Chapter XXI: Part II: Le Parti (5)

St. Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, who was born and died in the fourth century, owed his early training of piety and solid learning to his mother, who was left a widow during his infancy, and to his elder sister Marcellina, to whom later on Christendom became indebted for the three admirable books he wrote on _The State of Virginity_. Another of his famous works is a treatise on _Widowhood_. In one of his books on _Virginity_ he meets the common though worn-out argument that virginity is a foe to the propagation of the human race. As this bears upon our general subject, though it be not immediately akin to it, we will stop to quote it. “Some complain,” he says, “that mankind will shortly fail if so many are consecrated virgins. I desire to know who ever wanted a wife and could not find one? The killing of an adulterer, the pursuing of waging war against a ravisher, are the consequences of marriage. The number of people is greatest where virginity is most esteemed. Inquire how many virgins are consecrated every year at Alexandria, all over the East, and in Africa, where there are more virgins than there are men in this country [Italy].” And Butler, in his _Life of St. Ambrose_, goes on to explain: “May not the French and Austrian Netherlands, full of numerous monasteries, yet covered with populous cities, be at present esteemed a proof of this remark? The populousness of China, where great numbers of new-born infants are daily exposed to perish, is a terrible proof that the voluntary virginity of some is no prejudice to the human race. Wars and the sea, not the number of virgins, are the destroyers of the human race, as St. Ambrose observes; though the state of virginity is not to be rashly engaged in, and marriage is not only holy, but the general state of mankind in the world.” Not only did St. Ambrose occupy his mind and pen with the concerns of holy and spotless women, but he did not think it beneath his dignity to write for those unhappy virgins who had fallen from their vows and thus been reft of their most precious heirloom. In the third book of his work on _Virginity_, he pays the following homage to Christian woman, such as she was in his age: “I have been a priest but three years,” he says, “and my experience has not been long enough to teach me what I have written. But what my own experience could not teach, the sight of your conduct has suggested. If, in this work, you find any flowers of thought, know that I have gathered them from your own lives. I do not so much give you precepts, as I draw examples from the behavior of living virgins, and set them before the eyes of the world. My discourse has only reproduced the image of your virtues. It is but the portrait of your own life, so grave and earnest, which you will see here, beaming with light as reflected from a mirror. If you find grace in these words, it is you who have inspired my mind with it. All that is good in this book belongs to you.” (Third book on _Virgins_.) What more graceful tribute, more appreciative homage, could man render to the opposite sex? Yet he who wrote this was a great and powerful bishop, a doctor of the church, a profoundly learned man, whose influence was spread through kingdoms, and whose advice was sought and followed by emperors. Here is yet another example of the distinguished part played by woman in affairs of the highest public importance. Capefigue, in his _Four First Ages of the Church_, says that in the churches of Rome might be seen the most noble matrons of the city, “who gave the first and greatest impulse to all Christian sentiments.” This was at the end of the fourth century, and the two Melanias were then foremost among the active and energetic women mentioned. The elder Melania, whose fortune was immense, and who was married early by her father, the Consul Marcellinus, became a widow after a few years of married life, and thereafter devoted herself to the church. She travelled to Egypt and Palestine in the interests of the persecuted Patriarch Athanasius, whom she protected and supported with all the moral influence and temporal means at her command. The zealous and open protectress of more than five thousand Christians, the harborer of priests and bishops driven from their sees and parishes during the Arian persecutions of the Emperor Valens, she was herself cast into prison by the Governor of Jerusalem, to whom she spoke thus boldly and fearlessly: “Do not think to despise me because I wear poor garments: I might wear the robes of a princess, did I choose to do so. Do not think to intimidate me by your threats, for I have sufficient influence to protect me against the slightest aggression on your part. I tell you this, and give you this advice, that you may not through ignorance commit any error that might lead you into danger.” The courageous woman was released, and continued her ministrations of mercy. Her granddaughter, St. Melania, married young to a noble Roman, the descendant of the great Publicola, and the son of the Prefect of Rome, was even a more prominent personage than the elder Melania. After the birth and death of two children, she and her husband renounced their high position, freed eight thousand slaves, and sold their immense possessions in several parts of the Roman Empire for the benefit of the poor. They then retired to a quiet country solitude in Campania, and with several associates began leading “the perfect life” which we have so often seen attempted in vain in this age by refined and earnest souls without the bosom of the church. Here, their chief occupation was the study and the propagation of the Scriptures and other solid works of learning and faith. The works of the fathers were foremost among the latter, and Ventura says with truth that we may well thank woman when we read these admirable treatises, for without her help, care, and zeal they would be considerably less in number than they are. The love of the Scriptures and of Biblical lore seems thus to have been a distinctive mark of the sex in the early days of the church.

