Chapter LVII: Conclusion (2)

and so Dr. Pusey himself seems to feel, save in those moods of rebelliousness which now and then come over him. We have seen how he once almost pledged himself to secede if the Gorham judgment was not disavowed. He was too old then to be excused on the plea of youthful impetuosity; at all events, the fit passed away: the baptismal service contents him. We have seen the threats he threw out more than a year ago about a free church if the court of appeal were not modified: that mood too has passed away. His present book speaks in the most contented manner: "Essay and Reviewism a passing storm," is the title that runs along the top of one of his pages; and he speaks of "the bright promise of the year of ingathering which the Lord has blessed!" He has forgotten his despair of last year, and boldly proposes to the Catholic Church terms on which reunion may be made,--terms, we venture to say, which would be rejected at once by every authority of the Church of England itself. Still, with all this, we do not see in his book any indication that, except as to the validity of Anglican orders, he really thinks much better of Anglicanism than Dr. Manning or Dr. Newman. Its authority is nothing to him; and they, on the other hand, do not deny that, though a mere human institution, it teaches many truths which might otherwise be untaught. He is ready to leave it if it "accepts heresy;" but it seems that _what_ is heresy, and what is its acceptance, must be left to himself to decide. This is the language of one party in a contract or a compromise to another; not that of a pupil to a teacher, a child to a parent--above all, not that of a Catholic to his Church. He does not aver that "the Church of England is the best possible bulwark against infidelity," but only "as a matter of fact, that it is at this moment, under God's providence, a real and chief bulwark against it." He complains of Dr. Manning's statement that she "rejects _much_ Christian truth" in a way that looks very much as if he thought she rejected _some_ and he only defends her even then by putting an entirely strange face upon her. He hoists a false flag, and fights for her under it.

We are unwilling to speak personally of an amiable and excellent man; but Dr. Pusey, if there are few exactly like him, is still in his way a representative man; and his work shows thus the position of many others beside himself. It is obvious that he is really in the Church of England because he has nowhere else to go. He is loyal to her, not because he loves and admires her, but because he thinks he can find no other resting-place. Deeply versed in the Scriptures, especially of the Old Testament, and with a large acquaintance with some of the fathers, he has studied them under that fatal disadvantage which consists in the entire ignorance of the living system in which the authors whom he has read lived and breathed. The fathers especially, if they are studied without a knowledge of the ever-living Church, are certain to be misunderstood and to convey inadequate ideas of their own practice and belief. The Church alone explains and completes their testimony. It is exactly the everyday life, the things and customs and ideas that are too familiar to be chronicled, that must ever be unknown to those who have a merely literary knowledge of any system or any set of men. The strange thing is that any reasonable man should suppose it to be otherwise. Dr. Pusey, if we may judge from the opening of his postscript, really seems to think that if St. Augustine were to arrive to-morrow in London, he would go to worship in St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey, rather than at Moorfields or Warwick Street--St. Augustine, who, in a well-known passage, {541} has pointed out the unfailing mark which the common sense of mankind has fixed upon the true Church by the simple popular use of the name Catholic!

The result of Dr. Pusey's thought and study may be summed up in two simple heads. The first is an attitude of mind utterly and entirely alien from that which is the first condition of the relation of a Catholic to the Church. He has never been taught by a church, guided by a church, moulded by a church; he is self-educated and self-reliant; he has made his own teacher for himself, and has never sat at the feet of any other, except of the author of a book of which he was himself the interpreter. Speaking of the possibility of "secession" in his own case, he tells us, "I have always felt that I could have gone in on no other way than that of closing my eyes and accepting whatever was put before me" (p. 98). What a revolution that would be! This attitude of simple, uncriticising, ungrudging docility and obedience, is a thing which to him is a perfect novelty. It is one thing to take our faith from an abstraction of our own brain; quite another to receive it from a living reality, outside and independent of ourselves. This is the first thing that strikes us in men like Dr. Pusey, as their minds are reflected in books such as that before us. The second is an amount of misconception, misunderstanding, and positive ignorance of the Catholic system, which would be simply unintelligible did we not consider the great disadvantages under which any one in his position must have studied it. He is not one of the more rabid school of Anglican controversialists; his character and habits of mind are quite alien from wilful misrepresentation and conscious unfairness. And yet there is hardly a fair statement in his book on matters which belong to Catholicism; and there are many most provoking misstatements, as well as many most ludicrous and childish blunders. The book presents an easy victory to any moderately-informed Catholic theologian who may take the trouble to refute it. This has not been our purpose at present. We have been content with pointing out that his defence of Anglicanism really condemns it, because it implies that he cannot defend it without misrepresenting it. In a future article we may deal with him as a controversialist, and point out, by way of specimen, some few of the mistakes into which he has fallen in his attack on the Catholic Church.

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From The Literary Workman.

IRELAND BEFORE CHRISTIANITY.

