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THE IRISH
ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
the irish
Ecclesiastical Record
a JKotitfjlg Sournal, tmtJer CHpiscopal Sanction
VOLUME VI. '
JULY TO DECEMBER, 1899
JFourtl) Series
DUBLIN
BROWNE & NOLAN, LIMITED, NASSAU-STREET
1899
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Nihil Obstat.
GlKALDUS MOLLOY, S.T.D.,
CENSOR DEP.
Stnprhnatur,
|J« GULIELMUS,
Archiep. Dublin., Eiherniae Primas.
BROWNE & NOIiAK, LTD., NASSAU-STREET, DUBLIN.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Conversion of Great Britain to the Catholic Faith. By Abbe P. de Foville,
p.s.s. - ' - - - - - - - 481
Catholics and Freemasonry. By Rev. C. M. O'Brien - - - 309
Church, The, in ' the Dark Ages.' By Rev. Philip Burton, o.m. - 507
Conduct and Confession. By Rev. W. A. Sutton, s.j. - - 123
CorresponDcncc :—
Homes for Aged and Infirm Priests - - 361, 467, 469, 545
Darwinism. By Rev. E. Gaynor, cm. .... 147
Derry-Calgach. By Most Rev. Dr. O'Doherty - - - - 480
Bocuments :—
Baptism, The Abuste of Delaying - - ' - - - 82
Baptismal Font, Blessing of, by Chapter . - . . 357
Bishop's Throne - - - - - - 186, 278
Canonization of the Blessed John Baptist de la Salle, Founder of
the Christian Brothers - - - - - - 561
Confraternity of the Rosary, Erection of - - - - 186
Convent Schools in France - - - - - - 368
Degrees, Time Required for, in Ecclesiastical Faculties - - 470
Delegation, May a Papal Delegate Sub-delegate without Restriction 179
Encyclical of His Holiness Leo XIII. on the Consecration of Man-
kind to the Sacred Heart ----- 70
Faculties Granted to the Master -General of the Dominicans - 372
Faculties Given to Maynooth College to Confer Degrees iu Theology,
Philosophy, and Canon Law - - - - - 564
Fast to be Observed before Ordination and Consecration of
Churches ------- 78
Funeral of Canons ...---- 280
Heretics in Catholic Hospitals - - - - - 76
Index of Indulgences Granted to the Members of the Confraternity
of the Holy Rosary ---..- 546
Indulgences Granted by a Bishop ----- 84
Leo XIII. and French Catholics - - - - - 181
Leo XIII. and the Review ' Ephemerides Liturgicae ' - - 1^2
Marriages of Freemasons - - - - - - 81
Masses in Convent Chapels - - - - - 473
Matrimonial Consent, Renewal of - - - - - 182
Matrimonial Impediments - - - - - - 79
Occurrence of Feasts - - - - - - 279
Office, Dorbts Regarding Divine . - - - - 375
VI TABLE OF CONTENTS
DocmiBN'TS— continued. ^-^^^
Oratory, What is a Semi-Public ? - . . . . 4^2
Ordination, Doubt Regarding Validity of - - . - 180
Privilege, The Pauline - - . . . - 183
Regulars who become Secularized - . . . - 83
Religious Life outside the Cloister -' - . 371
Requiem Mass for the Poor --.... jgg
Requiem Mass with Chant ---... 279
Statutes of the Sodality of Reparation, 363 ; Rules of same - 374
' Tametsi ' Decree, Proclamation of, in Costa Rica - - - 173
Translation of Candlemas ----.. 375
Vespers of the Chapter ----.. 280
Water Used at Baptism - - - . . - 373
Dr. Horton and the Pope. By Rev. John Freeland - - - 327
Dr. Russell, of Maynooth. By Rev. Matthew Russell - - - 26
Episcopal City of Ferns, The. By W. H. Grattan Flood - - 167
Evil, The Existence of. By Right Rev. Mgr. John S. Vaughan - 401
Father Marquette, s. J., Discoverer of the Mississippi. By E. Leahy - 496
Father O'Growney. By Rev. Michael P. Hickey, d.d., m.e.i.a. - 426
Freemasonry and the Church in Latin America. By Rev. Philip
Burton, cm. - - - - - - - 35
Idealism and Realism in Art. By Rev. M. Cronin, m.a.,d.d. - 300,412
Index, The New Legislation oq the. By Rev. T. Hurley, d.d. - 49, 242
Manna, The. By Rev. Jerome PoUard-Urquhart, o.s.b. - - 205
Masonic Persecution in Mexico, The. By Rev. Philip Burton, cm. - 267
motes auD (Sluertcs:—
LiTTJEGY (By Rev. Daniel O'Loan, d.d.) : —
Carrying the Blessed Sacrament in other Cases than to the Sick - 459
Certain Duties of the Subdeacon at Solemn Mass - - - 465
Puiificators, Use of, when Bishops distribute Holy Communion - 465
Theology (By Rev. Daniel Mannix, d.d.) : —
Absolution from a Reserved Sin - - - . - 4c 7
Baptism, Use of Short Form of - - - . . 359
Danger to Catholics in Protestant Institutions - - - ,543
Dispensation in a Vow of Chastity - - . . ^455
Dispensation in the Vow of Religion - - - . 459
Dispensation to Read Forbidden Books - - - . 542
Protestants as Sponsors at the Baptism of Catholics - - 542
Viaticum : Can a Priest who is not Fasting Celebrate in order to
procure the Viaticum? - - - - . - 359
IFlotices Ot 3B00k9:—
A Dead Man's Diary, 286 ; A Full Course of Instruction in Explana-
tion of the Catechism, 191 ; Abridgment of the History of the
Church for the Use of Schools, 569 ; Adrian IV. and Ireland, 568;
Business G-uide for Priests, 89 ; Cantiones Sacrae, 576 ; Carmel in
England, 476 ; Commentarii de Deo Trino, de Verbo Incamato,
de Deo Consummatore, 383 ; Daily Thoughts for Priests, 571 ;
TABLE OF CONTENTS Vll
Notices of Books — continued.
De Paucitate Salvandoriun, 479 ; De Justitia et Jure et de Quarto
Decalogi Praecepto, 477 ; Demonstration Philosophique, 89 ;
Directoire de I'Enseignment Religieux, 286 ; Entretiens et Avis
Spirituels, 94 ; Exposition of Christian Doctrine, 191 ; History of
Enniscorthy, 287 ; Idyls of Killowen, 377 ; Institutiones Theo-
logiae Moralis, 95, 283;'L'Ap6tre, St. Paul, 188 ; L ' Homme Dieu,
rCEuvre de Jesus Clirist, 89 ; Mariolatry, 95; Morale Stoicienne
en face de la Morale Chretienne, 94 ; Missa de SS. Virginibus, 383 ;
Missa XVI. in Honorem S. Antonii de Padua, 382 ; Mrs. Markham's
Nieces, 285 ; Natural Law and Legal Practice, 190 ; Occasional
Sermons on Various Subjects, 475 ; Probabilismo, Dissertatio
de, 86 ; Reformation, The Eve of the, 670 ; Religion of Shakespeare,
378 ; Saciaments Explained, The, 88 ; Sagesse Pratique, 287 ;
Seraph of Assisi, 96 ; Si Vous Conaissiez le Don de Dieu, 92 ;
Science of the Bible, 192 ; Seigneur, Y en aura-t-il peu de sauves,
479 ; The Child of God, 285 ; The King's Mother, 285 ; The
Catholic Visitor's Guide to Rome, 381 ; The Sacred Ceremonies of
Low Mass, 38'z ; Twenty-two Offertories, 480. '
Possession in Moral Theology and Anglo-American Law. By Rev. T.
Slater, s.J. 193
Preacher, The, in the Making. By Rev. Richard A. O'Gormao. o.s.a. 130
Religious Education of the Young. By Most Rev. Dr. O'Doherty - 114
Sacramental Causality. By Rev. John BI. Harty - - - 385
Sacred Heart, The, in the New Testament. By Rev. Gerald Stack - 1
St. Patrick, The Birthplace of. By Ver/ Rev. Sylvester Malone,
p.p , v.G. - ...---- 07
St. Patrick, The Birthplace of. By Very Rev. Edward O'Brien.
D.D. - - - - - - - 11, 237
St. Patrick, The Birthplace of. By Rev. Gerald Stack - 341, 444, 521
Socialism, and the Title of Production. By Rev. Thomas Wilson - 226
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THE SACRED HEART IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
A STUDY IN SCKIPTURE TRANSLATION
IT is unnecessary to insist upon the 'importance of the
devotion to the Sacred Heart, or upon the advantages
to be derived from it. These are topics familiar to
the readers of the I. E, Eecord, topics upon which
they have to address their congregations not infrequently.
But, I believe, it is not too much to say, that the Sacred
Heart of Jesus occupies, perhaps, the most important place
among recent devotional and doctrinal developments in the
Church of God.
The question naturally presents itself. How far is this
modern devotion foreshadowed in the writings of an earlier
period, or founded in the Christian sentiment of past ages ?
And, above all, we are naturally moved to ask, How far is
this devotion supported by the language of Scripture ? The
first of these questions is too wide to admit of discussion at
present ; but a few observations may at least be made as to
the mode of conducting such an inquiry.
The reader will remember that Father Dalgairns, in his
work on Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus,^ quotes as
follows from the well-known letter from the Churches of
Lyons and Vienne, which is preserved to us in Eusebius,^
and which is said to date from about the year 178: — 'He
Page G3. -^ Eccl. Mint., Book v., ch. i.
JJOL'HTH iJERIEb VUL. VI. — JULY 189^. A
2 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
(the martyr, Sanctus, deacon of the Church of Lyons) was
bedewed and strengthened by the spring of living water
which flows from the Heart of Christ.'
The Greek word used in this passage is V7]hu<; nedys ; but
in translating it ' heart ' Father Dalgairns follows, not only
Neander, the Protestant historian, but also Professor Torrey,
his Protestant translator. And here two considerations natu-
rally present themselves. First, it is obvious that * heart ' is
not the ' literal ' translation; i.e., it is neither the primary, nor
the predominant meaning of the word nedys : the meanings
assigned to the latter, indeed, are those of ' stomach, belly,
paunch, bowels, womb.' ^ But, secondly, it seems equally
obvious that * heart ' is the only proper — it might also be
said, the only possible — translation. The reason is plain ;
and is found in the very nature of a translation, properly
so called, as opposed to the schoolboy's * crib.' The * crib '
gives the * literal ' meaning of each individual word in a
phrase, but does not, and cannot, convey the real sense
of a pas3age ; while a translation, if worthy of the name,
endeavours to produce in the minds of those who may read
or hear the rendering the very ideas, feelings, and associa-
tions which are expressed in the language of the original.
Let us take a simple example, such as the Latin phrase os
durum. The ' crib ' may be justified in turning this into
* hard mouth ' ; but this somewhat * horsey ' expression is
in no sense a translation. To translate the Latin words,
we must employ some such English phrase, as 'brazen-face.'
Similarly, radices mofitimii does not, at least normally,
mean the ' roots of the mountains ' ; and he who should
venture to render Horace's favete lifiguis as ' favour with
your tongues,' would certainly not succeed in conveying the
meaning of the poet. In short, as already observed, a
translation should reproduce, as closely as possible, the
ideas and sentiments of the original; this is its first and
most important function. If it can, at the same time,
imitate the phraseology of the original by giving the equi-
valent for the particular words employed, so much the
1 Cf . Liddell and Scott, s.v.
THE SACRED HEART IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 3
better; but it must never sacrifice sense or sentiment to
mere words.
According to the principles here laid down, the transla-
tion already quoted from Father Dalgairns is worthy of all
commendation ; and the word ' heart ' is rightly employed
by him to render the Gxeek 7iedys. But if this be so, it will
immediately occur to one, that there must be a number
of similar passages in the literature of the early Church,
passages in which the devotion to the Heart of Jesus is
foreshadowed; if only the proper translation be adopted,
and if the true sense of the originals be not obscured by a
false literalism. However, it has been already intimated,
that my present purpose is not with early Christian litera-
ture in general : my object is a more limited, but a more
important one ; namely, to apply the principles just enun-
ciated to the text of the New Testament. If the principles
themselves are sound, surely we can, or rather we should,
apply them to the words of Holy Writ. We may now
proceed to answer the question : What support does Sacred
Scripture give to devotion to the Heart of Jesus? The
Heart of Jesus is apparently alluded to in only a single
passage, and the allusion is found in the well-known words
of our Saviour Himself : * Learn of Me, because I am meek,
and humble of heart.' ^
It may be noted, in passing, that our Catholic Version
intimates that the meekness and humility of Christ are set
before us, not directly as the lesson to be learned from Him,
but rather as the reason, or encouragement for becoming His
disciples. This is the view of our Saviour's words
rightly adopted by Maldonatus, as well as by most modern
commentators. But, for our present purpose, it is more
worthy of remark that a direct reference in the above text to
the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in our modern sense of the phrase,
is by no means certain. The heart is regarded by us * as the
seat of the affections ' ^ (to use a common phrase) ; and in
1 Matt. xi. 29.
3 How far the words ' the seat of the afEections ' are applicable to the human
heart in general, and to the Heart of Christ in particular, is a matter that
cannot be here discussed. I may refei' the reader to the little work of
Pere E-iche, the Sulpician, De Sacro Conur et le Frecieux Sang dc J'esm\ (see
specially, ch. i.) .
THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
this capacity the Heart of Jesus is proposed to us by the
Church as the symbol, or rather as the embodiment, of
Christ's love and tenderness, and consequently as a fitting
object of our worship and devotion. I may here reproduce
the words of Father Dalgairns : —
The Church uses human language, and assumes for her own
purposes that common mode of speech, infinitely varied, and to be
found in every nation under the sun, by which we employ the word
'heart ' when we talk of love. . . . Whether from this common
witness of all languages we are right or wrong in inferring that
the heart is the exclusive organ of human affection, at all events
it is quite sufidcient for our purpose that it should be, what it
certainly is, the chief emotional centre of our being. ... In one
word, then, the object of our adoration is the very Heart of Jesus ;
and the reason why we select it for adoration is, because it
thrilled and palpitated with the emotions of His love ; and, like
that of every other human being, is taken as the symbol of joys,
griefs, and affections, which in some way or other it really felt.^
In Matt. xi. 29, however, the word 'heart' seems to
refer to the mind rather than to what we commonly under-
stand by the heart, and this for two reasons. In the first
place, because in the language spoken by our Saviour
{i.e, in Aramaic), such a reference would be the more natural
one. The Aramaic word ^^), lihha (in Syriac, leho), corres-
ponds to the Hebrew ^^. leb, or ^^^., lehah, which in itself
denotes the seat of the intellect rather than that of the
emotions; and this consideration acquires especial force,
when we remember that we have, in St. Matthew's Gospel,
a document originally written in Aramaic. In the second
place, the qualities which our Saviour here attributes to
His * Heart ' are such as we most naturally associate with
the mind. Our ordinary mode of expression — when unin-
fluenced by the phraseology of Scripture — is sufficient proof
of this assertion. Thus, we commonly speak of people as
having a 'proud mind,' or an 'humble mind,' as being
* haughty-minded,' or 'humble-minded.' Such a phrase as
'meek-minded' is not, indeed, in common use; but expres-
sions indicative of an opposite character, such as ' fierce-
minded,' or 'bloody-minded,' are quite natural. Anyone
1 0^. cit., pp. 160-151.
THE SACRED HEART IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 5
with a proper sense of English idiom will at once perceive
a certain strangeness of expression, if * heart ' be substituted
for * mind ' in these phrases.
At the same time, it would be going too far to assert that
Matt. xi. 29, contains no reference to the Heart of Jesus. A
great deal of latitude is allowed as to the precise sense in
which both the Hebrew ^% leh, or ^^% lebab, and its Greek
equivalent, KapBia, kardia, may be used ; and it is hardly
possible to draw any hard-and-fast line. In English, too, we
observe something similar in the use of the words heart and
mind : the meaning of one term sometimes approaches
indefinitely near to the ordinary sense of the other ; while
occasionally the two words seem practically interchangeable.
Thus, in the phrase * to learn, know, or recite by heart,' the
reference is to the mind rather than to the emotions ; in the
phrase, * to lay a thing to heart,' the' reference may be
described as being of a mixed character ; while, in the closely
allied phrase, * to take a thing (very much) to heart,' the
feelings rather than the intellect are obviously referred to.
Again, we cannot overlook the fact, that in the text in
question a reference to the Heart of our Saviour, if not
directly expressed, is, at least, clearly involved. This
appears from the character of the passage as a whole, taken
in its full depth of meaning. Still, the word here used is not,
perhaps, the word that we should have expected, and is
certainly not the most expressive word that might have
been employed, if the sense were precisely that which is
conveyed by our word ' heart.'
What, then, is the term that we should expect to find im
biblical language as the equivalent of * heart ' ? The answer
to this question must be drawn from a study of the peculiar
idiom of the Bible. In the Old Testament ' the seat of the
affections ' is referred to by a number of different terms.
Sometimes the word * reins,' or ' loins ' is found in this sense,
being used to render the Hebrew ""i'^q, keldydth, or d'.?"?,
nwthnayim. Thus, the word Medydth is rendered : * Thou
art near in their mouth, and far from their reins '^ : cf. Is.
Jer. xii. 2.
6 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
xxix. 13, and Matt. xv. 8. Similarly, * And my rei7is shall
rejoice when thy lips shall speak what is right.' ^ As to the
word mothnayim, it is rendered thus : * And thou, son of
man, mourn with the breaking of thy loins (Hebr. beshibrm
mothnayim; Vulg. in contritione lumborum), and with
bitterness sigh before them.' ^ Another word employed in a
similar sense is la:^^ hete7i ; e.g., ' Yerba susurronis quasi
simplicia, et ipsa perveniunt ad intima myitris,'^ where
Luther's German version actually gives herz, * heart.' * Com-
pare Prov. xxii. 18, where the Septuagint has Jcardia,
Another noteworthy example is Hab. iii. 16. Here we may
appropriately refer to the Hebrew word ^-j,-?, qereb, which
is variously rendered by the Vulgate, but is sometimes
translated cor; e.g., 'Cor eorum vanum est.'^ Similarly,
in Prov. xxvi, 24.
Two Hebrew words, which claim special attention, still
remain, namely o'i^?, meghtm and d'?"!, rachdmmi, both
of which are frequently found in such a context that the
translation * bowels ' is utterly inappropriate. Even the
Vulgate and our own version sometimes render megMm
* heart ; ' thus : * Deus mens volui, et legem tuam in medio
cordis mei.'^ But the same rendering might have been
adopted in Jer. xxxi. 20, as also in the similar phrase, Lam.
ii. 11, in both of which passages the Vulgate has viscera.
As to the Hebrew word raclidrmmy it also is translated
viscera in passages where everyone must feel that the only
appropriate rendering is * heart.' Thus : ' Festinavitque quia
commota fuerant viscera ejus super fratre suo.' ^ Compare
3 Kings iii. 26 ; and Ps. Ixxvi. 10, where the Vulgate has :
* Prov. xxiii. 16.
a Ezech. xxi. 6.
3 Prov. xxvi. 22.
* In connection with these passages I cannot help calling attention to John
vii. 88, which should surely have been rendered : * Out of his heart shall flow
rivers of living water.' Our present version is so repellant — if not absolutely
repulsive — that it is practically impossible to make ase of this beautiful text in
its existing form. I am far from having sympathy with those who habitually
decry our Catholic English Bible ; but this, surely, is a deplorable instance of false
literalism.
'■• Ps. V. 10.
^ Ps. xxxix. 9,
7 Gen. xliii. 30.
THE SACRED HEART IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 7
* Aut continebit in ira sua misericordias suaSy but which
might be at the same time more literally and more forcibly
rendered : * Or will He, in His anger, close up His heart ? *
In Prov. xii. 10 : * Novit Justus jumentorum suorum
animas ; viscera autem impiorum crudelia,' the Protestant
version has achieved an undoubted bull, which, however,
usually passes for an epigram. We read : ' The tender mercies
of the wicked are cruel.' In the original there is nothing
about ' tenderness ; ' and the sense simply is : * The heart o
the wicked is cruel.'
From the above examples it must be sufficiently evident
that we need not expect to find in the Vulgate anything like
uniformity of rendering with regard to the words of the
Hebrew text, At the same time it is equally clear that the
word viscera must sometimes be taken in the sense of
* heart,' especially when we observe that it represents the
Hebrew rachdmim.
If we now turn to the New Testament, we find that the
word viscera 0CCWC8 eleven times. In Acts i. 18, it is used
in narrating the fate of the traitor Judas. Here, of
course, it occurs in its proper physical sense, and calls
for no special remark. But in the other ten passages,
namely, Luke i. 78; 2 Cor. vi. 12, vii. 15; Phil. i. 8, ii. 1. ;
Col. iii, 12; Philem. w. 7, 12, 20; 1 John iii. 17, it is
certainly not used in a * literal ' or physical sense ; it
refers rather to the feelings and emotions.
In the Old Testament the Vulgate employs viscera to
represent six different Hebrew words. In reference to three
of these, however, the Vulgate usage is either exceptional
or incorrect ; so we may pass them over. See Job xvi. 14,
xxi. 24, xxxviii. 36. With regard to the remaining three
Hebrew words, the usage is as follows : —
(1) In seven passages viscera represents the Hebrew
qereb: 3 Kings xvii. 21 ; Ps. 1. 12 ; Is. xvi. 11, xix. 3 ; Jer.
xxxi. 33 ; Exech. xi. 19 ; Hab. ii. 19.
(2) In five passages viscera represents the Hebrew
meghtm ; 2 Paral. xxi. 19 ; Is. ix. 15 ; Jer. xxxi. 20 ;
Lam. ii. 11 ; Ezech. iii. 3.
(3) In three passages viscera represents the Hebrew
8 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
rachamtm ; Gen. xliii. 30; 3 Kings iii. 26; Prov. xii. 10.
These three passages have been alreadj^ considered.
So far, then, the Vulgate viscera might leave us to
choose between three different Hebrew words. When, how-
ever, we turn to the Greek text of the 'New Testament, our
choice is practically determined to the word rachamtm. In
every case in which the Vulgate New Testament has vicera,
the original has airXay^va^ spldnclina ; and the usage of
the Septuagint favours the view that spldnchna represents
rachcimim, as in Prov. xii. 10.^ The natural conclusion,
therefore, is that viscera in the New Testament may be
taken as the equivalent of the Hebrew rachdmhn.
This conclusion is rendered absolutely certain by an
lexamination of the Syriac text. In all the cases under con-
sideration, with the exception of Philem. vs. 12,^ the Syriac
New Testament presents us with the word rachme, the
exact equivalent of the Hebrew rachamtm. We are,
therefore, justified in asserting that viscera in the New
Testament represents the Hebrew rachdinim. Now, we
have already seen that in all cases where viscera in the Old
Testament is the equivalent of rachdmim, these words
are to be rendered by the English word 'heart.' We are,
therefore, forced to conclude that viscera and spldnchna in
the New Testament correspond most nearly to * heart ' in
English. In some cases, perhaps, the idiom of our language
may require that we should employ some more paraphrastic
expression ; but, speaking generally, * heart ' is the only
word which will convey the ideas, sentiments, and associa-
tions of the Greek and Latin terms. Such, indeed, is the
^ The only other text in point is Prov. xxvi. 22, where spldnchna represents
the Hebrew beteti. In Jer. 11. 13 (its only other occurrence), it may represent a
possible meghhn, as read by the Septuaarint ; but our present Hebrew text has
a ditferent reading*. In later Hellenistic works we notice indications of an
increased tendency to employ splanchna in the sense of rachdmim.
^ In this passage the Syriac adopts the somewhat peculiar rendering
yaldo, 'son,' or -offspring.' In reference to the Syriac version of the other
passages, it is right to mention that, while the same two words rachme, and
ntr.hofo, are employed to translate the Greek (nrkdyxva, spldnchna and oIktipjios^
oiktirmos, in Col. iii. 12, and Phil. ii. 1, in the latter text the words are
reversed. Still, the occurrence of rachme, even in this passage, is none
the less significant. On the other hand, it should De noted that when the
Syriac wants to represent the Greek upldnchna, taken in a material sense,
as in Actsi. 18, it employs a different word, gawoyeh, • his bowels, or entra
THE SACRED HEART IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 9
rendering actually adopted by the Kevised Version in the four
passages, Col. iii. 12, Philem. w. 7, 12, 20 ; but it is equally
appropriate in other cases. It is the meaning adopted by
Protestant commentators, such as Ellicott and Lightfoot, in
Philip i. 8 ; and in this last text especially we should have
no hesitation in rendering : * For God is my witness, how I
long after you all in the heart of (Jesus) Christ.' Almost
equally striking is the passage, Luke i, 78. Here, according
to Semitic idiom, the principal substantive has an adjective
addition, expressed by the genitive relation. Compare the
well-known text, Acts ix. 15, where St. Paul is called a vas
electionis, i.e., ' a vessel (instrument) of choice,' or * a chosen
instrument.' We should, therefore, translate : ' Through
the merciful heart of our God, in which (i.e., through which,
or according to which) the Orient from on high hath visited
us.' Here, indeed, the direct reference -is to the Heart of
God, but of God who becomes incarnate for the redemption
of men. The passage is of especial interest, as it serves as
a link between those texts of the New Testament in which
the Heart of Christ is expressly mentioned (Matt. xi. 29,
Phil. i. 8) and those of the Old Testament which refer to
the Heart of God.
From the foregoing observations it appears that we must
recognise in the New Testament the germs of devotion to
the Sacred Heart, clearly and forcefully presented in the
ordinary idiom of Holy Writ. This, of course, is what we
might have expected. What can be more natural, for
instance, than that St. Paul, the ardent lover of his Divine
Master, should speak to us of the Sacred Heart of Jesus ?
His writings breathe the spirit of tender devotion to the
Sacred Humanity; he was the Apostle of the Precious
Blood ; can we wonder that he should also be the Apostle
of the Sacred Heart ?
The above has been written with the object of drawing
attention to a fact which, however tacitly admitted, is
seldom if ever expressly noticed. Without at all intending
to advocate too free a treatment of our received EngHsh
text, I may venture to suggest that the translations of
Luke i. 78, and of Phil. i. 8 here given, might be sometimes
10 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
adopted in the pulpit, or, at least, that the real sense of the
passages should be explained to the people. It is true that
the word * bowels,' on account of its frequent employment
in similar contexts, may convey a prpper meaning to the
priest ; but I greatly doubt whether it can do so to the con-
gregation at large. Indeed, its repellant associations seem
to render this very unlikely, and I suspect that our present
rendering * can only pass without censure when it passes
without observation.' Whether we consider its original
derivation, or its present signification, it has a very poor
claim to be regarded as the equivalent of 'heart.' It
properly refers to * the small intestines,' so that it has not
even the merit of being a true ' literal ' translation of the
Latin viscera or of the Greek spldnch7ia, for both of these
terms are wider in meaning, including what are sometimes
called * the nobler viscera,' i.e., the heart, &c.
There may be some who would incline to defend the
present use of the word ' bowels ' by appealing to ' old
English ' usage ; but I believe that — apart from more or less
direct Scripture quotation — such usage cannot be generally
established. The expression in question was never more
than a foreign intruder in the language, whose introduction
was due to a forced and false literalism. According to
Murray's New English Dictionary^ the earliest occurrence
of * bowels ' in the sense of * heart ' is in the translation of
the Bible usually ascribed to Wyclif, and dating from the
year 1382. This is a significant fact; but it is equally
significant that, according to the same authority, the next
occurrence is not until about sixty years later, i.e., in the
Gesta Bomanorum, c, 1440, Nay, for a century afterwards
the expression must have been felt to be harsh and strange,
for Tyndale, Coverdale, and other translators avoided it,
using the phrase ' heart root ' in its stead, when referring to
the .person of our Saviour.^
But, whatever be the opinion entertained on the question
of the propriety of the words employed, it is, at all events
advisable that we should bring home, both to our own minds
1 Phil. i. 8.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST. PATRICK 11
and the minds of others, the full significance of texts like
those referred to. It is, surely, both consoling and instructive
to reflect that we are at one with the Apostles and their
contemporaries, not only in our faith in Christ, but also in
the feelings with which we regard His Sacred Humanity, and
even in the very modes of expression which indicate the
strength and vividness of our belief in our Incarnate God.
Gerald Stack.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST. PATRICK
III.
THE translations of the * Confessio ' that are ordinarily
current and accepted, represent Patrick as saying, 'I
had for my father Calpornius (a deacon), a son of Potitas (a
presbyter), who dwelt in the village of Bannavem Taberniae,
for he had a small farm hard by the place where I was taken
captive.' In the text there is nothing to justify the addition
* who dwelt,* Benavem is written in some copies Banavem or
Banaven or Bonaven. Probus who clearly copies from the
' Confessio,' writes at Bannave. Now, it is a strange and most
important fact, that in none of the lives, except in that
attributed to Probus, and in the life by Joceyln, at the end
of the twelfth century, is Bannave mentioned; but all with
the exception of Fiacc mention Tabernae, though with
significant variations of spelling. Vita Secunda : —
He was born in Campo Taburne, so called because the Boman
armies once placed their tabernacula there during the winter cold,
and from thence it was called Campus Tabern ; that is, Campus
Tabernaculorum.
That explanation shows that the author was perplexed
by the word Taburne. Vita Tertia says :—* Patrick was
born in illo oppido Nemther. He was born in Campo
Taburniae ; ' and then goes on to give the same explanation
as in the Secunda. Hence it is called Campus Tabuerni.
12 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Vita Quarta repeats the same, omitting about the winter,
and adding that in the Imgua Britannica Campus Tabern is
the same as Campus Tabernaculorem. Joceyln says : * There
was a man, Calphurnius by name, son of Potitus Presbyter in
the canton (pago), Taburnia dwelling near the town Empthor,
bordering on the Mari Hibernico. On the other hand, all
mention Nemthur, or Empthor, as the place of his birth.
Fiacc : * Patrick was born in Nemthur. ' Vita Secunda :
* Patrick was born in that town, Nemthur by name.' Vita
Tertia : ' Patrick was born in that town, Nemthor by name.
He was reared in Nempthor.' Vita Quarta: * Patrick was
born in that town, Nemthor by name, which put into Latin
would be heavenly tower, and was reared in the town
Nemthor by name.' Vita Quinta (Probus), who mentions
Bannave, does not mention Empthor, but says Bannave
belongs to the province Nevtriae; he has found that out.
Vita Sexta : * There was a man Calphurnius . . . dwelling
beside Empthor.' Vita Septima: 'Patrick was reared in
Nemthor.' Leabhar Breac : * At Nemthur was he born,
Patrick was reared at Nemthor.' Book of Lismore : * In
Nemthor was he born.' Breviary of Paris : * Patrick was
born in Britannia, the town Empthor.' Breviary of Armagh :
In the town of Britannia, called Emptor.' I assume that
Nemthur, Nemthor, Empthor, are all the same place, and
the form that comes nearest to the correct spelling in Emp-
thor. That the initial n cannot be defended, is sufficiently
shown in the following quotation from the I. E. Kecoed
March, 1868 :—
Many have imagined that the name of St. Patrick's birth-
place was Nemthur, from the Irish phrase in Nemthm\ However,
Eugene O'Curry well remarked, that the initial n in this case is
euphonious, and belongs to the preceding preposition, precisely as
we find in the old MSS., in neren for in Erin; in nalban for
in Albania ; in memain for in Emania. The name of our
apostle's birthplace is more accurately given as follows in a very
ancient Irish MSS. In a village the name of which is Hurnia in
Britain, near the city Empter.
I assume, also, that the spelling Empter or Emptor is as
likely to be the original spelling as Emther.
Unless we are to set aside the Irish writers completely
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST. PATRICK 13
we must hold, that Empthor was the name of the place
where Patrick was born. But if so, why does Patrick not
mention it in the ' Confessio ' ? It is extremely probable that
he did, and that the passage, * Villam enim prope habuit ubi
ego in capturam decidi,' is not what Patrick wrote : first,
there is various reading Enon for enim, which shows the
passage was obscure; second, enim has no meaning, and must
be rejected ; next, if Enon be retained it must be the name
of the farm which his father had near Bannave Tabernia.
Now, why should Patrick tell the name of the farm ? What
interest could anyone take in the name of the farm ? It is
almost certain that what Patrick wrote was : * Villam in
Emporio habuit,' which became, first, ' Villam inem porio,'
and then, ' Villam en^m or Enon prope habuit.'
Many Irish writers connect Empthor with the Clyde.
The Scholiast on Fiacc : ' Nemthur is a city in North Britain,
that is Ail-cluade.' The Liber Hymfiorum : ' Patrick's father
was Calpuirnn ; Conches was his mother.' They all went
from the Britons of Alcluaid. The Tripartite: * Patrick
was reared in Nemthur.' The King of Britain's steward
commanded Patrick and his nurse to clean the hearth in
Al-cluaid.' Leabhar Breac : * Patrick was of the Britons of
Aid-cluaide, ' Vita Quarta : * His parents proceeded to
the Strath Clyde.' Book of Lismore : * Patrick's father
was of the Britons of Alcluaid ; in Nemthor was he born.'
Manuscript quoted above : 'Patrick now was of the Britons ;
Al-cluaide was his native place.' Jocelyn (close of twelfth
century): * Empthor situated in the Valley of the Clyde.'
Fiacc does not mention Alcluaide, neither does the Vita
Secunda or the Vita Tertio. Now those statements about
the Clyde are either pure inventions or have some
foundation in fact. They are on a different footing
from the statements that he was a Briton, or was born
in Briton, That statement is not a testimony ; it is a
deduction, an inference, and may be nothing more. If
those writers knew that there was another Clyde not in
Britain, and used the word Britain to distinguish the one
Clyde from the other, then their statement that Clyde was
in Britain, would be a testimony, whether true or false ; but
14 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
it being clear that those writers never had the notion of
making such a distinction, the statement that Patrick was
born in Britain can be only a statement of their opinion,
a display of their geographical knowledge. If you state that
a man was born in England, that is a' statement of a fact.
If you state that he was born in London, and go on, in
addition, to say that he was born in England, that is only
a display of your geographical learning.
According to the usual interpretations of St. Patrick's
statements he has given for his father's residence the names
of places which nowhere can be found, or, at least, names
which no one ever heard of. Is this credible? Every
other writer that gives the names of places, gives names of
known places. St. Patrick's father was a decurio ; that is
to say, a member of the senate of one of those cities which
were thought of sufficient importance to have a senate
modelled on the plan of the senate of Eome. The city
must have been one of importance, seeing that Patrick
adduces the fact of his father having been a decurio, as
sufficient to prove that he was of a noble family. Why
does he not give the name of that city, if it was only to fortify
that he was teUing the truth ? Why does he tell at all the
name of the unknown village to which his father belonged ?
What importance could that be to his readers ; what interest
could he imagine them to take in it? What then did Patrick
say ? He said : * My father was a decurio, of Yicus. '
There are many cities called Vicus. Some in France,
some in Germany, several in Spain : Vicus Aquarius, Vicus
Cuminarius, &c. ; and, of course, it is necessary to make
some addition that will distinguish what Vicus is meant.
So Patrick says Vicus Bann-aven. You will find it in the
map of Spain, 41.55 N.L., 2.13 E.L. It is in the ancient
atlasses called Ausa, and is on the Alba Fluvia. Alba and
Fluvia are Latin forms ; that would not be the name by
which the river would be known to the Iberian dwellers
around, but it would be known by the name of which Alba
and Fluvia are the translation Bann Aven.
Vich, an ancient town built on the ruins of Ausa, where the
inhabitants resisted the Romans 185 years before the Vulgar era,
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST, PATRICK 15
The streets are broad, and most of them are very steep. The
principal square is surrounded with arcades. The copper and
coal mines in the neighbouring towns, the linen and cotton
manufactures within the walls, maintain the commerce of the
inhabitants.^
Vic (Vicus) a city of Spain, in Catalonia, with a bishop's see
suffragant to Tarracona. The former name was Ausonia ; when
ruined by the Komans it got the name of Vicus. We see the
signature of a bishop of Ausona of which Vicus was the episcopal
see, in a council of Tarragona in 516, and in other councils down
to 906.2
Vich (Vicus), a very ancient town of Spain, in Catalonia, 40
miles north of Barcelona. It is the capital and centre of its
temperate and fertile plain. It is a most ancient bishopric. The
cathedral was re-built in 1038. ^
Ansa, the chief city of the Ausetani. In the middle age
Ausonia and Vicus Ausoniensis Vic-d Osane, whence its modern
name of Vique or Vich. It lies on a small tributary of the Ter,
the ancient Alba. Ausetani, one of the small peoples in the
extreme north-east of Hispania Tarraconenses, at the foot of the
Pyrenees, in Catalonia. Pliny places them west of the Laletani
(Laetani), and east of the Lacetani. Their position is fixed by their
chief cities, Ausa, and Gerunda (Gerona), along the valley of the
river Ter, the ancient Alba. Ausa and Gerunda had the jus
Latinum.*
Thus, Vicus was a city that had a Senate, the members
of which were decurions. With Yicus on the Bannaven all
the Irish writers connect Empthor, and, most probably, so
did Patrick himself in the * Confessio.' The writers say it
was his birthplace ; Patrick says it was the place he was
made captive. All the writers say Empor was on the Clyde,
in Latin Cludianus.
You will find Emporium on the Clodianus, Lat. 42, 7 N.
Long. 8, 3 E., about 40 miles to the east of Vicus.
Emporiae or Emporium, an ancient and important city of
Hispania Tarraconensis, on the small gulf of Kosas, which lies
below the east extremity of the Pyrenees, and at the mouth
of the Kiver Clodianus, which formed its port. Its situation
made it the natural landing-place from Gaul, and as such it was
colonized at an early period by the Phoceans of Massilia. Their
first city, afterwards called the Old Town, was built on a small
1 Malte Bran ** Findlay's Gazeteer.
2 Moreri. * Smith's Geographical Lietionary.
16 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
island, whence they passed over to the mainland, and here a
double city grew up — the Greek town on the coast, and an
Iberian settlement, of the tribe of the Indigetes, on the inland
side of the other. Julius Caesar added a body of Eoman colonists
to the Greeks and Spaniards, and the place gradually coalesced
into one Roman city. On coins it is styled a municipium.^
Ampurias, a seaport of Spain, in Catalonia, at the mouth of the
Fluvia, 70 miles N.E. of Barcelona. Long. 3, 0 E. ; Lat. 42, 9 N.^
Ampurdam, a small territory of Catalonia, whose capital
city was formerly Ampurias. It is 3 leagues from Eosas,
6 from Gerona, and 20 from Barcelona. It was formerly very
considerable under the name of Emporiae or Emporium.
Polybus calls it Emporias, Strabo, and Stephanus, Emporium;
Titus Livius mentions it when speaking of Cato's arrival in Spain.
It is said that this city was divided into two parts ; that the
Greeks who had come from Phocea occupied the part next the
sea, and that the Spaniards inhabited the other. After Julius
Caesar had vanquished the son of Pompeius, he left at Ampurias
a colony which built a third city. These latter comers joined
with the Spaniards, who became Roman citizens, and afterwards
the Greeks obtained the same position. In the course of time,
Ampurias became the seat of a bishop's see, and we find the
names of its bishops in the Councils of Toledo from 589 and 599,
in Egara 614, and in several others. ^
Clodianus, a river of Hispania Tarraconensis at the east end
of the Pyrenees, forming at its mouth the harbour of Emporiae. ^^
Going along the coast, and starting from Cerraria, we come
at once to a precipitous headland, which makes one of the
projecting summits of the Pyrenees, * quae in altum Pyrenaeum
extendit ' ; next the Tichis, a river which runs to Rhoda, next
the Clodianum which flows to Emporias, next the Mons Jovis,
whose western side is called Scalae Hannibales. ^
Vossius: — That place is still called Scalae, and the whole
mountain Monjui, altered from Mons Jovis. A glance at the map
of Spain will show twelve salient points in the outline of the
coast. The first, beginning at the north end of the east coast, is
that formed by the eastern extremity of the Pyrenees, Pyrenes
Prom, Veneris Prom, Pyrenea Venus, a mountainous headland,
projecting far into the sea, and dividing the Gulf of Cervara or
Portus Veneris, on the north, from that of Rhoda and Emporiae
on the south (Bay of Rosas). At the present time. Cap de Creus.^
Creus (see * Creuz ') Cap de Creuz or of the Cross ;
1 Smith's Geographical Bictionari/. * Smith's Geographical Dictionary.
^ Findlay's Gazeteer. ^ Pomponius Mela.
» Moneni. ^ Smith's Geographical DictioHary
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST, PATRICK 17
in Latin Promontorium, Aphrodisium is the most eastern cape
of Catalonia, in the province of Besaki, between Rosas and
Ampurias.^
The coast line of the Endegeton, the mouth [ekbolai]
of the River Sambroka ; Emporeai ; the mouth of the
River Klodianos ; RhodipoHs ; next to which is the before-
mentioned leron Aphrodision.^
The River Rubricatus, beyond which [are] the Laletani
and Indigetes, towns of Roman citizens ; that is, having the
Jus Romanum Baetulo, otherwise Iluro, River Larnum ; Blanda
(now Blanes), River Alba ; Emporiae, a double town of the
original inhabitants, and of the Greeks who came of the Phoceans
River Tichis, about 40 miles therefrom, Pyrenea Venus (Cap
Creuz) on the far side of the promontory. ^
We see from Pliny^ that most of the cities in Spain,
perhaps all that had Roman names, had also Iberian names.
The Iberian name would, as a matter of course, be the only
one known or in use among the Spaniafds, the Latin name
used only in official documents. We have here the explana-
tion of the word Taburne. Vicus and Empor are in the
territory of the Indigetes (Ptolemy, Endeketae, or Indeketai).
Why, then, did not Patrick write, de Vico Bannaven Indi-
getum. He could not have written Indigetum, for that is
a name of idolatry, as Port us Veneris or Promontorium
Aphrodiseum. It is certain that as Promontorium Aphro-
disium from the very introduction of Christianity was
supplanted by Cap Creuz (the promontory of the remarkable
cross) ; so, from the introduction of Christianity, the name
Indigetes, an idolatrous name (Indigetes means the tutelary
gods), would have been abolished, and by Patrick's time
utterly forgotten. Taburne, then, was the name, the Iberian
name of the territory. No wonder we cannot find it. That
we cannot creates no objection ; for if we cannot find it,
neither can we find any other name which Patrick would
have written in place of the idolatrous name Indigetes —
some other name he must have written. Taburn is just the
most likely of all names for that district. I assume that the
Irish and Iberian are the same language.
The Irish word taoh means flank, and burren means
1 Moreri. ^ PJiny, lib. iii.
2 Ptolem>, lib. ii., c. 6. * Lib, iii., c. 3.
VOL. VI. B
18 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
mountains ; burren is, in fact, identical with Pyrene. There
could not be a more appropriate name, at any rate, to
the district than the Mountain Flanks. If anyone disHkes
taob-burren, he might prefer Taib, the sea, burren, mountains
taib- burren ; but some other name he must suggest, and
that other name will be just as unfindable as Tiburne.
Patrick also writes in his Letter to Coroticus, that his
birthplace was Iberia. Considering that so much has been
written about Patrick's birthplace, it is somewhat startling
that this statement of Patrick's has been so persistently
ignored. Yet, that he states he was born in Iberia is a
fact that cannot be denied. Every writer admits and asserts
that in every manuscript of the ' Confessio ' is found the .
statement that he was born in Iberia. But with consum-
mate audacity they change the word Iberia into Hibernia ;
and, taking that corrupt reading of their own as a foundation
they interpret the words, * I was born in Iberia,' as meaning
the Irish were born in Hibernia. The words are, 'They
make little of us because we were born in Iberia.' For that
is the way they talk, sic enim aiunt. Now, as we do not
know but that Coroticus and all around him were fools, we
are not sure but they did say, * the Irish were bom in Ireland,
or the Irish are not worth heeding, because they were born in
Ireland ; ' but if they did think the less of the Irish because
they were born in Ireland, and repeated often that remark,
sic enim aiuntt Coroticus and those about him must have
been great fools, indeed. Their remark would make sense
if it was he Patrick was not worth heeding, because he was
born in Iberia. The whole paragraph has Patrick himself
for its subject, with the exception of these eight words.
Common sense would dictate that those eight words are also
about himself. If by Iberia Patrick meant Ireland, of course
those eight words must have for their subject the Irish ; but
ths absurdity of the remark, and the incoherence of it, shows
that by Iberia Patrick did not mean Ireland. Those who
corrupt the text by changing Iberia into Hibernia have not
the least excuse for doing so. Every consideration that in
any text establishes a reading where there is a disputed
reading is against Hibernia and for Iberia. And, first, there
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST. PATRICK 19
is no disputed reading ; there is no doubt that all the manu-
scripts gave Iberia. Where, then, is the ground for doubt-
ful reading? Where is the ground for alteration? Does
not the reading Iberia make good sense, while the reading
Hibernia makes, if not nonsense, very incoherent sense?
But what should put the matter beyond all doubt, nay, show
that if the manuscript reading was Hibernia, that even so
it was Iberia was meant, is, that Patrick never calls Ireland
Hibernia, but always Hiberione.
The passages in which Patrick mentions by name Ireland
are: — (1) * Hyberione adductis sum ; ' (2) ' Hyberione devene-
ram;' (3) * Vidi virum venientem de Hiberione ;' (4) *Vox
Hyberionarum ; ' (5) * Quotidie contra Hyberionem per-
gebam;' (6) *Ibernas gentes ;' (7) *Unde autem, Hiberione,
qui idol a coluerunt nuper plebs Dei effect^, est ; ' (8) ' Hanc
scripturam Hiberione conscripsi.' These are from the
' Confessio.' The following are from the Letter to Coroticus :
(9) * Hiberione episcopus constitutus (sum) ; ' (10) * Lex
quam Deus Hiberione plant averat ; ' (11) * Veni Hiberio-
nem;' (12) * Grex Domini Hiberione crescebat/ Those are
the only places in which Patrick names Ireland; and we are to
believe that after all those passages he suddenly turns, and
at the end gives Ireland the name of another country, Iberia.
In 383, Maximus was proclaimed Emperor by the unani-
mous voice, both of the soldiers and the provincials in
Britain. He was a native of Spain. He could not hope to
reign, or even live, if he confined his ambition within the
limits of Britain. He invaded Gaul with a fleet and army
which were long after remembered as the emigration of a
considerable part of the British nation. The armies of Gaul
received him with acclamations. Andragathius, the general
of the cavalry of Maximus, overtook Gratian, and delivered
him into the hands of the executioner. Maximus sent an
ambassador to Theodosius offering the alternative of war and
peace. * As a Koman,' the ambassador said. * he would prefer
to employ his forces in the defence of the Eepublic, yet was
prepared in field of battle to dispute the empire of the world.' ^
' Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Soman Htnpire.
20 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
That this was no idle boast, is proved by the fact that
Theodosius accepted his alliance. Andragathius and his
followers returned to their own distant abodes ; but not all
of them, as will be noticed afterwards^
The reign of Maximus might have ended in prosperitj^
but he considered his actual forces as the instruments of
greater success, and prepared to seize Italy, which Theodosius
had stipulated he should not meddle with. Andragathius and
his forces were summoned back. Ambrose mentions that
he and his forces were brought from the ends of the earth to
suffer the penalty due for the slaying of Gratian,
In 387, Maximus marched across the Alps. In 388, the
contest was decided against him on the banks of the Save.
Sozomen^ says Maximus had gathered an immense army
of the Britains, of the Gauls, and of the Celts, and that
Andragathius, when Maximus was defeated, drowned himself
in the river that ran by. This Andragathius was commander
of the fleet and commander of the cavalry. Another account
of his end is that he drowned himself in the Ionian sea.
This double account of his death, so like the double account
of the death of Niall — one account saying Niall was drowned
in the Iccian Sea, another putting his death at the Loire —
suggests that Niall and Andragathius were the same person.
Irish writers put Niall's death in 409. At any rate,
Andragathius was either Niall himself or one of his captains.
The circumstances that there were Celts in the army of
Maximus' soldiers, * brought from the ends of the earth,'
identifies them completely with Niall and his armies, and
accounts for the Irish stories, otherwise utterly ridiculous,
of Niall having invaded France, and Dathi having reached
the Alps. It also vindicates Niall from being a mere pirate
and freebooter, which the Irish stories about him would
make him out to be.
Gildas tells us, that the right wing of the army of
Maximus rested on Spain. Nennius tells us, that he con-
fiscated lands, which he specifies, to his soldiers, who, of
course, drove out the previous inhabitants. The lands he
* Book vii., c. xiv.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST, PATRICK 21
specifies, the names he mentions, are all in this distaict of
Vicus Bannave, of Empor, and Clodianus : —
Maximus gave them many regions from the pool (stagnum),
which is over the top of Mons Jovis, to the city which is called
Tanguic. Those are at the Cumulum occidentalem, ?.e., Cruto
chidenit. ^
The Latin Nennius confesses here, that Cumulus occi-
dentalis is only his guess at the meaning of Cruto-chedent.
The Irish Nennius is more intelligible : —
Maximus gave them many lands, from the place where is the
lake on the top (Mullach) of Mount Jove, to Canacuic {alias
Cannachuic, alias Can-cuic), to the mound (duma) Ochiden
where there is a celebrated cross, and these are the Britons of
Letha.
This shows that Cruto of the Latin Nennius is not
cumulus but crux. The Lake on the top- of Mount Jovis is
the Lacus Lemanus (the Lake of Geneva). The Mons Jovis
is the Summus Penninus (the great St. Bernard) : — ]
The Pennine Alps was the appellation by which the Eomans
designated the loftiest and most central part of the chain
extending from the Mount Blanc on the west to Mount Eosa on
the east. The opinion having gained ground that the pass of the
Great St. Bernard was the route pursued by Hannibal, the name
was connected with the Poeni, and the form Poeninae was
adopted by late writers. Livy points out the error, and adds
that the name was really derived from a deity to whom an altar
was consecrated on the summit of the pass, probably the same
who was afterwards worshipped by the Romans themselves as
Jupiter Penninus.
Per Alpes Penninas — This route which branched off from the
Per Alpes Gracias at Augusta Pretoria led to Octiodurus at the
head of the Lake Lemmanus. At the summit of the pass there
stood a temple of Jupiter.^
* Mons Jovis Summus Penninus a simulacro vel fano
Jovis olim ei imposito sic dictus alias Mons S. Bernardi,'^
Canacuic the Canigou (Mons Candidus) the culminating
point of the Pyrenees at this east end of the Pyrenees. It
is over nine thousand feet high. It is at the west end of
1 Latin Ketmius. Gale's edition.
"^ Smith's Geographical Dictionary,
^ Hofman's Dictionary.
•22 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
the territory of the Indigetes wherein is Vicus Banna ven,
Empor and Clodeanus ; Canigou is its ancient name, seeing
that the Komans called it Mons Candidas : * where there is a
famous cross, Cap Crouz.* Creus: see Creuz. Creuz Cap
de Creuz, or of the Cross, in Latin, T romontorium Aphro-
disium,' is the most eastern cape of Catalonia, in the pro-
vince of Besalu, between Eosas and Ampurias (Emporias)
(Empor).
Almost isolated from the rest of the range, the Canigou
dominates the whole country, and was considered for a long
time the highest summit of the Pyrenees. In favourable con-
ditions of the atmosphere there can be seen from it the coast of
the Mediterranean, from Barcelona to Agde and Montpellier, and
even Marseilles. Port Vendres owes its name to Portus Veneris,
dedicated to the Pyrenean Venus, whose temple was in the
neighbourhood on the Promontorium Aphrodisium. Cap Creus, on
the rocks of Gap Creuz, the terminating masses of the Pyrenees,
one might imagine oneself to be in a desert isle in the middle of
the sea, except the rocky shore of France, which may be traced
towards the north, nothing is to be seen but the blue waters of
the Mediterranean dotted here and there with the white sails of
ships. ^
Cap Creuz to those who dwelt in France would be very
correctly described as Crut (Crux) occidentalis. The defeat
of Maximus in 388 made little or no change in the position
of the soldiers that had settled in this district described by
Nennius. Theodosius published an amnesty for all persons,
without exception, who had sided with Maximus. The
auxiliaries who had come in 388 with Andragathius from
the ends of the earth, would return home. It was on
their return they brought with them Patrick. The passage
through the south of France would not be open to them,
and the natural return road would be to Bretonia.
From Vicus to Bretonia would be about three hundred
miles. Patrick indicates that the journey was a long one.
He says: *Day by day I was making my way» driven on
(non sponte)f until I was nearly worn out.' Bretonia, being
the great cattle market, would be the mart for most of the
traffic between Spain and Ireland. Probably, it was in
^ Adolphe Joanne, Guide Book of the Pyrenees.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST» PATRiCK 23
Bretonia Patrick was bought and sold. Captives coming
from Bretonia would, of a certainty, be called Bretons, and
Patrick would be known during his captivity, and remem-
bered after his escape, by the name of the Breton. In his
long captivity of seven years he must have been asked and
have told many things about himself, his family, and his
native home. He must have told that his native city was
Emporiae on the Clodianus (Empor on the Clyde). The
Irish were as much Iberian as the inhabitants of New York
are EngHsh. He would have told them of the Bay of Eosas,
into which the Clodianus flows, and of the Thyrrene Sea.
Some of this would be remembered, and some not
The SchoHast on Eiacc, and all who followed in his track,
would naturally, almost necessarily, hearing that Patrick
was a Breton, and that his birthplace was on the Clyde, put
his birthplace on the only Clyde they knew — the Clyde in
Scotland, and (what else could they do?) say it must be
Alcluith. They would not trouble much how Empor came
to be forgotten, or called Alcluaide, or that an Empor never
was heard of near their Clyde. No doubt it would be remem-
bered that Empor was on the Bay of Kosas, and we have
that memory preserved in the statement by Camden and
by Humphrey Luydd, that Patrick was born in Valle Kosina.
The Eiver Clodianus, on which Empor was built, empties
itself into the Bay of Eosas. It would also be remembered
that the Bay of Eosas, the bay into which the Clodianus
flowed, was a bay of the Tyrrehenean Sea ; and we have
this memory treasured in the notice given in the Vita
Quarta, where it is stated that Patrick's parents proceeded
from Armorica near the Tyrrehene (Torrian) sea. The inco-
herence of this account makes it the more valuable, for it
shows that the reference to the Tyrrehene Sea is not an
invention, and the writer found himself under the necessity
of explaining the connection of Patrick's birthplace with the
Tyrrehene Sea, which connection must then have been an
undisputed fact. Probus says Patrick's parents were from
' Vicus Bannave Tiburniae regionis baud procul a mari
occidentali.' I suggest that 'mare occidentali' here, the only
place in which it is connected with Patrick's birthplace, is
24 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
only an interpretation of * Mare Inferum/ a name^ by
which the Tyrrehene Sea was known to the Komans.
'Inferum' in Irish would be * airthair ; ' * airthair' would be
'occidentalism
To explain Patrick's being brought to Ireland, Probus —
unconscious of what he had said before, that Patrick was
from * Vicus Bannave ' of the region Tiburniae which Vicus
he has found is in the province of Nentriae — goes on to say
that Armuric was their city, and that the sons of King
Kethmitius from Britain devastated Armuric, cut-throathed
Calpurnius and Conchessa. So, according to Probus, they
were not living when 'Patrick was in Britain' with his
parents after his captivity. There was, about one hundred
years after Patrick's time, a king of the Britons of Armorica,
Kiotham, who, at the request of Anthemius, Emperor of the
Romans, marched at the head of twelve thousand men
against Euric, King of the Visigoths, got as far east as
Berri, but was defeated by Euric, and had to take refuge
still farther east in Burgundy. This Riotham is, of course,
the one before the mind of Probus. The glaring anachronism
of putting Riotham in the time of Patrick shows that Probus
or the Secunda Manus had some information about Patrick's
birthplace, which was irreconcilable with the off-hand
statements of the Scholiast on Fiacc, and the rest of those
who follow his track.
The triangular district bounded on the north by that
small part of the Eastern Pyrenees commencing with
Canigou (Canna-cuic) and going to Cape Creux, the cape of
the remarkable cross, bounded on the east by the Thyrrene
Sea, and on the west by the Rubricatus, that district in
which is Empor ; Vicus ; the river Clodianus, and the gulf of
Rosas, was divided among several tribes. Nearest to the
sea the Indigetes? an idolatrous name, adjoining the Indi-
getes Laeaeta, the district of the Laeaetani.^ This is the
district Nennius calls Leta. Herein we have the explana-
tion of the perplexing statements of the Irish writers about
^ See Smith's Manual of Ancient Geography .
2 Ibid., p. 621.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST, PATRICK 25
Patrick's connection with Leta, perplexing because Leta
was made out to be Italy. Fiacc : ' Patrick went beyond
the Ealpa ; he dwelt in the deisciort parte Leta. He dwelt
in the islands of the Thyrrehene (Torrean) sea; he came
to Erin do cum neren' (cf. Nemthur). Scholiast on Fiacc
(Patrick's people) * causa negotiationis ' went to Britannia
Letha-censem. In that time the seven sons of Factmudius
gathered booty in Britannia Armorica, in the region of
Letha, where Patrick and his family were, and they slew
Calpurnius (so Patrick's parents were not living when after
his captivity he was with his parents in Britain). This
Leta was not Italy.
The later Irish scribes translated Leta as Italy, and
naturally, for they know not of Laeaeta in the north-east
corner of Spain, and snatched at Latium as having a
similarity in sound. But when was Italy called Latium ?
Certainly not in the time of Patrick.
Nennius tells us that the Letha he speaks of was in the
region of Canigou (Canna-cuic) and the famous cross and
Mons Jovis. Patrick must have often spoken of this Leta.
It is not until about 1400 that there is any evidence that
Leta was supposed to be Italy or any other place but Leta,
wherever that might be.
"Where, then, was St. Patrick's country ? It was Spain —
which he, as a native of a Greek-speaking town. Emporium,
necessarily or naturally calls Iberia. He was born in
Emporia, or at least was dwelling there, when he was made
captive ; that Emporium is on the Clyde (the Clodeanus),
and on the Gulf of Kosas (Khoda), a gulf of the Thyrrene
(Torrean) Sea, the Mare Inferum of the Komans, as opposed
to the Adriatic, the Mare Superum. His grandfather was a
Presbyter ; that is, a member of the supreme council ; his
father was a decurio. The city of which he was decurio
was Vicus, an episcopal see. It was on the river Bann-
(Aiba), Aven (Fluvia), in the territory of Tiburne, formerly
Indigetes. To the west of that territory, or rather included
in it, was Laeaeta (Letha) ; to the north-west of it Canigou
(Cannacuic Mons Candidus) ; to the north-east the projecting
masses of the Pyrenees, where they push themselves out
26 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
into the sea, and end in the Cape, where is the remarkable
Cross ; still farther north, and to the east of Mons Jo vis
and the Lake above Mons Jovis, Lake Geneva and the
Great St. Bernard.
Edward O'Brien, d.d., p.p.
DR* RUSSELL, OF MAYNOOTH
HIS * EDINBURGH REVIEW ' ARTICLES IDENTIFIED
FOR the editorial hospitality which, in May, allotted
considerable space to an account of Dr. Russell's first
appearance in The Edinburgh Be view, it is a poor return to
crave now a few pages for the purpose of identifying his
subsequent articles in that most famous of quarterlies.
After the essay on Mezzofanti had served as his * open
Sesame,' he was a pretty frequent contributor during the
twenty years that remained to him. Besides other motives
for this exercise of his literary industry, the substantial
cheque which followed each contribution was not unwel-
come to one on whom pressed many public and private
obligations, or what were accepted as obligations by his
affectionate, unselfish, and generous heart.
No help towards the discovery of Dr. Russell's articles
is afforded by the biography of his editor, Mr. Henry Reeve,
recently published, in two volumes, by Mr. John Knox
Laughton; but this work throws light on a little matter
mentioned in our previous paper. It lets us know that
the writer of the official obituary of Mr. Reeve, in The
Edinburgh Beview, October, 1896, was no less a person
than the historian, Mr. W. E. H. Lecky ; and, therefore, it
was he who stated that Mr. Reeve had become editor after
the death of Sir George Cornwall Lewis. Mr. Laughton
quotes this tribute in full, but quietly changes * death ' into
* resignation ; ' for the learned baronet was Chancellor of
the Exchequer some years after the date assigned by
Mr. Lecky to his death in his own Beoieio.
DR* RUSSELL, OF MAYNOOTH 27
Dr. Eussell's first article, as we have said, appeared in
the last number edited by Sir G. C. Lewis, January, 1855/
In the following year the new editor, Mr. Henry Keeve,
better known, perhaps, as editor of the Greville Memoirs,
writes to him thus, on the 12th of October, 1856 ; for it is
from letters preserved by Dr. Eussell that the information
which follows is derived : —
I have the pleasure to transmit to you, in this enclosure*
Messrs. Longmans' draft, in acknowledgment of your very inte-
resting contribution. For my own part, I have seldom read a
more agreeable and scholarlike article, and I am convinced the
public will be of the same opinion.
I have not been able to determine the subject of this
* agreeable and scholarlike ' article.
In 1857 Dr. Eussell succeeded Dr. Eenehan as President
of Maynooth College, and the editor- of The Edinburgh
Eevietv wrote to him, on the 10th of November : —
It aifords me most sincere gratification to congratulate you
and the College on your appointment to the highest office in it,
and I regard it as the most favourable indication I have heard
of for a long time amongst the ruling powers of the E.G. Church
in Ireland, that they should have selected for the Presidentship
of Maynooth a gentleman whose tolerant and liberal sentiments
are not exceeded by the rarity and extent of his attainments.
I shall be perfectly satisfied if Maynooth become what I am
convinced you would wish to make it.
Your corrected revises have duly reached me. I am much
obliged to you, and I shall, if possible^ insert the article very
shortly. It has already waited far too long.
Accordingly, in the number which must have been at
that time in great part in print. Dr. Eussell's very curious
paper on ' Hawkers' literature in France,' appears in
January, 1858.'-^
The next article to which we find allusion made in the
correspondence of the President of Maynooth, is 'The Graffiti
of Pompeii,' in October, 1859.^ It had at first been called
* Graffiti on the Walls of Pompeii ' — a title which Mr. Eeeve,
who called it * a most curious and amusing paper,' asked
iVol. cL.pp. -^3-71.
2 Litterature du Colportagc, vol. cvii., pp. 232-247.
« Vol. ex., pp. 411-437
28 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
his contributor to alter, lest the unlearned should imagine
that it was some author named Graffiti who had written
about the walls of the doomed city, whereas these * Graffiti*
are idle scribblings that have survived more than eighteen
hundred years and many a work of genius.
Another victim of the volcano of Vesuvius was connected
with the subject of the next article that we are able to claim
for Dr. Kussell. Like Pompeii, Herculaneum was destroyed
by an eruption in the 79th year of our Christian era. Its
ruins were discovered in the year 1720; and with many
interruptions the work of excavation and exploration may
be said to have been going on ever since. Among other
discoveries, there have been brought to light many old
manuscripts and papyri, containing various ancient treatises,
&c. These are discussed with full and minute learning by
Dr. Kussell, in an article entitled ' The Herculaneum
Papyri,* October, 1862.'
In the course of this article, in referring to some publi-
cation of the Itahan antiquarians which had been discussed
in The Edinburgh Bevieiv, in the year 1824, Dr. Kussell
speaks of * the notice we devoted to it on its first appear-
ance;' namely, when he was himself twelve years old. A
recent Edinburgh reviewer ought similarly to have respected
the moral continuity of the editorial 'we,' when, in 1894, he
contributed an elaborate dissertation on the Church of
St. Sophia at Constantinople ; he ought to have referred to
a previous treatment of the subject in the Bevieiv, in April,
1865.^ The clue which enables me to claim this paper for
Dr. Kussell is an allusion which he himself makes to it in a
letter, which came to me from Lord O'Hagan. In October,
1874, Lord O'Hagan was setting out on a trip to Constanti-
nople, and his friend urged him to take the Danube route,
as he himself had done a year or two before. He adds : * I
am sorry I didn't think of sending you my article in The
Edinburgh Beview on St. Sophia's. I wrote it very care-
fully, and it would have been a good preparation for a visit
to the spot.' In the same letter, the President tries to cut
1 Vol. exvi., pp. 318-347. 2 Yq\. e-xvi., pp. 456-493
DR, RUSSELL, OF MAYNOOTH 29
down Lord O'Hagan's ' princely offer ' of a subscription to
the Maynooth College Church, then a noble project, and
now, after quarter of a century, a magnificent achievement.
Our first Irish Catholic Chancellor wished to give £500,
which Dr. Eussell, with difficulty, succeeded in reducing
to £200.
Ten years earlier, on the 28th of May, 1864, the editor
wrote to his Maynooth contributor : —
I am quite ashamed of the length of time the printers have
been engaged on your article ; but from the peculiarity of the
inscriptions they found it very difficult to print. I hope, however,
you have now received the proofs, and I shall be obliged to you
to correct them with peculiar care, and return them to me as soon
as you conveniently can. The article is one of extraordinary
learning and interest, and I am extremely indebted to you for it.
This praise, unusual with an editof like Lord Jeffrey's
successor, was bestowed on the article on * De Kossi's
Jewish and Christian Inscriptions.' ^ There are few who,
living in a community like the Maynooth professorial staff,
would have kept completely to themselves literary associa-
tions of this gratifying kind, so unusual for an Irish priest ;
yet I strongly suspect that Dr. Eussell said nothing of all
this to his colleagues ; and he certainly did not confide it to
a kinsman who would have been made happy by such con-
fidences. The Edinburgh, which contained the De Kossi
article, chanced to fall into my hands, and I noticed how
skilfully the Catholic view of certain subjects involved was
put forward. Knowing the authorship of the article on
Mezzofanti, I ventured to attribute to the same this essay
on * Ancient Jewish and Christian Inscriptions,' and I
received this answer : —
Your guess as to De Eossi is right. But this is a secret. I
think it a great privilege to have the opportunity of putting
forward, even negatively, such subjects from the Catholic point
of view ; and I am sure that such things do more general good
than direct controversy. In the same spirit (also a secret) I
have written, by invitation from Mr. William Chambers, all the
Catholic subjects, and many others in the Chambers' Encyclopedia
1 Julj, 1864, ToL •xx.,'pp. 217-248
30 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
from the letter B onwards. It has cost me little trouble, in fact
only the time occupied in writing ; and these things will be seen
by people whom we could not hope to reach by any other
channel.
I wish Dr. Kussell had drawn up a list of his contri-
butions to The Edinburgh Eeview similar to the list of
his more than six hundred contributions to Chambers*
Encyclopedia which I found among his papers, and have
published in The Irish Monthly? But he did not do so,
and we are able to discover only four more alluded to
in Mr. Eeeve's correspondence. This leaves a complete
blank between the years 1865 and 1874. Considering
what Dr. Eussell did under the blue-and-yellow standard
before and after those dates, it is in the highest degree
improbable that Mr. Eeeve dispensed with his service during
so long a period, especially when we find him writing to the
President as follows, on the 13th of November, 1875 : —
Dear Dr. Eussell, — Dr. William Smith has just published
the first volume of his Dictionary of Christian AntiqidtieSy which
seems to me to be a most interesting and creditable book. I
know no one so competent to review it as yourself, and I heartily
hope you will undertake it. It is not at all written in a sectarian
spirit, and steers clear of theological dogma, but if you detect any
errors, you would be, of course, quite at liberty to criticise them
from your own point of view. The work embraces the first seven
centuries of the Church.
I should like to publish the article in April or July next.
I have received * Casaubon,' and hope shortly to send it to
Press.
Yours faithfully, H. Eeeve.
Dr. Eussell complied with this request ; but the article
did not appear till October, 1876. ^
This letter reveals another of Dr. Eussell's papers, his
review of Mr. Mark Pattison's ' Life of Isaac Casaubon/
which appears in January, 1876.^ The printer, I remember
once addressed the proof sheets to the *Eev. Isaac Casaubon,
Maynooth, Ireland,'— Casaubon having lived from 1559 till
1 Vol. xxii., p. 75. (18^4.)
2 Vol. cxUv., pp. 406-442.
3 Vol. cxlviii., pp. 189-222.
DR. RUSSELL, OF MAYNOOTH 31
1614; and being, therefore, far out of the reach of the penny
post in 1875.
Those who are able to examine any of these articles in
back numbers of The Edinburgh Beview will find them to
be full of the most minute and accurate information, often
derived from recondite sources, and conveyed with a liveli-
ness and grace which will have, perhaps, the added zest of
a surprise. As one slight instance of the pains Dr. Eussell
took to secure accuracy in all the details of his subject, we
may note that his article on * Libraries Ancient and Modem '
opens the number for January, 1874 ; ^ yet he was evidently
preparing for it so far back as October 6th, 1872, when
Lord Lyons, the British Ambassador at Paris, writes to
him from Arundel Castle : —
Dear Dr. Eussell, — I intend to go back to Paris early next
month, and will then try and get the information you want about
the Library at Paris. I shall be most happy to be of service to
you. If it would be inconvenient to you to wait until I get back
to Paris, I will write to the Embassy at once; but I should
probably manage the matter better if I were on the spot myself.
Yours very faithfully,
Lyons.
But his correspondent would not wait, for His Lordship
writes on the 9th : — ' I have written by this post to the
Embassy at Paris to request that the information you wish
for respecting the Library at Paris may be obtained and
sent direct to you without delay.'
This enumeration of as many of Dr. Kussell's Edinburgh
Beview as can now be identified was, at first, intended to be
a mere footnote to our previous paper. As it has come to
stand by itself, it may, in its turn, give shelter to one little
item that was also crushed out on that occasion. The
writer's name lends some value to the following slight
note : —
Carlton House Terrace,
July 26, '59.
Ebv. and Dear Sir, — Pray accept my best thanks for your
kind gift. The fame of Mezzofanti has reached every European
' Vol. cxxxix., pp. 1-43
32 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
ear ; and I have already derived much pleasure from looking
into your memoir.
I sincerely hope that, if you visit town next year, you will
allow me, during the season, an opportunity of improving our
acquaintance.
I remain,
Rev. and dear Sir,
Your very faithful servant,
W. E. Gladstone.
The Rev, President of
Maynooth College.
We may end this catalogue raisonne by linking together
the first and the last appearance of Dr. Eussell in the pages
of the Edinburgh by means of tv^o letters of his own which
Lord O'Hagan gave to me after my uncle's death. The first
of them alludes to the laborious volume which grew out of
the original disquisition on great linguists in general, and
the prince of linguists in particular. His friend had evidently
asked him to join in befriending the widow of Hogan, the
sculptor, who had recently died. Mrs. Hogan survived
her illustrious husband till the beginning of the present
year.
St. Patrick's,
March 29, 1858.
My Dear O'Hagan, — I am very reluctant to appear on
committees ; but I think this is one which I may fairly under-
take, and especially as you think and wish that I should do so. I
had not heard of poor Hogan' s death.
I have been very busy of late between college work and the
finishing of my unhappy Life of Mezzofanti^ which has got
anything but fair play in the midst of more engrossing and
anxious occupations. I have, however, I rejoice to say, finished
it taliter qtialiter, and have but two or three sheets now to print.
I hope to send you a copy before the end of April.
With every most affectionate message to Mrs. O'Hagan and
the girls,
I am ever, my dear O'Hagan,
Your sincere and affectionate friend,
C. W, Eussell.
Eighteen years later he wrote to the same true friend a
letter which I am able to connect with his final contribution
DR. RUSSELL, OF MAYNCXDTH 33
to the great quarterly which it has been necessary to name
so often : —
DUNDALK,
D^c. 28, J 876,
My Deak Lord, — I fear it will be impossible for me to keep
my engagement with you to-morrow. On my way down from
the station, in the storm of Tuesday night, my portmanteau
dropped off the car ; and, although we retraced the route at
once, it was not to be found, nor have the police been able to
make it out since. Unhappily, it contained a parcel of cheques,
with some cash, and a number of accounts and papers about the
Church Fund, which are of the utmost consequence to me. The
cheques I have written to stop, and most of them are crossed,
and none had been endorsed ; but the accounts are of great con-
sequence to me, and there was also a lot of my own papers and
books, which it would be most embarrassing to me to lose. I
have had everything set in motion to make it out, and I must
wait here till the end shall be seen. If it turns up early
to-morrow, I shall go to you without fail; but in that case I
shall telegraph.
It is a sad marplot to my Christmas hopes of enjoyment, but
* le trouble n'est bon pour rien.'
Say all kind things to Lady O'Hagan, and all regrets for my
failure.
Believe me, as ever,
]Most affectionately yours,
C. W. EUSSELL.
A less reticent and less modest man would probably have
told his friend that the lost portmanteau contained the
finished manuscript of a long article which was to appear
in The Edinburgh Bevieiv^ the fruit, perhaps, of months of
laborious research. He may have regretted this loss even
more keenly than the list of contributors to his Maynooth
Church Fund, which he at once tried to supply out of the
file of The Freeman's Journal in the Dundalk Newsroom.
To the disgust of the police authorities, an extremely large
reward was offered for the recovery of the missing treasure;
but it was only after Dr. Kussell had given up all hope, an I
had returned to his college duties, that the portmatiteau
was restored stealthily by night to his brother, who at oncj
gave the reward, and asked no questions. By the first traia
next morning the good old man conveyed it to Maynooth,
VOL. VI. c
34 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
never letting it out of sight till it was safe in the President's
library.
During the interval of suspense and despair, Dr. Bussell,
as he mentioned to me afterwards, began to rewrite from
memory his vanished article on the Pseudo-Sibylline poems ;
and this second edition, he said, was a great improvement.
How many articles, and how many books would be greatly
improved, if their author dared to face the heroic toil of
writing them over again !
The Pseudo-Sibylline article may be found in The
Edinburgh Bevieio of July, 1877.^ When despatching it to
Mr. Keeve, probably in February or April, he little thought
('who ever does ?) that it was destined to be his last article.
On the 16th of May occurred that fatal fall from his horse,
which, in reality, killed him, though his death did not
actually take place till the 26th of February, 1880. A Sister
of Mercy, who was allowed to come from Newry to nurse
her revered uncle, remembers what was considered one of
the hopeful symptoms of convalesence, the pleasure he
showed at receiving a pingue honorarium from the Messrs.
Longman for this contribution to their great Beview, She
remembers, also, that the invalid, in dictating a letter of
acknowledgment, inquired how she had spelled SibyUine, and
found that she had incorrectly placed y in the first syllable.
This, then, was Dr. Kussell's farewell to The Edinburgh
Beview. Of his own Dublin Beview, to which his contri-
butions were to be counted, not by the dozen, but by the
hundred, he had taken leave in the previous January by the
completion of his * Critical History of the Sonnet,* which is
still referred to by competent writers as one of the most
brilliant and solid contributions to the literature of the
subject. This holy priest, this tender-hearted and noble-
hearted man, was thus to the end, in circumstances not
altogether favourable to such a vocation, a cultivated and
ralmly enthusiastic man of letters.
Matthew Eussell, s.j.
1 Vul. clxvj.. pp. 31-68.
[ 35 ]
FREEMASONRY AND THE CHURCH IN LATIN
AMERICA
IN connection with the Latin- American Council at Kome,
a few details regarding those countries will not be out
of place. All are now republics, all are Catholic. The
masses are everywhere full of faith ; but Masonry, trans-
planted from Europe, has poisoned the minds of the ruling
classes. No educated Catholic of our time can be ignorant
of the anti-Christian character of Masonry, for it has com-
pletely thrown off the mask. It has no great objection to a
nominal, well- diluted Christianity; but its hatred of the
Catholic Church is perfectly satanic. All its efforts are
directed against Catholic populations, among whom it strives
to abolish Christian marriage. Christian education, Christian
burial, Christian festivals, and even the Christian Sabbath.
Organized into opposite camps, Latin-American Masons are
constantly planning new revolutions, in which all interests
suffer, but most of all the Church. If European Masonry
be satanic, its offspring, Latin- American Masonry, is often,
if possible, still more satanic. The material and moral
conditions are so similar in all those countries that a descrip-
tion of one will do for all. We shall, therefore, select the
greatest and newest of these republics, Brazil.
In 1874 a cablegram from Kio startled us with the news
that the Bishops of Para and Olinda had been condemned to
four years' imprisonment, with hard labour. Little more was
heard of it in the general press, and, of course, most people
wondered how any Christian country could have such criminals
for pastors. It is one of the devices of masonry to flash
such news, and then leave it to settle in the public mind.^
1 Atter tue iSpanisli elections,
last April, the
result was thus wired to us : —
Ministerialists .
. no
Liberals
50
Gamazists
7
Tetuanists
<)
Carlists
3
Republican
I
Independent
1
Catholic
1
This means, of course, that the Spanish Senate is not Catholic ! Good news.
36 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
As the details of this transaction shed a flood of light on
the spirit of Masonry in those countries, I here insert a
memorandum drawn up for me, in 1895, by a Brazilian
gentleman of rank, who writes English : —
At the time — 1872-1875 — that this question arose, Masonry
had spread far and wide among the ruling classes in Brazil.
The Grand Master of one section, the Italian, Viscount de Eio
Branco, being Prime Minister, it is no wonder that the lodges
enjoyed unparalleled control in the country. Under the pretence
that the object of their society was beneficence and mutual assist-
ance, and, therefore, not at variance with religious purposes, they
had not the slightest hindrance in taking part in the administration
of churches, brotherhoods, seminaries, and all sorts of Catholic
institutions. It thus came to pass that, far from making any
display of heretic doctrines, or in any way attacking the Eoman
Catholic creed, they as yet professed to be in favour of religion,
and even succeeded in alluring some Catholic priests into their
community. On one of those festivals they used to celebrate ever
and anon it happened that a Catholic priest took a prominent
part, and in a most ostentatious way delivered a vehement speech
in the Masonic style ; and this he had published afterwards.
The then Bishop of Rio de Janeiro, Dom Lacerda, felt bound to
call him to the path of discipline, and, after some admonitions,
suspended him. The Masons, considering themselves offended
by this, met in council, and after a warm debate decided to attack
the Bishop's act in the Press, which they actually did, not spar-
ing, in the heat of the fray, even the doctrines of Catholicism in
their purity and integrity. Owing to the Bishop's prudence, or weak-
ness, no step was taken in Rio de Janeiro to prevent Masonry from
interfering in Catholic affairs, and their influence, as before, con-
tinued to make itself felt in the very precincts of the churches.
It lies beyond our scope to dilate on the virulence of the article?
published in the Press then supported by the lodges ; be it enough
to say, that all control of decent language was lost. The Papacy
itself did not escape their roughest invectives, and the dogmas
estabUshed by the Church, they maintained, were nothing but
sheer impostures. Such was the position of the Church in Brazil
when Bishop Dom Vital took charge of the diocese of Oliada
(Pernambuco), on the 24th of May, 1872. Soon after his arrival
the Masons started a Masonic paper, A VerdacU (' The Truth '),
the language of which, of course, was very far from reverential
to Catholicism. The Bishop was an intelligent, uncompromising
young minister of Christ, and, perhaps too alive to the fact that
Masonry had been condemned by the Holy See. The Masons
having announced the celebration of a Solemn Mass for St. Peter's
Day, to commemorate the foundation of their associations, the
FREEMASONRY AND dHURCH IN LATIN AMERICA 37
clergy were prohibited from taking part in the service. As may
be easily imagined, Masonry was too strong and irritable to
endm^e the blow in silence. An outbrn^st of resentment was not
long in making itself felt, in the form of most violent articles
in the papers. Led by the incitement of mirestrained passion,
the Bishop's adversaries went so far in their invectives as to dis-
respect our Holy Father Pius IX., and positively deny the dogma
of the Immaculate Conception. That was too much for Dom Vital,
who immediately ordered an act of reparation to be performed in
the churches, which, to his great satisfaction, had the effect of
winning to him the enthusiasm and confidence of his flock. The
storm was then inevitable ; nothing could longer avert it. A
decisive challeng'i was made by the Masons, inasmuch as they
published the names of the influential members of Catholic
brotherhoods who belonged to their organization, and ended by
conjuring the Bishop to fulfil his duty. The gauntlet was taken
up. As regards the Masons in the brotherhoods, the Bishop did
his best to induce them to abjure, and after a second and third
admonition laid their churches under interdict. The Masons
appealed to the Crown, and Lucena, President of Pernambuco^
himself a Mason, ordered the Bishop, but, of course, all in vain,
to prohibit any preaching against Masonry.
Whilst such was the state of affairs at Pernambuco, the
Bishop of Para, Dom Antonia da Costa, was undauntedly facing
similar circumstances. The question being now before a Masonic
Government, little doubt could be entertained as to the result.
The appeal was decided in favour of the Masons, and the bishops
were commanded to raise the interdicts. Three motives were
alleged for this decision — 1. The non-religious character of
Masonry. 2. The want of approval {i^lacet) by Government of
the bulls against Masonry. 3. The twofold nature, civil and
religious, of the brotherhoods. The bishops refused to carry the
order into effect, and a judge was appointed to raise the inter-
dicts. This step proved a complete failure, as no priest could be
compelled to officiate in the interdicted churches. Exasperated
by the firmness of the clergy, the Masons, in conjunction with
some unscrupulous politicians, assembled in a riotous meeting,
on May 14, 1873, the result of which was the assault on the
college and chapel of the Jesuits, and the firing of the press
where the Uiiiad, the organ of Catholicism in Pernambuco, was
printed. It was only when the mob shaped their course towards
the Bishop's palace and the college of the Sisters of Charity, the
Government interfered. It was thought of the utmost importance
to hasten the denouement, and the Government sent Baron de
Penedo to Kome to ask the Pope to compel the bishops ' to acknow-
ledge the rights of the State.' Yet, instead of suspending the
criminal processes that had been started before the courts, the
Government urged them forward, and when least expected sent
B8 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RfiCORD
the bishops to prison. The trials of the Bishops of Para and
OUnda, which took place some time after, were such solemn and
touching events as never to be erased from the memory of the
Brazilian people. When the sentences condemning them to four
years' imprisonment, with hard labour, 'were read out before a
great throng, held in painful suspense, many a heart throbbed
with inexpressible anguish, many a careworn face was bedewed
with tears. The Emperor soon commuted the sentence to four
years' simple imprisonment. The successors (Vicar-Generals) of
the bishops in the administration of the diocese kept the inter-
dicts in force, and would have shared the same fate only for the
following occurrence : — Just at this time a rebellion broke out in
the northern provinces — Pernambuco, Ceara, &c. — against some
new taxes. The Ministry seized on the opportunity, ascribed it
to the Jesuits, imprisoned some priests of the Order, and expelled
the rest from the country. But owing to the ever-increasing
discontent of the country, the Cabinet fell, on the 22nd June,
1875. Yielding to the general feeling, the new Cabinet decreed
the liberty of the bishops, without any conditions whatever. The
only benefits gathered from the strife were the cohesion of the
true Catholics then and after, and the unmasking of the real foes
of Catholicism. As to the rest, we only see losses. Masonry, a
little subdued for a time by the extensive gaps made in its ranks
owing to the desertion of a great many whose belief in its aims
had been destroyed, soon rose anew, and was able to achieve
such changes as the republic, the separation of Church and
State, civil marriages,^ the secularization of cemeteries, &c.
This calm unadorned narrative places before us, in a
concrete form, the true spirit of Masonry. Untruthfulness
and irreligion, hypocrisy and tyranny, are so blended that
one can hardly tell which predominates.
The Brotherhoods here mentioned are survivals of
similar associations, once very numerous in Europe, and
not yet quite extinct. They had special churches or
oratories, and large corporate funds for the relief of indigent
members. Visitors to Nice will remember their special
costumes, funerals, processions, and churches.
Dom Vital, in a letter from his prison copied into the
^,The reader must not imagine that the civil man-iage established under
Masonic influence resembles th<it known to ourseho.s ; no, it is obligatory on
all, and a priest would incur a severe penalty if he married a couple not first
married by the registrar. The religious marriage is not acknowledged at all by the
state in several of those Litin-American countries, such as Mexico, Brazil,
Uruguay, &;c. ; and the moral evils resulting from this Masonic law are just
such as its authors intended.
J'REEMASONRV and church in latin AMERICA S9
I. E. Kecoed,^ gives some important details not mentioned
in the above narrative. Thus, he says : —
If we calmly observe the character and proceedings of the
persecution in progress in Brazil against the Catholic Church,
we must come to the conclusion that it is the thread of the skein,
one of the countless wrongs which Caisarism, Liberalism, and
Materialism are in our day inflicting on the Catholic Church.
The three act under the influence of the secret societies. Thus it
is that they work in concert on orders that come from beyond
the sea — obedient to the signal sent to them by the all-powerful
universal Masonry, the most relentless persecutor of the Catholic
Church, in the era in which we live. All appearances lead to
the belief in the existence of a pre-arranged plan, and of a
compact long concluded between Masonry and the Government,
which at present rules this unfortunate country. . . . Bitter
enmities of long standing between the two lodges, French and
Italian — were forgotten, and the Brethren shook hands once
again. Thenceforward Masonry, casting off all reserve, showed
itself in all its detestable deformity. It denied and turned into
ridicule the fundamental dogmas of our holy religion — the Divinity
of Christ, the Holy Trinity, the eternity of the pains of hell, &c.
. . . But in spite of its rampant cruelty in every part of the
Empire, it gave rise to a magnificent religious movement — a
sudden awakening of a people too long asleep in the arms of
indifference, and standing on the brink of a fathomless abyss,
that is, Protestantism.^
A singular confirmation of the Great Bishop's words has
come to light since Bismarck's death. According to the
latest history of German Masonry, he was not at all the
author of the Kulturkampf. He and his imperial master
were only the pupils and agents of the lodges. It is also to
be remarked that the German and Brazillian persecutions
exactly synchronized, a fact which goes far to confirm the
Bishop's assertion regarding unity of action in the Masonic
camp. It is also to be noted that Bismarck and Kio Branco
simultaneously urged the Pope to compel the bishops to
respect the so-called 'rights of the State.'
By the fall of the Kio Branco cabinet in 1875, peace
was restored. But peace is a very uncertain quantity in
''November, 1874.
2 Dom Vital d'Oliveira was a Capuchin. We read in the Lea Missions
Catholiques of November 4, 1892, ' Le jeime et vaillant ^veque d'Olinda,
Mgr. Vital d'Oliveira, etait frapp6 de mort, empoisonn^ par I'ordre des Leges,'
40 THfe IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORt)
countries where rival lodges are always hatching new
revolutions. In November, 1889, the Emperor was quietly
shipped off to Europe, and Marshal Fonseca placed at the
head of a provisional government. • The news was at the
same lime cabled to Europe that Positivism was declared
the religion of the State, with every tenth day as the day of
rest instead of the Christian Sabbath. Early in 1890 a
convention formally set up the republic, with Fonseca as
President, and a total separation of Church and State, thus
indirectly abolishing the new state-religion. Fonseca was
upset in 1891, province after province revolted, and a civil
war raged about the capital in 1893-4, An unstable peace
has since reigned ; but, perhaps, at this moment a new
revolution is being hatched in the lodges. For Masonry
has neither patriotism nor loyalty. All the old of&cials of
the Empire stuck to their posts at home and abroad under
the Eepublic.
This revolution was unusually peaceful as regards the
Church. Bishops were neither imprisoned nor banished,
priests were not murdered, and for once in Masonic history
even the Jesuits were left unmolested. This can be easily
explained. The revolution was entirely the work of high-
class Masons, men extremely prudent in their generation.
They remembered the reactions caused by Eio Branco's
violent measures, Bismarck's Kulturkampf, and the fana-
tical deeds of Belgian Masonry from 1879 to 1885.^
^ We have seen the immediate effect of Kio Branco's violence. Bismarck
boasted that he would never go to Canossa, but he had to go much farther
before his death, and the Catholic party, the Centre, can now dictate terms to
the Government, the Landtag, and the Reichsrath. Belgian Masonry, after
years of preparation in the lodges, and a long monopoly of political power, felt
btroug enough in 1879 to attempt the one object of its aspirations — a law of
godless education. Having carried this law, they went on for six years cover-
ing the country with godless schools and colleges at the public expense, and in
open opposition to the Catholic establishments, until at last the people, unable
any longer to bear the reckless taxation, drove them so completely from power
that they have little chance of ever regaining it. Up to 1886 they called them-
selves Liberal-, and their adversaries Clericals ; but this astute distinction has
disappeared, and they now openly profess pure Atheism. The Belgian papers
of last March tell us that M. Rolin Jaquemyns, a prominent member of their
last ministry, seeing his occupation gone, took office under the King of Siam,
and can now be seen at his devotions every morning in the royal pagoda. The
transition had no difficulty for a Belgian Mason,
FREEMASONRY AND CHURCH IN LATIN AMERICA 41
Alfaro, the author of the Masonic revolution in Ecuador
in 1895, was not a man of this stamp, and hence his
revolution followed very different lines. The Tablet quotes
the following account from the Kolnische Volkszeitung : —
For over a quarter of a year the victors have carried on a
veritable orgy of hatred and persecution against everything
Christian. The Bishop of Portoviego and his clergy have been
driven into exile. The palace of the Archbishop of Quito was
plundered, and partly destroyed. Last March twenty Capuchins
were expelled from Ibarra during the tropical rains, and were
not even allowed to borrow horses, but had to travel on foot
to Columbia, though one of them was over eighty years of age.
Orders were given to expel the Capuchins from Tulcan, but
the very soldiers rose up against the decree. At Quito the
lash is freely used. Two German priests, named Webber
and Nuerhofer, were ill-treated by the officials at Manibi. A
merchant of Portoviego, a Liberal himself, was shot by an official
for having protested against the ill-usage ol the Vicar-General.
This caused an emeute, and the Governor caused the troops to
fire upon the people. He turned the Bishop's house into a
godless school, and placed a Freemason, Kobert Andrack, over
it as director. All the leaders of the new Government are most
pronounced Freemasons. When Alfaro, the Dictator, landed at
Guayaquil, his words were, down luith thcocracij}
This consisted simply in the fact that the Catholic was
the religion of the State, Catholics being the only Christians
in the country. Other outrages followed, and the usual
Masonic laws were enacted ; but those revolutions generally
expend their satanic fury in the first outbreak, and then the
real people begin to assert themselves. In a letter now
before me, dated Quito, November 15th, 1897, 1 find the new
Government had begun to fear the inevitable reaction : —
The radical Masons [it says] now perceive that they have
gone too far, and most gladly would they fraternize with the
moderate Liberals, who have no desire to support men who have
persecuted and well-nigh ruined them. The Government dare not
enforce the fatal educational edicts of Congress ; and hence the
religious teaching bodies have opened their colleges with a greater
influx of students than in the previous years. ^
1 May 20, 1896.
- Masonry is strongly represented in English ministries and in the press.
The Freemason — July 13th, 1895 — boasted of thirteen • brothers ' in the new
ministry, and gave their names and titles. Was none of them ashamed of his
42 THE IRISH ec(::lesiasTical record
The political history of Brazil and Ecuador is the same
as that of the other fourteen Latin- American Kepublics ;
periodical revolutions, acd persecution of the Church, all
fomented by Masonry, the curse of* those countries. Still
the faith of the masses is sound and strong ; and, with a
sufficient supply of good and zealous pastors, they would be
a fine Catholic people. But this is the difficulty. Masonry
has confiscated most of the Church endowments, and the
people have not as yet got accustomed to the voluntary
system. In Mexico all Church property was confiscated in
1867, and all the religious houses suppressed.^ If a bishop
establishes a seminary or a college, the next revolution may
sweep it away. In all these countries periodical missions
do a great work, and hence Alfaro's fury against the
Capuchins. A few details regarding these missions will
give an idea of the people.
foreign brethren ? We know the power of the press in those days of
omnipotent public opinion. Let only a Jewish pedlar be touched, and at once
all the wires and cables begin to sp^'ak ; orders are sent to the British minister
or consul, and a gunboat, if need be, appears off the coast, to seek redress for
a British subject, or, at least, to defend the cause of 'humanity.' English
ministers require only a vpry slight pretext to remonstrate with weak non-
Masonic rulers. "Who can forget the valuable assistance rendered in this way
to the Italian revolution in irs early stages ? |There was a British minister,
W. H. Doveton Haggard, at Quito in 1895. Why was he not ordered to
protest against the savagery of Brother Alfaro ? Why was the English press
so benevolently silent about it? We know what the press and ministers of
England can do in ihe name of humanity ; what becomes of it on such occasions ?
All the Friars in Ecuador may be banished, and those in the Philippines
murdered, by the ' brethren,' without a word about it in the English press, or
in any consular report. And yet these Friars are not robbers or murderers ;
they are peaceable citizens and educated men. But they arc not ' brother
Masons.'
^.The Satanic barbarity with which this suppression was carried out opened
the eyes of thousands hitherto iguorant of the true character of Masonry ; but
when five hundred hospital sitters came to be expello<l at once from every
notable city, the public indignation knew no bound?. The Masons then saw
their mistake ; their journals called aloud for applause, and were answered
only by curses and protests. To come at these sisters h penal code was
elaborated in the lodges in 1874, and announced long before it came before
Congress. It still exists, and from one of its forty articles we can judge of its
spirit : it is penal to make or receive any vow, even though the parties do not
live in community. And all in the name of liberty ! Adieu to every liberty,
except the liberty of evil, wherever Masonry reigns supreme. By its very
excesses Masonry has declined. The President in 1897 asked the Nuncio to
procure some missionaries for the Indians; but this infamous penal code
remains still unrepealed in, perhaps, the most religious of all these Republics.
What an enigma !
1^reeMas6nrV and Church ii^ latin America 43
MasoDry is on its good behaviour at present in Brazil ;
there is an ambassador at the Vatican, and the president-
elect, General Campos Salles, paid a state visit to the Pope
last August. Hence the work of the Church goes on quite
freely at present. Nearly all the religious orders are repre-
sented there. Their chief work is education and missions.
Having often seen letters from all these countries, I can
assure the reader that the spirit of the people is everywhere
the same as in Brazil. The Kepublic of Brazil is as large
as Europe, and consists of twenty autonomous States. I
have now before me letters from several of these States ; let
us take the most populous and the least populous — Minas
Geraes with 3,000,000, and Matto Grosso with only 100,000
inhabitants ; the former as large as France, the latter three
times the size of France. Minas Geraes has two episcopal
sees, Mariana and Diamantina. The Vincentians, mostly
French, out of forty-two houses in all Latin- America, and
fourteen in Brazil, have five houses in this State — viz., the
two diocesan seminaries, a college, and two mission houses.
The missions last eight months of the year, and two or three
weeks in each parish. Diamantina is a new diocese, cut off
from Mariana a few years since ; it contains eighty parishes,
each as large as one of our largest counties, and generally
served by only one priest. I take the following description
from the letter of a missionary, dated Diamantina, December
3, 1898 :—
The rainy season being over, and the pastor being informed
of the day on which the mission is to begin, we set out on our
long journey. On the day appointed you see crowds of people
proceeding towards the place ; the roads are encumbered by a
multitude of people who come, some on horseback, others in
waggons like movable houses intended to lodge an entire family
during the mission. The horses in great number carry on their
backs two or three persons. After the cavalry comes the infantry,
always the largest portion ; most of these have to make forced
marches without provisions, without foot-gear — as we remarked
specially in the parish of Trahiras. Until the third day the
audience meets in the church, but after that on the public square
around a rude platform, the women with their children on their
laps, forming the inner circle, the men standing in the outer
circle. The first three days the audience augments visibly.
44 THE IRISH ECCLESiASTicAL RECOkb
During the day the immense concourse offers the picture
of a wide sea, whose murmurings are distinctly audible.
Morning and evening the silence is absolute. The first
two days the people are pre-occupied with their examen of
conscience. On some occasions the corffessor finds himself facing
three penitents at once. The penitent is but little concerned at
others hearing his confession, provided he succeeds in making it.
At nightfall the scene becomes animated and assumes a festive
appearance. The evening service opens with the Eosary ; then a
choir, almost always improvised, intones the Veni Sancte Spiritus.
Ascending the platform, the already worn-out missionary addresses
for an hour some 4,000 persons thirsting for the Word of God.
At the end he lifts up his voice, sums up what he has been saying.
and all eyes are bathed in tears.
Similar details abound in all these letters, not only from
Brazil, but from all the other Latin-American countries.
Another missionary, writing from Diamantina, December 1 ,
1895, says : —
The eagerness of the good people to avail of the blessings of
the mission is most touching. The respect for the Word of God
is wonderful. They wait hour after hour for their turn at the
confessional, and many faint from fatigue. They come on foot
thirty, fifty, and sixty miles, and attend the mission to the end,
God only knows at the cost of how many sacrifices, poorly clad,
sheltered, and fed. During one of these missions, when about
ten thousand persons were present, we met two French engineers
who were engaged in those parts on government works. They
could not find words to express their astonishment, and could not
understand how, at a word from a missionary, these crowds were
inspired with enthusiasm to prepare the mission cross, form a
cemetery, or gather enormous heaps of stones to build a chapel.
Surely, it is no exaggeration to call that Masonry satanical
which labours to destroy the faith of such a people. But
this is just what Brazilian masonry intends. The great
Masonic weapon, godless education, is at work, and will
certainly be extended when the finances permit, unless the
Catholics can have the law repealed. There was no excuse
for such a law in a country with a Christian population of
14,000,000, only 30,000 of whom were non-Catholic.
Of Matto Grosso there is little to be said ; in 1889 it
had only one episcopal see, Cuyaba, with only seventeen
parishes and about twenty priests. Three of these mission-
FREEMASONRY AND CHURCH IN LATIN AMERICA 45
aries founded a diocesan seminary there at that dateJ
Beside the Christian population of 100,000 there is an
immense population of Indians for whom little or nothing
has heen done for generations, and the same state of things
exists in all these Eepublics ; and yet the vast majority of
their Christian inhabitants are of Indian descent. The
settled policy of Spain and Portugal down to the time of
Pombal (d. 1782) and Aranda (d. 1794) was the conversion
of the Indians ; and at this work all the religious orders
laboured most successfully for nearly three centuries. But
these ministers introduced the seeds of Masonry ; Spain and
Portugal were covered with lodges in the next generation,
and revolutions became chronic. This infatuation soon
spread to their colonies ; the religious orders in Spain and
Portugal were suppressed; the conversion of the Indians
ceased; and both these once powerful nations with their
colonies, are at this day the most notorious object lessons in
the whole world of the temporal and spiritual ruin which
Masonry can produce in Catholic nations.^
The separation of Church and state is a fundamental
article of the Masonic creed, but it has been put in
force in only three or four of these Eepublics. Its real
object is the plunder and oppression of the Church.; bat in
Mexico and Brazil it has had one good consequence, the
free erection of new sees. It took ten years of negotiation
to estabhsh the see of Diamantina under the empire. With
only stable government the Latin-American Church could
overcome every difficulty. The masses are sound, irreligion
^ Cuyaba, the capital of Matto Grosso, is N.W. of Rio Janeiro. Well, to
o-et to it they sailed from Rio on the 5th of October, touched at Montevideo and
Buenos-ayres, then sailed up the Rio Plata, the Parana and the Paraguay to
Assumption, and CoTumba, then up the San T.orrenco, to Cuyaba, where they
arrived on the 5th of November. The post arrives from Rio only once a month.
This will give some idea of the country and its rivers.
2 English writers always speak of Pombal as the greatest minister that
Portugal ever had. This impudent fiction is repeated in the * Story of the
Nations ' (Portugal), p. 354 ; but the writer honestly tells us the grounds of his
estimate, and seems quite unconscious of the ridicule to which he exposes
himself by his hero-worship of such a monster of cruelty and despotism. The
new edition of the Enct/clopedia Britannica goes on exactly the same lines.
'I'hese writers see only his material improvements, and forget that he laid the
foundations of his country's ruin by the despotism and irreligion which he
fostered. The reader should pce Feller's accoimt.
46 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
does not exist to any great extent in the upper or middle
classes, and the rich are extremely generous towards works
of charity and religion. In a letter dated Diamantina,
December 3rd, 1893, we find that on the death of a
missionary, the Governor of the State, in his letter of
condolence, says : * I have just assisted at the seventh Mass
which I have had celebrated in the chapel of the palace for
the soul of your illustrious brother, my very dear professor
and excellent friend.' Men of this stamp are constantly
met on these missions, but they are generally ex-pupils of
the Jesuits or other orders. Masonry understands this very
well, and hence godless education is one of the most
fundamental of its tenets. Masonry exists chiefly in the
official classes, civil and military. Hence one may expect a
pronunciamento any day from some new dictator selected
by the lodges. The clergy are his natural enemies, and
are generally sure to be victimized. The poor soldiers who
do the fighting are only dupes of ambitious men ; in the
Peruvian revolution of 1895, the rebels on entering Lima
prayed aloud in the churches for a blessing on their arms.
And yet the great question in dispute was whether General
Pierola or General Caceres was to be President. ^
Hoping that these few details may help to give some
idea of these interesting countries, we may now endeavour
to sum up the situation. The elements of good and evil are
abundant and vigorous. Masonry is universal in the official
classes, and is the chief, if not the sole, cause of the chronic
revolutions which desolate these fine countries. The masses
take no part in these revolutions ; even in the towns only
the mere rabble take part in them. The distances are
^ On the night of March 16 there was a ball at the Palace ; the President
retired to rest at 4 o'clock on the morning of the 17th. At 6 o'clock cannon
shots were heard ; Pierola had entered the city during the night. For two
days the streets of Lima ran with blood. At last the Papal Delegate went
under fire between the combatants, and negotiated a truce of a few hours to
bury the dead and remove ihe wounded. The dead numbered 1,300, the
wounded 1,000. The Delegate, Mgr. Macchi, in union with the other foreign
ministerci, obtained a prolongation of the truce, negotiations were opened with
both parties now equally strong. It was agreed that Caceres should resign, and
that a new election should take place. Thus ended this revolution, which may
be taken as a specimen of these Latin-American revolutions.
FREEMASONRY AND CHURCH IN LATIN AMERICA 47
enormous between the centres of population, and hence a
dictator who gets possession of the seat of government can
hold it for a long time in spite of the protests of a scattered
and unorganized population. He can easily get up a mock
election, and bring together a pretended congress ; the
Masonic press at home and abroad will call this the man-
date of the people, and iniquitous laws will be enacted in
their name ; but he has no assured lease of power. Another
dictator may arise any day, and thus all sense of security
vanishes ; business of every kind languishes, material pro-
gress is impossible, and religious interests are ruined
altogether.
Against this we have a people strong in faith, and a body
of bishops unrivalled in the whole Church, but alas ! entirely
too few. And what shall we say of the parochial clergy ?
How could one priest attend to the spiritual wants of ten
thousand souls, dispersed over a parish equal to one of our
largest counties ? And yet this is the state of things in all
these sixteen republics. However, this fundamental want
is gradually disappearing ; diocesan seminaries, directed by
various religious orders, have been opened in almost every
diocese. The fanaticism of German and French Masonry
has sent great numbers of missionaries and religious teachers
to Latin America. Colleges, seminaries, and schools have
been opened in almost every city and important town.
Magnificent hospitals, hospices, orphanages, &c., are found
everywhere in these countries, and, with the exception of
Mexico, gladly welcome all the sisterhoods expelled by
French atheism from the schools, hospitals, &c,^ Even in
* In 1877 the Grand Orient of France erased the name of God from its
constitutionF, and English Maeonry broke off all official communion. French
Masonry, owing to the insane dynastic rivalries of the Conservatives, has been
ever since in power ; it has erased the name of God from the school books, and
a deputy named Breton proposed last March to have it erased from the coins of
the Republic, and got 16<5 deputies to vote with him. The Finance Minister,
Peytral, opposed the motion, ' as a sound freethinker,' because the name was
still retained on the coins of Switzerland and America ! Who has ever heard a
word of protest against such blasphemies from English Masonry or the English
press ? On the contrary, these atheists receive not only the important aid of a
benevolent silence, but very often words of commendation and encouragement
This makes one suspect that the breach of communion is only official and
apparent*
48 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Mexico Satan has been completely disappointed, A priest
who visited the capital in 1880 tells us that on the Feast
of the Assumption there were over twelve thousand
communions at the cathedral, and at least fifty thousand
in the city ; and this without any special invitation. The
same revival of fervour exists over the whole Kepublic
in every class, and the rich now pour out their wealth
to ornament the despoiled churches on feast days, just
as they used to be before the spoliations. Schools are
opened everywhere to counteract the effects of the godless
schools, although neither Christian Brothers or nuns are
tolerated. The self-sacrifice of the people makes up
for all. And yet no one can open even a private school
without using the official class books. The present rulers
did not make these laws ; why are they not repealed ?
The Catholic population of the sixteen Kepublics is about
fifty millions. With their immense resources what a future
might be predicted for them if only the demon of Masonry
could be exorcised.
Philip Burton, cm.
t 49 ]
THE NEW LEGISLATION ON THE INDEX
Cap. VII. — De lihris Uturgicis at j^recatoriis
Reg. XVIII. — In autlienticis editionibus Missalis, Breviarii
Ritualis, Caeremonialis Episcoporum, Pontiticalis Eomani,
aliorumque librorum liturgicorum, a Sancta Sede Apostolica
approbatorura, nemo quidquam immutare praesumat ; si sec us
factum fuerit, hac novae editiones prohibentur.
AFTEE having treated of sacred images and indulgences
in Chapter VI., the legislator now turns his attention
to the liturgy of the Church, and devotes Chapter VII. to it.
It was necessary to consult the correctness of Uturgy, in
order to safeguard the faithful from misconceptions. The
liturgy of the Church is her symbolic language ; it is the
collection of the rites and ceremonies which she employs to
express her inward feelings and belief. As a public speaker
may make use of words and gestures to express his thoughts
and feelings, so does the Church make use of Liturgy to
give external expression to her inward belief. She is obliged
to exercise continual vigilance over her liturgy lest inaccuracy
should creep in; for just as we might be deceived by the
words and gestures of a speaker, so we might easily be led
astray by a false liturgy.
The publications regarding the liturgy of the Church
^may be reduced to three classes: 1" Editions of the five
Tliturgical books — the Missal, the Kitual, the Breviary, the
Pontificale, and the Ceremoniale Episcoporum, together with
some other books in which certain portions of the Church's
liturgy are published apart : such as the ceremonies of Holy
Week or the Ordination ceremony. 2'' The public prayers
of the Church, and especially the litanies. S"" Books in
which the public prayers of the Church are collected and
published. To each one of those liturgical publications, the
legislator devotes a rule.
2. Eule 18 prescribes that no one shall presume to change
anything in republishing the authentic editions of the Missal,
the Breviary, the Eitual, the Caeremoniale Episcoporum,
VOL. VI. D
50 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL ftEOORD
the Pontificale, or of any of the other liturgical books which
have been approved by the Holy See ; if anyone should pre-
sume to make any change in republishing anyone of those
books he shall have his edition proscribed.
The legislator speaks of the authentic editions of the
liturgical books : now, which are the authentic editions ? In
general, when we speak of anything as authentic, we refer it
back to someone that has power over it {avOevretv), When we
speak, for instance, of a book as authentic, we refer it back
to its author ; when we speak of a legal interpretation as
authentic, we mean that it emanates from the same man as
made the law ; and so when we speak of authentic editions
of the liturgical books, we mean those editions that have
been revised and published in the first instance by the
Church.
"Who in the Church has power to make authentic editions
of the liturgical books ? The Pope alone has power to make
authentic editions of the liturgical books. Liturgy is the
expression of dogma. The truths that we believe in our
hearts we express with our liturgy. As the Pope has
supreme power in defining dogmatic truths, which are the
elements of belief in the Church, so also he has supreme
power to select a liturgy which will be the fit and proper
expression of them ; for the conception of an idea, and its
expression, belong to one and the same individual.
There may be more correct liturgies than one : for just
as the linguist may express the same idea in several different
languages, so the Church may express the very same belief,
and the very same feelings, in several different liturgies.
Nor does a multiplicity of liturgies cause confusion : they
rather give a richness to the symbolic language of the
Church ; just as a proHfic speaker will employ a number of
synonymous terms to express the same idea. Nor do they
lead to schism or rend the garment of the Church : they
rather give variety to the garb of the Church ; just as we
may employ different colours to ornament our dress.
Yet, as far as she has considered it convenient, the
Church has introduced uniformity in her liturgy, in order
that as there is but one faith, there might also be but one
THE NEW LEGISLATION ON THE INDEX 51
expression of it. Now, of all the liturgies that have existed
throughout the world, the Church has always preferred the
antient liturgy of Kome ; because Kome has always remained
orthodox in the faith, and has been sanctified with the blood
of Peter and of Paul. In the Western Church, however, she
has allowed one or two forms of liturgy to stand — to be as
witnesses to testify to the conformity of the present Church
with that of almost apostolic times ; and in the Eastern
Church she has allowed several forms of liturgy to stand —
to be as proofs that the various liturgies, which grew like
plants from the traditions surrounding each of the Apostles,
have all sprung from one parent stock.
