II.

In the twelfth century the cardinals of the Holy Roman Church were in full and undisputed possession of the right of electing the Sovereign Pontiff; and although the exercise of this right is commonly attributed to the Sacred College, only from the passing of the famous decree of the Third Council of Lateran, in 1179, beginning _Licet de vitanda discordia in electione Romani Pontificis_ (cap. vi. _de Elect._), it rather supposes the cardinals to be already the sole papal electors, and merely determines what majority of their votes shall constitute a valid election.[184] Factious and semi-ignorant persons have often protested against this exclusive right of the cardinals to elect the visible head of the church. Of such a kind was Wycliffe, whose diatribe, _Electio Papæ a cardinalibus per diabolum est introducta_, was condemned by the Council of Constance (artic. xl. sess. viii.); and Eybel, whose errors were exposed by Mamacchi, under his poetical name of Pisti Alethini, as a member of the Academy of the Arcadians.[185]

In early times, when the pope died at Rome the cardinals met to elect a successor in the Lateran or the Vatican basilica, or in the cathedral of any other city in which they might have determined to hold the election. Conclave is the term used exclusively for many centuries for the place in which the cardinals meet in private to elect a pope; but it was used in the early middle ages of any room securely shut,[186] just as, among the ancient Romans, _conclave_ was a covered and enclosed apartment or hall that could be fastened with a lock and key—_cum clavi_. Long before the pontificate of Gregory X. the cardinals who assembled for a papal election met in some part of a large and noble building—generally the sacristy of a cathedral—where they transacted the business of the day, and returned after each session to their private abodes. The gloss _Nullatenus_, on the decree of Alexander III., says that if two-thirds—the majority required—of the cardinals will not agree upon a candidate, they should be closely confined until they do—_includantur in aliquo loco de quo exire non valeant donec consenserint_—and mentions several popes elected after the cardinals had been subjected to a reasonable duress. This is precisely the conclave. It was not, however, until the year 1274 that the mode of procedure in a papal election was settled—after the incursions of the barbarians and the many vicissitudes to which the Holy See then became subject had deranged the earlier and apostolic manner—and the rules and regulations of the modern conclave were published. After the death of Clement IV. in Viterbo, on Nov. 22, 1268, the eighteen cardinals composing the Sacred College met there to elect his successor; but not agreeing after a year and a half, although the kings of France and Sicily, St. Bonaventure, General of the Franciscans, and many influential, learned, and holy men came in person to urge them to compose their differences and relieve the church of her long widowhood, they were all got together one day, by some artifice, in the episcopal palace, which was instantly closed upon them and surrounded with guards. Even this imprisonment did not change their temper, and after some further delay the captain of the town, Raniero Gatti, took the bold resolution of removing the entire roof and otherwise dilapidating the edifice, in hopes that the discomforts of the season, added to their confinement, might break the stubbornness of the venerable fathers.[187] This move succeeded, and a compromise was effected among the discordant cardinals on the 7th of September, 1271, in virtue of which the papal legate in Syria, Theobald Visconti, Archdeacon of Liege, was elected. This was not the first time that extraordinary and almost violent measures had been taken to bring the cardinals to make a prompt election. At Viterbo the captain of the town coerced their liberty; at Naples the commandant of the castle bridled their appetite when, after the death of Innocent IV., in 1254, he diminished day by day the quantity of food sent in to them—_cibo per singulos dies imminuto_—until they agreed upon a worthy subject.[188]

Gregory X., who was so singularly elected at Viterbo while far away in Palestine, called a general council, which met at Lyons on May 2, 1274. Five hundred bishops, over a thousand mitred abbots and other privileged ecclesiastics, the patriarchs of Constantinople and Antioch, the grand master of the famous Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, the kings of France and Aragon, besides ambassadors from Germany, England, Sicily, and other important nations, took part in it. The pope was resolved to establish the manner of electing the Roman Pontiff on a better principle, and now drew up a constitution which, in spite of considerable opposition from the cardinals, was read between the fourth and fifth sessions, and finally received the approbation of the fathers. This is substantially the code that still regulates the conclave. The original constitution, which had been suspended by some popes and not observed by the cardinals in several elections, was introduced into the body of canon law[189] by Boniface VIII., in order to impress it, if possible, with a more solemn and perpetual obligation of observance; and when some of the cardinals, incensed at the transfer of the see to Avignon, maintained that, despite all this, the Sacred College could modify or abolish it at discretion, it was confirmed by the General Council of Vienne and their factious spirit reproved. This conciliar decree has also a place in the canon law, where it is found among the Clementines (_Ne Romani, 2 de elect._)[190]

“Where the danger is known to be greatest,” says the preamble to Pope Gregory’s constitution, “there should most care be taken. How many risks and what great inconvenience a long vacancy of the Holy See entails is shown by looking back upon the disorders of other days. It is, therefore, wise that, while diligently engaged in reforming minor evils, we should not neglect to provide against calamity. Now, therefore, whatever our predecessors, and particularly Alexander III., of happy memory, have done to remove a spirit of discord in the election of the Roman Pontiff, the same we desire to remain in full force; for we do not intend to annul their decrees, but only by our present constitution to supply what experience points out to be wanting.”

The whole decree may be divided into fifteen paragraphs, which are called the Fifteen Laws of the Conclave. They are summarized as follows:

On the death of the pope the cardinals, having celebrated for nine days his obsequies in the city where he died, shall enter the conclave on the tenth day, whether absent colleagues have arrived or not, and be accompanied by a single attendant, whether lay or clerical, or at most, in case of evident necessity, by two attendants. The conclave shall be held in the palace last occupied by the pope, and there the cardinals must live in common, occupying a single spacious hall not cut off by curtains or partitions, and so carefully closed on every side that no one can secretly pass in or out. One room, however, may be cut off for private purposes—_reservato libero ad secretam cameram aditu_—but no access shall be allowed to any cardinal, nor private conversation with nor visits to him, except from those who, by consent of all the other cardinals, may be summoned to consult on matters germane to the affair in hand; nor shall any one send letters or messages to their lordships or to any of their familiars, on pain of excommunication. A window or other opening shall be left in the hall of conclave, through which the meals are introduced, but it must be of such a size and shape that no human being can penetrate thereby. If, after three days from the opening of the conclave, no election has been made, the prelates appointed to attend to this shall allow each cardinal no more than one dish at dinner and supper during the next five days, after which only bread and water until they come to a conclusion. The cardinals shall take nothing from the papal treasury during the vacancy of the see; but all its revenues are to be carefully collected and watched over by the proper officers. They shall treat of nothing but the election, unless some imminent danger to the temporalities of the Holy See may demand their attention; and, laying aside all private interests, let them devote themselves entirely to the common weal; but if any cardinal shall presume to attempt by bribes, compacts, or other arts to entice his brethren to his own side, he shall suffer excommunication, nor shall any manner of agreement, even if sworn to, be valid. If a cardinal draw off from the conclave, or should he retire from motives of health, the election must still proceed; yet, if he recover, he shall be readmitted. Cardinals arriving late or at any stage of the proceedings, as also those who may be under censures, shall be received. No one can give his vote outside of the conclave. Two-thirds of the votes of all the electors present[191] are requisite to elect; and any one not radically disqualified[192] is eligible to the Papacy. The feudal superiors of the territory and the municipal officers of the city in which the conclave is held are charged to observe these regulations, and shall swear in presence of the clergy and people to do so. If they fail to do their duty they shall be excommunicated, be declared infamous and lose their fiefs, and the city itself shall be interdicted and deprived of its episcopal dignity. Solemn funeral services are to be held in every important place throughout the Catholic world as soon as news arrives of the pope’s death; prayers are to be recited daily and fast days appointed for the speedy and concordant election of an excellent pontiff.

In this provident constitution of Gregory X. are contained in brief the rules and regulations which have ever since governed the conclave. In a few points, however, its severity has been relaxed, particularly by Clement VI. in the bull _Licet de Constitutione_, dated December 6, 1351; and in others some small modifications have been introduced, in accordance with the manners and customs of a more refined age, by Gregory XV. (Ludovisi, 1621–1623) in his comprehensive ceremonial.[193] Thus Clement VI. (De Beaufort, 1342–1352), while recommending the greatest frugality at table during the seclusion of the conclave, removed the alimentary restrictions and left it to the cardinals themselves to select the kind, quality, and amount of their food, but forbade the prandial civilities of sending tidbits from one table to another. The same pope allowed each cardinal to have his bed enclosed by curtains, and to have two attendants, or conclavists, in every case. The monastic simplicity of a common sleeping-room was done away with in the sixteenth century, when each cardinal was allowed the use of a separate cell, which Pius IV. commanded should be assigned by lot. When a cardinal’s name and number have been drawn, his domestics upholster it with purple serge or cloth, if their master was created by the late pope; but if by a former one, with green—a difference in color that was first observed in the conclave for the election of Leo X. A few articles of necessary furniture, such as a bed, table, kneeling-bench, and a couple of chairs, complete the interior arrangements. On the outside of his cell each cardinal affixes a small escutcheon emblazoned with his arms, which serves as a substitute for that vulgar modern thing called a door-plate. While great care is still taken to hinder suspicious communications between the conclave and the outer world, it is no longer prohibited to visit a cardinal or member of his suite, although the colloquy must be held at some one of the entries, and whatever is spoken be heard by the prelates doing duty there. Instead of the single small window—more like an _oubliette_ than anything else—which Gregory prescribed, openings in the shape of pivotal or revolving wooden frames, like those used in nunneries and called _tours_ in French, were adopted at the suggestion of Paride de’ Grassi, master of ceremonies to Leo X. Eight of them are always connected on different sides with the hall of conclave, wherever it may be. The ten days before the conclave can open begin from the very day of the pope’s death; but sometimes a much longer time has elapsed—as, for instance, after the death of Alexander VI., when the violence of Cæsar Borgia and the presence of a French army in Rome occasioned a delay of thirty days; and again, when Cardinal Ferreri was arrested on his way from Vercelli to the conclave by the Duke of Milan, his loyal colleagues waited for him eight days beyond the usual time. The conclave in which Julius III. was elected in 1550 was not opened until nineteen days after his predecessor’s death, to oblige the French cardinals, who had not yet all arrived at Rome. In early ages, before it became customary to give the hat to occupants of episcopal sees other than the seven suburbican ones, and when cardinals were strictly bound to reside _in curia_—_i.e._, to live near the pope of whose court they were the principal personages—there was generally no necessity for a considerable delay. Anastasius the Librarian[194] says that Boniface III., in the year 607, made a decree forbidding any one to treat of a future pope’s election during the lifetime of the living one, or until three days after his death; but, as Mabillon shows,[195] this three days’ delay was observed in the Roman Church long before the seventh century, as appears from the despatch sent to the Emperor Honorius after the death of Pope Zosimus in the year 418. It is not known when it began to be observed as a law. In many cases an election took place either on the very same day that a pope died or on the following one,

## particularly during the era of persecutions and in the tenth and

twelfth centuries, when the seditious disposition of the populace and the factions of rival barons made any unnecessary delay extremely hazardous. During the fifteenth, sixteenth, and following centuries the conclaves have generally been short, averaging about two weeks each. But during the greater part of the middle ages, after the supremacy of the Sacred College during the vacancy of the Holy See was undisputed, and the cardinals had little to fear from princes or people, their own dissensions often occasioned an interregnum of months, and even years, to the discredit of their order and the scandal of the Christian world.

The election should take place in Rome, if possible, because Rome is, or ought to be, the ordinary residence of the Sovereign Pontiffs; but both before and after Pope Gregory’s constitution many elections have been held elsewhere, according as the Curia was in one place or another. Urban II. was elected in Terracina; Calixtus II. in Cluny; Lucius III. in Velletri; Urban III. in Verona; Gregory VIII. in Ferrara; Clement III., Alexander VI., Honorius III. in Pisa; Innocent IV. in Anagni; Alexander IV. and Boniface VIII. in Naples; Urban IV., Gregory X., and Martin IV. in Viterbo; Innocent V. in Arezzo; Honorius IV., Celestin V., and Clement V. in Perugia. During the stay of the popes in France John XXII., Benedict XII., Clement VI., Innocent VI., Urban V., and Gregory XI. were elected at Avignon. John XXIII. was elected at Bologna, and Martin V. at Constance, since whom all his successors, except Pius VII., have been elected in Rome. The law of Gregory X. commanded that the conclave should be held there where the last pope died—_Statuimus ut, si eundem pontificem in civitate, in quâ cum sua curia residebat, diem claudere contingat extremum, cardinales omnes conveniant in palatio, in quo idem pontifex habitabat_—because in one sense, as of ancient Rome,

... Vejos habitante Camillo, Illico Roma fuit;

and of modern Rome, _Ubi Papa, ibi Roma_. When, however, he was absent only on some extraordinary occasion, the election was to be held in Rome itself, no matter where he died. Gregory XI., who brought back the see from Avignon, intending to return to France on business and to better his health, but wishing to assure an Italian election and the permanent re-transfer of the Holy See to Rome, made a decree on March 19, 1378, ordering a majority of the cardinals, should his death occur during his absence, to meet in any part of Rome, or, if more convenient, in some neighboring city, and there elect a successor. Clement VIII. restricted the place of holding the conclave to Rome alone, in a bull issued October 6, 1529, on occasion of his journey to Bologna to crown the Emperor Charles V., and in another one, dated August 30, 1533, when going to France to confer with Francis I.

When Pius IV. had a mind to go to Trent and preside in person at the council, he declared on September 22, 1561, that a papal election—should one become necessary by his death while away—was to be held in Rome, unless it were under an interdict, in which case in Orvieto or Perugia. Clement VIII., when going to Ferrara to receive back the fief which had reverted to the Holy See on the death of Alphonsus d’Este, declared on March 30, 1598, that, should he die before returning, the subsequent election was to be held nowhere but in Rome. Long usage, continued up to the beginning of the present century, has consecrated the Vatican as the most proper seat of the conclave. The first pope elected there was Benedict XI. in 1303, and the next was Urban VI. in 1378. When Honorius IV., of the great house of Savelli, died where he had lived and held his court, in his family mansion on the Aventine, some remains of which are seen near the convent of _Santa Sabina_, the cardinals, in scrupulous observance of the first law of Gregory’s constitution, met there and elected his successor, Nicholas IV., on February 22, 1288. Eugene IV. in 1431, and Nicholas V. in 1447, were elected in the Dominican convent of the Minerva, the great dormitory of the friars being fitted up for the cardinals, and the election itself being held in the sacristy behind the choir, over the door of which a large fresco painting and a Latin inscription commemorate the event. There were several projects on foot in the seventeenth century to establish with every possible convenience, and in accordance with the prescriptions of the Roman ceremonial of election, a hall of conclave which should serve for all future occasions. The venerable Lateran and the more modern Quirinal each had its advocates, and Pius VI. is said by Cancellieri to have intended the vast and magnificent sacristy building which he erected alongside of St. Peter’s for such a purpose; but his immediate successor was elected in Venice on account of the French troubles, and all of _his_ successors have been elected in the Quirinal palace.

On the pope’s death the Sacred College, or apostolic senate of Rome, succeeded to the government of the States of the Church. All the officers of the government were instantly suspended until provision was made to carry on the public business. Only the chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church, the grand penitentiary, and the vicar-general, who are always cardinals, continued to exercise their powers by a privilege granted to them by Pius IV. The chamberlain (camerlengo) was the executive or head of the government, acting as a quasi-sovereign, and was consequently honored with a special guard and allowed to coin money stamped with his family arms and the distinctive heraldic sign of the vacancy of the see, which is a pavilion over the cross-keys. With him were associated three other cardinals, each for three days at a time, one from each of the three orders, beginning with the dean, the first priest, and first deacon, and so on in turn of seniority. The secretary of the Sacred College, who is always a prelate of very high rank, was prime minister and transacted all the correspondence and other relations of the cardinals with foreign ambassadors and the representatives of the Holy See at foreign courts. Clement XII. provided that if the chamberlain and grand penitentiary should die during the conclave, the cardinals are to elect a successor to him within three days; but if the cardinal-vicar die, the vicegerent, who is always a bishop _in partibus_, succeeds _ex-officio_ to his faculties. The Sacred Congregation of Rome are privileged to transact business of small importance through their secretaries, and even to finish affairs of whatever importance, if at the pope’s death they were so far advanced as to need only the secretary’s signature.

If a cardinal fall ill and choose to remain in conclave, provision is made to take his vote; but he may retire, if he wish, losing his vote, however, which cannot be given outside of the conclave or by proxy. If he recover he is obliged in conscience to return, because it is a duty of his office, and not a mere personal privilege, to take part in papal elections. All cardinals, unless specially deprived by the pope before his death of the right of electing and of being elected, can vote and are eligible, even if under censures. Thus, cardinals De Noailles and Alberoni were invited to the conclave at which Innocent XIII. was elected; but cardinals Baudinelli-Saoli and Coscia had been deprived, the one by Leo X. and the other by Clement XII., of what is called in canon law the active and passive voice. The cardinals may elect whom they please; nor is it necessary to be either a member of the Sacred College or an Italian to become pope. In former ages the choice of subjects was more confined than it is at present; for we learn from the acts of a council composed chiefly of French and Italian bishops, convened at Rome in 769 by Stephen III., _alias_ IV., to condemn the anti-pope Constantine, who was not even a cleric, that no one who was not either a cardinal-priest or deacon could aspire to the Papacy—_Nullus unquam præsumat ... nisi per distinctos gradus ascendens, diaconus aut presbyter cardinalis factus fuerit, ad sacrum pontificatus honorem promoveri_.[196]

Nevertheless, in view, presumably, of the greater good of the church, many persons have since been elected who did not answer to this description. This was the case with Gregory V. in 996; Sylvester II. in 999; Clement II. in 1046; Damasus II. in 1048; Leo IX. in 1049; Victor II. in 1055; Nicholas II. in 1058; Alexander II. in 1061; Calixtus II. in 1119; Eugene III. in 1145; Urban IV. in 1261; Gregory X. in 1271; Celestine V. in 1294; Clement V. in 1305; Urban V. in 1362, and Urban VI. in 1378, since whom no one not a cardinal has been elected, although several have come near being chosen. At the conclaves at which Adrian VI. and Clement VII. were elected Nicholas Schomberg, a celebrated Dominican and archbishop of Capua, received a number of votes; and as late as the middle of the last century, at the conclave from which proceeded Benedict XIV., Father Barberini, ex-general of the Capuchins and apostolic preacher, was repeatedly voted for. No matter what may have been a man’s previous condition, he can be elected; and there are not a few instances of persons of ignoble birth or mean antecedents having been exalted to the Papacy, which they have illustrated by their virtues or their learning: “Choose the best, and him who shall please you most of your mother’s sons (_children of the Catholic Church_), and set him on his father’s throne”[197] (_as vicegerent of God in his kingdom on earth_).

However, since Sixtus V. (1585–1595), who is said to have been a hogherd in his youth, all the popes have belonged to noble families; for, says Cardinal Pallavicini, the celebrated Jesuit and historian of the Council of Trent, nobility of birth, although no necessary condition, adds dignity and splendor to the pontificate—_reca grandecoro ed ornamento al pontificato_.[198] But then he belonged to a princely family himself and wrote two centuries ago.

