Chapter XIV: Part 14

‘When the king heard his confession, he thought, “Perhaps this was my daughter, who was lost and never found;” and he sent messengers into the forest to seek for the remains of his daughter, that her bones at least might rest in consecrated ground. When they came to the foot of the precipice, there they found a beautiful woman seated, naked, and holding a child in her arms; and John said to her, “Why sittest thou here alone in the wilderness?” And she said, “Dost thou not know me? I am the woman who came to thy cave by night, and whom thou didst hurl down this rock!” Then they brought her home with great joy to her parents.‘[294]

This extravagant legend becomes interesting for two reasons: it shows the existence of the popular feeling and belief with regard to Chrysostom, long subsequent to those events which aroused the hatred of the early monks; and it has been, from its popular notoriety, embodied in some rare and valuable works of art, which all go under the name of ‘the Penance or Penitence of Johannes Chrysostom or Crisostomos.’

1. A rare print by Lucas Cranach, composed and engraved by himself. In the centre is an undraped woman reclining on the ground against a rock, and contemplating her sleeping infant, which is lying on her lap; a stag, a hind crouching, a pheasant feeding near her, express the solitude of her life; in the background is ‘the savage man’ on all fours, and browsing: here, he has no glory round his head. The whole composition is exceedingly picturesque.

2. A rare and beautiful print by B. Beham, and repeated by Hans Sebald Beham, represents a woman lying on the ground with her back turned to the spectator; a child is near her; Chrysostom is seen crawling in the background, with the glory round his head.

3. A small print by Albert Dürer, also exquisitely engraved (from which I give a sketch). Here the woman is sitting at the entrance of a rocky cave, feeding her child from her bosom: in the background the ‘savage man’ crawling on all fours, and a glory round his head. This subject has been called St. Geneviève of Brabant; but it is evidently the same as in the two last-named compositions.

All these prints, being nearly contemporaneous, show that the legend must have been particularly popular about this time (1509-1520). There is also an old French version of the story which I have not seen.

ST. BASIL THE GREAT.

_Lat._ St. Basilius Magnus. _Ital._ San Basilio Magno. _Fr._ St.
Basile. (June 14, A.D. 380.)

St. Basil, called the Great, was born at Cesarea in Cappadocia, in the year 328. He was one of a family of saints. His father St. Basil, his mother St. Emmelie, his two brothers St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Peter of Sebaste, and his sister St. Macrina, were all distinguished for their sanctity, and renowned in the Greek calendar. The St. Basil who takes rank as the second luminary of the Eastern Church, and whose dogmatical and theological works influenced the faith of his own age, and consequently of ours, was the greatest of all. But, notwithstanding his importance in the Greek Church, he figures so seldom in the productions of Western Art, that I shall content myself with relating just so much of his life and actions as may render the few representations of him interesting and intelligible.

He owed his first education to his grandmother St. Macrina the elder, a woman of singular capacity and attainments, to whom he has in various parts of his works acknowledged his obligations. For several years he pursued his studies in profane learning, philosophy, law, and eloquence, at Constantinople, and afterwards at Athens, where he had two companions and fellow-students of very opposite character: Gregory of Nazianzen, afterwards the _Saint_; and Julian, afterwards the _Apostate_.

The success of the youthful Basil in all his studies, and the reputation he had obtained as an eloquent pleader, for a time swelled his heart with vanity, and would have endangered his salvation but for the influence of his sister, St. Macrina, who in this emergency preserved him from himself, and elevated his mind to far higher aims than those of mere worldly science and worldly distinction. From that period, and he was then not more than twenty-eight, Basil turned his thoughts solely to the edification of the Christian Church; but first he spent some years in retreat among the hermits of the desert, as was the fashion of that day, living, as they did, in abstinence, poverty, and abstracted study; acknowledging neither country, family, home, nor friends, nor fortune, nor worldly interests of any kind, but with his thoughts fixed solely on eternal life in another world. In these austerities he, as was also usual, consumed and ruined his bodily health; and remained to the end of his life a feeble wretched invalid,—a circumstance which was supposed to contribute greatly to his sanctity. He was ordained priest in 362, and bishop of Cesarea in 370; his ordination on the 14th of June being kept as one of the great feasts of the Eastern Church.

On the episcopal throne he led the same life of abstinence and humility as in a cavern of the desert; and contended for the doctrine of the Trinity against the Arians, but with less of vehemence, and more of charity, than the other Doctors engaged in the same controversy. The principal event of his life was his opposition to the Emperor Valens, who professed Arianism, and required that, in the Church of Cesarea, Basil should perform the rites according to the custom of the Arians. The bishop refused: he was threatened with exile, confiscation, death: he persisted. The emperor, fearing a tumult, resolved to appear in the church on the day of the Epiphany, but not to communicate. He came, hoping to overawe the impracticable bishop, surrounded by all his state, his courtiers, his guards. He found Basil so intent on his sacred office as to take not the slightest notice of him; those of the clergy around him continued to chant the service, keeping their eyes fixed in the profoundest awe and respect on the countenance of their bishop. Valens, in a situation new to him, became agitated: he had brought his oblation; he advanced with it; but the ministers at the altar, not knowing whether Basil would accept it, dared not take it from his hands. Valens stood there for a moment in sight of all the people, rejected before the altar,—he lost his presence of mind, trembled, swooned, and would have fallen to the earth, if one of the attendants had not received him in his arms. A conference afterwards took place between Basil and the emperor; but the latter remained unconverted, and some concessions to the Catholics was all that the bishop obtained.