The present rule has reference to the liturgical books of
the Eoman liturgy alone.
Having now determined that it is only the Church that
can make authentic editions of the liturgical books, and that
the Koman Pontiff holds supreme power in liturgy, as he
does in dogma, it remains for us to determine what Pontiffs
have made authentic editions. This question may be solved
by examining the introductions to the different liturgical
books. For instance : the authentic editions of the Missal
are those of St. Pius V., Clement VIII., and Urban VIII.
The authentic editions of the Koman Breviary are those
made by the same Pontiffs. The authentic editions of the
Eoman Eitual, the Pontificale, and the Caeremoniale
Episcoporum are those made by Benedict XIV.
3. Quidquam immutare praesumat—The interpretation
of this clause may be deduced from the Bulls prefixed to
the authentic editions of the liturgical books. Quidqicam
includes all the substantial things in connection with the
said books ; and immutatio implies any change whatsoever
of the said substantial things, either by omission, trans-
position, or insertion.^
1 P. Pennacchi thus explains this clause :— ' Atque advertatur has novas
editiones iri prohibitum quamvis immutatio admissa sive per mutilationem,
sive per interpolationem, sive transpositionem, Sec, levioris sit momenti : nam
nemo quidquam immutare praesumat inquit legislator.
Ex lectione paragraphi apparet autem, singulis facultatem libros liturgicos
imprimendi factam esse, cum et nemo excipiatur, et nihil requiratur aliud
nisi conformitas cum editiouibus autheuticis. Qua de causa editores et
52 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Eeg. XIX, — Litaniae omnes, praeter antiquissimas et com-
munes, quae in Breviariis, Missalibus, Pontificalibus ac Eitualibus
continentur, et praeter Litanias de Beata Virgine, quae in Sacra
Sede Lauretana decantari solent, et Litanias Sanctissimi Nominis
Jesu jam a Sancta Sede approbajtas, non edantur sine revisione
et approbatione ordinarii.
1. After having treated of the publication of new editions
cf the liturgical books in the last rule, the legislator now
considers the publication of new litanies ; and he prescribes
that no litany be published without the revision and appro-
bation of the bishop, except those ancient and well-known
litanies ' contained in the Breviary, the Missal, the Ponti-
ficale, and the Kitual, and the Litanies of the Blessed Virgin
which are sung in the Holy House of Loreto ; and, finally,
the Litanies of the Holy Name which have been approved
by the Holy See. Hence it appears that editors may publish
the Litanies of the Saints as they are found printed in the
Missal, the Breviary, or the Kitual, as well as the Litanies
of the Holy Name and of the Blessed Virgin, without recur-
TypogTapM quicumque ob ejusmodi Leonis XIII. concespam licentiam possunt
quosumqTie libros liturgicos imprimere, id unum prae oculis habentes, ut novae
editiones sint plane conformes editionibus authenticis, cum sin minus ipso facto
proscriptae mansurae sint; bine neque facultate S. Congregationls Ritunm, neque
Episcoporum licentia pro ejubmodi novis editionibus conficiendis, post
Leonis Xill. Constitutionem, indigent.'
^ The litanies called by the legislator Antiquissimae et commmien are those
that are eometimes called Litaniae Majores seu Sauctorioii^ and that are sung in
processions during the three Rogation days. They are found in the liturgical
books, and from them are sometimes taken, and printed at the end of the
Gradualc. The legislator calls them autiquisshnae because, according to the
most reliable authority, they come down from the very earliest ages of the
Church, Their author, however, has not with certainty been ascertained.
Some attribute them to St. Mamertus, a French bishop, who died about 470.
Others, however, believe — and, perhaps, on better authority — that they had
been composed long before the time of St. Mamertus, but that it may be ho
who first got them sung during the Rogation days. Some would attribute
them to St. Gregory the Great; and some, finally, to St. Leo. What, then, is
the historical conclusion to be deduced from the number of conflicting testimo-
nies adduced by the historians of the litanies ? It is merely that stated by the
legislator — that whereas their author and the year of the composition are
unknown, it is quite certain that they are very ancient.
The origin of the Litany of the Blessed Virgin is also lost in antiquity.
Various explanations have been given of its name, Liiania Lauretana. Some
would say that it is so called because it was composed at Loreto ; others, again,
would say that it is so called because it was first sung at Loreto ; others, finally,
would say that it was so called after the Holy House, to distinguish it from
some other litanies which the faithful were wont to sing in honour of
the Blessed Virgin, and which were afterwards proscribed by Clement VIII.
aud Paul V. Cf. Pennacchi, p. 157 ; and La Givilta Cattolica, 1807.
THE NEW LEGISLATION ON THE INDEX 53
ring to any ecclesiastical authority. For the publication ot
all other litanies the revision and approval of the bishop is
required.
2. According to the present rule, therefore, bishops have
power to revise and to authorize the publication of new
litanies ; hence, naturally, arises the question : Have bishops
the power to approve new litanies, and to grant permission
to have them sung or recited at devotions? In answer
to this question we should distinguish two kinds of devo-
tions— public devotions and private devotions. It would
appear that bishops have not power of granting permission
of having new litanies sung at public devotions ; for we find
the following decree passed by the Sacred Congregation of
the Holy Office, 18th April, 1860 :—
Litaniae omnes, praeter antiquissimas et communes quae in
Breviariis, Missalibus, Pontificalibus continentur, et praeter
Litanias B.M.V. quae in Aede Lauretana decantari solent, non
edantur sine revisione et approbatione ordinarii ; ' nee publice in
Ecclesiis, publicis oratoriis et processionibus recltentur, absque
licentia et approbatione S. Rituum Congregationis. ' ^
From this it would appear that no litany may be sung
or recited at public devotions that has not been approved, at
least, by the Congregation of Eites.
In explanation we should say that when any particular
prayer or devotion is publicly recited or practised, it
becomes, in a certain way, the voice of the Universal
Church. Now, who can speak for the Universal Church
but him who thinks for the Universal Church? and who
can think for the Universal Church but him who rules it ?
Power in dogma and power in liturgy belong to one and
the same individual, just as thinking and talking. To say,
therefore, that a bishop has power to sanction any particular
public prayer or devotion, would seem to imply that he
has power to speak for the Universal Church, — which is not
true. Hence it would be erroneous to conclude from the
present rule, that bishops have power to approve new
litanies for public devotion.
Acta Sedis, xxviii. 67.
54 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Can bishops grant permission to recite new litanies at
private devotions ? It would appear that they can : for, if
they cannot, the power granted them of approving new
litanies would be perfectly useless ? New litanies, therefore,
to be sung or recited at public devotions, must be approved,
at least by the Congregation of Eites. New litanies,
to be recited at private devotions, may be approved by
bishops.
Eeg. XX. — Libros aut libellos precum, devotionis vel doctrinae
institutionisque religiosae, moralis, asceticae, mysticae, aliosque
hujusmodi, quamvis ad fovendam populi christiani pietatem con-
ducere videantur, nemo praeter legitimae auctoritatis licentiam
publicet, secus prohibiti habeantur.
1. After having treated of the more common public
prayers, the legislator now considers handbooks of devotion ;
and with regard to these he prescribes, that no one shall
presume to publish, without the permission of legitimate
authority, prayer-books, or books treating of piety or
Christian doctrine, or books treating of morals, asceticism,
mysticism, or any other similar subject, although they
appear apt to foster and promote Christian piety. Should
any books treating of those subjects be published with-
out the approval of legitimate authority, they shall be
proscribed.
2. In order to determine with accuracy the meaning of
some of the terms of the present rule, its grammatical con-
struction must be carefully noted. It is to be remarked, in
the first place, that the words religiosae, moralis, asceticae,
and mysticae are all adjectives qualifying institutiov.is. Then,
as regards the meaning of the conjoined terms, institutio
religiosa, institutio moralis, &c., it is to be remarked that
they imply something more than a mere exposition of
religious doctrine or of Christian doctrine; they imply
a certain building-up or development of Christian doc-
trin or morals, from certain fundamental principles.
Let us now proceed to an individual examination of the
terms.
Lihri precum, — Are handbooks containing prayers to
God, to our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, or to the saints.
THE NEW LEGISLATION ON THE INDEX 55
Libri devotionis, — Are handbooks containing the litanies
and other prayers proper to certain devotions or pious
practices.
Libri doctrinae institutionisque religiosae. — The works
here referred to must treat of Christian doctrine, as the
word doctrina implies; they must, moreover, treat of
Christian doctrine in a more or less scientific order, as
the word institutio would seem to imply : for institutio
implies a certain construction, or a certain building-up of
knowledge. The works, however, here designated cannot
be professional works on theology, for such works are treated
ofinKule41. It would appear, therefore, that the words
under discussion, designate catechetical works which are
written in a more or less scientific order, and are designed
to impart a rudimentary knowledge of the principal truths
of our faith.
Libri institutionis moralis. — Those words would seem
to designate books written for the purpose of setting forth
in a popular way the rules of morality, basing the proofs
thereof on Scripture and on simple philosophical principles.
Libri institutionis asceticae are books which explain how
a soul may proceed step by step on the way of perfection.
Libri institutionis mysticae are books which treat of the
supernatural gifts of God, such as visions, discernment of
spirits, revelations, or ecstasies.
Unless books treating of any one of those subjects
bear the approval of legitimate ecclesiastical authority,^
the faithful are forbidden to use them.
3. The main object, therefore, that the legislator had in
view in framing the present rule was to sift the devotional
books that issue from the press day after day. Although
those works are always, we believe, written in the most
pious spirit, and from the purest motives, yet it oftentimes
happens that they contain unsound doctrine : that they
propose forms of devotion that have not been sanctioned
^ From Rule 35 we shall see that the auctoritas legitima here spoken of is
that of the bishop of the place wherein the book is published. If the book
should be published simultaneously in a great many places, the approbatiou o^
any one bishop would seen\ to be enough.
56 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
by the Church, or thai they contain certain notions of
virtues which are not theologically correct. The effect of
the present rule will be to sift those works, and to block the
way to any one of them, that is not calculated to foster piety
on truly Catholic grounds.^
Cap. VIII. — De Diariis,foliis ct libellis periodicis.
Eeg. XXI. — Diaria, folia, at libelli periodici, qui religionem
aut bonos mores data opera impetunt. non solum naturali, sed
etiam ecclesiastico jure proscripti habeantur.
1. After having treated of sacred liturgy, the legislator
now turns his attention to a species of literature, which
may be said to be the literary production characteristic of
the present age, i.e., newspapers and periodicals. To this
class of literature, which we may designate under the
generic name of the Press, he devotes Chapter VIII.
We must distinguish at the outstart between newspapers
and periodicals. Newspapers have generally for their subject
the current events of the day, and the immediate conclusions
to be deduced therefrom. Periodicals, on the other hand,
generally discuss events more fundamently ; they discuss
their causes and make surmises regarding their ultimate
consequences. The press, composing both of those kinds
of literature, gives expression to the ideas and feelings
prevalent at the centres of thought in the country ; accord-
ingly, just as the human voice is the organ of expression in
the human individual, so the press may be regarded as the
organ of expression of the country.
^ L'Abbe Pf-ries thus writes concerning" the necessily of closely supervising
tlie publication of devotional books : ' Get article met un terme, il le faut esperer,
a I'abondance de livres et d' opuscules de devotion, dont tant de gens bien
intentionnes sans donte, mais insuffisamment instriiits, ont sature les fideles
trop confinnts au detriment de la saine doctiine. Ainsi done, prieres, con-
s-derations pieuses, cssais doctrinanx snr le dogme, la morale, la theolofjie
T> ystique, et autres matieres connexesdoivent etre soumis au visa de 1' autorite
competente, et sent regaides comme defendup s'ils n'en sont revetus. II est a
sonhaiter que celte revision de 1' ar.torite soit accomplie plus severement qu' elle
no r a ete bien soixvent jnsqu' ici, afin d' eliminer tons ces woii de difPerents
sn'nis ct autres devotions analogues, ou les considerations les plus absurdes
s' etalent dans un stvlo d' une platitude approprice. La religion j gagnerait
dans I'estime des gens serieux etles bonnes ames n' j perderait rien. To^t au
plus certains libraires s' en plaindraient— ils,
THE NEW LEGISLATION ON THE INDEX 67
The form that the press will assume will depend in a
great measure on the social condition of the country : in
much the same way, as the exterior manner and deportment
of an individual will depend on his natural character and
education. The form of the press and the state of the
country, will act and react on one another. In order of
causality the state of the country is first, and it rough-hews
the /orm of the press ; the form of the press, in turn, brings
the public feeling to a definite shape. If the press is good
in form^ it is of immense social benefit, inasmuch as it leads
pubhc thought and feeling in the proper direction ; but, on
the other hand, if it is bad, it is like a cancer or ulcer that
draws to one point everything that is corrupt and fetid
in the social body. In applying the present chapter of rules
to the press, we may, therefore, regard newspapers and
periodicals as moral individuals, having' definite characters,
guided by certain principles, and actuated by special motives. ,
The separate issues, we may regard as so many specimens of
the language of those individuals; and we may diagnosed
their character by reading their issues, just as we might '
diagnose the character of any person by listening to his J
conversation.
It is not easy to classify or divide newspapers and
periodicals. They cannot be well divided according to their •
subject matter ; because they may talk of anything, just as
a human individual. Nor can we well divide them accord-
ing to the principles they profess ; for they are as different
in character, as the faces of those we meet in the street
are different from one another. They may, however, be
roughly classified according to the intervals that elapse
between their separate issues ; and it would appear that
the legislator has classified them on this basis in the present
rule.
In the present rule the legislator declares and prescribes,
that all newspapers whether dailies or weeklies as well as
reviews and periodicals, that intentionally and designedly,
or with set purpose, assail religion and morals, are pro-
scribed not only by the natural law, but also by the ecclesi-
^stigal law ; h^ also desires that bishops of places wherein
58 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
such publications should chance to be made, would give
timely warning to their flocks of the danger with which they
are surrounded, and the injury they suffer from reading
such productions.
2. Let us now proceed to an examination of the terms
of the rule.
Diaria, — Diaria is a word formed from dies, and signifies
in the present context publications issued every day, whether
they be composed of one or more sheets of paper ; it would,
therefore, be equivalent to our word dailies.
Folia are publications composed of one standard sheet of
paper ; they will have a greater or less number of pages
according as they are in 4:to, 8vo, 12mo, &c. ; and they may
be made daily or weekly.
Lihelli periodici are small books published periodically.
They are, consequently, periodicals that may be issued
weekly, fortnightly, or monthly.
Qui religionem impetunt. — What is the meaning of the
term Beligio in this context ? It would appear that we are
not to con.^ae the term to purely Catholic doctrines, but
that we are to extend it to all truths concerning God. The
natural law stamped on the minds of all men, the written
law given to Moses, and the Catholic Church founded by
Christ, have a close relation one with the other. If anyone
were to assail the natural law, he should assail thereby the
Bible also ; and were he to assail the Bible, he should assail
the Catholic Church as well.
Directing our attention to the Catholic Church, and to
the various sects, we remark there are many truths held by
the sects in common with the Catholic Church ; and that
there are some doctrines held by the Catholic Church alone.
Now, we must get words to express the set of truths
peculiar to the Catholic Church : the words will be Fides
Catholica. We must also get words to express all the
truths held by the Catholic Church, even those which
she holds in common with the sects : the expresion will be
Beligio.
That the legislator has used the terms Beligio and Fides
Catholica witl^ thpi^e significations throughout the present
THE NEW LEGISLATION ON THE INDEX
69
constitution will become apparent from a collation of some
of the rules : —
EULE 2.
Libri apostatanim,
haereticorum, schismati-
corum, et quorumcumque
scriptorum haeresim vel
schisma propugnantes,
aut ipsa Beligionis funda-
menta utcumque ever-
tentes omnino prohiben-
tur.
EULE 3.
Item prohibentur aca-
tholicorum libri, qui ex
professo de Beligione.
Tractant, nisi constet
nihil in eis contra.
Fidem Catholicam con-
tineri.
Rule 5.
Editiones textus origi-
nalis et antiquarmn ver-
sionum Catholicarum
Saorae Scripturae, etiam
ecclesiae orientalis, ab
acatholicis quibuscumque
publicatae, etsi fideliter et
integre editae appareant,
iis dumtaxat qui studiis
theologicis vel biblicis
dant operam, dmnmodo
tamen non impugnentur
in prolegomenis aut adno-
tationibus.
Catholicae Fidei dogmata
permittuntur.
Examining those three rules, we perceive that in Eule 2
Beligio is used to cover the whole extent of Catholic
truth — even those truths which the Catholic Church may
hold in common with the sects. In Kule 5 we see that
Fides Catholica is used to cover the area of truth proper to
the Catholic Church ; and in Eule 3 we find the two expres-
sions compared, and a far wider extension given to Beligio
than to Fides Catholica, For our part, then, we conceive all
Christian truth as lying out in an immense area. This
whole area we should call Beligio ; a part of this area, how-
ever, is the personal property of the Catholic Church : and
this we should call Fides Catholica.
Bonos Mores. — Boni Mores in the present context would
seem to be co-relative with Beligio. As Natural Ethics are
co-relative with Natural Theology, or as Moral Theology
is co-relative with Dogmatic Theology, so Boni Mores are
co-relative with Beligio. Beligio includes the speculative
truths, Boni Mores the practical ones. The expression will,
therefore, not only include the moral code peculiar to the
Catholic Church, but also the moral code of any of the sects
in so far as it may coincide with that of the Catholic
Church.
Data opera. — A difference of opinion exists among the
commentators who have heretofore written on the rules of
the Index, regarding the exact meaning of this expressions
60 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
1°. According to II Monitore Ecclesiastico, data opera and
ex'professo would be synonymous expressions, ' Dicemmo
altrove che i\ data opera equivale aW ex-prof esso ;' ^ Otudi
elsewhere we read *si i^oti quel data opera ; expressione
simile all' Bltia, ex-pivfesso,' ^ 2°. L' Abbe Peries, however,
is of opinion that the two expressions mean quite different
things. In translating Kule 9, wherein the expression ex-
professo occurs, he writes : — ' Les livres qui traitent ex-pro-
fesso les sujets lascives ou obscenes, &c.';^ whereas in trans-
lating the present rule he writes : — ' Que les journaux,
feuiiles, et revues qui atteignent a dessein la religion ou les
bonnes moeurs, dx.'^ For ex-prof esso, therefore, I'Abbe
Peries finds no French expression ; for data opera he finds
a dessein, 3°. P. Pennacchi makes a clear distinction between
the significations of the two expressions : —
Data opera impetere nihil aliud est quam studiose de industria
consulto aliquid aggredi ; italice : a hclla posta, a hello studio,
apposta, stndiosamente, scientemente. Quae dictio differt ab alia
ex-prof esso : quae importat aliquid scribere vel docere circa datam
materiam enucleate, et cum argumentorum serie atque delectu,
ut lectores de re persuadeantur. . . . Exinde omne id quod
ex-2)rofrsso agitur, etiam data opera agitur ; sed non e contra, cum
haec dictio non adeo se extendat, nee tanta complectatur quantum
dictio pxprofesso.
Against the opinion, therefore, of II Monitore, we have
those of P. Pennacchi and of I'Abbe Peries ; and, moreover,
there exists a strong presumption that the legislator would
not have used two different expressions to designate the
same thing in the present rules, wherein precision of
diction has been so much studied.
In explanation, we should say that the term ex-prof esso
implies in the first place a declaration of something (ex-pro-
fari). In its literal sense, then, the expression should be
applied to men and not to books. When applied to writings,
as in the present context, it is used in a slightly metaphorical
sense. But, since a person does not declare a thing without
having some intention, the term implies in the second place,
^ Cf. II Monitore, p. 57. =» Page 84.
2 |^i<?., p. 37. * Page 122.
THE NEW LEGISLATION ON THE INDEX 61
an intention of doing something. An ex-prof esso treatment
of a subject, therefore, implies two things — the intention of
treating of it, and an open declaration of that intention. In
treating of his subject the author will generally proceed along
a predetermined line ; but occasionally he may step aside
for awhile ; and what he then writes is said to be written
obiter; hence we have the expressions obiter dicta and
dicta ex'projesso.
The expression, data opera, would seem not to imply a
declaration at all. Thus, we have the common Latin expres-
sions,— * est pretium operae, operam alicui negotio navare,
studio operam praestare,' — which do not imply a declaration
of anything. Again, we read the following in the Civil War
of Caesar, — * Dent operam consules praetores, tribuni plebis,
ne quid respublica detrimenti capiat,' ^ — where the meaning
is 'precaution, not declaration ; and- in Sallust's history of
Jurgurtha we read, — ' Qui postquam allatas litteras audivit,
ex consuetudine ratus opera et ingessu suo opus esse, in
tabemaculum introivit,' ^ — where the meaning is advice or
counsel, and not the declaration of anything. Turning to
ecclesiastical writers, we read in a sermon of St. Augustine,
— * Sed potius abstinentes ab omni luxu, ebrietate, lascivia
demus operam sobriae remissioni ac sanctae sinceritati,' ^ —
wherein there is no intimation of a declaration of any kind.
Finally, in the present rule§ we have the expression clearly
used to signify intention or study, exclusive altogether of
any outward declaration. In Kule 8, for instance, we read :
* Hae nihilominus versiones iis, qui studiis theologicis vel
biblicis dant operam, permittuntur.' We, therefore, consider
the opinion of the Monitore as improbable.
Summing up then. Ex-professo implies two things:
(a) an intention of doing something ; (b) and a declaration
thereof. Data opera implies only the intention. Hence it
follows, as P. Pennacchi says, that, what is ex-professo, is
also, da^a opera ; but not vice versa. We should here call
the attention of our readers to the greater severity of the
^ J)e Bello in Civil, in principio.
■2 Jurgurtha, cap. 71.
^ Rom. Brev. Serm: proposito pro Dom in Albis.
62 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
legislator towards the press than towards books. A book is
generally proscribed only for an ex-prof esso treatment ; a
journal or periodical is proscribed even for a data opera
treatment.^
Nan solum naturali, sed etiam ecclesiastico jure proscripti
haheantur. — We have already explained ^ that a book will be
forbidden us by the natural law as well as by the ecclesi-
astical law. Now, what does ecclesiastical prohibition
superadd to that of the natural law? Books treating of
bad subjects, which might not be to us the occasion of sin,
would not be forbidden us by the natural law : the ecclesi-
astical law steps in and proscribes them to all. Hence,
* it is in accordance with the Catholic tradition to believe
that the natural law, which forbids us to expose ourselves
to this danger (i.e., of committing sin), except under the
pressure of a proportionate necessity, is safeguarded
by the addition of an ecclesiastical precept to the same
effect.*^
^ lu paraphrasing the present rule we have rendered the expression data
opera by the English -words intentionally, deiiffmdly, or with set purpose. To
justify ourselves for this version of the Latin expression, we here give some
synonymous expressions in Latin, Italian, and French : —
LATIN. ITALIAN. FEENCH. ENGLISH.
Data opera, studiose, a bella posta k dessein designedly
de industria a hello studio de parti pris intentionally
consulto. apposta intentionelle- with set
studiosamente ment. purpose,
scientemente.
2 Cf. Rule 4.
s I. E. Kecokd, February, 1897 :— Art. by" Dr. M'Donnell. We have
already referred to the proscription of books by the natural law, in our remarks
on Rule 4, A doubt here presents itself for solution regarding the meaning of
Jus naturale when applied to the proscription of bad books and newspapers
according to the present Legislation on the Index. In order to bring the
difficulty home to our readers, we would recall some proscriptions made by
civil rulers.
It is recorded that the Athenian Senate proscribed a book of Anaxagoras
for having disparaged paganism ; and also that the Koman Senate proscribed
the book of Cicero Be Natura deorum,' because he laughed therein at the idea of
a multiplicity of gods. Finally, we know that Ceesar Augustus proscribed the
book of Ovid, De Arte Amandi, and drove the author into exile. Let us place
those proscriptions of the Athenian and Roman Senates side by side with that
of the present rule, and compare them. By what motives were Caesar Augustus
and the Athenian and Roman Senates led to condemn the works of Ovid, of
Anaxagoras, and Cicero ? was it by motives founded on the natural law ? And
if it was, are we to predicate the natural law of those proscriptions of the pagan
rulers, in exactly the same sense as we should predicate it of the proscription of
THfi UE^ LEGISLATION ON THE INDEX 63
3. We now come to the practical question : when are we
justified in saying that a particular newspaper or periodical
is proscribed by the present rule? "We have already explained
the general character of the press ; we have also examined
the anatomy of the present rule. Let us now apply the
rule to measure the press.
In answering this question we must remark that the
legislator speaks of two kinds of proscription — proscription
bad books and newspapers made by the legislator in the present rule of the
Index ? We propose to briefly examine those questions.
Object of the naturalf divine, and eecUsiastieal laws.
A law is primarily intended to direct or restrain one's actions. The Latins called
it lex because it bound them to act in a certain way (ligare) ; and they called it
regiila because it ruled them. Now, we rule horses with bridles and bits, but
men are ruled through reason j and so St. Thomas calls a law an ' ordinatio
rationis.' (i. — ii. ; 90 ; 4.)
Reason is of two ^nds : speculative and practical. The laws of speculative
reason are laid down in logic, and have truth for their object ; we should say
that anyone would violate them, who would not observe the rules of the
syllogism. The laws of practical reason are laid down in ethics, and have good
for their object. There exists a very strong analogy between those two
branches of reason, and the laws that regulate them. As there are certain
speculative truths, called first principles, which are at the root of all logical
conclusions, and which reqtlire no proof ; so there are certain good things which
nre at the root of all practical laws, and which man seeks and txji braces without
any constraint or persuasion.
Into the definition of man enter animal and rationale ; he may be considered
then as an animal, and as a rational being. As an animal there are two things
that he seeks spontaneously and almost from instinct. First, to preserve his
own life ; and to this end he is induced to take food. Second, to preserve the
life of his race ; and to this end he is drawn to sexual intercourse. Considered
as a rational being there is one thing that he spontaneously seeks — to develop
his faculities ; and to this end he is induced to live in society. Accordingly, we
have three precepts of the natural law : 1°. That which secures the life of the
individual. 2". That which secures the life of the race. 3°. That which secures
the life of the state. Each of those have again subordinate or secondary
precepts. {Summa, i.-ii., ; 94; 2.)
In theological questions we frequently have conclusions asserting that such
or such an action is forbidden by such or such a precept of the natural law.
Thus we might say that suicide is forbidden by the ^rst precept of the natural
law ; that polyandry is forbidden by one of the primary precepts of the second
precept of the natural law, and polygamy by one of the secondary precepts of
the same precept ; and we might say that Anarchism, Socialism, and Free-
masonry are contrary to the third precept of the natural law.
How, now, are we to explain the proscription of the books of Ovid, Cicero,
and Anaxagoras ? In the first place we should say that Caesar Augustus and
the Roman and Athenian Senates would never have condemned the aforesaid
books, imless they saw themselves in some way assailed by them. Rome and
Athens believed themselves to be, in a certain way, the children of the gods :
to have been blessed by them, and to have flourished under their patronage.
The Romans never ventured on any great enterprise without having first
offered Bacriflce ; and they attributed their success as much to the good- will of
64 THE IRISH fiCCLESIASTTICAL RECORD
by the natural law, and proscription by the ecclesiastical
law. We must, accordingly, take cognizance of both.
As regards proscription by the natural law, the answer
is easy: any newspaper or periodical, or any issue thereof, is
forbidden by the natural law that' should be to us the
occasion of sin.
As regards proscription by the ecclesiastical law, how-
ever, the answer would seem to be more difficult. Some
the gods, as to their own prudence and valour. Livy, for instance, tells us that
before Scipio Africanus ventured on his great African campaign against
Hannibal, he spent hours in meditation in the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol
The Romans, in fact, believed that Jupiter was as much at home on the Capitol,
as he was in Olympus, What the Capitol was to the Romans, the Acropolis
was to the Athenians. The pagan state identified itself with paganism ; and
accordingly, when Anaxagoras and Cicero openly assailed paganism, the
Senates saw that a blow was dealt at themselves, and they rushed to the
assistance of their patrons, as a child might rush to shield its parent from insult.
The books of Cicero and Anaxagoras would, therefore, seem to have been
proscribed under the third precept of the natural law. Not so, however, the book
of Ovid. The books of Anaxagoras and Cicero might be said to be impious :
that of Ovid was immoral. The books of Anaxagoras and Cicero assailed the
state through its patrons : that of Ovid assailed it through its constituent
element — the race ; for nothing tends to the destruction of the race so much as
immorality. The book of Ovid would, therefore, appear to have been con-
demned under the second precept of the natural law.
Tlie Divine Law. — Now, besides the natural law, and its various precepts,
it was necessary for many reasons that G-od would deign to give us a divine
law : — 1°, on account of the end to which He had ordained us. If, indeed, man
had been ordained to nothing beyond this mortal life, there would have been no
necessity of a law beyond the reach of man's own understanding and inherent
inclinations ; but G-od has ordained us to an end far beyond the reach of our
understanding, and far outside the range of our inherent inclinations ; for
St. Paul says that no ear hath heard, or eye perceived, what God has in store
for His elect ; and David, who had been already fully acquainted with the natural
law, beseeches God to give him another law, the Divine law — ' Legem pone
niihi Domineviam' justiiicationim tuarum. ' (Ps. cxvii.) 2°. To enable man to
act with certainty in the particular conclusions drawn from the natural law ;
although the primary precepts of the natural law will be known to all, yet all
will not be acquainted with the particular conclusions di-awn therefrom. Hence
it was necessary for man to have for his guidance a divine law, as well as a
naturallaw. (Cf. Summa, i., ii., 91, 4.)
The divine law would seem to have no objectively distinct precept from
those of the natural law with regard to the proscription of bad books and news-
papers ; it merely promulgates anew, in a new light, as it were, the precepts
ah-eady imposed by the natm-al law ; and so St. Paul says, ' Eratis aliquando
tenebrae, nunc autem lux in Domino ; ut filii lucis ambulate.' (Ephes. o.)
' Ecclesiastical Lat^;.— Besides proscriptioQ by the natural law or divine law,
we have also proscription by the ecclesiastical law.. Sometimes a book may be
proscribed by the natural or divine law without being proscribed by the ecclesi-
asticaP law ; and of such we have an example in Rule 4 of the present
Legislation. We have already explained how we are to understand such an act
of the Church. We are not to understand it as an approbation of such books :
because the Church could not approve of what is in itself bad. We are to
THE NEW LEGISLATION ON THE INDEX 65
would be inclined to answer this part of the question by
assigning a certain number of bad issues — say two, three,
four, or five — beyond which all further issues should be
proscribed. They would put those separate issues together
into one volume, and weigh them against the rule, as they
would a book. But this manner of procedure we should not
consider correct. In the first place, no two judges could be
got to agree to exactly the same number of issues ; and,
regard it as a kind of toleration, to prevent confusion and greater evils. It is
in this same spirit that the Church sometimes tolerates heresy and freedom of
the press. Again, sometimes books will be proscribed by the ecclesiastical law
which would not be proscribed by the natural or divine law. Thus many books
which would ncit assail in any way the life of either the individual, the race or
society, and which would not be the slightest occasion of sin to priests and some
laymen, will be forbidden to all by the ecclesiastical law. The ecclesiastical law,
therefoie, in the proscription of books does two things over and above the
natural or divine law ; it specifies the precepts of the natural or divine law, and
enforces them with a new vigour.
It is to be remarked that the more particidar the case becomes, and the
greater the number of surrounding circumstances, the more difficult it is to
apply in practice a general law. Accordingly, although we might be well able
to explain the precepts of the natural or divine law, yet it might happen that
we could not apply our speculative knowledge to practical and particular cases.
The ecclesiastical law does this for us ; it takes us by the hand aod lays our
finger on the tainted book or newspaper. It does more; if we show any
reluctance to keep away from what is bad, it compels us to do so.
§2.
Now, what are the relations existing between those three laws — the
natural, the divine, and the ecclesiastical ? In reply we should say that all
relationship is founded either on action or on quantity {Sitmma, i., 28, 4). In
discussing, then, the relations between those laws, we are to attend piincipally
to their comprehension, i.e., to the objects of the precepts contained under each
of them.
Comparing thus the natural law with the divine law, we see that every-
thing commanded by the natural law is also commanded by the divine law. It
is, however, commanded under a new light, the light of revelation. And so we
find St. Paul telling the Romans, * Ciun gentes quae legem non habent, natura-
liter ea quae legis sunt f aciunt ' (Rom. ii.) ; and he tells the Ephesians after
their conversion : — ' Eratis aliquandp tenebrae, nunc autem lux in Domino ; ut
filii lucis ambulate ' (Ephes. v.). There are, however, some things commanded
us by the divine law, that do not fall under the natural law ; thus the acts of
the three virtues. Faith, Hope, and Charity, tend to a supernatural object.
Comparing in the same manner the divine law with the ecclesiastical law,
we see that the object of the divine law falls under the ecclesiastical law, but
not vice versa ; there are some things commanded us by the Church which do
not fall directly under the divine law. In illustration of this we should reman-
that we find several disciplinary decrees in the Decrees of the Council of Trent,
which the Church changes from time to time to suit the exigencies of time au<i
place. Now, if they were divine, she would not change them. Although,
however, the object of the divine law falls under the ecclesiastical law, yet the
Church sometimes preserves economic silence with regard to some particular
things commanded by it ; and of such policy we have an example in Rule 4 of
the present Constitution.
To what, then, shall we liken those three laws? We m^y compare them
VOL. VI. E
66 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
accordingly, those who would seek for an answer of such
mathematical accuracy should be deceived in their hope :
because their answer would not be practical. Secondly, it
would appear from the end the legislator has had in view,
ihat the separate issues of newspapers and periodicals, taken
singly, do not fall under the present rule at all.
And hence no number of issues taken singly would suffice
to three wheels moving one within the other ; or, again, recurring to the parable
of the seed and the sower; may we not say that the herb was put forth in the
natural law, that the ear grew in the divine law, and that an abundant harvest
has been produced under the care of the Catholic Church? (Sitfnma, i., ii.,
107, 3.)
§3.
Now, are we to understand ^us naturale in Kule 21 in the same sense as we
phould predicate it of the proscriptions of Augustus and the Roman and Athenian
Senates ? It would appear that we are not.
In explanation we should say that we may speak of virtuous actions in two
ways. 1°. In so far as they are virtuous. 2". We may speak of the species of
the virtues. If we speak of human acti(jns in so far as they are virtuous or
not, then all good actions are according to the natural law, and all bad actions
are contrary to it. Everything belongs to the natural law to which man is
induced by the elements of his nature : and he is led by the elements of his
nature to follow the dictates of reason. Hence, when he acts in accordance
with reason he acts virtuously, and when he acts contrary to it he performs a bad
action : and so St. Paul says ; * Quod non est ex fide peccatum est. ' Hence
in one sense we may say that every good action is in accordance with the
natural law, and that every bad action is contrary to it. If, however,
we consider the species of the virtue, or the object of the action, then those actions
only will be contrary to the natural law which tend in some way to destroy
either the individual, the race, or human society. (Summa, i., ii., 94, 3.)
Hence we find the words jus naturale used in two diflPerent senses by theolo-
gians. In one sense, to designate the object of the action : in the other to
designate its conformity or deformity with reason. In the fir.»t sense we may
say that the natural law tends to preserve the individual, the race, and human
society : and it is in this sense that we are to predicate the law of the proscriptions
of Augustus and the Roman and Athenian Senates. In the other sense, however,
we may say that the natural law forbids us to expose ourselves to the proximate
occasion of sin, unless a sufficiently grave reason supervenes ; and it is in this
sense that we are to understand the jus naiura/e in Rule 21,
It is in this second sense that writers on the Index usually use the words.
Thus Dr. M'DonneU writes (I.E. Record) : — ' What are the obligations of
Irish Catholics with regard to dangerous books and periodicals ? What are we
to preach ? Are we to confine ourselves to inculcating the natural law, which
undoubtedly forbids one, under the pain of mortal sin, to expose oneself to
serious spiritual danger except under the stress of some necessity proportionate
to the risk ? II Monitors writes (p. 57) : ' E dichiarasi che come questi son
prohibiti per diritto naturale, cosi pure sono proscritti per leyye ecclesiastica ; ' and
P. Pennacchi writes (p. 163): 'Jure enim naturali libros contra religionem
legere prohibemur ob pericalum ruinae spiritualis.'
In the present Legislation on the Index, then, there are two kinds of
proscription — proscription by the natural law, and proscription by ecclesiastical
law. By the natural law are proscribed all books that might bo the cause of
our spiritual ruin ; by the ecclesiastical law are proscribed all books included
in the present Rules of the Index, as well as those ii^dividually condemned by
special decrees.
THE. NEW LEGISLATION ON THE INDEX 67
to have the newspaper or periodical, as a living organ, pro-
scribed. The end of the present rule is to preserve the faith
and morals of the people from being corrupted by the press.
This end is attained by keeping the faithful from reading
the publications of bad newspapers and periodicals. Now,,
the faithful cannot know whether any particular issue is bad
or not till they have read it ; and once they have read it, the
end of the present rule, as far as that issue is concerned, can
no longer be attained. Nor can the future issues, considered
singly, fall under the present rule : for what is not blame-
worthy cannot be condemned ; and how can the child unborn
be yet guilty of personal sin ? To assign a certain number
of bad issues, therefore, as the limit of toleration, would not
seem to be a good way of answering the question under
discussion.
It would be well to distinguish the living organism, so to
speak, of the newspaper or periodical from its individual
issues. The newspaper or periodical may be regarded as a
living moral person — having, as it were, personal interests
and motives— guided in its publications by a certain policy,
and by a certain set of principles, and by reason of itS*origin
having a certain clientela to represent. The separate issues,
on the other hand, may be regarded as so many utterances
made by this moral person. Those separate issues convey
the thoughts and feelings of the press, so long as they are
read, in much the same way as our words convey our
thoughts and feehngs to others, so long as they are listened
to ; when they cease to be read, they are like words spoken
in the desert, that awaken not even an echo.
Viewed in this light, all difficulties would seem to disap-
pear ; the end of the present rule can be attained with
regard to the future issues as well as the past, and we have
means of arriving at a practical conclusion. The separate
issues may not be guilty as individuals, but they shall be
guilty because of their origin, in much the same way — if we
may compare small things with great — as the child comes
forth stained with the sin of its origin. It was thus that
the books of Luther had been condemned by the Church
even before they were conceived in his mind; and it was thus
69 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
also that the books of Arius, Nestorius, and Eutyches had
been condemned by the Church long before they were given
birth. It would appear, therefore, that it is the organ of the
newspaper or periodical, and not its separate issues, that
falls under the present rule.^
When, then, can we say that the organ of a newspaper
or periodical falls under the proscription of the present rule ?
The rule itself supplies the answer : when it . manifests a
character antagonistic to religion or morals. If the organ,
therefore, of any newspaper or periodical should manifest a
character or spirit hostile to any point of the whole area of
Christian truth, or to any precept of the entire Christian
moral code, it is proscribed by the present rule.
Eeg. XXII.— Nemo e Catholicis, praesertim e viris ecclesias-
ticis in hujusmodi diariis, vel foliis, vel libellis periodicis, quid-
quam, nisi suadente justa et rationabili causa, publicet.
1. After having stated in Eule 21 when it is that bad
newspapers and periodicals are proscribed by the ecclesias-
tical and natural law, the legislator now treats of contribu-
tions to the same, and prescribes that no Catholic, and,
above all, no cleric, is to publish anything in such papers
and periodicals unless he be induced to do so by a just and
reasonable cause.
2. This rule is simple both in its form and its matter ;.
neither requires explanation. It may be well, however, to
consider the motives that seem to have induced the legislator
to frame it. It would seem that one of his motives was to
prevent scandal ; for many persons would naturally be led
to beheve that the Catholics and priests who would contri-
bute articles to such papers or periodicals could not be
worthy of their name. Another end would seem to have
been to save the faithful from faUing into error ; for seeing
Catholics and priests writing for such papers they would
gradually be led to put trust in the principles advocated by
^ It is in this manner that II Monitore considers newspapers and periodicals
in the present context, for (p. 59) it writes : — ' Ora i giornali quando assal-
g-ono la religione ed i buoni costumi, sono proibiti di per se, benche scritti da
falsi Catholici ;' and again (p. 60) it writes : — ' La proibizione dei giornali
empii o immorali porta seco Tobligo di non retioerli, di non donarli ad altri, e
molto meno di non associarsi ad essi; I'associazione ai giornali cattivi 6 nn
cooperare non solo alia lore diffusione, ma si ancora alia loro esistenza.'
THE NEW LEGISLATION 5N THE INDEX 69
such organs. Finally, he may have intended by the present
rule to lessen the circulation of such papers and periodicals.
When the public perceive that those organs speak the ideas
and sentiments of none but men of bad character and ruined
fortunes, they will gradually be drawn away from reading
their publications.
The legislator states, however, that a just and reasonable
cause may render it lawful for a priest or layman to publish
an article in one of those papers or periodicals. We are not
prepared to specify what causes would be sufficient ; but it
would appear that they must be very grave. Generally
speaking, articles in such organs shall fail to produce any
good effect ; for, as the organs lie under the censure of the
Church, the articles, though good in themselves, shall be
tarnished with the same leprosy. The writer will be disre-
garded by the genuine supporters of the organ, and regarded
with suspicion by Catholics of true spirit. Perhaps even
such articles, instead of doing good, would do positive evil;
for it might happen that some Catholics, desirous to read the
said articles, would be induced to buy the issue on which
they should appear, and therein find cockle with the wheat.
Finally, there might be a risk that such articles, instead of
advancing the Catholic cause, might do it positive injury.
Some Catholics, full, perhaps of more zeal than discretion,
might rush into a defence without sufficient previous prepara-
tion, and thereby seriously injure the cause they would defend;
for, as there is nothing that so weakens the resources of a con-
quered country, and rivets the chains of slavery so tightly on it,
as an unsuccessful revolt, so there is scarcely anything that
does so much damage to a good cause as an indifferent defence.
We are, therefore, of opinion that it would be in accord-
ance with the wish of the legislator that all Catholics and
ecclesiastics would abstain almost altogether from inserting
articles in such organs ; and that when they should deem it
necessary to enter the lists with any anti-religious periodi-
cal or paper, they would do well to select rather some
Catholic paper or periodical of good and decent character as
an organ to give expression to their ideas.
To be continued, ^' HUBLEY.
[ 70 ]
DOCUMENTS
ENCYGLICAL OF HIS HOLINESS LEO XIIL ON THE
CONSECRATION OP MANKIND TO THE SACRED HEART
SANCTISSIMI DOMINI NOSTEI LEONIS DIVINA PROVIDENTIA PAPAE XIII
LITTERAE ENCYCLICAE AD PATRIARCHAS PRIMATES ARCHIEPIS-
COPOS EPISCOPOS ALIOSQUE LOCORUM ORDINARIOS PACEM ET
COMMUNIONEM CUM APOSTOLICA SEDE HABENTES
DE HOMINIBUS SACRATISSIMO CORDI lESU DEUODENDIS
VENERABILIBUS FRATRIBUS PATRIARCHIS PRIMATIBUS ARCHIEPIS-
COPIS EPISCOPIS ALIISQUE LOCORUM ORDINARIIS PACEM ET
COMMUNIONEM CUM APOSTOLICA SEDE HABENTIBUS
LEO PP. XIII.
VENERABILES FRATRES SALUTEM ET APOSTOLICAM BENEDICTIONEM
Annum Sacrum, more institutoque maiorum in hac alma Urbe
proxime celebrandum, per apostolicas Litteras, ut probe nostis,
nuperrime indiximus. Hodierno autem die, in spem auspicium-
que peragendae sanctius religiosissimae celebritatis, auctores
suasoresque sumus praeclarae cuiusdam rei, ex qua quidem, si
modo omnes ex animo, si consentientibus libentibusque volun-
tatibus paruerint, primum quidem nomhii christiano, dcinde
societati hominum universae fructus insignes non sine caussa
expectamus eosdemque mansuros.
Probatissimam' religionis formam, quae in cultu Sacratissimi
Cordis lesu versatur, sancte tueri ac maiore in lumine collocare
non semel conati sumus, exemplo Decessorum Nostrorum
Innocentii XII, Benedicti XIII, Clementis XIII, Pii VI eodem-
que nomine VII ac XI : idque maxime per Decretum egimus
die xxviii lunii mensis an. mdccclxxxix datum, quo scilicet
Festum eo titulo ad ritum primae classis eveximus. Nunc vero
luculentior quaedam obsequii forma ob versatur animo, quae
scilicet honorum omnium, quotquot Sacratissimo Oordi haberi
consueverunt, velut absolutio perfectioque sit : eamque lesu
Christo Redemtori pergratam fore confidimus. Quamquam haec,
de qua loquimur, baud sane nunc primum inota res est. Etenim
abhinc quinque ferme lustris, cum saecular'a solemnia imminerent
iterum instauranda postea quam mandatum de cultu divini
DOCUMENT'S 7l
Cordis propagando beata Margarita Maria de Alacoque divinitus
acceperat, libelli supplices non a privatis tantummodo, sed etiam
ab Episcopis ad Pium IX in id undique missi complures, ut
communitatem generis humani devovere augustissirao Cordi lesu
vellet. Differri placuit rem, quo decerneretur maturius : interim
devovendi sese singillatim civitatibus data facultas volentibus,
praescriptaque devotionis formula. Novis nunc accidentibus
caussis, maturitatem venisse rei perficiendae iudicamus.
Atque implissimum istud maximumque obsequii et pietatis
testimonium omnino convenit lesu Christo, quia ipse princeps est
ac dominus summus. Videlicet imperium eius non est tantum-
modo in gentes catholici nominis, aut in eos solum, qui sacro
baptismate rite abluti, utique, ad Ecclesiam, si spectetur ius,
pertinent, quamvis vel error opinionum devios agat, vel dissensio
a caritate seiungat : sed complectitur etiam quotquot numerantur
christianae fidei expertes, ita ut verissime in potestate lesu
Christi sit universitas generit humani. Nam qui Dei Patris
Unigenitus est, eamdemque habet cum ipso substantiam, ' splen-
dor gloriae et figura substantiae eius,'^ huic omnia cum Patre
communia esse necesse est, proptereaque quoque rerum omnium
summum impenum. Ob earn rem Dei Filius de se ipse apud
Prophetam, ' Ego autem,' effatur, * constitutus sum rex super
Sion montem sanctum eius. Dominus dixit ad me : Filius
meus es tu, ego hodie genui te. Postula a me, et dabo Tibi
gentes hereditatem tuam et possessionem tuam terminos terrae.' -
Quibus declarat, se potestatem a Deo accepisse cum in omnem
Ecclesiam quae per Sion montem intelligitur, tum in reliquum
terrarum orbem, qua eius late termini proferuntur. Quo autem
summa ista potestas fundamento nitatur, satis ilia docent, ' Filius
meus es tu.' Hoc enim ipso quod omnium Eegis est Filius,
universae potestatis est heres : ex quo ilia, * dabo Tibi gentes
hereditatem tuam.' Quorum sunt ea similia, quae habet Paulus
apostolus : ' Quem constituit heredem universorum. ' ^
Illud autem considerandum maxime, quid affirmaverit de
imperio suo lesus Christus non iam per apostolos aut prophetas,
sed suia ipse verbis. Quaerenti enim romano Praesidi : * ergo
rex es tu ' ? sine uUa dubitatione respondit : * tu dicis quia rex
sum ego.* Atque huius magnitudinem potestatis et infinitatem
1 Heb. i. 3. ^ Heb. i. 2.
2 Pg. ii. * loan, xviii. 37.
72 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
regni ilia ad Apostolos apertius confirmant : ' Data est mihi
omnis potestas in caelo et in terra.' ^ Si Christo data potestas
omnis, necessario consequitur, imperium eius summum esse
oportere, absolutum, arbitrio nullius obnoxium, nihil ut ei sit nee
par nee simile : cumque data sit in ca'elo et in terra, debet sibi
habere caelum terrasque parentia. Ee autem vera ius istud
singulare sib que proprium exercuit, iussis nimirum Apostolis
evulgare doctrinam suam, congregare homines in unum corpus
Ecclesiae per lavacrum salutis, leges denique imponere, quas
recusare sine salutis sempiternae discrimine nemo posset.
Neque tamen sunt in hoc omnia. Imperat Christus non iure
tantum nativo, quippe Dei Unigenitus, sed etiam quaesito. Ipse
enim eripuit nos ' de potestate tenebrarum,'^ idemque ' dedid
redemptionem semetipsum pro-omnibus.'^ Ei ergo facti sunt
' populus acquisitionis '* non solum et catholici et quotquot
christianum baptisma rite accepere, sed homines singuli et
universi. Quam in rem apte Augustinus : ' queritis,' inquit, ' quid
emerit ? Videte quid dederit, et invenietis quid emerit. Sanguis
Christi pretium est. . Tanti quid valet ? quid, nisi totus mundus ?
quid, nisi omnes gentes ? Pro toto dedit, quantum dedit.' ^
Cur autem ipsi infideles potestate dominatuque lesu Christi
teneantur, caussam sanctus Thomas rationemque, edisserendo,
docet. Cum enim de iudiciali eius potestate quaesisset, num
ad homines porrigatur universos, affirmassetque, ' iudiciaria
potestas consequitur potestatem regiam ' plane concludit : ' Christo
omnia sunt subiecta quantum ad potestatem, etsi nondum sunt ei
subiecta quantum ad executionem potestatis.' Quae Christi
potestas et imperium in homines exercetur per veritatem, per
iustitiam, maxime per caritatem.
Verum ad istud potestatis dominationisque suae fundamentum
duplex benigne ipse sinit ut accedat a nobis, si libet, devotio
voluntaria. Porro lesus Christus, Deus idem ac Redemptor,
omnium est rerum cumulata perfectaque possessione locuples :
nos autem adeo inopes atque egentes ut, quo eum munerari
liceat, de nostro quidem suppetat nihil. Sed tamen pro summa
bonitate et caritate sua minime recusat quin sibi, quod suum est,
perinde demus, addicamus, ac iuris nostri foret : nee solum non
recusat, sed expetit ac rogat : * Fill praebe cor tuum mihi.' Ergo
1 Matt, xxviii * 1 Pet. ii. 9.
2 Coloss. 113. ^ Tract. 120 in loan.
8 I Tim. ii 6. « 3» p. q. 59. a. 4.
Documents 73
gratificari illi utique possumus voluntate atque affectione animi.
Nam ipsi devovendo nos, non modo et agnoscimus et accipimus
imperium eius aperte ac libenter : sed re ipsa testamur, si nostrum
id esset quod dono damus, summa nos voluntate daturos ; ac
petere ab eo ut id ipsum, etsi plane suum, tamen accipere a nobis
ne gravetur. Haec vis rei est, de qua agimus, haec Nostris
subiecta verbis sententia. Quoniamque inest in Sacro Corde
symbolum atque expressa imago infinitae lesu Christi caritatis,
quae movet ipsa nos ad amandum mutuo, ideo consentaneum est
dicare se Cordi eius augustissimo : quod tamen nihil est aliud
quam dedere atque obligare se lesu Christo, quia quidquid honoris,
obsequii, pietatis divino Cordi tribuitur, vere et proprie Christo
tribuitur ipsi.
Itaque ad istiusmodi devotionem voluntate suscipiendam
excitamus cohortamurque quotquot divinissimum Cor et noscant
et diligant : ac valde velimus, eodem id singulos die efficere, ut
tot millium idem vonentium animorum significationes uno omnes
tempore ad caeli templa pervehantur. Verum numne elabi animo
patiemur innumerabiles alios, quibus Christiana Veritas nondum
affulsit? Atqui eius persona geritur a Nobis, qui venit salvum
facere quod perierat, quique totius humani generis saluti addixit
sanguinem suum. Propterea eos ipsos qui in umbra mortis
sedent, quemadmodum excitare ad eam, quae vere vita est,
assidue studemus, Christi nuntiis in omnes partes ad erudiendum
dimissis, ita nunc, eorum miserati vicem, Sacratissimo Cordi
lesu commendamus maiorem in modum et, quantum in Nobis
est, dedicamus. Qua ratione haec, quam cunctis suademus,
cunctis est profutura devotio. Hoc enim facto, in quibus est
lesu Christi cognitio et amor, ii facile sentient sibi fidem amorem-
que crescere. Qui, Christo cognito, praecepta tamen eius legem-
que neghgunt, iis fas erit e Sacro Corde flammam caritatis
arripere. lis demum longe miseris, qui caeca superstitione
conflictantur, caeleste auxilium uno omnes animo flagitabimus,
ut eos lesus Christus, sicut iam, sibi habet subiectos ' secundum
potestatem,' subiiciat aliquando * secundum executionem potes-
tatis,' neque solum 'in futuro saeculo, quando de omnibus
voluntatem suam implebit, quosdam quidem salvando, quosdam
quidem salvando, quosdam puniendo,^ sed in hac etiam vita
mortali, fidem scilicet ac sanctitatem impertiendo ; qtiibus illi
1 S. Thorn. L c.
74 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORb
virtutibus colere Deum queant, uti par est, et ad sempiternam in
caelo felicitatem contendere.
Cuiusmodi dedicatio spem quoque civitatibus afferb rerum
meliorum, cum vincula instaurare aut firmius possit adstringere,
quae res publicas natura iungunt Deo. Novissimis hisce tempori-
bus id maxime actum, ut Ecclesiam inter ac rem civilem quasi
murus intersit. In constitutione atque administratione civitatum
pro nibilo babeter sacri divinique iuris auctoritas, eo proposito ut
communis vitae consuetudinem nulla vis religionis attingat.
Quod buc ferme recidit, Cbristi fidem de medio tollere, ipsumque,
si fieri posset, terris exigere Deum. Tanta insolentia elatis
animis, quid mirum quod bumana gens plera(|U6 in eam inciderit
rerum perturbationem iisque iactetur fluctibus, qui metu et
periculo vacuum sinant esse nominem ? Certissima incolumitatis
publicae firmamenta dilabi neoesse est, religione posthabita.
Poenas autem Deus de perduellibus iustas meritasque sumpturus,
tradidit eos suae ipsorum libidint ut serviant cupiditatibus ac
sese ipsi nimia libertate conficiant.
Hinc vis ilia malorum quae iamdiu insident, quaeque vehe-
menter postulant, ut unius auxilium exquiratur, cuius virtute
depellantur. Quisnam autem ille sit, praeter lesum Cbristum
Unigenitum Dei ? ' Neque enim aliud nomen est sub caelo
datum bominibus, in quo oporteat nos salvos fieri.' ^ Ad ilium
ergo confugiendum, qui est * via, Veritas et vita.' Erratum est :
redeundum in viam : obductae mentibus tenebrae : discutienda
caligo luce veritatis : mors occupavit : apprehendenda vita. Tum
denique lice bit sanari tot vulnera, tum ius omne in pristinae
auctoritatis spem revirescet, et restituentur ornamenta pacis,
atque excident gladii fluentque arma de manibus, cum Cbristi
imperium omnes accipient libentes eique parebunt, ' atque omnis
lingua ' confitebitur ' quia Dominus lesus Cbristus in gloria est
DeiPatris.''^
Cum Ecclesia per proxima originibus tempora caesareo iugo
premeretur, conspecta sublime adolescenti imperatori crux,
amplissimae victoriae, quae mox est consecuta, auspex simu^
atque effectrix. En alterum bodie oblatum oculis auspicatissimum,
divinissimuraque signum i videlicet Cor lesu sacratissimum,
superimposita cruce, splendidissimo candore inter flammas
elucens. In eo omnes collocandae s^es : ex eo hominum petenda
atque expectanda salus. -
' Actsiv. 12. 2 Phil. ii. 11.
DOCUMENTS 75
Denique, id quod praeterire silentio nolumus, ilia quoque
caussa, privatim quidem Nostra, sed satis iusta et gravis, ad rem
suscipiendam impulit, quod bonorum omnium auctor Deus Nos
baud ita pridem, periculoso depulso morbo, conservavit. Cuius
tanti beneficii, auctis nunc per Nos Sacratissimo Cordi honoribus,
et memoriam publice extare volumus et gratiam.
Itaque edicimus ut diebus nono, decimo, undecimo proximi
mensis lunii, in suo cuiusque urbis atque oppidi templo principe
statae supplicationes fiant, perque singulos eos dies ad ceteras
preces Litaniae Sanctissimi Cordis adiiciantur auctoritate Nostra
probatae : postremo autem die formula Consecrationis recitetur :
quam vobis formulam, Venerabiles Fratres, una cum his litteris
mittimus.
Divinorum munerum auspicem benevolentiaeque Nostrae
testem vobis et clero populoque, cui praeestis, apostolicam bene-
dictionem peramanter in Domino impertimus.
Datum Eomae apud Sanctum Petrum die xxv Maii, An.
MDCccLXxxxix, Pontificatus Nostri vicesimo secundo.
LEO PP. XIII.
AD SACRATISSIMUM COR lESU FORMULA CONSECRATIONIS
RECITANDA
lesu dulcissime, Redemptor humani generis respice nos ad
altare tuum humillime provolutos. Tui sumus, tui esse volumus ;
quo autem Tibi coniuncti lirmius esse possimus, en hodie Sacra-
tissimo Cordi tuo se quisque nostrum sponte dedicat, Te quidem
multi novere numquam : Te, spretis mandatis tuis, multi repu-
diarunt. Miserere utrorumque, benignissime lesu : atque ad
sanctum Cor tuum rape universos. Rex esto, Domine, nee
fidelium tantum qui nuUo tempore discessere a te, sed etiani
prodigorum filiorum qui Te reliquerunt : fac hos, ut domum
paternam cito repetant, ne miseria et fame pereant. Rex esto
eorum, quos aut opinionum error deceptos habet, aut discordia
separatos, eosque ad portum veritatis atque ad unitatem fidei
rcvoca, ut brevi fiat unum ovile et unus pastor. Rex esto denique
eorum omnium, qui in vetere gentium superstitione versantur,
eosque e tenebris vindicare ne renuas in Dei lumen et regnum.
Largire, Domine, Ecclesiae tuae securam cum incolumitate liber-
tatem ; largire cunctis gentibus tranquillitatem ordinis : perfice, ut
abntroque terras vertice una resonet vox : Sit laus divine Cordi,
per quod nobis parta salus : ipsi gloria et honor irr saecula : amen.
Di questo importantissimo documento pontificio daremo quanto
prima la versione italiana autentica.
76 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECOJRD
heretics in catholic hospitals
haeeetico moribundo postulanti ministrum proprium, non
licet morem geeere, sed catholicae personae ipsi
inservientes, passive se habeant
Beatissime Pater,
Superiorissa Generalis Instituti Parvarum Sororum a Paupe-
ribus dictarum, provoluta ad S. V. pedes humiliter postulat
quomodo sese gerere debeant sorores quando reperitur inter senes
ia propriis domibus receptos, acatholicus quidam qui in extreme
vitae limine positus, posthabitis conatibus ut moriatur in sinu
verae religionis conversus, absolute petit adsistentiam ministri
haeretici. Possunt-ne Sorores dictum ministrum advocare ?
B'eria IV, die 14 Decembris 1898.
In Congregatione Generali abEE. ac ERmisDD. Cardinalibus
in rebus fidei et morum Inquisitoribus Generalibus habita,
propositis suprascriptis precibus, praehabitoque EE. DD.
Consultorum voto, iidem EE. ac RR. Patres respondendum
mandarunt :
'Detur Decretum in Colonien. fer. IV, 14 Martii, 1848, una
cum Declaratione ad "Vicarium Apost. Aegypti fer. IV, 5 Februarii,
1872.'
Porro Decretuin in colonien. ita sc habet ;
Beatissime Pater, — ' D. Evens, presbyter dioecesis Colonien-
sis in Borussia, V. S. humiliter exponit quod in civitate Neutz,
eiusdem dioecesis, existit hospitium, cuius ipse Rector et
Capellanus est, ac in quo infirmorum curam gerunt Moniales,
dictae Sorores Nigrae. Cum autem in hoc hospitio subinde
recipiantur acatholicae religionis sectatores, ac iidem ministrum
haereticum, a quo religionis auxilia et solatia recipiant, identidem
petant, quaeritur utrum praefatis monialibus falsae religionis
ministrum advocare licitum sit ? Quaeritur insuper utrum eadem
danda sit solutio, ubi haereticus infirmus m domo privata
cuiusdam catholici degit ; utrum scilicet tunc catholicus ministrum
haereticum advocare licite possit.
* Resp.: Tuxta exposita, non licere ; et ad mentem. Mens est
quod passive se habe . '
DOCUMENTS 77
Sequitur Declaratio ad Vicarium Apost, Aegypti : ^
* Nella Fer. IV, 31 Gennaio, 1872, fu proposta a questi Emi
Inquisitori Gen.li la dimanda di Mons. Vicario e Delegate
Apostolico dell'Egitto . . . diretta ad avere istruzioni sul come
diportarsi negli Ospedali misti, serviti da Monache oattoliche
quando qualche scismatico o protestante infermo ivi degente
richiede I'assistenza del suo ministro,
'II S. Consesso, dopo aver preso rargomento con i suoi
aggiunti in matura considerazione, trovo conveniente di emettere
il seguente Decreto ; B. P. D. Vicarius Apostolicus se conformet
Decreto fer IV, 15 Martii, 1848, et opportune eidem explicetur
sensus verborwn eiusdem Decreti passive se habeat. Infatti egli
nella sua lettera manifestava il suo imbarazzo nello interpretare
quelle espressioni, ossia nel tradurle in pratica. Sul qual proposito
i prelodati EEmi intendono sia fatta apposita avvertenza a quel
Prelato, nel senso che alle Monache o ad altri individui cattolici,
addetti alia direzione o al servizio dell'Ospedale, non sarebbe
lecito prestarsi direttamente alle richieste degli acattolici infermi
in quanto al chiamare un loro ministro, il che e bene che alia
evenienza lo dichiarino ; ma in pari tempo soggiungono che per
la chiamata possono servirsi di qualche soggetto appartenente alia
rispettiva loro setta. In questa guisa rimane salva la massima
in quanto alia vietata comunicazione in divinis^ '
Sequenti vero Feria VI, die 26 Decembris, eiusdem mensis
et anni, in solita Audientia a SSmo D. N. Leone Div. Prov. Pp.
XIII, R. P. D. Adsessori impertita, SSmus D. N. resolutionem
EE. et RR. Patrum adprobavit.
I. Can. Mancini, S. B, et U, Inquisit. Not,
1 Feria rV, die 31 Ian. 1872 proposita fait Emis Inq. gen. petitio Bmi
Vicarii et Delegati Apl. Aegypti, ad hoc tradita ut instrueretur quomodo
agendum esset in Hospitalibns mixtis in quibus catholicae Moniales servitium
praestant, quoties aliquis scliiBmaticus vel protestans infirmus inibi dectimbens
postulat adaistentiam proprii ministri.
S. Ordo, petitionem cum suis adiunctis matura consideratione ventilavit, et
opportunimi auxit emittendi sequens Decretum : ' R. P. D. Vic. Aplicus se
conformet Decreto fer. IV, 15 Martii 1848 et opportune eidem explicetur sensus
yeThoTxaa einsdeja Decieii passivt! se habeat. Ipse enim in epi*«tolis datis sese
anxium declarabat in interpretandis dictis verbis, seu in applicandis illis ad
praxim. Et ideo praelaudatis Emis Patribus mens est ut notificetur Praelato
Oratori, Monialibus vel aliis personis catholicis addictis directioni vel servitio
Hospitalis, non licere operam suam directe praestare infirmis acatholicis pro
advocando proprio ministro, et bene erit, si data cccasione, id declarant; sed
addunt Emi Patres, quod adliiberi i)otest pro advocando Ministro, ministerium
aUcuius personae pertinentis ad respectivam sectam postulantium. Et ita
salva manet doctrina relate ad vetitam communieationem in divinis/
78 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
FAST TO BE OBSERVED BEFORE ORDINATION
THE CONSECRATION OF CHURCHES
CIRCA lEIUNIUM PRAEMITTENDUM S. ORDINATIONI ET CONSECRA-
TIONI ECCLESIARUM
Beatissime Pater,
Episcopus N. N. ad pedes S. V. provolutus humillime petit
benignissimam declarationem quomodo sit intelligendum ieiunium
ante Ecclesiae consecrationem et ante Ordinationes.
In casu vero quod ieiunium hocce in Pontificali Romano
praescriptum comprehendat turn abstinentiam a carnibus, turn
etiam unicam in die saturationem, humillime petit Episcopus
orator, qui pluries per annum Ecclesias consecrat et Ordinationes
facit, pro se, pro Ecclesiae adscriptis et pro ordinandis mitigatio-
nem dicti praecepti, quatenus Sanctitas Vestra indulgere dignetur
dispensationem a carnibus quoad prandium, tum ante Ecclesiae
consecrationem tum ante Ordinationes, ita ut maneat, excepta
sic dicta suppa, abstinentia a carnibus in coena et ieiunium pro
more regionum nostrarum servandum.
Causae sunt : l*" Dispensationes pro diebus quadragesimalibus
a S. V. similiter concessae. 2° Asperitas aeris et circumstantia
victus nostrarum regionum. 3° Infirmitas moralis multorum
laicorum Ecclesiis nostris adscriptorum, etc.
Feria IV, die 14 Decembris 1898.
In Congregatione Generali coram EEmis et RRmis DD.
Cardinalibus in rebus fidei et morum Inquisitoribus Generalibus
habita, propositis suprascriptas dubiis praehabitoque RR. DD.
Consultorum voto, iidem EE. ac RR. Patres respondendum
mandarunt :
' Quoad Ordinationes, sufficit servare ieiunia Quatuor Tem-
porum ; nam pro Ordinationibus extra Tempora non adest
ieiunii obligatio.'
Quoad Consecrationes Ecclesiarum servetur Decretum S, B. C,
in Mechlinien. diei 29 lulii, 1870 (n. 2519 edit, noviss.) ad I,
quod ita se habet •' * Ieiunium in Pontificali Romano praescriptum
esse strictae obligationis pro Episcopo consecrante et pro iis
tantum qui petunt sibi Ecclesiam consecrari ; idemque ieiunium
indicendum esse die praecedenti consecrationi ad form am
Pontificalis Romani.'
DOCUMENTS 79
' Quoad vero petitam dispensationem pro ieiunio in Consecra-
tione Ecclesiae, supplicandum SSmo iuxta preces.'
Sequent! vero Feria VI, die 16 Decembris eiusdem anni, in
solita audientia a SSmo D. N. Leone Div. Prov. Pp. XIII,
E. P. D. Adsessori impertita SSmus D. N, resolutionem EE. ac
ER. Patrum adprobavit et petitam gratiam concessit, contrariis
non obstantibus quibuscumque.
I. Can. Mancint, S. B. et U. Inquis. Not.
MATRIMONIAL IMPEDIMENTS
e s. e. univ. inquisitione
explicatur responsio in una cenomanen ii. martii 1896 . . .
quum duo fratres duas sorores duxerunt, eorum soboles
duplici tantum imped. consang. devincitur.
Beatissime Pater,
Eecens vulgataest responsio S. C. S. Officii data ad Episcopum
Cenomanensem,^ circa impedimenta consanguinitatis multiplicia,
casu quo duo sponsi in secundo gradu consanguinitatis revincti,
avum et aviam habent in secundo item gradu coniugatos ; ex qua
responsione aperte sequitur :
In casu contemplato adesse non solum impedimentum in
secundo aequali, sed etiam in quarto aequali :
2. Ideoque non sufficere declarationem, item nee dispensa-
tionem impediment! in secundo aequali ; unde matrimonium
contractum in huiusmodi hypothesi, id est declarato et dispensato
solo impedimento secundi gradus, esse nullum.
Sequitur praeterea 3. Consanguinitatem in quarto gradu esse
duplicem ; quia cum avus et avia sponsorum non se habeant per
modum unius stipitis sed ut personae, ideoque stipites distinct!,
iam duplex est via ad ascendendum usque ad ulteriorem
stipitem.
Videtur autem ilia duplex consanguinitas in quarto aequali
ita duplex constituere impedimentum, ut si unicum declaretur et
dispensetur impedimentum in quarto gradu (declarato item et
dispensato altero in secundo gradu aequali), matrimonium foret
nullum.
Porro frequentior praxis in Curiis ecclesiasticis nostrarum
regionum duplex tantum, non triplex, in casu proposito retinebat
1 Cf. Anal. Ecol., vol. iv., p. 207, ubi haec responsio prostat.
80 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
et dispensandum curabat impedimentum : scilicet unum in
secundo aequali; alterum in quarto aequali. Numquid igitur
dispensationes sic datae nullius fuissent momenti et matrimonia
sic contracta, invalida ? Namque grayes pro matrimoniorum
valore adesse videntur rationes. Nam : 1. Dum oratores
arborem genealogicam exhibent, ex qua aperte deducitur eos
descendere in secunda generatione a parentibus qui in secundo
gradu aequali contraxerant, liquide et candide aperiunt omnia,
nee locus esse videtursubreptioniavt obreptioni. 2. Dum Curia,
considerans casum et arborem genealogicam, dispensat super
duplici tantum impedimento, res prout sunt, contemplantur et
casui vero prospicere intendit ; durumque videretur dicere matri-
monium nullum fuisse, eo quod Curia, omnia casus elementa
habens, duplex tantum vidisset impedimentum, dum triplex erat.
Sed et alia difficultas oritur ex praefata decisione. Casu enim
quo duo fratres duxerint duas sorores, iam eorum filii non duplici
tantum sed quadruplici impedimento consanguinitatis in secundo
aequali devincerentur. Quia nempe, si pater et mater singulorum
non per modum unius stipitis se habeant, iam quoad singulos
filios, duplex datur via ascendendi ad duplicem stipitem
ulteriorem, unde quatuor sunt impedimenta quod nemo auctorum,
si unus, me conscio, excipiatur, docuit, nuUaque ex Curiis, quan-
tum scire fas est, in praxi servat ; quando enim adsint sponsi
quorum pater materque sunt respective frater et soror alterutrius
patris et matris, Curiae dispensationem petunt aut concedunt
super duplici tantum impedimento in secundo gradu aequali.
Quum vero in hac Dioecesi N. innumera sint matrimonia cum
variis impedimentis consanguinitatis contracta, sequentium dubi-
orum solutio a S. Congregatione S. OflGicii enixe petitur nempe :
I. Quando duo sponsi constituuntur in secundo aequali
consanguinitatis gradu, et eorum avus et avia ipsi in secundo
consanguinitatis gradu matrimonium contraxerant, ita ut devinci-
antur etiam quarto gradu consanguinitatis, utrum necessario
petenda et obtinenda sit dispensatio super triplici impedimento,
nempe in secundo efc in duplici quarto, an valida sit dispensatio
forsan petita et obtenta super duplici tantum impedimento, nempe
secundi aequalis et quarbi item aequalis. Et quatenus negative
ad secundam partem ;
II. Quid agendum quoad matrimonia in hac Dioecesi cum
simili dispensatione contracta, nempe super duplici tantum
impedimento in secundo et quarto ?
DOCUMENtS 81
III. Dum duo fratres duas sorores duxerunt, rum eorum
soboles devinciatur duplici vel quadruplici vinculo consanguini-
tatis in secundo aequali ? — Efc quatenus quadruplici ;
IV. Num invalida sint matrimonia inter huiusmodi contracta
cum dispensatione super duplici tantum consanguinitatis impedi-
mento in secundo aequali ? — Et quatenus invalida ;
V. Quid faciendum quoad matrimonia in hac Dioecesi sic
contracta ?
Et Deus, etc.
Feria IV, die 22 Fehruarii, 1899.
In Congregatione Generali ab E,mis DD. Cardinalibus in
rebus fidei et morum Inquisitoribus Generalibus habita, propositis
suprascriptis dubiis, praehabitoque EE. DD. Consultorum voto,
iidem EE. ac EE. Patres respondendum mandarunt :
'Ad I. Quoad primam partem, affirmative ut in fer. IV. die
11 Martii, 1896 Cenomanen, — Quoad secundam partem pariter
affirmative ; dummodo exponatur casus uti est, non obstante errore
materiali in computatione impedimentorum.'
* Ad. II. Provisum in praecedenti. '
'Ad. III. Duplici tantum consanguinitatis impedimento in
secundo gradu aequali.*
'Ad. IV. et V. Provisum in praecedenti.'
' Sequenti vero Feria VI, die 24 eiusdem mensis et anni, in
audientia a SS. D. N. Leone Div. Prov, Pp. XIII. E. P. D.
Adsessori impertita, SS.mus D. N. resolutionem EE. et EE.
Patrum adprobavit.'
I. Can. Mancini, S. B. et U. Biquis, Not.
1CABBIAOES OF FREEMASONS
conceditur ordinaeiis facultas permittendi mateimonia
libeborum pbnsatorum
Beatissimo Padre,
II Vescovo N. N., prostrato ai piedi della S. V., rispettosa-
mente espone quanto appresso :
Con decreto di Fer. IV 30 Gennaio 1867, confermato daU'altro
di Fer. Ill loco IV 25 Maggio 1897,^ il S. Officio diehiaro :
* Quoties agatur de matrimonio inter unam partem catholicam et
alteram quae a fide ita defecit, ut alicui falsae religioni vel sectae
sese adscripserit, requirendam esse consuetam et necessariam
dispensationem cum solitis ac notis praescriptionibus et clausulis.
1 a. Anal. EccL, toI. vi., p. 141.
VOL. VI. F
82 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Quod si agatur de matrimonio inter unam partem catholicam et
alterara, quae fidem abiecit, at nulli falsae religioni vel haereticae
sectae sese adscripsit, quando parochus nullo modo potest huius-
modi matrimonium impedire (ad quod totis viribus incumbere
tenetur) et prudenter timet ne ex denegata matrimonio adsistentia
grave scandalum vel damnum oriatur, rem deferendam esse ad
E. P. D. Episcopum, qui, sicut ei opportuno nunc facultas
tribuitur, inspectis omnibus casus adiunctis, permittere poterit,
ut parochus matrimonio passive intersit tamquam testis author-
izahiliSy dummodo cautum omnina sit catholicae educationi
universae prolis aliisque similibus conditionibus.'
Ora il Vescovo oratore chiede umilmente la facolta di per-
mettere i matrimonii dei liberi pensatori secondo le norme del
prefato decreto. Che ecc.
In Congregatiorie generali S. E. et U. Inquisitionis, habita ab
EE.mis et EE.mis DD. Cardinalibus in rebus fidei et morum
Generalibus Inquisitoribus, propositis suprascriptis precibus, prae-
habitoque EE. DD. Consultorum voto, iidem EE. ac EE. Patres
respondendum mandarunt :
Eeformatus precibus : I. An verba Decreti S. Officii fer. IV,
die 30 lanuarii 1867 ad I *rem deferendam esse ad E. P. D.
Episcopum qui, sicut ei opportuna nunc facultas tribuitur'
extendi possint ad omnes Episcopos ?
II. ' Et quatenus negative orator Episcopus N.N. suppliciter
petit ut sibi dicta facultas concedatur.'
Eesp. : ad I. * Affirmative, facto verbo cum SS.mo.*
* Ad II. * Provisum in primo.'
Feria vero VI, die 13 eiusdem mensis et anni, in solita
audientia E. P. D. Adsessori S. 0. impei tita, facta de his omnibus
SS.mo D. N. Leoni Div. Prov. Pp. XIII relatione, SS.mus
resolutionem EE. morum Patrum adprobavit.
I. Can. Manoini, S. B. et U. Inquis. Not,
THE ABUSE OF DELAYINa BAPTISM
CIRCA LUGENDUM ABU SUM DIFFERENDI NOTABILITER COLLATIONEM
BAPTISMI
Bkatissime Pater,
Episcopus N. N, invenit in sua dioecesi lugendum abusum,
quod scilicet nonnulli genitores, ob futiles praetextus, praesertim
quia patrinus vel matrina parati non sint, vel a remoto loco
transire debeant, differunt collationem baptism! neonatis, non
bOCUMENf S 83
solum per hebdomadas et per menses, sed etiam per annos, uti
manifestum apparuit occasione Sacrae Visitationis. Ad obvi-
andum praefato abusui, praefato abusui, omnes adhibuit conatus ;
valde tamen timet Orator ne ilium iuxta vota eradicare possit.
Quibus positis, humiliter postulat utrum obstetrix, quando
praevidet bai)tismum notabiliter differendum iri, possit illico
neonatum abluere, quamvis iste in bona sanitate reperiatur,
etiam insciis uno vel utroque conjuge, monito tamen de hoc
parocho ?
Feria IV., die 11 lamcarii, 1899.
In Congregatione Generali S. R. et U. Inquisitionis, habita
ab EE.mis et RE. mis DD. Cardinalibus in rebus fidei et morum
Generalibus Inquisitoribus, proposito suprascripto dubio, prae-
habitoque RR. et DD. Consultorum voto, iidem EE.mi ac RR.mi
Patres respondendum mandarunt.
' Urgendum ut Baptismus quam citius jninistretur : tunc
vero permitti poterit ut obstetrix ilium conferat, quando pericu-
lum positive timeatur ne puer dilationis tempore sit moriturus.'
Feria vero VI, die 13 eiusdem mensis et anni, in solita
audientia R. P. D. Adsessori S. 0, impertita, facta de his omnibus
SS.mo D- N, Leoni Div. Prov. Pp. XIII relatione, SS. us resolu-
tionem EE.morum Patrum adprobavit.
I. Can. Mancini, S. B. et U. Inquis. Not.
LEQISIiATION BEOABDINa BEGULABS WHO BECOME
SECULABIZED
DUBIUM. AN EPISCOPUS EXCIPEEE COGATUR RELIGIOSOS SAECU-
LARIZATOS, ET AN EOSDEM VALEAT ADHIBERE IN SACEIS
MINISTERIIS
Illme. AC Rme. Dne., uti Fratbe,
Difl&cili Eegularium hodiernae conditioni occurrere satagens,
S. Congr. super Disciplina Regulari, pro illis Beligiosis, qui gratia
vocationis destituti, val de alia rationabili causa muniti, extra
claustra degere voluerunt, et tractu temporis vellent — auditis
Superioribus Generalibus Ordinis, maturo consilio, statuit atque
decrevit : — ' Ut ipsis f acultas tribueretur manendi extra claustra
habitu regulari dimisso, ad annum : quo tempore S. Patrimonium
sibi constituerent ; Episcopum benevokim receptorcju invenirent ;
atque deinde, ])ro saecularizatione perpetua, iterum recurrerent, et
interim Sacra facientes, verbum Domini praedicantes, fidelibus
populis pia conversatione prodesse valerent,'
84 THfe IRISH ECCLEglASTieAL RECOkE)
Quibus autem dispositionibus iurisdictio episcopalis nulli
subest detrimento : namque Ordinarius invitus non cogitur illos
in suum Clerum cooptare, neque Beneficiis ecclesiasticis pro-
ponere ; sed perdurante gratia concessipnis, eiusdemque a Sede
Apostolica, consecuta prorogatione^ ad sancta obeunda ministeria,
'pro lubitu in sua Dioecesi habilitare potest, si velit. Neque uUam
huic agendi rationi dubitationem infert Decrctum Aiictis admodum
1892, qui hoc per regulam generalem afficit Listituta recentia
votorimi simplicium ; ac tantum yer exceptionem respicit Ordines
propria dictoSy in quibus vota solemnia religiosi nuncupantur.
Quae tamen cxceptio, si fieri contigerit, in singulari decreto ada-
mussim notaticry ita ut speciale Bescripkim, eiusque conditiones,
legc7n pro individuo, constituunt : et solummodo ab eo Ordinarius
sui agendi rationem quaerere debeat.
lam vero, litteris, quas, die 4 lulii cur. an. Amplitudo tua, ad
banc S. Congregationem mittere existimavit, relate ad PP. . . .
Ordiniis SSiiiae Trinitatis — et pro quibus ut ait, — ' quin onera
Episcopi benevoU receptoris in se suscipiat, aliquod levamen ipsis
offerre desiderat ; ideoque licentiam cxposcity ut Ordinem exercere
valeant ad suum beneplacitum, &c.'
Hie S. Ordo respondit : ' "Religiosos huiusmodi esse saecula-
rizatos ad annum et interim^ &c. ut supra : pertinere ad Ordines
votorum solemnium ; proinde nisi sint aliqua speciali censura
irretiti, nulla ipsi indigent nova facultatCy ut Sacris ministeriis
Episcopi auctoritate in respectiva Dioecesi possint vacare.'
Et haec dicta sint, ut ius et regula agendi in re Tibi propona-
tur ; cui a Deo Optimo Maximo cuncta felicia adprecamur.
Komae die 16 Aug., 1898.
Amplitudinis tuae
Uti Frater Addictissimus,
S. Cabd. Vannutelli, Praef,
INDULGE NCES GRANTED BY A BISHOP
EX S. CONGREG. INDULGENTIABUM
MONTIS POLITANI DUBIA DE INDULGENTIIS AB EPISCOPO CONCESSIS
Episcopus Montis Politiani huic Sacrae Congregation! Indul-
gentiis Sacrisque Reliquiis praepositae sequentia dubia enodanda
proposuit :
I. An Indulgentiae quas Episcopus concedit valeant intra
limites suae dioecesos tantum, an vero etiam extra ?
DOCUMENTS 85
II. An acquiri possint intra limites dioeceseos etiam a fideli-
bus, qui non sunt subditi Episcopi concedentis Indulgentias ?
III. An subditi Episcopi concedentis Indulgentias has lucrari
valeant dum extra dioecesim commorantur ?
Et Emi Patres in Vaticano Palatio coadunati relatis dubiis
die 5 Maii 1898 responderunt :
Ad I. Affirmative ad 1.'"" partem ; negative ad 2.""\ nisi agatur
de subditis Episcopi concedentis, et de Indulgentiis personalibus.
Ad II. Affirmative, dummodo Indulgentiae non sint concessae
alicui peculiari coetui personarum .
Ad III. Pro visum in primo.
De quibus facta relatione SSmo Domino Nostro Leoni Papae
XIII. in Audientia. habita die 26 Maii 1898 ab infrascripto
Cardinali Praefecto, eadem Sanctitas Sua Emorum Patrum reso-
lutiones benigne approbavit.
Datum Romae ex Secretaria eiusdem S. Congregationis die 26
Maii 1898.
Fr. HiERONYMus M. Card. Gotti, Prafeckts.
Lii« S.
1^1 Antonius Archiep. Antinoen., Sccretarius,
[ 86 I
NOTICES OF BOOKS
De Probabilismo Dissertatio. Quam, cum subjectis
Thesibus, pro gradu Doctoris S. Theologiae, in Collegio
S. Patritii,Maniitiae,PublicePropugnavit. David Dinneen,
Presbyter Cloynensis. Dublini : Browne et NoJan, Ltd.
The publication of Dr. Dinneen' s treatise will have been
awaited by many with a peculiar interest. A very wide-spread
public attention was centered in the auspicious event of twelve
months ago, when he figured as the first successful candidate for
the Maynooth Laureate. In the Public Defence which he then
underwent, he challenged attack from all comers on the proposi-
tions which are set forth in the present treatise.
Though the literature of Probabilism is already confessedly
very extensive, yet we cannot regret the influences which deter-
rnined Dr. Dinneen in the selection of his subject. From a careful
perusal of his work we believe that he has made a contribution to
that literature of distinct and permanent value. While he shows
himself fully versed in the best literature of the subject, and
manifests due deference to the views of the great masters of moral
science, yet one cannot fail to recognise throughout a striking
independence of thought, whether in the discriminating fashion in
which he deals with the opinions and arguments of others, or in
the masterly and confident manner in which he seeks to establish
his own position. The book throughout is a model of clear
exposition and capable reasoning, and evinces a thorough grasp
by the author of the great principle in all its bearings.
The chapters occupied with the defence of his system are
specially interesting. With Lehmkuhl and others, he attaches
decisive force to the toleration of Probabilism by the Church.
The argument from the necessity of promulgation he propounds
in regard to duhia juris, which are such in the first instance — the
doubt arising ex culpa legis. In regard to duhia juris, which are
primarily duhia facti — a class which comprehends in his view all
doubts in regard to the natural law — his defence is based on the
principle that one may have a sufficient reason for incurring the
danger of material sin. To establish the presence of such a
reason wherever Probabilism applies, he has recourse to the
NOTICES OF BOOKS 87
well-known method of weighing the good and evil which would
accrue to the race from the presence or absence of a universal
obligation.
But is it so clear that this method is really applicable here — at
least w^hen there is question of doubts in regard to the natural
law? The method seems to have been employed already in
regard to the direct doubtful law, and ex hypothesi has failed to
yield a satisfactory conclusion. For instance, in the case of a
doubtful negative law, we have weighed the commoda and incom-
moda to the race, were a certain line of conduct universally per-
mitted or prohibited, and we have simply failed to reach a better
conclusion than this. It is probable, or more probable, as the
case may be, that the mcommoda resulting from a universal per-
mission would predominate, while the contradictory of this
remains quite probable.
In regard to all doubtful laws {juris ng^turae) the applica-
tion of the same method has resulted in similar failure.
How, then, can we hope to demonstrate that, were a
universal obligation of observing all those doubtful laws im-
posed, evil to the race would predominate in the result, seeing
that, for aught we know, an obligation of observing them sever-
ally may result in good to the race ? Furthermore, we do not
clearly see that, in estimating the sufficiency of the reason,
account should be taken of the danger of formal sin as such. We
speak still in regard to doubts of the natural law. We could
understand the frequency of sin being adduced as a proof of the
over-burdeDing of nature by the proposed obligation. But our
author evidently requires for his argument a consideration of the
immense evil inherent in formal sin as such. But if an obligation
be demanded by the essences of things — if the obligation against
which Dr. Dinneen contends be so demanded — will it not be pre-
sent irrespective of the fact that men will knowingly violate it ?
How, then, can we legitimately take into consideration the evil of
formal sin as such, or the dangers of this evil, in determining the
presence or absence of an obligation ? Indeed, we cannot help
thinking that if Probabilism be true at all in regard to natural
law, it would still be true, even though the humajia fragilitas,
which occasions so many formal sins, were completely foreign to
our poor nature. These are points on which we should certainly
desire further elucidation. We are not concerned with our
author's conclusions, or with his main thesis ; but we cannot fall
88 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
in completely with his method of defence. There are ether points
on which we should wish to touch — especially his very ingenious
attempt to vindicate the consistency of Probabilists in their
teaching with regard to the cessation of a law. A further discus-
sion, however, would carry us too far afield. The dissertation
cannot fail to set a reader much a-thinking by reason of the excel-
lent presentation which it gives of the particular line of defence
which the author adopts.
W. B.
The Saceaments Explained. By Kev. A. Devine.
London: E. & T. Washbourne, Paternoster-row, and
Benziger Brothers.
* This volume, after the treatise on Grace, is confined to the
Sacraments, and is intended as a companion to two volumes
already published, one on the '* Creed," the other on the '' Com-
mandments." In the three compendious volumes a complete
course of instruction on the Christian doctrine is intended, which
may serve as a help to the readers to know God by a lively faith,
to obey Him by keeping His Commandments, and to use those
means which Christ has instituted for obtaining His grace here
and His eternal beatitude hereafter by frequently receiving the
sacraments.' These words occur in the Preface to this work.
They explain its aim and object. And there can be no doubt that
in fulness, conciseness, and accuracy, it leaves little to be desired.
The whole doctrine of Grace and the Sacraments is scientifically
set forth within the compass of some five hundred pages. Father
Devine, indeed, never wrote anything that did not bespeak solid
knowledge and a full grasp of his subject. He has laid his
fellow-priests under an additional obligation by the publication of
this work ; rightly or wrongly, many of them will always prefer
an English rendering of theology to the Latin manuals — more
especially in the preparation of sermons and instructions.
But it is a pity he did not free himself from the scholastic
idioms and the scholastic terminology. The truths of faith,
though possessing an almost sacramental power of their own,
will never reach the hearts and minds and souls of latter-day
readers, unless presented in language at once correct, elegant,
and attractive.
E. N.
NOTICES OF BOOKS 89
Business Guide for Priests. By Eev. W. Stang, D.D.
New York : Benziger Brothers. Price 85 cents.
The name of Dr. Stang upon the title-page is a sufficient
indication of the practical utility of this manual. It is meant,
I dare say, to meet the wants of the American mission ; but it
contains much that will be of use to priests in these countries.
It is only a young priest who finds himself suddenly launched
into a responsible position can say how valuable a companion it
may prove. The manner of keeping parochial registers, the
method of applying for dispensations, the various little ordinances
of letter-writing, etiquette, and other hints in * business * matters,
will be welcome items of information to one who has not yet
been trained in the school of experience. However, the book is
not as full as could be desired, at least for missioners on this side
of the Atlantic. Perhaps its appearance may lead to the
publication of a * Business Guide ' adapted to the special needs
of the mission here at home. E. N.
La Demonstration Philosophique. Par I'Abbe Jules
Martin. P. Lethielleux, 10 Eue Cassette, 10 Paris, 3.50.
This is a volume of the ' Bibliotheque Philosophique,' edited
by P. Lethielleux. To use the venerable Abbe's own words, it is
* a doctrinal exposition which lays down and explains (qui
montre eomme intelligible) a complete conception of the universe,'
or * a body of principles and reasonings arranged in accordance
with one leading doctrine.' The author expands and elucidates
his system with elegance and ease, deals with the relations
between metaphysics and science, dispels the illusions created by
the aberrations of Descartes, Kant, and Renan, and sets proper
limits to the idea that speculative truth is essentially one. We
cannot help admiring the felicity of language, even in the
expression of the most abstruse thoughts.
L'HoMME DiEU. L'CEuvRE de Jesus Christ. Par
E. C. Minjard, Miss. Apost. Paris, Lethielleux. 2 vols.
f. 7-00,
The commendatory letter from the distinguished member of
the Academy, M. Francois Coppee, which appears opposite the
title-page of this work predisposes the reader to find abundant
paerit in the succeeding pages. In common with all other
90 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
attempts to depict the true portrait of Jesus Christ, the present
one earns the gratitude of all who desire to see the Great Teacher
better understood, and His injunctions more loyally obeyed. In
these studies on the divine character of the Godman, as mirrored
in His lifework, M. Minjard proceeds upon lines consecrated by
usage, and suggested by the title which has become proper to
Jesus alone, ;that of ' the Christ,' who received unction as, par
excellence, prophet, priest, and king.
The study of his divine subject as Teacher and King occupies
our author throughout his first volume. It is his aim to present
in brief compass the Master's chief teachings as the true solution
of human perplexities defying the searchlight of vaunted modern
science to reveal therein the faintest shadow of error, and also to
put in high rehef the sublimity of Christ's precepts which
revolutionized the ethics of His day, becoming the foundation of
what is good in most existing moral codes. The elevated character
of His doctrines, the vastness of His enterprise, and His bound-
less success in regenerating the corrupt world, all prove Him to
be what He claimed to be • the Christ, the Son of the living
God.' In His office as king He founded a kingdom which for
extension and stability stands without a rival. Composed of what
are humanly speaking the most disintegrating elements, it has
endured ages longer than the work of any merely human
intelligence ; and this without any essential modification of its
original constitution, while ceaseless shiftings and changings are
proceeding all around. This sums up the argument of the first
volume. In the second we are introduced to a study of Christ as
the author of a religious system unique in its sublimity, and at the
same time wisely adapted to the needs and learnings of the
human individual and human society. The whole economy of
the Eedemption and the machinery, so to speak, for applying its
effects to the individual are treated with the hand of a master
and in a liberal spirit.
In the execution of his task the author presents us with a very
thorough and convincing apology for the Catholic Church as the
true interpreter of Jesus Christ had His accredited representative
in carrying on the work He has inaugurated. We do not recollect
being struck by any thoughts of a startlingly novel nature, but we
are very far from regarding this in the light of a defect. We
desired to see the old thoughts arrayed in a garb calculated
tp attract and impress the readers of t^iis novelty-loving age,
NOTICES OF BOOKS 91
and it is a pleasure to us to testify to the gratification of this
desire. In the main, the old familiar truths are re-stated in the
old familiar ways, but throughout in a style rich in varied
illustration and glowing with that warmth and freshness so
admittedly and distinctly French. Clear and forcible at all times,
even at the cost of occasional redundancy, our author rises not
unfrequently to true heights of eloquence. Of such opportunities
for powerful and vivid description, and the pointed inference as
the marvellous spread of Christianity, and the wonderful practical
outcome of the observance of the evangelical counsels afford, the
author is not slow to avail himself. In connection with the latter
point, faithful as so often to his practical aim, he improves the
occasion to marshal against French anti-clericals a powerful array
of facts showing what religious orders have done and are doing
in the service of humanity.
We encounter in the course of these two volumes frequent
reference to 'lae critique scientifique,' and 'we, therefore, felt
inclined to exact from the author a critical cogency in his proofs
and repHes. It appeared to us that the author was sometimes
wanting herein. To cite an instance — we think no good purpose
is served in adducing — incidentally, be it admitted, the plurality
of divinities among pagan nations as the proof of the remains of a
primeval revelation of the mystery of the Trinity. We are not at
all so certain as our author that the body of even the Jewish
people possessed any acquaintance with the idea of a Trinity of
Persons in God. More than once our author makes passing
mention of current errors without any immediate attempt to a
direct reply. This, no doubt, is due to his own confidence in his
position, and to his expectation that his work will be received in
its logical entirety ; yet we think this proceeding demands too
much of a strain upon the attention and reasoning powers of a
large section of readers whom he designs his work to reach and
influence.
But these are very minor points, and perhaps exist only to our
own thinking. Throughout its pages this work is replete with
solid information on every subject reasonably coming within the
author's scope. Scarcely a point upon which the candid inquirer
might seek information is left untouched. Quite a feature is the
appositeness with which the author without any apparent
digression glances at contemporary topics, and sheds light on
many dark problems of current controversy, f^e following
92 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
passage, for instance, would appear in view of recent events, to
be dictated by more than a speculative purpose. He is speaking
of the Church's relation to human progress: — ' Ces besoins
nouveaux, sous les masques divers dont ils se couvrent selon les
temps et les lieux, sont toujours les «memes et se romment
I'orgueil, I'avarice et la luxure. L'tglise se declare, depuis
soixante siecle, impuissante a les satisfaire ; et I'Eglise mourvait
dans I'averir de cette impuissance quand elle n'en est pas morte
dans le passe ? "
In conclusion, we dare echo the wish of M. Coppee, that this
admirable work will dissipate the doubts and prejudices of the
multitudes of the incredulous, and lead many hesitating and
troubled spirits to the contemplation of the adorable Person of
Jesus Christ, of His life work and His teaching, in which to find
the peace unattainable in the creeds of scepticism and unbelief.
That M. Minjard's work will find readers in our own countries
also, we earnestly hope. It remains to add that the present
volumes form the second part of M. Minjard's entire work on the
Man -God. The first part, likewise consisting of two volumes, is
entitled * La Personne de Jesus Christ. Ses Origines, Sa
Mission, Sa Physionomie Divine.'
P. L.
Si Vous CoNNAissiEZ LE DoN DE DiEU. Mgr. Isoard,
Bishop of Annecy. Paris : P. Lethielleux. 2f. 50c.
At a time when the signs of unrest which came to a climax
in the recent storm of Americanism have not completely dis-
appeared, the work of a French bishop on the position of Catholics,
lay and clerical, in regard of progress with science, true and
false, will be read with unwonted interest. Some will look upon
it as an Apologia for those to whom the title of ^ prie-dieu men '
was lately attached as a stigma. Some, we are inclined to suspect,
will open the work in the expectation of finding therein all the
* slowness of mediae valism.' However, after a careful perusal of the
book we prefer to regard it as a summons to progress in the right
direction.
The immediate cause of the partial giving away of the Catholic
position regarding dogma and the presentation thereof, the virtues,
their nature and practice, Mgr. Isoard finds in the fact that most
Catholics to-day are content to remain passive when their faith
|s ridiculed, arid to leave defence to some self-constituted lay
Notices of febOKS 93
apologists who are gifted with a supreme idea of their own
omniscience, and are not over-burdened with a knowledge of their
faith. Such lack of knowledge of the gift of God, our faith, per-
vades, his Lordship believes, all the French Catholic laity, and is
to be laid to the charge of the clergy, who teach not, because
they have not what to teach withal. The bishop is to be under-
stood as maintaining, not that the priests of France to-day lack a
theoretical knowledge of theology, but that they need that
intimate acquaintance with the science of God which ramifies
through all the powers of man and bears the fruit of Christian
deeds. In a word, they are not as rich as they might be in the
supernatural life. ' Ce qui nous frappe et nous afflige, c'est la
pauvrete du sens divin.'
Speaking in this connection his Lordship has a word to say
concerning the training of the young priest» Dogma, learned
from the heresies of old, whence alone it is best mastered, must
stand at the head of the curriculum of our seminaries. But while
Mgr. Isoard thus fittingly crowns dogma, no one maintains more
stoutly than he that it needs the attendance of the other sciences
so often pressed into their service by the enemies of our faith.
Here, too, as throughout his whole work, the author avoids
extremes, proving how absurd it is to demand that the young
priest should at ordination be able to meet all modern antagonists
on their own ground with all the proficiency of a master in
sciences from which attack may come. To attain such pro-
ficiency is beyond the power of any man. To attain it in one
department requires the work of a lifetime. But such attack
must be met. Hence, priests must study to the end.
Such is his Lordship's charge. To enable us to fulfil it he
suggests two means already employed in France with incalculable
benefit — the Apostolic Union of Secular Priests, and the
Sacerdotal Circulating Library. The former we have amongst
us ; the latter rs described in detail in the work under review,
and did it alone give ground for approval it would render
Mgr. Isoard' s work worthy of our closest perusal.
In two trivial particulars have we any fault to find. We
think * modernism ' a title which would suit a large section of the
book better than it does a sub -section of a chapter, and we believe
* feminism ' not the most prominent feature of * modernism.*
Taking these exceptions, which are, perhaps, hyper-critical, we
can give nought but the highest praise to a work which is at once
94 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL REC0R£)
a defence of those who hold, with Leo XIII., that the solutions
of latter day errors are to be found in works long since penned,
of those who believe with Vincent de Paul that the loss of the
clerical spirit is the cause of much of the disrepute into which
religion has fallen, and an invitation to progress which will be
readily accepted by all lovers of ' personal initiative ' in the only
true sense of the term.
T. W.
La Moeale Stoicienne en face de la Moeale
Chretienne. L'Abbe ChoUet, Professor at the Catholic
University of Lille. Paris: P. Lethielleux, f. 3 '50.
Entretiens et Avis Spirituels. K. P. Lecuyer, O.P.
Paris : P. Lethielleux, f, 2-00.
That the Christian moral code is derived from that of the
pagan philosophers, especially of the Stoics, is an ancient error
recently resuscitated in France by Miron, Proudhon, Renan,
Tiscot, and a host of others of that species. Suppressing, on the
one hand, all that is supernatural in our code, and, on the other,
putting carefully out of sight all the extravagances of the Portico,
these philosophical acrobats exultingly point to the similarity in
the residues as incontrovertible proof of their position.
Subjecting the salient features of both codes to strict examina-
tion, L'Abbe Chollet clearly demonstrates that the conclusion is
rendered illegitimate by the eliminations which precede it, and
that the analogies discovered prove not the evolution of the
latter from the older code, but merely the right use of reason on
the part of the Stoics, and the remembrance of primitive tradition.
The work is unanswerable, and forms a valuable addition to
the philosophical library at present issuing from the press of
Messrs. Lethielleux.
The first portion of Father Lecuyer' s book consists of a
resume of instructions given by the author to children of Mary.
It deals with the primary truths of our faith in their special
relation to young persons in the world anxious to lead lives of
perfection beyond the ordinary. While diminishing none of the
native force of these truths, the author quickens them with a
new life by touches which reveal at once his own intense piety,
and a thorough knowledge of the needs for whom he wrote.
The latter part contains advice on practical spirituality, a rule
NOTICES OF BOOKS 95
- ■"■
of life, and two letters on the sanctification of a life of celibacy
outside convent walls, and bears all the laudable characteristics
of the earlier portion. We earnestly recommend the little work
to all who are brought into professional contact with such souls as
those for whom Father Lecuyer worked so well.
T. W.
Instittjtiones Theologiae Moealis Generalis. Auctore
G. Bernardo Tepe, S.J. P. Lethielleux, 10, Via Dicta
Cassette. 8 frs.
Eeaders of Father Tepe's previous works will gladly
welcome his latest addition to theological literature. It was
fitting that the fundamentals of Moral Theology should supple-
ment his treatment of Dogma, and I venture to think that these
handy volumes will meet with equal commendation. Human
acts, laws, sins, virtues, and the gifts of the Holy Ghost are
dealt with clearly, concisely, and comprehensively. On the ever-
perplexing question of probabilism he is extremely full, and at
least as satisfactory as his predecessors. To veteran theologians
he may not be as * strong ' or as * original ' as Lehmkuhl ; but to
those who have been merely introduced to the queen of sciences
he will prove a staunch 'friend at court.' There is not a tract
touched which he has not illuminated. There is no extraneous
matter ; there is no waste of space over questiunculae ; minor
matters are very properly relegated to scholia, and all is most
orderly. If a theological tyro may so express himself without
laying himself open to the charge of presumption, I would
earnestly express the hope that Father Tepe may continue his
labours. Having been so many years in Wales he cannot be
unacquainted with English law in its relations with Moral
Theology. Surely, it would be a great blessing for theological
students in these countries to possess a work dealing therewith.
Germany, France, Italy, America, can point to manuals adapted
to their peculiar needs. Why is it not so in the British Isles ?
E.N.
Maeiolatry. By Eev. Henry G. Ganns. Notre Dame,
Indiana.
The reverend writer discusses some ' new phases of an old
fallacy ' in a fresh racy style. At first sight, it is very difficult
to get through a book in which the stupid and insulting
96 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
statements of men like the ' Eev. W. M. Frysinger, D.D.' are
refuted seriathn; but the refutation is so triumphant, that we
exclaim with Wordsworth at the close : —
Mother whose virgin bosom was uncrossed
With the least shape of thought to sin allied ;
Woman ! above all women glorified, —
Our tainted nature's solitary boast ;
Purer than foam on central ocean tossed
Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn
With fancied roses, than the unblemished moon
Before her wane begins on heaven's blue coast
Thy image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween,
Not unforgiven, the suppliant knee might blend
As to a visible power, in which did blend.
All that was mixed and reconciled in thee
Of mother's love with maiden purity
Of high with low, celestial with terrene.
We heartily congratulate the Ave Maria on its latest literary
offspring.
The Seeaph of Assisi. By Kev. J. A. Jackman, O.M.
Dublin : Duffy & Co. Price, 5s., net.
One cannot help regretting that the author's literary powers
are not commensurate with his piety. Had Father Jackman been
gifted with the divine fire of poetry as he is with the fire of divine
love, we might be certain of a great poem on the seraph saint of
Assisi. This tasty volume of over two hundred pages enshrines
is love for the virtues which St. Francis preached and practised.
We have no doubt his verse may lead souls to imitate the life of
the father he admires so much.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST. PATRICK
THEKE are those — and I sympathise with them — who
feel impatient at a discussion on the birthplace of
St. Patrick. This may arise either because they
judge the discussion likely to unsettle some pre-
conceived theory, or because they deem some other subject
of more practical importance. I can very well understand
such feelings, though I do not share them : for there are
few historical subjects which, to my mind, can have a more
practical interest for all Irish ecclesiastics than the birth-
place of our national saint. Alas ! for the day on which his
anniversary shall not be celebrated in Ireland by at least a
few words touching him ; and these are not, and cannot well
be, addressed to the faithful without, at the same time, being
told whence he came to us. Hence the utility of having the
national mind made up as to the saint's birthplace.
As it is, very doubtful if time will add to the materials
at present available for forming a soHdly probable, if not
certain, opinion on the birthplace ; and as, perhaps, there
exists as critical, discerning a spirit at present as ever will
exist, the more discussion is carried on, provided it be
intelligent, the sooner will ensue a practically general
agreement. The happy result should be the avoidance of
contradictory statements from the altar on a historical point
which tell injuriously on religion.
All of us are familiar with the touching lines on the
FOURTH SERIES, VOL. VI. — AUGUST, 1899. Q
98 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
burial of Sir John Moore on the heights of Corunna. In
one of these lines allusion is made to the last sad office
performed by a Briton : —
In the grave where a Briton had laid him.
A literary wag, in order to expose the too vague description
of the poet, transformed the whole scene ; transferred it to
the ramparts of Pondicherry, a French colony, and would
have us believe that the Briton burying the French general
hailed from Brittany.
This literary freak is paralleled by an article in the last
number of the il. E. Kecobd. The theory of its ingenious
writer briefly told comes to this : — St. Patrick was from
Emporia, or Yich, in Spain, where he was made captive, and
his Irish captors sailed with him from Bretonia, three
hundred miles away from the place of capture. The Con-
fession of the saint is relied on for mention of Emporia and
Vich. Our saint, speaking of his father, says : ' Fuit vice
Bonaventahemiae, villulam enim prope habuit ubi capturam
dedi.' To account for Emporia and Vich our ingenious
writer gives a peculiar reading to the words enim prope by
Emporia, and translates vico by Vich. Now for a reply.
Firstly. All the biographers of our saint have placed his
residence in the Bonaventaherniae, and never in vico or in
enim prope.
Secondly. If a transcriber, through inadvertence or
ignorance, gives a wrong reading, a fundamental canon for
amending it is to alter as few letters or parts of a letter as
possible, especially when the reading is given without a
doubt expressed. Now, no doubt is expressed as to the
phrase enim prope, yet we are asked to believe it was
originally written Emporio ! Such liberty with a text is
unpardonable.
Thirdly. The supplemental leaves to the Booli of Armagh
inform us of St, Patrick being by nationality a Briton,
having been born in Britain ; yet the remark of our
ingenious writer on this is that he was shipped from
Bretonia to Ireland, and that his biographers confounded it
with Great Britain, But Bretonia in the N.E. of Spain
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST. PATRICK 99
was the name merely of an episcopal see, and not of a
nation; nor were its inhabitants called Britons. Nor is
Bretonia the same as Brittannia or Britanniae, a term
exclusively applied to Britain. The life-long companions
and fellow-labourers of our saint, forsooth, did not under-
stand the story of his life as well as the writer in the
I. E. Eecord, but confounded the place of his shipment
with that of his nativity and the Bretonia as an episcopal
district with the Britanniae of the British isles !
Fourthly. Our writer assumes that the Irish language
was identical with the Iberian, or Spanish, and then derives
from the Irish the word taberniae, which, we are told, means
the flanking mountains, or, if we prefer it, the mountains
of the sea. Why, the word could with as much propriety
mean, in the Irish language, Timbuctoo. But it is too
much to assume the identity of the Irish with the Iberian
language; for the Book of Armagh'^ tells us that even the
British language, in the days of St. Patrick, was different
from the Irish.
Fifthly. The supplemental leaves to the Book of Armagh^
inform usj that after St. Patrick's escape from captivity in
Ireland he left home for Eome, with a view of qualifying
himself for the Irish mission. He accordingly crossed the
British sea, on the south ('mari dextro Britannico'), and in
making for Kome fell in with St. Germanus of Auxerre,
where he tarried for a long time. Now, I ask, could a man
under the southern shadow of the Pyrenees have a British
sea on his south, or, in going to Kome, face northwards to
Auxerre ?
Sixthly. Our saint, remonstrating with Coroticus, and
speaking in the name of the Irish, with whom he identifies
himself, asked were they to be treated unworthily because
they were Irish (* de Hiberia nati sumus '). Our ingenious
writer insists that Hiberia is Iberia, and that this means
Spain. Yet he has to admit that our saint always expresses
Ireland by Hiberio, and the whole context shows that in the
present instance the saint is speaking of Ireland. Why,
1 Fol. xvi. ba. 2 Brussels MSS.
100 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
then, change Hiberia to Iberia ? Moreover, Iberia, in the
fifth century, was never used as an expression for Spain. If
it was, let us have a single instance in proof. On the other
hand, Hispania or Hispaniae was the expression for Spain
since, and for centuries previous to the days of St. Patrick.
Thus Pope Innocent I., in St. Patrick's time, writing to
Decentius,^ dwells on the missionary work of Kome in
evangelizing Africa, France, and Spain (Hispanias).
Seventhly. Coroticus, who carried away St. Patrick's
converts while neophytes, is acknowledged to have been a
prince in South Wales. Our saint addressed to him and his
followers a letter of excommunication. He disowns them ;
but in doing so acknowledges a nationality common to all
of them (* non dico civibus meis et civibus sanctorum
Komanorum sed civibus demoniorum ') ; and the saint added
that, as they contemptuously ignore him (* mei non cognos-
cunt'), they verify the proverb: * Propheta in patria sua
honorem non habet.' This is a proof of the Britannia
Secunda being the birthplace of our saint.
