The Catholic World Volume Iii Part 109

[Footnote 155: Tableau des Revolutions.]

[Footnote 156: Hist. Universelle.]

[Footnote 157: Bell on Feudalism.]

[Footnote 158: Sess. xxv. c. 19.]

The pitiless character of human legislation was exhibited for ages in the practice of refusing those who were condemned to death the privilege of confession; and it was not till the reign of Philip the Bold, in 1397, that this cruel restriction was removed. The church had always protested against it, and her remonstrances at last prevailed.

Chivalry itself owed something to her inspiration. Mingled as it was with rudeness and violence, it had also many n.o.ble elements, which religion encouraged. It was a step toward higher civilization, because it vindicated the dignity of womankind; true gallantry sprang from honest purposes and virtuous conduct, and if Sir Galahad said--

"My good blade carves the casques of men, My tough lance thrusteth sure,"

he added--

"My strength is as the strength of ten, _Because my heart is pure_."

Sir James Stephen, in a paper on St. Gregory VII., [Footnote 159] has avowed his conviction that the centralization of the ecclesiastical power did more than counterbalance the isolating tendency of feudal oligarchies. But for the {650} intervention of the papacy, he says, the va.s.sal of the west, and the serf of eastern Europe would, perhaps to this day be in the same state of social debas.e.m.e.nt, and military autocrats would occupy the place of paternal and const.i.tutional governments. Feudal despotism strove to debase men into wild beasts or beasts of burden, while "the despotism of Hildebrand," whether consistent or no, sought to guide the human race by moral impulses to sanct.i.ty more than human. If the popes had abandoned the work a.s.signed them by Providence, they would have plunged the church and world into hopeless bondage. St. Gregory VII. found the papacy dependent on the empire, and he supported it by alliances with Italian princes. He found the chair of the apostles filled, when vacant, by the clergy and the people of Rome, and he provided for less stormy elections by making the pope eligible by a college of his own nomination. He found the Holy See in subjection to Henry, and he rescued it from his hands.

He found the secular clergy subservient to lay influence, and he rendered them free and active auxiliaries of his own authority. He found the highest dignitaries of the church the slaves of temporal sovereigns, and he delivered them from this yoke, and bound them to the tiara. He found ecclesiastical functions and benefices the spoil and traffic of princes, and he brought them back to the control of the sovereign pontiff; He is justly celebrated as the reformer of the profane and licentious abuses of his time, and we owe him the praise also of having left the impress of his giant character on the history of the ages that followed. Such are the candid admissions of a professor in the University of Cambridge. The highest eulogies of Rome are often to be found in the writings of aliens.

[Footnote 159: Edinburgh Review, 1845.]

Up to the time of the Reformation the Roman church was manifestly in the forefront of civilization. After that terrible revolution she was still really so, but not always manifestly. Her position was the same, but that of society had changed. It no longer accepted her laws; it cavilled at her authority, ort openly spurned it. People forgot their debt of grat.i.tude to the power which had always interfered in behalf of the oppressed, and princes jibed at the restraints which the papacy imposed on their absolute rule. The printing-press was wrested from the church's hands, and made the chief engine for propagating misbelief. A new and spurious civilization was set up, and was so blended with real and amazing progress in many of the sciences and the arts of life, that when the popes opposed what was corrupt in it and of evil tendency, they often appeared adverse to what was genuine. Of this their enemies took every advantage, and constantly represented them as the mortal foes of the liberty, enlightenment, and progress of mankind. Pontiff after pontiff protested against this wilful misrepresentation, which has lasted three hundred years, and continues in full force to this day. Seldom has it been put forward more speciously than in reference to the recent Encyclical of Pius IX. We shall endeavor to show its utter falsity in the remainder of this article.