The ignorance of true Irish history that prevails, and the absurdity of the things given as facts to a large mass of moderately educated people, is painfully surprising. For instance, it is generally believed among a great number of people, and it is taught to them in books, that Ireland was a land of desolate bogs, and forests filled with wolves, and inhabited by lawless savages, till converted to a "sort of Christianity" by the English, of which Christianity the remarkable part was that it had nothing to do with the Pope. Many people believe St. Patrick to have been an Englishman; others think he was a Welshman, and a few bold spirits of the present day declare that they can prove him to have been an excellent Protestant. Savages, bogs, wolves, and desolation, having been taken {542} compassion upon by the English, they subjugated the people, taught them, gave them laws, and in the reign of Henry II. of England attached Ireland to the British crown, when that country began to have a history. Before that date, that is, before the twelfth century, for Henry II. ascended the throne in 1154, Ireland had had no history worth remembering or worth noting. This is a short summary of the chief points of the Protestant belief on that matter. And although true knowledge concerning many things has struck root and spread amazingly of late years, there is so much still to learn about Ireland, and the history of that country is at once so interesting and so edifying, that "Papers on Irish History" are offered to the readers of the "Workman" with a conviction that they will find a welcome both in that country and in England.

In looking back to the earliest years of the history of Ireland, our instructor is tradition. It is a very curious thing, however, to see that the old tales, which have passed with many for poetic fables, have assumed in these days a remarkable importance, because in so many instances science is proving tradition to be truth. Speaking of Ireland, Camden says: "If what the Irish historians relate be true, this island was not without reason called _Agygia_ or _most ancient_, by Plutarch. For they begin their histories from the remotest period of antiquity, so that compared with them all other nations are of modern date, and but in a kind of infancy. They tell us that one _Caesarea_, granddaughter to Noah, lived here before the flood, and that afterward came _Bartholanus_ (_Partholanus_), a Scythian, 300 years after the flood, and waged fierce war with the giants. Long after this, Nemethus, the Scythian, landed, and was presently driven off by the giants. Afterward, Dela, with some Greeks, made themselves masters of the island; then _Gaothelus_ with his wife _Scota_, daughter of Pharaoh, arrived here, and called the island from her Scotia, and from him _Gaothela_, and this at the time of the Israelites' departure out of Egypt. A few ages after, _Hiberus_ and _Hermione_ (or as the Irish called them, _Ever_ and _Erimon_), sons of _Milesius_, king of Spain, led some colonies into this island, which had been depopulated by a plague. These stories I neither mean to affirm nor refute, making all due allowance for antiquity." Then Camden gives his own opinion in these words: "That this island was originally inhabited upon the general dispersion of mankind, I have not the least doubt." And at this date, no one who may be quoted as understanding the subject, has any doubt of the immense antiquity of the Irish; an antiquity which, in fact, defies calculation. But it is in some measure proved by the discovery in Ireland of those weapons which are the earliest weapons of defence used by man. They are flints chipped into a shape like the head of a spear. They were used before men knew how to use metal; and they belong to that earliest time which geologists have called by the name of the stone age. Geologists have divided the early ages into three: the stone, the bronze, and the iron period. In the stone age, Ireland had a people, and the celts, or flint stones chipped into a form like a spear head, were their weapons.

The debated point of whether or not Ireland was peopled from England, is one which is of little interest. There was a time in the history of man when people could have walked over from France to England, and when Ireland was joined to Wales. Strange as this may read to some persons, it is less strange than the greater instance of, for example, Australia being found peopled, and yet parted from the rest of the world by a great sea. The people of Australia had not gone there in vessels. They had got there by land; and whether, by the gradual work of time, during which the land sunk, and the sea {543} flowed in over it, and by this means gave islands to the world, or whether by enormous convulsions rocks shivered, and the land was rent apart and sunk, as between us and France, where the chasm may be said to be filled in by the water that makes the Straits of Dover--however it was done, whether suddenly or not, the researches of modern science have settled that these things occurred, and that the people who were our forefathers in this manner were separated from each other. Accepting this theory as a truth, it is idle to ask whether Ireland was peopled from this country or not. But in the presence of such a theory, no person can any longer laugh at Ireland's traditional antiquity; it is more reasonable to accept it, and to allow that they have proved their ancient and hereditary intelligence by preserving history.

And this theory of the manner in which islands were divided from continents is, in fact, constantly proving itself before our eyes. Not to go out of England, we may see the progress of such a change now in Lincolnshire. The reason why the great embankments against the sea are necessary there, and have become more than ever necessary of late years, is, that the land is sinking; and but for the preventions that science and labor effect, a part of Lincolnshire would become an island.

There are now a few words to be said about the name Scotia, as applied to Ireland. The Romans called all the far "western people" Scots, or Scythians. It meant a people who sailed--a maritime people--they learnt the word in these countries, for it is _Teutonic_, or northern Celtic; and we use the word ourselves when we speak of a boat _scudding_ over the waves.

