Volume 27 — THE HOME-RULE CANDIDATE. A STORY OF “NEW IRELAND.” CHAPTER IV. THE ELECTION. (continued 2)

The cardinal, preoccupied also with their spiritual condition, found means of providing them with a chapel where they could attend Mass and on festivals hear a sermon. Their cells were sprinkled with holy water to drive away the malign spirit, and ornamented with 240pictures of devotion. They were forbidden to play cards or read bad books, and were to go to confession six times a year—at Christmas, Easter, Whitsunday, St. Peter’s day, Assumption, and All Saints. Every month the vicar-general visited them to listen to their grievances, remove all grounds of complaint, and assure himself that all orders had been executed. And the cardinal, who always kept an eye on everything himself, went to see them twice a year.

One item in the register of accounts is particularly touching. Cardinal Orsini increased the ration of bread from time to time at his own expense, and had a fire made in the winter, that the prisoners might not suffer from the cold.

The three soldiers employed to make the necessary arrests were under the command of a baricello, or corporal, all of whom, with the jailer, were lodged in the guardiola beside the arched passage which connects the two interior courts.

The second court is bounded on one side by the sacristy of the cathedral, and on the other by the stables and the jubilee hospice. The stables, built by Mgr. Pacca (of the same family from which the cardinal of that name descended), are large enough for about twenty horses—none too many for the archbishop and his suite, for his visits could not always be made in a carriage. Even in our day a cross-bearer precedes his eminence on horseback, clothed in a violet cassock and mantellone, and in former times the cortége must have been much more imposing.

The hospice affords a proof of Cardinal Orsini’s inexhaustible charity. He had before built a special asylum for pilgrims, not far from the palace, under the title of 241St. Bartholomew, patron of the city. There is nothing left now to remind one of it, except a narrow street still called the Via dei pellegrini. But on extraordinary occasions, as at the time of a jubilee, this asylum was insufficient, and the cardinal accordingly set apart a whole wing of his palace to lodge those who came to Beneventum or were on their way to Rome to gain the indulgence of the Holy Year. This hospice had two entrances to admit the sexes separately: one opening into the first court, the other into the second. The latter has on its lintel this inscription, which gives the precise date and object of the foundation:

Xenodochivm Archiepiscopale

Vrsinvm pro An. Ivbilæi MDCC.

Nor was the cardinal content to give them benches and tables in such numbers as still to be spoken of. He had the bare walls relieved by paintings of some religious subject. In the room where public prayers were offered and the rosary sung, as it still is daily in the cathedral to a peculiar air handed down by tradition, was painted Our Lady of the Rosary, with St. Dominic and St. Catharine of Siena at her feet. In the refectory was depicted a scene from the life of the Blessed Ambrogio Sansedoni, a Dominican friar. He was in the habit of serving five pilgrims in honor of the five wounds of our Lord. One day, while waiting on his guests, his eyes being opened by the Holy Spirit, denoted by the white dove on his shoulder, he saw with astonishment that they were five angels sent by God to reward his charity. In the room where the pilgrims’ feet were washed is to be seen the Blessed Andrea de Franchi, also a Dominican, humbly prostrate before a pilgrim who afterwards reveals himself to be the Saviour.

In the arched passage we find a staircase, leading on the one hand to the hall of state, and on the other to the curia. Taking the latter direction, we pass beneath a statue of St. Philip Neri, larger than life, for which reason it is called St. Filippone. Before it burns a votive lamp, a tribute of gratitude from Cardinal Orsini. Higher up are two medallions of the fifteenth century: one of the Blessed Virgin modestly veiled, her hands folded, borne to heaven by two angels; the other represents St. Mark with his usual attribute, the winged lion. The walls of the court-room are enlivened by a series of landscapes, alternating with the Orsini arms, but the most appropriate decoration is the sentence from the writings of St. Jerome:

Privsqvam avdias

Ne Ivdicaveris

Qvemqvam

D. Hieron:

De Sept: eccl.

Gradibvs.

To judge no one without first hearing him is one of those axioms it seems useless to repeat, and yet how many precipitate judgments, how many sentences that would not be rendered, were so obvious a duty heeded!

The metropolitan archives are between the chancery and the office of the vicar-general, which pour into it every week a mass of official documents for preservation. On the ceiling are emblazoned the arms of Cardinal Banditi, who fitted up the room with conveniences for the registers and papers, distributing them, according to their contents, among the large pigeon-holes which extend from 242the floor to the very ceiling, and are literally crammed with documents. To find one’s way through such an accumulation requires the sagacity and good memory of an archivist like the present one, whose patience is only equalled by his wish to oblige. Beneventum is full of such excellent priests, who are ready to spend their leisure moments in aiding you in your researches.

It is here Cardinal Orsini may best be studied, and that we can learn to what an extent he sacrificed himself for his flock, thereby meriting to become, by the unanimous suffrage of the Sacred College, the successor of Pope Innocent XIII. His incessant activity is shown by the Diario of six volumes in folio in which, till his elevation to the Papacy, his secretary, day by day, noted down the most minute details of his official life. It begins December 1, 1685, the date of his preconization as archbishop of Beneventum by Pope Innocent XI.

The contents refer chiefly to his pastoral visits, ordinations, both regular and extraordinary; assisting at the offices of the cathedral, preaching in pontificals with seven deacons around him; confirmation, with examination of the children on the eve; general communions, baptisms, visits to the dying, visits of devotion to churches; consecration of bishops, churches, altars, and chalices; blessings of all kinds, including vestments; religious professions; processions wearing the red hat; attending lectures on the Holy Scriptures by a theologian; exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, absolution of the excommunicated, synods, provincial councils, consultations in cases of conscience, instructions to the people after the Gospel, saying the rosary with the faithful, teaching children the catechism, journeys, etc., etc.

At the end of the year a summary was made of his principal labors. We give that of the year 1694: Cardinal Orsini baptized 67 children and confirmed 13,851; conferred orders on 841 clerks, 503 porters, 450 lectors, 449 exorcists, 435 acolytes, 436 subdeacons, 434 deacons, and 457 priests; consecrated 12 bishops, 100 churches, 100 stationary altars, 500 portable altars, 176 patens, and 188 chalices; blessed 5 abbots and 4 abbesses; received the profession of 88 nuns; performed 6 marriages; administered extreme unction 8 times; placed 13 corner-stones, and blessed 14 cemeteries and 234 bells.

What a proof of his activity, combined with a very complicated administration! But let us cite a few items from this unpretending diary:

“In the evening I kept vigil before the relics exposed in the church to be consecrated on the morrow.

“In the morning I solemnly consecrated the church of the Most Holy Annunciation at Jelsi, preached to the congregation, and then said Low Mass. This church is the CXXXV.

“I solemnly administered the sacrament of confirmation in the church to 34 boys and 24 girls, in all 58.

“Assisted in cappa at a sermon on the Blessed Sacrament by one of the students of my seminary.

“Assisted in cappa at the Mass of the feria, chanted (it was in Lent), and at the sermon.

“At Fragnitello I was received with the usual ceremonies, but, what was unusual (and this greatly affected me), all the men, women, and children came out to meet me a mile distant, with olive branches in their hands, showing by this manifestation the joy in their hearts. God be for ever blessed!”

At the end of the year the cardinal signed the register to guarantee 243the authenticity of the contents. He adopted this formula:

“Annus 1695, Deo propitio, hic terminatur.

“Ita est. Ego fr. Vin. Mar. card. archiepiscopus m(anu) p(ropria).”

The old palaces had a hall of state for exceptional occasions, when the bishop had to appear in all his dignity. There is such an apartment here, and it is of grand proportions. It is adorned with the portraits and arms of the prelates who have occupied the see, with a concise notice of each. Among them are fourteen saints and two beati: viz., SS. Photinus, Januarius, Dorus, Apollonius, Cassian, Januarius II., Emilius, John, Tamarus, Sophus, Marcian, Zeno, Barbato, and Milon. The latter belongs to the eleventh century, St. Photinus to the first, and the remainder range between the fourth and seventh. The Blessed Giacomo Capocci and Blessed Monaldi lived in the fourteenth century. Let us hope, as the cause has been introduced, we may soon add the Venerable Orsini.

From St. Photinus to his Eminence Cardinal Carafa di Traeto there are fifty-one bishops and seventy-one archbishops. The see was not made archiepiscopal till the year 969, during the pontificate of Pope John XIII. Of the twenty-three cardinal archbishops two became popes: Alexander Farnese, under the name of Paul III.; and Cardinal Orsini, under that of Benedict XIII. Three other popes were likewise from Beneventum—St. Felix (526), Victor III. (1086), and Gregory VIII. (1187).

As an example of the concise and elegant manner in which these prelates’ lives are noticed, we give that of St. Milon, a native of Auvergne:

“LIX. Archiep. VIII. S. Milo ex Arvernia

in Gallia oriundus, VIII. Beneventanus

archiepiscopus, ille idem qui

pietate et literis Stephanum Grandimontensis

familiæ fundatorem erudivit. Provincialem

synodum consummavit A.D.

MLXXV. Obiit die XXIII. Februarii

A.D. MLXXVI. cum sedisset paucis

supra annum mensibus.”

Above these records of the bishops is a long array of armorial ensigns, in which, unfortunately, the arms and seal are often confounded, though essentially different. The archbishops of Beneventum have used for ages a seal of lead on their diplomas and licenses, similar to the bulla of the popes. On one side, separated by a cross, are the heads of the Blessed Virgin, titular of the cathedral, and of St. Bartholomew, the patron of the city and diocese. On the other side are the name and title of the actual archbishop. This seal, in spite of the principles of archæology and heraldry, is given as a coat of arms to the bishops who had none, beginning with St. Photinus, and continuing to the seventh century. From the time of St. Barbato, who died in 682, another seal is added in parti to the bulla, representing a bishop on horseback crossing a bridge and precipitating a dragon into the water. This is doubtless St. Barbato himself, and perhaps refers to the golden viper which he abolished the worship of at Beneventum, transforming it into a chalice, on which, says tradition, was graven the Lord’s Supper.^[55] This counter-seal is maintained from the seventh to the eleventh century, when the bulla is resumed under Amelius (1072).