Thrown back in her efforts to evangelize Europe, the church turned with more ardor than ever toward the other hemisphere. Already Alvarez di Cordova had planted the cross in Congo. Idolatry vanished before it almost entirely in the African territory recently discovered, and upon its ruins rose the city of San Salvador. The ills inflicted on the Americans by the first Spanish settlers were repaired by the Benedictine Bernard di Buil, and other missionaries who trod in his steps. The Dominicans set their faces sternly against reducing the Indians to the rank of slaves, and Father Monterino, in the church of St. Domingo, inveighed against it in the presence of the governor, with all {651} the fervor of popular eloquence. [Footnote 160] The life of Bartholomew de Las Casas was one long struggle against the cupidity and cruelty of Spanish masters and in favor of Indian freedom. The labors and successes of St. Francis Xavier are too well known to require recapitulation in this place; it is more to the purpose to remark that the missionaries of Rome, from Mexico and the Philippine islands, to Goa, Cochin-China, and j.a.pan, everywhere exposed to adverse climate, hardship, and martyrdom, carried with them the two-fold elements of civilization--religion and the arts of life.

The Jesuit who started for China was provided with telescope and compa.s.s. He appeared at the court of Pekin with the urbanity of one fresh from the presence of Louis XIV., and surrounded with the insignia of science. He unrolled his maps, turned his globes, chalked out his spheres, and taught the astonished mandarins the course of the stars and the name of him who guides them in their orbits. [Footnote 161] Buffon, [Footnote 162] Robertson, and Macaulay have alike extolled the missionary zeal of the Jesuit fathers, and have ascribed to them, not merely the regeneration of the inward man, but the cultivation of barren lands, the building of cities, new high roads of commerce, new products, new riches and comforts for the whole human race.

[Footnote 160: Robertson, Hist. of America.]

[Footnote 161: Genie du Christianisme.]

[Footnote 162: Hist. Naturelle de l'Homme.]

In teaching barbarous nations the arts of life and the elements of scientific knowledge, the missionaries acted in perfect accordance with the spirit of the papacy and the example of the religious orders.

Each of these had its appointed sphere, and each civilized mankind in its own way. The templars, the knights of St. John, the Teutonic knights, and half a dozen other now forgotten military orders, defended civilization with the sword; the Chartreux, the Benedictines, the Bernardines, in quiet and shady retreats, preserved from decay the precious stores of heathen antiquity, compiled the history of their several epochs, and gave themselves, under many disadvantages, to the study of natural philosophy; the Redemptorists, the Trinitarians, and the Brothers of Mercy devoted themselves to the redemption of captives and the emanc.i.p.ation of slaves. Voltaire cannot pa.s.s them over without a burst of admiration, when touching on their benevolent career during six centuries. [Footnote 163] Some orders made preaching and private instruction their special work, and among these were the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Carmelites, and the Augustines. The pulpit is the lever that raises the moral world; and it civilizes city, village, and hamlet the more effectually because its work is constant and systematic. It explains, Sunday after Sunday, and festival after festival, the sublimest and deepest of all sciences, while it guides society, with persuasive might, in the path of moral improvement. With all that social science has devised for the comfort and welfare of mankind, nothing that it has ever invented is so essentially civilizing, so dignified and lovely, so unpretending and strong, as the self-denying labors of brothers and sisters of charity, sacrificing youth, beauty, prospects, tastes, and indulgence, on the altar of religion, and pa.s.sing their days among the lepers and the plague-stricken, the ignorant, the degraded, the squalid and the infirm.

[Footnote 163: Sur les Moeurs, ch. cxx.]

And of these orders, none, be it observed, has railed against knowledge. By no rule, in any one of them, has ignorance been made a virtue and science a sin. All have admired the beauty of knowledge--the fire on her brow--her forward countenance--her boundless domain. All have wished well to her cause, and have maintained only that she should know her place; that she is the second, not the first; that she is not wisdom, but {652} wisdom's handmaid; that she is of earth, and wisdom is of heaven; she is of the world for the church, and wisdom is of the church for the world.

Severed from religion, they regarded her as some wild Pallas from the brain of demons; but science guided by a higher hand, and moving side by side with revelation, like the younger child, they believed to be the most beautiful spectacle the mind could contemplate.

