Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family Part 23

"Yes," replied the other, lowering her voice, "I have been told the history of those robes. A certain lady who was powerful at the late Holy Father's court, is said to have presented the dress in which she appeared on some state occasion to the nuns, just as she wore it."

"Did she become a penitent, then?"

"A penitent? I do not know; such an act of penitence would purchase indulgences and ma.s.ses to last at least for some time."

Brother Martin and I do not so much affect these gorgeous processions.

These Italians, with their glorious skies and the rich colouring of their beautiful land require more splendour in their religion than our German eyes can easily gaze on undazzled.

It rather perplexed us to see the magnificent caparisons of the horses of the cardinals; and more especially to behold the Holy Father sitting on a fair palfrey, bearing the sacred Host. In Germany, the loftiest earthly dignity prostrates itself low before that Ineffable Presence.

But my mind becomes confused. Heaven forbid that I should call the Vicar of Christ an _earthly_ dignitary! Is he not the representative and oracle of G.o.d on earth?

For this reason,--no doubt in painful contradiction to the reverent awe natural to every Christian before the Holy Sacrament,--the Holy Father submits to sitting enthroned in the church, and receiving the body of our Creator through a golden tube presented to him by a kneeling cardinal.

It must be very difficult for him to separate between the office and the person. It is difficult enough for us. But for the human spirit not yet made perfect to receive these religious honours must be overwhelming.

Doubtless, at night, when the holy father humbles himself in solitude before G.o.d, his self-abas.e.m.e.nt is as much deeper than that of ordinary Christians as his exaltation is greater.

I must confess that it is an inexpressible relief to me to retire to the solitude of my cell at night, and pray to Him of whom Brother Martin and I spoke in the Black Forest; to whom the homage of the universe is no burden, because it is not mere prostration before an office, but adoration of a person. "Holy, holy, holy, Lord G.o.d Almighty: heaven and earth are full of thy glory."

Holiness--to which almightiness is but an attribute, Holy One, who hast loved and given thine Holy One for a sinful world, _miserere n.o.bis_!

ROME, _July_.

We have diligently visited all the holy relics, and offered prayers at every altar at which especial indulgences are procured, for ourselves and others.

Brother Martin once said he could almost wish his father and mother (whom he dearly loves) were dead, that he might avail himself of the privileges of this holy city to deliver their souls from purgatory.

He says ma.s.ses whenever he can. But the Italian priests are often impatient with him because he recites the office so slowly. I heard one of them say, contemptuously, he had accomplished thirty ma.s.ses while Brother Martin only finished one. And more than once they hurry him forward, saying "Pa.s.sa! pa.s.sa!"

There is a strange disappointment in these ceremonies to me, and, I think, often to him. I seem to expect so much more,--not more pomp, of that there is abundance; but when the ceremony itself begins, to which all the pomp of music, and processions of cavaliers, and richly-robed priests, and costly shrines, are mere preliminary accessories, it seems often so poor! The kernel inside all this gorgeous sh.e.l.l seems to the eye of sense like a little poor withered dust.

To the eye of _sense_! Yes, I forget. These are the splendours of _faith_, which faith only can behold.

To-day we gazed on the Veronica,--the holy impression left by our Saviour's face on the cloth St. Veronica presented to him to wipe his brow, bowed under the weight of the cross. We had looked forward to this sight for days; for seven thousand years of indulgence from penance are attached to it.

But when the moment came Brother Martin and I could see nothing but a black board hung with a cloth, before which another white cloth was held. In a few minutes this was withdrawn, and the great moment was over, the glimpse of the sacred thing on which hung the fate of seven thousand years! For some time Brother Martin and I did not speak of it.

I feared there had been some imperfection in my looking, which might affect the seven thousand years; but observing his countenance rather downcast, I told my difficulty, and found that he also had seen nothing but a white cloth.

The skulls of St. Peter and St. Paul perplexed us still more, because they had so much the appearance of being carved in wood. But in the crowd we could not approach very close; and doubtless Satan uses devices to blind the eyes even of the faithful.

One relic excited my amazement much--the halter with which Judas hanged himself! It could scarcely be termed a _holy_ relic. I wonder who preserved it, when so many other precious things are lost. Scarcely the Apostles; perhaps the scribes, out of malice.

The Romans, I observe, seem to care little for what to us is the kernel and marrow of these ceremonies--the exhibition of the holy relics. They seem more occupied in comparing the pomp of one year, or of one church, with another.

We must not, I suppose, measure the good things done us by our own thoughts and feelings, but simply accept it on the testimony of the Church.

Otherwise I might be tempted to imagine that the relics of pagan Rome do my spirit more good than gazing on the sacred ashes or bones of martyrs or apostles. When I walk over the heaps of shapeless ruin, so many feet beneath which lies buried the grandeur of the old imperial city; or when I wander among the broken arches of the gigantic Coliseum, where the martyrs fought with wild beasts,--great thoughts seem to grow naturally in my mind, and I feel how great truth is, and how little empires are.

