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might have still investigated the hills round Nazareth themselves, and found that the native stone of the country (and of which all houses are built) was grey (not red) lime-stone.' Once more, with Quaresmius, and indeed all travellers, they might advert to the fact, that the actual spot of the Annunciation is still shown at Nazareth as well as Loretto; or, finally, with the eloquent writer in a recent Quarterly, they might point to the utter impossibility of amalgamating the grotto which has been connected with it at Nazareth, with any such appendage as the Santa Casa.' Each one of these is an awkward objection; all together may be thought well-nigh irrefragable. To many minds, therefore, it may seem superfluous to have insisted so long upon the historical one. But, indeed, when the truthfulness of history has been tampered with to the extent that it has been in the present instance, its vindication almost partakes of the character of a sacred duty. Besides, would that we could add that the merits of the question were purely historical; that it was a point simply in which the authority of Fleury' and of Berault Bercastel, who repudiate the story, had been abandoned for that of the Abbé Rohrbacher, who accepts it with enthusiasm. It is a fiction that has exercised and is still exercising more practical influence throughout western Christendom, than the most plain precepts of the Gospel. For every one that abstains habitually from violating any single command in the Decalogue, there are thousands who year by year make a pilgrimage to Loretto, and tens of thousands who have the will and desire to do so were they able. It has amassed treasures that would have fed almost the entire poor of Europe for their lives. It has extorted homage from Erasmus, from Descartes," and in our own days from Dr. Newman! Into it has been introduced the purest of virgins and holiest of mothers, for the purpose of stamping with her authority the clumsiest as well as the falsest of all legends. It forms, finally, the sixth Lection of a special office set forth by Papal infallibility, and by no means

it; as all the houses there are built of the native grey stone, and not a single brick is to be seen in the country. Hence, Roman Catholics are apt to think that they have satisfied the objection, when they have shown it to be of stone and not brick. (Barsky's Travels to the Holy Places. S. Petersburg, 6th ed. A. D. 1819. Pages 39 and seq. and 347 and seq.) Whereas, on the contrary, it may be granted not only that the house is of stone, but that a kind of stone with red streaks or veins in it is found in Palestine; what is denied, is, that any such red-brick-like stone as that of the house is found there.

1 Quarterly Review, and Abbé Michon, as before.

2 Quoted by M. Gosselin, p. 457, note.

3 M. Caillau, pp. 166-204. Comp. Moore's Italy, Letter xxxii.

M. Caillau, pp. 353-359, inserts a mass which Erasmus actually composed in honour of it.

Ibid. p. 143, where his pilgrimage is recorded.

See l'Univers above.

obsolete, in which Almighty God is venerated for a miraculous exercise of His power, which, according to the framers of the story, clearly ought to have been exerted, but in point of fact never was! Actually, while the seventh Lection consists of a portion of the first chapter of S. Luke's Gospel, in the preceding one-as it were to illustrate the contrast between light and darkness-what follows is assumed to be no less trustworthy!1

The house in which this Virgin was born, hallowed by the divine mysteries, and snatched by the ministry of angels out of the hand of the infidel, was translated first into Dalmatia, and afterwards into the territory of Loretto, in the province of Picenum, during the pontificate of the holy Celestine V. And it is proved to be the very one in which the Word was made Flesh and dwelt amongst us, as well by papal diplomas and the abundant veneration of the whole world, as also by the constant power of miracles and the grace of heavenly benefits. Whereupon Innocent XII., moved by these things, in order that the faithful might be the more effectually stirred up, and put in mind of the worship of our most beloved mother, gave directions to celebrate, with Mass and office appropriate, the translation of the said holy house, which is observed throughout the whole province of Picenum with anniversary solemnity.'