St. Basil died in 379, worn out by disease, and leaving behind him many theological writings. His epistles, above all, are celebrated, not only as models of orthodoxy, but of style.

Of St. Basil, as of St. Gregory and St. John Chrysostom, we have the story of the Holy Ghost, in visible form as a dove of wonderful whiteness, perched on his shoulder, and inspiring his words when he preached. St. Basil is also celebrated as the founder of Monachism in the East. He was the first who enjoined the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience; and his Rule became the model of all other monastic Orders. There is, in fact, no other Order in the Greek Church, and when either monks or nuns appear in a Greek or a Russian picture they must be Basilicans, and no other: the habit is a plain black tunic with a cowl, the tunic fastened round the waist with a girdle of cord or leather. Such is the dress of the Greek caloyer, and it never varies.

* * * * *

The devotional figures of St. Basil represent him, or ought to represent him, in the Greek pontificals, bareheaded, and with a thin worn countenance, as he appears in the etching of the Greek Fathers.

* * * * *

‘The Emperor Valens in the church at Cesarea,’ an admirably picturesque subject, has received as little justice as the scene between Ambrose and Theodosius. When the French painter Subleyras was at Rome in 1745, he raised himself to name and fame by his portrait of Benedict XIV.,[295] and received, through the interest of his friend Cardinal Valenti, the commission to paint a picture for one of the mosaics in St. Peter’s. The subject selected was the Emperor Valens fainting in presence of St. Basil. We have all the pomp of the scene:—the altar, the incense, the richly attired priests on one side; on the other, the Imperial court. It is not easy to find fault, for the picture is well drawn, well composed, in the mannered taste of that time; well coloured, rather tenderly than forcibly; and Lanzi is enthusiastic in his praise of the draperies; yet, as a whole, it leaves the mind unimpressed. As usual, the original sketch for this picture far excels the large composition.[296]

The prayers of St. Basil were supposed by the Armenian Christians, partly from his sanctity, and partly from his intellectual endowments, to have a peculiar, almost resistless, power; so that he not only redeemed souls from purgatory, but even lost angels from the abyss of hell. ‘On the sixth day of the creation, when the rebellious angels fell from heaven through that opening in the firmament which the Armenians call Arocea, and we the Galaxy, one unlucky angel, who had no participation in their sin, but seems to have been entangled in the crowd, fell with them.’ (A moral, I presume, on the consequences of keeping bad company.) ‘And this unfortunate angel was not restored till he had obtained, it is not said how, the prayers of St. Basil. His condition meantime, from the sixth day of the creation to the fourth century of the Christian era, must have been even more uncomfortable than that of Klopstock’s repentant demon in “The Messiah.”’

* * * * *

There are many other beautiful legendary stories of St. Basil, but, as I have never met with them in any form of Art, I pass them over here. One of the most striking has been versified by Southey in his ballad-poem, ‘All for Love.’ It would afford a great variety of picturesque subjects.

ST. ATHANASIUS.

_Lat._ S. Athanasius, Pater Orthodoxiæ. _Ital._ Sant’ Atanasio. _Fr._
St. Athanase. (May 2, A.D. 373.)

St. Athanasius, whose famous Creed remains a stumbling-block in Christendom, was born at Alexandria, about the year 298; he was consequently the eldest of the Greek Fathers, though he does not in that Church take the first rank. He, like the others, began his career by the study of profane literature, science, and eloquence; but, seized by the religious spirit of the age, he, too, fled to the desert, and became, for a time, the pupil of St. Anthony. He returned to Alexandria, and was ordained deacon. His first appearance as a public character was at the celebrated council of Nice (A.D. 325), where he opposed Arius and his partisans with so much zeal and eloquence, that he was thenceforth regarded as the great pillar of orthodoxy. He became Bishop of Alexandria the following year; and the rest of his life was a perpetual contest with the Arians. The great schism of the early Church blazed at this time in the East and in the West, and Athanasius, by his invincible perseverance and intrepidity, procured the victory for the Catholic party. He died in 372, after having been Bishop of Alexandria forty-six years, of which twenty years had been spent in exile and tribulation.

* * * * *

It is curious that, notwithstanding his fame and his importance in the Church, St. Athanasius should be, as a patron and a subject of Art, of all saints the most unpopular. He figures, of course, as one of the series of Greek Doctors; but I have never met with any separate representation of him, and I know not any church dedicated to him, nor any picture representing the vicissitudes of his unquiet life, fraught as it was with strange reverses and picturesque incidents. Such _may_ exist, but in Western Art, at least, they have never been prominent. According to the Greek formula, he ought to be represented old, bald-headed, and with a long white beard, as in the etching.

ST. GREGORY NAZIANZEN.

_Gr._ St. Gregory Theologos. _Lat._ S. Gregorius Nazianzenus. _Ital._
San Gregorio Nazianzeno. _Fr._ St. Grégoire de Naziance. _Ger._ St.
Gregor von Nazianz. (May 9, A.D. 390.)