Almost every European nationality has had a representative on the papal throne; but for several centuries the Italians have jealously guarded its steps from any one but themselves, and perhaps with reason so long as the pope was temporal sovereign of a large part of the Peninsula. Adrian V., of Utrecht (1522–1523), was the last _foreigner_ ever allowed to wear the tiara, and he for his relations with the powerful emperor Charles V., rather than for his undoubted virtues and learning; and yet so great was the indignation of the Romans when his name was announced that the cardinals were insulted and some of them maltreated as they left the conclave. But if a Hollander might be tolerated for some grave political reasons—not a Frenchman under any condition. In the conclave of 1458 the worthiest subject to very many of his brethren seemed the Cardinal d’Estouteville, Archbishop of Rouen—the same who built the magnificent church of San Agostino at Rome. But _Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes_; so when there was a fine chance of his getting the requisite number of votes, Orsini and Colonna, as heads of the Roman party, deliberately turned the tide in favor of Piccolomini, although his record was bad and his health not good. When Clement V. (Bertrand de Got, archbishop of Bordeaux, 1505–1514) was elected, he summoned the Sacred College to Lyons to assist at his coronation. When the order reached the cardinals old Rosso Orsini, their dean, rose and said: “My venerable brethren, soon we shall see the Rhone—but, if I know the Gascons, the Tiber will not soon see a pope again.” And so D’Estouteville, with all his wealth and learning and high connections, was made to feel that

Necdum etiam causæ irarum sævique dolores Exciderant animo.

Gregory X. prescribed that a strict watch should be kept over the conclave wherever it might be held. When held in Rome the representatives of the noblest families have a principal part in maintaining order in the city and protecting the cardinals from any kind of interference. The marshal of the Holy Roman Church and guardian of the conclave watches over the external peace and quiet of the Sacred College. This is one of the highest offices held by a layman at the Roman court. It is hereditary, and belonged for over four hundred years to the great baronial family of Savelli until its extinction. It passed in 1712 to the princely family of Chigi. The very ancient and now ducal family of Mattei was charged with preserving the peace of the _Ghetto_ and _Trastevere_. For this purpose it used to raise and equip a small body of troops which was kept up as long as the conclave lasted. The majordomo of the late pope is _ex-officio_ governor of the conclave since the time of Clement XII. (Corsini, 1730–1740). Although he also exercises some external jurisdiction, he is more particularly required to attend to the domestic wants of the cardinals and preserve order within the palace where the conclave may be held. Delegations from the various colleges of the Roman prelacy—apostolic prothonotaries, auditors of the pope, clerks of the chamber, etc.—taking their orders daily from the governor, are to be stationed at one or other of the _Ruote_, or turnstile windows, during the whole of the conclave. _Prælati_, says Pius IV.,[199] _ad custodiam conclavis deputati, sub pœna perjurii et suspensionis a divinis, maxima et exquisita diligentia utantur in inspiciendis ac perscrutandis epulis, aliisve rebus, ac personis conclavi intrantibus, ac de eo exeuntibus, ne sub earum rerum velamine literæ, aut notæ, vel signa aliqua transmittantur_.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when every species of gambling and games of chance was practised with frenzied passion in Italy, it was very common in Rome, although prohibited under severe penalties by Pius IV. and Gregory XIV. as a sort of sacrilege, to bet on the cardinals whose “backers” thought they had a chance of being elected.

The collect _Pro eligendo Pontifice_—that God may grant a worthy pastor to his church—is said at all Masses throughout the world from the beginning of the conclave until news arrives of the pope’s election. In Rome there is a daily procession of the clergy from the Church of St. Lawrence _in Damaso_ to St. Peter’s basilica (if the conclave be held in the Vatican), chanting the litany of the saints and other prayers. When the procession arrives there a Mass _de Spiritu Sancto_ is said by a papal chaplain in a temporary chapel fitted up near the main entrance to the conclave. The singing is by the papal choir.

The literature, if we may call it so, of papal elections is varied and extensive. Besides the letters, bulls, and conciliar decrees of twenty-eight popes from Boniface I. in 419 to Pius IX., there is a host of writers on the subject, some of whom are distinguished for piety and learning, while others are noted for their hatred of the Holy See. Almost every conclave from Clement V.’s down has had its chronicler or historian. The oldest special treatise extant on a papal election is one written by Cardinal Albericus, a monk of Monte Cassino, in 1050—_De Electione Romani Pontificis, liber_.

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THE HOLY CAVE OF MANRESA.

_DIGITUS DEI EST HIC!_

It is difficult to bring it home to one’s mind that Manresa is a place of petty industries and striving for worldly gain; that it ever had a hand in war or bloodshed, or, indeed, ever took any active part in the turmoil of ordinary life; for its very name has for more than three hundred years been almost synonymous with solitude and ascetic piety, on account of the _Santa Cueva_, or Holy Cave, so celebrated throughout the Christian world, where, amid the ecstasies of divine contemplation and the severities of the most rigorous penance, St. Ignatius de Loyola laid the foundation of the Society of Jesus, and by the infusion of supernatural light, to use the expression of the Congregation of the Rota, composed his famous _Spiritual Exercises_—a work which, said St. Francis de Sales two hundred years ago, “has given as many saints to the church of God as it contains letters.”

But Manresa is, in fact, a busy, thriving place of about fifteen thousand inhabitants, on the direct railway line from Barcelona to Zaragoza. It is a centre of industry, and contains a number of cotton and woollen mills by no means in harmony with its mediæval walls and towers that rise up out of the plain, gray and time-worn, and with many a mark of ancient conflict. For it is a walled town, and was in existence before the Roman conquest. We should say _city_, for so it has been styled ever since the ninth century, at least; and Don Jaime of Aragon, by a diploma of April 22, 1315, conferred on it, for its loyal services, the perpetual title of _buena y leal ciudad_. Nay, more, after Marshal Macdonald came here in 1811, and burned five hundred houses and factories, and slaughtered many of the inhabitants with a ferocity almost unequalled, the Spanish Cortes gave it the qualification of _muy noble y muy leal_ city (for these Spanish towns have their gradations of titled rank, of which they are as jealous as an ancient hidalgo of his family quarterings), on account of the bravery of the people, who rallied in their desperation and madness, and, pursuing the enemy, amply avenged their dead in true national fashion.

We arrived at Manresa after dark, and, as there was not a single vehicle at the station, we gave our travelling-bags to a porter, and followed after him on foot through narrow, ascending, tortuous, dimly-lighted streets to the Fonda de San Domingo, very Spanish in character, with a court full of diligences and stables on the ground floor, and an enormous dining-room above, out of which opened the bedrooms—at least, ours did. This was by no means favorable to repose, for the hilarity of its _habitués_ was kept up to a late hour, to say nothing of the singing and music in the neighboring streets. This would not have surprised us in Andalucia, but in an industrious place like Manresa we expected to find that labor had laid its repressing hand on the people, as is so often the case with us in the north. But the elastic temperament of the race causes a rebound as soon as the hour of toil is over. Then the dance and the song have their time, and castanets and the tambour take the place of the shuttle and the spindle. Manresa is noted for the publication of romanceros, ballads, and complaintes, illustrated with coarse engravings, which are sold under the general name of _pliegos_. This kind of literature is a key to the character of the people, and therefore not without its interest; but the sound of these jolly songs in such a place, and at so late an hour, was, it must be confessed—unreasonable as we may appear—very much to our disgust; for not only were we fatigued with our journey, but our thoughts were continually wandering off to the lonely cave and its mystic tome.

We were up betimes in the morning, notwithstanding, and, seeing the tower of a church from our window, we hurried out; for all through Spain, as in Italy, if there is anything worth seeing in a town, it is certainly the churches. However, it was not a question of art with us, though by no means insensible to the grand in architecture or to the beautiful in painting and sculpture. The church we soon came to had given its name to the Fonda. It was the church of St. Dominic, an edifice of the fourteenth century, formerly connected with a Dominican convent. It is a grim, mouldy church, with a tomb-like atmosphere about it—and, indeed, it is partly paved with memorial stones of those who sleep in the damp vaults below. But it was quiet and solemn, and there was a certain grave simplicity about it peculiar to the Dominican churches in Spain. A priest was saying Mass in subdued tones at the very altar where St. Ignatius once saw the glorious Humanity of our Saviour at the elevation of the Host, and a few people were kneeling here and there on the flag-stones, praying devoutly. St. Dominic and the dog with a flaming brand still seemed to be keeping watch and ward over the place, though his children are banished from his native land. The adjoining convent often gave St. Ignatius hospitality, and it was at one of its windows, after being tempted to despair in view of his sins, that he exclaimed: “Lord, I will not do aught that will offend thee!” He often made the _Via Crucis_ in the cloisters, bearing a large wooden cross on his shoulders from station to station, shedding floods of tears over the divine Sufferer. This cross is still religiously preserved, and bears the inscription:

Enecvs A Lohola porta bat hanc crv cem, 1522

—Ignatius de Loyola bore this cross, 1522.

We found Manresa exceedingly picturesque by daylight, rising abruptly, as it does, out of the valley of the Llobregat on one side and that of the Cardoner on the other. The railway station is at the foot of the eminence, with the river between, and the effect of the steep cliffs, crowned by the noble and loyal city, is very striking. Directly opposite, as if it sprang out of the mount, rises the Seo, a venerable cathedral of the fourteenth century, beautifully mellowed and embrowned by time. Further to the left are the spires of the Carmen and the tower of San Miguel; while at the right, but lower down, built into the very side of the cliff, so that it seems like a continuation of it, is the church of the Jesuits, with the Santa Cueva which gives celebrity to the city. One would like to see the Holy Cave in its primitive simplicity; but such was the devotion of pilgrims who came here in thousands after the canonization of St. Ignatius that, to save it from being carried off piecemeal, it was found necessary to place some safeguard around it, and it is now enclosed within the walls of the church.

Crossing the bridge that leads from the station, and walking along the opposite bank beneath the long arms of the umbrageous plane-trees for five minutes, we turned to the left, and, going up a short street, found ourselves directly beneath the overhanging cliff, which is tapestried with vines and the delicate fronds of the maiden-hair, kept green and fresh by little cascades of clear water that come trickling down the rocks with a pleasant murmur, glittering like the facets of a thousand jewels in the bright morning sun. Here is the Holy Cave, though no longer open on the side of the valley, towards which turn with interest so many hearts from the ends of the earth. We passed beneath the church walls, with its long line of sculptured saints, of rather coarse workmanship in the Renaissance style, but producing a striking effect from the valley below. One more turn to the left up a steep path, and we were on the terrace leading to the entrance. A statue of St. Ignatius is over the door. One always recognizes his striking physiognomy, with the noble dome of solemn thought that crowns it, and we saluted it with reverence and love, as we had done in many a strange land, as a symbol of the paternal kindness we had met with from the order to which he has bequeathed his spirit.

The church consists of a single aisle, with four small chapels on each side, and a latticed gallery above for the inmates of the residence. There is nothing remarkable about it, and, in fact, it was never completed according to the original plan, owing to the suppression of the order in Spain. Seeing an open door on the gospel side of the sanctuary, we went directly towards it and found ourselves in a long, narrow passage lined with portraits of the Jesuit saints, and, at the further end, a doorway secured by a strong iron grating, above which is graven:

SANTA CUEVA.

Finding the grating ajar, we pushed it back, and, descending three stone steps, found ourselves in the Holy Cave. It is long and narrow, being about thirty feet in length, seven in width, and about the same in height. A small octagon window is cut through the wall that closes the original entrance, and there is a feeble lamp hanging before the altar, but neither gives light enough to disperse the gloom, and, as there was no one in the cave, it was as silent and impressive as a tomb. You could only hear the pleasant rippling of the water over the rocks without. The pavement is the solid rock, and the upper part of the cave is in its rough state, but the lower part of the walls is faced with marble, and jasper, and a series of bas-reliefs that tell the history of the saint. An inscription on the wall says:

“In this place, in the year 1522, St. Ignatius composed the book of _Exercises_, the first written in the Society of Jesus, which has been approved by a bull from his Holiness Paul III.”

At the right, as you enter, is a projection, or shelf, in the wall, on which the _Spiritual Exercises_ were written, and there is a cross hollowed in the rock where the saint used to trace the holy sign before beginning to write. One’s first impulse is to kiss the ground where his holy feet once stood, and pray where he so often prayed. St. Ignatius said he learned more in one short hour of prayer in the cave of Manresa than all the doctors in the world could have taught him. Here, like St. Jerome, trembling before the judgments of God, he used to smite his breast with a hard stone. Here he wept over the sufferings of Christ, with whose bodily Presence he was often favored, as well as the presence of the angels and their Queen. “Flow fast, my tears,” wrote he in this very place, “break forth, my heart, in bitter sighs, that I may weep worthily over the sorrows of my Saviour! O Jesus! may I die before I cease to have a horror of sin. God liveth, in whose sight I stand; for while there is breath in me, and the spirit of life in my nostrils, my lips shall not give utterance nor my heart consent to iniquity.”[200]

A phalanx from his right hand is preserved here in a crystal reliquary, set in gold and jewels, on which is graven the Scriptural exclamation of Pope Paul III. after reading the Constitutions of St. Ignatius:

Digitus Dei est hic. Paulus III.

—The finger of God is here!...

Over the altar is a large bas-relief of the saint, kneeling before a cross in the Holy Cave and gazing up at the Virgin, who, enthroned on a cloud, is dictating to him the _Spiritual Exercises_, according to the constant local tradition. This relief is framed in black marble with white mouldings, and on each side are angels of white marble playing on musical instruments. These, as well as the other sculptures, were done by Francisco Grau, a Manresan artist of local celebrity. Among the others is one in which St. Ignatius, arrayed like the Spanish _caballero_ he was, with sword in hand, is keeping his vigil before the altar of Our Lady of Montserrat. In the next he is giving his rich garments to a beggar, coming down from the mount. Beyond is the miracle of the Pozo, of which we shall speak further on, and many such.

There were, at the time of our visit, four Jesuit Fathers in the adjoining _Casa_, and a daily service was held in the Santa Cueva. Many indulgences are attached to the place, on the usual conditions, granted by Pope Gregory XV. and other pontiffs. The cave, of course, was regarded from the time of St. Ignatius as a place singularly favored by Heaven. In his day it belonged to Don Fernando Roviralta, a great friend of the saint. He lived to be over a hundred years of age, and at his death he bequeathed it to his nephew, Don Mauricio Cardona, who sold it January 27, 1602, to the Marquesa de Ailona, who in the following year gave it to the Jesuits. As soon as it fell into their possession means were used to ornament it, and in the course of time a _Casa de retiro_ was built adjoining, with a church intended to be one of the finest in Catalonia. The Countess of Fuentes, a native of Manresa, gave one thousand escudos to ornament the Holy Cave. Don Pedro Osorio, commissary-general of Lombardy, came here on foot from Barcelona when seventy years of age, and presented eight thousand escudos for the same purpose. And finally the crown took it under its protection, and Philip V. gave it a valuable chalice on which were graven the royal arms. Not only Don John of Austria, but several of the kings of Spain, came here to visit a place of historic as well as religious interest, for the mysterious influences that have gone out of this Holy Cave have been a power in the world. The public documents of Manresa show the devotion of the Christian world to have been such that some days in the year 1606 there were more than a thousand visitors, many of whom came from a distance. They used to carry away with them pieces of the Holy Cave, which they preserved as relics. A fragment was sent to Queen Margaret of Austria, who had it set in gold surrounded by rubies and diamonds, and wore it on festivals of great solemnity.

When St. Ignatius came to Manresa there were only about a thousand families in the place, it having been reduced by wars and pestilence to one-fourth its former size. It is said that he stopped at the bridge leading to the city to pray at the chapel of Nuestra Señora de la Guia—Our Lady of Guidance—and was there supernaturally directed to the cave. It was then surrounded by shrubs and brambles, and was almost inaccessible. Though so near the city, it seemed retired, for it lay towards the broad valley, and was shaded by thorn-bushes and the cistus, which gave it an aspect of solitude. The pavement was uneven, and it was much smaller than at the present day. The birds of the air made it their home, and water trickled down the walls. The first thing the saint did was to prostrate himself on the ground and kiss it, then, with a sharp stone, trace a cross on the wall, still to be seen.

From the windows of the passage now leading to the Santa Cueva is the same landscape St. Ignatius had before him from the mouth of the cave; only in his day the country was wilder, and therefore more beautiful, if possible, and there were no factories, no railway, in the valley to disturb the peaceful solitude. It is certainly a landscape of surpassing beauty, and we could imagine his exaltation of soul in gazing at it; for St. Ignatius had the soul of a poet and was a great admirer of nature. He loved to walk in the meadows and gardens, to observe the form, color, and odor of flowers; and from time to time, when at Rome, used to go forth on his balcony to look at the starry heavens, as if to refresh his soul.

Directly beneath the cliff is the swift-gliding stream, and, beyond it, a hill crowned with the tower of Santa Catalina, then dark with sombre pines and gigantic oaks, but now descending in gentle terraces covered with the silvery olive. At the left opens the smiling valley of the Llobregat, covered with perpetual verdure, once called the Valle del Paraiso—the Vale of Paradise—and in the distance, against the bluest of heavens, rise the marvellous pinnacles of Montserrat, the sacred mountain of Spain.

Over the present entrance to the Holy Cave is an ancient stone crucifix, once part of the famous Cruz del Tort, at which St. Ignatius so often went to pray. On the eve of his festival, 1627, the Christ was seen, to the astonishment of every one present at Vespers, to exude blood, first from the side, then from the hands and feet, and finally from the thorn-crowned head. We went to visit the cross from which it was removed for preservation. On leaving the Santa Cueva we kept on, up the side of the hill, by a circuitous road the saint must often have trod, then towards the east by an old narrow street. We passed a crucifix in a niche, with red curtains before it, and a hanging lamp. Just beyond came several peasants with scarlet Catalan caps, broad purple sashes, blue trowsers, black velvet jackets, and alpargatas laced with wide blue tape across their white stockings. They were driving mules that looked as gay as their owners, with their heads streaming with bright tassels and alive with tinkling bells. We soon came to a house on which was a fresco representing the Virgin appearing to St. Ignatius. Just opposite this was a terrace on the edge of the hill, where stood the Cruz del Tort, a lofty stone cross with several stone steps around the base. It was on these steps that St. Ignatius, while praying here one day, as he was accustomed to do, and shedding floods of tears, had the mystery of the Holy Trinity made clear to him by some vision which he compares to three keys of a musical instrument. His eyes were opened to a new sense of divine things. His doubts fell off like a garment. His whole nature seemed changed, and he felt ready, if need were, to die for what was here made manifest to him. On the cross is this inscription:

Hic habvit St. Ignativs Trinitatis visionem, 1522.

While we were saying a prayer at the foot of the cross a peasant woman, who was passing by, stopped to tell us how San Ignacio came here to do penance and had a vision of God. The terrace occupies an opening between the houses which frame an incomparable view over the valley of the Llobregat, with the solemn turrets of Montserrat in full sight. The tall gray cross against that golden sky, with the Vale of Paradise spread out at the foot, is certainly one of the most ravishing views it is possible to conceive. Steps descend from the cross, winding a little way down the side of the cliff, which is covered with ivy, to a pretty fountain fed by clear water bubbling from the rocks.

Turning back from the Cruz del Tort, and passing through the suburbs, we soon came into the city among streets that looked centuries old. We passed San Antonio in a niche, and soon came to a small Plaza with a painting of St. Dominic at the corner, and in the centre a stone obelisk with a long inscription, of which we give a literal translation:

“To Ignatius de Loyola, son of Beltran, a native of Cantabria, the founder of the Society of Jesus, who, in his thirtieth year, while valiantly fighting in defence of his country, was dangerously wounded, but being cured by the special mercy of God, and inspired with an ardent desire to visit the holy places at Jerusalem, after making a vow of chastity, set forth on the way, and, laying aside his military ensigns in the temple of Mary, the Mother of God, at Montserrat, clothed himself in sackcloth, and in this state of destitution came to this place, where with fastings and prayers he wept over his past offences, and avenged them like a fresh soldier of Christ. In order to perpetuate the memory of his heroic acts, for the glory of Christ and the honor of the Society, Juan Bautista Cardona, a native of Valencia, bishop of Vich, and appointed to the see of Tortosa, out of great devotion to the said father and his order, dedicates this stone to him as a most holy man to whom the whole Christian world is greatly indebted, Sixtus V. being pope, and Philip II. the great and Catholic king of Spain.”