Melania and her companions after a time left Italy, and settled in Africa near Hippo, and there became the most active allies of St. Augustine. They also journeyed through Spain, Palestine, and Asia Minor, always in the interests of the faith, founding monasteries and schools, and assisting the poor and the persecuted. After her husband’s death, Melania, having been wrecked on the coast of Sicily, and having found several thousand Christians in bondage to barbarian idolaters, she redeemed and freed them all. At one time she held a high post at court, and exerted herself successfully in favor of orthodoxy. When the Nestorian heresy was making great progress in Asia and Africa, she uncompromisingly combated it by her influence and social talents, by the persuasion of her manner and the force of her arguments, as Ribadeneira testifies in the sketch he wrote of her life. Ventura asserts that she confounded Pelagius himself, who by all manner of arts endeavored to win her to his side; and it is known that, when St. Augustine failed to convert Volusian, the Prefect of Rome, and uncle to Melania, this heroic woman, according to Baronius, undertook to convince him, and succeeded most triumphantly. Melania’s funeral at Jerusalem was the occasion of lavish homage to the power and influence of her sex; bishops and confessors were eager to show their respect and admiration, and the Christian world proved once more that “precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.”

Marcella, one of St. Jerome’s spiritual daughters, and whose funeral eulogy he wrote, was, according to this great saint’s own words, “the greatest glory of the city of Rome.” When Alaric and his Goths invaded Rome, her house was broken into, and herself cruelly beaten and disfigured. All her reply was, “My gold I have given to the poor: you will find nothing in my possession but the tunic I wear.” She collected many holy and learned women around her, and her house was the rallying point of all Christians. All good works received their impetus from her, and she was often consulted by bishops and priests on questions of Biblical learning, after St. Jerome, who had taught her the Scriptures, had left Rome. Although consecrated virgins of both sexes abounded in her time, as yet no distinct community under a recognized rule had been formed in Rome. She undertook to establish the monastic life in the capital of the empire, and was the first to reduce to order the elements of which such a community might be formed. With the advice of St. Athanasius, and some fugitive priests of Alexandria, who took refuge in Rome in 340, during the Arian persecution in the East, Marcella gave up a country-seat of hers for a monastery, and adopted for the future religious the rule of St. Pachomius. The men followed her example, and assembled in concert to found communities of their own. Rome vied with the Thebaïd for sanctity and learning, and this was the work of a woman. When, in the seventh century, St. Benedict, the reformer and patriarch of all religious orders in Europe, reduced monasticism in the West to the state in which we know it in our own days, he was only, says Ventura (_Donna Cattolica_, vol. i. p. 488), walking in the path which the heroic women of Christendom had hewn out before him in imitation of the hermits and anchorites of the East. But Marcella shines no less as a pillar of orthodoxy than as the institutrix of Western monachism. When the Origenists, through the aid of the cunning Rufinus and the intriguing Macarius, who disseminated skilfully veiled errors in Rome, began to attack the integrity of the Christian faith, Marcella left her solitude, and came to the capital to confront the heresiarchs. The following details are all vouched for by St. Jerome in the funeral eulogy addressed by him to her friend and scholar Principia: “The faith of the Roman people had been weakened on many points.... The new heresy had made many victims, even among priests and monks.... The Sovereign Pontiff himself, Siricius, who was as conspicuous for holy simplicity as for sanctity of life, and who judged of others by the candor of his own soul, seemed for a moment to have become the dupe of the hypocrisy of these new pharisees. The orthodoxy of the bishops Vincent, Eusebius, Paulinian, and Jerome had even been suspected, and, when they cried out that the wolf was in the fold, no one vouchsafed to listen to them. In this grave emergency, in presence of much coldness, indifference, and weakness on the part of _men_, God made use of the far-sightedness, the zeal, the courage of a _woman_ to keep the faith intact in Rome. Marcella, more eager to please God than men, resisted the Origenist heresy publicly, vigorously, and efficaciously. She it was who by the very testimony of those who had first been deceived by the new errors and then abjured them, convinced every one of the real nature of the heretical doctrine. She stimulated the zeal of the Sovereign Pastor by proving to him how many souls had already gone astray.... She was the first to point out to him the disguised impieties of the garbled translations of Origen’s book on _Principles_, which Rufinus had translated and altered, and was now selling everywhere. She often summoned the heretics to come and justify themselves in Rome, but they dared not answer, and preferred being condemned as absent and contumacious, rather than be publicly confounded by a woman. At last, when a general condemnation was pronounced upon their doctrines, it was chiefly the result of Marcella’s vigilance.” Here, therefore, is a woman exerting a guiding influence on the destinies of the church by her learning, subtleness, and eloquence. If the women of the early centuries achieved such successes with the natural weapons of their sex and position, why do our sisters of the present day desire a reorganization of society, and a new accession of hitherto unknown and unnatural weapons? Why indeed but because the order of society sanctioned and regulated by the church has been subverted by the Reformation; the holy charter of woman abolished; and elegant and veiled Islamism, or in some instances a coarse and degrading barbarianism, inculcated and forcibly brought into action concerning woman, and the sex gradually forced out of its legitimate orbit, with its capabilities dwarfed, its intellect narrowed, its talents sneered at, and its affections repressed? The broad river of woman’s influence, flowing so calmly and majestically through the centuries of the church’s undisturbed unity, has been dammed up by the Protestant tradition of the last three hundred years, till it has broken forth again as a turbulent torrent, devastating where it once fertilized, disturbing where once it conciliated. In its new form and its strange aggressiveness, it now horrifies mankind, where in early days, in its legitimate sphere, it guided the greatest statesmen, orators, and saints, and gravely helped them on the road to heaven, to science, and to happiness. But we are digressing, for we have undertaken to speak of facts, not to declaim about theories. We have much ground to travel over yet before we come to the end of the list of glorious women who have made the church, so to speak, their panegyrist, and the world their debtor. We have once before mentioned the Roman ladies, Proba, Juliana, and Demetrias, to whom St. Chrysostom recommended his envoys and their mission to Pope St. Innocent. Demetrias was the daughter of the Consul Olibrius and of St. Juliana; Proba was her grandmother on her father’s side. The two widows, having converted their husbands, consecrated their after-lives to the education of Demetrias. St. Augustine was their friend and counsellor, and wrote them letters that are among the most prominent of his works. One to Proba is on the efficacy and the nature of prayer; another to Juliana treats of the advantages and duties of widowhood. When Demetrias announced her intention of remaining a virgin, the holy joy of the family knew no bounds, and the day of her formally receiving the veil was a festival for all Rome. St. Jerome honored her with a discourse which has come down to us in the shape of a _Letter to Demetrias_, followed by a treatise on _Virginity_, and not only did he interrupt for this purpose the grave commentaries on the Scriptures in which he was engaged, but he also addressed to the parents of the virgin such congratulations as rang throughout Italy, and made the holy and happy trio the envy of every matron and maiden in the Christian world. (Ventura, _Donna Cattolica_, vol. i. p. 520.) The heresiarch Pelagius so little understood the importance of woman that he took the trouble to address to Demetrias a letter so long that it almost forms a book, which is still extant, and was intended to instil into her mind his insidious errors. St. Augustine, however, cautioned her against Pelagius, and bid her keep staunch to “the faith of Pope Innocent.”

