Chapter III: Captain Leopold Introduces His Friend (2)

Strangely, then,
Sounded the High-Priest’s message, summoning
The unwed of David’s lineage who had claim,
By sacred right of kinship, to espouse
Its sole surviving maiden—bidding them
Bring each a wand, whereby the Lord might show
Whom he had chosen—and, among them, me,
Nearest of kin, but hoping to lie hid
Half-way in the fifth decade of my years!
But, ever wont to obey the voice divine,
Within heard or without, I came, and stood
Unseemly ’mid the suitors. Then the wands
Were laid upon the altar—the High-Priest
Seeking the sign to Moses given of yore,
When, in the wilderness, the tribes rebelled
’Gainst privileged Aaron.[153] So we knelt, and went,
And waited on the Lord.

And I, that night,
Like Joseph, son of Jacob, dream’d a dream.
I saw a maiden, robed in purest white,
Sit throned where once, in Solomon’s vanished fane,
Reposed the Ark beneath the Mercy-seat,
Within the Holy of Holies. While I gazed,
Behold, a sudden vista of long light
Opened as into heaven; and, swiftly, a dove
Descended on the maid, yet settled not,
But o’er her head hung brooding! Then a voice
Said softly: “Fear not, Joseph, for thy vow.
Bride of the Dove is she; and thou, her spouse,
Shalt guard her for her Spouse.” Whereat I woke,
Astonished: and to find, upon the morrow,
That one of the rods had budded in the night—
Budded and blossom’d; and that rod was mine!

SINGS:

Though the dream brought me peace, there is mystery still:
But in time He will solve it, the Lord of my love.
’Tis enough that I know I am wedding His will—
Beheld in this maiden, the “Bride of the Dove.”

Ah, who can she be—there enthroned as a bride
Where the Ark of the Covenant rested of old?
Is it She for whose advent our fathers have sigh’d—
The long-promised Virgin Isaias foretold?

And what was the Dove? When the voice said “her Spouse,”
Did it mean that Jehovah had seal’d her his own?
Has she too, like me, made the sweetest of vows—
To live evermore for Divine love alone?

But she comes: and I feel that the angels are here.
Their charge to be mine! They will share it, then, still.
And the dear God himself, was He ever so near?
Be at peace, O my soul! Thou art wedding His will.

MARY (SINGS).

My God, to Thee I bow:
Thy will is ever mine.
Thy grace inspired the vow
That made me wholly thine.

If Thou dost bid me wed,
Thou canst but guide aright.
I follow, darkly led,
Till break the perfect light.

I take my chosen lord,
And plight him troth for Thee.
So find thy sovran word
Its handmaid still in me.

CHORUS.

All hail, blest pair, all hail!
As yet ye little know
What words that cannot fail
To after-times will show.

Not angel eyes command
The glorious lot that waits,
As, meekly, hand-in-hand,
Ye leave the temple’s gates!

MAY, 1878.

Footnote 152:

Written for a children’s “May Cantata.”

Footnote 153:

Numbers xvii.

THE BOLLANDIST _ACTA SANCTORUM_.

For many reasons the Bollandist series of saints’ lives is one of the most remarkable works that ever issued from the pen of man. As a serial publication, what other work of the kind extends over a period of nearly two centuries and a half, comprises upwards of sixty volumes in large folio, and is still advancing, with upwards of one-sixth part of the whole remaining to full completion? Or as a monument of devotion to the saints of God, as a vast storehouse of example and instruction in the way of eternal life, there is nothing that can be put in competition with it. Even this view of it is narrow, as compared with other claims to regard which it possesses, and which are fully recognized by literary men, even among those who have little or no sympathy with the religious side of this great work. The whole range of history, from the foundation of Christianity, forms an essential portion of it. The lives of the apostles demand the investigation of all that is known of that remote period; a large proportion of the Roman pontiffs are among the canonized, and their records belong to the history of the Christian world, including that of the middle ages. The sainted founders of religious orders, from Benedict to Ignatius, from Anthony to Paul of the Cross, cannot be described without entering at length into the origin and progress of their holy institutes, many of which were asylums and homes of refuge for letters and learning during the darkest and most troubled periods of European history, and others served as training-places, whence the confessors and martyrs of the Christian faith went forth to the ends of the earth to propagate divine truth and love at the sacrifice of everything that humanity holds dear, even of liberty and life itself. Or, if it is question of kings and emperors whom the church venerates as saints, the secular history of their dominions naturally falls within the scope of their biographies: as of Hungary under St. Stephen; of Germany under Henry II.; of England under Edward the Confessor; of Denmark under Canute IV.; of Spain under Ferdinand III.; and of France under Louis IX. Not unfrequently the biography of a saint comprises the history of his age: as of the fourth century in the life of St. Athanasius; of the eleventh in that of St. Gregory VII.; of the twelfth in that of St. Bernard; and of the thirteenth in those of St. Dominic and St. Francis of Assisi. The limits of the _Acta_ are not confined to Europe; they are as wide as our globe itself. Wherever the seed of the Gospel has been sown or watered by the blood of martyrs, among every race of mankind, from China to Paraguay, from Lima to Japan, nothing is foreign to the Bollandists’ pen; their work embraces, incidentally or formally, all the history of all nations.

