The Catholic World Volume I Part 94

I go before my Judge. Ah! ... .

ANGEL.

.... Praise to his name!

The eager spirit has darted from my hold, And, with the intemperate energy of love, Flies to the dear feet of Emmanuel; But, ere it reach them, the keen sanct.i.ty, Which with its effluence, like a glory, clothes And circles round the Crucified, has seized, And scorched, and shrivelled it; and now it lies Pa.s.sive and still before the awful throne.

O happy, suffering soul! for it is safe, Consumed, yet quickened, by the glance of G.o.d.

SOUL.

Take me away, and in the lowest deep There let me be, And there in hope the lone night-watches keep, Told out for me.

There, motionless and happy in my pain, Lone, not forlorn,-- There will I sing my sad perpetual strain, Until the morn.

There will I sing, and soothe my stricken breast, Which ne'er can cease To throb, and pine, and languish, till possessed Of its sole peace.

There will I sing my absent Lord and love:-- Take me away, That sooner I may rise, and go above, And see him in the truth of everlasting day.

-- 7.

ANGEL.

Now let the golden prison ope its gates, Making sweet music, as each fold revolves Upon its ready hinge. And ye, great powers, Angels of purgatory, receive from me My charge, a precious soul, until the day, When, from all bond and forfeiture released, I shall reclaim it for the courts of light.

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SOULS IN PURGATORY.

1. Lord, thou hast been our refuge: in every generation;

2. Before the hills were born, and the world was: from age to age thou art G.o.d.

3. Bring us not, Lord, very low: for thou hast said, Come back again, ye sons of Adam.

4. A thousand years before thine eyes are but as yesterday: and as a watch of the night which is come and gone.

5. Though the gra.s.s spring up in the morning; yet in the evening it shall shrivel up and die.

6. Thus we fail in thine anger; and in thy wrath we are troubled.

7. Thou hast set our sins in thy sight: and our round of days in the light of thy countenance.

8. Come back, O Lord! how long? and be entreated for thy servants.

9. In thy morning we shall be filled with thy mercy: we shall rejoice and be in pleasure all our days.

10. We shall be glad according to the days of our humiliation; and the years in which we have seen evil.

11. Look, O Lord, upon thy servants and on thy work; and direct their children,

12. And let the beauty of the Lord our G.o.d be upon us: and the work of our hands direct thou it.

Glory be to the father and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost.

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be; world without end. Amen.

ANGEL.

Softly and gently, dearest, sweetest soul In my most loving arms I now enfold thee, And, o'er the penal waters, as they roll, I poise thee, and I lower thee, and hold thee.

And carefully I dip thee in the lake, And thou, without a sob or a resistance, Dost through the flood thy rapid pa.s.sage take Sinking deep, deeper, into the dim distance.

Angels, to whom the willing task is given, Shall tend, and nurse, and lull thee, as thou liest; And ma.s.ses on the earth, and prayers in heaven, Shall aid thee at the throne of the Most Highest.

Farewell, but not for ever! brother dear, Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow; Swiftly shall pa.s.s thy night of trial here, And I will come and wake thee on the morrow.

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From The Edinburgh Review. (Abridged.)

THE CHURCH AND MOSQUE OF ST. SOPHIA.

1. _Byzantine Architecture; ill.u.s.trated by Examples of Edifices erected in the East during the earliest ages of Christianity_. With Historical and Archaeological Descriptions. By C. TEXIER and E. P.

PULLAN. Folio. London: 1864.

2. _Epigraphik von Byzantium und Constantinopolis, von den altesten Zeiten bis zum J._ 1453. Von Dr. S. A. DETHIER und Dr. A. D.

MORDTMANN. 4to. Wien: 1864.

3. _Acta Patriarchates Constantinopolitani_, 1305-1402, _e Codice MS.

Bibliothecae Palat. Vindobonensis; edentibus_ D. D. MIKLOVISCH et MULLER. 8vo. 2 vols. Viennse: 1860-2.