There was one sphere which more than any other was christianized and influenced for good by women, and indeed could not have been otherwise sanctified--the sphere of the imperial court, both in Rome and in Constantinople. We have already seen empresses and relatives of the Cæsars becoming Christians and often martyrs, but it remained for the women of the fourth and fifth centuries to make the palace into a sanctuary and add the lustre of a heavenly crown to the majesty of an earthly sceptre. Constantine, under whose auspices Christianity first emerged from the Catacombs, was the gift of woman to the church. His mother Helena, his wife Fausta, and his mother-in-law Eutropia (the two latter being respectively the wife and daughter of Maximian-Herculeus) were zealous and devoted Christians, and to their influence are due the toleration and subsequently the favor with which the faith was treated by Constantine. Eusebius relates that Eutropia on her pilgrimage to the Holy Places found idols and sacrificial rites still flourishing near the famous oak of Mambre, where tradition places the scene of the visit of the three angels to Abraham. She wrote to her son-in-law in unconcealed indignation, and thus procured after a time the destruction of the shameful altars. Later on we find the emperor building a church on the identical spot. The progress of the Empress Helen through Palestine is as an ovation to the faith, and a record of churches built and monasteries founded in every Holy Place. She constantly besought her son’s aid and munificence in these undertakings, and extended the protection of his name to all Christian establishments in the East. We owe to her piety and energy the most solemn and the greatest of the memorials of the Passion, the Holy Cross on which our Lord suffered and died. It is likewise to her, a woman, that we owe one of the most beautiful of Christian churches, that of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, as well as one of the most interesting basilicas of Rome, _Santa Croce in Gerusalemme_, where a portion of the august relic of the cross was deposited. Her charities were numberless, her foundations magnificent. She alleviated the condition of those who were condemned to the mines, and freed many from chains and slavery. The city of Drepanum in Bythinia, where St. Lucian the martyr had died for his God, she so beautified and endowed in his honor that after her death her son changed its name to Helenopolis. Even the fame of the local and municipal life of many cities can be traced to the influence and activity of woman, and further on we shall see how some of her sex have laid colleges, schools, and universities under eternal obligations. Constance, the daughter of Constantine, was the first convert of the imperial family, and exercised no little influence over her father. She assembled numbers of holy virgins, and consecrated herself with them in a state of virginity to the service of God and the poor. When Constantius, her brother, became emperor, and, favoring Arianism, called himself head of the church, while he exiled Pope Liberius, hundreds of the Roman ladies united in a deputation to protest against this illegal act. As long as the anti-Pope Felix remained in Rome, these same women utterly scorned his authority, and encouraged the people to refuse to hold communion with him. This firm attitude of the women of Rome had its reward, and Pope Liberius was at length recalled when the emperor perceived that the forced schism was likely to result in sedition against himself. Maximus, Emperor of the West, through the influence of his Christian wife, became the friend and protector of St. Martin of Tours; and Theodosius, the contemporary of St. Ambrose, was mainly guided in his wise and, upon the whole, salutary administration by his wife Placidia and his daughter Pulcheria. But his granddaughter, also named Pulcheria, and justly honored as a saint, was pre-eminently the glory of the Eastern Empire and the honor of her sex as well as of her order. Her reign was the triumph of the church, the golden age of justice, the realization of a Christian Utopia. When the tranquillity of the age was disturbed, it was through the decline of her influence and the triumph over her of her many enemies. When her father Arcadius died and left his throne to his son Theodosius, she was chosen not as regent, but as _Augusta_, or co-ruler and empress, with her brother, and moreover was entrusted with the care and responsibility of his education. The historian Rohrbacher, ever eager to extol the sex says of her: “It was a marvel, the equal of which has never been known either before or since, and which God wrought in those days for the glory of woman, whom his grace sanctified and his wisdom inspired--that a maiden of sixteen should govern successfully so vast an empire.” Pulcheria reduced the imperial household to a degree of order and decorum more resembling a college than a court; her brother’s masters were all chosen and approved by her, and the utmost respect was paid by her both to the laws and the prelates of the church. Alban Butler, in his _Lives of the Saints_, speaks of her and her reign in these terms: “The imperial council was, through her discernment, composed of the wisest, most virtuous, and most experienced persons in the empire: yet, in deliberations, all of them readily acknowledged the superiority of her judgment and penetration. Her resolutions were the result of the most mature consideration, and she took care herself that all orders should be executed with incredible expedition, though always in the name of her brother, to whom she gave the honor and credit of all she did. She was herself well skilled in Greek and Latin, in history and other useful branches of literature, and was, as every one must be who is endowed with greatness of soul and a just idea of the dignity of the human mind, the declared patroness of the sciences and of both the useful and polite arts. Far from making religion subservient to policy, all her views and projects were regulated by it, and by this the happiness of her government was complete. She prevented by her prudence all revolts which ambition, jealousy, or envy might stir up to disturb the tranquillity of the church or state; she cemented a firm peace with all neighboring powers, and abolished the wretched remains of idolatry in several parts. Never did virtue reign in the oriental empire with greater lustre, never was the state more happy or more flourishing, nor was its name ever more respected even among barbarians, than whilst the reins of the government were in the hands of Pulcheria.” Ventura is not less explicit in praise of this great woman. After mentioning the different studies embraced in the plan of education which Pulcheria had traced for her brother, he says: “In these arrangements, both the subject-matter which was to occupy the young prince’s attention, and the time he was to spend in each occupation, were so judiciously and admirably managed that such a plan of education seemed rather the work of an experienced philosopher than that of a young girl of sixteen.... Theodosius possessed neither a generous soul nor exalted intellect; in fact, his was a nature scarcely above mediocrity. Pulcheria, however, by her enlightened efforts, succeeded in producing unexpected results from so thankless a field of labor.” (_Donna Cattolica_, vol. ii. pp. 23, 24.) Exiled and disgraced by the machinations of her frivolous sister-in-law, the Empress Eudocia, and the ambitious Chrysaphius, one of the courtiers, she left Constantinople and retired into the country, no more downcast in adversity than she had been elated in prosperity. Eudocia and Chrysaphius, unable to draw St. Flavian, the Patriarch of Constantinople, into their conspiracy against the noble exile, became violent partisans of Eutyches and his new heresy. Between the years 447 and 450 of the Christian era, the condition of the empire was perfectly chaotic; the heresies of the Eutychians, the Nestorians, and the Monothelites disturbed the public peace; morality was forgotten; the court became an assembly of intriguers; Theodosius himself was no longer obeyed at home or respected abroad. St. Leo the Pope, scandalized and grieved at such excesses, wrote to the emperor, the clergy, and the people of Constantinople, but reserved his most remarkable mission for Pulcheria. He says, “If you had received my former letters, you would certainly have already remedied these evils, for you have never failed the Christian faith, nor the clergy her guardians,” and towards the end of his letter he adds: “In the name of the blessed apostle St. Peter, I constitute you my _special legate_ for the advancement of this matter before the emperor.” Referring to this magnificent elogium, the historian Rohrbacher remarks that, “when the Pope writes to the Emperor Theodosius, one would think he was addressing a woman; when, on the contrary, he writes to the ex-empress, one would imagine he was speaking to a _man_,” upon whose energy he could depend. In 450, the Emperor of the West, Valentinian, and his mother and wife, Placidia and Eudoxia, came to Rome, where the Pope entrusted them with the task of admonishing by letter the weak-minded Theodosius and his heretical followers. Thus was the power of woman and her influence in state affairs recognized and honored by the church from end to end of the Christian world. Pulcheria, urged by the entreaties of all these great and holy personages, boldly went to the court, reproached her brother, and by her firmness opened his eyes and restored peace, orthodoxy and morality in the distracted empire. Her brother’s death in 450 left her, by the universal consent of the people, once more ruler of the vast realm she had already so much benefited. Now again she evinced consummate wisdom in her choice of Marcian, the most renowned soldier and most talented statesman of the empire, to be her husband and fellow-ruler. Under condition of preserving her early vow of perpetual chastity, she admitted him to an entire participation of her life and counsels, and together, with a strong yet gentle hand, they upheld and protected the fathers of the Council of Chalcedon. After three years of a wise and virtuous reign, Pulcheria died, lamented by the thousands of the poor and destitute whom she had never ceased to relieve, and honored by the church as the “guardian of the faith, the peace-maker, the defender of orthodoxy,” as the Chalcedonian fathers expressed it. The historian Gibbon, whose testimony can hardly be deemed interested, has thus outlined the history of her reign: “Her piety did not prevent Pulcheria from indefatigably devoting her attention to the affairs of the state, and indeed this princess was the only descendant of Theodosius the Great who seems to have inherited any part of his high courage and noble genius. She had acquired the familiar use of the Greek and Latin tongues, which she spoke and wrote with ease and grace in her speeches and writings relative to public affairs. Prudence always dictated her resolves. Her execution was prompt and decisive. Managing without ostentation all the intricacies of the government, she discreetly attributed to the talents of the emperor the long tranquillity of his reign. During the last years of his life, Europe was suffering cruelly under the invasion and ravages of Attila, King of the Huns, while peace continued to reign in the vast provinces of Asia.” (_History of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire_, vol. vi. chapter xxxii.)