The first arms really heraldic make their appearance under Cardinal 244Roger, the sixteenth archbishop, who died in 1221. The red hat is found on the escutcheons of the twelfth century, though not conceded to cardinals till about a hundred years later (at the Council of Lyons), and not to be seen on their arms before the fourteenth century. But this may be on the same principle that St. Jerome is usually represented with a cardinal’s hat at his side.

The bulla, seal, and arms, from the first, bear the tiara and crosier. The latter adds nothing to the significance, and does not imply any special privilege, being common to bishops and abbots. As to the tiara, even with a single crown at the base, it is a manifest usurpation. The archbishops of Beneventum, it is true, wore it in the middle ages, as is shown by a document of the fourteenth century and the reliefs on the bronze doors of the cathedral. But Paul II., and later St. Pius V., by a motu proprio, the original of which is to be seen in the archives of the chapter, condemned the practice in formal terms. If the tiara is no longer admissible on ceremonial occasions, why retain it on the arms? And this tiara is boldly surrounded by a nimbus when placed over the arms of the canonized bishops, though none of them ever wore it, with the exception, perhaps, of St. Milon. The nimbus is suitable for the head, which represents the whole body, whereas the covering of the head, however sonorous its name or rich its make, should not have an emblem which denotes elevation on our altars and a claim to public veneration. This would be a grave error, infringing on the liturgy as well as iconography.

The archbishops of Beneventum had a mania for imitating the pope. Thus, they wore the tiara, had the Blessed Sacrament borne before them in their visits, styled themselves Servus servorum Dei, issued diplomas in solemn form after the style of the Cancellaria, sealed them sub plumbo, and imposed on the bishops of the province the annual visit ad limina B. Bartholomæi apostoli. Of all these usurpations, only the tiara remains on the arms, and the bulla on the licenses; but even these are too much, for the tiara and bulla are essentially papal, and rightfully belong to the Sovereign Pontiff alone.

On the walls of the apartment are painted en camaïeu all the sainted bishops of Beneventum in simulated niches, clothed pontifically, with the tiara on their heads. One alone has a distinguishing attribute—St. Barbato, who has in his hand the viper of gold. St. Photinus, according to the Diptychon of Beneventum, was ordained and sent here by St. Peter in the year 40. He is believed to be of Greek origin. From him to St. Januarius, who was martyred in 305, is a long interval with no names, though tradition tells us the see had eleven occupants in the time. This loss of names is said to be owing to Diocletian, who ordered the writings of Christians to be destroyed. There is a similar vacancy in all the sees in France, but this is no argument against their apostolic origin. The first founders might receive their mission from St. Peter or his immediate successors, and the difficulties of the times might prevent their being at once replaced. The churches had to exist as best they could for a long period, and were perhaps governed by bishops with no fixed residence or distinct territory.

To complete the parallel with 245Rome, Beneventum is said to have had a woman for one of its bishops, as the papal see, according to its enemies, was fraudulently occupied by Pope Joan. Cardinal Orsini spiritedly replies to this calumny in the noble words inscribed next the name of Bishop Enrico, who died in 1170: “Ex errore in necrologio monialium S. Petri orta fuit fabula de Sebastiana moniali pro archiepiscopo habita ne fabula sua vacaret Beneventana Sedes in hac Sebastiana ut Romana de sua Johanna.” This calumny sprang from a false interpretation of the record in the necrology of the abbey of San Pietro for November 29: “Obiit archiepiscopus et Sebastian. mon.” The archbishop and the nun might certainly die on the same day, without being, on that account, one and the same person.

On the east wall of the hall is painted the city of Beneventum, surrounded by the principal towns of the diocese and the sees of the suffragans. As their number is considerable, the frescos are continued in the passage leading to the sacristy. They are not without interest, though perhaps maps would be preferable, after the manner of those, so striking and complete, which adorn the gallery of Gregory XIII. at the Vatican.

As conferences and ecclesiastical assemblies, as well as the Mandatum on Holy Thursday, were held in this hall, there is a permanent throne of carved wood, but it stands between the windows on one side, instead of being at the end in capite aulæ, the proper place, where the entrance now is from the private apartments.

One of the doors in the hall opens into the Monte di Pietà, founded by Cardinal Orsini to relieve the poor of his diocese, where money was lent on articles pledged and without the least interest, conformably to the bulls of Leo X. and Paul V., which definitely regulated such institutions. He established, moreover, a Mons Frumentarius, or wheat fund, to furnish grain to the poor in want of bread, or to sow, at the mere recommendation of their curate, and inscribed over the door appropriate texts from Holy Writ, showing him to be the comforter of the poor:

Mons frumentarius Beneventanus erectus anno Domini 1694.

Factus es fortitudo pauperi, fortitudo egeno^[56] (Isaias xxv.)

Eripiet de angustia^[57] pauperem (Job xxxvi.)

Revolutions have naturally put an end to these charitable institutions, without substituting anything more to the advantage of the people, but they cannot efface the memory of the incomparable prelate who founded them. Canonico Feuli has reason to say in his Bulletino Ecclesiastico that “others may equal Orsini, but can never surpass him.”

At the top of the staircase is a kind of marquise, supported by elegant columns, before the door leading to the private apartments. Above are the Orsini arms of inlaid marbles, the colors conformed to the rules of heraldry, and the inscription:

Fr. Vinc. Maria. Ord. Præd. Card. Ursino. Archiep. An. MDCCVIII.

which reminds us that Cardinal Orsini belonged to the Dominican Order. Even when pope he continued to be a frate. From him emanated the celebrated constitution which admonished bishops chosen from the regular orders to remember, by the color of their 246costume, the solemn profession they had once made.

The most striking thing in the antechamber is a double band of emblematic medallions on the walls, with explanatory mottoes, such as were popular in the sixteenth century. They all refer to the obligations of a bishop, and evidently allude to Cardinal Orsini as the model of one. They begin with the holy name of God in Greek, with the Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, the angels’ eternal song of praise. We will rapidly review the other emblems here employed to raise the mind from the visible to the invisible, the material to the spiritual.

The telescope, which enables the human eye to penetrate the profound mysteries of the heavens. So the spiritual world is opened by prayer and meditation. Alta a longe cognoscit (Ps. cxxxvii. 6).

A dog, guarding the fold: emblem of pastoral vigilance. Vt vitam habeant (St. John x. 10).

The mitre, supported by a column: episcopal firmness. Firmalitvr et non flectetvr (Ecclus. xv. 3).

The wine-press overflowing with the juice of the grape: emblem of the spiritual harvest. Vt fructvm plvs afferat (St. John xv. 2).

A clock, which tells the hours and minutes: the value of time. Particvla non te prætereat (Ecclus. xiv. 14).

The crane, emblem of vigilance, because it was formerly believed to sleep on one foot; the other holding a stone, which, when it fell, awoke it. Excvbat in custodiis (Num. xviii. 4).

The horse, held in check by a vigorous hand: self-government. Ne declines in ira (Ps. xxvi. 9).

The elephant, believed every morning to adore the sun at its rising: humility before God. Hvmiliat semetipsvm (Philipp. ii. 8).

The lamp which burns and gives light: figure of the bishop consuming himself for others. Vt ardeat et lvceat (St. John v. 35).^[58]

The pelican, nourishing its young with the blood from its own breast: a lively expression of extreme devotedness. Reficiam vos (St. Matt. xi. 28).

The crosier is the shepherd’s crook. It terminates with a graceful hook for the purpose of drawing the lambs more gently. It was once a saying: “It is good to live under the crosier!” Svm pastor bonvs (St. John x. 2).

The sun, shedding its rays on a balance: equity under the inflexible eye of God. Æqvitatem vidit vvltvs eivs (Ps. x. 8).

The honeycomb, in which the bee deposits its honey gathered from the flowers: activity and sweetness. Mansvetvm exaltant (Ps. cxlix. 4).

The stag, which, according to an old notion, attracted serpents by its breath in order to exterminate them: the might of the Holy Spirit, of which a bishop is the organ. Flavit Spiritvs eivs (Ps. cxlvii. 18).

The trumpet, which, though sonorous, can give forth sweet notes. In spiritv lenitatis (Gal. vi. 1).

The mill, turned by the water, grinds wheat to feed the hungry. A bishop, above all, should be the father of the poor and needy. Frangit esvrienti (Isai. lviii. 7).

A painting representing the sun: the divine attributes should be reproduced in a bishop. In eandem imaginem (2 Cor. iii. 18).

The fox, emblem of the transgressor, flies before the dog, symbol of episcopal vigilance. A facie tva fvgiam (Ps. cxxxviii. 7).

The dolphin, by the odor it exhales, draws to it the fish of the 247sea: the influence of virtue. In odorem cvrrimvs (Cant. i. 3).

An anvil, struck by two hammers at once, without being moved: strength to resist exterior assaults. Fortitvdinem meam cvstodiam (Ps. lviii. 10).

The phœnix, which springs to new life on the pile where it is consumed: the power of multiplying time. Mvltiplicabo dies (Prov. ix. 2).

The bear, taking its young in its paws, to teach them to stand and walk: paternal direction of souls. Donec formetvr (Gal. iv. 19).

The compass, turning its needle to the polar star. A bishop should not be guided by human influences. Hanc reqviram (Ps. xxvi. 4).

The rain, watering the garden: going about doing good. Pertransiit benefaciendo (Acts x. 38).

The pomegranate contains a great number of seeds: a bishop shelters the multitude. Coperit mvltitvdinem (St. James v. 20).

The mitre, surrounded by an aureola: the splendor sanctity adds to the episcopal dignity. Contvlit et splendorem (Judith x. 4).

