Chapter XIX: Part I (4)

It is easy to see how earnestness leads to the picturesque in biography. In proportion as the writer is able to fix his mind upon his hero, in the same proportion he comes to realize him, as the phrase is. Not only are all the facts and circumstances collected with the care of a lawyer getting up a brief, but words and names that look dead and speechless are analyzed as with magnifying power, till they take significance and life. Every name, as Aristotle saw, is itself a picture; but it is a picture that only requires a more powerful imaginative lens to grow greater, fuller, and more living. And therefore the earnest writer, because he looks more intently at his subject, sees more in it to put upon his canvas; and the reader, struck by the significance that he cannot gainsay, and moved by the pictures, as pictures always move the human fancy, is held in bonds by the writer, and remembers long and vividly what impressed his thought so strongly at the first. He is like one who has seen the site of a great battle, and has once for all fixed for himself, as he gazed, the relative positions and movements of the fight; he will not easily forget it. Something must, no doubt, be added to this; something must be allowed to modern culture, to modern appreciation of art as art, to modern love of landscape, and to the general _romanesque_ tendency begun by Chateaubriand. But so far from the tendency to picturesque biography being wholly attributable to sentiment, we hold that it is precisely our modern earnestness that makes us demand to see things nearer and more real. Doubtless the picturesque biographer is exposed to many dangers, and his readers to many trials. He may “realize” what does not exist; he may “analyze” out of his inner consciousness alone; he may usurp what is the privilege of the poet and the romancer, and give names and habitations not only to airy nothings, but, what is much more serious, to unsubstantial mistakes. And therefore we do not wonder that many well‐meaning people, with the results of romantic biography or history before their eyes, and youthful remembrances of Lingard and Butler, have come to distrust every account of a personage or of a fact which contains the smallest mixture of imagination.

The length of these prefatory remarks may lead the reader to suppose that Prior Vaughan has written picturesquely and sensationally about S. Thomas of Aquin. Yet this, stated absolutely, would by no means be true. We shall presently give one or two passages, in which a fine imaginative and descriptive power, we think, is displayed. But the book bears no sign of a straining after pictorial effect. Yet its whole idea is pre‐eminently picturesque. Prior Vaughan has written with the idea of not merely giving the history of his chosen saint, but of localizing it in time and in space. It is with this view that he enters into descriptions of Aquino, of Monte Cassino, of Paris and its University; it is for this that he brings S. Dominic and S. Francis on the canvas, and sketches the figures of Frederick II., of Abelard, of S. Bernard, of William of Paris. Each of these names has some connection with Thomas of Aquin, and each throws fresh light on the central object, when it is analyzed with care.

Here is the description, taken from the opening pages of the first volume, of the town of Aquino, which was, if not the birthplace of the saint, at least the principal seat of his family:

“The little town of Aquino occupies the centre of a vast and
fertile plain, commonly called Campagna Felice, in the ancient
Terra di Lavoro. This plain is nearly surrounded by bare and
rugged mountains, one of which pushes further than the rest into
the plain; and on its spur, which juts boldly out, and which was
called significantly Rocca Sicca, was situated the ancient
stronghold of the Aquinos. The remnants of this fortress, as seen
at this day, seem so bound up with the living rock, that they
appear more like the abrupt finish of the mountain than the ruins
of a mediæval fortress. Yet they are sufficient to attest the
ancient splendor and importance of the place; and the torrent of
Melfi, which, tumbling out of the gorges of the Alps, runs round
the castellated rock, marks it out as a fit habitation for the
chivalrous and adventurous lords of Aquino, Loreto, and
Belcastro.”—i. 3, 4.

Prior Vaughan, as a Benedictine, is naturally drawn to dwell upon the fact of S. Thomas having lived as a boy for five or six years in the Abbey of Monte Cassino. It certainly seems true that the child was placed by his parents in the abbey with a view to his continuing there after he came to years of discretion; just as so many children had been from the days of S. Benedict downwards. “To all intents and purposes,” says the author, “S. Thomas of Aquin was a Benedictine monk. Had he continued in the habit till his death—without any further solemnity beyond the offering of his parents—he would have been reckoned as much a Benedictine as S. Gregory, S. Augustine, S. Anselm, or S. Bede” (i. 20). We do not think that this can be denied. It was affirmed on oath, in the process of canonization, by an exceedingly trustworthy witness, that the saint’s father “made him a monk” at Monte Cassino. And a monk he was, no doubt, as much as a boy of twelve can be a monk—and the Council of Trent, be it remembered, had not then fixed the age of religious vows at sixteen. But the frightful confusion of the times brought his Benedictine days to a premature close. Monte Cassino was pillaged and nearly destroyed, the community was scattered, and Thomas of Aquin went to Naples to study—and to find the habit of S. Dominic.