To repeat these things in the ears of well read Catholics, is to iterate a thrice-told tale. But there are others who need often to be reminded of facts of history which our adversaries are apt to ignore.

Besides the vast body of priests and religious orders, whose office was to disseminate thought and piety through the world, the papacy constantly sought new vehicles by which to promote science. The greater part of the universities of Europe owe their existence to this agency. Oxford, Cambridge, Glasgow, Naples, Padua, Vienna, Upsal, Lisbon, Salamanca, Toulouse, Montpellier, Orleans, Nantes, Poictiers, and a mult.i.tude beside, were made centres of human knowledge under the patronage of the popes, and Clement V., Gregory IX., Engenius IV., Nicholas V., and Pius II., were among the most ill.u.s.trious of their founders.

The writings of Leonardo da Vinci were not published till a century after his death, and some of them at a still later period. They are more like revelations of physical truths vouchsafed to a single mind, than the fabric of its reasoning on any established basis. He laid down the principle of Bacon, that experiment and observation must be our chief guides in the investigation of nature. Venturi has given a most interesting list of the truths in mechanism apprehended by the genius of this light of the fifteenth century. [Footnote 164] He was possessed in the highest degree of the spirit of physical inquiry, and in this department of learning was truly a seer.

[Footnote 164: Estai sur lea Ouvrages Physico-Mathematiques de Leonard de Vinci. Paris. 1797. Hallam's Literary History, vol. i.

pp. 222-5.]

Let the reader transport himself in idea to the beautiful borders of the Henares, and there, in the opening of the sixteenth century, look down on the rising University of Alcala. Let him admire and wonder at the varied energy of its founder--Ximenes, the prelate, the hermit, the warrior, and the statesman. There, in his sixty-fourth year, he laid the corner-stone of the princ.i.p.al college, and was often seen with the rule in hand, taking the measurement of the buildings, and encouraging the industry of the workmen. The diligence with which he framed the system of instruction to be pursued, the activity of mind he promoted among the students, the liberal foundations he made for indigent scholars and the regulation of professors' salaries, did not withdraw him from the affairs of state, or the publication of his famous Bible, the Complutensian Polyglot. When Francis I., visited Alcala, twenty years after the university was opened, 7000 students came forth to receive him, and by the middle of the seventeenth century the revenue bequeathed by Ximenes had increased to 42,000 ducats, and the colleges had multiplied from ten to thirty-five.

[Footnote 165] Most of the chairs were appropriated to secular studies, and Alcala stands forward as a brilliant refutation of the calumnies against Catholic prelates as the patrons of ignorance.

[Footnote 165: Quintanilla: Archetype. Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella, ii. 826.]

The same country and epoch which produced Ximenes gave birth also to Columbus. It was neither accident nor religion, but nautical science and the intuitive vision of another hemisphere, that piloted him across the Atlantic to the West-India sh.o.r.es. Amerigo Vespucci followed in his wake, emulous of like discoveries. He published a journal of his earlier voyages at Vicenza in 1507, and gave his name {653} to the continent of the western world. Thus, while two great navigators, each of them Catholics, explored new lands on the surface of our globe, Copernicus at the same time, and Galileo not many years after, presaged the motion of the planets round the sun, and the twofold rotation of the earth. To Galileo, indeed, far more is due. To him we owe the larger part of experimental philosophy. He first propounded the laws of gravity, the invention of the pendulum, the hydrostatic scales, the sector, a thermometer, and the telescope. With the last he made numberless observations which changed the face of astronomy. Among these, that of the satellites of Jupiter was one of the most remarkable. He came, it is true, into a certain collision with the church, but it is remarkable, that all the provocation given by Galileo never reduced authority to the unjustifiable step of impeding the fullest scientific investigation of his theory. Nay, those astronomers who taught on the Copernican _hypothesis_ were more favored at Rome than their opponents. It was at Galileo's request that Urban appointed Castelli to be his own mathematician, and the letter in which the pontiff recommended Galileo to the notice of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, after his condemnation, abounds with expressions of sincere friendship. As to the dungeon and the torture, they are simply fabulous. During the process Galileo was permitted to lodge at the Tuscan emba.s.sy instead of in the prison of the holy office--a favor not accorded even to princes. His sentence of imprisonment was no sooner pa.s.sed, than the Pope commuted it into detention in the Villa Medici, and, after he had resided there some days, he was allowed to install himself in the palace of his friend, Ascanio Piccolomini, archbishop of Sienna. Subsequently he retired to his own house and the bosom of his family; for, as Nicolini's correspondence with him testifies, "his holiness treated Galileo with unexpected and, perhaps, excessive gentleness, granting all the pet.i.tions presented in his behalf." [Footnote 166] These facts are surely sufficient to prove that physical science received all due honor at this period in Rome.