The eagle, trying its eaglets by making them look at the sun: God alone should be looked to in trial. Cvm probatvs fverit (St. James i. 12).

A tree, the vigor of which is only increased by age: experience increases one’s efficiency. Fortior cvm senverit (Prov. xxii. 6).

At one end of the antechamber is the library, formerly containing a fine collection of books, mostly belonging to Cardinal Orsini, but now unfortunately scattered. He also established a printing-press in the palace for the purpose of publishing his own edicts, licenses, and pamphlets for the direction of his clergy. A small oratory opens into the library with its marble altar turned towards the East and its walls covered with paintings. One of these is a votive picture from Cardinal Orsini after his miraculous preservation in the earthquake of 1688 by the special intervention of St. Philip Neri, representing him buried among the ruins of his palace, his head alone visible, resting on a picture of the saint, who, in consequence of this memorable circumstance, has ever since been regarded as one of the patrons of Beneventum.

It is said that when Cardinal Orsini was leaving Beneventum for Rome, he turned towards the weeping inhabitants, and, after praying silently for an instant, promised them his protection henceforth against earthquakes, and, in fact, not only has the city been spared when serious disasters have occurred in the country around, but no citizen of Beneventum has received any injury, even when exposed elsewhere to terrible danger. Many families keep with veneration a bust of the holy cardinal in their houses, or some object once belonging to him, and attribute to this devotion a special protection.

There is nothing of interest in the private rooms once occupied by Cardinal Orsini. One would like to see his unpretending furniture, his pictures of devotion, the kneeling-stool where he so often prayed for his flock, and the books he daily used, but they are all gone. There is not even an authentic likeness of him,^[59] though he resided here thirty-eight years, and expended in the restoration and embellishment 248of the palace 64,589 ducats of his personal fortune.

We have already alluded to the quarter of the palace called il conventino, because it has the aspect of a monastery. It is divided by a corridor, with cells on both sides that communicate with each other, or can be made private at pleasure. Here, without any luxury or display, Cardinal Orsini lodged the bishops convoked for the provincial councils, and generously provided for every expense these assemblies involved. The priests who accompanied them were lodged in the convent of San Modesto, where nothing was wanting to their comfort. The register of accounts gives some curious details as to the supplies. Macaroni necessarily played an important rôle. Snow was furnished for refreshing drinks. And as the wine called Lachryma would doubtless have been too heavy, it was previously tempered by a strong addition of the ordinary red wine!

But the patience of the reader is already exhausted with these details. As we have implied, the archiepiscopal palace of Beneventum is not precisely artistic, and yet it is interesting and curious. If the account has been unreasonably prolonged, the memory of Cardinal Orsini is a sufficient justification. We cannot make too prominent the name and labors of those who lived only for the church, and sacrificed themselves for its development and glory. Quam multa, quam opportuna, quam grandia accepta referunt beneficia, let us say, in conclusion, with the inscription on the hospital at Beneventum, graven on marble to the praise of Fra Vincenzo Maria, priest of the title of St. Sixtus, Cardinal Orsini.

“JUXTA CRUCEM.”

“Dear Lord,” we say, “could we have stood

With thy sweet Mother and Saint John

Beside thy cross; or knelt and clung—

Heedless what ruffian eyes look’d on—

With Magdalen’s wild grief, and flung

Our arms about th’ ensanguined wood!...”

But have we not the Crucified

Among us, “even at the door”?

Whom else behold we, day by day,

In the sore-laden, patient poor?

And where disease makes want its prey,

Can we not stand that cross beside?

O blest vocation, theirs who come,

At chosen duty’s high behest,

To soothe the squalid couch of pain

With pledges of a better rest

Than all earth’s wealth can give or gain,

And whispers of eternal home!

249Never so near our Lord as then,

We touch His Wounds—more heal’d than healing:

Never so close to Mary’s Heart,

Hear too for us its throbs appealing:

And when for other scenes we part,

It is with John and Magdalen.

THE LITERARY EXTRAVAGANCE OF THE DAY.

La Bruyère sees in all extravagance of phrase some symptom of weakness. “To say modestly of anything it is good or it is bad, and to give reasons why it is so, needs good sense and expression. It is much shorter to pronounce in a decisive tone either that it is execrable or admirable.” He himself is a model of clearness and exactness of expression. His English counterpart is Swift, of whom Thackeray said: “He writes as if for the police.” Nothing in literature surpasses the vraisemblance of Gulliver’s Travels, which reads like a book of authentic adventure. Its artlessness is the perfection of art concealing art. La Bruyère also says: “What art is needed to be natural (rentrer dans la nature)! What time, what rules, what attention, what labor to dance with the ease and grace with which we walk, to sing as easily as we talk, to speak and express one’s self as one’s self thinks!” To speak or to write as one thinks seems, in these days of tumid and extravagant expression, to be one of the lost arts. We generally say either more or less than we think, usually more. For this reason we should turn to the older classical writers, because of the importance they attribute to diction, and the sense of duty they attach to it.

The new rhetorical doctrine is, “Let the style take care of itself. Give us thought.” Robert Browning, whose poetry nobody understands, probably not even himself, declares in favor of “burrs of expression that will stick in the attention.” Any one who has scrambled through the labyrinths of some of his poems has had “burrs” enough to suffice him for a lifetime. It is clear that this plea for thought to the neglect of style is an excuse for slovenly composition. There is no reason why thought should not have clear, precise, and beautiful expression. Unless style be made a subject of deep attention, and be brought to the severest test of rhetorical criticism, there is an end of literature. If the barbaric “yawp” of Walt Whitman is to pass for poetry; if the pictorial daubs of J. A. Froude are to be considered historical portraitures; and if extravagant and exaggerated forms of speech are to be ranked as striking beauties, the literary critics and the lovers of literature in general must gird themselves for a tougher battle for letters than they ever did for any attack that threatened them from Philistia. What we call the Extravagant School of Literature numbers eminent names, and is by no means confined to the more obvious and pronounced sensationalism of the daily press. Contemporaneous 250history, criticism, poetry, sectarian theology, and, wonderful to say, philosophy and science deal largely in exaggerated expression and extravagant theory.

It may be some consolation to the newspapers and to the gentler sex, both charged by the critics with the use of exaggeration and hyperbole, that they but follow the example set them by grave modern historians and scientists. The reckless writing in the journals, like the fluent gossip at Mrs. Grundy’s tea-parties, is ephemeral. But extravagance aspires to immortality in the pages of the historian. The description of Mary Stuart’s beheading in Froude lacks even the historical accuracy of a New York Herald reporter’s account of an “execution.” Macaulay’s fantastic analysis of motives exceeds in boldness of conjecture a journalist’s article on the future policy of the Vatican. In both sets of examples there is the same fault—unlimited speculation and unjustifiable comment. Darwin observes some particular facts in natural history, and, in defiance of a familiar rule in syllogisms, leaps at once to a universal conclusion. Matthew Arnold, fired by his name as a critic, indulges in extravagant speculation upon the relations of literature and dogma. Science loses its cool head, and philosophy its cautious pace, on the presentation of hitherto unexplained phenomena. Protestant theology hears aghast that the Greek of the Epistle to the Hebrews is more classic than that in the other Pauline epistles, and telegraphs the discovery to the Board on the Revision of the Scriptures. The dainty trick of Tennyson’s metre is the despair and admiration of inglorious Miltons, whose hands cannot strike the resounding lyre with like skilfulness, and thereupon jangle it in woful measures. Bret Harte makes a “hit” in the delineation of wild Western life, and he is hailed as a new-born genius. John Hay and Joaquin Miller assume the bays. A crowd of nonentities rush before the public on the lecture platform, and their extravagant nonsense brings them fame and fortune. The two classes react upon each other for the worse. The extravagant never corrects his faults, and the public never perceive them, so used have they become to this baneful influence of sensationalism. It permeates popular religion. A Protestant Life of Christ by a prominent preacher reads like a dime novel.

We readily pardon the extravagance of fiction; and catechresis in poetry does not call forth the severest censure of the critic. Any one familiar with the hard conditions of modern newspaper writing will not be disposed to judge harshly if both editor and reporter combine to make their journal “spicy.” It may be that the high-pressure system on which newspapers are conducted has exercised a marked influence upon all classes of readers and writers. The New York dailies have a rather questionable élan, which provincial journals follow from afar off. The stupendous enterprise of sending expeditions to South Africa and to the North Pole, the insatiable quest for news, the undisguised love of the sensational characteristic of foremost journalism, have, in our opinion, a debilitating and disastrous effect upon the scholarship and the intellectual life of America. The showy story, the painfully epigrammatic drama, and the pyrotechnical poetry of the land are newspapery to the last degree. 251Journalists do not even seem to know or realize the influence which they exert. What is a pointed and brilliant editorial compared to the honest endeavor of a journalist to inculcate sound ethical and social views in the minds of his readers? Who cares about Jones’ slashing attack upon Smith? Why, in the name of common decency, are columns opened to the discussion of Robinson’s domestic infelicities? We do not wish to make up our minds every morning upon the state and prospects of the universe. We are firmly convinced that the world will go on, without being daily buttonholed by talented editors to acquaint us with the fact. The sensational newspaper has spoiled some of the best traits in the American, and it has given abnormal development to his worst tendency—his curiosity. A newspaper would have scattered all the happiness of Rasselas’ valley. It is happy for Americans that they have a weakness for print, and seem rather to enjoy a figure therein. If the Bungtown Bugle did not notice the arrival in town of Mr. Porkpacker, let the editor tremble.