The holy Pope St. Gregory the Great did not owe less to the influence and friendship of woman than Pope St. Leo. Among his many and remarkable letters, those addressed to the Empress Constantina and the Princess Theoclissa, wife and sister of Maurice, Emperor of the East, are not the least admirable. The emperor being both imbecile and miserly, and of a nature utterly despicable, the only bulwark of orthodoxy against the heretics lay in the strenuous and continued efforts of these two women in favor of the church. When Phocus, a general of Maurice, freed the indignant empire from its supine and debased ruler, his wife the Empress Leontia took the place of the former princesses, and continued their work of protecting the faith of the Councils. In the West, where the Lombards were successfully laying the foundation of the future power they were destined to wield, it was chiefly to a woman that Gregory the Great looked to defend the interests of religion, and saw among these half-reclaimed barbarians the seeds of Christian chivalry. Theodolinda was his pupil and correspondent, and by her care the future King of the Lombards, Adoloaldus, was baptized and brought up a Christian. In the matter of the great expedition which resulted in the final conversion of England, the same Pope testifies by his letters that Bertha, the wife of King Ethelbert, and Brunehault, Queen of the Franks, were chiefly instrumental in aiding and countenancing St. Augustine in his mission. He says to Brunehault: “We are not ignorant of the help you have afforded our brother Augustine.... It must be a source of great rejoicing to you that no one has had a greater share in this work than yourself. For, if that nation [the Saxons] has had the blessing of hearing the Word of God and the preaching of the Gospel, it is to you, under God, that they owe it.”