Intimately connected with the historical researches of their work are several auxiliary branches of knowledge which largely enter into it and cannot be overlooked in estimating its scope and value. The aid of geography, for example, had to be called in to settle the boundaries of episcopal sees, of provinces, of kingdoms; to reconcile history with topography by determining the obsolete or corrupted names of certain places, about which different authors may have held different opinions. Several treatises on chronology entered into the general scheme. Archæology furnished the means of a minute and complete examination into ancient manners, rites, laws, arts, and the rudiments of languages, and of a comparison among the sacred and secular monuments of various nations. Then, again, the art of employing the materials, characters, and other portions of ancient MSS. for the determination of dates engaged the attention of the Bollandists, and of Père Papebroch in particular; and this father, with the frankness inseparable from true genius, did not hesitate to acknowledge his debt to the illustrious master _Rei Diplomaticæ_, the Benedictine Mabillon. As might have been expected, theology, canon law, and ecclesiastical history are largely represented in those sixty volumes. The teaching of the holy fathers, the decrees of councils, the laws of the church constantly demanded scientific statement and vindication, as also did the perpetual glory of miracles, of prophecy, of celestial revelations, and the undying gift of the loftiest contemplation, as against a class of critics who, while affecting to patronize letters, assume that the lives of saints must be nothing more than a tissue of idle tales and old women’s fables, or at least speak of them as if they thought them so. In the judgment, however, of several eminent critics of the modern school even the legends of saints, regarded as popular beliefs in a remote and half-instructed age, have their value as evidence of the ideas, manners, and customs of the people in the middle ages. M. Guizot was at pains to count twenty-five thousand legends in the Bollandists’ work; and these, he remarks, were the real literature of the first half of that period, and served for aliment to the intellectual, moral, and æsthetic life of those ages, and, from a historian’s point of view, were on that account beyond all price. Another French critic, M. Renan, also regarding the _Acta_ from an external point of view, expresses himself in language of eulogy little to have been anticipated: “Quelle incomparable galerie, en effet, que celle de ces 25,000 héros de la vie désintéressée! Quel air de haute distinction! quelle noblesse! quelle poésie! Il y en a d’humbles et de grands, de doctes et de simples; mais je n’en connais pas un seul qui ait l’air vulgaire. Tous m’apparaissent tels que les pose Giotto, grandioses, hardis, détachés des liens terrestres, et déjà transfigurés. Ils plaisent peu au sens positif, je l’avoue; mais qu’ils ont, après tout, mieux compris la vie, que ceux qui l’embrassent comme un étroit calcul d’intérêt, comme une lutte insignifiante d’ambition et de vanité.”

Such being the character of the _Acta_, who conceived the comprehensive scheme and gave it actual form and being? The names of its originator and early continuators are preserved in the following lines:

Quod Rosweydus preparaverat,
Quod Bollandus inchoaverat,
Quod Henschenius formaverat,
Perfecit Papebrochius.

Herbert Rosweyd, a native of Utrecht in Holland, entered the Society of Jesus in 1589, at the age of twenty, and taught philosophy and theology successively at Douay and Antwerp. He was a man in whom great learning was united to great piety. He composed and edited many works in Latin and Flemish, and among the rest published an edition of the Oriental ascetic Moschus’ _Spiritual Meadow_, and an original treatise on the _Imitation of Christ_ to prove its author to have been Thomas à Kempis. Eleven years before his death, in 1629, Père Rosweyd published the _Lives of the Fathers of the Desert_, in a folio volume, at Antwerp. It may be regarded as a first instalment of the _Acta Sanctorum_. While he was engaged on one of his books the idea occurred to him to collect in some twelve volumes the lives and acts of the beatified and canonized saints of the Catholic Church. At the time when he first conceived his great plan he was too deeply committed to other literary works to take it up at once; but the idea never was abandoned, and death alone prevented him from at least commencing it. When the project was mentioned to Cardinal Bellarmine, he inquired if Père Rosweyd expected to live two hundred years; such was the cardinal’s estimate of the magnitude of the undertaking—an estimate fully borne out by the result. Yet, as we shall presently see, in the first century and a half of the work not a dozen only but four times that number of volumes were published; and if twelve volumes could have comprised it the end would have been reached in little more than forty years from its commencement. What Papebroch said of Bolland may be said of Rosweyd: It was providential that he who first started such a work could not foresee its vast extent. Who but a rash man, or one assured by divine revelation of his success, would otherwise ever have dared to extend his plans and hopes to an age beyond his own, or counted upon the co-operation of future authors yet unborn in an association of labor up to that time without a parallel in the history of letters? It was probably only in the bosom of a religious order like the Society of Jesus, in which years count for days and centuries for years, that such a scheme could ever have been carried out.

Rosweyd, then, was dead, but his conception survived him. The duty of giving effect to it devolved on John Bolland (Latinized, in the style of the period, into Bollandus), after whom the whole body of succeeding editors has since been named BOLLANDISTS.[154] Bolland was by his birth, August 13, 1596, a native of Tillemont, in Flanders. At the age of sixteen he entered the society, and professed the four solemn vows January 27, 1630. His studies had been distinguished, and as a professor he stood high in many various attainments, in letters and in Oriental and other languages. But, better still, his piety and religious fervor kept equal pace with his other acquirements. Even after his appointment to carry on the work suggested by Père Rosweyd, Père Bolland would never intermit the duties of the confessional in the church of St. Ignatius attached to the house of the professed fathers of the society at Antwerp—now the church of St. Charles Borromeo, at the corner of Wyngard Street and the Katelina Rampart. It was only the spare time unoccupied by hearing confessions that he gave to sacred literature.