But the extravagance of journalism is mainly confined to words. It is not altogether true that the guiding spirit of the newspaper is sensation. This charge, which can readily be sustained against the contemporary historian, does not hold of the journalist. He makes the most of news, but he rarely invents. He is sensitive on this point. Accuracy is a prime requisite in a reporter. His is the hyperbole of words. This comes generally from a limited education and inexact habits of thought. When we reflect that the first and last lesson of rhetoric is simplicity, we should not expect too much from men who are trained to think and believe that no idea is acceptable unless arrayed in gorgeous imagery and blazing with tawdry rhetoric. A fire with loss of life is a terribly startling thing, and the reporter imagines that he is really describing its horror when, with apt alliteration’s artful aid, he heads his account with “The Fire-fiend Furious—Flaunting Flames Frantically Flashing—Fainting Firemen Fused by the Fierce Fire,” etc. Richard Grant White has wearied his readers for a decade and more on the theme of newspaper English and cognate subjects. The fact is, no man can be an etymologist without a fair knowledge of the languages from which the English is derived, and it is simply wasted labor to counsel the attainment of a classic style from a mere acquaintance with one language, and that the vernacular. The wonder is that so much really good writing is done under such limitations.

It takes some self-denial in a newspaper man to say a thing simply. We understand that Western newspapers have made a new departure in announcing deaths, and that a rather coarse, if not ribald, humor is tolerated. This is an evidence of a lower sensationalism. The West has exercised a rough and energetic influence upon the laughable dilettanteism of the Eastern press, but we must confess our inability to relish its humor. Its humor is extravaganza, and thus would work out the very reform and improvement which it is the design of this article to advocate. The pompous descriptions ending in anti-climax, the open burlesquing of the style of newspaper novelists, the riotous characterization of oddities, and the hearty dislike of sham and cant that one meets in 252Western journalism must have a good effect upon the general literature of the country. But one tires of Mark Twain, mayhap for the reason that one grows speedily weary of professedly funny papers. The poor court-jesters of the middle ages got more frowns than smiles. Mark Twain has little of that heartiness and bonhomie that are the characteristic of true humor. Real wit he has none, nor does he pretend to it. His humor is extravagance, which, even in this humble but oh! how genial faculty and expression of the human heart, is seen to be out of place and power.

The more we read and write, the clearer becomes to us the wisdom of the Horatian maxim to keep our lucubrations by us for years. Hasty writing is not only hard reading but often dangerous utterance. An editor told the writer that when the news of the late Pope’s death reached us he had his biography already in type, but without editorial comment. It was necessary to compose some sort of editorial upon an event which for a time suspended the breath of Christendom, and our editor, with the nonchalance and conceit which unfortunately characterize so many of the journalistic guild, sat down to dash off as fast as pen could travel his estimate of that great, long-suffering, and heroic man on whose brow, where gathered the glory of Thabor and the gloom of Calvary, rested the mystic diadem of the Supreme Pontificate. “Of course,” said our editor, “I hadn’t time to get up anything very fine, but my Protestant friends were delighted. I gave the good old man some pretty severe raps—that thing, you know, about his being a Mason, and opposed to progress—and—and—Antonelli, and that little love-affair, you know. Ha! ha! ha!” No wonder Dickens impaled the editor of the New York Rowdy. Now, if this man could have waited, and read and reflected, it would have been morally impossible for him to have composed an obituary which, if it had been written of any other man than the dead Vicar of Jesus Christ, would have exposed its author to the pistol-shot of outraged relatives or to the chastisement of public justice.

So long as ignorant and irresponsible men are suffered to guide and control the expression of a journal, so long will the American newspaper fail of any high mission. It is a good sign of the sturdy independence of the American character that it has shaken off the journalistic yoke and thinks for itself. Formerly the editorial pages were the first to be scrutinized and the mysterious oracle consulted. But

“Apollo from his shrine

Can no more divine.”

The garish light of day has been poured in upon the sanctum, and the divinity has fled. The newspaper is not likely soon again to attain to that high dignity and power which it held prior to the last Presidential election, for reasons too obvious to the reader to need mention here. Year by year the strongly-marked individuality of the chief editor, so familiar of old, fades out of sight, either because the race of great editors is run or the conditions of newspaper life have changed. We speak of the newspaper only as it falls within the scope of this article, which regards its literary and not its moral aspect. We do not advert to it at all as a teaching or ethical power, for we look upon the average 253journal with feelings akin to contempt at its blind or wilful neglect of the highest possibilities of good. No men are better acquainted than are newspaper men with the absurdity of Protestantism, its failure both as a public institution and a private religious life, its petty tyrannies, its squeamishness, its rhodomontade, and its helplessness before any attack of sound and manly logic. They know, too, or ought to know, the real good of the Catholic Church. Yet how rarely one sees in a journal even a feeble recognition of the benefits of Catholicity! Why, in many quarters we do not even get the show and hearing graciously accorded to the Mormons. Who has not felt the covert sneer, the poorly-concealed bigotry, and the ignorant prejudice so thinly disguised? When Doyle, England’s best caricaturist, not even excepting Cruikshank, was required by the proprietors of Punch to draw a caricature of the Pope, he threw his pencil in their faces and told them “be ——,” a word which the recording angel certainly blotted out. What are we to think of a journal that seizes the celebration of the feast of a great national saint as a happy occasion for publishing a series of “jocular” and blasphemous articles on the saint’s memory, twice piercing the sensibilities of Irishmen, once through their faith and next through their nationality? Is that honest, worthy, or dignified journalism?

Enough has been said to place the general newspaper press upon a low form in the school of extravagant expression. Not until editors feel a profound moral responsibility, and enlarge their minds with at least a cursory study of Catholic theology—two things which are least likely to come to pass—will the American journal attain any lasting prestige or power. As it is, its tone becomes less dignified and effective year by year, and we should not be surprised to discover in the newspaper, in time, the most stubborn and powerful opponent of Christianity, and even of general morality. Heaven knows what incalculable harm it now does to immortal souls by its constant vomiting forth of social impurities and criminal details. There are certain papers of large circulation and “respectability” which cannot be read by all without proximate danger of mortal sin. But if a Catholic critic ventures to proclaim these manifest truths, he is answered with a howl about the church’s opposition to progress and enlightenment. The newspapers cannot bear criticism whilst savagely attacking any person or institution to which they take a dislike. This sensitiveness is a symptom of weakness.

We turn to the great masters of extravagant expression. At their head we place Lord Macaulay, who has demonstrated the art of making history romantic, and romance historical. Query: whether Sir Walter Scott was not the founder of the contemporaneous historical school? At any rate the cry is, “Let us have no more dryly accurate histories like Lingard’s or Arnold’s. Relegate to an appendix state papers and statistics. Give us delightful conversations between historical personages, somewhat in the style of Landor’s Imaginary Conversations, only not so heavy.” It is so delightful to enter into the secret motives of men, to interpret their hidden spirit, and clearly understand their whole mental and moral being. This is the new school of historical writing, carried 254to extravagant lengths by Macaulay, Froude, and Carlyle. The old-fashioned idea of history was the simple and exact statement of events, the ascertained motives of historical personages, and the actual results of their deeds and decrees. This idea the trio before mentioned scout with derisive laughter. Macaulay writes down “the dignity of history”; Froude penetrates into the arcana of royal bosoms; and Carlyle shrilly hoots at the Dryasdusts for their historical investigations, and makes a bonfire of archives and state papers. Of this precious triad Macaulay is the least vehement, but none the less must we dub him an extravagant. He never can say a thing naturally. He cannot rise above an epigram or an antithesis. Nor was there ever any intellectual growth in him. In Trevelyan’s Life and Letters of Macaulay there is a characteristic anecdote of his boyhood. His mother refused him a piece of cake for some misdemeanor—for missing a lesson, we think. “Very well,” antithetically answered the future reviewer (ætat. 9), “hereafter industry shall be my bread and application my butter.” This might have been written in the Edinburgh forty years after. When the famous essay on Milton appeared, sensationalism had not as yet invaded the prosy precincts of the reviews. Jeffrey’s classic but dull reviews were models; nor did the humor of the “joking parson of St. Paul’s” receive much countenance from the Scotch, on whom the parson revenged himself when he said that a surgical operation was necessary to get a joke into a Scotchman’s head. Macaulay’s brilliancy took the town by storm. But what is there in the review of Milton? of Johnson? of Bacon? He began the carnival of the sensational. George Cornewall Lewis said of Macaulay: “The idea of a man of forty writing such flowery and sentimental stuff! Macaulay will never be anything but a rhetorician.” But the reading people had their appetites whetted by Scott and Byron, and there has been little sobriety in literature since. The extravagance of the praise with which Macaulay bedaubed Milton struck the critics at the time; but when they answered, he was famous. The Americans raved over him. It was perhaps as well that his History was never finished, for it is morally certain that his infatuation for saying brilliant things would have led him to hurl Washington and the American patriots of the Revolution from their pedestals. He could not resist the temptation to bid men abate their admiration of any esteemed character. To wind up with a brilliant period was the height of his poor literary ambition. Of course he received his reward; but no man now who values his reputation for scholarship would think of citing him as an historical or, what may seem stranger, a literary authority. That glowing tribute to the Catholic Church in the review on Ranke has always seemed to us one of his rhetorical bursts. There were in the subject light and color, imposing figures, an atmosphere of art and beauty, and innumerable chances for introducing epigrams and startling paradoxes. He wrote an article which flames like one of Rubens’ pictures. The whole argument is false from beginning to end, and its logic would shame the New Zealander himself. The conclusion which any thoughtful man would draw from the powers and 255attributes therein ascribed to the Catholic Church is that such an institution must be divine—a conclusion furthest from the reviewer’s thought. He has made the dull pages of English political history as interesting as a fairy-tale, under which designation it no doubt will be tabulated by future scholars; for there is not a point d’appui in the entire history, from his glorification of King William to his defamation of Penn, that has not been shattered by some one. But who should seriously attack romance?