Eightly. Our ingenious writer appeals to Probus, an
Irish writer of the tenth century, who states that our saint's
birthplace was not far from the Western Sea, and concludes
that this means the Tuscan Sea. Only think of an Irish
writer describing the Tuscan sea as a western sea, or our
sea, as the supplement to the Book of Armagh gives it
('mari nostro').
The strange reasoning of our ingenious writer is in keep-
ing with his wild hypothesis. The Tuscan sea, he suggests,
was the * Mare Inferum.' Inferum is the Irish airthair (not
to my knowledge), and airthair would be occidentalism
Why, Airthair means quite the opposite — orieiitalis, or
eastern.
Our ingenious writer having satisfied himself, by indirect
proofs, that Britain was not our saint's birthplace, proceeds
to give us direct proofs of it. He maintains that Britain is
so far from being the birthplace of St. Patrick, that the
saint, in three places, * distinctly conveys that it is not, and
1 Ep. Coustant.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST. PATRICK 101
is not the residence of his parents.' His first passage or
proof runs thus : —
1. Iterum post paucos annos in Britannia eram cum. * paren-
tibus ' meis qui me ut filium exceperunt, et ex fide rogaverunt
me ut vel modo post tantas tribulationes quas Ego pertuli
nusquam ab illis discederem.
The wrong explanation given by our ingenious writer of
this passage is th&t par entibus, which I have italicized, means
relatives, and that their reception of him as (ut) a son proves
he was not really a son. Now, any person who looks into
the oldest life of our saint, from which all others are mainly
copied, can see that there was question of parents in the
above passage. The Index to the Life in the Book of
Armagh, has : —
De secunda captura quam senis decies diebus ab inimicis
pertulerat. De susceptione sua a parentibus ubi agnoverunt
eum.
The relatives or natural parents given in the Life just
quoted, and no others, are those to whom our saint refers in
his Confession.
Furthermore, the derivative and primarily conventional
meaning of parentes is parents. In the Confession the
saint himself identifies parentes with father and mother.
He spoke of those who became virgins, ' not with the will of
their fathers (patrum), but rather suffered persecution and
unjust reproaches from their parents ' (parentum). Here
clearly parentes and patres (fathers) are identified.
The Justinian Code, advocating the hberty of children
to become religious, strictly forbids parents to interfere with
them : * Ut non liceat parentibus impedire. ' ^
On the other hand, the Second Council of Toledo, ^ legis-
lating on the children given up to the Church by their
parents, decreed thus : * Pe his quos voluntas parentum a
primis infantiae annis in clericatus, &c.' Does the word
parentes here exclude parents, and signify only relatives ?
In looking into the Theodosian Code ^ we get further
proof of the meaning of parentes in our saint's time : * Si
1 Lib. i., tit. 3, de Epis., leg. 5C, ^ Ch. I -^ Lib. ix., tit. 24,
102 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
quis cum parentibus puellae ante depectus invitam rapuerit
vel volentem, &c.' Here, as in every passage of the fifth
century, parentes signifies parents. The word, then, con-
trary to the assertion of our learned writer, had the same
meaning as it has either in the Tridentine decrees on the
consent of parents (parentum) to the marriage of their
children; in the Koman Kitual on directions to parents
(parentes) in regard to newly-born children; or, as in
the Maynooth Statutes on the Catholic education of children
by their parents (parentum),
(b) Our ingenious writer, remarking on the reception of
St. Patrick as a son by his parents, says that the word as
(ut) proves that he was not a real son. Not at all. I have
shown that the word parentes meant parents ; and, therefore,
the parents in receiving him received their son. St. Patrick
left, or was carried away from his home a beardless boy.
He returned to his parents a full-grown man, with probably
a flowing beard, with scanty and tattered garments, and
speaking gibberish. What wonder there should be a passing
doubt as to his identity ! The Booh of Armagh suggests
some such hesitation ; for a heading to one of its chapters
runs thus : ' De susceptione sua a parentibus uhi agnoverunt
eum.' There was question of recognising him, and when
acknowledged he was received as their real son. Nothing
could be plainer.
(c) But our ingenious writer proceeds to say that :
' There is not the slightest intimation that our saint's
parents had their residence in Britain.' Indeed ! The Book
of Armagh, or, more correctly, its supplement in the Brussels
manuscript (learnedly edited by Kev. P. E. Hogan, S.J.),
states that ' Patrick was by nationality a Briton, being born
in Britain ;' and as we learn from the Book of Armagh, * his
father had a farm hard by where he was made a captive.' To
this capture our saint alludes in his letter to Coroticus,
where he says, * that he came back to those who at one
time seized me, and laid waste the male and female servants
of my father's house,' ' domus patris mei.' And yet a
bewildering theory is thrust on us, grounded on the bold
assertion, that *his parents had no residence in Britain!*
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST. PATRICK 103
2. The second proof, equally as valueless as the first, in
support of a baseless theory is given by the ingenious writer
in English ; but as I do not admit its correctness I give the
original thus : —
Et eomperi ab aliquantis fratribus ante defensionem illam
quod ego non interfui nee in Britannis eram nee in me orietur ut
et ille in mea absentia pro me pulsaret.
The only remark which our learned writer makes on this
alleged proof is *this passage does not show that Patrick
says Britain was his country.'^ Yes; but it is adduced by
him to prove that St. Patrick ' conveys distinctly that
Britain is not the place of his birth, or of his parents'
residence/ Does it at all allude even to his parents or their
residence ? Assuredly, no. All the above passage proves is
that Patrick was not in Britain on a particular occasion.
With a view to a clear understanding of the passage, I
may mention that some persons had opposed the consecra-
tion of our saint because of some alleged fault. At this
time, and for some time previously, our saint was studying
with St. Germanus, at Auxerre, to whom, through the inter-
ference of Palladius, was committed the charge of the
British churches. Palladius himself, a Eoman deacon (I am
quoting from the Booh of Armagh), was sent the first
bishop to Ireland; but having to return to Eome imme-
diately after, he died, while returning, in Britain. The
disciples of the dead chief Palladius, Augustin and Benedict,
together with others crossed the English Channel, and made
their way as far as Eburo-briga (Ebmoria). There they met
St, Patrick accompanied by the priest sent with him by
St. Germanus. The disciples of Palladius, with others, who
were probably on their way to Germanus, and then were
within some thirty or forty miles of Auxerre, announced the
death of Palladius to St. Patrick, who was on his way to
Ireland. He at once stopped and received consecration
from Amatus. After his consecration our saint at once
made his way through France, passed over to Britain, and
thence to Ireland.^ One of those who came with the
Page 503. . 2 Book of Armagh, fol. 2, ab.
104 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
disciples of Palladius from Britain, probably opposed the
consecration of St. Patrick at Eburo-briga, situated on the
Yonne, by charging him with a fault which our saint
told him in confidence thirty years previously; and this
charge was made by one who previously defended him when
his fitness for the mitre was discussed in Britain. To this
our saint alluded in the passage under discussion, and
already given in the original : —
And I learned from some of the brethren of that defence at
which I was not present, nor was I in Britain, nor did it arise
from me that he should solicit for me in my absence : he even
said from his very mouth to myself * you are to be raised to the
episcopal grade,' of which I was not worthy. But how did it
occur to him after to dishonour me publicly before the good and
the bad?
"Why, if I were in want of proof I would use the above
passage as tending to establish the saint's birthplace in
Britain. For as he was opposed at his consecration for a
fault committed thirty years previously, and told in trouble
of mind when he was scarcely fifteen years old, the fault
must have been committed before he was made captive, in
bis sixteenth year, in Britain. Now it can be clearly seen
that the phrase : ' I was not at all in Britain at the time '
(*nec in Britannis eram') does not give the proof promised —
that St. Patrick was not born in Britain.
3. The third argument produced in proof of our saint
being not born in Britain rests on the following passage :
XTnde autem et si voluero dimittere illos et pergere in
Brittannias, etsi libentissime paratus irem quasi ad patriam et
parentes, et non solum sed etiam usque ad Gallias visitarem
fratres.
(a) This extract would rather prove the contrary of
what it is adduced for. The saint says that though he
should have wished, and was ready, to go to Britain by
abandoning his converts, and visit, as it were, his country
and parents, and go even as far as Gaul to visit the brethren,
yet he felt bound by the Spirit not to abandon the work he
began. The objection raised is, that Britain is mentioned as
if, and not as being, his country. Now, considering that
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST. PATRICK 105
our saint renounced his country and parents (' ut patriam et
parentes amitterem'), he had need of qualifying the statement
that Britain was, in point of fact, his country.
Again : in his letter to Coroticus he says that for the
love of God he made a surrender of his country, his parents,
and his life, * pro quibus tradidi patriam, et parentes, et
animam meam ; ' and in another passage he states he sold
his nobility or free-born condition and became a slave,
* vendidi enim nobilitatem meam denique servus sum.' Now
as the barter of his nobility lost to him his freedom, so the
renunciation of his country made him call Britain qualifiedly
his country.
{b) There is an objection grounded on the state-
ment that our saint was old when he was writing his
confession, and that if he had wished to visit people in
Britain they must be only relatives ' and not parents
(parentes). He did not say then that he would visit them :
he merely said that though he had wished to go to Britain
the Spirit forbade him. Our saint used indiscriminately the
various moods to express his desire to have visited his
country, etsi voluero, irem, valde optabam. So, too, in
another passage, he declares that * poverty and calamities befit
him more than riches and delights. Wretched and unfor-
tunate as I am, though I were to desire riches (etsi voluero)
I have them not, nor deem myself worthy.' He wished to
show that he was not an alien to his country from human
motives, but habitually wished to visit it and his parents ;
and not only so, but from spiritual motives to visit the
brethren in distant Gaul, which was the country merely of
his education. No wish is expressed about Spain.
4. The following words are quoted as an objection to
Britain as his birthplace : * The Lord dispersed us among
many nations, even to the ends of the earth.' Our writer
asks could St. Patrick have spoken so if he and his fellow-
captives were taken from Britain to Ireland ? Where were
the many nations (gentes) in Ireland ? The gens does not
mean a nation. There were indeed many (gentes) clans in
Ireland. Thus, in the Book of Armagh,^ the angel directed
1 Fol. 21 c.
106 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
that in cases difficult for the judges of Ireland, arising among
the Scottish clans {Scotorum gentium) ^ they should be referred
to the see of St. Patrick. Thus, too, in the old * Corpus '
Missal the prayer of St. Patrick makes mention of his
mission to the Irish clans (Hibernenses gentes) who sat in
darkness.
Again : in the Book of the Angel, already referred to,
St. Patrick is represented as having from God as his parish
the entire nations of the Irish (universas Scotorum gentes).
The Irish clans (gentes) correspond to the Eoman gens Julii,
Servilii, Quinctilii, Curiatii, &c.
{h) Our saint very appropriately described himself in
Ireland as at the ends of the world. If Britain, in sight
of the Continent, was said to be separated from the entire
world, with greater reason could the same be said of Ireland.
No matter how near or otherwise St. Patrick's birthplace
in South Wales was to Ireland, he was fully justified in
applying to Ireland, because of its remoteness, the language
which Claudian applied even to Eomanized Britain : —
Venit ab extremis legio praetenta Britanni,
Quae Scoto dat frena truci.^
And when our saint looked out from the shores of
Tirawly over the boundless ocean, he was justified, without
copying any stereotyped phrase, in his realistic description
of his position, * ad exteras partes ubi nemo ultra erat.'
5. The ingenious writer has undertaken to correct the
plainest passage in the saint's Confession by historical
blunders, and to the detriment of history. The Booh of
Armagh opens the Confession of our saint in the following
words : — * I Patrick had for father Calpurnius, a deacon
(diaconum), son of Potitus, son of Odissus, a priest
(presbyteri).
The comment made on this by our writer is that : —
It is possible Patrick wrote decurion (decurionem); and that
{diaconum) deacon is the transcriber's guess, and would assume
wrongly that presbyter meant a priest.
In proof of the possible blunder of the transcriber, our
1 De Bello Get,, 416.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST. PATRICK 107
theorizing critic blunders by saying * there is no setting
aside the fact that, except in this improbable instance,
antiquity shows no case of a decurio being a deacon.*
Such is not the fact. I may here mention that St. Patrick
in his letter to Coroticus says his father was a decurion.
Firstly, the Eoman laws forbade any persons being
ordained who were incorporated into a society for the
service of the State without the consent of the Senate or
the Emperor. For the duties of the ecclesiastical and
civil conditions .were deemed incompatible. By these laws
decurions were forbidden being ordained. However, weari-
ness of the world and a yearning after a more perfect life
led to the evasion of the law. But to meet the objection
that a religious call should not be conscientiously disregarded,
it was enacted that religion or a monastic state should be
entered for fifteen years before ordination was permissible.
Hence the law of Justinian : — ^
Bed neque cohartales neque decuriones clerici fiunto — dempto
si monachicam aliquis ex ipsis non minus quindecim annis
transegeris.
By the laws of Theodosius Junior ^ and Valentinian the
Third,^ bishops, presbyters, or deacons, when ordained, had
to provide a substitute qualified in every respect to serve in
the corporation from which the ordained had been taken.
The laws of Valentinian and Theodosius the Great
ordained thus : —
Eos qui ad clericatus se privilegio contulerunt aut agnoscere
primam oportet function em aut ei corpori quod declinant proprii
patrimonii facere cessionem.
To prevent decurions from being ordained deacons, not
only the State but the Church interfered. For, sometimes
when ordained and found very useful they were recalled by
the State. St. Ambrose informs us that deacons who had
been for thirty years in the service of the Church were
recalled to the Curial duties : ' Per triginta et innumeros
-^ XovellcR 123, c. 15.
2 NovelUe 26, de corporalis Urbis Romce, &c
'•^Novella 12, Hid.
108 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
annos retrahuntur a munere sacro et curiae deputantur. ' ^
Yet we have been boldly told by our writer that antiquity
furnishes no instance of a decurion being made a deacon !
The deaconship of the father is given clearly and
unhesitatingly in the Booh of Armagh and in the Life
found in its supplementary Brussels manuscript ; and from
these all other manuscripts subsequently more or less per-
fectly have copied. It is unwise, then, to state that the
mention of deacon in connection with the father of our saint
was unknown to the early writers of the Irish Church :
it is not creditable boldly to assert that antiquity shows
no instance of a decurion being a deacon.
Secondly. Our learned writer thinks it ' possible ' as the
transcriber of the Booh of Armagh wrongly (?) made a deacon
out of a decurion, that he wrongly concluded ^r^s^^/^er to be a
priest. Our critic says it is dishonest to translate the word by
priest rather than by a lay official, such as senator. For this
extraordinary explanation of presbyter two arguments are
drawn by him from the writings of St. Patrick : —
Everywhere the Lord ordained clerics through my mediocrity.
It is the custom of the Eoman and Gallic Christians to send
holy presbyters to redeem baptized captives.
And I sent by a holy presbyter whom I taught from his
infancy, and I sent with him clergy (clerici) asking them for
some of the captives they had taken.
The argument founded by our theorist on these extracts
is thus formulated : ' Patrick calls those whom he ordained
clerici or sacerdotes, and not preshyteri. In two places in
which preshyteri for the redemption of captives is found, it
has no connection with priestly duties, and the words
excludied presbyter from meaning priest.'
So far is it from being wrong to assume presbyter to
mean priest, it were wrong to assume it as meaning any-
thing else.
Prosper of Aquitaine tells us that in connection with the
dispute about grace, St. Augustine writing to Xistus before
being Pope, who succeeded Pope Celestine in the year 432,
lEp. 29.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST. PATRICK 109
calls him * heatissimum presbyterum nunc vero Pontificem.'
Here, surely, presbyter did not mean a lay official. In the
Book of the AngeP we read there ' were in the Southern
Basilica at Armagh, bishops and presbyters (presbyteri), and
anchorites, and various religious. Does the word presbyter
here mean senators? The same Book of Armagh speaks of
the ordination of bishops and priests (presbiteri) after being
baptized in their advanced age and taught by St. Patrick.^
In principle as well as in fact our critical theorist is at
fault. For, as a general rule, clerici by itself meant those in
the ecclesiastical state, but in conjunction with bishops
and presbyters meant the inferior clergy ; the mention of
presbiter in the fifth century universally meant a priest to
my mind; and if it meant a lay officer in any passage I
challenge its production.
Thirdly. Our writer states that it argues only a secular
office to have sent presbyters to ask back some of the
captives from Coroticus, and that the fact of their being
accompanied by clerics? (priests) proves the presbyter to
have been a layman. That presbyter meant a priest, and
clerici inferior ministers, is known to every ecclesiastic with
even elementary knowledge. The presbyter was the same
as sacerdos, with the difference that sacerdos was employed
to designate a bishop when it was coupled with summuSy
primuSy princeps. The clerici by itself included all who
had their lot or inheritance in the Church. To illustrate
what I say we have only to look into the Councils or
fathers of the Church. St. Cyprian, speaking of Optatus
and Saturus, whom he ordained respectively sub-deacon
and lector, calls them clerics.^ His contemporary Lucian,
martyr, calls lectors and exorcists clerics : * Presente de clero
exorcista et lectore, Lucianus scripsit.'*
The third Council of Carthage, Canon 21, extended the
name of clerics even to the Psalmista and Ostiarius, and the
same council forbade civil employment to the clergy: *Placuit
ut Episcopi et presbyteri et diaconi vel clerici non sint
1 Book of Armagh, fol. 21. -^ Ep. 24, al. 29.
2Fol. 9, b. 1. *Epi8. 17. al. 23.
110 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
conductores.' St. Ambrose, speaking for the Church of Milan,
says ^ : ' Aliud est quod ab Episcopo requirit Deus, aiiud
quod a Presbytero, et ahud quod a Diacono, et ahud quod a
clerico, et aliud quod a laico.' And St. Hilary, speaking for
the entire Latin Church, as well as for Gaul, says: *Nunc
neque diaconi in populo praedicant, neque clerici vel laici
baptizant.'
These authorities ought to give a clear idea of the mean-
ing oi presbyter and clerici. We learn clearly their relative
position from Optatus : * Quid commemorem Presbyteros in
secundo sacerdotio ; ' from the Council of Eliberis : * xxvi.
presbyteris resedentibus, adstantibus diaconis,' &c. ; from
the condemnation of Jovinian, with the approval of all, by
Pope Siricius : ' Tam presbyterorum et diaconum quam totius
cleri ; ' and from St. Jerome : ' Et nos habemus in Ecclesia
coetum presbyterorum.'
I have stated more than enough to prove that our saint
sent, in the person of a presbyter, a priest for the restoration
of the captives. Nor was it wise to add that such an
of&ce of charity ' had no connection with priestly duties.'
St. Ambrose melted down the vessels of the altar to redeem
captives ; ^ St. Augustine did the same ; Deo Gratias of
Carthage did the same, and extorted the praise of Victor
Uticensis.8 Paulinus of Nola, the probable ordainer of
St. Patrick, in Campania, sold himself to redeem the son of
a widow ; and are we to suppose that St. Patrick considered
this work of religion and humanity peculiar to a layman ?
That the person sent by St. Patrick for the release of his
captives was a priest (presbyter) is strongly suggested even
by the Book of Armagh. It states* that the priests (presby-
teris) ordained by our saint were innumerable, as he daily
baptized men to whom he taught literary and sacred know-
ledge. Now, we may fairly infer that it was not as a mere
schoolmaster St. Patrick acted, with a gigantic work before
him, by instructing a youth for thirty years, but to fit him
for being, what he was, a priest (presbyter). The person
1 De dig. Sacerd., c. iii. ^ De persecut. Van.
•^BeOffic. 4FoUix.,b, 1.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST. PATRICK HI
first sent, with his attendant clerics, by St. Patrick, and
laughed to scorn by Coroticus, was a consecrated priest ; and
the person secondly sent with a letter of excommunica-
tion, on the event of not having the captives restored, was
also consecrated to religion {famulus Dei)} Famulus and
famula Dei were convertible terms for male and female
religious. Evidence, then, of the meaning of presbyter and
clericiy as used by St. Patrick, may be gathered from the
luminous page of contemporary history.
Behold an additional instance of the abuse of language.
Our saint, in his Confession, says : * You know how I have
conducted my aeli a juventute mea'
The unnatural and unusual comment made on this phrase
is that the saint means from the end of his youth, having
come on the Irish mission in his fifty-second year, rather
than from the beginning of his youth.
Now the phrase occurs in another passage in our saint's
writings, but could not have such a meaning : * Ever since
I came to know Him (God) a juventute mea the love of God
has increased in me. The a juventute mea here refers to his
captivity in his sixteenth year. For he says, * he was in
incredulity and death till he was corrected by daily hunger
almost to fainting in Ireland, and fitted me for what I never
hoped for . . . and that the fear and love of God since then
increased more and more.' Now this, and much more to the
same effect, proves that, even supposing our saint understood
fifty years as the end of youth, he did not refer the a juven-
tute mea to the end, but beginning of his youth. Thus, too,
in the Gospel, the young man (adolescens) says to our Lord:
* I have observed all these ihuiga a juventute mea.^'^
Now the phrase in this case could not mean the end of
youth, for the age of adolescence did not extend beyond the
end of youth. Again, the Psalmist says : * Son receive
instruction a juventute tua.*^ Here the phrase evidently did
not mean the end of youth.
In like manner, St. Paul, speaking in his defence before
Festus, said : * All the Jews know my life a juventute mea.' ^
1 Folio clixiv.. b. 2. 2 Matt. xix. 20. ^ Ps. Ixx. 17. *Acts. xxvi, 4.
112 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
That did not include up to the time he wrote, in the year 60,
For after being brought in youth from Tarsus to Jerusalem
for education, and having become a Christian in a.d. 34, he
turned his back on Jerusalem and his brother Pharisees,
lived in Cyprus, Macedonia, Greece, Asia Minor, and
Csesarea, where he appeals to the Jews of Jerusalem for their
knowledge of him a juventute mea. In like manner, and
with greater reason, as he spent his many last years of life
with the Irish, did St. Patrick say to them, in reference to
the time of his captivity, * You know how I conducted
myself among you a juventute mea.'
Certain dates are fixed on by our theorist for which history
must be disjointed. Thus the year 372 is given by him for
the birth of our saint ; 404 that of his captivity ; 424 that of
his consecration in his fifty-second year ; 448 that of his
Confession ; and 458 that of his death, having been thirty-
five years on the Irish mission.
1. Now 372 could not be the year of his birth if 404 was
that of his captivity. As our saint says in his Confession
he was made a captive in his sixteenth year, and continued
so for six years.
2. If 372 was the year of his birth, 404 could not be
a year of his captivity for the above reason.
3. He could not have been consecrated in 424 if born in
372 ; firstly, because, as he tells us, at his consecration he
was charged with a fault committed thirty years previously,
and was scarcely fifteen years when committed. Secondly,
because our theorist says our saint wrote his Confession in
the year 448, and he was then, and even before then when
he wrote to Coroticus, thirty years in Ireland, having trained
a priest from his infancy ; therefore, in 448 the number 30
does not square with 424.
4. If our saint was fifty-two years old when consecrated
in 424, he should have been thirty-two years when captured
in the year 404 ; yet, the Confession says he was then only
sixteen years, and six years in captivity.
5. Thirty-five years could not be the term of the saint's
mission in Ireland, dying in the year 458. For having
written the Confession ten years previously in 448, and
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST PATRICK 113
having been even before then, when he wrote to Coroticus,
thirty years on the mission, he should be over forty years on
the mission in Ireland.
6. The year 458 could not be the year of the saint's
death, if, being consecrated in 424, he had been over forty
years on the mission.
Such self-contradictions together with the contradictions
to the writings of our national saint, which I could multiply,
and to his oldest Life in the Booh of Armagh, are the result
of a wild theory; and this result is the more remarkable as
the theory is propped by the mutilation of texts, the violence
offered to the plainest meaning of words, and by the mis-
representation of historical facts.
Just ten years ago St. Patrick's birthplace was identified
and pubHshed in the I. E.'Recoed. It ^took its place not
as a theory or hypothesis, but as an absolute certainty
clearly established ; so clearly and naturally as to excite
wonder that the discovery had not been previously and easily
made. Now as then Usktown stands forth as the birthplace
of St. Patrick, a proof against every objection that may be
derived from a linguistic, geographical, historical or any
other source.
Sylvester Malone.
VOL. VI.
[ 114 ]
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG
THE subject of education is so extensive, tbat it would
be impossible to enter into it at length. It is one
of the great subjects of the age, on which theories
have been propounded and treatises written, and which
seems still inexhaustible. Our object, however, is to
show the importance of grounding education on religion,
so as to bring up the child, instructed not alone in secular
knowledge, but imbued with the principles of faith, and
trained to the practice of piety. What appears to be the
tendency of the age is the desire to separate religion from
education, to hand over to the State the training of the
young, and to gradually exclude the Church from her
sacred office of providing for the instruction of the little
ones of Christ's fold. Such a separation must be con-
demned by thinking men of every denomination. The late
Sir Eobert Peel once said : ' I am for a religious, as opposed
to a secular education. I believe, as Lord John Eussell
has said, that such an education (which is not avowedly
religious), is only half an education, with the most important
half neglected ;' and we require but little experience of the
world to know that if the principles of religion be not
instilled in youth, it is vain to expect to find them in after
years. * The things thou hast not gathered in thy 3^outh,'
says Ecclesiasticus, ' how shalt thou find them in thy old
age?" The young mind is easily moulded to any shape we
please, and the impressions made upon it usually remain in
after life. Some trifling words, some thoughtless remark,
or, it may be some pious admonition, frequently exercises a
magic influence over the unformed mind of the child, giving
it a particular bias for good or evil. This idea has been
beautifully expressed by the distinguished American writer
Longfellow in his Outre Mer,
If [says he] we trace back to its fountain the mighty torrent
which fertilizes the land with its abundant streams, or sweeps it
1 Ecd. xxii. •^.
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG 115
with a desolating flood, we shall find it dripping from the crevice
of a rock in the distant solitudes of the forest : so too the
gentle feelings that enrich and beautify the heart, and the
mighty passions that sweep away all the barriers of the soul,
and destroy society, may have sprung up in the shadowy recesses
of the past, from a nursery song or a fireside tale.
Early impressions are of the utmost importance, and
remain till the latest age ; and when advancing years have
impaired the faculties, do we not often find these first
impressions still glowing on the page of memory, whilst
those of later years have faded away ?
In their anxiety about secular education, men appear to
forget that there is a knowledge of greater importance than
what facts of history or scientific problems can impart.
They seem to lose sight of the truth that man is not a mere
animal, but that he possesses an immortal 'soul, the salvation
of which is the supreme good. * Knowledge,' according to
the Wise Man, * is a fountain of life to him that possesseth
it ;'^ but he speaks of that true knowledge which springs
from the study of God's Law. There is another kind of
knowledge of which the Apostle speaks, which * puffeth up,'
and which fills the mind with pride and vanity. Now, what
will it avail to be profoundly versed in science, to be an
accomplished linguist, to be an eloquent orator, to be a
successful statesman, if God be forgotten, and His service be
neglected ? ' For what doth it profit a man, if he gain
the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul ? ' ^
St. Augustine tersely expressed it when he said : * He who
knows God knows enough, though he be ignorant of other
things ; but he who knows not God knows nothing, though
he may know all other things.' Secular education, which
excludes religion from the school, is simply a modern form
of paganism. Once excluded from the school, it will soon be
neglected in the home ; and the young will grow up learned,
perhaps, in this world's knowledge, but ignorant of the only
knowledge that is really worth having.
Two things are indispensably necessary for a truly
Christian man — sound faith and pure morals. And how is
1 Prov. xxix. 17. '^ Matt. xvi. 26.
116 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
he to acquire these except by careful training ? If the young
mind be left to itself, ordinarily speaking we know it will
tend to evil, and we cannot expect from it the good fruits of
virtue. Since the fall of Adam there is in man a natural
proclivity to vice, but the voice of conscience and the
dictates of religion alike point out to him the necessity of
virtue, and the conflict thus generated remains during life
(at least to a spiritual man) a source of pain and anxiety.
This conflict St. Paul experienced and thus described in
forcible terms : — * I find then a law, that when I have a will
to do good, evil is present with me. For I am dehghted
with the law of God, according to the inward man: but I see
another law in my members fighting against the law of my
mind, and captivating me in the law of sin, that is in my
members.' Thus drawn to sin, which he loathed in his heart,
he cried out : ' Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver
me from the body of this death ? ' And knowing the only
source from which he could derive strength, he immediately
answered : * The grace of God, by Jesus Christ our Lord. ' ^
Now this conflict was not peculiar to St. Paul. It is, un-
fortunately, the lot all, and the skilful training of the young
Christian athletes for this spiritual combat is the duty ahke
of parent and of pastor.
The first duty is to instil the principles of faith into
the minds of the young, knowing that * without faith it is
impossible to please God,'^ and next to guard that faith
from danger. Faith, indeed, is a priceless gift ; consequently,
it should not be exposed to danger. It can be, and often is,
weakened, or even entirely lost, through evil associations,
particularly the associations of school and college. This
was why our ancestors in penal times preferred the enforced
ignorance imposed by cruel laws to knowledge acquired at
the peril of their faith. They chose to be what St. Gregory
the Great described St. Benedict, * Scienter nesciens et
sapienter indoctus ' — * learnedly ignorant and wisely un-
lettered,' rather than drink in knowledge from a poisoned
source. Their love for learning was great, but their love
1 Rom. vii. 21-25. • * Heb. xi. G
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG 117
for the faith was greater still ; and though their schools were
banned, and their religion proscribed ; though their churches
were desecrated, and their altars profaned ; though learning,
and wealth, and honour were offered as the price of the
sacrifice of faith, they nobly spurned the prof erred bribe, and
chose the poverty of the afflicted Lazarus in preference to
the purple and fine linen of Dives. The penal days were a
sad, yet a glorious epoch in the history of our Church, for
then * her sanctuary was desolate like a wilderness, hex
festival days were turned into mourning, her sabbaths into
reproach, her honours were brought to nothing. Her
dishonour was increased according to her glory, and her
excellency was turned into mourning.' ^ Catholics could then
acquire learning and instruction in their faith only by stealth;
yet how they strove to acquire the one, and how nobly they
clung to the other, is the great glory of our Church and
people. They transmitted unsullied the legacy of the
irue faith to their descendants, and our fathers, in
turn, have transmitted it unsullied to us. We contend
for the right to teach the principles of that faith in our
schools to the young ; and, surely, no right is more sacred.
St. Paul admonishes parents to bring up their children * in
the discipline and correction of the Lord.'^ And long before
him Solomon had said : * Instruct thy son, and he shall
refresh thee, and shall give delight to thy soul.'^ Ecclesias-
ticus had similarly expressed himself : * He that instructeth
his son shall be praised in him, and shall glory in him in
the midst of them of his household,' * But as it is unreason-
able to expect that he who has not the faith himself could
impart it to others, the necessity is at once apparent of
having Catholic teachers for Catholic children. * Faith
cometh by hearing,' as the Apostle assures us, and so does
the knowledge of the virtues which the possession of the
true faith implies. It is through oral teaching that most
knowledge is communicated; and not only in the New
Law, but also in the Old, this system of instruction was
i 1 Machab. i. 41, 42, ^ Prov. xxix. 17.
2 Ephes. vi. 4. * Eccl. xxx. 2.
118 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
enjoined upon God's people. After giving the Command-
ments to the Israelites, God said to them : * Teach your
children that they meditate upon them, when thou sittest
in thy house, and when thou walke^t on the way, and
when thou liest down, and risest up.'^ Indeed, our
every-day experience so clearly proves the necessity
of mental training, that it requires no proof; but if
in literature and science this be necessary, it is doubly so
in the matter of religion. The human mind is so prone to
wander from the right path, that it takes all our precautions
to keep it from going astray ; but the Wise Man assures us
that the child who is trained up in the way he should go, even
when he is old, will not depart from it. But what use is
all training, or what use is the possession of all knowledge,
if not grounded upon religion ? It is religion that gives its
proper direction to learning, that sanctifies and elevates it
into a sacred science. It is religion that digs the channel
for the current of the young Christian mind wherein it may
steadily flow to the great ocean of God's love and service.
It is religion alone that properly animates all knowledge,
because ' the commandment is a lamp, and the law a light,
and reproofs of instruction are the way of life.' ^ What
were all the learned systems and vain theories of the pagan
philosophers, but a mere skeleton, because they lacked the
spirit of religion ? How futile were their teachings which
rested upon a false code of morality ; and how ineffectual to
satisfy the cravings of the soul, since they held out no
certainty of a world beyond the grave ! And equally vain
are modern systems which would exclude religion from the
schoolroom and the study-hall, which would give as again
the dry skeleton of a pagan education, and rob us of the
living soul which Catholic training imparts. Is such a
system calculated to foster the life of the soul, and to make
it what St. Paul declared it to be — * the temple of the living
God ' P Certainly not; for if you divorce science from
religion, and leave the mind to wander at will through the
fields of speculative philosophy, it will soon make shipwreck
1 Dent. xi. 19. 3 Prov. vi, 23. J' 2 Cor. vi, 6.
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG 119
of the faith, and end in destruction. A sound religious
training is the foundation on which to erect the super-
structure of learning — it is the fortress that is able to
withstand the assaults of the spiritual enemy.
But it is not alone in matters of faith that the young
require instruction. They must, in addition, be taught the
code of morality imposed by that faith. They have duties
to discharge to God, to their neighbours, and to themselves ;
and where can these be taught more effectually than in the
schoolroom? It is true this duty devolves first upon parents ;
but observe how long in the day scholars at school are with-
drawn from the influence of their parents, and still more
so, those at college. If, then, children attend a school
where no religious instruction is given them ; above all, if
they associate with others of depraved morals, we know
what will be the natural result. * With the holy, thou wilt
be holy,' said David; 'and with the innocent man thou
wilt be innocent ; and with the elect thou wilt be elect ;
and with the perverse thou ivilt be perverted.' ^ Is not this
especially true of the young, whose minds are so susceptible
of good or bad impressions ? With the perverse they shall,
indeed, soon become perverted ; for though at first their
virtuous nature may shudder at the sight of vice, yet soon
from familiarity with it, they will come to endure it, to love
it, and, finally, to practise it. No efforts, then, should be
spared to save the young from the knowledge of evil, and
from the company of those whose example teaches it, for
* evil communications corrupt good morals.' Too soon,
perhaps, will they come to know the wickedness of the
world, too soon will they experience the violence of tempta-
tion ; but, if trained in the maxims and the practice of piety
in youth, they will be able to fight the more successfully
against the dangers of after years.
Here, however, we will be told that the argument fails ;
that we see many from time to time who have received all
the advantages of early religious training fall away from
virtue, and, in some instances, become rocks of scandal.
1 Ps, xvii. 26, 27.
120 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
What, then, becomes of the religions training in their case,
or where are the good fruits it produces ? This objection,
specious at first sight, rests entirely upon a false hypothesis.
Eeligious training does not pretend to eradicate the passions ;
it merely teaches us how to subdue them, and, when subdued,
to keep them in subjection. Who will say that if a man fail
to put into practice the good instructions given him, that,
therefore, the blame is chargeable to the early training?
But this objection supposes more than this; it assumes that
because the education does not prevent evil, it is, therefore,
the cause of it. Now, it is a trite saying among philosophers
that * what proves too much proves nothing.' And so it is in
the present instance; for as in the first family on earth
there was found a Cain, as in the household of Jacob there
was found a Euben, as Amnon and Absalom were the
shame and the sorrow of David, and as in the very school
of Christ there was a Judas ; so, to the end of time, some
will be found who will resist grace and spurn instruction.
From the example of such no sound objection can be urged.
We look rather to the millions who are benefited by early
religious training than to the few who reject its blessings.
Two different parables of our divine Lord, however,
sufficiently answer the objection without going farther for
solution. In the one He tells us of a sower who went out
to sow seed, some of which fell by the wayside, and was
trodden down; and other some fell upon a rock, and withered
away for want of moisture ; and other some fell among
thorns, and was choked; and other some fell upon good
ground, and produced fruit a hundredfold. Now, here the
sower was the same, the seed sowed was alike, the only
difference consisted in the soil on which it fell. x\nd, in the
second parable. He tells us how good seed was sowed in
well-prepared soil, and took root ; but an enemy came in the
night and over-sowed it with cockle, which grew equally with
the good seed, and was reserved for the fire of destruction.
The application of these parables is apparent, and from
them one can see how frivolous is the objection advanced
against religious training.
But even in the case of those who, well-instructed in
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG 121
youth, give way to passion and plunge into vice ; who seem
in the gratification of their senses to forget the spiritual joys
of their youth, is the blessing of early religious instruction
always and entirely lost ? No ; certainly not. "What was
it induced the prodigal son, mentioned in the Gospel, to
arise in the day of his distress, and return to the home of
his kind and loving father ? Was it not the early training
and the delights he had felt in that home of youth and
innocence? Was it not the memory of those by-gone
days, when, as a distinguished orator has expressed it, *life
was young and hope unbroken, and the chalice of guilty
pleasure untasted '? Yes ; even in the days of his wandering,
in the years of his folly and vice, virtue still had charms for
him, and the vessel of his soul, broken by many a crime,
retained to the end the scent of youth's roses — the odour
that early virtue and religious training had left behind. As
when an exile, pining in a foreign land, hears some once
familiar but long-forgotten song, and at once a thousand
memories of childhood and youth sweep across his soul,
and tears of fond emotion fill his eyes, and an indescribable
longing for the place of his nativity takes possession of him ;
so is it with our once virtuous but erring youth. The old
familiar voice of religion reaches him in the strange land of
sin, and images of the past rise up before his mind in all
their bright, unsullied beauty. The years, unstained by
sin, when prayer was his delight, confession his comfort, and
the Eucharist the joy of his soul ; the years when he loved
to learn what religion taught, and to practise what his faith
inculcated — these, with all their tender associations, shake
his soul with an agony of remorse, open up the fountain of his
tears, convulsively rend his very heart, till, crushed, subdued,
and humbled, he cries out in his distress, 'Father, I have sinned
against heaven, and before thee : I am not worthy to be called
thy son : make me as one of thy hired servants.'^ Thus the
early graces are not all lost — the plant of early virtue has
still vitality in its roots. Still more does this hold true
when sickness tears off the tinsel from the pleasures of life.
' St. Luke. XT. 18, 19.
122 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
When the shadows are gathering round him, and in that
strange land of sin into which he has wandered, he is
realising the nothingness of the world ; when the vista of
eternity is opening out before him with its endless joys or
its endless sorrows, there still remains ' the lingering light
of his boyhood's years ' to guide the penitent back to the
home of youth. Just as a crystal spring, whose fountain
has been choked, and whose course has been impeded by the
weeds that cluster round it, sends forth its living waters
gushing freshly as ever when the hand of the husbandman
has cleared its channel ; so, when the hand of sickness has
gathered the weeds of vice from the heart of the prodigal,
and laid it open to the influence of God's vivifying grace,
then does the stream of faith, and hope, and charity well
up once more, and gush forth again with the vigour and the
freshness of his earlier days. Thus in the supreme moment
of existence, when the poison of sin seemed to have done its
deadly work, an antidote is furnished by the remembrance
of the lessons learned in the time of boyhood.
* And if such things be done in the green wood, what
shall be done in the dry ? ' If religious training in youth
produce such fruits in the prodigal, who shall enumerate its
effects in the just ? Who can count the temptations it has
enabled them to overcome, the occasions of sin it has made
them avoid, and the many virtues it has taught them to
practise ? Unseen by the world, a warfare is daily going on
within the precincts of the soul, and victory is been recorded
in favour of virtue. Unpretending piety which loves con-
cealment from the world is one effect of this early training,
for the truly good seek not to display their piety before the
world. Like the Singaddi, or night-tree, which grows by
the rivers of Sumatra, and which opens its flowers and
exhales its perfume only in the darkness and stillness of the
night ; so do holy souls love to commune with God in secret,
and offer to Him the perfume of prayer when the busy world
heeds not, and sluggards are sunk in repose.
Keligious instruction is, then, the greatest blessing which
the young can receive, for, as has been truly said, * education
is an ornament in prosperity, and a refuge in adversity.' It
CONDUCT AND CONFESSION 123
was what moulded the saints of the Old Law, and guided the
early Christians in the New Law ; and it is what still must
guide the young in the way of virtue. The rich man may
lose his wealth, the king may be hurled from his throne, all
the honours of the world may be wrecked by the storms of
adversity ; but the treasure of virtue imparted by religious
training will survive every tribulation, and remain with us
when friends forsake us, when the world is melting from
our vision, and our souls enter into the house of their
eternity.
»i< John K. O'Doherty.
CONDUCT AND CONFESSION
WHAT ought I to do, is the many-sided problem that
all human beings, while they have the use of reason,
have to be perpetually solving. It is the crown of all our
worries and perplexities. It enters into all our joys and
sorrows, into all the details of our life. There is a right
and a wrong way of doing everything. Nothing we freely
do is so unimportant as not to have this characteristic. In
real life there is always a motive, or collection of motives, on
account of which we act, whenever we do so freely, and not
instinctively and unreflectingly ; and in this way there is
always some merit or demerit in what we do, whether that
doing is chiefly exterior, or in our minds and wills only,
the conduct and management of which are much more
important than what appears exteriorly. Merit and demerit
vary infinitely, not only from the intention we have in
acting, but also from the acts themselves ; some being about
* trifles light as air,' while others have for their sanctions
* proofs from holy Writ.' Nevertheless, we require to be
always on our guard, for the consequence of trifles are often
the very reverse of trifling.
The teaching of others by word and example, and our
own experience, give us practical rules for the conduct of
124 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
life. And yet there is no one who is not frequently puzzled
as to the right thing to do in the varying circumstances
which day by day develop. It is not enough to know how ; it
is still more important to have the good will to act rightly.
It will be enough, and more than enough, here to consider
about knowing how. Even this must be restricted to con-
sidering where we have mainly to apply for information,
when our moral and religious conscience is concerned and
puzzled, as to what is sin and what is not, what is in har-
mony with genuine piety and what is not, how is a man to
know in what manner a Chri^ian in any state under any
circumstances ought to behave.
This is one of the greatest blessings the Catholic Church
confers on her children, guidance safe, sure, and scientific
in this all-important sphere. For two thousand years her
saints and doctors, in whom every species of moral and
mental excellence have been conspicuous, have devoted
themselves to the study and elaboration of all moral and
religious questions affecting all human relations and circum-
stances. The fruit of their holiness, wisdom, learning, and
labour in this field, is moral and ascetic theology. Their
prayerful study has never lost touch with real experience.
A chief spur to them * to scorn delights and live laborious
days ' in this work has been the requirements of human
society in its manifold developments. Over all their fruitful
toils the Church has kept watch with the divinely promised
guidance of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of truth, which
guidance accommodates itself to human needs and human
modes of motion.
In the merely natural order there is a science of morals,
of the principles and rules of conduct in all the relations of
life. This science is called ethics or moral philosophy. It
is a branch of philosophy of the greatest importance, and
always most highly valued and sedulously cultivated in
the Church. Its principles and conclusions enter largely
into moral theology, which deals with conduct in the light
of revelation, while using, too, in every way the light of
reason. The natural order is not superseded, maimed, or
dwarfed by the supernatural, but, on the contrary, elevated,
CONDUCT AND CONFESSION 125
developed, and perfected thereby. Christianity has made
human life and conduct immensely more complicated than
the mere natural order presents it ; but it has introduced
supreme order into all its complications, so that no one need
be at a loss how to satisfy conscience in his conduct in any
state or circumstance, if he will listen to the directions and
counsels of the Church. The most perplexing problems of
human conduct are being perpetually solved, and unhappy
consciences perpetually relieved and healed by the applica-
tion to their miseries of that wisdom which is stoi?ed up in
moral theology. Not only are miseries and diseases of the
moral and spiritual order alleviated and healed, but through
the same channel human beings are led on to every form
of moral and spiritual good and greatness. These results
are mainly for the general faithful brought about through
confession : for it is chiefly through the Sacrament of
Penance that the treasures of wisdom stored in moral and
ascetic theology are distributed. Men carefully selected,
having positive signs that they are divinely called to the
work, are trained with all possible care in the knowledge
and application to human needs of moral theology. It is
not enough that they should be priests of the Most High,
they must be known to have knowledge enough, they must
have given proof of worthiness of their awful responsibilities,
they must be delegated by their prelates to sit in the tribunal
of God and with full consciousness of the sublimity and
requirements of their office, and the tremendous consequences
of how they discharge it, they administer by the institution
of our Lord Himself this most consoling sacrament, more
than any other typical of the unutterable mercy of God.
Of course not all come up to the ideal the Church forms
of what a confessor should be. Seeing what human nature
is, it is one of the many miracles of grace existing in the
Catholic Church, that this ideal is realized all the world
over in so many cases, and that wherever there are Catholics
in any number there are so many competent and satis-
factory directors within common reach of the faithful. A
prudent, competent, holy confessor is one of the greatest
blessings anyone could experience ; one of the most valuable
126 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
members of human society, of whom the saying : ' Worth
his weight in gold,' but feebly conveys the idea of his
inestimable value. Whatever truth there is in the saying :
* No one is more dangerous than g. pious fool,' it is quite
certain, that no advice is so reliable as that of a wise and
pious confessor, who knows when to judge that an act or
line of conduct is obligatory, and in what degree, or advisable,
or perfectly optional to adopt or decline. This does not
mean, as every Catholic knows, that we surrender our
consciences to the absolute rule of the confessor. Every
man is accountable for himself, his own conscience it is
which he ought to follow ; but, inasmuch as we are bound
to do what we can to have right and true consciences, and
to avoid wrong and false ones, the advice and direction of
one specially trained, and specially aided by Divine grace,
must be of the greatest assistance in the moral and spiritual
struggle on which our highest interests depend. A man,
who is his own lawyer, is said to have a fool for his client,
and something analogous must be said of one who thinks
himself able to dispense with moral and spiritual counsel.
Through confession, more than any other way, human
conduct is brought into harmony with the moral and
spiritual order. Catholics hold with the certainty of faith,
that it is God's will and law that they should tell in con-
fession all the sins they have on their conscience, which they
believe to be grievous and never before absolved. Forgive-
ness of these sins is not by any means the sole fruit of
confessing them, but many other great blessings are thereby
secured. Not to mention the immense relief which all
experience proves it is to one conscious of sin and crime to
pour out his miseries to another in whose secrecy and
sympathy he can absolutely confide, a specially great
advantage is knowledge of how we ought to conduct
ourselves interiorly and exteriorly in matters where our
conscience is concerned. This in itself is a priceless boon.
Again, it is almost altogether through confession that the
morally diseased learn how to heal their hideous maladies.
In the same way, too, as has already been intimated, we
get to know in perplexing cases what we are downright
CONDUCT AND CONFESSION 127
bound to do, or to avoid, and wherein we are perfectly-
free to act one way or the other. And this knowledge
is marvellously efficacious in liberating the mind from
anxieties, scruples, and multiform distress.
It must be remembered that it is the grace of God which
makes confession so fruitful. God, who created human
nature, and knows infinitely well its requirements in every
shape, instituted the Sacrament of Penance in all its parts —
confession, contrition, and satisfaction, as one most necessary
and most .consoling mode of conferring all kinds of grace
and help on his sinful but penitent creatures. Penitent and
confessor, hearer and preacher, faith in grace is what makes
these certain it is worth their while to go through the pain
and labour of telling and listening, of instructing, exhorting,
resolving. Without grace we are all but helpless in our
moral struggles ; with grace we are able for all difficulties ;
we are more than a match for all our enemies, the world,
the flesh, and the devil. There are sublimer means of grace
than confession ; there are none more practical, none more
expressive of God's mercy towards knowledge of and
condesension to human needs and weakness.
The best proof — at any rate a perfect proof— of the divine
institution of confession is experience of it. Miserable slaves
of vice are being constantly delivered and restored to moral
and spiritual health by the persistent use of confession. The
very fact of having made up their minds to go frequently
and regularly is an immense deterrent against yielding to
the suggestions of temptation and disorderly passions. Being
bound in conscience to tell their grievous falls, and being
determined to do so, has tremendous efficacy in preventing
them, or marvellously lessening their number. Knowing
that they will not be absolved unless they give signs and
proofs of sincerity of sorrow endows them with strength of
resistance, and helps them to that sincere sorrow, which
seems on the surface altogether beyond their power. And
so it would be were not the Sacrament of Penance a
fountain of grace ever flowing, succouring and stimulating
poor sinful human beings.
Although getting rid of sin and of the effects of sin, more
128 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
and more, is most especially the fruit of this sacrament, it
is not, as we have seen, all the benefit derived from it. A
most important part is direction how to discharge the duties
of our state of life and circumstances, and how to advance
in the service and love of God and our neighbour. Of course
a great deal of knowledge on these points is the consequence
of telling sins, and what are thought to be sins; for then we
are told, when we are ignorant ourselves, what is lawful,
what is not, what is advisable to do. Prudent and zealous
confessors point out to their penitents how they may make
progress in Christian perfection, by trying to do their ordinary
actions conscientiously, by often calling to mind the presence
of God, by uniting what they do and suffer with the actions
and sufferings of our Lord, by trying to have right intention
in the very things in which they find pleasure, according to
the words of St. Paul : * Whether you eat or drink, or what-
ever else you do, do all to the glory of God.' ^ And again :
* All whatsoever you do in word or in work, all things do ye
in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.' ^
Doing all for God in the supernatural order is the
conscious and free perfecting of that law of our rational
nature, whereby we are necessitated to do all that we freely
do in order that we may satisfy, or tend to satisfy, our
craving for happiness. We are not free to choose
whether we shall wish to be happy or not, but we are
free to choose in what we shall place our happiness. By
grace we choose God and His service as the true object
and way to become happy. The more perfectly we refer
all our lives to Him, the more we secure what we aim at.
At first sighjt it would seem that, since eternal happiness
is the one thing supremely important to us, we should, if we
were wise, scarcely mind anything else. This idea presents
itself to some as if they ought to renounce the world
in every shape and form, and do nothing but works
of piety, think of nothing but God and their soul, and what
would unite them more and more with Him. Others,
realizing the terrible state of this world, the temporal
1 1 Cor. X. 31. 2 Col. iii. 17.
CONDUCT AND CONFESSION 129
and spiritual destitution so widely, so awfully prevalent,
have it borne in on them that anyone in earnest about a
noble and self-sacrificing life should devote or share all he
has of every kind for the relief and succour of the suffering.
Incomparably more have such thoughts than ever seriously
attempt to give them act. Many do try to carry them out,
and more do a good deal, which relieves and consoles and
improves some, at least, of the huge multitudes of unhappy
human beings. Now, it is in this field that moral theology
and confession, moral teaching and spiritual direction are
of priceless value for the religiously and philanthropically
inclined. Without these helps they become fanatical or
despairingly selfish, or in other ways moral wrecks and
failures, more or less complete. The Catholic Church,
through the teaching and application of tnoral theology, has
the secret of peace of heart for all sorts of characters, for all
sorts of situations, for all sorts of human circumstances. It
is God Himself in His own way, and in accordance with
human nature and society, who has provided His Church
with this infinite treasure, and the experience of ages proves
its divine source and unlimited power for human good.
All that the world really and reasonably requires for the
due development of human society is in perfect harmony
with the will and design of God, and therefore of His Church.
There must be different ranks in life, different degrees of
wealth and temporal means, all sorts of human careers,
rulers and subjects, civilians and soldiers, artists, scholars,
philosophers, professional, commercial, mechanical toilers,
married and single, sacred and secular callings. Every field
for legitimate enterprise and energy must be worked, every
legitimate enjoyment must have its place and consideration.
The will and full plan of God can only be worked out
through human society. Experience as well as nature itself
makes clear how that society must be constituted and
developed. No doubt the world, as we know it, is a great
mystery. We shall never understand it in this life in all its
bearings. Eeason alone can make no satisfactory hand of
it. Keason enlightened by faith can. Not that anyone will
be completely delivered from all perplexity and worry in the
VOL. VI. I
130 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
moral and spiritual sphere. The wisest and holiest often
enough suffer therefrom. Perhaps it is not in the nature of
things that such complex beings as we are, having such
complicated and conflicting relations at times with others,
should be able to be perfectly balanced in this state of
struggle and probation, and in perfect adaptation and har-
mony with our environment moral and spiritual. For all
that, through the maze and tangle of life, its duties and
opportunities for useful and noble action, its temptations,
dangers, disasters, joys, and sorrows of every kind, a sure,
safe, and sufficient guide of interior and exterior conduct, as
far as conscience is concerned, is the moral and ascetic
theology of the Church, conveyed and applied for the most
part to the faithful through the Sacrament of Penance.
William A. Sutton, s.j.
THE PREACHER IN THE MAKING
'Ytto yap \6y(ov 6 vovs re fieTecopl^erai,
€iraip€TaL t' avdpconos.
Aristophanes.
NOT the least important obligation imposed upon us
when ordained to the Christian priesthood is that of
preaching the word of God. At that hour we receive our
mission to spread and to carry on that Gospel message of
peace and reconciliation with God which are the fruits of
man's redemption. In the Church the preacher has in-
variably been regarded as a power for good. He is able to
influence many ; his words will occasionally sink deep into
the human heart and imagination, and may be they are
treasured up, and oft repeated in the home circle, long after
the speaker has passed into the land of shadows.
St. Paul, were he alive to-day, would probably, in addition
to preaching, like to fill an editor's chair, in the hope of
influencing by his writings those whom his voice was never
destined to reach. This may be true ; but, * non omnia
possumus omnes,' as Virgil has it ; and, is it not wiser to
THE PREACHER IN THE MAKING 131
use to the best advantage the opportunities which are daily
at hand rather than sigh regretfully for others which the
capricious wheel of fortune is never destined to bring within
our reach.
In mediaeval Europe there were few men whose sway was
more unquestioned than the friar preachers. Those moated
castles and plumed knights, which writers of modern fiction
have cajoled us into regarding, in the one instance as the
secure haven of refuge for the sore-bestead husbandman,
and in the other as the living quintessence of truth and
chivalry, did not appear exactly in the same light to the
vice-combatting friars. As somebody has put it : —
Vehemens ut procella, excitatus ut torrens, incensus ut ful-
men, tonabat, fulgurabat, et rapidis eloquentiae fluctibus cuncta
proruebat et porturbabat. ' >
What a spectacle it must have been ; and how resonant
the groans of the conscience-stricken lordlings.
Probably there are few ecclesiastics in history who
believed more entirely in the power of the preacher than
Hugh Latimer, who was forced into the see of Worcester by
Henry YIII. and Cromwell, in 1535. Never was he happier
than when occupied roving from village to village, address-
ing the simple rustics, and preaching to them a doctrine
which, though manly 'and vigorous, was highly tinged with
the unfortunate errors of the Keformation period. In his
sermon entitled the * Ploughers,' delivered at St. Paul's,
January 18th, 1549, he draws an analogy between the
preacher and ploughman : —
First [as he puts it], for their labours of all seasons of the
year, for there is no time of the year in which the ploughman
hath not some special work to do ; and then they also may be
likened together for the diversity of works and variety of offices
that they have to do. For as the ploughman first setteth forth
his plough, and then tilleth his land, and breaketh into furrows,
and sometimes ridgeth it up again ; and, at another time
harroweth it, and clotteth, and hedgeth it, diggeth it, and weedeth
it, purgeth it, and maketh it clean ; so the preacher hath many
divers offices to do. He hath first a busy work to bring his
parishioners to a right faith ; he hath then a busy work to
confirm them in the same faith ; now cutting them down with
132 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
the law and with the threatenings of God for sin ; now ridging
them up again with the Gospel and with the promises of God's
favour; now weeding them by telling them their faults, and
making them forsake sin ; now clotting them, by breaking their
stony hearts, and making them to have hearts of flesh,
that is, soft hearts, and apt for doctrine to enter in ; now
teaching to know God rightly, and to know their duty
to God and their neighbours ; now exhorting them when they
know their duty, that they do it, and be dihgent in it — so that
they have a continual work to do.
If, in the sixteenth century, the work of the preacher
was so arduous, and required such unremitting attention,
how much more is not this the case to-day, when we are
called upon to address ourselves to a people in the full
enjoyment of all the advantages of modern culture and
civilization ; and distracted by the glamour of an age of
extreme luxury and corruption, a materialistic age, when
the temptations to sin are all the more effective and insidious
because presented under forms in which there is little or
any trace of grossness.
There are many qualities which go to the making of a
successful preacher. In fact, we can well say that, like the
poet, he is not made. Nature must have endowed him with
certain important gifts and graces, and if these are wanting
to him he may labour and study much, and gain for himself
some repute as a careful and polished speaker, but a great
preacher he will never be. A friend of mine, a highlj^
esteemed clergyman of the Church of England, has frequently
been heard declaring that it takes a clever parson to get
together one good sermon in a week ; that it takes a regular
genius to preach two in the same time ; but that any fool
can fire off five or six : and certainly there is a fair share of
truth in the remark. Some men certainly have caught the
trick of being able to enter the pulpit at a moment's notice,
and of discoursing with the eloquence of a verger for long or
short, as the case may be, on any subject from the fall of
Adam to the question of predestination. But is this preach-
ing, and do those to whom such addresses are delivered leave
the church with a clear conception of what they have heard ?
Seneca tells us that speech is the mirror of the mind.
THE PREACHER IN THE MAKING 133
imago animi sermo est ; and if the mind be confused
and full of ill-digested thought, can its reflection be said
to impress us? 'Preaching,' says Sydney Smith, * has
become a by-word for long and dull conversation of any
kind : and whoever wishes to imply, in any piece of writing,
the absence of everything agreeable and inviting, calls it a
sermon.' Yes, but the man who is forced to listen to this
sort of discourse, will not be caught so easily a second time.
We cannot disguise from ourselves the fact that the average
intelligent Catholic has a dislike to hearing sermons. The
low Masses are crowded : but the Missa Cantata is shunned
as far as possible ; and chiefly, I fear, because in entails the
hearing of a sermon. This does not indicate a healthy state
of things ; and that unfortunate sermon is responsible for all
the mischief.
* Unless,' says C. H. Francis, in Orators of the Age,
' you have the art of clothing your ideas in clear and
captivating diction, never hope to rule your fellowmen in
these modern days.' This hits off the situation to a nicety.
In fact, if we want to deliver even a moderately good sermon
it is essentially requisite that we be able to express our ideas
clearly and neatly. The young admirers of Thackeray who
wished to follow in his footsteps invariably received one
piece of advice from the famous creator of Beckey Sharpe :
first, to be quite certain of what they meant to convey, and
then to set it forth as plainly, as simply, as straightforwardly
as possible; and Flaubert urges us in the same direction
when he declares that the chief aim of the writer — and I
presume that what applies to the writer obtains with equal
appositeness in the case of the preacher— should be absolute
precision. There is, he tells us, but one noun that can
convey your idea : only one verb that can set that idea
moving, and only one adjective that is the proper epithet for
that noun. Flaubert himself was a marvellous writer:
yet it was nothing unusual for him to spend half a day in
thought, seeking for some word or expression with which he
might express his idea the more exactly. The great states-
men, Fox and Pitt, were both speakers of the highest order.
Yet Fox was large-minded enough to say, after hearing a
134 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
famous speech delivered by his rival, that although he himself
was [never at a loss for a word, yet that Pitt never failed
to hit upon the word. This is the result of thought, neglect
of which is the fruitful cause of u,ncertainty and circum-
locution. Sophocles evidently felt this when he makes
Theseus say : AtSao-K'- avev yvm/x-qs yap ov /xe )(prj Aeycii/.i
The simpler and the easier the language we use when
expressing our ideas the better. The English tongue is
wonderfully comprehensive; yet for homeliness and directness
the old Saxon words cannot be surpassed. Still it would be
an affectation to limit ourselves too rigorously to their
service. Probably the best style, whether in writing or
speaking, is that which is trained to draw upon a well-
balanced measure of Celto-Saxon words with numerous
others which have come to us from a Latin or a French
source. The use of too many long words of Latin origin is
apt to lead up to the formation of a style at once spineless
and inflated. Professor Meiklejohn, in his recently published
work. The Art of Writijig English ^ which no student of our
language will fail to read, mentions the case of an alderman
of the city of London who felt aggrieved when one of his
colleagues proposed that the following simple words should
be inscribed on the tomb of the famous statesman
George Canning, * He Died Poor' As an amendment, the
alderman proposed that the inscription should read, 'He
expired in circumstances of extreme indigence.' Another
example of this bladder-like diction is furnished by the
famous reference of the Earl of Beaconsfield to Mr. Gladstone
in the course of a speech delivered in the House of Commons
in 1878. It runs as follows : —
A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of
Lis own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination, that
can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series
of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself.
There are hardly three words in this quotation that do
not smack of foreign birth. It is scarcely in good taste :
for, as Lady Mary Montague puts it, ' Copiousness of words,
1 (Edipus Coloneus, 594,
THE PREACHER IN THE MAKING 135
however ranged, is always false eloquence, though it will
ever impose upon some sort of understandings.' There is
much of this sort of writing to be found in our daily and
weekly newspapers. Thus, a leader in the Times is like to
the continuous booming of a big gun ; and the Saturday
Beview cultivates a style, the identity of which can never
be mistaken. To give a simple example : the Beview of
April 15th, 1899, when referring to the report then current,
of the considerable irritation which had been caused in
Malta owing to the attempt to substitute English for Italian
as the official language, argued that as Maltese is an Arab
dialect, the Italian tongue might never have been tolerated
for a moment in the island. The result of its continuance,
said the writer, has been ' to foster a spurious irredentism
among the insignificant Italian settlers.' This is very stilted
English; and the allusion to * irredentism ' is enough to
cause one to lose ten minutes hunting in a work of reference,
unless his memory can carry him back as far as 1876, when
one of the parties of the Left in Italian politics climbed into
office by means of the cry of Italia Irredenta. A little over
a year since a volume of Catholic sermons from the French
was published ; and looking through the sermon set down
for the Second Sunday after Easter, 'Jesus the Good
Shepherd,' I noticed the following sentence : —
But it is not enough that Jesus died for us. His ingenious
love has done more : it has found the secret of surviving death,
and eternalizing His presence and His benefits among us.
The derivation of the word 'ingenious' will certainly
permit of its being employed in the manner indicated in the
above sentence ; but I take it that no preacher would use
the word during the delivery of his sermon unless he chanced
to be addressing a body of savants. All this goes to prove
that the simpler the language we employ when expressing
our ideas the better. Clearness or perspicuity, according
to Locke, * consists in the using of proper terms for the ideas
or thoughts which a man would have pass from his own
mind into that of another,' and to succeed in this particular
should be the ambition of every preacher.
The education or training of the preacher is a matter of
136 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
such vital importance that it can never receive too much
attention at the hands of those v^ho are responsible for the
instruction of such as aspire to the priesthood. It is almost
a crime against society to send a youiig priest out into the
world now-a-days without his being carefully prepared for
the onerous work of preaching which presses so heavily on
every beginner ; so heavily, in fact, as almost to make the
young priest's life a misery for a year or two after his
ordination. An intimate acquaintance with the Bible is
absolutely necessary for any man who is sent to preach
God's word. Kead the works of St. Augustine, or those of
St. .lohn Chrysostom, and you cannot fail to be impressed
by their knowledge of the sacred writings. Their sermons and
homilies are replete with quotations, for the most part apt,
drawn from that treasury of \^isdom and holiness. Kingsley
has said that * a man may learn from his Bible to be a
more thorough gentleman than if he had been brought up
in all the drawing-rooms of London.' Certain it is that with
it, and from it, the preacher can imbue his mind with
thoughts and sentiments which never grow stale, which
invariably produce a good effect on the minds of his hearers.
As a translation our Douay version is not to be mentioned
in the same breath with the Anglican Authorised edition in
which we find the best and most musical rhythms contained
in our language.
Kuskin has put it on record that he owes his taste for
literature to the care and anxiety of his mother, who,
good woman, was determined that he should know his
Bible at all costs. Day after day he had to learn whole
chapters by heart, * hard names and all,' until he had com-
mitted every word of the ponderous tone to memory from
Genesis to the Apocalypse. I am afraid that we Catholic
preachers do not make as good a use as we might of the
Bible. Its language comes to our lips only with an effort ;
hence our neglect of the wealth of illustration it affords us ;
and our inability to hit upon an apt quotation at a moment's
notice. Thus we deprive ourselves of one of the most potent
weapons not merely for inviting the attention, but for carrying
ponyiction to the n;in4s of oi^r hearers, ' The vyord of God/
THE PREACHER IN THE MAKING 137
says St. Paul,^ ' is living and active, and sharper than any two-
edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and
spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the
thoughts and intents of the heart.' I should say that our
intimacy with Latin rhythms from the daily use of the
Breviary, and our scientific works gives us a distaste for the
simple but tuneful Saxon rhythms of the EngHsh Bible.
Yet, let us but be profoundly moved and forced to give vent
to feelings of grief, anguish, anger, or reproach, we shall
find that we naturally revert to the simpler Saxon terms,
and employ words which express our meaning with a force
and a directness that cannot be mistaken.
A sound and fairly extensive knowledge of Dogmatic
Theology is necessary in the case of every preacher. How-
ever, we should so assimilate its principles as to be able to
refer to them in that easy, ordinary, langtlage which never
exceeds the scope of the mind of our humblest hearers. Not
only are we laying ourselves open to the charge of pedantry,
but we even make an otherwise good sermon intolerably
tiresome when we drag into it the tag ends of theological
termini, about which those we are addressing know probably
next to nothing. This cannot be too carefully guarded
against. Ignorant people may be impressed by the frequent
repetition of Latin words or phrases ; but the more intel-
ligent can only regard their use as an evidence of bad taste,
united with crudeness of information.
In the dogmatic system of the Church we shall find a
wealth of argument, and a studied clearness of statement on
points of doctrine, which cannot be too highly appreciated
of the preacher. In it, too, we can easily follow the traces
of what Newman calls the * development of doctrine,' and
concerning which he wrote so eloquently. By it we
understand the gradual crystallization with the advance of
time of the teaching of the Church on points of faith con-
tained, without doubt, in the original deposit of revelation
delivered of old to the saints ; always believed, yet slowly
attaining their proper setting and position in the jewelled
crown of the Spouse of Christ.
1 Heb, iv. 12
138 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Again, dogmatic theology puts before us exactly what has
been defined as of faith, and what has not been so declared.
This is a matter of vital importance, and never more so
than to-day. It is nothing unusual for a priest to meet with
people who are of the household of tie faith, and who fear lest
they may have overstepped the limits of discretion when
debating questions which are really not of faith, but rather
subjects for discussion amongst theologians. To give an
instance, some people who are good and religious-minded
find a certain difficulty in acccepting all that they read or
hear concerning the miracles which are reputed as having
taken place at Lourdes, or at some other well-known place
of pilgrimage. Unauthenticated cases of the appearance of
the stigmata, apparitions, &c., engender in their minds a
feeling of mistrust. Now, we are all perfectly convinced
that these wonders have occurred in the past ; and that there
is no unHkelihood of their reappearance at some future date.
Miracles, the Gospel hall-mark, have never been wanting to
the Church. Yet we may not disguise from ourselves the
fact, that the mother of saints is extremely slow to pro-
nounce as to the genuineness of the different phenomena
described above. The paradoxes of one age dwindle down
to the dull level of the common-places of the next ; and so
what may appear mysterious and hard of explanation to-
day, will seem evident as the summer sun at noon-tide a
century hence, when the restless eyes of science has
penetrated deeper into the hidden things of nature, and
gauged more accurately the over-lapping of mind on matter,
and the power of a living faith in things unseen to subue
and to correct our bodily infirmities. Mindful of these
facts, the preacher will never allow himself to lay undue
stress upon any event, upon any apparent wonder, upon any-
thing which might tend to upset that evenness of balance,
or to break down that clearly-defined barrier between
essentials and non-essentials, to be found in every text -book
of theology. There is a certain class of people who are only
too ready to turn and twist every word uttered by the
preacher to a sense utterly foreign to his intention. Many
of us have had personal acquaintance with the man who
THE PREACHER IN THE MAKING 139
attaches more importance to the act of creeping to the cross
on Good Friday than to compliance with the precept of
the Easter confession and communion; and with another
individual who is miserable for days if he miss receiving the
blessed ashes on the first day of Lent, yet who is ready to
wink at fornication, and other such peccadillos,
Mr. Augustine Birrell, in his ohiter dictay speaks of the
' great dust heap called history ' into which every thought-
ful mind loves to plunge itself. The history of any race or
nation is always a captivating study; but much more
interesting is it to go through a really trustworthy record
of the annals of the Church from the time of the Apostles.
No preacher can afford to dispense with this knowledge.
He can use it in a variety of ways, and always with good
effect. In our ecclesiastical annals we see the Church
growing century after century, constantly gaining ground.
We marvel at that mysterious assistance which, in all
contests with the power of evil, enabled her to come off
victorious, and to keep the purity of the faith unsullied.
Doctrines and beliefs latent and undeveloped in the begin-
ing, come in the course of time, occasionally as the result of
some bitter schism, to find their true position and setting
amongst the Church's formularies. The human element in
the Church will put before us man's character in all its base-
ness. Lust, avarice, ambition, now in the cleric, now in the
statesman or the sovereign; occasionally in all three in
combination against the Spouse of Christ. Their rage
expends itself, and leaves her unhurt, as great, as vigorous,
as powerful as ever-
Much useful information may be gathered from the study
of the acts of the early (Ecumenical Councils. Then, the
origin and development of monasticism, a power which has
never failed to make itself felt in the Church ; its decline
and rehabilitation; its services to the Church and to civiliza-
tion; its shortcomings, must open up a vista for thought and
meditation to any serious student. Who can study the reli-
gious life, worship, and discipline of the Church, say from the
year 750 to 1000, when all Europe seemed hopelessly sunk
in barbarism, without being impressed by the civilizing,
140 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
elevating influence exercised by the Church on ail sides?
Then we have the Eastern Schism; the famous pontificate of
Hildebrand ; the Crusades ; the events which culminated
in the so-called Pragmatic Sanction; the appearance of
St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure ; with the subsequent
Scholastic controversies ; the spread of the Mendicant
Orders : these events, which filled the stage of Europe
for centuries, afford endless opportunities of reference to
the preacher, and furnish him with a wealth of illustra-
tion well-nigh inexhaustible.
The seventy years captivity of the Church at Avignon,
one of the saddest epochs in her history, is well deserving
of close study. Though we find much to sadden and depress
us, there is yet much more to rejoice over in the evidences
of such rare sanctity as was shown forth in the lives of
Catherine of Sienna, the guide and counsellor of popes and
bishops, and Vincent Ferrer.
The incidents which led up to the so-called Protestant
Eeformation, and made such a movement possible, whether
in Germany or England, are well- deserving of careful notice.
There is no use blinking facts. Nor must we allow ourselves
to run away from the truth. It is heartbreaking to reflect
on what we then lost; and that, I fear, beyond all hope of
recovery.
The course of events in the Church for the last three
hundred years, and her rapid extension in the New World,
the circumstances which rendered the declaration of the
dogmas of the Papal Infallibility and the Immaculate
Conception absolutely necessary, are well known to every
reader. It is plain, however, to every thinking man to-day
that times have very much altered. The march of events
is rapid to quite a startling degree. The social conditions
of the nations have altered considerably. Venerable,
ancient systems and institutions are being swept away,
and replaced by others of a fresher type. Past works are
being read in a clearer light ; a dead weight of prejudice is
being lifted slowly from off men's minds ; things are now
seen in a clearer perspective- But, immovable in the midst
of all changes, and towering above all human institutions.
THE PREACHER IN THE MAKING 141
the student of history will easily discern the Church of God ;
that light set upon a mountain, and attracting the attention
of all nations; the unfailing source of truth, peace, and
salvation. Grievously have her children dishonoured and
disgraced her. Pride and ambition have led to many a fall ;
but in her doctrine the Church has never wavered — the same
to-day as yesterday, the mother of saints, the infallible
teacher of truth for all time.
There is one thing the Catholic preacher cannot afford
to lose sight of at the present moment, and that is the
immense influence wielded by the press, and that which
is also exercised by our writers of fiction. Now-a-days
everybody reads. Newspapers are multiplying weekly : all
tastes aye catered for, from those of the scholar to those
of our kitchenmaids. Then the modern novel is a factor
which, in many instances, is likely to cause serious mischief.
Many of them deal with questions which even men of
the world scarcely care to mention in the course of
conversation.
Now, as Catholic priests, it is plainly our business to make
ourselves acquainted with current literature, and to do all
that in us lies to apply the antidote to what is admittedly
poisonous. Idle it is to imagine our people do not read
such writings. They do, and what is more they are influ-
enced by them to a far greater extent than we imagine.
What are we to say of the Catholic maidens of the better
class, and their married sisters, who revel in such a book as
Evelyn Lines ? Then there is that powerful and fascinating
story by Miss Eobins, The Open Questio?i, which caused
so much excitement on its appearance a few months ago.
Have we nothing to say to the startling ideas put forward in
this book as to the commission of suicide, the propagation of
disease, and the numerous other questions debated in its
pages ? To be in a position to refute any and all misleading
theories, it is essential that we keep ourselves well abreast of
the times in the matter of current thought on all social,
poetical, moral, and religious questions. Owing to the spread
of education our people are fast becoming more and more
cultured. This is just as it should be. But the priest as
142 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
their guide, must make it plain that he is still more cultured
than they, and that he is capable of correcting any error
which may effect their minds, and which tends to dim the
purity of their faith. Emerson says that he who would fain
lift another up must himself be on higher ground : and if we
wish to arrest the spread of the corrupting influences which
are ever at work in society, we must grapple with them,
and show full plainly their inherent rottenness.
There is one side of the preacher's training, the value of
which we cannot afford to ignore, and that is his knowledge
of rhetoric. To many minds this word conjures up the idea
of artificiality, insincerity, and clap-trap. But this is a fatal
mistake. A preacher is not, surely, insincere, because he
has trained his voice to the best modulations, and whose
articulation is a joy to listen to? We sit and enjoy the
vocalization of some well-known singer who plays upon our
feelings even as a musician does upon his instrument ; and
yet we never dream of accusing the singer of artificiahty.
Why, then, the speaker or the preacher? In fact, matters
are fast coming to that pass that church-goers used to the
perfect voice production of the stage, will think twice before
going to hear a sermon, for no other reason, perhaps, than
that the speaker's voice grates upon their ears. ' Speak the
speech,' says Hamlet to the players; * trippingly on the
tongue, suit the action to the word, the word to the action.'
Splendid advice this, if only we could succeed in carrying
it out in practice. It may be said, I think, that character
has a great deal to do with the formation of a man's delivery ;
and, as no two characters are exactly alike, so it will be
difficult to find two speakers who will deliver the same
passage after the same fashion. * All speech,' says
Demosthenes, * is vain and empty unless it be accompanied
by action.'^ This is very true, but no two men will agree
as to the extent to which action may be employed when
preaching; much will depend on the matter we are
discussing.
When Sir Henry Irving put Kobespierre on the Lyceum
"Awas fi€V \6yos av airovr epy' '4x0 fidraiov rt (^aiverai Ka\ Kevov.
THE PREACHER IN THE MAKING 143
stage a few weeks since, one of the leading successes proved
to be the acting of Mr. Laurence Irving as TaUien. In the
convention scene, many ignorant people, who were present,
were inconsiderate enough to laugh at the young actor.
But his gesticulation, though wild and fierce, was quite
in keeping with the character and circumstances of the
man he was representing. Tallien had been an actor
before he became a politician. He had a private reason for
bringing about the downfall of Eobespierre ; so when his
opportunity came we may rest certain that he made the
most of it, forcing into his service every trick of diction and
action which was likely to influence his hearers. Still
gracefulness of action is a thing that is not acquired in a
day. Herein, if in anything : * Chi va piano va sano ed
anche lontano.' We may not leap up the oratorical ladder,
but we can all mount it step by step according to the measure
of our ability. As Browning says : * ever with the best
desire goes diffidence.' In time, however, the diffidence
disappears; or we become more self-controlled. Yet not
even then ought we to allow ourselves to forget, that in the
matter of action the golden rule is moderation, a gift which
someone has charmingly described as the silken string
running through the pearl chain of all virtues.
The older some of us grow in the sacred ministry, the
more manifest appears to us the absolute need that exists
for careful preparation before preaching. Study, thought,
and prayer, these we can never afford to dispense with, be
we ever so gifted. Those, says, Montaigne, who are deficient
in matter endeavour to make it up in words. But this can
never be accomplished. The seedlings must first have
struck root in the mind and heart of the preacher before
they can be transferred to the minds of his hearers, where
he hopes, with God's help, they will fructify. A small drop
of ink, as Byron has it,
Falling like dew upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.
But, first of all, the thought has assumed form and shape in
the mind of the writer.
144 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
There is one quality which will make even a very poor
sermon acceptable to the people, and the absence of which
cannot fail to render a beautiful discourse almost intolerable ;
that is, earnestness, or the happy .faculty of making others
realize that we believe what we are saying ; that the exhorta-
tions we address to them are of supreme importance to
ourselves. ' It is the speaker's character,' says Menander,
'which persuades, and not his words.' The name of
John Knox is one to which most of us are not particularly
partial. Yet there is no denying that he was a most earnest
preacher. In his old age he had to be carried from his
home to the pulpit ; but, as an ancient writer tells us, * 'ere
he had done with his sermone, he was so active and vigorous
that he was lyk to ding the pulpit in blads, and flie out of it.'
This same note of intense, overpowering conviction and
earnestness will be noticed in Thomas Guthrie's well-known
sermon on intemperance. Even the least imaginative can
form some idea of the effect likely to be produced by an
impassioned orator, his mind throbbing with conviction,
giving utterance to the following words in the middle of
his discourse : ^ Before God and man, before the Church
and the world, I impeach intemperance ; I charge it with
the murder of innumerable souls.'
An affected preacher will never make a successful one.
The pulpit is a very conspicuous piece of furniture, and any
tendency to exaggeration or posing whilst in it is sure to be
widely noticed, and remembered. Some preachers like to
say amusing things, especially when delivering contro-
versial sermons, and to tell stories which are sure to excite
laughter ; but this is a tendency which ought to be very
carefully guarded against. Laughter, says Demophilus, like
salt, must be sparingly indulged in, at all events in such a
sacred spot as a Catholic church.
The reading of the Epistle and Gospel preparatory to
preaching at the sung Mass on Sunday may seem a matter
of very slight consequence ; but, like most other things, it is
capable of being done either very well or altogether badly.
A good reader delivering the sacred word with due emphasis,
slowly and deliberately, may do more during that minute or
THE PREACHER IN THE MAKING 145
two in the direction of making a lasting impression, than
he will by a dozen sermons. Dr. Barry, in his recently
published novel, The Tivo Standards, gives a beautiful
description of the reading of the Church of England vicar,
Mr. Greystoke, father to the heroine of the story. It runs
as follows : —
Mr. Greystoke read the lessons with an intonation so large
and well-balanced, so sweet and searching, or so convincingly
profound, that while he was giving them out, Marian sat as in
the hearing of a mighty orchestra. No less — for the exquisite vox
humama was borne up, was quickened and thrown into a flame
by the words themselves, which sang with him in their ancient
beauty and struck their golden cords in unison, and sometimes
danced as if the stars in their courses turned about a steadfast
sun ; and again wept most feelingly, and fell into the minor, and
sank down one by one, dying as if from very sweetness and the
pain of an intense desire.
This was the perfection of reading which we all have
to admire, but which few of us dare emulate. There are
few writers or students but feel tempted to burn the
midnight oil, and to neglect that amount of open air
exercise which is necessary in the case of every healthy
man. This entails the most lamentable consequences ; and
is, moreover, a positive neglect of a most important duty —
the preservation of our health, on which depends the proper
performance of our daily work. * All breaches of the laws
of health,' says Herbert Spencer, 'are physical sins,' an
injustice done to nature. Mental power, says the same
writer, cannot be got from ill-fed brains. Therefore, the
preacher must keep constantly before him the excellent idea
of the mens sana in corpore sano; and rest assured that this
cannot be brought about if active exercise in the open air
is neglected. As Browning finely expresses it : —
Air, air, fresh life blood, thin and searching air,
The clear, dear breath of God that loveth us.
The man that takes a cold tub in the morning, and rides
twenty-five miles a day on his cycle, will generally have
bis wits about him ; he will not be troubled much with the
headache, nor will he pay much away in doctor's fees.
VOL. V K
146 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
I think I have touched upon the chief qualifications
which go to the making of a successful preacher. We
should have an ambition to be able to perform this impor-
tant work of our ministry faithfully and well. We may
have to spend much time and labour in the drudgery of
preparation ; and then the finished work may not come up
to our expectations : but it is so in every walk of life. We
can but do our best, fully convinced of the importance of
the position we occupy, and the endless opportunities we
have ever at hand to advance the interests of the Master
whose ambassadors we are.
Men my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something
new ;
That which they have done but the earnest of the things
which they shall do.
Ours it is to work and pray, but God still giveth the increase*
Souls have to be saved ; and we, even we, are the dispensers
of the mysteries bf our Father. Our duty it is to support
the weak, to check the headstrong, to picture vice in all its
native grossness, to foster a love for virtue, to raise the eyes
of our people above the things of this world, and, as far as
may be, to fix them upon the city of God, our eternal
home.
BiCHAEI) A. O'GORMAN.
[ 147 ]
DARWINISM
SENSATION
[This article is one of an interrupted series formerly appearing under the
general heading of ♦ Modem Scientific Materialism.' This will account for
the opening sentences, and for some passing references later on. The preceding
articles can now be had in book form under the name of The Neiv Materialism.}
WE now reach that part of the materialistic Genesis
which professes to account for the diversity of organic
Hfe we see around us. We have witnessed the frantic efforts
of the * advanced philosophers ' to get matter out of void
and life out of matter. We shall now see that even when
they have assumed life, they are by no means at the end of
their troubles. Before they can take a single step forward
they have to give some account of a new phenomenon con-
nected with life, viz., sensation. Life presents itself under
two such totally different aspects in the animal and in the
vegetable that common-sense as well as philosophy looks for
some explanation. What is this superadded something
which makes such a difference between them, and whence
is it derived ? ^
Our * philosophers,' not having anything better to say,
simply deny that there is any fundamental difference between
what we call sensitive and merely vegetative life. It is
another case of * difference not in kind, but in degree.' ' No
man can say that the feelings of the animal are not repre-
sented by a drowsier consciousness in the vegetable.' ^
Certainly no man can say it in precisely the same way as he
says 'I feel,' for no man — not even a green-grocer — is a
vegetable. Nevertheless it is a curious thing that every
^ We are not here asking for a dejinition of sensation. Such a demand
would be unreasonable, and even absurd. Sensation is for us an ultimate fact,
and as such inexplicable ; it cannot be resolved into simpler elements. No other
form of words can make clearer to us the meaning of * 1 feel.' But as the
* advanced philosophers ' profess to be able to derive ' every form and quality of
life ' from primal matter we have a right to know what, according to material-
istic principles, is their view about this remarkable ' quality,' and how they
account for its appearance in only one of the two great divisions of organic
nature.
2 Ty^dall, Fragments, p. 244.
148 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
man in his senses, including the green-grocer, does say it.
* The aggregate common-sense of mankind ' may seem some-
times a very pig-headed power ; but it generally knows its
own mind, and speaks it. And this is a case in point. No
number of philosophers will ever persuade the world of the
consciousness of a turnip. It does not matter in the least
what any man may or can say. We here pass out of the
realm of formal demonstration into that of what we may
call rational instinct. Speaking of the almost intuitive
manner in which practical certainty in concrete matters is
often arrived at, Cardinal Newman says : —
It is difficult to avoid calling such clear presentiments by the
name of instinct ; and I think they may be so called, if by instinct
be understood, not a natural sense, one and the same in all,
and incapable of cultivation, but a perception of facts without
assignable media of perceiving,^
This exactly describes the common belief about sensation
in vegetables — it is ' a preception of a fact without assignable
media of perceiving,' and as such we may, with Cardinal
Newman, call it instinct.
We may be told that this is a case in which common
belief not only has no assignable foundation, but no founda-
tion of any sort. Each unscientific unit of the population
simply represents ignorance. How can the mass represent
knowledge ? We have here a difficulty similar to one which
Cardinal Newman proposes to himself when justifying his
unreasoning conviction that Great Britain is an island.
As to the common belief, what is to prove that we are not all
of us believing it on the credit of each other ? And then when it
is said that everyone believes it, and everything implies it, how
much comes home to me personally of this ' everyone ' and
* everything ? ' The question is — Why do I believe it myself ? ^
Perhaps each one's belief is no more than *a life-long
impression,' which is really quite mistaken.
This very well represents our present difficulty. No
man — at least no man that we have met— can say of his
own knowledge that Great Britain is an island. If some
1 Grammar of Assent (1891), p. 334. ^ 7^^^^ p 295.
DARWINISM 149
few by sailing round it have definitely ascertained the fact,
who ever cross-examined any of them with a view to settling
the point for himself ? Clearly the population as a whole
have just been taking it for granted, each one depending on
his neighbour's knowledge, which is as baseless as his own.
And as for books, papers, maps, and the like — what are they
but mere reflections of the common impression ? They can
prove nothing. Error is not converted into fact by printing
it or mapping it.
And what is the upshot of all this most logical demoli-
tion of a common belief ? That the common belief remains
as unreasonably vigorous as ever. Not a single Briton with
brains enough to know what an island is but still believes
his country to be one, and rests illogically content that
no foe can get at him while Britannia^ rules the waves
And is his belief ^therefore irrational, a prejudice? The
Cardinal's whole argument is meant to bring out the fact
that there may be cases when * we cannot analyze a proof
satisfactorily, the result of which good sense actually
guarantees to us.'
So with the common belief about vegetable sensation.
It defies logical analysis ; it is so elementary that a man
can hardly say how or when he came by it ; it seems to have
always been an unnoticed part of him, like an internal
organ. He has been as little conscious of it as of his spinal
chord. It has shaped his conduct every day and hour, and
nothing has ever happened that would give rise to the
faintest suspicion that it does not represent a fact. Indeed
he is quite unconscious of holding anything so definite as a
belief about the matter at all. It is just a fact, like the
weather — a part of the nature of things, in the existence of
which it would be ridiculous to express one's belief. And
when some day he sits down to dinner beside an * advanced
philosopher,' and learns for the first time that the potatoes
were ' sensitive and conscious,' though a trifle * drowsy/
before boiling, if not still, the probable result of the com-
munication will be a feeling of pity for the poor gentleman,
qualified with a slight uneasiness when he sees him reach for
the bread-knife. Surely we may say of this common belief
150 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
what Cardinal Newman says of his geographical conviction
about Great Britain : * It is a simple and primary truth
with us, if any truth is such.'
Nor is our argument in the least affected by the undeniable
fallibility of each individual witness. It must not be looked
at in the individual, but in the mass ; in fact it is only when
so looked at that it is an argument at all. It rests, not on
men, but on mankind. As the opinion or conviction of this
and that individual it might be discounted ; but as an
implicit judgment of the whole human race in every age and
every land, backed up by a constant experience equally wide,
it bulks out into an argument of the biggest kind. It may
be * one of those arguments which, from the nature of the
case, are felt rather than are convertible into syllogisms';^
but nobody misses the syllogism. In fact it would only be
in the way. This is not a weapon of the Excalibur type, but
unshapely and uncouth as Samson's. Still it breaks heads
in its own way just as well, and it has this advantage over
Excalibur logic, that it comes handy to every man of average
common sense. But perhaps it will seem that we are
slipping away into rather mythical regions, and losing sight
of our thesis. So we bid good-bye to the heroic figures of
Arthur and Samson, and return to our turnips. We think
we may claim that in denying turnip-consciousness we have
the support of the common belief of humanity — an ample
and goodly backing.
But may it not still be urged that in a matter of this kind
the informed opinion of a small number of experts outweighs
the blind conviction of even the whole world ? We might
perhaps be disposed to allow this argument some weight if
we knew less about the expert opinion. But we know it to
be simply one more instance of the expertness of the experts
in dodging a difficulty — another example of the magnifying
and transforming power of the scientific imagination.
Something had to be done to avert a repetition of the fiasco
of the origin of life at the very next step. ' Cooling planets '
were more or less used up ; * subtle influences ' were rather
i/iicf., p. 27,
DARWINISM 151
too delicate to stand wear and tear ; while ' successive
complications ' and some other machinery of * advanced
philosophy ' had better not be obtruded too often on the
public view. So recourse was had to that favourite trick of
* advanced philosophy,' the appeal to ignorance — * no man
can say ' — supplemented by highly coloured views of certain
facts of natural history. We had this sort of thing before
in the case of living and not-living matter. That too was ' a
difference of degree, not of kind.' ' No man could say ' that
the rock was not as much alive as the moss that clung to it.
Tyndall * could fancy the mineral world responsive to the
proper irritants.' The man who could fancy this would
have little difficulty in fancying a * drowsy ' vegetable.
Shakespeare's * nodding violet ' becomes something more
than a figure of speech — in fact a fore-glimpse of the
* advanced philosophy.' Wonderful man-, Shakespeare !
To eke out the * nobody-can-deny ' argument the philo-
sophers bring forward two classes of facts from nature--
(1) the difficulty of distinguishing between the lowest forms
of the animal and vegetable kingdoms ; and (2) the extraor-
dinary behaviour of what are called ' insectivorous ' or
* carnivorous ' plants.
PLANT OR ANIMAL— WHICH ?
1. *If we look to the two main divisions [of organic beings],
viz., to the animal and vegetable kingdoms, certain low forms
are so far intermediate in character that naturalists have
disputed to which kingdom they should be referred.'^
Tyndall insists strongly on the continuity of the animal
and vegetable kingdoms. * The vegetable shades into the
animal by such fine gradations that it is impossible to say
where the one ends and the other begins."^
It is quite true that there are a few organisms of so inde-
terminate a character that it is impossible to decide whether
they are animal or vegetable. All the same, no naturalist
who has not * advanced philosophy ' on the brain doubts that
they are either one or the other, not a judicious mixture
^ Darwin, Origin of Species, p. 399. * Fragments of Science, Yol.ii.,-p 244.
152 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
of both. And if it were decided to-morrow to which class
they belong, no unprejudiced naturalist would hesitate for a
moment as to whether he should or should not credit them
with sensation. The actual fact might be as hidden as
ever, but the recognised analogies of the two great
kingdoms would at once settle the point. *No line has
ever been drawn,' says Tyndall, * between the conscious and
the unconscious.'^ Certainly there has — a line as plain as a
turnpike road. The fact that at one point it runs into a fog
does not make the rest of it less clear. And we have as
little doubt that it keeps on still through the fog as if we
saw it. This is a case where we very properly * prolong
the method of nature' beyond the reach of observation.
"We rightly credit the confusion, not to the poor Pariahs * on
the ditch,' but to our own limited 'capacity to observe.' To
borrow Tyndall' s ' always elegant words,^ we * cannot stop
abruptly where our microscopes cease to be of use.' We
* draw the line from the highest organisms through lower
ones down to the lowest ; and it is the prolongatio7i of this
line by the ijitellect beyond the range of sense that leads us
to the conclusion' that these puzzling creatures are not
abnormal mixtures, but true members of one or the other
kingdom. The analogy of all the rest of animated nature
reduces the doubt in these few cases to a simple alterna-
tive— a question of which, not tvhat; and 'a being with
our capacities indefinitely multiplied ' would, we feel sure,
solve that doubt, and have these * nobody's children' off the
ditch and into their proper places in a wink.
CARNIVOEOUS PLANTS
2. Plants that catch and, in a s^snse, eat flies with their
leaves, and show a decided taste for raw meat, soup, and the
like, may well be ranked among the curiosities of nature.
It had long been known that the leaves of certain common
plants exuded a sticky substance in which flies were caught,
while a district in North Carolina produces a * fly-trap'
that acts with the startling promptness of a spring rat-trap.
1 Ibid. ^Belfast Address.
DARWINISM 153
The peculiar conduct of these various 'fly-catchers' had
been studied by several naturalists, but nothing like a
satisfactory account of them had appeared until the publi-
cation of Darwin's Insectivorous Plants in 1875. Darwin
found that the fly-catching leaves close upon, and, in a
manner, digest the prey captured or given to them. Some
of them help on this digestive process by an acid secretion
not unlike the gastric juice of the animal stomach.
Now it is worthy of [remark that Darwin himself did not
see in the behaviour of these plants those indications of an
approach to animal sensation which appeared so evident
to his more * advanced ' followers. Indeed he repeatedly goes
out of his way to forestall and prevent such misinterpreta-
tion of the facts he describes. * The leaf falsely appears as
if endowed with the senses of an animal.'^ In using the
term * reflex action ' of a certain process which seems
analogous to what is so described in animal sensation he is
careful to warn us that * the action in the two cases is
probably of a widely different nature.'^ He several times
calls attention to the complete absence of anything even
remotely resembling nerves in these leaves. * No one
supposes that they possess nerves,' nor does it appear that
*they include any diffused matter analogous to nerve-
tissue.'^ On the same page the absence of nerves is again
referred to, as also on pp. 219, 221, &c. Finally, the whole
concluding paragraph of Chapter XV. is devoted to a
summing up of the many fundamental differences between
these plants and any kind of animal.
Turning now from Darwin's work to a review of it by
the late Professor Asa Gray of Harvard,* we hardly recog-
nise the sober science of the English naturalist in the lively
paragraphs of the American reviewer. *When plants are
seen to move and to devour, what faculties are left that
are distinctively animal?' Comparisons of these vegetable
functions with analogous animal functions are quoted in
^ Page 222. The references are to the second revised edition, 1888.
2 Page 197. He repeats the warning on p. 223.
» Page 295.
* The article now forms chap xi. of his Barwiniana.
154 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
the most striking way, hut not a word is said of any of
Darwin's numerous cautions about these deceptive resem-
blances. This is an excellent example of ' advanced philo-
sophy ' as she is made !
Needless to say the whole band of ' philosophers ' fully
indorsed the view of Professor Gray. There could no
longer be any doubt of the complete identity of animal and
vegetable life. Plants ate, drank, and presumably made
merry. An alderman could do no more. But what was
the whole amount of solid foundation for all this triumphant
theorising ? Was the world altogether ignorant that plants
are nourished by the products of animal substances ? Has
Goulding carried the globe on his back to no purpose ? Is
there a man on this or any neighbouring planet still uncon-
vinced that the sovereign'st thing on earth is bone manure
for growing crops? And to bring the matter yet nearer
home — how many ages is it since men first noted the
perennial richness of the churchyard sod ?
So practically everybody knew that plants absorbed
animal products through their roots; and the only thing
that was not so well known was that some plants absorbed
them also through their leaves. But where is the wonderful
significance of the fact, beyond giving us one more instance
of the marvels of adaptation in nature ? How are plants
brought any nearer to animals because some of them have
glands on the leaves which discharge some of the functions
of roots? A far more extraordinary analogous fact was
already known of plants in general, viz., that it is through
the leaves they gather in the carbon which is the main
constituent of their solid stems. That some of them should
procure in the same way the comparatively small quantities
of nitrogenous and phosphate substances they require can
hardly on reflection be regarded as altogether abnormal.
And as for the modus agendi, is it so much more wonderful
than many other things in plant economy ? Has not the
sticky substance that first attracts and then captures the
greedy fly its perfect counterpart in the nectar which entices
* the little busy bee ' to become the most indefatigable of
gardeners ? And are the movements of the leaf towards
DARWINISM 155
the captured fly one bit more wonderful than the movements
of the roots pushing their way through the soil towards a
dead cat buried below ? And remembering that the nutri-
ment is to be assimilated by protoplasm similar to that of
animals, what more natural than that it should be prepared
in some such way as in the animal stomach ? And finally,
what has all this to do with sensation , which is the
distinguishing characteristic of animal life ? Digestion sub-
serves the vital process — the work of protoplasm — and is
equally unnoticed.
In truth the old knowledge was quite as suggestive as
the new, and it was simply the circumstances of the time
that lent the new its apparent significance. Evolution was
in the air, and every fresh discovery was at once seized upon
in its interests. The origin of the whole contention for
sensation in plants may be told in half a dozen words — the
needs of the evolution theory. The two lines of life must
start from a single ' low and intermediate form ' such as the
doubtful cases above referred to. What we distinguish as
sensitive and non-sensitive life must spring from the same
root; and the only way in which such a thing can be
rendered conceivable is by denying the distinction. It must
be allowed that the * advanced philosophy,* whatever its
defects, is not wanting in courage. No assertion or denial
is too gigantic for it. When the origin of life could be
accounted for in no other way, it confounded animate and
inanimate nature,'and ' discerned in matter the promise and
potency of every form and quality of life.' When the two
kinds of life offer a difficulty, it confounds with equal
facility the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and blots out
the line between the conscious and the unconscious.
ABSENCE OF SENSATION IN PLANTS
Finally, as regards our present point, viz., the absence
of sensation in plants, modern research tends very decidedly
to confirm it by showing (1) that animal sensation is always
associated with a nervous system ; ^ and (2) that no trace of
1 Huxley calls the nervous system ' the physical basis of consciousness.'
Critiques and Addresses, p. 280.
156 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
a nervous system is to be found in plants, even in such
promising cases as the aforementioned * fly-catchers.' The
'vascular bundles' in no sense represent nerves; and Darwin
has shown that the contractile impulse is not transmitted
through them, but through the ordinary cellular tissue of
the leaf.
Notwithstanding this adverse opinion from the Father
of Advanced Philosophy, Huxley is not disposed to yield.
There is still that unfailing resource of distressed material-
ism— the unknown possibilities of the future. The problem
he admits to be of such * extreme difficulty ' that it must
be attacked *by the aid of methods that have still to be
invented.' This seems to render the prospect of solution
di scour agingly remote ; but he is not daunted.
It must be allowed to be possible that future research may
reveal the existence of something comparable to a nervous system
in plants.^
This is very moderate for Huxley, but it is quite enough
to warrant the conclusion which duly follows : — * So that
I know not whether we can hope to find any absolute
distinction between animals and plants ! '
This is sufficiently answered by a still more recent
* advanced ' writer.
In plants, it is almost needless to remark, no nervous system
has been demonstrated to exist ; and no botanist has eveyi sug-
gested the possible existence of nervous tissues within the limits of
the vegetable creation,'^
We will close this part of our argument by quoting an
authority whose right to a hearing will not be questioned.
The praises of Alfred Eussell Wallace are in the mouths
of all the * advanced philosophers.' He has the distinction
of being * the joint discoverer of natural selection ' and
co-patron with Darwin of the modern theory of evolution.
1 Science and Culture (1881), p. 158.
2 Dr. A. Wilson, Leisure-time Studies (1884), p. 55. With the inconsistency-
characteristic of his school, Dr. Wilson, in another essay in the same volume,
says :— * The wonderful facts recently brought to light respecting insectivorous
plants . , . tend to the conclusion that the difference between animal and
vegetable is one of degree rather than of kind.' Ibid., -g. 11^.
DARWINISM 157
His name is constantly coupled with that of Darwin, both
by Darwin himself and his most zealous admirers. * Darwin
and Wallace dispelled the darkness' surrounding *the species
problem,' writes Huxley in 1887.^ He is an uncompromising
advocate of Darwinian evolution all the way up to the
evolution of man's bodily organization ' from some ancestral
form common to man and the anthropoid apes.' ^ Hence,
he cannot be suspected of any undue leaning, apart from
conviction, towards views opposed to the evolutionary school.
In the light of these facts the importance of the following
declaration can hardly be overstated. It will be seen that
it covers all the ground we have been discussing : — *
There are at least three stages in the development of the
organic world when some new cause or power must necessarily
have come into action. (1) The first stage is -the change from
inorganic to organic, when the earliest vegetable cell, or the
living protoplasm out of which it arose, first appeared . . .
(2) The next stage is still more marvellous, still more completely
beyond the possibility of explanation by matter, its laws and
forces. It is the introduction of sensation or consciousness ^ consti-
tuting the fundamental distinction between the animal and vegetable
kingdoms. (3) The third stage is the existence in man of a number
of his most characteristic and noblest faculties, those which raise
him furthest above the brutes, and open up possibilities of almost
indefinite advancement.
These three distinct stages of progress from the inorganic
world of matter and motion up to man, point clearly to an
unseen universe — to a world of spirit, to which the world of
matter is altogether subordinate. To this spiritual world ... we
can refer those progressive manifestations of life in the vegetable
the animal, and man — which we classify as unconscious, con-
scious, and intellectual life. . . . Any difficulty we may find in
discriminating the inorganic from the organic, the lower vegetable
from the loiuer animal organisms . . . has no bearing at all upon
the question. This is to be decided by showing that a change in
essential nature (due, probably, to causes of a higher order than
those of the material universe) took place at the several stages of
progress which 1 have indicated — a change which may he none
the less real because absolutely imperceptible at its point of
origin.
1 Life of Darwin, vol. ii., p. 197.
2 Darwinism, p. 461.
3 Darwinism, pp. 474-5-6.
168 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Comment would but mar the effect of this pronounce-
ment from a man whose authority on all questions of
evolution is admitted to be second only to that of Darwin
himself. We will only point out that it is the matured
opinion of the author, published just thirty years after the
Origin of Species.
NEEVES NOT SENSATION
One of the arts in which our ' philosophers ' excel is, as
we know, that of making a partial knowledge of a subject
seem to cover the whole of it. Our present subject,
sensation, furnishes a good instance of their skill. The
knowledge they have acquired of the physical machinery of
sensation is somehow made to look like a knowledge of
sensation itself.
Great credit is indeed due to the science of biology —
which, we may remark, is not coextensive with * advanced
philosophy ' — for the light it has thrown on the working of
that marvellous telegraphic maze, the nervous system. It
has disentangled the wires that carry the incoming and
outgoing messages to and from the central station; it has
even calculated the speed with which nerve-messages are
conveyed.^
Thanks to its discoveries we can all now at least talk
about ' sensor and motor,' or * afferent and efferent ' nerves,
' reflex action,* and the like. We also know that the act of
some one treading on our corn and the explosive language
that conveys our idea of that act are not simultaneous, but
separated by an appreciable interval. This is all very
interesting and wonderful as far as it goes. But how far
does it go ? Will the most accurate knowledge of the course
of a river and the speed of the current tell us what water is ?
1 This is found to be surprisingly low. In man and warm-blooded animals
it is only about 120 to 130 feet a second, or between 80 and 90 miles an hour —
a speed sometimes reached by fast trains. Compared with the speed attained
in other departments of nature's work, this is a mere bagatelle. A portion of
the earth's surface near the equator makes its daily round sixteen times as fast ;
the whole earth travels round the sun at a speed of nearly nineteen miles a
second ; while light is propagated through space at the rate of 186,000 miles a
second.
DARWINISM 159
Does the Postmaster-General know anything more than
other people about the nature of electricity because of his
presumably more extensive knowledge of the telegraph
system ? Would the most perfect knowledge of the purely
mechanical working of that system entitle him to propound
a new theory of electricity? Yet something like this our
'philosophers,' implicitly at least, claim to do in regard to
sensation. Because they have learned something of the
purely mechanical part of nervous action, they assume to
speak with a show of knowledge of the nature of sensation
and of the consciousness that is its shadow. Here is a
specimen of the kind of thing we mean, taken from a work
by a living writer already referred to, Dr. A. Wilson of
Edinboro'.
There can appear little doubt that the domain of mental
science is being invaded on more than one side by the sciences
which deal more especially with the material world and with the
physical universe around us. When physiologists discovered
that the force or impulse which travels along a nerve originating
in the brain, and which represents the transformation of thought
into action, is nearly allied to the electric force — now one of
man's most useful and obedient ministers — one avenue to the
domain of mind was opened up. And when biologists, through
the aid of delicate apparatus, were actually enabled to measure
the rate at which nerve force travels along the nerve-fibres, it
might again be said that physical science was encroaching on the
domain of mind, being in a certain sense thus enabled to measure
the rapidity of thought. , . . The common phrase * as quick as
thought ' is found to be by no means so applicable as is generally
supposed, especially when it is discovered that thought or nervous
impulse, as compared with light or electricity, appears a veritable
laggard.^
Here we have that skilful interweaving of assumption
with fact that is so characteristic of the * advanced ' writers
and so misleading to the unwary reader. The near alliance
of nerve force to electric force is purely imaginary;
physiologists have never * discovered ' anything giving the
smallest warrant for such a statement, no one having the
slightest idea of the nature or mode of action of either force.
We shall return to this point later on. Throughout the
1 Leisure-time Studies, pp. 229. 230.
160 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
rest of the passage the skill with which sensation and thought
are confounded is admirable. Because the speed with which
sensation travels in a nerve has been measured, science may
be said to be able, * in a certain sense,' to measure the speed
of thought — which, so far as we know, does not travel any-
where. * As quick as thought,' is quietly assumed to be the
equivalent of * as quick as sensation ' ; while the phrase
' thought or nervous impulse ' gives the finishing touch to
the identification of the two processes.
Needless to say, our friends Tyndall and Huxley are
accomplished masters of this art of hiding ignorance behind
knowledge. Tyndall will admit with apparent frankness
that between the physical process and the consciousness with
which it is linked there is * a blank which mechanical
deduction is unable to fill'; but in the very same breath he
practically obliterates the blank by ' denying to subjective
phenomena all influence on physical processes.' ^ This is as
much as to say that as consciousness does undoubtedly
* influence physical processes,' it must itself be a sort of
physical process. Huxley plainly asserts this in so many
words : —
There is every reason to believe that consciousness is a
function of nervous matter, when that nervous matter has attained
a certain degree of organisation. . . . Our thoughts are the
expression of molecular changes in that matter of life which is
the source of our other vital phenomena.^
We do not now stop to refute the assumption slily
introduced into the last sentence, viz., that protoplasm is
the ' source,' and not simply the physical medium, of our
vital phenomena. Yie treated that question at sufficient
length in a former paper. As for the assertion here made of
the mechanical nature of consciousness, it is best answered
by the accomplished Professor himself.
We class sensations, along with emotions and volitions and
thoughts, under the common head of states of consciousness.
But what consciousness is we know not ; and how it is that any-
1 Fragments, p. 356.
2 Critiques and Addresses, p. 288.
DARWINISM 161
I
thing so remarkable as a state of «onsciousness comes about as
the result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as
any other ultimate fact of nature.^
Tbis is excellent teaching, and hardly needs backing
up with a still later opinion, which will be found in the
Contemporary Uevieio, No. 182.
In the first place it seems to me pretty plain that there is a
third thing in the universe, to wit, consciousness, which, in the
hardness of my heart or head, I cannot see to be matter or force,
or any conceivable modification of either. ^
ALL WE KNOW OF SENSATION
Let us clearly bear in mind that the whole amount of
scientific knowledge hitherto gained about sensation is purely
mechanical, viz., the lines along which sensations travel to
and fro, and the speed of transit. There is no authority
even for the use of such terms as * molecular motion ' ^ to
indicate a physical equivalent of sensation. There is not a
shadow of ascertained fact to warrant the assumption that
sensation in a nerve is represented by motion or any other
special condition of its molecules. And this for the very
obvious reason that molecules are quite beyond the reach of
observation.
Therefore when Huxley says : ' We know exactly whp.t
happens when the soles of the feet are tickled ; a molecular
change takes place in the sensory nerves of the skin, and is
propagated along them, &c.,'* we answer, that as molecules
are at present only inferential, and of course quite imper-
ceptible, entities, all such descriptions of their behaviour
must be regarded as figures of speech. In our present
ignorance of the constitution of matter what we *know
exactly' about sensation amounts only to this — that the
1 Physiology (1886), jv 202.
2 The reader has long ago, we presume, given up expecting consistency in
Profejssor Huxley's philosophical opinions. The Professor might hare made
his own of the characteiistic avowal with which the late Lord Bandolph
Churchill once delighted the House of Commons. The erratic Lord, in reply to
a vigorous attack on his inconsistency, placidly * begged to inform the honoui-
able member that he never meant to be consistent ! '
3 Tyndall passim,
* Science and Culture (1881), p. 21S.
YOU VI. y
162 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
nerve-tissue is affected in some way^ and that this affection,
whatever is its nature, is propagated at a known velocity
through the nerve.
The intrinsic nature of the change in the nerve-fibre effected
by a stimulus is quite wiknown. . . . From the stimulated point
some kiiid of change is propagated along the nerve. ^
Again, there is no warrant whatever for the comparison
often made between the condition of a nerve in action and
that of a conducting wire. This is simply a comparison of
ignorance with ignorance. Nothing whatever is positively
known of the condition of either nerve or wire while dis-
charging their respective functions. The electric influence
is propagated through the wire,^ the sensation through the
nerve, and that is all that can be said of either. Yet
Huxley speaks as positively as if science had really solved
the puzzle of electricity.