A glance at what had been previously done in the way of saints’ lives will enable us the better to understand the plan now adopted by Père Bolland. Of the acts of the martyrs and the other saints the very earliest form is the record of St. Stephen’s origin, arrest, trial, condemnation, and martyrdom, contained in the Acts of the Apostles. Similar records began to be kept first of all in the Roman Church by order of Pope Clement. Notaries were appointed for the purpose of collecting and authenticating the acts of martyrs. The testimony of eye-witnesses was taken down, and, when duly attested, the records were submitted to the judgment of the pope. Similarly the martyrologies took their origin from the burying-places of the martyrs in the catacombs. When a martyr was carried to his rest from the Amphitheatre an inscription was placed beside him, a name, a date, a title, a palm-branch or a dove, perhaps a monogram. Such were the rudiments of the earliest martyrologies. The Roman martyrology, in a few lines, each day records the names of the martyrs of the day under the favorite term of _Depositio_. The earliest calendar of the Roman Church is composed of a list of depositions copied as it were from the galleries of the cemeteries. These honored names thence passed into the diptychs, and were read aloud to the Christian assemblies on public occasions. Separate churches had their own diptychs, and frequently exchanged them with one another. At first martyrs only were admitted among the select number; but in the fourth century in the Western Church the first exception was made in favor of St. Martin. In the East the lists were opened to confessors somewhat earlier in favor of SS. Ephrem, Athanasius, Hilarion, and Antony. As regarded confessors, the acts were in fact an authenticated narration of their lives. In this way the martyrologies and acts of the martyrs and other saints assumed the form we now know, subject to the scrutiny of the bishops of particular sees, till a later date, when the admission of a new name into the calendar was reserved for the Supreme Pontiff. During the middle ages the literature of saints’ lives was in great part the work of the monasteries. Eusebius, the ecclesiastical historian, at an earlier period laid the foundation of this class of composition. Prudentius, in the third century, celebrated in verse the martyr’s crown of victory. There was the _Spiritual Meadow_ of Moschus, and the _Mirror_ of Vincent of Beauvais; and, most celebrated of all, the _Legends of the Saints_, composed by Da Varaggio, or De Voragine, Archbishop of Genoa—a work better known by its title of the _Golden Legend_, given it by its admirers. This collection was by far the most popular of all the works of the kind, and was translated into nearly every European language. It was one of the earliest books printed in England by Caxton, in 1483, in folio. To a somewhat later period belonged Surius the Carthusian, from whose _Lives_, in seven folio volumes, we find Charles Kingsley admitting that he had picked up his knowledge of ecclesiastical history. After Surius came Père Ribadeneira, the Spanish Jesuit, author of the _Flower of Saints’ Lives_. The work contemplated by Rosweyd and put in hand by Bolland was different from everything of the kind that had gone before it. The new scheme aimed at the collection and publication of the original acts and lives of all the saints in the order in which they stand in the Roman calendar and martyrology. Difficult and obscure passages were to be elucidated. It was adopted as a general rule that no testimony could be admitted which the editors had not thoroughly examined; that, in adducing an important witness, the age he lived in, his trustworthiness and judgment as an author, should be rigorously estimated. Nothing which tended to fuller acquaintance with any saint was to be slurred over without discussion; no place to be deemed too obscure, no people too ignoble, no country too remote, to which a saint had at any time belonged; and, in a word, no language too rude to occupy their careful attention, as far as either the intervention of published and unpublished authors, or correspondence, or the agency of ubiquitous friends could utilize human labor. Their plan was not simply to write a history of the church in numerous countries, strenuously as they meant to labor for that; its scope included the particular foundations of bishoprics, of cities, of monasteries, and of religious orders, the successive stages of whose histories they professed, to the full extent of their powers, to investigate.

Père Bolland’s first care was to collect materials for so extensive a work. He opened a correspondence with churches and monasteries all over Europe and beyond its limits, inquiring in all directions for offices peculiar to different places, and for copies of the rarest archives of the religious houses. These he gradually accumulated, until the foundation of a valuable library and museum was established, which long occupied the upper floor of a detached building in the professed house at Antwerp. Out of these materials Père Bolland then commenced to form his _Acta_ for the month of January. Six years he toiled single-handed; but in 1635 a coadjutor was given him in Père Godfrey Henschen, S.J., a native of Gueldres, in Holland, then in the thirty-sixth year of his age and the sixteenth of his religious profession. The fathers prosecuted the work in company for eight years, and in 1643 the first two volumes were published, comprising the saints belonging to the month of January, to the number of upwards of twelve hundred. Père Bolland struck the keynote of his great work at a sublime height in these few words of dedication:

SANCTO SANCTORUM
JESU CHRISTO
ÆTERNO PONTIFICI
EIUSQUE INTER MORTALES VICARIO
URBANO OCTAVO
ROMANO PONTIFICI.