James II. was a poltroon, and William III. was a brave man and a great statesman. Macaulay did not attempt all the possibilities of sensationalism. This was left for J. A. Froude, who now reigns in his stead. Casting about for a striking character, Froude lights on Henry VIII. And it is here that that delightful historico-romantic style soars to hitherto unexplored heights of extravagance. The injured monarch is introduced to the sound of mournful music. His tortured mind is apparent in his anguish-riven face. Contemplate at leisure that Achillean form, that massive brow, the melancholy grace of those royal legs. A pensive smile irradiates a countenance on which all the graces play. He is thinking of Katharine. His conscience is smitten. Enter to him Anne Boleyn. What thoughts are hidden beneath that alabaster brow?—and so on for volumes. The forte of the historian of this school is his thorough knowledge of the thoughts and designs of his personages. Nothing escapes his eagle eye. This wondrous faculty, which has hitherto been considered preternatural, enables him to detect deep meanings in the slightest act. The king smiled significantly. Ah-hah! Sergeant Buzfuz’s interpretation of Pickwick’s note about the warming-pan sinks into obscurity alongside of the calm and connected analysis of motive that Mr. Froude can weave out of King Henry’s stockings. It will amuse our readers to take up a few pages of any of Froude’s historical works, and study out illustrations of this criticism. They will soon discover that it is he who does all the thinking, planning, and suffering for his historical automata, that are moved by the chords of his sympathetic heart. No one would call Froude a historian except in burlesque. He is a romancist.

But what shall we say of the Scotch Diogenes, Carlyle, who hurls books instead of tubs, though the latter missile would do less mischief? He is an extravagant. We have hesitated some time about classing him in the school, but we think that we are justified, at least by the wildness, unconnectedness, and rhapsodical fury of his speech. Besides, he frantically hates and denounces America, which fact would set him down at once as a man of unbalanced intellect and malignant humor. He used to know how to write English, as his Life of Schiller and Life of John Sterling abundantly prove. But in an evil hour he learned German, and the next view of him we have discovers him tossing in a maelstrom of German metaphysics. He certainly deserved a better fate. We very much doubt if any sane man can long keep his wits and study German philosophy, especially in the mad outcomes of Fichte’s Absolute Identity and Schelling’s theories of the το εγο. The best minds of Germany, both Catholic 256and Protestant, Möhler and Neander, have pronounced the judgment of all sensible men upon these absurdities in one word—rubbish. Carlyle patiently worked in this rubbish for years, and his result is not half so good as his brave old words, spoken out of his honest heart: “Do what you are able to do in this world and leave the rest to God.” In the name of common sense, do rational men care anything about the critic of Pure Reason, or the beer and tobacco speculations of conceited egoists? It were well if men, like the parish priest in Don Quixote, burnt all those foolish books of knight-errantry carried on in a world as dreamy and fantastic as that fabled by the old writers on chivalry. Carlyle’s command of language is marvellous, but his style is hybrid, wearisome, and frequently unintelligible. He is sensational, in a bad sense, too. There is not a hero that he has chosen who was not chosen with an eye to effect: Mohammed, a prophet! Luther, the hero-priest! Cromwell, the hero-king! The selection of these worthies enabled him to say something startling. Then the idea of taking Frederick II. of Prussia as a type of the heroic, kingly, religious, literary, and general excellence of the eighteenth century was carrying the extravagant a little too far. The old man now sits like a bear with a sore head. We pardon him much, for we look upon him as an embittered and disappointed man. He seems not to care what he says nor how rudely he says it. His criticism on Swinburne, the erotic poet, whose success is an indication of something rotten in English letters, is so harsh that we hesitate to quote it, though it is richly deserved: “He is a man up to his neck in a cess-pool, and adding to the filth.” We need Diogenes to snub Alexander and to trample on the pride of Plato. Had Carlyle escaped fantastic Germanism and its wretched philosophizing, he would rank with the greatest masters of language in any tongue. The glow and beauty of many of his descriptions are beyond praise, and no more skilful hand has ever drawn the vast and gloomy tableaux of the French Revolution. His historical method has the same vice as Macaulay’s and Froude’s. He is pictorial, imaginative, and given to unwarranted speculation. His style has the worst faults of the sensational school, though it may be alleged in his defence that his vast knowledge of German has unconsciously and radically modified it. Affectation he has none, which cannot be said of his imitators in word-coining.

Literary criticism, which certainly should have advanced somewhat since the days of Dennis, is at present as “slashing” as that old cynic himself could have desired. The great reviews, spoiled by Macaulay’s example, have adopted a supercilious tone that but ill comports with the dignity and functions of true criticism. We recall only one great exception, John Wilson (Christopher North), in recent English literary criticism, that is not open to the charge of querulous fault-finding. The narrowness of the English reviews, and their fatal obtuseness to see beyond the limits they have drawn for themselves, have deprived them of the proper power of literary judgment or suggestive writing such as we associate with a review. The latest of their number, the Nineteenth Century, is not long 257enough before us to enable us to form a satisfactory judgment. It lacks unity, but, perchance, this is a merit. The reader knows beforehand the judgment of the Edinburgh, the London and British Quarterlies, and the Westminster on any subject. They are a bench of Lord Jeffreys passing sentence before any evidence is presented to them.

There is no writer on whom sensationalism works such quick and fatal destruction as the critic. We look to him to be above the passions of the hour, the rage of the fashion, and the influence of literary and political cliques. Even his admiration must be tempered. He must betray no weaknesses. When we come across a critique which runs over with passion, weak sentiment, petty jealousies, unworthy bickerings, and a subdued but potent sensationalism, we are shocked and disappointed. Most contemporary reviews are pompous exhibitions of the writer’s own learning, which may be in one sense encyclopædic, and which generally throws the author under review quite in the shade. The older reviewers gave some hearing to an author. They quoted him largely, and enabled the reader to judge for himself. They proffered their opinions modestly, and supported their objections with proof drawn from the book itself. But nowadays, if a reviewer condescends to advert to the book which he is supposed to be reviewing, it is in a high and mighty tone of censure or of autocratic approval. This obtrusion of self and opinions smacks much of the sensational. The reviewer wishes to be seen upon the tripod, and he is convinced in his own heart, or at least allows his reader plainly to understand, that he could write a much better book than that which he has deigned to review. Slashing criticisms are in great favor. Oh! for another Macaulay to blast another Montgomery. We say, Oh! for another Pope to place these gentlemen in another Dunciad. There is no merit in cutting a book to pieces. An eye sharpened by malice and on the lookout for faults will detect blunders in a title. Where merited chastisement must be inflicted it should not be spared; but that is a poor idea of literary criticism that views it as a medium of communicating only stinging comment and bitter diatribe. Criticism is essentially calm and judicial. It should sift a book as law does evidence. No stormy passions should be suffered to disturb its equanimity. There is no other department of letters that invites and exacts such rare scholarship and genial wisdom.

The man who can quickly recognize and honestly praise a work of genius, and, through wise commendation, introduce it to a wide circle of readers, merits a crown more precious than the poet’s. In these days of much bad writing and wide reading there is deep need of such exact criticism, such careful watchfulness over literature, and such sure guidance of the public taste. Keep sensationalism at least out of our reviews and our book notices, for if the critic loses the reckoning we are indeed at sea.

We hinted that sectarian theology has its sensational side. If we can dignify with the name of theology that congeries of books, sermons, pamphlets, and tracts that is the literary outcome of Protestantism, then theology, the queen of the sciences, is in the plight of Hecuba as described in Hamlet:

“But who, oh! who had seen the mobled queen

Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames,” etc.

258No attempt is made to conceal the sensationalism of the Protestant pulpit. A dull preacher had best betake himself to another occupation; say anything that will be listened to, sooner than behold the agonizing sight of a sleeping congregation. Modern congregations do not enjoy the traditional nap. They are kept awake by the attitudinizer in the pulpit. They are not sure of what he is going to say next. Sir Roger de Coverley made his chaplain preach one of Barrow’s sermons, and, thus being assured of orthodoxy, he slept with a quiet conscience. The quality of the majority of Protestant sermons is as spiced and sensational as the average popular lecture. What motive but that of making a sensation can induce Farrar and Stanley to preach against hell in Westminster Abbey? Their sermons are as high colored as a story in the New York Ledger. The new tack which the Protestant hulk is now painfully taking is the harmonization of science and religion. We verily believe that Darwin, Huxley, and Tyndall take a malicious pleasure in seeing the squirms of Protestant theologians. Those men know themselves the inconclusiveness of their arguments against revelation, but the fatal spell is on science, too—it must be sensational or nothing. The old scientists worked calmly away for years, and set forth the results of their investigations with the modesty of true merit. But Huxley cannot anatomize the leg of a spider without publishing the process in the newspapers, with some reflections upon its bearing and probably fatal effect upon the Mosaic records.

In summing up the conclusions suggested by our reflections upon the extravagant, we must not forget that the ways and habits of modern social life have almost necessitated this species of literature. It is remarkable that the Latin writers under the later emperors have neither the purity of thought nor of style of the old masters. Literature is the reflex of passing life. Our century is the century of startling discovery, of kaleidoscopic changes, of rapid social life and intense intellectual energy. Its expression must be loud and boisterous. But it is the duty of writers to keep the gross sensational elements of life out of letters. Literature should soothe and compose the mind; should be its refuge from turbulence and care; should be a ministry of peace and refreshment to the wearied spirit. The enduring products of human genius are marked by the calmness and serenity of the great souls that conceived them, and they produce in us the like frame of mind. The public should look coldly upon the class of productions we have been examining, and bid

“The extravagant and erring spirit hie

To its confine.”

259

THE BLUE-BIRD’S NOTE.

I.

Not Philomel, ’mid dark of night, unseen,

Pipes sweeter notes unto the listening heart

Than from the adventurous blue-bird start

That sings amid the cedars’ dusky green

When March doth fleck the sky with windy clouds,

When sodden grass is gray as naked boughs

Along whose length no touch of summer glows—

Folded the buds within their spicy shrouds,

Waiting the coming of their Easter morn,

When the up-risen sun their bonds shall break,

Earth’s alleluia in the forests wake,

Wherein no voice more glad than this is born

That fills the farewell hours of winter gloom

With skies of blue and fields knee-deep in bloom.