That the people from Spain came to Ireland, and that the existing Irish are their descendants, is not disputed. Hiberus and Hermione, called by the Irish Ever and Erimon, left their names in _Hibernia_, from the Spanish for one brother, and in the Irish _Erin_ for the other. But yet Hibernia is a comparatively modern name; and Ireland is the ancient _Scotia_, called Ierne by the Roman poet Claudian and other Roman writers, and Ivvorna by Diodoms Siculus, and many beside.

One word more about the rude flint weapon called everywhere a celt. It took its name undoubtedly from the people who used it. It was the weapon of the northern or Celtic nations. When Celts are found they indicate to us the existence of the men who used them, and their state of civilization. Wherever they are found they are called by this name, and their name is derived from the northern people.

Ireland has always been considered a most healthy country, and in Campbell's Philosophical Survey of Ireland, Dr. Rutty tells us, "The bogs are not injurious to health, and agues are very unfrequent here." And again, these "bogs are not, as may be supposed from their blackness, masses of putrefaction, but, on the contrary, are of such a texture as to resist putrefaction above any other substance we know of." Of such assertions we have now constant proof, and the durability of the beautiful and often highly polished ornaments made out of Irish bogwood is too well known to dwell upon.

The people seem to have been, in very early times, great feeders of sheep, cattle, and pigs. But the richness of the soil of this beautiful island yields to the labor of the scientific former great gain.

Very curious speculations have arisen as to the gold that has been found in Ireland. It remains a mystery. Mr. O'Connor, in his dissertations on the history of Ireland, says, "that, soon after the arrival of the Scots from Spain, we read of Uchadan of Cuala, who rendered himself famous by his skill in the fabrication of metals." This places the civilization of Ireland very far back; and taken together with the early renown of the Irish in music, puts them at once in a {544} position of their own. When a people are musicians and workers in gold, Silver, and other metals, they have advanced a good way in what is meant by the word civilization. Their music is described as being of the most affecting and tender kind; and they seem to have met together, as afterward at Tara, for such accomplished recreations before anything of that kind would have been understood in England.

It will be interesting to give, from "Gough's Additions" to Camden's account of Ireland, some notes of the buried gold that has been found:

"In the bog near Cullen, in the county of Tipperary, in 1732, a laborer found a piece of worked gold, a little less than half the size of a small egg. It weighed 3 ozs. 4 dwts. and 7 grs."

"In 1739, a boy found a circular plate of beaten gold, about eight inches in diameter, which, lapped up in the form of a triangle, enclosed three ingots of gold, which they say could not weigh less than a pound; for the boy no sooner brought them home than his mother, a poor widow, gave them to a merchant, on whose land she had a cabin, as brass to make weights."

This is one of the great many instances in which large pieces of gold were sold as brass. Gold was found in these lumps, and in thin plates, as follows:

"1742. A child found on the brink of a hole a thin plate of gold. 1747. A girl found in the turf-dust a thin plate of gold, rolled on another, which when extended was 14 inches long, and a quarter of an inch broad; of which a fellow standing by took about half from her; what he left weighed 6 dwts. 13 grs. Soon after, an apprentice girl found 1 oz. 5 dwts. of the same kind, rolled after the same manner, in a sod of turf as she made the fire."

Vessels of a "yellow metal," as the people said, were frequently found in this bog. They used to sell them for brass. One was four-sided, and 8 inches high, with a handle on each side; the sisters who possessed it sold it to a tinker, who mended a pot and gave thirteenpence for it. The page of Irish history which the sight of these vessels, and the consideration of their shape and workmanship, might have revealed, has been, doubtless, lost with them in the melting pot.

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From The St. James Magazine.

THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES.

In the elementary works for the instruction of young people we find every day frequent mention of the Colossus of Rhodes. The statue is always represented with gigantic limbs, each leg resting on the enormous rocks which face both sides of the entrance to the principal port of the island of Rhodes, and ships in full sail pass easily, it is said, between its legs; for Pliny the ancient tells us that its height was seventy cubits.

This colossus was reckoned among the seven wonders of the world, the six others being, as is well known, the suspended gardens of Babylon, devised by Nitocris, wife of Nebuchadnezzar; the pyramids of Egypt; the statue of Jupiter Olympicus; the mausoleum of Halicarnassus; the temple of Diana at Ephesus; and the pharos of Alexandria, erected in the year of Rome 470, and completely destroyed by an earthquake A.D. 1303.

{545}

Nowhere has any authority been found for the assertion that the Colossus of Rhodes spanned the entrance to the island, and admitted the passage of vessels in fall sail between its wide-stretched limbs. No old drawing even of that epoch exists, when the statue was yet supposed to be standing; several modern engravings may be seen, but they are mere works of the imagination, executed to gratify the curiosity of amateur antiquarians, or to feed the naive credulity of the ignorant.