It was no exaggeration of the fact when Père Paul Oliva, afterwards elected father-general of the Jesuits, thus addressed Père Henschen: “Your reverence and your coadjutor are dwelling, in your every thought and with your pen, in the church in heaven.” The success of the January volumes was from the first assured, and went on increasing after the publication of the February saints, in three volumes, followed in 1658. Pope Alexander VII., the reigning pontiff, recorded his opinion that “a work more useful to the church of God or more glorious for her had never been accomplished, or even begun, by any one.” About the same time a second coadjutor was taken into the work in Père Daniel Papebroch, S.J., a native of Antwerp. His family was originally from Hamburg, but at the Reformation his father removed to Antwerp, where Daniel was born in 1628. At the end of the usual studies he entered the Society of Jesus in 1646, three of his brothers eventually following his example. Père Papebroch was ordained in 1658, and called from the chair of philosophy at Antwerp to assist PP. Bolland and Henschen in the _Acta_. After the February volumes appeared the pope invited the Bollandist Fathers to Rome. Père Bolland himself was too infirm to accept the invitation, but his younger coadjutors went instead of him. They left Antwerp July 22, 1660, old Père Bolland accompanying them as far as Cologne. Their literary tour, which lasted about two years and a half, was eminently successful. They visited monasteries and libraries without number all over Germany, Italy, and France; every door, every drawer was thrown open to them. Hundreds of precious documents were copied by them and for them; their library and museum were enriched, beyond the expectation of the most sanguine, with manuscripts and books; with missals, breviaries, martyrologies, sacramentaries, rituals, graduals, antiphonaries, and other similar works of many various rites or “uses,” such as the Mozarabic in Spain, the Ambrosian at Milan, the Sarum in England, and its Aberdeen daughter in Scotland. When at its best this library possessed some twelve thousand volumes, and in value and rarity is believed to have surpassed either the Barberini in Rome or the Mazarine in Paris—collections especially noted for their pre-eminence in similar works.

Père Bolland, who was now approaching his seventieth year, survived the return of his coadjutors from their tour only a few months. To the last he took part in the work of the museum, while the fervor of his regular and holy life seemed to increase. The 29th of August, 1665, was the last day he visited the working-room, but on a proof-sheet being put into his hand he was forced to lay it aside and retire to bed. He lingered about a fortnight, and then expired, after receiving all the sacraments of the dying. In his life and in his death, as well as with his indefatigable pen, he proved how well he had studied the saintly models he had been for upwards of thirty years daily contemplating.[155]

The next issue of the _Acta_, in three volumes, comprising the saints for March, appeared in 1668, the joint work of PP. Henschen and Papebroch. It was memorable for more reasons than one. With it began one of the customs of the Bollandists, to open a new volume with a biographical notice of any of their number who had died since the issue of the last. The first volume for March opened with an _Eloge_ of Père Bolland, accompanied by an excellent engraving of his fine head, taken from a portrait of him executed by Fruytiers, a pupil of Rubens. The first difficulty that beset the undertaking arose from passages in the same volumes, in which a favorite opinion of the Carmelite Order, that their founder and first general was the prophet Elias, was quietly ignored. Not only had Baronius and Bellarmine anticipated the Bollandist view of the question, but it had already been taken for granted by two preceding authors belonging to the Carmelite Order itself. The Flemish Carmelites, however, took umbrage at Père Papebroch’s opinion, and a quarto volume soon afterwards appeared in opposition, the first in a tolerably long series of publications resulting from this curious controversy.[156] The Bollandists took no notice of their opponents until the publication of the saints’ lives for April, in three volumes, in 1675, afforded an opportunity of repeating and confirming their view of the actual origin of the order in question in the twelfth century of the Christian era. The Flemish Carmelites again asserted the more ancient origin; and when it was known in 1680 that three volumes of the May saints’ lives were about to appear, containing the life of another Carmelite saint, the order addressed an unusual request to Père Papebroch that a copy of the life might be shown them before publication. After some difficulty the Bollandist forwarded a copy to his father-general in Rome to be shown to the general of the Carmelites there. For a long time no answer was returned; three of the May volumes were ready; the bookseller was impatient; and Père Papebroch was on the point of leaving home for Westphalia. He therefore permitted the volumes to be issued for sale. He had hardly gone when Père Henschen received an order from Rome to suppress the life of St. Angel, and despatched it to Père Papebroch. But by this time many copies of the Bollandist May lives had got into circulation; it was too late to attempt the suppression of the life in question, and his father-general accepted Père Papebroch’s apologies. The result was another large volume from a Carmelite pen. Up to this time the dispute had been restricted to the Flemish province of the Carmelites, but in 1682 its area was extended to France by the casual discovery of an opinion favorable to the Bollandist view, expressed by Ducange, the illustrious archæologist, in a private letter to a friend. The provincial of the Flemish Carmelites next called on Pope Innocent XI. to interpose his authority in the matter; and Père Janning, a younger member of the Bollandist body, was sent to Rome to watch the proceedings. In 1690, two-and-twenty years after the dispute began, Père Papebroch was summoned to the tribunal of Pope Innocent XII., who referred the matter to the Congregation of the Index. Rome, however, did not move fast enough for Carmelite zeal. The _Acta_ were denounced, 1691, before the Spanish Inquisition as a work originating within the dominions of the Catholic king. Four years later a decree of the Inquisition condemned the March, April, and May volumes of the _Acta_ as “containing erroneous propositions, scenting of heresy, dangerous to faith, scandalous, impious, offensive to pious ears, schismatical, seditious, presumptuous, offensive,” etc., etc.

That this was a bitter trial to Père Papebroch and his coadjutors cannot be doubted. All the learned men of Europe were on their side, and the Jesuits succeeded in obtaining a subsequent decree of the Inquisition, 1696, permitting the Bollandists to appear and answer the charges; for the former decree had been pronounced in their absence. Upon this Père Papebroch produced a categorical defence of everything laid to his charge, in three volumes (1696-1699). The Carmelites also were quite as busy. Meanwhile, also in 1696, Innocent XII. forbade the disputants to attack each other. The Carmelite general, little satisfied with a neutral decision, petitioned His Holiness to end the dispute by a positive decree. After consulting the Congregation of the Council the pope decided to impose silence on the whole question regarding the origin of the Carmelites, and issued a brief to that effect, dated November 20, 1698. The judgment of the Spanish Inquisition, June 11, 1697, prohibited all the books relating to the dispute, but presumably excluding the _Acta_ themselves; for in 1707 an index of forbidden books, published at Madrid under the authority of the Inquisition, made no mention of the Bollandist lives.

