from whence they started for the scene of action, and approached the park of Buzenval through a hailstorm of balls, to find the ground already strewn with wounded. The soaking in of the snow having made the land a perfect marsh, greatly increased the difficulty of their labor, but they only exerted themselves the more, astonishing those who observed them. On the 19th the Committee of the Ambulances of the Press for the second time addressed to the Superior-General its thanks and congratulations.

After the battle near Joinville-le-Pont, the Brothers had to carry the wounded a league before reaching the carriages.

In this brief sketch we can give but a very inadequate idea of the work of the Brothers, not only in collecting and housing the wounded, but also in nursing them with unwearied assiduity day and night. The ambulance at Longchamps, a long wooden building, had been organized by Dr. Ricord, the first physician in Paris, and an excellent Christian, who had obtained numerous auxiliaries from Brother Philip. One of these, Brother Exupérien, showed an extraordinary solicitude for the four hundred wounded of whom he there shared the charge. The cold was intense; there was scarcely any fuel; and food of any kind was difficult to be had. This good Brother never wearied in his constant and often far-distant search for supplies for the many and pressing necessities of the sufferers; day after day walking long distances, and often having to exercise considerable ingenuity to get even the scanty provision which his perseverance succeeded in obtaining.

Brother Philip bestowed his especial interest on the ambulance established in the Mother-house, Rue Oudinot, and which was called the ambulance of S. Maurice. The novices had been removed into the nooks and corners of the establishment, so as to give plenty of air and space to the suffering soldiers. All the Brothers in this house, young and old, devoted themselves to their sick and wounded; Brother Philip setting the example. He would go from one bed to another, contrive pleasant little surprises, and do everything that could be done to cheer the spirits of the patients as well as to afford them physical relief. The Abbé Roche, the almoner of the mother-house, exercised with the greatest prudence and kindness the priestly office in this ambulance.

On the 1st of January, 1871, one of the soldiers decorated at Champigny for bravery read aloud to Brother Philip, in the “great room,” turned into an ambulance, a “compliment,” in which he offered him, as a New Year’s gift on behalf of all, the expression of their gratitude. On the 6th, in a letter to the Superior-General from Count Sérurier, vice-president of the Société de Secours, and delegate of the Minister of War and of the Marine, he says: “All France is penetrated with admiration, reverence, and gratitude for the examples of patriotism and self-devotion afforded by your institute in the midst of the trials sent by Providence upon our country.”

The first Brother who re-entered Paris on the day after the signing of the armistice at Versailles was the Director of the orphanage at Igny. It was like an apparition once more from the world without, after the long imprisonment under the fire of the enemy.

It must not be forgotten that, besides all that we have mentioned from the beginning of the war to the end of the first siege, teaching was not neglected by the Brothers for a single day; all else that they were doing was but a supplement to their ordinary occupations; and all went well at the same time, in the schools, the ambulances, and on the field of battle. It was as if they multiplied themselves for the good of their fellow-countrymen.

Acknowledgments in honor of their courageous devotion were sent from nearly every civilized country; but amongst all these we select one for mention as having a particular interest for Americans. We give it in the words of M. Poujoulat—first stating, however, that the Académie Française had awarded an exceptional prize, declared “superior to all the other prizes by its origin and its object,” to the Institute of the Christian Brothers. M. Poujoulat writes as follows:[138]

“In 1870, we were abandoned by every government, but when our days of misfortune commenced, we were not forgotten by the nations. There arose, as it were, a compassionate charity over all the earth to assuage our sorrows. The amount of gifts was something enormous. One single city of the United States, Boston, with its environs, collected the sum of eight hundred thousand francs. The Worcester, a vessel laden with provisions, set sail for Havre, but on hearing of the conclusion of peace, the insurrection, and the second siege of Paris, the American captain repaired to England, where the ship’s cargo was sold, and the amount distributed among those localities in France which had suffered most. When this had been done, there still remained two thousand francs over, which the members of the Boston Committee offered to the Académie Française, to be added to the prize for virtue which was to be given that year. ‘This gift,’ said the letter with which it was accompanied, ‘is part of a subscription which represents all classes of the citizens of Boston, and is intended to express the sympathy and respect of the Americans for the courage, generosity, and disinterested devotion of the French during the siege of their capital.’

“The Academy, in possession of this gift, deliberated as to whom the prize should be decreed, it being difficult to point out the most meritorious among so many admirable deeds. After having remarked, not without pride, upon the equality of patriotism, the Academy resolved to give to this prize the least personal and the most collective character possible.

“‘We have decreed it,’ said the Duc de Noailles, speaking for the Academy, ‘to an entire body, as humble as it is useful, known and esteemed by every one, and which, in these unhappy times, has, by its devotedness, won for itself a veritable glory: I allude to the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools.’

“After the Director of the Académie Française, in an eloquent speech had justified the decision, he added that ‘this prize would be to the Institute as the Cross of Honor fastened to the flag of the regiment.’”

Already had the Government of the National Defence perseveringly insisted upon Brother Philip’s acceptance of the Cross of the Legion of Honor, the reward of the brave; but his humility led him to do all in his power to escape it, and he had already refused it four times in the course of thirty years. It was only when he was assured that it was not himself, but his Institute, that it was desired to decorate in the person of its Superior-General, that, sorely against his will, he ceased to resist. Dr. Ricord, in his quality of principal witness of the devotedness of the Brothers, was charged to attach the Cross of Honor to Brother Philip’s cassock, in the grande salle, or principal room, of the mother house. Never had the saintly Superior known a more embarrassing moment than this in all the course of his long life; and when he conducted Dr. Ricord to the door of the house, he managed so effectively to conceal his new decoration that no one would have suspected its existence. He never wore it after this occasion; and this Cross of Honor which he wished to hide from earth remains as a sort of mysterious remembrance. It has never been found again.

Always clear-sighted and well-informed, the Superior-General had been watching the approach of the insurrection of the 18th of March, and sent away the pupils of the Little and Great Novitiates, foreseeing that Paris was about to fall into the power of the worst enemies of religion and civilization. The satanic character of the Commune declared itself in the words of Raoul Rigault, one of its chiefs, who said: “So long as there remains a single individual who pronounces the name of God, everything has yet to be done, and there more shooting will always be necessary.” The Commune began its work by beating down the cross on the church of S. Géneviève, and putting the red flag in its place. We cannot wonder, therefore, at its hatred of the Christian Brothers—their Christianity being an unpardonable crime. They were not even allowed to remove the wounded, who were left to die untended in the street, rather than that they should be succored by religious.

Two decrees were passed, one putting the state in possession of all property, movable or otherwise, belonging to the religious communities, and the other incorporating into the marching companies all valid citizens between nineteen and forty years of age. The Commune was returning to its traditions of ’93, “interrupted,” it was stated, “by the 9th of Thermidor.” There were to be no more Christian schools; no more Christ; no more religion; no more works of piety, Catechism, First Communion, the Church—all these were proscribed, and none but atheists might keep a school.

But we will give some extracts from a circular issued to his community by the Superior on the 21st of June, 1872, in which he briefly notes down the events of these dreary days:

“The festival of Easter (April 9th) was spent in anxiety, sadness, and mourning, for Monseigneur the Archbishop and several priests have been arrested as hostages.

“April 10th: Some of our Brother Directors were officially informed that my name had been placed on the proscription list, and that I should be arrested forthwith. Yielding, therefore, to the solicitations of my Brother Directors, and to the injunctions of our dear Brother Assistants, I quitted Paris to visit our houses in the provinces.

“On the 11th of April, towards ten o’clock in the morning, a commissioner and delegate of the Commune, accompanied by forty of the National Guard, surrounded the house, announcing that they had orders to take me away, and to search the establishment. Brother Calixtus told them that I was absent, and accompanied them wherever they wished to go. They carried off the money that remained in the chest, as well as two ciboria, two chalices, and a pyx, after which they declared that, in default of finding the Superior, they were to lead off the person who had been left there in his place.