A century ago, the Comte de Cayius, a distinguished French archaeologist, found fault with his countrymen for admitting this fiction into the schoolbooks [Footnote 76] for young people; but he sought in vain to trace its origin.

[Footnote 76: "_Memoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions_," t. xxiv.,
p. 369]

Vigenère, in his "_Tableaux de Philostrate_," is supposed to have been the first who ventured to make an imaginary drawing of the colossus. He was followed by Bergier and Chevreau, [Footnote 77] the latter adding a lamp to the hand of the statue.

[Footnote 77: "_Histoire du Monde_," iv., p. 319.]

The greater number of French dictionaries, Rollin, in his "Ancient History," and even some encyclopaedic dictionaries, have adopted the fiction of their predecessors.

A fictitious Greek manuscript, quoted by the mythologist Dachoul, [Footnote 78] further adorns the colossus by giving him a sword and lance, and by hanging a mirror round his neck.

[Footnote 78: "_Religion des Anciens Romains_," p. 211.]

The Comte Ghoisel-Grouffier, in his picturesque "Journey through Greece," published about the year 1780, declares the colossus with the outstretched legs to be fabulous. He says: "This fable has for years enjoyed the privilege so readily accorded to error. It is commonly received, and discarded only by the few who have made ancient history their study. Most people have accepted, without investigation, an assertion which is unsupported by any authority from ancient authors." Nevertheless, the Belgian, Colonel Rottiers, and the English geologist, Hamilton, [Footnote 79] do not yield to this respectable authority, but endeavor to place the site of the statue at the entrance to one of the smaller harbors of the island, scarcely forty feet wide. Rottier goes still further, and gives a superb engraving of the colossus under the form of an Apollo, the bow and quiver on his shoulders, his forehead encircled by rays of light, and holding a beacon flame above his head.

[Footnote 79: "Researches in Asia Minor," etc. London, 1842.]

Polybius is the first among the ancient writers who mentions the Colossus of Rhodes, in enumerating the donations received by the inhabitants of the island after the fearful earthquake they experienced in 222 or 224 b.c. We quote the passage: "The Rhodians have benefited by the catastrophe which befel them, owing to which not only the huge colossus, but also a number of houses and a portion of the surrounding walls, were demolished." Then follows a list of the rich gifts they received from all parts. Among the benefactors Polybius mentions the three kings, Ptolemy III. of Egypt, Antigone Doson, of Macedonia, and Seleucus, of Syria, father of Antiochus. The ancient Pliny records that the colossus, after having stood for sixty-six years, was overthrown by an earthquake, and that it took the artist Charès de Lindos, to whom the Rhodians had intrusted its construction, twelve years to complete his task.

The tendency in art to produce grand effects by colossal works became perceptible twenty-five year's before Phidias; for we find that 463 years before Christ the inhabitants of Syracuse caused a huge statue to be erected to Jupiter Eleutherius, after the death of the tyrant Thrasybulus. This tendency was an indication of the decline of art, traceable during and after the period of Alexander the Great.

But to return to the colossus. One Philo-Byzantius wrote a short treatise on the seven wonders of the ancient world, about 150 years B.C. [Footnote 80] In it he {546} gives an explanation of the construction of the colossus, but nowhere speaks of the extended legs, under which vessels in full sail entered the port. On the contrary, he mentions one sole pedestal, which was of white marble. Moreover, the statue was said to be 105 feet in height, and the harbor entrance, according to modern researches, was 350 feet wide; it could not, therefore, possibly reach across this space. Lastly, if the statue had stood at the entrance of the port, the earthquake must have overthrown it into the sea; whereas Strabo and Pliny tell us that its fragments remained for a considerable time imbedded in the earth, and attracted much attention by their wonderful size and dimensions.

[Footnote 80: It was reprinted with a Latin translation, by J. C.
Orelli, at Leipzic, in 1816. Strabo also mentions the colossus as
one of the seven wonders of the world.]

Now this is the real truth concerning the colossus:

Toward the year 305 B.C., Demetrius Poliorcetes laid siege to Rhodes, and the inhabitants defended themselves with so much bravery that, after a whole year of struggle and endurance, they forced the enemy to retire from the island. The Rhodians, by whom the sun-god (Helios) was worshipped as their patron (having emerged from the waves of the AEgean Sea), inspired by sentiments of devotion, and excited by fervent gratitude for so signal a proof of the divine favor, commanded Charès de Lindos to erect a colossal statue to the honor of their deity. An inscription explained that the expenses of its construction were defrayed out of the sale of the materials of war left by Demetrius on his retreat from the island of Rhodes. This statue was erected on an open space of ground near the great harbor, and near the spot where the pacha's seraglio now actually stands; and its fragments for many years after its destruction were seen and admired by travellers. This explanation is still further supported by the fact, that a chapel built on this ground in the time of the Knights of Rhodes is named _Fanum Sancti Joannis Colossensis_.