This Doctor, like St. Basil, was one of a family of saints; his father, St. Gregory, having been bishop of Nazianzus before him; his mother, St. Nonna, famous for her piety; and two of his sisters, St. Gorgonia and St. Cesarea, also canonized. Gregory was born about the year 328; and his mother, who fondly believed that he had been granted to her prayers, watched over his early education, and guided his first steps in piety and literature. When a boy, he had a singular dream, which he has related himself. He beheld in his sleep two virgins of celestial beauty; they were clothed in white garments, and their faces shone upon him like two stars out of heaven: they took him in their arms and kissed him as if he had been their child. He, charmed by their virgin beauty and their caresses, asked who they were, and whence they came? One of them replied, ‘I am called Chastity, and my sister here is Temperance; we come to thee from Paradise, where we stand continually before the throne of Christ, and taste ineffable delights: come to us, my son, and dwell with us for ever;’ and having spoken thus, they left him and flew upwards to heaven. He followed them with longing eyes till they disappeared, and as he stretched his arms towards them he awoke.

This dream—how natural in a boy educated between a tender mother, who had shielded him, as only mothers can, against all sinful temptations, and a lovely and saintly sister!—he regarded as a direct revelation from heaven: it decided his future life, and he made a vow of perpetual continence and temperance. Like the other Greek doctors, he began by the study of profane literature and rhetoric. He went to Athens, where he formed an enduring friendship with St. Basil, and pursued his studies with Julian, afterwards Cæsar and Apostate. After leaving Athens, in his thirtieth year, he was baptized; and, devoting himself solemnly to the service of God and the study of the Scriptures, like his friend Basil, he destroyed his health by his austerities and mortifications: he confesses that they were wholly repugnant to his nature —a nature sensitive, imaginative, poetical; but this of course only added to their merit and efficacy. His aged father withdrew him from his solitude, and ordained him as his coadjutor: in 362 he succeeded to the bishopric of Nazianzus: but great part of his time was still spent at Constantinople, whither he was invited to preach against the Arians. It was a strange spectacle to see, in the capital of the world, a man, from a distant province and an obscure town, of small shrunken stature, bald-headed, wrinkled, haggard with vigils and fasting, poor, ill-clothed, and in his address unpolished and abrupt, stand up to oppose himself to a luxurious court and prevalent sect. The people began by stoning him; but at length his earnestness and eloquence overcame all opposition.

Religious disputes were the fashion at that time in Constantinople, not merely among the priesthood, but among the laity, the lawyers, and above all the women, who were heard, in assemblies and at feasts, at home and abroad, declaiming and arguing on the most abstruse mysteries of the evangelical doctrine, till they lost temper and modesty:—so true it is, that there is nothing new under the sun. This was in 378, and St. Gregory found more difficulty in silencing their squabbles than in healing the schisms of the Church. He was ordained Bishop of Constantinople by the favour of Theodosius; but, unable to endure the odious cabals and uncharitable contests which at that time distracted and disgraced Christianity, he resigned his sacred office, and retired to a small paternal estate, where he lived, with his usual self-denial and austerity, till his death. He composed in his retreat a number of beautiful poems in his native Greek: he was, in fact, the earliest Christian poet on record. These poems are not hymns only, but lyrics, in which he poured forth his soul, his aspirations, his temptations, his joys, his sufferings, his plaintive supplications to Christ, to aid him in his perpetual combats against a too vivid imagination, and feelings and passions which not even age and penance had subdued.

* * * * *

St. Gregory Nazianzen ought to be represented as an old man wasted by fasting and vigils, with a bald head, a long beard of a reddish colour, and eyebrows the same. He is always the last in a series of the Four Greek Fathers, and, though often occurring in Greek Art, the popularity of St. Gregory the GREAT has completely banished St. Gregory the POET from Western Art.

There remains, however, a very valuable and singular monument to the honour of St. Gregory Nazianzen, in the Greek MS. of his sermons preserved in the Imperial Library at Paris, and adorned with Byzantine miniatures, which must once have been beautiful and brilliant: ruined as they are, they present some of the most ancient examples which remain to us of the treatment of many sacred subjects from the Old and the New Testament, and give a high idea of the classic taste and the skill of the Byzantine limners of the ninth century. Besides the sacred subjects, we have numerous scenes interspersed from the life of Gregory himself, his friend St. Basil, and the Emperor Theodosius. As these are subjects which are exceptional, I need not describe them. Of the style of the miniatures I have already spoken, and given one example (_v._ p. 75).

ST. CYRIL.

_Lat._ S. Cyrillus. _Ital._ San Cirillo. _Fr._ St. Cyrille. (Jan. 28,
A.D. 444.)

St. Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria from the year 412 to 444, was famous in his time as deeply engaged in all the contests which disturbed the early Christian Church. He has left a great number of theological writings, which are regarded as authority in matters of faith. He, appears to have been violent against the so-called heresies of that day, and opposed Nestorius with the same determined zeal and inexorable firmness with which Athanasius had opposed Arius. The ascendency of Cyril was disgraced by the death of the famous female mathematician and philosopher Hypatia, murdered with horrible cruelty, and within the walls of a church, by the fanatic followers of the Patriarch, if he did not himself connive at it. He is much more venerated in the Greek than in the Latin Church. In the Greek representations he is the only bishop who has his head covered; he wears a veil or hood, coming over his head, falling down on his shoulders, and the front embroidered with a cross, as in the illustration.

With the Greek Fathers I conclude the list of those saints who are generally represented in their collective character, grouped, or in a series.

St. Mary Magdalene, St. Martha, St. Lazarus, St. Marímín, St.
Marcella, St. Mary of Egypt, and the Beatified Penitents.

ST. MARY MAGDALENE.

_Lat._ Sancta Maria Magdalena. _Ital._ Santa Maria Maddalena. _Fr._ La Madeleine. La Sainte Demoiselle pécheresse. (July 22, A.D. 68.) Patroness of Provence, of Marseilles, and of frail and penitent women.

