The Cloister and the Hearth Part 116

He reported the same at headquarters, half reluctantly. For he was an honest friar though a disagreeable one.

One Julio Antonelli was accused of sacrilege; three witnesses swore they saw him come out of the church whence the candlesticks were stolen, and at the very time. Other witnesses proved an alibi for him as positively.

Neither testimony could be shaken. In this doubt Antonelli was permitted the trial by water, hot or cold. By the hot trial he must put his bare arm into boiling water, fourteen inches deep, and take out a pebble; by the cold trial his body must be let down into eight feet of water. The clergy, who thought him innocent, recommended the hot water trial, which, to those whom they favoured, was not so terrible as it sounded.

But the poor wretch had not the nerve, and chose the cold ordeal. And this gave Jerome another opportunity of steeling Clement. Antonelli took the sacrament, and then was stripped naked on the banks of the Tiber, and tied hand and foot, to prevent those struggles by which a man, throwing his arms out of the water, sinks his body.

He was then let down gently into the stream, and floated a moment, with just his hair above water. A simultaneous roar from the crowd on each bank proclaimed him guilty. But the next moment the ropes, which happened to be new, got wet, and he settled down. Another roar proclaimed his innocence. They left him at the bottom of the river the appointed time, rather more than half a minute, then drew him up, gurgling, and gasping, and screaming for mercy; and, after the appointed prayers, dismissed him, cleared of the charge.

During the experiment Clement prayed earnestly on the bank. When it was over he thanked G.o.d in a loud but slightly quavering voice.

By-and-by he asked Jerome whether the man ought not to be compensated.

"For what?"

"For the pain, the dread, the suffocation. Poor soul, he liveth, but hath tasted all the bitterness of death. Yet he had done no ill."

"He is rewarded enough in that he is cleared of his fault."

"But, being innocent of that fault, yet hath he drunk Death's cup, though not to the dregs; and his accusers, less innocent than he, do suffer nought."

Jerome replied, somewhat sternly:

"It is not in this world men are really punished, brother Clement.

Unhappy they who sin yet suffer not. And happy they who suffer such ills as earth hath power to inflict; 'tis counted to them above, ay, and a hundredfold."

Clement bowed his head submissively.

"May thy good words not fall to the ground, but take root in my heart, brother Jerome."

But the severest trial Clement underwent at Jerome's hands was unpremeditated. It came about thus. Jerome, in an indulgent moment, went with him to Fra Colonna, and there "The Dream of Polifilo" lay on the table just copied fairly. The poor author, in the pride of his heart, pointed out a master-stroke in it.

"For ages," said he, "fools have been lavishing poetic praise and amorous compliment on mortal women, mere creatures of earth, smacking palpably of their origin; Sirens at the windows, where our Roman women in particular have by lifelong study learned the wily art to show their one good feature, though but an ear or an eyelash, at a jalosy, and hide all the rest; Magpies at the door, Capre n' i giardini, Angeli in Strada, Sante in chiesa, Diavoli in casa. Then come I and ransack the minstrels' lines for amorous turns, not forgetting those which Petrarch wasted on that French jilt Laura, the slyest of them all; and I lay you the whole bundle of spice at the feet of the only females worthy amorous incense; to wit, the Nine Muses."

"By which goodly stratagem," said Jerome, who had been turning the pages all this time, "you, a friar of St. Dominic, have produced an obscene book." And he dashed Polifilo on the table.

"Obscene? thou discourteous monk!" And the author ran round the table, s.n.a.t.c.hed Polifilo away, locked him up, and, trembling with mortification, said, "My Gerard, pshaw! brother What's-his-name, had not found Polifilo obscene. Puris omnia pura."

"Such as read your Polifilo--Heaven grant they may be few!--will find him what I find him."

Poor Colonna gulped down this bitter pill as he might; and had he not been in his own lodgings, and a high born gentleman as well as a scholar, there might have been a vulgar quarrel. As it was, he made a great effort, and turned the conversation to a beautiful chrysolite the Cardinal Colonna had lent him; and, while Clement handled it, enlarged on its moral virtues: for he went the whole length of his age as a worshipper of jewels. But Jerome did not, and expostulated with him for believing that one dead stone could confer valour on its wearer, another chast.i.ty, another safety from poison, another temperance.

"The experience of ages proves they do," said Colonna. "As to the last virtue you have named, there sits a living proof. This Gerard--I beg your pardon, brother Thingemy--comes from the north, where men drink like fishes; yet was he ever most abstemious. And why? Carried an amethyst, the clearest and fullest coloured e'er I saw on any but n.o.ble finger. Where, in Heaven's name, is thine amethyst? Show it this unbeliever!"