We have seen that Strabo, who wrote and travelled during the reigns of the first two Roman emperors, was the earliest author after Polybius who mentioned the fall of the Colossus of Rhodes, and that very concisely. Pliny enters into somewhat fuller details, and speaks of the dimensions of the mutilated limbs. "Even while prostrate," says he, "this statue excited the greatest admiration. Few men could span one of its thumbs with his arms; and each of its fingers was as large as an ordinary full-sized statue. Its broken limbs appeared to strangers like caverns, in the interior of which enormous blocks of stone were seen."

From this time we find no further mention whatever of these fragments; but it is curious that toward the end of the second century several writers speak of a colossal statue at Rhodes as still existing. It is possible that one was again constructed, but of smaller dimensions. Indeed, Leo Allazzi tells us that the Colossus of Rhodes was reconstructed and completed under the Emperor Vespasian; but later Greek authors give us nothing in support of this opinion.

A long time after the fall of the Roman empire the island of Rhodes was conquered by the general-in-chief of the Caliph Othman, in the seventh century of the Christian era; and then mention is once more made of a colossus in metal. "This last memorial of a glorious past was not respected by the conqueror," says the Byzantine history. "The general took down the colossus which stood erect on the island, and transported the metal into Syria, and sold it to a Jew, who loaded 980 camels with the materials of his purchase."

We should refer any who may be curious for further details on the Colossus of Rhodes to a remarkable work on the subject by Carl Ferdinand Lüders, in which the fiction of the gigantic outstretched limbs is completely disposed of; but with such an array of learned accessories, _more germanico_, that few will perhaps read it throughout.

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{547}

From The Month.

PUBLIC LIFE OF ST. CATHARINE OF SIENA.