The throne of Constantinople was to be honored yet by another sainted empress, the worthy successor of Pulcheria, and, like her, an able ally of the Pope and the orthodox patriarch of her own capital. Once more, through the vices and indifference of men, a heresy had arisen and flourished, the heresy of the Iconoclasts. Great persecution had been suffered by the faithful, during the reign of Leo, the husband of our heroine Irene, and the new heretics, had completely triumphed. At his death, his widow became regent for her young son. The clergy, the nobility, and especially the army, were arrayed on the side of the Iconoclasts. Irene was as prudent in action as she was zealous in heart. The persecutions against the followers of the Pope were first merely suspended, thought and speech were once more free, and gradually a reaction began to take place. The patriarchal see of Constantinople becoming vacant by the death of Paul, the finally repentant abettor of the unhappy heresy, it was Irene who proposed the election of Tarasius, the most popular, most pious, and most talented man among her subjects. He, too, was the product of a wise and holy woman’s training, and the name of his mother, Eucratia, is among the saints. Having thus paved the way, the empress wrote to Pope Adrian about the year 786, and begged him to assemble a general council to further the interests of religion and cement the peace of Christendom. The council, which was the second of Nicea, took place according to this suggestion, upon which the Pope, through his legates, formally congratulated the empress. The utmost success having attended the sittings of the council, and the faith having been triumphantly vindicated against the Iconoclasts and their errors, the empress sent to entreat the assembled fathers to hold one final and ceremonial sitting in Constantinople itself. She procured an efficient guard among the orthodox cohorts of the imperial army, and prepared an immense hall in the palace for the gathering of the council. Ventura describes the scene thus: “The Pope’s legates waived their right of precedence in favor of Irene, and the astonishing spectacle was seen of a woman, accompanied by a child twelve years old (her son), presiding over one of the most august assemblies of the church. The sitting was opened by a discourse by the empress, in which she spoke, both in her son’s name and in her own, with so much eloquence, warmth, and grace, that the greatest emotion was manifested throughout the assembly; tears of joy flowed from the eyes of all present, and the last words of Irene were followed by the most heartfelt acclamations.... The enthusiasm was at its height, when, in the assembly and also to the people without, the decree or definition of faith made by the council was read, and the empress claimed her right to be the first to sign it.... It must never be forgotten that this great council, as well as its consequences, which put an end to a great heresy and restored Catholicism in the East, was the thought and work of a woman, and that it was a woman-sovereign (_un empereur-femme_) who alone by her discreet and courageous zeal knew how to blot out and destroy the scandals caused by three men-sovereigns and even a great number of bishops themselves.” (_Donna Cattolica_, vol. ii. pp. 55, 56.)