“The dear Brother Calixtus presented himself, and was ordered by the commissioner to follow him; whereupon there ensued a scene which it would be impossible to describe. All the Brothers insisted on following our dear Brother Assistant; and some even of the National Guards were moved to tears. A crowd of people collected in the street, expressing grief and indignation. The commissioner then gave a promise that Brother Calixtus should not be detained a prisoner, at the same time bidding him get into a cab, which took him to the prefecture of police. There he was set at liberty, and returned to the mother-house.

“From the 10th to the 13th our Brothers of Montrouge, Belleville, and S. Nicolas were expelled, and lay teachers put in their place. On the 17th the house at Ménilmontant was searched at the very time that the Brothers were engaged with the classes; they were arrested, and detained prisoners until the 22d, during which time they were threatened and insulted in various ways. On the 18th a staff of military infirmiers was substituted for the Brothers in charge of the ambulance at Longchamps, and the Brother Assistants were officially informed that it was resolved upon to arrest the Brothers en masse, in order either to imprison them or to enrol them for military service. Thus they put soldiers with our sick, and intended to send us on the ramparts to defend the cause of our persecutors, who were also the enemies of order and religion. It was a critical moment, but Providence came to our aid in a particular manner. Many persons, several of whom were unknown to us, offered their assistance in contriving to send out of Paris those of our Brothers who were between nineteen and forty years of age, and, thanks to God’s goodness and to this friendly aid, a certain number, by one means or another, daily effected their escape.

“During the period between the 19th of April and the 7th of May, all our free schools were successively closed, and the emigration of the Brothers continued. This, however, could not be completely accomplished; new orders, more and mote suspicious and oppressive, having been issued by the Commune, an increasingly rigorous surveillance was kept up, and the Brother Director of S. Marguérite and two of his subordinates were arrested in their community. Towards the 7th of May, from thirty to forty of the Brothers who were attempting to escape were also arrested, either at the railway stations or at the city gates, or even outside the ramparts. A few of these were released, but twenty-six were taken to the Concièrgerie, and from thence to Mazas.

“Of all our establishments, one alone never ceased working, namely, that of S. Nicolas, Vaugirard, which, even when times were at their worst, numbered its thirty Brothers and three hundred pupils.

“The projectiles of the besieging army having reached Longchamps, it was found necessary to remove further, into the city the sick and wounded with which the ambulance was crowded. It was then that, on an order of the Committee of Public Health, our house was requisitioned by the Administration of the Press, who required there a hundred beds. It was arranged that the Brothers should undertake the attendance on the sick, but scarcely had they begun to organize the work before a new order arrived from the committee, forbidding any of the Brothers to remain in the house under pain of arrest and imprisonment. Our dear Brother Assistants therefore, with the others who until then had remained at the post of danger, as well as our sick and aged men, found themselves compelled to quit that home which could no longer, alas! be railed the mother, but the widowed, house, and, during five or six days, the abode of pain and death. The ambulance was established there under the direction of the Press, the administrators of which testified a kindly interest towards us, and we gladly acknowledge that to them we owe the preservation of our house, which, but for them, would in all probability have been given up to the flames.

“On Sunday, the 21st of May, there was no Mass in our deserted chapel, from whence the Blessed Sacrament had been removed the evening before. The persecution against us had reached its height, and also its term. That same day the besieging army forced the Gate of St. Cloud, and on the next, the 22d, took possession of our quarter, and put an end for us to the Reign of Terror.…

“All this week was nothing but one sanguinary conflict; our mother-house was crowded with wounded to the number of six hundred; a temporary building had also been erected within its precincts, to which were brought those who were slain in the neighborhood; as many as eighty dead would sometimes be carried in at a time. On Wednesday, the 24th, however, the military authorities decided that the ambulance should be transferred back again to Longchamps, and that the Brothers should immediately be restored to the possession of the mother-house as well as of their other establishments. From that day a new order of things commenced for us, and with it the reflux into Paris of our emigrated Brothers.

“But all were not able to return; some were prisoners at Mazas. Already, out of hatred to religion, the Commune had shot Monseigneur the Archbishop, the cure of the Madeleine, and several other priests, secular and regular, … and they now proposed to shoot all their prisoners, and renew in 1871 the massacre of 1792. But again time failed them.

“The liberating army, like an irresistible torrent, carried away the barricades, and the firing soon began around Mazas, whereupon the keepers of the prison seized the Communist director and locked him up, opening all the doors, and bringing down the captives—between four and five hundred in number—into the court, from whence they made their exit three by three. Our Brothers went out; but only to find themselves entangled in the lines of the Federals, and forced to work at the barricades, until night seemed to favor their escape. It was while he was thus employed that our dearest Brother Néomede-Justin, of Issy, was killed by the bursting of a shell.”

During three days and nights the Brothers were the objects of the most active surveillance, and had to watch their opportunity to recede from one barricade to another. In this way several managed to reach the mother-house on Friday, the 25th; others, on the two following days, but not all. To continue in the words of Brother Philip:

“On Whit-Sunday, towards one o’clock in the morning, all the insurgents were surrounded on the heights of Belleville, disarmed, chained five together, taken to La Roquette (the prison of the condemned), and brought before a council of war. Our two Brothers, who had been also chained to three insurgents, were present at the interrogation of those who had preceded them, and at the execution of sentence of death upon a large number. For the space of three hours they waited thus in the most anxious expectation. When it was their turn to appear, they said that they were Brothers of the Christian Schools, just out of prison, but that for three days they had found it impossible to escape from the vigilant oppression of the insurgents. On ascertaining the truth of their statement, the council gave them a pass, and facilitated their return to the mother-house.

“They came back to us worn out and broken down by fatigue, as well as by all the terrible emotions they had undergone, and blessing God for their wonderful preservation.”

On hearing of the restoration of order the emigrated Brothers hastened back to Paris, their venerable superior joining them at the mother-house on the evening of the 9th of June.

“It was,” writes Brother Philip, “the hour of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, … after which we sang the psalm, Ecce quam bonum, … and then I attempted to say a few words to our dearest Brothers, reunited once more, but I found it impossible, so great was my emotion.”

When, during his absence, Brother Philip had heard of the arrest of Brother Calixtus, he immediately set out from Epernay, to give himself up in the place of his friend; but learning, at St. Denis, that he had been set at liberty, he proceeded to the visitation of other houses of his institute in the provinces. We can understand with what joy these two holy friends would meet again.

After some great calamity has passed away, life, emerging from the regions of death, seems as it were to begin anew. Brother Philip, who regarded the misfortunes of France as a warning from God, invited all the members of his institute to carry on their work with increased energy and devotion. From the beginning of the year 1872, as if he had had some presentiment of his approaching end, he gave more attention than ever to the perfecting of his “children,” and completed various little works of piety which he thought might prove useful to them. An illness which he had at this time he regarded as a first warning. The Archbishop of Paris, Mgr. Guibert, who had not then long succeeded his martyred predecessor, came at this time to visit the venerable Superior.

Brother Philip presided at all the sittings of the general chapter which was assembled from the 12th of June, 1873, to the 2d of July. Towards the conclusion of the last sitting, in reply to some respectful words which had been addressed to him, he answered: “My dearest Brothers, soon, yes, soon you will again assemble together, but I shall be no longer among you. I shall have had to render to God an account of my administration.” It was with heavy hearts that the Brother Assistants heard these words, while their Superior proceeded to consecrate the Institute to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Our Holy Father Pius IX. had for the heart of Brother Philip an unspeakable attraction. On the 22d of October, 1873, the latter set out on his fifth journey to Rome. His first visit to the Eternal City was in 1859, when he was welcomed by the Pope with paternal affection. He was there again in 1862, for the canonization of the Martyrs of Japan, when he had an opportunity of conversing with the bishops of many distant regions in which the Brothers of the Christian Schools were established. On this second occasion, the day after his arrival in Rome, he hastened to the Vatican and mingled with the crowd in the hall of audience; but the Pope having observed his name in the long list of the persons present, immediately sought with his eye the humble Superior, and, perceiving him far off in the last rank of the assembly, his Holiness, with that clear and sweet voice so well known to the faithful, said to him, Philip, where shall we find bread enough for all this multitude? (S. John vi. 5), and bade him come near. Brother Philip, confused at so great a mark of attention, approached, and, kneeling before the Holy Father, presented the filial offering of which he was the bearer on the part of his Institute. He made his third journey to Rome in 1867, to be present at the eighteenth centenary anniversary of the Martyrdom of the Apostles SS. Peter and Paul. On seeing him, the Pope said, “Here is Brother Philip, whose name is known in all the world.”