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What a train of melancholy reflections is thus afforded by December 10th. The largest portion of Christendom by far insisting upon Papal infallibility as a vital principle; Papal infallibility thus solemnly pledged to an untruth; so many devout Christians, lastly, thus pledged to a system where belief in an untruth may be said to be morally necessary to their religious growth! Equally deplorable, too, is the association of the blessed Virgin Mary with a story so false! Can this be the way to attest our gratitude or revere her memory? How purely rationalistic in principle (though veiled under the mask of authority) are the pious beliefs with which the Church of Rome teems, professedly in her honour! What are the real grounds upon which the Santa Casa, together with her Assumption and Immaculate Conception, rest? Revelation, or the consent of antiquity, or authentic history? Nothing of the kind. Neither can with the least justice be pleaded in behalf of either. It would be safer, indeed, not to risk their verdict. Upon what grounds, then, are they based? Professedly upon authority? but what

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1 Benedict XIV. admits that it was fully discussed in the Congregation of Rites before it was appended to the office, by authority of Innocent XII. A. D. 1699-so that by it the Church of Rome stands pledged to the miracle. Op. tom. ix. De Festis B. V. M., lib. ii. 16. 1. The Apostolical (i. e. Papal) Constitutions, of which he makes so much in the next section, are neither given at length, nor (excepting that of Sixtus V.) is it said where they are to be found in the passage to which he refers, De Servor. Dei Beatif. and Beat. Can. lib. iv. pars ii. c. 10. § 11. and N. B. it is there said that the whole responsibility of the truth of the legend rests on them. 2 Caillau, p. 371, and seq.

3 See the account given of the rise, e. g. of the last of these, Fleury, E. H. B. xci. c. 29, A.D. 1308; and Duns Scotus frankly admits that he is arguing against the common opinion!

are the arguments that have swayed authority? A pious sorites, or logical illumination! S, Mary must have lived in a house. S. Luke in fact has said as much. This house must have been dear to her as the scene of the Annunciation. It must have been dear to the Saviour equally, for the same reason. As such, it must have been likewise dear to the Apostles. Where would S. Mary love to pass most of her time after the ascension, but there? Where would the Apostles meet most frequently, but there? and they could scarce have met without breaking bread. Would not the said house have been equally dear to their successors? Would not a special Providence have watched over it; a house, the scene of a mystery without parallel, would it have been allowed to perish with other houses? How much more consonant to piety to believe that it was removed by angels, than that it was overthrown by infidels!

Such a train of reasoning, never otherwise than attractive, would have found innumerable votaries in a locality like that of the shores of the Adriatic, before the moral effects of the fall of Acre had passed away. There, perhaps, of all Europe, minds were likely to have been most impressed with them. Henceforward those coasts ceased to be the rendezvous of kings and pilgrims, of warriors and ecclesiastics, banded together in a mixed mass, but all bound for the Holy Land. Venetian fleets were no longer under the necessity of scouring those coasts, for the purpose of protecting or of impeding a Crusade. Pilgrimages to the East were for the moment paralysed. The conquests of Godfrey de Bouillon had all been forfeited. It was a fact, that Christianity no longer existed in the land that gave birth to Christ and His Apostles. No longer could sins be cancelled, or indulgences obtained, or enthusiasm rewarded by a visit to the Holy Sepulchre.

What fruitful topics, both of conversation and of sad reflection, must these have been for some time between Venice and Ancona on the one hand, and between Fiume and Ragusa on the other hand (for these were the localities that were affected most), from A.D. 1291 downwards. And how is it that men console themselves for the long-continued absence of a much-loved object? Their best solace is to be found in the imitative arts of painting and poetry; through these they may manage to give vent to their feelings; through these they may manage, at least in some sense, to realize what they no longer possess. Where they can, they paint from sight or memory; where they can do neither, they supply the void from imagiuation. Instances of the former kind and to the point are to be found in the Calvary, as it is called, of Lombardy, the Jerusalem of