No one can expect to find the history of the Church free from vicissitude; as it has its bright and glorious periods, so also it has its times of gloom and darkness, when a superficial observer might almost interpret the disastrous character of the more salient facts that meet his eye, as the evidence of a suspension of the vital activity and healthy vigor of the whole body. But the life of the Church is essentially internal, and depends on the free action of divine grace, penetrating and animating the whole community--an action that is perpetually kept up by the most common and unobtrusive ministrations of sacramental strength, which are going on in full frequency and efficacy, while the political fortunes of the hierarchy, or of the supreme power, are crushed by oppression or persecution; or even while scandals are seen in high places--when bishops become courtiers, when cardinals are truckling to kings and emperors, and popes are in captivity or exile. And it often happens that these dark times are most prolific of the noblest fruits of the interior life; and that at such seasons the choicest treasures of the Church--the souls on whom great and special graces have been bestowed--are providentially brought out into unusual prominence, so as to exercise great influence and give a character to the period, or a direction to some of its most important transactions. Even if it be not so, at all events we have only to go a little below the surface in order to find plentiful indications of the rich veins that are contained in no soil but one. Thus, in Italy, at the time in which this paper treats, there were a number of saintly souls, whose names have since taken rank in the calendar of the Church. The secular historian sees little more than a set of quarrelsome states, restless in their mutual discord and aggressive ambition, and distracted, ever and anon, by the most furious domestic strife, which would slake itself with nothing but blood. St. Andrew Corsini once showed his audience, as he was preaching in the Piazza of Fiesole, looking down on Florence, an immense flight of hawks, kites, and other ravenous birds, battling with one another over the city. They represented, he told them, the number of evil spirits that were engaged in stirring up the inhabitants to intestine discord. Florence was not worse, but rather better, and more thoroughly Catholic, than its neighbors; yet when we take up such a life, for instance, as that of St. Giovanni Colombini, of Siena, the founder of the Gesuati, we find ourselves at once in an atmosphere of calm and fresh simplicity, of happy peace, fervent devotion, and loving faith; and it is only by the chance mention of public calamities--the sufferings of the peasants, whose fruit-trees had been cut down by the German "company"' of marauders, and the like--that we are reminded of the Italy of the day, with its endless disturbances and hopeless insecurity. We have not merely the beautiful picture of Giovanni himself, and his immediate followers and friends; of his good wife, for instance, who begged him to read her pious book while she kept him waiting a few minutes for his dinner, and who, though he had at first thrown it on the floor in a fit of impatient anger, could not persuade him to leave it, when all was ready, till he had read to the end the story of St. Mary of {548} Egypt. She had prayed that he might be more given to almsgiving than he was, and then had to complain that she had prayed for a shower, not for a deluge, when he began to give away everything in the house; and she had to yield at last to his saintly fervor, and release him altogether from the obligations of the married life. It is not only Francesco Vincenti, the other rich and noble gentleman of Siena, who caught up the example of Giovanni, began to give great alms, dress shabbily, and serve the poor, and at last joined him in giving up the world altogether, and placing himself under religious obedience; or Giovanni's cousin Catarina, the first of the nuns whom he established, whom he could not persuade to embrace the state of poverty, though she had given up the idea of marriage, till he called her to a little window in the wall between their two houses, one night, as she was going up to bed with her lamp lit, and talked to her in so heavenly a strain that her heart was perfectly changed; and when she turned to go away at last, she found that she had been listening all night, and the morning rays were streaming through the shutters, though, as he bade her observe, the little stock of oil in her lamp was unconsumed. These might be accidents of piety and simple faith in particular families; but we cannot so account for the great number of followers that enlisted themselves under Giovanni--so many, that the worthy magistrates of Siena thought fit for a time to banish him and his companions from the city, lest every one should join them; nor for the ready and enthusiastic welcome that he met with wherever he went throughout Tuscany, the joy with which his preaching was received, and the rapid fruit that it produced. The beautiful account of him and his early followers, written in the century after his death by Feo Belcari, is full of details and anecdotes that seem to prove the powerful hold that faith and religion retained upon the mass of the population in those seemingly black and miserable days. The mere number of his followers, as we have said, is an evidence of this, the proofs to which the novices were put were very severe indeed; yet when Urban V. came from France to Italy, Giovanni went to meet him at Corneto with a company of seventy, all of whom had joined him within two years. The same conclusion is forced upon us when we take up the life or the letters of the still more famous child of the same fair city, St. Catharine of Siena, of whose public influence we hope to give presently some short account. The family of religious disciples whom she collected around her in the course of her short life, from all ranks and classes, could never have been furnished save by a population thoroughly penetrated with religious feeling, and familiar with the loftiest principles of faith. Her own home, too, is a charming picture. There is the good pious father, "a man simple and without guile," as Father Raymond tells us, "fearing God, and keeping free from vice;" a man so moderate in speech, that for no occasion whatever, of disturbance or trouble that was given him, did unbecoming words escape his lips; rather, when others of his family felt bitterly, and he heard them break out into angry words, he set himself at once, with a joyous countenance, to comfort them, saying, "Ah, God give you good luck! don't fret yourself, or say things like that, which don't befit us." He let himself be injured and brought to the brink of ruin by a false charge, and yet would never allow any one in his presence to speak against his accuser, leaving his cause entirely to God; and in due time all was wonderfully set right. His large family of children were brought up with so much modesty, and with so great a hatred of anything licentious, though only in word, that one of the daughters, whom he had given in marriage to a young man who had lost his parents when a child, and learnt bad language from the chance companions he had picked up, made herself ill with {549} grieving over her husband's bad habit in this respect, and could never be well or happy till he had given it up. We hear less of the rest of the family. Catharine was one of twenty-five children; but though they opposed for a while her resolution not to marry, and tried to make her give up her excessive penances, they seem to have been good, fervent Christians; and her mother, with her natural love for her child, struggling against the sacrifice of giving her up entirely to the service of God, is delightful in her simplicity, and her character gives a charming air of truthfulness and reality to the whole picture. But there is no reason for supposing that the family of the good Jacomo and Lapa were far above the level of their neighbors in virtue and piety, except in the instance of the one chosen soul whose wonderful graces and history have alone saved them from being altogether forgotten, like the mass of their daily companions in the streets and the churches of Siena. What we are told of them reveals that which escapes the notice of the superficial historian--the daily life of a Catholic people, however politically unsettled, and subject to violent outbreaks natural to its hot temperament and passionate disposition--though the character of the Siennese was said to be comparatively gentle and sweet--still thoroughly leavened and penetrated by the faith that had been handed down through an unbroken succession of generations, since the city's first martyr consecrated its soil by his blood. Such, in general, was the population of Italy, and, of course, of great parts of Europe, at that time; and such a population constitutes a resource, as it were, for the Church, that it must take, it would seem, many generations thoroughly to corrupt or to destroy. From the depths of such a people springs ordinarily the ever-fresh crop of eminent saints, who form the chief glories and supports of the Church in their successive generations; and the wide extent to which the principles of Christian faith and practice influence the mass from which they themselves rise, makes it possible for them to gather followers around them, to touch the springs of public action and thought, and to exercise the wonderful influence upon the men of their day which is so strange an enigma to the uncatholic historian. [Footnote 81]

[Footnote 81: Thus Dr. Milman ("Latin Christianity," t. v., p.
891-2) is fairly upset by what he calls a "most extraordinary
letter" of St Catharine. It is that in which she relates her
assistance of Nicola Tuldo, when under sentence of death and on the
scaffold. He adds at the end of his note: "St. Catharine had the
stigmata. And this woman interposed between popes, princes, and
republics." We may see, perhaps, whether she "interposed," or was
entreated to do so; whether her influence was sought by herself, or
forced on her by others. ]