“It will soon be so at Madagascar, Most Holy Father,” answered Brother Philip, smiling, “as we are just now establishing ourselves there.”

In 1869, about the time of the opening of the Vatican Council, the Superior-General was again at Rome. True as the needle to the magnet was his loyal heart to the Vicar of Christ; and yet once more must the veteran soldier look upon the face of his chief before laying down his arms and receiving his crown. He took his fifth and last journey to the city of Peter in 1872, accompanied by Brother Firminien. Of this last visit, which especially concerned the beatification of the founder of his Institute, as well as of the preceding ones, full particulars are given in the work of M. Poujoulat. The Pope received Brother Philip to private as well as to public audiences, asking many questions and conversing with interest upon the details of the various works in which the order was engaged. On the Festival of All Saints, more than a hundred of the Brothers being assembled with their Superior-General in the throne-room at the Vatican, the Pope entered, preceded by his court, and attended by five cardinals, numerous bishops, and other ecclesiastics, for the reading of the decree referring to the beatification of the venerable De la Salle. When a few lines had been read, His Holiness said to one of the prelates, “Do not allow Brother Philip to continue kneeling; the brave old man must be fatigued.”

The reading being ended, Brother Philip was invited to approach the Holy Father, to whom he made an address of thanks for the progress of his founder’s cause, concluding with the following words: “With regard to our devotion to the Holy Church, to this ever-celebrated chair of Peter, and to the illustrious and infallible Pontiff who occupies it so gloriously, it will be the same all the days of our life; and, moreover, we shall never cease, Most Holy Father, to offer to God our most fervent prayers that he will speedily put an end to the calamities which afflict so profoundly the paternal heart of Your Blessedness, … praying Your Blessedness to be pleased to bestow your holy benediction upon him who has at this moment the exceeding happiness of kneeling at your feet, and also upon all the other children of the venerable De la Salle.”

Copies of the decree were then distributed amongst those present, the original manuscript, which was presented to the Superior, being now in the archives of the Régime. The Pope addressed his answer directly to his “dearest son, Brother Philip,” as if to testify his esteem not only for the Institute but for the man. Immediately after the closing of the audience, the Pope despatched messengers to the Palazzo Poli with two immense baskets full of various kinds of pastry, etc., saying, “Brother Philip must assemble the Brothers to-day for a little family feast, and I wish to regale them”; and when afterwards the Superior expressed his thanks for this paternal mark of attention, the Holy Father answered: “Some good nuns thought of the Pope, and the Pope thought of Brother Philip.”

On his return from this last journey to Rome, the Superior reached Paris at seven o’clock in the morning, was present at Mass in the mother-house at eight, and half an hour later was seated at his bureau as usual in the Salle du Régime, as if he had never quitted his place. The longest life is short; but what can be done by a man who never wastes a moment of his time is something prodigious. One result of this unceasing activity on the part of Brother Philip was the fact that, having found 2,300 Brothers and 143,000 pupils when he was placed at the head of the Institute, he left 10,000 of the former engaged in the education of 400,000 youths and children. He was a man of study, prayer, and action; no one could be more humble than he, nor yet more qualified to govern. He listened patiently to arguments and suggestions, but, when his resolution was once taken, he adhered to it. He spoke little, having neither taste nor time for much talking, but what he said was always to the point, the right thing at the right time, and the truth on every question. His correspondence was a reflection of himself, his letters containing just so many syllables as were sufficient to express his meaning: with him, a letter was an action. He was at the same time the most devout of religious and the most assiduous of workers; severe to himself, and never accepting the little indulgences which others would fain have mingled with the hardness of his life. The Abbé Roche mentions that on one occasion Brother Philip, arriving in a little town of Cantal after forty hours of travelling, had one hour to rest. Being shown the way to the house of the Brothers, he found them assembled in the chapel, where he remained until the prayers were over. Then, after exchanging greetings with them, and taking a morsel of bread moistened with wine and water, he resumed his journey. There are few communities of his Institute in France which he did not visit, and in all these his presence left an abiding remembrance.

The art of ruling presupposes a knowledge of men. Under his simple and modest exterior, Brother Philip had a keen penetration; he very quickly formed his judgment of what a man was and what were his capabilities, and there could be no better proof that he chose his instruments wisely than the fact that all his establishments have succeeded; not that he always allowed human prudence to have much voice in his undertakings, as he frequently preferred to leave much to Providence. His look and manner were reserved, almost cold, but in his heart were depths of real tenderness and feeling. He allowed no recreation to his fully occupied existence except indeed his one refreshment and rest, which was in attending the services at the chapel; and his great enjoyment, the beauty of the ceremonies and the grand and ancient music of the church. He never failed to bestow the most particular attention on every detail of the procession on the Feast of Corpus Christi, and took an especial delight in being present at the First Communion of the pupils. For this great act of the Christian life he recommended a long and serious preparation, and wrote a manual with this intent, entitled The Young Communicant.

He excelled in the art of solving difficulties, not by having recourse to human wisdom, but by imploring light and guidance from above. To overcome obstacles, he prayed; he did the same to lead his enemies to a better mind; and against their decisions, again he armed himself with prayer.

The municipal council of Châlons had, in 1863, suppressed the Christian schools in that town. Brother Philip repaired thither on the 2d of May. The mayor gave notice that the council would assemble on the following day. The Superior was suffering from acute rheumatism, but would not accept anything but the regulation supper of the Brothers, who made him a bed in the parlor. The next morning, at four o’clock, when the community had risen, they found Brother Philip kneeling on the pavement of the chapel, and it was observed that his bed had not been touched. He had passed the night in prayer before the Tabernacle. At six o’clock he attended Mass with his foot bound up in linen. On the evening of the same day the municipal council, annulling its decision of the preceding year, permitted the re-establishment of the Christian Schools in Châlons. The Superior had not prayed in vain.

One of his principal cares was always the reinforcement of his Institute, and it was with exceeding happiness that, on the 7th of December, 1873, he presided at the reception of fifty-four postulants.

It was not without apprehension that the Brothers had seen their venerated Superior, at eighty-one years of age, undertake his last journey to Rome, but after his return his activity was unabated, and he did not in any way diminish his daily amount of work. On the 30th of December, having returned to the mother-house in the evening from a visit to Passy, he was indisposed, but rose the next morning at the hour of the community. After Mass he was seized with a shivering; he repaired, however, to the Salle du Régime, where deputations from the three establishments of S. Nicolas were waiting to offer him their respectful greetings for the New Year. On receiving their addresses he answered, in a weak and failing voice: “My dearest children, I thank you for your kindness in coming so early to wish me a happy New Year; perhaps I shall not see its close. I am touched by the sentiments you have so well expressed, but, for my own part, there is but one thing that I desire, and that is, that you should go on increasing in virtue.” After a few more words of paternal counsel, he bade them adieu.

The exchange of good wishes between himself and the community was not without sadness. On the 1st of January he made a great effort to go to the chapel, where he heard Mass and received Holy Communion. This was the last time that he appeared amid the assembled Brothers; his weakness was extreme, and his prayers were accompanied by evident suffering. From the chapel the Superior went to his bed, from which he was to arise no more. On the 6th of January, the Feast of the Epiphany, he received the last sacraments, while the Brother Assistants were prostrate around his bed, weeping and praying. One who appeared more broken down with sorrow than the rest was Brother Calixtus, the old and most intimately beloved friend of the dying Superior. The Apostolic Benediction solicited by Brother Floride at four o’clock arrived at six, but Brother Philip, having fallen into a profound slumber, was not aware of it until past midnight. The morning prayers were being said in a low voice in his cell, it not being known whether he was unconscious or not, but the Brother who presided having, through distraction, begun the Angelus instead of the Memorare, the dying man gave a sign to show that he was making a mistake.