In due time--long after Galileo's death--his theory was scientifically established; and not very long afterward the Congregational decree was suspended by Benedict XIV. Galileo's famous dialogue was published entire at Padua in 1744 with the usual approbations; and in 1818 Pius VII. repealed the decrees in question in full consistory. What could the church do more? It was her duty to guard the Scriptures from irreverence and unbelief, and to prohibit the advocacy of theories absolutely unproved which seemed to oppose them. To her physical science is dear, but revealed truth is infinitely dearer. Already she had opposed astrology as a remnant of paganism, and had studied the motions of the moon and planets to fix Easter and reform the Julian calendar. Already Gregory XIII. had brought the calendar which bears his name into use; and the works of Aristotle, translated into Arabic and Latin, had become the model of theological methods of disputation and treatise. St. Thomas Aquinas had written commentaries on them, and on Plato; and thus, as well as by his essay on aqueducts and that on hydraulic machines, had proved how inseparable is the alliance between sound theology and true science. "The sceptre of science," says Joseph de Maistre, "belongs to Europe only because she is Christian. She has reached this high degree of civilization and knowledge because she began with theology, because the universities were at first schools of theology, and because all the sciences, grafted upon this divine subject, have shown forth the divine sap by immense vegetation."

[Footnote 167]

[Footnote 166: British Review. 1861. Martyrdom of Galileo.]

[Footnote 167: Soirees de St. Petersbourg, Xme entretien. ]

{654}

Voltaire has observed that "the sovereign pontiffs have always been remarkable among princes attached to letters," and the remark is equally true as regards science and art. Silvester II. was so learned that the common people attributed his vast erudition to magic. He collected all the monuments of antiquity he could find in Germany and Italy, and delivered them into the hands of copyists in the monasteries. St. Gregory VII. conceived the design of rebuilding St.

Peter's, and gathered around him all the first architects of his day.

Gregory IX. interfered in behalf of the University of Paris, and, as Guillaume de Nangis says, "prevented science and learning, those treasures of salvation, from quitting the kingdom of France." Nicolas V. was a great restorer of letters, and Macaulay speaks of him as one whom every friend of science should name with respect. Sixtus IV.

conferred the t.i.tle of Count Palatine on the printer Jenson, to encourage the n.o.ble art, then in its infancy. Pius III. enriched Sienna with a magnificent library, and engaged Raphael and Pinturicchio to adorn it with frescoes. Paul V. endowed Rome with the most beautiful productions of sculpture and painting, with splendid fountains and enduring monuments. Urban VIII. loved all the arts, succeeded in Latin poetry, and filled his court with men of learning.

Under his pontificate "the Romans," as Voltaire says, "enjoyed profound peace, and shared all the charms and glory which talent sheds on society." Benedict XIV. cultivated letters, composed poems, and patronized science. The infidel himself just mentioned paid him homage, and professed profound veneration for him, when sending him a copy of his "Mahomet." [Footnote 168] Every pope in his turn has been a Maecenas. Not one in the august line has lost sight of the interests of society and the prerogatives of mind. The useful and the beautiful were always present to their thoughts; and even in those few instances where they failed in good personally, they encouraged in their official capacity whatsoever things are true, lovely, and of good fame.