The personal character which is drawn in this work is that of a large‐ minded, serene man, of powerful natural genius and winning character, who steps forth from the ranks of mediæval nobility, and, turning his back on sword and lance, and giving no heed to the tumult of war and rapine, deliberately consecrated himself wholly to God, and, grace being added to natural gifts, illuminates the world as a doctor and as a saint. It would be interesting to dwell, if we had space, upon the circumstances of S. Thomas joining the Order of S. Dominic. The opposition of his family, the utter unscrupulousness with which they carried out their opposition, the quiet yet fervent persistence of the saint—feudal violence, maternal desperation, and ecclesiastical interference—all this makes up a scene of wonderful reality and deep suggestiveness. But we must pass it over. S. Thomas became a Dominican, and we follow him from Naples to Cologne, from Cologne to Paris. We follow the course of his academical life, his writings, his teaching, his promotion to the grade of bachelor, of licentiate, of doctor. The first chapter of the second volume is entitled “S. Thomas made doctor.” It contains a lively picture of the great University of Paris and its life from day to day; and with it, moreover, the author gives an eloquent summary of the character of his hero, part of which we extract, because it is in some sort a key to the whole story of his life.

“A man with the power possessed by the Angelical could afford to
be serene and tranquil. He lived, as it were, behind the veil; he
saw through, and valued at its intrinsic worth, this earth’s
stage, and took the measure of all the actors on it. Like Moses,
he came down from the mountain, into the turmoil of the chafing
world below, and, enlarged by the greatness of the vision in which
he habitually lived, it shrank into insignificance before his eye;
and those events or influences which excited the minds of others,
and disturbed their peace, were looked upon by him somewhat in the
same way as we may imagine some majestic, solitary eagle surveys
from his high crag, with half‐unconscious eye, the world of woods
below him. The Angelical himself had drawn his first lessons from
a mountain eyrie. His elastic mind, even as a boy, had expanded,
as he looked down from the mighty abbey, on teeming plain and
rugged mountain, with the far‐distant ranges of the snowy
Apennines standing up delicate and crisp against the sky. God, who
made all this, had drawn him to himself, and the fingers of a
heavenly hand, striking on his large, solitary heart, had sealed
him imperially, for all his life to come, as the great master of
the heavenly science, and as the gentle prince of peace....
Immense weight of character, surpassing grasp of mind, and
keenness of logical discernment, added to a sovereign benignity
and patience, and to a gentleness and grace which spoke from his
eyes and thrilled in the accents of his voice, made men conscious,
when in contact with him, that they were in presence of a man of
untold gifts, and yet of one so exquisitely noble as never to
display them, save for the benefit of others. Men knew that he had
the power to crush them; but since he was so great, they knew also
that he never would misuse it; they found him ever self‐forgetting
and self‐restrained. A character with such a capability of
asserting itself, and yet ever manifesting such gentle self‐
repression, must have acted with a singular fascination on any
generous mind that came into relation with it.... He was a vast
system in himself, and appears to have been specially created for
achieving such an end. He was one single, simple man—doubtless.
But he was a ‘system,’ or the representation of a system—the
highest type of what heroism can do in human heart and mind.
Christ, in choosing him, had chosen the most majestic of human
creations, converting it into a powerful exponent of the light,
peace, and splendor which strike out from the cross. He, if any
man, had rested on the bosom of his Lord. He, the great Angelical,
with the golden sun flashing from his breast, and the fire of
heaven scintillating round his massive brow—he, if any man, had
broken the bread of the strong, and had refreshed his lips with
the blood of the grape, and had been transfigured by the draught.
There is a largeness about him which, whilst it expands the heart,
seems almost to take away the breath. We look up at him, and say:
‘How great art thou! how gently courteous, and how tenderly true!
Sweet was the power of God, and the grace of Christ, which made
thee all thou art. O gentle mighty sun, shine on in thy sweet
radiance, spread thy pure invigorating rays amidst the deep sad
shadows of the earth!’... Such was his character. And, prescinding
from his natural gifts, how did he become so mighty? The cause has
been touched on and partially developed already. The reader,
adequately to realize it, would do well to study and master, with
his heart as well as with his head, the monastic theology of S.
Victor’s—the Benedictine science of the saints. Grasp the spirit
of S. Anselm, S. Bernard, and the Victorines, weigh it as a whole,
follow its drift, mark its salient points, learn to recognize the
aroma of that sweet mystic life of tough yet tender service and
self‐forgetfulness, and you will have discovered that spring of
living waters which ran into the heart and mind of the great
Angelical, and lent to all his faculties—aye, and even to his very
person and expression—a warmth and glow which seemed to have come
direct from heaven. From the rock, which was Christ, flowed
straight and swift into the paradise of his soul four crystal
waters: Love—fixing the entire being on the sovereign good, and
doing all for him alone; Reverence—that is, self‐distrust and
self‐forgetfulness, produced by the vision of God’s high majesty
awfully gazed on with the eye of faith; Purity—treading all
created things, and self first, under the feet, and, with entire
freedom of spirit, basking and feeding in the unseen world;
Adoration—love, reverence, and purity, combined in one act of
supreme worship, as the creature, with all he has and all he is,
bends prone to the earth, and with a feeling of dust and ashes
whispers to his soul: ‘The Lord he is God, he made us, and not we
ourselves!’ ” (ii. 31‐48.)