Of all the personages who figure in history, in poetry, in art, Mary Magdalene is at once the most unreal and the most real:—the most _unreal_, if we attempt to fix her identity, which has been a subject of dispute for ages; the most _real_, if we consider her as having been, for ages, recognised and accepted in every Christian heart as the impersonation of the penitent sinner absolved through faith and love. In this, her mythic character, she has been surrounded by associations which have become fixed in the imagination, and which no reasoning, no array of facts, can dispel. This is not the place to enter into disputed points of biblical criticism; they are quite beside our present purpose. Whether Mary Magdalene, ‘out of whom Jesus cast seven devils,’ Mary of Bethany, and the ‘woman who was a sinner,’ be, as some authorities assert, three distinct persons, or, as others affirm, one and the same individual under different designations, remains a question open to dispute, nothing having been demonstrated on either side, from Scripture or from tradition; and I cannot presume even to give an opinion where doctors—and doctors of the Church, too—disagree; Origen and St. Chrysostom taking one side of the question, St. Clement and St. Gregory the other. Fleury, after citing the opinions of both sides, thus beautifully sums up the whole question:—‘Il importe de ne pas croire témérairement ce que l’Évangile ne dit point, et de ne pas mettre la religion à suivre aveuglement toutes les opinions populaires: _la foi est trop précieuse pour la prodiguer ainsi_; mais la charité l’est encore plus; et ce qui est le plus important, c’est d’éviter les disputes qui peuvent l’altérer tant soit peu.’ And this is most true;—in his time the fast hold which the Magdalene had taken of the affections of the people was not to be shaken by theological researches and doubts. Here critical accuracy was nothing less than profanation and scepticism, and to have attacked the sanctity of the Blessed Mary Magdalene would have embittered and alienated many kindly and many believing spirits. It is difficult to treat of Mary Magdalene; and this difficulty would be increased infinitely if it were absolutely necessary to enter on the much-vexed question of her scriptural character and identity: one thing only appeals certain,—that such a person, whatever might have been her veritable appellation, did exist. The woman who, under the name of Mary Magdalene,—whether that name be rightfully or wrongfully bestowed,—stands before us, sanctified in the imagination and in the faith of the people in her combined character of Sinner and of Saint, as the first-fruits of Christian penitence,—is a reality, and not a fiction. Even if we would, we cannot do away with the associations inseparably connected with her name and her image. Of all those to whom much has been forgiven, she was the first: of all the tears since ruefully shed at the foot of the cross of suffering, hers were the first: of all the hopes which the Resurrection has since diffused through nations and generations of men, hers were the first. To her sorrowful image how many have looked up through tears, and blessed the pardoning grace of which she was the symbol—or rather the impersonation! Of the female saints, some were the chosen patrons of certain virtues—others of certain vocations; but the accepted and glorified penitent threw her mantle over all, and more especially over those of her own sex, who, having gone astray, were recalled from error and from shame, and laid down their wrongs, their sorrows, and their sins in trembling humility at the feet of the Redeemer.

Nor is it only the popularity of Mary Magdalene as the representative and the patroness of repentant sinners which has multiplied her image through all Christendom. As a subject for painting,

Whether the fair one sinner it or saint it,

it is rich in picturesque capabilities. It combines all that can inspire, with all that can chasten the fancy; yet, when we review what has been done, how inadequate the result! In no class of subjects have the mistakes of the painters, even the most distinguished, been so conspicuous as in the representation of the penitent Magdalene; and it must be allowed that, with all its advantages and attractions, it is a subject full of perils and difficulties. Where the penitent prevails, the saint appears degraded; where the wasted, unclad form is seen attenuated by vigils and exposed in haggard unseemliness, it is a violation of that first great rule of Art which forbids the repulsive and the painful. And herein lies the fault of the earlier schools, and particularly of the old Greek and German painters;—their matter-of-fact ugliness would be intolerable, if not redeemed by the intention and sentiment. On the other hand, where sensual beauty has obviously been the paramount idea in the artist’s work, defeating its holiest purpose and perverting its high significance, the violation of the moral sentiment is yet more revolting. This is especially the fault of the later painters, more particularly of the schools of Venice and Bologna: while the French painters are yet worse, adding affectation to licentiousness of sentiment; the Abbé Mèry exclaims with reasonable and pious indignation against that ‘_air de galanterie_’ which in his time was regarded as characteristic of Mary Magdalene. The ‘larmoyantes’ penitents of Greuze—Magdalenes _à la Pompadour_—are more objectionable to my taste than those of Rubens.

* * * * *

I shall give the legend of the Magdalene here as it was accepted by the people, and embodied by the arts, of the middle ages, setting aside those Eastern traditions which represent the Mary of Bethany and the Magdalene as distinct personages, and place the death and burial-place of Mary Magdalene at Ephesus. Our business is with the Western legend, which has been the authority for Western Art. This legend, besides attributing to one individual, and blending into one narrative, the very few scattered notices in the Gospels, has added some other incidents, inconceivably wild and incredible, leaving her, however, the invariable attributes of the frail loving woman, the sorrowing penitent, and the devout enthusiastic saint.