Our conceptions of what takes place in a nerve have altered
in the same way as our conceptions of what takes place in a
conducting wire have altered siiice electricity was shoivn to be,
not a fluidf but a mode of molecular motion.^
The bottom is very effectively knocked out of this
comparison by a few quotations from recent works on
electricity. We take up Modern Views of Electricity,^ by
Professor Lodge of the Liverpool University College, and
learn from it that the * modern view ' now in favour is
■ ethereal.' Electricity is not associated with any action or
condition of the molecules of matter, but with the ether,
' Electricity is a form, or rather a mode of manifestation, of
the ether.' ^ Professor Lodge goes out of his way to warn
us that the one thing we must be careful to exclude from
our conception of electricity is molecules; for the ether,
to which electricity is now referred, is * continuous, not
* Encyclopedia Britannica (1875) — Physiology.
2 A recent American writer on electricity, Professor Trowbridge of Harvard,
questions even this : * There is but little evidence that there is a flow of electricity
in a wire which we ordinarily say conveys a current.' What is Electricity';^
(1897), p. 61.
3 Science and Culture, p. 207.
^ 1889. The references here q^re to the seoojjd edition, 1892.
5 Page 9,
DARWINISM 163
molecular.'^ So much for Huxley's *mode of molecular
motion.'
Of course all this is theory. The real fact of the matter
is tersely stated in a lecture appended to the volume. ' Now
then we will ask first — What is electricity ? And the simple
answer must be — We don't know.^ ... It may be that it is
an entity per se, just as matter is at entity per se," — Which
shows pretty plainly how near we are to the solution of the
puzzle of electricity, viz., just about as near as we are to the
solution of the puzzle of matter.
A little farther on in the same lecture we are told how
much has been found out about the nature of an electric
current, which, according to Huxley, throws such light on
the nature of nerve currents. *The nature ... of the
simple stream of electricity is at present -unknown.'* All
that can be said of it, we are told elsewhere, is that ' it is
certainly a transfer of electricity, whatever electricity may
be ;'® but * the actual mode of conveyance' is * unknown.'®
We can now gauge the value of Huxley's comparison —
and something more. He compares his knowledge of sensa-
tion with his knowledge of electricity. Professor Lodge
gives us the measure of one term of the comparison. Ergo.
We next turn for information to that enterprising people
who, in practice at any rate, seem to have got the firmest
grip of this slippery agent. Two years ago Professor
Trowbridge of Harvard published a very interesting work
about electricity. He boldly wrote on the title page the
great question — what is electricity? — and we took up the
volume with a sort of feeling that now or never it would be
answered. We were right. It was seemingly a case of
now or never — but it was not now ! After 308 pages expla-
natory of the behaviour of ' this wonderful something which
we call electricity,' on the last page we are once more con-
fronted with the still unanswered question. ' What shall we
therefore answer to the question — What is electricity?
Must we reply — IgnoramuSy ignorabimus ? '
1 Page 396. -^ Page 371. '"• Page 73
2 Page 370, * Page 372. "^ Page 74.
164 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
And there we are left ! No doubt we got premonitory
hints as we went along which somewhat prepared us for
this, e,g. — 'Philosophers of to-day set themselves to work to
study the transformations of electricity . . . with very little
hope that they can ascertaiyi what electricity really is.'^ — But
what a fall from Huxley's comfortable state of assured
knowledge !
From all which we conclude that, so far from its having
been * shown ' what electricity is, Lord Salisbury, in that
splendid address at Oxford five years ago, did not exaggerate
when, with full knowledge of all the latest achievements, he
said : * As to the true significance and cause of those
counteracting forces to which we give the provisional names
of negative and positive [electricity], we know about as much
as Franklin knew a century and a half ago.'
Before finally leaving the point let us once more remind
the reader that it is the * philosophers ' themselves who
challenge us to estimate the extent and certainty of their
knowledge of sensation by the extent and certainty of their
knowledge of what they are pleased to regard as a kindred
force, electricity. We have taken them at their word, with
the result of showing that while they know something of
the action, they know nothing whatever of the nature, of
either force.
DABWIN AND SENSATION
But some reader whose patience is running short may
here challenge us. ' This is all very well ; but what has it
to say to Darwinism ? ' And we have to confess that strictly
speaking it has nothing — at least to the Darwinism that will
be found in Darwin's own books. But that is due to the
saving virtue of inconsistency that was so characteristic of
Darwin as a thinker and a theorist.^ He professed to trace
all living organisms back to a few animal and vegetable
types, or perhaps to one common type — ' one low and
intermediate form.' We see at once how vast is the difference
iPage 178.
2 Darwin's intellectual character has been summed up in one sentence — ■
he was a wonderful observer, but a bad reasoner,
DARWINISM 165
between the alternatives. As a matter of fact he never
attempted the second, and so escaped the whole difficulty
about the origin of sensation. Ard this brings out the
curious fact that the title of his most famous book, the
Origin of Species, is a misnomer. He never really made
any attempt to trace species to a common origin in * one
primordial form,' much less to account for the origin of that
form itself, which, however ' low,' was necessarily a species
of some sort. On the contrary, he borrowed from what
he called the ' creator ' as many ' origins of species ' as
he wanted; and his book really aims at accounting, not
for the origin of species, but for the development of groups
of species from these borrowed origins or original types.
Darwin's attitude towards ' origins ' in general was
remarkable. They had as little attraction for him as
'honour' had for Jack Falstaff. And for just the same
reason: — the tracing of origins might he very philosophical;
it certainly was very risky. And so Darwin came to the
same conclusion as prudent old Jack — * I'll none of it ! '
Hence the origin of matter, of life, of animal instinct, of the
higher mental powers — all were taboo. * Eubbish ' was his
word for such investigations. This was of course inconsistent :
but then, who minds about consistency ? Darwin certainly
gained in reputation for soundness by his careful avoidance
of the wild speculations of his less prudent friends.
Huxley would have us believe that ' with respect to the
origin [of the primitive stock or stocks, the doctrine of the
origin of species is obviously not necessarily concerned.' ^
We should say the very contrary is obvious. The primitive
stock or stocks were pro tern, representative species, and
therefore any complete theory of the origin of species must
obviously concern itself about them. An account of the
origin of the steam-engine which would begin with the first
steam-engine in full blast, and, without making any attempt
to explain how it arose, would go on to describe the evolution
of all the later forms from that 'primitive stock,' would
hardly be considered complete. But Darwin has not done
1 Lay Sermons, p. '243.
166 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
even so much as this. The historian of the steam-engine,
to put himself quite in line with the historian of species,
should start with several * primitive stocks,' representing
the chief types of steam-engine — say the ordinary locomotive,
the stationary, and the marine ; and should declare himself
* obviously not necessarily concerned ' with the origin of
these.
The transmutation hypothesis [continues Huxley] is perfectly
consistent either with the conception of a special creation of the
primitive germ, or with the supposition of its having arisen, as a
modification of inorganic matter, by natural causes.
Quite so ; but the adoption of one or other alternative
is necessary for the completeness of the account. Either
' special creation of the primitive germ ' must be honestly
accepted as the ultimate origin of species, or some
rational scientific account of its ' arising, as a modification
of inorganic matter, by natural causes,' must be given.
Darwin does neither of these things. He first takes his
• primitive stocks ' from * the Creator,' and afterwards
explains that by creation he * really meant appear by some
wholly unknown process^ ^ So according to Darwin the
origin of species comes at last to this : — species ' appeared
by some wholly unknown process.' This is surely an origin
as mysterious and mentally unsatisfactory as the origin of
Topsy, who, according to her own account of herself, ' jess
growed' !
E. Gaynor, cm.
1 Life and Letters, in., p, 18.
[ 167 ]
THE EPISCOPAL CITY OF FERNS
III.
IN the diocesan annals of Ferns, a rather curious incident
is chronicled for the year 1435, as we read that
Eugenius IV., at the request of Bishop Whitty * absolved
the citizens of New Koss from any ecclesiastical censures
which might have been incurred by their ancestors.' It
would appear that owing to the massacre of some Crutched
Friars, about one hundred and fifty years previously, the
citizens were solemnly ' censured ' by the ecclesiastical
authorities, and so the trade of Eoss declined, as was
believed, from a.d. 1300 to 1434. Hence, at the request of
the citizens of this ancient town — which was even then
called Neio Eoss — Bishop Whitty applied to the Holy See to
remove the excommunication.^
The viceroyalty of the Earl of Ormonde having proved a
failure, as regards the anticipated conquest of the Leinster
septs, the Earl of Shrewsbury — better known as Lord
Talbot de Furnivall — one of the greatest English generals of
the age, was sent over in 1446. He held a parliament at
Trim, in 1447, ' on the Friday after the Feast of the
Epiphany,' in which many enactments were made against
the native Irish. On July 17th, 1447, this nobleman was
created Earl of Wexford and Waterford, and Viscount
Dungarvan ; but he very soon afterwards returned to
England, leaving his brother Eichard, Archbishop of Dublin,
as Lord Deputy, who died on the 15th of August, 1449.
There was a great famine throughout Ireland in 1447>
and seven hundred priests are said to have perished.
Eichard, Duke ot York, arrived as Viceroy in July, 1449 ;
and the Blessed Edmund Campion, S.J., has preserved for
us a letter written by him to the Earl of Shrewsbury,
dated from Dublin, June 15th, 1450. Owing to continued
infirmity, the Bishop of Ferns, then eighty years of age,
1 Wadding.
16S THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
was unable to be present at the parliament which was held
at Dublin in October, 1449 ; and so, in 1450, he was given
an assistant prelate in the person of a certain Thady, O.S.F.,
of whose rule we have scant particulars. About the year
1453, an abbey for Austin canons was founded at Lady's
Island, though some say they were Austin friars.
Bishop Whitty went the way of all flesh early in 1458,
in the eighty-eighth year of his age, and had as successor
Dr. John Purcell, who, on November 30th of the same year,
was appointed collector of Peter's pence in Ireland. Some
time previously there was a dispute .regarding the advowson
of Kathmacknee Church,' near Wexford, which was claimed
by one of the Kossiter family against the Prior of All
Hallows, Dublin. Owing to the vacancy in the see of Ferns,
the episcopal curia did not take place till June 2nd, 1460,
when nineteen 'inquirers,' under the presidency of Laurence,
Archdeacon of Ferns, found in favour of All Hallows
Priory. The following clergymen assisted at the inquiry : —
Eobert Sutton, Rector of Fethard ; Richard Busher, Rector of
Coolstuffe ; John Boggan, Vicar of Kilmore ; Thomas Browne,
Vicar of Mulrankin ; Nicholas Connick, Rector of Kilmannin ;
Daniel Reilly, Vicar of Killag ; Richard Keating, Vicar of
Kilkevan ; William Grant, Vicar of Kilturk ; Walter Fowler
Vicar of Clonmines ; Richard Cloney, Vicar of Mayglass ; John
Wilmot, Vicar of Hook ; Garret 0 'Byrne, Curate of Ballymore ;
John White, Curate of Ballybrennan ; G. Walshe, Curate of
Lady's Island ; and the Curate of Bannow.
Pope Pius II., wrote a letter to the Bishop of Ferns
(Dr. John Purcell), '^the Prior of St Catherine's, Waterford,
and the Archdeacon of Ferns, acknowledging the petition
which they had presented on the part of Kobert le Poer,
Bishop of Waterford and Lismore. The next item we find
is the founding of a noble Franciscan friary at Enniscorthy,
by Donald Fuscus (Beagh, the brown, or the swarthy
complexioned) Kavanagh, King of Leinster, which was
1 The church of Rathmacknee was dedicated to St. Martin of Tours. On
October 2Pth, 1538, Walter, Prior of All Hallows, Dublin, granted to
Nicholas Staihhurst, of Dublin, • the next presentation to the vicarage of the
l^axociiial Church of St. Martin of Rathmacknee.' The church had been
granted to All Hallows by William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, in 1240,
which grant -vfas confined by Pope Innocent V. in 127t).
THE EPISCOPAL CITY OF FERNS 169
solemnly dedicated to the service of God, on October 18th,
1460, by Bishop Purcell — Father Nehemias O'Donoghue
being Vicar Provincial.
The viceroyalty of the Earl of Ejldare, which terminated
in 1459, effected nothing of consequence; and the county
Wexford had to contribute ^620 yearly to the King of
Leinster, in addition to the ' black rent ' of 80 marks
annually paid by the Government. Edward lY. was pro-
claimed King of England on March 4th, 1461.
Pope Pius II., on September 26th, 1461, wrote to the
Bishop of Leighlin, the Dean, and Canon Patrick O'Byrne,
of Leighlin, who had been appointed judges of the eccle-
siastical dispute in the diocese of Ferns, regarding the
Chancellorship — confirming the appointment of Dermot
O'Doyne (O'Dunne or Dunne) as Chancellor of Ferns, vice
Philip Nagle, who had been deposed for manifest irregu-
larities. The position was then valued at ten marks per
annum. This Dermot O'Dunne was subsequently promoted
to the bishopric of Leighlin :^ a fact which is worth
chronicling, inasmuch as his identity was unknown to
Brady or Comerford ; and he is the Dermitius mentioned in
the Papal Bull.
In 1461, the Abbot of Ferns, by a Bull of Pope Pius II.,
was entrusted with the erection of a house for Austin friars
or hermits of St. Augustine, at Callan, county Kilkenny,
which had been petitioned for by Sir Edmond Butler,
who died on the 13th of July, 1464. In 1467, Sadh, or
Sabina Kavanagh, the daughter of Donald Fuscus, was
married to Sir James Butler, who completed Callan friary.
Notwithstanding the civil strife which raged violently
from 1460 to 1476, King Donald was not unmindful of the
interests of religion. There is yet preserved in Kilkenny
Castle the original of the grant which this petty sovereign
gave to the Cistercian Abbey of Duiske (Graiguenemanagh),
county Kilkenny, by which he made over to the monks * a
charge of eightpence, lawful money of England, on every
plough working in Us. dominion of Leinster.' This grant
' Thomas Fleming, O.S.F., Bishop of Leighlin, died in U68.
170 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
is dated from Enniscorthy Castle, 3rd of April, 1475, and
is sealed with his great seal, with the legend : * Sigillum
Donall Meic Murchada Begis Lageniae.^ Among the sub-
scribing witnesses are the Kev. Dermot O'Bolger, Eector
of Carnew ; Charles and Gerald, sons of the aforesaid
King Donald ; Aulaf O'Bolger, physician ; Hugh O'Farrell,
Cormac O'Brien, Magnus O'Brien, William M'Aylward,
clerics of the diocese of Ferns ; Donald, son of Hugh
O'Byrne, and many others.
In connection with this grant, which was read before the
Koyal Society of Antiquaries, on January 17th, 1883, by
the late Eev. James Graves, this distinguished archseologist
was unable to identify some of the names ; and he was also
unaware of the date when King Donald died, merely pre-
suming, with Dowling and others, that he was alive in April,
1475. I have, fortunately, succeeded fin identifying the
names ; and I have also discovered the exact date of the
king's death, which occurred on the 21st of April, 1476, at
the age of eighty. This latter fact is attested by an entry
in an ancient manuscript missal belonging to the now extinct
Franciscan Friary of Enniscorthy, which missal was written
* for the use of the Friars Minor.'
Bishop Purcell, of Ferns, died in 1479 ; and on Novem-
ber 26th of the same year, Laurence Neville, Archdeacon
of Ferns, a blood relation of the Baron of Bos-Garlan
(Kosegarland), was appointed his successor, receiving
restitution of temporalities on the 20th of May, 1480. At
this date, the episcopal city of Ferns was shorn of its
ancient splendour, and the castle was held by the
MacMurroughs. Bishop Neville resided at his ancestral
Manor of Eosegarland ; but, notwithstanding his Anglo-
Norman proclivities, he sided with the pretensions of
Lambert 8imnel in 1487.
In 1481, * Cahir Kavanagh, the son of MacMurrough (who
witnessed the grant to Duiske Abbey, in 1475), was slain
by the English of county Wexford.' Alas ! from 1478 to
1487, much internecine strife prevailed in the diocese of
Ferns, though, at the time, the Irish had possession of most
of county "Wexford. Never was there a better opportunity
THE EPISCOPAL CITY OF FERNS 171
for * wiping out ' the Anglo-Normans, and yet the clans
would not unite for the common cause. Under the date of
1488, the Irish Annals tell us that Mahon O'Murphy, chief-
of Ballaghkeene (county Wexford) * was treacherously slain
by Donogh Mac Art MacMurro ugh. Lord of Kinsellagh.'
Bishop Neville, notwithstanding the troublesome period
during which he ruled the diocese Ferns, worked zealously
for the good of the Church. On May 13th, 1489, Dr. John
Phelan, Canon of Ferns and Eector of Clonmore, county
"Wexford, was appointed Bishop of Limerick.
In 1490, Sir Jordan de Valle (Wall), Knight, granted
to the abbey of St. Thomas, near Dublin, *the church of
St. Andrew and St. Brigid of Mathelcon, in the diocese of
Ferns ; and the deed was signed by Laurence, Bishop of
Ferns.' This church of St. Andrew and St. Brigid of
Mathelcon, was the parish church of Moyacomb (a cor-
rupted form of the Celtic Magh-da-con := * the plain of the
two dogs'), which had replaced the old Augustinian abbey
known as Abbeydowne, founded by St. Dubhan, the patron
saint of Hook; It is situated beyond Newtownbarry,
Co. Wexford, and quite near Clonegel, Co. Carlow, but is in
the diocese of Ferns. Here, again, I must impress the
reader with the fact that the see of Ferns is conterminous
with Leighlin and Glendalough, and follows the tribal
parochial arrangement of pre-Norman days.
Sir Edward Poynings arrived as Lord Deputy on the
13th day of October, 1494, and convened the celebrated
parliament which met at Drogheda, on December 1st, when
the statute was passed known as Poynings law. This
parliament voted a subsidy of ^454 to Captain Thomas
Garth, commander of the English forces in Leinster.
At the Provincial Council held in Christ Church, Dublin,
attended by Bishop Neville, of Ferns, an annual contribution
for seven years was imposed on the clergy of the province of
Leinster, to provide salaries for lecturers in the University
of Dublin, then in a moribund condition.
On August 26th, 1496, Henry VII. granted a general
amnesty to all those prelates and nobles who had been
implicated in the Perkin Warbeck comedy. However, the
172 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Pretender, styling himself Kichard IV. again landed at Cork
in July, 1497, and on the 28th of the same month besieged
Waterford, but was so successfully resisted by the citizens
that he was compelled to fly on August 3rd.^
Bishop White, of Glendalough, surrendered his see on
the 30th of May, 1497, and it has ever since been incorporated
with that of Dublin. The average reader may, perhaps, not
be aware that the diocese of Ferns embraces a small por-
tion of Co. Wicklow, including Kilpipe, Preban, Tomacork,
Annacurra, Tinahely, Killaveny, Aughrim, Shillelagh, and
Kathdrum. This arises from the fact that the old Irish sees
were mostly tribal; and Ferns was coincident with the
territory known as Hy Kinsellagh.
In 1497 there was a terrible famine throughout Leinster ;
and, in August, 1499, the Earl of Kildare, Lord Deputy,
held a parliament at Castledermot, Co. Kildare, which
granted to the English monarch and his successors * a tax
of twelve pence in the pound on all kinds of merchandise
that were imported, except wine and oil,' and also levied a
subsidy off the clergy for the king. In 1501, our ancient
annals have the pleasing announcement that ^ a general
peace prevailed in the provinces of Leinster and Munster.'
Bishop Neville passed to his eternal reward in 1503,
after a rule of twenty-four years, and had as his successor,
Edmond Comerford, Dean of Ossory, who was consecrated
for the see of Ferns in St. Canice's Cathedral, Kilkenny,
in 1505.
During the episcopacy of Bishop Comerford, nothing of
any note occurred, but he was summoned to the parliament
which was convened at Dublin, in October, 1508, by the
Earl of Kildare, 'in which subsidies were granted to the king,'
as MacGeoghan writes, * by taxing the lands according to
their produce.' This prelate died on Easter Sunday, 1509,
and was succeeded by Nicholas Comyn, who was duly con^
secrated in St. Paul's Cathedral, London, on January 20th,
1 It was on this occasiou that Henry VII. conferred the title of Urbs intacta
on Waterford for its loyalty (?) ; and ever since the legend of the city is : Urbs
intacta manet Waterfordia. Perldn Warbeck with his friend John Waters,
Mayor of Cork, was hanged at Tyburn, on the 23rd of November, 1499.
THE EPISCOPAL CITY OF FERNS ITS
1510, being the first year of the reign of Henry VIII. This
prelate resided at Fethard Castle, Co. Wexford, and attended
the Provincial Council of Dublin, held at Christ Church
Cathedral, on the 21st of September, 1512, under the presi-
dency of Archbishop Kokeby.
Murrough ballagh, King of Leinster, died in 1511, and
was succeeded by Art boy (Buidhe = the yellow, or the
sallow complexioned), Kavanagh, who received 'twenty marte
lands,' i.e, fattening lands for beeves or kine, from his father
King Donald fuscus. This Art ruled the kingdom of
Leinster during a stormy period of seven years, and died
at Enniscorthy Castle, in 1518, whereupon the kingship
devolved on his brother Gerald, ' of Ferns.'
Bishop Comyn assisted at the second Provincial Council
held by Archbishop Eokeby, at Dublin, jn 1518, the acts
of which are still extant in the Bed Book of the Church of
Ossory. After an able administration of nine years, he
was transferred to the more lucrative see of Lismore and
Waterford, on April 13th, 1519; and on the same day
John Purcell, Austin Canon of St. Catherine's, Waterford,
was 'provided' to the see of Ferns, being consecrated at
Eome, on the 6th of May, 1519.
Murtogh Kavanagh, a younger son of Art boy, on
May 20th, 1521, during the viceroyalty of the Earl of Surrey,
seized the freehold lands of Enniscorthy; and, in the follow-
ing year, on the death of King Gerald, of * Ferns,' he was
proclaimed by the clan as the MacMurrough.
In truth, this was a very troubled period for the see of
Ferns. The whole county Wexford, with the exception of
the town of Wexford, was in the hands of the MacMurroughs.
Even Kew Koss was merely nominally within the Pale.
To further complicate matters, there were intermarriages
between the Butlers and the Kavanaghs; and the English
power in Leinster was scarcely ever at so low an ebb. The
dispute regarding the title to the vast Ormonde estates had
been settled, on August 16th, 1496, by the death of Sir James
Butler, who was killed by Sir Piers Butler, the legitimate
heir. Still there was no unity.
This Sir Piers Butler, who afterwards (August, 1515),
174 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
became Earl of Ormonde, was the maternal grandson of
Donald fuscus Kavanagh, King of Leinster, and was
appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland, in December, 1521, in
succession to the Earl of Surrey. Two months previously,
Henry VIII. wrote a letter to the Earl of Surrey, that he
was most anxious to arrange a marriage between Sir Piers
and the celebrated Anne Boleyn ; and, had such an interest-
ing event taken place, how differently might the history of
the * Eeformation ' have been written. Anyhow, Sir Piers
did not fall in with the views of King Henry, and, in 1524,
he was replaced as Lord Deputy by the Earl of Kildare. I
may add that, in 1524, the King himself first took serious
notice of * Mistress Anne ; ' and, on June 18th, 1525, he
advanced her father, Sir Thomas Boleyn, to the peerage,
under the title of Viscount Kochford, *one of the long-
contested titles of the house of Ormonde.'
Murtogh Kavanagh, King of Leinster, drew up an agree-
ment, dated August 28th, 1525, with Piers Butler, eighth
Earl of Ormonde, in which the * King of Leinster ' (the last
who subscribed himself as such) agreed to resign all claim
to the lordship of Arklow, on condition of being allowed to
live there whenever he liked, and to receive * a moiety of the
rents, services, and customs as well of fish as of timber,
accruing to the said Earl, as well in his said town of Arklow
as in its port,' with certain reservations. For pledges,
MacMurrough gave the Earl of Kildare, Lord Deputy of
Ireland, the Seneschal of county Wexford, Kichard Power,
Edmund Duff O'Donoghue, MacDavid and his clan,
O'Murchoe [the O'Murphy], and Donall O'Murchoe, the sons
of Gerald K&ySbn&ghy the Bishop of Ferns and his clergy, the
Guardian and other brethren of Enniscorthy, with all his
community, &c.
From documents of the year 1524-1530, we meet with the
names of the Kev. Nicholas Keating, as Kector of Taghmon,
and the Eev. Thomas Browne, Prebendary of Clone. At this
period the MacMurrough held Ferns Castle, and continued
to receive the accustomed tribute of 80 marks annually
from the Crown, until 1532. On the death of Murty
(Murtogh or Maurice) Kavanagh, and his two sons Dermot
THE EPISCOPAL CITY OF FERNS 175
and Donogh, the chieftaincy of Leinster devolved on Cahir
(Charles) Maclnnycross.
During the deputy ship of Sir William Skeffington, i.e.,
from August 1522 to August, 1532, various raids were made
by the English forces in Ulster and Leinster. For some
unexplained cause John Purcell, Bishop of Ferns (who
resided at Fethard Castle), was taken prisoner, and placed in
the custody of the Marshal of the Exchequer on the Ist of
September, 1531, but was released early in 1532. Very
probably this was owing to his inability to pay some debts
due to the crown.
In 1530, Cahir Maclnnycross, King of Leinster, took
possession of Ferns Castle, and on August 3rd, 1534, he
burned Ballymagir Castle, county Wexford. With the
unfortunate murder of John Allen, Archbishop of Dublin,
on July 28th, 1534, may be said to end the pre-Keforma-
tion period of Irish history; and on March 19th, 1535,
Henry VIII. exercised his new prerogative as * Head of the
Church,' by appointing George Browne, an ex-Augustinian
friar, as first Protestant Archbishop of Dublin. On October
3rd, Lord James Butler, son of Sir Piers, Earl of Ossory,^
was created Viscount Thurles, on condition of 'vigorously
resisting the usurpation of the Bishop of Kome.'
Lord Leonard Grey, the new Viceroy, convened a motley
parliament, which met at Dublin, on May 1st, 1536 ; and
this base assemblage of sycophants declared the King ' Head
of the Church of Ireland,' also attainting the Irish estates
(many of which were in the county Wexford) of the Duke of
Norfolk, Lord Berkeley, the Earl of Shrewsbury, the Abbot
of Furness, &c. ; which were then vested in the King. The
first assignation of religious houses was at the same time
made to the crown, comprising thirteen monasteries,
including Dunbrody and Tintern, in the diocese of Ferns,
the yearly value of which was estimated at iG32,000.
Cahir Maclnnycross Kavanagh surrendered Ferns Castle
to Lord Grey, on July 4th, 1536, but was left in possession
1 Sir Thomas Boleyn, Viscount Rochford, was created Earl of Ormonde,
fl,nd as a solatium, Sir Piers Butler was given the title ' Earl of Ossory."
176 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
as constable, on payment of eighty marks, Irish, annually;
Gerald Sutton being appointed deputy constable. A very
interesting account of the capture of Ferns Castle was
sent on July 17th, by Thomas Allen, to the Secretary of
State, Cromwell, from which I give the following, merely
modernizing the spelling : —
My Lord and the Master of the Rolls returning from Kilkenny
towards Dublin, sojourned at Leighlin, from whence he sent
Stephen ap Harry to Kilkea [Co. Kildare], to prepare his footmen
[infantry ] , ordnance, and victuals, and with all celerity to repair
to the castle of Ferns. My Lord rode all that night, and was
there early in the morning, and viewed it. My Lord demanded
whether they would surrender, and deliver the same to him, or
not. They made plain answer, they would not leave the same,
using very spiteful language. And so passing the day in
preparing engines, instruments, and other necessaries for the
obtaining thereof, bringing them nigh to the castle to the intent
they might see my Lord would not have the same . . . and
caused part of his men to go to the castle, and break the outer
gate^ entering to the drawbridge . . . Whereupon, shortly after
they desired to speak with my Lord, who showed them that
inasmuch as they would not deliver the castle unto him before
his Lordship had bestowed his ordnance, which was coming
within a mile, that afterwards, even if they would have delivered
the same, it should not be accepted of them : but man, woman, and
child should suffer for the same.
Which altogether, with the death of their captain, discomfitted
them. They surrendered and yielded the same to my Lord, who,
for that night, put a captain and men in the same, and the
next day put a ward of the MacMurroughs in the same. And
MacMurrough himself came in hostage with my Lord Deputy
to Dublin, to agree with his Lordship, and Mr. Treasurer
[Lord James Butler], for the taking of the same, which was let
very late for 5 marks, Irish, or thereabouts. . . .
Assuming your right honourable good Mastership, that the
said castle is one of the ancientest (sic) and strongest castles within
this land, and of the Earl of Shrewsbury's, or the Duke of
Norfolk's, old inheritance, being worth sometime 500 marks by
the year, situated nobly within 10 miles to Wexford, and 12
miles to Arklow.
From the State Papers we learn that on December 7th,
1537, James Sherlock was appointed * treasurer, general
receiver, and bailiff of the lordship of Wexford, and of all
other manors and lands in county Wexford ; to hold during
good behaviour, with the accustomed fees.* On December 20th
THE EPISCOPAL CITY OF FERNS 177
of the same year William St. Loo, as a reward for the
capture of The MacMurrough, was given a lease for twenty -
one years of various lands in county Wexford, including
Kilmannock, the Hook, (;lonmines,Eosegarlancl,the Park and
Ferry of Wexford, the Saltee Islands, the Kectory of Kilmore,
Long Grange, &c. At this date the Very Eev. Dr. Hay was
Dean of Ferns, Eev. Walter Rossiter was Rector of Taghmon,
and the Rev. Thomas Browne was Prebendary of Clone*
John Allen, Master of the Rolls, who had been present
with Lord Leonard Grey at the surrender of Ferns Castle, was,
on December 1st, 1536, given a grant for ever of the Priory
of St. Wolstan's, county Kildare, which was the first great
religious house suppressed in Ireland. It was not, however,
till 1537 that the drift of the so-called Reformation began
to be seen, and in 1538 the spoliation began. As might be
expected, there was much bickering over the distribution of
the loaves and fishes ; and under date of July 25th, 1538,
we find a petition from Thomas Agar to Secretary Cromwell
for the seneschalship of county Wexford, then held by
William St. Loo aforementioned.
On Saturday, January 4th, 1539, Archbishop Browne, of
Dublin, arrived at New Ross, where he preached on the
following day (Sunday) in St. Mary's Church ; and on Sunday
night he proceeded to Wexford, where, on January 6th, the
Feast of the Epiphany, as we read in the State Papers, * the
Archbishop again preached, having a great audience.'
The aged Bishop Purcell, of Ferns, died July 20fch, 1539,
whereupon Alexander Devereux, last pre-Reformation Abbot
of Dunbrody, was schismatically consecrated his successor,
on December 14th of the same year, by the aforesaid
Archbishop Browne.
Ferns Abbey was suppressed by Royal Commission,
dated April 7th, 1539 ; and an account of its last days, as
also a sketch of the life and work of Alexander Devereux,
who, though consecrated in schism, subsequently became
orthodox, and was rehabilitated, will be given in a subsequent
paper.
William H. Gbattan Flood.
VOL. VI. M
[ 178
DOCUMENTS
proclamation of the decree ' tametsi ' in costa riga
Beatissime Pater,
Episcopus de Costa Bica in America Centrali sequentia dubia
enodanda propooit :
Licet nulla extet memoria publicatum fuisse Concilium Triden-
tinum in dioecesi de Nicaragua et Costa Rica, tamen nunquam
in dubio positum est quin eiusdem leges in tota America Latino.
Hispanica vigerent (etiam cap. I. sess 24 De ref. matrim.) ;
nihilominus dubium occurrit utrum haec lex Tridentina publi-
canda sit in novis parochiis quae eriguntur, speciatim in locis,
ubi maior pars kabitantium est haeretica.
^•- Casus concretus hie est : Portus de Limon anno 1870 regio
erat inculta et silvis consita. Primi incolae fuerunt Nigritae
haeretici et nonnuUi Catholici Costaricenses. Anno 1893 erecta
fuit parochia in eodem portu, ubi degunt 1000 Catholici et 4000
haeretici.
I. Vigetne ibidem lex Tridentina quoad celebrationem matri-
mooiorum propter solam rationem quod terra ilia pertineat ad
dioecesim ubi publicata censetur lex, an vero denuo publicanda
est.
II. Validane sunt matrimonia ab haereticis celebrata coram
ministro acatholico vel coram Gubernio in Portu de Limon ?
III. Anno 1897, viginti septem haeretici suos errores abiura-
runt et in Ecclesiam reversi sunt. Quaerit Parochus quid cum
iis faciendum qui matrimonium inierunt n. II. exposito. Post
baptismum conditionalem etc. consensus matrimonialis reno-
vandus est necne ?
IV. Utrum conveniat, ad toUenda dubia, Concilium Triden-
tinum publicare ?
V. Utrum conveniat dispensationem petere a S. Sede relate
ad matrimonia haereticorum, sicut concessa fuit aBenedicto XIV.
die 4 Novembris, 1741, pro provinciis foederatis Belgii et
HoUandiae.
Feria IV, die 23 Novembris 1898.
In Congregatione Generali S. Eomanae et Universalis
Inquisitionis habita ab Eminentissimis ac Keverendissimis DD.
DOCUMENTS 179
Cardinalibus in rebus Fidei et morum Generalibus Inquisitoribus,
propositis suprascriptis dubiis, praehabitoque EE. DD. Consul-
torum voto, iidem Eminentissimi ac Eeverendissimi Patres
respondendum mandarunt :
Ad T. Decretum Tametsi Concilii Tridentini tanquam promul-
gatum censeri debet in tota Dioecesi de Costa-Eica ; neque
proinde necessaria est eiusdem decreti promulgatio in nova
paroecia Portus de Limon.
Ad II. Provisum in praecedenti ; scilicet Negative.
Ad III. Affirmative : et detur Decretum S. Officii 20 Novem-
bris, 1876.1
Ad IV. Publicationem necessariam non esse.
Ad V. Negative.
Feria vero VI. die 25 eiusdem mensis et anni, in solita
audientia E. P. D. Assessori S. Officii impertita, facta de his
omnibus Sanctissimo Domino Nostro Leoni Divina Providentia
Papae XIII. relatione, ;Sanctissimus resolutionem Eminentissi-
morum ac Eeverendissimorum Patrum approbavit.
I. Can. Mancini, S. E. et U. Inquis. Notarius.
MAY A PAPAL DELEGATE SUBDELEGATB WITHOUT
BESTBIGTION P
DUBIUM. AN DELEGATUS A PAPA ABSQUE BESTRICTIONB SUB-
DELEGATE VALEAT
Feria IV., die 14 Decembris, 1898.
Huic Supremae S. E. et U. Inquisitioni propositum fuit
enondandum sequens dubium.
An possit Episcopus dioecesanus subdelegare, absque speciali
concessione, suis Vicariis Generalibus, aut aliis Ecclesiasticis,
generali modo, vel saltern pro casu particular!, facultates ab
Apostolica Sede sibi ad tempus delegatas.
1 Huius Decreti tenor est huiusmodi : 'Utrum debeat Baptismus sub con
ditione haereticis qui ad Catholicam Fidem convertuntur e quocumque loco
proveniant et ad quamciimque sectam pertineant ? Respondetur : — Negative,
sed in conversione haereticorum, a quocumque loco vel a quaciunque secta
yenerint, inquirendum est de validitate baptismi in haeresi suscepti. Instituto
igitur in singulis casibus examine, si compertum fuerit, aut nullum, aut nulUter
coUatum f uisse, baptizandi erunt absolute. Si autem pro temporura et locorum
ratione, investigatione peracta niliil sive pro validitate, sive pro invaliditate
delegatur, aut adhuc probabile dubium de baptismi validitate supersit, tunc
sub conditione secreto baptizentur. Demum si constiterit validum fuisse,
recipiendi erunt tantummodo ad abiurationem, seu professionem fidei.'
180 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Porro in Congregatione General!, ab EEmisDD. Cardinalibus
in rebus fidei et morum Inquisitoribus Generalibus habita,
maturrime praedicto dubio expenso, praehabitoque RE. DD.
Consultorum voto, iidem KE. ac RR. Patres respondendum
mandarunt :
* Affirmative, dummodo id in facultatibus non prohibeatur,
neque subdelegandi ius pro aliquibus tantum coarctetur : in hoc
enim casu, servanda erit adamussim forma Rescripti.'
Sequenti vero Feria VI. die 16 eiusdem mensis et anni, in
audientia a SS. D. N. Leone Div: Prov. Pp. XIIL R. P. D.
Assessori impertita, SSmus D. N. resolutionem EE. et RR.
Patrum approbavit.
I. Can. Mancini, S. R. et U. Inquis. Notaruis,
DOUBT RBaARDINQ VALIDITY OF ORDINATION
dubium an valida sit ordinatio presbyteralis, si in
traditione calicis vinum non adpuerit
Beatiseime Pater,
Episcopus N.N., ad pedes S.V. provolutus humiliter exponit :
Nuper, in collatione generali Ordinum, sabbato Quatuor
Temporum Adventus, accidit ut presbyteris ordinandis traditus
sit, una cum patena et hostia, calix absque vino, ex mera Cae-
remoniariorum inadvertentia. Res processit omnibus nesciis,
nee nisi vespere nota fuit, quum iam recessissent omnes ordinati,
qui nee hodie defectum suspicantur.
Quare humiliter orator anceps quaerit :
I. An possit acquiescere ? Et quatenus negative ;
II. Quid agendum in praxi ?
Et Deus etc.
Feria IV., die 11 lanuarii, 1899.
In Congregatione generali S. R. et U. Inquisitionis, habita ab
EEmis ac RRmis DD. Cardinalibus in rebus fidei et morum
Generalibus Inquisitoribus, propositis suprascriptis dubiis, prae-
habitoque RR. DD. Consultorum voto, iidem EE. ac RR. Patres
respondendum mandarunt :
Ad I. et II. * Ordinationem esse iterandum ex integro sub
conditione et secreto quocumque die, facto verbo cum SSiiio, ut
Buppleat de thesauro Ecclesiae, quatenus opus sit, pro Missis
celebratis a sacerdotibus ordinatis ut in casu.
Feria vero de die 13 eiusdem mensis et anni, in solita
DOCUMENTS 181
audientia E. P. D. Assessori impertita, facta de his omnibus
SSmo D. N. Leoni Div, Prov. Pp. XIII. relatione, SSmus resolu-
tionem EEmorum Patrum approbavit et gratiam concessit.
I. Can. Mancini, S. R. et U. Inquis. Notarius,
LEO XIII. AND FBENCH CATHOLICS
EX ACTIS LEONIS XIII. ET E SECRETAR. BREVIUM
LEO XIII. DENUO INCULCAT HORTATIONES UM. PLURIES DATAS
CATHOLICIS GALLIS, CIRCA RATIONEM AGENDI IN RE POLITICA
ET SOCIALI
VENERABILI FRATRI PETRO, ARCHIEPISCOPO BITURICENSI
LEO PP. XIII.
Venerabilis Frater Salutem et Apostolicam Benedictionem.
Hand levi sane moerore cognovimus, ex quibusdum Actis ab
Apostolica Sede nuperrime evulgatis nonnullos occasionem per-
peram omnino nancisci publice edicendi : mutasse Nos consilia
circa illam de re vel politica vel sociali rationem agendi catholi-
corum in Galliis, quam et Ipsi primum indicavimus et pro oppor-
tunitate deinceps inculcare nunquam destitimus. Eo autem
magis hoc indoluimus, Venerabilis Frater, quod et animos dubio
percellere a rectoque itinere obturbatos possit revocare, ac notam
iis vestratum inurat, qui hortationibus Nostris sese praecipue
audientes exhibere, et, vita ad earumdem hortationum normam
ex acta, pro religione et patria agere passim contendunt.
Etenim quae a Nobis documenta recenter prodiere, ea quidem
qua christianam disciplinam unice respiciunt, nulloque aliquando
pacto praescriptiones attingunt, quae, uti diximus, de ratione,
apud vos, agendi catholicorum sunt, inque Epistola, februario
mense mdcccxcii. ad Gallos data, et in Encyclicis Literis
Berum novanirrif dilucide continentur.
De quibus, nihil prorsus immutatum esse, cunotaque satius
integro robore vigere, pronum est intelligere . Non enim deceret
Apostolicae Sedis sapientiam a consiliis decedere, quae ita omni
maturitate cepit et continenti studio inculcavit, ut Ei, si quis
aliter sentiret, iniuriam haud exiguam temere irrogare existi-
maretur.
Haec, Venerabilis Frater, ex caritate, qua gentem vestram
complectimur, rursus significanda censuimus, atque iterum
182 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Galliarum catholicos hortamur summopere, ut quae ad com-
munem utilitatem consilia ac monita et saepius dedimus et nunc
instaurare vel maxime optamus, ea faciant oppido, eisque, animo
et factis in unum Concordes, libenter regi, moveri et inter se
coalescere nullo non tempore adlaborent.'
Quod ut e votis cedat, benevolentiae Nostrae testem et
munerum divinorum auspicem, Apostolicam Benedictionem tibi
ac Dioecesi tuae peramanter in Domino impertimus.
Datum Romae apud S. Petrum die xxv. maii mdcccxcix.,
Pontificatus Nostri argao vicesimo secundo.
Leo pp. XIII.
LEO XIII. ON THE REVIEW * EPHEMERIDES LITURGHCAE '
LEO XIII. LA.UDAT OPEEAM MODERATORIS '' EPHEMERIDUM
LITURGICARUM "
Dilecto filio Chalcedonio Mancini e Congreg. Vincentiana
Bomam.
Dilecte Fill, salutem et Apost. Benedictionem.
Diligentiam tuam, qua annos iam amplius decem rei liturgicae
illustrandae das operam, novimus plane magnique facimus.
Tanti enim refert ut quae Ecclesia de sacra Liturgia decernit
probe cognoscantur et observentur, quanti ut sancta sancte
tractentur et fidelium pietas sacrorum maiestate augeatur. Tuos
igitur labores, quorum testes sunt Ejphemeridum Liturgicarum
oblata volumina, laude Nostra exornamus optamusque ut homines
sacii cleri tibi opere ac voluntate faveant. Addimus vero, bene-
volentiae Nostrae pignus, Apostolicam Benedictionem, quam tibi
peramanter in Domino impertimur.
Datum Romae apud S. Petrum die X. Maii mdcccxcix,
Pontificatus Nostri anno vicesimo secundo.
Leo pp. XIII.
RENEWAL OF MATRIMONIAL CONSENT
E. S. R. UNIV. INQUISITIONE
cibca renovationem consensus, ad hoc ut, sublato impedi-
mento, matrimonium convalidetur
Beatissime Pater,
Amalia protestans non baptizata, nupsit Joanni protestanti
baptizato : durante matrimonio, Amalia baptizata fuit in Protes-
DOCUMENTS 183
tantismo et vixit cum marito per aliquod tempus. Decursu tem-
poris ipsa certior facta est illicitos foveri amores Joannem inter
et certain mulierem. Quapropter ipsi valedixit, et brevi post,
a Tribunali civili obtinuit divortium ex capite adulterii ex parte
mariti. Nunc autem Amalia postulat licentiam contrahendi
secundas nuptias cum viro catholico.
Notandum quod protestantes non recognosaunt matrimonium
inter baptizatum et non baptizatum et non baptizatum, esse
nullum.
Quibus positis, Archiep. N. N. ad pedes S. V. provolutus
humiliter quaerit :
Posita ignorantia nullitatis matrimonii ex capita disparitatis
cultus, conversatio maritalis Amaliae cum Joanne revalidavitne
matrimonium post baptismum Amaliae ?
{Versio Direct.)
Fer. IV., die 8 Maii, 1899.
In Congregatione Generali coram EEmis ac REmis DD.
Cardinalibus in rebus fidei et morum Inquisitoribus Generalibus
habita, proposito suprascripto dubio, praehabitoque RR. DD;
Consultorum voto, iidem EE. ac RR. Patres respondendum
mandarunt :
Praevio iuramento ab Amalia in Guria N. N. praestando, quo
declaret matrimonium contractum cuhi loanne post baptismum
ipsius Amaliae, ab iisdem, scientibus illius nullitatem, ratificatum
non fuisse in loco ubi matrimonia clandestina vel mixta valida
habentur, et dummodo R. P. D. Archiepiscopus moraliter certus
sit de asserta ignorantia sponsorum circa impedimentum dis-
paritatis cultus, detur mulieri documentum libertatia ex capite
ipsius disparitatis cultus.
Sequenti vero Fer. V., die 9 eiusdem meusis et anni SSmus
D. N. Leo Pp. XIII. per facultates Emo Cardinali huius Supremae
Congregationis Secretario impertitas, resolutionem EE. ac RR.
Patrum adprobare dignatus est.
I. Can. Mancini, >S^. B, et U. Inquis. Not.
THE PAULINE PRIVILEGE
utrum pars fidelis uti possit privilegio pualino si post
conversionem commisbrit aliquod delictum
Beatissime Pater,
Aemillus van Henextho-ven, Superior missionis Kwangensia
in Africa Societatis lesu Patribus demandatae, and S. V. pedes
provolutus humiliter exponit quae sequuntur :
184 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Non semel S, Sedes declaravit adulterium et alia delicta ante
baptismum commissa, ita per baptismum condonari, ut pars
infidelis, quae ideo declinaret cohabitationem, permitteret alteri
parti baptizatae usum privilegii Paulini.
Quid autem si post baptismum adulterium vel delictum fuerit
iteratum, ita tamen, ut moraliter constet, quia v. g. iam magnis
spatiis separati erant coniuges, haec facta posteriora nullatenus
causam esse discessus partis infidelis, quae nee de baptismo nee
de moribus post baptismum inductis sollicita aeque etiam secuta
emendatione detrectasset cobabitationem.
Quo casu posito supradictus Orator enixe supplicat S. V. pro
responsione ad baec duo dubia :
I. An delicta, quae post baptismum sunt commissa, sed
nullatenus attenduntur a parte infideli, vel etiam quandoque
penitus ignorantur, obstent, quominus pars baptizata uti possit
privilegio Apostoli ?
II. An illo casu licitus sit usus facultatis Apostolicae, vi cuius
in dicta missione dispensari potest a faciendis interpellationibus
requisitis ?
Feria IV. die Aprilis, 1869.
In congregatione General! S. Eomanae Universalis Inquisi-
tionis ab EEmis ac EEmis DD. de Cardinalibus in rebus fidei
et -morum Inquisitoribus Generalibus habita, propositis supra-
scriptis dubiis, rite perpensis omnibus tum iuris turn facti
rationum momentis, praehabitoque ER. DD. Consultorum voto,
iidem EE. ac EE. Patres respondendum mandarunt :
* Dentur Oratori Decretum S. Officii 5 Augusti, 1759, et
Instructio S. C. de Propaganda Fide, 16 lanuarii, 1797 ; et ad
mentem. Mens est ut in dubiis indicium sit semper in fidei
favorem.'
' Porro Decretum S. OfiBcii 5 Augusti, 1759, ad Episcopiim
Coccinensem, in resp. ad 11. sic se habet ' :
* Cum militet ex parte coniugis conversi favor fidei, eo
(privilegio) potest uti quacumque ex causa, dummodo iusta sit,
nimirum si non dederit iustum ac rationabile motivum alteri
coniugi discedendi, ita tamen ut tunc solum intelligatur solutum
iugum vinculi matrimonialis cum infideli, quando coniux con-
versus (renuente altero post interpellationem converti) transit ad
iilia vota cum fideli.'
' Instructio vero S. C. de Propaganda Fide 16 lanuarii 1797,
pro Sinis est prout sequitur ' :
DOCUMENTS 185
' In casu matrimonii dissolvendi ex privilegio in favorem fidei
promulgate ab Apostolo duo haec tantum spectanda, de quibus
fieri debet interpellatio : 1. Utrum pars infidelis velit converti.
2. Utrum saltem velit cohabitare sine contumelia Creatoris,
nulla praeterea habita ratione, utrum nee ne praecesserit sive
adulterium, sive repudium,'
Sequenti vero feria VI., die 21 eiusdem mensis et anni, in
audientia a SS. D. N. Leone Pp. XIII. E. P. D. Adsessori
S. O. impertita, SS. D. N. resolutionem EE. ac EE. Patrum
adprobavit.
I. Can. Mancini, S. B. et U. Inquis. Not.
BEaUIEM MASSES FOR THE POOR
E SACEA CONGREGATIONE RITUUM
DECRETUM
CIRCA MISSAM EXEQUIALEM LECTAM, LOCO CANTATAE
Instantibus aliquibus Farochis, Sacrorum Eituum Congre-
gationioni sequens dubium propositum fuit : * An pro paupere
defuncto cuius Familia impar est solvendi expensas Missae ex-
equialis cum cantu, haec Missa legi possit sub iisdem clausulis et
conditionibus quibus praefata Missa cum cantu conceditur.
Et Sacra eadem Congregatio, exquisito voto Commissionis
Liturgicae, omnibusque rite expensis, rescribendum censuit :
Affirmative seu permitti posse in casu Missam exequialem lectam,
loco Missae cum cantu, dummodo in dominicis aliisque Festis de
praecepto non omittatur Missa officio diei currentis respondens.
Die 9 Maii, 1899.
Quibus omnibus Ssmo Domino Nostro Leoni Papae XIII per
infrascriptum Cardinalem Sacrae Eituum Congregationi Prae-
fectum relatis, Sanctitas Sua rescriptum Sacrae ipsius Congre-
gationis ratum habuit et confirmavit, die 12 lunii eodem anno.
C. Card. Mazzella, Praef.
L.ii* S.
D. Panici, S.B, G. Seer.
186 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
THE ERECTION OF THE CONFRATERNITY OF THE ROSARY
e sacra congeegatione indulgentiarum i
ordinis praedicatorum
circa delegationem sacerdotis pro ^rigenda confraterni-
tatb ss. rosarii
Beatissime Pater,
luxta Decretum Sacrae Congregationis Indulgentiarum datum
die 20 Maii, 1896, ad VI. Magister Generalis Ordinis Praedica-
torum pro erigenda Confraternitate SS. Rosarii cerium Sacerdotem
delegare debet. Cum autem baud rare accidat Sacerdotem ita
delegatum ex improvise impediri, quominus die statute man-
datum exequi possit, quin recur sus opportunus pro nova dele-
gatione obtinenda possibilis sit, hinc Magister Generalis, ad pedes
Sanctitatis Vestrae humiliter provolutus, postulat ut praeter
Eeligiosum vel Sacerdotem sibi nominatim propositum, delegare
possit alium Sacerdotem, Episcopo acceptum, quem ille in tali
casu sibi subatituat, hoc fere modo : ' tenore praesentium Rdum
Patrem N. N. vel ilium Sacerdotem, Episcopo acceptum, quem
hie, ipso forsan impedito, sibi substituerit, delegamus.'
Et Deus, etc.
Sanctissimus Dominus Noster Leo PP. XIII. in audientia
habita die 8 Februarii, 1899, ab infrascripto Cardinali Praefecto
S, C. Indulgentiis Sacrisque Eeliquiis praepositae benigne annui
iuxta preces. Praesenti in perpetuum valituro. Contrariis qui-
buscumque non obstantibus.
Datum Romae ex Secretaria eiusdem Sacrae Congregationis
die 8 Februarii, 1899.
Fr. Heronymus M. Card. Gotti, Praefectus,
L. ^S.
Ant. Archiepiscopus Antinoen., Secretarius.
THE BISHOP'S THRONE
EPISCOPUS OEDERE POTEST THfiONUM SUUM ALTERI EPISCOPO
INVITATO, ETC.
Quum tanta commeandi itinerum suscipiendorum et per-
ficiendorum facilitas illud etiam commodi attulerit ut Episcopi
diversarum Dioecesium saepius conveniant sive ad festum aliquod
1 In praeterito fascicido p. 205, Col. B. initio, loco 100 dierum ; versus
finem, tollenda est paragr. incipiens verbis Ex And. SS. die 6 Maii, 1899 . . .
usque ad subscriptionem Z. M. Card. Vicarius Firmis reinanentlbus caeteris.
DOCUMENTS 187
solemnius agendum, sive ad coetus episcopales celebrandos,
quaesitum est : utrum liceat Episcopo Dioecesano thronum
suum alteri Episcopo cedere. Hinc Sacra Eituum Congregatio
quaestionem super hac throni cessione sibi pluries delatam,
studiose pertractare opportunum duxit. Quare ab Emo. ac Kmo.
Domino Cardinali Andrea Steinhuber Relatore, in Ordinariis
comitiis subsignata die ad Vaticanum habitis, propositum fuit.
dubium : An Episcopus Dioecesanus gaudeat iure cedendi
thronum suum alteri Episcopo cum Rmorum Canonicorum
adsistentia sibi debita ?
Et Sacra eadem Congregatio, exquisite voto Commissionis
Liturgicae, omnibusque accurate discussis atque perpensis
rescribendum censuit : Affirmative^ dummodo Episcopus invitatus
non sit ipsius Dioecesani Coadiutor aut Auxiliarius aut Vicarius
Generalis, aut etiam dignitas seu Canonicus in illius Ecclesiis,
Sicut autem Cardinales Episcopi Suburbicarii aliique Titulares
Ecclesiarum Urbis, tantum purpuratis Patribus thronum cedere
possunt, ita Praesules Cardinales aliarum dioecesium decet ut
suum thronum nonnisi aliis eadem Cardinalitia dignitate ornatis
cedant. Die 9 Maii, 1899.
Facta postmodum de his Ssmo Domino Nostro Leoni
Tapae XIII. per infrascriptum Cardinalem Sacrae Eituum Con-
gregationi Praefectum relatione, Sanctitas Sua rescriptum Sacrae
ipsius Congregationis ratum habuit et confirmavit, die 12 lunii
eodem anno.
C. Ep. Praenest. Card. Mazzella, S. R. C. Praef,
L. 1^ S.
DiOMEDES Panici, S, B, G. Secret.
[ 188 ]
NOTICES OF BOOKS
L'Apotre Saint Paul. Par I'Abbe S. E. Frette. Paris :
Lethielleux. f. 6-00.
The work before us is the outcome of much labour and
research in a field of sacred science, cultivated with laudable
assiduity, and no small fruit by the clergy of France. The
personality of St. Paul has ever exercised an irresistible fascina-
tion over all who confess to an admiration of strength and nobility
of character, while the important role he played in the spread of
the Gospel invests the story of his life with a special interest for
those who wish to study the history of the foundation of the
Church. It is natural, then, that we should have had many studies
and monographs upon St. Paul before M. Pretty undertook to
give us the result of his reading of the Acts and the Pauline
Epistles. All of them have their own special standpoints,
features, and excellencies. M, Frette, in his turn, may be said
to strike the keynote in his declaration, 'Nous offrons notre
travail a ceux qui veulent s' instruire.'
Thoroughly conversant with the Acts and the Epistles, well-
informed upon Jewish and rabbinical customs, M. Frette, in
addition, draws largely from the rich quarry of tradition and
legend bearing upon the period. He is thus in a position to fill
up many of the lacunae existing in the biblical account of the
Apostle of the Gentiles. But what will win for him the favour
of those of a critical turn is his intimate acquaintance with the
conditions and manners of the age and of the peoples with whom
the Apostle came in contact, with the topography of the Acts
as illustrated by the most recent discoveries, and consequently
with the most probable appearance, physical and moral, presented
by each of the towns St. Paul visited. His descriptions and
reconstructions recurring at intervals through the work, proof
of his patient research and accurate scholarship, place at the
reader's disposal much valuable information otherwise difficult of
access. By this means he endeavours, with a large measure of
success, to make the old world live again before our eyes, assisting
our imaginations to see it as it must have appeared in St. Paul's
day, clearing up many passages of doubtful meaning, and giving
NOTICES OF BOOKS 189
point to many allusions which would else be bereft of their due
import. In his use of tradition he is reverent without being
uncritical, neither unduly credulous nor hastily sceptical, invari-
ably citing his authorities. On points of dispute his views are
those more usually accepted, and we have seldom felt obliged to
disagree with any of his conclusions. This is especially so of those
questions of theological bearing which, from time to time, come
up for treatment. The concluding years of St. Paul's life, upon
which the Acts are silent, he illustrates from the Epistles and
from trustworthy tradition. M. Frette regards as a certain fact
of history St. Paul's missionary journey to Spain, and with
pardonable eagerness claims a share of the Apostle's labour on
this occasion for the favoured land of Gaul.
From what has been said it will be apparent that we
regard this work as an extremely able and learned study of the
life and labours of St. Paul. But the title of the work led
us to expect a biography of the Apostle,'and approaching its
perusal as we did with certain preconceptions on the subject
of biography in general, and with an exalted idea of French
biographers, we experienced at times a feeling akin to disappoint-
ment. We conceive it to be the duty of a biographer to make
his hero move and act again before our gaze, standing out from
his pages a living personality, enchaining our engrossed attention.
To this standard, whatever be its truth, M. Frette's work did
not at all times rise. His introduction seems at first sight so
irrelevant that it might introduce the life of anyone from Abel
the just — Adam is given a few pages of it — down to the latest
servant of God. His undeniably learned dissentations might
have been served up in a less raw condition, more in touch with,
and giving a more living interest to his subject. There is
enough background, but we should like more picture proper.
We are; however, well prepared to waive this objection on
the author's assurance that his aim is to instruct. But are we
to glean instruction merely from the outward facts of St. Paul's
life ? It is quite true that St. Paul's undying zeal, his invincible
courage, his magnetic attractiveness, his contagious enthusiasm,
and his human tenderness and amiability appear on every stage,
and in every act of his life. Still, if a biographer is to be a guide,
it should be part of his duty to point to those various traits as
they appear. The dulness of those who cannot see, or will not
see, should be reckoned with, and catered for accordingly. Yet
190 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
M. Frette dismisses the many-sided character of St. Paul in a
few words, nor is attention called to its striking traits as often as
we would wish, in the course of the work. The elaboration of
several contrasts proves M. Frette's ability in such writing, and
whets our appetite for more of it. And who could pass such
touching scenes as the parting of St. Paul from the Ephesian
elders at Miletus, from the Tyrians by the sea shore, from his
spiritual children on his departure to stand before Nero, with the
bare narration of the fact of parting ? M. Frette's capable treat-
ment of these scenes makes us desire from his hands a more
detailed study of the Apostle's character, a history of his interior
life, and of his victories in the bitter struggles that rent his
mighty soul.
On the sufficiently important question of chronology we can-
not fall in with our author's new dating our Lord's death a.d. 33,
and the Council of Jerusalem a.d. 51. We are of opinion, and
for grave reasons, that the Council was held as early as a.d. 47,
a view which has also the advantage of leaving more time for
the journeys in Spain and the east after St. Paul's first imprison-
ment. We should have welcomed from the author a short
statement of his grounds for accepting the view of Baronius, and
preferably in an appendix. Indeed it strikes us, that it might
have relegated several discussions to appendices, as is done in
many kindred works. He would thus have the results of his
sifting ready for expedite use, so as not to interfere with the easy
flow of the narrative.
The publishers have done their part in a manner worthy of
their high reputation. Two of the maps inserted would be the
more useful for having traced upon them the routes of St. Paul's
apostolic journeys.
There is a class of readers to whom a work of this kind will
be its own recommendation ; but to all students of the New
Testament, to all lovers and would-be imitators of this great
imitator of Jesus Christ, we cordially recommend this work on its
own intrinsic merits as a valuable addition to any average
library of biblical literature,
P.L.
Natural Law and Legal Practice. By Kene J. Holland,
S.J. New York : Benziger Bros. Price $1-75.
Father Holland's aim in pubhshing these lectures is worthy
of all praise. He wishes to impress upon the minds of all law
NOTICES OF BOOKS 191
students, the principles and ordinances * written on the fleshy tables
of the heart,' without which no human legislation can maintain
stable equilibrium. The work is done with professional precision
and accuracy, and nothing, certainly, is * given away.' In a
series of twelve lectures the author treats of the nature and
existence of the natural law, the essential characteristics of man,
the basis of morality, the various kinds of * justice ' (taking the
term in its theological sense), the mutual relations of the
individual, the family and the state, the rights and duties of
property, the war between capital and labour, the obligations of
judges, jurors, lawyers, and legislators. These lectures are
valuable in themselves ; but expanded and illuminated by ' the
living voice' of the professor, they cannot fail to have produced a
lasting impression on Father Holland's pupils. E.B.
A Full Couese of Instbuction in Explanation of
THE Catechism. By Eev. J. Perry. St. Louis:
B. Herder.
The great sale this manual has commanded proves that it is
above the average catechism companion. Indeed it is a veritable
summa of Christian doctrine. To be sure, one would like to see
a fuller explanation of some points, and a more popular exposi-
tion of many, but one cannot have everything. Father Perry
is above all things a practical theologian, and his editor belongs
to a congregation — the Vincentian — whose characteristic aim is
the spiritual utility of its efforts. Most cordially, then, do we
wish the thirteenth edition of Father Perry's Instructions a
ready and rapid sale. E. N.
Exposition of Christian Doctrine. Part II. — Moral.
By J. J. McVey. Philadelphia.
*The Exposition of Christian Moral,* says the Bishop of
Tarentaise, * is a worthy sequel to the Exposition of Christian
Dogma^ which has already met with the most flattering approval,'
In these words the venerable prelate has given this substantial
volume a hearty God-speed. We beg to endorse his Lordship's
approval. For treatment so exhaustive, explanation so lucid,
order so perfect, we have nothing but words of praise. This
work is none of your mere dry-as-dust compilations. It is
thoroughly up to date (in the orthodox sense), embodying the
192 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
teaching of the latest Papal Encyclicals and the latest American
Synods. We are espscially gratified to find the now famous
Berum Novaricm done justice to in its pages. The paper, printing,
and binding are excellent, and the price, $2-25, under the
circumstances, moderate. . E. N.
The Science of the Bible. By Kev. M, S, Brennan,
A.M. Freiburg: Herder; St. Louis, Mo.: B. Herder,
17, South Broadway.
We cannot say that we are impressed very favourably by the
result of Father Bennan's well-meant efforts. To our mind it is
absolutely impossible to give in one small book * an honest
presentation of the branches of science touched upon in the
Sacred Scriptures as compared with the same branches studied
from a purely natural or secular standpoint.' The idea that the
bearings of astronomy, optics, geology, biology, and anthro-
pology upon the inspired word could be adequately or fairly
dealt with in the course of three hundred and ninety small pages,
is shortsighted and unwise. A great deal of matter is touched
on, undoubtedly, and a great many authorities quoted ; but the
depths are sounded seldom, and the impression left on the mind
is confused and vague. We believe, however, that the work will
prove to many the inadequacy of the ordinary theological treatises
on matters bibUcal. E. N.
POSSESSION IN MORAL THEOLOGY AND
ANGLO-AMERICAN LAW.
POSSESSION is a notion of great importance in law
and in morals. It is the subject of several titles and
of many a chapter in the Eoman Civil Law ; a large
portion of a whole title is given to it in the Canon
Law. In Anglo-American Law the importance of possession
is not less but greater. 'Possession is a conception which is
only less important than contract,' says Mr. Justice Holmes.^
What is it to possess ? [asked Bentham]. This appears a very
simple question : — there is none more difficult of resolution. . . .
It is not, however, a vain speculation of metaphysics. Everything
which is most precious to a man may depend upon this question: —
his property, his liberty, his honour, and even his life. Indeed,
in defence of my possession, I may lawfully strike, wound, and
even kill if necessary. But was the thing in my possession ? ^
In morals possession is a notion of scarcely less impor-
tance than in law. It is a condition of title to property by
prescription and by occupation. A finder of lost goods
acquires rights and incurs obligations by assuming possession
of the things found. Much is said in our text-books of
morals concerning the duties and rights of possessors in
good faith, in bad faith, and in dubious faith. A rule of
law concerning possession : In doubt the position of the
i The Common Law, p. 206.
2 Work'i, iii., p. IH8 ; quoted by Sir F. Pollock, Possession in the Commoi^
Law, p. 6.
FOURTH SERIES, VOL. VI.— SEPTEMBER, 1899. N
194 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
possessor is the better, — is by one school of theologians made
a principal foundation of their system of moral theology.
A part, at any rate, of the significance of possession is due
to positive law. Professor Lega of the Apollinare in Eome
teaches this,^ not less than English lawyers : —
It [possession] is a notion of particular or municipal law ; for
these modes, events, and incidents may vary in different systems
of law, and they have even in this country varied at different
times. 2
Molina ' ascribes the great difficulty which divines and
jurists have always experienced in defining possession to the
fact that it is a creature of the positive law, and so has no
certain and invariable meaning.
But if possession is a notion of such importance, and at
the same time a creature of positive law, it is worth while
to inquire what it implies in Anglo-American law. Those
who have hitherto written on Catholic moral questions have
almost exclusively had in mind the rules of Roman Law as
modified by the Canon Law, or, some system of law based
on the Eoman Law, if we take account of more modern
authors. It was natural that while treating of possession,
the older moralists should expound the dicta of the Roman
and Canon Law, the common law of Christendom. That
several of the privileges which, according to them, attach
to possession were simply the prescriptions of the positive
common law of Christendom, is evident to anyone who will
consult such representative moralists as Laymann and
Lacroix. English law, however, is not based on Roman law,
though directly or indirectly it has borrowed largely from it,
and according to English and American writers, the Anglo-
American theory or doctrine of possession differs in several
important details from the doctrine of the Roman and
Canon Law.*
It is an interesting and important question whether these
1 Frcelectiones jur. can., lib. i., vol. i., n. 194. Cf. Lessius, De Just., lib. ii.j
c. iii., Dub. II.
2 Pollock and Wright, Fosseaslon in the Common Law, p. 119.
^ Dejust. etjure, tract, ii., disp. 12.
4 0. W. Holmes, The Common Laiv, p. 210 ; Pollock and Wright, p. 9.
POSSESSION IN MORAL THEOLOGY, &c. 195
differences affect any of the principles or rules concerning
possession which are usually laid down in our text-books
of moral theology.
Before trying to answer this question let us endeavour
to get as clear an idea as may be as to what possession
is. A vast amount has been written about it by jurists, phi-
losophers, and divines from different points of view. We shall
discuss the matter from the standpoint of moral theology,
and we shall by preference use the terminology familiar
to students of moral theology, and only lay stress on what
is of practical importance for our own science. It may well
be that much may depend in law on some difference between
the Koman and the English concept of possession, which
difference may, nevertheless, be of slight import for the
theologian. Thus in Koman law a depositary was said not
to have possession of the deposit, while in English law he
has ; but however important in law this difference may be,
in morals it would seem that we may almost disregard it ;
for whether the depositary be said to have possession of what
is bailed to him or not, his duties and rights m foro
conscienticB are much the same. About such questions as
this, therefore, we shall have little or nothing to say; we shall
confine ourselves to questions which interest the moral
theologian.
Possession, then, must be carefully distinguished from
the right to possess. The owner of a watch has the right
to possess it, unless he has transferred his right to another.
Eor ownership implies the right to use the thing owned;
and in order to use it, to exercise one's activity over it, one
must possess it. The right to possession, then, usually
follows ownership; but the right to possession is not
possession itself. A man who has lost his watch retains
the right to possession, but he has lost the possession itself.
Possession expresses not a right, but a fact. A man is in
possession of his watch if he has it in his pocket, if it is
lying on the table before him, if he has it in such a way that
he can exercise control over it, and exclude others from its
control. If a thief snatches it from his waistcoat pocket,
but the guard still remains firmly attached to the watch and
196 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
to its owner, the latter still retains possession ; if, however^
the guard breaks, the thief gains possession of the watch,
and the owner loses it.
The meaning of possession is best seen by taking an
instance of how it may be acquired! A fisherman sees a
fine salmon in the river ; he would like to reduce it into
possession ; but seeing it is not possessing it. He throws his
fly, and the fish takes it, but it is not in his possession yet.
As yet he has not got it under his control. After skilfully
playing it for some time, he nets it and lands it ; he now has
it safe, he has it in his possession. Now, let us suppose
that instead of the salmon rising to the fly, this was
taken by a miserable smelt, which came swinging through
the air, dangling on the line towards the fisherman. It
is worth nothing, and had better be thrown back. The
fisherman, with the intention of throwing it far away into
the river again, seizes it impatiently. He has no intention
of keeping it, or making it his own; he merely detains it
in his hand long enough to detach it from the hook, and
then casts it from him. He never possesses it in any true
sense ; he had no intention of reducing it into possession ; he
only wished to remove it from the hook, which he intended
for nobler prey. So that possession implies physical
control of the thing possessed, and a certain intention
in the possessor ; it is a fact implying custody and
control of a thing, with the intention of having it and
of excluding others, at any rate to the extent of one's own
interest.
This definition would seem to express with tolerable
accuracy what theologians and canonists mean hy possessio
naturalisy and which English lawyers call physical or de
facto possession. Theologians and canonists, it is true,
following the Boman law, require for possessio naturalis the
animus domini ; a man, according to them, has not natural
possession of a thing unless he holds it as his own; he must
hold the thing corpore et animo, with the intention of having
it as his own, of exercising dominion over it. The intention
of exercising dominion or the rights of ownership over the
object, is not necessary for possession in Anglo-American
POSSESSION IN MORAL THEOLOGY, &c. 197
law ; it would seem to be sufficient if there be the intention
to^exclude others.
If what the law does [says Mr. Justice Holmes i] is to exclude
others from interfering with the object, it would seem that the
intent which the law should require is an intent to exclude others.
I believe that such an intent is all that the common law deems
needful, and that on principle no more should be required.
. . . The intent to appropriate or deal with a thing as owner
can hardly exist without an intent to exclude others, and some-
thing more ; but the latter may very well be where there is no
intent to hold as owner. A tenant for years intends to exclude
all persons, including the owner, until the end of his term ; yet
he has not the animus domini in the sense explained. Still less
has a bailee with a lien, who does not even mean to use, but only
to detain, the thing for payment. But, further, the common law
protects a bailee against strangers, when it would not protect him
against the owner, as in the case of a deposit or other bailment
terminable at pleasure ; and we may, therefore, say that the
intent even to exclude need not be so extensive as would be
implied in the animus domini}
Although English law does not require for possession the
intention to hold the thing as one's own absolutely, yet it
does require something more than holding in the name of
another. A servant who carries his master's bag has only
the custody of the bag; he has not possession of it in
English law any more than in Koman or Canon law ; so
that the intention to have the thing to the extent of one's
interest, and to exclude all others from it — at any rate to
that extent — would seem to be required by English law.
And many theologians required nothing more for natural
possession. Thus Molina^ allows that the feudatory and
the tenant for a long period have the natural possession of
their fief and tenancy. So that I think we may say that
the definition of the naturalis possessio of canonists and
theologians is substantially rendered by the definition given
above.*
Such natural or physical possession is a fact which must
* The Common Law, p, 220.
2 Cf. Pollock and Wright, Fossession, pp. 13, 131.
^ Be just, etjiire, tract, ii., disp. 12.
* Cf. Sir T. E. Holland, Jurisprudence, p. 160.
198 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
be very carefully distinguished from the right to possess and
from the right of ownership. A thief has the physical
possession of the watch which he has stolen ; he has not
the right to possess it, nor the right of ownership over it.
Possession may be just or unjust," with title or without,
implying ownership or not. It is a fact, and abstracts from
rights and justice. Bare possession of itself gives no
right of ownership ; possession and ownership have nothing
in common, as the Eoman law expressly declares.
However, although possession is not ownership, law pro-
tects possession, and invests it with certain consequences
and legal effects. The possessor must not be disturbed in
his possession by private violence any more than the pro-
prietor in the enjoyment of his property. There has been
much discussion, since Savigny wrote, about the reason why
the law throws the aegis of its protection around possession.
Some would have it that the law does this in the interests
of peace and public security. Public order requires that
self-help should not be permitted indiscriminately. Another
may unjustly have possession of what belongs to me ; but
the law cannot allow me to oust him vi et armis. If such
proceedings were permitted, there would be an end of public
order ; and so the law protects possession in the interests of
peace, forbidding possessors to be disturbed, even by rightful
owners, except by process of law. Others prefer to derive
the protection accorded to possession from the protection
which the law gives to persons. An attack on possession
would ordinarily involve an injury to the person, and so pro-
tection of the person necessitates protection of possession.
Others, again, say that possession must be protected, because
property miist be secure. To prove ownership is frequently
difficult, if not impossible ; and it would be intolerable if
proprietors were to be constantly liable to be compelled to
show their title-deeds to what they hold. And so the law
looks upon possession, which is a more evident fact, as
giving a presumption of ownership, and, therefore, defends
the possessor. Eeal owners may, perhaps, sometimes be the
sufferers from such a rule ; but it is better for the common
good that a few should be kept from their own rather than
POSSESSION IN MORAL THEOLOGY, &c, 199
that the general rights of property should be unstable and
insecure. Other writers rest the protection accorded to
possession on the merits of possession itself. By the very
fact of a man being in possession, he has more right than
anyone who has not a better title ; and so, as the law should
protect all rights, it is its duty to protect possession.
Sir Frederick Pollock and Professor Maitland in their
History of English Laio,^ tell us that all these reasons have
had their influence on English Law ; and it is not unlikely
that the same may be said of other systems of law. What-
ever the cause or causes may be, positive law has extended
the meaning of possession, and invested it with legal effects
of no slight importance. For a man retains legal possession
of his property though here and now it is not under his
physical control. A man leaves his dwelling in the morning,
and goes to his business into town ; throughout the day he
retains possession of his house and all that it contains ;
when he leaves it, so that he no longer can exert his
physical control over it, he loses indeed the natural or
physical possession of it, but he still has what canonists and
theologians call possessio civilis, and what English writers
call constructive possession or simply possession. Much in
the same way the owner retains possession of a watch which
he hands to his servant to take to the watchmaker for
repairs. The servant has the bare custody of ifc ; he merely
carries it for his master. All this is quite in keeping with
the natural law ; the positive law protects the right to
possess, and regards it much in the same light as possession
itself. The master can maintain trespass committed against
his property while in the custody of his servant. Positive
law further enlarged the meaning of possession so as to
comprehend certain incorporeal rights, such as servitudes
or profits, and easements, advowsons, services. These are
said by the canonists quasi-possideri, for they cannot be
grasped or detained corporally. Possession was further
extended by operation of law to certain cases where there
was neither the physical control nor the intention required
1 Vol. ii., p. 43.
200 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
by natural and civil possession. Thus by operation of law/
the heir has possession of the property of one who dies
intestate, the executor of the property of the testator, the
property of the bankrupt vests in the trustee in bankruptcy
on his 8.ppointment, and the heir apparent possesses the
crown on the death of the sovereign. This is called by the
canonists ^055ess*o civilissima.
Finally, moralists have enlarged the meaning of the
term possession so as to embrace not only the subject-
matter of the virtue of justice, but that of all the other
virtues as well. Thus with regard to the most general of
all virtues — obedience, human liberty is said to be in
possession if there is no law that restricts it ; in other
words, we are at liberty to do what is not forbidden by
any law or command of any lawful superior. On the
contrary, the law is in possession if it once existed, and
there is no reason to think that it has ceased to
exist. In this case the law must be obeyed, for, in doubt
the position of the possessor is the better. This is quite
a legitimate use of the term and principle of possession;
it is in keeping with natural reason and sound morality.
And indeed the subject matter of law and liberty is not so
remote from that of justice as at first sight it may appear.
For have I not a right to the use of my liberty if it is not
restricted by any law? and rights come under the protection
of justice. So that if it is right and proper that the possession
of corporal things should be protected, is it not just that
liberty should also be safeguarded ? It is true that the use
of the principle of possession in this connection has its
limits, but to attempt to assign these limits would lead us
into controverted questions, and too far afield for our
present purpose.
In substance, then, English law attributes the same
meaning to possession as Roman and Canon Law. But there
are certain advantages or effects ascribed to possession by
jurists and morahsts, and these were so ample and impor-
tant that Beati possidentes, * Blessed are they who are in
1 Pollock and Wright, Possession, p. 127.
POSSESSION IN MORAL THEOLOGY, &c. 201
possession ' became a common saying among lawyers. Some
of these effects flow from the natural law, from the very
nature of possession ; others are due to positive law, and it
is a question of some moment for English and American
moralists whether and how far the effects ascribed to
possession in the ordinary text-books of moral theology are
modified by Anglo-American law. I will take the chief
advantages ascribed to possession by Laymann, and briefly
comment on them from the standpoint of natural and English
law.
1. Possession has nothing in common with ownership.
This dictum is sufficiently clear from what has already been
said on the nature of possession.
2. Possession continued in good faith for the length of
time required by law gives ownership by prescription.
Possession is also a root of title by prescription in English
law, but it is less extended in its application than in Eoman
and Canon law, and the conditions are somewhat different.
According to the strict use of the term, prescription in
English Law is acquisitive only, not extinctive; it applies to
incorporeal hereditaments, such as advowsons, profits a
prendre, and easements, not to land or movables ; and the
length of time required to prescribe differs much from that
laid down by Eoman and Canon law, and moreover, varies
with different rights and circumstances. However, although
prescription is not admitted as a title to land by English law,
yet title to land may be extinguished by the Statutes of
Limitation, which to this extent may be looked upon as
extinctive prescription acts by the moral theologian. Property
in movables cannot be acquired by prescription or Limi-
tation Acts, according to English law. The laws of the
United States, with the exception of Louisiana, which
follows the Roman law, concerning prescription are based
on those of England, but the terms of years vary somewhat
in the different States.
English law does not seem strictly to require good faith
in one who claims by prescription ; it is sufficient if he is in
possession for the required time peaceably, openly, and not
with licence ; but good faith is needful in conscience, for
202 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
one who knows that he is in possession of another's property
against his will must surrender it to the rightful owner.
As prescription is a title to property by positive law, it is
obvious in this matter the moralist must follow the laws of
his country, where these do not conflict with conscience.
3. If a person in good faith begins to doubt whether
he is the owner of the thing in question or not, he should
use moral diligence in making inquiry ; and if after this the
doubt remains, he may retain and use the thing.
This rule seems to follow from the nature of possession
begun in good faith, for it would be unreasonable to expect
a man to deprive himself of what in good faith he had
possessed as his own, unless he is morally certain that it
belongs to someone else. Such a one, therefore, might
elect to go before the courts, prepared to take his chance,
and to abide by the result.
4. If a possessor in good faith consume a thing, or the
profits arising from it, or alienate it, and afterwards discover
that it belonged to someone else, he is only bound to restore
that by which he is the richer.
Laymann gives the Eoman law as authority for this rule,
but it seems also to rest on reason. Such a possessor of
another's property is only bound to restore to the rightful
owner what he has of his property, not what he consumed
in good faith ; for there was no theological fault in using and
consuming what he sincerely thought belonged to himself, and
so he was not the guilty cause of any unjust damage to the
true owner. However, according to English law, the owner
in such cases would frequently have a right of action for the
profits accruing during the last six years, and moreover : —
Whenever it should appear in any ejectment between landlord
and tenant, that such tenant, or his solicitor, had been served
with due notice of trial, the judge before whom this cause was
tried, whether the defendant should appear on the trial or not,
should permit the claimant, after proof of his right, to go into
evidence of the mesne profits thereof which had accrued from the
time when the defendant's interest determined, down to the time
of the trial ; and the jury, finding for the claimant, were to
give their verdict on the whole matter, both as to the recovery of
possession, and as to the amount of damages to be paid for such
POSSESSION IN MORAL THEOLOGY, &c, 203
mesne profits ; and this procedure would still be applicable in
such a case. ^
Such laws are not unjust, and oblige after the sentence
of the judg3 ; so that, although as has been said, the bona
fide possessor of another's property would not be obliged to
account for what he had already consumed, unless con-
demned to do so by the court, after the sentence of the
court he would be obliged in conscience to submit to it.
5. Possession throws the burden of proof on the
plaintiff.
This seems to be a rule of natural law, for a
peaceable possessor should be defended against all who
cannot show a better title. But will it be sufficient for
the plaintiff to show a better title ? Or must he furnish
full proof that he is the rightful owner of what is in the
defendant's possession, in order to gain his cause? The
common opinion of canonists and moralists seems to be,
that it is not sufficient for the plaintiff to prove a better
title ; he must prove clearly that he is the absolute owner. ^
However, the view that proof of better right would pre-
vail against possession was maintained by some theologians,
and it seems to be the opinion adopted by our law.
Thus our law of the thirteenth century [write Sir F. Pollock
and Professor Maitland]^ seems to recognise in its practical
working the relativity of ownership. One story is good until
another is told. One ownership is valid until an older is proved.
No one is ever called upon to demonstrate an ownership good
against all men ; he does enough even in a proprietary action if
he proves an older right than that of the person whom he attacks.
And this appears to be the law still : —
We have seen that possession confers more than a personal
right to be protected against wrongdoers ; it confers a qualified
right to possess, a right in the nature of property which is valid
against everyone who cannot show a prior and a better right.*
6. One may use force in defence of possession, cum
tnoderamwe iJiculpatae tutulae, as the canonists say, and in
^ Stephen's Commentaries j iii., p. 428.
"^ St. Alphonsusy i., n. 36.
^ Hist, of English Law, ii., p. 76.
* Sir F. Pollock and R. S. Wright, Fossession, p. 93.
204 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
retaking a thing possessed from a flying thief. The same
principle holds good in our law.
A person is justified in forcibly defending the possession of
his land against anyone who attempts to take it.^
And
Self-defence is a natural act open to every man, and if a
person has actual possession of goods or other personal property,
and another wrongfully attempts to take the same from him
against his will, he is perfectly justifiad in using all force neces-
sary for the purpose of defending his own possession and
preventing the act of trespass or conversion ; he must, however,
use no more force than is, under the circumstances of the case,
necessary.2
With regard to the recaption of goods that have been
wrongfully taken, Sir F. Pollock^ says : —
The true owner may retake the goods if he can, even from an
innocent third person into whose hands they have come ; and,
as there is nothing in this case answering to the statutes of
forcible entry, he may use whatever force is reasonably necessary
for the recaption.
7. The acquiring possession of things without an owner
gives property in the things by the law of nature, and by
our law.* Analogous to this is the qualified property which
the finder acquires in a thing found, defeasible on the
appearance of the rightful owner, but valid against the rest
of the world .^
These are the chief advantages or emoluments of posses-
sion mentioned by moralists, and of interest to the moral
theologian. It will be evident from our brief treatment
of them that they remain substantially unaffected by the
differences between the Eoman theory of possession and
that of Anglo-American law. However, we shall have
gained something by our examination of the question if this
fact has been made clear, and if we have succeeded in throwing
any new light on the difficult subject of possession.
T. Slater, s.j.
1 Indermaur, Principles of the Common Law, p. 312.
2 Ibid., p. 337.
■'^ The Law of Torts, p. 313
* Sir F. PoUocu and R. S. Wright, p. 1-24.
^ Stephen's Commentaries, ii., p. 9.
[ 205
THE MANNA
THE following study is an expansion of what in its
original form was a draft of remarks to a class of
Biblical exegesis in the monastery of which the writer is a
professed monk. Its object is tentatively to determine
whether, or in what degree, the gift of the manna was
miraculous. Obviously, any such dissertation would be
waste of time and paper were it directed to meet a criticism
whose postulates are either the impossibility of divine com-
munication and interference with the natural order, or the
fact that miracles, though involving no contradiction, do as a
fact not happen. We suppose, therefore, readers. Catholic
or otherwise, who believe in the government of nature, not
by inexorable forces, but by intelligent laws, subject in the
wisdom of their Originator, not to repeal after a stability
constituted commensurate in duration with the conditions
whence their ratio essendiy but to derogation for ends
regarding whose worthiness He, not we, must be competent
to arbitrate.
It is hardly necessary to point out in this introductory
section, that the assumption so far implied does not, apart
from revelation, determine the character of the event we
are to consider in these pages. The theistic reader as above
described, if he be a believer in the Bible as historically
trustworthy, still more if he regard it as an inspired book,
no doubt approaches the subject with a leaning to the
traditional view, biased by accepted interpretation or reverent
associations. If he be a Catholic, he may further feel him-
self supported independently of critical examination, by the
common persuasion of the faithful, in which from its having
never been ecclesiastically corrected, he fancies himself
secure, thanks to the passive infallibility of the ecclesia
discens in its relation to the magisterium of the 'ecclesia
docens. His frame of mind may be laudable ; and that the
use of Scripture in a spirit of uncritical devotion will in
206 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
many cases, perhaps in the majority, be more advantageous
than the reading accompanied by scientific gloss, who will
deny ? The hnes, however, have fallen to us in surround-
ings, with regard to which a reader of this last class must
live in retirement more than monastic if his received and
cherished notions never meet with the shock of critical
objections. The present is, therefore, a time when he will
do well to examine how far his traditional views can be
sustained. He must be prepared to surrender belief in what
may be shown to have been not really, but only seemingly,
part of Catholic tradition. He need not be startled by the
proposition that improved methods of dealing with the
Scriptural text, and recent application of subsidiary know-
ledge may have taught us, not certainly any doctrine varying
from the old as regards the essence of Holy Scripture, but a
more enlightened mode of reading it, thanks to which he
will be less likely to waste effort in defending what is un-
tenable, or to risk quoting as certain what is only put forth as
commonly circulated.^ Scripture consists of two elements :
the divine, which is not here our subject, and the human.
The human being dependent for the clothing of its ideas on
language, its means shares the imperfection of all language,
viz., its inadequacy, or more precisely a degree more or less
of obscurity. Hence the art of interpretation, which is but
one in its devices for all and every expression of thought.
Thus taking the human element of Scripture, subjecting it
hermeneutically to critical canons the same for it as for work
uninfluenced by inspiration, and now better defined and
systematized than of old, he should even be ready for
the possibility of what has so far passed for narration of the
supernatural proving to be after all a record of the natural
only, coloured by contemporary delusions of progressive
humanity, which have practically, though not of necessity,
obscured its truth. An instance of this is, perhaps, to be
found in the fate of Lot's wife,' if we compare the idea of
^ Cf. Newman, Idea of a University, Part II., Lectures vii., viii. Longmans,
1885,
2 Gen. xix. 26 : Wisd. x. 7.
THE MANNA 207
Josephus as to the fact^ with that of modern commentators.
He should further be prepared to find that just as the
miracle of Josue, for example, must not now be misunderstood
according to its statement in ante-Copernican language ;
so possibly ideas of other facts may have to be similarly
corrected by the discovery that the form in which their
record is set has been misunderstood, either, let us say, by
the figurative being taken as the literal, or by current terms
passing for scientific. Nor, again, will it appear less possible
that primitive ignorance, greater or less, of natural forces,
or of secondary causes, may have occasioned writers in
Scripture to believe a particular miracle to have been, in
terms of scholastic classification, one quoad substantiam,
when the accurate description would be quoad subjectum,
or quoad modum, in which case the language will seem
to fit only the first supposition ; and' it may involve
some reconsideration of Scriptural phraseology to under-
stand how compatibly with divine assistance the writer is
not committed to it.
The writer of these pagos wishes to state his conviction,
that even lay Cathohcs will be immensely the gainers by
adding to their devout reading of Holy Scripture a minute
and intelligent analysis of its historical narratives, aided by
those apphances of natural knowledge popularly but erro-
neously reputed to be in the long run subversive of childlike
faith in, and veneration of, the written Word. This may read
as a truism, but having in view the timidity with which
such a line is approached in pious circles, we venture
to think the remark timely. The result augured is the
possession in Catholic society of more reasoned and intelli-
gent Scriptural apologetics than are, unfortunately, at present
common ; with the further beneficial consequence that the
often shallow but generally verbose critic, who meets us
less in literature than at unexpected turns in everyday life,
will be not unfrequently disappointed of what would pose
as a display of critical acumen on being met by such con-
cessions as candid examination authorizes us to make.
1 Antiquities of the Jews, i., xi.
208 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
particularly when they appear perfectly consistent with
Catholic definition ; and as often, let us hope, startled when,
concession being out of question, a Catholic returns not a
bare or timid contradiction, or, by way of evasion, an expres-
sion of his implicit trust in his Church, but a defence of his
view that will be a credit to the religion and the body, lay
or ecclesiastic, which he represents.
Not further to detain the reader ' per ambages et longa
exorsa,' our plan is this : — I. We analyze and compare the
accounts of the manna in the historical books, and examine
what light may be thrown on them by references in books
didactic or sapiential. II. We classify the conceivable
interpretations, and attempt an estimate of their respective
value in dealing with the matter under consideration.
I.
Our main reference in this section is Exod. xwi., passim,
supplemented by particulars in Num. xi. 7-9 ; Deut. viii. 3 ;
Jos. V. 12 ; from which we gather the nature, sequence, and
harmony of the facts. Other references are more of the
nature of allusions, valuable as external testimony of the
highest authority to the traditional impression and interpre-
tation of the Pentateuchal history on the point, down to the
Christian era. From these sources we collect as matter of
debate between views to be enumerated below, data, which
for convenience of later reference it is convenient to class
as — (a) historical; (fi) physical; and (7) traditional.
(a) Among the historical data, we are first introduced
to a period of the wanderings, when all enthusiasm on the
subject of racial emancipation, and prospects of mastery in
an ideal land had evaporated in presence of the hard and
unromantic realities of a journey through the desert, and
the discipline imperative in this trying period of national
life. In every case of national hardship, disaffection and
revolt are incidents safely to be predicted a priori, irrespec-
tive of the justice or otherwise of complaints. In the case
before us the unreasonableness seems sufficiently clear.
But its [cause, if our comparison of data be correct, would
seem to have been not a prospect of starvation, at least
THE MANNA 209
proximately, but a regulation of daily rations by economical
enactment. In support, reference is invited to Exod. x. 26,
xii. 38, xix. 13; Num. xi. 22, xxxii. 1, 4 ; which if read in their
order seem to testify to live stock in continuously sufficient
quantity. The sacrificial offerings in Num. vii. also imply
the possession of herds, and stores of flour. Provisions
even seem to have been procurable by purchase from native
tribes ; see Deut. ii. 6, 28. Any subvenience from heaven
would be, under such a supposition, a solace, not a salvation;
a mercy proportionate to the evil results of fancied griev-
ances rather than a deliverance from famine.
It may be noticed that disgust with even a plentiful
diet would be sufficient to provoke discontent in formidable
proportions which would be productive of rebellion, or
possible return to Egypt with its * flesh pots,' and food
without stint. Such a state of thifigs was no unworthy
occasion of divine interposition in furtherance of the
destiny of a chosen nation.
The distress is met ^ by a promise of divine succour, and
its fulfilment. Eood from heaven is to come like rain, i.e.^
figuratively in abundance ;^ and, probably, literally, from the
sequel. It is to be gathered in sufficient quantity for the
current day ; ^ on the sixth day alone is provision to be made
for two days.*
Next,^ the nature of the subvenience is declared ; a new
variety of flesh is to be procurable in the evening, and
' bread ' on the following morning : the prediction being
confirmed by the words of God Himself to Moses from
the cloud. In the evening, accordingly, a flock of quails in
immense numbers is driven by a special providence across
the track,® so fatigued, as is common, by having been long
on the wing that they were easily captured, their flight
being low, * two cubits above the ground,' as is stated in
' Exod. xvi. 4.
2 Cf . Deut. xxxii. 2 ; Ecclus, xxxix. 9.
'^ Exod. xvi. 5.
^ Ibid., 4, 5.
5 Ibid., 6-12.
« Ibid., 13; Ps. civ. 40.
VOL. VI.
210 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
coDnection with their second appearance.^ The quails, be
it observed, would not have been slaughtered for immediate
consumption alone, for in the account of their provision a
second time, just referred to, we find that the people * dried
them about the camp,' and reserved them in quantities of
at least ten ^cores'; i.e., they were acquainted with the
Egyptian method and appliances for preserving the meat ; ^
and, if the countless numbers in which{these gregarious birds
have been observed be taken into account, we may be sure
that a store was secured sufficient to render the danger of
famine fairly remote, independently of any other succour.
In the morning a dew fell around the camp, and with it,
while distinct from it,^ a substance with which neither
knowledge of Egyptian products, or experience of the Sinaitic
peninsula had familiarized the Israehties ; the surprise born
of their ignorance giving it its name. * They said to one
another : Man hu/ which signifieth : * What is this ? ' and
hence, ' man ' or * manna.' The Hebrew, however, may also
read: 'This is man;' either in allusion to some substance
locally so named, as I understand is the case in Arabia ; or
meaning : * This is a portion.' or * gift ' ; deriving the word
from the root inanan, classed in Hebrew lexicons as Arabic.
The new article of food was eagerly gathered, each
securing as much as he could carry away, and rations were
dealt out from the common stock at the rate of a gomor
for every head.'^ This detail is accounted miraculous by
Josephus f among fathers by St. Chrysostom and Theodoret,
each commenting on 2 Cor. viii. 15 ; and among commen-
tators by Corn, a Lapide. Yet the text scarcely warrants
our taking it otherwise than we do here, with Calmet.
The manna fell regularly on six days of the week. On
the seventh it was sought in vain by any improvident
Israelite who, perchance, had not heeded the injunction to
lay in a double supply on the sixth day.^ Some, too, who
1 Num. xi. 31. See Tristram, Natural History of the Bible, pp. 231-233.
2 Cf. Herod., ii. 77.
a Num. xi. 9.
* Exod. xvi. lG-18.
^ Antiquities of the Jews, iii. 2.
6 Exod. xvi. 27.
THE MANNA 211
had neglected the order : * Let no man leave thereof till
the morning,' found whatever amount they had reserved in
a state of putrefaction. Only from Friday, when according
to the command a double quantity was to be gathered, till
Saturday morning, did it undergo no change.^ On Friday
other culinary preparations were to be made for the Sabbath,^
with which the manna could be mixed. So we infer from
the Vulgate; while the Hebrew reads like direction for
preparing the manna in various ways, as in Num, xi. 8.
The supply lasted for forty years ; that is, until the
Israelities were able to subsist on the harvests of the
Promised Land,^ and required no special provision from
Divine Providence.
(/?) To turn to facts of the physical order.
From Exod. xvi. 21 we infer the manna to have been of
a gum-like or resinous nature, exposure to the rays of the
hot sun causing liquefaction ; while under the influence of
the cold morning dew, or removed into the shade, it remained
solid or congealed, just as do exudations from trees.* From
our historical data it would seem that, probably, in the course
of nature, it putrified in twenty-four hours. Some appliance
may have been known to counteract putrefaction, as the
reservation of a portion is ordered ' ad perpetuam rei
memoriam.' Of this observance the only further notice is
Heb. ix. 4, which supplies no additional information. In
appearance the manna is described as a pounded white
substance, resembling the globular seed corns of the
coriander,^ which there seems no hesitation in identifying
with the Coriandrum sativum, indigenous to Egypt, where
the Israelites would have been familiar with its existence,
and, probably, its popular employment as a condiment to
bread or other food.^ It is needless to point out that
comparison to the coriander implies, not identity, but
distinction.
1 Ibid., 24.
2 Ibid., 23.
•^ Exod. xvi. 35; Jos. v. 12; Judith v. 15.
* Cf. Exod. xvi. 4. 16, 21 ; Num. xi. 9.
s Exod. xvi. 14 ; Num. xi. 7.
6 Tristram, Naturalllistory of the Bible, under ' Coriander.'
SI'? THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
A further idea of consistency — perhaps also of size— is
given by comparison with hoar-frost/ while the colour alone
is likened to the bdellium.^ The latter (bdolah) is mentioned
among the specialities of the land of Hevilath, in Gen»ii. 12,
whence, from its apparent classification with onyx, has
originated the suggestion that it is a mineral. Genesius,
however, is of opinion that it is an animal production, pro-
bably a pearl. On the whole, we incline to the view of
Josephus ^ that it stands for a vegetable substance of resinous
nature. A Bactrian species is mentioned by Pliny,^ but can
hardly be identical with that here referred to, as its colour
is stated to be, sometimes, at least, black ; and, whatever
its shade, to be spotted only with white. The reference is
most likely designed to furnish a more specific description
of the white, of which it may indicate some particular shade,
as greyish or yellowish.
"We have next an account of the taste. Baked ^ or
ground fine and boiled, it was made into cakes of sweet
flavour, resembling bread with honey.^ In Wisdom
xvi. 20, 21, we read of it ' having in it all that is deli-
cious, and the sweetness of every taste, for Thy sustenance
showed Thy sweetness to Thy children, and, serving every
man's will, it was turned to what every man liked.' If
this is to be understood literally, the manna, besides being
sustaining, had the property of serving at will for any
physical disposition. To the passage we shall have to
return.
Another particular is, that daily use engendered disgust,
partly from home sickness in the ' mixed multitude ' that
accompanied the tribes, and partly through the disposi-
tion of the tribes themselves, corrupted by these hangers
on."^ A second supply of quails was given as a corrective
to disaffection.
(v) Next, to take the evidence of tradition^ which we
can follow down to the time of the New Testament, and
comment on the passages that concern us in their order.
1 Exod. xvi. 14. ^ Ek. xvi. 23, Hebr.
2 Num. xi. 17. ^' Num. xi- 8.
'•^Antiquities of the Jews, iii. 1, 6. ''' Num. xi. 4, C.
* Nat. Hist,, xii. 19.
THE MANNA 213
The first allusion to the manna as an event of past
history occurs in Deuteronomy. The latest date assigned
to this book need not detract from the value of its text as
an early witness to the point. In the references that follow
we must suppose the redactor either to give a report of a
public utterance of the Mosaic period, or to put a speech in
the mouth of Moses, the statements of which must agree
with what he would have believed to be the truth on the
subject, either supposition being consistent with, and one or
other necessary for, the veracity of the book, if we are
partisans of the late authorship.
In Deuteronomy viii., then, we have : — * He afflicted
thee with want (Hebr. caused thee to hunger), and gave
thee manna for food, which neither thou nor thy fathers
knew : to show that not in bread alone doth man live, but
in every word (or thing, al-hdl motsdh) that proceedeth from
the mouth of God.' ^ And further : ' [He] fed thee in
the wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not.' ^
From these passages two things are beyond question ; viz.,
first, that the manna was, at least, no substance so far known
to the Israelites ; and, secondly, that it was regarded either
as a special creation or as a substance indigenous to the
country they had reached, but endowed (in virtue of the
potentia ohedientialis) with prseternatural properties of nutri-
tion, or, at least, provided not by the ordinary course of
nature. Short of one of these ideas, the lesson that God is
not limited to ordinary means would not be objectively
taught as claimed.
In considering the Psalms as carrying on tradition, it is
no easy matter to know with what period we have to deal.
Of the two psalms that are to our purpose, the first,
Ps. Ixxvii. (Ixxviii.), supposes the Temple already built
(v. 69), which makes it safe to associate it with the post-
Davidic period ; while its reproving tone, as regards the
tribe of Ephraim, has been thought reason sufficient for
assigning it to a time later than that of the secession of
Israel from Juda. The second, Ps. civ. (v.), may be thought
1 Verse 3, , 2 Verse 16,
214 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Davidic from its citation, with selections from Pss. xcv. and
cv., in 1 Paralip. xvi. But if internal evidence of subject,
style, and diction consign it to post-exilic times, its incorpo-
ration into 1 Paralip. xvi. cannot mean that it was sung in
connection with the event there related. And be it observed
that nothing of the kind is historically there claimed.
Eeference to the chapter will show that, though the psalm
editorially follows v. 7, it is not joined to it by any connec-
tion, logical or grammatical. The allusions, therefore, to
the manna in the Psalter may be fairly cited as the tradition
of the two periods of the division and the return from
captivity.
The verses to our purpose are Ps. Ixxvii. 18-29 ; civ. 40,
41. If these passages be examined, it will be observed that
the manna is compared with two other providential supplies
meeting want, viz., the quails, and the water out of the rock.
Nothing in the language about the quails leads one to sup-
pose anything beyond common providential assistance. The
quails were supplied just as suitable weather might be sent
in answer to prayer, or a plague in punishment to wrong-doing.
It is otherwise with reference to the water from the rock.
It is attributed to direct divine agency, without reference to
any secondary cause (Kenan's supposition of a divining-rod
is scarcely worth discussion). And St. Paul's allusion in
1 Cor. X. 4, shows how much higher this subvenience was
esteemed than that of the quails, and how easily it was
understood to be full of mystical significance in the divine
intention. Yet the language in description of the manna is
more exalted still. The idea seems to have surpassed
credibility : ' Can He also give bread ?' ^ For it the
' doors of heaven are opened,' the ' clouds commanded
from above.' Above all, it is 'bread' or 'corn (dagan) of
heaven,' the lehe77i ahhlmn, or * food of the strong,' or ' of
the nobles,' i.e, more dainty food; so St. Jerome translates;
the reading of our Psalter, * bread of angels, ' being from the
LXX. The Psalms being poetry, we may make large allow-
ance for figurative language : e.g., ' rained from heaven,'
1 Ixxvii. 20,
THE MANNA 215
praedicated of the manna in v. 24, need not mean more than
it certainly does mean in v. 27 of the quails, i.e. either pro-
vided in abundance, or caused to descend through the air.
None of these expressions will prove a difficulty when we
try by their force the view that will appear most plausible
in the following section.
Proceeding with the historical books, we meet in Judith
with a testimony of what the gentile world had learnt
on our subject. The report of Achior to his master, on the
origin and historical vicissitudes of the children of Israel, is
coupled with a warning to think twice before interfering
with a nation so favoured by their God (as long as they
remained faithful to their monotheism), that when in any
difficulty they had only to trust in Him to obtain a deroga-
tion from ordinary providential courses in their favour; a
notable instance being the forty years' supply of ' food from
heaven.' ^ The fact would scarcely have been so classed, or
so solemnly mentioned had Achior's impression been that it
was wholly removed from the praeternatural.
For undoubted post -exilic tradition we may refer to
2 Esdras ix. 20 : ' Thou gavest them Thy good Spirit to teach
them. Thy manna Thou didst not withhold from their mouth,
and Thou gavest them water for their thirst.' From the
association of the manna with the supernatural gift of the
Spirit, and with the praeternatural supply of water from the
rock, the inference seems clear that it is esteemed a benefit
of an order far above the common, and exceeding anything
like a merely abnormal supply of food.
The continuity of Old Testament tradition is kept up to
a later age, that is, to from 120-30 B.C. ; the following testi-
mony being from Wisdom, a book venerated even where it
is not accounted canonical. Its author in ch. xvi. 20, 21,
contrasts the destructive dealings of heaven for the correc-
tion of the Egyptians with its saving measures in favour of
the chosen people. The verses we must examine are the
twentieth and twenty-first : ' Thou didst feed Thy people
with the food of angels, and gavest them bread from
1 Verse 15.
216 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
heaven prepared without labour ; having in it all that is
delicious, and the sweetness of every taste. For Thy
sustenance (substantia vTroa-raa-Ls) showed Thy sweetness to
Thy children, and serving every man's "^ill, it was turned to
what every man liked.' ^ The expressions borrowed from the
Psalms having been weighed in a preceding paragraph, we
have only the latter part of the passage to analyze. * Prepared
without labour ' would be true of either a natural product,
the work of angels, or a new creation. The literal sense of
the nutritive properties that follow can, on the whole, hardly
be intended. There exists an intrinsic reason against it in
the loathing for the heavenly food which succeeded its
appreciation. The LXX. has instead of ' serving every man's
will,' the words 'obedient to the will of Him that bestowed it
(ry Se rov TrpoiTifiepovfxevov ctti^v/jIi^' VTrrjperwi'). More plausible
seems the meaning that conditionally on the good dispositions
of the receiver the food had its desired effect.
Passing on at length to the New Testament, the allusion
that interests us above others is that in John vi., too well
known to require transcription. How far it may prove
the manna to have had a mystical signification is, be it
remembered, no part of our subject. Our only concern is to
examine what light it may throw on accepted and con-
temporary Jewish intelligence of Exod. xvi. ; and whether
the received idea receives or not confirmation from the words
of our Lord following its expression in verse 31. Following,
then, the dialogue beginning at verse 26, we shall notice the
allusion to the manna to be occasioned by the claim on the
part of our Lord to a divine mission absolutely, advancing
so far to justify it neither argument, credentials, or proof.
Not unfairly the audience proposes the test of a ' sign,*
reminding that the Moses in whom they were believers had
for his part so established an analogous claim ; and it is not a
little remarkable that, citing Scripture in support, they do not
choose the more drastic miracles of the plagues of Egypt, or
of the Eed Sea, which one might have expected would carry
most conviction to the popular mind, but prefer the remem-
1 Wisdom xvi. 21, 22.
THE MANNA 217
brance of the 'bread from heaven,' which they consider
convincing, and the like of which they will expect from any
one of Messianic pretensions. We could scarcely find, it
would seem, more unequivocal testimony to the belief of
the times that the manna was no phenomenon explicable
by natural science alone. In order, however, to weaken
this contention, it has been the writer's fortune to hear it
urged that it is corrected by the words of our Lord in
following verse : — ' Moses gave you not the (sic Gr.) bread
from heaven. ' The objection took no account of the original :
for, if the passage be there studied, we venture to think two
things will appear that traverse it. First, taking the colloca-
tion logically (as rendered in the English, Catholic and
Protestant alike), the antithesis is between ' bread from
heaven ' in a wide, and the same in a stricter sense. That
Moses gave bread from heaven is not denied ;'on the contrary,
it is admitted. If conviction be needed, let the passages
be referred to in which an apparently prohibitive 'not'
is followed by ' but ' in the apodosis ; see, for instance,
Luke X. 20 ; xxiii. 28 ; where the sense of the negative is
permissive, while yet something higher is in the speaker's
doctrine to be preferred. Secondly, if we examine the
collocation in the Greek strictly, the grammatical position
of the negative before 'Moses' (thus, 'Not Moses,' &c.) seems
to establish an antithesis between ' Moses ' and ' My Father,
with the sense that the * bread from heaven ' in the lower
sense as in the higher was the gift not of Moses, but of the
same Divine Father from whom the mission now claimed
has originated. It is quite possible that] both antitheses
are intended under an elliptic form of expression. But
either takes the force out of the objection. The further
mention of the manna in vv. 49, 59 of the same chapter only
brings out for its purpose that manna, like ordinary food,
could do no more than sustain life during its allotted span.
Coming to the Apostolic period, we meet first with :
' [They] did all eat the same spiritual food ; ' ' which might
settle the question of the nature of the gift in the wilderness,
11 Cor. X. 4.
218 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
were it not that the word * spiritual ' (Tn/ev/xan/cos) is capable
of two interpretations ; viz., oi miraculous (so e.g, Estius),and
of mystical (so Lyranus). The latter quality may, of course,
pertain to what is purely of the natural order.
The passage already alluded to, 2 Cor. viii. 15, is surely
no more than an accommodation : and, in any case, adds
nothing to what has been discussed above, on Exod. xvi. 18.
Heb. ix. 4, is merely historic, and has been sufficientlynoticed,
where we enumerated historical data. The only remaining
allusion to the manna in the New Testament is in Apoc. ii.
17, where it stands figuratively for consolation of whatever
nature, with probable reference to those effects of * sweet-
ness, &c.,' of which in Wisd. xvi. 21, already considered.
n.
Having so far set before the reader every passage of
Scripture bearing on our subject, with its literal interpreta-
tion gathered as well as we have been able, we may proceed
to the principal part of our undertaking, as promised in our
opening paragraph. Our task, then, here is to weigh how
far we feel bound, on fair principles of exegesis to the view
on the subject reputed traditional wherever the Bible is read
devotionally alone, and where criticism is believed to border
on irreverence ; or whether, in formulating a restatement
of the case adapted to meet criticism backed by knowledge
statistical, geographical, botanical, &c., we shall feel obliged
to modify it so far as to admit as at least tenable interpreta-
tions paring down, or even denying the miraculous altogether.
The views advanced on the nature of the manna are
three, and may be termed, according to their respective
characters, the supernatural, the natural^ and the mixed.
According to the supernatural view, the manna was
a special creation to meet a special difficulty, and no supply
even in abnormal quantity of any natural product. To
ascertain, therefore, as modern commentators seem fond of
doing, the existence of Asiatic, or specially Sinaitic vegetation,
the fruit of which resembles in whatever variety the
* bread from heaven ; ' or to collect known instances of any
extraordinary * rain ' of such substances as gums or lichens.
THE MANNA 219
is, as far as apologetics are concerned, mere ' vexation of
spirit,' resulting in statistics scientifically interesting, but
hermeneutically irrelevant.
Of this view let us say at once that no theistic reader, in
the sense given in our introductory section, can oppose it
conclusively on intrinsic grounds. To urge antecedent
improbability would amount virtually to the denial of the
postulate that, as governed by a loving Providence, we are
not only subject to, but even the likely objects of, super-
natural interposition,^ the opportuneness of which, however,
we are unable to determine. Nor can it be denied that,
extrinsic objections apart, the view meets with no objection
from our data historical, physical, or traditional, and even
seems to find support in both the spirit and the letter o
the various passages of Scripture quoted as witnesses to
the traditional impression through age after age. Extrinsic
objections, in default of anything demonstrative, amount,
at most, to probabilities ; and if to many these seem out-
weighed by what seems unequivocal textual evidence, the
older traditional view may retain its possession.