The mind and heart are both fond of dwelling on the heroic; and the heroic is met with at every step in the life of S. Thomas. We are reminded, as we read, of that Achilles on whose prowess hangs the fate of Troy and of the Greeks,

“Full in the midst, high‐towering o’er the rest,”

his limbs encased in an armor that is more divine than that which the father of fire forged for the son of Peleus, the gold upon his breast, the sword of the Spirit by his side, the “broad refulgent shield” of heavenly faith upon his arm, and in his hand the great paternal spear that none but he can wield—not a “whole ash” felled upon Pelion by old Chiron; but the seven gifts of the Christian doctorate wielded by the force of seraphic love. His appearance in the lists of argument, in the contest of the schools, in the field of intellectual strife, has all the _quelling_ power that is ascribed to the greatest heroes of the battle‐field; and his place in the records of mental and theological history is that of a discoverer, a conqueror, and a king. Here is a scene which is perhaps more or less familiar, but it is a type of many scenes in this wonderful life. It occurred whilst Thomas was under Albertus Magnus, at Cologne:

“Master Albert had selected a very difficult question from the
writings of Denis the Areopagite, and had given it to some of his
scholars for solution. Whether in joke or in earnest, they passed
on the difficulty to Thomas, and begged him to write his opinion
upon it. Thomas took the paper to his cell, and, taking his pen,
first stated, with great lucidity, all the objections that could
be brought against the question; and then gave their solutions. As
he was going out of his cell, this paper accidentally fell near
the door. One of the brothers passing picked it up, and carried it
at once to Master Albert. Albert was excessively astonished at the
splendid talent which now, for the first time, by mere accident,
he discovered in that big, silent student. He determined to bring
out, in the most public manner, abilities which had been for so
long a time so modestly concealed. He desired Thomas to defend a
thesis before the assembled school, on the following day. The hour
arrived. The hall was filled. There sat Master Albert. Doubtless
the majority of those who were to witness the display imagined
that they were about to assist at an egregious failure. How could
that heavy, silent lad—who could not speak a word in
private—defend in public school, against the keenest of opponents,
the difficult niceties of theology? But they were soon undeceived,
for Thomas spoke with such clearness, established his thesis with
such remarkable dialectical skill, saw so far into the coming
difficulties of the case, and handled the whole subject in so
masterly a manner, that Albert himself was constrained to cry
aloud, ‘_Tu non videris tenere locum respondentis sed
determinantis_!’ ‘Master,’ replied Thomas with humility, ‘I know
not how to treat the question otherwise.’ Albert then thought to
puzzle him, and show him that he was still a disciple. So, one
after another, he started objections, created a hundred
labyrinths, weaving and interweaving all manner of subtle
arguments, but in vain. Thomas, with his calm spirit and keen
vision, saw through every complication, had the key to every
fallacy, the solution for every enigma, and the art to unravel the
most tangled skein—till, finally, Albert, no longer able to
withhold the expression of his admiration, cried out to his
disciples, who were almost stupefied with astonishment: ‘We call
this young man a dumb ox, but so loud will be his bellowing in
doctrine that it will resound throughout the whole world’ ” (i.
321, 322).

How exactly this prophecy was fulfilled need not be said. S. Thomas was soon employed in speaking to the world what God had given him to say. He spoke in the class‐hall and in the church; he wrote for young and for old; and wherever his voice was heard men wondered as at a portent. The students of Paris, the professors of France and of Italy, his fellow‐ religious, the intimate friend of his privacy, the rough people round his pulpit, the pope himself as he sat and heard him preach, every one said over again the wondering words that Albert the Great had used in the hall at Cologne. And if we had no record of what men thought, we should still be secure in saying that they were astonished; for we are astonished ourselves. Many men who have made a great noise in their lifetime have left posterity to wonder, not at themselves, but at their reputation. But the writer of the _Summa_ _must_ have been great even in his lifetime. That breadth of view, that keenness of analysis, that comprehensive reach of thought, that enormous memory—we can see it for ourselves, and every story of his prowess we can readily credit from what the imperishable record of his written works attests to our own eye. Prior Vaughan relates interesting anecdotes of his power of discussion, and of his influence over the irreverent world of his scholastic compeers, filling up the outlines of the annalist with no greater exercise of imagination than is fairly permitted to the serious biographer.

But the heroic in the life of the Angel of the Schools would not be perfect unless the giant strength had been joined to the gentleness of the servant of Christ. There is nothing, perhaps, that will so strike a reader of this Life as his mild, equal, and gentle spirit. It does not seem that S. Thomas was naturally of a quick and impetuous nature, like S. Ignatius or S. Francis of Sales. From his youth he had been a contemplative in the cloisters of Monte Cassino; when but a child he had charmed his teachers by asking with childish meditative face, “_What was God?_” His quiet determination had conquered his mother when she opposed him being a Dominican; his calm courage had converted his sisters and shamed his brothers. And in the schools, his silence and his humility, virtues never more difficult to be practised than in the field of intellectual combat, had soon become the marvel of all who knew him. A great natural gift—the gift of a changeless serenity of heart and temper—was perfected in him by grace, until it became heroic. The contest he once had in the Paris schools with Brother John of Pisa, a Franciscan friar who afterwards became Archbishop of Canterbury, is typical of what always happened when the Angelical discussed:

“John of Pisa, though a keen and a learned man, had no chance with
the Angelical. It would have been folly for any one, however
skilled—yes, for Bonaventure, or Rochelle, or even Albert the
Great himself—to attempt to cross rapiers with Br. Thomas. He was
to the manner born. Br. John did all that was in him, used his
utmost skill—but it was useless: the Angelical simply upset him
time after time. The Minorite grew warm; the Angelical, bent
simply on the truth, went on completing, with unmoved serenity,
the full discomfiture of the poor Franciscan. John of Pisa at
length could stand it no longer. In his heat he forgot his middle
term and forgot himself, and turned upon the saint with sarcasm
and invective. The Angelical in his own gentle, overpowering way,
giving not the slightest heed to these impertinences, went on
replying to him with inimitable tenderness and patience; and
whilst teaching a lesson which, after so many hundred years, men
can still learn, drew on himself, unconsciously, the surprise and
admiration of that vast assembly. Such was the way in which the
Angelical brought the influence of Benedictine _quies_ and
_benignitas_ into the boisterous litigations of the Paris schools.
And what is more, Frigerio tells us that the saint taught the
great lesson of self‐control, not only by the undeviating practice
of his life, but also by his writings; that he looked upon it as
an ‘ignominy’ (ignominia) to soil the mouth with angry words; and
contended that ‘quarrels,’ immoderate contentions, vain
ostentation of knowledge, and the trick of puzzling an adversary
with sophistical arguments—such as is often the practice of
dialecticians—should be banished from the schools” (ii. 57‐59).

The appearance of such a man as S. Thomas, in the midst of the scholastic agitation of the XIIIth century, partakes of that providential character which the eye of faith sees in the lives of all the great saints. We have already, in a former notice, touched upon the marvellous way in which he turned the current of thought against rationalism, heresy, and impiety. But his personal influence was no less than what we may term his official. At the moment when theology was beginning, with philosophy as her handmaid, to enter on that course of development in which system, on the one hand, advanced in equal steps with discovery on the other, it was the will of God that a saint should show the world in his own person a perfect model of the Catholic scholastic theologian. His powers were undeniable, his genius imperial, his rights undoubted; and he used his privileges and his grand position to enforce upon the noisy spirits of the time, and upon all generations of students yet to be, that the true type of theological discussion was “_humilis collatio, pacifica disputatio_.”

The theologian was to be no proud dogmatist, laying down the law as if he had discovered all truth, but one who, taking the faith for his standing‐ point, humbly put forth and peacefully discussed the views that he thought to be true. This was his great lesson; he taught it in the tone of his own lectures and discussions, in the turn of his phrase when he wrote, in the meekness of his answers, and in the moderation of his conclusions. And we may thank the Providence that sent S. Thomas for that calm and judicial serenity which has ever been the prevailing character of Catholic theology. The great Dominican school that he founded carried on the traditions of their master; and (to take an example not far from our own days) the weighty and admirably clear pages of a Billuart are not unworthy, in their broad, searching, yet tranquil argument, of the master whom they follow. A troubled reach of time separates Paris in the XIIIth century from Douay in the XVIIth; yet the spirit of S. Thomas had been living over it all. Not only in his own religious family was his influence strong. The Franciscan Order has its own tradition; but it is a tradition that sprung up side by side with the Dominican. It was the seraphic Bonaventure that sat beside Thomas of Aquin in the hall of the University of Paris on the day when each of them received the insignia of the doctorate. They were friends—more than friends, for each knew the other to be a saint. Each heard the other speak, and the spirit of one was the spirit of both. And in spite of divergences and varieties, such as our Lord permits in order to draw unity from diversity or good from evil, the two Orders have taught in harmonious spirit during all the long centuries they have been before the world. S. Thomas, who reverenced S. Bonaventure, has had the reverence of all S. Bonaventure’s children; and we have before us as we write the _Cursus Theologiæ_ of a venerable bearded Capuchin, considerably esteemed in the theological classes of the present day, who stops in his enumeration of fathers and of doctors to add his emphatic tribute of veneration to the Angelic Doctor, who, he reminds us, is, with S. Augustine, “_præcipuus theologorum omnium temporum magister_”—the great master of theologians of all ages. And what we say of the Franciscan Order we may say of that great school which dates its traditions from that Cardinal Toletus who was the pupil of the Dominican Soto. It is not that the Jesuit theologians, even the many‐sided Suarez, have looked up to S. Thomas as to their prince and teacher: this they have done; but even if they had left his teaching, or where they have left his teaching, they have followed his spirit. That spirit we might name the spirit of _conciliation_. We do not mean the spirit of compromise, or of going only half‐way in matters of truth. S. Thomas was as downright as Euclid. But what we refer to is that readiness to admit all the good or the true in an opposite view, the shrinking from forcing a vague word upon an adversary, the impartial dissection of words and phrases which issues from the scholastic and Thomistic method of _distinction_. The _distinguo_ of the tyro or the sophist is a trick that is easily learned and easily laughed at; but we claim for the scholastic method that its _distinguo_ is the touchstone of truth and of falsehood; it requires acuteness and stored‐up learning to make it and sustain it; but it requires, above all, that perfect fairness of mind, that judicial impartiality of view, which calms the promptings of ambitious originality; it requires that patience which seeks only the truth and cares nothing for the victory, and that honesty which is afraid of declamation, and sets its matter out in unadorned and colorless simplicity. This is the true scholastic spirit, and it is pre‐ eminently the spirit of S. Thomas. If we might personify that grand science which has been so high in this world, and seems now to have sunk so low (yet, with the signs around us, we dare hardly say so now), it would be under the figure of him who is its prince and lawgiver.