4. _Die alt-christliche Baudenkmale Konstantinopels von V. bis XII.

Jahrhundert. Auf Befehl seiner Majestat des Konigs aufgenommen und historisch erlautert von_ W. SALZENBERG. _Im Anhange des Silentiarius Paulus Beschreibung der heiligen Sophia und der Ambon, metrisch ubersetzt und mit Anmerkungen versehen, von_ Dr. C. W. KORTuM. Fol.

Berlin: 1854.

5. _Aya Sofia, Constantinople, as recently restored by Order of H. M.

the Sultan Abdul Medjid_. From the original Drawings of Chevalier GASPARD FOSSATI. Lithographed by Louis HAGHE, Esq. Imperial folio.

London: 1854.

There is not one among the evidences of Moslem conquest more galling to Christian a.s.sociations than the occupation of Justinian's ancient basilica for the purposes of Mohammedan worship. The most commonplace sight-seer from the west feels a thrill when his eye falls for the first time upon the flaring cresent which surmounts "Sophia's cupola with golden gleam;" and this emotion deepens into a feeling of awe at the mysterious dispensations of Providence, when he has stood beneath the unaltered and still stately dome, and

"surveyed The sanctuary, the while the usurping Moslem prayed."

For oriental Christians, this sense of bitterness is hardly second to that with which they regard the Turkish occupation of Jerusalem itself. In the latter, however they may writhe under the political supremacy of their unbelieving master, still, as the right of access to those monuments which form the peculiar object of Christian veneration is practically undisturbed, they are spared the double indignity of religious profanation super-added to social wrong. But the mosque of St. Sophia is, in Christian eyes, a standing monument at once of Moslem sacrilege and of Christian defeat, the sense of which is perpetuated and embittered by the preservation of its ancient, but now desecrated name.

To an imaginative visitor of the modern mosque, it might seem as if the structure itself were not unconscious of this wrong. The very position of the building is a kind of silent protest against the unholy use to which its Turkish masters have perverted it. Like all ancient Christian churches, it was built exactly in the line of east and west; and, as the great altar, which stood in the semicircular apse, was directly at the eastern point of the building, the worshippers in the old St. Sophia necessarily faced directly eastward; and all the appliances of their worship were arranged with a view to that position. Now, in the exigencies of Mohammedan ecclesiology, since the worshipper must turn to the Kibla at Mecca (that is, in Constantinople, to the south-east), the _mihrab_, or sacred niche, in the modern St. Sophia is {642} necessarily placed out of the centre of the apse; and thus the _mimber_ (pulpit), the prayer carpets, and the long ranks of worshippers themselves, present an appearance singularly at variance with every notion of architectural harmony, being arranged in lines, not parallel, but oblique, to the length of the edifice, and out of keeping with all the details of the original construction. It is as though the dead walls of this venerable pile had retained more of the spirit of their founder than the degenerate sons of the fallen Rome of the east, and had refused to bend themselves at the will of that hateful domination before which the living worshippers tamely yielded or impotently fled!

The mosque of St. Sophia had long been an object of curious interest to travellers in the east. Their interest, however, had seldom risen beyond curiosity; and it was directed rather toward St. Sophia as it is, than to the Christian events and traditions with which it is connected. For those, indeed, who know the grudging and capricious conditions under which alone a Christian visitor is admitted to a mosque, and the jealous scrutiny to which he is subjected during his visit, it will be easy to understand how rare and how precarious have been the opportunities for a complete or exact study of this, the most important of all the monuments of Byzantine art; and, notwithstanding its exceeding interest for antiquarian and artistic purposes, far more of our knowledge of its details was derived from the contemporary description of Procopius [Footnote 126] or Agathias, [Footnote 127]

from the verses of Paulus Silentiarius, [Footnote 128] from the casual allusions of other ancient authorities, and, above all, from the invaluable work of Du Gauge, which is the great repertory of everything that has been written upon ancient or mediaeval Byzantium, than from the observation even of the most favored modern visitors of Constantinople, until the publication of the works named at the head of these pages.