Mary Magdalene was of the district of Magdala, on the shores of the sea of Galilee, where stood her castle, called Magdalon; she was the sister of Lazarus and of Martha, and they were the children of parents reputed noble, or, as some say, of royal race. On the death of their father, Syrus, they inherited vast riches and possessions in land, which were equally divided between them. Lazarus betook himself to the military life; Martha ruled her possessions with great discretion, and was a model of virtue and propriety,— perhaps a little too much addicted to worldly cares: Mary, on the contrary, abandoned herself to luxurious pleasures, and became at length so notorious for her dissolute life, that she was known through all the country round only as ‘THE SINNER.’ Her discreet sister, Martha, frequently rebuked her for these disorders, and at length persuaded her to listen to the exhortations of Jesus, through which her heart was touched and converted. The seven demons which possessed her, and which were expelled by the power of the Lord, were the seven deadly sins to which she was given over before her conversion. On one occasion Martha entertained the Saviour in her house, and, being anxious to feast him worthily, she was ‘cumbered with much serving.’ Mary, meanwhile, sat at the feet of Jesus, and heard his words, which completed the good work of her conversion; and when, some time afterwards, he supped in the house of Simon the Pharisee, she followed him thither, ‘and she brought an alabaster box of ointment, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hair of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with ointment; and He said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven.’ She became afterwards one of the most devoted of his followers; ‘ministered to him of her substance;’ attended him to Calvary, and stood weeping at the foot of the cross. She, with the other Mary, watched by his tomb, and was the first to whom he appeared after the resurrection; her unfaltering faith, mingled as it was with the intensest grief and love, obtained for her this peculiar mark of favour. It is assumed by several commentators that our Saviour appeared first to Mary Magdalene because she, of all those whom he had left on earth, had most need of consolation:—‘_The disciples went away to their own home; but Mary stood without the sepulchre, weeping._’

* * * * *

Thus far the notices in the Gospel and the suggestions of commentators: the old Provençal legend then continues the story. After the ascension, Lazarus with his two sisters, Martha and Mary; with Maximin, one of the seventy-two disciples, from whom they had received baptism; Cedon, the blind man whom our Saviour had restored to sight; and Marcella, the handmaiden who attended on the two sisters, were by the heathens set adrift in a vessel without sails, oars, or rudder; but, guided by Providence, they were safely borne over the sea till they landed in a certain harbour which proved to be Marseilles, in the country now called France. The people of the land were pagans, and refused to give the holy pilgrims food or shelter; so they were fain to take refuge under the porch of a temple; and Mary Magdalene preached to the people, reproaching them for their senseless worship of dumb idols; and though at first they would not listen, yet being after a time convinced by her eloquence, and by the miracles performed by her and by her sister, they were converted and baptized. And Lazarus became, after the death of the good Maximin, the first bishop of Marseilles.

These things being accomplished, Mary Magdalene retired to a desert not far from the city. It was a frightful barren wilderness, in the midst of horrid rocks and caves: and here for thirty years she devoted herself to solitary penance for the sins of her past life, which she had never ceased to bewail bitterly. During this long seclusion, she was never seen or heard of, and it was supposed that she was dead. She fasted so rigorously, that but for the occasional visits of the angels, and the comfort bestowed by celestial visions, she must have perished. Every day during the last years of her penance, the angels came down from heaven and carried her up in their arms into regions where she was ravished by the sounds of unearthly harmony, and beheld the glory and the joy prepared for the sinner that repenteth. One day a certain hermit, who dwelt in a cell on one of those wild mountains, having wandered farther than usual from his home, beheld this wondrous vision—the Magdalene in the arms of ascending angels, who were singing songs of triumph as they bore her upwards; and the hermit, when he had a little recovered from his amazement, returned to the city of Marseilles, and reported what he had seen. According to some of the legends, Mary Magdalene died within the walls of the Christian church, after receiving the sacrament from the hand of St. Maximin; but the more popular accounts represent her as dying in her solitude, while angels watched over and ministered to her.

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The middle of the thirteenth century was an era of religious excitement all over the south of Europe. A sudden fit of penitence—‘una subita compunzione,’ as an Italian author calls it—seized all hearts; relics and pilgrimages, and penances and monastic ordinances, filled all minds. About this period, certain remains, supposed to be those of Mary Magdalene and Lazarus, were discovered at a place since called St. Maximin, about twenty miles north of Toulon. The discovery strongly excited the devotion and enthusiasm of the people; and a church was founded on the spot by Charles, Count of Provence (the brother of St. Louis), as early as 1279. A few years afterwards, this prince was vanquished and taken prisoner by the king of Aragon, and when at length set free after a long captivity, he ascribed his deliverance particularly to the intercession of his chosen patroness, Mary Magdalene. This incident greatly extended her fame as a saint of power; and from this time we may date her popularity, and those sculptural and pictorial representations of her, under various aspects, which, from the fourteenth century to the present time, have so multiplied, that scarcely any Catholic place of worship is to be found without her image. In fact, it is difficult for us, in these days, to conceive, far more difficult to sympathise with, the passionate admiration and devotion with which she was regarded by her votaries in the middle ages. The imputed sinfulness of her life only brought her nearer to them. Those who did not dare to lift up their eyes to the more saintly models of purity and holiness,—to the martyrs who had suffered in the cause of chastity,—took courage to invoke her intercession. The extravagant titles bestowed upon her in the middle ages—‘_l’amante de Jésus-Christ_,’ ‘_la bien-aimée du Sauveur_,’ ‘_la très-saincte demoiselle pécheresse_,’—and others which I should hardly dare to transcribe, show the spirit in which she was worshipped, particularly in the south of France, and the kind of chivalrous sentiment which mingled with the devotion of her adorers. I found in an old French sermon a eulogium of Mary Magdalene, which for its eloquence and ingenuity seems to me without a parallel. The preacher, while acknowledging the excesses which brought her a penitent to the feet of Christ, is perfectly scandalised that she should be put on a par with common sinners of the same class, and that on the faith of a passage in St. Luke, ‘on a osé flétrir une des plus belles âmes qui soient jamais sorties des mains du Créateur!’ He rather glorifies her as a kind of Aspasia, to whom, indeed, he in a manner compares her.[297]