Before the Empire of the East became totally degraded, another sovereign, another woman, lent it the glory of her reputation. The Iconoclasts, profiting by the treacherous support of succeeding emperors, again renewed their hostilities against orthodoxy, but were speedily checked once more by a brave Christian woman, the Empress Theodosia, widow of Theophilus, and of whom Rohrbacher says: “If in the West the temporal sovereigns were insignificant, in the East they were detestable. There was but one exception, and that was a woman, the Empress St. Theodosia. She began her reign after the death of her unworthy husband--whom she had succeeded, however, in converting on his death-bed--by threatening the heretical patriarch, Lecanomantes, with the condemnation of the coming council unless he consented to vacate his see and renounce his errors. He refused, and the council assembled within the walls of the imperial palace. The Iconoclast heresy was again solemnly denounced, and the previous Council of Nicea confirmed. For the countenance and protection afforded by her to the church, the empress only asked as a reward that the prelates should pray for the forgiveness of the sin of heresy which her husband had committed. Theodosia celebrated this new victory of the church with becoming solemnity, and instituted in its honor a festival, which is observed to this day under the name of the ‘festival of orthodoxy.’ When Methodius, the holy Patriarch of Constantinople, died, she replaced him by St. Ignatius, the friend of the Pope, St. Nicholas I. She made peace with the Bulgarians, whom the Pope was interested in converting to the faith, and seconded his efforts by procuring the conversion of the captive Bulgarian princess, sister to King Bogoris, whom she afterward freed and sent back to her brother. This princess became the Clotildis of her people, and, together with Formosus, the Pope’s legate, and St. Cyril, Theodosia’s envoy, effected the conversion of the whole Bulgarian nation in 861.”

Other Danubian tribes also owed their conversion to Theodosia; she sent missionaries to the Khazars and the Moravians, whose chief specially addressed himself to her for instruction. Her son Michael, when he came to the throne, renewed the horrors of the pagan empire of Caligula and Domitian, persecuted his mother and sisters, exiled and deposed the Patriarch Ignatius, and put the heretic Photius into his place. One of his captains, Basil, put a violent end to his infamous reign, and, though inexcusable in the eyes of the ecclesiastical law, yet redeemed his act by the utmost deference to Theodosia and devotion to religion. The empire breathed again, and Theodosia’s counsels procured another general assembly of the church at Constantinople, when Photius was condemned and the rightful patriarch reinstated in his authority. After the death of the empress, the heresy of Photius revived and spread, and, schism becoming more or less general, the empire began to degenerate, until its very name, the “Lower Empire,” became a synonym for all degradation and hopeless ruin. Ventura, who says truly that real sanctity is impossible in the bosom of voluntary schism, attributes the degeneracy of the Empire of the East to the want of strong and generous women, such as those whom we have briefly sketched in this article, and asserts that the very accumulation of evils which this scarcity of holy women has heaped upon the church during some of the darkest periods of her history, is in itself a proof of the paramount importance of woman in the work of the propagation and protection of true religion.

We are now close upon the mediæval times, when the glory of the sex shone forth again in the West, and counted as many champions as there were kingdoms to convert, universities to endow, courts to reform, and infidel powers to overthrow. The influence of woman began to be recognized in society as it had always been in the church; chivalry taught men to place the honor of woman next in their estimation to faith in God, and equal with loyalty to their king and patriotism to their country. We can find no more beautiful, no more _Catholic_, expression of this sovereignty of woman’s pure and ennobling influence, as consecrated by the church’s approbation, and guarded by all that is noblest and most generous in man, than the following extract from a modern poet, whose inspiration, like that of all true artists, is drawn perforce from the legends of Catholic antiquity. The poet of the Holy Grail is also the poet of woman; the legends of the deeds of the prowess of knights, whose names are perchance but myths as to actual history, but nevertheless are human types of the exalted ideal of the old Catholic days, are inevitably mingled with legends of the vows of holy chastity, and the pure and stainless lives of many of those renowned heroes of the field and tournament. Let the following serve as an introduction to our next article, which will treat chiefly of the great women of the Middle Ages:

“For when the Roman left us, and their law
Relaxed its hold upon us, and the ways
Were filled with rapine, here and there a deed
Of prowess done redressed a random wrong.
But I was first of all the kings who drew
The knighthood-errant of this realm and all
The realms together under me, their head,
In that fair Order of my Table Round,
A glorious company, the flower of men,
To serve as model for the mighty world,
And be the fair beginning of a time.
I made them lay their hands in mine, and swear
To reverence the king as if he were
Their conscience and their conscience as their king,
To break the heathen and uphold the Christ,
To ride abroad, redressing human wrongs,
To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it,
To lead sweet lives in purest chastity,
To love one maiden only, cleave to her,
And worship her by years of noble deeds,
Until they won her; for indeed I knew
Of no more subtle master under heaven
Than is the maiden passion for a maid,
Not only to keep down the base in man,
But teach high thought, and amiable words,
And courtliness, and the desire of fame,
And love of truth, and all that makes a man.
And all this throve.... I wedded thee,
Believing, lo! _mine helpmate_, one to feel
My purpose, and rejoicing in my joy.”
_Tennyson_, _Idylls of the King._

DEVOTA.

Sweet image of the one I love,
To whom your infant years were given
(And still the faithful colors[61] prove
A constancy not all in heaven):

To me a violet near a brink,
Far-hidden from the beaten way,
And where but rarest flowerets drink
A freshness from the ripples’ play:

A lily in a vale of rest,
And where the angels know a nook
But one shy form has ever prest--
A poet with a poet’s book.

But poet’s book has never said
What I, O lily, find in you:
’Twas never writ and never read,
Though always old and always new.