For thirty years, then, Père Papebroch had to bear this unwelcome interruption; and forty years after his death circumstances made it desirable to restate his defence. In 1755 a _Supplementum Apologeticum_ took its place in the Bollandist series, containing all the apologetic volumes published in defence of Père Papebroch’s view in his Carmelite controversy. The successors of the early Bollandists had a noble opportunity, and used it nobly, to bury all former rancors, in the first volume of their revived work, in 1845, and the fifty-fifth of the series. _The Life of St. Teresa_, the great Carmelitess, occupies nearly the whole of its seven hundred folio pages—the largest scale on which any one life had hitherto been executed by the Bollandists. It was the solitary work of its author, Père Vandermoere, and was illustrated by drawings of places in Spain connected with the saint, and engraved in the highest style of art.

Père Henschen lived to see the first three May volumes issue from the press in 1680, and the following year closed his useful life, of which forty-six years had been devoted to work as a Bollandist. Père Papebroch was now at the head of the work, and had for his assistants PP. Janning and Baert. It went steadily on, and before his death, in 1714, Père Papebroch saw five volumes of the month of June, and of the series twenty-four, completed. For five years preceding his death he was nearly blind, and when it occurred he had reached the age of eighty-seven. This second founder of the great series was the author of several other important works, such as the _Annals of the City of Antwerp_ and the _Acta Vitæ Scti. Ferdinandi Regis Castillæ_.

It would protract our sketch beyond all reasonable limits if we were to follow the progress of the great work, during the sixty years following Père Papebroch’s death, with as much detail as we have hitherto given. Let it suffice to say that it was prosecuted by fifteen Jesuit fathers in succession in addition to those already named; and when the work was suspended in 1773, the year in which the Society of Jesus was for the time suppressed, fifty volumes of the _Acta_ had appeared, and the fiftieth was the third of the month of October. The plan of the work had indeed grown and expanded since Rosweyd estimated its contents at twelve volumes, since Bolland found two sufficient for the month of January, February, March, and April had each of them occupied three, August six, June and July seven, May and September eight. The chief sources relied upon for the heavy expenses of such a work were at first the gifts of private persons, bishops, abbots, and others, the patrimony of Père Papebroch and his sister forming no inconsiderable item in the account. Afterwards the sale of the volumes ensured a limited annual profit; and in 1688 the court of Vienna granted the fathers a pension, but burdened with the condition that subsequent volumes should each of them be dedicated to some member of the imperial house. Hence, after that date, every volume bears at the head of it an engraved portrait of an emperor or empress, of an archduke or archduchess. The Bollandists also enjoyed a certain revenue from their monopoly of the sale of classical books in the Jesuit colleges of Belgium.

A word as to the place where they lived and worked. Travellers who have visited Antwerp must remember the handsome Renaissance tower of St. Charles Borromeo’s Church, on the corner of the Katelina Rampart and Wyngard Street. That church was originally dedicated to St. Ignatius, the great first Jesuit, and was once a museum of Rubens’ art. At the suppression of the society its best ornaments were removed to Vienna, where many of them may be seen in the public gallery. The church itself perished by fire in 1718, but soon rose again as before. The small square it stands in is formed on two sides by massive buildings, formerly the Antwerp house of the professed fathers of the society. In the upper floor of the building opposite the church Père Bolland established his museum and printing-press, and there the work was carried on for nearly one hundred and fifty years. Few places in the history of Christian literature have a better title to be remembered with honor. In another article we shall trace the progress of the Bollandist _Acta_ after the suppression of the Jesuit fathers until the long suspension of the work itself consequent on the French Revolution. We shall then give our readers an account of its revival some forty years ago, together with a description of the new museum and library in the Collége St. Michel, Brussels, which the writer had the honor of visiting a short time ago.

Footnote 154:

Nothing could give a truer idea of the fog of misconception and
ignorance that envelops every subject connected with Catholicity in
England than an incident which occurred to the writer in the course of
last summer. He had applied to the editor of an influential monthly of
high standing, published in London, for permission to contribute a
paper on the Bollandist _Acta_. The editor in reply said that he
should be happy to receive an article on such a subject, adding, “They
were old friends and benefactors of mine.” The phrase was somewhat
puzzling; but it was fully explained to the writer by a literary
friend of great experience as referring to the respectable family of
the late Baron Bolland, a judge of the English Exchequer Court. The
Catholic Bollandists were strangers even in name to the popular
editor.

Footnote 155:

Among the numerous errors in the few lines devoted to the Bollandists
in the new _Encyclopædia Britannica_, not the worst is the statement
that Père Bolland was only a short time engaged on the _Acta_. More
than one-half of a life of sixty-nine years was spent in the
production of five folio volumes for his own share, besides
superintending the preparation of others.

Footnote 156:

Particulars may be found in the _Bibliothèque des Ecrivains de la
Comp. de Jésus_, of the Pères de Backer, S.J. Liége, 1854. Also in
Nicéron, _Histoire des Hommes Illustres_, II.