“See him, then, our great Angelical, as with calm and princely
bearing he advances, a mighty‐looking man, built on a larger scale
than those who stand around him, and takes the seat just vacated
by Bonaventure. His portrait as a boy has been sketched already.
Now he has grown into the maturity of a man, and his grand
physique has expanded into its perfect symmetry and manly
strength, manifesting, even in his frame, as Tocco says, that
exquisite combination of force with true proportion which gave so
majestic a balance to his mind. His countenance is pale with
suffering, and his head is bald from intense and sustained mental
application. Still, the placid serenity of his broad, lofty brow,
the deep gray light in his meditative eyes, his firm, well‐
chiselled lips, and fully defined jaw, the whole pose of that
large, splendid head—combining the manliness of the Roman with the
refinement and delicacy of the Greek—impress the imagination with
an indescribable sense of giant energy of intellect, of royal
gentleness of heart, and untold tenacity of purpose. That sweet
face reflects so exquisite a purity, that noble bust is cast in so
imperial a mould, that the sculptor or the painter would be struck
and arrested by it in a moment; the one would yearn to throw so
classical a type into imperishable marble, and the other to
transfer so much grandeur of contour, and such delicacy of
expression, so harmonious a fusion of spotlessness with majesty,
of southern loveliness with intellectual strength, to the enduring
canvas” (ii. 108, 109).

The angelic quality of the Angel of the Schools—his calmness and his power over men—was not bought without a price. Like all the saints, he too had to bear the cross, and like all the saints he was not content with suffering the cross, but he sought it and courted it. We cannot quote much more of Prior Vaughan’s narrative, or else we would fain draw attention to the account he gives from authentic sources of Thomas’ holy distress of mind, and his midnight prayer the night before he received the doctorate. But the following paragraph must be transcribed:

“Let the carnal man, after looking on the sweet Angelical
fascinating the crowded schools, take the trouble to follow him,
as silently, after the day’s work, he retires to his cell,
seemingly to rest; let him watch him bent in prayer; see him take
from its hiding‐place, when all have gone to sleep, that hard iron
chain; see him—as he looks up to heaven and humbles himself to
earth—without mercy to his flesh, scourge himself with it,
striking blow upon blow, lacerating his body through the greater
portion of the sleepless night: let the carnal man look upon this
touching sight; let him shrink back in horror if he will—still let
him look on it, and he will learn how the saints labored to secure
a chaste and spotless life, and how a man can so far annihilate
self‐seeking as to be gentle with all the world, severe with
himself alone. If in human life there is anything mysteriously
adorable, it is a man of heroic mould and surpassing gifts showing
himself great enough to smite his own body, and to humble his
entire being in pretence of his Judge” (ii. 60, 61).

S. Thomas died in the prime of life—when scarcely forty‐eight years old. He was called away a little before his great work, the _Summa_, was completed, as if his Master wished to show the lamenting world that his own claims were paramount to every other thing. But it was that divine Master himself who had rendered it necessary to take away his servant when he did; for S. Thomas could write no more. After that vision and ecstasy which rapt his soul in the chapel of S. Nicholas at Naples, he ceased to write, he ceased to dictate; his pen lay idle, and the _Summa_ stood still in the middle of the questions on penance. It was, as he said to his companion Reginald, _Non possum!_ “I cannot! Everything that I have written appears to me as simply rubbish.” From that day of S. Nicholas he lived in a continual trance: he wrote no more. As the new year (1274) came in, he set out, at the pope’s call, to attend the general council at Lyons: but he was never to get so far. He had not journeyed beyond Campania—he was still travelling along the shores of that sunny region which had given him birth, when mortal illness arrested him, and he was taken to the Abbey of Fossa Nuova to die.

“The abbot conducts him through the church into the silent
cloister. Then the whole past seems to break in upon him like a
burst of overflowing sunlight; the calm and quiet abbey, the
meditative corridor, the gentle Benedictine monks; he seems as if
he were at Cassino once again, amidst the glorious visions of his
boyish days—amidst the tender friendships of his early youth,
close on the bones of ancient kings, near the solemn tomb of
Blessed Benedict, in the hallowed home of great traditions, and at
the very shrine of all that is fair and noble in monastic life. He
seemed completely overcome by the memories of the past, and,
turning to the monks who surrounded him, exclaimed ‘_This_ is the
place where I shall find repose!’ and then ecstatically to
Reginald in presence of them all: ‘_Hæc est requies mea in sæculum
sæculi, hic habitabo quoniam elegi eam_—This is my rest for ever
and ever; here will I dwell, for I have chosen it’ ” (ii. 921).

The whole of this last scene of the great saint’s pilgrimage is admirably and most touchingly brought out by the author, and our readers must go to it themselves. As we conclude the story, we are forced to agree with Prior Vaughan when he exclaims, “It is but natural, it is but beautiful, that he who in early boyhood had been stamped with the signet of S. Benedict, should return to S. Benedict to die!”