And ah, that you must change and go--
The violet fade, the lily die!
Let others joy to watch you grow;
Let others smile: so will not I.

Yet smile I should. Is heaven a dream?
In sooth, he needs to be forgiven
Who matches with the things that seem
A deathless flower, that blooms for heaven.

And while he mourns the onward years
That sweep you from the things that seem,
Let faith make sunshine on his tears:
’Tis heaven is real, and earth the dream.

FOOTNOTE:

[61] Children dedicated to the Blessed Virgin wear white and blue.

THE CARESSES OF PROVIDENCE.

FROM LA CIVILTA CATTOLICA.

Very recently, the Liberal Italian party, finding that their Catholic opponents were in no wise damaged by arguments drawn from a denial of God’s concern in human affairs, has changed its tactics, and proposes now to convert us clericals by appeals to our religious sensibilities. We are assaulted by a theological attack _ad hominem_, which they tell us is so conclusive that, if we do not acknowledge ourselves beaten, it is because we have lost our reason and renounced the faith.

“You believe,” say they, “in the providence of God. You recognize his hand in all the events of life, and you profess to bless and bow to the divine decrees. Well, then, Providence, you perceive, has smiled graciously on us and on our work--a work which you execrate and detest. Providence is plainly on our side. He declares himself for us and against you. Submit, then, to his decrees. Lay aside this idle expectation of the triumph of your cause, which is evidently opposed to the holy will of God. Accept accomplished facts. Reconcile yourselves with Italy, our glorious new kingdom, and cease, amid your noisy professions of religion, to rebel against the will of the Most High.”

Such in its naked substance is the argument to which the Liberals now exultingly resort; more especially since the breach of Porta Pia and the successful picking of the locks of the Quirinal. They hope in this way to convict us of apostasy from the faith, and (what they deem still more atrocious) of an unpardonable outrage against the laws of “the human understanding.”

“It seems incredible,” they go on to say, “that, after such positive proofs of a special protection vouchsafed by Providence to regenerate Italy, the clerical party should cling so stubbornly to the hope of a resuscitation of the past--a past which, were it not already irrevocably condemned by the logic of events, would be condemned by their own theory of an all-seeing and all-wise God.” This is the language in which the Jewish journal _L’Opinione_, after taking Roman ground at the close of the year just elapsed, expressed this very formidable argument. They had already uttered it some hundred times before. Many sheets of less importance had got up an industrious echo to this cry; and one in particular, a petty Florentine print, undertakes to celebrate the new year by magnifying “the caresses of Providence” bestowed upon the little darling angel, Italy, born, as everybody knows, of the wonderful shrewdness of the Italian people and their undying love of liberty--a liberty, by the way, which never fails to exemplify itself by a free and strenuous appropriation of a weaker neighbor’s earthly goods. Strange indeed it is that men, who never were known as professed believers in any other divinity than Mammon, should now, after having derided for years, and with every mark of blasphemous scorn, “the finger of God,” suddenly assume the office of apostles of a new idea of Christian Providence. Strange it is that only now, after the plunder of a city gained by battering down walls and picking locks with forged keys--that these men, we say, should chant the praises of the God they had defied, and defend his holy decrees against the “scandalous negations” of the Catholic Church. Strangest is it of all, that the prince of these extraordinary apostles should be no other than the so-called Jew proprietor of the _Opinione_--who is not even a Jew; for he has always shown that he believes as little of the Old Testament as he does of the New.

But--

“To what infamies untold
Hast thou man’s nature not controlled,
Thou execrable greed of gold!”

Solid or not, this _argumentum ad hominem_ has for a certain class of minds an air of great plausibility. At all events, it might be well to look into it a little; for we may thereby throw some light upon several important truths which nowadays need special illumination. We let in the argument, therefore, as the new Jewish and infidel philosophers present it; and we propose to give them, in a nutshell, the proper answer to it. They will then understand why Catholics not only refuse to surrender to this showing, but, on the contrary, see in it reason to stand firm to their first faith, and to cherish unceasing hopes of the speedy triumph of their cause.

Yes, gentlemen, we Catholics believe, with all our heart and soul, in the holy providence of God. In this Providence we recognize the origin and order of all created things. We make it indeed our glory that we bless and humbly worship its adorable decrees. We confess, therefore, without reserve, that what you choose to call its “loving caresses” are really yours by divine appointment; and the very decree which to you is the source of so much joy, and to us of so much mourning, we adore as the undoubted manifestation of his most holy will. All this we freely admit as truth, as unquestionable, unanswerable truth. But while, in these explicit terms, we confess this Catholic verity, we deny, in equally explicit terms, that what you choose to call “caresses” are in any sense _such to you_, or that the palpable proofs of that “special protection” of which you make so vain a boast are proofs of anything but the very opposite; nay, so false is it, that the caresses you claim are marks of divine approval, that the very assertion is a blasphemy most insulting to the sovereign providence of God. To prove these propositions is an easy thing to any one who knows his catechism; and the understanding of them easier still to any one who believes as well as knows. To him who either does not know his Christian primer, or, knowing it, will not believe, they may seem incapable of either proof or comprehension. Should such a case present itself, the fault is certainly not ours. A poet tells us that:

“Of winds the sailor ever loves to speak,
Of arms the soldier, and the boor of swine;
The astronomer, of planet, moon, and stars;
Of palaces and piers, the architect;
The juggling necromancer prates of ghosts,
And the old harper of his well thrummed strains.”