There is a little versicle and response particularly dear to the dying members of the Institute: “May Jesus live within our hearts!” to which the answer is, “For ever.” It is, as it were, their watchword on the threshold of eternity. On the morning of the 7th of January, Brother Irlide, assistant, bending over the Superior, pronounced the words of Jesus on the Cross: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” adding, “May Jesus live within our hearts.” Brother Philip, like a faithful soldier, ever ready with the countersign, attempted to utter the answer “For ever,” but in the effort his soul passed away. The community being then assembled in the chapel for the recitation of the Rosary, at once commenced the De profundis. The Institute had lost its father and head.

The death of Brother Philip produced a profound impression. Together with the sense of a great loss, a feeling of admiration for the great qualities of the departed, and gratitude for the immense services he had rendered to his countrymen, burst forth from all ranks of society. The working-classes more especially felt keenly how true a friend they had lost, and the announcement, “Brother Philip is dead,” plunged every heart into mourning. From the moment of his death the cell of the Superior was constantly filled by the novices, who in successive companies recited the Office of the Dead. In the evening, the body was removed into the Chamber of Relics, which had been transformed into a chapelle ardente, or lighted chapel, and there in the course of two days more than ten thousand persons came to pay their respects and to pray by the dead. On the Friday evening the remains were enclosed in a coffin, which was covered with garlands and bouquets which had been brought, a tall palm being placed at the top; and on Saturday morning it was transferred to the chapel, where the sorrowing community had assembled, and where a Low Mass of requiem was said by the Reverend Almoner, the Abbé Roche.

But another kind of funeral was awaiting the humble religious. The Institute, in accordance with its rules, had ordered merely a funeral of the seventh class; but France, true to herself, was about to honor her benefactor with triumphant obsequies. The coffin, taken out of the mother-house at a quarter past seven, and placed upon a bier used for the poorest of the people, was borne to the church of S. Sulpice, through silent and respectful multitudes, and placed upon trestles, surrounded by lighted tapers, in the nave. A white cross on a black ground behind the high altar composed all the funeral decoration of the church. But a splendor of its own was attached to this poverty and simplicity, contrasted as it was with the vast assemblage present, among whom were two cardinals, several bishops, and many of the most important personages of the church and state. There were the representatives of all the parishes of Paris, and of all the religious orders, as well as of the public administration. Not the smallest space remained unoccupied in the vast church; and, when it was found necessary to close the doors, more than ten thousand persons remained in the Place St. Sulpice. Cardinal Guibert, Archbishop of Paris, gave the absolution, and M. Buffet, President of the National Assembly, threw the first holy water on the coffin.

“On both sides of the streets,” writes an eye-witness, “the crowd formed a compact mass; the men uncovered, and the women crossing themselves, as the body of the venerated Superior passed by. Long lines of children conducted by the Brothers marched continuously on each side. In the course of the progress to the cemetery of Père la Chaise, ten thousand pupils of the Christian Brothers, school by school taking its turn, joined without fatigue in the procession.”

Paris, this city so wonderful in its contrasts—in the brightness of its lights and the depths of its shadows—is more Christian than men are apt to suppose. Out of this Paris no less than forty thousand persons attended the remains of Brother Philip to the grave, and many were the tears of heartfelt sorrow which mingled with the last prayers at the brink of that vault where he was laid, the place of burial reserved for the Superiors of his order. On the day of the funeral itself, the memory of Brother Philip received from Cardinal Guibert, in his circular letter addressed to the venerable curé of S. Sulpice, a testimony which will remain as a page in the history of the church of Paris.

And it was not Paris only, but France, which paid its homage to the memory of Brother Philip. The whole French episcopate testified its regard for him by requiem Masses on his behalf, by solemn services, funeral orations, allocutions, or circular letters. Nor was this religious mourning limited to France: it was expressed in all the lands where the Christian Schools have been founded, so that throughout the world honor has been done to him who never sought it, but who, on the contrary, shrank from celebrity, feared the praise of man, and singly and simply did all for God.

As the crown and completion of all other witness to the merits of the departed Superior, the Brothers received in answer to the letter announcing their bereavement a Brief from our Holy Father Pius IX., most honorable to the departed, and for themselves full of sympathy and consolation.

Five months after the death of Brother Philip, the venerable Brother Calixtus, who had for sixty-four years been his dearest friend, and who was chosen as Superior-General in his place, followed him to the grave.

His present successor is Brother Jean-Olympe, an excellent and devoted religious, who, at the time we write, has just returned from Rome, where with four of the Brother Assistants he has been welcomed by the Holy Father with marks of particular regard. We conclude our sketch in the words of M. Poujoulat, the admirable writer already so often quoted: “The undying remembrance of Brother Philip will remain a motive power for his Institute, an effective weapon in time of conflict, an incitement to perseverance in well-doing, to the love of God, our neighbor, and our duty.”

SUBMISSION.

THE ROMAN RITUAL AND ITS CHANT COMPARED WITH THE WORKS OF MODERN MUSIC. II.—CONTINUED.

RESPECTIVE AUTHORITY, ECCLESIASTICAL AND MORAL.

Natural religion attaches the idea of authority to God. God is King, “Dominus Exercituum,” the Lord of Hosts, the one supreme absolute source of all power and authority. Moreover, society implies authority, in order that it may exist. In social life there cannot be discordant purposes and independent wills. Now, God called all created society into being out of nothing, and through the principle of authority and subjugation of the will maintains his work in love, happiness, and mutual concord. And in the scheme of redemption he has sent his church, a working society upon earth, to heal by her sweet and divine yoke of a lawful authority the social anarchies and disorders of a fallen race. In the church, then, as sent by him who is the absolute source of authority and order, governed by him, and in continual correspondence with him through prayer, we expect to find all her important elements and modes of acting upon, and of dealing with, mankind under the direction of the principle of authority; and since God declares of himself that he is a God of order, and the “author, not of confusion, but of peace in the churches” (1 Cor. xiv. 33), we conclude that God will contemplate sacred song in the Christian Church as subject to the principle of authority, as an instrument placed by himself at the disposal of the church for carrying out her divine work, and as such to be used, under the guidance and direction of the authority which governs her.

To put, then, what is meant by the claim about to be made that the Ritual or Gregorian Chant possesses this authority, in its true light, it would be a misconception to suppose that the notion of a positive authority is identical with that of absolute monopoly. The positive authority of the chant of the Ritual by no means implies that the use of modern music cannot, under certain conditions, enjoy a just toleration, as will be plain from an instance. The sick man who is slowly recovering from a severe disease may be fully aware of the positive authority which his physician has for many reasons attached to a particular rule of diet, and may yet have the permission occasionally to deviate from it. But now, if it be asked, what is this authority which is claimed for the Roman Ritual chant-books? it may be replied, if a spectator, at a review of British military, were to ask what authority the infantry regiments had for wearing red coats, he, I suppose, would be answered at once, that in a disciplined army the regimental uniform could not be otherwise than authorized. In the same manner, in an organized state of society so perfect as that of the Catholic Church, the mere existence of such song-books as the Gradual and Antiphonary, and their immemorial use in connection with the Missal and Breviary, necessarily implies their authority. It would be in place here, if space permitted, to cite the various archiepiscopal and episcopal synods that have made these or similar song-books the subjects of their legislation, providing, down to the minutest details, for the different questions which might be liable to arise out of their use. But it may here suffice to refer to the fact, not perhaps sufficiently known, that the whole of the Roman Liturgy, the entire Breviary, the whole of the Missal, except the few parts which the celebrant himself recites in an undertone of voice at the altar, has its proper notation in music, which every efficient choir-singer and celebrant priest is required to know, as the necessary accompaniment of his functions.

The authority, therefore, of the Ritual chant is to a considerable extent identified with that of the Ritual itself in the character of the authorized form of its solemn celebration. No other music has been at any time published by the church. No other is co-extensive with the Ritual; and the use, therefore, of any other, however permissible it may have become through force of circumstances, can only be regarded as a deviation from perfect Ritual rule.