TOMBS OF THE HOUSE OF SAVOY.

“Let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings.”—_Shakspere._

One of the most secluded and picturesque valleys of Savoy is to be found about twenty miles north of Chambéry, shut in, as by cyclopean walls, among gray jagged rocks, height piled on height—Mont du Chat on the one hand, and the mountains of Beauges on the other, while away to the north, through the gorges that give passage to the arrowy Rhone, is the dark Jura range, and to the south-east, rising into the very clouds, shine the everlasting glaciers of the Alps. At the base of Mont du Chat, which here rises abruptly fifteen hundred feet from the shore, is the beautiful lake of Bourget, clear, calm, and pure as the bright summer sky which is reflected in its bosom. It is the _lac enchanté_ of Lamartine, who opens his impassioned romance of _Raphael_ upon its shores, and under the inspiration of the glorious scenery wrote his poem of “Le Lac,” in which he calls upon the hours on these enchanted waters to suspend their course, and thus prolong a bliss which, to use his expression, neither time nor eternity could ever restore. In the fulness of delight and feeling he cries:

“Assez de malheureux ici-bas vous implorent,
Coulez, coulez pour eux,
Prenez avec leurs jours les soins qui les dévorent,
Oubliez les heureux!”

The lake of Bourget winds for several leagues in and out among the capes and headlands, forming a beautiful series of bays and inlets which wash picturesque cliffs and verdant slopes covered with vines and fig-trees and fields of waving corn. Towards one end is the little islet of Châtillon, with an old manor-house that seems to grow out of the rock, the seat of an ancient race, flanked with towers, and surrounded by gardens with steps cut in the rock leading from terrace to terrace where grow fruitful espaliers and the fragrant jasmine. Further south is the promontory of Saint-Innocent, with its granite cliffs and ancient château jutting into the lake, of which it commands the entire view. Not far from the eastern shore is Aix-les-Bains, whose hot sulphur springs were frequented in ancient times by the Roman emperors, and are still resorted to for health or pleasure. Between Aix and the lake is the verdant hill of Tresserves, that rises almost perpendicularly from the water, covered with enormous old chestnut-trees. To the south you can see the mountains gradually descending towards the Arcadian valley of Chambéry, with many a village spire peering forth amid the dark walnut groves, or the tower of some ancient castle with battlements still frowning, though they now only serve to point a moral and adorn the landscape, if not, perchance, a tale. On the other side, at the foot of Tresserves, is the château of Bon Port, overshadowed by trees, near a sheltered bay where boats are to be found for crossing the lake. Every one goes over to the western shore, where in the gloomy shade of Mont du Chat, which veils it from the glare of the sun the greater part of the day, is the royal abbey of Hautecombe, the ancient burial-place of the house of Savoy. The profound solitude, the grandeur of the scenery, varying from stern mountain height to fair, sunny slopes and luxuriant valleys, and the pure, limpid waters of the tranquil lake giving expression to the landscape, render it one of the most lovely as well as peaceful spots in which to rest after life’s fitful fever. The luminous sky, the purple, light on the mountains, the stately colonnade of the pines with their solemn shades, the lulling sound of the torrents and cascades, the wind murmuring through the defiles, the sunny terraces where the eye passes from gloom to light, as the soul from darkness to joy, all dispose the heart to peace.

Hautecombe may be reached in less than an hour, but there is a delicious charm in floating idly around this gem of a lake, all blue and gold, giving one’s self up to dreamy thought, breathing the mountain air, listening to the gentle waves as they break against the shore and to the melancholy songs of the boatmen, and looking at the chalets on the hillsides, the meadows and pastures, the herds with their tinkling bells, the insects floating in the sun, the quivering leaves and shimmering lights, and the dark pile of the abbey with its shadowy cloisters on the further shore.

At length we land on the terrace at the foot of a tall, octagon tower that looks like a pharos, and, indeed, serves as one. The vast buildings that constitute the abbey, the Gothic church with its painted walls, its storied windows, the tombs and cenotaphs on every side, and the three hundred statues that people its chapels and aisles, are well worth a visit. More than one tomb tells of the brave exploits of a valiant race, the glorious part its chiefs took in the Crusades, their attachment to the Holy See, for which they often shed their blood in the continual wars of Italy, and their prowess on every battle-field of Europe. All these monuments of white stone, and these pale statues standing in niches or lying on tombs, have a somewhat ghastly, ghostly look that is the more striking from the groundwork of black schist. The house of Savoy, which gradually rose by the bravery, policy, and fortunate alliances of its counts, first ruled over a sterile domain in the Cottian Alps of which Chambéry was the principal town. These princes were remarkable for their political sagacity and gallantry on the battle-field. This was in part owing to their peculiar position. Savoy was in the middle ages a border-land which forced its knights to live in the saddle and hold themselves in readiness to meet the enemy, whether on the side of France or the vast domain of the German Empire. And when not needed at home they were always at the service of their allies, so that they took part in all the wars of the times, and led a life of knight-errantry that often bordered on romance. Humbert _aux Blanches Mains_, the first count, was a descendant of Duke Witikind, a contemporary of Charlemagne. His benefactions to the churches of that day are still on record. The line of counts ended with Amédée VIII., who was created duke in the fifteenth century. The ducal line extended through three centuries, when the peace of Utrecht in 1713 recognized Victor Amédée as King of Sardinia.