II.

Who hears the music of the blue-bird’s song,

And sees not straightway cloudy skies grow fair

With softened light pale April kindleth there?

Who heareth not the swollen, rippling throng

Of loosened streams that trip the roads beside,

That wear soft channels in the meadow grass,

And peaceful grow to uphold the crisp-leaved cress?

Who sees not o’er the marsh-pools, dark and wide,

Rise tasselled willow and the later glow

Of sturdy marigolds’ broad, golden bloom,

Dim light of violets; while fresh perfume

From every budding twig doth overflow?

Such world a song can build of shivering air—

Earth’s miracles unfolding everywhere.

III.

Singeth the dreamy nightingale of love,

Unsevered still the thrush from Paradise,

The lark’s swift aspiration to the skies

Is faith that sees in perfect light above;

And type doth seem spring’s blue-winged herald’s song

Of that calm faith Eternal Wisdom blessed,

Believing things unseen with quiet breast,

Not asking first to see the angels throng.

260Faith meet for earth, filling the storm-rent skies

With cheerful song of trust and heavenly grace,

Softening with joys to come earth’s rugged face,

Tinting life’s gray with heaven’s rainbow dyes—

Thy note, O fearless blue-bird! stainless scroll

O’er writ with love and hope for earth and soul.

GERMAN GLOSSARIES, HOMILIES, AND COMMENTARIES ON SCRIPTURAL AND LITURGICAL SUBJECTS.^[60]

A diligent and impartial German bibliographer, Dr. John Geffcken, Protestant pastor of St. Michael’s, Hamburg, in his learned work on catechetical treatises of the fifteenth century, has pointed out the almost complete forgetfulness of present scholars of a branch of literature important in the theological and controversial history of Germany before the Reformation. He says of his own researches in this field:

“There was a lost, or at any rate a forgotten, literature to be discovered step by step, and its spirit grasped in all the branches thus brought together and compared. The following information will show how little light the fragmentary notices of Langemack in his Historia Catechetica (vol. i.), or of Köcher, in his Catechetical History of the Papal Church, threw upon the times to which I have devoted my attention. The worst, however, was that even these scanty notices were often false or misleading, and that, instead of pointing out the right track, they not seldom led into error. They consist mostly of lists of titles of books, without a hint of the contents of such books, and not seldom an uncertain or fanciful title is interpreted as denoting contents utterly different from the reality. The spirit of controversial prejudice in which these works were written impelled the authors, whenever they had to deal with ante-Reformation times, to paint the historical background in the darkest possible colors, in order to bring out in corresponding relief the brightness of the new dawn of the sixteenth century.”

If this is true of such works as those to which Geffcken refers, it is equally so of the German Plenarii, or glossaries, commentaries, homilies, and various devotional manuals in the vulgar tongue published in the last half of the fifteenth century and the first quarter of the sixteenth. The inquiry into the publication, contents, and diffusion of these books is as interesting from an antiquarian as from a theological point of view. They are little known even to cataloguists of acknowledged merit. Brunet, in his Manuel du Libraire,^[61] etc., under the heading Plenarium, vol. iv., mentions only one, as the Plenarium, or Book of the Gospels, printed at Basle by Peter von Langendorff in 1514; while under the heading of Gospels (vol. ii.) he mentions in general terms several “Evangelia.” Hain, in his Repertorium 261Bibliographicum (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1826-1828), in which he claims to have collected the names of all the books printed from the time of the discovery of printing to the year 1500, is a little more explicit as to the gospels and epistles under the heading of that name, but has nothing to say of any Plenarium; although the name stands as a separate heading, it is followed by no details or examples. Graesse, in his Trésor de livres rares et précieux, ou nouveau dictionnaire bibliographique (Dresden, 1859-1869), mentions only five of these works, giving the dates and presses but no hint of the contents of the books. Earlier scholars, however, had not so wholly lost the tradition of the existence of these manuals; for instance, Nicholas Weislinger, in his Armamentarium Catholicum Argent., 1749 fol. sub anno 1488 (pp. 412-415), and Panzer, in his Annals of Ancient German Literature; or, notices and descriptions of those books which, since the invention of printing till the year 1520, were printed in the German tongue (Nuremberg, 1788), mentions a fact which Dr. Alzog says he has not yet found proved by other documents—the existence of similar manuals in other countries than Germany. The French have Les Postilles et Expositions des Epistres et Evangiles Dominicales, etc. (Troyes, 1480 and 1492, and Paris, 1497), and the Italians the same in 1483, press and date not mentioned, and Epistole e Evangeli per tutto l’anno, per Annibale da Parma (Venice, 1487). No doubt research among the libraries of ancient Italian cities, colleges, and monasteries would discover many copies of such manuals, and the same may be said of French glossaries. The fact that they have but recently come to light in Germany argues equally in favor of their being at some future time discovered in other countries, certainly not less enlightened at the time whence date the German manuals.

It seems that hitherto no satisfactory etymology of the name of this class of books has been found; the explanation of Du Cange^[62] being rather bald, that the books “wholly contain the four gospels and the canonical epistles.” Whatever the origin of the title, the books themselves multiplied rapidly from 1470 to 1522. They were invariably in the vulgar tongue, often in dialect. They were meant as emphatically popular hand-books, guides to the liturgy, and interpreters of the Latin offices of the church, while they also supplied the place of sermons, homilies, and meditations by their glossaries and explanations of the gospels, lessons, and epistles. Some of these are much in the style of the commentaries of the early Fathers on Scriptural subjects. The translations from the Vulgate are generally original, and do not follow strictly any of the authorized versions of the day. In some of the later Plenarii the Collects and Prefaces are given, in others the Graduals and Communions; in a few the whole liturgy is translated and the ceremonies explained. None of these books was ever published in Latin, and, unlike our modern missals, they very seldom, and then sparingly, included the Latin text with that in the vulgar tongue. Hymns and sequences were also often printed. Dr. Alzog was drawn to the study of this branch of church literature by his researches for a hand-book of universal 262church history, and by his opportunities in the University Library of Freiburg in Breisgau, which alone contains six editions of Plenarii of 1473, press unknown, five respectively of 1480 (Augsburg), of 1481 (Urach), of 1483 (Strassburg), of 1514 and 1522 (Basle), and several others without authors’ or publishers’ names, as well as the kindred works of a famous preacher of that time, Geiler von Keisersperg, printed at Strassburg. The reproach sometimes made to the fifteenth century, of being destitute of sufficient religious and moral instruction in printed form, is much neutralized by the opposite reproach of a contemporary whose name is famous in literature as that of the author of the Ship of Fools, Sebastian Brant. This powerful satire, the work of a priest, begins with these words in German rhyme:

“All the land is now full of holy writings

And of what touches the weal of souls,

Bibles, and the lore of holy fathers,

And many more such like,

In measure such that I much marvel

No one grows better on such cheer.”

Alzog names thirty-eight manuals, including five by Keisersperg, with his sermons and expositions of doctrine, and seven in Low Saxon dialect, interesting as showing the peculiarities of spelling in certain districts at that time. The form of the title is almost unvaried in all: “In the name of the Lord. Amen. Here follows a Plenarium according to the order of the holy Christian Church, in which are to be found written all epistles and gospels as they are sung and read in the ceremony of the holy Mass, throughout the whole year, in order as they are written in the following.” The two earliest mentioned by Alzog are of 1470-1473. They are adorned with title-pages or frontispieces, Scriptural or allegorical subjects. In the University Library of Freiburg is a small folio with a wood-cut of our Lord, his right hand uplifted in the act of blessing, and his left carrying an imperial globe, the ball surmounted by a cross, such as may be seen in pictures of the old German emperors. Round the four sides of the print runs the following curious inscription, unfortunately clipped short in part by the binder: “This portrait is made from the human Jesus Christ when he walked upon the earth. And therefore he had hair and a beard, and a pleasant countenance. Also a ... He was also a head taller than any other man on the earth.” The first edition mentioned by Panzer and Hain as containing a glossary on the Sunday gospels is of the year 1481, printed at Augsburg, but the four editions between 1473 and 1483 all had uniform glossaries.

The mention is worded thus: “A glossary will be found of each Sunday gospel—that is, a good and useful teaching, and an exposition of each gospel, very useful for every Christian believer (or believer in Christ) to read.” In 1488 Weislinger and Panzer point to a book printed at Baden by Thomas Ansselm, called Gospels with Glossaries and Epistles in German, for the whole year; also the beginning; the Psalm (the “Judica” and Introit) and the Collect of each Mass according to the order of the Christian Church. Another book of 1516, printed at Dutenstein, has the same title with this addition: “for the whole year, with nothing left out.” A very elaborate manual, of which a copy (1514) is in the University Library of Freiburg and is mentioned in Panzer’s catalogue, is called

263“The Plenarium, or gospel book. Summer and Winter parts, through the whole year, for every Sunday, Feria, and Saints’ days. The order of the Mass, with its beginning or Introit. Gloria Patri, Kyrie Eleyson, Gloria in Excelsis, Collect or prayer, Epistle, Gradual or penitential song, Alleluia or Tract, Sequence or Prose. Gospel with a glossary never yet heard by us, and ended by fruitful and beautiful examples.^[63] The Patrem or Creed, Offertorium, Secreta, Sanctus, Agnus Dei, Communion, Compleno and Ite Missa est or Benedicamus Domino, etc. And for every separate Sunday gospel a beautiful glossary or Postill, with its example, diligently and orderly preached by a priest of a religious order, to be seriously noticed and fruitfully applied for the greater use of the believer, who in this quickly-passing life can read nothing more useful....” At the end are these words: “To the praise and worth of Almighty God, his highly-praised Mother Mary and all saints, and to the use, bettering, and salvation of men.... Printed by the wise Adam Peter von Langendorff, burgher of Basle. 1514. In folio.”