On another side is the following:

“This monument, having been overthrown during a time of calamity, has been restored and commended to posterity by the most noble ayuntamiento of the city of Manresa, out of ineffaceable love, Pius V. being Sovereign Pontiff, Carlos IV. king, and Ignacio de la Justicia governor of the city. 1799.”

Bishop Cardona, the first to set up this monument, was an able writer of the golden age of Spanish literature, and a man of such vast knowledge that he was employed by Philip II. in the formation of the royal library at the Escorial. He was a great admirer of St. Ignatius, and left an inedited manuscript, now in the National Library, entitled _Laus St. Ignatii_.

While we were standing before this obelisk we were agreeably convinced that, notwithstanding all the ravages of pestilence and the massacres of the French, the good and loyal city was in no danger of being depopulated; for the doors of a large edifice on one side of the square opened, and forth came a swarm of boys that could not have been equalled, it seemed to us, since the famous crusade of children in the thirteenth century. They came from a school in what was once the Jesuits’ college, built out of the ancient hospital of Santa Lucia, where St. Ignatius used to minister to the sick, and sometimes seek shelter himself. This was what we were in search of. Connected with the college is the modern church of St. Ignatius, and from one side of the nave you enter the old church of the hospital, which has been carefully preserved. Here we found the Capilla del Rapto, a small square chapel, opening into the aisle and covered with frescos. It is so called because it was here St. Ignatius lay rapt in ecstasy from the hour of complines on the eve of Passion Sunday till the same hour on the following Saturday. It was during this wonderful withdrawal into the spiritual world that the foundation of the Society of Jesus was revealed to him, as is stated in an inscription on the wall. For more than two centuries a solemn octave has been annually celebrated here in commemoration of this divine ecstasy. Beneath the simple altar lies the saint in effigy, wearing the coarse robe which made the _gamins_ of that day call him _El Saco_, or Old Sackcloth, till they found out he was a saint. Over the altar is a painting of the Rapto, in which, unable to endure the vision of Christ Glorified with mortal eyes, St. Ignatius is mercifully rapt in ecstasy. Angels bend around him, holding the banner of the Holy Name that has become the watchword of the Society. _In hoc vocabitur tibi nomen._ On one side of the chapel he is represented catechising the children, and on the other he stands in his penitential garments, exhorting the patients of the hospital, while some lord, doubtless Don Andrés de Amigant, is kneeling to him in reverence.

The original pavement of stone is covered with a wooden floor to preserve it, but a brass plate, on which is inscribed the name of Jesus, is raised to show the spot where the saint’s head lay in his ecstasy. The stone is worn with kisses, and has been partly cut away by pilgrims. Behind the chapel is the room where he used to teach children the catechism, and there is the same old stone stoup for holy-water that was used in his day. Here, too, is an inscription:

Serviendo en este Hospital Ignacio a gloria Divina, Enseñaba la Doctrina En las piedras de este umbral.

A few months after his arrival at Manresa St. Ignatius fell ill and was taken to this hospital among the poor with whom he now identified himself. But Don Andrés de Amigant, a nobleman of the place, soon had him removed to his own house, where he and his wife nursed him till he recovered. It was a pious custom of theirs to take two patients from the hospital every year, and tend them as if our Saviour in person. For this Don Andrés was styled “Simon the Leper” by the wits of Manresa, and Doña Iñés, his wife, was called Martha. This admirable charity had been practised in the family nearly two hundred years. It appears by a MS. in possession of the Marquis de Palmerola, its present representative, that a remote ancestor of his, Gaspar de Amigant, introduced the practice into his family in 1364, out of devotion. He added two rooms to his house, where he kept two poor patients, providing every remedy and means of subsistence, and, as soon as they recovered, diligently sought out others to supply their places, that, as he said, so religious an exercise might never be wanting in his family. How faithful his descendants were to so holy a practice appears from the statement that Juan de Amigant in 1478, having, “according to his custom,” received a woman named Ignès Buxona into his house, she bequeathed to him when she died, having no relations, the patronage of the benefice of San Francisco in the Seo of Manresa.

Many traditions concerning St. Ignatius have been preserved in this pious family. A cross has been recently discovered on the wall of the chapel of _S. Ignacio enfermo_ during some repairs, similar to that in the Santa Cueva. And there is a curious old family painting commemorating his illness in the house. The convalescent saint is represented sitting up in bed, supported by the left hand of Don Andrés, who with his right offers him a cup of broth. Behind are Doña Angela, his mother, Doña Iñés, his wife, and all the other members of the household, each one with some restoring dish in hand. In front of the bed is the inscription:

Stvs Ignativs de Loyola lang vens

—that is, St. Ignatius ill.

At the foot of the bed is another:

Hæc omnia evenervnt 22 Ivlii anno 1522.

—All these things took place July 22, 1522. His illness, by this, appears to have occurred about four months after his arrival at Manresa.

The honor of having St. Ignatius was disputed by many noble families of the place. In the _patio_ of one of the houses he sometimes visited, in the street called Sobreroca, is a picture of him, now indulgenced by the diocesan authority.

The college of St. Ignatius was founded in 1603. The ayuntamiento of Manresa, touched by a discourse during the Lent of 1601 at the Seo, purchased the ancient hospital of Santa Lucia, and established the Jesuits here soon after. The college became a flourishing institution, and they were before long able to build a new church and adorn the precious chapel of the Rapto.

When Carlos III. issued the decree for the expulsion of the Jesuits, April 3, 1767, the residence at Manresa was at first overlooked, and the fathers, as usual, celebrated the octave of the _Maravilloso Rapto_. On the very day it ended, April 11, the eve of Palm Sunday, at the same hour when St. Ignatius awoke from his mysterious trance, crying: “Ay Jesus! Ay Jesus!” the venerable fathers were seized and carried away amid the tears of the citizens to Tarragona, where they were put on a vessel of war, and, with nine hundred from Aragon, were transported to Ajaccio. The island of Corsica had on it at one time three thousand Jesuits who, for no crime, had been barbarously torn from their native land. Among them were the venerable Pignatelli and several who were eminent for letters. But on the 15th of August, 1769, Napoleon Bonaparte was born at Ajaccio, who proved the scourge of Spain.

The churches of the Jesuits were dismantled and the temporalities sold. The vestments and sacred vessels were given to poor churches of the diocese, but even these were mostly sold afterwards to help to defray the expenses of the war of independence. The chalice of Philip V., given to the Santa Cueva, was, however, saved.

Manresa has the glory of having been the first city in Catalonia to sound the war-cry against Bonaparte, and by the battle of Bruch, in which a handful of men routed the French army, to convince Spain that the Great Captain’s troops were not invincible. After the French had captured Tortosa they came to Manresa, and the house of the Santa Cueva was turned into a barrack and the church into a stable. With the restoration of the Bourbons returned the Jesuits. At Manresa the people rang the bells, and went out to meet them with cries of _Viva la Compañia_! The mules were taken from their carriages, and men drew them to the Seo, where the clergy and people with tears of emotion chanted the _Te Deum_. On July 25, 1816, they were reinstated in their former places, the keys of the Santa Cueva were presented to them in a silver basket, and on the 31st of July the festival of St. Ignatius was celebrated with solemn pomp in the Seo, with a congratulatory discourse on the restoration of the society.

Manresa has always been a religious city, as is to be seen by the number of solidly-built churches and the remains of its monastic institutions. When St. Ignatius quitted the place it is said there was hardly a person left unconverted. And when he was canonized there was a general explosion of joy, exhibited in Spanish fashion by dances, comedies, Moorish fights, illuminations, fireworks, salvos of artillery, triumphal arches and bowers—all of which contrast strangely with the penitential life of the saint in his cave.

There is something very friendly and cordial about the people. Inquiring our way to the Seo of an old woman, she said as she pointed it out: “Go with God; may he preserve you from all ill.”

We went on through the steep, narrow streets, which are often hewn out of the rock. The houses show traces of war and violence, and would be gloomy but for the galleries and hanging gardens with flowers and orange-trees. The women were gossiping from balcony to balcony. The _plazas_ were lively with trade. Everywhere was an interesting picture of Spanish life. In one place we passed a group of women around a well, washing at a huge tank, beating their clothes with wooden paddles, all laughing, all talking, all looking up with a flash of wonderful expression in their brown faces.

The Seo is an immense Gothic edifice, the first stone of which was laid October 9, 1328, but the crypt is several centuries older. The nave is of enormous width, which gives it an air of grandeur, and there are some fine stained windows, though greatly injured by the French. It is gloomy, but, when lighted up for a solemn service, presents an imposing appearance. There are queer Saracens’ heads on the walls of the choir, and steps lead to one of those subterranean churches full of solemn gloom so favorable to meditation and solitary prayer.

Among the notable things to be seen at Manresa is the Pozo di Gallina, where took place what is called the _primer milagro_ of St. Ignatius. Tradition says, as he was crossing the principal street of the city, called Sobreroca, on his way from the Carmen to the hospital of Santa Lucia, he met a child crying for fear of her mother, because the hen she was carrying home had escaped and fallen into an old well close by. Touched by her grief, the saint paused a moment, as if in prayer, and, while he stood, the water in the well rose to the brim, bringing with it the hen, which with a smile he restored to the child and went on his way. An oratory was afterwards built here, and the healing virtues of the water—such is the power of charity—have often been experienced by the people of Manresa, as is testified by the inscription from the pen of the learned Padre Ramon Solá:

Disce, viator, amor quid sit quo Ignatius ardet Testis aqua est, supplex hanc bibe, doctus abi.

S. Ignacio de Loyola en el año del Señor de 1522 hizo aqui el primer milagro sacando viva á flote hasta el borde una gallina ya ahogada.

This favored hen naturally became an object of special care, and it seems to have become the ancestress of an illustrious breed which kings did not disdain to have set before them at table.

We can fancy this _gallina resucitada_ laying now and then an egg, as Hawthorne says of the Pyncheon hens, “not for any pleasure of her own, but that the world might not absolutely lose so admirable a breed.” Brillat-Savarin pretended that the redeeming merit of the Jesuits was the discovery and introduction of the turkey into Europe.[201] Had he only known of this race of hens, rendered meet for the palates of princes by their great founder, they might have had an additional title to his approbation. Father Prout, speaking of the Jesuits being accused of having a hand in every political disturbance for the last three hundred years, compares them to Mother Carey’s chickens, which always make their appearance in a storm, and, for this reason, give rise to a belief among sailors that it is the _fowl_ that has raised the tempest! How ominous, then, was this Spanish hen of Manresa! We could not find out whether there are any scions of this time-honored race still living in their ancestral coops, or whether they were all suppressed with the order as dangerous to the state; but we do know that six of the breed—three _pollos_ and three _pollas_—in a line direct from the famous hen, were, in the beginning of the year 1603 (the miracle of the Pozo, it must be remembered, took place in 1522), sent to her Catholic majesty, Queen Margaret of Austria, who received them with as many demonstrations of pleasure as would have been consistent with royal etiquette in Spain.

We trust no supposititious egg was ever smuggled into the nest of this illustrious _gallina_ to deteriorate the breed. Père Vanière, a learned French Jesuit of note in the last century, has described in an able Latin poem, part of which has been translated by Delille, the sorrows of a poor old hen when she found, for instance, that she had hatched a brood of ducks, which became the torment of her life by their inclination for water. As Hood has it:

“The thing was strange—a contradiction It seemed of nature and her works, For little chicks beyond conviction To float without the aid of corks.”

Imagine, then, the woes of this maternal hen, in her new-fledged pride of race, should any Moorish or Guinea fowl taint her ennobled Spanish blood!

There is a hotel at Manresa, called the Chicken, of about the same stamp as the San Domingo, though Mr. Bayard Taylor, whose experience in such matters transcends ours, satisfied himself that, “although the Saint has altogether a better sound than the Chicken, the Chicken is really better than the Saint!”

It was one of St. Ignatius’ favorite devotions, while at Manresa, to visit the sanctuary of Our Lady of Viladordis, on the banks of the Llobregat, about three miles from the city. The last time he went there he gave his hempen girdle of three strands to the tenant of a neighboring farm-house who had often offered him hospitality, and assured him that as long as he and his posterity should continue to aid the poor they would never lack the means of a decent livelihood, and, though they might not attain great wealth, they would never be reduced to absolute poverty; which prophecy has been fulfilled to the present day, for the family still continues to exist. In this rural church a solemn jubilee is celebrated every year on Whitmonday in memory of St. Ignatius. Over the altar is a picture of the saint inscribed: “St. Ignatius, founder of the Jesuits, in the year 1522, the first of his conversion, frequented this church of Our Lady of Viladordis, and here received singular favors from Heaven, in memory of which this devout and grateful parish dedicates this portrait, Feb. 19, 1632.”

In 1860 Queen Isabella II., the great-granddaughter of Carlos III., came to Manresa, and, after visiting the Santa Cueva, expressed a wish to the city authorities that a monument so important in the religious history of Spain, and associated with the chief glory of Manresa, should be carefully preserved. This excited fresh interest. Spontaneous contributions from the _devotos de S. Ignacio_ flowed in for the restoration of the church and the ornamentation of the cave. To the former was transferred the miraculous image of Nuestra Señora de la Guia, before which St. Ignatius often used to pray. Pope Pius IX. conferred new indulgences on the Holy Cave, and its ancient glory had already revived when the revolution of September, 1868, broke out, overthrowing the royal government and compelling the Jesuits once more to take the road of exile. But the bishop of the diocese has watched over the cave, and it continues to be visited by pilgrims from all parts of the world.

A visit to the Santa Cueva marks an era in one’s life; for it is one of those places that produce an ineffaceable impression on the soul. Thank God! there are such places where the claims of a higher life assert themselves with irresistible force. Who that ever made a retreat with the _Spiritual Exercises_ in hand has not turned longingly to the Holy Cave in which they were written? Followed there, they seem to acquire new significance and authority. Wonderful book, that for three hundred years has on the one hand been regarded with admiration and love, and on the other been the object of distortion and abuse! Some have gone so far as to declare it a book of servilism and degradation; others, more happy, look upon it as an inexhaustible mine of wise directions in the practice of virtue. The sons of St. Ignatius have never ceased to meditate on the little volume which embodies the religious experience of their founder. They cherish it the more for giving them so large a draught in the chalice of ignominy, and they carry it with them through the wilderness of this world, as the children of Israel did the ark, to ensure their happy progress in the spiritual life. Pope Paul III., in his bull _Pastoralis Officii_, says: “Out of our apostolic authority and certain knowledge, we approve, we praise, we confirm by this document these teachings and these spiritual exercises, exhorting in the Lord, with all our might, the faithful of both sexes, one and all, to make use of these _Exercises_, so full of piety, and to follow their salutary directions.”

Manresa may well be proud of her Holy Cave, for it was here the great soul of St. Ignatius was tempered for his vast undertakings. But he did not indulge in any spiritual dalliance. His work once planned, he went boldly forth to achieve it.

“Forth to his task the giant sped; Earth shook abroad beneath his tread, And idols were laid low.

“India repaired half Europe’s loss; O’er a new hemisphere the cross Shone in the azure sky, And, from the isles of far Japan To the broad Andes, won o’er man A bloodless victory!”

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THE MIRACLE OF SEPTEMBER 16, 1877.

ABRIDGED FROM THE FRENCH OF M. HENRI LASSERRE.

In the month of August, 1874, Canon Martignon, previously _curé-archiprêtre_ of Algiers, arrived at Lourdes. He was a man of about forty years of age, and while in Africa had been attacked by an affection of the chest which entirely deprived him of the use of his voice; he had therefore crossed the Mediterranean to seek healing in the city of Mary.

At the rocks of Massabielle he prayed, drank of the miraculous font, and bathed in the piscina, but without obtaining the cure he sought.

Not disheartened, he resolved to make a novena. This, too, was unaccompanied by any change for the better.

“Well, then,” he said, “I will make a novena of weeks.” And he took up his abode at Lourdes for sixty-three days.

On the sixty-fourth day, finding himself in absolutely the same state, he left for Pau, to seek a temporary alleviation in the mildness of its climate. But soon reproaching himself for having quitted Lourdes, and regarding his having done so as an act of weakness and a want of faith, and, moreover, possessing in the depth of his heart a conviction that sooner or later the Blessed Virgin would grant his prayer, he returned to the sacred grotto and took up his abode in the town.

An invalid, he constituted himself the guide and guardian of the sick and suffering. Pilgrims who of late years may have spent any time at Lourdes will recollect having seen there a priest, still young, with a long, light beard, a distinguished countenance, with a bright earnestness and sweetness in the expression of the eyes; a tall, slight figure, the chest somewhat narrowed and the shoulders bent by suffering—a priest who led the blind, assisted the lame and infirm, to the piscina, and spent the whisper of his failing voice in cheering and consoling the afflicted. This was the Abbé Martignon.

“If Our Blessed Lady does not cure me this time,” he would say, smiling, “I have made up my mind for a novena of years, then a novena of centuries; and after that I will stop.”

He had the joy of seeing several of the sick of whom he had been the guide and stay miraculously cured; but he himself, though experiencing at times some slight alleviation, did not obtain the complete recovery he sought.

Did he at last feel that there was some secret resistance on the part of the Blessed Virgin to grant the favor he solicited? We do not know; but it seemed to us that, while his faith continued the same and his charity ever on the increase, the virtue of hope was with him gradually turning into that of resignation—or, to speak more accurately, that he was _postponing_ his hope. Happy to remain in this corner of the earth, on which the feet of the Queen of Heaven had rested, and to pray daily at the sacred grotto, he did not begin the novena of years and of centuries of which he had smilingly spoken.

“I stay here,” he would say, “at the disposal of Our Lady of Lourdes, like a person sitting in an ante-chamber waiting for an audience. She will hear me when she pleases. My turn will come; I shall have my hour or minute, and will take care not to let it escape me.”

For this hour and this minute he waited three years. Then, a few months ago, he felt an impulse within him urging him to knock again at the heavenly gate. He resolved to make a novena which should end on the Feast of Our Lady of the Seven Dolors. He had not observed that, this being a movable feast, the first day of the novena would this year (1877) coincide with the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin,[202] and that his prayer would thus go, as it were, from the birth of Mary to the last sigh of Jesus—from the cradle of the Mother to the sepulchre of her Son.

Had the Abbé Martignon been cured he would have returned to Algeria; and we imagine that if at first the Blessed Virgin refused his request, it was because she had no intention of so soon granting leave of departure to such a servant. Neither God nor his priest were losing anything by this refusal. When such and such a temporal blessing—that is to say, the copper coin—is denied to our prayers, it is because the gold and the rich increase are being laid up in store for us, either in this world or the world to come. Besides, a new mission had been imposed on the ardent zeal and charity of the Abbé Martignon: one which flowed naturally from the function to which he devoted himself of consoling the afflicted.

From the commencement of his sojourn at Lourdes he had found a man more suffering than the sick and more tried than the ordinarily afflicted, and to him also he had ministered aid and support. He to whom we allude—the Abbé Peyramale—had had the signal honor of receiving a message from heaven, and of accomplishing, in spite of every obstacle, the divine command. But the Blessed Virgin, doubtless reserving for him a higher place, had said: “I will show him how much he must suffer for love of me”; and the most unlooked-for troubles had been sent to torture his heroic heart.

By a strange contrast he was at the same time on Calvary and on Thabor. While his name was celebrated throughout Christendom, while he was blessed by the people whose beloved father and patriarch he was, he had also, especially during these latter times, the bitter pain of being misjudged, forsaken, and obstinately persecuted in that matter which he had most at heart—in his zeal for the Lord’s house. Like the Cyrenian, he was the man bearing the cross, and his robust shoulders were bruised and bleeding beneath the sacred burden, while around his sufferings, as around those of his Master, many shook their heads, saying: “He has been the instrument of Mary; let her now help and deliver him!”