We are sure that this life of S. Thomas of Aquin will do good. It is a large book, but it deals with a large and a grand life. It is the work of one who evidently has an interest in his subject far beyond that of the mere compiler. The earnestness, the warmth, the very redundancy and fulness of the author’s style, leave the impression of one whose heart is strongly impressed by the glorious career which he has been following so minutely, and there is little doubt that his readers will sympathize with him. And there can be just as little doubt of the benefits which a practical study of the life of the great doctor will confer upon students, upon priests, and upon all serious men at the present day. Sanctity taught by example is always an important lesson; but the saintliness of learning and genius is still more important and still more rare. We live in an age when there are numbers of men who are profoundly scientific and splendidly accomplished in the different branches of knowledge which they profess; and there is no one who is more sure of the world’s attention and reverence than the man who can show that he knows something which other men do not. The present time, therefore, is one at which we are to look for and to hope for men who in theology and Catholic philosophy shall be as able and as learned as are the leaders of profane science. Hard work and unwearying devotedness are essential to this; and the example of S. Thomas shows us what these things mean. But there is something which is more necessary still; something which is especially necessary in sacred science. “_In malevolam animam non intrabit Sapientia, nec habitabit in corpore subdito peccatis._” There is no such thing as the highest wisdom without the highest purity of heart. The perfection of the Christian doctorate is the consequence of the perfect possession and exercise of the Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost. And the holy fathers who have written on Christian wisdom tell us repeatedly, using almost identical words, that a man might as well try to study the sun with purblind eyes as to be perfect in theology with a heart defiled. There has been no greater example in the range of sanctity of what S. Augustine calls the “_mens purgatissima_” than that of him who on account of his purity has been called the Angelical. Leaving the world as a child, his heart hardly knew what earthly concupiscence was. With his loins girded by angels’ hands, with his body subdued by hard living, with his thought always ranging among high and elevating things, the soul of S. Thomas lived in a region that did not belong to the world. He learnt his wisdom of the crucifix, he found his inspirations at the foot of the altar; and the same lips that dictated the _Commentaries on Aristotle_ were ready to break forth with the _Lauda Sion_ and the _Pange Lingua_. If he taught in the daytime, he chastised his body during the watches of the night. Born to a gentle life, with powerful friends, with the world and its attractions within his reach, he lived in his narrow cell, cleaving to his desk and to his breviary, walking the streets with a quick step and downcast eye, letting the world go on its way. He wanted only one thing—not as a reward for his labor, because his labor was only a means to a great end—he wanted only that one object which he asked for when the figure spoke to him from the Cross, “Thee, O Lord! and thee alone!”

Prior Vaughan has accomplished a task for which he will receive the thanks of all English‐speaking Catholics. His book will be read, and will be treasured; for it is a book with a large purpose, carried out with unwearying labor, presenting the results of wide reading, and offering the student and the general reader a large variety of solid information and of suggestive thought. If the book were less honestly wrought out than it is, we could excuse the author, in consideration of the heart and soul he has thrown into it. S. Thomas of Aquin is evidently a very real, living being with him. His hero is no abstraction of the past, no quintessence of a scholastic that must be looked at as one looks at an Egyptian papyrus in a museum. He is a man to _know_, not merely to know about; a man who taught in Paris and who reigns in heaven; a man who led an angel’s life here below, and who can help us to lead a life more or less angelic from his place above. To have worked with such a spirit is to have worked in the true spirit of the Catholic faith. The saints are our teachers and masters; and, what is more, they are the trumpets that rouse us to battle, the living voices that make our hearts burn to follow them. And therefore a true life of a saint will live, and will do its work. Our wish is that Prior Vaughan’s _S. Thomas_ may make its way into the hearts of earnest men, and it is our conviction that it _will_ make its way, and that men will be the better for it.

To S. Mary Magdalen.

’Mid the white spouses of the Sacred Heart,
After its Queen, the nearest, dearest, thou.
Yet the auréola around thy brow
Is not the virgins’. Thine a throne apart.
Nor yet, my Saint, does faith‐illumined art
Thy hand with palm of martyrdom endow:
And when thy hair is all it will allow
Of glory to thy head, we do not start.
O more than virgin in thy penitent love!
And more than martyr in thy passionate woe!
How should thy sisters equal thee above,
Who knelt not with thee on the gory sod?
Or where the crown our worship could bestow
Like that long gold which wiped the feet of God?

God’s Acre.