That such was the view of the fathers of the Council of Trent is evident from the fact, that they seriously debated whether it might not be advisable to put an end to the scandalous musical excesses that had found their way into the church through the partial abandonment of the Ritual chant, by rendering it henceforth imperative. But though this measure was vehemently urged by more than one father as the best remedy for the evil complained of, still the father of the council at length declined to pass the decree. They seemed to have judged it to be on the whole wiser to leave the Ritual chant to its claims as the acknowledged and authorized song of the Liturgy, and to have thought that the remedy required was rather to be sought for in prayer to God to give his people a better and more sober mind than in a severe and peremptory legislation, which might end in provoking the further and worse evil of a more formal and open disobedience.

But to return to the subject of the positive ecclesiastical authority of the Ritual chant-books. The truth and the reason of this authority appear at once, on reflecting how impossible it is that a kingdom directed by the Spirit of God, under the government of a divinely founded hierarchy, should employ sacred song to the extent which the Catholic Church does, without a sanctioned and authenticated form of it. That this form should be absolutely imperative, to the rigid exclusion of every other, could occur to no one to maintain. But still, without an acknowledged body and form of song, of such indisputable authority as to claim the willing confidence of those whose calling is with sacred song, its efficacy is certainly lamed and its mission impeded. Men that have work to do in God’s vineyard require to know not merely the general truth that what they are engaged with is in the main good, but they also desire to know that the blessing of God is with the manner of their work, and the means they employ. Now, such confidence nothing but an authorized body of song can supply.

For what reason do we trust the church in her definitions of faith? Because we feel our own weakness; because we feel how impossible it is for the mind to repose on its own conclusions. We know, from a voice that speaks from within the heart, that our heavenly Father could not have given a revelation without the conditions necessary to fit it to meet our wants. And because we feel the need of a positive authority in matters of faith, we believe it to have been given, and that the Catholic Church is the depository of it, as alone possessing the satisfactory credentials. Now, although it may be true that an equal need for a positive authority in matters of song cannot be asserted, yet if ecclesiastical music do really possess those many healing virtues which at once betoken its divine origin and heavenly mission, it may be asked, is it a wise, is it a self-distrusting, is it a pious course for each individual to imagine himself free from such an authority? Is it not rather true that, in proportion as his sense of the heavenly mission of the ecclesiastical chant deepens, the more vivid will become his perception of the need of an express living authority to which the individual can commit himself, in perfect confidence that that song which a divinely directed hierarchy shall put forth and acknowledge as their own work, will be sure to carry along with it the blessing of God upon its use.

I do not see how a reasonable person can refuse to admit that such is the positive authority attaching to the liturgical song-books, and that it is to the devout and skilful use of these books by her own priests, cantors, and devout people, that the church mainly looks for the fulfilment of the divine idea with respect to sacred music. How otherwise will you account for their existence? to what purpose has the wisdom of saints who contributed and collected their contents been exerted? Why has the church not let the Gregorian system of music alone, as she has the modern? why has she formed a complete system and body of song in the one, and not in the other, if her work, when complete, has no positive authority? Or will the advocate of modern art say, that this her work is defective and superannuated; and that it is time it should be locked up, out of the way, in collections of antiquities, and cease to be an offence to ears polite? Yet, if such be the case, an abrogation is not to be presumed; it must be proved. But the fact is, that the Council of Trent caused the song-books to be reissued, and directed the ecclesiastical chant to be taught in the seminaries of the clergy.[139] And when those very canonized saints, of whose conditional approbation of the use of modern art so very much is made, came to the dignity of obtaining a record in the church’s song of her warriors departed, here was surely a fit occasion, if, indeed the church had abandoned her former song, and disembarrassed herself of its defective scale and wearisome monotony, to call for the charms of modern art, that at least it might be identified with its votaries. Yet with this very natural supposition contrast the fact that the Ritual chant and its singers continue year by year to hand on the memory of the virtues of S. Philip Neri and S. Charles Borromeo; while for these, its supposed patrons, modern art has not even a little memorial. To the Ritual song it leaves what would seem to be to itself the unwelcome task of keeping up the record of their sanctity and their example.

Nor do I see to what purpose a reference can be made to the anecdote of Pope Marcellus’ approbation of Palestrina’s composition, since named Missa Papæ Marcelli, with the view to establish an authority for the system of modern music; for the idea of deviation from the order of the Ritual chant once admitted to toleration, nothing can be more natural than that a pontiff, equally with any other person, might come to express his very high commendation of a particular composition. And if we allow that such a commendation is not without its weight, it would surely be a violent inference, singularly betraying the absence of better argument, if an instance of such approbation of a particular work were to be claimed as an ex cathedra legislative authorization of a whole system of music to which it cannot be said to belong.[140] For it should not be forgotten that Palestrina’s music is essentially different from the existing system of modern art, inasmuch as his works are either mere harmonies upon the Canto Fermo, or else consist of themes borrowed from it, which frequently preserve that distinct tonality of the modes of the ecclesiastical chant which modern art has quite abandoned.

It has been objected, “that an assertion that the church does not authorize the use of modern harmony, because she has not herself furnished her children with any individual compositions, is about as reasonable a conclusion as the notion that she does not authorize and sanction sermons, because their composition is left to the judgment, good or bad, of private clergymen.” But the objection fails, as there is a total want of parity between the office of singer and preacher. The preacher passes through a long course of training to the state of priesthood, before he receives a license to preach; and every person in the church who has the license to preach, is to be presumed to be duly qualified both to make known the divine law and recommend it by his words and example. This is not the case with the singer, who is not necessarily even in the minor orders, and whose duty is merely to sing what is placed before him correctly and with feeling. If the education of the priests were left to the same hazard and caprice that would seem to be desired for the choice of music for the church, it is easy to imagine the result. But very far from this, the most thoughtful care is bestowed by the church on the training of her future ministers: obliged to fixed and unalterable dogmas of the faith, versed in one sacred volume, bound to one uniform office of daily prayer and pious reading, trained in an almost uniform system of studies and external discipline, the preacher comes forth the living organ of a divine system, fitted to be the spokesman of a kingdom that is endowed with the power of drawing its manifold materials to a concordant and coherent system, and moulding multiform and varied minds to a unity of type and consistency of action. “Such was the strict subordination of the Catholic Church,” says the historian Gibbon (Hist., ch. XX.), “that the same concerted sounds might issue at once from a hundred pulpits of Italy or Egypt, if they were tuned by the master hand of the Roman or Alexandrian primate.” Carry the same principle of system and order into the song of the church, and it will be found impossible to stop short of the Ritual chant-books.

2. With regard to the moral authority of the chant: moral authority, in the legislation of the church, is ever a necessary companion of any act of her legislative authority. We should not, however, overlook what seems to be a distinct element of moral authority, in the historical connection of the Ritual chant with the generations now past and gone to their rest. It was their song, the song of saints long ago departed. It is the song which S. Augustine sang, and which drew forth his tears: “Quantum flevi in hymnis et canticis, suave sonantis ecclesiæ tuæ vocibus commotus acriter; voces illæ influebant auribus meis, et eliquebatur veritas tua in cor meum, et ex ea æstuabat. Inde affectus pietatis, et currebant lacrymæ, et bene mihi erat cum illis”—“How often have these sacred hymns and songs moved me to tears, as I have been carried away with the sweetly musical voices of thy church. How these sounds used to steal upon my ear, and thy truth to pour itself into my heart, which felt as if it were set on fire! Then would come tender feelings of devotion, my tears would flow, and I felt that all was then well with me” (Confess. lib. vi. cap. 6). It was the song of S. Augustine, the apostle of Saxon England, of S. Stephen the Cistercian, and of all the holy warriors of our Isle of Saints. Nor is it only the song which the saints sang, but it is the song that sings of the saints—the only song which cares to pour the sweet odor of their memory over the year, or to spread around them its melodious incense, as they too surround the throne of their Lord and King.