When, at the time of the apparitions, now nearly twenty years ago, he had asked Our Lady to make roses bloom in the time of snow, she, who was in that same place to work so many miracles, refused this one, and to the priest whom she had chosen replied by the austere word, “_Penance_.” The illustrious Abbé Peyramale, the priest of the Immaculate Conception, had thus been condemned to suffer. It was he of whom, for some years, the Abbé Martignon was the filial comforter and the friend of every hour.

It is not our purpose here to dwell on the sorrows beneath the weight of which sank the venerable curé of Lourdes; we would only call to mind that, when the basilica of the grotto was completed and enriched with the gifts of all the world—the basilica which was to be the point of arrival for the processions commanded by Our Lady—he undertook to rebuild the parish church, which ought to be their point of departure.

He died at his work, without having been able to complete it, and having more than once announced his death as a sort of necessity—a last sacrifice on his part in the interest of the house of God.

The unfinished church had stopped at the height of the arches. Aid on which he had been led to rely had failed him, and his efforts had been impeded by inconceivable hostilities.

“I shall not enter the promised land,” he would say; “I shall only see it afar off. _I must die to repair the ruin._ When I am here no more, all difficulties will be smoothed. My death will pay all”—sorrowful words, which brought tears to his eyes and to the eyes of those who loved him! We ourselves had the sad consolation of being present at his departure. God chose the Feast of the Nativity of Our Blessed Lady to open the gates of eternity to her faithful servant.

Around the death-bed of Mgr. Peyramale were his brother and other relations, his _vicaires_, friends, and those of his flock who had been able to penetrate into his room. Among this tearful family was the Abbé Martignon, broken down with grief, and scarcely thinking of himself, his malady, or his cure, or yet of his novena to Our Lady of the Seven Dolors, which, by a curious coincidence, was to begin that same day.

Mgr. Peyramale, after a long agony, had just rendered his last sigh to earth and his immortal soul to God. In that hour of grief and desolation his friend, while raising his heart to her who is the _Consolatrix Afflictorum_, recollected his promised novena.

What was passing in his mind? Kneeling by that bed and holding in his the lifeless hands of the curé of Lourdes, he remained for some time bowed down in silence. Then, rising, he said to some of those present: “I have just said the first prayer of my novena to Our Lady of Sorrows, and made my request for a cure, in presence of these holy remains; and I conjure Our Lady of Lourdes to permit that in her own name, and _on the ninth day_, our friend may himself transmit to me the answer”; adding: “The choice God has made of the 8th of September to call to himself the Priest of the Apparitions sufficiently authorizes me to associate his first remembrance (_souvenir_) with my humble supplication.”

Side by side with a great sorrow a great hope from this moment entered in and possessed the heart of the sick priest. The thought of recovery did not, assuredly, lessen his grief for the loss of his friend; but seeing himself henceforth alone in France, it was a happiness to him to know that his protector was in heaven, and that it would be doubtless owing to the intervention of that friend, next to that of God and Our Blessed Lady, that he should receive the favor so long solicited.

He spoke of this with conviction. It seemed to him that, with such an intercessor, the Blessed Virgin would, _on the ninth day_, put herself in some sort at the disposal of his prayer. He even wrote to Paris, to the Rev. Père Picard of the Assumption, to tell him of his hope. Already he spoke of what he would do when he was cured, and how he would employ himself in furthering the unfinished work of the curé of Lourdes. He prayed with fervor; friends joined him in his novena; and thus the time went on until Saturday, the 15th of September—the eve of _the ninth day_.

On this Saturday, in the morning, he received a telegram to tell him that M. and Mme. Guerrier were on their way to Lourdes, and to ask if he would kindly meet them at the station with a carriage.

M. and Mme. Guerrier were utterly unknown to him. A letter only, which he had received from the curé of St. Gobain twenty-four hours before the telegram, informed him that Mme. Guerrier had for several years been suffering from a very serious illness, and was starting for Lourdes to seek a cure, full of faith that it would be granted. This lady and her husband were earnestly recommended to the Abbé Martignon, as this was their first visit to the city of the Blessed Virgin.

The canon gladly undertook this act of charity, and went to the station in good time to meet the three o’clock train. Leaving him for a time occupied with his Breviary in the waiting-room, we will relate by what series of circumstances M. and Mme. Guerrier were brought to Lourdes on that day.

M. Edouard Guerrier, judge of the peace at Beaune, married, about fifteen years ago, Mlle. Justine Biver, a religious and excellent lady. Her father was a distinguished physician, and her two brothers occupied high commercial positions, one being general director of the Company of St. Gobain, and the other director of the celebrated glass manufactories of St. Gobain and Chauny.

God had blessed this union with three children, healthy and intelligent, to whose training and education their mother devoted herself, bringing them up especially in the love of God and of the poor.

Thus passed eleven years of unbroken happiness. In 1874, however, a dark cloud suddenly over-shadowed this clear sky. The health of Mme. Guerrier broke down rapidly, and violent headaches, frequent faintings, and increasing weakness were succeeded by a general state of paralysis, which seized successively several important organs of the frame. The spine and lower limbs became powerless, and the sight dim and enfeebled. The sufferer was unable to sit up in bed, and obliged to remain always lying down. Finally the lower limbs became not only incapable of movement but insensible to pain, so that, if pinched or pricked, they remained without feeling. During the long fits of fainting it often seemed as if life must become extinct. Death was knocking at the door, and mourning had already entered the home lately so bright with happiness.

Unable to continue the education of her children, the poor mother could only assist them in their religious duties. Night and morning they knelt at her bedside, adding to their prayers an earnest petition for her recovery.

In this state Mme. Guerrier had continued about two years, when Alice, her eldest girl, was about to make her First Communion, on April 2, 1876. This great day constantly occupied the thoughts of this Christian mother. She thought of it for her child, and also a little for herself. It seemed to her as if, in coming to take possession of this young heart, the compassionate Saviour would surely bring some relief to her own great needs, and leave in the house some royal token of his visit and sojourn there. Had he not, on entering the house of Simon Peter, healed the sick mother-in-law, enabling her to rise and serve him?

“I am certain of it,” she said. “On that day I shall get up and walk.”

Alice made her First Communion on the appointed day; and in the evening the priest who had prepared her, and a few members of the family, were assembled at dinner. No change, however, had taken place in the state of the sick lady, and her place was remaining empty, as for so many months past, when, at the moment the party were about to sit down to table, suddenly recovering her lost powers, she rose, dressed, and came to take her place amid her family circle. Her sight was clear, the spine had recovered its strength, and she walked and moved with the same ease as before her illness.

The priest intoned a hymn of thanksgiving, all present answering. Every one felt that He who that morning had given himself in the divine Banquet was invisibly present at the family feast. During the night Mme. Guerrier’s sleep was calm and profound; but in the morning, when she attempted to rise, her limbs refused their service, having fallen back into their helpless state. Was it, then, a dream or an illusion? Was it an effect of the nerves, the imagination, or the will?

The day of her daughter’s First Communion He would not disappoint the mother’s hope and faith.... But afterwards he willed her to understand that, for purposes known to him alone, she was still to bear the weight of her trial. The intolerable headaches returned no more, the faintings ceased, and the sight remained clear and distinct. From this day the resignation of Mme. Guerrier, already very great, became greater still. Her soul as well as her body had received grace from on high. The dimness of vision which had hidden from her the faces of her husband and children had disappeared before the breath of Heaven, and, although she remained infirm and always stretched upon her bed, she was filled with thankfulness and joy. From the beginning of her illness she had never seen her aged parents. She lived at Beaune, in the Côte d’Or, and they at St. Gobain, in the department of Aisne, one hundred and forty leagues away, and, Dr. Biver being then in his eighty-second year, any journey was a difficulty to him. His daughter longed to see him once more, and from April to September this longing continued to increase. In vain the exceeding risk as well as difficulty of travelling in her state was represented to her; she at last persuaded her husband to consent to the imprudent undertaking upon which she had set her heart.

As the physicians had foreseen, the journey very seriously aggravated Mme. Guerrier’s sufferings, which increased to such a degree that, even after some weeks of repose, it was impossible for her to attempt to return to Beaune. The slightest movement often brought on an alarming crisis.

The consequence of such a state, under existing circumstances, was nothing less than the breaking up of the family. The husband, on account of his duties as judge of the peace, was compelled to reside at Beaune, while the condition of his wife rendered it impossible for her to quit St. Gobain. She had asked to have her children with her, and thus, between every two audiences, when possible, M. Guerrier took a journey of one hundred and forty leagues and back, in order to spend a few days with those who made all the happiness of his life.

Nearly a year passed in this way. A moment of improvement was constantly watched for which might permit Mme. Guerrier to travel; but this moment was waited for in vain. On the contrary, the paralysis was beginning to affect the left arm, and the thought of her journey thither made that of the homeward one very alarming.

Last August, M. Guerrier being at St. Gobain in the same painful state of hope deferred, his wife astonished him by saying: “My dear, I wish to make a pilgrimage to Lourdes. I shall be cured there. You must take me.”

M. Guerrier, seriously alarmed at this proposal, energetically withstood an idea which he believed could not be acted upon without a fatal result.

“My dear wife, you are asking impossibilities,” he said. “Think what it has cost us for having, eleven months ago, yielded to your wishes by attempting the journey from Beaune to St. Gobain! Remember that from that time you have not even been able to bear being carried into the garden or drawn a few paces in a sofa-chair. And yet you would venture to travel across France, to a part of the country where we are utter strangers, with the pleasant prospect of being unable to get away again! Do not think of it, dearest! It would be tempting God and running a risk that would be simply madness.”

“I am certain that I shall be cured at Lourdes,” was the answer, “and I wish to go thither.”

It was a struggle of reason against faith and hope, and, both parties being resolute, the struggle lasted for some days. Mme. Guerrier’s faith, however, communicated itself to her two brothers; they advised her husband to grant her wish, and he, weary of contention, at last gave a reluctant consent. Provided with a medical certificate as to the state of his wife’s health, he requested of the minister a few weeks’ leave of absence, in order to take her to the Pyrenees.

It was on Saturday, the 8th of September, Feast of the Nativity, that the journey was resolved upon.

M. Guerrier felt, however, no small anxiety at the prospect (in case his worst fears should be realized) of finding himself in a place where, knowing no one, he could expect no aid or support beyond the services to be had at hotels.

“If only,” he said, “I knew of any one there who could guide us a little! I shrink from this plunge into the unknown.”

On the 10th or 11th of September the Abbé Poindron, curé of St. Gobain, saw, announced in a newspaper, the death of Mgr. Peyramale, and in the account given of his last moments observed the name of the Abbé Martignon. He went immediately to M. Guerrier, and said: “You will have some one at Lourdes to receive and direct you. I know Canon Martignon, and am writing to recommend you particularly to his kind care. On the way telegraph to him the hour of your arrival. He will be prepared for it.”

The exact time of the dreaded departure was then fixed for Wednesday, the 12th of September. It was arranged that the travellers should stop at Paris for a day’s repose, and that the rest of the journey should, if possible, be made without another halt until they reached Lourdes. An invalid carriage was engaged of the railway company to be in readiness.

Great was the anxiety of the family.... The children, however, rejoiced beforehand, implicitly believing that their mother would be cured: Marie, the youngest, who never remembered seeing her otherwise than in bed and infirm, exclaimed: “Mamma will come back to us like another mamma, and we shall have a mamma who can walk.”

“And,” joined in little Paul, who in this respect had sometimes envied other children of his acquaintance, “mamma will be able to take us on her lap.”

“Yes,” said Alice, “she will come back quite well.”

In order to spare Mme. Guerrier’s aged father the uncertainties and anxieties which preceded the decision, he had not been told what was in contemplation until everything was arranged, and the only thing that remained was to obtain his consent.

The venerable physician was deeply moved on hearing from his daughter her intention of visiting that distant sanctuary to seek from the Mother of God a cure which human science had proved powerless to effect. He consented without hesitation, and, when the moment of departure arrived, raised his hands over his afflicted child in a

## parting benediction.

The journey was painful. At Paris it was not without great difficulty that Mme. Guerrier was transported to the house of her brother, M. Hector Biver.

Their brother-in-law, M. Louis Bonnel, professor at the _lycée_ at Versailles, met them there. “I have just ascertained,” he said, “that Henri Lasserre is at Lourdes. I knew him formerly; he is a friend of mine. Here is a letter for him.” And thus it was that the writer of the present account was enabled later to learn all its details.

Notwithstanding the courage of the sick lady, her prostration was so complete when the train entered the station at Bordeaux that her husband dared not allow her then to go further, and insisted on her again taking a day’s repose.

* * * * *

On Saturday, the 15th of September, the travellers arrived at Lourdes. The Abbé Martignon was at the station, having prepared everything necessary. Two porters bore Mme. Guerrier to a commodious carriage, and the three repaired to the furnished apartments of Mme. Detroyat, where the abbé had engaged a room. This room was on the first or second story, and the helpless state of Mme. Guerrier rendered it absolutely necessary that she should have one on the ground floor. The canon had not been made aware of this, and was consequently in much perplexity.

“Do not be uneasy,” said Mme. Detroyat. “You are very likely to find a room that will suit you, close by, at the house of M. Lavigne.”

M. Lavigne is the owner of a very pleasant house, surrounded by shrubs and flowers. The garden gate opens on the highroad which passes through Lourdes and forms its principal street. The house is in the lower part of the town, between the _cité_ and the station.

M. Lavigne, with the greatest kindness, put his house at the disposal of the pilgrims, and thus they were soon installed in a large room on the ground floor, temporarily transformed into a bedroom and opening into the garden.

After resting for a time they repaired to the grotto; M. Guerrier having engaged two men-servants to assist him in lifting his wife from the carriage to the foot of the statue of Mary Immaculate. It was then about five o’clock. There it was that we first saw Mme. Guerrier. Her husband gave us the letter of M. Louis Bonnel, and thus we became acquainted with the trials of this family.

The prayer of Mme. Guerrier was ardent and absorbed. Motionless and fixed, as if in ecstasy, her gaze never quitted the material representation of the Holy Virgin, who had appeared where now her image stands, and whom she had come so far to invoke. Everything in her countenance and aspect expressed faith and hope.

Before setting out Mme. Guerrier had received absolution, and as much as possible disposed her soul for the reception of the great grace she implored. She was ready. Her husband, though a practical Christian, was still a little behindhand. Burdened as he had been with all the weight of temporal anxieties, he had not been quite so active in arranging for his spiritual needs. With an exceeding watchfulness he had attended to everything relating to the comfort of his charge, but the preparation of himself he had delayed, awaiting for this, the decisive moment and the latest hour.

At Lourdes this hour came.

Late in the evening he requested the Abbé Martignon to hear his confession. As he had all along intended, he desired on the morrow to receive Holy Communion with his wife.

And thus in the sacrament of penance, after the avowal of his faults, he had the consolation of pouring out his troubles and deep anxieties into the sympathizing heart of his confessor. The details of these confidences are the secret of God, but this we know well: that the confessor, who is God’s lieutenant for the time, and who, in the name of the Father of all, pronounces the words of pity and pardon, often experiences, more fully than other men, the sentiment of deepest compassion. And great was the compassion of the Abbé Martignon for the misfortune of this distressed husband, for the sufferings of the wife, and the mourning of their family. He put aside all consideration of himself to think only for them. Not that he forgot his own sufferings, or the bright hope with which he was looking forward to the morrow; on the contrary, he remembered this; but a thought of a higher order, which had already presented itself to his mind, recurred to him now, and he at once acted upon it.

“Let your wife have confidence,” he said to his penitent, “and do you have confidence as well. I saw her when she was praying this evening at the grotto. She is one of those who triumph over the heart of God and compel a miracle.” Then, telling him about his own novena, he added: “To-morrow, then, at eight o’clock I shall celebrate the Mass which is my last hope!... Well, say to Mme. Guerrier that not only will I say this Mass _for her_, but that, _if I am to have a share in the sensible answer which I solicit, I give up this share to her_. I make over to her intention all the previous prayers of this novena, and _I substitute her intentions for mine_, so that, if the answer is to be a cure, _it shall not be mine but hers_. Let her, before she goes to sleep to-night, and to-morrow on awaking, associate with her prayers the name of Mgr. Peyramale, and at eight o’clock come, both of you, to my Mass at the basilica. I have good hope that something will happen.”

In accepting with simplicity such an offer as this M. and Mme. Guerrier could not measure the heroism and the extent of the sacrifice which the Abbé Martignon was making in their favor. For this the knowledge of a long past was necessary—a past of which they knew nothing.

The sick lady did not fail to mingle in her prayers the name of Mgr. Peyramale, and towards eight o’clock in the morning she was taken to the basilica to be present at the last Mass of this novena, her feeling of assured confidence in her recovery being singularly strengthened by the noble act of self-denial made in her favor.

Since the previous day the crypt and upper church had been filled by the pilgrims from Marseilles. It would have been difficult to carry a sick person through the dense multitude, especially one to whom the least shock or movement caused suffering and fatigue. One of the first chapels on entering was therefore chosen in which to say the Mass. It happened to be the first on the left, dedicated to Ste. Germaine Cousin.

Mme. Guerrier heard the Mass seated on a chair, her feet, absolutely inert, being placed on a _priedieu_ in front of her.

While reading the epistle the remembrance of Mgr. Peyramale suddenly presented itself with extraordinary clearness before the mind of the celebrant, when he came to the last lines, and saw these words, whose striking fitness impressed itself irresistibly upon him:

“The Lord ... hath so magnified thy name this day that thy praise shall not depart out of the mouth of men, who shall be mindful of the power of the Lord for ever; for that thou hast not spared thy life by reason of the distress and tribulation of thy people, but in the presence of the Lord our God _thou hast repaired our ruin_.”[203]

“I must die to repair the ruin,” had often been the words of Mgr. Peyramale.

At the moment of the Elevation all were kneeling except the paralyzed lady. In her powerlessness she was compelled to remain reclining, the sacred Host being brought to her where she lay.

Scarcely had she received the Blessed Sacrament when she felt in herself a strange power which seemed as if impelling her to rise and kneel, while an inner voice seemed to command her to do so.

Near to her knelt her husband, absorbed in prayer and thanksgiving after Communion. He heard the soft rustling of a dress, looked up, and saw his wife kneeling by his side.

Respect for the holy place alone prevented the exclamation of wonder that rose to his lips. Instinctively he looked towards the altar—it was at the moment of the _Dominus vobiscum_—and his eyes met those of the priest, which were radiant with joy and emotion. At the Last Gospel Mme. Guerrier rose without effort and continued standing. As for her husband, he could scarcely remain upright, his knees trembled so. He gazed at his wife, afraid to speak to her or to believe the testimony of his senses, while she remained praying and giving thanks in the greatest calmness and recollectedness of spirit.

The priest laid aside his sacred vestments and knelt at a corner of the altar to make his thanksgiving, with what fervor may be imagined.

The sign he had asked had been given, luminous and unmistakable, _on the ninth day_, when, at the Mass said by himself, the requested answer came which by an heroic act of charity he had transferred to another. Whatever may have been the joy of the recovered lady, that of the priest was greater still. His friend, the Curé Peyramale, now in heaven, had already begun to manifest his presence there, while the circumstances attending the miracle seemed to show that Mary herself took in hand the glorification of the faithful servant who had been here below the minister of her work.

* * * * *

Neither the Abbé Martignon nor those who had accompanied him had then paid any attention to the details of the little side-chapel into which a hand more delicate and strong than that of man had led them; and yet the stones, the sculptures, and inscriptions there were so many voices which repeated the same name. It was the first chapel on entering, and the commencement of the basilica. Under the window, on three large slabs of marble, is inscribed an abridged account of the eighteen apparitions, including the message with which Bernadette was charged by Our Blessed Lady: “Go and tell the priests that I wish a chapel to be built to me here”—a message which indicated the mission and the person of him who had dug the foundation and laid the first stone.