"And 'twas that amethyst made the boy temperate?" asked Jerome, ironically.

"Certainly. Why, what is the derivation and meaning of amethyst? a negative, and e??? to tipple. Go to, names are but the signs of things. A stone is not called ae??st?? for two thousand years out of mere sport, and abuse of language."

He then went through the prime jewels, ill.u.s.trating their moral properties, especially of the ruby, the sapphire, the emerald, and the opal, by anecdotes out of grave historians.

"These be old wives' fables," said Jerome, contemptuously. "Was ever such credulity as thine?"

Now credulity is a reproach sceptics have often the ill-luck to incur: but it mortifies them none the less for that.

The believer in stones writhed under it, and dropped the subject. Then Jerome, mistaking his silence, exhorted him to go a step farther, and give up from this day his vain pagan lore, and study the lives of the saints. "Blot out these heathen superst.i.tions from thy mind, brother, as Christianity hath blotted them from the earth."

And in this strain he proceeded, repeating, incautiously, some current but loose theological statements. Then the smarting Polifilo revenged himself. He flew out, and hurled a mountain of crude, miscellaneous lore upon Jerome, of which partly for want of time, partly for lack of learning, I can reproduce but a few fragments.

"The heathen blotted out? Why they hold four-fifths of the world. And what have we Christians invented without their aid? painting? sculpture?

these are heathen arts, and we but pigmies at them. What modern mind can conceive and grave so G.o.d-like forms as did the chief Athenian sculptors, and the Libyan Licas, and Dinocrates of Macedon, and Scopas, Timotheus, Leochares, and Briaxis; Chares, Lysippus, and the immortal three of Rhodes, that wrought Laoc.o.o.n from a single block? What prince hath the genius to turn mountains into statues, as was done at Bagistan, and projected at Athos? what town the soul to plant a colossus of bra.s.s in the sea, for the tallest ships to sail in and out between his legs?

Is it architecture we have invented? Why here too we are but children.

Can we match for pure design the Parthenon, with its cl.u.s.ters of double and single Doric columns? (I do adore the Doric when the scale is large), and, for grandeur and finish, the theatres of Greece and Rome, or the prodigious temples of Egypt, up to whose portals men walked awe-struck through avenues a mile long of sphinxes, each as big as a Venetian palace. And all these prodigies of porphyry cut and polished like crystal, not rough hewn as in our puny structures. Even now their polished columns and pilasters lie o'erthrown and broken, o'ergrown with acanthus and myrtle, but sparkling still, and flouting the slovenly art of modern workmen. Is it sewers, aqueducts, viaducts?

"Why we have lost the art of making a road--lost it with the world's greatest models under our very eye. Is it sepulchres of the dead? Why no Christian nation has ever erected a tomb, the sight of which does not set a scholar laughing. Do but think of the Mausoleum, and the Pyramids, and the monstrous sepulchres of the Indus and Ganges, which outside are mountains, and within are mines of precious stones. Ah, you have not seen the East, Jerome, or you could not decry the heathen."

Jerome observed that these were mere material things. True greatness was in the soul.

"Well then," replied Colonna, "in the world of mind, what have we discovered? Is it geometry? Is it logic? Nay, we are all pupils of Euclid and Aristotle. Is it written characters, an invention almost divine? We no more invented it than Cadmus did. Is it poetry? Homer hath never been approached by us, nor hath Virgil, nor Horace. Is it tragedy or comedy? Why poets, actors, theatres, all fell to dust at our touch.

Have we succeeded in reviving them? Would you compare our little miserable mysteries and moralities, all frigid personification and dog Latin, with the glories of a Greek play (on the decoration of which a hundred thousand crowns had been spent) performed inside a marble miracle, the audience a seated city, and the poet a Sophocles?

"What then have we invented? Is it monotheism? Why the learned and philosophical among the Greeks and Romans held it; even their more enlightened poets were monotheists in their sleeves.

'?e?? est?? ???a???, ?e?? te ?? ?e?? t?? pa?ta,'

saith the Greek, and Lucan echoes him:

'Jupiter est quod cunque vides quo cunque moveris.'