The traditional scene of the penance of the Magdalene, a wild spot between Toulon and Marseilles, is the site of a famous convent called La Sainte Beaume (which in the Provençal tongue signifies _Holy Cave_), formerly a much frequented place of pilgrimage. It is built on the verge of a formidable precipice; near it is the grotto in which the saint resided; and to Mount Pilon, a rocky point about six hundred feet above the grotto, the angels bore her seven times a day to pray. This convent was destroyed and pillaged at the commencement of the French Revolution. It was filled with relics and works of art, referring to the life and the worship of the Magdalene.

But the most sumptuous fane ever erected to her special honour is that which, of late years, has arisen in the city of Paris. The church, or rather the temple, of La Madeleine stands an excelling monument, if not of modern piety, at least of modern Art. It is built on the model of the temple of Jupiter at Athens:—

That noble type is realised again
In perfect form; and dedicate—to whom?
To a poor Syrian girl of lowliest name—
A hapless creature, pitiful and frail
As ever wore her life in sin and shame!
R. M. MILNES.

The saint, whether she were ‘the lowly Syrian girl’ or the ‘Princess of Magdala,’ would be equally astonished to behold herself thus honoured with a sort of pagan magnificence in the midst of a luxurious capital, and by a people more remarkable for scoffing than for praying. Even in the successive vicissitudes of this splendid edifice there is something strange. That which is now the temple of the lowly penitent was, a few years ago, _Le Temple de la Gloire_.

Let us now turn to those characteristic representations with which painting and sculpture have made us familiar, and for which both Scripture and legendary tradition have furnished the authority and the groundwork. These are so numerous and so infinitely varied that I find it necessary here, as in the case of St. Jerome, to arrange them under several heads.

The devotional representations may be divided into two classes. 1. Those which represent the Magdalene as patron saint. 2. Those which represent her penitence in the desert.

The historical subjects may also be divided into two classes. 1. Those scenes from Gospel story in which Mary Magdalene figures as a chief or conspicuous personage. 2. The scenes taken from her legendary life.

In all these subjects the accompanying attribute is the alabaster box of ointment; which has a double significance: it may be the perfume which she poured over the feet of the Saviour, or the balm and spices which she had prepared to anoint his body. Sometimes she carries it in her hand, sometimes it stands at her feet, or near her; frequently, in later pictures, it is borne by an attendant angel. The shape varies with the fancy of the artist; it is a small vase, a casket, a box, a cup with a cover; more or less ornamented, more or less graceful in form; but always there—the symbol at once of her conversion and her love, and so peculiar that it can leave no doubt of her identity.

Her drapery in the ancient pictures is usually red, to express the fervour of her love; in modern representations, and where she figures as penitent, it is either blue or violet; violet, the colour of mourning and penitence—blue, the colour of constancy. To express both the love and the sorrow, she sometimes wears a violet-coloured tunic and a red mantle. The luxuriant hair ought to be fair or golden. Dark-haired Magdalenes, as far as I can remember, belong exclusively to the Spanish school.

1. When exhibited to us as the patron saint of repentant sinners, Mary Magdalene is sometimes a thin wasted figure with long dishevelled hair, of a pale golden hue, falling over her shoulders almost to the ground; sometimes a skin or a piece of linen is tied round her loins, but not seldom her sole drapery is her long redundant hair. The most ancient single figure of this character to which I can refer is an old picture in the Byzantine manner, as old perhaps as the thirteenth century, and now in the Academy at Florence. She is standing as patroness, covered only by her long hair, which falls in dark brown masses to her feet: the colour, I imagine, was originally much lighter. She is a meagre, haggard, grim-looking figure, and holds in her hand a scroll, on which is inscribed in ancient Gothic letters—

Ne despectetis
Vos qui peccare soletis
Exemplo meo
Vos reparate Deo.[298]

Rude and unattractive as is this specimen of ancient Art, I could not look at it without thinking how often it must have spoken hope and peace to the soul of the trembling sinner, in days when it hung, not in a picture-gallery to be criticised, but in a shrine to be worshipped. Around this figure, in the manner of the old altar-pieces, are six small square compartments containing scenes from her life.

The famous statue carved in wood by Donatello, in point of character may be referred to this class of subjects: she stands over her altar in the Baptistery at Florence, with clasped hands, the head raised in prayer; the form is very expressive of wasting grief and penance, but too meagre for beauty. ‘_Egli, la volle specchio alle penitenti, non incitamento alla cupidizia degli sguardi, come avenne ad altri artisti_,’ says Cicognara; and, allowing that beauty has been sacrificed to expression, he adds, ‘but if Donatello had done all, what would have remained for Canova?’ That which remained for Canova to do, he has done; he has made her as lovely as possible, and he has dramatised the sentiment: she is more the penitent than the patron saint. The display of the beautiful limbs is chastened by the humility of the attitude—half kneeling, half prostrate; by the expression of the drooping head—‘all sorrow’s softness charmed from its despair.’ Her eyes are fixed on the cross which lies extended on her knees; and she weeps—not so much her own past sins, as the sacrifice it has cost to redeem them. This is the prevailing sentiment, or, as the Germans would call it, the _motive_ of the representation, to which I should feel inclined to object as deficient in dignity and severity, and bordering too much on the _genre_ and dramatic style: but the execution is almost faultless. Very beautiful is another modern statue of the penitent Magdalene, executed in marble for the Count d’Espagnac, by M. Henri de Triqueti. She is half seated, half reclining on a fragment of rock, and pressing to her bosom a crown of thorns, at once the mourner and the penitent: the sorrow is not for herself alone.