Above the great arch which forms the entrance to this chapel is inscribed the word “_Pénitence_”—the answer to the request for roses to bloom in February, and which spoke of suffering; while on the right of the altar, over the smaller arch leading to the next chapel, the sculptor has represented Simon the Cyrenian bearing the cross of Jesus.

On the altar is carved the young shepherdess saint (also of the south of France) who seemed best to typify the favored child of Lourdes—namely, the pure and innocent Ste. Germaine Cousin. Bernadette was wont to say: “Of all my lambs I love the smallest best.” Ste. Germaine is represented with a lamb at her feet, while behind her is the dog, symbol of _Vigilance_, _Fidelity_, and _Strength_, these virtues recalling the energetic pastor who had never suffered persecution to touch the child of Mary.

If, in granting this cure, Our Lady of Lourdes had not intended specially to associate with it the remembrance of her servant, would she not have chosen another _moment_ than this ninth day, asked for beforehand, another _place_ than this significative chapel, and another _circumstance_ than the last Mass of the novena made by that servant’s intimate friend? In all these delicate harmonies of detail we seem to perceive the divine hand.

* * * * *

We resume the narrative.

After her act of thanksgiving Mme. Guerrier rose from her knees, calm and serene, without the least excitement, physical or moral, but still radiant from the heavenly contact, and, turning to her husband, she said: “Give me your arm, dear; let us go down.”

Still fearing that what he saw was too good to last, M. Guerrier wished to summon the porters.

“No,” said the Abbé Martignon; “let her walk.”

Taking her husband’s arm, she pressed it for a moment to her heart, full of happiness and gratitude; then, with a firmer step than he, descended the two steps of the chapel and crossed the nave.

The Marseilles pilgrims thronged the church, singing the power of the Immaculate Mother of God, not knowing that close beside them, in a little side-chapel, during the stillness of a Low Mass, that benignant power had just been put forth.

On leaving the basilica Mme. Guerrier descended with ease the twenty-five steps of the stone flight at the foot of which the carriage was waiting.

The coachman gazed at Mme. Guerrier in amazement and remained motionless, until, on a sign from her husband, he got down and opened the door.

“No,” said the cured lady; “I wish to go to the grotto.”

“Certainly; we will drive there.”

“Not at all. Your arm is enough. I will walk.”

“She is cured,” said the Abbé Martignon; “let her do as she wishes.”

So, all together, they walked to the grotto.

Here Mme. Guerrier made her second act of thanksgiving before the image of Mary Immaculate. Then, after drinking of the miraculous spring, she went to the piscina, in which, though cured, she wished to bathe. After this immersion she lost entirely a certain stiffness which had remained, and which had somewhat impeded the free play of the articulations.

She made a point of returning on foot to the town, the carriage preceding at a slow pace; but about half-way the Abbé Martignon said, smiling: “Madame, _you_ are cured, but I am not; and I must own that I can go no further. In charity to me let us get into the carriage.”

“Willingly,” she replied, and, hastening to it, she sprang lightly in.

They traversed Lourdes, until, a little below the _old_ parish church, they turned into the Rue de Langelle, and stopped near the rising walls of the _new_ one.

Mme. Guerrier and her companions alighted, and, descending some steep wooden steps, entered the crypt. Here was a tomb, as yet without inscription. She sprinkled some holy water over it with a laurel spray that lay there, and then knelt down and made her third act of thanksgiving by the venerated remains of Mgr. Peyramale.

During the week which had followed the death of this holy priest no pilgrimage had appeared in the mourning town. It was on this same day of glory that the first, that of Catholic Marseilles, came to pray at his tomb, and thus the first crown (from a distance) placed upon it bears the date of the event we have just related: “_Les Pélerins Marseillais, 16 Septembre, 1877_.”

When M. and Mme. Guerrier returned to the house of M. Lavigne great was the joy of those who had so kindly received them. They regarded this miracle as a benediction upon their house, and heard with deepest interest the details of what had taken place.

“Madame,” then said M. Lavigne, “are you aware into what place exactly Providence led you in bringing you to us?... You are in the house which was the presbytery of Lourdes at the time of the apparitions; and you occupy the room in which M. le Curé Peyramale questioned Bernadette and received from her mouth the commands of the Blessed Virgin.”

After remaining some days at Lourdes M. and Mme. Guerrier returned to St. Gobain. The journey was rapid and without fatigue. Passing over its earlier details, we quote the following portions of a letter from M. Guerrier, now before us:

“When we reached Chauny my wife’s younger brother, M. Alfred Biver, was waiting for us at the station, full of anxiety; for, in spite of the letters and telegrams, he could not believe. What was his surprise when my beloved wife threw herself into his arms!—a surprise from which he could not recover, and which drew from him repeated exclamations during the drive of fourteen or fifteen kilometres from Chauny to St. Gobain. We drove rapidly, for we were eager to reach home. How long the way appeared! At last there was the house! It was then about five in the evening. We saw the whole family waiting for us, great and small: sisters, sisters-in-law, nephews, nieces, and, above all, our dear little ones—all were at the door, eager to make sure that their happiness was real.

“Ah! when they saw their mother, sister, aunt alight alone from the carriage and hasten towards them, it was a picture which no human pencil could paint. What joy! what tears! what embraces! The mother of my Justine was never weary of embracing the daughter whom Our Lady of Lourdes restored to her upright, walking with a firm step—cured.

“Detained by his eighty-three years, her father was in his sitting-room up a few stairs. We mounted; he was standing at the door, his hands trembling more from happiness than age, and his noble countenance glistening with tears.

“‘My daughter!...’

“Mme. Guerrier knelt before him. ‘Father,’ she said, ‘you blessed me when, incurably afflicted, I started for Lourdes; bless me now that I return to you miraculously cured—as I said I should....’

“And, as if nothing were to be wanting to our happiness, it so happened that this very day was the _fête_ of her who returned thus triumphantly to her father’s house. What a glad feast of St. Justine we celebrated!

“But this is not all. The family had its large share; the church also must have hers. The excellent curé of St. Gobain, the Abbé Poindron, had obtained from the lord bishop of Soissons authority to have solemn benediction in thanksgiving for the incomparable favor that had been granted to us.

“On the day after our arrival, therefore, we repaired to the parish church, through crowds of awestruck and wondering people. The bells were ringing joyously, and the church was full as on days of great solemnity. Above the congregation rose the statue of Notre Dame de Lourdes, and, facing it, a place was prepared for her whom Mary had deigned to heal. The priest ascended the pulpit, and related simply and without comment the event that was the occasion of the present ceremony, after which some young girls, veiled and clad in white, took upon their shoulders the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes, and the procession began; my dear wife and myself walking immediately behind the image of our heavenly benefactress, amid the enthusiastic singing of hymns of praise and the triumphal sound of the organ.... Then the _Te Deum_ burst forth. Our Lord God was upon the altar....”

If earth has festivals like this, what must be the festivals of Paradise?

* * * * *

Here we would fain close our narrative, leaving the hearts of our readers to sun themselves in these heavenly rays. But in this world there is no light without a shadow. In the letter we have just quoted M. Guerrier, after speaking with fervent gratitude of the heroic charity of Canon Martignon, says how earnestly he and his are praying for the restoration of his health. Alas! these prayers are not yet granted. A few weeks after the event here related he left Lourdes for Hyères, being too ill to return, as he had desired, to his own archbishop in Algiers.

In the midst of her joy Mme. Guerrier has a feeling very like remorse. “Poor Abbé Martignon!” she lately said to us; “it seems to me as if I had stolen his cure.”

No! This lady has, it is true, received a great and touching favor; but assuredly a still more signal grace was granted to that holy priest when he was enabled to perform so great an act of self-renunciation and charity—an act which bestows on him a resemblance to his divine Master, who said: “Greater love than this no man hath, to lay down his life for his people.” Let us not presume to pity him, for he has chosen “the better part.”

May his humility pardon us the pain we shall cause him by publishing, contrary to his express prohibition, this recent episode of his life!

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PIUS THE NINTH.

In the afternoon of Thursday, February 7, our Holy Father, Pope Pius IX., died.

In his person passes away one who to two hundred millions of spiritual subjects was the greatest figure of the age, and who to all the rest of the world, if not the greatest, was certainly the most conspicuous. The history of the last thirty years—that larger history that takes within its scope the whole human family rather than this or that nationality or people—will in after-times centre around him. It will be seen that he has had a hand in shaping it, though to-day it may seem that that hand was brushed rudely aside or lifted only in impotent menace against the irresistible movements and the natural aspirations of the age. Time is a great healer and revealer of truth; and time will deal gently and justly with the memory of Pius IX. When the smoke of the long battle that has been raging in Europe, and more or less over all the world, during the last half-century, shall have finally cleared away, and men’s eyes be better prepared to regard all things honestly, truth, now obscured and hidden, will come to light, and the persistent action, misnamed reaction, of Pius IX. will appear to have been the truest wisdom and the soundest policy.

The field, of which this wonderful life is the central figure, is so vast, its lights and shadows so changing, its surface so diversified, and the events with which it is crowded are so many and so great, that one shrinks from attempting to picture it even faintly. Yet we cannot, even with the brief time allowed us, permit the Holy Father to go to his grave without a tribute of admiration and respect for his memory, however inadequate that tribute may be. Into the minute details of his life we do not purpose here to enter. These are already sufficiently well known, and there are ample sources of information from which to gather them. We purpose rather passing a rapid glance over the most prominent events that mark the career of the Pope, that give it its significance and make of it one of the most remarkable in history.

Whoever attempts to deal with Pius IX., with a view to what the man was, what he achieved, what he failed to achieve, the meaning, the purport, and the influence of his life, must necessarily regard him in a twofold aspect: first, as a temporal prince, a man occupied with human and secular affairs; secondly, as the supreme head of the Catholic Church, the vicar of Christ on earth, and the father of the faithful. As the one his life was a failure, outwardly at least. He has gone to his grave shorn of all his earthly possessions and dignities; and his successor will enter into office much as the first pontiff entered, with no authority save that bequeathed him by his divine Master. As the second—as supreme pastor of the church—Pius IX. yields to none of his illustrious predecessors in point of moral and real dignity and grandeur. This is the strange and significant contrast in the man’s life: the decadence and utter loss of the temporal power and principality of the church under his reign, with a contrary deepening and strengthening of the bonds that bind him to the faithful as their spiritual father and guide. In both these aspects we shall look at him: as a prince who failed in much that he attempted, and as a spiritual ruler who grew stronger by his very losses; under whom the church has marvellously, almost miraculously, developed; and who leaves it to-day in a spiritually stronger condition than perhaps it has ever been in. As a temporal sovereign there may have been greater popes than he; as a spiritual, few, if any, have surpassed him. And much, very much of the growth of the church within the period of his troubled reign is undoubtedly to be attributed to the personal influence of the pontiff, to his own high example of virtue and burning zeal, and to the keen eye he had for the church’s truest interests and welfare.

He was ushered into a revolutionary epoch, in a time when disaster was heaped upon the church and on civil society. Lacordaire says of himself: “I was born on the wild and stormy morning of this nineteenth century.” The same is true of him who became Pius IX. He was born at Sinigaglia, May 13, 1792, while Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette were prisoners and waiting for the scaffold to release them from their woes. Napoleon I. had not yet arisen. The United States had not much more than come into being. Joseph II. ruled and reigned in Austria. France was in the hands of the progeny of Voltaire. Sardinia did not exist. Catholic Ireland did not exist politically. Australia was almost an unknown land. It was a period of moral earthquakes. The progeny of Voltaire were very active in the propagation of their doctrines; and Italy, which for centuries had been the battle-ground of kings and the theatre of petty rival factions, offered an inviting soil for the evil seed. In 1793 the heads were struck off from Louis and his queen; the Goddess of Reason was enthroned in Notre Dame; and the reign of “liberty, fraternity, equality” began and ended with—“death.”

Then came that grim child of the Revolution, Napoleon, and changed everything. He had an eye to religion, and he wanted a sort of tame pope whom he might use as a puppet. Italy felt his iron heel, and things went from bad to worse there. It saw the pope, with others of its treasures, carried off by this rough-and-ready conqueror. In 1805 this same conqueror had himself crowned “King of Italy”—king of a kingdom which did not exist, save as a pillage-ground for whoever chose to enter. In 1808 the Papal States were “irrevocably” incorporated with the French Empire. So decreed the omnipotent conqueror. Where is his empire now? Where was it and where was he a few years afterwards? He was eating his heart out at St. Helena; his empire had vanished; and the pope whom he had captured and imprisoned was back in Rome.

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ROME PREPARED FOR REVOLUTION.

All this time the young Giovanni Mastaï-Ferretti was pursuing his studies as conveniently as he could under such circumstances. We do not recall these events in the earlier life of the boy idly, but with a very distinct purpose: to show that when in 1846 Pius IX. was elevated to the Papacy, and to the guardianship of the church’s temporalities, he stepped into no bed of roses. He stepped, on the contrary, into a very hot-bed of revolution—a revolution that, with less or more of secrecy, had overspread Europe, and that found its most convenient as well as its most necessary centre of attack in Rome and in the Papal States. Italy had long been the prey of Europe. The people had suffered terribly from foreign invasions. They suffered almost equally from home intrigues and jealousies. With all this the popes had nothing to do. It was simply a repetition of the history of the Italian peninsula from the disruption of the Roman Empire down. The outer barbarians were always knocking at her gates and trampling on her soil, invited there by native quarrels.

It is necessary to bear these things well in mind, in order to judge rightly of the difficulties against which Pius IX. had to contend. He was elected to an impoverished and disturbed principality, to a centre of revolution in an era of revolution. All Italy groaned with trouble. The people were ripe for any mad-cap scheme which should profess to better their condition. There was revolution in the air, all around them, all over the world. There were burning ideas afloat of people’s rights, and people’s wrongs, and people’s futures. Schemes of regeneration for the human race were abundant as the schemers; and some of these were very keen, far-sighted, and resolute men. Mazzini was one of them. His policy was simple enough, and it is the policy of all his followers to-day: For the people to rule you must first destroy the rulers—kings; before destroying the kings, who (in Europe at least) are the representatives of authority, you must destroy the priests who preach submission to lawful authority. Death to the priests! death to the kings! and then, long live the people!

That, we believe, is a fair presentation of the Mazzini programme for the regeneration of Italy and of the rest of the world. It has its fascinations for empty minds and empty stomachs, and the masses of the people, particularly of the Italians, just about the time of which we write had both empty minds and empty stomachs. The people of the Papal States, in common with the people of all the other Italian States, and, indeed, of states generally, were not in the happiest condition possible. Wars and foreign invasions and constant turmoil from day to day are not the best agents of good government. So Pius IX. came to an uneasy throne.

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PIUS IX. AS A POLITICAL REFORMER.

The cry of the Roman people, of the whole Italian people, as of all people just then, was for reform. They wanted a share in the government; and there was no harm in that. The new pontiff began his reign by at once setting about practical reform. His scheme was excellent. The details of it must be found elsewhere. Practically it amounted to letting the people have a just and rational share in the government. It was not universal suffrage. But the Papal States were not the United States; and there are intelligent and patriotic men in the United States even who begin to doubt about the actual efficacy of universal suffrage as a panacea for all political or social evils. It is not long since Mr. Disraeli laid down the daring doctrine in the English House of Commons that universal suffrage was not a natural right of man, to which doctrine nobody seemed to object. The Pope, then, set earnestly and practically to work at every kind of reform. He set on foot a scheme of government which should admit the laity to their lawful place in civic functions. He looked to the laws of commerce, which were in a very bad state. He struck at vicious monopolies, in return for which the monopolists struck viciously at him. He was very careful about the finances, his treasury being low indeed, or rather non-existent. He advised the people, who, under the impulse of a steady conspiracy, seized every opportunity at the beginning of his reign of getting up festivals in his honor, to spend their money at home, or hoard it for an evil hour, or devote it to some charitable or educational purpose. He was clement to political offences. He was kind and charitable to the oppressed Jews of Rome, and removed their civil disabilities before England thought of doing so.

All this is matter of fact, beyond question or dispute. It was recognized by the outer world. All the crowned heads of Europe, with the exception of Austria and the Italian principalities, who found themselves in a position of painful contrast, sent their hearty congratulations to the Pope; and the voice of New York—non-Catholic New York—joined in with them. The Pope was, for the time being at least, the most popular man in the world as well as in Italy. And he deserved his popularity, for he was real and resolute in what he attempted.

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WHY HE FAILED AS A REFORMER.

How, then, came the sad sequel? Why did all this fail? Pius IX. looked even beyond the Papal States in his political schemes. He wished for a united Italy. He was a true Italian. He proposed a confederation of the Italian States, which, without infringing on any people’s rights, should constitute one Italy, show a united front to the foreigner, and remove all excuse for foreign interference. Why was this, too, a failure?

Because it was intended that it should be a failure. Because the men who used the clamor for reform as an agitating force among the people wanted nothing so little as actual reform, least of all in the prince of the church. Good government was what most they feared; for good government makes, as far as government can make, people happy and well off and reconciled to order. But order and contentment among the people were precisely what Mazzini least desired.

Pius IX. was in heart and soul and act a reformer of reformers. As a temporal ruler he desired nothing in this world so much as the welfare and happiness of his people, and he took all honest means to bring about that happiness and welfare. But he was met at the outset by a strong and wide-spread conspiracy—a conspiracy that had existed long before his time, that had laid its plans and arranged its mode of

## action, and that was ready to do any diabolical deed in order to carry

its purpose through. The very willingness of the Pope to concede reforms helped it. It took him up and petted and played with him. The clubs that roamed the streets and shouted themselves hoarse with _Viva Pio Nono!_ and _Viva Pio Nono solo!_ were instruments of the conspirators. The offices which the Pope threw open to the laity were seized upon by conspirators. His guards and soldiers were corrupted and led by corrupt officers and generals. Some of the clergy even felt the contamination. Ministry after ministry was tried and changed, and only succeeded in exasperating the minds of the people, as it was intended they should. The Pope had faith in human nature, and could not believe but that the honest measures which he devised for the benefit of his subjects would be honestly accepted by them. Although he knew of the conspiracy against his throne and against society, perhaps he scarcely realized its depth and intensity. The horrible assassination of De Rossi undeceived him, and the reformer and gentle prince had to fly for his life and in disguise from his own subjects.

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TRIUMPH OF THE REVOLUTION.

Not two years of his reign have passed, and the Pope is already an exile at Gaeta. Pandemonium reigned in Rome. It was not the secret societies alone who brought all this about. They were aided by some, at least, of the crowned heads of Europe; and Palmerston, as infamous a politician as ever conspired against the right, was hand and glove with them, ably seconded by Gladstone, whose recent attack on the Pope cannot have surprised those who remembered his political career. Meanwhile Piedmont was creeping to the front in Italy, and though at first Mazzini was as thoroughly opposed to Charles Albert as to the Pope and the priests, the conviction grew upon the conspirators that kings might sometimes be utilized as well as killed, and that Italy might, for the time being at least, be united under the Sardinian. This conviction only came slowly, and there was a man at the head of affairs in Piedmont who was keen in reading the signs of the times, and who never missed a chance. Cavour utilized the secret societies, and the secret societies utilized Cavour. In like manner Louis Napoleon, then coming to the front in France, utilized, and was in turn utilized by, them. Palmerston, Cavour, Louis Napoleon, a dangerous and powerful triad, were with the conspirators, while Austria blundered on with characteristic stupidity, actually courting the fate which has since overtaken it.