The book contains four large wood-cuts of some artistic merit, Christ crucified, with a landscape in the background, and two groups, one of four women on one side, the other of four men on the other, and the following legend beneath, taken from Notker’s famous hymn Mediâ Vitæ, which “wonderful anthem or sequence,” says an Anglican writer, is “so often mistaken for a psalm or text”^[64]: “In the midst of life we are in death: whom shall we seek to help us, and to show us mercy, but thou alone, O Lord, who by our sins art righteously enwrathed? Holy Lord God, holy strong God, holy, merciful, and eternal God, suffer us not to taste the bitterness of death.” The other wood-cuts, respectively indicating Christmas day, Easter eve, and Whitsunday, represent the Adoration of the Infant Jesus by Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds, with a landscape in the background; the Resurrection; and the Descent of the Holy Ghost in the form of fiery tongues. The book contains many smaller wood-cuts.

Another Plenarium (Strassburg, 1522) boasts of being “translated from the Latin into better German,” and another, of the same year (Basle), announces “several other Masses, never hitherto translated into German,” as well as a register with blank leaves. Keisersperg’s sermons “in the last four years of his life, taken down word for word from his own mouth,” are printed at Strassburg in 1515, and are qualified in the title-page as “useful and good, not only for the laity, and never hitherto printed.” His Postill, or “Commentaries on the Four Gospels,” is printed in four parts in Strassburg in 1522, also his Lenten sermons, and some additional ones on a few saints’ days, “written down from his own mouth by Henry Wessmer”; but the most curious work mentioned is a folio volume of his sermons, without title, and containing other treatises with fanciful titles and bearing on mysterious subjects. “The Book of Ants, which also gives information concerning witches, ghostly appearances, and devilish possession, very wonderful and useful to know, and, further, what it is lawful to hold and believe touching them”; also, “the little book, ‘Lord, whom I would gladly serve,’ in fifteen parts of fine and useful doctrine; finally, the book of ‘Pomegranate,’ in Latin Malogranatus, containing 264much wholesome and sweet doctrine and advice.” This dates from 1517 (Strassburg, John Greinninger). For the sake of the language the manuals printed in Low Saxon, chiefly in Lübeck, are among the most interesting specimens. The titles are much the same as the German, but generally more concise. Panzer remarks of one of them, printed by Stephen Arndes at Lübeck in 1496, and adorned with several fine wood-cuts, that he has seen three other editions, printed in 1488, 1493, and 1497. A few of the peculiarities of spelling, and of the indifferent use of various forms of one word, will be seen in the following examples: book, in the contemporary High-German, spelt buch or buoch, is here spelt boek, boeck, bok, and boke, this last a form often found in Old English writers; holy, heylig, heilig, or hailig, is here spelt in five different ways: hilgen, hylgen, hylligen, hilligen, and hyllyghen; and birth, geburt, is bort and borth. Das (the) becomes dat; endigt (ends) is turned to ondighet; and the o’s and n’s are in general used the reverse way to that common in High-German.

The contents of the Plenarii show the peculiarities of the liturgy as used at that time. The same epistle and gospel sung or read on Sunday was repeated on Monday, Tuesday (which the oldest manuals call After-Monday), and Thursday. Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the year had separate epistles and gospels, and Saturday is not mentioned, unless it is indicated by the “third day,” which the later editions speak of as “having a separate epistle and gospel throughout the year.” Each day of Lent had a separate one. Some of the books of 1473 contained special Masses—that of the Wisdom of God for Mondays, the Holy Ghost for Tuesdays, the Holy Angels for Wednesdays, the Love of God for Thursdays, the Holy Cross for Fridays, and the Blessed Virgin for Saturdays. There followed Masses for rain, for health, for sinners, for fair weather, and for “all believing souls.” The glosses on the gospels in the earlier editions are interesting from their simplicity and directness. Even the preface of the Basle Plenarium of 1514, though less simple, is a good specimen. It is noteworthy that the Immaculate Conception is implied in the text. The heading is from Luke xi. 28: “Blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.” The preface runs thus:

“Jesus Christ is the Word of the Eternal Father; the Word is made flesh (understand by that, man) in the womb of the immaculate, holy, and pure Virgin Mary, that we too may be saved. From this Word, as from Christ the Son of God, flows Holy Scripture, which is the life-giving flow of the blessed paradise of the highest heaven, penetrating and making fruitful on this earth the paradise of the holy church to the use of all believers. And in order that man may better know and acknowledge his Lord, he has at hand the help of Holy Scripture, which is the source of all knowledge and wisdom, of whom all knowledge is the servant and follower, and which teaches and admonishes us, through the wonderful works of God, to worship the Maker of all; for Christ the Son of God is the wisdom of the Eternal Father, and in him and through him are all creatures made, and, indeed, so wonderfully made and hidden that no human wisdom can fully penetrate into these secret recesses. Such is the teaching of Holy Writ.

“To confess God, to avoid sin, to do good, and to show ourselves diligent in the love of God and our neighbor—this is a spiritual pharmacy of all sweet-smelling and precious medicine. Although many prophets and other saints have written Holy Scripture and divine 265truth, each one according as it was given to him by the Holy Ghost, yet are the strength and truth of the holy gospels above every other Scripture, as says St. Augustine in his Concordance of the Gospels. And Holy Scripture is so fruitful, wise, and unfathomable that we can never fathom it till the end of this passing life on earth, and till we come to the place whence Scripture itself floweth ... and ourselves read in the great Bible—that is, the Book of Life.

“And because many men do not understand Latin, and yet can read German, therefore this book of the gospels, with its belongings, has been translated into German, to the glory of God and the use of such as shall feed their souls on it. For man liveth not on material bread alone, but on the spiritual bread which is the Word of God, as Christ says by the mouth of the evangelist Matthew, in the fourth chapter.”

Much more follows; for instance, an enumeration of the nine graces that a diligent reader of Scripture receives, in which much good but rather trite advice is given, and of the five kinds of men who read Holy Writ, only two of whom do it to advantage. These conceits belonged to the age, and, indeed, survived the age, as we find in the Presbyterian sermons of two centuries later in Scotland and the Puritan sermons of New England. Keisersperg was profuse of them, and some of the quaint and rather strained combinations and coincidences which he imagined are a curious illustration of the sort of pulpit eloquence popular in the fifteenth century. The prominence given among saints to the four evangelists grew naturally out of the reverence paid to the four gospels as the noblest part of Scripture. The Plenarii often contained allegorical representations of them under the conventional figures known to art, and undertook to explain the reason of these figures being applied to them, connecting them with the four living creatures of Ezechiel’s vision and those of the Apocalypse. But, beyond the constantly-received explanations, they sometimes contained details calculated to astonish readers of a later day. Such is the idea of the fitness between St. Mark and the symbolic lion, derived from the belief that lion whelps were awakened the third day, by the roaring of their mother, from the sleep or trance in which they had been born, which was interpreted to refer to the fact that St. Mark chiefly dwells on the resurrection of the Lord on the third day after his death. The Basle manual from which the foregoing preface is quoted has special prayers in honor of the evangelists, chiefly to the end that they would help the faithful to a better understanding of, and acting up to, the principles of the Gospel. The wood-cuts which distinguish these as well as the Latin missals took the place of the illuminations of the older books in manuscript, and, though wanting in the finish and delicacy of the latter, were designed on the same models and in the same spirit. The Latin missals now in the University Library of Freiburg, of 1485 and 1520, are rich in this kind of ornamentation, the latter having as title-page the Crucifixion, with a group of many figures, and around the illustration representations of the seven sacraments, whose grace flows from the atonement of Christ. The same idea is conveyed in the often-repeated allegorical representation in mediæval pictures of two angels collecting in golden cups the blood that flows from the outstretched hands of the Saviour on the cross.

Freiburg has many treasures in the department of illuminated 266manuscripts, the chief one being a Codex of the tenth century, with the Sacramentarium Gregorianum. It contains two hundred and ten pages of parchment, and begins with a calendar of twelve pages on purple ground with arabesque borders. The Ordinary of the Mass is written on a similarly colored ground, and has three illuminated pictures—a portrait of Pope Gregory the Great, an angel uplifting the Host, and an elaborate Byzantine crucifix. Five thousand francs were offered for it by a French archæological society, and refused by the university. Among the peculiarities set forth by the German manuals is the order of Sundays throughout the year, which, before the Council of Trent, were reckoned from Trinity instead of Whitsunday, and, in the case of Easter falling early, were supplemented by a “twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity,” as the editions of 1473 to 1483 have it, “if another Sunday is needed.” The later editions and the Latin missals simply call it, without comment, “the twenty-fifth Sunday.” As time went on, the German Plenarii contained more and more, sometimes additional votive Masses, and the Passions and Prophecies of Holy Week, sometimes the whole of the liturgy, including the minor parts, sometimes even more than the Latin books themselves—as, for instance, the thirteenth to the fifteenth chapters of St. John, inclusive, for the edification of their readers on Maundy Thursday. The glossaries or homilies also grew longer and more serious after 1514, and among explanations of undoubted moral worth and pious intent—due, Alzog thinks, greatly to the influence of the Swiss “Friends of God,” a brotherhood devoted to popular teaching and the propagation of practical piety among the masses—we often come upon those naïvely-propounded conceits which were common to earnest and ingenious men of that day. For instance, the word alleluia, whose etymology was probably wholly unknown to the author, is thus dissected and explained in one of the Basle editions of the sixteenth century:

“The word has four syllables—that is, four meanings: the first, al—that is, altissimus, or Most High and Almighty; the second, le, levatus in cruce, or uplifted on the cross; the third, lu, lugentibus apostolis, or the apostles have mourned and all creation bemoaned him; the fourth, ja, or jam surrexit—that is, he is now risen from the dead, wherefore we should rejoice with all our strength and sing alleluja.”