"Their vulgar were polytheists; and what are ours? We have not invented 'invocation of the saints.' Our sancti answer to their Daemones and Divi, and the heathen used to pray their Divi or deified mortals to intercede with the higher divinity; but the ruder minds among them, incapable of nice distinctions, worshipped those lesser G.o.ds they should have but invoked. And so do the mob of Christians in our day, following the heathen vulgar by unbroken tradition. For in holy writ is no polytheism of any sort or kind.

"We have not invented so much as a form, or variety, of polytheism. The pagan vulgar worshipped all sorts of deified mortals, and each had his favourite, to whom he prayed ten times for once to the Omnipotent. Our vulgar worship canonized mortals, and each has his favourite, to whom he prays ten times for once to G.o.d. Call you that invention? Invention is confined to the East. Among the ancient vulgar only the mariners were monotheists; they worshipped Venus; called her 'Stella maris,' and 'Regina caelorum.' Among our vulgar only the mariners are monotheists; they worship the Virgin Mary, and call her 'the Star of the Sea,' and 'the Queen of Heaven.' Call you theirs a new religion? An old doublet with a new b.u.t.ton. Our vulgar make images, and adore them, which is absurd; for adoration is the homage due from a creature to its creator; now here man is the creator; so the statues ought to worship him, and would, if they had brains enough to justify a rat in worshipping _them_.

But even this abuse, though childish enough to be modern, is ancient.

The pagan vulgar in these parts made their images, then knelt before them, adorned them with flowers, offered incense to them, lighted tapers before them, carried them in procession, and made pilgrimages to them just to the smallest t.i.ttle as we their imitators do."

Jerome here broke in impatiently, and reminded him that the images the most revered in Christendom were made by no mortal hand, but had dropt from heaven.

"Ay," cried Colonna, "such are the tutelary images of most great Italian towns. I have examined nineteen of them, and made draughts of them. If they came from the sky, our worst sculptors are our angels. But my mind is easy on that score. Ungainly statue, or villanous daub fell never yet from heaven to smuggle the bread out of capable workmen's mouths. All this is Pagan, and arose thus. The Trojans had oriental imaginations, and feigned that their Palladium, a wooden statue three cubits long, fell down from heaven. The Greeks took this fib home among the spoils of Troy, and soon it rained statues on all the Grecian cities, and their Latin apes. And one of these Palladia gave St. Paul trouble at Ephesus; 'twas a statue of Diana that fell down from Jupiter: credat qui credere possit."

"What would you cast your profane doubts on that picture of our blessed Lady, which scarce a century agone hung l.u.s.trous in the air over this very city, and was taken down by the Pope and bestowed in St. Peter's Church?"

"I have no profane doubts on the matter, Jerome. This is the story of Numa's shield, revived by theologians with an itch for fiction, but no talent that way; not being orientals. The 'ancile,' or sacred shield of Numa hung l.u.s.trous in the air over this very city, till that pious prince took it down and hung it in the temple of Jupiter. Be just, swallow both stories or neither. The 'Bocca della Verita' pa.s.ses for a statue of the Virgin, and convicted a woman of perjury the other day; it is in reality an image of the G.o.ddess Rhea, and the modern figment is one of its ancient traditions; swallow both or neither.

'Qui Bavium non odit amet tua carmina, Mavi.'

"But indeed we owe all our Palladiuncula, and all our speaking, nodding, winking, sweating, bleeding statues to these poor abused heathens: the Athenian statues all sweated before the battle of Chaeronea, so did the Roman statues during Tully's consulship, viz., the statue of Victory at Capua, of Mars at Rome, and of Apollo outside the gates. The Palladium itself was brought to Italy by aeneas, and after keeping quiet three centuries, made an observation in Vesta's Temple: a trivial one, I fear, since it hath not survived; Juno's statue at Veii a.s.sented with a nod to go to Rome. Anthony's statue on Mount Alban bled from every vein in its marble, before the fight of Actium. Others cured diseases: as that of Pelichus, derided by Lucian; for the wiser among the heathen believed in sweating marble, weeping wood, and bleeding bra.s.s--as I do. Of all our marks and dents made in stone by soft substances, this saint's knee, and that saint's finger, and t'other's head, the original is heathen. Thus the foot-prints of Hercules were shown on a rock in Scythia. Castor and Pollux fighting on white horses for Rome against the Latians, left the prints of their hoofs on a rock at Regillum. A temple was built to them on the spot, and the marks were to be seen in Tully's day. You may see near Venice a great stone cut nearly in half by St. George's sword. This he ne'er had done but for the old Roman who cut the whetstone in two with his razor.

'Qui Bavium non odit amet tua carmina, Mavi.'