Again: a moral authority attaches to the Roman Ritual chant in the very name Gregorian, by which it is so generally known. S. Gregory was the first to collect it from the floating tradition in which it existed in the church, and to digest it into that body of annual song for the celebration of the Ritual which has come down to us. This work came to be called after him, Cantus Gregorianus, and forms at this day the substance of the Roman chant-books, enriched and added to by the new offices and Masses that have since then been incorporated in the Ritual. Nothing is known with any positive historical certainty as to the authorship of the several pieces in the song-books; but as to the main fact, that the music of the Ritual is the work of the greatest saints of the church—of the Popes Leo, Damasus, Gelasius, and S. Gregory himself—of many holy monks in the retirement of their cloisters—history leaves no doubt. This fact, then, is beyond dispute: that the Roman Ritual chant, which the present inquiry concerns, is the creation of the saints of the Roman Church, for the decorum and solemnity of the public celebration of the Liturgy.

And now, to come to the comparison: if to the adequate realization of the divine idea of sacred song, as an instrument placed at the disposal of the church, to aid in carrying out her work of sanctification and instruction, the notion of a definite authority, both defining what it should be, and prescribing and regulating the manner of its use, necessarily belongs, the conclusion I think is that this authority is found attaching itself to the Ritual chant; and, from the nature of the case, it is incapable of attaching itself to the works of modern music. First, because it would seem to be an inseparable principle as regards their use, that every individual must be at liberty to ask for or to demand their employment according to his own pleasure; and secondly, because a positive authority can attach to that alone which exists in a definite and tangible shape, which is far from being the case with the works of modern music. They not only do not form a definite collection, but, such as they are, are subject to perpetual change—that which is on the surface to-day and admired, being to-morrow nauseated and condemned; and hence there is no resting point whatever in them for the idea of a positive authority.

And as regards the comparison on the score of moral authority, the attempt to draw it will, I fear, touch upon delicate ground; for, to confess the honest truth, it cannot be drawn without bringing to light the degeneracy of our popular ideas respecting sacred music. Who is there who seriously thinks of claiming for the works of modern music any connection with the saints, past or present? or who is there who either cares to ask for, or to attribute any character of sanctity to its authors? or would even be likely to think very much the more highly of the music if the fact of its saintly origin could be established? And what kind of persons, for the most part, have its authors been? Mozart died rejecting the last sacraments; Beethoven is supposed by his German biographer, Schindler, to have been a pantheist during the greater part of his life; Rink was a Protestant; Mendelssohn a Jew, who cared very little for his Jewish faith; and the different maestri di capella who have been throughout Europe the chief composers of these works, were, for the most part, also the directors of the theatres and opera-houses of their royal patrons.

But enough has been said to make it evident upon how different a footing the chant of the Ritual and the works of modern art respectively stand, as regards moral and ecclesiastical authority.

RESPECTIVE CLAIM TO THE COMPLETENESS AND ORDER OF A SYSTEM.

The idea of a God Incarnate, manifesting himself in the nature of man on earth, necessarily contains the idea of a system and order displayed in his works. All apparent system, it is true, does not necessarily imply God as its author; but absence of system and its consequence, positive confusion and disorder, is undeniably a sign that the mind of the Almighty is not there. If, then, the Catholic Church be the kingdom of God Incarnate, and the abiding-place of his Spirit, it follows that her song is a system, if God is at all to acknowledge it in any respect of his own. But the idea of system leads at once to the Ritual song-books. Modern art has not as yet furnished even the necessary materials out of which to construct a system, not to speak of the hopelessness of forming one, when the materials should exist. Do but remove the Ritual chant from the church, and you remove a wonderful and perfect system, which an order-loving mind takes pleasure in contemplating—one that moves with the ecclesiastical year, that accompanies the Redeemer from the annunciation of his advent, the Ave Maria of his coming in the flesh, to his birth, his circumcision, his manifestation to the Gentiles, his presentation and discourse with the learned doctors in the Temple, his miraculous fast in the companionship of the wild beasts in the wilderness, his last entry into his own city, his betrayal, his institution of the Holy Eucharist, his agony in the garden, his death upon the cross, his resurrection from the dead, his ascension into heaven—a system of song which places around him, as jewels in a crown, his chosen and sainted servants, as the stars which God set in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth. Cœli enarrant gloriam Dei, et opera manuum ejus annuntiat firmamentum—“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork” (Ps. xviii.) Yet if we saw the heavens only in the way in which we are treated to the performances of modern music, the greater and the lesser light occasionally changing places, after the manner of the vicissitudes of Mozart and Haydn, the planets moving out of their orbits in indeterminate succession, at the caprice of some archangel, as the organist changes his motets and introits, the Psalmist would hardly have spoken of the “firmament showing God’s handiwork.” Where is there a trace of order and system in the use of the works of modern art? Where is the musician who regards “duplex,” “semiduplex,” or “simplex”? Mozart in one church, Haydn in another, Beethoven in a third, and a host of others whose name is Legion, taken like lots from a bag, as whim or fancy may at the moment direct, like the chaos described by the poet, where

But to approach the comparison. If in the divine idea of the Christian song there is necessarily contained the notion of a working and efficient system, the simple truth is, that there is no such system, either in the works of modern music themselves, or in the manner of their use. On the one side is the important fact, that the modern art of music leaves the vastly larger portion of the Ritual without any music at all, embracing positively not more than its merest fraction; on the other, the equally great fact of a total absence of any thing like rule to determine their selection. As a working system, then, full and complete in all its points, the Ritual chant stands alone the only realization of that part of the divine idea which contemplates order and system in the use of Christian song.

RESPECTIVE MORAL FITNESS: I. AS A SACRIFICIAL SONG; II. AS A SONG FOR THE OFFICES OF THE CHURCH.

I. As a Sacrificial Song.

It has been already remarked that ecclesiastical song is not everything or anything that is beautiful in music, nor merely a work of art. It is, strictly speaking, a sacrificial chant, the song of those engaged in offering sacrifice to God, Tibi sacrificabo hostiam laudis. Such a song is obviously not any kind of song, but one that possesses a moral type and character, rendering it a fit companion for the holy and bloodless victim offered on the Christian altar; becoming an offering, offered not to man, but to the ears of the Most High, and akin to the solemnity of its subject—redemption from sin and death through the blood and sufferings of a sinless victim, the crucified Son of God. The divine idea may then, I think, be said to contemplate sacred song as possessing a sacrificial character.

And the reason, if required, will appear, on considering to how great an extent music possesses the remarkable gift of absorbing and becoming possessed with an idea. When song has been successfully united to language, the ideas contained in the latter are found to take possession of the music, and to form the sound or tune into an image and reflection of themselves, in a manner almost analogous to the way in which the mind within moulds the outward features of the face, so as to make them an index and expression of itself. What I mean by this alleged power of music to absorb, and afterwards to express, ideas, even those the most opposite to each other, may be exemplified, if an instance be wanted, by contrasting any popular melody from the Roman Gradual, as the Dies Iræ, or the Stabat Mater, with one of our popular street tunes, “Cherry ripe,” or “Jim Crow”; and it will be seen at once, on humming over these tunes, with what perfect truth and to how great an extent music is able to ally itself to the most opposite ideas, and how, through the ear, it has the power, not merely to convey them to the mind, but to leave them there, firmly and vividly impressed. If, then, by virtue of this power, music may, on the one hand, become the channel of the most exquisite profaneness in divine worship, so it certainly may, on the other, contribute wonderfully to its majesty and power of attraction. And since the music of the field of battle, the military march, and the roll of the drum, has a character not shared by other kinds, as the song of the banquet, and of the dance, of the drunkard over his cups, of the peasant at his plough, of the sailor at sea, of the village maiden at her home, have each their own stamp and form: so also in the song of Christian worship, God will regard it as the song of men offering sacrifice to himself, as having a character inherent in its subject—the life, sufferings, and death of him who died to take away the sins of the world—in a word, as a sacrificial chant.