[Footnote 168: Letter to Pope Benedict XIV.]

Many names dear to science and religion occur to us in ill.u.s.tration of these remarks--names of men who, in the two last and in the present century, have devoted their lives to secular learning without losing their allegiance to the Catholic faith, or confounding it with other sciences which lie within human control for their extension and modification. Of these honorable names we will mention a few only by way of example, feeling sure that our readers' memory will supply them with many others. Ca.s.sini, among the astronomers, enjoyed so high a reputation at Bologna that the Senate and the pope employed him in several scientific and political missions. Colbert invited him to Paris, where he became a member of the Academy of Sciences, and died at a good old age in 1712, crowned with the glory of several important discoveries, among which were those of the satellites of Saturn and the rotation of Mars and Venus. His son James followed in his footsteps, and bequeathed his name to fame. Andre Ampere, again, a sincere Catholic, was one of the most ill.u.s.trious disciples of electro-magnetism. He developed the memorable discovery of Oersted, ranged over the entire field of knowledge, and acquired a lasting reputation by his "theory of electro-dynamic phenomena drawn from experience." When between thirteen and fourteen years of age, he read through the twenty folio volumes of D'Alembert and Diderot's Encyclopaedia, digested its contents wonderfully for a boy and could long afterwards repeat extracts from it. But his reading was not confined to such books. A biography of Descartes, indeed, by Thomas, inspired him with his earliest enthusiasm for mathematics and natural philosophy; but his first communion also left an indelible stamp on his memory and character. The love of religion then, once {655} and for ever, took possession of his soul, and fired him through life, like the electric currents into which he made such profound research.

When his days, which were fall of trouble, came to a close at Ma.r.s.eilles in 1837, he told the chaplain of the college that he had discharged all his Christian duties before setting out on his journey; and when a friend began reading to him some sentences from "The Imitation of Christ," he said, "I know the book by heart." These were his last words.

By the lives and labors of such men the church's mission on earth is effectually seconded. They inspire the thinking portion of society with confidence in religion, and though, from their constant engagement in secular pursuits, they frequently err in some minor point, and cling to some crotchet which ecclesiastical authority cannot sanction, yet in consideration of their loyal intentions and exemplary practices, the clergy everywhere regard them as able and honorable coadjutors. True civilization, (observe the epithet,) far from being adverse, must ever be favorable to the salvation of souls.

Many writers still living, or who have recently pa.s.sed away, have united happily Catholicism with science. Santarem, in his long exile, gave his mind to the history of geography and the discoveries of his Portuguese fellow-countrymen on the western coast of Africa. Caesar Cantu, in his historical works, uniformly defended the cause of the popedom in Italy, and persisted in holding it forward as his country's hope. M. Capefigue, among his numerous works on French history, has included the life of St. Vincent of Paul; and Cardinal Mai has rendered incalculable service to the study of Greek MSS. But for his diligence and sagacity, the palimpsests of the Vatican would never have yielded up their all-but obliterated treasures. Saint-Hilaire, eminent alike as a zoologist and natural philosopher, who demonstrated so clearly the organic structure in the different species of animals was destined in his youth for holy orders; but although he preferred a scientific career, he retained his affection for the clergy, and saved several of them, at the risk of his own life, during the ma.s.sacres of September, in 1792. Blainville, another great naturalist, and Cuvier's successor in the chair of comparative anatomy, was deeply religious.