On the other hand, some of the prayers and meditations of these now obscure books of devotion were beautiful, dignified, and worthy of imitation. The language often reminds one of the Following of Christ:

“Consider, O my soul! with thorough devotion, the gifts and benefits of God wherewith he has so abundantly blessed thee. He has created thee out of nothing and in his image. He has given thee wisdom and understanding, that thou mayest distinguish good from evil. He has also given thee reason beyond that of all other creatures, and made them subject unto thee. He has put the sun and the moon in heaven to give light to the world. He causes all green things to grow and ripen on the earth to thy use, that thou mayest be fed and clothed therewith. Consider also, O my soul! with great devotion, how inestimable are the gifts of the holy sacraments, so sweetly prepared for thee. How clean should be thy hands from all evil works, how chaste thy lips, how holy thy body, how spotless thy heart, to which the Lord Almighty, the God of purity, humbles himself so lovingly! How great should be thy thankfulness to God thy Creator, 267who gives himself to thee so freely, not for any good he derives therefrom, but only that he may cleanse thee, in thy misery and sickness, from sin, and give thee eternal life. Amen.”

The manuals also made typographical progress corresponding to that of their contents, and, after 1483, began to have their pages both numbered and headed, while the spelling became a little more uniform, but the odd comparisons and arbitrary combinations in the text developed themselves as freely as ever. Indeed, they had one merit—that of fixing a thing in the minds of hearers less likely to be impressed by generalities; and, unlike the sensational devices of the present day, they were not resorted to as mechanical means by men to whom they were themselves indifferent, but came from the “abundance of the heart” of authors fully penetrated by their meaning and proud of having originated this particular form of it. For instance, a panegyric on St. Martin, Bishop of Tours, is résumed in the seven letters of the German word Bischof, each standing for the initial of a word describing some quality of the saint; and the same happens with the seven letters of the name of Matthew, Matheus (seven was, from obvious causes, a favorite number in the mystical mind of those ages), which are thus interpreted: Magnificentia in relinquendo (magnanimity in relinquishing), Auscultatio in obediendo (hearing in obeying), Tractabilitas in non resistendo (tractability in not resisting), Humilitas in sequendo (humility in following), Evangelisatio in prædicando (evangelization in preaching), Virtuositas in operando (efficiency in working), Strenuitas in patiendo (fortitude in enduring).

The glossaries on the epistles and gospels contain many passages remarkable as setting forth the reverence for Holy Writ of which those times have been too hastily pronounced deficient. The four oldest editions (from 1473 to 1483) have the same commentary for the first Sunday in Advent, on which the gospel of Palm Sunday, pointing to preparation for the coming of the Lord, was then read. The whole is filled with texts and allusions to the prophets; the preparation is asserted to consist in being “washed clean of evil thoughts,” in laying aside the torn garments of sin, that bind us to the darkness where we have hidden ourselves that we may not be seen, ... in hating the garments of impurity and those of pride.... It is not seemly to stand in the hall of the King clothed in mean garments, as we find in the Book of Esther, cap. iii., and therefore no one should enter the holy time of Advent while yet burdened with sin and so on through a host of Scriptural quotations in which moral virtues only are inculcated, and of ceremonial observances there is no mention. The edition of 1514 (Basle) on the same occasion says that this gospel is read twice in the year, on the anniversary of the day when our Lord entered Jerusalem, and on the first Sunday in Advent, which commemorates his spiritual coming and his assuming human nature. The various kinds of advents or comings are represented by the gospels of the four Sundays, the last being the entry into the heart of every sinner when he repents of his sin and is converted. “As the Jews asked John the Baptist, ‘Who art thou?’ so should every man ask himself, Who am I? If we examine honestly we must needs acknowledge that we are but 268poor sinners. Of this advent St. John speaks in the Apocalypse: ‘Behold I stand at the door of thy heart and knock with my gifts; and whoever opens unto me, to him will I go in, and give him bread from heaven, and a new stone in his hand, that is the new joy of everlasting life.’“^[65] Of this advent St. Augustine speaks:

“Lord, who shall give it to me that thou shouldst come into my heart, sweet Jesus, and fill it, and that my soul should forget all evil and all sin?... ‘This is everlasting life (John xvii. 3), that men know thee, Father in heaven, and confess thee alone the living and true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.’ This raises a question—namely, Why did the Lord Jesus not come earlier? why delay his coming so long? For this reason: that Adam transgressed God’s command on the sixth day, and the coming of Christ was therefore deferred till the sixth age of the world.... If you turn to the Lord in truth, he will answer you through the prophet Ezechiel: ‘In whatsoever hour the sinner repents of his sins and forsakes them, and is turned from his unrighteousness, I will remember his sins no more, saith the Lord.”

The commentary on the gospel of the first Mass on Christmas night in the Basle edition of 1514 contains glimpses of legends which long kept their hold on the popular and even the scholarly mind of that age. The story of the Sibyllic prophecies is outlined:

“The Emperor Augustus, when he had conquered the whole world for the Roman Empire, was about to be adored by the Romans as a god. But he resisted and asked for a delay of three days, during which he sent for the wise woman, the Sibyl of Tibur, and asked her advice. When she shut herself up with the emperor and prayed to God to tell her how to advise the emperor, she saw close by the sun a shining ring of light, and within the ring a beautiful Virgin with a fair Child upon her knees. Then the Sibyl showed the Virgin and Child to the emperor, and said: “This Child upon the knees of a Virgin must thou adore, for he is God and Lord of the whole world, and the Child that is to be born of a Virgin shall be for the consolation and salvation of mankind.’ So when the emperor saw this he refused to let himself be adored....

“We read also that once the Romans built a fine temple, large and grand, which they meant to call the Temple of Peace. While they were building it they asked the Sibyl how long the temple should stand. She answered and said: ‘Until a Virgin shall bear a Child.’ ‘Then,’ said the Romans, ‘as that can never happen, the temple will stand for ever, and shall be called the Temple of Eternity.’ Then came the night when our Lord Jesus Christ was born, and a great part of the temple fell suddenly in ruins, and many who have been in Rome say that every Christmas night a portion of this temple still crumbles into ruin, as a sign that on this earth nothing is eternal.”

The three Maries at the sepulchre give the author occasion in the homily on Easter Sunday to link the virtues we ought to practise with the names of the three holy women. From Mary Magdalen, whom, according to the tradition of the time, he identified with Mary the Sinner, he bids us learn “the great diligence and great love with which she sought God the Lord; ... so should we also anoint the feet of Christ with the ointment of contrition and repentance. From Mary Jacobi (Mary the mother of James, or Jacob) we should learn to overcome sin, because Jacob means a fighter and striver.... From the third Mary we should learn to have a true hope of obtaining grace, for Salome means a woman of grace (probably he considered wisdom and grace identical), ... especially the grace to battle against despair.” And this suggests a comparison of the three Maries with the three virtues, faith, 269hope, and charity. Galilee, again, which he interprets to mean in German Passover, is set as a sign that we must part with sin and cross over to God, die to the world and be detached from its allurements. The commentary on the gospel of Whitsunday, in the older editions (1473-83), contains these words: “If you love God, you will willingly hear his word and diligently say to yourself, What I hear is a token from the great King.” Then follow several Scriptural quotations strengthening and illustrating this truth. The epistle of the day gives rise to an explanation of the appearance “as it were of fiery tongues”: “The fire of the Holy Ghost consumed all fear in their hearts, and so enkindled them that they feared neither king nor emperor. So was fulfilled the saying of the Redeemer, ‘I am come to bring a fire upon the earth,’ and what do I wish but that it should be enkindled?” Then the tongues signify that the word is spread by the tongue; God sent the Holy Ghost in fiery tongues, that they (the apostles) might burn with love and overflow in words. What is the Holy Ghost? He is the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, who confirms and establishes all things, and who comes at all times to the heart of every man who makes himself ready to receive him, as says St. Augustine: “It is of no use for a teacher to preach to our outer ears, if the Holy Ghost be not in our hearts and do not give us true understanding.” The likeness of the Holy Spirit to a dove is then ingeniously drawn out in comparisons such as St. Francis of Sales, two centuries later, might have adopted in his Introduction to a Devout Life, and the prayer or aspiration at the end is thus worded: “May the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost help us to hear the word of God and keep it, that our hearts may be enlightened and enkindled by the fire of the Holy Ghost, that we may live with simplicity and joy among the doves, and that the true Dove, the Holy Ghost, may come to us and abide with us for ever.”

The later editions of the sixteenth century have a longer and more complicated homily on the same subjects; they dwell, among other things, on the peace and comfort brought by the Holy Ghost, and distinguish three kinds of peace, that of the heart, that of time, and that of eternity, the second of which alone was not given to the apostles, because their Master also had it not, as is inferred from several texts quoted at length. The suddenness, the force of the wind, and the quickness of the appearance in the upper chamber in Jerusalem are all turned to practical account by the commentator, who also reminds his readers that the grace of God comes soonest to those who lead a life of inner recollection and prayer. The love of God is shown under a sort of parable, that of the scholars of an Athenian philosopher, who begged their master to write them a treatise upon love, and received from him in answer the picture of a lion with a legend round his neck: “Love brings forth nothing which afterwards causes remorse to man.” Thus Christ, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, is spiritually this lion of love, whose works were all for the salvation of man. For Trinity Sunday the glossaries of both the older and the later editions are very short, the mystery being confessedly unfathomable, and the ancient Fathers themselves having but feebly 270succeeded in throwing any other light than that of faith upon the subject. Both editions contain a warning not to search curiously into the mystery, but believe with simplicity, and the later ones cite the legend of St. Augustine and the child whom he met by the sea-shore trying to bail the sea into a small trench in the sand. On the thirteenth Sunday after Trinity the vision of God by purity of heart, “and by the reading of Holy Scripture and practising its precepts,” is descanted upon in the 1514 Basle edition, and the fate of Lot’s wife is used as a simile for the turning back from God into sin, while the love of our neighbor, as flowing from a true love of God, is strenuously inculcated by Scripture texts and warnings.