Now that a sacrificial chant has in all ages accompanied the offering of sacrifice, is a truth to which history, if examined, will be found to bear abundant testimony. In the sacrifice described by Virgil in the Æneid,

When, at the command of Nehemias, on the return of the captive Jews from Babylon, sacrifice was solemnly offered after their custom in Jerusalem, the priests, it is said (2 Machab. i. 30), sang psalms until the burnt-offering was wholly consumed. Nor is it the whole truth to say that this sacrificial chant has passed over in its more perfect reality to the Christian Church, but even in the Song of Heaven among the redeemed, the sacrificial character still continues, a point well worthy of the notice of those who are so confident that the type of the modern music is alone that which is found in heaven. “And they [the twenty-four ancients] sang a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book and open the seals thereof, for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation.”

If, then, the ideas which suggest themselves and arise naturally on reflecting upon what, in the nature of things, would be the type and character of the Christian sacrificial chant; if these ideas find themselves absorbed, then expressed, embodied, and brought out into life and being in the music of the ecclesiastical chant; and if, on the other hand, they are not to be found in the variety of modern compositions such as are now in partial use;[141] if it be possible to conceive our Lord’s apostles, upon the supposition that they could return to the earth, standing up in any church of Christendom to sing the song of the Ritual in honor of the Holy Sacrifice, and in company with the celebrant priest;[142] and if there be something obviously unbecoming in the mere thought of their taking bass or tenor in such music as that of Mozart’s or Haydn’s masses, neither of which will be denied; then, I think, it is not extravagant to infer that the Plain Chant of the Ritual is far the most adequate fulfilment of that part of the divine idea which contemplates Christian music as a sacrificial song.

II. Fitness for the Offices of the Church.

With regard to the fitness of the ecclesiastical chant for the offices of the church, it must be remarked, that the ideas of the modern musician touching the use of music in the church are very widely removed from those of the fathers of the church. In their idea, a church-singer would somewhat answer to what would be a ballad-singer in the world, inasmuch as he has a great deal to convey to his hearers in the way of narrative. Almighty God has been pleased to work many wonderful works, and the fathers of the church appointed singers for the churches, to celebrate these works in song, in order that the people who came to worship, or even the heathens who came as spectators, might hear and learn something of the works of the Lord Jehovah, into whose house they had come. What can be more reasonable than this? “My song shall be of all thy marvellous works,” says the Psalmist. But, according to the notions of a modern musician, if a Brahmin priest, or the Turkish ambassador, were to come to Mass, and to hear a choral performance, in which the concord of voices should be most ravishingly beautiful, but in which not a single one of the marvellous works of God could be understood from the concert, he is still to consider that he has heard the perfection of Christian music, and ought, according to them, to go away converted. Out of two so contradictory notions one must necessarily be chosen as the one which best answers to the divine idea. And if persons are prepared to say that the ideas of the fathers are become antiquated, and that they would have acted differently had they known better, they are certainly called upon to make this good.

But, in the meantime, it will be both reasonable and pious to acquiesce in the belief that the fathers acted in conformity with the divine idea, and under the direction of God’s Holy Spirit, in appointing a song for the church, in which the marvellous and merciful works of God might be set forth in a charming, becoming, and perfectly intelligible manner, for the instruction of the people. A serious person, when he goes into the house of God, is supposed to go there with the intention of learning something respecting God, and it is to be supposed that Almighty God desires to see every church in such a condition as that the people who frequent it may learn all that they need to know respecting God and his works. To this use the fathers employed chant, and considered that it was, by the will of God, to be employed to this end. If any candid and serious person will take the trouble to examine the language and sentiments of the Ritual apart from its musical notation, he will be struck with it as a complete manual of popular theology. He will see that it is full of the works of God, the knowledge of which is the food of the faithful soul, particularly among the poor and the unlearned. Next let him examine its notation in song, as contained in the Gradual and Antiphonary, and he will be struck with a solemnity, beauty, and force of melody fitted to convey to the people the words of inspiration, to which melody was annexed in order that they might be the better relished, and pass current the more easily. And lastly, let him consider them, in both these respects, as forming one united whole, and he cannot refuse to acknowledge the fitness of the chant which the fathers selected for the purpose they had in view. Musicians must be equitable enough to abstain from complaining of a work on the score of its unisonous recitative character, if they will not be at the pains to understand or to sympathize with the end for which it was formed and destined. Have the fathers ever troubled themselves to criticise what was innocent and allowable in the world’s music? Then why should musicians go out of the way to find imaginary faults with that of which they seem indisposed to consider either the use or the efficacy? The church chant was framed generations before they and their art were known; and it has helped to train up whole nations in the faith, and fulfilled its end to the unbounded satisfaction of the fathers, who adopted, enlarged, and consolidated it into the form in which it has come down to us, and may therefore claim a truce to such criticism.

But here, again, the comparison fails for want of a competitor, and we are again brought back to the fact that the works of modern art embrace too small a fraction of the whole Liturgy to be in a condition to challenge any comparison. And could the comparison be admitted, it would still remain to insist on the equally certain truth of experience that the idea of a lengthened and continual recitation of the works of God, intended to be popularly intelligible, is one unsuited to the employment on any great scale of even the simplest counterpoint vocal harmonies, and fundamentally averse to the prevailing use of the canon and fugue of modern musical science.

RESPECTIVE FITNESS TO PASS AMONG THE PEOPLE AS A CONGREGATIONAL SONG.

Upon this point of the comparison the result, I think, will be tolerably obvious, if it be admitted that the divine idea contemplates the chant of the church as designed to pass to some considerable extent among the people in the form of congregational singing. It will not, however, be out of place to show briefly on what grounds this assumption rests.

1. Almighty God has created in people a strong love for congregational psalmody, and has attached to it peculiar feelings possessed of an influence far more powerful for good than the somewhat isolated pleasure that the musician feels on hearing beautiful artificial music, inasmuch as congregational singing is a common voice of prayer and praise; and being, as Christians, members one of another, in congregational psalmody we gain a foretaste of heaven, where it will be far more perfect.

2. There are obvious benefits arising from it. It is an union of prayer and praise, and as such is more powerful with God. It kindles in the individual a livelier sense of Christian fellowship. It is a voice that expresses the union of the many members in the one body; many voices, one sound.

3. The argument from history. The worship of God has always been that of congregational psalmody; and where trained choirs of singers existed, their song was always such as to admit of the people at times taking part with them. This is an undeniable fact of history. “Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord” (Exodus xv.) “Then sang Israel this song, Spring up, O well, sing ye unto it, etc.” (Numbers xxi. 17). The psalm CXXXV. was composed for the people to sing the chorus. The Book of Psalms is a kind of historical testimony, in many of its passages, to the fact of that congregational song to which it so often exhorts. Fleury, in his History of the Manners of the Jews and Christians (page 143), acknowledges congregational song as a fact among both. He cites the testimony of S. Basil, that all the people in his time sang in the churches—men, women, and children—and he compares their voices to the waters of the sea. S. Gregory of Nazianzen compares them to thunder. But it is impossible to conceive such to have been the practice both of Jews and Christians, without inferring that it was so with the approbation of Almighty God.

4. The apostles and the fathers of the church have sanctioned it. “Teaching and admonishing yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with melody in your hearts unto the Lord” (Col. iii. 16).

“Wherefore, since these things are so, let us with the more confidence give ourselves to the work of song, considering that we have obtained a great grace of Almighty God, to whom it has been given, in company with so many and so great saints, the prophets, and the martyrs, to celebrate the marvellous works of the eternal God.”—An old author in the first volume of Gerbert’s Scriptores Musici.

“Quocunque te vertis, arator stivam tenens Alleluia decantat, sudans messor Psalmis se evocat, et curva attollens vitem falce vinator aliquid Davidicum cantat. Hæc sunt in provincia nostra carmina, hæc ut vulgo dicitur amatoriæ cantationes, hic pastorum sibilus, hæc arma culturæ.”—“Wherever you turn, the laborer at his plough sings an alleluia; the reaper sweating under his work refreshes himself with a psalm: the vinedresser in his vineyard will sing a passage from the Psalmist. These are the songs of our part of the world. These are, as people say, our love-songs. This is the piping of our shepherds, and these are the arms of our laborers.”—S. Jerome, Epist. 17 ad Marcellum.