This holds good if we read Scripture explained by itself
alone. But if we care to read it, availing ourselves of the
sidelights of scientific knowledge, and illustrated by the
communiter contingentia of ordinary and ascertainable dis-
pensations of Providence, these may suggest a wider and,
as it will then appear, a more natural sense of Scriptural
narratives than that which is drawn by mere grammatical
and logical sequence. Thus, using our observations as a
hermeneutical factor, we may reason thus : What God can
do is one thing ; what He is likely to do another. Now,
if anything seems, by induction from observable facts, to be
fairly established, it is that the divine power of interposition
in the course of nature is never exercised needlessly : mira-
cula non sunt multiplicanda. Accordingly, in the explanation
of the abnormal, the presumption is always for the natural
as far as it will go. To apply the reasoning to our subject.
Should we find natural phenomena, ordinary or exceptional,
1 Cf . Newman, Essat/s on Miracles, i., sect. 2.
220 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
that cover all or any of the particulars so minutely reported
concerning the manna — even should they necessitate the
language of the sacred writer himself, or of those he
cites, being understood in a less literal or less elevated
sense than seems at first sight intended — such phenomena,
so far as they lead us, will afford the most probable
explanation of the occurrence. And, according as they
cover all or only a part of the narrative, we are justified
in accepting an explanation wholly or partially natural.
So stands the case for the natural or the mixed view,
according as our data, historical, physical, and traditional
may be fairly read by the light of certain natural facts now
to be considered.
From botanical statistics, and from the reports of Eastern
travellers, it seems safe to say that there exist three species
of natural products that may fairly claim identity with the
manna of Exodus. To describe them : —
1. The first is a resinous exudation from the branches of
the tamarisk, a shrub or tree growing formerly in abundance,
and not rare at][the present day, in the Sinaitic peninsula ;
the local variety being termed Tamarix gallica or mannifera.
Its flow is occasioned by the puncture of a tiny insect, the
Coccus mannix>arus, which settles on the plants in great
numbers during the seasons of spring or summer. The
resin is observed to congeal with exposure to the air, but
to return to a state of liquefaction under the rays of the sun.
In its congealed state it is found on the ground in the form
of white globules, which are eagerly collected by the Arabs,
and preserved in the shade, to serve, after some preparation,
as a condiment to more substantial food. This is the
product exhibited, and, perhaps, sold by the present monks
of Sinai as identical with the Scriptural manna; and support
they may find in Josephus,^ who certainly believes its fall,
though now in due season only, to have begun from and
lasted since its special creation during the wanderings. The
taste is not unHke honey. Unless boiled it will not keep
beyond about twenty-four hours, but breeds vermin.
3- Antiquities of the Jeics, iii. ii. Q.
THE MANNA 221
2. The second so-termed manna, likewise an exudation,
is gathered from a thorny shrub popularly known as the
camers-thorn, and technically called Alhagi maurorum. The
exudation, in this case from the leaves, congeals into spherical
droppings of the size about of the coriander seed, and of
honey-like taste. This species, like the last, is collected
and used for food, and is relished not only by man, but also
by beast — camels, sheep, and goats. No particulars are
forthcoming as to its duration, or its varying consistency
when influenced by heat or cold.
3. The third product is a cryptogam of the lichen order,
undoubtedly edible and nourishing, the Lecanora esculenta
common throughout the regions of the Steppes, Armenia,
Asia Minor, South Western Asia, and the north of Africa.
Its external colour is a greyish yellow, but when bruised it
appears purely white. "When detached from its substratum,
it is known to shrivel into small spherical bodies with a
central cavity, in which state it is carried by the wind, and
is known sometimes to drift in such quantities as to cover
the ground to the depth of several inches. Collected it is
reduced to flour, and made into a bread variously reported
relishable or insipid. More than once has a * rain ' of this
manna lichen afforded timely relief from the horrors of
famine; as in 1829, during the war between Eussia and
Persia, in the district south-west of the Caspian; and in
1846, during a scarcity in the country around Jenischehir, in
the east of Asia Minor. Eemarkable falls are also chronicled
in Persia, in 1828, and about Lake Van, in the east of Asia
Minor, in 1841. The African specimen (differing, if at all,
but slightly) was mentioned in a report by General Jussuf
to the Governor of Algiers, in 1847, as having been thankfully
received, and used as an article of food by the troops in the
campaign of 1847.
It has already been remarked that the view we have
termed the supernatural meets with absolutely no objection
from textual spirit, phrase, or expression ; at least, if we
prefer a reading unmodified by the conclusions of studies
not in themselves Bibhcal. Before estimating, as it only
remains to do, whether as good a case of conformity to
222 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Scriptural data can be made out for either the natural or
the mixed view, it will be well to insist that although in
certain items of our traditional data the spirit and licence
of poetry authorises a wide or figurative sense (no vain
observation, as will presently appear), the same does not
hold good with regard to the data we have classified as
historical and physical. If we are asked by advocates of
theories now well known how in the case before us we
distinguish history from myth, we answer, by the minute-
ness of the narrative. It is the genius of a myth to teach
some truth under a beautiful presentment of striking
imagery. Its strength lies not in statistics, which rob the
image of its charm. It overlooks, accordingly, such minutiae
as precise hours, exact shade of colour, approximate size, &c.
These find no place in the fancy of a composer, but unmis-
takably reveal the work of the conscientious reporter.
Presuming that few will care to discuss this further, we
proceed on our inquiry.
The first product suggested as identical with the manna,
i.e. the gum of the tamarix, has in common with it — (1) its
resinous nature, inferred from its property of liquefaction in
the heat of the sun;^ (2) its form of small white globules,
which scattered over the ground would give the appearance
of hoar-frost ; ^ (3) its honey-like taste ;^ its corruption in
about twenty-four hours,"* though this can be prevented by
boiling, a fact which might account for the incorruption of
whatever quantity of the manna was reserved to be laid up
* before the Lord ;' ^ (4) and its fitness as an article of
food. Against it, on the other hand, it is urged that if
edible and palatable, it is, to say the least, most unsub-
stantial. To this one would, it seems, have no objection.
It might be precisely at this point that the miraculous
begins. It is a notable fact, by way of illustration, in the
history of Elias, not that he was supported without food,
but that the nourishment of one meal was rendered by
1 Ex. xvi. 21. * Ex. xvi. 20.
2 Ex. xvi. 14 ; Num. xi. 7. '" Ibid., xvi. 33.
a Ex. XTi. 23 ; Num. xi. 6 ; Wisd. xvi. 20.
THE MANNA 223
divine power of sufficient efficacy to sustain him for forty
days. The potentia ohedientialis which was in the
prophet's hearth-cake is similarly in gums, lichens, or any
other edible matter, enabling them at the divine pleasure
to work effects to which by ordinary dispensation they are
not ordered. If we are disposed by what has been noted
in favour of the mixed view, this satisfactorily meets the
objection. But it may be questioned how far we are in
need of the solution. Nothing, so far as we can see, seems
to prevent the admission that the nourishment of the
manna was in reality very slight. Earlier in these pages
we have suggested that while the manna met a want it was
not designed to save from starvation, that eventuality being
averted by more substantial succour or stores. The sugges-
tion even seems to find confirmation in the complaint of
those who were dissatisfied with the heavenly food, at a
later stage of their wanderings : viz., that it was * very light'
(LXX. StttKevos) or ' despicable ' (Heb. Mohel)}
Of the so-called camel' s-thorn, reference to what we
have written will show that very much the same may be
asserted of its similarity to the manna up to a certain point.
Particulars, however, are less complete, particularly as to
its duration.
In favour of the lecanora lichen, we have the clear
evidence of its colour and size, and the certain fact of its
suitability for food, and of its occasional abundance sufficient
to allay hunger in whole districts. But of its capability of
keeping incorrupt no particulars seem forthcoming. If it be
as durable as the lichens more familiar to us in the West,
then the miraculous alone can account for the point of the
twenty-four hours keeping.]
Such facts as we have collected being duly examined and
compared with Scripture, it will strike any reader that any
or conceivably a combination, of these products lead us no
little way in explanation of the particulars historical fur-
nished by Exodus or Numbers. It will, however, be no less
obvious that certain notable items of the narrative are not
1 Num. xxi. 5.
224 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
covered by botanical statistics ; to wit — •(!) the supply every
day of the week, the seventh excepted ; (2) in a quantity
sufficient continuously for so large a multitude; and (3) the
preservation from corruption regularly from the sixth day
to the seventh inclusive. From the acceptation of these
facts as miraculous, try as we will, there is no possible
evasion, except by those whose estimate of Scriptural
authority is formed to be on all fours with an a priori
cosmology Deistic, or if termed Theistic to be so represented
'with a difference,' i,e. a voluntary but irrevocable resigna-
tion of power so far as interference with a constituted order
is concerned. M. Eenan is an example of how a predeter-
mined cosmology of this kind is forced to treat Scriptural
records. He tells us in a chapter of his History of Israel
that in regions where manna was not known save by report,
the wildest legends have been combined with the original
history ; one of them in particular representing that for a
time the sons of Israiel had been sustained by the food of
immortals, similar, we suppose, to the ambrosia of celestial
banquets in Greek mythology. This, suiting his purpose,
entails a stricter literal exegesis than it has ever been our
lot to hear recommended to the Catholic student, be he ever
so orthodox ; for in reading such expressions as * bread of
heaven ' or ' food of angels,' he scruples apparently to make
allowance for any turn of speech figurative or poetical.
About such expressions we need not repeat what we have
said above.
As regards the physical data, we see, so far as the
resinous productions are concerned nothing that cannot
square with a natural explanation ; but failing certain
returns of the resistance of the lecanora to corruption, it
may be necessary to admit ' the finger of God is there.'
We fail even to find any but apparent difficulty as regards
the exalted traditional language of the later books. Should
it be insisted that, as we have already remarked, the spirit
and form of these passages seems at first sight altogether
in favour of the supernatural view, it is equally worth
consideration whether the facts taken account of and
enumerated under the mixed view, facts of which no natural
THE MANNA 225
explanation seems to us honest, would not in themselves
warrant all that is said in the spirit of praise and
thanksgiving. We may even further observe that, saving
truth, the language may have seemed to the various writers
to fit their possible, or even probable belief in a miracle
quoad suhstmitiam, as we should term it, and been at the
same time overruled by the Holy Spirit to be not contra-
dictory to an explanation to be in course of time proved to
be the true one ; that, namely, of a miracle quoad modum
only. This postulates no dictation of precise terms, but
only that assistance and protection concomitant to sub-
stantial inspiration which ensures the ' omnia et sola quae
ipsa juberet,' as says the Encyclical Providentissimus,
To form at length our conclusions, we submit that :
I. The natural view, if reconcilable with the physical
data, is hopelessly at variance with important historical facts,
and with the tone and terms of traditional evidence.
II. The supernatural is far from being discredited;
certainly not as a possibility, and not even as a probability ;
and is further what one would most naturally gather from
the unillustrated text of Scripture ; but that
III. A fair case can be made for the mixed view ; and
all the above details considered, and especially the improba-
bility of any waste of edible product being allowed, we may
on the whole, and pending any decision on the part of the
Church, adopt it as the most eligible.
Jeeome Pollaed-Urquhaet, o.s.b.
VOL. VI.
[ 226 ]
SOCIALISM, AND THE TITLE OF PRODUCTION
WERE a socialistic congress held to-morrow, with a
view to presenting a united front against capitalism,
and putting into a concise form the el hies of the new
gospel, we feel confident that one of the principal, if not
the chief, commandment of the future decalogue would
run : — * Eender unto every man that which he has produced,
and to none that which is not the fruit of his own labour.'
Doubtless, some leading apostles of the young evangel would
question the propriety of introducing the first portion of
the commandment, on the score that the main factor in
production is not the individual but environment and in-
heritance. Doubtless, too, other socialists who sit in high
places, and perhaps all, would quarrel for a time with the
latter portion of the law, as all socialistic schemes proclaim
that many who are incapable of labour must needs be sup-
ported by the toilers. However, were it understood that
the law in the form proposed at once clearly forbids the sin
of accumulation of capital by individuals, and commands that
he whom socialists dignify with the title of the labourer
should receive as his own the full value of his work ; and
were it also pointed out that the law, being of necessity in
a condensed form, would be capable of receiving the required
limitations by interpretation, we are justified, we believe,
in supposing that it would meet with universal acceptance.
Let us examine to what conclusions the precept leads.
It is confessed on all sides that the strength of socialism
lies in the principle that the producer has a strict, inviolable,
claim to the thing produced. We are well aware that the
majority, at least, of socialists understand the formula in the
exclusive sense that production is the only valid title to
property, and that, as a consequence, their position may
be attacked by proving the existence of other titles. At
present, however, we prefer to meet them on their own
ground, to grant for the moment that production is the only
valid title of property, and to demonstrate the inconsistency
SOCIALISM AND THE TITLE Ol^ PRODUCTION 2^7
of the socialistic theory by answering the question, who has
produced and is daily producing the wealth of the nations,
and to whom as a conseauence that wealth should, on
socialistic principles, belong.
Before proceeding to do so directly we would ask the
prophets of the social millenium whether or not their theory,
as a speculative theory, is a thing of value, and whether
or not they would regard its promulgation among the
masses as an addition to the wealth of the world. Of cour&e
we receive in answer an emphatic affirmative. Bearing this
confession in mind, we would ask them to consider the
socialistic body, both preachers and sympathetic audience,
and see whether or not they recognise between the members
any difference whose basis is the fact that some, a minority,
have formulated and promulgated the theory ; while others,
the vast majority, have merely received it, and been set in
motion by it to attain its ends? The answer to this
question is not so prompt in coming. For many socialistic
leaders, especially among the more modern schools, have
committed themselves to the doctrine that though * in the
human species, as in every other species that has ever
existed, no two individuals of a generation are alike in all
respects,' and though * there is infinite variety,' still this
variation is confined to * certain narrow Hmits.' They
have, however, so far introduced the principles of advanced
evolution into the sociology of to-day as to maintain that
the results produced by those possessed of faculties slightly
above the average are to be attributed rather to environ-
ment and inheritance than to the slight advantageous
variations of the individual, so much so that the individual
can claim as the fruit of his own faculties only * one part in
a thousand.' Reserving the consideration of this position
for the sequel we shall at present take it that the division
mentioned among socialists and its marked extent are
evident to the most casual observer. We believe, and shall
endeavour to prove, that a similar division runs through the
ranks of wealth-producers in the ordinary sense of the term ;
and, finally, we maintain that, as a consequence, on socialistic
principles the increase of wealth belongs to a minority
inasmuch as they are the main producers.
228 THE IRISH ECCLESIAS1*ICAL RECORt>
Before stating our proof we would remark, that for the
present we lay aside the question as to how far land
produces wealth, and place the issue between human pro-
ducers thereof. Furthermore, we would draw attention to
this — that to prove our position it ,is necessary to show,
firstly, that the principal wealth-producers are a minority
blessed with faculties superior to those of their fellows ; and,
secondly, that they owe these faculties not to society, neither
solely nor chiefly, nor yet to inheritance mainly, nor again
to education principally, but that they have them con-
genitally.
To proceed, then, to proof. It must, we think, be granted,
that if a number of causes working together for a given
time produce a certain result — the maximum for them — and
if when another cause is brought to concur with them the
result is thereby increased, to the added cause is to be
attributed the gain in result. Thus if twelve reapers reap
a certain number of acres of wheat in a given time, and
if when a machine is brought to work with them three
times the area is reaped in the same time, the work done
by the reaping machine in the time under consideration is
represented by the reaping of an area double that reaped
when the reapers were working alone. Let us apply this
reasoning to wealth-production generally.
It is an historical fact, that the present century has
witnessed a vast increase in the output of labour in these
countri,es. It is also historically true, that in so far as
labour is unaided by ability of a markedly superior kind, its
results have been so fixed in quality for many centuries as
to enable one to mark their limits with sufficient accuracy.
Thus, the brick-makers of ancient Chaldsea could compete
with the potter of to-day who would work without complex
machinery. The stone-cutters of Greece and Kome have
not been surpassed in their own line by their nineteenth
century brethren. The ship-carpenters of Marco Polo's
day did their work, as far as it was ship-carpentry, and not
designing, as well as those of Belfast or Glasgow could to-
day without our modern mechanical appliances. We might
prolong the list almost indefinitely; but prolong it never so
SOCIALISM AND THE TITLE OF PRODUCTION 229
far, the fact comes out only the more clearly, that the limits
of the power of manual labour in respect of quality are
fixed and so determined that no development of ordinary
faculties could account for the rapid strides made by industry
during the present century.
Nor can increase in the number of workmen serve as a
Deus ex machina. For if, as is actually the case, a popula-
tion of ten millions at the beginning of the present century
could produce an annual income of one hundred and forty
million pounds,^ a population of thirty millions to-day,
unaided by improvements, could produce merely some four
hundred and twenty millions per annum. Still our present
yearly income is thirteen hundred millions ! What, then, has
wrought the change ? Without doubt, the change is due
to those men, who, endowed with faculties beyond the
ordinary, stood apart for a while from manual labour, and set
their minds to devise some means of increasing the limited
powers of the hewers of wood and drawers of water ; and
who, finally, succeeded in discovering these means in
improved mechanical appliances, in more perfect plans of
subdividing and controlling labour, or in new methods of
employing, land, minerals, and the other materials given in
the raw state by nature into their hands. This has been the
real cause of the vast increase of wealth-production during
the present century; and, therefore, to its credit is to be
placed the increase in our national income. The work of
such men, and the increase in the number of workmen, are
the only varying causes of wealth-production that have been
at work during the time under consideration. We have
seen that the latter cause can account for, at most, one-third
of our present income. Consequently, the main portion of
our income to-day belongs, on socialistic principles, to a
privileged minority.
Before passing on to discuss the objections against this
argument it is well to draw attention here to the fact that
* The principal fignres occurring- throughout we take from' Mallock's
Laboicr and the Popular Welfare, and Aristocracy and Evolution, works frequently
consulted in prepaiiiif; the paper. Some of our mathematical deductions from
these figures differ from his, but in so slight a degree as not to mateiially affect
the argument.
230 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
while the argument comes out most clearly when applied to
the increase of wealth caused by mechanical inventions,
such as looms, saws, &c., and also to new methods of using
the helps given by nature, such as the smelting of iron by coal
instead of by wood, it applies with equal force to such parts
of our enterprise as the subdivision of labour, the watching
of markets, the legislation on trade and the foreign policy
of the country generally. Steps in advance in these quarters
have their effect for good on the wealth of the country as
much as, if not more than, inventions and such like. They,
too, as is evident on the most superficial examination are,
due not to the manual labourer, but to that small minority
who in these departments possess powers above the rest of
men, and by whom, consequently, may be appropriated
the increase of wealth due to the improvements which result
from their work. Doubtless, companies may be floated and
corners formed in our markets for unjust ends to be attained
by unjust means ; but these abuses, not uses, of the powers
of the minority are capable of being checked by less sweep-
ing and not less effective means than those of the latter-day
socialist.
The first difficulty we shall consider is embodied in the
principle * every man is as good as his neighbour.' It has
crept into the laws regulating franchise where it is ;per se
calculated to produce results not beyond suspicion. It is
often heard repeated by the rank and file of socialists. It
has even been heard preached by leading socialists, and
there is reason for believing that it is not proclaimed for
the mere purpose of catching the ear of the crowd. It
denies the supposition on which our argument rests, viz.,
that there is a minority of men superior to their fellows.
In answer, we reply that the denial is gratuitous ; that it
runs counter to the witness of history, to the common-sense
of mankind from the birth of time, and to the immediate
evidence of every-day experience. Taking our experience
of socialists themselves, we believe that no one can fail to
see among socialists the division caused by such superiority.
The voices of men like Marx and Lasalle and Shaw are not
voices in a crowd, nor are the meij themselves mere
SOCIALISM AND THE TITLE OF PRODUCTION 231
drummers beating time for the movements of their fellows.
They are men whose words and works prove them to be
possessed of intellectual power in an uncommon degree.
True it is that these powers are frequently so misdirected as
to oppose the dictates of common sense, and even the very
principles they are employed to maintain. But, even when
abused, their titanic strength is apparent, and places between
them and the many-headed multitude who follow them a
chasm which cannot be blinked.
The weakness of this argument socialists endeavour to
strengthen by invoking the aid of environment and inheri-
tance ; in other words, society past and present, with all its
aids and opportunities. When men grow to maturity, say
they, there may, indeed, be great differences among them,
but at the beginning of life it was not so. At birth all men
are equal. Geniuses do not drop from- the sky. It is the
age that makes the man.
In answer, we object, in the first place, that all those who
make a step forward as inventors, controllers of labour, and
the like, are not to be denominated geniuses. Among all such
men there are grades^ varying from that of the controllor of
the smallest butter factory to that of the largest brewer or
mill-owner ; and, consequently, to state the doctrine here
put forward as one which claims that advance in
wealth and civilization is due to one or two men in
a century is to utterly misrepresent our position. Putting
aside, then, socialistic eloquence, we preface our reply
by granting that a certain grade of civilization is indeed
required for a successful effort of genius worthy of the
name. A Verdi cannot arise at once among Hottentots, nor
a Eaphael among Afridis. But this is by no means a
guarantee that, given the degree of civilization, the sublime
effort will follow. If it were so, the fact that among
the thousands who lived in precisely the same circumstances
of time, place, education, and the rest, only one Shakespeare
arose, were a miracle of miracles. What is true of a
Shakespeare is true of a Watt and a Stephenson. Again,
^ Cf. Mallock, Arislocraci/ and Evolution, Book XL, ch. i.
232 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
let us appeal to recent events. If the age makes the man,
how comes it that from so many possessing equal advan-
tages some from the start outstrip their fellows ? How
comes it that so few Gladstones come forth from our public
schools ? Out of thousands who were similarly situated we
have had but one Edison. One Pasteur is sent us in a
century from hundreds who have succeeded in becoming
village practitioners. One Arkwright we have seen, one
Dudley, one Bessemer. Once more, if there is any fact
proved by the history of invention and discovery up to the
time when men were taught to submit themselves to master-
minds in science and commerce, it is that, so far from being
assisted by the age in giving to the world the fruits of their
genius, our great inventors and discoverers have had to fight
their battle against the powers of the masses and the
jealousy of their compeers. Let the wrecking of Arkwright 's
power-looms, at the end of the last century, be one witness
out of many. Finally, it is a notorious fact that many of
those to whom we owe the greatest of our modern advances
in industrial output have not had even equal opportunities
with those from whom we should naturally expect such
results. The inventors of the reaping machine, of the
hydraulic press, of the steam engine, and of countless other
modern machines, received no education as engineers.
Hence, if facts are proofs, one thing is certain, viz., that the
age does not make the man, but rather the man the age.^
Denied of help by society contemporary with the agents
of progress, socialists seek refuge in the past. Even though
it be a fact, they say, that it requires a superior man to
raise himself above the rest of men, still, when first he puts
his hand to the work, he finds it already half completed.
None of our inventions has sprung in full completion, as did
Minerva, from the brain of an individual. During the years
preceding the invention others were gradually developing
the germs of the new birth. Stephenson himself has said
that the steam engine is not the result of one man, but of a
race of engineers in years preceding. This developing, and
1 Cf. Smiles' Self-Help, passim ; Mallock, Aristocracy and Evolution, l,c.
SOCIALISM AND THE TITLE OF PRODUCTION 233
tlie machine being developed, were the property of society
before the last inventor came. Hence he is not the sole
cause, nor even the main cause, but at most one of a series
of causes, whose work, compared with his, is as a mountain
to a mole-hill.^
Here, again, we recognise the principles of evolution ; but
once again they are at fault. Each invention, it is true, is
linked with the past ; but it could never have been made
and joined to its predecessors except some man, or some
few men, were able to assimilate the work of their fathers,
to see what was wanting for perfection, and how that want
could be supplied, by grouping existing inventions or adding
to the ancient stock. Such men were needed, and such
men arose. But they were a minority who required and
possessed faculties for performing a gigantic work. By
their fruits we know them ; and who will maintain that the
work was within the powers of ordinary mortals ?
Printing is generally said to have been discovered in the
fifteenth century, and so it was for all practical purposes ; but,
in fact, printing was known long before. The Eomans used
stamps ; on the monuments of the Assyrian kings the name of
the reigning monarch may be found duly printed. What, then,
is the difference? One little but all-important step. The real
inventor of printing was the man into whose mind flashed the
fruitful idea of having separate stamps for each letter instead of
for separate words. How slight seems the difference ! And yet
for three thousand years the thought occurred to no one.^
Men had for forty years to tolerate the single-fluid
batteries, with all their inconvenience, until Daniell solved
the problem. Similar facts are in evidence in the case
of the steam engine, the telescope, and the rest. Hence,
bearing in mind the fact that what is true in mechanical
industry holds true also in commerce and legislature, we
conclude that advancement is due to a minority. On
socialistic grounds they are worthy of their hire — and
socialists are honourable men.
^So Spencer, Kidd. and Bellamy, as quoted by Mallock, Aristnc. and
Evolution, IJook I., oh. iii.
2 Sir John Lubbock, Pleasures of Life.
234 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL .RECORD
Nor will it avail to appeal to the fact that the same
discovery has been made by different men in different
countries at the same time ; which fact proves, say the
socialists, that progress is upwards evenly through all society.
For this merely proves that * two or three men, instead of
one man, are greater than their fellow workers.' ^
We have already noted that labour unassisted by ability
of a superior stamp is fixed in its power of producing wealth.
We have shown, too, that the increase in wealth noticeable
during the present century must be due to one cause only —
the powers of a minority. Hence, it would follow that labour
is to be rewarded at a practically fixed rate for all time,
while ability causing the increase in wealth is to go on for
ever increasing its share in the profits. This appears to us
to follow without question from the strict socialistic prin-
ciples, and we congratulate the socialistic labourer on
adopting principles that ward off so well the dangers of
avarice. Should he regret the conclusions to which his first
commandment leads, and desire a less stringent code, we
would invite his attention once more to the industrial history
of the century. It is a fact borne witness to by history, and
even by the testimony of those who have watched the
social question for even twenty years past, that the social
condition of the labourer has during recent years been
improved exceedingly. The cause of this advance has been
that, instead of all increase of wealth due to industrial progress
passing into the hands of those who invent, discover, and
control, a great portion of it has found its way into the
pockets of the labourer. So much is this the case, that if
the general distribution of wealth clamoured for by some
socialists had taken place at the beginning of the century,
the labourer would not now find himself in as good a position
as he actually is in to day. Indeed, if that distribution took
place at the present time, the position of the average labourer
would be seriously injured. Full proof of this fact, startling
as it is to Socialists, would involve long quotations from
statistics which would be somewhat out of place here. The
'Mallock, Aristocracy and Ecolntion, Book I., ch. iii.
SOCIALISM AND THE TITLE OF PRODUCTION 285
following will serve the purpose of the present paper. The
yearly income of the United Kingdom is estimated at
practically twelve hundred million pounds. The population
is a little over thirty eight millions- Hence, at equal
distribution the share of each individual would be about
thirty two pounds a year. This, however, puts man, woman,
and child on an equal footing — a proceeding which the most
levelling socialist would scorn. If, to give each man, woman,
and child proportionate shares, the amount of food required
by each for a given period were taken as a standard of
division, the results would be that each man would receive
(taxes paid at present rate) seventeen shillings a week, and
each woman not quite thirteen : — ^
Could such a condition of well-being be made universal, many
of the darkest evils of civilization would, no doubt, disappear ;
but it is well for a man who imagines that the masses of this
country are kept by unjust laws out of the possession of some
enormous heritage, to see how limited would be the result, if
laws were to give them everything ; and to reflect that the largest
income that would thus be assigned to any woman, would be less
than the income enjoyed at the present moment by multitudes of
unmarried girls who work in our midland mills— girls whose
wages amount to seventeen shillings a week, who pay their
parents a shilling a day for board, and who spend the remainder,
with a most charming taste, on dress. ^
This result is also put forward to show that it is the
labourer's interest to maintain, in a modified form, perhaps,
an existing order of things which has improved his condition
in a manner undreamt of in any socialistic philosophy.
By so doing he will go on increasing, as he has done in
the [past, his share in the enormous increase of national
income.
It appears to us that the labourer, though his work
considered in itself and apart from accidental circumstances
is of a fixed value, can justly demand a higher wage in
proportion to the increase of income of those who employ
1 Mallock's figures are triflingly higher.
2 Mallock, Labour and the Popular Welfare. Bo 3k I., ch. iv.
236 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
the kind of labour he is willing to offer. This action of the
labourer can, to our thinking, be justified on two scores.
Firstly, employers, though when compared with employees
they are in a minority, are still m^any among themselves.
Hence the gain each may acquire from labour is open to
many competitors, and thereby the value of labour in the
market rises in the common estimation of employers.
Consequently a jpretium vulgare is created which increases
with the gain accruing to the employer, and which may,
being vulgare pretium^ be justly demanded by the
labourer.
The other score on which the labourer has a right to the
share in the increasing wealth is one which socialism, in
spite of itself, suggests. Perhaps the greatest sin of socialism
is the destruction of the family. It might, indeed, be said
with a good show of truth, that the true foe of socialism is
not the capitalist, but the family. Hence, to defend the
family, to extend our defence of it beyond the hearth, to
regard the employer and the employed as forming one great
family — as on Christian principles we are warranted, if not
bound, to do — is at once to put an end to the existing evils
among the working-classes, to advance their welfare on the
highest principles, and to guard against the curses which
socialism brings in its train. This is no new teaching. It
dates, at least, from the day when the Apostle of the
Gentiles taught masters to remember that their servants
were to them as they were to their Master in heaven. It is
an old-world doctrine, but one which is so strange to the
ears of men to-day that he who advocates it thereby
defends himself from the charge of favouring laissez-faire
principles.
Again, if it be the end of civil government to advance the
greatest temporal good of the greatest number, it is within
the scope of legislation not only to eradicate the evils at
present in our midst, but also to assist the labourer to
acquire the market value for his work. With these aids to
acquire what he may justly receive, the working classes may
combine co-operation to secure their share of our national
income. However, it must be remembered always, and
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST. PATRICK 237
especially by those of socialistic leanings, that the labourer's
share in our growing income cannot be so far increased as
to deter men of ability from developing their faculties as they
have been doing in the past. For, no matter how eloquently
socialists may proclaim that it is a noble thing to work
for humanity, and that our models should be these many
wealthy men who find their pleasure in disbursing thousands
for the welfare of the poor, there will always remain
embedded in human nature a disinclination to work to the
best of one's power, except there be held out to the worker
a reward far greater than that which socialists will allow,
though, perhaps, not quite so great as might be justly
claimed by our workers par excellence if the socialistic
theory regarding the title of production were carried to its
ultimate conclusions.
Thomas Wilson.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST. PATRICK
IN the August number of the I. E. Kecobd several state-
ments which I did not make are attributed to me. The
following are some of them : —
1. It is said that I rely on the Confessio for the mention
of Emporia. I did not ; and I did not draw any argument
whatever from the mention of Emporia in the Confessio.
2. It is said that I suggest the biographers of Patrick
mistook Bretonia for Great Britain. I did not ; on the
contrary, I suggested that the biographers never heard of
Bretonia.
3. It is said that I derive the word Taberniae from the
Irish. I did not ; I stated that I did not know what
Taberniae meant, and I suggested a resemblance between it
and two Irish words.
4. It is said that I admit Patrick always expresses
Ireland by Hiberio. I did not ; on the contrary, I showed
that he always expresses Ireland by Hiberione.
238 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
5. It is said that I quote Probus for saying that Patrick
was born near the Western Sea, and conclude the Western
Sea means the Tuscan Sea. I certainly did not draw that
conclusion from Probus ; but I did draw from Probus and
Eleran, that when Probus mentioned the Western Sea, he
probably meant the Tuscan Sea.
Probus says that when Patrick was in his own country,
in their city, Armuric, King Kathmit, from Britain, laid
waste Armuric, murdered Calpurnius and Concessa, and led
off captive their sons, Patrick and Kuchti. Therefore,
Probus says Armuric was Patrick's city. The Vita Quarta
(Eleran) says that the territory known as Armorica was near
the Tyrrhene Sea. Assuming the Armuric of Probus to be
the same as the Armorica of Eleran, the sea which Probus
speaks of would be the Tuscan Sea. Why, then, does he
call it occidentalis ? I suggested that, as iartar may mean
Infernm^ and as iartar also means Western,^ Probus might
have interchanged mare Inftriim (the Tyrrhene Sea) for
mare occidentali,
6. It is said that I adduce" certain passages from the
ConfessiOf the passages quoted,^ to prove that Patrick says
Britain was not his country. I did not. I adduced these
passages to show that Patrick does not say Britain was his
country.
7. It is stated that I said it is dishonest to translate the
word presbyter by priest. I did not say any such thing ; I
did say it is dishonest to translate it in the Confessio by
priest.
8. It is stated that I said the year 404 was the year of
Patrick's captivity. I did not say any such thing : I said : \
* 388. It is this year that Patrick is brought to Ireland ; in
394 he makes his escape.'
The purpose of what I have written about Patrick's
birthplace is to show that all the places mentioned in the
^ O'Reilly's Dictionary, p. 39 i, says it signifies the end or hindmost part
of anything.
2 O'Reilly's Diciionari/, p. 300.
•^ I. E. Recced, June, 1899, pp. 502, 503.
* Page 492.
I
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST. PATRICK 239
Confessio as connected with his birthplace, and all the places
mentioned in antiquity as connected with it are (with the
exception of Taberniae), to be found in the North East of
Spain and in the territory of the Indigites, or in due relation
to it ; Vicus, Empor, Cluaid (Clodianus), Bann (Alba), Aven,
Fluvia, Eosas, Torrian Sea, Letha, Canigou (Cannacuic),
Cruit Occident (Cap Creuz), Mons Jovis.
While, on the other hand, no one presumes to say that
even one of all the names can be found elsewhere (if we
except Clyde), either in history or geography, either in
Itinerary or Peutingerian table; the utmost that anyone
undertakes to show — whether Lanigan or Moran — is, that
places can be found so shaped and situated that they
might have been called by those names or by something like
them.
There is one important passage which up to the present
I did not advert to. I take it from the Dublin Beview, 1887,
and the I. E. Kecoed, December, 1893 : —
Documenta de S. Patricio, edited by Eev. E. Hogan.
Patricius qui et Sochet vocabatur Brito nations in Britanniis
natus Cualforni diaconi ortus ut ipse ait Potiti presbyteri qui
fuit vico Ban navem Thabur indecha ut procul a mare nostro
quern vioum constanter indubitanterque comperimus esse ventre.
To this must be joined the version of this text, which
Probus gives as follows : —
Sanctus Patricius qui et Sochet vocabatur Brito fuit natione.
Hie in Britanniis natus est a patre Calpurneo diacono qiii fuit
filius Potiti presbyteri . . . de vico Bannave Tiburniae regionis
baud procul a mare occidentali quern vicum indubitanter com-
perimus esse nentriae provinciae, in qua olim gigantes habitasse
dicuntur.
This passage of Mactheni contains some ancient tradition,
and gives us over again the country of the Indigetes and the
Tyrrhene Sea.
In the map of France, lat. 42.29, long. 35, you will find
Vendre. It is there called Port Vendre. Eousillon, the
province in which it is belongs to France since the peace of
the Pyrenees, 1659; but before that belonged to Spain, and
240 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
formed part of Catalonia. At the extreme north of the coast-
line of Eousillon we find Cette, on the Bay of Vendre ; at the
extreme south of the same coast-line we have the Port of
Vendre, There is no landing-place for traffic between those
two points. Ampurias and Eousillon formed one county
(provincia : The Counts go back very far, even the recorded
ones. There is a record of Suner II., Count of Eousillon
and Ampurias, in the time of Charles the Bald ; of Suner I.,
Count of Eousillon and Ampurias in the time of Louis le
Debonnaire; of Armingol, Count of Eousillon and Ampurias,
in the time of Charlemagne.
Here now we have a province in which we have Vendre
giving its name to the whole coast-line from Port Vendre to
the Bay of Vendre, one on the extreme south of Eousillon,
the other on the extreme north ; we have therein Vicus, we
have Bann (Alba) aven (fluvia), and we have Indecha.
Listen to Strabo speaking of ttis country : ' Empor has for
its inhabitants some of the original people, the Indeketai.'
Listen to Ptolemy, speaking of this country : * Dekiana and
lungaria are inland cities of the Endigeton.' Take up any
ancient atlas of Spain, and see between the Pyrenees and the
river that flows out at Empor, the Indigetes(Indeke-tae). The
termination tes or tae is not given, but the identification is not
weakened thereby. Compare the names in Nennius, Claud,
Theothas, and Cirine. The statement Probus makes that it
was where giants were said in days gone by to have dwelt,
is in complete accordance with his having this place in his
mind, for the Indigetes were deified men gods, such as
Hercules. The report that in ancient times giants dwelt
there, is exactly what is to be expected as a popular version
that heroes, indigetes, lived there.
Mactheni says that Vicus Ban Navem Indecha was not
far from Mari Nostro. It is assumed that nostro is a pro-
noun, and that, of course, to find out what sea is meant, we
should first find out who the ive are, the we whose sea it is.
I think that is a somewhat unusual form of designating
a sea.
The word nostro is not a pronoun here, it is a part of a
proper name. Mare Nostrum is by the usus loquelae, the
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST, PATRICK 241
established and fully recognised name of the Mediterranean
sea. Classical writers never called it the Mediterranean,
but either Mare Internum or Mare Nostrum.
Cardinal Moran says the Life ascribed to Probus is
only an amended text of the Life by Mactheni . It may be
that the coincidence between Probus and Mactheni arises
not from Probus copying Mactheni, but from them both
copying a more original text, so that it may not be known
who is the author of the Life ascribed to Mactheni ; but no
matter who he is, or where he wrote, a person writing at
that early period could not use the words Mare Nostrum to
express anything but the Mediterranean Sea. See Smith's
Dictionary of Greek and Boman Geography, 'Internum Mare';
and Bunbury's History of Ancient Geography ^ vol. ii., p. 679,
where it is shown that Isidore, a writer of the seventh cen-
tury (the same period as Mactheni), was the first to use
Mediterranean as a proper name : Mare Internum and
Mare Nostrum being the recognised proper names for the
Mediterranean up to that time, and, of course, for many
centuries after.
A writer in the I. E.Kecoed, December, 1893, points
out that Thabur may mean river, and quotes O'Keilly's
Dictionary lo the effect that Thabur Seaghsa means the
River Boyne. If that was accepted, then Mactheni's text
would run who was of Vicus of Alba Fluvia, ' a river of the
Indigetes not far from the Mediterranean Sea.' It is of
importance to observe that in those foregoing passages
Mactheni and Probus do not say that Patrick himself was
from Vicus Ban-navem, but that his grandfather Potitus
was. Eleran, who as well as Probus, mentions Armuric as
the original residence of Patrick's parents, carefully points
out that Armuric, the original residence of Patrick's father,
was not the place of Patrick's birth. Much less would the
original residence of Patrick's grandfather be the place of
Patrick's birth. Eleran says : *In that dispersion his parents
proceeded to the district of Strath Clyde, in which territory
Patrick was born.' Seeing that Eleran's statement, that
Patrick was born in Britain, is in no way inconsistent with
his statement that his father belonged to a distant district ;
VOL. VI. Q
242 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
neither is Mactheni's statement that Patrick was born in
Britain, in any way inconsistent with the text he quotes,
that Patrick's grandfather was from ' Vicus not far from the
Mediterranean Sea.'
Edwaed O'Brien.
THE NEW LEGISLATION ON THE INDEX
Cap. IX. — De facilitate legendi et retinendi libros proJiibitos.
Eeg, XXIII. — Libros sive speciahbus, sive hisce GeneraHbus
Decretis proscriptos, ii tantum legere et retinere poterunt, qui a
Sede Apostolica, aut ah illis, quibus vices suas delegavit, oppor-
tunas fuerit consecuti facultates.
IN the foregoing chapters of the present constitution, the
legislator has laid down some general rules, by which
certain classes of books shall be forbidden to the entire body
of the faithful. He has also stated that when occasion should
require it, the Congregation would proscribe by special
decrees books submitted to its judgment. But, there was
something else needed. It will happen that some of the
faithful will require to read and keep in their possession
certain proscribed books ; it will also happen that certain
members of the faithful, and especially ecclesiastical
superiors, will be obliged to denounce bad and dangerous
books. Now to those two points the legislator devotes the
two remaining chapters of Title I. In Chapter IX. he
explains how we are to obtain permission to read pro-
scribed books ; and in Chapter X. he states who are bound
to denounce bad and dangerous books to ecclesiastical
authority.
In Kule 23 the legislator prescribes, that no one is to
read or retain books proscribed by special decrees, or
by the general rules of the present Constitution, unless
he have obtained permission from the Apostolic See, or
from those who have delegated power to grant such per-
mission.
THE NEW LEGISLATION ON THE INDEX 243
In this rule, the legislator mentions two kinds of pro-
scription— proscription by special decrees, and proscription
by the present general rules. A word in explanation : we
have already explained in tracing the gradual development
of the legislation on the Index, how it became necessary for
the Church to condemn bad books in categories or classes.
In the early ages of the Church bad books were very few,
and those worthy of proscription extremely rare. Individual
proscription was, therefore, quite easy and practicable. With
the advance of ages, however, the flood of bad literature
widened and deepened, as a river proceeding from its
source ; when the art of printing was introduced everybody
began to write, and the tiny stream became a mighty
deluge. Thenceforth, individual proscription was quite
impracticable. Accordingly, the fathers of the Council
of Trent threw the bad books into csctegories, and sum-
marily condemned them. Now, the present rules do what
the rules of the Council of Trent did: they proscribe in
Individual proscription will, however, be sometimes made.
It will generally be made by the Congregation of the Index ;
but the Supreme Pontiff may in exceptional circumstances
take the case out of the hands of the Congregation,
and pronounce proscription himself in person. All the
books individually proscribed are collected and published
in a list ; and this is the list or index of proscribed
books.
By the present rule, then, we are forbidden to read the
books proscribed in a class, as well as those individually
proscribed, unless we have obtained permission from com-
petent ecclesiastical authority.
Reg. XXIV. — Concedendis licentiis legendi et retinendi libros
quoscumque prohibitos Romani Pontifices Sacram Indicis Con-
gregationem praeposuere. Eadem nihilominus potestate gaudent,
turn suprema S. Officii Congregatio, turn Sacra Congregatio de
Propaganda Fide, pro regionibus regimini suo subjectis. Pro
urbe tantura, haec facultas competit etiam Sacri Palatii Apostolici
Magistro.
In Rule 24, the legislator states who have power to
244 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
grant permission to read and retain proscribed books. The
Congregation of the Index can grant permission for the
entire Church ; the Congregation of the Propaganda for the
countries under its jurisdiction ; the Master of the Sacred
Palace for the City of Home. Hence a permission from
the Congregation of the Index holds good anywhere ;
permission from the Propaganda within the countries
subject to it ; and permission obtained from the Master
of the Sacred Palace can be used only within the City
of Eome.
Reg. XXV. — Episcopi aliique prelati jurisdictione quasi
episcopali pollentes, pro singularibus libris, atque in casibus
tantum urgentibus, licentiam concedere valeant. Quod si iidem
generalem a Sede Apostolica impetraverint facultatem, ut fidelibus
libros proscriptos legendi retinendique licentiam impertiri valeant,
earn nonnisi cum delectu et ex justa et rationabili causa
concedant.
1. In the foregoing rule it has been stated that the
Master of the Sacred Palace, the Congregation of the
Propaganda, and the Congregation of the Index, have all of
them power to grant permission, to a certain extent, to read
and retain proscribed books ; hence, arises the question —
have bishops power to grant a similar permission ? This
question is answered by Eule 25 : bishops and other prelates
having quasi-episcopal jurisdiction have power to grant the
said permission only in particular cases and in urgent cir-
cumstances ; if any bishops should have obtained from the
Holy See general faculties to grant the aforesaid permission
to their flocks, they are to be careful to grant it with
choice and discretion, and only from a just and reasonable
cause.
Earn nonnisi cum delectu . . . concedant. — What are
bishops to consider before granting to persons permission to
read and keep proscribed books ? About what are they to
use their choice and discretio7i ? The answer to this question
is supplied us partly from an Instruction of Clement VIII.,
and partly from a document published by the Congregation
THE NEW LEGISLATION ON THE INDEX 245
of the Index subsequent to the publication of the present
Leonine Constitution : —
CLEMENTINE INSTRUCTION. CONGEEGATION OF THE INDEX.
Qui ^ quidem gratis earn ^ et Quamobrem concedere possis
scripto manu sua subsignato virisdumtaxatiirohiseruditisqiic
tribuent de triennio in trien- licentiam legendi retinendique
nium renovandam ; ea in pri- libros a Sancta Sede Aposto-
mis adhibita conside.ratione ut lica prohibitos quoscumque (et
nonnisi viris dignis, ac pietate ephemerides), iis exceptis qui
et doctrina conspicuis cum haeresim vel schisma propug-
delectic ejusmodi licentiam con- ne^it, aut ipsa religionis fun-
cedant; iis autem in prim is da7nenta evertunt, quorum lee-
quorum studia utilitati publicae tionem iis tantum permittere
et Sanctae Catholicae Ecclesiae valeas quos doctrina, pietate,
Usui esse compertum habuerint. fideique zelo praestantiores esse
perspectum habeas ; lihrorum
vero de obscoenis ex prof es so
tractantium- lectionem nemini
permittas.^
We have already stated, in the introduction, that should
we meet with any word or phrase in the present Constitu-
tion of doubtful meaning, we were to refer to former
legislation on the same subject wherein the same words
occurred, and endeavour to discover therefrom the meaning
of the words in the present legislation. We now apply that
principle to the words 7ionnisi cuvi delectu . . . concedant
Those words occur in the Instruction of Clement VIII.
Although Leo XIII. has annulled and abrogated this
Clementine Instruction, yet he has not changed the natural
meaning of the words employed therein. Hence we can
determine almost to a certainty the object of the choice
{delectus) spoken of in the present rule from this Clementine
Instruction. Now, Clement VIII. almost defines the
object of the choice : * viri digni ac pietate et doctrina
conspicui.'
Turning now to the publication of the Congregation of
the Index, we find a still more definite answer to our ques-
^ Qui = Episcopi et Magister S. Palatii.
2 Earn = licentiam legendi ac retinendi libros juxta Regulas Tridentinas
prose rip to8.
^P. Pennachi, p. 174.
246 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
— — — ^ — —
tion. We see that books proscribed by the present Leonine
Constitution are therein divided into three classes — 1. Those
proscribed under Kule 9 : ' Qui res lascivas seu obscenas ex
professo tractani' 2. Those proscribed under Eule 2 :
* Libri qui haeresim vel schisma propugnent aut ipsa reli-
gionis fundamenta evertunt,' 3. Those proscribed by the
remaining rules. The Sacred Congregation specifies the
qualities to be required in the persons seeking permission to
read or keep books belonging to any of those classes, "With
regard to books treating ex professo of licentious things,
bishops are to grant permission to no person. With regard
to books condemned under Eule 2, they are to grant per-
mission to those only who are remarkable for their Iear7ii7ig,
their piety, and their 2eal for the faith. Persons requesting
permission to read or keep in their possession books con-
demned under the remaining rules must, at least, be learned
and of good character.
Since the power of bishops to grant permission to read
and keep proscribed books is delegated, and not ordinary,
the conditions to which it is subject must be carefully
observed.
Eeg. XXVI. — Omnes qui facultatem apostolicam consecuti
sunt legendi et retinendi libros prohibitos, nequeunt ideo legere
et retinere libros quoslibet, aut ephemerides ab Ordinariis locorum
proscriptas, nisi eis in apostolico Indulto expressa facta fuerit
potestas legendi et retinendi libros a quibuscumque damnatos.
Meminerint insuper qui licentiam legendi libros prohibitos ob-
tinuerint, gravi se praecepto teneri hujusmodi libros ita custodire,
ut ad aliorum manus non perveneant.
Eule 26 states that should anyone have obtained per-
mission from the Apostolic See to read and keep proscribed
books, he is not thereby entitled to read and keep proscribed
books or newspapers proscribed by his own bishop — unless
there have been granted in the ApostoHc Indult permission
to read and keep books no matter by whom proscribed.
Persons, moreover, who have obtained such a universal per-
mission are carefully to bear in mind that they are bound
suh grave to so keep such books that they cannot fall into
the hands of others.
THE NEW LEGISLATION ON THE INDEX 247
The latter part of this rule may be said to refer in a
certain way to the management of libraries. It would be
well to have a section of the library set apart for proscribed
books, and to give no one access to it, who had not the
required permission.
In our remarks on Rule 1, we stated that the present
Leonine Constitution interferes in no way with diocesan
proscription made before its publication. We now present
the present rule in confirmation of that statement.
Cap. X. — De denunciatione pravorum lihrorum.
Eeg. XXVII. — Quamvis catholicorum omnium sit, maxime
eorum qui doctrina praevalent, perniciosos libros Episcopis aufc
Sedi Apostolicae denunciare ; id tamen speciali titulo pertinet ad
Nuncios, Delegates, i\.postolicos, locorum Ordinarios, atque
Rectores Universitatum doctrinae laude florentinm.
1. After having treated in the foregoing chapter of
faculties to grant permission to read and retain proscribed
books, the legislator now turns his attention to the denuncia-
tion of bad and dangerous ones. With regard to the
denunciation of them he does three things : 1**. He states
who are to denounce them. 2°. He explains hoio they are to
be denounced. 3*^, He indicates in general terms what books
bishops are to proscribe themselves, and what ones they are
to forward to the Congregation of the Index for examination.
To each of those three points he devotes a rule.
2. In Eule 27, he states that although all Catholics, and
especially those who excel in learning are expected to
denounce bad and dangerous books to their bishops, or to
the Apostolic See; yet papal nuncios, apostolic delegates,
bishops, and rectors of universities, are under a special
obligation to do so. It is to be remarked that the terms
Apostolic See imply — the Congregation of the Supreme
Inquisition, the Congregation of the Index, and the Congre-
gation of the Propaganda.
The legislator says that it is the part of all Catholics to
denounce bad books ; all, however, are not equally bound.
Catholics in general are bound to denounce bad books only
by the virtue of charity ; and hence they are bound onl
sub leve — except in very exceptional circumstances. Papal
248 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
nuncios, apostolic delegates, and rectors of universities,
are, moreover, bound by the virtue of justice; and hence they
are usually bound sub grave to denounce bad books.
By reason of having used the adjectival phrase doctrinae
laude florentium, we are not to suppose that the legislator
has cast a slur on some universities. Adjectives generally,
indeed, restrict the extension of their subject, but sometimes
they merely define or explain its meaning. And it is in this
latter way that the legislator has used the said phrase in the
present context ; all universities are supposed to be focuses
of talent and learning.
3, In cm: remarks on Kule 10 we enumerated certain
classes of persons who are permitted by the general legisla-
tion, by reason of their office, to read classic works treating
of immoral subjects. We now present the present rule in
confirmation of that enumeration.
Eeg. XXVIII. — Expedit ut in pravorum librorum denuncia-
tione non solum libri titulus indicetur, sed etiam quoad fieri
potest, causae exponantur ob quas liber censura dignus existi-
matur. lis autem ad quos denunciatio defertur, sanctura erit
denunciantium nomina secreta servare.
1, Eule 27 determines who are to denounce bad books.
Eule 28 determines hoiv denunciation is to be made. It
states that in denouncing bad books it will be useful to
indicate not only the title of the book, but also the reasons
why the book is considered worthy of proscription. Those
to whom the denunciation is made are strictly bound to
keep the names of the denouncers secret.
The present rule is nothing more than a repetition of
some of the instructions given by Benedict XIV. in his
Bull Sollicita et Frovida, already explained by us. It
imposes no obligation ; it merely states what would be
useful and convenient for the expedite transaction of
business.
Any person at all, then, may denounce a bad book. The
denunciation is made either to one's own bishop or to
Eome, If to Kome, it is directed generally to the Prefect
of the Congregation of the Index or to his Secretary. It
may, however, be made to the Prefect of the Congregation
THE NEW LEGISLATION ON THE INDEX 249
of the supreme Inquisition ; or, if the denouncer belong to
a country under the administration of the Propaganda, it
may be made to the Prefect of that Congregation. Under
extraordinary circumstances it may be addressed even to
the Supreme Pontiff himself.
In denouncing a book it will be useful both to the
denouncer himself, and to the consultores of the Congrega-
tion, to state the reasons why it is deemed worthy of
proscription. It will be useful to the denouncer : because
he will thus show the members of the Congregation that he
has been led to make the denunciation neither from personal
motives nor from flimsy reasons. It would, indeed, be a
strange thing for anyone to denounce a book unless he were
able to show that he was committing no calumny against
the author by doing so. It will also be useful to the
consultores of the Congregation : for it will make known to
them the general tone of the book, and, perhaps, unfold to
them the character and history of the author, which will
be of the greatest assistance to them in passing a just
criticism on the work.
Authors, however, are not to be uneasy because their
books must stand solitary and alone on their own merits
before the bar of the Congregation — with no one to befriend
them or plead their cause. Benedict XIV. would, indeed,
allow a Catholic author of good repute to choose a champion
to plead the cause of his book ; but even though he should
not choose one, he is not to be afraid of unjust treatment.
The report forwarded by the denouncer will go very short
in securing the proscription of the book. When the book
is received, the Secretary of the Congregation selects two
consultores, and with them he carefully examines the book,
to see if there be any foundation for the charges alleged
against it. If they discover that there is really foundation
for the charges, the book is given for examination and
criticism to a consultor skilled in the matter of which it
treats. The book is not allowed to pass the preparatory
Congregation until two adverse decisions have been pro-
nounced against it by two different sets of consultores.^
1 Cf. Sollicita et Frwida, § 5.
250 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Every precaution, therefore, is taken in order to arrive at
a correct and impartial judgment.
Finally : the denouncers are not to be afraid that their
names will be devulged ; for the members of the Congre-
gation are strictly bound to keep them a dead secret.
Eeg. XXIX. — Ordinarii etiam tamquam Delegati Sedis
Apostolicae, libros, ahaque scripta noxia in sua Dioecesi edita
vel diffusa proscribere, et e manibus fidelium auferre studeant.
Ad Apostolicum judicium ea deferant opera vel scripta quae
subtilius examen exigunt, vel in qui bus ad salutarem affectum
consequendum, supremae auctoritatis sententia requiri videatur.
Kule 29. is one of the key-stones of the present Leo-
nine Constitution, for it applies to the government of
each diocese the entire legislation on the Index. It pre-
scribes that bishops — not only as ordinaries, but also as
delegates of the Apostolic See, are to be careful to proscribe
and to romove from the hands of the faithful bad books and
other dangerous kinds of literature published or circulated
through their dioceses. They are, however, to remit to the
judgment of the Holy See, works and writings that require a
more than usually careful examination, as well as those that
require the declaration of supreme authority in order that
salutary effects ensue.
The present rule, it will be remarked, brings home to
each diocese the entire Leonine Constitution. It applies
general laws to the government of limited areas ; the laws
made for the universal Church are brought to bear on the
internal management of each diocese. Now, circumstances
will differ widely in the various dioceses throughout the
Catholic world ; hence the application of the present consti-
tution to the affairs of each diocese will demand the exercise
of consummate prudence.
* Prudentia,' says St. Augustine, 'est cognitio rerum
appetendarum et fugiendarum '; ^ we must know what we are
to seek, and what we are to avoid, before we can be said to-
be prudent. The present rule, then, which is intended to be,
as it were, a rule of prudence to the bishops, does two
things : — It tells them what they are to aim at, and what
1 Apud S. Thomas, ii.-ii., 47, i.
THE NEW LEGISLATION ON THE INDEX 251
they are to avoid. It is, accordingly, composed of two main
parts; and the second part is again subdivided into two
minor parts. Its division may be thus graphically shown : —
Paet I. — Ordinarii etiam tamquam Delegati Sedis Apostolicae
libros, aliaque scripta noxia in sua Dioecesi edita vel diffusa pro-
scribere et e manibus fidelium auferre studeant.
Part II. — (a) Ad Apostolicum judicium ea deferant opera vel
scripta quae subtilius examen exigunt.
{b) Ea quoqiie deferant, in quibus ad salutarem effectum conse-
quendum, supremae auctoritatis sententia requiri videatur.
We shall, therefore, first treat of the exercise of episcopal
proscription ; and, secondly, of the cases which must be
submitted to the judgment of the Apostolic See.
§1.
Bishops, it would appear have always had power to examine
and condemn bad books within the boundaries of their
dioceses. This is evident in the first place from the history
of the Index, and from the constant exercise of this power
in every country, and in every age of the Church. We read,
for instance, that Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, con-
demned the works of Origen in 385, and did so even against the
will of his suffragan bishops. In 1121, the bishops assembled
at the Synod of Suesson, condemned the works of Abelard,
before they were condemned by the universal voice of the
Church ; in 1204, the Synod of Paris condemned the works
of David a Dinando ; in 1382 the heretical works of Wicliffe
were condemned by the English bishops; and, omitting all
further instances, have not bishops, even since the publica-
tion of the present Leonine Constitution, more than once
condemned bad books without having had recourse to the
Holy See ?
But. apart from the history of the Index, it is manifest
that bishops possess this power, from several declarations of
the Supreme Pontiffs. In 1825, Leo XII. admonished all
patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops throughout the entire
Church, that since it was quite impossible for the Congre-
gation of the Index to examine and proscribe individually
all bad and dangerous books, they should, on their own
^52 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
authority {propria auctoritate), take such books out of the
hands of the faithfuL^ In 1864, Pius IX. directed through the
medium of the Congregation of the Index, a letter to the
bishops of the universal Church, in which he gives them the
most explicit instructions with regard to the condemnation
and proscription of bad books : —
The lawful pastors [he says] who watch over the flock of
Christ, in order to avert this baneful pest {i.e., bad publications)
from those committed to their charge, are accustomed in their
zeal to send bad books to the Sacred Congregation of the Index,
that they may deter the faithful from reading such productions
by reason of having obtained the judgment of the Eoman See.
Nor has the Sacred Congregation, whose sole aim and desire is
to fulfil the duty assigned to it by the Supreme Pontiffs been ever
slow to lend assistance. However, as it is overburdened from
the increasing number of denunciations that pour in from the whole
Christian world, it is not always able to pronounce a prompt
decision on every case submitted to its judgment ; and hence
it is that occasionally the provision is too late, and that the
remedy is thereby inefficacious, as enormous damage has in the
meantime been caused by the reading of such works.
To remove this inconvenience, steps have been more than once
taken by the Eoman Pontiffs. Omitting instances which occurred
in other ages, Leo XII. in our own times issued a mandate on
24:th March, 1825, ... by which bishops were ordered to pro-
scribe, on tbeir own authority {propria auctoritate), all bad books
published or circulated within their dioceses, and to remove
them from the hands of the faithful.
Lest, however [the letter continues] anyone should rashly
dare to despise, and set at nought the judgment and proscription
of bishops, on the ground that they have not the requisite
jurisdiction, or on any other ground, his Holiness (Pius IX.)
hereby grants bishops powers to proceed in this matter also as
delegates of the Apostolic See.^
2, Now, what is the nature of this power possessed by
bishops ? Is it ordinary or delegated ? We are of opinion
that bishops have both ordinary and delegated power to
condemn and proscribe bad books within their dioceses.
That they have delegated power to do so, is manifest from
the letters of Leo XXL and Pius IX., already cited, as well
as from the present Eule of the Index ; and unless they had
ordinary power to do so, why would Leo XII. have told
1 Cf. Peiinacchi, p. 186. 2 cf. Pennacchi, p. 187.
THE NEW LEGISLATION ON THE INDEX 253
them to proscribe bad and dangerous publications 07i their
own authority ? How can we regard bishops — who are
placed as scouts (tTrio-Koiros) on the watch-towers of the
Church — as supplied with suitable weapons to repel the
foe, unless they have power of their own to safeguard the
minds of the faithful from being corrupted and led astray by
dangerous literature? Bishops, then, have both ordinary
and delegated powers to condemn and proscribe bad and
dangerous publications ; and, hence, the legislator in the
present rule joins ordinarii and Delegati Sedis Apostolicae
with a cumulative conjunction : * Ordinarii etiam tamquam
Delegati Sedis Apostolicae. '
3. Now, what is the specific object of this episcopal
power? Or, in other words, what kinds of books or writings
can bishops proscribe ? It would appear that bishops have
not, by reason of their office, power to judge and proscribe
every class of bad literature. P. Arndt, S.J., thus writes
on the ordinary power of bishops to proscribe bad books : —
Attamem non tanta episcopo competit potestas ut quasi locum
Concilii universalis, vel Eomani Pontificis in judicando doctrinas
obtineat. . Non potest ergo ipse librum prohibere oh proposi-
tiones, quas Ecclesia non damnavit, nee rejecit. Duhiae proinde
propositiones quae tamen ah Ecclesia tolerantur non possunt
prohihitionem justificare. Varum cum propositiones dubiae
proponuntur, quae quam proxime ad damnatas sententias
accedunt, Episcopo fas est lihrum in sua diocesi vetare}
There is a limit, then, to the ordinary power of bishops
to proscribe bad books : their power does not extend to all
classes of such books. Bishops are as stewards placed over
a department of the king's household;^ or as sentinels placed
on high to watch and guard a portion of the flock of Christ.
As subordinate stewards, they cannot speak for the manage-
ment of the entire household ; nor, as merely sentinels, can
they issue orders in the name of the supreme leader. They
can, however, announce to those subject to them the wishes
and the mandates of him who holds supreme power, and
enforce obedience thereunto.
1 P. Arndt : De libris prohibitis, p. 213,
2 Cf. Matt. xxiv. : ' Fidelis Servus ot prudens quern constituit Dominus
super familiam suam.'
254 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Accordingly, as bishops cannot speak for the universal
Church, nor issue commands in the name of the Supreme
Pontiff, so they cannot proscribe a book for propositions
that have never been condemned by the Church, nor for
those that have been tolerated by her. As, however, they
can repeat the decisions of the universal Church, or of the
Supreme Pontiff, and force their subjects to obey them,
so they may condemn a book for propositions that have
already received the condemnation of the Church, or that
are very closely connected v^ith such.
The delegated power of bishops to proscribe bad books
seems to be co- extensive with their ordinary power. This
is evident from a letter of Pius IX., addressed to the bishops
of the entire Church through the medium of the Congrega-
tion of the Index in 1873 : —
Quod si omnis ab Episcopis est adhibenda cura ut docti
probatique utriusque cleri viri, verbis ac scriptis sana doctrina
refertis, errores publice grassantes impugnent atque confodiant,
pariter ab iisdem non est praetereundum examen operum videlicet
et ephemeridum quae fidem moresque directe imyetunt}
4. With what dispositions are bishops to enter on
an examination of books subjected to their judgment ?
Benedict XIV. gave the four following rules of guidance to
the consultores of the Congregation of the Index : —
1. That they were to bear in mind that their duty was — not
to strive by every means to procure the proscription of the books
submitted to them for examination — but to give the Sacred
Congregation a faithful account of their contents after a careful
reading thereof.
2. That care should be taken that the book be given to a
consultor skilled in the matter of which the book treates. If
anyone should discover that from the peculiar nature of the book,
he is unable to pass a just criticism on it, he is to bear in mind
that he is not free from sin if he does not make this known at
once to the Sacred Congregation.
3. In passing judgment on the book, the mind must be free
from every prejudice. The consultores are to bear in mind that
they are to drive far off the sympathies of their country, of their
race, of the schools wherein they were trained, and of the institute
to which they belong. They are to be guided by the dogmas
of the Church, and by the common teaching of Catholics, as
1 Cf. Pennacclii, p. 189.
THE NEW LEGISLATION ON THE INDEX 255
contained in the decrees of the general councils, the Constitu-
tions of the Koman Pontiffs, and in the traditions of the fathers.
4. They are to remember that a proper judgment cannot be
formed as to the mind and meaning of the author, unless the
book is read through ; for it often happens that different parts of
a book throw light on one another, and that an author expresses
himself more clearly in one place than in another.
5. If one wishes to judge a book as Benedict XIV.
would have him do it, it is not enough for him to have
good and impartial dispositions : he must also have correct
premises to work on. The judgment passed on a book, or
on a writing of any kind, is, as it were, a conclusion drawn
from the two premises of a syllogism. In order to make up
this syllogism we take in one hand the Sollicita et Provida
of Benedict XIV., together with the present Leonine
Constitution : and from them we get our major premise ;
we take the book in the other hand : and from it we get our
minor premise ; we ourselves are to be accountable for the
conclusion deduced therefrom.
6. Having now treated of the existence^ the nature^ and
the object of episcopal power to judge and condemn bad
books, a question of the utmost importance, presents itself
for solution, with regard to the extent of the binding force
of episcopal proscription. Are regulars bound by episcopal
proscription? or, have bishops power to enforce diocesan
proscription in the monasteries and convents that may
exist within their dioceses ?
This question is nothing else than a particular phase
of the general question regarding the relations between
regulars and episcopal jurisdiction. Those two questions
are related to one another in much the same way as the
major and minor premises of a syllogism : one cannot be
well solved without the other. With regard to the rela-
tions existing between regulars and episcopal jurisdiction,
especially where there is mention of censures, long and
intricate controversies have existed amongst canonists.
Even St. Alphonsus, it would appear, notwithstanding his
extensive knowledge of Canon and Civil Law, and his
remarkable power of collating different laws and bringing
them to bear on a particular point, was unable to extricate
256 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
himself from the puzzling mazes of this question ; and
P. Ballerini, S.J., does not hesitate to say that the Holy
Doctor has not been quite consistent with himself in the
different places through his writings in which he treats of
this general question.^ Since the whole field, then, has been
the scene of such a hot and complicated contest amongst
canonists, little wonder that there should be a difference of
opinion when any particular case turns up, like the present
one. Accordingly, amongst the commentators who have
heretofore written on the Rules of the Index, there are two
opinions on the present question : —
1. P. Vermeersch, S.J., and I'Abbe Peries, hold that
regulars are exempt from diocesan proscription, and accord-
ingly that bishops cannot enforce their proscription within
the religious housss that may exist in their dioceses,
P. Vermeersch, S. J., thus writes : —
Ha bent enim regulares propria dicti (et etiam quarumdam
Congregationum alumni, v.g., C. S. S. Redemptoris) generale
privilegium exemptionis. Inter exceptiones autem factas huic
privilegio, quas tamen diligentissima cura coUegerunt auctores,
nuUibi indicatur praesens casus. Nee materiam istam praeter-
miserunt, cum disserts doceant regulares quoad praeviam
censuram subdi episcopis.^
P. Vermeersch, S.J., would, therefore, argue thus : — If
regulars enjoy general exemption from episcopal jurisdiction,
we are not to suppose them subject to episcopal jurisdiction
in any particular case that may turn up, unless we have
positive proof to that effect ; but in the present case we
have no such positive proof: because, although canonists
enumerate a great many points in which regulars are subject
to episcopal jurisdiction, yet they omit the present point.
According to P. Vermeersch, then, the original jurisdiction
over religious orders, has been completely emptied from
the hands of bishops into the Holy See, by the privilege
of general exemption, and we are not to suppose that any
has been poured back again, except what we have positive
proof for.
1 Cf. Guri-Ballerini, voL ii., p. 955. 2 Page 30.
THE NEW LEGISLATION ON THE INDEX 257
And I'Abbe Peries writes to the same effect : —
Les Reguliers exempts ne sont pas obliges, de tenir compte
des condemnations des livres ou des journaux faites par I'eveque
du diocese, ou ils resident puisqu' ils ne sont pas ses sujets.^
2. P. Pennaccbi, however, strenuously maintains that
regulars are bound by diocesan proscription just as seculars.
He looks at exemption from another side, and says, that
originally religious orders were all subject to episcopal
jurisdiction, and that it was only gradually that they were
released therefrom.^ Accordingly, he founds a major premise
the direct contradictory of that of P. Vermeersch, and
I'Abbe Peries — that when any particular case turns up, we
are to suppose regulars subject to episcopal jurisdiction,
unless we have positive proof to the contrary ; but in the
present case we have no such proof; therefore, it would
appear that regulars are bound by diocesan proscription.
P. Pennaccbi sustains his opinion with arguments founded
on decrees passed at the Council of Trent, on the Bull of
Pius IX., Inter Multiplices, and on the present Leonine
Constitution ; he, moreover, alleges that before coming to a
final decision on this question he consulted several canonists,
and some religious superiors in Kome, and that it was the
belief of all, that regulars were not exempt from episcopal
proscription.^ On the whole, we must say, that we prefer
the opinion of P. Pennaccbi.
1 Page 155.
2Cf. P. Pennaccbi, p. 193.
s The opinion of P. Pennaccbi is supported by P. Franciscus Saverius Wemz,
S.J., in Lis Instiiutiones Canonicae, at present in process of being printed.
With kind permission, and assistance we bave been enabled to employ the
following note in confirmation of the opinion of P, Pennaccbi. In treating
of episcopal jurisdiction this Jesuit canonist writes of Rule 29 of the present
Leonine Constitution, to the following effect (page 130, note 82) : —
* Of. Mandatum Leonis XII. 26 Martii, 1825, Pii IX. litteras Apostolicas
Inter Multiplices, 24 Aug., 1864, ex quibus Keg. xxix bujus Constitutionis
desumpta est. Episcopi igitur praeter propriam sive ordinariam auctoritatem
babent etiam jurisdictionem a Sede Apostolica delegatam ad proscriptionem
librorum in suis diocesibus. Quae jurisdictio delegata secundum formulam
Concilii Tridentini Concessa, nequaquam restrigenda est ad potestatem cumu-
lativam in suis subditis, sed juxta meliorem interpretationem a Fagano,
Palmieri, aliisque probatam sese extendit etiam in exemptos. Inde consequitur
regulares quoque exemptos obligari prohibitionibus libroriun Episcopi Diocesani.
Tunc obligatio regularium jam est indubitata propter argumentum indirectum ;
nam practice vix fieri potest ut regulares exempti absque scandalo hujusmodi
prohibitiones negligant (cf. Suarez; I>e Legib.; lib, iv. Cap. xx. ; n. 10). Porro
vol. VI. B
268 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
In explanation, then, we should say that there are three
questions that must carefully be distinguished one from the
other — 1. The present question of the extent of the binding
force of diocesan proscription. 2.^ The general relations
existing between regulars properly so called, and episcopal
jurisdiction. 3. The nature of general exemption. The
solutions of these questions depend one from the other. We
cannot well solve the present question of diocesan proscrip-
tion, without determining in some way the general relations
between regulars and episcopal jurisdiction ; and we cannot
know what those relations are unless we know the nature
of exemption.
All who follow a religious life must be subject, in one
way or another, to a religious superior ; for religion implies
the severance of the bonds that might keep us separated from
Qod — wealth, carnal pleasure, and self-will.^ Be he, there-
fore, a general of a religious order, a provincial, a lay-brother,
or a hermit in the desert, he cannot be said to belong to
the religious state, unless he is subject to some religious
superior.
Keligious orders grow up, like tender plants, in the midst
of some diocese. By the bishop they are nursed, and fostered,
and sheltered from attack, until they are strong enough to
withstand resistance. Accordingly, to the bishop they become
subject by reason of their origin. This subjection maybe
exemptio alligari nequit ; nam regulares exempti. licet ipsorum conventus quasi
avulsi a diocesi dicantur, tamen non sunt vere avulsi, sive separari, sed potius
intra diocesin siti, nisi agatvir de monasteriis nu-lins. Insuper in casu hoc
particulari, Episcopi gaudent jurisdictione in exemptos suae diocesis; ergo
foustra invocatur generale priviligiiim exemptionis, cum generi per speciem fuerit
de-ogatum.'
The Canonist refers to a species of Exemption, which it may be well to
explaia. Stretching out a bishop's diocese as a sheet before us, we perceive
that it is composed of two main elements — the area, and the population. If
any portion of the area be removed, or torn away (avulsus) from the diocese,
it cannot be said to belong to the diocese ; and if a monastery be built thereon,
that monastery may be said to be a Monasterium nullius diocesis. The Benedictine
monastery of Monte Cassino was exempt in this way.
Nearly always, however, exemption touches not a portion of the area, but a
portion of the population ; and if that portion of the population have a monastery
within the diocese, although it be exempt from episcopal jurisdiction, yet it is
not torn away from the diocese ; or, as P. Franciscus Wernz would put it,
eisi sit qicasi avulsum, tamen nen est vere avulsum,
1 Cf. St. Thomas, ii.-ii. 186, 6.
THE NEW LEGISLATION ON THE INDEX 259
of different kinds. Sometimes the bishop may not only be
patron, but also religious superior ; and while this state of
things lasts the members of the community are subject to
the bishop by a double bond — by the vow of obedience and
by ecclesiastical law. Sometimes the bishop will be patron,
but not religious superior ; and then the members are bound
under his jurisdiction only by ecclesiastical law. Lastly,
sometimes the rules of the community rest on nothing
higher than episcopal sanction : the bishop may alter or add
to them as he deems fit. Now, while such is the state of
the religious congregation, there can be no doubt with regard
to diocesan proscription. A.s the whole institute is under
episcopal supervision, so all the members are bound by
episcopal proscription.
Matters, however, do not always remain that way. As
the religious congregation grows in strength and size, the
Holy See begins to cast its eyes on it. The rules of the
institute are taken and examined, and after a time, perhaps,
solemnly approved of. Episcopal jurisdiction over the con-
gregation is thereby considerably restricted. Bishops are,
in a certain way, the lieutenants of the Supreme Pontiff :
they hold his place within limited areas. As long as the
religious congregation rested merely on episcopal approba-
tion, its management lay in the hands of the bishop. When
there acceded the approbation of the Holy See, its manage-
ment fell from his hands into the hands of the Supreme
Pontiff. As much as the Holy See sets its seal on, it takes
to itself. Before the approbation of the Holy See, bishops
might have altered the rules of the institute as they thought
prudent ; after the approbation of the Holy See, they can
no more interfere with them than an inferior officer can
countermand the orders of the supreme commander. As
officers, however, they can make the rounds, and see that
the rules approved of by the Holy See are faithfully observed.
Although religious congregations are released from epis-
copal jurisdiction by reason of the approbation of the Holy
See, yet they are not thereby completely released ; the
amount of release will be measured by the nature of the
approbation and the amount of special privileges. At
260 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
present it would appear that there is no religious con-
gregation entirely released from episcopal jurisdiction;
for in the 4th, 24th, and 25th Sessions of the Council
of Trent we read several cases .in which regulars are
bound under episcopal jurisdiction, and canonists have
collected many more such cases from particular declarations
of the Holy See. For instance, one author, Chockier, enume-
rates as many as one hundred and sixteen cases ; and
Barbosa, a canonist of well-known moderation, cites no
less than fifty-two such cases, and amongst them that
regarding the publication and use of boohs}
Now, to what shall we liken all this ? The Church is
as a mighty tree that has spread its branches far and wide.
Kome is the core of this mighty tree, and from the Bishop
of Eome all other bishops in the Church derive the pleni-
tude of their jurisdiction, as the branches of a tree derive
their life and nutriment from the trunk thereof. Eeligious
congregations do not grow up as independent parts of the
Church, nor no they spring from the heart of the tree ; they
spring from the boughs or the branches. Accordingly, under
the jurisdiction of the bishop they exist at the outstart,
and they are gradually released therefrom by the Holy See,
in order to give scope and liberty to the development of the
vital force within them.
Summing up, then, it would appear that all religious
congregations are, by reason of their origin, subject to
episcopal jurisdiction, except in so far as they have been
expressly released therefrom by the Holy See ; but they
have not been expressly released as regards the publication
and use of books. Therefore, it would seem that they are
subject to diocesan proscription.
Apart, however, from considerations founded on the
nature of general exemption, the opinion of P. Pennacchi is
supported by positive legislation on the use and publication
of books. The legislation we refer to is found in the
4th Session of the Council of Trent and in the present
J Of. Ballerini, S,J., Opus Magnum, vol. vu., p. 29.
-The new legislation on the index
261
Leonine Constitution. We here place the different laws
side by side : —
CON. TBID. : SESS, 4.
Sancta Synodus : decernit et
statuit, ut posthac Sacra Scrip-
tura, potissimum vero haec
ipsa et vetus Vulgata editio,
quam emendatissime imprima-
tur : nullique liceat imprimere,
vel imprimi facere, quosvis
libros de rebus Sacris, sine
nomine auctoris : neque illos
in futurum vendere, aut apud
seretinere 7iisiprimum examinati
yrohatique fuerint ah Ordinario.
Et si Regulares fuerinty ultra
examinationem et probationem
hujusmodi licentiam quoque a
SUM superioribus impetrare
teneantur.
LEONINE RULES.
Rule 26 : omnes qui faculta-
tem apostolicam consecuti sunt
legendi et retinendi libros pro-
hibitos, nequeunt ideo legere
et retinere libros quoslibet, aut
ephemerides, ab ordinariis
locorum proscriptas, nisi eis in
Apostolico Indulto facta fuerit
potestas legendi et retinendi
libros a quibuscumque damna-
tus.
Rule 36 : Eegulares praeter
Episcopi licentiam, meminerint
teneri se Sacri Tridentini de-
creto, operis in lucem edendi,
facultatem a Praelato cui sub-
jacent obtinere.
From a survey of those laws the strength of the case
against the opinion of P. Vermeersch and I'Abbe Peries,
becomes at once apparent. Let us examine them one by
one. The Council of Trent states that no one is to retain a
book that has not been examined and approved of by the
bishop ; and it expressly includes regulars. If, then, regulars
are forbidden to read and retain books that have not the
sanction and approval of a bishop, how can they be excused
when there accedes his positive condemnation ? Is not
condemnation more than non-approval ? If, therefore, non-
approval can prevent regulars from reading and keeping
certain books and newspapers, much more so proscription.
Again : in Eule 26 of the present Leonine Constitution,
it is very clearly implied, that no one is to read books or
newspapers proscribed by the local bishop, unless he has
express permission to do so. Now, how can regulars be
excluded from the universal term * omnes ' ? And if they
be 'included, where is their express permission?
Lastly : in Eule 36, it is stated that regulars are
required to respect and seek episcopal approbation for any
work they publish. Now, if they are required to ':eek his
262 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
approbation, they are at least expected to observe bis
proscription.
How, now,"are we to solve the argument of P. Vermeersch
and I'Abbe Peries ? General exe^nytion may be viewed from
two different standpoints. Viewed £rom one side, it appears
to be a positive entity : a completely new state of things,
arising from the fact, that jurisdiction over regulars has
been poured completely from the hands of the bishops into
the Holy See, just as if we emptied one vessel of water into
another. This view of general exemption would seem to be
justified by the tendency of canonists, to cite the cases in
which regulars are subject to episcopal jurisdiction, and
not the cases in which they are released, as well as by the
modus agendi of the fathers of the Council of Trent. For
if the jurisdiction of the bishops with regard to regulars was
not at one time or another poured completely into the Holy
See, would it not have been more natural and expedite for
canonists to measure the amount that was poured out, rather
than to go to such trouble in measuring the amount that
has been allowed to remain? And if religious congre-
gations are naturally subject to episcopal jurisdiction,
would it not have been more scientific for the Holy Council
to state the cases in which they are exempt therefrom
than cite the cases in which they are subject thereunto?
If we view general exemption from this side, it would
appear that the opinion of P. Vermeersch, S.J., and I'Abbe
Peries, has, at least, some foundation to rest on.
General exemption, however, when viewed from another
side, appears to be a negative entity. This view is justified :
1. By the form of the word itself. If the thing be not
negative, why have got a negative term to express it?
2. By the simplicity of this view : for religious congregations
were originally subject to episcopal jurisdiction. Would it
not appear, then, that every degree of withdrawal therefrom
is a subtraction from the original quantity of jurisdiction?
Moreover, total withdrawal is an historical fact ; historical
facts are not to be admitted till proven with documentary
evidence ; and P. Vermeersch and I'Abbe Peries will not be
able to produce documentary evidence to prove that regulars
THE NEW LEGISLATION ON THE INDEX 263
have been totally withdrawn from episcopal jurisdiction ?
3. This view is tested and corroborated by the strong argument
founded on the decree of the Council of Trent, and the
Leonine Kules ; for how can a correct conclusion be deduced
from a premise, unless that premise itself be true ?
Viewing general exemption^ then, from this latter stand-
point we may thus solve the argument of the Belgian and
French commentators. In solving questions in moral
theology— and indeed generally in judging any penal case —
we are in justice bound to suppose at the outstart the
penitent free ; and we are to bind him, step by step, only
as evidence is forthcoming ; and the reason of this is,
because his first state was immunity from sin, his second
subjection to it. In the present question, however, the
process is quite the reverse, Keligious congregations were
first subject to episcopal jurisdiction, and afterwards
they were partially liberated. Accordingly, when any
particular question arises, we are to suppose them subject
to episcopal jurisdiction, unless there is positive proof to the
contrary. That there is no such proof with regard to
diocesan proscription, is manifest from the evidence of the
Council of Trent, of the present rules of the Index, and of
the canonist Barbosa.
7. Can religious superiors proscribe books on the
members of their communities ? P. Vermeersch, S. J., is
of opinion that they can; for, speaking of the power of
bishops to proscribe books and newspapers on their subjects,
he writes : ^ ' Eadem facultas ut patet, competit Praelato
regulari quoad suos subditos.' P. Pennacchi, however,
deems it well to make a distinction. If there be question
of proscription based on the rules of the Institute, and
enforced through the vow of obedience, then it would
appear that religious superiors have the said power. If,
however, there be question of proscription based on the
legislation of the Index, it would appear that they have no
such power ; because neither in the present Leonine Consti-
tution, nor in the Sollicita et Provida of Benedict XIV., do
we find the slightest trace of it.
» Page 29.
264 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
§11.
In the second part of the present rule two cases are
stated wherein the bishop is to refrain from proscription, —
when the book requires a more than usually careful
examination, and when the judgment' of supreme authority
is required in order that salutary effects may ensue.
Attention, therefore, is called to the examination of the
book, and to the execution of proscription. Sometimes it
will be very dif&cult for a bishop to know whether a book
really deserves proscription or not ; and sometimes, although
it be as clear as noon-day that the book deserves condemna-
tion, yet it may be doubtful whether good results could
ensue from episcopal proscription or not ; in such cases the
book is to be remitted to the judgment of the Holy See.
1. Many things may render it difficult to know whether
a book is worthy of proscription or not. The proscription
of a book or of a newspaper is, as it were, a practical
conclusion deduced from the two premises of a syllogism.
The major is obtained from the present legislation on the
Index ; the book itself is to yield the minor ; we, ourselves,
are to draw the conclusion. About the major premise there
will generally be very little difficulty ; we can locate at once
the rules and clauses under which the work falls, and make
out their meaning. The minor, however, will not always
be so easy ; a good deal of experience and of positive
particular knowledge will be required, and a great many
circumstances will have to be weighed and considered.
The judgment of a literary work may be compared to
the solution of a moral question. Every question in moral
theology is a deduction from a syllogism, the major of which
is a speculative proposition, and the minor a practical one ;
the conclusion, in consequence, will be practical, since : —
Pejorem sequitur semper conclusio yartem. The major lays
down the end to be attained ; the minor specifies the means
thereunto. The major is always founded on some dogmatic
principle ; the minor on some moral precept, or on some
positive legislation. Hence we may know the major premise
with certainty ; about the minor there will occasionally be
some doubts, because different minds will view particular:
THE NEW LEGISLATION ON THE INDEX 265
things in different ways, just as persons with different
ranges of vision will see distant objects with greater or less
distinctness. Furthermore : in moral theology we are not
to exact that certainty which is required in dogma ; we are
men, and we must live and act as men. As ^e are not
expected to see distant objects with the naked eye as clearly
as with a telescope ; nor to perceive tiny things as distinctly
as with a microscope, so we are not expected by Almighty
God to discern between good and evil in particular things,
with the delicacy and precision of pure spirits, but only in
accordance with the moral perception with which He has
endowed us ; and thus it is that in morals probability
becomes the rule of life.
Now : as no one can solve a moral question who is not
acquainted in some way with the ends of human actions, so
no one may justly pronounce a literary' work worthy of
proscription, who is not in some way acquainted with the
legislation on the Index.
Again : just as an easy question in moral theology
may be solved by anyone acquainted with the general prin-
ciples of dogma, so some books may at once be perceived
worthy of proscription even from a superficial knowledge of
the present legislation on the Index. Finally, as a difficult
question in moral theology will require for solution a great
deal of positive information, and a great deal of experience ;
so the examination of a book will occasionally demand a
great deal of experience in the management of the Index, and
a great deal of positive knowledge about the matters treated
in the book, and of the manner of treatment. In order to
obviate the danger of unjust condemnation, the book in such
a case is to be forwarded to the Holy See, quia nimirum
subtilius examen exigit.
Even after having come to a decision regarding the bad
character of the literary work, the execution of the proscrip-
tion is to be furthermore considered. It may sometimes
happen, that proscription would bring no good fruits,
although it be as clear as noon-day that the work deserves
proscription. Eecurring to our former simile for illustration :
it is not enough for the moral theologian to have arrived at
266 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
a correct conclusion as to the goodness or the badness of a
certain mode of action : he must, furthermore, determine the
means of making his conclusion practical, and suitable to
the circumstances of daily life. In order to do this he must
be both cautious and circumspect : he must be circumspect
in making his conclusion square with all the surrounding
circumstances ; and he must be cautious, lest more harm
than good result from the application of his conclusion. If
he be not circumspect, he may be like the painter that would
paint a palm-tree in the midst of the waves, or the poet that
would describe a shoal of dolphins as playing among the green
groves ; and if he be not cautious, he may be like the husband-
man that would go forth to weed the cornfield, and tear up
the good wheat with the cockle.
Now, although it be quite clear that a book be deserving
of proscription, yet in executing that proscription one would
require to be both cautious and circumspect ; he would
require to be cautious lest more harm than good result from
his proscription ; and he would require to be circumspect in
taking account of all the surrounding circumstances. If he
be in doubt that happy results may not follow his proscrip-
tion, he is to remit the work to the Holy See, in order that
it be condemned by the voice of the Supreme Pontiff, and
happy results thereby ensue.
This ends the rules of Title I.
To be continued. rp^ HUELEY.
[ 267
THE MASONIC PERSECUTION IN MEXICO
IN the paper on * Freemasonry and the Church in Latin
America ' ^ there was room for only a passing allusion
to Mexico, and yet the trials of the Church in that
country form one of the most eventful pages of con-
temporary history. In 1821, under its last Viceroy, Don
Juan O'Donoju, Mexico revolted from Spain, and has
never since long enjoyed the blessings of just and stable
government. From the first, two parties were formed, the
Conservative and the Liberal ; the leaders of the latter,
though always influenced by Masonic ideas, never felt strong
enough to declare themselves openly until about forty years
ago, when President Comonfort, in 1857, proclaimed a
thoroughly Masonic constitution. He fell in 1858, and was
succeeded after a year's anarchy by Jaurez, a pure Indian,
who fought his way, as usual, to the seat of power. As
Chief Justice under Comonfort he had co-operated in the
work of the new constitution, and resolved now, at all
hazards, to enforce it to the letter. Wherever the Liberals
prevailed church property was seized, religious communities
were dispersed, nuns were expelled from their convents, and
this often at dead of night; priests were held to ransom, or
placed in the front ranks in red shirts armed with muskets,
or burned alive. English writers on modern Mexico hardly
allude to these doings of the * brethren,' or if they do so at
all it' is only to palliate them, as we see in the volume, Mexico
of the * Story of the Nations.' In this volume (2nd edition,
1897), otherwise so moderate and free from offensive bigotry,
the only blame administered is reserved for the bishops for
their unwillingness to be plundered. There is not a word of
blame for those who had driven hundreds of cloistered nuns
from their convents, and cast them on the world to beg their
bread.
1 I. E. Kecoed, July, 1899.
268 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Men capable of such deeds were not likely to respect
even private property. In 1862, France, Spain, and England,
demanded in vain compensation for their subjects, and had
at last to send a combined armed force. The empire lasted
from 1863 to 1867, when Jaurez resulned the presidency; and
from this date the persecution has never ceased. He died of
apoplexy, in 1872. He had banished all the bishops, sup-
pressed all the religious orders, closed all the seminaries,
expelled all the nuns, hunted the priests like wild beasts,
and confiscated every atom of church property on which he
could lay his hands ; this amounted, according to the new
Encyclopedia Britannica, to £75,000,000. and a third of the
land of the country.^ The Encyclopedia has not a word of
blame for all this savagery, and the English press never said
much about it : another instance of the benevolent silence
extended to foreign Masonry.
It will be asked, if the Mexicans be true Catholics, how
did they permit all this ? "Well, the Conservatives did their
best to prevent it, but failed, as we did against Cromwell.
And good reason they had ; for, apart from all religious
interests, confiscation, exile, and even death itself awaited
the best families in the country. But the population, even
in 1893, was only 12,000,000, dispersed over a territory
equal to more than one-half of Europe. It is easy to see how
a dictator can tyrannize over such a country if he can only
manage to seize the helm of the state. We must also
remember that the population is not homogeneous ; whites,
19 per cent. ; Mestizos, 43 per cent. ; Indians, 38 per cent.
There are only 10,000 negroes, as slavery did not exist in
this country. The Astecs were a superior race, and were '
treated like the serfs and vassals of Europe at the same
period ; they are now in every way the peers of their old
1 The State gained very little by all this : it was squandered in the execu-
tion, seized by the ' brethren ' and their followers, as in Italy, and paid to
England and the United States for loans advanced to the various revolutionary
governments. The United States lent 26,000,000 dollars to Juarez, in 1868.
All these loans, up to J 868, were unproductive. Since then English and American
money has built railways, &c., which the Church property was to do. Deputies
get 3,000 dollars each.
THE MASONIC PERSECUTION IN MEXICO 269
masters, and have given Presidents to the Kepublic. When
shall we see an Indian President at Washington?
Juarez left the Church of Mexico as prostrate and desolate
as Cromwell had left our own; but Masonry was not satisfied,
the lodges began at once to call for a penal code. The
* brethren ' had shared largely in the plunder, and dreaded
above all things a religious revival. This agitation went on
for two years in the Masonic press, until at last, in 1874, a
penal code elaborated in the lodges,was presented to congress.
The debates began in November, and lasted to the 8th of
December, for there were even Masons who questioned the
prudence of some of its forty articles. The twentieth, which
aimed at the only communities — the hospital sisters — still
remaining after the general wreck, was hotly debated in
several sittings, and from words the legislators came to
blows. The people filled the galleries day after day in a
menacing attitude, for these sisters were extremely popular.
When a deputy protested his honourable motives, and
appealed to those who knew him, the gallery answered, 'Yes,
we know you for a drunkard.' When a moderate deputy
pleaded for the twelve thousand children in the schools of
these sisters, a fanatic shouted, 'Yes, this is their chief crime.'
And so it really was in the eyes of these impious men whose
hatred of Christian education was intensified by the con-
sciousness that it might imperil their title to confiscated
property. One of them exclaimed, ' If we permit this, all
our work will be undone before ten years.' On the 3rd of
December, a deputy named Don Juan Baz made a furious
speech against the poor sisters, and next day a caricature
appeared in which he was photographed to the life with his
musket pointed at two sisters, one of whom was caring a
patient, the other teaching a child to read. Angry protests
arrived from every city in the Kepublic, deputies were
accused of treason to their constituents, the crowds about
the chambers became every day more menacing, until at
last these apostles of liberty turned out the people on the
8th of December, filled the streets with soldiers, closed their
doors, and in the dead of night voted an infaroous penal
code which still disgraces the statue-book of Catholic Mexico.
270 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
It is a unique specimen of hypocrisy and tyranny, as the
reader can easily see from a few of its enactments : —
The liberty of worship is hereby ratified, but it can be
exercised only within the temples, and under the inspection of
the police. An agent of the government shall specially superin-
tend the services of every kind. His jurisdiction shall give him
the right to silence the preacher if he remarks anything deserving
censure.
It is prohibited to exhibit in public any symbol of religion.
The prohibitions against all religious communities are hereby
renewed ; whether their vows be solemn or simple, perpetual or
temporary ; and no matter what may be the end of their institute,
or whether they are subject to one superior or to more than one,
for all this is contrary to personal liberty. No religious costume
shall be tolerated, for it wounds liberty of conscience.
Should anyone bound by vow obey a superior, even though
they do not live in community, that superior shall incur the
penalty which his crime deserves.
The right of association is hereby renewed and ensured to
all the citizens of the Eepublic.
It is easy to imagine the feelings of indignation and
shame which this infamous code aroused in the minds of all
true Mexicans ; the following protest will give some idea of
it. It appeared immediately in all the papers, and received
daily, whole columns of adhesions.
TO THE CONGRESS OP THE REPUBLIC
Gentlemen, the Catholic women of your nation venture to
address your august assembly, making use of the privilege
graciously accorded by your predecessors who, however, reserved
to themselves the right to disregard the complaints of the
oppressed should they happen to be expressed too strongly or
with too much truth. We know that we shall not be heard, for
party spirit sees nothing, hears nothing but the Masonic watch-
word which must be obeyed, were it even to consume the world.
We shall, however, raise our voices to make known the true
sentiments of the people. We do not want the whole world to
attribute to our good and persecuted nation the infamies of
representatives who have betrayed it. We want also to confess
our faith and assuage our indignation. By what right do you
seize our churches, despoil our priests, and demolish our holiest
institutions? Even that collection of trash which you call a
constitution does not authorise this. You proclaim liberty, and
THE MASONIC PERSECUTION IN MEXICO 271
hunt down the ministers of God ; you preach independence, and
enslave the Church ; you give Hberty of association, and banish
four hundred Mexican ladies guilty of the unpardonable crime
of associating for the care of the afflicted.
Gentlemen, you are v^orthy of the Masonry to v^hich you have
sworn obedience, and it may be proud of you ; but the anathemas
of the Church overwhelm you, the people curse you, and every
decent member of society abhors you. For you have left many
a family without bread, thousands of orphans without mothers,
whole populations without teachers, hundreds of sick without
care, and an immense number of unfortunates without consola-
tion or resource. You have saddened the hearts of all honest
people, spread grief and desolation in the bosom of families, and
caused them to shed bitter tears, equal to the libations of your
ignoble feasts. You have insulted the public opinion of which
you pretend to be the organs, and excited the indignation of the
people by turning against them your cannons ; and on coming out
from your brutal session you have gone to wallow in beastly
orgies to celebrate your infamous triumph, like Nero at the burn-
ing of Rome. We declare, in the face of the whole world, that
the man who thus abuses his mission is a traitor ; that he who
thus outrages and insults our sex is a vile and impudent wretch ;
and that he who votes such laws against the religion of his fathers
may be the deputy of the lodges, but not of the Mexican people.
As we see that men who still call themselves Christians tremble
before you, we women bind ourselves by a solemn vow to resist to
the death the impious laws of our modern Julians, and to obey our
pastors, whether they address us from the pulpit, the land of
exile, or the scaffold. We promise never more to recognise as
spouses, sons, or brothers the men who have taken part in this
iniquitous business, and we are ready to suffer with joy every
persecution which this protest may bring upon us. We request
the Catholic journals to publish our protest, with the names of
all the Mexican ladies who may send in their adhesions. We
shall be only too glad if the organs of impiety reproduce it, even
in mockery, in order that the whole world may learn how the
tyranny which sets itself up for law earns the reprobation of all
honest people.
The treason here so often alluded to is the plague of all
those countries. Freemasons get elected under false pre-
tences, and then, without shame or scruple, betray their
constituents. In this way a civil marriage law was recently
enacted in Peru, in spite of the protests of the whole
country and of the Prime Minister, Alejandrode Eomana,
who resigned his office rather than sign this Masonic law.
272 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
And yet, according to the latest statistics in the Masonic
Token, there are only twenty-six lodges in Peru, against two
hundred and forty-five in Mexico, one hundred and eleven
in Brazil, and four hundred and seventy-six in France. It
is a singular fact that the powei* of Masonry, where the
lodges are select and few, is greater than where they are
more numerous in proportion to population. There are one
thousand eight hundred and seventy-four lodges in England,
and three hundred and ninety-six in Ireland, against twenty
in Belgium, and seventy in Portugal.
As the English press seldom gives any Mexican news
but what relates to the rise or fall of its stocks and shares,
some readers who have heard of this terrible persecution
may ask whether the Church still survives in the country.
Well, I shall merely offer in reply a few authentic facts.
Before this terrible persecution the hierarchy consisted of
one archbishop and twelve bishops ; it consists at present of
five archbishops, and twenty-two bishops, thirteen of whom
assisted at the Latin American council, opened at Kome, on
the 28th of May. There was no provincial council held in
Mexico since 1771 ; there have been five since 1894. To
ensure the gradual extinction of the ministry, Juarez not
only banished all the bishops, but confiscated the diocesan
seminaries. Visitors to the city of Mexico will remember
the splendid Hotel Gillow. Its history is connected with
the seminaries. It was built for the archdiocese by
Mr. Gillow, a Lancashire gentleman who had married a
Mexican heiress ; and was ready to be presented to the
Archbishop when the confiscations began ; seeing no chance
of its being used for the purpose intended, Mr. Gillow sold
it for an immense sum which, as we shall see, went to found
a seminary for another archdiocese later on. His only son,
heir to his immense fortune, is now Archbishop of Oaxaca
(Antiquera) where he has built a seminary, a college, an
hospital, and numerous schools. All the bishops have
reopened or founded seminaries. To give an idea of the
difficulties they had to overcome, one instance will suffice.
The Bishop of Merida had a fine seminary, which the
Government turned into municipal offices; he transferred
THE MASONIC PERSECUTlOlsr IN MEXICO 273
the students to a private house ; but in 1877, at midnight,
they were turned into the street by the police, and the
house was closed up. This was an act of illegal violence,
but there was no use in appealing to a Masonic court which
had been installed in his own seminary. Still, he did not
give up ; he lodged the students in private families, and
brought them daily to class in the cathedral ; after a time he
took another house, and from that day to this his seminary
has continued its work. I may remark, that the exiled
bishops had returned under the empire, and for some reason
or other were not again banished on its fall,
A special feature in Mexican piety is their extraordinary
veneration for the Mother of God. Missionaries and dollars
were poured into the country from the United States, and
got churches, schools, and every kind of encouragement
from the Masonic Government. They 'began by denounc-
ing * Mariolatry,' but soon found that they had begun at the
wrong end. In their annual reports, not content with
denouncing 'Mexican bigotry,' they complain, that only for
the protection of the police their lives would be in danger,
especially in the Indian villages. In their very last reports
they confess that the Mexican mission is a complete failure*
Even the very Masons who patronize them will not profess
themselves converts to Protestantism.^
The one thing on which Masonry relies for permanent
results is godless education ; it is in such full operation in
Mexico that no one can open even a private school without
using the Government class books. They have endeavoured
to make Catholic schools and colleges impossible by the law
against religious communities ; and yet their godless educa-
tion is everywhere confronted by Catholic schools and
colleges. The laity, so long accustomed to have everything
done for them out of the wealth of the Church, have nobly
done their duty in this most vital emergency.
^ The Story of the Nations is very reticent on this point ; it merely says
(p. 414) : ' Since 1868 a movement in favour of the Protestant h^pi8(.-opal Church
has increased to one of importance. Other Protestant denominations maintain
missions in different parts of the country. There is still a wide field open
in Mexico for teaching the natives of Anahuae the simple tenets of the religion
of Christ.'
VOL. VI. s
274 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Missions were, in the best of times, absolutely necessary
in Mexico ; and this was thoroughly understood in the lodges.
Scattered over immense areas, the villagers were often whole
years without seeing a priest. But they were full of faith,
and came immense distances to hear the word of God and
receive the sacraments when the missionaries came among
them. All this was gall and wormwood to the Masons, who
often endeavoured to put a stop to it by fanatical harangues
and open violence. They at last thought to dry up the
source by completely dispersing the religious. But here
again their malice was defeated. The dispersed religious,^
and even secular priests, continued the missions even at the
risk of their lives, and the faith of the people rose to the
occasion. There was no law against these individual
missions, but the * brethren ' found means to make up for
this. Bandits, calling themselves Liberals, got a free hand ;
not daring to attack the Padres during the missions, they
lay in wait for them, brought them off to their lairs, held
them to plagiar (ransom), and subjected them to every
species of indignity and hardship until the stipulated sum
was paid. When the reader learns that the missions were
continued in face of this satanic violence, he can form some
idea of the temper of the clergy and people in Mexico. For
the past twenty years this Masonic violence has ceased, and
these missions are more flourishing than ever.
Masonry established the liberty of the press chiefly to
calumniate the Church and corrupt public morals ; well, in
1870, two Catholic associations — one of ladies, the other of
gentlemen — arose as if by magic, and had at once thousands
of members ; their object is to combat impiety, and sustain
the Church by means of the press and every other legal
1 The Story of the Nations tells us, (page 413), that, with the exception of
the Jesuits, they were allowed to remain in the country as individuals. In
justice to Juarez, we must observe that he had recourse to no Tudor hypocrisy
of • correcting abuses ' ; it was all a pure stand-and-deliver business from first
to last. It was not a mere disestablishment such as we have seen in our own
time in Ireland, The exception against the Jesuits is another instance of
Masonic unity of principle and conduct all the world over. And yet English
Masonry pretends to have no responsibility for the fanatical, or even the
atheistical doings of its foreign brethren.
THE MASONIC PERSECUTION IN MEXICO 275
weapon. It is to the Catholic press worked by these associa-
tions we owe our knowledge of the savage deeds of Masonry
in those days.
I have now before me a letter written by a priest who
saw Mexico from end to end in 1880. He says : —
I arrived under the full conviction that piety had been extin-
guished, and the work of the Church made impossible. But I
soon found out my mistake. To my astonishment I found an
extraordinary spirit of religion and piety in all classes of society.
All external manifestations are prohibited, and the Church is no
longer able to give the old eclat to her solemnities ; but this has
only served to develop interior piety more and more. One sees
every day rehgious festivals at which the faithful assist in great
numbers and with evident fervour. In the capital the Forty
Hours are kept during the whole year; retreats for men and
women are frequent and attended by immense numbers. Many
fervent Christians discipline themselves eVen unto blood to
appease the wrath of God. The priests diligently and courageously
preach the word of God ; numerous members are enrolled in the
various confraternities ; the conferences of St. Vincent de Paul,
and the Ladies of Charity, labour with boundless zeal to multiply
the Catholic schools. The Children of Mary abound, constantly
wearing their blue ribbon, and exercise immense influence.^ The
attendance at daily Mass, the anxiety to hear the word of God,
and the number of daily communicants, are striking features in
this great capital. On the feast of the Assumption, without any
special invitation, there were more than twelve thousand com-
munions at the cathedral, and, at least, fifty thousand in the city.
And who furnishes on great feasts those .rich ornaments, those
tapestries of silk velvet with gold lace, which cover the walls,
those countless wax lights, this exquisite music ? The faithful
people for whom the Church used to provide all this before the
Masonic spoliations. I heard of one sacristan who had for such
purposes received donations to the amount of two thousand
pounds.
These facts bring us down to 1880^ Since then, for one
reason or another, moderate counsels have prevailed ; stable
government and some sort of legality have continued. The
Church, though crippled in every way, has made good use of
^ After the enactment of the penal code in 187-i, the authorities made war
upon this blue ribbon, but it is quite clear that the ladies soon defeated ihem,
for in 1880 they gloried in wearing their ribbon everywhere and at all times.
276 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
the little liberty left to her.-^ By the merciless suppression
of all her religious communities and the strict prohibition of
new ones, Masonry has tied up her right arm. Who is to
conduct the seminaries and colleges ? Who is to continue
the missions? Who is to conduct the Catholic primary
schools ? Who is to give a Christian education to the girls
of the middle and upper classes ? Who is to manage in a
Christian spirit the orphanages, industrial schools, reforma-
tories, &c.
But why do not these earnest Catholics strive to repeal
this Masonic code ? Alas ! it is much easier to enact such
laws than to repeal them. Proud men do not like going to
Canossa. The Centre is the strongest party in the German
Eeichsrath, and now occupies the presidency, and yet it has
not repealed the May laws ; it could easily do so by blocking
necessary legislation ; but it is too patriotic for this ; they
prefer to practise a little patience and bide their time. This
is exactly the attitude of Mexican Catholics. The country
is slowly recovering from nearly a century of revolutions, the
latest in 1877 ; Masonry has no patriotism, and would require
only a slight pretext to disturb this much-needed peace — the
longest which the Kepublic has ever known. Kather than
furnish them with a pretext the Catholics prefer to bide
their time, using meanwhile the liberty allowed them. The
President, Porfirio Diaz, now in his fourth term, is a
moderate man ; the Vatican is represented by an Apostolic
Delegate ; and there is no disposition to strain the law, as
was done in 1874, against the ribbons of the Children of
Mary. The greatest injury inflicted at present by this penal
code is the impossibility of employing communities of any
kind ; they could do nothing with such a code hanging over
them. The President's fourth term expires in 1901 ; he will
1 The Story of the Nations (p. 413) says : * In any of the smaller cities and
towns the parish priest, almost without exception, is a worthy and faithftil
cura, of devout and godly reputation and leading among his flock a simple
life, wholly occupied in ministering to his charge according to the best of his
abilities. Since the enactment of the laws of the reform there is nothing to
tempt men to adopt their calling, but their love of God and genuine interest in
the welfare of their parish, often composed lor the most part of ignorant
Indians.'
THE MASONIC PERSECUTION IN MEXICO 277
then be in his seventy-first year, and who or what his
successor may be no one could safely predict for such a
country. As a Liberal he took part in every revolution of
his time, and this is his chief claim to popularity with his
party. Though Eepublican in theory, the Government is
very personal in practice. Juarez and Diaz, of the same
race, differed much in their ideas of government, as we
have seen.
The writer on Mexico, in the Story of the Nations
tells us,^
The general testimony of such observers as civil engineers,
telegraph men, and others who in the development of the
resources of the country have penetrated remote parts of it, is
that the native Mexican is peaceful and quiet in disposition,
leading a domestic life with his faithful wife, fond of his children,
and diligently toiling to support his family. ,
We may be sure that such people are the victims, not
the authors, of revolutions. The same writer tells us,^
* that in 1880, for the second time in the history of the
Eepublic the retiring President gave over his office to his
legally elected successor.' Porfirio Diaz has been thrice
peacefully installed since then; should a new revolution
break out in 1901, the reader will know where to locate the
blame: it will be the work of some ambitious soldier of
fortune trained in the Masonic lodges.
P. Burton.
1 Page 415 2 Pa^e 398.
[ 278 ]
ino
DOCUMENTS
MAY A BISHOP YIELD HIS THRONE TO ANOTHER
DECRETUM QUOAD DUBIUM AN EPISCOPUS DIOECESANUS lURB
FRUATUR CEDENDI THRONUM SUUM ALTERI EPISCOPO ETC.
Quum tanta commeandi ac itinerum suscipiendorum et perfi-
ciendorum facilitas illud etiam commodi attulerit, ut Episcopi
diversaruoi Dioecesium saepius conveniant, sive ad festum aliquod
solemnius agendum, sive ad coetus episcopales celebrandos,
quaesitum est : utrum liceat Episcopo Dioecesano thronum suum
alteri Episcopo cedere. Hinc Sacra Eituum Congregatio quaes -
tionem super hac throni cessione sibi pluries delatam, studiose
pertractare opportunum duxit. Quare ab £^mo ac Emo Diio
Cardinali Andrea Steinhuber Eelatore, in Ordinariis comitiis
subsignata die ad Vaticanum habitis, propositum fuit dubium :
* An Episcopus Dioecesanus gaudeat iure cedendi thronum suum
alteri Episcopo cum Emorum Canonicorum adsisfcentia sibi
debita?'
Et Sacra eadem Congregatio, exquisito voto Commissionis
Liturgicae, omnibusque accurate discussis atque perpensis,
rescribendum censuit : Affirmative, dummodo Episcopus invitatus
non sit ipsius Dioecesani Coadjutor, aut Auxiliaris aut Vicarius
Generalis, aut etiam Dignitas seu Canonicus in illius Ecclesiis.
Sicut autem Cardinales Episcopi Suburbicarii aliique Titulares
Ecclesiarum Urbis tantum Purpuratis Patribus thronum cedere
possunt, ita Praesules Cardinales aliarum dioecesium decet ut
suum thronum nonnisi aliis eadem Cardinalitia dignitate ornatis
cedant. Die 9 Mail, 1899.
Facta postmodum de his Sanctissimo Domino Nostro Leoni
Papae XIII. per infrascriptum Cardinalem Sacrae Eituum Con-
gregationi Praefectum relatione, Sanctitas Sua Eescriptum Sacrae
ipsius Congregationis ratum habuit et confirmavit, die 12 lunii,
eodem anno.
C. Card. Mazzella, S, R. C. Praef.
L. ^ S.
D. Panici, S, B. C. Secret.
DOCUMENTS 279
REaUIEM MASS WITH CHANT, ETC.