The singularly beautiful life of St. Catharine of Siena, written by her friend and confessor, Raymond of Capua, gives us as perfect an account as we could wish to have of the personal and, as it were, private history of the saint, and sets her character before us in the freshest colors, like a picture of Fra Angelico. But it is deficient in that very part of her life to which it is our purpose more particularly to attend. The public influence exercised by St. Catharine was fresh in the recollection of those for whom Fr. Raymond wrote: they wished to be told the antecedents, as it were, of a person whom they had seen brought forward by Providence in so remarkable a manner to support the papacy in an hour of severe trial. A complete life of St. Catharine would have to include a great many points which have been omitted by Raymond; and much that he has mentioned or alluded to would have to be fixed more accurately as to time and place. Nor could any one hope to draw up such a work with success without the fullest acquaintance with the ample collection of her letters. It is from these last that many most important features of her public life would have to be drawn. [Footnote 82] We owe them, probably, to {550} the care with which her disciples or secretaries copied them before they were sent, for it is hardly likely that they could have been otherwise recovered from the persons to whom they were addressed.

[Footnote 82: One of the best sketches of St Catharine's action on
public matters with which we are acquainted is contained in the
introduction to M. Caltier's recent translation of her letters into
French. The "_Histoire de Ste. Catharine_," published many years ago
by M. Chavin de Malan, contains a great deal of extraneous matter,
and does not scene to as to use the letters as they might have been
used. M. Christophe, in his "_Histoire de la Papauté pendant le XlVe
Siècle_," falls entirely in giving sufficient importance to the
saint. There is a good Italian "_Storia di Sta. Catarina da Siena_,"
by Fr. Capecelatro, an Oratorian, published a few years ago, in
which much use is made of the admirable notes of Fr. Buramacchi to
Gilgli's edition of the letters.]

It is not easy to say at what precise time the public action of Catharine began. She was in the twenty-fourth year of her age at the time of the death of Urban V. She had already passed, for about four years, from that life of prayer, mortification, and contemplation with which her saintly career had begun, to one of greater intercourse with others; and she had already brought about some very wonderful conversions, of which Fr. Raymond has given us an account. She had in several cases been successful in obtaining reconciliations between families hostile to one another through the hereditary feuds and traditions of revenge which have always had so baneful an effect on Italian society; but it does not appear that she had had any personal intercourse with Urban V., or any of the great prelates or princes of the time; and perhaps her fame had not travelled far beyond the frontiers of Tuscany. Giacomo Orsini, who passed through Siena in the year following the death of Urban to receive the dignity of cardinal from Gregory XI., may have made her acquaintance in her native town, and carried the report of her wonderful sanctity to the court of Avignon. The next year, 1372, we find her already in correspondence with important persons. War had again broken out between the Holy See and the restless Barnabo Visconti. Barnabo had usurped the dominion of Reggio, a fief of the Church, and had proceeded to other excesses, such as to force Gregory XI. to excommunicate him in 1371. War was now declared; but it was at first favorable to the Milanese tyrant. A league was then organized against him, in which the emperor, the King of Hungary, and the Count of Savoy took part. John Hawkwood, moreover, with his famous English lances, was engaged on the Pontifical side. The success was now chiefly on the side of the league, and Visconti once more betook himself to intrigues and negotiations at Avignon, where he obtained a truce in 1374. We find St. Catharine writing, in 1372, to two great French prelates, the Cardinal Pierre d'Estaing, who had just been appointed legate at Bologna; and the Abbot of Marmontier, a relation of the Pope, who was sent at the same time to govern Peragia and discharge the office of nuncio in Tuscany. Her letters to the cardinal seem to show that she was already known to him. The first contains little but spiritual exhortation, though there is a hint at the end to the saints favorite subject at this time, the crusade against the infidels. In the second she speaks strongly for peace among Christians. The letter to the abbot--who afterward became a cardinal, and died on the schismatical side--is evidently an answer to a letter from him, asking advice for himself and also for the Pope. St. Catharine urges him to prevail on the Holy Father to put down the nepotism that prevailed among high ecclesiastics, to discourage the luxurious worldliness of the prelates, and to choose good and virtuous men as cardinals. A little later we find her writing to the truculent Barnabo himself, the man who made papal legates eat the missives of excommunication which they were charged to deliver to him--who declared that he was Pope in his own dominions, and dressed up a mad priest in mock vestments to excommunicate the Pope in return, and made the monasteries under his rule take charge of his hounds. This letter, again, was in answer to a message brought to Siena from Barnabo by {551} one of his servants. Catharine sets before him the crime he has been guilty of in going to war with the Pope, and exhorts him to make amends for it by taking part in the crusade. The letter seems to have been written after the peace granted to Visconti in 1374. The same date, or perhaps an earlier one, seems to belong to a long letter of the saint to Beatrice della Scala, the wife of Barnabo, in which that lady is urged to become more religious herself, and thus to influence her husband, especially to peace and obedience toward the Holy Father. This letter, also, is in answer to a message.