It may be said that we concede too much power to the secret societies. Who and what are they after all? A handful of men working in the dark, led by crack-brained enthusiasts who write inflammatory letters and publish silly pamphlets at safe distances from the scene of action. They are more than this, however. They are well organized, and they trade on real wrongs and disaffection too well grounded. Certainly, in the earlier period of the Pope’s reign men were far from being, as a whole, well governed in Europe. They were not at rest; they had not been at rest from the beginning of the century. Reforms from their rulers came very slowly and grudgingly. The conspirators possessed all the daring of adventurers, and spread out a political _El Dorado_ glittering before the hungry eyes of bitter and disappointed men. In such a state of affairs the wildest chimeras seem possible to the common mind, and in this lies the real strength of secret societies, which find their growth cramped only where men are freest and best off, as among ourselves.

A fair idea of what the reign of “the people” meant may be gathered from the state of Rome while the pontiff was in exile at Gaeta. It was cousin-german to the reign of the _Commune_ in Paris in more recent days. And for this the Pope was driven from his own city. These were the reformers who could not be satisfied with the Holy Father’s rational measures of real reform. These were the “heroes” honored by England, by the United States, by all the enlightened and advanced men of all lands. It was for opposing and condemning these that Pius IX. is regarded by enlightened non-Catholics as a reactionist of the worst type, a foe to progress, an enemy to popular liberties. A government of assassins was preferred by the world, or at least by a very large portion of it, to the mild and beneficent sway of Pius IX. For condemning cut-throats he is against the spirit of the age; and for refusing to honor men like Mazzini and Garibaldi—men who openly professed and caused to be practised murder as a necessary political instrument—he is condemned as one who refused to recognize the progressive spirit of the times in which we live.

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THE POPE AND LOUIS NAPOLEON.

While the Pope was at Gaeta, and while Rome was in the hands of what, without fear of contradiction, may be described as the vilest of vile rabbles, the baleful star of Louis Napoleon was rising over France. He was false from the very beginning to the Pope, and the Pope understood him. But he was tricky and adroit. He had the born conspirator’s liking for mystery and secrecy and intrigue. He seemed by nature incapacitated to speak and act openly. He never was a friend to the Pope. By means that are already known and stamped in history he came to the lead of what, in spite of all vicissitudes and awful changes, remained at heart a Catholic nation. The trickster realized his position and trimmed his sails accordingly. He cared nothing for the Pope or for Catholicity; but the French people did. Moreover, the protection of the Pope and French predominance in Italy was a part of the Napoleonic legend, and likely to advance his own cause. French cannon, then, and French bayonets cleared the way for the return of the Pope to Rome. Not France, Catholic France alone, but all the world, had been shocked at the awful excesses perpetrated by the revolutionists in Rome, as was the case earlier still at the outbreak of the first French Revolution. France only anticipated Europe in its action by staying the reign of blood.

Louis Napoleon thenceforth assumed the character of protector of the interests of the Holy See. He was the persistent enemy of those interests. He was altogether opposed to ecclesiastical rule in an ecclesiastical state. This friend and protector of the Pope labored all his political life, and used the great influence of a Catholic nation, to bring about what has since been consummated: the robbery of the States of the Church, the invasion of the Holy See, the Piedmontese ascendency in Italy, and the reducing of the head of the Catholic Church to a political cipher in his own states. Yet intelligent men are surprised at the ingratitude displayed by Pius IX. towards Louis Napoleon! Pius IX. loved France; he despised the dishonest trickster to whose hands the fate of so noble a nation was for a time committed. He despised him, for he knew him with that instinctive knowledge by which all honest and open natures detect duplicity and fraud, under whatever smiling guise they may appear. Some good qualities the man may have had. Open honesty was not one of them. Some regard for the Catholic religion he may have had. He never allowed it to interfere with his schemes or with the schemes of those of whom after all he was a tool, never a master. Louis Napoleon knew perfectly well that the Pope understood him and his schemes.

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THE POPE AGAIN AS A REFORMER.

Pius IX. returned to Rome in 1850. He immediately set to work to repair the losses which his subjects had sustained during his absence. He proceeded in his work of reform. Within seven years he succeeded in clearing off the enormous debt with which the country had been saddled. The French commission, of which M. Thiers was a member, appointed to examine and report on the political wisdom and practical value of the institutions granted to his states by Pius IX., reported to the Republican Government (1849):

“By a large majority your commission declares that it sees in the _motu proprio_ (the Pope’s decree reorganizing the government of the Pontifical States) a first boon of such real value that nothing but unjust pretensions could overlook its importance.... We say that it grants all desirable provincial and municipal liberties. As to political liberties, consisting in the power of deciding on the public business of a country in one of the two assemblies and in union with the executive—as in England, for instance—it is very true that the _motu proprio_ does not grant this sort of political liberty, or only grants it in the rudimentary form of a council without deliberative voice.

“... That on this point he (the Pope) should have chosen to be prudent, that after his recent experience he should have preferred not to reopen a career of agitation among a people who have shown themselves so unprepared for parliamentary liberty, we do not know that we have either the right or the cause to deem blameworthy.”

And Palmerston, whose testimony is surely as unbiassed as that of Thiers, said of the same act in 1856:

“We all know that, on his restoration to his states in 1849, the Pope published an ordinance called _motu proprio_, by which he declared his intentions to bestow institutions, not indeed on the large proportions of a constitutional government, but based, nevertheless, on popular election, and which, if they had only been carried out, must have given his subjects such satisfaction as to render unnecessary the intervention of a foreign army.”

We have gone into this matter of reform and home government in the Papal States at some length, because it is precisely on this ground of all others that the temporal power of the popes is attacked. Priests are unfit to rule, it is said; their business is with the souls of men, to tend to spiritual wants. They should have no concern with the things of this world. This may be all very well, and is a very convenient way of disposing of rights and properties which do not belong to us. If the invasion of the Papal States and their occupation by a hostile power is justified on the ground that the Pope was a priest, and, _because_ a priest, unfit to rule his subjects, that at least is intelligible. We have seen, however, that Pius IX. was in heart and in act a wise and just ruler, who aimed at doing nothing but good, and who did nothing but good, to his people, but who was steadily prevented from doing all the good he wished and attempted to do by conspiracy at home and abroad. Had he been left alone to work out the constitution he framed, to carry through the reforms he proposed and entered upon, it is beyond question that the States of the Church would have been more happily governed and more peacefully ordered than any states in the world. But he was prevented from ruling as he wished as well by the opposition of governments, such as those of Palmerston, Cavour, and Louis Napoleon, as by the organized conspiracy within his own domains—a conspiracy that sprang from causes with which he had had nothing to do, which assailed him because by his very position he was the symbol and type and fountain-head of all earthly order, and which would not be reconciled to good. He trod on volcanic ground from the beginning. All that a good man could do to dissipate the evil elements he did. But the conspiracy abroad and the conspiracy at home were too much for him. Indeed, the existence of the Papacy as a temporal power always depended on the sense of right and the good-will of men. There have been a few fighting popes in other days; but as a matter of fact the Papacy has always been a power built essentially on peace; and if powerful enemies insisted on invading it, it was always open to them. The pope, like the Master whose vicar he is, is “the prince of peace.”

It is needless here to enter into the details of the intrigues and events that led up to the invasion of the Papal States, and to their forced blending into what is called united Italy. We cannot here go into the question as to when invasion is necessary and justifiable. Common sense, however, is a sufficient guide to the doctrine that no invasion of another’s territory or property is justifiable or necessary, unless the holder of that property is incapable; unless that property has been and is being grossly abused; unless those who live on that property invite the invasion on just grounds; and unless the invader can guarantee a better holding and guardianship of the property, a reform in its administration, a sacred regard for rights that are sacred. If any man can show us that any one of these conditions was fulfilled by the Sardinian invasion of the Papal States, we are open to conviction. Nor in this matter are we taking the rights and property of the church as something apart from ordinary rights and property, though they are so. We base our whole opposition to this most infamous usurpation and robbery on known and accepted natural rights common to all property and holders of property. It is useless to tell Europe that it solemnly sanctioned a sacrilege. Europe has forgotten the meaning of the word sacrilege. It has still some sense of what robbery and wrong mean, though constant practice in robbery and wrong and nefarious proceedings has so blunted its moral sense that it can always readily connive at the wrong, especially when the wrong is done to the Catholic Church.

We invite all honest men to contrast the condition of the Papal States to-day, under the present Italian _régime_, with their condition under the Papal _régime_. They cannot show that that condition is bettered. All Italy is in a chronic state of legal and secret terrorism. There was no terrorism under Pius IX. The people groan under taxes such as in their worst days they never had to sustain. Parliamentary representation and freedom of election in Italy is a farce. As for the social and moral effects of the invasion, they have been dwelt upon so often and are so patent that they need no mention here. Pius IX. failed as a political leader and ruler, not because he was not a wise and just and benevolent ruler, but because, as we said, it was intended that he should fail. The combinations against him were too powerful. The wonder is that he withstood them so long. But history will faithfully record that the last ruler—the last, at least, as things are at present—of the temporalities of the church was the best and most just prince in Europe, and the one who cared most for the material and moral advance of his people.

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PIUS IX. AS HEAD OF THE CHURCH.

So much for one aspect of the Pope’s life and character. It is a sad and a saddening one—the one in which he is most bitterly and unjustly assailed. Thus far the story has been one of a long and disastrous failure. We turn now to look at him in his greater character as Pontiff and High-Priest of the Catholic Church

Here the heart lifts, the eyes grow dim, the pen falters, as we glance across the ocean and see the meek old man who has done so much for the church, who has served her so faithfully, who has given her so high and holy an example of undaunted faith, of burning zeal, of universal charity, of meekness and long-suffering, laid out at last on the bier to which the eyes of all the world turn in sorrowing sympathy and respect. In this is his true triumph. In the midst of universal disaster the great and mighty church, which was entrusted to him in a condition that was truly deplorable, so far as its existence in the various states of the world went, has gathered together its strength, has renewed its youth like the eagle, has flown abroad on the wings of the wind to the uttermost parts of the earth. In 1846 how stood the church in Europe? In England the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill had not yet been passed. The Act of Catholic Emancipation had only been granted in 1829. Ireland was still a political nonentity. Catholicity in France was suffering under the worst features of the Napoleonic Code. In Austria it was strangled by Josephism. In all places it was under a ban. In the United States and Australia it was still almost a stranger.

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WONDERFUL GROWTH OF THE CHURCH.

But a new spirit was awakening among men. The American Revolution was productive of important results to mankind. The French Revolution, which followed, gave a startling impetus to these. All over the world men were rising to a new sense of their natural rights. The awakening found expression in deplorable and revolting excesses here and there, but there were some right principles under the mass of extravagances and chimeras afloat. These principles good, earnest Catholics hastened to grasp and utilize. They beat the progeny of Voltaire, they beat the liberal philosophers, the apostles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, with their own weapons. They gave the right and lawful meaning to those words and would not surrender their claims. Thus uprose O’Connell, who gave the cue and the lead to so many other illustrious champions of civil and religious liberty. O’Connell roared and thundered in England, and made himself heard over the world. Montalembert and Lacordaire and the unfortunate De Lamennais took up the great Irish leader’s cry in France. Görres sharpened his pen in Germany. Balmes arose in Spain. Brownson was won over in the United States. Louis Veuillot found the antidote to his infidel poison, and the school of Voltaire found one of their doughtiest warriors heart and soul in the Catholic ranks. A crowd of men, equally illustrious or nearly so, sprang up and around these leaders. Catholic laymen took heart, entered zealously into good works and political life, and many a one lent his powerful pen and voice to the service of the church, in places often where the priest could not well enter. Catholicity assumed, if we may so say, a more manly and aggressive tone. The children of Voltaire were wont to laugh at it as a thing of cassocks and sacristans. They were astonished to find the young, the enthusiastic, the noble entering on what was veritably a new crusade, and defending their faith courageously and ably wherever they found it attacked. What Pius IX. had attempted in his temporal dominions had actually and, as it were, spontaneously come to pass in the spiritual domain. The laity assumed their lawful place in the life of the church. The Holy Father encouraged them in every way possible; and his aged eyes have been gladdened by witnessing in all lands a new army of defenders of the faith growing up and disciplined, and daily increasing in numbers, strength, and usefulness.

He saw the faith in France and in the German states revive wonderfully. Able and zealous bishops were appointed; the education of the clergy, on which he always insisted with especial vehemence, was very carefully cultivated. Bands of missionaries followed the newly-opened rivers of commerce and carried the faith with them to new lands. The Irish famine of 1846–1847 sent out a missionary nation to the United States, to Australia, to England itself. Priests went with them, or followed them, and in time grew up among them. While Sardinia was confiscating church property, destroying monasteries and institutions of learning, and turning priests and monks out of doors, England and her possessions and the United States were beginning to receive them, and, in accordance with the principles of their government, letting them do their own work in their own way.

And so the church has gone on developing with the greatest impetus in the most unpromising soil. Already men say wonderingly that it is strongest and best off in Protestant lands. Pius IX. had the happiness of creating the hierarchy in England, in the United States, and in Australia, in the British possessions—wherever the faith is to-day reputed to be in the most flourishing condition. But all this has not come about by accident. There was a very active, keen, and observant man at the head of affairs. It is wonderful how the Pope, with the troubles that were for ever pressing upon him regarding the affairs of the Papal States, could have found time to attend to those wider concerns of the universal church. But if he loved Rome and its people with a love that was truly paternal, his first care was always for the church of which he was the guardian. His heart was in every work and enterprise for the advancement of the faith. His eye was all-seeing. His prayers were unceasing.

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GREAT EVENTS OF THE PONTIFICATE.

The definition of two great dogmas marks the pontificate of Pius IX. and will make it memorable for ever in the annals of the church: the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mother, and of the Papal Infallibility. The last was a death-blow to schism and heresy. We do not mean that schism and heresy will die out because of it. But it roots them out of their holes; and henceforth they will know that over them hangs a voice, not often used, indeed, or idly, but which, once it has uttered its last and final and solemn decision, is irrevocable. The scenes that Rome witnessed in its last declining days as the city of the popes will dwell in the memory of men. The bishops of all the earth, in numbers unprecedented, flocking to what was vainly thought to be the rocking chair of Peter, was perhaps one of the most striking testimonies to a scoffing and unbelieving age of the immense vitality of the faith, of the vastness, the splendor, and renown of the Catholic Church. A more solemn testimony still was the joyful acceptance by the faithful of the dogma of Papal Infallibility, which, it was thought by those who knew not the Catholic faith, would rend the church asunder. The canonization of the martyrs of Japan, the thronging of the bishops and faithful to Rome on the occasion of the various jubilees, and the crowning event of last year, when all the Catholic world assisted at the celebration of the fiftieth episcopal jubilee of Pius IX., are other events that mark this great pontificate with significance and splendor. These last were as much personal tributes to the man as of respect to the supreme head of the church, and they showed, if aught were needed to show, that Pius, stripped of his dominions, bereft of his possessions, imprisoned in the Vatican, lived and reigned as, perhaps, no other pope lived and reigned in the hearts, not of a small section of his people, but of all the great church that covers the earth.

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THE POPE’S PERSONAL CHARACTER.

One feature of all others marks the character of Pius IX. Personally the meekest and most yielding of men, he was always filled with the sense of his position and his sacred charge. We do not mean that as Pope he was proud, overbearing, intolerant. He was anything but that. But in all that touched the faith and the sacred prerogatives that had been placed in his pure hands he was simply inflexible. He would not yield a jot of them. He would not compromise. He would not temporize. A singularly open, honest, and frank character, ready to trust all men, he seemed to scent out danger from afar off when it threatened what was dearer to him than life—life was always a small matter in his eyes—the chair of Peter and the faith of Christ. The utterances of his bulls and encyclical letters, the speeches that he delivered, sometimes off-hand, on important subjects, bear all one tone, never contradict one another. They are resolute and bold and breathe authority throughout. He saw from the first the movement of the age, and that it was moving in a false direction. The movement was, in one word, towards a complete rejection of divine authority, of divine revelation, and consequently of the church as a divine institution, and of all authority save such as men choose to set up for themselves. From his first papal allocution to the Syllabus of Errors to be condemned, he always struck at this spirit, and this spirit recognized its vigilant foe and master. Hence the rage with which his utterances were received in the courts of Europe and by the infidel press. But he never swerved from his course. He was never weary of condemning what he knew to be wrong; and the state of public opinion to-day regarding rights that were once held as sacred even by large and powerful non-Catholic bodies is a sufficient vindication, if any were needed, of the pontiff’s course. Rights, natural and supernatural, are everywhere invaded. The cloister is desecrated. The home is threatened with disruption by divorce and an easy marriage that is no marriage. Innocent infants are no longer consecrated to God. “Free” thought finds its issue in “free” religion, and free religion means no religion. The sense of right has yielded to the sense of force. Education is handed over to infidels. This is the larger growth of the conspiracy that swept away the States of the Church only by way of a beginning to a wider sweeping that was to desolate the earth.

All this was what Pius IX. felt coming on and resisted to his last breath. He guarded the church well, and, if human judgment be allowed to follow him, he goes before his divine Master with a clean heart and untroubled conscience, having done his work thoroughly. We shall miss that majestic figure from our busy scene. We shall miss the grand old man seated prophet-like on the now bare and barren rock of Peter, the storms of the earth roaring around and threatening to overwhelm him, and he calm and unmoved, his head lifted above them clear and lovely in the white light of heaven. We shall miss the face that we all know as we know and cherish the picture of a father: with its large, bright eyes, its sweet lips, and that smile that could only come from a heart free from guile and clear from constant communings with heaven. Set the men of the age beside him, and see how they dwarf and dwindle away. Set Cavour, Louis Napoleon, Bismarck, Thiers, Palmerston, those known as the greatest among the leaders of men, by Pius IX., and what a contrast! The story of the struggle that he waged is told in this. Ages stamp themselves in the men they deify. In brutal, debased, but “civilized” pagan Rome statues were set up to men like Nero and Domitian and Claudius and Diocletian; and these were the gods of the degenerate Romans. The gods of to-day, the idols of the people, are the men we have mentioned above and the lower brood of the Mazzinis, Garibaldis, Victor Emanuels, Gambettas. To the worshippers of these heroes Pius IX. was a despot and a ruler of a brood of despots, an enemy of the human race. The gown of the cleric has become the garb of ignominy and darkness; the blood-red cap of the revolutionist the beacon of liberty and light. The intellectual stream of Voltaire and the Voltairists, the men of “science” of to-day, filters down into the mud and blood of the rabble. These dainty gentlemen prepare the dynamite, leaving others more ignorant to fire it. This is the progress that Pius IX. stigmatized, and these the lights of the age whom he condemned. But his work has been effectual. He guarded the vineyard of the Lord. He made straight its paths. He weeded it well and watered it, if not with his heart’s blood, with the labors and sufferings of a long life that never knew rest or thought but of good to the whole human race. He has left to the world the example of a life of unspotted virtue, of large and wise charity, of undaunted courage and zeal, of meekness and childlike simplicity. He goes to his grave amid the tears and benedictions of the mightiest body on earth, followed by the sorrowing sympathy of all who esteem piety, honor integrity, and admire courage.

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NEW PUBLICATIONS.

MORNING OFFICES OF PALM SUNDAY, HOLY THURSDAY, AND GOOD FRIDAY. Together with a Magnificat for Holy Saturday and a few selections for the Tenebræ Function. Arranged and edited by Edwin F. MacGonigle, St. Charles’ Seminary, Overbrook, Pa.

The publication of this work is another comforting evidence of the reality of the revival of a better taste amongst church musicians, and of the demand of church people for a style of music at the divine offices which, at least, shall not outrage every sentiment of religious reverence and respect which they have for the house of God.

Although giving but few selections from the vast number of sentences, anthems, etc., enjoined to be sung during the great week, the choice made proves that there is a more general knowledge of the Rubrics than has hitherto prevailed amongst church musicians, and a consequent desire to produce the offices of the church in their entirety. It will also serve a purpose—to us a very desirable one—which is to turn the attention of choir-masters and organists to the _sanctioned chant melodies_ for the Holy-Week services, which are, in our judgment, after long experience, quite unequalled by any musical melodies that were ever written.