But, in her character of patron saint, Mary Magdalene was not always represented with the squalid or pathetic attributes of humiliation and penance. She became idealised as a noble dignified creature bearing no traces of sin or of sorrow on her beautiful face; her luxuriant hair bound in tresses round her head; her drapery rich and ample; the vase of ointment in her hand or at her feet, or borne by an angel near her. Not unfrequently she is attired with the utmost magnificence, either in reference to her former state of worldly prosperity, or rather, perhaps, that with the older painters, particularly those of the German school, it was a common custom to clothe all the ideal figures of female saints in rich habits. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries such representations of the Magdalene are usual both in Italian and German Art. A beautiful instance may be seen in a picture by Signorelli, in the Cathedral of Orvieto, where she is standing in a landscape, her head uncovered, and the rich golden hair partly braided, partly flowing over her shoulders; she wears a magnificent tunic embroidered with gold, over it a flowing mantle descending to her feet; she holds the vase with her left hand, and points to it with her right. If it were not for the saintly aureole encircling her head, this figure, and others similar to it, might be mistaken for Pandora. See, for example, the famous print by Lucas v. Leyden, where she stands on clouds with an embroidered coif and flowing mantle, holding the vase in her left hand, and lifting the cover with her right (in the sketch it is reversed): and in the half-length by Leonardo, or one of his school. The want of a religious sentiment gives such figures a very heathen and _Pandora_ look, so that the aureole alone fixes the identity. This is not the case with a noble Magdalene by Dennis Calvert, in the Manfrini Palace at Venice. She is standing in a fine bold landscape; one hand sustains her ample crimson drapery, the other holds her vase; her fair hair falls in masses over her shoulders, and she looks down on her worshippers with a serious dignified compassion. This is one of the finest pictures of the later Bologna school, finer and truer in sentiment than any of the Caracci and Guido Magdalenes.

In this her wholly divine and ideal character of saint and intercessor, Mary Magdalene is often most beautifully introduced as standing near the throne of the Virgin, or as grouped with other saints. In two of the most famous pictures in the world she is thus represented. In the St. Cecilia of Raphael, she stands on the left, St. Paul being on the right of the principal figure; they are here significant of the conversion of the man through _power_, of the woman through _love_, from a state of reprobation to a state of reconcilement and grace. St. Paul leans in deep meditation on his sword. Mary Magdalene is habited in ample drapery of blue and violet, which she sustains with one hand, and bears the vase in the other. She looks out of the picture with a benign countenance and a particularly graceful turn of the head. Raphael’s original design for this picture (engraved by Marc Antonio) is, however, preferable in the sentiment given to the Magdalene: she does not look _out_ of the picture, but she looks _up_: _she_ also hears the divine music which has ravished St. Cecilia. In the picture she is either unconscious or inattentive.

In the not less celebrated St. Jerome of Correggio she is on the left of the Madonna, bending down with an expression of the deepest adoration to kiss the feet of the infant Christ, while an angel behind holds up the vase of ointment: thus recalling to our minds, and shadowing forth in the most poetical manner, that memorable act of love and homage rendered at the feet of the Saviour. Parmigiano has represented her, in a Madonna picture, as standing on one side, and the prophet Isaiah on the other. Lord Ashburton has a fine picture by Correggio, in which we have the same ideal representation: she is here grouped with St. Peter, St. Margaret, and St. Leonardo.

There are two classes of subjects in which Mary Magdalene is richly habited, and which must be carefully distinguished; those above described, in which she figures as patron saint, and those which represent her _before_ her conversion, as the votary of luxury and pleasure. In the same manner we must be careful to distinguish those figures of the penitent Magdalene which are wholly devotional in character and intention, and which have been described in the first class, from those which represent her in the act of doing penance, and which are rather dramatic and sentimental than devotional.

* * * * *

2. The penance of the Magdalene is a subject which has become, like the penance of St. Jerome, a symbol of Christian penitence, but still more endeared to the popular imagination by more affecting and attractive associations, and even more eminently picturesque,—so tempting to the artists, that by their own predilection for it they have assisted in making it universal. In the display of luxuriant female forms, shadowed (not hidden) by redundant fair hair, and flung in all the _abandon_ of solitude, amid the depth of leafy recesses, or relieved by the dark umbrageous rocks; in the association of love and beauty with the symbols of death and sorrow and utter humiliation; the painters had ample scope, ample material, for the exercise of their imagination, and the display of their skill: and what has been the result? They have abused these capabilities even to licence; they have exhausted the resources of Art in the attempt to vary the delineation; and yet how seldom has the ideal of this most exquisite subject been—I will not say realised—but even approached? We have Magdalenes who look as if they never could have sinned, and others who look as if they never could have repented; we have Venetian Magdalenes with the air of courtesans, and Florentine Magdalenes with the air of Ariadnes; and Bolognese Magdalenes like sentimental Niobes; and French Magdalenes, _moitié galantes_, _moitié dévotes_; and Dutch Magdalenes, who wring their hands like repentant washerwomen. The Magdalenes of Rubens remind us of nothing so much as of the ‘unfortunate Miss Bailey;’ and the Magdalenes of Van Dyck are fine ladies who have turned Methodists. But Mary Magdalene, such as we have conceived her, mournful yet hopeful,—tender yet dignified,—worn with grief and fasting, yet radiant with the glow of love and faith, and clothed with the beauty of holiness,—is an ideal which painting has not yet realised. Is it beyond the reach of Art? We might have answered this question, had Raphael attempted it;—but he has not. His Magdalene at the feet of Christ is yet unforgiven—the forlorn castaway, not the devout penitent.