DECRETUM I DUBIUM QUOAD MISSAM EXEQUIALBM CUM C4NTU ETC.
InstantibusaliquibusParochis,Sacrorum Rituum Congregationi
sequens dubium propositum fuit : * An pro paupere defuncto,
cuius familia impar est solvendi expensas Missae exequialis cum
cantu, conceditur. Et Sacra eadem Congregatio, exquisito voto
Commissionis Liturgicae, omnibusque rite expensis, rescribendum
censuit : Affirmative, seu permitti posse in casu Missam exequi-
alem lectam, loco Missae cum cantu, dummodo in dominicis
aliisque festis de praecepto non omittatur Missa officio dial
currentis respondens. Die 9 Maii, 1899.
Quibus omnibus Sanctissimo Domino Nostro Leoni Pp. XIII.
per infrascriptum Cardinalem Sacrae Rituum Congregationi
Praefectum relatis, Sanctitas Sua Rescriptum Sacrae ipsius Con-
gregationis ratum habuit et confirmavit. pie 12 Junii, eodem
anno.
C. Card. Mazzella, S. H. C, Praefectus,
L. i^S.
Diomedes Panici, S. B. C, Secretarius.
\
OCOUBRENCE OF FEASTS
romana dubium quoad praecedentiam in occurrentia duorum
FESTORUM etc.
Hodiernus Parochus Ecclesiae S. Catharinae a Rota de Urbe
a Sacra Rituum Congregatione sequentis dubii solutionem
humillime flagitavit, nimirum : An festum fixum prae mobili et
magis proprium prae minus proprio, quae duo festa in occurrentia,
ceteris paribus, praecedentia pollent iuxta iRubricas generales
Breviarii Tit. X. n. 6, eadem gaudeant praecedentia etiam in
concurrentia ?
Et Sacra Rituum Congregatio, referente subscripto Secret ario,
audito etiam voto Commissionis Liturgicae, omnibusque accurate
expensis, respondendum censuit :
Negative.
Atque ita rescripsit die 19 Maii, 1899.
C. Card. Mazzella, S.R. C, Praef.
L. ii« S.
Diomedes Panici, S. R. C, Secret,
280 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
VESPERS OF THE CHAPTER
CAUKIEN. DUBIA QUOAD CONSUETUDINEM PEBSOLVENDI VESPERAS
A CANONICIS
E. D. Vincentius Cosme, Sacerdos et "Caeremoniarum Magister
Ecclesiae Cathedralis Caurien. de consensu sui Emi Ordinarii
sequentium dubiorum solutionem a Sacra Eituum Congregatione
humillime expostulavit, nimirum :
In Ecclesia Cathedral! Caurien, viget consuetudo persolvendi
vesperas a Canonicis, cum cantu, etiam in duplicibus minoribua,
semiduplicibus, simplicibus et feriis ; quam consuetudinem, iuxta
Decretum in Derthonen. d.d. 22 Maii, 1841, ipsi servare tenentur ;
sed cum in praedictis vesperis Celebrans est paratus, altare
thurificatur et per statutum speciale eiusdem Ecclesiae assistunt
due Beneficiati pluvialibus parati. Quaeritur :
I. An in Vesperis, ita persolvendis, servandum sit Caeremo-
niale Episcoporum ?
II. An attenta consuetudine, Celebrans possit manere in
habitu chorali usque ad Capitulum, et tunc tantum assumere
pluviale ?
III. An praedieti pluvialistae assistere debeant Celebranti
thurificationem altaris facienti ?
IV. An si faciendae sunt commemorationes, persolvendae
sint cum cantu propter uniformitatem ?
Et Sacra eadem Congregatio ad relationem subscript! Secre-
tarii, audito etiam voto Commissionis Liturgicae, omnibusque
perpensis, rescribendum censuit :
Ad I. Affirmative,
Ad II. Negative.
Ad III. et IV. Affirmative.
. Atque ita rescripsit die 19 Maii, 1899.
0. Card. Mazzella, S. E. C, Praefectus.
DiOMEDES Panici, S. E. C, Secretarius,
FUNERAL OF CANONS
DUBIA QUAE OCCURRUNT SAEPE IN EXEQUIIS
E. D. Emmanuel Martinez Garcia Caeremoniarum Magister
Cathedralis Ecclesiae Gaditanae, de consensu sui Eevmi Episcopi,
sequentia dubia quae frequentur occurrunt in exequiis, Sacrae
DOCUMENTS 281
Rituum Congregationi pro opportuna solutione humillimc exposuit,
nimirum :
I. Cum sepeliendum est cadaver alicuius Canonici sou Benefi-
ciati huius Cathedralis Ecclesiae Gaditanae, iuxta consuetudinem
duae cruces praeferuntur in processione ; una processionalis
Ecclesiae Cathedralis, altera quae dicitur Capitularis. Quum
autem Rituale Romanum tit. 6, cap 3, n. 1. dicat : * clerico prae-
ferente crucem,' quaeritur : Utrum tolerari possit haec con-
suetude ? et quatenus negative, quaenam ex dictis crucibus
praeferenda sit ?
II. Circa modum quo cadaver componendum est, inter alia
praecipit Rituale tit. 5. cap. 8, n. 4 : * ac parva crux super pectus
inter manus defuncti ponatur, aut ubi crux desit, manus in
modum crucis componantur.' Quum autem in Dioecesi Gaditana
et in aliis eiusdem regionis adsit consuetudo ponendi inter manus
defuncti (si fuerit sacerdos) non parvam crucem, sed potius
calicem'qui aliquando solet esse argenteus, et ad Missae cele-
brationem assignatus, quaeritur : Permitti potest haec praxis ?
III. Circa translationem cadaveris e domo in coemeterium
omnes docent deferendum esse pedibus versus ulterius, si laicus
fuerit defunctus; sin autem clericus, non omnes conveniunt.
Aliqui auctores docent in hoc postremo casu cadaver esse defer-
endum pedibus retro, et huic opinioni favet praxis, in aliquibus
locis servata, deferendi clericorum cadavera capite versus ulterius.
Etiam textus Ritualis congruere videtur huic sententiae dum
asserit : ' presbyteri vero habeant caput versus altare : ' tit 6,
cap. 1, n. 17. Quaeritur ergo, utrum tenenda sit haec sententia
et praxis ?
IV. In Rituali tit. 6, cap. 3, n. 1 legitur: 'parocho praecedente
feretrum ' : hoc non obstante, in civitate Gaditanao viget con
suetudo, qua defunctus, si e clero cathedrali sit, defertur prae-
cedens eum, qui officium sepulturae peragit, id est in medio
eorum qui assistunt processioni. Estne toleranda haec consuetudo ?
V. Quum Rituale dicat tit. 6, cap. 4, n. 4 : ' lectiones leguntur
tolerari potest consuetudo eas decantandi, praecipue vero si ita
fiat a musicorum coetu, prout fit in Cathedrali Ecclesia Gaditana
quoad primam et secundam lection em ? .
Et sacra eadem Congregatio, referente subscripto Secretario,
exquisito etiam voto Commissionis Liturgicae, attentis expositis,
respondendum censuit :
Ad. I. quoad primam quaestionem ; Negative; et quoad
282 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
alteram : Crux GapitulariSj quae est etiam Crux Ecclesiae
Cathedralis.
Ad II. Affirmative, dummodo calix adhibeatur que Missae
non inserviat.
Ad III. NegativBy et cadaver ciuscumque defuncti pedibus
per viara deferatur : in Ecclesia autem quoad Sacerdotes servetur
Rituale Romanum.
Ad IV. Servetur Bituale Bomanum^
Ad V. Affirmative.
Atque ita rescripsit, die 8 lunii 1899.
C. Card. Mazzella, Praef.
L. ^ S.
D. Panici, S. B. C. Seer.
[ 283 ] ^'-^
NOTICES OF BOOKS
Tnstitutiones Theologiae Moralis. Auctore Bernard
Tepe, S.J. Paris ; Lethielleux.
The student of moral theology generally finds in ordinary text-
books two things unavoidably wanting. The one is a clear and
reasoned statement of the general principles which the treatise
applies to particular cases. It is impossible, with the mass of
details which have to be discussed, to do more than lay down
very briefly the principles which underlie the conclusions arrived
at. To explain their ultimate reason, and the foundations on
which they are based, is impossible, except in the most cursory
fashion. The result of this is, that the student has constantly to
be satisfied with a decision based simply on authority, without
being able to see the process by which it is reached. The second
deficiency of which he is conscious, as he pursues his study of
moral theology, is the absence of a sufficient discussion of what we
may call the positive side of the subject. The one idea which seems
to run through every text-book is that of telling him all about the
sins he is to avoid, without any exposition of the virtues that he
is to practise. He is tempted to think that perhaps there is some
sort of foundation for the charges brought by Protestants against
Catholic text-books, that they dwell almost exclusively on the
* seamy ' side of human nature, and appear to be looking out for
every possible sin that a man may possibly commit, instead of
bracing him up to virtue, and inculcating moral virtues, the
presence of which necessarily exclude the sins against which he
is so elaborately warned. The utter falsity of such a notion is
indeed clear enough to everyone who has had sad experience of
human frailty ; and most priests will accuse their books of moral
theology of giving them too little rather than too much instruction,
in the almost innumerable varieties of sin to which poor human
nature is exposed. But, at the same time, everyone must desiderate
sometimes a book which will not make sins to be avoided its main
subject, but which will dwell more largely on the pleasant
prospect of virtues to be acquired, and points of perfection to be
aimed at, and that may help the confessor in the more congenial
task of leading on his penitents to the practice of those sweet
284 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
works of supererogation which those outside the Church so
strangely misunderstand.
These two wants are admirably supplied by the book lately
published by F. Tepe, whose many years of teaching at St. Beuno's
College, N. Wales, have given him a "grasp of theological prin-
ciples of which he makes good use in the present volumes for the
benefit of the student of moral theology. He makes no attempt
to discuss any moral details, or to supply rules for the immediate
solution of cases of casuistry ; but in his first volume he treats of
the various aspects of human acts, the binding force of conscience,
probabilism, and the ultimate sanction of laws, human and divine,
ecclesiastical and civil, as well as the amount and character of
the obligation they impose on conscience. It is easy to see how
many interesting and important questions present themselves
under these various heads, and what an excellent propaedeutic
they form for one who is commencing the study of the details of
moral theology.
In his second volume, after a preliminary discussion of the
general nature of sin, and the distinction between mortal and
venial sin, F. Tepe passes on to the loftier regions of the infused
virtues, in general and in detail ; to the gifts and fruits of the
Holy Spirit, and to the perfection aimed at in religious life.
This volume is not merely a basis for moral action considered in
detail. It is also a treatise of high spirituality, and suggests
ideas and principles of a most practical nature. It supplies
sound material for a series of meditations, and the preacher will
find in it a treasure-house of valuable matter for sermons. We
take by way of instance, the very first passage we light upon. It
is a Scholion respecting the gift of Wisdom, and runs thus : —
Wisdom, as a gift of the Holy Spirit, is not only speculative,
but also practical. The reason is that it does not rest on God
merely as the object of our intellect, but considers Him also, as
being infinitely good, infinitely beautiful, infinitely worthy of our
love ; and thus it is of its own nature a means of attaining to true
sanctity and to an intimate union with God. Hence, although
it is essentially in the understanding, yet it has joined to it of
necessity an act of the will, so that by this gift God is not only
intimately known but also ardently loved. The contemplative
life, says St. Thomas, although it essentially consists in an act
of the intellect, yet has its source in the will, inasmuch as it is
by charity that a man is led on to the contemplation of God.
And since the end corresponds to the source, it follows that the
end and object of the contemplative life has its being in the will,
NOTICES OF BOOKS 285
when anyone takes delight in beholding the object of his love,
and this delight intensifies his love of the object he beholds.
Hence, Gregory says : that when anyone beholds one whom he
loves, his love is kindled more towards the object he beholds.
This is the perfection of the contemplative life, that the Divine
Truth be not only seen, but also loved, (pages 296, 297.)
We recommend this book to all priests and students of
theology, as one that will not only be a useful accompaniment of
their theological studies, but most useful for spiritual reading,
and for enabling them to make solid progress in the spiritual
life.
The King's Mother, By Lady Margaret Domville.
London : Burns and Gates, Ltd. 3s. 6d.
Mrs. Markham's Nieces. By Francis Kershaw. London :
Burns and Gates, Ltd. Ss. Qd.
The Child of God. By Mother Mary Loyola London :
Bums and Gates, Ltd. 35. 6d.
The first volume at the head of this list is an appreciative and
graceful sketch of a very interesting and very worthy English-
woman. Henry VII. was a really great king, though his name,
is eclipsed by that of his saintly son, and it is no exaggeration to
say that his mother, the Countess of Eichmond, contributed
largely to the formation of his character and the achievement of
his successes. A loyal daughter of the Church, a generous
benefactress of the poor, a munificent patroness of religion and
of letters, ' her death,' in the words of Bishop Fisher, * gave all
England cause for weeping. ' Cardinal Newman once intended to
write her life, but the project was abandoned for reasons that have
become historic. An essay by Miss Halstsd and a memoir by
Charles H. Cooper were the only attempts made hitherto in that
direction. Lady Margaret Domville has at length done full
justice to her memory. The mother of the first Tudor king could
not have found a more sympathetic biographer.
Miss Kershaw's devotion to the cause of Catholic literature
needs no proof to-day. To be sure her Bahy^ her Little Snow-
white, and Mrs. Markham's Nieces have no pretence to any kind
of greatness ; but they are pleasant, harmless reading, excellent
in tone and aim, and they may be the forerunners of something
destined to survive herself.
286 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Mother Mary Loyola is already favourably known to readers
of her First Communion. The Child of God is another children's
book, characterized by the same liveliness of treatment and wealth
of familiar illustration as its predecessor. A thoughtful preface
from the pen of Fr. Thurston, S.J., graces the elegant volume.
We believe there can scarcely be any need to recommend it to the
favourable notice of Mother M. Loyola's sisters in religion ; there
could not be many books found more suitable for a convent
library. It tells in a homely way what comes of our baptism ; it
interests the reader by dialogues, short stories, and interrogations;
it developes the Catholic doctrine on the effects of baptism in a
manner that renders its explanation to children an easy matter,
and yet a befitting dignity of style is maintained throughout. It
is altogether a useful and beautiful book, and will suit many
' children ' who are no longer young in years.
E.N.
A Dead Man's Diaky. By Coulson Kernahan. London :
Ward, Locke & Co. Price 6d.
We confess to a feeling of sadness on laying down this six-
penny booklet. It is so surpassingly beautiful in language; it
bespeaks an imagination of so high an order ; its moral tone is so
nigh ; its ideals so lofty ; its religious sincerity so unmistakable,
that one grieves to find them misspent in the cause of a Christi-
anity that is fragmentary and inadequate. A Protestantism akin
to Dean Farrar's runs through the book ; and surely such a system
can never generate what the author evidently yearns for — purity
of life. May the kindly light of the true faith burst in mid-day
effulgence on his soul, and secure his services for the dissemina-
tion of Catholic truth !
DiRECTOiEE DE l'Enseignement Keligieux, Par I'Abbe
Dementhon. Librairie Delhomme et Briguet. Paris,
Prix 3 fr. 50 c.
In the introduction to this work the rev. author points out the
inadequacy of the religious instruction given to the Catholic youth
of France, and its consequent baneful and only too plainly visible
effect on the French Church. In the work itself he explains his
views with regard to the system of religious education that should
be followed, and the organization that should be carried out. He
insists on the fact that the knowledge of revealed truth that
NOTICES OF BOOKS 287
would suffice for the labouring class, will not do for the educated ;
the latter will necessarily come into contact with those who
regard religion as the offspring of ignorance or deceit, or at best
as a matter of perfect indifference. Finally, he points out the
obligation of those responsible for the training of young people to
have them so grounded in the principles of religion that they
shall be able to answer current objections, and give a reason for
the faith that is in them.
We think that, unfortunately, there are good grounds for
believing that things are not much better here amongst us ;
that those leaving our schools and colleges are not sufficiently
trained to fight the battles that will have to be fought if their
faith is to be kept bright and unsullied. On this account, as well
as on account of the intrinsic good qualities of the book, we have
great pleasure in recommending the Abbe Dementhon's work.
J.J.H.
The History of Enniscorthy. By H. H. Grattan Flood.
The History of Enniscorthy is an octavo volume of close on
two hundred and fifty pages, and may be procured for the modest
sum of three shillings and sixpence. Its author expresses a hope
in his preface that his work will supply a long-felt want. Well,
we think his hopes run a far better chance of being realized than
those of many who use that time-worn expression. His history
will be welcomed by those who take an interest in the fine old
town of which he writes, or in the gallant stand in defence of
their homesteads, the virtue of their women, and the free exercise
of their religion made by the brave but ill-starred followers of the
Fathers Murphy. He deserves to be congratulated on his pains-
taking reseach and strict impartiality. His style, though some-
what bald, is clear and strong.
J.J.H.
Saoesse Pratique. Par T Abbe Collin. Libraire Delhomme
et Briguet, Paris. Prix 3 fr. 50 c.
Sagesse Pratique is a translation of a German work written by
E. P. Weiss, of the Order of St. Dominic. Though we have not
seen the original, we venture to pronounce the translation a
success, otherwise the language and idiom could not be so
thoroughly French.
Sagesse Pratique is intended for the use of students in univer-
288 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
sities and colleges. It is a collection of essays written at different
times, many of them in the sick-room. The essays may be
divided into three groups. Those of the first group treat of the
dogmas of the Catholic religion ; education under its many-sided
aspects is discussed in the second ; in the third batch the author
gives practical advice, and undertakes to teach the readers of his
book 'how to get on.' The book is written in a quaint, old-
world style. Though it contains nothing new, it puts things in a
striking way.
We think it a pity that the publishers compressed the work
into five hundred pages ; the print is trying on the eyes, and is
not as good as is generally found in the publications of Messrs.
Delhomme and Briguet.
J. J. H.
THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL
* In Dei administratione, multa a nobis nisi in obsouris aenigmatis perspici
nequeunt ; sive hac ratione arrogantiam nostram coercere velit ; sive nos ad
eeterna revocare.' — Greg. Nazianz. Orat \1 post, reconcil,
PAET I. — PHYSICxVL EVIL
AMONG the various problems that come before us
from time to time, to disturb and trouble our
equanimity, one of the most formidable is, perhaps,
the existence of evil. Generation after generation
has to face this difficulty in turn, and it is very important
that sound Catholic ideas should be formed on the subject,
and that the faithful should not be led away by the false
and dangerous theories of certain worldly-minded men.
Evil undoubtedly exists. It is all around us. Why does
it exist ? Why does not God exercise His omnipotence to
stamp it out ? Why does He not interfere when things are
going wrong, and the innocent suffer even more than the
guilty ? Such questions are ever in men s minds, and any
particularly sad and distressing event, such as an earth-
quake, an inundation, a war, or a pestilence, or even a
serious conflagration, such as that of the bazaar at Paris a
year or two ago, is enough to bring them to the surface.
This difficulty forms one of the favourite topics of tb^e
atheist and the unbeliever. He will select some individual
case that has especially struck him, and then proceed to
enlarge upon it, and to weave together his poor but mis-
chievous human theories. * Look,' he will cry oat, /just look
FOURTH SERIES, VOL. VI. — OCTOBKR, 189^. T
290 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
at yon unfortuoate cripple. See ; he was born into this
world a mass of deformity. Never will he be able to walk, or
run. His whole career is blighted. His life must ever be a
miserable one, and devoid of all pleasure and enjoyment.
Contemplate his state, and then tell me : why did God
allow such a monstrosity to be created ? Do you say that
God is good ? Will you seek to excuse Him ? If you urge
that God could not prevent it, then I reply, He is not
almighty ; and if not almighty, then not God at all. Or do
you prefer to say that He might have prevented it, and
could have arranged things differently, but would not ?
Well, then I declare, if God could easily have prevented it,
and He nevertheless refused to do so. He is neither good
nor merciful, nor even just ; and if not good nor just — then
not God at all ; and I, for one, will not believe in Him.'
Some little time ago chance brought me into contact
with a young lady whose mother was lying seriously ill.
The daughter was naturally in the deepest grief. She had
no brothers or sisters. Her father died when she was a
child, and her mother was, to use her own words, ' the only
true friend she had in the world.' The poor girl felt she
could not live without her. Accordingly, she prayed, and
prayed, and prayed that God would spare the life she held
so dear. But, in spite of all her entreaties, the disease ran
its ordinary course ; and, finally, the mother breathed out
her last. Then the girl arose from her knees, and, in a fit
of passionate vexation and disappointment, declared with
many a bitter oath, that she neither would nor could
believe any longer in the existence of a good and merciful
God.
This attitude of mind is not only very awful and very
sinful, but it is also most foolish and unreasonable, and
indicative of excessive pride and presumption ; yet similar
expressions may be heard, again and again, from the lips
not only of unbelievers, but even of some unthinking and
foolish Christians. It may be well to make some considera-
tions on this subject without further preamble. We will
be^in, then, by observing that—
1. It is the acme of conceit and stupidity for ignorance
THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL 291
to attempt to sit in judgment on the acts and decisions of
Infinite Wisdom.
2. When reason itself supplied us with innumerable
and irrefragable proofs of God's goodness and love, it is
absurd to set aside and to ignore all these proofs on the
very first difficulty that presents itself.
3. We look over the earth, and we behold many
things which strike us as cruel, wrong, inconsiderate; and
unjust, and we may, in our folly, dare to blame and censure
the great Ruler of the universe ; yet this can be ascribed
solely to our imperfect and partial knowledge. It is abso-
lutely certain that could we see the wliole of God's plan,
and could we read, as God reads not merely the immediate,
but also the ultimate consequences of things, our difficulties
would disappear. Yes, were it possible for us to gaze, as He
gazes, into the infinite future, and to tell, as He can tell,
precisely how the present will affect that future, and how
every individual event and circumstance works out and fits
in with every other, according to one great symmetrical plan,
we should at once reahze and perceive that whatever God
does is good ; that whatsoever He permits is permitted for
some wise, beneficent, and loving purpose ; and that often
His highest and greatest favours come to us in disguise ;
yea, that not unfrequently He is most kind and most consi-
derate precisely in those things in which He appears to be
the harshest and the most cruel. When Joseph was sold
into Egypt by his own brethren, who would have imagined
that that was in reality the first step in the process of his
exaltation as ruler of Egypt and chief magistrate and
official of the king ?
But from these general considerations we will pass to a
more detailed exposition of our subject. Evil. What is
evil ? In its widest sense I take it to be whatever hinders
or interferes with justice, truth, order, comfort, happiness,
and the general harmony and perfection of existence.
From this definition, it is clear that there are two distinct
kinds of evil, viz , physical and moral. By physical evil we
mean all that interferes with our physical and material well-
being, such as poverty, sickness, disease, hunger, thirst,
292 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
hard and painful work, the loss of friends, of property, of
reputation, old age, and, of course, death. In this paper we
will confine ourselves to the consideration of physical evil.
The question of moral evil we will, with the editor's per-
mission, deal with at a future time. •
The question, then, before us is : Does the presence of
physical evil in the world really indicate any want of perfect
goodness on the part of the Supreme Being who rules our
destinies ? To answer this query, we must begin by striving
to see things from God's point ot view, and in so far as it is
possible, with God's own eyes. We must set clearly before
us the divine purpose and intention. If this world were the
only world, and if this life were the only life, we might find
some difficulty in joining issue with the atheist and the
scoffer. But so soon as we realize that this present and
momentary existence is but a prelude to, and a preparation
for another, and an eternal one, and that the whole purpose
of God's Providence is to fit and dispose us for that other,
our difficulties lose their force, and grow weaker and weaker,
until, at last, what we call physical evil is found to be, in
sober truth, no evil at all. It is admitted by every theologian,
that moral excellence and moral worth, or, in other words,
the existence, expansion, and promulgation of supernatural
virtue, is of immeasurably greater importance than mere
mental and bodily comfort, and physical perfection, whether
of the individual or of the race. To grow rich in grace, in
sanctity, and in merit, is infinitely preferable to any advance
in material wealth. Consequently, God by reason of His
very goodness, will often sacrifice a man's physical interests
for the sake of his spiritual interests. To preserve what is
higher and better. He will lovingly allow him to be deprived
of what is lower and of less value. That is to say, God
permits physical evil, in order that He may promote and
increase the sum of moral good. Hence, so far from being
shocked at the sight of physical evil around us, we should
be filled with admiration at the thought that God can, and
actually does, draw so much good of a higher and more
permanent kind out of evil itself.
Let me state the case thus : — (1) God is infinitely good.
1*He existence of evil 293
(2) Because of His goodness He sincerely desires for His
creatures the highest good of which they are capable.
(3) Consequently, He will desire both their physical and
their moral good, in so far, be it always understood, as
the one is compatible with the other. (4) Where they
conflict He will obviously prefer the higher to the lower.
Hence, since their moral good is as much above their purely
physical good as eternity is above time, and as heaven is
above earth, He will in thousands of instances manifest,
by external acts, His preference for the former over the
latter. In fact, where He foresees that their moral good
may be increased and advanced by the whole or partial
withdrawal of their worldly prosperity or bodily health, it
would be but in accordance with His known goodness and
love were He to deprive them of the lesser for the sake of
the greater. Perhaps my meaning may be best illustrated
by means of the following touching incident which came to
my knowledge a few years ago.
An Australian golddigger, after years of successful
digging in the goldfields, was returning home with his
prize when a terrific storm arose. After some hours the
ship foundered, and he found himself amid the waves
struggling for dear life. Around his waste was a belt full of
golden nuggets, the hard-earned fruit of years of toil. He
soon became convinced that he could never hold out, nor
reach the shore with this dead weight clinging to him and
dragging him down. The gold was indeed precious — yes,
most precious. But his life ? Ah ! That was immeasurably
more precious still. Well he understood, in that extreme
moment, the wisdom of sacrificing the less for the sake of
the greater. In an agony of regret he loosened the leather
belt, and let it sink to lie with rock and shell, and, utterly
ruined and penniless, reached a place of safety. It was not
that he prized the nuggets less ; it was simply that he
prized his life far more.
In a similar manner, temporal blessings may often imperil
our spiritual hfe; and in a similar loving regard for our
safety, God may do for us what we have not the courage to
do for ourselves, and deprive us of temporal gifts or the
294 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
sake of the eternal. Who shall say how many souls have
been rendered capable of reaching the bright and glorious
shores of heaven solely because God has caused them to
be deprived of certain temporal and worldly goods, which,
clinging to them and filling their hearts, would have dragged
them down to hell.
Such a Providence is, surely, no mark of severity or
cruelty, but rather of fatherly kindness and solicitude. Yet
it goes far to answer the objections we are now occupied
with. Instead of dealing with the matter in the abstract,
we will select a specific example from the inspired pages
of Holy Scripture, and then the unassailable nature of
God's position may, perhaps, be more readily grasped.
* There was a certain man,' the Bible informs us, ' in the
land of Huss, whose name was Job, He was simple and
upright, and fearing God, and avoiding evil." Now let us
here pause to put to ourselves the question : How should we
be inclined to treat such a person, if we had the disposal of
bis fortune ? An ordinary man of the world would, probably,
argue somewhat after this fashion : Here is a truly good
and holy man ; one distinctly above the average ; a man of
God, remarkable for his piety, uprightness, and sanctity of
life. Surely we must reward such fidelity by protecting him
from evil, preserving his herds and flocks, giving him health
and happiness, and making him secure in his possessions.
Yes, that is the view of the ordinary critic of Divine
Providence. But it was not God's view. In fact, God's
view was diametrically opposite. And how comes it that
God's plans and purposes are often so opposite to ours, and
so unintelligible to us? Is it because we are wiser, or
holier, or more generous and loving? No, just the reverse.
God acts BO differently, because He is what He is, that is to
say, the infinitely holy, the infinitely wise, and the infinitely
loving.
No mother ever looked down upon her only child with half
the tenderness and love with which God looked down upon
Job. He contemplated his virtue, and rejoiced at it. He
1 Job i.
rrifi EJtist^Ne^ OP eVil 295
saw within him the makings of a great saint. And, if
we may express ourselves in a human way, God mused
within Himself : ' I will reward this man. He is holy now,
but I will raise him up to a yet higher degree of holiness ;
I will so chasten his virtue in the furnace of affliction, that
it will glow with a splendour and a beauty all its own.*
Patience and conformity to God's will are always good.
But patience under trial and misfortune, and bitter tempta-
tion is a very different thing to patience when all is done
according to our desires, and when the world smiles and
blesses us. Conformity to God's will is, in very truth, the
essence of perfection, and the very root and foundation of all
sanctity. But, again, let me point out, conformity to God's
will in seasons of pain, and humiliation, and poverty, and
disease is one thing, and conformity when all is favouring
and flattering us is quite another.
Hence God, out of His very love for Job, and because
He wished to place him for ever in the very front rank of
His chosen servants, and to make him one of the princes of
His people, allowed the severest trials and sufferings to
come upon him, according to the principle laid down
by St. Paul : * Whom the Lord loveth, He chastiseth.' ^
His servants were put to the sword ; his children were
slain, his sheep and oxen were destroyed, his barns and
houses were burned down, and he was, in an in-
credibly short time reduced to a state of abject poverty
and misery. Nor was this all. His own body became the
seat of disease and loathsome sores. Ulcers and pustules
and boils were formed upon his flesh, and covered him from
the top of his head to the soles of his feet ; so that, at last
he sat on the top of a dung-hill, the picture of sadness and
desolation, like one abandoned by God and man ; while with
a potsherd he scraped the corrupted matter from his gaping
sores.
In this figure of misery and misfortune the sapient fault-
finders of to-day would probably discern nothing but another
startling example of evil, and of cruelty and injustice on the
1 Heb. xii. 6.
296 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
patt of Almighty God, for they are spiritually blind, and
cannot read God's thoughts. Yet, they would be altogether
roistaken.
The virtue of Job, under such difficulties increased and
developed, and rcsc far above the level of common virtue,
into the regions of the sublime. Who indeed can measure
the moral attitude in which he lives, who amid extreme
suffering and humiliation, is able to reproach the scoffers
of God's providence, and to justify God's action, saying: *If
we have received good things at the hand of God, why
shoald we not receive evil ? ' ^ Yea, who can even bless and
praise God while His hand is actually laid heavy upon him?
'The Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken away:
blessed be the nane of the Lord.' ^
Who, contemplating this picture, can refuse to acknow-
ledge the exalted nature of Job's sanctity ? W^ho can doubt
of the splendour of the reward he is now enjoying ? But to
what is it owing ? To what circumstances are we to ascribe
it ? Surely, to the very fact, of which men are so ready to
complain, that God allows physical evil and disaster to come
upon even those who are most near and dear to Him.
And God's goodness, which is abundantly vindicated and
evident in this case, is equally certain in cases where the
proofs of it are not so manifest and conspicuous. Men may,
of course, frustrate the designs of God by the evil exercise of
their free will, and may allow misfortunes to harden and
embitter them — that is their own fault ; but if they choose
to make a proper use of such opportunities of grace, their's
will be all the gain, their's all the merit.
Before concluding, it may be well to take a somewhat
different instance. Go, thisn, into some great hospital
where suffering and disease are so rife. Look at the gentle
Sister of Charity, or of Mercy, as she flits about so softly and
so unobtrusively among the sick and the dying. Observe
how attentive she is to her charges, and how sweet-tempered
and patient. See with what loving-kindness and solicitude
she waits upon the poor sufferers, as though in each she
iJobii.10. 2 Job i. 21.
-The existence of evil 297
recognised the person of Christ Himself. She has renounced
the world, and turned her back upon its joys, amusements,
and delights. She has spurned its favours, honours, and
dignities, and consecrated herself for life, by a solemn vow,
to the service of the poor, and the suffering. Her time, her
talents, her thoughts, her energies are all directed to this
noble task. And she finds strength and courage in the
thought of and in the love of Him, who said : ' When you
have done it to the least, you have done it to Me.'
Such generous-hearted souls ennoble our nature besides
giving glory to God. Such lives are purer, holier, more
self-sacrificing and in every way sublimer than the lives
of others. They are a credit to our religion and a glory to
our race. Now, to what do we owe them ? Is it not to
the very presence of physical evil in our midst ? Most
undoubtedly. Were there no poor, no orphans, no sick and
diseased, no men nor women needing help, instruction,
nursing, and sisterly care and attention, why the very
raison d'etre of the Sister of Charity would be gone. The
urgent needs which gave birth to this beautiful religious
Order not existing, the Order itself would never have come
into being. The * Sister Teresa ' or the * Sister Clare '
who now moves about the fever or small-pox ward as an
angel of light and consolation, clad in her rough habit, and
administering to Christ's afflicted members, might, under
other circumstances, have been the ' Hon. Mrs. Smith,' or
* Lady Timkins of Timkins Hall,' and have been following
her own sweet will in the fashionable world. She might
have been a very amiable person indeed, and have won
heaven at last ; but the higher and sublimer paths of
charity, chastity, and self-denial would scarcely have been
trodden by her.
It is to the fact that pain and temporal calamities and
misfortunes are permitted, that we must ascribe the sheer
existence of this sisterhood, and all the glory to God of
which it is the source and the mainspring. And the same
may be said of countless other orders and religious societies
of various kinds, both of men and of women. If God were
to do away with every bodily ailment and every earthly
29B THt IRlS^i ECCLESIASTICAL RfeCORb
calamity, He would at the same time do away with
innumerable opportunities of exercising virtue; while the
splendid examples of heroism and devotion which now so
often startle us and fill us with wonder, would have no place
on earth.
In the vast majority of cases, we can (with a little good-
will) actually see how God draws good out of evil. We
realize for ourselves, for instance, how suffering produces
admirable patience, as in the case of holy Job ; how poverty
and want beget the most consummate resignation, as in
St. Benedict I'Abre; and how opposition and persecution
awaken the most unheard-of charity, as in the case of
St. Stephen, who prayed for those who were stoning him to
death. And where the good results are not so evident and
unmistakable, we can surely attribute that to our own
limited range of intellect, and fall back upon the general
principle that God is the infinite and uncreated Goodness,
who disposes all things lovingly, whether we can recognise
His love in every particular case or no. * Omnia in mensura,
et numero et pondere disposuit. ' ^
Even in the natural order, we often fail to discern the
reason and the use of things. Take the human body, which
is such a living miracle of wisdom and divine adaptations of
means to ends, and in which every part is so marvellously
disposed, and so exquisitely arranged and contrived. Do
we not even here, sometimes come across an organ or a
substance, whose precise use and purpose we are unable to
determine? What is the use of the spleen? What end
does it serve ? I know not if doctors have 7iow discovered
a use for it, but certainly thousands of learned medical
men have lived and died without being able to solve the
problem. Yet no one doubts but that it fulfils some useful
purpose.
So will it often be in regard to the existence of evil.
There may, and do, arise special and particular instances
which we find it difficult to reconcile with our notions of
Wisdom.
THE EXISTENCE OF eViL ^99
perfect goodness and infinite love. But, dear reader, are w^
justified in such cases in doubting the goodness of God ? Is
our confidence in the Infinitely Holy so flimsy and unstable
that it melts away at the first appearance of difficulty ? Are
we going to trust His mercy and His tenderness only so far
as we can actually test them for ourselves ? Ah ! So to
trust, is not to trust at all.
Shall we make our limited powers the supreme measure
of all right and wrong, of all good and evil ? Or does God
really cease to be good, just when His goodness becomes too
deep and wide and unfathomable for our puny minds to
sound its hidden and mysterious depths ? As well say the
sea is bottomless because we cannot actually touch the
bottom with the end of our umbrellas. Our general know-
ledge of God's goodness more than warrants our trusting
Him, even where appearances are dead against Him.
Take the case of a maimed and suffering child — a child
as yet incapable of actual sin. I grant it is a difficulty, but
yet, we may be absolutely certain, that did God reveal His
whole mind and purpose to us, the difficulty would vanish,
and the wisdom and justice of God would be vindicated even
here. Then why, someone may ask, does He not make it
clear ? May it not be because He wishes to bring good even
out of this very evil of ignorance, from which we are
suffering ? To trust God with the difficulty still unsolved ;
to trust Him when we cannot see nor even imagine its
solution ; to trust Him when every circumstance seems to
condemn Him, that surely, is trust, indeed. Yes; trust
under such conditions honours God in an immeasurably
higher degree, than if we could penetrate His motives, and
read His secrets, and see as He sees. ' You believe,' said
our Lord to St. Thomas, ' because you have seen : blessed
are they who have believed and have not seen.'
John S. Vaughan.
[ 300
IDEALISM AND REALISM IN ART^
DISTINCT altogether from the' several arts, there is a
study known as the Science of the Arts, which, unlike
the arts themselves, is critical and speculative, or, at least,
only indirectly practical. It embraces such questions as the
proper sphere and purpose of art, its legitimate methods, its
various departments, and their relations one to another.
Two schools or styles of art, in particular, generally known
as idealism and realism, have been made the pivot on which
most of the controversies raised by these questions mainly
turn — controversies that have had a marked effect on the
views of artists, their methods and technique, and on the
general character of the art of this century. I purpose,
therefore, to examine these two schools of art, idealism and
realism, and to state very briefly what we may hold about
their respective merits. To treat of them, however, in
relation to every variety of art would carry me far beyond
my purpose, so I shall confine myself merely to painting ;
and, when I speak of art, I wish it to be understood that
it is only to painting I am referring.
Let us begin with idealism. It makes very little
difference by what name we call it — style, school, or theory ;
and, therefore, I may define it as a theory which maintains
that the highest and truest function of art is to represent
nature at her best, without any of her defects, and with what-
ever of her beauties may be brought together without
incongruity. What constitutes a defect, and what a
perfection, or how they are to be discovered in nature,
it is not my province now to determine. I take it
for granted that there is in man a faculty called * taste/
whose function it is to reveal defects and discover beauties,
which acts spontaneously, and on principles of its own,
1 A lecture delivered in Dublin, in April, 1899. Some apology is due to
the reader for the summary references here made to certain works of art. In
the lecture these references were illustrated by the aid of lime-light views.
IDEALISM AND REALISM IN ART 30]
and with marked uniformity in its decisions. This faculty
testifies to innumerable blemishes, both in form and colour,
all through nature, and suppHes at the same time the
principles on which these faults may be corrected. Positive
defects are possible, only in organic natures, such as trees,
animals, and men ; where individuals, on account of
their structural uniformity, are seen to approach to, and
deviate from a type. By a type, I mean a faultless instance
of any species of organism, either constructed by the mind
or exhibited ready-made in nature. In inanimate nature,
where there is no unity of structure, as is the case with
lakes, mountains, stretches of country, positive defects are
out of the question ; but there is even here a scale of per-
fection, a more and less of the elements of beauty, such as
the majestic, the striking, the harmonious, the delicate, and
of what are known as suggested attributes, the gentle, the
lively, the quaint, the reposeful. It is therefore the aim of
idealistic art, to remedy defects on the lines of these types,
supplying shortcomings, softening, harmonizing, eliminat-
ing, and intensifying, according as the faculty of taste
suggests.
Idealistic art interprets nature from many points of view :
literally, if nature can be so reproduced ; figuratively, if the
limitations of art so require. Of these two styles of repro-
duction, figurative art is the more prolific in artistic subjects,
for by the use of imagery which is its proper instrument, it
can colour nature very highly as well as interpret her very
variously. The dawn, for instance, literally represented, is
always the same : one can vary it, of course, by altering the
landscape, or the colours in the sky; but, in general, the sun-
rise is one and unchangeable. Its interpretation, on the
other hand, in figurative art admits of numberless new
creations — the varied expression of all that a cultured and
artistic mind sees in the sunrise over and above mere lines
and colours. Every image used in 'Prometheus Unbound'
to express sunrise could be turned into a complete picture of
the dawn — the car, the steeds on the gold dust floor, the
singing spirits, &c : whilst of Guido Eenis' ' Aurora ' at
least four perfect * Auroras ' could be made — the steeds, the
302 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
cupid with the torch, the laughing goddesses, and the girl
scattering roses from her cloak.
With these two styles of reproduction at its disposal,
the literal and the figurative, idealism is not content until it
has eliminated from nature all her defects, and intensified
her perfections. Not that it claims in . the re-arrangement
of nature to take liberties with, and ignore her laws. There
are, of course, artistic licences which a painter may use as
well as a poet. It was by licence that Kaphael felt himself
dispensed from attempting an impossible perspective
between the two parts of the Transfiguration — the figures
on the mountain and the possessed boy beneath. Licences,
however, are not principles of art, but exceptions to them :
and idealism in its principles is altogether on the side
of nature, following her closely where nature has only
one course at her disposal, as in the general formation of
the human figure or the general structure of trees : but
giving scope to the artist to let out freely wherever a
multiplicity of forms is possible, as in the features of
the face, the portrayal of passion, the play of impulse
in look and on limb, and in everything that appertains
to the general setting of a subject, like architecture,
grouping, drapery, &c. In these things there is room for
the artist's best and most sweeping conceptions ; for where
nature follows no definite system, the artist is confined by
no definite formulae. Infinitely wide, therefore, is his field
of subjects, full and varied as nature herself, for the only
restrictions to an artist's conception are the laws of nature,
and the canons of taste. These canons, I admit, are nume-
rous enough. They are much more subtle than the laws of
nature ; and whilst few great artists have violated the latter,
only the greatest succeed in observing the former. One error
in taste can vitiate an otherwise perfect painting. Let
me take, as one instance of it, Claude Lorraine. Claude
was an untiring student of nature. At Kome he used to sit
out all day, and sometimes all night, watching the colours
come into the heavens, and transferring them to his scrap-
book. It is said he was acquainted with all the tints of the
sky and all the humours of the sea. Yet Claude has spoiled
IDEALISM AND REALISM IN ART 303
more than one of his pictures by crowding his canvasses to
overflowing, forcing into them everything that could bring
out an effect in colour — trees, mountains, cattle, lakes,
dancing peasants, temples set in the middle of woods,
churches, aqueducts, mills, &c. This sense of surfeit, pro-
minent in the greater part of his work, is a permanent
drawback to what would otherwise (so critics tell us) be
perfect art.
The function, then, of idealistic art is to perfect nature,
in the way I have described, and as nature seldom reaches
her best, that best must be created by the artist himself.
This is what is known as the creative element in art, and it
is just this element that gives art a place above colour-
photography. It opens out broad and fruitful fields of
artistic subjects, co-extensive with the artist's own con-
ceptions, which are practically infinite,, there being no end
even in a single species to the number of perfect forms it
may contain. This is a proposition that needs explana-
tion, and I am glad of the opportunity of enlarging on it,
because critics have questioned it. In his Discourse
on Painting, Sir Joshua Eeynolds says that in every
species there is only one type, one perfect form, which
nature is always trying to approach, from which, there-
fore, an artist should never deviate without necessity.
If this be true, see how we have limited the range of art
subjects. Idealism is supposed to pursue the perfect;
but according to this theory, the perfect human face is
one ; there cannot be two ; the human figure has one
type only ; each species of animal one perfect instance ;
and at the representation of these types, and these types only,
all art should aim. I said above, in opposition to this view,
and admittedly in the interests of idealism, that in any species
the number of perfect forms may be infinite. I see no
reason— Eeynolds gives none— for departing from this view.
And I say, moreover, that the theory expressed in the
Discourse on Painting is not borne out by Eeynolds himself.
In his beautiful ' Group of Angels' Heads ' every face is
formed on a distinct model, and approaches a wholly
distinct type. And if we take the faces that remain to us
304 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
from Grecian arfc, and compare them with those, for
instance, of Kossetti, we shall have no doubt, I think,
that a perfect is possible in each of the styles, though
differing from each other toto ccelo. And does not all this only
stand to reason ? For what is beauty but perfect harmony
in form and colour? Let an artist draw one curve of one
feature, and a perfect face may start out" from that. Change
that curve, and a face may be drawn perfect in symmetry,
but different in type. He might not be able to go on in
infinitum, but who shall say where the limits are ?
Idealism, therefore, with its creative element, opens out
a very wide field of subjects^ limiting art to no definite or
inferior phases of nature, and calling on artists for the
exercise of their highest and most varied conceptions. Its
principle is this — art has its rough materials in nature ; but
the refining touches may come from the mind, must come
from it, in fact, since art looks out for what is best in nature,
and nature is seldom at her best.
It may be asked : Is it certain that art can improve on
nature ? It is suggested that we cannot paint the lily, nor
gild refined gold, and that the artist is altogether at his best
when he holds the mirror up to nature merely to reflect
her. Or it may be said, that ivied ruins which nature
plans are more beautiful than any of the temples of
art; that there is more beauty in the bark of fallen trees
covered with green mould, than in the living trunk; much
more grandeur in clumps of trees thrown up confusedly from
among rocks and ferns, than in stately avenues laid out
artificially like cathedral pillars ; more beauty in a sunlit
patch of green bank, or a field of after-grass, than in
any of the creations of Claude Lorraine. I have even
heard it asked — What has nature to learn from art on
the forms of animals? If you want to see a war-horse
chafing, do not look for it in oils or water-colours,
but in nature herself, out on the battlefield, smarting with
bayonet points, held up to the fire of a line of muskets.
What, therefore, is left for art to create? In fact, one might
deny my whole contention, that the end of art is the pursuit
pf the perfect. For beauty, even as sought by art, is
Idealism and realism in kkf §oS
often found in the lowest and weakest, the maimed parts of
natm-e. Cheeks are beautiful in consumptive beggar-boys,
and art has been at prison gates even, painting wan faces,
under old worn cloaks. And what common things are the
children in Millais' * Autumn Leaves,' or Le Page's
' Flower Girl ! ' We meet them a hundred times daily.
Yet which of the creations of mediaeval art is more
beautiful than they are, in their own way?
All these things have been urged at times against idealism
as a theory of art. The only answer I can return is this :—
Idealism, as I have already insinuated, improves on nature
when it ought, and where it ought, and allows for the fact
that deformity may have a beauty of its own, that there are
beauties in neglected faces and in common-place scenes.
All these things, therefore, it will take into its canvasses, at
their very best; not as realism would, bringing out every
line and shadow, but in broad outline and rough, round
reality, as Millet paints. There are few deformities that may
not be allied to some perfection. Weakness suggests gentle-
ness ; rudeness, strength ; villainy, ability ; passion, power.
Gentleness, strength, ability, and power become the theme
of the artist. Mere weak ugliness, mere rude effrontery,
are left to the caricaturist. Caricature and art differ
as widely as art and photography. All three are
representative. Each has its special province to depict^
photography, fact ; art, the ideal ; caricature, the grotesque.
The caricaturists of the beginning of this century, in
France and England, are known in the history of modern
painting as ' the school of the draughtsmen,' not as artists.
Crime, cruelty, and cunning, therefore, have their legitimate
hold on the artist's attention ; but grossness and vulgarity
in the mode of representing them are precluded by the
conditions under which art receives them. Even therefore
in defects, art may still be dealing with the perfect ; and
that is one way in which classic art differs from idealism ;
classicism also pursues the perfect, but only amongst the
very highest forms of imagination or of history, such as the
pagan divinities, or the Christian saints. But idealism
finds ^ in the furrowed fields, and is interested in ordinary
VOL. VI. u
806 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECOkE)
sowers and gleaners — not for their plainness, but principally
because of the beautiful conceptions it can make them
embody. The portrayal of these conceptions, hidden
beneath mere line and colour, is what is known as the
mind element in idealism. Let us see how Millet con-
trived his subjects, for Millet had all a poet's nature
and a poet's conceptions : he was a dreamer, in fact.
Early in the morning he went out into the forest. If the
sun was shining, and the silence was unbroken, he was able
to work. If the clouds gathered or voices approached, he
could work no more. * Chut ! papa travaille,' his eldest
daughter used constantly to whisper to her brothers playing
outside their cottage. Now Millet has painted only sowers
and gleaners. On w^hat, therefore, was all his poetry
expended ? or how have his pictures set the world dream-
ing of furrows and the scent of clay ? The charm of his
pictures is the conceptions he has made them all embody.
His own estimate of the * Angelus ' was, that we should
' hear those bells stealing over the furrows.' That was the
conception hidden beneath mere line and colour, that he
would embody in his picture, and suggest to the spectator in
a hundred trifles. And, surely, if we miss that thought we
have missed all tha he meant, for there is very little in the
picture but the sound of bells ; stillness in the fields broken
by the quiet music of bells ; the long day's labour ended by
bells summoning to prayer ; bells marking the monotonous
history of peasants, day after day, until their old hands
drop from plough and harrow, and they are taken to their
rest. Millet's thought was always with the commonplace,
and therefore he has sometimes been called a realist. But
he read things in the commonplace which the eye could
not discern ; and these things are the sermons we all feel
him preaching in his sowers and gleaners, and wood-cutters,
and ploughed fields.
Unconscious^^ I must confess, I have begun to advocate
the principles of idealism, though in starting out I only
undertook to explain them. But it is a mystery to me how
anyone can refuse to grant to painting the privileges so gene-
rously conceded to poetry. A poet can chasten and colour
iD£ALISM AND REALISM IN Akf 307
Ti ■ ,
nature, and express her in symbols, and clothe her in
imagery, and select just that in which she shows most richly,
neglecting the rest. Why may not the painter do all that
too ? There is, I grant, an art of the commonplace. The
ge7ire paintings or pictures of common ordinary life, have
their own place in art. But there is certainly higher art
than this, an art that can transcend the common present,
and reveal the finer efforts of nature, exhibited in fact, or
built out of the richness of an artist's imagination.
I am quite aware that in recent years idealism has fallen
into great disfavour. But I do not think that that disfavour
should alter our estimate of the principles I have been
advocating. The disrepute into which idealism has fallen
was not reached by inference from artistic principles. It is
only the result of the rough-and-ready stand that has been
made in modern times against the maintenance in our schools
of classical art, an art in which idealism was an important
element. * Eeturn to nature/ became the cry of the modern
artistic world ; and it is only natural to expect, that the
movement that ensued should not be over-refined in its
courses or sensitively just. That is how idealism has
become unpopular. It was associated with classicism. In
the main, we can sympathise with the anti-classicists,
though we cannot shut our eyes to their follies. Everybody
was weary of those old Greek plasters, repeated in all
the studios of Paris, and turning up monotonously year
after year at the art exhibitions. And we know that at
the Kevolution France had seen a new life generated —
a highly-coloured life and manner which, certainly, had
enough in it to interest art. The French imagination
was scarcely one to keep looking into the dead past for
all that could interest the eye and heart, and aspirations
of an age, in comparison with which it deemed all old-world
institutions puerile. France was awakened to the idea of
revolution in everything as well as in art, and when a young
Norman painter, called Gericault, gave the signal for action
by telling his master in the presence of the students, to open
the shutters and let in the light from the living day, I
scarcely exaggerate when I say, that classicism began to
308 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
drop down from the walls, and a great deal of cobweb and
conventionality after it. It was then that artists began
to pour out from the lanes and top garrets of Paris, with
their easels on their backs, towards the Forest of
Fontainebleau ; for thither this Dew pulsation led them,
where wild birds lived, and sunbeams could be caught
pure out of the heavens. That, briefly, is the history of
the anti-classical movement. It was during that move-
ment that popular prejudice ran down idealism, and it will
take some years to effect its revival.
It may be well before passing to the consideration of
realism to say a w^ord on the new idealism, a school
of art recently introduced by Kossetti into England.
Dante Gabriel Kossetti was by nature an idealist. He was
a dreamer like Millet, and seemed to live unconscious,
almost, that there were things around him to be touched
with real hands, or to be looked on with real eyes.
He lived in the midst of mysterious beings, with lustrous
bodies. He paints them languid and melancholic, with a
consumptive atmosphere all about them, and a depressing
mysteriousness like the air of the death chamber. What
are we to think of it ? We can only say, that it is a beautiful
but a very unhealthy art. But it paves the way for
the revival, of the old Kenaissance idealism, which must
certainly reappear, strengthened and enriched with the great
and vigorous harvest of ideas reaped in three centuries.
In a future number I shall speak of realism, with the two
great schools of the pre-Eaphaelites and the Impressionists.
M. CrONIN, M.A., D.D.
To be continued.
[ 309 ]
CATHOLICS AND FREEMASONRY
IT is universally admitted that one of the best organized
and most influential societies in existence is Free-
masonry. Throughout the world its members, differing in
nationality, in religion, in social status, extend to one
another the hand of fellowship.
It is natural that Catholics, prohibited as they are by
the Church from becoming members, should, as a rule, have
but very vague ideas about it. They are aware that Free-
masons help one another in business, in professional life,
and the like. They may have found by experience that in
the employment of certain firms and companies there is no
chance of promotion for those who are not Freemasons.
However, in these countries especially, they cannot fail to
observe that the personnel of the society includes numbers
of men of the highest standing ; and, moreover, perhaps
they have met Freemasons socially, and found them upright
and honourable men. Many Catholics, then, may be puzzled
to know why Freemasonry is condemned by the Church,
and why they are excluded from its benefits. That some
Catholics, too. while they obey, feel sore about the matter, is
evident from letters which appeared recently in the Catholic
Times. Some information on the point may be welcome
and useful. I shall draw it principally from within ; that
is, from Masonic rituals, papers, speeches, and the like
from which it can be made quite clear that the Church i
justified in her condemnation of Freemasonry. It may be
well at the outset to state the extent and force of this
condemnation.
The first Papal condemnation of the society was issued
in 1738, by Clement XII. in the Bull In eminentL His words
are: —
Wherefore to each and all of the faithful in Christ, of what-
ever state, grade, condition, or order, we ordain stringently and
in yirtue of {loly obedience, that they shall not under any pretext
310 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
or pretence, enter, propagate, or support the aforesaid societies
known as Freemasons, or otherwise named ; that they shall not
be enrolled in them, affiliated to them, or take part in their pro-
ceedings, assist them or afford them in any way counsel, aid, or
favour, publicly or privately, directly or indirectly, by themselves
or others, in any way whatever, under pain of excommunication
to be incurred by the very act ; from which absolution shall not
be obtainable, except through ourselves or our successors, the
Roman Pontiff for the time being, unless in the article of death.
This condemnation was renewed by Benedict XIV.
in 1751; Pius VIL, in 1814; Leo XIL, in 1825; and by
Pius IX., in 1864. In his Encyclical Qui pluribus, con-
firming the condemnation of his predecessors, Pius IX.
gays : —
We declare that those by the very act incur excommunication
reserved to the Roman Pontiffs, who join the Society of Masons,
or of Carbonari, or other similar societies . . . and they also
who show these societies any countenance whatever {favorem
qualemcunque praestantes).
The present venerable Pontiff Leo XIII, is not content
with condemning Freemasonry, but he even charges the
craft with crimes of murder. His words in the Bull
Humanum genus, are :—
Under deceitful appearances, and adopting dissimulation as
a rule of conduct, the Freemasons, hke the Manicheans of old,
spare no effort to conceal their proceedings. As it is their great
concern to appear widely different from what they are in reality,
they assume the character of friends of letters, or of philosophers
combined for the cultivation of the sciences. They speak only of
their zeal of the progress of civilization, and of their love for the
poor. If we believe their assurances, their one object is to
improve the condition of the masses, and to extend as widely as
possible the benefits of civilized life. But even granting that
they pursue purposes of this kind, these are far from being the
whole of their projects. Those who are admitted to the order
must promise to obey, blindly and without examination, the
commands of their chiefs, to hold themselves ready at the least
sign to execute the task assigned to them, pledging themselves
beforehand to accept the most rigorous punishments — even death
itself — in case of disobedience. As a matter of fact, it is not a
rare thing that the punishment of death is inflicted upon those
who are found guilty of having betrayed the secrets of the society,
qx of haying disobeyed tjie orders of its chiefSr B\it tp keep ^
CATHOLICS AND FREEMASONRY 311
course of dissimulation, and to remain hidden, to place men like
mere bond-slaves under strict obligations, the nature of which is
not properly explained to them, to use them at the discretion of
others for all manner of crime, to arm their right hand for
slaughter, securing them immunity from punishment of their
crime — those are enormities condemned by nature itself . . .
Eeason and truth are enough to prove that Freemasonry is,
opposed to natural justice and morality.
This condemnation is emphatic almost beyond precedent,
and so explicit as to leave no room for evasion. Free-
masons grow wrathful at it ; Catholics know there must be
very grave reasons for it, and would naturally be anxious to
learn them. In the constitutions of Pius VIL and Leo XTI.
we find the following reasons alleged:— (1) the furious and
Satanic hatred of its members for the Vicar of Christ ;
(2) their league of secret murder ; (3) their avowed atheism ;
(4) their conspiracy against all legitimate authority m the
State as well as in the Church. The constitutions add
that the sources of information are the most authentic.
Benedict XIV. affirms that ' the union of men of every or
of any sect or religious persuasion and of men indifferent to
all religion — heretics, deists, atheists — is manifestly highly
dangerous to Catholic faith and morals.'
Again, Leo XII L gives his reasons for condemning Free^
masonry :—(l) it is a system of pure naturalism in religion;
(2) it reduces matrimony to a mere contract, revocable ai
will ; (3) it proclaims the right to affirm that there is no
God ; (4) it corrupts the masses to advance the interests of
the sect ; (5) it labours to overturn that discipline and social
order which Christianity has founded, and erect on its
ruins a system after its own principles and foundations of
disorder.
To give an appearance of antiquity to Freemasonry,
some of its members endeavour to trace its origin to the
Tower of Babel, others to the Pyramids of Egypt, others
again to Solomon's Temple ; while not a few astutely trace
it to the ages of faith when Catholicity held sway all over
Europe, and thence argue that it was once a Catholic asso-
ciation. Most Masonic writers of note admit, however,
that the connection between Freemasonry a^nd the above-v
312 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
i_ . ■ ■■■ ^...
mentioned buildings is a conventional fiction, and we shall
presently see that modern Freemasonry is quite a different
organization from the Freemasonry of the Middle Ages.
At that time, just as in our day, it was customary for the
members of the various trades to form guilds or societies
for the furtherance of their craft. As it was at that period
that the great cathedrals of Europe were being built, the
societies of stonemasons were very numerous and influen-
tial. As necessity required, the members went from city to
city, and, to insure being treated with kindness and hospi-
tality, they invented certain secret signs and symbols whereby
they might be recognised by the members of the trade. The
epithet of Freemasons was originally used as an abbrevia-
tion of * freemen masons,' men who elected to work at their
trade independently of any guild. In course of time, in
order to secure patrons and friends, the societies of stone-
masons admitted as associates individuals totally unac-
quainted with architecture, and by degrees other objects
besides the trade began to engage the attention of the
members. As time went on the transformation continued;
until, in the eighteenth century, the societies became purely
social and political organizations, having no connection
whatever with architecture.
Freemasonry, as at present constituted, may be defined
as a secret society which professes to lay down a code of
morality based on the brotherhood of mankind. It was
in England that the transformation in Freemasonry just
referred to took place, and all Masonic lodges throughout
the world owe their origin to those of Great Britain. In
Mackey's Lexicon of Freemasonry we find the following
account of the spread of Freemasonry : —
France. — The first Grand Provincial Lodge of France was
established in 1743 by a warrant from the Grand Lodge of
England. 1
Germany. — In 1773 the Grand Lodge of England granted a
charter to eleven German Masons in Hamburg to establish a
^ Several writers state that the first Masonic Lodg-e in France was
eitiblished in 1725 by Lord Darwentwater,
CATHOLICS AND FREEMASONRY 313
lodge. In 1738 another lodge was established in Brunswick by
a charter from the Grand Lodge of Scotland.
Belgiicm, — In 1721 the grand lodges of England constituted
the lodge of * Perfect Union ' at Mons, and in 1730 another at
Ghent.
Holland. — The first lodge established in Holland was in 1731,
under a warrant from the Grand Lodge of England.
Denmark- — The Grand Lodge of Denmark was instituted
in 1743. It derived its existence from the Grand Lodge of
Scotland.
Sweden. — Freemasonry arose in Sweden in 1754, under the
charter of the Grand Lodge of Scotland.
Bussia. — An English lodge was established in St. Petersburg
in 1740, under warrant from the Grand Lodge of England.
Boliemia. — Freemasonry was established in this country in
174y, by the Grand Lodge of Scotland.
Sivitzerland, — In 1737 the Grand Lodge of England granted a
patent to Sir George Hamilton, by authority of which he instituted
a provincial grand lodge.
Italy. — The first lodge in this country was established in
Florence in 1733, by Lord Charles Sackville, son of the Duke of
Dorset.
Asia. — Freemasonry was introduced into India in 1728, by
Sir George Pomfret, who established a lodge in Calcutta.
Africa. — England has established lodges in many towns and
islands in and about Africa.
Oceanica. — From 1828 England has established lodges in
Sydney, Paramatta, and many other English colonies.
America. — The first account we have of Freemasonry in the
United States dates from the year 1729, and it tells us of the
grand mastership of the Duke of Norfolk.
Thus America, as well as Europe, Asia, and Oceanica,
owes its Freemasonry to England.
Let us now examine the rites and ceremonies of Free-
masonry as given in Masonic manuals. There are three
principal degrees in Freemasonry — apprentice, fellow-crafts-
man, and master-mason. A lodge consists of a master,
stylsd worshipful, a senior and junior warden, a senior and
junior deacon, two tilers or door-keepers, both armed with
swords to keep off all cowans, eavesdroppers, and persons
unqualified to pass. When a lodge assembles, the master,
thus assured, gives the order for the lodge to be clothed, and
all officers put on their aprons and jewels and take their
seats, The worshipful master raps with his gavel, and aH
314 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
the subordinate officers stand up, and recite in turn their
various duties. If there is anyone to be initiated he is taken
charge of by two deacons. The junior deacon presents him
as a * poor candidate, in a state of darkness, who now comes
of his own free will and accord, properly prepared, humbly
soliciting to be admitted to the mysteries and privileges of
Freemasonry.' Then after various inteirogations and cere-
monies the candidate kneels on his left knee, keeping his
right foot * in the form of a square,' with his hand upon the
Bible, and repeats the following terrible oath : —
I, A.B., do hereby and hereon solemnly promise, and swear,
that I will always hail, conceal, and never reveal any part or
parts, point or points, of the secrets or mysteries of, or belonging
to free and accepted Masons in Masonry, which may heretofore
have been known to me, unless it be to a lawful brother or
brothers. I further solemnly promise that I will not write these
secrets, print, carve, engrave, or otherwise delineate, or cause, or
suffer them to be done by others, on any thing movable or
immovable, under the canopy of heaven, whereby or whereon, the
least trace of a letter, character, or figure, may become legible or
intelligible to myself or to anyone in the world, so that our
secrets, arts, and hidden mysteries may improperly become known
through my unworthiness. These several points I solemnly
sWear to' observe, without evasion, equivocation, or mental
reservation of any kind under no less penalty of the violation of
any of them, than to have my throat cut across, my tongue torn
out by the root, and my body buried in the sand of the sea at
low-water mark, or a cable's length from the shore where the tide
regularly flows twice in twenty- four hours. So help me God, and
keep me steadfast in my great and solemn obligation of an entered
Freemason.^
At the initiation of the fellow- craftsmen the following
oath is administered : —
I . . . will never reveal to him who is but an apprentice
mason, the mysteries belonging to the second degree of the fellow -
craft, no more than I would to the popular world who are not
Masons. All these points I solemnly swear to obey under no less
a penalty than to have my left breast cut open, my heart torn
therefrom and given to the ravenous birds of the air, or the
devouring beasts of the field. So help me God.^
1 See Tevfcct Ceremonies of Craft Masonry^ p. 49; also Carlile's Manual of
Freemasonry ^ p. b. '
> 2 Carlile, pp, 4 3 and 49/
CATHOLICS AND FREEMASONRY 315
Then follows the explanation by the Master : —
You are to supply the wants and relieve the necessities of
your brethren and fellows to the utmost of your power, and to
apprise them of approaching danger, and to view their interest as
inseparable from your own. Such is the nature of your engage-
ments as a craftsman.
In the ceremony of initiation of a Master Mason the tie
of brotherly love is growing stronger. The oath taken is : —
I solemnly vow and declare that I will not defraud a brother
Master Mason, or see him defrauded of the most trifling amount,
without giving him due and timely notice thereof ; that I will
prefer a brother Mason in all my dealings and recommend him to
others as much as lies in my power. AH these points I promise
to observe under no less a penalty than of having my body
severed in two, my bowels torn therefrom and burned to ashes,
and these ashes scattered before the four winds of heaven. So help
me God.i
Besides these three ordinary degrees there are a great
number of others bearing extraordinary, high-sounding titles,
that are conferred on those who are ambitious enough to aim
at the zenith of Masonic virtue. The ceremonies are fantastic
and ludicrous, and the oaths administered are even more
awful than those already quoted. Take, for instance, what
is called —
THE EOYAL ARCH DEGREE
The masters of this degree when assembled are called a
chapter. They are so arranged as to form the figure of an
arch. There are nine officers, Zerubbabel as prince, Haggai
as prophet, Joshue as high priest, &c. In the front stands
an altar on which are the initials of Solomon, King of Israel ;
Hiram, King of Tyre, and Hiram Abiff. When convenient,
the chapter room should contain an organ. A chapter is
considered as a type of the Sanhedrim of the Jews.
If a candidate is to be initiated, he is blindfolded, his
knees bared, a cable tow around his waist. He is conducted
around part of the room, while the high priest reads the
third chapter of Exodus. The bandage is taken from the
candidate's eyes, and he sees a bush on fire ; then his shoes
are taken off, and a rod is placed on the floor which he is
1 Carlile, ^, 09.
816 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
directed to pick up. He is then shown the Ark of the
Covenant, the pot of manna, &c. After a prolonged ceremony
he is given the five Koyal Arch signs, invested with the
apron, and the sash of purple and crimson. The oath
administered is : —
I . . .of my own free will and accord, in the presence of
this chapter of Eoyal Arch Masons, do hereby swear, in addition
to my former obUgations, that I will never reveal the secrets of
this degree to any of an inferior degree, under the penalty of
having my crown struck off, in addition to all my former
penalties. So help me God.^
DEGREE OF KNIGHT TEMPLA
The candidate for installation is dressed as a pilgrim,
with sandals, mantle, staff and cross, scrip and wallet, with
bread and water, a belt or cord round his waist, which is
made to fall off at the sign of the cross. After a while the
staff and cross are taken away, and a sword is placed in his
hand ; this is afterwards taken away and a skull substi-
tuted. Then he is divested of the pilgrim's dress, and
invested with the Masonic apron, sash, &c. Then, with
the skull in his hand, he swears : —
I will never shed the blood of a brother knight. Even when
princes are engaged in war, I will never forget the duty that I
owe him as a brother. If I violate this contract may my skull
be sawn around with a rough saw, and my brains taken out and
exposed to the scorching sun, and may the soul which inhabited
this skull appear against me on the Judgment Day. So help me
God.i
Then bread and wine are given in commemoration of the
Last Supper, the whole of the Sir Knights drinking from
the cup of brotherly love.
architect's DEGREE
In the ceremony for this degree the hall is hung in black,
and lighted with twenty-one lamps. A throne is elevated
in the east, a table is placed in the centre, on which is a
Bible, a pair of compasses, a square, and a trowel in an urn.
The contents of the latter are a mixture of milk, oil, flour,
^ Cplile. p. 116, 2Cf^,rlile's Manual of Masonnj , p. \5\.
CATHOLICS ANt) FREEMASONRY 3l7
and wine, which is supposed to be the heart of a worthy
brother. When the candidate is being received he is blind-
folded, and is thrown on the floor, so that his mouth covers
a blazing star ; then the bandage is taken off his eyes, he
sees the star, and its symbolic meaning is explained to him,
and after a long ceremony he takes the oath/ and receives
the insignia of his degree.
THE ROSICBUCIAN DEGREE
This is the highest or ne plus ultra degree. The lodge
is decorated with a triangular altar, to which seven steps
lead. Behind appears a cross and a rose planted on it, and
over it the letters I.N.K.I. Broken columns are visible on
the one side, and a tomb on the other on the east, and
three large lights on the west. The Most Wise is seated
on the third step of the altar, his head supported on his
hand. The room is darkened, and the candidate is led in.
Chains are rattled to intimidate him. After some ceremonies
are gone through, a sideboard is prepared; it is covered with
a cloth, and on it are placed as many pieces of bread as there
are knights, and a goblet of wine. Every knight has a white
wand in his hand. The Most Wise strikes his twice on the
ground, and declares that the chapter is resumed. Then he
proceeds seven times around the apartment, and is followed
by all present, each stopping in front of the altar to make a
sign. At the last round each partakes of the bread ; then
the Most Wise partakes of the goblet and passes it round,
the knights give each other the grip, the Most Wise says :
* Consummatum est,' and all depart.^
What Catholic could read such ceremonies and oaths
without a thrill of horror ? The Bible, the inspired word
of God, made a toy of ; the holy name of God profjaned by
blasphemous oaths ; the most sacred mysteries of religion —
the Last Supper, the crucifixion of the Son of God — parodied
in the most contemptuous manner! For what purpose, if
not to degrade and dishonour Christianity? * Freemasonry,*
^ The Encyclopcedia BritatDilca states that an item in the ceremonial of the
Kosicrucian degree is the drinking of porter out of a human skulli
318 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
says O'Connell, ' if for nothing else, should be condemned
for its irreligious use of holy things as symbols, and for its
frequent and blasphemous oaths.'
Let us next examine whether Freemasonry is merely
what it professes to be, a grand mutual aid society. That
at one time it went beyond its philanthropic purpose is
patent from the following.
In the year 1735 the States-General of Holland pro-
scribed the Secret Masonic League, and the French Govern-
ment followed the. example in 1737. In 1757 the Synod
of Stirling in Scotland adopted a resolution debarring all
Freemasons from the ordinances of religion. The Council
of Berne proscribed Freemasonry in 1748- Bavaria followed
in 1799. The Eegency of Milan and the Governor of
Venice acted in a similar way in 1814. John VI. of
Portugal prohibited Freemasonry in the strictest manner, in
1816 ; . and in 1820 several lodges were closed in Prussia for
political intrigues. In the same year Alexander VI. banished
the order from the whole Eussian empire. A similar occur-
rence took place four years later in Modena, and in Spain.
But let us hear the opinions of Masons and ex-Masons
as to whether Freemasonry is a mutual aid society or not.
In the Freemason, February 23rd, and May 27th, 1884,
we find the following statements. In a certain lodge a
Mr. Whytehead says : —
It was once said to me by a. brother well known in the craft,
and who had been a successful worker in the noble cause of our
charities : * If it were not for charities Freemasonry would not be
worth ten minutes of attention from any intelligent man.' Now,
brethren, I venture to say, that the brother who made that
observation, with all his virtues, and in spite of all his good works,
had never mastered the true object of Freemasonry ; he was entirely
ignorant of the raison d'etre of the craft. In opposition to the
idea enunciated in his sentiments, I contend that Freemasonry
is not a charitable society, except in the very highest sense of the
word ; and that if there is nothing else in it but the maintenance of
our splendid institutions, it is not only not worth the attention of
an intelligent man, but that we are a parcel of utter fools, wasting
our time and a large part of our means upon childish follies.
I should be very sorry that there is a semblance of truth in the
remark of the brother just quoted. We need not pay fees of
many guineas, or deck ourselves in gold lace in order to secure
CATHOLICS AND FREEMASONrY 319
-
the privilege of subscribing our means for kindly or charitable
purposes. Freemasonry in its present and speculative form was
ixx)nstituted for the purpose of kindling and keeping alive human
■^and divine sympathies, to preserve a solid platform whence the
'barriers of class jealousies should be for the time removed, to
teach society that in the eye of the great Architect, and under the
hand of the King of Terrors the peasant is the peer of the prince,
and to keep before the view of the salt of the earth the advantage
to be derived from the exercise of that charity, which, indeed, does
include the giving of alms, but in itself is far superior to such
detail — the charity that never faileth. Our charities were quite
an afterthought.
The Kev. C. W. Arnold says : —
It is natural for us to ask the question : What is it that makes
Freemasonry so attractive ? It cannot be charity alone, although
we Masons maintain such magnificent institutions, that a man
might well be proud of supporting them, for charity may just as
well be practised without our rites and withput our clothing. It
cannot be morality, however beautiful the system is which is
found in our Masonic charges, for all that we teach may be found
in the Sacred Volume, and might easily be studied without Free-
masonry. It cannot be only the pleasure of the social meetings
which take place after the lodges are closed, for social intercourse
of the pleasantest kind may be easily enjoyed without Masonic
work. But there must be something beyond, something higher
than mere brotherly love and relief, great principles though they
may be, there must be something far deeper than this which
recommends Freemasonry to men of intellectual culture. Free-
masonry is but a casket which contains a priceless jewel, and
that jewel is Truth, and all our rights and ceremonies, our signs
and passwords, have been designed for the purpose of guarding
this precious jewel.
It is easy enough to follow Mr. Arnold when he says
that a man need not be a Freemason to enjoy a good dinner
or a pleasant evening with some friends, or even to distribute
a little charity ; but when he speaks of the priceless jewel
of truth, enshrined in the casket of Freemasonry, and
protected by squares, compasses, grips, skulls, and so forth,
be gives the benighted non-mason something to think about.
Louis Blanc, in the history of his ten years' experience
as a Freeniason, speaks as follows : —
Thanks to its clever system of mechanism, . Freemasonry
found in prinoes and autocrats patrons rather than enemies^ It
320 THE IRISH fiecLESlASTlCAL RfiCoRt)
- - - - 1
pleased certain sovereigns, the great Frederick amongst the rest,
to take the trowel and gird themselves with the apron. Why
not ? The existence of the higher grades being carefully concealed
from them, they knew of Masonry only what could be revealed
without danger . . . They had no need to trouble themselves
about it, kept down as they were in the lower grades, where they
saw but an opportunity of amusement 'and banqueting. But in
these matters comedy borders closely on tragedy, and princes
and nobles were brought to sanction with their names, and
blindly to serve with their influence, the hidden enterprises
directed against themselves.
Freemasons boast : —
We wander amidst our adversaries shrouded in a threefold
darkness, Their passions serve as wires whereby unknown to
themselves we set them in motion, and compel them unwittingly
to work in union with us. Under the very shadow of authority
Masonry carries on the great work entrusted to her. I
All governments [says the revolutionary Mason Gregoire]
are, our enemies, all nations our friends; either we shall be
destroyed or they emancipated, and emancipated they shall be.
When the axe of freedom has struck down the throne, that
throne will fall upon the head of anyone who strives to gather its
fragments.
To whatever government [writes Master-Mason Barruel], to
whatever class of society you belong, as soon as the plans and
sworn designs of Freemasonry come into operation, there is an
end to your clergy, your government and your laws, your property
and your authority. All your possessions, your lands and your
houses, your families, your friends, and your firesides : all those
from that day forward you can no longer call your own.^
The following extract from a document drawn up by one
hundred and three seceding Masons at Le Eoy, U.S.A., on
the 4tli July, 1828, will throw some further light on the
inner working of Freemasonry : —
The Masonic Society has been silently growing amongst us,
whose principles and operations are calculated to subvert and to
destroy the great and important principles of the Commonwealth.
That it is opposed to the genius and the design of this Govern-
ment, the spirit and precept of our holy religion, and the welfare
of society generally, will appear from the following considera-
tions : it exercises jurisdiction over the persons and lives of the
* Vienna Freemason's Journal, No. i., p. fjG.
^ Mpimires pour servir a Vhistoir^ du Jacobinisme, vol. i., p. 20 ; Hamburg-,
1803. ^
CATHOLICS AND FREEMASONRY 321
citizens of the Eepublic. It arrogates to itself the right of
punishing its members for offences unknown to the laws of this
or any other nation. It affords opportunities for the corrupt and
the designing to form plans against the government and the lives
and characters of individuals. It blasphemes the name, and
attempts a personification of the great Jehovah. It prostitutes
the Sacred Scriptures to unholy purposes, to subserve its own
secular and trifling ends. It weakens the sanction of morality
and religion by the multiplication of profane oaths and immoral
familiarity with religious forms and ceremonies. It substitutes
the self-righteousness of the ceremonies of Masonry for the vital
religion of the Gospel. It contracts the sympathies of the human
heart for all the unfortunate, by confining its charities to its own
members, and promotes the interest of the few at the expense of
the many.
Even the Encyclopcedia Britannica says : —
There is something in the fundamental principles [of Free-
masons], the fraternity of men and their indifference to all
theological belief, and also in their recent movements, which,
perhaps, justifies the suspicion, and even the hatred, with which
they are regarded by the Ultramontane party.
These statements would not strengthen our belief that
Freemasonry is a harmless mutual aid society ; still less will
the following historical incidents. Barruel, an eye-witness,
tells us that on the 12th of August, 1792, the day on which
the unfortunate Louis XVI. was dethroned and led captive
to the Temple, the Masonic brethren, thinking the time had
come when they were free to publish their secret, exclaimed
in the public streets : —
At last our goal is reached. From this day France will be
one great lodge, and all Frenchmen Freemasons. The rest of the
world will soon follow our example,
In the first days of the Kevolution of 1848, three hundred
Freemasons, with their masonic banner floating above them,
marched to the Hotel-de-ville, and offered their banner to
the provisional Government, proclaiming aloud the part they
had taken in the glorious Kevolution. M. de Lamartine
made them the following reply, which was received with
enthusiasm by the Masonic lodges : —
It is from the depths of your lodges that the ideas have
emanated, first in the dark, then in the twilight, now in the fu 1
VOL. VI. X
822 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
light of day, which have laid the foundation of the Revolutions of
1789, 1830, and 1848.
Fourteen days later, a new deputation of the Grand
Orient, adorned v^^ith their masonic scarfs and jewels re-
paired to the Hotel-de-ville, Paris. ,To the members of the
Government who received them, the Grand Master spoke
thus : —
French Freemasonry cannot contain her universal burst of
sympathy with the great social and national movement which
has just been effected. The Freemasons hail with joy the triumph
of their principles, and boast of being able to say that the whole
country has received through you a Masonic consecration. Forty
thousand Freemasons, in five hundred workshops (lodges), cheer
you on with one heart and soul.
One of the Government representatives replied : —
Citizens and brothers of the Grand Orient, the provisiona
government accepts with pleasure your useful and complete
adhesion to the Republic which exists in Freemasonry. If the
Republic do as Freemasons have done, it will become the glowing
pledge of union with all men, in all parts of the globe, and in all
sides of the triangle.
It was the revolutionary designs of Freemasonry that
induced its provincial Grand Master, the Prussian minister,
Count Von Haugwitz, to leave the order. In the memorial
presented by him to the Congress of Monarchs at Verona,
in 1830, he bids the rulers of Europe be on their guard
against Masonry : —
I feel at this moment [he writes] that the French Revolution,
which had its first beginning in 1788, and broke out soon after,
attended with all the horrors of regicide, existed heaven knows
how long before, having been planned, and having had the way
prepared for it by associations and secret oaths.
I think I have produced sufficient evidence to show that
Freemasonry has not been a model mutual aid society in the
past; in fact, that it has turned aside to engage itself in such
occupations as the overturning of thrones and altars. I shall
now show that even still it has that old failing of going
outside the province of a mutual aid society.
In a circular issued by Masonic authorities early in
CATHOLICS AND FREEMASONRY 323
1890, and published in the Gazette du Midiy we find the
following : —
1. Masonry . . . aims at the rescuing of men's minds from
the slavery to which the dogmas and prescriptions of the Catholic
Church reduce them.
2. To this end teaching and the education in schools should
especially engage the attention of the brethren.
3. If all means suggested be carried out, they will hasten the
arrival of the day when, from the ruins of religion and revela-
tion, rationalism will entone the canticle of liberation . . . Then
man and humanity . . . will no longer busy itself about anything
save securing to itself here below that happiness which some
dreamers promise themselves in another life. We recommend
in an especial manner to the brethren never to lose sight of the
orders of Freemasonry in regard — (a) to securing the cremation
of bodies ; (b) civil marriages and funerals ; (c) to prevent as far
as possible the baptism of infants : (d) to disparage all that has a
rehgious character, but particularly the Catholic press.
At the Annual Convention of the Freemasons of the
Grand Orient, held at Paris,-) 10th September, 1888, it was
proposed : * That the Chapel of Expiation be demolished, and
commemorative slabs be erected.' ^ Also proposed : * That
the state have a monopoly in the matter of education.*
At the International Congress of Masons held at Paris,
1889, it was resolved :—
To establish national holidays commemorative of the French
Eevolution, to strengthen fraternity among the citizens, and to
make them more attached to their country and its laws.^
It was also resolved : —
That the Chapel of Expiation be demolished. It was built
by a law of January, 1816, and it cannot be demolished except
by another law. It belongs to Masons as citizens to present
a"petition for that purpose to Parliament.
At the International Congress of Masons, held at Paris
in 1891, it was resolved : ' That the Masonic members of
Parliament endeavour to secure a law for the abolition of
the religious oath ; ' also, * that the law of 1872, whereby all
religious congregations of men and women were suppressed,
be put in force.'
1 Ma^onnerie, parG. Bois, Avocat. Paris, 1S92. "Bois, p. 187.
324 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
In the Bevue Mago7mique (organe de la Franc-Maconnerie
Fran9aise et Etrangere), Paris, June, 1898, we find the
following : —
In Catholic countries the Church and Freemasonry are two
rivals. Protestant Churches are not* hostile to Freemasonry,
even their ministers become members. . . . The Catholic religion
is a collection of gross superstitions.
In the December issue of the same Bevue, we find the
climax of Masonic impudence : —
Measures should be taken to organize next year a festival on
the 25th December in honour of Humanity, to rival the existing
one in honour of the birth of Christ.
Such, in conclusion, is Freemasonry, made in England,
patented in France, patronized by royalty, and to be had
everywhere. Clad in the resplendent but deceptive garb of
benevolence it has for a time deceived mankind ; but at
length the fierce searchlight of inquiry has pierced that
veil, and exhibited a monster bent on the destruction
of Christianity, social law and order, and especially the
Catholic religion.
It has been condemned by the Church, because it
compels its members to resign their liberty into the hands
of an unknown and irresponsible authority, a thing which
is intrinsically wrong ; because' of the danger of unsound
doctrine and immoral practices creeping into secret oath-
bound societies which exclude the supervision of Church
and state ; but especially because it has proved itself to
be — what the Eoman Pontiffs do not hesitate to call it
— an atheistic, lawless, murderous society.
Having failed to conceal its revolutionary designs, it has
been proscribed by most European Governments as dan-
gerous to the state.
At present it confines itself solely (at least on the Con-
tinent) to persecuting the Catholic Church. There it has
brought about laws prohibiting any external manifestation
of religion, secularizing education, legalizing divorce, com-
pelling religious communities to give to the state portion of
the alms that they receive from the people; and, more
CATHOLICS AND FREEMASONRY 325
diabolical still, compelling priests to serve in the army
often in most unsuitable company, leaving their flocks to
die without the help and consolations of religion.
It v^ould appear, however, that Freemasonry has reached
its zenith of success, and that it is at present on the wane.
In a recent issue of the Eclio de Paris, M. Jules le Maitre,
a member of the French Academy, and by no means a friend
of the Catholic Church, is reported to have made a violent
attack on Freemasonry, denouncing its destructive inter-
ference with the social welfare of the Republic. Again, in
the Civilta Cattolica for May, 1899, it is stated that the
robberies from Italian banks, to the extent of one hundred
and forty million lire, have compromised the leading
lights of the fraternity. The same journal adds that very
many persons who ten years ago boasted of being Free-
masons are anxious at the present moment to conceal the
fact.
English and Irish Freemasons will, I know, repudiate
the idea that Freemasonry is in these countries in any way
opposed to Christianity ; but so long as its members
contemptuously interweave the most sacred mysteries of
Christianity with an absurd galimatias about compasses,
squares, and triangles, we can hardly believe that they are
in earnest. They may attempt to dissociate themselves
from the nefarious doings of continental Masons ; but as
long as they hold out the hand of fellowship to them ; as
long as they have representatives in foreign lodges, and
foreign lodges have representatives with them ; as long as
there is but one system of Freemasonry, their logic will fail
to convince. They may laugh at the idea that the organiza-
tion is opposed to the social welfare of mankind ; but as long
as they swear away their liberty, and bind themselves
in business and professional life to * prefer ' a Mason — no
matter how competent a non-mason may be — merit is
disregarded and fair play ceases ; as long as they swear
that they will * apprise a brother of approaching danger,*
although, for example, as detectives, sheriffs' officers, or
the like, they may be officially bound not to do so, there
is an end to public integrity ; as long as they swear * always
326
THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
to help a brother in distress,' even though he be a prisoner
in the dock, and they be judges or jurymen — bound to
strict impartiahty — so long will justice be trampled on,
and the very existence of society imperilled.
. C. M. O'Brien,
Note. — The Masonic Token gives an
possible ' of the Masons of the Avorld,
reader : —
Argentine Republic
Brazil
Belgium
Chili . .
Cuba . ,
Costa Rica
Denmark
Dominica
Egypt
England
France
Germany . . •
Greece
Holland
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Japan
Luxemburg
Mexico
New Zealand
Norway
Peru . .
Porto Rico
Portugal
Roumania and Bulgaria
Scotland
Spain . .
Sweden
Switzerland
Turkey
Uruguay
Venezuela
Victoria
United States and Canada
estimate ' corrected up to date as far as
which may not be uninteresting to the
Total .
Lodges.
Members
60
3,000
111
3,300
20
1,550
8
240
37
1,200
7
350
19
3,634
15
750
11
500
1,874
91,000
476
23,800
364
18,000
6
250
86
4,398
40
2,781
396
20,000
174
6,250
3
250
1
61
245
22,492
148
7,700
10
2,021
26
541
20
1,100
70
2,850
24
1,200
640
27,000
208
6,000
33
4,000
31
2,774
5
250
33
1,650
40
2,000
177
8,500
11,943
783,644
17,262
1,054,036
t 327
DR. HORTON AND THE POPE
DK. HOETON has written a pamphlet which bears the
startling title of Our Lord God the Pope. It purports
to be an answer to Mr. James Britten, who questioned
an assertion made in Bomanism and Natural Decay, that
* Kome has presented to the world men claiming to be God.
For you must remember that one of the forms of address to
the PopeinKoman Catholic literature is "our Lord God the
Pope." ' Dr. Horton has managed to find one passage in
which the words, offensive to all, whether Catholic or
Protestant, occur ; and he seems to have found it, not by
reason of any wider knowledge of * Koman Catholic litera-
ture ' than the ordinary Nonconformist minister possesses,
but through the kindness of the Secretary of the Catholic
Truth Society. Mr. Britten sent him Father Sydney Smith's
little book, Does the Pope claim to be God ? It is needless to
say that the circumstances under which the word * God '
found its way into the passage have been explained by the
Jesuit father to everyone's satisfaction, excepting, perhaps,
Dr. Horton's, who, doubtless, suspects everything Catholic
of being Jesuitical, and any paper written by one with the
letters S.J. after his name of being indescribably so.
But the writer is not content with insinuating that
Catholics are seriously responsible for the words which form
the title of his little tract. He will have it that the Popes
claim to be God ; that they have been called God by those
who acknowledge their authority, and that * the attributes
and prerogatives of God were ascribed to them and admitted
by them.' ^ He tells us, moreover, that the thought he had
in his mind when he first made this accusation against the
Popes was * that when veneration due to the Creator is given
to the creature, it is small wonder that the favour of God
should be withdrawn from countries which countenance
1 Tract, p, 9.
328 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
such an error.' Catholics have committed this enormity by
giving the title God to the Supreme Pontiff.
There is another divine appellation, apparently over-
looked by our writer, v^hich, to most biblical students, if
not to others, is as sublime in signification as is the word
God, The name Lord is the constant and invariable trans-
lation in Greek, in Latin, and in English for the unspeakable
term Jehovah. It comes nearer to the Hebrew meaning
than any other word.^ It is, moreover, the highest title
we make use of in speaking of the Son of God. Whether
Catholics are more to be reprehended than any other people
for applying the name God to creatures, or not, remains to be
seen ; but there can be no doubt at all that England, in spite
of its Protestantism, has bestowed the divine title Lord, as
a token of honour, upon mere humanity, very much more
than other countries. This land which, according to
Dr. Horton, enjoys the protection of an admiring Providence,
because it has protested against the blasphemous use of
words associated with the Deity, seems to make a parade of
the iniquity it condemns in others as something to be
gloried in. It has a whole House of Lords ! Some thirty
Anglican bishops, too, who are supposed to be to the rest of
us examples and models of true religion, bear with serene
countenances, the * blasphemous ' name of Lord ; and are so
steeped in moral obliquity as to expect to be addressed as
My Lord-^the very words which the devout Englishman
uses to his Saviour — and are regarded as suffering an injury
if that expression is omitted ! Nor does the wickedness
end here. Not content with the sad spectacle of about one
thousand persons calmly using, and of the whole country
bestowing upon them, this solemn name Lord, this land, so
favoured by God for its service to Him alone has without the
least scruple, agreed to address each male member of its
population by yet another divine title ! * You call me Master ,
and you say well, for so I am '^ said Jesus Christ on one
occasion. Master is a name ascribed to Him frequently in
the Gospels ; and it is most commonly used of Him, and
- ■ • .
*- Sir W» Martin, finnitic La^^gnageSi p. 67. ^ John xiii. 13.
DR, HORf ON AND THE POPE ^29
addressed to Him, at the present time. But even Mr- Horton
seems to ' blasphemously ' use the term without remorse.
He is not in the least disturbed when employing it in
speaking to others. He does not appear to be afraid
lest his arm might be withered like Jeroboam's, as he
puts the obnoxious word upon his letters, nor expect
every morning to see the postman succumb to the fate
of Gehazi because he co-operates in this nefarious busi-
ness ! No one needs to be reminded that Mr. is master
written shortly. Yet, what an incorrigible sinner our
country seems to be in the adoption and the use of this
divine title ! If Dr. Horton's theory is true— if national
decay must ensue so soon as names and attributes used
of the Creator are applied to the creature — most of us
will wonder why England has not long ago found its cities
utterly demolished, and the ground they stood upon turned
with the ploughshare and sowed with salt. He cannot,
surely, need to be told that ' whosoever shall offend in one
point is guilty of all.' ^ The words lord and mastery according
to him should be sufficient, when used as they are in this
Protestant land, to make our fate as hard as was that of
Sodom and Gomorrah. Yet, strange to say, we still live
and flourish.
But it is with the special word God that the writer of
Our Lord God the Pope is busied. He suggests, to speak as
mildly as possible, that in the four centuries before the
Eeformation, God was a common name for the Pope.
* Impartial men will form their opinion on this matter by
inquiring whether in the four centuries preceding the Eefor-
mation it was common to apply the term Deus to the Pope.
Now, beyond all question^ the Pope was called God.^ Three
out of the four centuries are dismissed with a * cloud of
witnesses ' the number of which does not appear, after all,
so very enormous. They amount to exactly one. Dr. Horton
resolutely locks up in his breast his vast knowledge of
* Koman Catholic literature,' The whole Christian world is,
for the space of three hundred years to be charged with
^ James ii. 10.
330 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
idolatry on the strength of one witness. And that one
witness he has hired into his service from the pages of
Father Smith's pamphlet, Does the Pope Claim to he God ? ^
There Dr. Horton appears to have first fallen in with his
solitary bit of Canon Law; there, too, he must have seen how
utterly worthless it is as testimony against the Popes ; there,
at least, he must have noticed that, if the explanation was to
him not convincing, yet the one quotation was now rendered
so doubtful that sensible men would hardly dare to put a fly
to death with only a similar weight of evidence, to say
nothing of condemning a whole religion of blasphemy.
Nevertheless, Dr. Horton seems to be quite happy with his
one extract. It is difficult to imagine the storm of abuse
and the vials of wrath which would fall and be poured upon
the head of a Catholic priest were he to assert that, for three
centuries, the Protestant bishops have been commonly
divorced from their wives, and that the English clergy have
generally put theirs up for auction. He need not rely upon
a quotation of doubtful meaning as the author of Our Lord
God the Pope is compelled to do, for his three hundred years.
It cannot be denied that Bishop Ponet of Winchester, ' was
divorced from the butcher's wife with shame enough, ' ^ nor
that the Vicar of St. Nicolas, Cole Abbey, ' sold his wife to
a butcher.' ^ This is Dr. Horton's way of arguing. But if a
whole religion is to be condemned of blasphemy, and that
for the space of three centuries, because of one extract,
whose bearing upon the subject most will assert to be
absolutely nothing, and all will acknowledge to be doubtful,
what are we to conclude as to the state of morals among the
Protestant clergy after Machyn's testimony, the truth of
which is certain? No one, we suspect, will conclude anything
excepting that Bishop Ponet and the Vicar of St. Nicolas,
Cole Abbey, were very disreputable persons. Then why is a
solitary extract, which Dr. Horton must confess to be at
least very doubtful in meaning, to be used, not to
condemn the individual who wrote it, but to charge with
1 Tract, p. 7.
^ Machyn's Diary, p. 8, year looL
8 JHdetn, p. 48, year 1553.
* DR. HORTON AND THE POPE 33l
blasphemy three centuries of God-fearing and Christian
people ?
Nor can the author of Our Lord God the Pope be said to
shine at a greater advantage in his references for the remain-
ing one hundred years. The period from the year 1423, the
first date he gives, until 1523, the last, v^^as that during
which the Eenaissance in Italy reached its crowning point.
The Eenaissance, so far as letters are concerned, meant not
only the writing of a more classic style of Latin, not only
the study of, and a perfect acquaintance with Greek as
Plato and Aristotle wrote it ; it meant also the adoption of
pagan forms of expressions and the use, in literature, of an
almost anti-christian terminology. The men of the new
1 darning started from the principle that a Christian term
could not be considered good classic Latin, seeing that the
pagan writers, whose style they so closely imitated, were
either antecedent to Christianity, or, if contemporaries with
it, knew nothing of that religion. What did the word God
mean when they used it ? They would have answered that,
as they found in classic Latin both a higher and a lower
meaning for the term, the first for God Almighty, and the
second for whomsoever they choose to address by it, they
felt justified in employing the word with a similar distinc-
tion in their writings. They would have referred us to a
passage in a work of their great master, Cicero, which
even Dr, Horton might find it difficult to condemn : —
Hold fast to this : not thou but this body is mortal. For thou
art not he whom this form declares thee to be. The mind of each
one, that each one is ; not that shape which can be pointed out
by the finger. Knoiu, therefore, that thou art a God; forasmuch
as he is a God who lives, who feels, who remembers, who forsees,
who so rules, and moderates, and moves that body over which he
is placed, as does that principal God this world. ^
If each one of us, they would answer, might, in this lower
sense, be called God, why should we be condemned if we use
the term in the same way to princes and poets, and even
Popes? Indeed, when Sigismond Malatesta could call a
^ Cicero, Be Soninio Scipionis.
332 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
worthless creature Hhe goddess Isota,' and when Aretino,
the poet, was styled 'divine,' and the * Son of God,' we are
surprised that Dr. Horton has succeeded in finding only
two extracts in which, in anything like a serious manner
the Pope is called a god. The remaining two in which
the expression occurs are taken from poems, one of which
our author finds in Addington Symonds' charming, if not
altogether unbiassed book, the Be7iaissance in Italy, while
the other is, apparently, borrowed from one of his Protestant
friends. These two poetical quotations are placed before
us with all the solemnity due to grave historical data.
Dr. Horton seems to be in perfect ignorance that by means
of poetry we could prove almost anything. We might prove
that Milton, a Nonconformist like himself, was a pagan,
because in Lycidas he invokes the goddesses of song ; we
might deny the Christianity of the most Christian Dante,
because he personifies Fortune as a goddess, and gives her a
kingdom, as he does also the other ' heavenly intelligences : '
Ella provvede guidica e perseque
Sue regno come il lore gli altri Dei}
We might accuse Boileau, the author of a devout poem
on the love of God, as being, after all, * blasphemous,'
because he says of the King of France : * Thou alone,
without help, after the manner of the gods, sustainest
everything by thyself, and seest all things with thine eyes.' ^
Or, what is more to our purpose, we might hold up both
Charles II. and Dryden, and, according to our writer, the
whole English people as examples of idolatry, because the
poet wrote of the king : —
Both Indies, rivals in your bed provide
With gold or jewels to adorn your bride
This to a mighty king presents rich ore
While that with incense does a god implore.^
It is the spirit of the Kenaissance which Dr. Horton
fails so completely to understand. Even Addington Symonds
1 Inferno, Canto vii., 1. 87.
2 Discours an roi.
3 Dryden 's Coronation Poem, ' To His Sacred Majesty.'
DR. HORTON AND THE POPE 333
is quoted by him in proof of a theory the truth of which
that writer would have been the first to deny. ' As Symonds
says : " When the spiritual authority of the Popes came
thus to be expressed in Latin verse, it was impossible not to
treat them as deities." ' But the author of the Benaissance
in Italy does not mean that the people, or even the poets
themselves, regarded the Pope as a deity. He is giving his
readers some examples of what he calls * Pagan flattery of
the Popes ; ^ and in the passage following on immediately
to the one given by Dr. Horton, he shows that the very
principle from which the Kenaissance men started, the
principle that purely Christian expressions could not be
considered scholarly Latin, made them careless about fiot
seeming orthodox so long as they appeared, in what they
said, to be scholars. For he continues : — * The temptation
to apply to them (the Popes) the language of the Eoman
religion was too great ; the double opportunity of flattering
their vanity as Pontiffs and their ears as scholars, was too
attractive to be missed.'^ It is one thing to maintain, as
Symonds does, that, when the Kenaissance writers wished
to express a distinctly Christian office, as the office of the
Pope is, in a Pagan language, their flattery could not but
'treat him as a deity.* It is a very different matter to
bring forward those same writers, as Symonds does not, to
prove that they regarded the Pope as God, and that the
people of their times were idolaters. It is to this very book,
the Benaissance in Italy, we should refer had we to show
that these men were the last to look upon the Pope as a
deity. It is there we see, in colours sometimes all too vivid,
that it was these writers of Italian history, these half Pagan,
half Christian philosophers, these writers of love songs and
composers of pasquinades, who blackened the reputation of
some of the Popes in a very serious manner. If the Papacy
favoured them, they flattered ; if not, they blamed, as they
alone knew how to blame. * At one time,' says Symonds,
* he (Cellini) trembled before the awful majesty of Christ's
vicar revealed in Paul III. ; at another he reviled him as a
* Symonds' Renaissance, Revival of Learning, p. 362. 2 mdeni, p, 360.
B34 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
man who neither believed in God, nor in any other article
of religion.* Platina could call Paul II. divine so long as
he cherished hopes of propitiating that Pontiff. He w&s
deceived in his hope, with the result that he has given to
posterity a Life of Paul which is the very opposite of divine.
The men of the ' Kenaissance ' were not acceptable to
Adrian VI., and in consequence he was called by Berni the
dunce who could not comprehend his age, and, when he
died, his doctor's door was ornamented with this inscrip-
tion : — * The Koman Senate and people is grateful to the
deliverer of the country.'^ What is the value of evidence
brought from the writings of such men in the matter of
either praise or blame ? To say nothing of more sincere,
and we may add, more religious persons, not even the
writers themselves could be proved upon such testimony to
have thought that the Popes were gods. They flattered the
popes as they flattered anyone to whom they looked for
patronage or gain. No doubt, Dr. Horton has himself been
treated to this kind of unreliable praise in his time. But it
is sincerely to be hoped, for his own peace of mind, that he
does not infer from the flattering sentiments expressed
concerning himself, as he does from those addressed to
LeoX. or to Julius III., that, therefore, he is, and thinks
himself to be, and is regarded by the flatterer and by every-
one else as being as perfect as those sentiments represent
him.
A moment's reflection ought to have been sufficient to
have convinced our writer that this precious argument of
his must end in making our own country appear as blasphe-
mous and idolatrous as he thinks it does the countries
inhabited by Catholics. Indeed, nothing could have well
been less fortunate for him than his assertion that our
progress is the effect of our great care in giving divine titles
and attributes to God alone. Says Lightfoot : * Come
hither stranger, and stand by me while I am sacrificing ;
and, when you hear me relating my own story, help my
prayers with yours ; assist me in this holy office, and
^ Symouds' Renaissance Jge of the Despots, p, 347.
DR. HORTON AND THE POPE 885
worship the same deities with me/' This famous Protestant
clergyman tells us that his two deities are God and the
king ; and about the latter he continues : ' To the altar,
therefore, of his mercy I humbly fly, in a lowly supplication
begging and entreating him to consider my case.'
According to Dr. Horton, we must accuse this great
biblical scholar of idolatry and, at the same time, of denying
the fundamental doctrine of Christianity, the unity of the
Divine Nature ! The historian Camden, also a Protestant,
addressed Queen Elizabeth as a goddess. He is dedicating
his book upon Britain, ' To the most Serene and most
Powerful Queen Elizabeth;' and, after the opening sentences
he continues : * For to whopi ought it rather, or could it
better, be offered and consecrated than to thee, most Serene
Elizabeth, the goddess, the lady, and the most indulgent
mother of Britain.' ^ Dr. Horton is shopked by an extract he
gives purporting to come from a Croatian nobleman and spoken
to Pope Adrian VI. The strongest portion of that extract is
the following sentence : — ^ Suppliant and prostrate, I vene-
rate and adore the immediate presence of God.' Perhaps
the following from the above-mentioned preface of Camden
to Elizabeth will appear at least equally shocking : — * Just
as those who say their prayers to God moderate their voice,
their words, and their countenance by a certain reverence,
so ought I in consecrating this book at the altar of so great
a goddess to adore rather with my mind than to praise with
an oration.' ^ Everything which Kanke, the non-Catholic
historian of the Popes, says, concerning Adrian VI., whom
the author of Our Lord God the Pope accuses of claiming to
be God, leads us to suppose that he was the very last to love
any kind of flattery. He was the humblest of men. But,
we are not at all sure that ' Good Queen Bess * did not
thoroughly relish the 'pretty conceit ' with which, in addition
to the foregoing passages the historian embellished his preface
to her. He says : — * All do acknowledge that to be most
true which Eumenius formerly exclaimed to Constantino
1 Lightfoot. Horae. Heb. et Tal, p. 369, vol. xi.
2 Camden's Britannia, Latin Ed., 1600.
^ Ibidem.
336 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
the Great concerning this thy kingdom. Ye good gods !
what is this that from the very ends of the earth new gods
come down to be worshipped by the whole world ! ' *
After this, it is with mingled feelings of surprise and
amusement that we read in the tract : * Our English Eefor-
mers like Jewell were profoundly impressed by what seemed
to them names of blasphemy, attributed to a man.' Was it
really * the repudiation of this blasphemy,' as our writer puts
it, * which launched modern England upon her career of pro-
gress?' The term * Vicar of God' is one of the blasphemies
which devout England, according to him, repudiated. But
Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, one of the leaders of the Kefor-
mation in England, used the very term to King Edward VI.
* Consider also, ' he says, * the presence of the king's majesty
God's high vicar in earthy having a respect to his personage
ye ought to have reverence to it.'^ And Curio another
Reformer, called the same unhappy lad, * a king of clearly
divine hope,' * a divine boy. ' ^ Nor does Blackstone find any
difficulty in approving Bracton's assertion about the king
of England in general. * The king is the vicar and minister
of God on earth.' ^ Again, the words 'most sacred and
most blessed,' are objected to as being attributes and
prerogatives of God. Did Protestant England repudiate
these too ? But the king is called ' Most High ' and ' Most
Sacred ' in the ecclesiastical constitutions, ' treated upon by
the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, &c., in the year
1640. And the same canons inform us that if we * only
resist * the king by bearing ' defensive ' arms we receive to
ourselves damnation ! While the Members of Parliament
addressed King Charles I. as * Sir, you are the breath of
our nostrils, and the light of our eyes, and the religion
we profess hath taught us whose image you are.' ^ We
wonder very much if the following extract, written by a
Protestant to Thomas Cromwell, would commend itself to
Dr. Horton as a repudiation. ' Most gracious lord and
^ Camden, ibidem.
2 Latimer's Sermons before King Edward VI.
« Strype's Annals, vol. ii., p. 298. 9th. Ed. 1816.
4 Hlackstone's, Commentary, vol. i., bk. i., c. 7, The Eights of Persons,
•''Eapin, Hist. Eng., vol. x., p. 144. Ed. 1730.
DR. HORTON AND THE POPE 337
most worthiest visitor that ever came amongst us, make me
your servant, handmaid, and bedesman, and save my soul,
which should he lost if you help it not ; the which you may
save with one word speaking, and make me, which am
nought, come unto grace and goodness.' * These sentiments
are certainly not less extraordinary than those expressed
in a quotation given in the tract we are considering, in which
the Pope is said as the Lamb of God to take away the sins
of the world, and for which the writer gives no reference,
excepting that Elliott, a Protestant like himself, says, that
he has met with it ! Or again, what are we to think of
this : * Such is the mercy and kindness of thy godhead,*
writes a Protestant clergyman to * my most Serene Lord.
Lord Charles II.' — ' Such is the mercy and kindness of thy
godhead, that thy most holy and divine majesty will not
despise this little literary work ; ' ^ and h6 continues : * Nor
do I think that this fact ought to be passed over in silence
by me that, bound by a sense of worship as thy servant,
and of thy kindness to me thy vassal, I lie at thy most sacred
feet.* And he finishes by informing this most immoral
monarch that he holds the place of God on earth — another
blasphemy in Dr. Horton's eyes ! And all of this we are
gravely told,we as a nation repudiated ! The truth is that
Protestantism no more * repudiated ' these extraordinary
expressions than did Catholicism embrace them. In both
religions they are the words of an individual here and there,
and as such, were those individuals to be taken seriously,
cannot be brought forward to condemn a whole faith or
an entire people. And no one does take them seriously,
excepting the author of Our Lord God the Pope. He is so
terribly in earnest himself as not to be able to comprehend
how even Christians, of whose extreme goodness no one
could doubt, have found no difficulty, on one occasion in
their lives, in giving titles generally associated with the
Supreme Being to a fellow-creature. Dr. Horton has much
to learn. He has yet to learn that God and Christ Himself
1 Maskells Ritualia Aug., vol. i , p. clxxxi.
* Preface to Dr. Littleton's Latin Dictionary.
VOL. VI.
338 THE IRISH SCCLESlASTiCAL RfeCORi!)
fell into the error which he so sharply criticizes ; ^ that
St. John assures us we are * the sons of God,' ^ and St. Peter
that we are * partakers of the divine nature.' ^ He may yet
read the Epistle of Diognetus of the second century, and
ponder upon the assertion of that writer, that he who gives
to the needy * becomes a god to those who receive his alms.'
He might yet derive some instruction from St. Gregory
Nazianzen, who, although he addressed our Lord in the
following beautiful lines : —
What can I, Lord, in this my evil hour,
Save look to Thee, despising things of earth ;
Life of my life, Breath of my soul, my Power,
My guiding Light ! O Saviour what thy worth ! *
nevertheless feared no misconstruction with regard to his
words concerning his friend, St. Basil : —
Dispenser of the mysteries of God, man of the desires of the
Spirit. 1 do call thee the God of Pharoah, that is of all the
Egyptain power now opposing us. I call thee the column
and strength of the Church, the Will of the Lord, the Bearer of
Light in the world, the Holder of the word of Life, the Sustainer
of the Faith, and the temple of the Spirit.*
Dr. Horton's ignorance will, we feel sure, appear to
himself very great when he considers, that the blasphemy,
as he calls it, of giving the honour due to the ' One God to
another * has really been committed less often by Catholics
with regard to the Pope, than by Christians who lived when,
as we are always being told, there were no Papists, with
regard to persons who were not the Pope. For St. Jerome
called the Apostles Gods, and St. Gregory I. reminds the
Emperor Mauritius that priests are called Gods in Sacred
Writ. And he will wonder very much, doubtless, how it
came about that he should not have known that modern
Protestantism, of which he is so militant a member, is
really as great a blasphemer as ever was early Christianity, or
the more remote reformed writers to whom we have alluded.
It is Symonds who assures us that, the sculptor by his art *has
1 St. John X. 34, 35. ',* St. Gregory, I)e Vita Sua Carmen,
2 1 John ill. 2. ^ St. Gregory, Qratio 19.
» 2 Peter i. 4.
t>R. HdRf ON AND THE POPE 339
Til '
won for himself our worship.' ^ It is Kuskin who says, that
some phases of nature * cannot be heard without affection,
nor contemplated without worship.'^ It is Tennyson who
ascribes to the departed a certain supernatural knowledge
and mercy : —
Be near us when we climb or fall :
Ye watch like God the rolling hours,
With larger other eyes than ours.
To make allowance for us all.
It is a non-Catholic writer on education who says, that
' the teacher creates man a second time ; but he who creates
man is God, and therefore the teacher is God. ' ^ It is the
marriage service in which most Englishmen promise to
* worship ' their wives ; and it is Carlyle who informs us,
that they really do so, and that she is a * divine presence.'