“Alas!” observes Mgr. Parisis, upon this passage of S. Jerome, “where are now the families who seek to enliven the often dangerous leisure of long winter’s evenings with the songs of the Catholic Liturgy; where are the workshops in which an accent may be heard borrowed from the remembrance of our divine offices; where are the country parishes which are edified and rejoiced by the sweet and pious sounds which in the times of S. Jerome echoed through the fields and vineyards?”[143]

S. Augustine: “As for congregational psalmody, what better employment can there be for a congregation of people met together, what more beneficial to themselves, or more holy and well-pleasing to God, I am wholly unable to conceive?”—Letter to Januarius, towards the end.

A passage of S. Chrysostom, exhorting the people to psalmody, will be found elsewhere. It is unnecessary to do more than to refer to the example of S. Basil and S. Ambrose, encouraging their people in the same manner; to which may be added a passage from the life of S. Germanus:

“Pontificis monitis, psallit plebs, clerus et infans.”

Venantius, vita S. Germani.

Lastly, the moral reason of the thing.

This is expressed by S. Basil in the words: “O wonderful wisdom of the teacher! who hath contrived that we should both sing, and therewith learn that which is good.”

Now, if it be considered that Providence could not possibly have meant that the people at large should be formed into singing classes, in order to be initiated into the mysteries of minim and crotchet, tenor and bass, and that the one only practical means of bringing them to pick up by ear the more popular parts of the church chant is by encouraging, as the system of the Ritual chant does, that clear enunciation of language and melody which easily fixes itself upon the ear, and which the prevalence of unison singing gives;[144] it follows at once that the only hope of procuring general congregational singing in the worship of the Catholic Church lies in the increased use and zealous propagation of the unison execution of the Ritual chant. Experience is clear to the point that the use of the works of modern art, with their rapid movements, elaborate fugues, scientific combinations of sound, necessarily tends to stifle the voices of the people, and this is certainly not the will of our merciful God.

Now, if this be the case, I do not see how we are to avoid the conclusion, that any extensive use of these works of modern art tends to the clear frustration and the making void one great and important popular end, viz., congregational singing, which the divine idea contemplates in the song of the church, and which, in the song of the Ritual, is efficiently realized, as the history of the progress of the faith abundantly testifies. Might it not, then, be well that those who advocate the continued cultivation of these elaborate works of art should consider the full meaning of Mardocheus’ prayer, Ne claudas ora te canentium: “Shut not the mouth of them that sing thy praise, O Lord” (Esther xiii. 17).

RESPECTIVE MORAL INFLUENCE IN THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER.

The influence upon the mind of sounds that habitually surround the ear is a fact well known to all moralists. “Whosoever,” says Plato, in his treatise De Republicâ, quoted by Gerbert, “is in the habit of permitting himself to listen habitually to music, and to allow his mind to be engaged and soothed by it, pouring in the sweet sounds before alluded to through the ears, as through an orifice, soft, soothing, luscious, and plaintive, consuming his life in tunes that fascinate his soul; when he does this to an excess, he then begins to weaken, to unstring, and to enervate his understanding, until he loses his courage, and roots all vigor out of the mind.” Cicero observes, “Nihil tam facile in animos teneros atque molles influere quam varios canendi sonos, quorum vix dici potest quanta sit vis in utramque partem; namque et incitat languentes, et languefacit excitatos, et tum remittit animos, tum contrahit” (lib. ii. De Legibus). These remarks seem very much to have their exemplification at this day in the effeminate tone and temper of polished society in all the nations of Europe, who seem to be befooled with their love for pretty airs and opera music. Now, if the fathers, observing this power of music insensibly to mould and form the character, and acting, as it is more than pious to believe, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that his divine intention might be fulfilled, designed the song of the church to form a character very different from that of the musical voluptuary—one who was to be no cowardly skulker from the good fight of faith, but the soldier of Jesus Christ, the disciple patiently taking up his cross and following his crucified Master—those who do not participate in these ideas ought not to wonder that they find so little in the church chant with which they can sympathize; but above all let them at least have the modesty not to blame the fathers of the church for adapting it, after their wisdom, to a purpose the need for which they do not comprehend. The historian Fleury has a pertinent remark: “Je laisse à ceux qui sont savants en musique à examiner si dans notre Plain Chant il reste encore quelque trace de cette antiquité [he is speaking of the force of character of the old chant]; car notre musique moderne semble en être fort eloignée” (Fleury, Mœurs des Chrétiens, page xliii.)—“I leave to those who are versed in music to determine whether there remain any traces of this ancient vigor in our Plain Chant; for our modern music seems very far from it.”

Is it a thing to be wondered at if the Christian Israel’s Song of the Cross should have in it something a little strange to the ear of Babylon? Or are we to content ourselves with the conclusion that nothing but what is dainty and nice, nothing but that which is as nearly like the world as possible, will go down with Christian people? On the contrary, is it not to be presumed that the multitudes, with whom, in the main, the Christian teacher’s duty lies, are of that sickly, degenerate tone of mind that nauseates the strong, peculiar, and supplicating energy of the ecclesiastical chant?

But on this point the comparison may be drawn in the words of Mgr. Parisis:

“External to the Ritual chant, that is to say, the Gregorian, or Plain Chant, little else is now known except the works of modern music, that is to say, a music essentially favoring what people have agreed to call sensualism. It is this, almost exclusively this, which, under the austere title of sacred music, is sought to be introduced into our sacred offices. Now, without desiring to enter deeply into the matter, we need but few words to point out how grievously it is misplaced.

“Worldly music agitates and seeks to agitate, because the world seeks its pleasure in stir and change. The church, on the contrary, seeks for melodies that pray and incline to prayer. The church cannot wish for any others, since her worship has no other object than prayer.

“In vain will it be said that this is the work of one of the greatest masters, that it is a scientific and a sublime composition; it may be all this for the world—it is nothing at all of this for the church. And especially when this worldly music, by its thrilling cadences or impassioned character, leads directly to light ideas, sensual satisfactions, and dangerous recollections, it is not only a contradiction in the house of God, but a formal scandal.” (Instruction Pastorale, p. 45)

TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.

A LEGEND OF THE RHINE.

It is now many years since, during a summer ramble, I found myself at A——k, now nothing more than a hamlet in population, but retaining traces of having once been a place of very considerable importance, and boasting of very remote antiquity. The remains of the wall are, indeed, locally attributed to the Romans, probably because they are lofty and very strong, and it is the habit of ignorant people to refer all great works to that wonderful people. In this instance, however, tradition is certainly wrong, as the walls bear unmistakable evidence of mediæval origin, being in parts much enriched with Gothic work.

The little town stands on a plateau enclosed between a bend of the Rhine and the steep bluff on which the ruins of an old castle stand perched, equally watching the little burgh below and the counterpart castle on the opposite side of the Rhine at its next bend.

The eagles that once lived in and sought their prey from that lofty nest have long since crumbled into dust and have even passed from the memory of man, leaving for sole representatives the choughs and the crows, and perhaps a jolly old owl to keep up revelry at night.

The horses that those old knights rode must have been of a sure-footed breed, for it is hard to conceive how any quadruped, save a goat, could have mounted the path I scrambled up among the vines; but it is with the village and the village church that we have to do.

Who built the Rhine churches?

They all, with a few exceptions, are strikingly alike; though varying in size, number of towers, and many other particulars, they have mostly a strict resemblance in general conception and detail. To cite an instance: The cathedral at Coblentz might stand as the type of twenty others; instead of being individual and standing out alone—an effort of genius like Cologne, Strasbourg, Notre Dame, Ely, or Winchester—they have all the same resemblance to one another that a little oak has to a big one.

The church at A——k was no exception. Cathedral it might almost be called from its great size; but there was no bishop there, and it was only a parish church! With its three great towers, vast nave, long aisles, and noble choir, it seemed as if it might well hold all the population for many miles around, and the extremely small congregation that were present at the celebration of the High Mass that morning appeared ridiculously out of proportion. It was a high festival—the Annunciation—it is therefore to be assumed that the bulk of the population were there, and the High Mass was at the somewhat early hour of half-past five!