The abbey of St. Mary of Hautecombe was founded in the year 1125 by Count Amédée III. through the influence of St. Bernard and St. Guérin, with whom he had intimate relations. _Combe_ is an old French word signifying a valley between two mountains. The Cistercians generally built their convents in a valley. The first abbot was St. Amédée d’Hauterive, of a distinguished family in Dauphiné, who passed his youth at the court of the Emperor Henry of Germany, but afterwards became a monk at Clairvaux, and was appointed abbot of Hautecombe by St. Bernard himself. The Emperor Conrad II. held him in such esteem that he made him a member of his council, and Frederic I., his chancellor. And when, in the time of the Second Crusade, preached by St. Bernard, Count Amédée took the cross at Metz in presence of an immense multitude, and set forth with his nephew, Louis VII. of France (in 1147), he left both his son and estates to the guardianship of the holy abbot of Hautecombe, who proved himself fully equal to the trust. He was an able writer also, and left eight homilies in honor of the Blessed Virgin, which still form part of the collection of the fathers. They used to be read on certain days of the year in the churches of Lausanne, of which he died archbishop in 1158. His tomb is still to be seen in the cloister at Hautecombe.

The second abbot was St. Vivian, likewise a disciple of St. Bernard’s. By his exalted sanctity he gave additional renown to the abbey, which so prospered that when St. Bernard visited it a few years after its foundation it already numbered two hundred monks. Many eminent prelates have sprung from this house, two of whom were elevated to the pontifical chair—Geoffroy de Châtillon in 1241, under the name of Celestin II., and Nicholas III. in 1277, who belonged to the Orsini family. It was the latter who gave the highest sanction to the devotion of the scapular of Mount Carmel by the beatification of Simon Stock, who died at Bordeaux in 1265, in the hundredth year of his age.

Hautecombe does not seem to have been at first intended as a place of sepulture. Count Amédée III. died two years after his departure, on the isle of Cyprus, of some epidemic in the camp. His son, Humbert III., succeeded him. This prince was an able ruler, as brave as he was pious, and valiantly defended his domains against Guy IV. of Dauphiné. He also distinguished himself at the siege of Milan, and was always the ally and ardent defender of the rights of the Holy See. The religious education he had received from St. Amédée gave him a proper estimate of earthly things, and he would have gladly renounced the world and become a monk at Hautecombe, had it not been for the remonstrances of his people. He often retired here for a season, as well as at Notre Dame des Alpes, and when he felt his life was drawing to a close he took the holy habit and died a few days after with a reputation for sanctity which time has not dimmed. Pope Gregory XVI. authorized public honors to be paid him, and Savoy celebrates his festival on the 4th of March, believed to be the day of his death. It was he who conceived the idea of making Hautecombe the burial-place of his family, and he was the first to find a grave here. The statue on his tomb represents him in the Cistercian habit with _sabots_ on his feet.

Two brothers of Humbert the Saint, as he is called, Peter and John, and a sister named Margaret, embraced the monastic life and died in the odor of sanctity. Several other members of the house of Savoy have also been raised to our altars. A grandson of Humbert’s, buried behind the high altar at Hautecombe, was beatified by Pope Gregory XVI. in 1838 under the name of the Blessed Boniface. His festival is on the 13th of March. He was styled, when young, the Absalom of the age, on account of his personal beauty, but he early sought refuge from the seductions of the world in the Grande Chartreuse, where he took the habit of St. Bruno. He was subsequently called forth from his cell and appointed archbishop of Canterbury and primate of England. Pope Innocent IV. consecrated him at Lyons. He was noted for his charity, and was at once an able theologian and jurisconsult. He defended the rights of the church against Henry III. with energy, and showed equal zeal in supporting the royal authority amid the disaffections of the times, thereby inspiring so much confidence in the king that he appointed him regent when he went to France in 1259. Having gone to Savoy in 1270 to visit his brother, Count Philip, Archbishop Boniface fell ill and died, after an episcopate of twenty-five years, at the castle of St. Hélène, in the valley of the Isère, and was buried at Hautecombe. The statue on his tomb represents him with a serpent at his feet, emblem of prudence, and a bas-relief depicts him defending the rights of the church before Henry III.

Count Amédée IX. and two princesses of the house of Savoy are also invoked as saints. There is a statue of St. Margaret of Savoy in the chapel of St. Felix at Hautecombe, representing her in a monastic dress, her hands meekly crossed on her breast. She was a daughter of Amédée, prince of Achaia, and after the death of her husband, the Marquis of Montferrat, having been wholly converted to God by the preaching of St. Vincent Ferrer, she entered a monastery and devoted herself to the care of the sick in a hospital. She was canonized by Pope Clement X.