Catharine's life became still more active than before about this time. She was sent for to Florence by the general of her order, and seems to have gone about to several other cities, such as Pisa and Lucca, and to have exercised great influence everywhere. Her presence had before this begun to attract crowds wherever she went: they came to speak to her, to consult her about the affairs of their souls or their family troubles; and her burning words wrought numberless conversions. The B. Raymond, speaking of this part of her life, tells us in his simple way, "If all the limbs of my body were turned into so many tongues, they would not be enough to relate the fruit of souls which this virgin plant, that the heavenly Father hath planted, did produce. I have sometimes seen a thousand persons or more, men and women, come at the same time, as if drawn by the sound of some unseen trumpet, from the mountains or from the villages in the territory of Siena, to see or to hear Catharine. These persons--I don't say at her words, but even at the mere sight of her--were suddenly struck with compunction for their misdeeds, bewailed their sins, and ran to the confessors, of whom I was one; and so great was the contrition with which they made their confessions, that no one could doubt that a great abundance of grace had descended from heaven upon their hearts. This happened not once or twice only, but very often. For this reason Pope Gregory XI., of happy memory, who was both consoled and rejoiced at this great fruit in souls, granted letters apostolic to me and to my two companions, giving us power to absolve all those who came to see Catharine and to confess their sins, in all the cases for which the bishops of the dioceses had faculties. And that truth, that neither deceives nor can be deceived, knows well that many came to find us out who were laden with great sins, and who had never before made confession, or never received as it ought to be received the sacrament of penance. We--that is, my companions and myself--often remained fasting till evening, and were too few to hear all those who wished to confess; and indeed, to declare my own imperfection, and the influence of this holy virgin, so great was the throng of people wishing to confess that many times I found myself quite worn out and wearied by the excess of fatigue. But Catharine went on praying incessantly; and when the holy prey was won, she rejoiced fully in the Lord, as one who had won a victory, ordering her other sons and daughters to wait upon us, who were tending the nets that she had spread. No pen can express the abundance of the joy in her mind, nor even the signs of gladness that she gave, which indeed gave us so much internal delight as to make us forget the recollection of any sadness whatever we had to undergo." [Footnote 83]

[Footnote 83: _Legenda_, ii. ch., 7.]

Gregory XI. seems before his election to have been well acquainted with St. Bridget, for he was the cardinal through whom she had wished to communicate to Urban V. the message that she had received to deliver to him. He kept up a correspondence with her as long as she lived, and received some tremendous warnings from her about the return of the Holy See to Rome. At the time of which {552} we are speaking, 1374, in the fifth year of his reign, he sent St. Bridget's confessor to Catharine to recommend himself to her prayers. This may have been the opening of the intercourse between them. Of the fourteen letters to Gregory that remain to us, none seem to bear an earlier date than 1376. [Footnote 84] It does not appear certain, therefore, whether she had any direct influence upon the Pope's desire to set on foot a new crusade, which he urged on with much vigor about the time of the peace granted to Visconti. But it was one of St. Catharine's three darling projects; the other two being the reform of the prelacy and the restoration of the papacy to Rome. The fact that her confessor and friend, Fr. Raymond, was appointed to preach the crusade seems to imply that she had been in communication with Gregory upon the subject. We have already said that she proposed to Barnabo himself to take the cross. The idea of sending all the turbulent spirits in Europe to fight against the Turks was not a new one; Urban V. had proposed it to the "companies" who ravaged France and even insulted him by exacting a ransom for Avignon; but the freebooters naturally preferred the less dangerous, though less glorious, life that they were living in France. They were at last persuaded to enlist against Peter the Cruel. In St. Catharine's time there was a proposal of the same kind, with regard to the "bands" in Italy, whom we shall presently see the instruments of the greatest possible mischief to that unhappy country. We have a letter from her to Sir John Hawkwood, from which it appears that he and his followers had actually Engaged to serve in the crusade. Other letters on the subject of the same expedition show that she was now in a position to address herself with effect to the sovereigns of great states. She writes at this time to Queen Joanna of Naples, and to the queen-mother of Hungary, in hopes of her assistance in persuading her son, King Louis. But if the peace with Barnabo had made the crusade once more possible, fresh troubles soon ensued in Italy which prevented it, and which occasioned the still greater prominence of St. Catharine as an earnest advocate of peace.

[Footnote 84: Four of these letters (7-10) were written while
Catharine was at Avignon, and were only to be found in Latin among
the papers of B. Raymond, who was, it appears, interpreter between
the saint and the Pope, who did not understand her Tuscan dialect.
M. Chavin de Malan (ii., 369) conjectures that the first three of
them may be summaries of _conversations_ that passed at Avignon,
taken down afterward by B. Raymond. But internal evidence is against
this supposition; and it is not at all unlikely, as the opposition
to her influence was so strong, that the Pope preferred that she
should communicate with him by letter.]