' Thy own amber locked, snow and rose bloom maiden — whom
thou lovest, worshippest as a divine presence, which, indeed,
symbolically taken, she is.' * Perhaps those words * sym-
bolically taken' may help to explain to the writer of Our
Lord God the Pope in what manner extravagant language is
to be understood. Perhaps he may, some day, be converted
to the sentiment which most thinking men and women have
long ago held, that * words like nature half reveal, and half
conceal the soul within.' Or, at least, if he cannot learn the
lesson that it is possible for a word to have two meanings,
he will hesitate to charge Catholics with a blasphemy which
their whole soul abominates by means of proofs which would
condemn the All Holy Himself, the best of Christians, and
his own Protestant ' progressive ' country.
There are other parts of the tract which we pass by, con-
tent with simply mentioning them. There are four quota-
tions with no reference save that they are to be found in the
works of three Protestants as hostile to us as is Dr- Horton.
They are particularly offensive. Until he can bring us
better proofs than the unauthenticated assertions of our
^ Syraond's Renaissance Fine Arts, p. 120.
^ Modern Fainters, vol. ii., cap. xii,
^ Stimmen aus Maria Laach, Sept. 1896, p. 257.
* Sartor Besartus 23.
340 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
enemies, our writer must not be surprised to hear that he is
considered wantonly to have outraged the feeHngs of people
as religious, at least, as he is. He suggests that Catholics
regard the Pope so highly, that to accuse him is to commit
the sin against the Holy Ghost, and is therefore unpardonable ;
and that they have not hesitated to assert that, * with his
indulgence, as the Lamb of God, he, the Pope, took away
the sins of the world.' ^ We are sorry that Dr. Horton
thinks it so small a matter to wilfully hurt the religious
sentiments of persons whose idea of the Supreme Godhead
of the Lamb of God has not been surpassed by his own, and
whose love for the Son of God, and gratitude to Him for
His redemption, are much greater than he can lay claim to
possessing. The Popes have been, and ever will be, very dear
to us. We revere them as those to whom, through St. Peter,
the divine words were said, * To thee do I give the keys of
the Kingdom of Heaven,' and, ' whatsoever thou shalt bind
on earth shall be bound in Heaven ; ' but the history of the
Church is our witness, that never yet have Catholics placed
him or the saints, much higher than he, before that Lord
and God, who to them has ever been so precious. The
successor of Peter, the Vicar of Christ, the Pastor of our
Lord's flock, all these and many other titles do we give to
the Pope ; but Dr. Horton will have undertaken a thankless
task if he endeavour to find one member of the Catholic
Church, whose bead on earth the Pope is, who does not
also regard him as a man ' taken from among men and
compassed with infirmity.'
John Freeland.
Tract, pp. 10-12.
[ 341 ]
ST. PATRICK'S BIRTHPLACE: 'THE VOICE OF
THE IRISH'
INTRODUCTOKY NOTE
IT may be advisable to begin by giving the following
short bibliography of the controversy : —
1. * The Birthplace of St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland.'
By the Bishop of Ossory (nov^ Cardinal Moran). Dublin
Beview, April, 1880.
2. * Where St. Patrick was born.' By the Eev. Colin
Grant (afterwards Bishop of Aberdeen). Dublin Beview^
April, 1887. I put these two articles first, because they are
written so systematically. They begin by clearly setting
forth in chronological sequence the authorities appealed
to. The texts and translations there given have now been
before the world for many years, yet they have never been
challenged as inaccurate. The renderings of Cardinal Moran
and of Bishop Grant are, accordingly, those of which I shall
make use in the following article.
3. ' St. Martin and St. Patrick.' By the Kev. W. B.
Morris. Dublin Beview, January, 1883. Cf. the same
writer's Life of St. Patrick. Burns and Gates, 1888. Also
his (unsigned) article in the Dublin Beview, July, 1880 :
' The Apostle of Ireland and his Modern Critics.'^
4. * Where was St. Patrick born ? ' By Very Kev.
Sylvester Malone, M.K.I. A., &c., Dublin Beview, October,
1 Father Morris is not always quite serious in his discussion of St. Patrick's
birthplace ; and his ill-timed and sneering pleasantry is sometiines misleading.
Thus, in the Dublin Hevieiv, J anusiTy, 188S, p. 14, note, he makes merry over
certain details which he is pleased to ascribe to the Kilpatrick tradition,
although no responsible writer ever seriously thinks of urging them. It is
easy to retort : one might make merry over Father Morris and his 'blackthorn,'
(loc. cit., p. 20.)
Then, what shall I say of his unscientific etymology ? — a fault common to
him with too many Irish writers, who are otherwise men of ability and learning.
He derives pecora from the Grreek ' to shear ' ! Only the dignity of the subject
before me prevents me from characterising this as ' sheer nonsense ; ' one might
as well say that the Greeks spoke of a sheep as Tvpo^arov, prohdton, because it
vas probatnm, and found good !
342 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
1886. Another article with the same title,^ and by the
same writer, appeared in the Duhlin Bevieic^ October, 1887.
Cf. also his Clmpters towards a Life of St. Patrick
Dublin : Gill and Son, 1892.
5. * Where St. Patrick was born: A Last Reply.' By
Rev. Colin C. Grant. Duhlin Review, January, 1888.
6. ^The Birthplace of St. Patrick.' By Rev. Albert
Barry, CSS.R. Irish Ecclesiastical Record, December,
1893.
7. 'The Birthplace of St. Patrick' By Very Rev.
Edward O'Brien, P.P., V.G. Irish Ecclesiastical Becord,
June-July, 1899.
8. The Birthplace of St Patrick. By the Rev. Duncan
Macnab. Dublin : James Dnffy, 1866. In this work the
original authorities will be found cited in the appendix.
The learning and ability of the vnriter are remarkable,
especially when we consider the time at which he wrote.
For the intelligent discussion of the subject, an acquaint-
ance with the Celtic Scotland of Dr. W. F. Skene, late
Historiographer-Royal for Scotland, is indispensable. His
other works may also be consulted with advantage ; and the
same remark applies to the Scottish writers who have given
an account of the Roman remains in Scotland. These
remains are well described and illustrated in Stuart's Cale-
donia Bomana. Of course, local histories of the Alclyde
district must not be neglected. I may specially refer to the
recent work of Mr. John Bruce, F.S.A Scot., History of
the Parish of West or Old Kilpatrick, where a good deal of
information and many suggestive references may be found.*
1 But not with the satne view.
* I canaot here undertake to give a complete list of all the works which I
have consulted ; I content myself with mentioning a few writers, in whose pag«8
the literature of the subject will be foimd copiously qaoted and referred to. A
great deal has, of course, been done since Stuart, or even since Skene wrote ;
and I have derived much information from recent monographs, lectures, and
reports, such as, e.g., The Froceedingg of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
I speak, also, to some extent, from personal knowledge and observation- ^Vhpn
about eight years ago excavations and sections were made along the line of the
Antonine Wall, I was enabled to see and examine partof them. This may suffice
for the present ; if any of my statements are challenged, I shall know how to
reply. Meantime, perhaps enough has been said to caution the reader againnt
tjic assertions and views of dogmatic theorists, who know as much concerning
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST. PATRICK 343
In spite of all that has been written on the subject of
St. Patrick's birthplace, I trust that I may be permitted to
offer a contribution to the discussion. As a member of the
Irish race, I am bound to feel a profound interest in all that
concerns the apostle of our country ; as one dwelling within
easy reach of the saint's traditional birthplace, I cannot
ignore the claims of Kilpatrick, and cannot but wish that
they should be kept before the minds of my countrymen.*
Let us, therefore, inquire as to the character of these claimr,
and endeavour to ascertain how far ^ they are supported by
the most ancient traditions of those who were presumably
best acquainted with the facts of the case. All must agree
that the sources of information which have the best right
to be considered as authentic are : (1) the people to whom
St. Patrick preached the faith ; (2) the fellow-countrymen
of the saint. With regard to this latter source of informa-
tion, however, it is obvious that we cannot consult the
saint's (presumed) countrymen until we have previously
determined, at least with a certain degree of probability, his
birthplace or nationality. Let us, then, first question the
yoice of Irish tradition. After that we may proceed to
question — whom? Well, let us not indulge in rash antici-
pations : the result of our first ^inquiry must determine the
character and form of the second.
the district of Alclyde as I may know concerning the possible bodies that
revolve round Siiius or Algol.
1 St. Peter's College, the seminary of the archdiocese of Glasgow, stands
about six miles from the centre of the city, and five miles from Kilpatrick,
\^ho6e very name — seeing tliat no serious rival is known to exist — bhouid
constitute a claim to an impartial consideration of the right lo indicat*
St. Patrick's birthplace. As one looks from the College windows he csm
perceive, about a quarter of a mile away, the line of the Antoniue "Wall, a woi k
which was constructed a.d. 139, as the frontier of the Roman dominions, and
traces of which can still be distinctly seen iu the neighbourhood. Here, too^
Roman remains of unquestioned authenticity have again and again been
discovered. About a mile beyond the College grounds, on the uuiin road to
Kilpatrick and Dumbarton, there rises a remarkable eminence known as the
' Castle Hill.* This is the site of one of the CasteHa, or forts which defended
the frontier wall. The hill still shows traces of Roman fortification ; a Romnn
altar discovered there bears an inscription containing the name of the ' Fourth
Cohort of the Gauls.'
The very ground on which the College is built originally formed part of
the old Catholic Parish of Kilpatrick ; and the neighbouring modem village,
about a mile on the Glasgow side of the College gates, is named New
Klpatrick, lo distinguish it ^m the more accient town, six miles, to the west,
344 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
I. THE VOICE OF lEISH TRADITION
In the course of this article I purpose to ' take for granted '
as little as possible ; and whatever assumptions I may make
will, I trust, be of such a character that no reasonable person
will be likely to dispute them. My first assumption is that
the generations of Irishmen to whom St. Patrick actually
preached must have been acquainted with the saint's
birthplace. When the apostle of Ireland was, for the first
time, brought face to face with the inhabitants of the different
districts of the country, perhaps the first question that must
have been asked of him was : * Who are you, and whence do
you come ? ' As he journeyed through the length and
breadth of the land, this question, dictated both by prudence
and by curiosity, must have been put innumerable times and
in innumerable forms. And if frequently put, it must surely
have been frequently and fully answered. Or are we to
suppose that the saint continually refused to give a direct
and clear answer to the direct and searching questions of
those whom he was so anxious to conciliate ?
And even if we choose to imagine that he observed, when
dealing with the chiefs and with the mass of the people,
Bome extraordinary and meaningless reticence on the subject
of his birthplace, can we believe that he never revealed the
* dead secret ' of his birth and nationality even to his closest
and dearest friends, to such favourite disciples, for example,
as the loving and lovable Benignus ? Or did he only speak
of his natal spot under some solemn promise that the awful
secret should never be revealed to others ? We know from
the character of St. Patrick's own writings that he was
a man of deep and warm feelings, and that his mind and
heart turned naturally and lovingly to the recollection of
home and kindred. He must, one would think, have had
frequent occasion, in the course of his long apostolate, to
refer naturally and movingly to the subjects which, humanly
speaking, were nearest to his heart.
Again, even if we ignore what has just been urged, is
there not another important consideration which we must
take into our reckoning ? Surely the mm whp took our
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST, PATRICK 345
saint captive knew something of his antecedents. He was
their property, and they would deem it their business and
their right to know. They knew, at least, the place
whence they had taken him ; they could probably guess
something more ; they were certainly in a position to extort
what information their coarse curiosity demanded. And
when St. Patrick passed from the hands of his captors to the
power of his masters, were no questions asked and answered?
It is not thus that we find slaves being bought and sold,
either in ancient or in more recent times. A slave's ante-
cedents are always a subject of inquiry, and a new and
untried slave's antecedents could hardly include more than
his birth and nationality, and must have almost inevitably
included these. And during all the time of his captivity,
whilst he served various masters, and was brought into
contact with various people did no one ever ask him about
home and kindred, or did all who might ask fail to obtain a
reply? And though we should suppose such failure on
the part of the men of Erin, what about its women?
There is no reason to think that they have ever shown
themselves inferior to their foreign sisters in the quali-
ties of kindness and compassion ; and it might be rash to
assume that they are notably deficient in feminine curiosity:
Did no womanly Irish heart ever feel touched by even a
transient sentiment of pity for the lonely young captive?
Were no gentle words, or kindly inquiries ever addressed
to him, such as might win the poor slave to speak of parents
and country, and so move him to relieve his own sorrow,
while he gratified the natural and not uncharitable curiosity
of another? St. Vincent de Paul after his capture by the
Barbary Corsairs, was in a situation very similar to that
of St. Patrick : the story of St. Vincent and the infidel wife
of his Mohammedan master may suggest an answer to
the above questions. Only let us remember the difference
of age ; for Patrick was hardly more than a child, at the
time of which we speak.
Lastly, let us think of St. Patrick returning as a mis-
sionary and a bishop to the country, and even to the very
scenes of his former slavery. Imagine the interest that must
346 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
have been excited by his reappearance ; consider the inter-
change of pieces of information and the comparing of notes
that must have ensued. Numbers of those who had known
him as a captive were still alive ; possibly some of his
captors, and certainly some who were related to them, would
still be surviving to answer questions about him. Was there
no such thing as gossip in Ireland, or did it refuse to follow
him wherever he went ? * Haud semper errat fama,' says
the historian ; and we know that, while it cannot always
err, it travels far and wide.
If in spite of all these things, and in spite of human
nature itself, St. Patrick's birthplace still remained a secret,
then I can only say, in Kinglake's phrase, that our fore-
fathers must have been * a heap of originals.' Now, as we
can hardly accept such a conclusion, we must assume that
St. Patrick's birthplace could not have remained a secret to
his contemporaries. During the long years of his ministry
he and others must have had occasion often enough to say
' where St. Patrick was born ; ' and every such mention of
the place must have tended to originate an independent line
of local tradition. As time went on, these various lines of
tradition must have crossed and interlaced, mutually con-
firming and strengthening one another, until at last they
formed a network of conviction in the Irish mind such as
no hostile criticism can successfully assail, and none but
the most arbitrary theorizing can ignore.
A matter once so well and widely known could never
have been forgotten, so long as Irish learning preserved its
continuity of life. See how Father Morris himself speaks of
* the unbroken tradition concerning St. Patrick which was
handed down from generation to generation in the Irish
monasteries.' ^ How is it, then, that in regard to the saint's
birthplace, and in regard to that alone, the tradition is no
longer * unbroken,' but becomes fairly pulverized beneath
the blows of hostile criticism ?
But, perhaps, the Irish were indifferent about the matter,
and lost the recollection of what failed to interest them ?
^ Life of St. Patrick, p, 49.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST. PATRICK 347
One of our critics actually asserts this ; but the assertion is
not only rash, it is opposed to all the evidence that we
possess. Our earliest records show a lively interest in the
subject, and the writers give us a multitude of names and
indications by which the place might be identified. * Emthur '
(or Nemthur), ' Ailcluade,' ' Campus Taburne ' (or Campus
Tabern), * the district of Strathclyde/ ' the valley of the
Clyde,' * Dun-Breaton ' {i.e., the Kock of the Britons), ' the
Strathclyde Britons,' * the Strathclyde river' — these, and
such as these, are the indications which our ancient writers
afford. These authorities speak as men who took a parti-
cular interest in the question ; and anyone who will turn to
the Dublin Beview, April, 1880, and April, 1887, will see
that they also speak as men who profess to hnoio what they
were talking about. What arrant humbugs they must have
been, if they did not know ! And we must remember that
their evidence reaches back certainly to the eighth, probably
to the seventh century.^
But does not another objector sneer at the indications
referred to, and refuse to accept as evidence * names which
nobody ever heard of ' ? Unfortunately for the critic, these
names and indications are too abundant to be all rejected
as unknown quantities. Our ancient writers are simply and
literally * too many for him ' in this matter. If anyone
1 Father Sylvester Malone, in his Chapters towards a Life of St. Patrick,
p. 49, says : — '• The chief aod sole [sic !) argument in favour of Scotland being
the birthplace of St. Patrick is founded on a gloss at the close of the tenth cen-
tury.' On the very next page the date of the gloss is moved forward a little to
' about the end of the tenth or beginning of the eleventh century.' Of course,
Father Malone does all that he can to make the gloss as late as possible, and
he may be lelt to enjoy his own view. But when he talks of the gloss as ' the
sole argument,' he calmly ignores all other concurrent evidence, whether
derived from ancient records or from tradition ; and that is a proceeding which
I will leave to the judicious reader to characterise by appropriate epithets, but
which certainly calls for energetic protest.
And here an important observation suggests itself. All who have any
acquaintance with textual criticism know that, when we assign a certain writing
to a particular date, we by no means suppose that the evidence afforded by the
■writing originated at the date in question. On the contrary, unless the reading
presented by the MSS. can be shown to be a manifest corruption of some earlier
document, o.'^e are bound to regard such a piece of evidence as proof of a pre-
existing tradition. This observation must be carefully borne in mind, if we
would rightly estimate the significaneo of the proofs derived from anci«^nt
records ; y^et it seems to be generallj?" ignored b^ our ' Pa,triciq,n ' theorists..
348 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
can seriously say that he never heard of Dumbarton, of
Strathclyde, or even of Alclyde, I am sorry for the objector.
His want of knowledge is deplorable ; but his want of
discretion in thus publishing his want of knowledge is abso-
lutely inexcusable. A name like Campus Tahern is sometimes
objected to, on the ground that it is a * general designation,'
and not an individual appellation. But, if it is a general
designation, then it cannot be opposed to the particular
names with which we are furnished over and above ; and
even as a general designation it suits the topography and
history of the locality to which it is applied. Again, are not
all works on local etymology written on the supposition
that local names were originally appellatives, and, therefore,
of a more or less ' general ' nature. Let our critics consult
Joyce's Irish Names of PlaceSy or Johnstons Place-names
of Scotland, But, then, what about Emthur — a name
whose very form varies, and whose explanation is difficult,
because more than one etymology has been suggested ? As
to the variations of form, we are told that St. Jerome, an
older contemporary of St. Patrick, was born at Strido, or
Strigo. You see the form varies here again, yet no one
doubts that one or other of the forms implies an underlying
reality. As to the difficulty of etymological explanation, we
do not know the precise meaning of Strido (or is it Strigo?).
All etymologists seem to be in doubt as to the derivation of
the familiar names, Clyde and Glasgow. Are we, therefore,
to blot such names from our maps and histories ?
But there is another ' difficulty.' Father Malone and
other critics invoke distance to lend enchantment to their
hostile views. They insist that different places are set down
as St. Patrick's birthplace : he is said to have been born at
Dumbarton, and again, at Old Kilpatrick. It is hard to be-
lieve that such objectors are sincere. The Aberdeen Breviary
mentions Old Kilpatrick, because the work was compiled
for natives of Scotland ; the ancient Irish authorities give
Alclyde, or Dumbarton, because they were not writing for
Scotchmen, but for Irishmen. The latter would probably
know something of the important British city and fortress,
'^hos^ name was applied to the svirrounding district, and
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST. PATRICK 349
even to the Strath clyde kingdom, the capital of which was
Alclyde ; they might know nothing of particular local names
like Kilpatrick. Indeed, to tell a person that ' Patrick was
born at Patrick's Church,' would not seem to convey much
information; it would be more like tautology than definition.
We commonly say that * St. Paul suffered martyrdom at
Eome ' ; for the statement is intended to convey something
like an intelligible idea to people who are mostly ignorant of
Koman topography. The majority of men and women would
be mystified, instead of being instructed, if you told them
that St. Paul was martyred at S. Paolo alle Tre Fontane^
even if you put the information into English. In Kome,
however, the Tre Fontaiie would naturally be mentioned as
the name of the place, because it is the name familiar to the
inhabitants of the neighbourhood. Yet the Tre Fontane is
about four miles from the nearest gate of the City, and that
is just the distance from the Chapel Hill to the rock of
Dumbarton.
The mention of the Chapel Hill at the western extremity
of Kilpatrick once more ^reminds us of Emthur. If the
proper form be Nemthury and the meaning Turris Coelestis,
the modern name of Chapel Hill suggests a strange and
significant coincidence. Whether the name arose from the
local devotion to St. Patrick in early days, or points to some
pre-existing pagan Sacellum (possibly converted into a
Christian Oratory by the Christians among whom St. Patrick
was born), is quite a secondary matter. If, on the other
hand, the proper form of the name be Emthur, or even the
single element Thur, indicating a prominent or remarkable
' Tower,' such a designation would be singularly appropriate
to the important fortress on the Chapel Hill, where stood
the terminal fort of the great Antonine Wall. Again, the
name may refer to the Dumbarton Kock itself. The whole
question is not of any vital importance to those who believe
in the testimony of ancient records and of ancient tradition ;
for neither records nor tradition enter Jinto minute topo-
graphical particulars such as we could recognise at the
present day. ' In Emthur ' (or Nemthur), * in Alclyde ' (a
district as well as a town), *in Kilpatrick '—such is the
350 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
testimony of former ages : quarrel with these phrases as you
will, they can never imply any greater opposition, or involve
any greater difficulty than can be shown to exist in the
phrases, * At Kome,' * At the Tre Fontane.' There are
points about Emthur, and about one or two other names
associated in ancient writers with St. Patrick's birthplace,
concerning which we may not be quite certain ; but most of
the testimony which exists on the subject is clear and
decisive. We may acquiesce in the limitations of our know-
ledge ; for, in such matters, inter virtutes habetur aliquid
nescire. Or we may attempt to explain what is obscure, but,
while doing so, we must go on the principle that the
unknown is to be elucidated in conformity with the known.
To act on the opposite plan, or to explain away the certain,
in order to accommodate the requirements of the uncertain
and conjectural, would be to proclaim ourselves devoid of
the powers of reason.
To sum up the case in favour of Irish tradition. A
knowledge of human nature and a consideration of the
circumstances of St. Patrick's life in Ireland indicate that
the saint's birthplace could not have remained unknown to
his contemporaries. Not he alone, but others besides, must
have been led to give information upon the subject. Two
classes of people there are, indeed, whose life can have no
secret, and whose birth can be no mystery; these are,
the highest and the lowest, the despised slave and the
honoured leader and inspirer of a nation's life. St. Patrick
occupied both of these extreme positions ; he was the
slave of Irish masters, and he was the Apostle of the Irish
race.
And the knowledge once acquired was not likely to be
lost by our ancestors. The terms originally employed by
the saint himself or by other informants were certainly
intelligible to those who heard them ; for, if not intelligible
in themselves, they must have been rendered so by further
explanation. And such terms would be faithfully transmitted
from age to age, so long as they continued to be understood ;
and once they tended to become obscure, they would be
faithfully and accurately glossed and explained, or rendered
*rM£ BIRTHPLACE OF ST. PATRICK 351
into more modern and more familiar equivalents.^ We must
therefore, believe that the ancient Irish knew and remem-
bered where their national apostle was born; let us now
see how that cherished knowledge and recollection was
expressed.
II. EXPRESS TESTIMONY OF IRISH TRADITION
1. The Gloss on St. Fiacc's Hymn (before a.d. 700).
I put this first, because it is well known, and also
because it calls for special notice, seeing that its true cha-
racter and real importance are often systematically ignored
or misrepresented.
St. Fiacc, who is represented as Bishop of Sletty, and
one of the immediate disciples of St. Patrick, must have
written before the year a.d. 540. His Hymn, which appeals
to pre-existing records, tells us : * Patrick was born in
Nemthur ; it is this that has been declared in histories.' An
ancient gloss adds the information : ' Nemthur is a city in
North Britain, namely, Ailcluade.' ^
With regard to the above, the following points must be
noted. (1) Date of the Gloss. Cardinal Moran says ; —
His [St. Fiacc's] poem is preserved in the Liher Ilymnorum,
or ancient collection of Hymns of the Early Irish Church, which
probably was compiled by Adamnan towards the close of the
seventh century.-^
Again, pp. 294-295, he says : —
The two MSS. of the Book of Hymns also dating from the
tenth century, were copied from independent sources, as is
manifest from the different hymns which they contain and the
different texts which they present. Nevertheless, several of the
glosses like that which we have cited are the same in both
manuscripts, and are adjudged by the best Celtic scholars to
belong to a very early age, dating probably from the first com-
pilation of the hymns in the seventh century.^
1 To realise the value and trustworthiness of ancient Irish glosses the
reader has only to remember how largely Zbus's immortal work, the
Grammatica Celtica is founded upon the annotations of Irish scribes.
2 For proof of these statements and of those which follow, the reader is
referred to Cardinal Moran's article in the Dublin Review. The article of
Bishop Grant may also be consulted.
» L, c, p. 294.
\
352 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL jRECORD
(2) Authority of the Gloss. Cardinal Moran reminds ns
that, * the authority of such glosses is very great,' and this
applies with especial [force to the one now under con-
sideration. Father Morris, in his Life of St, Patrick^ p. 45,
referring to the compilation of the Book of Annagh ' in the
middle of the seventh century,' remarks : — 'From that date
to the death of St. Patrick leaves only a hundred and fifty
years to be accounted for ; a period which might have been
bridged over by the memories of two generations.' Follow-
ing this method of computation, we might say that the
period, from the time when St. Patrick was still living down
to the time of the first writing of the gloss, might be spanned
by the memory of three generations. But, as already said,
I wish to be cautious in making assumptions. Let us,
therefore, assume six or seven generations to be necessary
in the latter case. We then observe that a gloss, which
does not depend for support upon one solitary MS.,
which, on the contrary, must have been copied and recopied
by various hands, at various times, and in various places,
which is witnessed to by different but absolutely consentient
lines of MS. transmission, still presents the same unvarying
testimony to the fact that St. Patrick was born at Ailcluade,
i.e., at Dumbarton.^ And all this, not only without
opposition from any rival testimony, but without our being
furnished with the very slightest hint that any rival opinion
existed during the early centuries that composed the interval
in question.
Could such a thing be possible, unless the gloss repre-
sented the universal belief of the Irish people ? Or are we
to suppose that the real belief of Erin on the subject of
St. Patrick's birthplace was swept into oblivion by the
1 "Will the reader please observe the true character of the evidence here
presented ? Father Mai one delights to speak of the annotation as a ' tenth cen-
tury gloss.' Such an expression is most misleading. I'he MS. which contams
the ghss may be of the tenth century ; but the gloss itself, from the considerations
above advanced, as well as from those mentioned by Cardinal Moran, is
obviously earlier by a very considerable interval of time. The oldest MS. of our
Greek Gospels belong to the fourth century ; but not even the most reckless
rationalist would dare to deny that the evidence afforded by these MSS. would
alone prove our Gospels to be of an earlier date. Any writer who ignores this
consideration shows himself to be utterly incompetent to discuss critical and
textual questions.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST, PATRICK 853
blundering or fraudulent action of any * nameless scribe'?^
Must we believe that, in a country whose inhabitants have
always been ready enough to express divergent views upon all
subjects which conveniently admit of difference of opinion,
no voice capable of securing a permanent hearing was raised
against the presumed blunderer or forger ; no pen fitted to
attract lasting attention was found to advocate the cause of
truth against the assumed error ? Whoever can believe all
this, and all else that is involved in the rejection of ancient
testimony, may be left to enjoy bis own opinion ; for he is
beyond the reach of argument ; but we may well wonder
how he can possibly find a basis on which to erect his own
theory. If he rejects the venerable and clear statements of
our existing records, what else has he upon which he can
rely ? He must fall back upon arbitrary theorizing ; and his
theory, however ingenious, can pretend to nothing like
tangible proof. On the other hand, it must always have,
this against it, that its acceptance involves the discrediting,,
not only of Irish scribes and of Irish tradition, but of the
Irish nation itself ; for the people of Ireland are implicitly
charged with want of the most ordinary intelligence and
with an unaccountable lack of interest in the life of their
greatest benefactor. To the proposer of any such theory
every right-minded Irishman will reply : Quodcunque ostendis
mihi sic, incredulus odi. * I will not purchase, or adopt
your vain speculations at the expense of national honour.'
(3) Language of the Gloss. — Competent judges pronounce
the language of the gloss to be of an archaic type, such as
fully justifies its attribution to the remote period to which it
has been assigned. But the name Ailcluade is worthy of «
special notice. Dr. Skene tells us : —
The capital of the kingdom (of the Strathclyde Britons) was
the strongly fortified positions on the rock on tho right bank of ,
the Clyde, termed by the Britons Alcluith, and by ihe Gadhelic
people Dunbreatan, or the fort of the Britons, now Dumbarton.^
Even without the authority of Dr. Skene, it is obvious |
that the Britons would naturally speak of their capital]
1 This is Father Slalone's own i-pitliet fa • the aniiutator.
2 Cel:ic S^Qllund, vol. i., p, 'i'So.
VOL. 7*
864 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
uffdef the descriptive name derived from their own language,
i.e., Alcluith, rather than under the name of Dunbreatam,
i>., the fort of the Britons ; but this latter name would be
the one most naturally employed by men of a different
nation ality. Similarly, Mr. Smith will naturally speak of
his residence as * Mount Pleasant ' v he will hardly call it
Smithes; but this latter expression will be freely used by
Brown, Jones, or Kobinson. Now, the fact that the writer of
ih^ gloss speaks of Ailcluade, and not Dunbreatan, leads us
to think that the tradition from which he derived his infor-
mation must be ultimately traced to the mouth of one who
was himself a Briton of Strathclyde. In answer to the
question as to ' where St. Patrick was born,' the saint, or
one of his companions who had learned the facts from him,
would naturally reply, * in Ailcluade ; ' while a person of
Gadhelic race, whether belonging to the Irish or Scotch
branch, would as naturally answer * in Dunbreatan/ If the
name Ailcluade were thus introduced either by St. Patrick,
or by some other informant in reference to the saint, it
would become consecrated by association, and would be
handed down by tradition, otherwise its occurrence in the
present instance is not so easy of explanation. We thus
seem to have in the very wording of the gloss a new proof
of the trustworthiness of Irish tradition ; we see how the
Irish scribes faithfully transmitted, not merely the sub-
stance of the information which they had derived from
faithful witnesses, but even the very ' form of words ' in
which that substance was embodied.
If the gloss on St. Fiacc's hymn stood alone and un-
supported, it would still be sufficient to establish the fact
that St. Patrick was born near Dumbarton. The more
closely this testimony is examined the more clearly does its
value appear ; and the evidence thus presented to us cannot
be rejected without involving us in suppositions and forcing
upon us alternatives which are entirely arbitrary, utterly
unreasonable, and degradingly dishonourable to the Irish
race. But the gloss does not stand alone and unsupported :
there is other evidence which I now proceed to consider,
and which Tt, will be found equally hard to reject.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST. PATRICK 35^
2. The Tripartite Life (embodying early materials of
500 to 700).
If the Tripartite be really in the main the work of
St. Evin. to whom it is ascribed, it is from the pen of
one concerning whom O'Curry says,^ that this St. Eimhin
was probably living in the year 504, * so that he had very
probably seen and conversed with St. Patrick, who had
died only eleven years before this time, or ir 493.* At
all events, it is certain that the Tripartite embodies very
early materials, as appears from the character of the idioin
employed. The only objection admitted by O'Curry against
the view that the work is of the sixth century, is drawn from
the fact that certain seventh century compilers are men-
tioned in it, although our great Celtic scholar inclines to
consider such passages as interpolations. But, even as a
seventh century witness — nay, even as a witness of the
succeeding centuries, it is surely entitled to considerable
respect ; its testimony is, at least, of incomparably greater
value than the subjective statement of modern theorists^
whose expressions of opinion are avowedly their own
invention, and are certainly of much more recent date.
Now, here is what the Tripartite tells us : I give the wordg
of Hennessy's translation: —
Patrick, then, was of the Britons of Alcluaid by origin . . .
In Nemtur (Emtur) moreover, the man, St. Patrick was born
... A church was founded, moreover, over this well in wHich
Patrick was baptized ; and the well is at the altar, and it has the
form of a cross, as the learned report.
The Tripartite adds that St. Patrick was taken captive
in * Amoric Letha.' "With regard to this, it is beside the
present purpose to enter into any discussion. The Tripartite
distinctly confirms the evidence of the gloss on St. Fiacc's
hymn, both authorities declare that St. Patrick's origin must
be sought among the Britons of Strathclyde. As to where
the saint was taken captive, * das ist ganz was anders,' as
the German fabuHst has it, "tis quite another story.'
St. Vincent de Paul was born near Dax in the south-west
of France, not fifty miles from the shores of the Bay of
1 MS. Materia's, p. 251. 2 Xi/^ of St. latrick, by Casack, pp. 37^373.
856 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Biscay y but he was captured by the Barbary Corsairs in the
Mediterranean f while on a voyage from Marseilles to
Narbonne. Julius Caesar was captured by pirates in the
neighbourhood of Miletus ; but no one supposes that the
great dictator was a Milesian.
3. The Vita Quarta (before a.d. 774).
Cardinal Moran informs us that the Vita Quarta *is
proved by intrinsic data to have been written before the
year 774.' He thus translates : ^ ' Some affirm that
St. Patrick was of Jewish descent.' (The reasoning of
those who held this fanciful view is then given, and it
is certainly worthy of some of our modern theorists.
Those early anticipators of Lanigan and his imitators
first pointed out that the saint says : * We have been
scattered unto the extremities of the earth for our
sins;' they then remarked that the Jews, upon the fall of
Jerusalem, ' were scattered over the whole world ' ! The
compiler of the Vita Quarta, however, was not misled by
such misapplied ingenuity, for he thus continues) : —
But it is more true and correct that he (St. Patrick) here
speaks of that dispersion which the Britons suffered at the hands
of the Eomans, when some of them settled in the district known
as Armorica, near the Tyrrhene sea. In that dispersion, there-
fore, his parents proceeded to the district of Strathclyde, in which
territory Patrick was conceived and born . . . The inhabitants
of the place erected a church over the fountain in which he
was baptized, and those acquainted with the place say that the
fountain, which is beside the altar, is in the form of a cross.
The above passage not only distinctly confirms the
tradition that St. Patrick was born in Alclyde, but it is
highly instructive in another way. It shows that even in
the eighth century there were a few subjective critics, who
endeavoured to base their fanciful speculations on the word-
ing of the saint's own writings ; but it also shows that such
vain speculations did not affect the Irish nation as a body,
and could not obscure the Irish tradition on the one
important point, the question of St. Patrick's birthplace.
As to the mention of * Armorica near the Tyrrhene sea,'
"^Dublin Review, 1. c, p. 296.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST, PATRICK 35?
all must admit that the phrase is obscure, too obscure,
indeed, to afford a basis for anything but mere conjecture ;
but if it really refers to Armorica, as ordinarily understood,
the statement presents no difficulty in the Scottish view.
We know that there were Gauls in the neighbourhood of
the modern site of Kilpartick centuries before St. Patrick's
time ; ^ and a certain amount of passing and repassing
between the Gaulish settlers in the Dumbarton district and
their kindred who remained in Gaul is natural enough.
Impartially considered, the phrase in question may be taken
as an * undesigned coincidence ' in favour of the traditional
view, as it would help to explain the well-known assertion
that St. Patrick was connected with St. Martin.
4. The Vita Sexta (written by Jocelyn before a.d. 1200).
Jocelyn, towards the close of the twelfth century,
compiled a Life of St. Patrick, based upon pre-existing
works. I believe that the only real objection ever urged
against the testimony of Jocelyn is that he was * uncritical *
in the use of his authorities, i.^., that he too faithfully
reproduced the testimony of earlier writers upon whose
works his own narrative is founded. Now, Jocelyn tells
us: —
There was a certain man, Calphurnius by name, son of
Potitus a priest, a Briton by birth, (or nation), dwelling . . .
near the town, Empthor, bordering on the Irish sea , . . The
place is famous, situated in the valley of the Clyde, and called in
the language of that country Dunbreaton, i.e., the Rock of the
Britons.
So clear a testimony calls for little remark. It presents
no difficulty, except to those who doggedly set themselves
to raise difficulties against the traditional view, although
they have no substitute for the latter except suppositions
which involve, not merely difficulties, but absurdities.
Captious exception has been taken to the statement that
St. Patrick's birthplace is * bordering on the Irish Sea.*
Bishop Grant has well answered this objection, such as it is.
But, surely, in any case, Jocelyn is a better witness than
any modern objector, when it comes to a question as to how
1 Cf. the mention of the ' fourth Cohort of the Gauls,' p. 341.
8^58 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
far the term ' Irish Sea ' was extended by early Irish writers.
Even if any doubt remained, we must here, as in similar
cases, explain the uncertain in conformity with the require-
ments of the certain.^ And here we are supplied with, the
clear and definite information that St. Patrick was born at
a place that was ' famous, situated in the valley of the Clyde,
and called in the language of that country Dunbreaton,*
i.e., the present Dumbarton.
. Such, then, is the 'Voice of the Irish' and the testimony
of Irish tradition as to the birthplace of St. Patrick ; and
this tradition has all the marks of trustworthiness : it is
ancient, it is consistent, it is clear. No one is justified
in questioning the fact that in this matter the voice of
the Irish is the voice of truth.
It now remains that we should discover from what
quarter an answering voice is heard, reinforcing and con-
firming the testimony of Erin. The consideration of this
subject, as well as of some other interesting points, must be
reserved for future discussion.
Gerald Stack.
1 As a matter of fact, no doubt can remain in any reasonable and well-
hformed mind. Even as late as the middle of the t^eAenteenth century,
Roderic 0 'Flaherty •wrote as follows : ' A very great bay of the Irish Western
Ocean runs up the British country at a great distance from the we^t, which
formerly divided the Britons from the Picts, and which was appointed as the
ulterior Roman limits by Agricola. The celebrated fortress of Dunbriton
stands on a very high and craggy cliff, and commands a prospect of this bay,
&Cr — Ogygiay Hely's translation, quoted by Cardinal Moran, Irish Saints in
Great Fritain , ^. 1'62.
I 359
Botes anb (Sluerics
THEOLOGY
USE OF THE SHORT FORM OF BAPTISM
Eev. Dkar Sib, — In the admission of heretics into the
Church is the express permission of the bishop required for thie
use of the short form ?
Theologus.
According to the common law of the Church the use of
the long form is obligatory in the baptism of adults. The
Irish bishops however, can, in virtue of special powers
granted to them by the Holy See, use the short form ; th( y
can also delegate this faculty to their priests — sacerdotihns
sibi suhditis. The faculty was not granted to the priests
directly, but only through the bishops, nor is it lawful
for a priest to use merely presumed delegation.
CAN A PRIEST WHO IS NOT FASTING CELEBRATE MASS
IN ORDER TO PROCURE THE VIATICUM?
Eev. Dear Sir, — Is it lawful for a priest who is not fasting
to celebrate Mass in order to procure the Viaticum for a dying
person ? The case is not a mere speculative one, and I am
anxious to have a clear answer on the point.
Haesitans.
The point raised has — as, no doubt, our correspondent
is fully aware — given rise to a good deal of controversy.
We think, however, that a priest would be fully
justified in celebrating Mass in the circumstances named.
St. Alphonsus looked upon the opinion permitting the
celebration of Mass in these circumstances as probable.
Lehmkuhl, Haine, and other modern theologians following
Suarez, Laymann, Lacroix, Lugo, are of the same opinion.
There cannot, then, remain for us any doubt as to the
probability of an opinion supported by such a weight of
oGO THE IRISH fiCCLESIASTiCAL RECORD
authority. Nor is there any intrinsic reason why the
ecclesiastical law binding priests to celebrate fasting should
prevail over the divine law obliging the dying person to
receive the Viaticum. In our opinion, then, the following
assertions may be safely made : —
1. If, as Haine remarks — though the case is not very
practical— the priest (not fasting) were himself in danger
of death, he certainly could in case of necessity celebrate
in order to partake of the Viaticum.
2. A priest who is not fasting is not bound, in any
ordinary case,^ to celebrate in order to procure the Viaticum
for a dying person ; it is a probable and safe opinion,
however, that he may lawfully celebrate, provided that
there is no other way of procuring the Viaticum, and that
scandal can be avoided.
D. Mannix.
' Lehmkuhl writes : * Addam, bI — quod practice yix juvabit notasse —
aegrotus hujus pacramenti solius satis certo capaxsit, eo quod S. oleum defecerit
neque hab^ri tam cito posait, celebrare debci-e [sacerdos] etiam post meridiem.'
[ 361 ]
CORRESPONDENCE
ON HOMES FOR AGED AND INFIRM PRIESTS
Rev. Deab Sie, — You kindly published in a recent number of
the I. E. Record a few remarks from me in reference to the
substitution of eleven o'clock Mass on Sundays and holidays, for
the already generally condemned hour of twelve o'clock.
Another important matter let me submit for the consideration
of your readers. In England and other countries there are houses
or institutions for aged and infirm priests. Many an old priest
who is unfit for missionary duty would gladly retire to such an
institution if such were established. How sad sometimes to hear
of some old dignitary housed up for months, sometimes even for
years, without one to visit him, without oije to breathe to him a
word of spiritual consolation ! There he is, spending his last
years, his last months, holding, if you will, the usual revenue of
his parish ; but alas ! what good is revenue then to him ? Better
far if some home were established to which he could retire, and
there receive those spiritual helps which priest as well as layman
requires. *
The same applies to the infirm or sick priest. There is no
home for him. The charitably disposed have provided homes for
the poor amongst them ; but for the priest who is infirm no home
is provided. He must retire to some farm-yard, perhaps in some
remote part of the country ; to some abode of some relative,
where he in his illness cannot be attended to. But has he not
his * sick priests' fund ' to maintain him ? Yes, he has, a fund in
some dioceses that would not maintain a school boy, some £40 or
£50 a year. But what is to be done ? I certainly say, and say
boldly, that such neglect of the priesthood of Ireland is a shame
and a disgrace. What, I ask again, is to be done? Are our
Catholic people so devoid of charity, that they would neglect the
aged, or invalid priest in the days of his sorrow ? They helped
him when he ministered to them ; they assisted the priest when-
ever they knew he was in want ; so too would they in the days of
need.
Let them be informed that the aged and infirm priest wants
a home to which he may peacefully retire when he is unfit for
362 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
missionary duty, and I greatly misunderstand the Irish people, if
the need be not at once supplied. Inform them that the funds
for the sustenance of infirm priests are very low, and I doubt not
but that the secretaries of these funds in the dioceses that require
it will receive many charitable bequests. It is hard to blame the
people when these ecclesiastical matters ' are not brought before
them. In the absence of a clerical organ, it may be done by one
or two resolutions ; it may be done by a few words in a Lenten
Pastoral ; it may be done at a general meeting of the bishops ; it
may be done at a synod of the clergy; it may be done, again, in
the synod of 1900. At all events, some means ought to be devised
by which it may be done. A few homes in each province would
be sufficient; a few homes may easily be provided if our respected
and revered bishops took the matter in hands. If their Lordships
only hinted that such were needed, they would have scarcely
spoken when these institutions would spring into existence. I
wish that some more capable hand had written on these matters.
I have again to thank you, Very Eev. Sir, for your kindness in
opening your columns to matters of such vital importance to the
Irish priesthood. I shall for the present subscribe myself
An Old Eeadeb.
t 363 ]
DOCUMENTS
STATUTES OF THE SODALITY OF REPARATION
EX S. CONGREG. INDULGENTIAEUM
STATUTA PII SDDALITII SUB TITULO AB ADORATIONE REPARATRICE
GENTIUM CATHOLICARUM
I. Pium Sodalitium universale, quod ab Adoratione SSmi
Sacramenti Eeparatrice gentium catholicarum titulum obtinet,
iam canonice erectum, in Ecclesia Sancto loachimo in Urbe
dicata, tanquam in sede principe, constitutum est.
II. Sicut administratio et rectio supradictae Ecclesiae, ita
et pii Sodalitii ab Adoratione Eaparatrice directio, cura atque
procuratio commissae omnino sunt Sodalibus Congregationis a
SSmo Eedemptore, qui eximium catholicae Ecclesiae Doctorera
Sanctum Alphonsum Mariam de Ligorio institutorem habent et
patrem.
III. Sacerdos Congregationis a SSmo Eedemptore, electus
pro tempore a suo Superiore Generali ad regendam loachimianam
Aedem in Urbe, fungetur etiam munere Directoris generalis pii
Sodalitii ab Adoratione, cum iuribus et officiis adnexis, salva
tamen in his omnibus subiectione ipsius Directoris Superioribus
Congregationis suae, iuxta istius leges et statuta.
IV. Superior Generalis laudatae Congregationis deputare
poterit, ad beneplacitum suum, duos Sacerdotes e Sodalibus sibi
subditis, qui Directorem generalem adiuvent, eiusque vices
gerant, in expediendis negotiis et in obeundis actibus pii
Sodalitii ab Adoratione.
V. Ad Directorem generalem iure proprio pertinet constituere
Directores dioecesanos, vel quasi-dioecesanos pii Sodalitii in
totius Orbis Dioecesibus, et in terris Missionum : ipse electionis
diplomata subscribit. Poterit autem ob iustas causas hoc sub-
scribendi munus suis duobus coadiutoribus committere.
VI. Directores dioecesani vel quasi-dioecesani agunt cum
Directore generali de negotiis quae utilitatem, incrementum
rectamque procedendi rationem pii Sodalitii respiciunt. Mittent
etiam ad eumdem pias oblationes, quas tum Sodales tum alii
Christifideles sponte conferre voluerint pro Ecclesia S. loachimi,
364 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORt)
Sodalitii sede principe, ut in hac divini culfcus, et praesertim
Adorationie Eeparatricis, actus congruent! decore persolvantur.
VII. Pio Sodalitio ab Adoratione Eeparatrice nomen dare
cupientes cum Directore general! agant, s! Romae sunt ; cum
!pso vel cum D!rectore d!oecesano, s!ve quas!-d!oecesano, s! extra
Romam morantur.
VIII. In pjcclesia S. loachimi Eomae, opus Adoratioms
Eeparatricis universalis hac piarum exercitationum serie expli-
cabitur :
1. Omnibus per annum diebus Dominicis et Festis de prae-
cepto : — Mane, hora circiter octava, celebratio Missae cum
expositione SSmi Sacrament! ; post Missam, litaniae lauretanae,
Tantum ergo, etc. ; benedictio cum SSiTio Sacramento. Vespere,
(xpositio SSmi Sacrament! tamdiu, dum recitatur tertia pars
Eosarii et canuntur litaniae lauretanae, Tantum ergo, etc. ;
deinde benedictio cum SSmo.
2. Omnibus per annum feriis quintis, excepta maiori hebdo-
mada : — Mane, celebratio Missae cum expositione SSmi Sacra-
ment! et cum cantu Psalm! 50 Miserere mei Deus ; benedictio
cum SSiiio. Vespere, expositio SSiiii Sacrament! per tres horas
ante occasum solis, tertia pars Eosarii, Tantum ergo, etc., et
benedictio cum SSmo.
3. In omnibus aliis feriis per annum, exceptis quatuor ultimis
diebus maioris hebdomadae : Vespere, expositio SSmi Sacra-
ment! hora opportuna, preces expiationis, tertia pars Eosarii,
litaniae lauretanae Tantum ergo^ etc., benedictio cum SSmo.
4. Tribus diebus ante feriam IV cinerum : Mane, Missa cum
expositione SSmi. Vespere, omnia ut in feriis quintis per annum.
Expositio autem SSmi fiat hora congruent! iuxta iudicium
Superioris.
5. In prima feria sexta cuiusque mensis : — Mane, Missa
cum expositione SSmi Sacrament! et recitatio Coronulae SSiiii
Cordis lesu.
6. In singulis sextis feriis Quadragesimae : pium exercitium
Viae Crucis.
7. In festo Coi-poris Christ!, mane canitur Missa ; vespere, ut
in aliis feriis quintis per annum.
8. In Dominica infra octavam Corporis Christ!, fit Processio.
9. Bpiphania Domini habetur ut festum speciale pro Adora-
tione Eeparatrice. Mane, canitur Missa. Vespere, ut in aliis
festis per annum de praecepto.
DOCUMENTS 365
10. In festo S. loachim titularis Ecclesiae. Mano canitur
Missa. Vespere ut in aliis festis per annum diebus.
11. In festis solemnioribus, quae propria sunt Congregationis
SSmi Redemptoris, omnia disponantur de iudicio et ad praescrip-
tum Superioris ipsius Congregationis.
12. Si aliquando, datis per annum diebus, ob rerum
peculiarium adiuncta, aliquid iramutandum videbitur circa
Adorationis Reparatricis actus supra enumeratos, Director
generalis singulis vicibus providebit, de consensu tamen Superioris
8ui.
IX. Ordo dierum, diversis nationibus assignatorum pro
Adoratione Keparatrice, in posterum statuitur ut infra :
Dies Dorninica. Pro Italia, Gallia, Hispania, Portugallia,
Belgio.
Feria secunda. Pro omnibus aliis regionibus Europae con-
tinentalis et insularis.
Feria tertia. Pro Asia.
Feria qicarta. Pro Africa.
Feria quinta. Pro America septentrionali et centrali.
Feria sexta. Pro America meridional!,
Sabbato. Pro Oceania.
X. Qui pio Sodalitio nomen dant, ex quacumque gente, per
dimidiam circiter horam orationi vacant coram SSmo semel in
hebdomada, in die suae cuiusque nation! assignata, ut in numero
praecedenti ; vel alio hebdomadae die, si legitime impediti fuerint.
Adscript!, in Urbe degentes, dimidiam horam, ut supra, in
oratione insumunt in Ecclesia, in qua SSmum expositum est in
forma Quadraginta Horarum ; qui extra Romam degunt, iu
qualibet Ecclesia in qua SSmum Sacr amentum asservatur.
XI. SSmus Dfius Noster Lso PP. XIII. rata esse voluit
quae iam decrevit, per litteras in forma Brevis datas die 6 Martii
anni 1883, sacrarum Indulgentiarum munera iis omnibus qui
ordini Sodalium ab Adoratione Keparatrice dederint nomen.
Praeterea nonnullas alias, motu proprio, largitus est sub die
6 raensis Septembris anni 1898.
XII. Praedictarum omnium Indulgentiarum summarium
hoc est :
1. Omnibus et singulis pio Sodalitio adscriptis extra Urbem
degentibus, qui, iuxta ipsius Sodalitii instituta, in sua quisque
regione, quamlibet Ecclesiam devote visitaverint, in qua Sacra-
mentum Augustum asservatur, et coram Ipso per mediam
366 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
circiter horam oraverint, dummodo reliqua pietatis iniuncta opera
praestiterint, consequuntur quotidie omnes et singulas Indul-
gentias, peccatorum remissiones et poenitentiarum relaxationes,
quas consequerentur si adessent Orationi Quadraginta Horarum
iisdem diebus in Ecclesiis Urbis (Breve 6 Martii, 1883), idest :
Indulgentiam plenariam, si vere poenitentes, confessi ac sacra
communione refecti per dimidiam circiter horam, ut supra, coram
SSmo Sacramento oraverint ; Indulgeiitiam decern annorum et
totidem quadragenarum, quotiescumque vere poenitentes, cum
firmo proposito confitendi, aliquam Ecclesiam visitaverint et per
aliquod tempus coram SSmo Sacramento pias preces effuderint
(Breve ut supra).
2. Adscriptis pio Sodalitio in Urbe existentibus, qui vere
poenitentes, confessi atque Sacra Communione refecti, qualibet
hebdomada, die per praesentia Statuta ipsis designato, vel etiam
alio die, quatenus legitime impediti fuerint, per dimidiam circiter
horam SSmum Sacramentum adoraverint in Urbis Ecclesiis, in
quibus fit Quadraginta Horarum oratio, praeter Indulgentias
Quadraginta Horarum, conceditur :
Indulgentia jolenaria semel in singulis per annum mensibus,
uno die cuiusque eorum arbitrio sibi eligendo (Breve 6 Martii,
1883).
Iisdem adscriptis pio Sodalitio Eomae existentibus, qui sin-
gulis hebdomadis, statuta die, vel alia, quatenus impediti ut
supra, dimidiam circiter horam adorationis peregerint in Ecclesia
S. loachimi in Urbe coram SSmo exposito, SSmus Dfius Noster
Leo Papa XIII, motu proprio, sub die 6 mensis Septembris
anni 1898, concessit omnes et singulas Indulgentias, quae con-
sequerentur, si id praestarent in Ecclesiis Urbis, in quibus fit
oratio Quadraginta Horarum.
3. Praeterea, sub eadem die 6 Septembris 1898, Sanctitas
Sua concessit Indulgentiam septem mmorum et totidem quadra-
genarum omnibus Christifidelibus quotiescumque devote adsti-
terint in eadem Ecclesia S. loachimi cuilibet ex piis actibus in
num. VIII praesentium Statutorum expressis. Concessit denique
idem SSmus Dnus Noster Leo Papa XIII in perpetuum Indulgen-
tiam Plenariam omnibus Christifidelibus in die festo S. loachimi,
dummodo poenitentes, confessi et sacra Communione refecti,
visitent ecclesiam S. loachimi in Urbe, ibique orent pro
Ecclesiae catholicae exaltatione et ad mentem Summi Pontificis
(6 Septembris 1898 j.
DOCUMENTS 867
Omnes et singulae supramemoratae Indulgentiae sunt defunctis
applicabiles.
SSmus Duus Noster Leo PP. XIII, qui in suo Motu Proprio
sub die 21 lulii huius decurrentis anni iam edixerat se oppor-
tune perlaturum leges, ad quarum normam regeretur pium
Sodalitium sub titulo ab adoratione Keparatrice Gentium Catho
licarum, in Ecclesia S. loachimi de Urbe canonice erectum,
in Audientia habita die 6 Septembris 1898 ab infrascripto Card.
Praefecto S. Congregationis Tndulgentiis Sacrisque Reliquiis prae-
positae, audita relatione de Statutis pro memorata pio Sodalitio,
ex iussu eiusdem Sanctitatis Suae elaboratis, mandavit, ut per
Rescriptum praefatae S. Congregationis memorata Statuta appro-
barentur, una cum eisdem adnexo Summario omnium Indulgen-
tiarum, quibus idem pium Sodalitium ab eadem Sanctitate
Sua hue usque ditatum fuit. Quapropter eadem S. Congregatio,
mandato SSmi obtemperans, per praesens Rescriptum Statuta
dicti Sodalitii, uti prostant in superiore schemate, approbat et
servanda praecipit ab universis eidem Sodalatio adscriptis et in
posterum adscribsndis : item et praedictum Summarium, nuno
primum ex documentis excerptum, uti authenticum recognoscit
simulque typis mandari permittit. Contrariis non obstantibus
quibuscumque.
Datum Eomae ex Secretaria eiusdem S. Congregationis die
1^ Septembris 1898.
Fr. Hieronymus M. Card. Gotti, Praefectus.
L. ^ S.
}f^ Antonius Arcuiep. Antingen, Secretarius.
losEPHUs M^ Can. Coselli, Suhstitutus,
BLESSING OF THE BAPTISMAL FONT BY THE CHAPTER
DUBIUM QUOAD CONSUETUDINEM BENEDICENDI FONTEM BAPTISMALEM
A CAPITULO
Rmus Dnus losephus Maria Ranees et Villanueva Episcopus
Gaditanus, Sacrae Rituum Congregationi, ea quae sequuntur
pro opportuna declaratione reverenter exposuit, nimirum : Per-
antiqua est in civitate Gaditana Ecclesia, cui titulus Sanctae
Crucis, quae dimidio decimltertii saeculi a catholico sapientis-
simoque rege Alphonso X, fandata, ad annum usque millesimum
octingentesimum trigesimum octavum Cathedralis simul eb
368 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
parochialis fuit, quo quidem tempore ad hodiernum et munifi-
centissimum templum praedicto anno consecratum Capitulum
translabum est, hoc tamen modo ut, licet antiquum templum
septuaginta circiter passibus a novo distet, tamen ex tunc
temporis tanquam huius Sacrarium habitum fuerit, ad quod idem
Capitulum quotannis processionaliter convenire consuevit, tum in
Sabbato Sancto tum in Vigilia Pentecostes, impertiendi ergo
benedictionem fonti baptismali. Anno autem millesimo octin-
gentesimo septuagesimo sexto Antistes Gaditanus Fr. Felix de
Arriete et Slano, utriusque Ecclesiae bono valde interesse
iudicans illas omnino disgregare, reapse eas seiunxit, variasque,
quas maxime existimavit opportunas, tum Capitulo tum parocho
conditiones imponens, praedictam consuetudinem fontem benedi-
cendi baptismalem in Sabbato Sancto et Vigilia Pentecostes a
Capitulo non modo non improbavit, quin potius tanquam
laudabilem prosequendam statuit, prout usque nunc reipsa
factum est.
Hinc Emus Orator postulat :
*Utrum, attentis circumstantiis supra expositis, talis con-
suetudo benedicendi fontem baptismalem a Capitulo servari
possit ? *
Et sacra eadem Congregatio, referente subscripto Secretario,
omnibus in casu expensis, respondendum censuit : Ajjlrmative^
dummodo utriusque Ecclesiae unicus sit fons baptismalis.
Atque ita rescripsit. Die 8 lunii 1899.
C. Card. Mazzella, S. B. C Praef.
DiOMEDEs Panici, S, B, C, Secretarms,
DECISION OF THE SACRED CONQREaATION OF BISHOPS
AND REGULARS REGARDING CONVENT SCHOOLS IN
FRANCE
EX S. CONGREG. EPISC. ET REG.
AVENIONEN
SCHOLAE NORMALIS
Die 17 Martii, 1899.
Postremis hisce temporibus magna disceptatio exoriri coepit
inter Galliae Praesules nee non in Congregationibus Mulierum
religiosarum instructioni et education! puellarum inservientium,
DOCUMENTS 369
circa institutiouem scholae vel scholarum normalium pro
sororibus quae licentiam seu diploma ad docendum in cursibus
superioribus consequi cuperent. Contentionis occasio fuit liber
quidam, cui titulus Bdigiosae docentes et Necessitas Apostolatus
in lucem editus a Sorore Maria S. Cordis e Congregatione
Filiarum Nostrae Dominae ; quo in libro plura referuntur circa
inferioritatem scholarum virginum Deo sacrarum, sub duplici
aspectu Instructionis et Pedagogiae prae scholis status ; ad quod
malum evitandum proponitur et propugnatur nova methodus et
ratio studiorum per scholae normalis fundationem, quae ex una
parte dum respondet desideriis familiarum tradentium sororibus
puellas pro institutione, ex altera ponit religiosas docentes in
conditione aemulandi scholas laicas. Ut in re tanti momenti
quaedam certa norma haberi posset Archiepiscopus'Avenionensis,
sub finem elapsi anni per appositas literas censuit Apostolicam
Sedem consulere. Sacra vero Congregatio Episcoporum et
Eegularium, ad quam etiam aliae reclamatjones circa eamdem
rem devenerant, de mandato SSjiii. sequentes literas circulares
dedit ad omnes Galliae Episcopos.
* De mandato SSmi Dni Nostri Leonis Riv. Prov. PP. XIII
precor Amplitudinem (pro Cardinali Eminentiam) Tuam, ut velit
breviter significare huic S. Congregationi ES. et RR. quid ipsa
Amplitudo Tua in Dno sentiat de quaestione nuper in Galliis
excitata a quadam Sorore cognomento " Mariae de Sacre Coeur de
la Congregation de Notre Dame " circa institutionem scholae, ut
aiunt,' Normalis ad altius erudiendas Virgines Deo sacras, quae
ad magisterii munus in variis feminei sexus Institus destinantur.
Mens siquidem est Sanctitatis Suae, perspecta prius super
huiusmodi quaestione Sacrorum Antistitum sententia, diiudicare
utrum et quomodo annuendum sit quorumdam votis qui expetunt
rem Auctoritate Apostolica dirimi ac definiri. Interea tame
nihil profecto magis optandum quam ut silentiam hac de re
fiat.'
' Haec communicanda erant Amplitudini Tuae, cui fausta
omnia a Dno adprecor (pro Cardinali, Eminentiae T. cuius manus
humillime deosculor).'
Episcopi vero in suis Uteris responsivis ad S. Congregationem
varii varia senserunt, Nonnulli etenim autumant revera metho-
dum docendi, quam sequuntur sorores in Gallia, aliquantisper
deficere, et hinc propositum factum a Sorore Maria a S. Corde
sub aliquo respectu amplectendum esse, sed semper cum depen-
VOL. VI. 2 a
370 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECDkD
dentia a S. Sede. Alii e contra rentur rationem studiorum a
Sororibus instauratam sufficientiem esse et fini suo respondere,
adeoque relatum librum esse reiiciendum. Ob prudentia leges et
ob vetitum S. Congregationis ulteriora non referuntur.
Hisce acceptis Uteris efc aliis de ritu peractis tarn gravis
quaestio proposita fuit solutioni in plenario Emorum Patrum
auditorio diei 17 Martii, 1899, qui, omnibus mature perpensis,
decisionem emiserunt prout ex sequentibus Uteris ad GaUiae
Episcopus.
ILLUSTEISSIME AC REVERENDISEIME DOMINE
In plenario Conventu Emineritissimorum Patrum huius Sacrae
Congregationis Episcoporum et Kegularium, habito in Aedibus
Vaticanis die 17 Martii 1899, proposita fuit Causa Avenionen.
Scholae Kormalis, sub hisce quae sequuntur dubiorum
for jiulis :
I. * Se convenga approvare, il disegno della creazione di una
grande Scuola normale per le Eeligiose insegnanti, quale e
proposto nel Ubro di Suor Maria del Sacro Cuore.'
Et quatenus negative :
II. * Se convenga adottare qualche misura per migliorare
I'msegnamento femminUe negli Istituti Religiosi.'
Universa rei ratione mature perpensa, Emi Patres responden-
dum censuerunt.
Ad primum : negative et librum esse reprehensione dignum.
Ad secundum: non esse locum ordinationi generali : provi-
debitur, quatenus opus fuerit, in casibus particularibus : interim
varo per Galliarum Episcopos notum fiat Religiosis Mulierum
Congregationibus, quibus ex apostolica approbatione munus
commissum est erudiendi in pietate et scientia adolescentulas,
sese bene admodum meruisse de Christiana et civili puellarum
institutione ; ac propterea Sacra haec Congregatio, dum debitas
eis rependit laudes, spem firmam fovet eas etiam in posterum
muneri suo non defuturas, atque, dirigentibus, ut par est, et
coadiuvan tibus Episcopis, media idonea adhibituras, quibus
valeant iustis christianarum famiUarum dssideriis cumulate
respondere et alumnas sibi concreditis ad eam provehere culturam
quae mulierem christianam deceat,
Et facta de praemissis relatione SSiiio D. N. Leoni Papae XIII
in Audientia habita ab infrasoripto Cardinal! Praefecto die
24 Martii. Sanctitas Sua Eminentissimorum Patrum sententiam
in omnibus ratam habere et confirmare diguata est.
DOCUMENTS 371
Haec Sacrae Congregationis nomine significanda habui
Amplitudini Tuae Eevmae, cui in testimonium observantiae
meae fausta omnia a Deo adprecor,
Romae ex Secretaria S. C. Epp. et RR. die 27 Martii
1899.
RELIGIOUS LIFE OUTSIDE THE CLOISTER .
EX S. C, SUPER DISCLIPLIKA EEGULARI
LITTEKAE EMINENTISSIMI PRAEFECTI QUOAD RELIGIOSOS QUI
DEGERE CUPIUNT EXTRA CLAUSTRA
N. N. EPISCOPO N.
ILLME AC REVME DOMINE UTI FRATfclR,
Difficili Regularium hodiernae conditione occurrere satagens,
S. Congregatio super Disciplina Eegulari, pro illis Religiosis, qui
gratia vocationis destituti, vel de alia rationabili causa muniti,
extra claustra degere voluerunt, et tractu temporis vellent, auditis
Superioribus generalibus Ordinis maturo consilio, statuit atque
decrevit :, ' ut ipsis facultas tribueretur manendi extra claustra
habitu regulari dimisso, ad annum : quo tempore S. Patrimonium
sibi constituerent ; Episcopum benevolum receptorem invenirent ;
atque deinde, pro saecularizatione perpetua, iterum recurrerent,
et interim Sacra facientes, verbum Domini praedicantes, fidelibus
populis pia conversatione prodesse valerent,'
Quibus autem dispositionibus iurisdictio Episcopalis nulli
subest detrimento : namque Ordinarius invitus non cogitur illos
in suum Clerum cooptare, neque Beneficiis ecclesiasticis pro^
ponere : sed perdurante gratia concessionis, eiusdemque a Sede
Apostolica consecuta prorogatione, ad sacra obeunda ministeria,
pro lubitu in sua dioecesi habitare potest, si velit. Neque ullam
huic agendi rationi dubitationem infer t Decretum Auctis admodum
1892, quia hoc per regulam generalem afi&cit Instituta recentia
votorum simplicium ; ac tantum per exceptionem respicit
Ordines proprie dictos, in quibus vota solemnia Religiosi nuncu-
pant. Quae tamen exceptio, si fieri contigerit, in singular!
decreto adamussim notatur, ita ut speciale Rescriptum eiusque
conditiones legem pro individuo constituunt : et solummodo ab
eo Ordinarius sui agendi rationem quaerere debeat.
lam vero litteris, quas die 4 lulii currentis anni Amplitudo
Tua ad banc S. Congregationem mittere existimavit, relate ad
372 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORE)
PP . . . Ordinis Sanctissimae Trinitatis, et pro quibus, ut ait :
' quin onera Episcopi benevoli receptoris in se suscipiat, aliquod
levamen ipsis offerre desiderat ; ideoque licentiam exposcit, ut
Ordinem exercere valeant ad suum beneplacitum etc'
Hie S. Ordo respondit : ' Eeligiosos huiusmodi esse saecu-
larizatos ad annum et interim etc, (ut supra), pertinere ad
Ordines votorum solemnium ; proinde nisi sint aliqua speciali
censura irretiti " nulla ipsi indigent nova facultate, ut Sacris
ministeriis Episcopo auctorante, in respectiva dioecesi possint
vacare.
Et haec dicta sint, ut ius et regula agendi in re Tibi proponatur,
cui a Deo Optimo Maximo cuncta felicia adprecamur.
Amplitudinis Tuae uti Frater Addictissimus.
S. Card. Vannutelli, Praef.
FACULTIES GRANTED TO THE MASTER- GENERAL OF THE
DOMINICANS
DECRETUM, QUO INDULGETUR MAGISTRO ORDINIS PRAEDICATQRUM
DISPENSARE CERTUM NUMERUM CONVERSORUM UT INTRA
CLAUSURAM RECIPIANTUR, QUANDO INCOEPERINT ANNUM
decimum octavum
Beatissime Pater,
Fr. Hyacinthus Maria Cormier, Procurator Generalis Ordinis
Praedicatorum, ad pedes Sanctitatis Vestrae humiliter provolutus,
exponit quod decretum fel. record. Clementis X, 16 maii 1675,
prohibentis Conversos habitu donari, imo intra clausuram admitti,
antequam vigesimum aetatis suae annum compleverint, non
levibus hodie obnoxium esse inconvenientibus. Nam iuvenes
qui, afflante divina gratia, sacra claustra ingredi expetebant ad
salutem aeternam tutius consequendam, has sanctas dispositiones
crescentibus annis, saeculi fallaciis decepti, saepe nimis amittunt,
et, quando vigesimum annum attingunt, iam passionum illecebris
falsaeque amore libertatis inveniuntur illaqueati. Quod si adhuc
de sectanda religiosa perfectione familiae pulsant, audientes se
debere sex menses postulatus peragere, posteaque per tres annos
in qualitate Tertiariorum Religioni inservire, ut deinde ad novitia-
tum admittantur, post annum novitiatus vota simplicia et demum
post tres alios annos vota solemnia andem emissuri, tot inducias
formidantes baud raro recedunt, Xnde necessitas servos saecu-
DOCUMENTS 373
lares in Conventibus adhibendi cum dispendio non levi tarn
paupertatis quam vitae regularis. His perpensis et approbante
Eeverendissimo Ordinis Magistro P. Fr. Andrea Frlihwirth,
dictus Procurator suppliciter a Sanctitate Vestra petit, ut
Ordinis Magister pro tempore certum numerum Postulantium
Conversorum a Sanctitate Vestra determinandum, possit, quando
annum decimum et octavum incoeperunt, intra clausuram recipere
ut ibi seriem probationum prudentur in Ordine stabilitarum per-
currant, suoque tempore ad professionem admittantur.
Sacra Congregatio super Disciplina Eegulari, attentis expositis,
benigne annuit pro petita facultate, sed per quindecim tantum
Postulantes. Conversi saltem decimum octavum annum exple-
verint ; et si aliquando ad formalem probationem fuerint admit-
tendi, non prius admittantur nisi expleta aetate a Constitutionibus
Apostolicis et Ordinis praefinita et in loco pro Novitiatu designato :
servatis ceteris conditionibus, quae in decreto diei 10 iunii 1880
reperiuntur. Contrariis quibuscumque non obstantibus.
Bomane, diei 23 Augusti, 1898.
L. ^S.
S. Card. Vannutelli, Praef,
A. Trombetta, Secret.
WATER USED IN BAPTISM
UTINEN. DUBIA QUOAD AQUAM BAPTISMALEM
Emus Dominus Aegyptianus Canonicus Prugnetti Provicarius
Generalis Archidioeceseos Utinensis a Sacra Rituum Congre-
gatione sequentium dubiorum solutionem humillime postulavit,
nimirum :
I. Utrum aqua baptismalis, Sabbato Sancto et Vigilia
Pentecostes, benedicenda sit in ecclesiis tantum parochialibus,
vel etiam in filialibus quae sacrum fontem legitime habent ?
II. Et quatenus affirmative ad secundum partem, utrum
sufficiat aquam benedicere, usque ad Ss. Oleorum infusionem
exclusive in paroohiali ecclesia, et inde aqua ad alias ecclesias
delata, in singulis ecclesiis Ss. Oleorum infusionem peragere, vel
debeat Integra in singulis ecclesiis fieri benedictio ?
III. Utrum deficiente clero in ecclesiis filialibus, vel eodem
impedito mane Sabbati Sancti ob functiones parochiales, et
374 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
vespere ob domorum benedictionem, liceat renovationem fontiS
ad alium diem differre ?
IV. Utrum Parochus in cuius paroecia plures sunt ecclesiae
cum fonte baptismali, quique ius habet conficiendi in singulis
renovationem sacri fontis, quam per se nequit perficere, debeat
alium Sacerdotem delegare ad earn Sabbato Sancto et Vigilia
Pentecostes peragendam ?
Et Sacra eadem Congregatio, ad relationem subscript!
Secretarii, exquisito voto Commissionis Liturgicae omnibusque
expensis, rescribendum censuit :
Ad I. et II. Negative ad primam partem, Affirmative ad
secundum, iuxta Rubricas et Decreta.
Ad III. Negative^ et in casu adhibeatur Memoriale Bituum
pro Ecclesiis minorihus iussu Benedict! XIII. editum.
Ad IV. Affirmative,
Atque ita rescripsit. die 13 lanuarii, 1899.
C. Card. Mazzella, S, R. C. Praefectus.
DiOMEDES Panici, S. B. C. Secret,
RULES OF THE SODALITY OF REPARATION
Beatissime Pateb,
Aloisius Palliola Cong. SSmi Redemptoris Rector Ecclesiae
S. Joachim de Urbe et Director Generalis Pii Sodalitii Qniver-
salis ab Adoratione Keparatrice Sactissimi Sacramenti Nationum
Catholicarum ad pedes S. V. provolutus sequentia humillime
exponit.
S. V. per deer. ^. Cone. Indulg. et SS. Relig. d. d. 19 Septembris
1898 dignata est statuta de mandate suo composita praescribere
pro moderatione praefati pii sodalitii et specialia quidem pro ipsa
Ecclesia S. Joachim ubi sedes est primaria.
lam vero plures directores dioecesani ad Directorem Generalem
supplicantes ut quae sactitas vestra praescripsit statuta specialia
pro Ecclesia S. Joachim de Urbe extendantur (mutatis mutandis
pro arbitrio ordinariorum iusta adiuncta locorum) ad illas
E'cclesias ubi Pium Sodalitium involuit. Quapropter orator
instanter^upplicat S. V. ut ad majus incrementum ac firmitatem
necnon ad uberiorem fructuum segetem Pii Sodalitii iuxta men-
tditt ^;' yv huius Operis auctoris praecibus praefatprum directprum
behign^timmere dignetur Pro gratiaJ- '^ " i^^^.uiA?a i>-^'J\-^^ c>:;'.t>::iC^aiii
DOCUMENTS 375
SSmus Dominus Noster Leo Pp. XIII. benigne annuit in
omnibus iuxta praeces ad praeterea extendit ad omnes Ecclesias
de quibus in ipsis praecibus indulgentiam septem annorum et
totidem quadragenarum quam concessit die 6 Septembris, 1898,
pro Ecclesia S. Joachim Eomae. Praesentibus in perpetuum
volituris absque uUa brevis expeditione contrariis quibuscumque
non obstantibus. Datum Romae ex Secria S. Congnis Indulgen-
tiis Sacrisque Eeliquiis praepositae die 18 Augusti, 1899.
Fr. Hyeronimus M. Card. Gotti, Praefectus,
h. ^B.
A. Sabbatucci, Archiepus. Antinoen, Secretarius,
TRANSLATION OF CANDLEMAS
CIRCA TRANSLATIONEM BENEDICTIONIS SOLEMNIS CANDELARUM
Emus Episcopus Aginnensis in Galliis Sacrae Eituum Con-
gregationi humiliter exposuit quod in sua -dioecesi praesertim
ruricolae degunt et difficile ad Cereorum Benedictionem, die II
Februarii ecclesiam frequentant ob festi Purificationis suppre^.
sionem.
Quapropter expostulavit ut in eadem Dioecesi benedictio
solemnis Candelarum quae fit iuxta Eitum die 2* Februarii, in
dominicam sequentem transferretur.
Sacra porro Eituum Congregation referente subscripto
Secretario, exquisito etiam voto commissionis Liturgicae
rescribendum censuit : ' Servetur Decretum in una Rheynen.
7 Februarii, 1874.' Atque ita rescripsit. Die 27 lanuarii, 1899.
C. Card/ Mazzella, Praef,
D. Panici, Secret.
SOLUTION OF DOUBTS REGARDING THE DIVINE OFFICE
TRIA SOLVUNTUR DUBIA
Emus Dnus Paulus Bruchesi Archiepiscopus Marianopoli-
tanus, Sacrae Eituum Congregationi, sequentia dubia, pro
opportuna solutione humiliter subiecit, nimirum :
I. Utrum preces quae flexis genibus, ad omnes horas in feriis
poenitentialibus dicuntur, pariter in fine Matutini, quando
separatur a Laudibus, sunt addendae ?
876 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
II. Utrum antiphonae ' Ne reminiscaris ' et ' Trium puerorum
quae privatim a Sacerdote recitantur ante et post Missam,
duplicandae sunt vel non, iuxta ritum ofticii ab ipso recitati, vel
iuxta ritum Missae quam celebrat ?
III. An satisfacit obligationi suae clericus in ordinibus sacris
constitutus, qui sponte vel invitatus se« adiungit clero officium ab
officio ipsius clerici diversum canenti vel recitanti ?
Et Sacra eadem Congregatio referente subscripto Secretario,
audito etiam voto Commissionis Liturgicae, re mature perpensa>
rescribendum censuit :
Ad I. Negative.
Ad II. Ad libitum in casu iuxta ritum Officii vel Missae.
Ad III. Negative, seculso privilegio.
Atque ita rescripsit, die 27 lanuarii, 1899.
C. Card. Mazzella, Praef.
D. PanicIj Secret.
[ 377 ]
NOTICES OF BOOKS
Idyls of Killowen. A Soggarth's Secular Verses. By the
Eev. Mathew Kussell, S.J. London : Bowden, 1899.
This fresh volume of verses was laid on our library table
during the summer holidays. Nearly two months ago we saw it
reviewed in several English journals. The critics have said their
word about it ; the public have formed their judgment as to its
merits. It is, therefore, rather late for us to come along and
express our opinion. Fortunately, our readers need no spur to
their admiration for Father Russell's work. They know the line
he has chosen and the excellence he has attained. The verses
before us, however, are secular, though not profane ; and where
they touch on sac>red things they do so from a more or less
secular point of view. They are uneven in merit. The exigencies
of rhyme have sometimes forced the author's hand ; although it
is impossible not to admire the ingenuity of device by which even
a forced rhyme is sometimes achieved. What, for instance, could
be more brave than this ?—
'Twere better if in graceful round
My thoughts could move — but, arrah !
What can a poet do who's bound
To close each verse with Yarra.
' Glenaveena ' is a still greater triumph — rhyming as it does
with Terracina, Bohernabreena, concertina, Wilhelmina, and
scarlatina.
For a combination of the grave and gay, it is long since we
have met anything to equal these verses. The poems are any-
thing but worldly, dealing as most of them do with very solemn
themes ; but there is a vein of sly humour running through them
that is really captivating. Take, for instance, * The Irish
Farmer's Sunday Morning.' Part of this poem would recall the
ode of Pope Leo XIII. on ' Frugal Living,' or Ovid's description
of the simplicity of the golden age. The Sunday breakfast
and the Sunday preparation of the family for Mass are most
happily touched off. The boys are first out with their father ;
for they like to talk and to look around them before Mass
begins. The girls take longer to prepare, and can oply do so
%1S
THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
comfortably when they have seen the boys depart. Then ' herself *
is ready :
At length the mother issues forth arrayed
In all her splendoiir — for the sun shines bright-
Grumbling benignly that she is delayed
By her two youngest, not yet wholly ' right. '
- But now they beam before her, and, delight,
The mother's heart with prettiness sedate.
Off hand in hand they set, a touching sight ;
While she, half angry, cries, as clinks the gate,
, , / Mind, 'tis the curate's day. I'll lay my life, you're late.
There is also a sly thrust at certain weighty ' councils ' in the
following : —
The reverend patriarchs, throned on yonder wall,
-.,':! , With ardour keen their last debate renew
■ ,' '-..Upon the great world's politics, and all
''■y^^ '' The current wars and markets ; though 'tis true
; ; ; ,-•,'>, f:-^. Their facts are stale, apocryphal and few,
^>> ; - • Their judgment wrong, predictions false, no doubt ;
'• And like to councils of more weight, which you
And I could naine, they'd make more modest rout
Knew they a little more of what they talk about.
'The ' In Memoriam ' verses on Dr. Eussell and Father Burke,
Q:P., and the ' Learics,' on various literary celebrities, have a
personal interest for a very wide circle. We heartily recommend
this handsome little volume ; and though our recommendation
comes late, we trust it will not prove less effective for its purpose
than many of the earlier ones.
Eeligion of Shake speaee. Chiefly from the Writings
of the late Mr. Eichard Simpson, M.A. By Henry
Sebastian Bowden, of the Oratory. London : Burns and
V pates. New York: Benziger, Bros. Price 7s. Qd.
?'Wje undertook the reviewing of the above work with prejudices
decidedly in its disfavour. We had always regarded the writings
of tt^e great dramatist as a vast world wherein every religion ,
every philosophy, and every intellectual movement of the past or
of rthe. present found with more or less clearness its forecast or
its ' reflectiojj. } and we had therefore, believed, to use his own
words, that 'there was no .' fatal error but some sober brow would
bless it; and approve it with a text' — a text from his own plays of
p-sem^. We must confess, however, that when we had laid
Father Bio.wden-s i:^Qrk aside, we found that our prejudices were
in great 'part unwarranted, and found, moreover, that the light of
NOTICES OF BOOKS "^ ; ^ 3?9-
careful criticism had fallen on more than one passage hitherto
dark to us. . , -
When one takes up a work such as this, one naturally seeks
to discover the precise terms of the proposition which the work
is intended to prove. In the first chapter, page 55. we find the^
words : ' The greatest of English poets is not the product of the'
Tudor age, nor of any past mediaeval system, but of that
Catholicism revealed and divine which is in all time.' This
statement, which is not free from vagueness, must evidently be
read side by side with another put forward in page 122:. 'We
have neither regarded nor represented Shakespeare as a bold and
fearless champion of the faith, but rather as one who, whatever
his convictions, was desirous, as far as possible of avoiding any
suspicion of recusancy.' The author's thesis, therefore, is — that
Shakespeare was as much a Catholic as one dared be in those
days without danger to one's personal safety. The task of proving'
more than this would be utterly hopeless, except, perhaps, to the {
discoverer of ' cryptograms. The very position of a dramatist,
strongly Catholic in his plays would in those days have been
impossible. After the appearance of his first Catholic play, his
fate would have been the fate of Campion. Further, although it ,
is possible that Shakespeare could have been a good Catholic at
heart without having been obviously Catholic in his dramas, it
has to be remembered that he sufi"ered .his daughters to be
reared Protestants, and besides left no reliable evidence of
practical faith.
One of the principal arguments for the author's proposition
lies in the use which Shakespeare makes of older plays. These
plays came in some instances from the pens of rabid Eeformers
who never missed an opportunity of scurrilous attack on
Catholicity. It is, therefore, more than significant that
Shakespeare in his adaptations of the works of others- carefully "
purges them of all that would be offensive to the Catholic. Ti;is '
is conspicuously so in King John. The original, The Trmibler '
some Beigji of King John, was expressly composed to glorify^
Protestantism and vilify the ancient faith. It is full, of virulent'^
bigotry and ribald stories of ' nuns aiid friars, sXf ySfiiiiW
Shakespeare had but to leave untouched to secure pbpularityt'-
And yet a,ll is as rigourously excluded as though he were .g6tne,
censor appointed by ecclesiastical authority. PossibJyi tkerS'ts^'^'
one small point of the proof to which Father Bowdeii^'miglit la'avfe'''
380 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
attended. He ought, we think, to have shown by a word or two
that Shakespeare was not impelled to these excisions by dramatic
necessity.
The second class of proof which the author adduces is based
on the Catholic tone of the dramas. He gives us instances
without number in which Shakespeare reflects with perfect
accuracy the teachings of the Catholic divines, the tenets of the
schoolmen, and the directions of rubricists. Such subjects as
divine love, obHgation of an oath, theory of knowledge, service
for the dying, and countless others attest the accuracy of
Shakespeare's knowledge of all things Catholic ; and the frequency
with which they are introduced, shows his fondness for the old
religion. We cannot praise sufficiently the clearness with which
these reflections of Catholicity are brought under our notice.
Not alone do the extracts form a delightful revision of the entire
Shakespeare, but the brief explanations, theological and philoso-
phical, which accompany them must enhance the value of the
book in the eyes of the priest or the student. We must, however,
in fairness say that Father Bowden appears in one or two
instances to be guilty of special pleading ; for instance, in his
attempt to explain how a Catholic could, as in Hamlet y repre-
sent a blessed spirit inciting to revenge.
And, again, in his attempt to show, or rather in his suggestion
that the compliment to Elizabeth, the ' imperial votaress,' who
passes *in maiden meditation, fancy free,* may be read in quite
an opposite sense by omitting the comma after ' meditation.'
Further, we must confess to a great distrust for any proofs drawn
from the * sonnets,' which may, indeed, be made to furnish many
a telling quotation, but which examined as wholes, remain the
mysteries they have always been. In addition, this is a very
small matter; we think that in the side-reference to Boetius,
Father Bowden should not have described him as a saint and
martyr without adding a brief note to explain his reasons for
departing from the common opinion that he was a pagan. But,
enough of fault-finding. Father Bowden' s book has effectually laid
to rest the pretensions of Dowden, Kreysig, Knight, and others
who have sought to prove that Shakespeare was a fatalist, a
pantheist, an agnostic, a Protestant, or a Calvinist. That he has
discovered the secret of his vitality we do not believe. He thinks
Shakespeare was great because he was so Catholic ; we think he
was great because he was so human ; and we believe that had he
Notices of fiooits S81
been a pagan, he would scarcely have been less great. Difference
of view, however, is not to be interpreted as condemnation of a
work which we have found absorbing in its interest. Father
Bowden tells us that with the exception of three chapters, the
work is really that of Mr. Simpson ; but it is only fair to him to
say, that these chapters are in every way fit companions for
the rest. Also, the language throughout is evidently his own —
language, terse and pointed, strong with the strength of his great
master.
The Catholic Visitoe's Guide to Eome. By Kev.
Wilfred Dallow. London : E. T. W. Washbourne,
18, Paternoster-row. Paper, 6d. ; cloth, Is. 1899.
Visitors to Eome will heartily thank Father Dallow for this
most useful and convenient guide. Even those who by way of
preparation for a visit to the Eternal City have perused the
elaborate works of Eustace, Donovan, and Hare, will find this
little work simply invaluable. The best preparation for a visit to
Eome is, no doubt, a careful and systematic study of Eoman
history, both ancient and modern ; but when one is on the spot,
and has only a limited time to visit the various places of interest,
some such guide as Father Dallow has given us, is an absolute
necessity. This one is less cumbersome than the ordinary guides
and sufficiently full for practical purposes. It opens with some
very useful hints to the traveller and to priests in particular. It
gives a few paragraphs to each of the principal resting-places en
route — Paris, Turin, Genoa, Pisa. It explains certain peculiarities
regarding hotels, railway-porters, cabs, guides, and local customs,
which it is the interest of the traveller to know. It takes the
visitor by the hand and accompanies him for twelve days to all
the hallowed spots in and around the city. It shows how time
can be economized, and how the most may be made of it.
It classifies and combines the objects of interest with skill
and success. Finally, it leads the traveller home again
through Orvieto, Florence, Bologna, Loretto, Venice, Milan, the
St. Gothard, and lands him safely on British soil, after a most
interesting and enjoyable excursion.
We heartily recommend this guide to Catholics who intend
visiting Rome, and have but a short time to spend there. When
such a cheap and excellent guide can be had there is no reason
why Catholics should spend their money on guides that are full
f^SS^ THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
of impudent and ignorant comments on things Catholic,
it is really too much to expect Catholics to pay for such rubbish.
It is high' time for them to resent in the most practical way in
, their power the insults that are offered them at almost every page
of the "sd-called 'popular ' guides- There is nothing to oblige us
to "help non-Catholics to make a fortune by insulting what they
have npt the grace to understand nor the manners to respect.
The Sacred Ceremonies of Low Mass, according to the
EoMAN Kite. Edited by the Eev. M. O'Callaghan, CM.
5th Edition. Sixth thousand. Dublin: Browne & Nolan,
Ltd. 1899;
Im is quite unnecessary to recommend Father O'Callaghan' s
Ceremonies of Loio Mass to the readers of the I. E. Recoed.
Most of them have seen one or other of the earlier editions, and
the present edition does nothing more than present us with the
changes demanded by recent legislation. These changes are,
however, radical, in some instances, so that a copy of this new
edition would be useful to most priests. Father O'Callaghan
makes a statement on page 118 with regard to Private Bequiem
Masses which we are not prepared to adopt. He says that in
certain circumstances ^nm^e Requiem Masses may be celebrated
on doubles of the second class, within the Octave of Christmas,
the Epiphany, and Corpus Christi, and on the Vigil of the
Epiphany. The decrees of June, 1896, and January, 1897,
^ which the learned author appeals to in support of this statement,
hardly bears it out. .As a matter of fact, the recent decrees of
the Congregation of Rites regarding Requiem Masses has raised
a number of doubts which we should be glad to see discussed by
Competent writers. Needless to say, no one in Ireland is better
qualified to discuss this subject than the distinguished author of
the Ceremonies of Low Mass.
, . . D.O'L.
MissA XVI. IN HoNOREM S. Antonii de Padua, ad III.
Voces Aequales. (Soprano, Mezzosoprano, Alto),
organo comitante. Auctore Michaele Haller, Op. 62"^.
Katisbon : A. Coppenrath.
This is the third arrangement of a Mass first composed for
two mixed voices, and then arranged for four mixed voices and
organ. In this last arrangement, the author states in a prefatory
Notices of books .383
«i..i^=.i=^ . —. ; — ; . — — : L_t^i^
note, considerable liberty has been taken with the original in
order to produce the best possible effects with three-part writing.
The author also states that the accompaniment can, if necessary,
be played without the use of the pedals, a possibility which will
be appreciated where only a harmonium is available. Altogether
this Mass can be well recommended. It may be described^ as
fairly easy, like most of Haller's compositions, and, w;ith the
proper declamatory style of rendering, will prove effective: We
would suggest to take the first Kyrie considerably quicker than
indicated by the author. Being altogether in Alia breve rnove-
ment, and almost completely without any figuration, it must, We
are afraid, sound rather tedious at the pace marked. ^ '== ' 52
we should consider a suitable rate. The Christen then, might be
taken more slowly, so that the second Kyrie, at the pace marked,
could appear accelerated, as intended.
H.B.
MissA DE Ss. ViRGiNiBUS quam ad duas Voces Aequsiiles
concinente Organo vel Harmonio composuit Ign.
Mitterer. Op. 79. Katisbon : A. Coppenrath.
A SIMPLE Mass for two equal voices and organ and harmonium,
distinguished by free flow of melody and great rhythmical life.
The musical setting of the words must almost of necessity bring
about a dramatic declamation, and the accompaniment with the
phrasing carefully indicated in many places, does its part to throw
the rhythmical divisions into relief. In a few places the
harmonies are not in accordance with our ideal of Church music.
But, on the whole, the Mass can unreservedly be recommended.
There is nothing morbid about it, and though we sometimes feel
a slight breath of sentimentality, still the expression always
remains healthy,
H. B.
CoMMENTAEii De Deo Teino, De Verbo Incarnato, De
Deo Consummatore. Auctore Joanne MacGuinness,
CM., in Gollegio Hibernorum Parisiensi Professore.
Dublinii: Apud M. H. Gill & Son, O'Connell-street.
1889.
It has been our pleasing duty to say a few words on two
previous volumes of theology, by Father MacGuinness. Now
384 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
the third volume has appeared. It contains the tracts: — De
Trinitatc, De Incarnatione, De Novissimis, and De Cultu
Sanctorum. In this volume some of the most diflOicult mysteries
of our faith are discussed. ' How well the learned author has
done his work the reader can easily discover. As to the doctrines
laid down we need say little. The necessary truths of our faith
are explained and proved with unerring strength. Free doctrines
are treated with that spirit of liberty which our Holy Church
approves : yet no opinion is held without arguments of serious
import. As to the manner of treatment, fewer words still are
necessary. There is a clearness of expression joined with brevity
which must ever be a welcome attribute of a work intended for
weary students whose hours are full of labour.
Finally, it is our duty to say that Father MacGuinness
possesses the inestimable gift of progress in such a degree that
the marked improvement of successive volumes makes us hope
that the present scholastic year will see a volume on De Vera
Beligione and De Ecclesia given to the world by the energetic
author.
J. M. H.
L Till ' . - ,~7^", .7,, " ; ' 1- r , ~L, ^^ — Z~T. - 7
SACRAMENTAL CAUSALITY
CARDINAL MANNING, in the Eternal Priest-
hood, gives expression to some very striking
thoughts on the connection which exists between
the priestly character and grace. He considers
that the priest, by reason of his ordination, has acquired
a perennial source of divine grace. That source is the
character by which his soul has been adorned. This
doctrine, as the Cardinal points out, is the teaching of
St. Thomas. In the present paper we mean to explain the
theological aspect of this view. The question does not
belong specially to the sacerdotal character, nor indeed
to the characteristic sacraments. It has an intimate
bearing on all the sacraments of the New Law. The
question, taken in its general aspect, resolves itself into
this : What place must be given in sacramental theology
to the ' res simul et sacramentum ' ? We cannot give a
satisfactory reply unless we first explain the meaning
of the phrase: 'res simul et sacramentum,' and point
out what it is in the particular sacraments of the New
Law.
A sacrament is a practical sij^n of grace. Hence, a
sacrament signifies, and, sigaif3/ing, causes grace. In
this sacramental signification and operation three things,
distinct from one another, are known to exist, the * sacra-
mentum tantum/ the ' res simul et sacramentum,' and the
FOUUTH SERIES, VI. — ^'UVEM1JEU5 ] b'J'J. 2 15
38G THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
* res tantum.'^ The first has often been called the ' external
sacrament,' whilst the second has been styled the internal
sacrament.' We shall henceforth use these titles though
they do not carry with them the full force of the Latin phrases
usually employed. The external sacrament is that portion
of the sacramental action, which, while it is a sign of the
sacramental effects, is not signified by any previous sacra-
mental sign. Thus in baptirm the ablution by water and
the sacramental form are the external sacrament, for they
signify the character and the sanctifying grace given by
the sacrament ; but, being the first portions of the sacra-
mental action, they have no preceding sacramental sign.
The internal sacrament is that part of the sacramental
operation which is signified by something previous, and
signifies some ulterior effect of the sacraments. Thus in
baptism the internal sacrament is the character which is
signified by the external sacrament, and signifies sanctifying
grace. The 'res tantum ' of a sacrament is the term of all
the sacramental signification ; for, while it is signified by the
external and internal sacraments, it does not signify any
further sacramental effect. Sanctifying grace is that term
in all the sacraments of the New Law, for towards it all
their agencies tend, and beyond it no new sacramental effect
is wrought.
This general explanation of the three sacramental
phrases will be made more clear by an examination of the
individual sacraments of the New Law. As our purpose is
principally concerned with the internal sacrament, a few
words will suffice about the external sacrament and the
* res tantum.' The rale we must adopt in distinguishing
these three things in particular sacraments is abundantly
clear from what we have said. The internal sacrament is
something that, in its signification, comes between the
external sacrament and sanctifying grace, which is the
* res tantum ' of the sacraments, so that the external sacra-
ment immediately signifies the internal sacrament, which,
in turn, signifies sanctifying grace.
1 g. T., 3, q. G6, a 1,
SACRAMENTAL CAUSALITY 387
The * res tantum ' of all the sacraments of the New
Law is sanctifying grace, as we have already indicated. It
is well to remember, however, that sanctifying pjrace is
the * res tantum ' of different sacraments under different
aspects. Each sacrament has an end which is proper to
itself. For the purpose of gaining this end actual graces
are required from time to time. These actual graces are
given by God because of a right which each sacrament
gives, and which is attached to sanctifying grace. This
sanctifying grace, with this special claim, is called sacra-
mental grace. Under this aspect sanctifying grace is the
' res tantum ' of the sacraments ; consequently, as sacra-
mental grace is different for different sacraments, so also is
sanctifying grace, under different aspects, the ' res tantum '
of different sacraments of the New Law.
The external sacrament is the sensible rite, composed of
matter and form. To this rite, by divine institution, a sacra-
mental signification is given. This signification extends
to all the effects of the sacrament. Moreover, it is
the first action to which divine institution has attached
any sacramental signification ; consequently, it can have
no previous sign. Hence it has the qualifications, positive
and negative, which indicate the external sacrament. What
that external rite is in the individual sacraments is easily
seen. In Baptism it is the ablution by water, and the form
'Ego te baptizo in nomine Patris et FiHi et Spiritus
Sancti.' In the Blessed Eucharist it is the species of bread
and wine, with the forms * Hoc est enim corpus meum,' and
* Hie est enim calix sanguinis mei.'
The internal sacrament, according to the majority of
the older theologians, is some physical quality. In the
characteristic sacraments it is the character. In the other
sacraments it is some physical quality, which differs from
the character at least in this, that the character has an
indelible nature, while this ' ornatus ' is transient, as in the
Blessed Eucharist and Penance ; or partially permanent, as
in Extreme Unction and Matrimony. Since the doctrine of
the non-physical causality of the sacraments has come into
vogue a corresponding change is noticeable in indicating
388 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
the nature of the internal sacrament ; so that now a
moral entity is recognised, in some cases, as the internal
sacrament. We do not intend to directly discuss this ques-
tion. We shall, at most, indirectly do so by indicating what
seems the most probable opinion about individual internal
sacraments. All theologians agree that in the characteristic
sacraments it is the character. The truth of this doctrine
is evident in Confirmation and Holy Orders. Their external
rites undoubtedly signify immediately the transferring of a
power. The character is that power. Hence these sacra-
ments immediately signify the character. The character,
on its part, signifies sanctifying grace, without which it
cannot worthily perform its sacramental operations. Con-
sequently, the character is intermediate in signification
between the external rite and sanctifying grace, and is,
therefore, the internal sacrament. There is greater diffi-
culty in explaining how the character holds that interme-
diate place in the Sacrament of Baptism, because the
external ablution, made in the name of the Holy Trinity,
seems to signify immediately the internal ablution from sin
by sanctifying grace. Still a little consideration will show
that sanctifying grace cannot be immediately signified by
the external rite of Baptism. A sacrament, when valid,
must have its immediate, and consequently essentiaL signi-
fication verified. Now, Baptism, though valid, does not
always confer sanctifying grace. Hence it cannot be its
immediate and essential signification. What, then, is ?
Clearly, it is the other effect of Baptism, which infallibly
follows the external rite, viz,, the character. But how is
the meaning of *I baptize thee,' verified in this? The
character is the internal sacrament of ablution, and when
the minister says *I baptize thee,' he means, ' I give thee
the internal sacrament of ablution,' just as the minis-
ter of penance, by * I absolve thee,' means, ' I give thee the
iaternal sacrament of absolution.' Hence the externa] rite
signifies immediately the character. It, too, signifies the
sauctifyiog grace which washes away original sin. Hence
the baptismal character is intermediate in signification
between the external rite and sanctifying grace, and is, in
consequence, the internal Sacrament of Baptism.
SACRAMENTAL CAUSALITY 389
Theologians also agree that in the Blessed Eucharist the
intt^rnal sacraraeEt is the Body and Blood of our Lord
present under the sacred species. The species indefinitely
signify that Eeal Presence, while the form 'Hoc est enim
corpus meum ' and ' Hie est enira calix sanguinis mei '
more definitely is a sign of it. This Eeal Presence, on the
other hand, is an indication of sanctifying grace. It, there-
fore, is signified and signifies, and is, consequently, the
internal sacrament. There does not seem to be much
difficulty either in finding out the internal Sacrament of
Matrimony. It is the indissoluble bond which is imme-
diately operated by the external contract, and so is signified
by it. That bond, being, according to Kom. VL, a sign of
the union between Christ and His Church, is also a sign of
that union of sanctifying grace which exists between Christ
and the souls of those members of the' Church who have
received the Sacrament of Matrimony.
It is not so easy to discover the internal Sacrament of
Penance and Extreme Unction. Lugo^ thinks that in
penance it is the ease of conscience which usually follows
the sacramental absolution, and which is a sign of
reconciliation with God. St. Thomas^ holds that it is the
internal penance of the recipient, because this is signified
by the external acts of the penitent which are an essential
portion of the external rite, and signifies conciliation with
God. Father Billot^ is of opinion that it is the right to
freedom from sin which the priestly absolution gives. It is
immediately signified by the external rite because the
absolution of the priest follows the nature of every judicial
sentence of freedom. But in ordinary mundane matters
the sentence of a judge does not immediately signify
actual freedom, but rather a right to freedom which follows
if no obstacle intervene- Hence in the sacramental trial
the absolution immediately signifies a right to freedom from
sin, not actual freedom. This right, on its part, signifies
sanctifying grace as is evident. So the internal Sacrament
^ Le Sacr. in gen., Disp. ii., sect. viii.
2 3, q. 84, a. 1 ad 3.
•» Be Sacr., Th. vi.
396 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
of Penance is that right. Fr. Billot, however, subsequently^
explains his view in such a way that it can be easily
reconciled with the opinion of St: Thomas. He says that
he regards that right as the official stamp of freedom im-
pressed on the interior acts of the penitent. These acts
thus judicially recognised are the internal sacrament. So
also St. Thomas" explains that these acts as judicially
received by the priestly judge and stamped by the seal of
his reconciling authority are the internal Sacrament of
Penance. Clearly these apparently different views are in
reality only one. This view, which holds that the internal
sacrament is the union of the internal dispositions and the
right given by the sacramental absolution, seems to be
the most probable opinion. Everything in the sacra-
mental operation which is immediately signified by
the external rite, and signifies grace is the internal
sacrament. Now the external rite of penance immediately
signifies not simply the internal dispositions of the
recipient, nor merely the sacramental right given by
absolution, but both united; because the external rite of
penance consists of the externated dispositions of the
recipient united with the form of absolution. The exter-
nated dispositions are a sign of internal dispositions,
and the form indicates the right to freedom from sin.
Hence the union of these is immediately signified by the
external rite. In this union, of course, the right holds the
determining place, and so to it is to be principally attributed
the efficacy of the internal sacrament. This union, as is
clear, signifies grace ; so it holds the intermediate place
required for the internal sacrament. It must not be
objected that the internal dispositions of the penitent can-
not, under any aspect, be the internal sacrament, inasmuch
as they are not an effect of the external rite, but rather the
cause of it. The reply is, that the dispositions under the
aspect which we have indicated are an effect of the external
rite ; for the external rite causes that union between these
^ Be Poen., Th. iv
2 P 4 Sent., D. 22, Q. 2, a. 1. q. 2,
SACRAMENTAL CAUSALITY 391
dispositions and the sacramental right to freedom from
sin, which, in our opinion, is the internal Sacrament of
Penance.
In Extreme Unction there is great difficulty also in
determining the internal sacrament. According to many
it is the health of body which is caused by the anoiniing
and the form of Extreme Unction, and which signifies the
spiritual health which sanctifying grace gives to the soul.
The opinion of Blather Billot seems more probable. He points
out that the form of Extreme Unction is deprecatory. It
is a prayer, not the prayer of the individual, but of Christ
expressed in the form : ' Per istam Sanctam Unctionem
et Suam piissimam misericordiam indulgeat tibi Dominus
quidquid per visum redeliquisti.' The anointing and that
form have for their immediate signification a prayerful
handing over of the sick person to the mercy of God, in order
that his sins may be forgiven. There is not a word in the
form which indicates immediately the bodily health of the
patient. But there is an immediate indication of that
deprecatory consecration to God's mercy by the prayer of
Christ. That consecration too gives the subject a claim to
indulgence, and so it signifies the remission of sin. Hence,
that sacramental consecration to God's mercy in signification
intervenes between the external rite and grace. It is, con-
sequently, the internal Sacrament of Extreme Unction.
II.
Having seen what, in general, is meant by the internal
sacrament, and what it is in particular sacraments, we
naturally ask the question : Is there any utility in discuss-
ing this subject ? If we hold, with many modern theologians,
that there is no utility, or, at least, very little utility, in
raising this question, we have spent our time in vain ; but
then we condemn the collected wisdom of centuries- which
gave birth to the consecrated phrase : ' res simul et sacra-
mentum ; * and having produced it, passed it on from one
generation of theologians to another. If this phrase be
without utility, those generations of theologians must have
acted in a very imprudent manner. We think, however,
392 trts IRlSri ECCLESiASflCAL RECORD
— ^ . a
that underlying it there is a doctiiue which is of the ntmoot
importance in sacramental theology. What, then, is its
importance? What is its utility in the sacraments? It can
be easily explained. Not only in signification, but also in
operation does the internal sacrament intervene between
the external rite and sanctifying grace. The external rite
of a sacrament is a true cause of grace, whether physical or
moral we do not mean to discuss here. The external rite
in its causality may reach sanctifying grace immediately,
or it may reach it only mediately, immediately producing
the internal sacrament, which in turn causes grace. The
doctrine that we wish to hold is that only mediately does
the external rite operate grace. It immediately produces
the internal sacrament. This is a disposition for grace. It
is not a disposition in the sense that it removes obstacles to
the infusion of grace, nor simply in the sense that it fits
the subject for the reception of sanctification, but in the
sense that it exacts grace from God. It is a supernatural
disposition of such a nature that violence will be done to it
by God if He does not give sanctifying grace when it is
present. No doubt there may be obstacles to grace in the
subject of the sacrament, which will prevent God from
actually giving grace ; but this defect is not to be
attributed to God, who is ever ready to correspond with
the exacting demands of the internal sacrament, but rather
to the free will of man who has placed the obstacles, or,
having placed, does not remove them. Our purpose, then,
is to show that the sacraments of the New Law cause grace
through the intervening causality of the internal sacrament.
For this teaching there are arguments that may be taken
from theological reason and from authority — arguments
that refer to all the sacraments, to groups of sacraments,
and to individual sacraments. It will be useful to first
indicate some arguments that apply to individual sacra-
ments ; then to indicate some that apply to all or groups
of sacraments ; finally, to give an argument from the
authority of St. Thomas, the great master of sacramental
theology.
This teaching: seems clear in re'*erence to the Blessed
SACRAMENTAL CAUSALITY 393
•^- - • . .
Eucharist. What in the Blessed Eucharist is the imme-
diate cause of grace? Is it the external sacrament, the
species of bread and wine determined by the sacramental
form? Or is it rather the Body and Blood of our Lord
which are really present under the species by the efficacy
of the sacramental form ? Not only reason, but also the
Word of God seems to indicate that it is the Eeal Presence
which is the immediate cause of grace. Reason says that
when the author of all grace is Himself present. He gives
to the soul to which He is united the nuptial dress of
grace. St. John says : * Then Jesus said to them : Amen,
amen, I say unto you : Unless you eat the flesh of the Son
of Man, and drink His blood, 3'ou shall not have life in you.'
He that eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath ever-
lasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day.' ^ We
are here told negatively and positively that it is the flesh
and blood of our Lord which give the life of grace which is
a pledge of the life of glory to be enjoyed for ever in heaven.
Consequently, it is not the external rite of the Blessed
Eucharist, but its internal effect, the Real Presence, which
is the immediate cause of grace.
If we examine the Sacrament of Penance, we cannot
fail to see the same truth. Its internal sacrament is the
right to grace which the priestly absolution has attached to
the internal dispositions of the penitent. Is it this right to
freedom, or the external sacramental sign of sorrow and
absolution, that immediately causes grace ? If we follow the
analogy of all trials in which freedom is given to a prisoner
by the sentence of a court, our course is clear. It is not that
sentence which immediately liberates the prisoner ; it gives
a right to freedom because of which actual liberty is after-
wards given if no obstacle intervene to prevent it. Another
charge on which the judge has yet given no decision would
be such an obstacle. Precisely the same happens in the
supernatural trial which takes place in the Sacrament of
Penance. The sentence of the judge does not give free-
dom from sin. There is immediately given a right to
freedom from sin, because of which grace is infused into
ivi. 54, 55.
394 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
the soul for the remission of sin. Accordingly, the internal
Sacrament of Penance interposes its operation between
the external rite and sanctifying grace.
Lst us turn for a moment to Extreme Unction, and the
same teaching is evidently trae. 'In Extreme Unction the
internal sacrament is the deprecatory consecration of the
sick man to God's mercy. Is it this consecration or the
external rite which is the immediate principle of grace ?
Evidently, it is that consecration, for through it the claim
to grace is given, and, consequently, through it grace flows
from the sacramental fount. Hence, in Extreme Unction,
as in the Blessed Eucharist and Penance, the sacrament
produces grace through its internal sacrament.
Matrimony too affords us an argument in favour of our
teaching. Without it we cannot explain how the already
existing matrimonial bond of newly-baptized infidels
becomes sacramental. According to Pius IX. every valid
matrimonial contract of baptized persons is a sacrament.
Hence we are bound to hold that when two married
infidels are baptized, their marriage becomes a sacra-
ment, and causes grace. But where is this causality
of grace? Is it possessed by the external contract
formerly placed? But that was only potentially sacra-
mental when entered into, and now remains only in its
effect, the matrimonial bond. Is it by a new consent which
the parties now elicit ? But no new consent is necessary ;
for eo ipso that both parties are baptized, the marriage
becomes a sacrament. It remains for us to hold that grace
is caused by the matrimonial bond which has been elevated
into a sacramental sign. This bond is the internal Sacra-
ment of Matrimony. Hence, matrimony causes grace
through its internal sacrament. A difficulty of importance
which presents itself in connection with this argument is
derived from the dispensation known as * sanatio in radice.'
By its means a matrimonial consent, formerly elicited, but
ineffective, owing to an ecclesiastical diriment impediment,
now, at the removal of this impediment, without any
renewal of consent, becomes a valid matrimonial contract.
In this case an external consent, which was sacramental
SACRAMENTAL CAUSALITY 89^
only potentially when elicited, is quite sufficient to now
cause the sacramental matrimonial bond. A similar con-
tract of infidels, which was only potentially sacramental,
ought be sufficient, at their baptism, to directly cause
sacramental grace. For the present we waive a great dis-
parity between the matrimonial bond and grace, which
consists in this, that the external consent signifies directly
only the internal matrimonial bond, and consequently though
its virtue may remain to cause that matrimonial bond, it
does not follow that it remains too for the purpose of directly
giving grace. This argument w^e shall meet again. At present
we reply, that in the case of a matrimonial consent given
for the purpose of entering into marriage, that consent will
virtually persevere, unless it.be explicitly or implicitly with-
drawn, until the marriage is contracted. If, however, the
marriage be already vahdly contracted, the consent remains
not in any suspended virtue as in the previous case, but in
its effect, the matrimonial bond, which was caused by that
consent. Hence in the case of the ' sanatio in radice,' the
consent virtually remains 'ad matrimonium contrahendum,'
but in the case of the baptized infidels the consent remains
only in its effect, the matrimonial bond. Hence, just as
in the former case that suspended virtue causes the matri-
monial bond, so in the latter case the matrimonial bond,
the internal sacrament, causes grace.