In all countries and in all creeds, the dead have claimed the affectionate notice of the living. The idea of housing them, deifying them, propitiating them, of remembering them in _some_ way, however diverse, has always been a prominent one. The belief in the soul’s immortality seems to have been even more clear to the ordinary mind of the natural man than that of a Supreme and Almighty Being. When Christianity appeared, the departed had a place assigned them among the members of the church, and were commemorated as absent brethren gone before their fellows one stage further on the last great journey; when the Reformation disfranchised human nature in the XVIth century, and levelled all its hallowed aspirations with the brute instincts of the animal kingdom, the dead, though divorced from communion with the living, were yet remembered, and placed in two categories—the elect, or the precondemned. Another life was even then believed in, and later branches of the reforming sects all condescended at least to theorize on the future state of disembodied spirits. It remained for our times to foster the cruel _un_belief that dooms our loved ones, not even to everlasting perdition, but to absolute annihilation. It was hard enough in Puritan days for a pious though mistaken mind to bring itself to the belief that possibly the loved companion of childhood, the chosen mate of youth, the venerable parent, the upright teacher, was one of those predestined to eternal torments, one of the holocausts to the greater glory of God; but how far harder now for a fond heart, a clinging nature, to see in those it loves so many perishable puppets, without future and without hope! But happily there is a haven to which these storm‐tossed souls may come with the precious freight of their love and their unerring Catholic instincts. Their companions and brethren are not gone into trackless chaos, they are not absorbed into that monstrous “nothing” of which a false philosophy has made a bewildering bugbear. Every year the church protests against such revolting doctrines on the day which she publicly consecrates to prayers for and remembrance of the departed. This festival is like a spiritual harvest‐home; coming as it does just at the close of the ecclesiastical year, it marks an epoch in the life of the church suffering; and various “revelations” made to saints, as well as the collective belief of the faithful, agree in considering it a day of liberation and rejoicing among the souls in Purgatory. “God’s Acre” (according to the touching and suggestive German idiom) is reaped on that auspicious day, though, like Boaz, the Divine Reaper leaves yet a few ears of corn to be gleaned into heavenly rest by the prayers of the faithful on earth.

Before we go further into our own beautiful view of the future life, let us stop to see how other races and religions have treated the dead.

Of the Egyptians, it is difficult to speak except at too great a length, and, not having at hand sufficient authority, we can only set down what our recollection will supply. The readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD will no doubt remember some interesting articles published a few months since regarding the ancient civilization of Egypt, in which copious reference was made to the esteem and respect paid to the dead in that country. The singular custom of pledging the embalmed body of a father or ancestor, on the receipt of a loan, was noticed; also the dishonor attaching to the non‐redemption of such a pledge. A learned English author, speaking incidentally of Egyptian embalming, mentions that the word mummy is derived from “mum,” which, he says, is Egyptian for _wax_. Representations of the embalming process have been found on tombs and sarcophagi, in which the men engaged in it are seen wearing masks with eagles’ beaks, probably iron masks, thereby denoting of what a poisonous and dangerous nature this absolutely incorruptible embalmment must have been. The Pyramids are perhaps the most imposing funeral monuments ever raised to the memory of mortals, and even the famous Mausoleum of Artemisia can have had no more massive or _eternal_ an aspect.

To pass from the cradle of older civilization to the land whose original peopling has sometimes been attributed, though we believe inaccurately, to Egyptian enterprise, the America of the Aztec and the Red Indian, we find in Parkman’s _Jesuits in America_ some lengthy details on the funereal customs of the Huron tribe, now extinct. He says that “the primitive Indian believed in the immortality of the soul, but not always in a state of future punishment or reward. Nor was the good or evil to be rewarded or punished (when such a belief _did_ exist) of a moral nature. Skilful hunters, brave warriors, men of influence, went to the happy hunting‐ grounds, while the slothful, the weak, the cowardly, were doomed to eat serpents and ashes in dreary regions of mist and darkness.... The spirits, in form and feature, as they had been in life, wended their way through dark forests to the villages of the dead, subsisting on bark and rotten wood. On arriving, they sat all day in the crouching posture of the sick, and when night came hunted the shades of animals, with the shades of bows and arrows, among the shades of trees and rocks; for all things, animate and inanimate, were alike immortal, and all passed together to the gloomy country of the dead.” The public ceremony of exhuming the dead, of which some interesting details are given further on, was supposed to be the occasion of the beginning of the other life. The souls “took wing, as some affirmed, in the shape of pigeons; while the greater number believed that they journeyed on foot ... to the land of shades, ... but, as the spirits of the old and of children are too feeble for the march, they are forced to stay behind, lingering near their earthly homes, where the living often hear the shutting of their invisible cabin doors, and the weak voices of the disembodied children driving birds from their corn‐fields.... The Indian land of souls is not always a region of shadows and gloom. The Hurons sometimes represented the souls of their dead as dancing joyously.... According to some Algonquin traditions, heaven was a scene of endless festivity, ghosts dancing to the sound of the rattle and the drum.... Most of the traditions agree, however, that the spirits were beset with difficulties and perils. There was a swift river which must be crossed on a log that shook beneath their feet, while a ferocious dog opposed their passage, and drove many into the abyss. This river was full of sturgeon and other fish, which the ghosts speared for their subsistence. Beyond was a narrow path between moving rocks which each instant crashed together, grinding to atoms the less nimble of the pilgrims who endeavored to pass. The Hurons believed that a personage named Oscotarach, or the Head‐Piercer, dwelt in a bark house beside the path, and that it was his office to remove the brains from the heads of all who went by, as a necessary preparation for immortality. This singular idea is found also in some Algonquin traditions, according to which, however, the brain is afterwards restored to its owner.”