We fail to see any possible reason for a harmonized _morceau de musique_ to take the place of the cantor’s chanting of the _Recordare_ at the _Tenebræ_ function, nor can we discover any special merit in the composition itself. The works of Sig. Capocci seem to us to be better suited for exhibition at one of our “Vesper Series” concerts at Chickering and other halls than for practical use _in choro_ before an altar—unless, indeed, the hearing of a musical concert is to be the proper and most edifying manner of satisfying the precept of hearing Mass devoutly, or of piously assisting at Vespers and Benediction.

Can the editor give any authority for the whining _Fa_# in the first member of the cadence of the _Benedictus_, No. 1, here treated as _Do_#? Sig. Capocci may have so written it; but then he ought to have known better.

Those who use concerted music for their church services, and who possess capable singers, will no doubt be pleased to add this publication to their collection of “church music.”

A VISIT TO THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. By Rev. J. Spencer Northcote, D.D., canon of Birmingham. London: Burns and Oates. 1877. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society Co.)

This book is another proof of the untiring attention that Canon Northcote continues to devote to the object of his special studies—the Roman Catacombs, to which, as he modestly tells us, he first applied himself in 1846. The length of time that he has devoted to the subject, his diligence, scholarship, and perfect orthodoxy, make him the standard authority among English-speaking Catholics on all matters connected with those wonderful subterranean cemeteries which are inexhaustible mines of treasure to students of Christian antiquities, and points of attraction to all really learned, as well as to some ignorant and conceited, visitors to Rome. The traveller to the Tiber and the Seven Hills who does not visit the Catacombs has not seen one of the three Romes, and returns with a very inadequate knowledge of the Eternal City. A study of the Roman Catacombs is as necessary to enable one to understand the manners and customs of the early Christians, and to appreciate the various stages of the doctrines and practices of the church from apostolic times to the period that followed the triumph of religion under Constantine, and its splendid development of ritual and of ceremonial during the middle ages, as the careful examination of the deeply-planted roots of a mighty oak is wanted to show the lover of nature how so noble a tree grows up the monarch of the forest, “and shooteth out great branches, so that the birds of the air may lodge under the shadow of it” (Mark iv. 32).

We are glad to learn from the preface of this short but interesting and instructive _Visit to the Roman Catacombs_ that a second and enlarged edition of the _Roma Sotteranea_ of the same author, published in conjunction with Rev. W. R. Brownlow in 1869, and which will contain the substance of De Rossi’s recently-issued third volume, is in preparation. We shall heartily welcome it. The present little book contains a great amount of information in a convenient, attractive, and well-written form.

MATERIALISM: A Lecture by P. J. Smyth, M.P., M.R.I.A., Chev. Leg. d’Hon. Dublin: Joseph Dollard. 1877.

This is a strong and outspoken defence of Christianity by a layman from the lecture platform against the attacks of materialism on religion as addressed to popular assemblies under the cloak of science. The lecture reaffirms the primitive convictions of the soul and the common consent of mankind against the unsupported assertions of the modern materialist school. The Irish people have heroically withstood the assaults made against their religious faith—assaults more cruel and persistent than have been even charged upon the Spanish Inquisition—and that, too, from a nation which boasts of being the champion of religious liberty. It is a cheering sign to see that they are fully able to defend their faith with personal intelligent conviction against the materialism of the demagogues of science. Ireland has a class of thoroughly-educated laymen, and when religion is invaded from every quarter, as it is in our day, it is time that men who have deep and strong religious feelings should speak out in words which are fraught with the power of intelligent conviction and in tones which will make themselves heard. Mr. Smyth’s lecture is solid, manly, and eloquent, and we hope to hear from him again and often.

RECORDS OF A QUIET LIFE. By Augustus J. C. Hare, author of _Walks in Rome_, etc. Revised for American readers by William L. Gage. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1876.

The author of this volume, in presenting the picture of the Hare family, labored under the impression that he was revealing a model life to the public. Confined to non-Catholics, perhaps he and the writer of the American preface were not mistaken, and this class of readers will derive profit from its perusal. The Hares were Anglican clergymen, in charge of parishes, and with families. The volume furnishes pictures of the performance of their parochial duties, the life of their family circles, and the characteristics of their members. The Hares were above the common run of men of their class in intellectual gifts and scholarly attainments. They appear to have done their best to fulfil the duties of their position with the incoherent fragments of Christian truth which their sect teaches. A Catholic feels after reading this volume as if he had been passing through a picture-gallery of second-class artists. Our counsel to non-Catholic readers is: read these _Records_, and then take up the _Life of the Curé of Ars_, or _The Inner Life of Père Lacordaire_, or _A Sister’s Story_, or _The Life of Madame Swetchine_, and you will understand, if not fully appreciate, our meaning.

IS THE HUMAN EYE CHANGING ITS FORM UNDER THE INFLUENCES OF MODERN EDUCATION? Edward G. Loring, M.D. New York. 1878.

This is a very clever _brochure_ upon a very vexed question—namely, does compulsory education of the young under certain bad hygienic and dietetic conditions produce ocular deformity, and is such deformity hereditary? Dr. Loring produces certain eminent German oculists who state that myopia (near-sightedness) is certainly hereditary. The doctor only partially agrees with the German _savants_ whom he cites, and believes that no organ having reached its highest state of perfection, as has the human eye, can be changed by hereditary transmission, unless under conditions that affect the human organism as a whole, and that it would take ages to accomplish this under the most favorable conditions. The doctor explains why educated Germans as a rule are myopic by stating that the German forcing system for children under fifteen is radically wrong, and, moreover, that Germans as a nation are not fond of out-door sports. He further argues that their manner of cooking and sanitary arrangements are bad; all which, under certain conditions, will tend to produce hereditary myopia. Americans, it is stated, exhibit in some respects an inclination to follow the German plan rather than adhere to the traditional educational system of our ancestors of the English race.

Children, the doctor argues, must not be pushed in their studies until after fifteen, at which period the danger from over-use of the eye is diminished; and it is thus that watchmakers, type-setters, and other artisans who continuously use their eyes upon minute objects have better sight than the studious professional man or laborious scientific worker. We may sum up the article in a few lines when we say that nothing good, either physical or mental, can accrue from forcing young minds beyond a certain extent, and that we have reached, possibly passed, the ultimum in our present system of education. Encourage, as far as possible, out-door sports, and let the heavy mental work be done after fourteen. Give our children air and light, lest harm be done to the race.

AN AMERICAN ALMANAC AND TREASURY OF FACTS, STATISTICAL, FINANCIAL, AND POLITICAL, FOR THE YEAR 1878. Edited by Ainsworth R. Spofford, Librarian of Congress. New York and Washington: The American News Company.

Few persons in this country are more competent to compile a volume such as this than the Librarian of Congress. Himself a practical bookseller, he brought years of the necessary experience to his aid. The results of this experience are manifest in the intelligently-arranged and trustworthy volume before us. It contains a vast amount of really useful information, on agriculture, politics, banks, finances, libraries, the census, chronology, commerce, the post-office, gold and silver coinage, education—in fact, on every practical subject about which persons need ready and accurate information. Its statistics can be relied on as trustworthy. It is preceded by a short “History of Almanacs,” in which Mr. Spofford enumerates several that have appeared of late years, though he has forgotten to mention the _Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac_, now in its tenth year. This, we presume, was an oversight; for, if we are not mistaken, it has been a guide to some of the statisticians in Washington with regard to the statistics of Catholic colleges and institutions of learning conducted by Catholics.

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Footnotes

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Footnote 1:

Macaulay.

Footnote 2:

_Marble Faun_, vol. ii. p. 129, Tauch. Ed.

Footnote 3:

John Dwight’s translation.

Footnote 4:

See _Sum_ of St. Thomas, i. 2, cviii.

Footnote 5:

Words of Pius IX.

Footnote 6:

Lutheran I am not; nor Zwinglian; still less Anabaptist. In short. I am one who believes in, honors, and respects the holy, true, and Catholic Church.

Footnote 7:

Childlike simplicity.

Footnote 8:

_The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease, and Heredity_, _etc._ By R. L. Dugdale. With an Introduction by Elisha Harris, M.D. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

Footnote 9:

THE CATHOLIC WORLD, June, 1876, “Hammond on the Nervous System.”

Footnote 10:

_Some Remarks on Crime-Cause._ Richard Vaux.

Footnote 11:

_St. Hedwige, Duchess of Silesia and Poland_. By F. Becker. Collection of Historical Portraits. No. VIII. Herder & Co., Freiburg in Breisgau and Strassburg. 1872.

Footnote 12:

Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury.

Footnote 13:

Belatucadus was also the name of a divinity worshipped by the ancient Britons. A rock situated a little to the north of Belenus still retains the name of Tombalaine or Tombalène, formerly _Tumba Beleni_. Several strange legends linger about both these rocks. The ancient poem of _Brut_, of which a MS. copy is preserved in the archivium of Mount St. Michael, has the story of King Arthur, Sir Launcelot, and Elaine, and makes out the etymology of the northern rock to be Le Tombe (d’)Elaine.

Footnote 14:

These priestesses were in the habit of selling to the seafaring men who came to consult them arrows of pretended virtue in calming tempests, if thrown into the sea, during a storm, by one of the youngest sailors on board. In the ancient Druidic poem called _Ar Rannou_, or _The Series_, where the _Child_ says, “Sing me the number Nine,” the _Druid_ answers, “... Nine Korrigan with flowers in their hair, robed in white wool, dancing around the fountain in the light of the full moon.” (See De Villemarqué, _Barzaz Breiz_, p. 6.) Pomponius Mela designates as _Garrigena_ (evidently Korrigan Latinized) the “nine priestesses or sorceresses of the Armorican Isle of Sein.”

Footnote 15:

Monsieur de la Fruglaye mentions the existence, near to Morlaix, of a vast forest which has been submerged by the ocean. In a black and compact stratum, which is covered for the most part by a fine white sand, he found traces of very ancient and abundant vegetation: whole trees thrown in every direction—yews, oaks, large trunks, and green mosses. Beneath this layer the soil appeared to be that of meadows, with reeds and rushes, etc. Here all the plants were undisturbed and in a vertical position, and the roots of the ferns still had their downy coating. (See _Observations sur les origines du Mont St. Michel_. Maury.)

A similar, though gradual, sinking of the coast is going on on the western coast of France and England, also at Alexandria, Venice, Pola, and the coast of Dalmatia, besides other localities.

Footnote 16:

See _Itinéraire dans le Mont St. Michel_, par Edouard Le Héricher.

Footnote 17:

_Proceedings at the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Free-Religious Association, held in Boston, May 31 and June 1, 1877_. Boston: Published by the Free-Religious Association, 231 Washington Street. 1877.

Footnote 18:

Vide Moehler’s _Symbolism_.

Footnote 19:

_The Impeachment of Christianity_, p. 6.

Footnote 20:

Ibid. p. 1.

Footnote 21:

P. 26.

Footnote 22:

P. 23.

Footnote 23:

P. 29.

Footnote 24:

P. 28.

Footnote 25:

_Is Romanism Real Christianity?_ p. 14.

Footnote 26:

P. 22.

Footnote 27:

P. 28.

Footnote 28:

P. 28.

Footnote 29:

P. 29.

Footnote 30:

P. 30.

Footnote 31:

P. 33.

Footnote 32:

P. 34.

Footnote 33:

P. 40.

Footnote 34:

P. 42.

Footnote 35:

The fact of St. James having taken this journey has been generally considered indubitable, although Baronius held it as uncertain. Mariana, in his history, affirms that all written documents were destroyed in Spain, first by the persecution of Diocletian, and afterwards by the Moorish invasion and its attendant wars. The silence of ancient testimony is thus fully explained, and the learned Suarez, writing on the subject, says: “It matters little that the local histories of the time make no mention of this journey of St. James; for, besides that nothing happened in it so extraordinary or notorious that the renown thereof would necessarily spread abroad, Spain had at that period no writers careful to collect the facts of her history, and strangers would not be likely to know anything about it, especially as being of a religious nature, concerning which men would not trouble themselves at all.... If St. Luke had not left in writing the acts of St. Peter and St. Paul, many of their journeyings would be forgotten, or rest only upon such traditions as might be preserved by the churches they founded.”

Footnote 36:

Tome vi. _Aprilis_.

Footnote 37:

_In fest. Sancti Isidori, lect. 2a._

Footnote 38:

See the account as given by John de Beka in the _Chronicle of Utrecht_.

Footnote 39:

Datum Viterbii, XII. Kalend. Junii.

Footnote 40:

We published last month an article on the Indian question, based chiefly on the official reports to and of the Board of Indian Commissioners. We publish this month a second article on the same question by another writer, one who is personally familiar with the matter of which he treats, and whose observations and suggestions on so important a subject cannot fail to command attention.—ED. C. W.

Footnote 41:

Audax omnia perpeti, Gens humana ruit per vetitum nefas.

Footnote 42:

“Gentiles have often said before me that Mormonism is as good as any other religion, and that Mr. Joseph Smith ‘had as good a right to establish a church as Luther, Calvin, Fox, Wesley, or even bluff King Hal’” (_The City of the Saints_, by Richard F. Burton).

Footnote 43:

It was one of Mr. Finney’s doctrines that whenever we pray with sufficient faith, God, so to speak, is bound not only to answer the prayer, but to give us the precise thing we ask for; in other words, that we know better than God what is good for us. “There are men and women still alive and among us,” says Dr. Spring, “who remember the circumstances of the death of Mrs. Pierson, around whose lifeless body her husband assembled a company of _believers_, with the assurance that if they prayed in faith she would be restored to life. Their feelings were greatly excited, their impressions of their success peculiar and strong. They prayed, and prayed again, and prayed _in faith_. But they were disappointed. There was none to answer, neither was there any that regarded.” The italics are Dr. Spring’s.

Footnote 44:

_Remarkable Visions._ By Orson Pratt, one of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Liverpool, 1848.

Footnote 45:

Mormon books contain representations of six plates of brass, inscribed with unknown figures, which are said to have been dug out of a mound in Pike County, Illinois, in 1843. Like those which Moroni is supposed to have revealed to Joseph Smith they are described as bell-shaped and fastened together by a ring. But the evidence that any such plates were ever found is not satisfactory, and the characters on the published pictures of them bear little or no resemblance to those which Joseph Smith presented to the world as a fac-simile of a part of the Book of Mormon.

Footnote 46:

Many suppose that Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum fabricated plates of some basemetal and imposed them upon their credulous followers. But if they had gone to the trouble of doing this it is probable that they would have shown them to a number of people, and not confined the exhibition to a handful of their immediate associates. The mere fact that evidence as to the existence of any plates at all is so defective seems to us conclusive that there were none—not even forged ones.

Footnote 47:

“Revelation given to Joseph Smith, Jr., May, 1829, informing him of the alteration of the manuscript of the fore part of the Book of Mormon.”—_Covenants and Commandments_, sec. xxxvi.

Footnote 48:

Five thousand copies were printed, yet the first edition is excessively rare. The later editions differ a little from the original. The “third European edition,” which is now before us, was published at Liverpool in 1852.

Footnote 49:

Oliver Cowdery was expelled from the church some years later for “lying, counterfeiting, and immorality,” and died a miserable drunkard. Sidney Rigdon attempted to rule the church by revelation after the death of Joseph Smith, and, being “cut off” at the demand of Brigham Young, led away a small sect of seceders. Parley P. Pratt, having induced a married woman to become his polygamous wife, was killed by the outraged husband. Orson Pratt is still living, and one of the ablest of the Mormon leaders.

Footnote 50:

Although these lectures bear Smith’s name, it is understood that they were really written by Sidney Rigdon.

Footnote 51:

_Autobiography of Joseph Smith_, quoted by Stenhouse.

Footnote 52:

This is quoted by Capt. Burton, but he does not give his authority.

Footnote 53:

About the time of the invention of Mormonism Robert Owen’s communistic propaganda was making an extraordinary sensation in America. In his “Declaration of Mental Independence” at New Harmony, July 4, 1826, Owen declared that man had up to that hour been the slave of “a trinity of monstrous evils”—Irrational Religion, Property, and Marriage.

Footnote 54:

In the “Revelation on Celestial Marriage” Joseph Smith is styled “him who is anointed both as well for time and for all eternity; and that, too, most holy,” and it is added: “I have appointed unto my servant Joseph to hold this power in the last days, and there is never but one on the earth at a time on whom this power and the keys of this priesthood are conferred.” Hence a government by the quorum of apostles, in the Mormon idea, can never be anything but an interregnum. They believe that Heaven will not fail to send them a “prophet, seer, and revelator,” and, as Brigham succeeded Joseph, so they look for some one in the appointed time to succeed Brigham. _Uno avulso, non deficit alter_.

Footnote 55:

To avoid unpleasantness, the “Legislature of Deseret” annually re-enacts _en bloc_ the laws of the territorial legislature of Utah.

Footnote 56:

_The Mormon Prophet._ By Mrs. C. V. Waite. Cambridge. 1866.

Footnote 57:

Address by Brigham Young in the Salt Lake City Tabernacle. April 9, 1852, four months before the publication of Joseph’s “Revelation.”

Footnote 58:

“You believe that Adam was made of the dust of this earth. This I do not believe. I never did and I never want to, because I have come to understanding and banished from my mind all the baby stories my mother taught me when I was a child” (Sermon by Brigham Young, Oct. 23, 1853).

Footnote 59:

Joseph Smith professed to get this version by inspiration.

Footnote 60:

They made it over to him as trustee, retaining, however, the use of it. Thus an additional tie was made to keep them true to the faith. Brigham could at any time take away all that they possessed, and if they left the Territory they would have to go penniless.

Footnote 61:

See the whole passage in the _Popular Science Monthly_ for November, 1872.

Footnote 62:

The site of the fort in New York attacked by Champlain in 1615 has only recently been determined, although a number of leading historians have been discussing it for some years.

Footnote 63:

A foot or more of soft black soil (_humus_) on the bottom of the cellar refuted the suspicion entertained by some that this excavation was of more recent origin than the ancient buildings.

Footnote 64:

Indians, some of whom are no mean anatomists, have since pronounced one of them to be part of a _vertebra_ in all probability human.

Footnote 65:

Even at this day our pagan Ojibwas make such a use of human bones. They either carry them in their “medicine bags” as “manitous” or grind them to powder, which they apply especially to their puncturing instruments. In diseases of the head the powder of the skull is used; in the case of a sore leg, that of the _tibia_ or _femur_, etc.

Footnote 66:

_Short Studies on Great Subjects._ By James Anthony Froude, M.A. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1877.

Footnote 67:

Alexandre de Saint-Cheron. Introduction to Harber’s translation of Ranke’s _History of the Papacy_. Second edition. Paris. 1848.

Footnote 68:

Prince Bismarck.

Footnote 69:

_North American Review_, Sept.-Oct., 1877, art. on “Perpetual Forces.”

Footnote 70:

The word “royal” has so degenerated in these days that we feel no scruple in applying it to Victor Emanuel.

Footnote 71:

Froude’s _History of England_, vol. ii. p. 447. Scribner & Co. 1870.

Footnote 72:

_St. Louis and Calvin_, p. 149. Macmillan & Co.

Footnote 73:

“Let them not come forth Till the ninth ripening year mature their worth.” —Horat. _Ars Poet_., 388, Francis’ trans.

Footnote 74:

“Than if far Cadiz, Libya’s plain, And either Carthage owned your sway.” —Horat. _Carm._ ii. 2.

_En passant_, it may be said that this stanza, which begins

“Latius regnes, avidum domando Spiritum quam si,” etc.,

furnishes a curious parallel to the words of Holy Writ, Prov. xvi. 32: “He that ruleth his spirit [is better] than he that taketh cities.” It is far from being the only passage in Horace which in spirit, if not in letter, suggests the inspired writers so strongly as to tempt one to believe that he must have had some acquaintance with them. Cf. Virgil’s _Pollio_.