If so, why is it that this Jew, instead of sticking like a worthy Hebrew to his stock-list, takes to teaching us the Christian catechism? And why is it that this worshipper of Voltaire, instead of chanting hymns to Venus, reads us a lecture on what he knows about the purposes of God? _Sutor ne ultra crepidam._

Nevertheless, we proceed to explain the propositions advanced above.

Catholics acknowledge that every event, be it favorable or unfavorable to their prayers, is consistent with the providence of God. To Providence they refer evil as well as good, with this difference, that good and unblamable evil they ascribe to the decrees of his sovereign direction, but blamable evil they ascribe to his permissive decree. In a word, they believe and confess that God wills _positively_ all that comes to pass without taint of moral evil, and wills _negatively_ (that is, he does not preclude) what comes to pass so tainted by cause of man’s abuse of his free-will. They nevertheless hold and profess that whatever evil he permits, that also is ordained to good; so that nothing enters into those most just and wise decrees that does not aim effectively at the final design of the creation and redemption of mankind; which design in this life is the church militant, and, in the next, the church triumphant, the central point of his extrinsic glorification.

The reason, then, that Catholics hold and profess that God does not and cannot decree, otherwise than _permissively_, moral evil--that is, disobedience, injustice, or briefly sin--is that he neither participates nor can participate in evil of this nature which is essentially opposed to his infinite sanctity. He would, in fact, participate therein if he willed it positively and not merely negatively; whereas, permitting it only, he in no wise participates, though he allows man, whom he had created free, to make an evil use of the gift of liberty. He does not hinder him, because neither is he so obliged, nor can the divine hindrance of human freedom be exacted by the nature of man left free. With all this, God is in no wise the less able to secure for himself, always and in every case and from every human being, the external glory which he reserved to himself when he created man. Because, he who shall not glorify in heaven an infinite mercy granted to the good use of the free-will, shall glorify in hell an infinite justice merited by the abuse of this same free-will. Hence the Almighty will not be shorn of the least shadow of that glory, for which, among other things, he drew man out of the abyss of nothingness.

Catholics, moreover, believe and confess that the effects of moral evil are invariably directed by Almighty God to the good of mankind. They serve to punish in order to amend, or else to exercise in order to confirm. St. Augustine remarks, with his usual perspicacity, that the life of a bad man is often prolonged not only to afford an opportunity for his amendment, but to serve as an occasion of sanctification to the good. _Ne putetis gratis esse malos in hoc mundo, et nihil boni de eis agere Deum. Omnis malus aut ideo vivit ut corrigatur, aut ideo vivit ut per illum bonus exerceatur._[62]

Hence it is that Catholics, in all emergencies, even in the most calamitous, nay, even in those caused by the worst iniquities of unscrupulous men, do not fail to adore the goodness and justice of Almighty God, and to acknowledge the inscrutable dispositions of his most holy will. But they never think of imputing to him the sins and transgressions of the wicked. These he neither wills nor is he capable of willing them. He permits them only as subserving his mercy or his justice.

It follows, then, that, in order to decide whether the easy successes of certain definite transactions are successes due to divine approbation, and palpable proofs of his gracious protection, or whether rather they are not facilities that Providence permits for the punishment of the wicked and for the chastening of the virtuously minded, it is essential to see first whether these definite acts are right or wrong, meritorious or sinful; that is, conformable or unconformable to the law of eternal justice, and to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now, certain it is that in those transactions which the enemies of Christ regard as sanctioned by the manifest “caresses” of Almighty God, Catholic Christians see nothing but acts of iniquity and sin; and accordingly, while they accept them as permitted by God for reasons and results full of justice and mercy, they nevertheless esteem it the height of blasphemy to look upon such outrages, however successful for the moment, as “caresses” bestowed by Providence upon the very men who at other times deny his existence or treat his word with open scorn and contempt.

We have thus, as briefly and as lucidly as we could, and with the Christian catechism for our guide, explained to these Jews who are no Jews, and to these philosophers who are no philosophers, the sense of the propositions we affirm.

Perhaps they will now require of us to prove that the acts referred to are acts of iniquity and sin. This is very much like asking us to prove that the sun is shining, when it is evidently blazing at mid-day. We let pass that the highest authority on earth has pronounced, again and again, that the acts are simply acts most sinful and sacrilegious. We let pass that the concurrent testimony of all minds endowed with natural rectitude of judgment (not excluding Protestants nor Israelites nor Turks) has confirmed and reconfirmed the condemnations spoken already by Pope, by church, and by the entire Catholic world. It is enough that the authors and prime movers of these outrages proclaimed and stamped them as dishonorable and base before they perpetrated them, and even in the very act of their perpetration. Can these apostolic gentlemen, now so anxious for the conversion of the Catholic Church, be ignorant, for instance, that two of the Subalpine ministry, Visconti-Venosta and Lanza, declared the invasion of Rome and the usurpation of the Papal power acts of barbarism destitute of every semblance of right? And are they not aware that they so avouched just one short month before both invasion and usurpation were consummated by burglary and breach?