The Magdalene doing penance in her rocky desert first became a popular subject in the sixteenth century; in the seventeenth it was at the height of favour. There are two distinct versions of the subject, infinitely varied as to detail and sentiment: either she is represented as bewailing her sins, or as reconciled to Heaven.

In the former treatment she lies prostrate on the earth, or she is standing or kneeling at the entrance of the cave (in some of the old illuminated missals the upper part of her body is seen emerging from a cave, or rather a hole in the ground), the hands clasped, or extended towards heaven; the eyes streaming with tears; the long yellow hair floating over the shoulders. The crucifix, the skull, and sometimes the scourge, are introduced as emblems of faith, mortality, and penance; weeping angels present a crown of thorns.

In the latter treatment she is reading or meditating; the expression is serene or hopeful; a book lies beside the skull; angels present the palm, or scatter flowers; a vision of glory is seen in the skies.

The alabaster box is in all cases the indispensable attribute. The eyes are usually raised, if not in grief, in supplication or in aspiration. The ‘uplifted eye’ as well as the ‘loose hair’ became a characteristic; but there are some exceptions. The conception of character and situation, which was at first simple, became more and more picturesque, and at length theatrical—a mere vehicle for sentiment and attitude.

1. The earliest example I can remember of the Penitent Magdalene, _dramatically_ treated, remains as yet unsurpassed,—the reading Magdalene of Correggio, in the Dresden Gallery. This lovely creation has only one fault the virginal beauty is that of a Psyche or a Seraph. In Oelenschläger’s drama of ‘Correggio,’ there is a beautiful description of this far-famed picture; he calls it ‘Die Gottinn des Waldes Frömmigkeit,’—the goddess of the religious solitude. And in truth, if we could imagine Diana reading instead of hunting, she might have looked thus. Oelenschläger has made poetical use of the tradition that Correggio painted this Magdalene for a poor monk who was his confessor or physician; and thus he makes Silvestro comment on the work:—

What a fair picture!—
This dark o’erhanging shade, the long fair hair,
The delicate white skin, the azure robe,
The full luxuriant life, the grim death’s head,
The tender womanhood, and the great book:—
These various contrasts have you cunningly
Brought into sweetest harmony.

But truer, at least nobler in sentiment, is the Magdalene by the same painter (in the Manfrini Palace, Venice), of the same size and similarly draped in dark blue; but here _standing_ at the entrance of her cave. She leans her elbow on the book which lies on the rock, and appears to be meditating on its contents. The head, seen in front, is grand and earnest, with a mass of fair hair, a large wide brow, and deep, deep eyes full of mystery. The expression of power in this head pleases me especially, because true to the character, as I conceive it.

Doch ist es schön von einem Weibe, mein’ ich,
Einmal gefallen wieder sich zu heben;
Es gibt sehr wen’ge Männer, die das können!

Yes! it is good to see a hapless woman,
That once has fallen, redeem herself! In truth,
There be few men, methinks, could do as much.
_Correggio_, Act i. Scene 1.

I do not know why this lovely Manfrini picture should be so much less celebrated than the Dresden Magdalene: while the latter has been multiplied by copies and engravings, I do not remember a single print after the Manfrini Magdalene. There is a bad feeble copy in the Louvre;[299] I know no other.

2. There is a celebrated picture by Timoteo della Vite, in the Bologna Gallery. She is standing before the entrance of her cavern, arrayed in a crimson mantle; her long hair is seen beneath descending to her feet; the hands joined in prayer, the head declined on one side, and the whole expression that of girlish innocence and simplicity, with a touch of the pathetic. A mendicant, not a Magdalene, is the idea suggested; and, for myself, I confess that at the first glance I was reminded of the little Red-Riding-Hood, and could think of no sin that could have been attributed to such a face and figure, beyond the breaking of a pot of butter: yet the picture is very beautiful.

3. The Magdalene of Titian was so celebrated in his own time, that he painted at least five or six repetitions of it, and copies and engravings have since been multiplied. The eyes, swimming in tears, are raised to heaven; the long dishevelled hair floats over her shoulders; one hand is pressed on her bosom, the other rests on the skull; the forms are full and round, the colouring rich; a book and a box of ointment lie before her on a fragment of rock. She is sufficiently woeful, but seems rather to regret her past life than to repent of it, nor is there anything in the expression which can secure us against a relapse. Titian painted the original for Charles V. His idea of the _pose_ was borrowed, as we are told, from an antique statue, and his model was a young girl, who being fatigued with long standing, the tears ran down her face, and Titian attained the desired expression.’(!) His idea therefore of St. Mary Magdalene was the fusion of an antique statue and a girl taken out of the streets; and with all its beauties as a work of art—and very beautiful it is—this _chef-d’œuvre_ of Titian is, to my taste, most unsatisfactory.