Footnote 75:

Byron, however, if we are to take literally the well-known lines in _Childe Harold_, can scarcely rank with true lovers of our Horace:

“Then farewell, Horace, whom I hated so, Not for thy faults, but mine; it is a curse To understand, not _feel_, thy lyric flow, To comprehend but never love thy verse.”

Footnote 76:

“Why is all _journeyman-work_ of literature, as I may call it, so much worse done here than it is in France?... Think of the difference between the translations of the classics turned out for Mr. Bohn’s library and those turned out for M. Nisard’s collection!”—M. Arnold, _Essays in Criticism_, Am. ed., p. 51.

Footnote 77:

“I can understand that we must not make form everything in poetry. But why, in dealing with an art, we should take no account of the _technique_ of that art, should make light of those who excel in its _technique_, I do not understand at all.”

Footnote 78:

“With a mind undisturbed take life’s good and life’s evil, Temper grief from despair, temper joy from vain-glory; For, through each mortal change, equal mind, O my Dellius, befits mortal born.”

—Horat. _Carm._ ii. 3, Lord Lytton’s trans.

Footnote 79:

“Fell Care climbs brazen galley’s sides; Nor troops of horse can fly Her foot, which than the stag’s is swifter—ay, Swifter than Eurus when he madly rides The clouds along the sky.”

—_Carm._ ii. 16, Martin’s translation.

Footnote 80:

We do not here forget such songs as Shakspeare’s “Come away, come away, Death,” or Ben Jonson’s “See the chariot at hand here of Love,” or the anapests and dactyls in the madrigals. But we think it cannot be gainsaid that the general tendency of the earlier poets was to simple rhythms, and that the intricate arrangements of rhyme and novelties of metre in which modern poets delight were little known to them, or, if known, little relished.

Footnote 81:

“Fled are the snows; and the green, reappearing, Shoots in the meadow and shines on the tree.”

Footnote 82:

_Note by the author of the article._—The import of this needs some further explanation. Since the body is full of various and contrary physical forces, these must come either from the soul as the active principle giving the _materia_ of the body its first being, or from the elements which are the chemical components of the blood, bones, and other integral parts of the body. The soul cannot furnish them, because it does not possess them. Therefore the elements remain, and the material substance remains, and they are not divested of their substantial formality.

Footnote 83:

Viz., that the modern theory destroys the unity of substances, and

## particularly the unity of the human nature or substance.—_Author of

the article_.

Footnote 84:

Cant. iv. 7.

Footnote 85:

Ex. xvi. 33; Heb. ix. 4.

Footnote 86:

See THE CATHOLIC WORLD, July, 1877, “The European Exodus.”

Footnote 87:

Among the Catholic colleges whose teaching staff is wholly or mainly German, and whose students are largely of German birth, we may mention the Redemptorist Convent and House of Studies at Ilchester, Maryland, which has a staff of 11 learned professors; St. Charles Borromeo’s Seminary of the Congregation of the Precious Blood, Carthagena, Ohio; St. Joseph’s College, Cincinnati, conducted by the Brothers of the Holy Cross; Seminary of St. Francis of Sales, Milwaukee; College of St. Laurence of Brundusium, Calvary, Ohio, conducted by the Capuchin Fathers; St. Vincent’s Abbey of the Order of St. Benedict, Beatty’s Station, Pennsylvania, with a staff of 25 professors; St. Francis’ Monastery, Loretto, Pennsylvania; St. Francis Solanus’ Convent of the Franciscan Fathers, Quincy, Illinois; St. Joseph’s College, conducted by the Franciscan Fathers, at Teutopolis, Illinois; Franciscan College, Allegany, New York; St. Ignatius’ College, Buffalo; Franciscan Collegiate Institute, Cleveland; Gymnasium of the Franciscan Fathers at Cincinnati; St. Joseph’s College, Rohnerville, California, under the direction of the Priests of the Precious Blood; and St. John’s College, conducted by the Benedictines, at St. Joseph, Minnesota. We may add in this place that thirteen of our sixty-eight American prelates are of German birth or descent.

Footnote 88:

See THE CATHOLIC WORLD, August, 1877, “Colonization and Future Emigration.”

Footnote 89:

By Carlyle.—ED. C. W.

Footnote 90:

_The Beginnings of Christianity._ With a View of the State of the Roman World at the Birth of Christ. By George P. Fisher, D.D., Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Yale College, etc. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1877.

Footnote 91:

Mr. Leeser, a late eminent Jewish scholar and minister of a synagogue in Philadelphia, translated the original text of Gen. i. 11: “The Spirit of God _was waving_ over the face of the waters.”

Footnote 92:

Wisdom i. 14, 15.

Footnote 93:

P. 5.

Footnote 94:

Pp. 393–395.

Footnote 95:

Pp. 464, 465.

Footnote 96:

We should prefer to say contrived by the human intelligence, constructed and directed by the human will.

Footnote 97:

P. 465.

Footnote 98:

P. 66.

Footnote 99:

Pp. 137–139.

Footnote 100:

P. 140.

Footnote 101:

P. 42.

Footnote 102:

_Short Studies on Great Subjects._ By James Anthony Froude, M.A. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1877.

Footnote 103:

We cannot, in the space of an article of this kind, give chapter and verse for every statement we may make. Limits forbid this. In saying that incoherency and inconsistency mark the Protestant tradition throughout, we are aware that we make a very large and very grave assertion. To those who feel inclined to doubt its truth we would recommend as the readiest and fullest confirmation of it the very able series of articles on the Protestant tradition which appeared last year in the London _Tablet_—a series that, enlarged and carried further, we should like to see published in book-form.

Footnote 104:

Mr. Froude probably means the children of Catholic parents, who were encouraged by the state to apostatize, and thereby enter into the possession of their family estates; as otherwise there was no legal possibility of a Protestant being injured by a Catholic.

Footnote 105:

_The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century_. By James Anthony Froude, M.A. Vol. I. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1872.

Footnote 106:

Herein is plainly confirmed the view we took of Mr. Froude’s theory of might and right in our last article, “Mr. Froude on the Revival of Romanism,” Dec., 1877.

Footnote 107:

The Great Hall at Westminster, so called from William Rufus, who built it (1097) for a banqueting-hall—and kept his word.

Footnote 108:

See, for the true character of this much-maligned and really lamb-like sovereign, Froude’s _History of England_. Yet—so harsh is the judgment of men—it is this very prince of whose robber—we should say resumption of the church lands the Protestant antiquary, Sir Henry Spelman, writes: “God’s blessing, it seemeth, was not on it; for within four years after he had received all this, and had ruined and sacked three hundred and seventy-six of the monasteries, and brought their substance to his treasury, ... he was drawn so dry that Parliament was constrained to supply his wants with the residue of all the monasteries of the kingdom, great ones and illustrious, ... by reason whereof the service of God was not only grievously wounded and bleedeth at this day, but infinite works of charity were utterly cut off and extinguished.”

Footnote 109:

_Riding the wild mare_—i.e., playing at see-saw. The kneeling of the ox refers to an old English superstition that at midnight on Christmas Eve the oxen would be found kneeling in their stalls.

Footnote 110:

A peculiar peal of bells rung at Christmas-tide on the church-bells in Languedoc—doubtless, like _Noel_, from _natalis_.

Footnote 111:

_Du Darwinisme: ou l’homme singe_. Paris, 1877, page 170.

Footnote 112:

_On the Intrusion of certain Professors of Physical Science into the Region of Faith and Morals_: An address delivered to the members of the Manchester Academia of the Catholic Religion by J. Stores Smith, Esq.

Footnote 113:

_Manuel d’une Corporation Chrétienne_, par Léon Harmel. Tours, Marne, Paris: au Secrétariat de l’œuvre des Cercles Catholiques d’Ouvriers, 10 Rue du Bac. 1877.

Footnote 114:

1 Tim. iii. 7.

Footnote 115:

Cyprian, Epist. lxvii.

Footnote 116:

Celestine, Epist. ii. 5.

Footnote 117:

_De Clericis_, lib. i, cap. vi.

Footnote 118:

Lib. v. _Biblioth._ ad. not. 118.

Footnote 119:

_De Concord. Sacerd. et Imp._, lib. viii. cap. ii.

Footnote 120:

_Vet. et Nov. Ecclesia Discipl._, par. ii. lib. ii. cap. i.

Footnote 121:

Epist. v.

Footnote 122:

Epist. lv. No. vii., ed. Tauchnitz, Lipsiæ. 1838.

Footnote 123:

_Apud Wouters, Hist. Eccl. Comp._, vol. i. p. 65.

Footnote 124:

1 Cor. x. 24.

Footnote 125:

1 Tim. ii 11.

Footnote 126:

Cfr. Alzog’s _Church Hist._, Papisch & Byrne, vol. i. p. 396.

Footnote 127:

See Chrysostom, _De Sacerdotio_, iii. 15.

Footnote 128:

See Graziani, _Lettera di S. Clemente Primo Papa e Martire ai Corinti_, ... _corredata di note critiche e filologiche_, Rome, 1832.

Footnote 129:

Cfr. Devoti, _Inst. Can._, lib. i. tit. v. sect. i. par. vii., in note.

Footnote 130:

See Augustine, Epist. clv.; Synesius, Epist. lxvii.; Baronius, ad an. 304; Baluze, _Miscell._, ii. 102.

Footnote 131:

_H. E._, vi. 43.

Footnote 132:

Compare Tertullian, _Apol._, xxxvii.

Footnote 133:

Cfr. Novaes, whose voluminous, erudite, and orthodox work, the _Lives of the Popes_, is enriched with preliminary dissertations on every subject relating to the Papacy and the Cardinalate.

Footnote 134:

De Rossi, in his _Bullettino di Archeologia Cristiana, Anno iv._, Jan.-Feb., 1866, has given the reasons for the preponderating influence which the cardinal-deacons had in the affairs of the church, and for their frequent succession to the Papacy. Indeed, it became in the third and fourth centuries an almost invariable rule to elect the archdeacon to succeed to the chair of St. Peter.

Footnote 135:

Cap. _Si duo_, viii, dist. lxxix.

Footnote 136:

Strange to say, Vigilius did, although not immediately succeed to the Papacy, and is reckoned the sixty-first in the series of pontiffs.

Footnote 137:

See the controversy apud Ferraris, _Bibliotheca_, Art. “Papa.”

Footnote 138:

Const. _Prudentes Bullar. Rom._, tom. iv. par. ii. page 90.

Footnote 139:

Pagi, _Breviarium RR. FP._, vol. i. p. 129, _in vita Symmachi_.

Footnote 140:

In a curious old ballad sung in low French by the Scotch in the king’s service occurs the contemptuous line, _Les Romains bien tout villain mutinail_. Francisque-Michel, _Les Ecessais en France_.

Footnote 141:

_Apologia del Pontificato di Benedetto X._, par. i. cap. ii. num. 2.

Footnote 142:

Odoacer, the first king of Italy in olden times, become so by violence and usurpation like the first king of Italy of modern times, and the first to interfere in a papal election, was captured in March, 493, and put to death by his victorious rival, Theodoric.

Footnote 143:

Darras, _General History of the Catholic Church_, vol. ii. p. 66.

Footnote 144:

Some writers, it must be said, attribute the imposition of this odious burden to the Gothic kings. Graveson, who agrees with them, says (_Hist. Eccl._, tom. ii. page 62) that the money was always distributed in alms to the poor.

Footnote 145:

Cap. _Quia Sancta_, xxviii. Dist lxiii.

Footnote 146:

Paul the Deacon, _apud Pagi_ (_Breviarium, RR. PP._, tom. i. p. 350).

Footnote 147:

When a successor to the throne was elected or appointed during the emperor’s lifetime he was called King of Rome or of the Romans.

Footnote 148:

Ad an. 884.

Footnote 149:

_In Ord. Rom._ cap. xvii. page 114.

Footnote 150:

Ad an. 884.

Footnote 151:

_De Nummo Argenteo Benedicti III._, pag. 22 et seq.

Footnote 152:

_Vet. et Nov. Eccl. Discipl._, part ii. lib. ii. cap. xxvi par. 6.

Footnote 153:

_Primacy of the Apostolic See_, p. 243.

Footnote 154:

_Die Deutschen Päpste_, 2 vols., Regensburg, 1839.

Footnote 155:

See a long and interesting note to the point headed, _Quali consequenze discendano dalla condizione della chiesa romana al secolo x._ in Mozzoni’s _Tavole Cronologiche critiche della Storia della Chiesa Universale_. _Secolo Decimo_, Rome 1865.

Footnote 156:

Cap. _In Nomine Domini_, i. dist. xviii.

Footnote 157:

Ix., cap. _Licet, 6. de Elect._

Footnote 158:

Bede’s _Ecclesiastical History of England_, p. 217. Edited by J. A. Giles, D.C.L. (Henry G. Bohn).

Footnote 159:

This thought is taken from St. Teresa.

Footnote 160:

One of the most recent and significant signs of change in the Anglican communion is the movement in favor of confession. It may be well to inform our readers that the above article is from the pen of Mgr. Capel, than whom no man in England probably is better fitted from his position, knowledge, and experience to treat of such a subject.—ED. C. W.

Footnote 161:

This strange narrative, which has never hitherto been published in any language, is the autobiography of a friend of the Lady Herbert of Lea, who has translated it for THE CATHOLIC WORLD.—ED. C. W.

Footnote 162:

_The Final Philosophy; or, System of Perfectible Knowledge issuing from the Harmony of Science and Religion_. By Charles Woodruff Shields, D.D., Professor in Princeton College. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1877.

Footnote 163:

Have we no word to express shortly the meaning of the fine German word “_Thaten-drang_”?

Footnote 164:

_Katholische Stimme_.

Footnote 165:

Sparks’ _Life of Arnold_, p. 218.

Footnote 166:

Pp. 25–27.

Footnote 167:

The remains of St. Honorat are now in a church at Cannes.

Footnote 168:

Near Cap Roux is an inlet called Aurèle from the old Roman road along the shore.

Footnote 169:

Is. i. 18.

Footnote 170:

1 Cor. xv. 31.

Footnote 171:

_Report of the Joint Special Committee to investigate Chinese Immigration_. Washington, 1877.

Footnote 172:

“Who, perched on one foot, as though ’twere a feat, Some hundreds of verses an hour would repeat.”

—Horat., _Sat._ i. 4, 9.

Footnote 173:

A couplet from this great work is quoted in the _Dunciad_:

“So when Jove’s block descended from on high (As sings thy great forefather, Ogilby), Loud thunder to its bottom shook the bog, And the hoarse nation croaked, “God save King Log!”

Footnote 174:

“And iron slumber fell on him, hard rest weighed down his eyes, And shut were they for ever more by night that never dies.”

—_Æneid_, x. 745–746, Morris’ translation.

Footnote 175:

The translation of the Earl of Lauderdale appeared before Pitt’s, but it was really completed before Dryden’s, and the latter had the use of it in MSS. in preparing his own, as he admits in his preface. Some three or four hundred of the earl’s lines were adopted by Dryden without change.

Footnote 176:

“There is her temple, there they stand an hundred altars meet, Warm with Sabæan incense smoke, with new-pulled blossoms sweet.”

—_Æneid_, i. 415–416, Morris’ trans.

Footnote 177:

“Whence she with kindness prompt And eyes glistering with smiles,”

Carey gives it, which is certainly English, but—

Footnote 178:

_La Vie Domestique, ses Modèles et ses Règles—d’après les documents originaux_. Charles de Ribbe. Paris: Edouard Baltenweck.

Footnote 179:

In regard to the heroic virtue that can be practised in the married state there can be no question. As little can there be any question that in the scale of perfection the religious is the higher state.—ED. C. W.

Footnote 180:

He refused the chancellorship when Boucherat gave up the seals, but did his work effectually as commissioner of finance and overseer of public work in the south and west of France between 1650 and 1690.

Footnote 181:

_Dixit etiam Deus: Producant aquæ reptile anima viventis, et volatile super terram.... Producat terra animam viventem in genere suo ... et factum est ita._—Gen. i. 20, 24.

Footnote 182:

The translation is from the graceful pen of Lady Georgiana Fullerton.

Footnote 183:

As for “gall,” there is, according to the writer’s own showing, more of fallen than regenerate humanity in it. The less gall, then, the better. The Holy Father has recently favored the Catholic press by selecting St. Francis de Sales as its patron saint. The more closely writers adhere to the saint’s spirit the nearer they will approach their divine model, and the more abundant will their labors be in good fruits.—ED. C. W.

Footnote 184:

Marchetti, _Critica al Fleury_, vol. ii. p. 193.

Footnote 185:

_Ad auctorem opusc. Quid est Papa?_ vol. ii. p. 112.

Footnote 186:

Du Cange, _Gloss._, ad verb.

Footnote 187:

Macri, _Hierolexicon_, ad verb. _Conclave_.

Footnote 188:

Biondo da Forlì, lib. vii. decad. 2.

Footnote 189:

Cap. _Ubi periculum. 3 de Elect. in 6_.

Footnote 190:

Ne Romani electioni Pontificis indeterminata opinionum diversitas aliquod possit obstaculum vel dilationem afferre; nos, inter cætera præcipue attendentes, quod lex superioris per inferiorem tolli non potest, opinionem adstruere, sicut accepimus satagentem, quod constitutio felicis recordationis Gregorii Papæ X. prædecessoris nostri, circa electionem præfatam edita in concilio Lugdunensi, per coetum cardinalium _Romanæ ecclesiæ_ ipsa vacante modificari possit, corrigi vel immutari, aut quicquam ei detrahi sive addi, vel dispensari quomodolibet circa ipsam seu aliquam ejus partem, aut eidem etiam renunciari per eam tanquam veritati non consonam de fratrum nostrorum consilio reprobamus, irritum nihilominus et inane decernentes, quicquid potestatis aut jurisdictionis, ad Romanum, dum vivit, Pontificem pertinentis (nisi quatenus inconstitutione prædicta permittitur) coetus ipse duxerit eadem vacante ecclesia exercendum, _etc._

Footnote 191:

Voting by proxy is not recognized in the conclave.

Footnote 192:

Such, for instance, is a woman, a manifest heretic, an infidel—_i.e._, one who is not baptized.

Footnote 193:

_Cæremoniale continens ritus electionis Romani Pontificis, cui præfiguntur Constitutiones Pontificiæ, et Conciliorum decreta ad eam rem pertinentia._ Romæ, 1622, in 410.

Footnote 194:

_Lib. Pontif._, tom. iv., _in vita Bonif_.

Footnote 195:

_Mus. Ital._, cap. xvii. p. 112.

Footnote 196:

Labbé, _Concil._, tom. vi. col. 1721.

Footnote 197:

4 Kings x. 3.

Footnote 198:

_Hist. of Alex. VII._

Footnote 199:

_Const. In eligendis Bullar. Rom._, tom. iv. part ii. pag. 145.

Footnote 200:

_Spiritual Exercises_. Second Day.

Footnote 201:

Turkeys were introduced into France by the Jesuits in 1570, in which year they were first eaten at Mézières, department of Ardennes, at the marriage of Charles IX. and Elizabeth of Austria.

Footnote 202:

The Feast of Our Lady of Dolors is on the 3d Sunday of September. This Sunday, in 1877, fell on the 16th—_i.e._, the ninth day after the Nativity of Our Lady, which is on the 8th of September.

Footnote 203:

Hodie nomen tuum ita magnificavit, ut non recedat laus tua de ore hominum, qui memores fuerint virtutis Domini in æternum, pro quibus non pepercisti animæ tuæ propter angustias et tribulationem generis tui, sed subvenisti ruinæ ante conspectum Dei nostri (Epistle in the Mass of Our Lady of the Seven Dolors, third Sunday in September).

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● Transcriber’s Notes: ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected. ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book. ○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_) and text that was bold, is enclosed by equal signs (=Now!=).