Le Clerc, in his _Nouvelle Relation de la Gaspésie_, tells a curious story, which is mentioned in a foot‐note by Parkman. It was current in his (Le Clerc’s) time among the Algonquins of Gaspé and Northern New Brunswick, and bears a remarkable likeness to the old myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. “The favorite son of an old Indian died, whereupon the father, with a party of friends, set out for the land of souls to recover him. It was only necessary to wade through a shallow lake, several days’ journey in extent. This they did, sleeping at night on platforms of poles which supported them above the water. At length, they arrived and were met by Papkootparout, the Indian Pluto, who rushed on them in a rage, with his war‐club upraised, but, presently relenting, changed his mind and challenged them to a game of ball. They proved the victors, and won the stakes, consisting of corn, tobacco, and certain fruits, which thus became known to mankind. The bereaved father now begged hard for his son’s soul, and Papkootparout at last gave it to him in the form and size of a nut, which, by pressing it hard between his hands, he forced into a small leather bag. The delighted parent carried it back to earth, with instructions to insert it into the body of his son, who would thereupon return to life. When the adventurers reached home, and reported the happy issue, of their journey, there was a dance of rejoicing; and the father, wishing to take part in it, gave his son’s soul to the keeping of a squaw who stood by. Being curious to see it, she opened the bag, upon which it escaped at once, and took flight for the realms of Papkootparout, preferring them to the abodes of the living.”

These superstitions, although they may make us smile, yet attest, through their rude simplicity, the _natural_ and deep‐rooted existence in all races of a belief not only in the immortality of the soul, but in the possibility of communication with the departed. The Buddhist doctrine of transmigration is but a distorted version of the truth we call purgatory, that is, a state of temporary expiation and gradual cleansing. The Egyptian practice of embalming the dead and often of preserving the bodies of several generations of one’s forefathers in the family house, is another consequence of the primeval belief in the soul’s immortality. Everywhere reverence for the dead implied this belief and symbolized it, and even the custom of placing in the mouth of the Roman dead the piece of money, _denarius_, with which to pay their passage over the Styx, is referable to the true doctrine of good works being laid up in heaven and helping those who have performed them to gain the desired entrance into eternal repose.

The following minute description of the Indian feast of the dead, of which mention has already been made, is interesting, and is condensed from the account given by Father Brebœuf: “The corpses were lowered from their scaffolds and lifted from their graves. Each family claimed its own, and forthwith addressed itself to the task of removing what remained of flesh from the bones. These, after being tenderly caressed with tears and lamentations, were wrapped in skins and pendent robes of beaver. These relics, as also the recent corpses, which remained entire, but were likewise carefully wrapped in furs, were carried to one of the largest houses, and hung to the numerous cross poles which, rafterlike, supported the roof. The concourse of mourners seated themselves at a funeral feast, the squaws of the household distributed the food, and a chief harangued the assembly, lamenting the loss of the deceased and praising their virtues. This over, the mourners began their march for Ossonané, the scene of the final rite. The bodies remaining entire were borne on litters, while the bundles of bones were slung at the shoulders of the relatives, like fagots. The procession thus defiled slowly through the forest pathways, and as they passed beneath the shadow of the pines, the mourners uttered at intervals and in unison a wailing cry, meant to imitate the voices of disembodied souls, ... and believed to have a peculiarly soothing effect on the conscious relics that each man carried. The place prepared for the last rite was a cleared area in the forest, many acres in extent. Around it was a high and strong scaffolding of upright poles, with cross‐poles extended between, for hanging the funeral gifts and the remains of the dead. The fathers lodged in a house where over a hundred of these bundles of mortality hung from the rafters. Some were mere shapeless rolls, others were made up into clumsy effigies, adorned with feathers, beads, etc. In the morning (the procession having arrived over night at Ossonané) the relics were taken down, opened again, and the bones fondled anew by the women, amid paroxysms of grief. When the procession bearing the dead reached the ground prepared for the last solemnity, the bundles were laid on the ground, and the funeral gifts outspread for the admiration of the beholders. Among them were many robes of beaver and other rich furs, collected and preserved for years with a view to this festival. Fires were lighted and kettles slung, and the scene became like a fair or _caravanserai_. This continued till three o’clock in the afternoon, when the gifts were repacked, and the bones shouldered afresh. Suddenly, at a signal from the chiefs, the crowd ran forward from every side towards the scaffolding, like soldiers to the assault of a town, scaled it by the rude ladders with which it was furnished, and hung their relics and their gifts to the forest of poles which surmounted it. The chiefs then again harangued the people in praise of the departed, while other functionaries lined the grave throughout with rich robes of beaver skin. Three large copper kettles were next placed in the middle, and then ensued a scene of hideous confusion. The bodies which had been left entire were brought to the edge of the grave, flung in, and arranged in order at the bottom by ten or twelve Indians, stationed there for the purpose, amid the wildest excitement and the uproar of many hundred mingled voices. Night was now fast closing in, and the concourse bivouacked around the clearing.... One of the bundles of bones, tied to a pole on the scaffold, chanced to fall into the grave. This accident precipitated the closing act, and perhaps increased its frenzy. All around blazed countless fires, and the air resounded with discordant cries. The naked multitude, on, under, and around the scaffolding, were flinging the remains of their dead, relieved from their wrappings of skins, pell‐mell into the pit, where were discovered men who, as the ghastly shower fell around them, arranged the bones in their places with long poles. All was soon over; earth, logs, and stones were cast upon the grave, and the clamor subsided into a funereal chant, so dreary and lugubrious that it seemed like the wail of despairing souls from the abyss of perdition.”