I see an empire solid as this Coliseum crumble into ruins as undistinguishable as the dust of those streets, before the word of that once despised Jew of Tarsus, "in bodily presence weak," who was beheaded here. Or, again, in the ancient Pantheon, when the music of Christian chants rises among the shadowy forms of the old vanquished G.o.ds painted on the walls, and the light streams down, not from painted windows in the walls, but from the glowing heavens above, every note of the service echoes like a peal of triumph, and fills my heart with thankfulness.

But my happiest hours here are spent in the church of my patron, St.

Sebastian, without the walls, built over the ancient catacombs.

Countless martyrs, they say, rest in peace in these ancient sepulchres.

They have not been opened for centuries; but they are believed to wind in subterranean pa.s.sages far beneath the ancient city. In those dark depths the ancient Church took refuge from persecution: there she laid her martyrs; and there, over their tombs, she chanted hymns of triumph, and held communion with Him for whom they died. In that church I spend hours. I have no wish to descend into those sacred sepulchres, and pry among the graves the resurrection trump will open soon enough. I like to think of the holy dead, lying undisturbed and quiet there; of their spirits in Paradise; of their faith triumphant in the city which ma.s.sacred them.

No doubt they also had their perplexities, and wondered why the wicked triumph, and sighed to G.o.d, "How long, O Lord, how long?"

And yet I cannot help wishing I had lived and died among them, and had not been born in times when we see Satan appear, not in his genuine hideousness, but as an angel of light.

For of the wickedness that prevails in this Christian Rome, alas, who can speak! of the shameless sin, the violence, the pride, the mockery of sacred things!

In the Coliseum, in the Pantheon, in the Church of St. Sebastian, I feel an atom--but an atom in a solid, G.o.d-governed world, where truth is mightiest;--insignificant in myself as the little mosses which flutter on these ancient stones; but yet a little moss on a great rock which cannot be shaken--the rock of G.o.d's providence and love. In the busy city, I feel tossed hither and thither on a sea which seems to rage and heave at its own wild will, without aim or meaning--a sea of human pa.s.sion. Among the ruins, I commune with the spirits of our great and holy dead, who live unto G.o.d. At the exhibition of the sacred relics, my heart is drawn down to the mere perishable dust, decorated with the miserable pomps of the little men of the day.

And then I return to the convent and reproach myself for censoriousness, and unbelief, and pride, and try to remember that the benefits of these ceremonies and exhibitions are only to be understood by faith, and are not to be judged by inward feeling, or even by their moral results.

The Church, the Holy Father, solemnly declare that pardons and blessings incalculable, to ourselves and others, flow from so many Paternosters and Aves recited at certain altars, or from seeing the Veronica or the other relics. I have performed the acts, and I must at my peril believe in their efficacy.

But Brother Martin and I are often sorely discouraged at the wickedness we see and hear around us. A few days since he was at a feast with several prelates and great men of the Church, and the fashion among them seemed to be to jest at all that is most sacred. Some avowed their disbelief in one portion of the faith, and some in others; but all in a light and laughing way, as if it mattered little to any of them. One present related how they sometimes subst.i.tuted the words _panis es, et panis manebis_ in the ma.s.s, instead of the words of consecration, and then amused themselves with watching the people adore what was, after all, no consecrated Host, but a mere piece of bread.

The Romans themselves we have heard declare, that if there be a h.e.l.l, Rome is built over it. They have a couplet,--

"Vivere qui sancte vultis, discedite Roma: Omnia hic esse licent, non licet esse prob.u.m."[7]

[Footnote 7: "Ye who would live holily, depart from Rome: all things are allowed here, except to be upright."]

O Rome! in sacredness as Jerusalem, in wickedness as Babylon, how bitter is the conflict that breaks forth in the heart at seeing holy places and holy character thus disjoined! How overwhelming the doubts that rush back on the spirit again and again, as to the very existence of holiness or truth in the universe, when we behold the deeds of Satan prevailing in the very metropolis of the kingdom of G.o.d!

ROME, _August_.

Mechanically, we continue to go through every detail of the prescribed round of devotions, believing against experience, and hoping against hope.

To-day Brother Martin went to accomplish the ascent of the Santa Scala--the Holy Staircase--which once, they say, formed part of Pilate's house. I had crept up the sacred steps before, and stood watching him as, on his knees, he slowly mounted step after step of the hard stone, worn into hollows, by the knees of penitents and pilgrims. An indulgence for a thousand years--indulgence from penance--is attached to this act of devotion. Patiently he crept half way up the staircase, when, to my amazement, he suddenly stood erect, lifted his face heavenward, and, in another moment, turned and walked slowly down again.

He seemed absorbed in thought, when he rejoined me; and it was not until some time afterwards that he told the meaning of this sudden abandonment of his purpose.

He said that, as he was toiling up, a voice, as if from heaven, seemed to whisper to him the old, well-known words, which had been his battle-cry in so many a victorious combat,--"_The just shall live by faith._"

He seemed awakened, as if from a nightmare, and restored to himself. He dared not creep up another step; but, rising from his knees, he stood upright, like a man suddenly loosed from bonds and fetters, and, with the firm step of a freeman, he descended the Staircase and walked from the place.

_August_, 1511.

To-night there has been an a.s.sa.s.sination. A corpse was found near our convent gates, pierced with many wounds. But no one seems to think much of it. Such things are constantly occurring, they say; and the only interest seems to be as to the nature of the quarrel which led to it.