He felt the importance of rescuing physical science from the hands of infidelity, by which it is so often perverted into an argument against revelation. Epicurus is said to have maintained that our knowledge of Deity is exactly commensurate with our knowledge of the works of nature, and to have allowed no other measure of our theology out [sic]

physics. Lucretius devoted the whole of his beautiful but atheistic poem, "De Rerum Natura" to the task of proving that the soul is mortal, that religion is a cheat, and that natural causes sufficiently account for all the phenomena of the universe. In our day the disciples of Epicurus and Lucretius are legion, but they are not always so plain spoken as their masters. Happily they are everywhere opposed by men who recall physics to their true place, and make them a corollary of revealed truth--the science of the Creator, as Catholicism may be termed the science of the Divine Redeemer and Ruler. But useful as such laborers in the field of secular learning are, the truth cannot be too often repeated, that the vivifying principle of civilization lies in the cross and the ministry of reconciliation, of which the Pope is the head. No man whose knees have never bent on Calvary is truly civilized. If his pa.s.sions chance to be tamed, his reason is rampant, or his conscience is asleep. He has no clear perception of things divine, and his views of things earthly and human are erroneous and confused. Oh! that philosophers would learn that the glory of their intellect consists in its dutiful subordination to the church! Then would she shine forth more conspicuously in the sight of all men as the {656} civilizer of nations. Then, and then only, should we be able to encourage without reserve or misgiving the speculations of science and the enterprises of art, and should join with loud voices and full hearts in the ardent aspirations of the poet:

Fly, happy happy sails, and bear the Press; _Fly, happy with the mission of the Cross;_ Knit land to land, and blowing havenward With silks, and fruits, and spices, clear of toll, Enrich the markets of _the golden year_.

That which delays the golden year, and prevents the knitting of land to land in the bonds of religious brotherhood, is the want of unity among nations called Christian. The terrible disruptions effected under Photins, Luther, and Henry VIII., have rendered the conversion of the world for the present morally impossible. But if the East and West were again united under their lawful lord and pope; if Protestant sects were deprived of regal support, reabsorbed into the Catholic body, or so reduced in numerical importance as to be all but inactive and voiceless; if the vaunted utility of a.s.sociation were duly exemplified; if European populations were emulous of spiritual conquests in distant countries; if under the guidance and control of a common idea each of them launched its missionary ships on the waters in quick succession; if each town and university sent its quota of zeal and learning to the glorious work; if missionaries in large numbers went forth cheered with the apostolic benediction, and on whatever sh.o.r.e they might converge found other laborers in fields already white for the harvest, speaking with many tongues of one Lord, one faith, one baptism--then would the heathen no longer be stupefied by the feeble front and incongruous claims of those who now call them to repentance, nor would infidels scoff and jeer at a religion which has been made the very symbol of disunion; unbelieving nations, astonished at the strict coincidence of testimony borne by preachers arriving from every quarter of the globe, would distrust their prophets, desert their idols, and seek admission into the one ubiquitous fold. Then, also, the moral and intellectual energies of European prelates would be no longer engrossed by resisting aggression and weeding out disaffection nearer home, but would have leisure to organize missions on a large scale, and to fortify them with every auxiliary modern art and science can supply. The honor and glory of civilization would then be given to her to whom it belongs of right; and the nations, at length disabused of popular fallacies, would perceive that Protestantism and spurious liberty really hinder the progress they are supposed to promote.

------ {657}{658}{659}

[ORIGINAL.]

THE CURSE OF SACRILEGE.

[In the suburbs of the ancient and curious city of Angers in France is a beautiful chateau, situated in the midst of extensive and fertile grounds. The chapel contains some very remarkable pieces of statuary, now nearly eight hundred years old. The place was formerly a convent of monks, and wrested from them during the great revolution. The family into whose possession it came, has ever since been afflicted with the sudden death and insanity of its members. The death of the last male heir, a youth of great promise, which occurred but a few years ago, is described in the following verses.]

A youth of twenty summers Sat at his mother's knee; Ne'er saw you a youth more n.o.ble, Nor fairer dame than she.

Half-reclining he swept the lute-strings, Murmuring an olden rhyme; While the clock in the castle tower Rang out a morning chime:

"In the bright and happy spring-time Ring the bells merrily; When the dead leaves fall in autumn, Then toll the bell for me."