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Italy,' or still more literally, the Campo Santo of Pisa;' not, indeed, that they are by any means wanting in connexion with the Santa Casa. In earlier days, as is intimated in the legend itself, it gave rise to the twin shrine near Fiume; in our own times we need not go further than the chapel of the Seminary of S. Sulpice near Paris, in order to see a complete fac-simile of the original. Instances of the latter kind are to be found in the numerous conceptions of the Holy Family by a Raphael or Corregio. How exquisitely truthful all of them are! but who would dream of asserting that the scenes which they describe were authentic history? All which is equally applicable to the house of Loretto. It was evidently the rude production of some native architect, and the object of which was to bring Nazareth vividly into remembrance. It is exquisitely described in the Quarterly, as the petrifaction of the last sigh of the Crusades.' The groundwork of his idea was without doubt taken from S. Luke; for the details he had nothing to guide him but his own simple imagination; and the result was the house. By the process of reasoning already described, it was soon transformed into the original house. Nazareth had once been the dwelling-place of the blessed Virgin Mary; her house never could have been destroyed; her house must have been removed; her house was here; where was it, if it was not here? Some asked, how did it come? Imagination once more travailled. By the time that the house needed repair, a new conception had emerged, that for elegance and spirituality far exceeded that of the architect. In the picture designed for the new wall, the house was seen coursing above the ocean in mid-air, borne on the wings of angels! The picture without doubt caused universal admiration; the priest put the whole into writing; and gradually it came to be considered authentic history. The object of our inquiry has been to contrast it with authentic history, and of the result we conceive there can be but one opinion-even papal authorization cannot create a fact!

We commend the moral to be drawn from this one instance of popular teaching and belief in the Church of Rome, stamped with papal authority, commemorated in a solemn office before God yearly, joined to the very commemoration of the death of His Son, and yet false in fact, to the attention of all serious Roman Catholics; it is not, indeed, that we take a pride in exposing what we had far sooner did not exist. But we would

1 Quarterly Review as before, p. 443.

2 Watkins's Travels. Letter xvi. vol. i. p. 315.

2 Something like this was the view of the learned Benedictine, Dom. Calmet (see his Dictionary); but Mansi, who translated his work into Latin, expunged the passage. So much for the freedom of doubting the legend in the Church of Rome! Bened, XIV., Op. ix. De Festis, B. V. M. lib. ii. c. 16, § 11.

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address ourselves particularly to those who, with the Rambler, admit the religious movement in England of the last few years to have been, as far as they are concerned, or may be supposed numerical gainers by it, a downright failure; and we rejoice to find that it is considered a just cause of inquiry amongst them. We rejoice that Roman Catholics are at length conscious of, and anxious to account for, the fact, that whatever in England is 'most serious, whatever is most candid, whatever is best informed as to the Bible, as to religious doctrine and ecclesias'tical history, keeps itself apart from them with a jealous 'horror."... We rejoice to have their candid avowal that controversy' will only convert tens' where they had thought it would convert thousands.'. . We are rejoiced to find it propounded unhesitatingly that, If England is to be converted, it will be by the declaration of the doctrines of the Catholic faith as the word of God to save men's souls. . . . by such an exhi'bition of the truths of religion as may go to the root of the 'mischief, lay bare the secrets of the diseased heart to the ' awakening conscience, and bring the whole man, body, soul, ' and spirit, humbled as a sinner before the throne of God, or, 'rather let us say, before the foot of the Cross . . . It is before 'God dying on the Cross for them that they will yield.. The 'conscience will learn what sin is, what God is, what heaven ' and hell are, what the sinner must do to be saved, and to 'whom he must have recourse as the ministers of recon'ciliation.' 95

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What better programme indeed could be sketched out for a missionary priest? We trust that there is not a single missionary that leaves our shores-may we not add, a single clergyman that ministers to the wants of our home population?-who does not endeavour to carry out to the letter what is here commended. And yet Englishmen have a right to expect something more from Rome: they have a right to expect, on the one hand, express authoritative disclaimers upon points where they have just cause to doubt her sincerity; and they have a right to expect, on the other hand, that the discipline which may have been deemed advisable in a barbarous age, shall not be continued to be imposed upon a well-educated, enlightened people. Englishmen are loyal subjects; they read their Bible; they can communicate in a church without irreverence; they love their mother-tongue; they love ingenuousness; above all things, they love the truth. They will never part with any one of these characteristics, even to be one with Rome! Let it be declared authoritatively that the pope no longer claims the

1 Rambler, January, 1851. Art. i. p. 10.
3 Ibid. p, 12.

♦ Ibid. p. 16.

2 Ibid. p. 9.
5 Ibid. p. 17.

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