The Blessed Louise of Savoy was an angel of piety from her childhood, and after the death of her husband, Hugues de Châlons, prince of Orange, she being then twenty-seven years of age and free from all obligations to her family, was solemnly veiled a nun in the convent of the Clairists at Orbe, which had been founded by a princess of her husband’s family early in the fifteenth century, and still observed the rule in all its primitive rigor. Here she died in 1503 at the age of forty-two. Fifty years after her death the Calvinists of Switzerland overthrew the altars of the conventual church, and gave the nuns the choice of going into exile or renouncing the monastic life. They chose the former, but before quitting the cloister they sent a crier through the streets to proclaim at the sound of a trumpet that if they had offended any one whomsoever they humbly begged his forgiveness, and declaring that for the love of God they forgave the offence committed against themselves in being banished from their monastery. They were nineteen in number. They took with them some chalices, ornaments, and rich vestments they owed to the liberality of the Princess Louise, and a Madonna of carved wood, called Notre Dame de la Grâce, which she had given the convent at her entrance into religion. At Ouchy they embarked in three small boats for Evian, on the southern shore of the Lake of Geneva, then faithful to the device on one of its gates: _Deo regique fidelis perpetuo_—gates opened more than once, at that disastrous period, to exiles of the faith. The sky was clear when the nuns set forth, but a sudden tempest sprang up which threatened destruction to their frail barks. The boatmen themselves were alarmed, much more these timid doves just driven from their nest, and to lighten the boats they threw all their effects into the water. They succeeded, however, in getting ashore, and the magistrates and people of Evian came forth in procession to meet them, the bells meanwhile ringing out a peal of welcome. A few nights after some fishermen found Notre Dame de la Grâce gleaming among the cliffs of Meillerie, and the people of Evian went forth again with white banners to receive and convey it to the church. Some years later Count Emanuel Philibert built these exiles a convent at Evian, where this Madonna was preserved for more than two centuries; but in 1792 the nuns were again dispersed and the Virgin concealed. The convent is now used as a Petit Séminaire, but people from all the country around still go to the chapel to pray before the Madonna of the Blessed Louise of Savoy.

Another princess, but not of the house of Savoy, is specially honored at Hautecombe—St. Erine, daughter of the Emperor Licinius, and niece of Constantine the Great. She was taken captive in the East by the army of Sapor II. of Persia, and martyred because she would not renounce the faith. Her body was afterwards taken to Patras, and Anselmo, a bishop of the Morea in the thirteenth century, who had great devotion to her, gave a portion of her remains to the abbey of Hautecombe, which, in spite of many vicissitudes, is still preserved here in a reliquary of silver given by Charles Felix, King of Sardinia. The boatmen on the Lac du Bourget invoke St. Erine in perilous storms, and many miracles are attributed to her intervention throughout the valley. On Whitmonday her relics are solemnly exposed to veneration in the church.

In one of the aisles at Hautecombe is the tomb of Beatrice, daughter of Count Thomas I., and granddaughter of Humbert the Saint—one of the most beautiful and accomplished princesses of that age. She married Raymond Bérenger, the last count of Provence, and was not only one of the most brilliant queens of the Court of Love, but rivalled the troubadours themselves in the _Gai Science_. One of her songs, addressed to her husband, has been preserved:

“I fain would think thou hast a heart,
Although it thus its thoughts conceal,
Which well could bear a tender part
In all the fondness that I feel;
Alas! that thou wouldst let me know,
And end at once my doubts and woe.

“It might be well that I once seemed
To check the love I prize so dear;
But now my coldness is redeemed,
And what is left for thee to fear?
Thou dost to both a cruel wrong:
Should dread in mutual love be known?
Why let my heart lament so long,
And fail to claim what is thine own?”[157]

What is unique in history, this Beatrice of Savoy had four daughters and three granddaughters who were all queens or empresses. As Dante says:

“Four daughters were there born
To Raymond Berenger; and every one
Became a queen, and this for him did Romeo.”

It was this Romeo de Villeneuve, the able minister of Count Raymond, whom Dante finds worthy of a place in his Paradise, who is said to have first foreseen the grandeur of united France, and who negotiated the grand alliances of his master’s daughters. One married St. Louis of France; another, Henry III. of England; a third, Richard of Cornwall, afterwards Emperor of Germany; and the fourth, Charles of Anjou, King of Naples and Sicily. As for the granddaughters, Beatrice of Sicily became Empress of Constantinople; Margaret of England, Queen of Scotland; and Isabella of France, Queen of Navarre.

Beatrice of Savoy was first buried at Echelles, where a magnificent tomb was erected, on which she lay, surrounded by the statues of her children and grandchildren with their consorts—twenty-six in number, all of white marble; but the tomb was destroyed at the Revolution, and her remains afterwards transported to Hautecombe, or at least what was saved of them, and placed in a new tomb.

It was her daughter, the fair Eleanor of Provence, a princess of remarkable beauty and talent, who married Henry III. of England. Through her influence her uncle Boniface, of whom we have spoken, was appointed successor of St. Edmund of Canterbury. The English historians do not speak so favorably of Archbishop Boniface, but the number of foreigners who followed Eleanor to England gave great offence to the people. Many of them married rich heiresses, and several families, like the Fletchers, Butlers, and Grandisons, can trace their descent from a Grandson, Boutillier, and La Fléchière of that period.

That part of London called the Savoy was so named from another uncle of Queen Eleanor’s—Peter, brother of Archbishop Boniface, who was created earl of Richmond, and had this tract of land given him by the king in the Strand, where he built a palace. This was afterwards rebuilt on a grander scale by the first duke of Lancaster, and became a place of historic interest. It was appropriated to the use of King John of France while a captive in England (1356-1364), and “thyder came to see hym the kyng and quene often tymes, and made hym gret feest and cheere.” And here, by the way, King John brought his Bible in the vernacular, and thumbed it well too, it appears, for in the account of his expenses is recorded the sum of thirty-two pence paid “Margaret the bindress” for a new cover with four clasps. In the Savoy, too, lived John of Gaunt, “time-honored Lancaster,” to whom the place descended, and here the poet Chaucer was his frequent guest. One of the scenes in Shakspere’s “Richard II.” is supposed to be laid here, though at that date the palace had been sacked and destroyed by Wat Tyler’s followers.