We now turn our attention to some arguments that
are more general in their nature. We have already, in the
last argument, slightly touched on one of these. The
sacraments of the New Law are practical signs of grace, and
as such, signify and, signifying, cause grace. This principle
is laid down by St. Thomas, and seems to follow from the
very nature of a sacrament of the Christian dispensation,
St. Thomas says : ' Sacrament um|secundum propriam formam
significat vel natum est significare affectum ilium ad quem
divinitus ordinatur, et secundum hoc est conveniens instru-
mentum, quia sacramenta significando causant'^ Hence
the sacraments of the New Law have a causality which is
commensurate with their signification. But the sacraments,
1 JJe Veritate, q. 27, a. 4, ad. 13.
396 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
as we have already seen, do not immediately signify grace;
they signify it only through the internal sacrament which
is the immediate term of their signification. Consequently,
they produce grace not immediately, but mediately, through
that same internal sacrament.
Again, it is the universal teaching of theologians that
some sacraments can be valid without being fruitful, owing
to an obstacle to grace in the recipient. Unless the
internal sacrament intervene in its operation as well as in
its signification between the external rite and sanctifying
grace, this cannot be. Why? Because the operation of any
sacrament must always reach the essential and immediate
effect of that sacrament, else there will be no sacramental
operation at all. Hence in the case we contemplate the
essential and immediate effect of the sacramental operation
is produced. But grace is not always produced. Conse-
quently, grace is not the essential and immediate effect of
the sacramental operation. What, then, is? That which
is always present when the sacrament is valid, viz., the
character in characteristic sacraments, and the corres-
ponding quality in the others which generally is called the
internal sacrament. It may be said, however, that though
the internal sacrament be the immediate and essential effect
of the sacrament, it does not follow that the sacrament
produces grace through it, for grace may be produced by
the rite immediately, concomitantly with the internal
sacrament. We reply that in the sacramental external rite
generally there is no indication of any other immediate
causality than the one indicated. Take the Blessed Eu-
charist, as an example. The eucharistic form, ' Hoc est
enim corpus meum,' indicates solely the causality by which
the Eeal Presence is placed under the sacred species.
There is not a word in the form which immediately indicates
causality of grace. The same is true of matrimony. In
the form there is an immediate indication of the matrimonial
bond, but not a word to directly point out any simultaneous
effect of grace. In truth, if it were there it is hard to see
why it would not be infallible as well as immediate for any
word that belongs to the form by the institution of Christ
SACRAMENTAL CAUSALITY 397
must produce its effect infallibly, else the rite will not
operate as the work of Christ. This argument is confirmed by
what we shall now say about the revival of some sacraments.
It is the teachmg of theologians that the sacraments
of the New Law revive with one exception, viz., the
Blessed Eucharist. By this they mean that, owing to
an obstacle to grace in the recipient, a sacrament though
valid does not produce grace Yet afterwards, at the
removal of the obstacle, such a sacrament sometimes gives
sacramental grace. This causality is true sacramental
causality. So when the sacrament revives it then just as
truly causes grace as it would have caused it were it not
unfruitful when received. Now, according to the doctrine
of theologians the Blessed Eucharist does not revive in this
way. Extreme Unction revives as long as the same illness
lasts. Matrimony revives while the matrimonial bond
remains unbroken. The other sacraments revive whenever
the obstacle is removed. How can we explain this revival
of some sacraments consistently with the non-revival or only
partial revival of other sacraments ? Were the external rite
formerly placed the immediate cause of revival, the difference
would arise from it. But, clearly, the difference cannot arise
from the external rite, simply, for grace is demanded by one
external rite as much as by another. If there be any difference
at all in this it is against the teaching of theologians, for the
Blessed Eucharist, being the most worthy of all the sacra-
ments, ought to have a greater efficacy than the others, and,
consequently, ought to be the first to revive. Consequently,
the revival does not come from the external rite. If, then,
the revival does not come from the external rite, from what
does it come? Perchance, from the will of God alone, and
not from any real causality on the part of the sacrament ?
This is directly opposed to the universal tradition of the
Church, for that tradition tells us that it is the sacrament
which revives and causes grace. Moreover, God bas insti-
tuted the sacraments for giving grace. He uses them as
instruments in His hands for pouring out on the souls He
loves the abundance of His sanctification. Are we, then, to
say, that in some ca«^es in the sncrarar ntal operation, v/ithout
o98 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
any instrumentality on the part of these sacraments, God
gives grace ? This would seem to be opposed to the will
of God manifested in the institution of these sacraments.
We cannot, accordingly, admit it as a possible explanation
of the problem. Only one other .way remains by which a
satisfactory explanation can be given. That is the way of
the internal sacrament. The Blessed Eucharist does not
revive at all, because when the species are corrupted, the Keal
Presence, which is the internal sacrament, passes away too.
There, consequently, now ceases irrevocably the immediate
source of grace, and therefore there is no more hope that
grace will be caused by any revival of the sacrament. In
Extreme Unction there may be a revival of the sacrament, so
long as the person anointed remains in the same sickness,
because so long there remains the deprecatory consecration
to God's mercy, which, being the internal sacrament, is the
immediate fount of grace. The matrimonial bond, which
is the internal sacrament of matrimony, remains until the
death of one of the married parties, or a dispensation given
by lawful authority in the case of marriage that is * ratum
sed non consummatum ' dissolves it. Hence, so long the
sacrament can revive, through this immediate source of
grace. In the other sacraments the internal sacrament is
absolutely permanent, as in the characteristic sacraments, or
hypothetically permanent, as in the case of Penance. So in
these there is no limit of time, at this side of the grave, to
their revival. This doctrine, then, of the intermediate
causality of the internal sacrament clearly explains the
doctrine of reviviscence.
There is another doctrine, common in the schools, which
can also be easily explained by this teaching. "We know
that when sanctifying grace is lost, the right to actual graces,
necessary to obtain the special ends of the sacraments, is
lost with it. When, however, sanctifying grace is regained
the lost right is restored. What causes this revival? Being
a sacramental right it does not revive without sacramental
action. Hence the mere will of God will not explain it.
W^here, then, is the sacramental action which causes the
revival? It is not necessary to appeal to the external rite, for
there remains the internal sacrament which was immediately
SACRAMENTAL CAUSALITY 399
caused by that past rite. Hence to this internal sacrament
we ought attribute the revival of the lost right to grace.
The opinion which we have endeavoured to set before
our readers receives a high degree of probability from the
teaching of St. Thomas the great master of sacramental
theology. That this was his opinion there can be no
reasonable doubt. He expressed his view in words than
which no clearer can be found. He says: —
Dicendum est ergo, quod principals agens respectu justifi-
cationis Deus est, nee indiget ad hoc aliquibus instrumentis ex
parte sua ; sed propter congruitatem ex parte hominis justificandi
ut supra dictum est, utitur sacramentis quasi quibusdam
instrumentis justificationis. Hujusmodi autem materialibus
instrumentis competit aliqua actio ex natura propria, sicut
aquae abluere, et oleo facere nitidum corpus; sed ulterius
inquantum sunt instrumenta divinae misericordiae justificantis
pertingunt instrumentaliter ad aliquem effectum in ipsa anima,
quod primo correspondet sacramentis, sicut est character, vel
aliquid hujusmodi. Ad ultimum autem effectuin, quod est gratia,
nan pertingunt etiam instrumentaliter, nisi dispositive^ inquantum
hoc ad quod instriimentaliter effective ^pertingunt est dispositio,
quae est necessitas, quantum in se est, ad gratiae susceptionem. ^
We fail to see how the opinion we advocate could be
more clearly expressed. Not in this place alone does
St. Thomas teach this doctrine. He frequently recurs to it.
In 4 sent. D. 22, q. 2, a. 1, q. 2, he expressly states that the
internal sacrament of Penance causes grace. Also in 4 sent.,
D. 4, a. 2, q. 3, he teaches that it is by the character Baptism
revives. His words are : —
Ad tertiam quaestionem dicendum quod in haptismo imprimitur
character qui est immediata causa disyonens ad gratiam ; et idco
cum fictio non auferat characterem, recedente fictione quae effectuin
characteris imp>^diehat, character qui est praesens in anima, incipit
habere effectum suum, et ita baptismus, recedente fictione, eff'ectum
suum consequitur. ^
But perhaps in after life when he wrote his Summi.
Theologica he changed his views on this matter ? When he
expressly discusses in 3, q. 62, art. 1, the power of the
sacraments to cause grace, he does not mention this
^ 4 Sent. d. ]. q. I, a. 4, q. 5.
2 See also De Veritate, q. 27, a. 7, and q. tl, a. 4, ad, 3 ; also Do Potfiit" a,
q. 3, a, 4, ad 8,
400 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
intermediate efficacy of the internal sacrament; perhaps this
is a withdrawal of his earher view ? By no means. In that
article he wished simply to teach the Catholic doctrine that
the sacraments of the New Law cause grace, without going
into the manner of that production. That this is the case
is evident from a perusal of the article itself, and from the
fact that he afterwards in 8 q. 69, art. 10, expressly repeats
his former view. His words are without equivocation : —
Eespondeo dicendum, quod, sicut supra (q. 66, art. 9) dictum
est baptismus est quaeda'm spiritual is regeneratio : cum autem
aliquid generatur, simul cum forma recipit effectum formae, nisi
sit aliquid impediens, quo remoto, forma rei generatae perficit
suum elfectum ; sicut simul cum corpus grave generatur, movetur
deorsum, nisi sit aliquid prohibens, quo remoto, statim incipit
moveri deorsum. Et similiter quando aliquis baptizatur accipit
characterem, quasi formam, et consequiter proprlum effectum,
qui est gratia remittens omnia peccata ; impeditur autem quan-
doque per Actionem ; unde oporfcet, quod remota ea per poeni-
tentiam, baptismus statim consequitur suum effectum.
These quotations are sufficient to convince any unpre-
judiced reader that the unchanging opinion of St. Thomas
was that the internal sacrament intervenes between the
external rite and sanctifying grace, not only in signification,
but also in causality.
In fine, we venture to express the hope that the revival,
if we can call it a revival, of Thomistic Theology and
Philosophy, which our present venerable Pontiff Leo XII L
has done so much to bring about, will lead to a revival of
this particular opinion of St. Thomas. Indeed it is sur-
prising that already it is not more widely taught in the
schools. No doubt some theologians have not failed to see
its importance. Amongst these we may mention Father
Billot, S.J., the famous Professor of Dogmatic Theology
in the Gregorian College, Kome. His influence will, wa
hope, urge theologians throughout the world to devote deep
consideration to his view. Sach a kindly reception of the
doctrine would carry its own reward, for this teaching
would free its followers from many difficulties of sacrament 1 1
theology which, without it, must ever remain to disturb
thtir eqtiaiiiinir.v , ^
Jciix M. Hauty,
[ 401 ]
THE EXISTENCE OF EV^IL
PAET II. — MORAL EVIL
' Nihil in tota rorum natura, totoque universo fieri potest, quod Deus
antea in luce infinita sipientiae suae exactissime non consideraverit, et quasi
deliberarit, an conveniat illud velle ut fiat, aut saltsm velle permittere, seu non
impedire.'
• Etsi propter peccatum et arbitrii libertatem multam in rebuts, praesertira
humanis, videatur permittere ataxiam ; nihil tamen permittit nisi summa
ratione, et quasi prae via deliberatione/ — Z>5 Noniinihus Dei, lib. ii., p. 103 —
L. Lessii.
WE dwelt at some length in a recent article/ on the
existence of physical and material evil, and we there
attempted to demonstrate the folly of those who make its
presence an excuse for censuring and condemning God.
In the present article we shall address ourselves to a yet
more difficult task, and endeavour to show the wisdom and
goodness of God in permitting not only physical evil, but
what is in itself an immeasurably worse thing, namely,
moral evil, or, in plain English — sin. Observe, we do not
say * in causing sin,' for that is inconceivable, and in-
compatible with infinite holiness, but ' in permitting sin.'
We will begin by calling attention to the undeniable
fact that God, being infinite goodness, desires that man,
' made to His own image and likeness,' ^ should likewise
exercise goodness, practise virtue, and fulfil all justice. He
clearly signifies this desire in the well-known words : * Be
ye perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect.'^ A desire
of which the inspired Apostle is careful to remind the
Thessalonians, with even increased emphasis, when he
writes : ' This is the will of God, your sanctification.' *
Now, to anyone who gives the matter a thought, it must
be perfectly clear that, in order to exercise even the mini-
mum of virtue, the agent must necessarily enjoy the privilege
of liberty. That a person may merit, the first and most
1 Vide I. E. Recced, October, 1899.
2 Genesis i. 26.
3 Matt. V. 43. See also Gen. xviii. 1 ; Deut. xviii. 13 ; 2 Tim. ii. 17, &o.
* 1 Thess. iv. 3.
VOL. VI' 2 C
402 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
essential condition is, that he should be free. Should even
the best disposed person act in a certain way, for the sole
reason that he cannot by any possibility act in any other,
no one would say that he is practising virtue, or that he
is doing anything meritorious, any more than if he were
a mere machine. Here is, let us suppose, a chronometer.
It keeps excellent time. Well. We may, of course,
;:;peaking figuratively, proclaim it to be * an exceedingly good
watch.' But, in spite of the expression, it never would
occur to us to credit it with genuine virtuousness, any more
than it would occur to us to accuse a ten-and-sixpenny
Waterberry of gross immorality and wickedness, because it
habitually refuses to indicate the precise hour, and behaves
altogether in a most arbitrary and provoking manner.
Why ? Because we all know that in either case a watch
simply goes as it is made. It is but a machine, an auto-
maton. It exercises no free-will, and is m no sense
responsible for its successes or for its failures.
So again, to take a somewhat different instance. We
may extol the industry and ingenuity of the bee. We may
be lost in admiration at the mathematical exactness of the
wonderful hexagonal cells that it constructs ; and at the
sagacity and prudence with which it first collects, and then
stores up the honey, and so forth. But no one, unless he
be a very foolish person, indeed, would say that the bee is
possessed of any moral worth. Or that, indeed, he is in
the least degree more virtuous than that careless vagabond,
the butterfly, although the butterfly spends the whole of its
brief life idling and pirouetting among the flowers. Why?
Because neither the one nor the other possesses free-will.
Because each acts according to the laws impressed upon it
by its Creator. Free-will is a necessary condition for the
existence even of the least degree of sin, as also for the
existence of the least degree of virtue — so obviously necessary,
indeed, that even the common laws of the country will hold
no man either guilty of blame or deserving of praise for any
act whatsover in which his free-will has played no part.
A fev^ months ago, a youth sat playing with a loaded
gun. By some mischance the trigger was pressed, and the
THE E3tlST*ENCE OF EVIL 403
gun went off. The whole charge entered the body of a
young woman seated just opposite, and killed her on the
spot. The act was not intentional. The careless fellow
had no desire to murder, or even to wound, anyone. The
act was not an act of his free-will at all. Indeed, quite
the reverse. Consequently, he was not held responsible,
nor judged guilty even by the civil law, and certainly not
by the divine. Or, instead of a deplorable action, such as
this, we may take a praiseworthy action, and the same
principle will apply. Thus : to bestow alms upon the
destitute is a commendable practice ; but to be meritorious,
it must be an act of the free-will, and be done intentionally.
If a rich man, sauntering down some poor quarter of Liver-
pool or London, allows a quantity of loose silver to slip
through a hole in his] trousers pocket, the poor may, indeed,
reap the benefit of it ; but no one, I presume, would go into
ecstasies over the rich man's extraordinary generosity. No.
In order that an act may be really, and in the strictest
sense, virtuous and meritorious before God, it must be
performed freely and intentionally.
No one deserves to be rewarded for doing what he
simply cannot help doing. If a person deserves a reward
for doing a good deed which he cannot help doing, then it
would follow, that he would deserve punishment for a bad
deed which he cannot help doing, which is absurd.
In plain truth, it is precisely because a man might have
done wrong, that we think him deserving of praise for
having done right. This is explicitly laid down in Holy
Writ. Keferring to a wealthy, yet upright and honest man,
the inspired writer declares that : ' He shall have glory
everlasting.' Then he goes on to assign the reason;
because, *he could have transgressed and did not transgress;
he could have done evil things, and hath not done them.' ^
Thus it is abundantly clear from reason, from common
sense, and from the Bible itself, that there can be no true
virtue unless there be true free-will.
But observe, another consequence also follows. So soon
1 Eccles. xxxi. 10.
404 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
-
as ever we introduce the idea of free-will, we, nolentes
volentes, introduce the idea of sin If the will be truly
free, then man may choose. He may follow the path of
inclination rather than the path of duty. There is always,
at least, the bare possibility of making a bad, instead of a
good use of one's liberty. So soon as a man is put in
possession of the marvellous gift of free-will, one cannot
absolutely hinder him from committing sin. For, the
instant you coerce or force him, the same instant he ceases
to be free, and the same instant he ceases to be virtuous —
or for the matter of that — vicious: since the consequences,
of course, cut both ways.
This is a brief statement of the case : hence— if we may
be allowed, with all reverence, to put [the matter in a
human way — God, having determined to create man, had
still to choose between two courses. For sake of greater
clearness, we may suppose that the Creator mused within
Himself, saying : — I will create man. I will endow him
with intelligence and reason and the capacity of knowing
Me, his Maker. But shall I make him a mere piece of
mechanism : a machine, an automaton, moved only as
the brute beasts are moved, by internal and external
stimuli; and necessarily obedient to the strongest impulses?
or shall I? on the contrary, make him free ? I will weigh
the matter, and compare the advantages and the disadvan-
tages. If I decide to withhold the gift of free-will, there
will be no sin. True : man will be as innocent as the fishes
that swim in the waters, and as immaculate as the flowers
that glisten by the road side. Just imagine, we should then
contemplate a world unstained by any moral guilt, a world
without sin !
Unquestionably. But if this would give us a world
without sin, it would give us. also a world without virtue,
a world void of all moral excellence. Man would have no
more sin than a rock or a stone ; but then he would have
no more goodness, no more holiness, no more sanctity,
than a rock or a stone either.
On the whole, then, it seemed better to extend to man
the opportunities of practising virtue, even though such
THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL 405
opportunities carry with them the risk of sin. God saw
the advantages of granting man free-will, so He resolved
to grant it. Among the considerations which determined
Him in His decision, perhaps we may venture to suggest
the following five as among the most important.
First consideration. — If man were not endowed with
free will, then the entire race must for ever remain wholly
incapable of the least act of virtue.
Second co7isideratio?i. — If free-will was not to be the
prerogative, even of man, then God would not be freely
served by any of His visible creatures. Sun, moon, and
stars, together with the earth, and all the earth contains,
serve God, and obey Him. Truly; but it is not a voluntary
service. They obey because they cannot do otherwise.
But God wishes to be served, at least by His rational
creatures, with a spontaneous and a voluntary service : with
the homage of the heart and of the affections. And even
though all might not employ their free-will aright, yet
God foresaw that many would.
Third consideration. — We may suppose that God was
the more ready to grant the favour, because whosoever
abused His free-will and committed crime, would not only
be punished for his transgression, which would restore
the balance of justice, but would be obliged to acknow-
ledge that he had none but himself to blame. He would
realize that if he ran counter to the divine commands,
and received condign punishment, it would be wholly and
entirely his own doing, and in no way imputable to God.
Fourth consideration. — Another reason moving God to
give man free-will was, that such a system opens out to
God a vastly wider and grander scope for the exercise and
the manifestation of His divine attributes, especially of His
power, and His justice, in punishing those who deliberately
scoff and set His will at defiance, and still more of His
infinite love and generosity in rewarding those who volun-
tarily and lovingly serve Him, and who exercise their
freedom merely to honour and glorify His name. Further
it would also enable Him the more easily to show forth His
boundless mercy and compassion, in pardoning and
406 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
washing out sin, and in receiving even the greatest and basest
rebel — if only repentant — back into His grace and favour.
Fifth consideration, — And there is yet another considera-
tion that must have strongly influenced God to grant man
free-will, even in spite of the enormous sins and appalling
crimes that He foresaw would sometimes be the conse-
quences of this dangerous gift. I mean the consideration
that He, the Omnipotent and the Omniscient, is able to
bring good out of evil — not only out of physical evil, but
what is immeasurably more divine and marvellous, out of
moral evil; out of positive and heinous crime; out of hatred,
jealousies, vindictiveness, and bloodthirstiness. Yes, in
giving man free-will, God knew that sin, and great sin,
would result ; but He also knew that He was and is power-
ful enough to turn even the very sinfulness of sinners to the
ultimate advantage of the just, and to the increase of His
own eternal honour and glory.
Thus, although the condition of this or that particular
individual may be worse by reason of his possessing free-
will, yet we must bear two facts in mind : the one is, that
not even so much as one individual need suffer, except
through his own fault ; and the other is, that whatever
amount of suffering free-will might bring to the individual
who makes an evil use of it, it will, nevertheless, always be
to the advantage of the Church in general, and of the race
as a whole; in some measure, even here upon earth, but
above all, in its effects upon the more permanent state of
the blessed in heaven.
After a due consideration of this point, it is impossible
not to see that the permission of moral evil affords one of
the proofs — not, indeed, of God's want of goodness — but
rather of the limitless extent of His goodness, and of His
extraordinary solicitude for the development of the higher
and more heroic forms of virtue in His subjects.
We will now cite an instance or two illustrating the
manner in which God draws virtue out of vice, and in which
He makes sin itself the occasion of greater and yet greater
holiness, over-ruling the crimes and iniquities of the most
jnfamoi^s characters in all history, in order to compel them^
f THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL 407
to subserve His noblest designs, and to second His sublimest
purposes. Again and again does it happen in the history of
the world, that cruel tyrants rage and rebel against the
Church, and that * princes meet together against the Lord,
and against His Christ.' ^ But ' He that dwelleth in heaven '
allows them thus to abuse and misuse their free-will, and to
dabble their hands in blood, because He is fully able, by His
all-wise providence, to use them (even when they flatter
themselves that they are doing infinite mischief) as the
instruments — the unconscious, the unwilling, and the
wicked instruments — still the real instruments, of great
and everlasting good. ' Miri modo fit,' says St. Gregor}^
* ut quod sine voluntate Dei agitur, voluntati Dei contra rium
non sit, quia ejus consilio militant etiam quae ejus consilio
repugnant.'^
An example will make clear what we mean. Pass, then,
in spirit to the early ages of the Church. We are in Kome,
the capital and centre of pagan influence and power. The
air is astir with the sounds of many voices and the shouts
and cries of moving multitudes. Some are in chariots,
some on horseback, some are borne by slaves on litters ; but
the vast majority are elbowing and pushing their way along
on foot. Whither is this great, tumultuous stream of human
beings flowing and eddying ? Ah ! towards the gigantic
amphitheatre, the famous Coliseum, the very ruins of which
are one of the greatest marvels of modern and Christian
Eome. Full soon the thousands and thousands of seats,
arranged tier above tier to the number of ninety thousand,
are filled up by eager and excited spectators. The roar of
the wild beasts rises above the murmurs and the vocifera-
tions of the crowd. Not a cloud is to be seen in the sky,
and the strong Italian sun, beating down upon the immense
concourse of men and women, glistens and glitters upon
the burnished helmets and armour of the Imperial Guard,
and lights up the gaudy splendour of the Emperor and his
numerous attendants.
We ask, * What is going on ? ' and * What all this
1 Ps. ii. 2. -^ Lib. vl. Moral.
408 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
commotion may mean '? ' But we have not loDg to wait.
The mystery is soon made clear, for, hark ! a cry, a shout,
and now another, yet louder and shriller than before, rings
through the air: ' Christiaiios ad leones I' * To the lions
with the Christians! ' * Away with them to the arena ! ' A
great sea of voices takes up the refrain, till the pagan mob
grows hoai'se and husky with shouting.
Yes, Imperial Kome had resolved to destroy and uproot
this new sect (as it called the infant Church), and to put to
death the followers of the Crucified; and God deliberately
permits the attempt. The prophecy of our Lord is being
fulfilled : * I send you forth as sheep among wolves,' ^ to be
rent, and torn asunder, and devoured. * You shall be hated
of all men for My name's sake.' ^ 'The servant is not
above his Master. If they have persecuted Me, they will
persecute you.' ^ * Yea, the hour cometh in which whom-
soever killeth you will think that he doeth a service to
God.'^
Yet here, too, God is with His chosen ones, to comfort
and strengthen them in a conflict so honourable and so
advantageous to themselves ;s while the world, in its pride,
and arrogance, and material strength, stands by, and
marvels to see Christ revealed again in the person of His
followers. Yes, old men of over fourscore, like St. Ignatius;
warriors in the Emperor's own army, like St. Sebastian;
delicate and sensitive girls and mere children, like St.Felicitas,
and St. Agnes, and St. Perpetua, stand forth unabashed
before that immense multitude of witnesses to bear public
testimony to their faith, and to seal that testimony with
their heart's blood. Truly, God knows how to draw the
pure gold of virtue out of the seething cauldron of vice and
sin. Yes, God's providence has led the martyr and the
confessor there for the purpose of exhibiting to a pagan
1 Matt. X. 16.
^Markxiii. 13.
:* John xvi. 18, 20.
4 John xvi. 2.
^ ' Constanter Deo crede, eique te totum committe quantum potes ; nihil
enim tihi ercinrs jJcvfiiiHit, nisi qnod tibl prosit etiamsi necias." ISoliloq. cap 3^v.
^^. THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL 409
world the irresistible power of divine grace, and the indo-
mitable courage and superhuman love of the children of the
Church for the spiritual mother who bore them. Oh, what
a sublime scene was this ! — a spectacle to rejoice the hearts
of God and of man.
The youngest and the most fragile grows strong in the
strength of God. Children scarcely out of their teens, stand
up unfaltering and firm before the threats and menaces of
the greatest and mightiest institution the world has ever
known. Their faith grows till it becomes almost vision.
Their hope and trust expand until they attain heroic pro-
portions ; their love and their loyalty to their crucified
Lord and Saviour fill them not merely with submission
and resignation under their awful sufferings, but with a
holy impatience to pour out the ruddy stream of their life
for His sake, and to be ground to powder by the teeth of
savage beasts.^
What a glorious picture ! What a sublime record of
victory ! What a triumph of virtue over vice ; of gentleness
over cruelty ; of weakness over strength ; of love over hate ;
and of moral power over brute force ! Where, outside the
pale of the Catholic Church, shall we find such heroes ?
Non sunt inveiiti similes illis : their equals do not exist!
Who, indeed, will measure the height and the depth of their
burning charity ? Who will estimate the honour and glory
given to God by the * white-robed army of martyrs ' ? Not
in twos and threes, but in tens of thousands, and in hundreds
of thousands they came forth with joy in their hearts, and
smiles on their faces, to cruel imprisonment, torture, and
death, as though it were to a banquet or a nuptial feast. It
is calculated that over three millions of martyrs laid down
their lives in testimony of the Eoman and apostolic faith
during the ten great persecutions. So that it is really to
sin and injustice — i.e., the sin and injustice of wicked
tyrants — or, what is the same thing, to the permission of
moral evil, that we owe the glory of the martyrs.
^ St. Ignatius wrote in A. D. 107 : — ' I am the wheat of God, and I lonjr
to he ground by the teeth of wild beasts, that I may be found the pure brea4
of Christ,' &c.
410 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Look, gentle reader, look in spirit up into heaven.
Contemplate the ravishing beauty and glory of these con-
querors. Gaze upon the crowns of entrancing splendour
that deck their brows. Call to mind the joy and happiness,
and peace and delight, that is theirs ; and say : does not
their very presence seem to brighten up the heavenly court
as with a new effulgence, and to fill everyone of the blessed
with an altogether special joy? Who would wish to see
heaven shorn of all this glory ?
Who ? Well ; he who is foolish enough to blame God for
permitting the existence of moral evil. Such a man would
deliberately rob heaven of one of its greatest accidental joys,
and God Himself of untold honour and praise. For observe
if wicked men were not permitted to follow their free-will
and to indulge their passions, and commit crime, then there
would be no persecutors, no tyrants, no fierce and blood-
thirsty emperors and kings to torment, and imprison, and
put to death the holy ones of God. The martyrs would
be a class unknown and non-existent. Their heroism and
sterling virtue a thing undreamed and unimagined.
Our conclusion, then, is, that God permits moral evil for
the same reason that He permits physical evil, viz., because
He can draw good out of it, and through its agency add
immeasurably to the sanctity, to the glory, and to the
everlasting beatitude of the saints.
We have selected the example of the martyrs, because
it appears to us to be the most striking and the most readily
grasped. But the selfsame Providence is ever at work, all
the world over,^ converting evil into good, and calling forth
the fairest flowers of virtue from the most hopeless and
stubborn soil of vice. If the Church is attacked, if the
pride and malice of men denounce and malign her, it
redoubles the fervour of her children ; it arouses her bishops
and priests to greater zeal ; it causes her doctrines to be
more fully studied, and more accurately and more per-
suasively stated and explained, and the beauty and divinity
^ *^Deus unuraquemque nostrum tanquam solum curat, et sic omnes,
^nquam siugulos." St. Aug., 1. 3, Conf. cap. ii.
THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL 411
of her whole constitution to be more easily recognised and
more universally known.
The union ever subsisting between God and His Church,
and the wholly supernatural character of the Church's life,
could never have been so striking— could never have been
the argument it now is— had storms and dangers, and
hostile attempts not marked every stage of her career,
and proved on a hundred different occasions, that an
Omnipotent arm was sustaining her, and a Divine Power
defending her. * Behold I am with you all days,' receives
its most striking interpretation and confirmation in the
annals of her miraculous history.
Even in our own individual cases we must, surely, often
have realized how the faults and imperfections of others
have again and again offered us opportunities of exercising
virtue ; and how, perhaps, on the other 'hand, our own sins
have created occasions for others to display a charity, good
temper and forbearance, of which we scarcely deemed
them capable.
It would take too much space to pursue this subject
along the innumerable paths over which it would lead us,
but let each one think out the problem for himself, and
he will assuredly arise from his task, blessing and praising
the wisdom and goodness of God, who suffers moral evil
to continue in this world during the course of man's
probation, and who uses it as a mighty engine for the
accomplishment of His own divine and admirable purposes.
John S. Vaughan.
[ 412 ]
IDEALISM AND REALISM IN ART •
HAVING criticized at some length the school of idealistic
art, and sided generally with its main contentions,
I come now to treat of the school of realism, and of the
movement in which it took its rise. The realistic move-
ment was started originally as a protest against the lethargy
and repose that hung over art in the eighteenth century.
Very few names connected with that period have come
down to our day with any degree of familiarity. It was an
age that laid no claim to originality, and in the domain of art
moved along without demur in the narrow groove allowed
it by the classical idea. It was not until the nineteenth
century opened that artists began to turn to nature to draw
thence, if possible, a little of the life, the freshness, the free-
dom they saw in her, and forthwith craved for. They found
that freedom pervading nature like a living spirit, and they
could not but contrast it with the narrowness and poverty
of their own cramped methods. Mountains arose and rivers
flowed over the surface of nature, wherever the Creator
wished them to appear. But artists had to revere traditions
and measure and balance, and reason out places for every-
thing they painted, spreading out scenes in nice gradations,
and balancing them upon appointed centres.
Then came the reaction I am going to treat of. In
a quarter of a century most of these strictures were
entirely removed, and art sprang up, and flourished, and
grew strong, and showed its strength in the number and
variety of its enterprises and accomplishments. The
movement to which all this is due is known generally
as the realistic reaction. It had a varied history too
chequered and disordered to be considered here; but I
shall do my best to draw out its principles, and explain
the number of forms it took, as its aims grew wider and
more pretentious.
The realistic movement was a movement towards closer
POnjmunion with nature, towards fpesh sources of inspiration;
IDEALISM AND REALISM IN ART 4l3
a movement away from traditional ideas, from disabilities
and restrictions. The disabilities under which art laboured
in the eighteenth century, I think I may safely reduce to
three ; and these I shall indicate in the three following
paragraphs.
1. Properly speaking, art had a right to the fullest
freedom in the selection of its subjects; a right, therefore,
to range through the noblest and the simplest tracts in
nature wherever a fitting subject appeared. But the
mind of the eighteenth century critic was exceedingly
narrow. It was so in poetry, and it was so in art; and for
that whole century art was practically bound down to the
imitation of the classic model, plying its labours amongst
plaster gods in dusty studios, instead of being let into every
cranny of the earth's surface, if it only wished to get its
subject there. The first disabihty was on the subject-
matter of art.
2. That wide chasm, fostered particularly by the later
idealism, between art and nature, between art and truth, was
growing and growing, and should be closed. Nature is truth,
and standard of the true in art. In the eighteenth century, art
was content to outline well, caring little about minor details, on
the plea that if it adhered to them it could not possibly design
nobly. This meant that art was nine-tenths false — at least
nine-tenths. The second disability was on a question of truth.
3. The third disability arose from the fact that the
domain of painting — or rather, I should say, the proper object
of painting — was not quite understood in the eighteenth
century. The proper object of painting and the field of
vision are one and the same. What the eye sees the painter
paints. The difficulty is to determine how much in our
perceptive acts is revealed through sight. Other impressions
from other faculties associate with the pure visual im-
pression, to produce a fuller and more complex image of the
external world. Thus touch and judgment are always
working along with sight, filling in, completing, shaping,
defining its scanty presentations. It is for science to
analyze this complex image, and to pick out carefully the
single factor in which art is interested, viz., the visual
414 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECOk£)
impression. That is a matter for penetrating vigorous
refined research, and presupposes an intimate knowledge
of the determinants of perception and of the laws
of nature. The eighteenth century was not scientific ; it
was not penetrating, it was not vigorous ; and its art, in
consequence, was in great measure spurious. This I shall
make clearer further on. But take the genuine field of
vision^ disassociated from all other elements ; how great, how
varied, how deep it is ; how penetratingly that art must
sift it and sound its depths that would deal with it
adequately ! The eighteenth century did not half under-
stand it. If we only look steadily there is no missing what
falls on the retina in great broad masses ; but besides these
masses, there is, in nature, an infinite wealth of colour-
delicacies that can be missed, hanging about objects, that
are too light to awaken a sense of themselves, and may
escape observation, and that still can tell on the sensitive-
ness of vision, with the effect of enriching or softening,
or illuminating, as the case may be, the masses they hang
on. It was just these delicacies the eighteenth century was
not able to discover. Even still with our riper fuller
opportunities they are growing on us. The third disability
was one of inadequacy.
These were the three prevalent disabilities in the sphere
of painting during the eighteenth century; and they
naturally issued in three distinct reactionary movements :
the first in romanticism, the second in realism (the central
phase of the larger realistic movement), the third in
impressionism.
(1) Romanticism aimed at enlarging the traditional
compass of art. The rules of classicism had cut off from
art the whole range of history, ancient and modern ; and
limited it to the Christian tradition and pagan mythology.
The romanticists proposed to bring art into touch with the
whole range of history, ancient and modern, real and
imaginary, and to interest art in every feature and phase of
nature, in history, landscape, portraiture, &c. It is due to
them that art has stooped to ordinary nature, and found in
fields and barns, and ricks of hay, and ploughmen and reapers,
IDEALISM AND REALISM IN ART 4l5
inspiration for a new and original style more interesting than
anything achieved in the Eenaissance ; certainly more attrac-
tive. As long as art was kept within doors, amongst plaster
gods, what could it know of the things to which it was
subsequently awakened — of cottages, cottiers, sunhght,
fresh fields, or the common clay ? It missed the brighter
half of nature, or had long ceased to know that any such
existed. The history of romanticism is the most interesting
phase in the modern revolution. But I cannot dwell on it,
for I wish to run on to the two other movements of which I
have many things to say in criticism.
(2) On realism — the second of these three great move-
ments— I must dwell now at length. In it the whole
realistic movement appears to have been centred; and,
therefore, it is known as realism proper. The reaction of
the realists was much more thorough -than that of the
romanticists. Komanticism expanded the compass of art.
But realism broke from the traditionary rules of compo-
sition and design, and created two artistic principles in which
to formulate its new philosophy. These principles were —
first, that art, being only the reflex of nature, should fill in the
details it found in nature with as much care as it sketched
outlines. The second ran — nature has nothing to say to
ideals, but is built up of facts and physical laws, according to
which it works itself out into definite effects. As idealization
is not known in nature, so neither ought it be known in
art. How can art improve on nature, change her, recast
her, if it claims, at the same time, to be nothing more than
her reflex and expression ? The first was the principle of
artistic truth; the second the principle of artistic beauty.
All permanent truth is grounded in nature. All the beauty
that art requires it can find in nature. Beauty is truth,
and nature is truth. All other beauty is false and transient,
a thing of taste, a passing prejudice, a conventionality.
That is the aesthetic philosophy of reaHsm. Its natural
issue was the well-known rule formulated, I think, by the
pre-Eaphaelite Brethren, that all art is portraiture of one
kind or other. In this principle of portraiture the philo-
sophy of realism is fully expressed ; and it is to that principle
we shall direct our criticism.
416 THE IRISH ECCLESlASTiCAL RECORD
The rule of the pre-Eaphaelities, to paint from nothing
but the living model, is not so ridiculous as might at first
sight appear. How, one asks, is the past to be made live
again — past battles, past romances, past faces, &c. ? But the
pre-Kaphaelites made them live again, by staging history, and
spreading out tableaux in all kinds of surroundings, at dinner
tables, in ball-rooms, in woods, and by river sides. How could
a competent artist go wrong — this was their point — who had
only to paint the scene before him, with plenty of opportu-
nities to observe and measure, and plenty of leisure to dwell
on difficulties ? Yet that is exactly where portraiture failed.
It made them go wrong ; wrong in everything it was worth
going right in. Portraiture by proxy may get profiles right ;
but how will it provide for subtle indications of character,
feeling, momentary temperament — for everything, in fact, in
which separate personalities find distinct expression ? An
actor may work up in his own featiires the feelings of another,
and become for the moment the likeness of another, the model
of a history. But the artist it is who will judge of the like-
ness, and he judges an idea already in his possession. The
idea is painted : the model is discarded, except for the
rougher plainer work of profiles, lines, proportions, &c.
Portraiture, as a principle of historical painting, of imagina-
tive painting, is false on the face of it ; and the principle of
portraiture, 'justice without mercy,' will set us wrong as
sure as we work on it. Its incompetency increases as we
rise to the loftier characters in history. A man is great because
his deeds and life are such as will not be repeated in
others. His bearing is his own ; look is his own ; he is
^reat because his character is great, and his character is
his own, and no other countenance will be found like his.
I am speaking generally. It was a false principle, a
destructive principle, that set Holman Hunt searching
among the carpenters of Jerusalem for a model of Christ.
The Christ in Millais' * Workshop of Nazareth,' surprises
everybody, disappoints everybody. He is an ordinary boy,
without pretentions to intellect or sanctity, or thoughtfulness
or greatness, or any other trait, in which his character and
thought must have found some utterance.
IDEALISM AND REALISM IN ART 417
Now, I am not speaking of genuine portraiture, but of
portraiture by proxy. I have nothing to say to genuine
portraiture on the particular Ecore that has been before us,
But I do contend, though on another score, that genuine,
that is, first-hand portraiture, as a principle of art, is not
necessarily true. Portraiture emphasizes small details, and
gives them their full objective value. Every line in a stone,
every vein in a leaf, is as accurately drawn, as the prominent
masses. The rocks in Millais' portrait of Euskin are done,
as carefully as the woodcuts of a modern geological treatise.
I am waiving altogether the question of utility, though I
believe that such pains are lost on art, and lost on the
spectator. But, at present, I am on another point, on a
question of truth. Is detailed delineation a true principle of
art ? The answer is easy — it is, if details stand out in the
genuine field of vision, as they do in the ptcture ; it is not, if
the eye is not able to catch them, or will not catch them, as
it skims along the outlines of a landscape, or dwells on its
parts. Now, I know that the eye can discover anything, if
we set it to work as we plant a microscope on a single object,
to pick out atoms, or to tax, and try, and hurt the sensibi-
lity of a delicate organ. But the field of vision which art
interprets is the bold sweep which the eye embraces, when
nature leads it across her surface for the beauties that
are in her, and the pleasure she gives. In that wide
survey, the sense is dead to tiresome detail, to the veins
of stones, and the nerves of plants ; but it catches the
broader richer masses, the bold outline, the strong lights.
and the deep shadows, the telling obstacles, the strong large
framework that scenes are set in. Details are true, as true
as outlines ; but if sight must miss them, or must needs
investigate before it finds them, we are not to paint them,
on the very same principle that we adopt perspective, and
make streets that are parallel converge on a canvas.
That is the way they appear to us, and that is the form in
which art receives them- We paint as we see.
Have I nothing to say in favour of realism, now that I
have said so much against it? I have only to mention tbe
pre-Eaphaelite Brethren, and the pre-Kaphaelice school to
VOL. VI. 2 D
418 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
recall the many achievements of realism, in a department
that shall in future mark the kind and the degree of the high
artistic attainments of this century. That department is
landscape. The high attainments of modern art in the field
of landscape are due altogether to the school of realism,
and, in particular, to a little band of artists, all Englishmen,
I think, whose names are household works wherever art is
cultivated. Early in this century three young and enthusi-
astic lovers of art, Holman Hunt, Millais, and Dante Gabriel
Kossetti, happening to meet at Pisa, became possessed there
of a scrap-book, with drawings in it and designs for
the walls of the Campo Santo in that city. The simplicity
and truthfulness of the whole series, their freshness and
grace, their candid unaffected style, were a revelation to the
three young artists. Here was living, breathing nature
appealing forcibly to every faculty and to every sentiment,
disclosing too with telling persuasiveness the untried
possibilities of realistic art. And these three young men
made covenant with one another, that they would vindicate
for nature her naturally appointed and accredited function,
as the source and standard of artistic merit. They called
themselves the pre-Kaphaelite Brethren, because their
aims were those of Leonardo Da Vinci and of the others
that led the Kenaissance movement, before Eaphael's time.
Their aims were these, to paint no face but from the
living model; no action from memory or from mere
imagination, but from the living group; no moonbeams
except the moon was shining, no sunbeams outside the
broad noonday. Night after night, from sunset to sunrise
Holman Hunt was labouring at the open window on a
moon and sky for his * Light of the World.' Week after
week, from sunrise to sunset, he sat at his easel watching
the glow on the mountains of Moab for the scene in the
* Scape-goat.' Such laborious thought, such close com-
munion with the outward world, could not but yield a
ripe and plentiful harvest of ideas, and rich materials to carry
them out with. Full and rich, and accurate and bold, are
the pre-Kaphaelite landscapes, and, more particularly, the
pre-Kaphaelite water-scenes : and when I speak of the pre-
^ IDEALISM AND REALISM IN ART 419
Kaphaelites, I apply the term to the whole school of art from
Turner and Constable on to Millais. The Eenaissance artists
could not paint a water-scene — everybody knows that.
Eaphael and Michael Angelo knew less about water than a
modern school-boy, under a competent master. Until this
century water was quite a mystery to art, and never got
adequate treatment on canvas, not even from Vandevelde,
except in the less translucent forms, like foam. It is in great
part a mystery even now, and a mystery it must in great
part remain. Its moods are too delicate and subtle for art;
the variety of forms that rise each moment out of vast sea-
depths, and their manifold expression along its surface, are
not to be reproduced in painting. Light lies on water as on
nothing else. It trembles and dissolves, and art cannot paint
either tremor or dissolution. As the light grows strong, the
waters glow, and delicate vapours, streakfed with rainbow
tints, play on their surface ; and then art can follow nature
no further— its function is over. Such is art, and such is
nature. The one has limits ; if the other has any, who shall
assign them ?
But whatever came within the compass of art, the pre-
Kaphaelites accomplished. They have painted water : water
as we know it — water that can flow, and break and gather,
that fish can live in, and boats float on. No man can say
he is intimate with the sea ; but Turner (who, if he was not
one of the Brethren, had a part at least in the movement)
knew all that a man can know of the sea. He knew there
was nothing on earth like it, nothing so great, nothing so
extreme ; and he feared no extravagance in depicting its
anger, and never could get sunshine enough for its calms.
He tore waves asunder, as if he were tearing steel, marking
the strain, along their fluted surface, and suggesting the
power with which they close again in the piling up of a
mountain of waters high over the chasm. In one of the
harbour scenes, he has covered the full breadth of his canvas
with a single wave, mounting at one edge and descending
at the other, though the background exhibits an illimitable
sea, a harbour, and ships. No one before Turner could
have dared to lift up a wave like that, because no one else
420 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
knew what a wave could come to. Od the other hand, what
an inexpressible hour he has kepi for ns, from the morning
calm on the Scarborough beach ! I say it advisedly — he has
kept that hour for us. Even to-day, we fancy we can see
the waves rising to the line of shingle, the last deposit of the
ebbing waters, and the long bright reflections still tremble
towards us, from ships and pier head, and the children in the
water, and the skeleton fishing boats, and the sea-weed
lying still wet on the beach, beyond the tide.
This now is all I shall say of the Eealists. If they
exaggerated the principle of conformity to nature, they
have, at least, concentrated attention on it. They have
taught us that if art by artistic privilege may depart from
nature, it is a privilege that can be seldom used, and
never beyond assigned limits.
(3) I come now to impressionism. We have heard so many
bewildering accounts of the nature of impressionism, that
most of us have ceased to hope for a clear statement of its
principles, and for an explanation of those monstrosities of
art that are called impressionistic. It is not, therefore,
without difficulty that I venture to offer the following
explanation. Its very simplicity will prejudice many who
know anything about the vagaries of the school, and the
variety of styles that bear its name. The principle of
impressionism, as I conceive it, is as follows : — The pure
impressions received on the retina from the external world,
or what are called the pure visual impressions set free from
every element of association, from the suggestions, that is, of
touch, memory, and the other faculties — these and these only
are the proper and exclusive subject-matter of painting.
Let us see how this principle works itself out. Everybody
knows that experiences commonly attributed to sight are
really a very complex product to which other faculties
beside sight contribute. It is no easy matter to pick out
the pure visual impression so obscured is it by suggestions
from touch and interpretations from reason and associations
from memory. For all these faculties break in on the
simplest act of vision, and qualify its testimony by their
own. We see shadows and call them depth : we see lines
IDEALISM AND REALISM IN AR^T 421
brushed along indistinctly, and we call them motion : we
see a shapeless mass of green, and we remember the dis-
tinction of trunks and leaves and the lines on leaves. Again,
on another score, every visual act is complex in character.
When the eye opens, it lights successively on a number
of objects, successively pitching on various centres, and
changing its field of vision accordingly. An isolated look is
extremely rare, if not altogether impossible. This restless
motion of the pupil of the eye we can no more control than
a telegraphist can make the bell strike only once at each
touch of the button. Here are various impressions, all
visual, however; and, strictly speaking, a landscape should
hit off only one of these, for it purports to preserve the pro-
portion of parts given in one view, in prominence, dimensions,
distinctness, &c. First, than, the artist should cut off the
pure impression of sight from associated' elements ; and,
second, he must give to that impression just what io
revealed in a single instant, no more and no less. This
last restriction many would not admit, but the first is
a peremptory law of the art. Here are some examples.
We fancy if we look at a round glass vase, that the body
and edges are revealed together, clean cut and defined;
whereas if the eye falls fair on the vase we do not
FO see it, for the edges melt into the surrounding colours.
There are no abrupt endings. The intellect it is that keeps
betting us wrong. To see the edge stopping abruptly we
must centre the pupil on the edge itself. The accomplished
artist takes note of this, and his objects are seldom well
defined. Again, it would be worth our while to study one of
the impressionist water-scenes, particularly those that are
most misunderstood, I single out these because they ex-
aggerate principles, and are consequently more likely to bring
them out in greater prominence. A number of patches, blue
or grey, running along on a murky canvas, is commonly used
by impressionist artists to represent water. That is the way
an impressionist conceives it; and on what principle? — for
he must have a principle. Look at the surface of a sheet of
water which the winds have ruffled into small low waves, and
you will find the principle. What the eye reveals is not a
422 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
continuous sheet of water, though memory keeps telHng us it
is continuous (I know it is continuous) ; but a series of patches
each alternately light and darkness, running back in parallel
lines for a considerable distance. It is the movement of the
water that keeps suggesting an unbroken substance throwing
off reflections from each part of the surface, according to the
way in which the light falls on it. But the eye only catches
the shiting patches, and that is all the artist will reproduce.
Again, how few are ever conscious of the delicate colour-
ing that passes across the face of nature in atmospheric
mists, sunbeams, reflected lights, changing with every hour
of the day, sometimes deepening and growing quite visible,
sometimes discernible only with difficulty — the merest
breath. Without this floating mass of colour nature is only
discordant patchwork. This tempers its contrasts ; this is
the groundwork, the prevailing tone, the key-note of the
harmony we find on every coloured surface. Why do I say
this? What else is nature, but a patchwork of substances,
discordant in kind, and discordant in colour ? and what else
except the overhanging mists could graduate the breaks and
soften the discordance where so many textures lie side by
side ? It is the attention that misses what the eye catches
and cannot analyze.
And then there is that mystery of sunshine, streaming
over rocks, and seas, and many-coloured gardens, the mystery
being what it is doing there. Lighting up darkness — can that
be all ? So it used to be thought, but the moderns say that
sunshine has a colour of its own, distinct from that of the
texture it lies on. Science may demur, but the mystery
remains — why dark-green meadows can turn to gold, with
the green breaking through, when the sun pours over them.
The fact is unquestionable, and plain to anyone who cares to
notice it. It is only a question of looking and seeing. The
Venetians discovered that shadow was colour, but the nine-
teenth century was the first to know that there was something
more than light in sunshine; that it might be gold, or silver,
or scarlet, burning purer than the tints it lies on, though
these it also helps to strengthen, and purify, and refresh.
These are some of the mysteries of vision. It was only
IDEALISM AND REALISM IN ART 423
when romanticism awakened men to the study of nature that
these things began to reveal themselves ; and the men that
first became conscious of them, and raised interest for them
have a right, on many scores, to be called a school with a
special philosophy and a distinct aim. Impressionism seeks
to define the proper field of vision, and to limit painting to
the visual impression ; but then, in addition, to work that
field for all that it is loorth^ and reveal some of its untold
wealth. * Fiat lux ' is the full expression of the philosophy
of impressionism. It is a great philosophy. Let it only ba
supplied with legitimate methods, and impressionism must
live. The very formulation of its programme is great. So
much for its principles.
But our judgment alters when we come to consider the
extravagant courses this school entered on almost imme-
diately after it began. In the first place it so exalted colour
as to question the importance of line and figure, and even
tried to eliminate the latter altogether from art. It reasoned
as follows: — Draughtsmanship and painting are separate
arts. The former studies lineal symmetry ; the latter, colour
and harmonies in colour. What, then, has painting to do
with figures? What has colour to do with lines? If colours
may harmonize without dividing lines, and they can so
harmonize, is it necessary we should hang them on lines and
figures? And if we do so hang them, how are they to expand
or open out, like musical notes, into rich broad contrasts,
and prolonged harmonies? Figures compress them just
where they begin to deepen and expand. If music were
confined to a couple of scales, as painting is by the
limits of figure, how should musical harmonies find utter-
ance ? This now is the principle embodied in the so-called
impressionist symphonies. Every picture is a symphony
either in grey and green, or black and gold, or blue and
silver, or some other chord, a chord being the group of
colour tones the scene is strung on. There are no figures,
no dividing lines, but the colours arise in rich, broad
masses, or vanish into delicate films of unending harmonies.
But notice particularly how the original principle of impres-
sionism is running on here, for it is my busines3 to show -
424 THE IRiSH EeCLESlASTlCAL RECORD
that Luy definition of impressionism is still running on in
this prominent department of the impressionistic work. We
are still interpreting the field of vision, and the impressionists
suppose that line and figure are not essential to that field.
I have said so much in explanation of impressionism,
that I shall only say a word in criticism. I shall only ask
whether the painter's palette might justly be counted a
work of art. I ask the question in all seriousness. You
have only to harmonize the colours on the palette, and
there you have impressionistic art. Many will be dissatisfied
with this summary way of disposing of a school with a
name and a history. But, I believe, I am striking its
central weakness. The truth is, that harmony is a very
small portion of the function of colour. Figure lends all
their meaning to colours, and, what is more, gives them
their interest. Figures are their naturally appointed media,
their only support. Brown is only brown, but it gets a
meaning and becomes criticizable in a face or an apple.
And for these reasons, I say, we do violence to art in
divorcing colour from its appointed vehicle.
But what am I criticizing ? The colour symphonies ?
I do not believe that what are called colour-symphonies
exist. I have never seen one. The so-called symphonies
are all art trickery. Not one of them does what it
pretends to do. Every one of them works on lines and
figures, sometimes only dimly traceable, but always suggested
in one way or another for the colours to run on. It could
not be otherwise. You may paint faintly ; or you may paint
confusedly. You may show only fog or a cluster of stars,
or falling rockets, but you are not going to hang up a canvas
palette, dabbed over with colour, and call it art. The figures
will come in, whether you like it or not. If nothing is to be
visible but a rocket in the heavens, or the thick grey fog, then
every * man in the street ' can be an artist, for he can do
a fog. In that adventurous freak of Monticelli, ' A
bouquet of women,' there is no mistaking the dancers,
and trees, and the slopes of valleys, in the midst of the
colour. And the same is true of all the symphonies, not
excluding Whistler's. Artists may draw out the spirit of
IbEALISRi AND REALISM IN ART 425
Dature, and the moods it excites; but a bodily presence
must come in somehow, however it be insinuated.
Not less extravagant is the stress laid by impressionists on
atmospheric hues. There are some delicate shifting colours
floating in the atmosphere, particularly where the sun falling
through foliage reaches water. But they are never more than
barely perceptible, though I believe they affect our impressions
of a scene. In the impressionist paintings it is the solid objects
that are dimly traceable through the thick mist round them.
Nature is put aside or contradicted flat for the mere bringing
out of a idea. To a child the rushes in a river are green.
The impressionist comes and exhibits his painting, and now
the child calls them gold, or silver, or scarlet, or such like, with
green looking through . And this suggests another point about
colour. Why are these tints not noticed, as a rule, on the
surfaces they hang round ? The answer is; and the answer is
important: — they are always in motion, and pass so quickly
over the same locality that the several effects are in great
part neutralized, though they do get in delicately upon us.
Now painted objects are painted at rest. There is no
known method of painting motion. There are hundreds
of ways of suggesting motion : — the position of the body, the
lie of garments, haziness, streaks, the direction of the eyes.
There is no possible way of painting it directly. Art has
its limits, and this is a limit it cannot pass. If it could,
paint motion, it could paint sounds. With this simple
answer, I think I have disposed of (and I hope I am right)
a vast collection of impressionistic paintings, probably
the largest the school possesses— ballet scenes, storm
scenes, flickering of light, moving meadows, breaking waves.
They all embody a wrong principle, and are all false art.
When, therefore, it is claimed that impressionism has
opened new sources of beauty, and created for art an
entirely new province, we answer unhesitatingly: — it has
certainly looked far into nature, and opened up number-
less hidden beauties ; but the natural limitations of art
remain, and no new province has been created. Art is
fresher than it was before; its spirit is stronger; but the
boundaries it has are set by nature and are made impregnable.
426 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
I shall be quite satisfied if these few elementary remarks
will enable the reader to set out broadly the principles
that actuate a still-existing movement, and to localize its
disordered parts, and see the unity that underlies them.
M. Cronin, M.A., D.D.
FATHER O'GROWNEY.^
TO very many in Ireland, as well as to many, very many,
of the scattered members of our race, no sadder or
more heart-breaking news has come for many a day than
the announcement of the death of Father O'Growney,
which three days ago was flashed along the wires from the
distant Pacific Slope. Far away from his cradle-land, from
the land which claimed his undivided affection, has he fallen
asleep in death. Far away from that land to which he gave
such loyal and ungrudging service, for whose glory and
renown he ceaselessly laboured, in behalf of whose ancient
language and literature he spent himself during his all
too brief span of mortal existence, must his bones repose,
must all that was mortal of him await the resurrection.
Thousands of miles away from his natal spot in Koyal
Meath his remains have been ere now consigned to the
silence of the tomb ; but, if gratitude and patriotism have
not wholly died out of the Irish heart, his name and memory
must permanently endure in Erin. To his incessant, untir-
ing, enthusiastic, unselfish and self-sacrificing work for
Ireland and her language is it due, it cannot reasonably be
doubted, that he now fills an early grave in distant Los
Angelos. Such as he it is that make movements. What he
has been to the Irish language movement it is impossible
to tell. What he effected for it by his steadfast and unweary-
ing efforts, by his enthusiastic yet eminently practical and
methodic work, no words could well exaggerate.
On this occasion, then, I do not think I need apologize
1 Lecture delivered in the MacMahon Hall, Maynooth College, on Oct. 21,
1899.
FATHER O^GROWNEY 427
for turning aside from the beaten track of my lectures from
this platform to pay my tribute to Father O'Growney's
worth ; to give expression to my appreciation of his great
and unselfish labours for Ireland ; to lay a wreath, however
poor and unworthy, upon his grave. As a fellow-labourer of
his for many a year in the same field of national effort, but
still more as his successor here, charged with the duty of
continuing his work, I feel strongly that I owe this much to
his memory. But these considerations apart, I do not think
it too much to say that the students of the College may
learn a useful and inspiring lesson from his life-story.
Father O'Growney never thought of fame. As un-
assuming as he was unselfish, dreams of greatness, the
promptings of ambition, troubled him not. Ireland was his
idol. The study of her language and literature was his
passion. The movement for the revival, spread, and per-
petuation of the nation's ancient speech formed the focus of
all his thoughts and strivings. To the effort which is being
made to secure that Ireland's future shall be a genuine
continuation, a rational development of her past, he rendered
all the assistance in his power. To the ideal that inspires
that effort was he devoted heart and soul, and as long as life
remained all his energies were directed towards aiding to
secure its realization. That ideal was as persistently pre-
sent to him away in distant Arizona and California as it
ever had been in Ireland. The fame of which he never
dreamed came to him unsought. To-day there are thou-
sands all the world over who revere his name, to whom his
example and life-work have been an incentive to noble aims.
Father O'Growney was born at Ballyfallon, in the parish
of Athboy, County Meath, on August 25, 1863. Hence, he
was only thirty-six years when he passed away. His early
studies for the priesthood he made in the Diocesan Seminary
at Navan. It was during his student days in Navan, and when
he was already in his sixteenth year, that he first became
interested in the Irish language. Until then he was not
aware, as he used himself to tell, that there was, or ever had
been, an Irish language. The language of his ancestors had
not been spoken in his home, and of it he had never heard
4^8 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORI)
a single word there or elsewhere. He became aware of its
existence in this way. Father Nolan and John Fleming
contributed about this time a series of Irish lessons to
Young Ireland^ a weekly periodical published from the
Nation office. Of this periodical Father O'Growney had
been a reader, and the moment the Irish lessons began to
appear, and he became aware that there was a language
till then unknown to him which had been for thousands of
years the language of his race, he resolved that he should
master it at any cost. So he set to work. After much
searching he succeeded in discovering a few old people who
spoke Irish, with whom he could confer on questions of pro-
nunciation, and who could help him along in other ways.
From those days on to the very end the Irish language and
its restoration as the vernacular of his native land formed
his principal substantial interest in hfe.
In September, 1882, he came to Maynooth, and on the
13th of that month he matriculated for the class of First
Philosophy. During his college course, which extended over
six years, he never enjoyed robust health ; indeed, his health
was oftentimes of the most indifferent character. This
accounts for the fact that his course, though by no means
undistinguished, was not as brilliant as his undoubtedly
great talents had led his friends to expect. For him the
severe and constant study which alone leads to brilliant
scholastic successes was out of the question To the study
of the national language, however, he devoted himself with
the greatest ardour. In the brief sketch of his life which
appears in the history of the college, we read : —
Whilst still a student he showed an extraordinary aptitude for
the Irish language, and studied it with great care and persever-
ance. During his holidays he often spent months in the Islands
of Arran, and in those districts of Connemara and Cork, in
which the purest Irish is still spoken. He thus acquired a
perfect command of the spoken as well as of the written lan-
guage, and prepared himself admirably for the position he was
subsequently to occupy.^
It may here be added that his vacation tours, always
^ Maynooth College : lis Centenary History, p; 169.
FATHER O'GROWNEY 429
planned with a view to perfect his knowledge of Irish,
also embraced Donegal, Kerry, Waterford, and various
other districts. The Irish class in the College was in
Father O'Growney's student days placed in the Second
Divinity year ; and no wonder that we find him in 1886
carrying off the Irish Solus.
In 1888, he completed his course, and returned to Navan
Seminary, in what capacity I cannot at present say — pro-
bably as Dean or Professor. On the 24th June, 1889, he
was raised to the priesthood in the College Chapel here.
Immediately afterwards he went on the mission, being
appointed curate at Ballynacargy, County Westmeath.
This was his only curacy, and the few years that he
lived at Ballynacargy gave him his only experience of
missionary work.
He now threw himself with whole-hearted zeal and
energy into the Irish language movement. Just then the
movement was at a rather low ebb. It may be said to have
begun in 1876. From the time that the Ossianic Society
became defunct, several years before, until the Society for
the Preservation of the Irish Language was founded there
existed no organization specially charged with looking after
the interests of the language. But in 1876, almost
entirely through the great and unremitting exertions of
Father Nolan, the Society for the Preservation of the Irish
Language was successfully launched. For a brief space
hope ran high, and much enthusiasm was aroused. As an
immediate result the existing provision, miserably and
scandalously inadequate though it be, for the teaching of
Irish in the National Schools was secured. But the
Society referred to, though still in existence, never took
hold of the country, and to-day it has very little practical
work to place to its credit. Beyond the pubhcation of an
incomplete series of elementary manuals, and of a few
indifferently edited texts, it has done little to justify its
twenty-three years of existence. It soon became but too
evident that it was not the sort of body to create or direct
a popular movement.
Even the Gaelic Union, an association founded in 1880,
430 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
and since merged in the Gaelic League, though a much
more enterprising and progressive organization, did not
succeed in making any very considerable impression on the
public mind. All the same it accomplished some good
work ; so much do I, as one of its original members, and from
first to last a member of its Council, deem it my duty to
claim for it. It encouraged the teaching of Irish in the
National Schools by awards of prizes to teachers and pupils.
But its most important achievement was the founding of
the Gaelic Jourjial^. This was, undoubtedly, one of the
greatest services ever rendered to the Irish language move-
ment. The launching of such a periodical in 1882 — the
same year that Father O'Growney entered this college as
a student — was an almost heroic undertaking. Still the
movement, though it commanded the services of the best
Irish scholars of the time, and included in its ranks numbers
of unselfish and thoroughly earnest workers, did not make
notable progress. Indeed, after a time, it began rather to
lose ground, and, between one thing and another, its
fortunes were somewhat low when Father O'Growney
began to take an active and prominent part in it.
Very soon he became one of the outstanding figures, one
of the most potent influences, in the movement; and of
those who have closely followed its fortunes since then, few
will be found to question that to him is largely due the
position which it occupies to-day. "Whilst still a student he
was a frequent contributor to the Gaelic Journal, Whilst
on the mission he published, first in the Gaelic Journal, and
later on as booklets, a series of modernized versions of
lom^A^i'n SlineA-ogAfA 7 mhic tliAgl^, and other short early
Irish tales. Then also he made, and published in the Gaelic
Journal, translations of * The Wearing of the Green ' and
of * Auld Lang Syne,' which, under the names CAiceAiii An
5liiAif , and An U-ath ^a-o 6, have since acquired great
popularity in Gaelic circles. During those years he laboured
hard by his writings in the press as well as by private
1 In the orig-inal list of subscriberR, which I have before me at present,
and which contains nine hundred and eleven names, I find Father O'Growney 'a
name. The address given is ' Dressogue, Athboy, Co. Meath.' In a subse-
quent list, however, the address becomes * St. Joseph's, Maynooth College.'
FATHER cyGROVJNEY 481
correspondence to call attention to the movement, to arouse
increased interest in it, to induce as many as possible
to join it and work for it. His most notable performance
during those years was the publication in the Gaelic Journal
of a series of four articles on Arran written in Irish. They
were published under the title ^]ia n^ tiAotii. The articles
named appeared towards the close of 1889 and in the
beginning of 1890. Never have Arran and the Arran
islanders been written of more worthily, not even by Petrie
himself, than in the articles to which I have referred.
Language and matter are alike delightful.
In September, 1891, Father O'Growney became, in
succession to John Fleming, editor of the Gaelic Journal}
This put him at once in the very forefront of the move-
ment, and gave him a vantage ground which he was just
the man to avail himself of to the utmost.'
Of the periodical for which Father O'Growney now
became responsible, it may not be out of place to say some-
thing at this stage. As stated already, it was founded by
the Gaelic Union. Its first issue appeared in November,
1882. Since then a vast body of published and hitherto un-
published Gaelic literature — folk-tales, folk-songs, proverbs,
original prose and verse — has been published in its pages.
It contains, furthermore, extensive contributions to Irish
lexicography and to scientific Irish grammar. Valuable old
texts and masterly studies in Gaelic literature have appeared
therein, to say nothing of propagandist matter or of intelli-
gence about the movement. The Gaelic Journal is now in
its tenth volume, and a complete set of it forms an indis-
pensable adjunct to the library of every serious student of
our mother tongue.
From November, 1882, to August, 1884, it appeared as a
monthly. Thenceforward until February, 1894, it appeared as
a quarterly. But at that time the earlier arrangement was
reverted to, and since then it has again appeared as a monthly.
1 It inay be well to add here that when Father O'Growney went to America,
in 1894, Mf. John MacNeill undertook temporarily the editorship of the Gaehc
Journal. Later on it was absolutely transferred by Father O'Growney to the
Gaelic League, whose property it has nnc.e been. Mr. MacNeill continued to
edit it until recently. Its present editor is Mr. J. H. Lloyd.
432 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Its first editor was David Comyn, still an earnest and
effective, though unobtrusive, v^orker in the movement.
In March, 1884, he felt obliged to resign, and was suc-
ceeded in the editorial chair by my dear old friend and
tutor, John Fleming. Those who are at all interested in
our ancestral tongue should never forget Mr. Fleming.
Throughout a very long life he was an earnest, active, and
practical supporter of the claims of the Irish language. To
further the cause of its revival, he laboured unceasingly and
with the most single-minded devotion. In the very front
rank of the Irish scholars of his time, he was a persistent
and unwearying worker in the cause which was dearer to
him than life. Few Irish books appeared during his time,
the manuscripts and proofs of which did not pass through
his hands. A.nd what labour and pains he bestowed on
their revision ! Yet, his services in this way often passed
without a word of acknowledgment. He did not mind.
He only thought of the interests of his native language.
There was no Irish language society of his time of which
he was not an active member. The Ossianic Society, the
Keating Society, the Society for the Preservation of the
Irish Language (in its early days), the Gaelic Union, the
Gaelic League — he belonged to them all, did valuable work
for them all. Never overburdened with this world's wealth,
he freely gave of his means — oftentimes, as I know full
well, to an extent which he could ill afford — in further-
ance of the Irish language movement. From the first issue
of the Gaelic Journal, he was its most frequent, valued,
and extensive contributor. Such was the man who in
March, 1884, succeeded Mr. Comyn as editor.
He occupied the position for seven years. During those
years he had frequently to write or otherwise provide
almost the entire matter of the Journal himself. He con-
ducted it with signal ability, and kept the flag flying until
younger men were available to relieve him of the work. At
length, the accumulating infirmities of age obliged him
to ask that he should be relieved of the editorship, and
so in September, 1891, he handed over the periodical to
Father O'Growney.
FATHER O^GROWNEY 433
Mr. Fleming has since passed to his reward. Peace to
his ashes, and the light of heaven to his soul ! He had
many sorrows. He endured more trials than fall to the
common lot. Those who in the ordinary course should
have survived him predeceased him, and his home was left
desolate. But all his trials he bore with magnificent
Christian fortitude. A better man, a more sterling Christian,
a man of simpler and more robust faith, I have never known.
The language of our race never had a more ardent, fearless,
outspoken, uncompromising champion, nor has the Irish
language movement ever had within its ranks a more
earnest, persevering, and indomitable worker. For twenty
years I enjoyed his intimate friendship, his entire confi-
dence ; and to his inspiration, example, and unfailing aid I
owe far more than I can ever adequately acknowledge or
repay.
Within a month after he had taken over the editorship
of the Gaelic Journal, Father O'Growney was appointed
Professor of Irish in this College. His appointment took
place at a meeting of the Trustees held on October 15,
1891. By the terms of his appointment he was required,
in addition to the former duties of the Irish Chair, to deliver
each year, before the College, six public lectures on Irish
literature and archaeology.
Here it may not be amiss to say a word or two about the
College Irish Chair. The College, as everybody is aware,
was founded in 1795. It had been seven years in existence
before a chair of Irish was established : a somewhat curious
fact, it may be observed in passing. One would have
thought that a chair of the national language and literature
would have been, especially in those remote days, amongst
the first for which provision would have been made. Such
a chair was, however, established on July 30, 1802, and
its first occupant was the Kev. Paul O'Brien, who, hke
Father O'Growney, was a priest of the diocese of Meath.
Father O'Brien held the position for eighteen years. He
was a good Irish scholar of the old fashioned type, some-
what lacking however in exact and scientific knowledge, and
rather given to the fanciful speculations of the . Vallancey
VOL. VI. 0 £
4S4 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
schooL Judged by modern standards, his Irish Grammar
is a poor production. But he, undoubtedly, loved the
Unguage of his ancestors, did good work on its behalf in
the College, and was an active member of Irish language
societies of his time. His name appears in the list of
members and officers of the Gaelic and Iberno-Celtic
Societies, along with those of O'Flanagan, MacElligot,
Haliday, and O'Keilly. Father 0'Briei;i's successor was
the Kev. Martin Loftus, a priest of the diocese of Tuam.
He was appointed on June 22, 1820, and occupied the
Irish Chair for eight years. Of him or his work I have
been unable to glean any further particulars.
He was succeeded on August 30, 1828, by the Kev.
James Tally, also of the diocese of Tuam. Father Tully
occupied the Irish Chair for forty -eight years. His death
occurred in 1876. Of Father Tully little need be said.
All over Ireland, and far beyond the shores of Ireland, there
are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of priests to-day who
remember him, and who passed through the Irish class
during his time. He was, according to unanimous testi-
mony, a man of great piety, a kindly, benevolent, charitable
man, who effected much good in a variety of ways. But,
alas ! it is but too true that no one can lay to his charge
that he ever did much for the Irish language. His tenure of
the Irish Chair, covering nearly half a century, embraced the
most critical period in the history of the language. But all
with whom I have ever spoken on the subject agree that he
did little to help the students in the study of their mother-
tongue, to imbue them with a love for it, to send them forth
to the mission animated with a fitting sense of the duty
they owed it. When one recalls the lost opportunities of
that half century, well — de mortuis nil nisi honum. Sad,
very sad, is it, all the same, to think of what has been, and
of what might have be^n.
After Father Tully's death the present Cardinal Primate
became at once a Dean of the College and Professor of
Irish. This double appointment was made on October 17,
1876. The change in the occupancy of the Irish chair pro-
mised fair Ibr the fortunes of the national language in ihe
FATHER CyOROWNEY 435
College ; but, unfortunately, Cardinal Logue's tenure of the
Chair was of very brief duration. His Eminence was, on
the 25th June, 1878, appointed to a Chair of Theology, and
for the thirteen years that followed the Irish Chair was left
vacant. The Irish Class, however, was still continued, but
was taught by a lecturer selected annually from amongst
the Dunboyne students. This arrangement was^^ neces-
sarily most unsatisfactory. It involved a new appointment
every year, in itself a fatal drawback, not to speak of still
more serious disadvantages, which need not be mentioned,
but which must be sufficiently obvious.
Eventually came the dawn of a happier day. The Irish
Chair was revived by the Trustees on October 15, 1891.
Their choice of a professor fell, as a matter of course, upon
Father O'Growney. For the next few years he did the
work of three or four men. The national language was at
once placed upon a much more satisfactory footing than it
had ever previously occupied in the College. Attendance at
the Irish classes was made compulsory on all students
of Khetoric and Philosophy, whilst an optional class was
established for students of Divinity To all these classes
had Father O'Growney to lecture. He had to prepare and
deliver the public lectures to which I have already referred.
He had to manage and edit the Gaelic Journal. Further-
more, he carried on an extensive correspondence with
people in all parts of the world who were interested in the
Irish language. This I have the best reason to know.
Though then labouring on the Scotch mission, I was in
constant communication with him, and knew of all his
undertakings and projects. For the use of his classes he
began to compile text-books. He thus prepared and had
printed, although they were never published, an admirable
summary of Irish Grammar, two parts of a series of Irish
Headers, and one part of a Manual of Irish Composition.
How he contrived to get through all the work he did at this
time is a mystery.
His work in the Gaelic Journal and his correspondence
was beginning to tell upon the outside public. Beyond
doubt, he and John Fleming did an immense lot to pave
436 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
the way for a genuine Irish language awakening. But
credit where credit is due. There was another man who
accomplished very much in the same direction — a man
young in years, but comparatively old as a worker in the
movement. That man was Dr. Douglas Hyde. As a
lecturer, both in Ireland and in America, he had succeeded
in creating a good deal of interest in the movement. Th^
time seemed ripe for the launching of an organization of a
truly and professedly popular and go-ahead character. All
previous organizations had been largely, many of them
wholly, academical ; it was high time to see what an orga-
nization with practical aims, and worked by popular
methods, could accomplish.
On July 31, 1893, nine men, most of them young and
practically unknown, held a conference in Dublin. That con-
ference has become almost as historic as the more famous
conference, of scarcely larger dimensions, that originated
the language revival in Bohemia. Those present at the
conference were Dr. Douglas Hyde, C. P. Bushe, J. M. Cogan
(who has since passed away in a foreign land), Eev.
William Hayden, S.J. ; P. J. Hogan, M.A. (now Junior
Fellow of the Koyal University); John MacNeilljB.A.; Patrick
O'Brien, T.O'NeillKussell, and Martin Kelly. The conference
assembled at Mr. Kelly's house, 9, Lower O'Connell-street.
Thereat was founded the Gaelic League, which has since
become a world-wide organization, including hundreds of
branches in Ireland, England, Scotland, the United States,
and elsewhere, some of them located in places as far distant
as Montreal, San Francisco, and Buenos Ayres. At a
subsequent meeting. Dr. Hyde was elected President,
Father O'Growney Vice-President, and Mr. MacNeill
Hon. Secretary. Since then these three have been the
real leaders of the Irish language movement.^
1 'When the Gaelic League was founded in 1893, Father O'Growney was
absent, I think, in Scotland, but he had been for some time previously in
constant communication with a few others who, like himself, believed that the
whole question of the national language required to be taken out of its
academical surroundings, and brought to the hearths of the people Imme-
diately on his return he associated himself with the League, and induced many
others to join it, including several of his colleagues in Maynooth. He also
placed the Gaelic Journal at the service of the new organization. He is, there-
FATHER aOROWNEY 437
From a contemporary account of the founding of the
Gaelic League, I may quote a few passages : —
The idea of making our movement more popular and practical
has long been in the air. It was put forward by Dr. Hyde in
New York two years ago. Since that time it has been touched
upon more than once in the Gaelic Journal. It has now at
length taken tangible shape and found for itself a local habitation
and a name.
Then after giving an account of the preliminary con-
ference, the writer proceeds : —
It was agreed that the literary interests of the language
should be left in other hands, and that the new organization
should devote itself to the single object of preserving and spread-
ing Irish as a means of oral intercourse.^
I shall not here follow up the history of the Gaelic
League. Like honey of Hymettus was its advent to Father
O'Growney. But the office to which he was elected
therein threw additional work upon one already over-
burdened. To the practical and detailed work of the League
he ungrudgingly devoted himself, and amongst its members
in its early days of obscurity and struggle none was more
zealous and active than he.
In this same year which witnessed the founding of the
Gaelic League, Father O'Growney was called upon to
undertake still further work. As a result of a somewhat
protracted correspondence which appeared in the Freeman's
Journal, he undertook, at the suggestion of his Grace the
Archbishop of Dublin, the compilation of a new series of
elementary lessons in Irish, in which an attempt should be
made to teach the pronunciation by means of a system of
fore, properly to be regarded as one of its founders. Dr. Hyde was elected
President of the League, and has since been always re-elected. The Rev,
Guesby D. Cleaver was elected Vice-President, in recognition of his generous
help given to the teaching of Irish in the primary schools, on which he
annually spent large sums of money. Mr. Cleaver died a few months after the
Gaelic League was formed, and Father O'Growney was chosen Vice-President
to succeed him, and retained that post till his death; but he deprecated his
election at first, and renewed his protest several times afterwards. Indeed,
at no time did he seek prominence or obtrude his personality on others.' —
Eeminiscences of Father O'Growney. By one of hia friends. — Freeman's Journal,
October 21, 1899.
^ Gaelic Journal, November, 1893.
438 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
phonetics. In elaborating the phonetic system which he
proposed to employ for this purpose, he received large
and valuable assistance from the Most Kev. Dr. "Walsh.
The new course of lessons was first published in the
Weekly Freeman, and concurrently with their appearance
in that journal they also appeared from month to month in
the periodical which Father O'Growney himself controlled.
In the WeeJcly Freeman and Gaelic Journal, they appeared
as * Easy Lessons in Irish,' but when republished in book
form later on the title was changed to Simple Lessonfi in
Irish, Of these lessons Father O'Growney published Parts
I. 11. and III. When no longer able to work upon them,
Mr. John MacNeill undertook to continue them. Part IV.
has long since appeared, and Part V. is at present on the
eve of publication.
The compilation of the Simple Lessons was almost a
work of genius. To say that they are a great improvement
upon anything of a like kind previously in existence, is to
say but little. They are, beyond all doubt, vastly, imme-
asurably, superior to any works of a similar character ever
placed at the disposal of students of our language. They
are a marvel of simplicity, clearness, order, and almost
perfect gradation. Of the language and its phonology they
display, elementary as they of necessity are, a perfect
mastery. Their publication, on the whole, was probably
the greatest individual service ever rendered to the
Irish language movement. Compiled primarily and mainly
for the use of those whom circumstances obliged to study
without the aid of a teacher, they have been found just as
useful by others more favourably circumstanced. Never-
theless Father O'Growney himself always said that if he
had had a different object in view, he would have worked
upon quite different lines. Thousands upon thousands of
copies of his books have been sold. They have gone to all
parts of the world. They have carried their compiler's
name everywhere. They have made more readers of Irish,
introduced far more people to the study of the Irish
language, than all the other works that have ever been
published.
FATHER O'GROWNEY 489
It seemed that Father O'Growney was but on the thres-
hold of a career of singular usefulness to his country, to
her language and literature. But for some years he had, as
has been already observed, been doing the work of three or
four men. His health, always indifferent, now gave way
altogether. On October 9, 1894, he felt obliged to apply to
the Trustees of the College for a year's leave of absence.
He hoped that rest and change and a milder climate would
so restore him that by the time his leave of absence had
expired he should be able to resume his work. Unfortunately,
this was not to be. He immediately sailed for America,
where, on his arrival in New York, the Gaelic societies of
the Empire City, Brooklyn, and the Eastern States generally
organized a reception in his honour. He journeyed leisurely
to San Francisco, where he proposed to settle down. Soon,
however, he discovered that the state of his Piealth required
a still warmer and drier climate. He, consequently, moved
southward to Arizona. In that State he has since lived,
sometimes at Prescott, sometimes at Phoenix, with occa-
sional sojourns at Banning and Los Angelos in the neigh-
bouring State of California. When his year's leave of
absence had expired, his health had not materially changed
for the better. He asked that it should be extended by a
year, and his application was granted. Still restored health
refused to answer his expectations, and so he wrote to the
Trustees tendering his resignation. On June 23, 1896, his
resignation was accepted, and he was granted a pension by
the College.
His life since then has been a lonely one, far away from
home and friends, far removed from the scenes, the work,
the interests that to him were all in all, without a single
kindred spirit to commune with, save when, at long intervals,
some friend of happier days, or some fellow- worker in the
cause, paid him a brief visit. Such visits were necessarily
few in that remote region. His situation was pathetic
enough for tears. The victim of acute heart disease, he
lingered on until last Wednesday, when the end came.^ He
1 October 18, 1899,
440 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
died at the Mercy Hospital, Los Angelos. A pillar of the
Irish language movement has fallen ! He who was in very
truth a tower of strength to the cause to which he devoted
his life is no more. His friends and his fellow-labourers
in the cause have lost one for whom they shall mourn for
many a day. Every sympathiser with the movement for the
revival of our ancient language shall henceforth grieve for
one for whom he cherished a tender affection.
Though far removed from direct contact with the move-
ment, Father O'Growney kept in touch with it to the last,
and laboured as zealously as ever in its behalf. Daring the
brief portion of each day which his physicians allowed him
to devote to work of any kind, he occupied himself in writing
letters to the Irish-American periodicals and journals in the
interests of the movement. Scarcely an issue of the Gaelic
Journal appeared that did not contain a contribution from
his pen, usually on some disputed or unsettled point of Irish
grammar or lexicography. He maintained a constant and
voluminous correspondence with the leaders of the move-
ment at home and in America. For all he had a word
of encouragement, of praise, of counsel. His vast and
fxtremely accurate knowledge of everything pertaining to
the language was ever at the disposal of all who cared to
draw upon it, and he was a singularly prompt and obliging
correspondent. The vast influence that he wielded — in many
cases over people who never saw him, — his earnest and inde-
fatigable devotion to his ideal, his utter unselfishness, the
singularly practical character of his enthusiasm, have often
led me to link him with Thomas Davis in my thoughts.
In a notice of him which appeared about two years ago
the writer observed : —
There is no more familiar name in the Gaelic world than that
of Father O'Growney. It would be difficult to exaggerate his
great influence on the language movement. Modest, scholarly,
and retiring, he is one of those quiet enthusiasts by whom causes
seemingly almost hopeless are pushed on to victory. He may be
said to have consecrated his life to the cause of the old tongue
which he loves so well.^
1 ITAititie All Ue, Feb. 12. 1898,
FATHER CKGROWNEY 441
Generous and "enthusiastic as this tribute is, it certainly
does no more than justice to Father O'Growney, to bis
influence and work.
Now that he is gone from us, it is pleasant and consol-
ing to recall that he was spared to see the movement on
which be had staked all, whose final and complete success
was far dearer to him than life, well advanced along the
road to victory. His closing hours must have been cheered
and made happy by the well-grounded conviction that that
movement, which he himself did so much to create and
consolidate, is bound to succeed — to succeed, at no distant
date, beyond the most daring hopes of its originators, to
press onward and upward to victory, complete and assured.
Happy, assuredly, are those noble, generous, and unselfish
souls, fired by a lofty ambition, inspired by high and
ennobling ideals, moved by exalted aims-for God or country,
for whom life's evening is not clouded by shattered hopes,
whose sun does not set amidst forebodings of unrelieved
gloom, whose lamp is not extinguished in nethermost dark-
ness. May the great God be thanked and praised that such
a fate was not Father O'Growney's in his dying hour !
Father O'Growney was a man of most amiable disposi-
tion, of most winning manners, a kindly, warm-hearted,
genial man. He was as unassuming and artless as a child ;
amongst strangers somewhat reserved, silent, and even shy,
but amongst his colleagues and intimates bubbling over
with fun and drollery. He possessed an extraordinary gift
of humour ; indeed, those who knew him best believe that
in this respect he could not be surpassed. ' I have never
known a man half so witty, or with anything approaching
his exquisite sense of humour,' observed one of his former
colleagues a few days ago. No one was quicker to grasp the
humorous element in an incident or situation ; no one told
a story with more racy, sparkling, mirth-provoking humour.
He was a capital raconteur ^ a splendid specimen of the real
Irish seanchaidhe.
Of the ardent personal affection that he invariably
inspired, I had abundant and striking proof during the
summer vacation. His visits to the Arran Isles during his
442 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
student days have been already referred to. Such visits did
not end with his student days. He visited Arran more
than once in later years. Last July I carried out a long-
cherished project of visiting Arran. In Inishmaan, one of the
Arran group, I tarried for some weeks. I had been there
scarcely a day when I discovered that Father O'Growney
was simply worshipped by the islanders. He had been
almost the first to sojourn amongst them in quest of
Gaelic lore, the first to inspirelthat Gaelic-speaking com-
munity with a sense of pride in their racial inheritance.
They regarded him as in a sense their own, and from
morning till night would they talk of him in the most
affectionate and endearing terms. How they pitied him
away in distant Arizona, stricken down by illness, exiled
from friends and home and native land, and how fervently
would they pray again and again that God and the Virgin
Mary might restore him to health, and send him back
to Ireland. How ardent was their desire to see him once
more, to welcome him again amongst them. The news of his
death will make many a heart sad and sore the world over,
but nowhere will it cause keener, more poignant regret, or
a deeper sense of personal bereavement, than away amidst
the Atlantic billows in rock-bound Inishmaan.
Father O'Growney was a member of the Koyal Irish
Academy. He was well known to continental Celtologists, who
admired and respected his ability and attainments. Many of
them visited him here on their way to the Irish-speaking
districts in the south and west. On questions of Gaelic scholar-
ship they frequently sought his advice and assistance. In the
preface to one of his books, Dr. Kuno Meyer of Liverpool,
refers in warm terms of acknowledgment to the help which
he had received from him. Amongst his class-fellows and
contemporaries here were some who have since achieved
fame, and not a few who, inspired and influenced by his
example, have rendered valuable service to the Irish
language movement. Amongst them may be named
Father Yorke of San Francisco, distinguished as a journa-
list, controversialist, and orator ; Dr. Henebry, Professor
pf Irish in the Catholic University gf Ameriga ; Father
FATHER CyOROWNEY 443
Mockler, Professor of Irish in St. John's College, Water-
ford ; and Father Kiernan of Clontribret, the tireless
and indefatigable leader of the language movement in
Monaghan.
It is time to conclude. I should be glad to think that I
had done anything like justice to the memory of my dear
friend, my fellow- worker for so many years in the cause of
our native tongue, my distinguished predecessor in the Irish
Chair of our College. If I have failed, it has not been through
any want of good-will, of any want of appreciation of his
character and work, of any want of affection and reverence
for his memory. My highest ambition is to continue his
work here in the spirit in which he would have wished me
to continue it, to give to the movement for which, as I
believe, he sacrificed his life, all the assistance I can
possibly render it. His devotion to the language of his
country, when as a student he dwelt within these walls,
should be for all time an inspiration and a guiding hght
to the students of the College. I hope the lesson of his
unselfishness, his zeal, his industry, his self-sacrifice, his
patriotism, his high sense of national duty will not be lost
upon them. Most heartily and sincerely do I hope that his
example will spur many, very many of them to earnestly
strive to emulate his work for Ireland. I hope too that the
glorious example of his life-work since he became a priest
will not be lost upon the patriotic priesthood of Ireland. I
conclude in the words of a note received from Dr. Hyde
in reply to a telegram which I sent him on Thursday,
announcing that his dear old friend and comrade-in-arms
was no more, buille q\om q\iiAitiiieileAc -oo ciiic i^]\
Aimni A]\ ^cA^AA-o ! * A heavy woeful blow has fallen upon
the Irish race this day. May God grant mercy to the soul
of our friend ! '
Michael P. Hickey.
[ 444 ]
ST, PATRICK'S BIRTHPLACE
THE SCOTTISH TRADITION
BEFOKE we proceed to consider the character and value
of the Scottish tradition, it will not be out of place
briefly to review the ground already traversed. We began
our inquiry by asking what Irish tradition had to say on the
subject before us. Oar ancient records were found to give
to this question a clear and consistent answer : they pointed
decisively to the neighbourhood of Dunbarton as the place
where St. Patrick was born.^ And the answer thus given
must be accepted, not as the opinion hazarded by one or
other of our early writers, or as the witness of this or that
particular manuscript, or even as the view of any special
period, but as the unvarying testimony of early Irish
tradition. To doubt that this is so is tantamount to
accusing our ancestors of a dulness and apathy simply
inconceivable, and attributing to our ancient scribes, in
particular, an unexampled capacity for blundering. These
transcribers, according to such critics as Dr. Lanigan,
Father Malone, and Dr. O'Brien, not only displayed an
unvarying tendency to substitute false for true readings, but
showed themselves consistently incapable of perceiving true
readings, even when these latter were, so to speak, staring
them in the face, and clamantly demanding recognition.
St. Jerome, with characteristic plainness of language, some-
times attributes certain Scriptural readings to oscitantes
lihrarii : but our Irish copyists, according to the critics
just mentioned, can only be described in the language of
Lucretius as lihrarii stertentes.^ Such a supposition carries
with it its own complete refutation, and only serves to
confirm our belief in the genuineness of the tradition so
unworthily assailed.
Accordingly, when we now turn to examine the Scottish
tradition, we are simply obeying the voice of the Irish,
1 I. E. Eecoed, October, 1899, p. 341.
2 ' £t vigilans stertis, nee somnia cernere cessas,' J)e Eer. Nat. iii. 1061.
ST. PATRICK^S BIRTHPLACE 445
transmitted to us from a remote antiquity, when the
question of St. Patrick's birthplace could not have been a
matter of uncertainty. We are not acting as would-be
* discoverers,' but as those who seek confirmation of teaching
derived from trustworthy sources : we are not following the
ignis fatuus of * theory,' but are led by the light of authentic
records.
I. — TRADITION OF THE SCOTTISH CHURCH : THE
ABERDEEN BREVIARY
It is, surely, impossible for any Catholic to contemplate
the change which has come over the once glorious Scottish
Church, without feeling his heart touched with the deepest
sympathy for her misfortunes. As we think of the devas-
tating storm of anti-Catholic bigotry and violence that
swept over this country at the Eefornaation , we are filled
with a sentiment akin to despair, as we realise all that was
then lost to our common Catholicity. We mourn over the
general destruction of whatever was connected with the
ancient faith ; of glorious churches and venerable monastic
institutions burned or levelled to the ground; of precious
works of art, the symbols of our holy faith, wantonly defaced,
or shattered into shapeless fragments ; of valuable docu-
ments of various kinds, condemned either to the flames, or
to misuse, neglect, and ultimate decay. But, although
much has perished, something still survives to bear witness
to the ancient faith of the Scottish Church.
Among the documents which have survived the sixteenth
century revolution, the Aberdeen Breviary occupies an im-
portant place. It is, indeed, the only pre-Keformation
Scottish Breviary that has come down to our time.
(1) History of the Aberdeen Breviary
We owe this work to the enhghtened zeal of Bishop
WilHam Elphinstone, the founder of Aberdeen University,
and one of the earliest patrons of the art of printing in Scot-
land. He was a man distinguished alike for his private
virtues and for his labours for the public welfare ; and his
piety and learning would have made him a worthy ornament
of the Cathohc Church in any age or in any country of the
446 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
world. He caused the Aberdeen Breviary to be printed by
Walter Chapman, of Edinburgh, in 1509-1510. Under the
editorship of the well-known scholar, David Laing, the work
was reprinted by Toovey, of London, in 1854.
(2) Character of the Aberdeen Breviary
This work enjoys a high character for authenticity, even
in the estimation of Protestant writers. When submitted
to the. test of comparison with other early sources of
information, it is found to be so faithful in reproducing its
authorities that we are forced to respect its testimony in
cases where such means of comparison no longer exist.
Laing says : —
In the instances of some of the chief missions {i.e^ to the differ-
ent peoples inhabiting Scotland), such as those of St. Ninian and
St. Columba, St. Kentigern and St. Serf, the original materials
employed in the preparation of the work have, in whole or in
part, descended in our own day, and the remarkable fidelity with
which we j5nd these cited in its pages, warrants us in placing
a high value upon the accounts that are given of other apostles
and early teachers, of whose pious enterprise every other memorial
has passed away.^
The reader will also observe that the testimony of the
Aberdeen Breviary may well be taken as a witness to the
general belief of the Scottish Church in the matter now
under consideration ; for, as to its situation, the diocese of
Aberdeen was in the north-eastern corner of Scotland, far
removed from the territory comprised in the ancient see of
Glasgow.
(3) Testimony of the Aberdeen Breviary
The Lectio I, in the Matins for the 17th March, the Feast
of St. Patrick, is as follows : —
Patricius, Hybernensium apostolus, ex patre Calphurnio de
Scotorum nobili familia ortus, matre Conkessa, beati Martini
Turonensis episcopi Francigena sorore, apud castellum de Dun-
bertane divinorum praesagiis conceptus, et in Kilpatrik 'prope
idem castellum in Scotia natus et educatus extitit, in baptismate
Suthat a comparentibus nominatus : post hoc a sancto Germane
in Gallia Magonius, et a beato Celestino papa Romae Patricius
appellatus.
* Fi'gfacey by l>a>dd Laing, -quoted in Fatlier Macnab's Pamphlet, p. 58.
ST, PATRlCK^S BIRTHI'LACE 447
— — _■ - -
The general meaning of the above passage is unmis-
takable, and strikingly confirms, even in matter of detail,
the evidence derived from Irish tradition. But it is worthy
of remark that a distinction is here made between the place
in which the saint was * conceived, amid the accompani-
ment of heavenly signs,' and the place in which he was
born : the first is the ' Castellum de Dunbertane,' the second
is the neighbouring town of Kilpatrick. This reminds us of
the words of St. Fiac's hymn, and the gloss thereon. For,
St. Fiac says : * Genair Patraic i Nemthur,' literally Genitus
est Patricius in Nemthur. The gloss then adds : 'Nemthur. i.
cathir sein feil i. op. mbretnaib tuaiscirt i. ail cluadej literally,
Nemthur : id est, civitas quae est in Britonihus septen-
trionalihus (or, inter Britones septentrionales), id est,
Ailcluade}
And now, let us consider the special 'significance of this
testimony. We see that the Aberdeen Breviary claims
St. Patrick, as one born in Scotland ; but, in order to
recognise the full force of this claim, a second consideration
demands our attention ; namely, that no other ancient
Breviary has ever been known to advance a similar claim
for any other country in the world.^ Now, how could
this be so, if St. Patrick really belonged, not to Scotland,
but to some other country, such as France, Spain, or
even South Britain? All these were more favoured than
Scotland was ; they were more advanced in civilisation ;
they could boast of a more continuous literary activity ;
1 I have already observed (I. E. Recoed, Oct. 1899, p. 349), that the
question, whether Nemthur directly refers to Dunharton or to Kilpatrick, is
one of secondary importance, in the view of those who are guided by the
evidence of tradition. We may be content to acknowledge our limitations,
with regard to an accurate acquaintance with topographical details : it is better
to wait in patience than to blunder in haste. Later on I may venture to state
my own opinion. Meantime, it is obvious that a comparison of the passages
given above suggests that Nemthur was a special name for Dunbarton rather
than for Kilpatrick.
2 A striking illustration of this truth is derived from the history of the
Rouen Breviary. In the text which reads ' in Britannia Gallicana ortum,' the
word Gallicana is notoriously a modem interpolation. Such tampering with
ancient testimonies defeats its own object ; for when such ' Gallican liberties *
have to be taken with the text to bolster up the French theory, it is quite olear
that the original reading was regarded as unfavourable to that theory.
448 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
they possessed a more unbroken historical tradition. Yet
we are asked to admit as probable, nay as actual, that
from some one of these more favoured countries a prominent
citizen should suddenly disappear, torn from his home by
Irish marauders ; that he should again appear among his own
people, after years of absence in a state of slavery ; that he
should once more abandon friends and country, severing all
natural ties, and disregarding all opposition ; that he should
become the successful apostle of a country at the world's
end, thus adding a new nation to the Church's fold ; that he
should be the means of inspiring that newly converted
nation with such lively faith and ardent zeal as should send
forth from her bosom a countless multitude of earnest
missionaries, destined to become the teachers of his own
country and of half the countries of Europe ; and yet, that,
in spite of all these marvels, the countrymen of this
wondrous saint and hero should never acknowledge the
bond of nationality existing between themselves and him,
should never claim him as their own ! Are we seriously
expected to believe all this? Do our adversaries them-
selves realize all that is involved in their arbitrary hypo-
theses ? Let us suppose that no indication whatever had
been afforded by any national records as to the place of
St. Patrick's birth, and that we found ourselves reduced to
the necessity of casting about for a likely spot to which the
honour might be attributed. Even in that case, we might
prudently have selected Scotland, for we might naturally
reason thus : —
Since no nation claims this remarkable man, we are forced to
conclude that he must have been born in some country whose
national records have suffered most severely from the ravages of
time and from other destructive agencies ; for, otherwise, it is
impossible to understand how so great a man could fail to be
remembered in the place of his birth. Now, within the limits of
possibility in Western Europe, Scotland is certainly the country
that seems best to fulfil the required conditions. Therefore, it is
reasonable to conclude that Scotland was the place of St. Patrick's
birth.
And now, let us return from abstract hypothesis to actual
fact . In reality, Scotland is the only country which seems
ST. PATRICK'S BIRTHPLACE 440
to claim him, while other more favoured lands have con-
sistently ignored him. How can this phenomenon be
explained, unless we acquiesce in the unopposed claim of
Scottish tradition? We see, then, that the consistent and
consentient testimony derived from the ancient records of
two nations points to the same conclusion, and leads us
towards the same spot? Where must we look for that
spot ? I think the reader already knows how that question
must be answered; but, let us set all possible doubts at
rest, by turning to the evidence of strictly local tradition.
II.— THE KILPATEICK TEADITION
The Aberdeen breviary informs us that Kilpatrick, near
Dumbarton, was the birthplace of St. Patrick ; after the
considerations already advanced, that evidence should be
held to decide the question. But our ancient Irish records,
if properly understood ; if interpreted, not in the spirit of
captious criticism, but in the spirit of judicious fairness, are
equally definite. This appears all the more clearly when
we view them in connection with the facts to which I now
proceed to refer.
(1) Local Cultus of the Saint at Kilpatrick
The reader will remember the testimony already adduced
from two of the earliest lives of our national apostle.^ The
Tripartite, which embodies early materials dating from
A.D. 500-700, says :—
A church was founded over the well in which Patrick was
baptized ; and the well is at the altar, and it has the form of a
cross, as the learned report.
Similarly, the Vita Quarta, compiled before the year
A.D. 774, tells us : —
The inhabitants of the place erected a church over the
fountain in which he [St. Patrick] was baptized, and those
acquainted with thj place say that tiie fountain, which is beside
the altar, is in the form of a cross.
Now, let us compare these ancient records, more than
1 1. E. Recoed, October, 1899, pp. 355, 356
VOL. VI. '2 K
^50 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
twelve hundred years old, with existing facts, verifiable at
the present day.
On the main road to Dumbarton, about four miles from
Dumbarton Eock, and five miles from the place where I am
now writing, stands the modern church of Kilpatrick. The
church is on the right-hand side of the highway, as you
proceed towards Dumbarton ; and, on the opposite side of
the road, not many paces distant, is the well which has
been known from time immemorial as St. Patrick's well. I
am aware that such a gross, material fact as a well counts for
little in the estimation of ' Patrician ' theorists, who regard
as objects more worthy of their attention their own abstract
theories, doubtful etymologies, and conjectural ' readings.'
But it is none the less a striking circumstance, that the
well of which I speak is the only one which not only bears
St. Patrick's name, but also claims to have marked for
more centuries than we can precisely reckon, the place of
his birth, and the spot of his baptism.
(2) Antiquity of the Local Cultus
The modern church of Kilpatrick is but the last link in
the chain of evidence which reaches back to a period far
beyond the date of the oldest surviving records — the form of
the name would alone tell us that. But even such early
records as exists point to the same conclusion. From
them we gain a knowledge of the following facts: —
Deriving its name from Sfc. Patrick, the church had in the
remote and misty past been dedicated to that illustrious saint.
Following the fashion of the times, the church of Kilpatrick,
which had been Vjuilt on the supposed birthplace of the saint,
with the lands granted to it by the earls of Lennox, was conveyed
in 1227 by Maldowen, or Malcolm, the earl of the time, to the
monastery of Paisley. ^ #
This well-known action of Earl Maldowen's, by which
the church and lands of Kilpatrick became the property of
Paisley Abbey, merely begins a new period in the history of
the local Cultus, which must necessarily be admitted to
have existed long before. We know that Maldowen's
1 Bruce's History of Kilpatrick, p. 63.
{
ST. PATRICK^S BIRTHPLACE 451
predecessors had given generous grants to the church of
St. Patrick. The following, so far as can be gathered, is
the succession of the early earls of Lennox. The first of
whom history gives any account was Alwyn, who died about
the year 1160, leaving a family of very youDg children.
During the minority of the heir, the earldom was held by
David, Earl of Huntingdon, brother of William the Lion,
and one of the principal companions of Eichard the Lion-
hearted in the war of the Crusades ; Alwyn, the second of
that name, succeeded as heir to the first Alwyn, towards
the close of the twelfth century, and dying in 1225, left the
title and estates to the Earl Maldowen above mentioned.^
Maldowen's transfer of the property from the hands of the
secular guardians of the shrine to those of the regular clergy,
was not allowed to pass unchallenged. The dispute which
thus arose brought about the intervention, first, of a Papal
Commission ; and secondly, of the secular power. The pro-
ceedings which resulted are recorded both in the Chartulary
of Paisley Abbey, and in the Scots Acts of Parliament, The
following passages are of special significance.^
(a) A certain Beda Ferdan, who may be described as
hereditary guardian of the Kilpatrick church and property,
and who dwelt in a house situated towards the east, near
the cemetery attached to the church, held the lands of
Monachernan, and other lands in the time of Earl Alwyn,
the second of that name. These lands were held from
the church, under the sole obligation of entertaining
pilgrims who came to the sanctuary. Beda Ferdan ulti-
mately lost his life in defending the rights of the church,
interfectus erat pro jure et libertate ecclesiae, and was suc-
ceeded by his son, Christinus. Earl Alwyn added to the
possessions already held by the church.
Malcolmus Beg juratus dicit, quod vidit Bedam Ferdan,
habentem domum suam sitam juxta cemeterium ecclesiae de
Kylpatrick ex orientali parte et tenuit nomine ecclesiae illam
terram de Monachkennaran . . . et praedicta terra et aliis quas
^ Irving'' 8 Histori/ of Dumbartonshire, p. 43: cf. p. 480.
2 These passages will be found in an extract from the Scots Acts of Parlia-
ment, vol. i,, fol. 85, ci'edin Bruce's History of Kilpatrick, Appendix, p. 331.
452 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
tenebat de ecclesia recipiebat hospites ad ecclesiam venientes,
nullum aliud servitium faciendo pro eis. Eequisitus in tempore
cujus comitis hoc vidit. dicit quod in tempore Alwini Comitis ; et
quod idem Comes dedit Sancto Patricio et ecclesiae illam terram
de Kachconnen, &c.
(b) Earl David, while he held possession of the Lennox,
had endeavoured to obtain from the church lands assist-
ance in raising his military forces ; but this attempt had
been successfully resisted by the authority and influence of
the Church, although the resistance thus successfully offered
seems to have cost Beda Ferdan his life.
Anekol juratus, idem dicit per omnia quod Malcolmus Beg,
et adjecit quod Comes David, fraier regis Wilelmi, eo tempore
quo habuit comitatum de Levenax et possedit, voluit de dictis
terris ecclesiae de Kylpatrick habere auxilium, sicut de ceteris
terris comitatus, et non potuit, quia defensae erant per ecclesiam.
(c) Beda Ferdan's family seems to have presided over the
reception and entertainment of the pilgrims to St. Patrick's
church for a number of years. During the course of the
legal proceedings connected with the settlement of the
dispute, the oldest residenters, and such as had been born
and brought up in the neighbourhood, were naturally cited
to give evidence. One witness in particular deposed to
having seen, more than sixty years previous to the time
of the inquiry, this very Beda Ferdan, who occupied a
large house built of wattles, near the church of Kilpatrick,
and situated east of that building.
Alexander filius Hugonis juratus dicit, quod sexaginta annis
et eo amplius elapsis, vidit quemdam nomine Beda Ferdan, habi-
tantem in quadam domo magna, fabricata de virgis, juxta
ecclesiam de Kylpatrick versus orientem.
As the document from which the above extracts have
been taken refers to an inquiry instituted in 'the year of
grace 1233,' it is clear that the church of Kilpatrick was a
place of pilgrimage as early as a,d. 1170. At that time we
find Beda Ferdan established as guardian of the sanctuary,
and holding from the church certain lands by a kind of
feudal tenure. How many centuries before feudal tenures
were known in Scotland this church and place of pilgrimage
ST. patrick^s birthplace 453
existed, protected only by the sanctity of the spot, and by
the piety of the faithful, who shall say ? Or rather, who shall
take upon himself to put an arbitrary limit to the antiquity
of a local cultus, and a local tradition, which were already
old at the time spoken of by our most ancient records ?
(3) Position of the Ancient Church at Kilpatrick
In the course of ages, since first their existence was
recorded, both church and well have undergone several
changes. But the citations above given throw some light
upon the question of their original relative position. We
are told that Beda Ferdan's house, where he received and
entertained the pilgrims, recipiendo et pascendo hospites illuc
venientes, was a wattled building, and we naturally conclude
that the adjoining church was of wood. What we are told
of early churches in other places, as for example, of those in
Ireland, strengthens this conclusion, which indeed is put
beyond a doubt when we remember that St. Ninian's church,
being built of dressed stone, was regarded as quite an inno-
vation in ecclesiastical architecture. The earliest church at
Kilpatrick was, we are informed, built over the well ; and we
can quite understand the truth of the assertion. The present
Protestant church was built on the site of its immediate
predecessor, the pre-Keformation structure ; during the
rebuilding of the sacred edifice the congregation had to
worship in the open air. Mr. Bruce admits the difficulty
of assigning a precise date for the erection of this earlier
edifice, which was demolished in 1812. But he notes that
in 1825 * it was said to have been the oldest church of its
time in the west country ; ' and he adds, judging from a
surviving drawing of the building and from some still
existing fragments, that * the architecture is apparently of
the Norman period, and points to the early part of the
twelfth century.' ^
It seems probable, therefore, that two different churches
existed for some time simultaneously, and of course, occupy-
1 Bruce's History of Kilpatrick, pp. 100-101. This judgment has since been
confirmed by the remarks and illustrations which occurred in a lecture given
by Mr. Bruce before the Antiquarian Society of Helensburgh.
464 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
ing different sites : the earliest structure, which was of
wood, survived down to the end of the twelfth century, and
even later, being allowed to stand, in consideration of the
continued visits of pilgrims, until it gradually fell to ruins ;
while, under the influence of the superior culture introduced
by the Norman barons, the pre-Reformation stone building
was erected in the earlier part of the twelfth century. The
actual position of the present church is thus seen to be in
no wise opposed to the statement of our early writers, that
the primitive structure ' was erected over the well.'
EE CAPITULATION
Let us now briefly recall the evidence already considered.
We have seen the testimony of Ireland ; we have examined
the claims of Scotland, and we have inquired into the local
tradition of Kilpatrick ; the result has been in every case
the same, and seems to leave no room for reasonable doubt.
With regard to the first, our ancient Irish records are
decisive and unanimous in pointing to Scotland, and even
to the neighbourhood of Dambarfcon, as our apostle's
birthplace. The evidence is all directly in favour of one
view: no other opinion finds any support.^ Now, on the
supposition of our adversaries, what an inexplicable pheno-
menon would here be presented, setting at defiance all the
laws of evidence ! What a wonderful agreement in support
of error ; what a wonderful * conspiracy of silence ' against
the truth !
Again, when we consider the opposite claims that might
be advanced by various nations, a similarly remarkable
phenomenon is presented : Scotland alone claims St. Patrick
while all other nations confirm her claim by allowing it to
pass unopposed. The Aberdeen Breviary asserts that he
was born in Scotland and at Kilpatrick ; all other ancient
^ With regard to the supposition that our ancient records prove that
St. Patrick was taken captive in Armorica, I have already called attention to the
fact that the place of birth and the place of capture are in themselves two
very different things. If, from an examination of St. Patrick's own writings,
or from any other consideration, we are forced to conclude that the two places
are to be reduced to one and the same, then the unanimity of testimony in
favour of Kilpatrick being the place of birth will compel us to seek in the same
neighbourhood the place of capture. Once more, the certain must be made to
explain the uncertain, not vice versa. My own opinion on the point in question
will find expression at the proper time.
ST, PATRICK*S BIRTHPLACE 455
breviaries fail to raise a single note of protest. This
must be a new embarrassment to ' Patrician ' theorists : the
assumed agreement in support of error and * conspiracy of
silence ' against the truth become still more wonderful.
Lastly, when we turn our attention to the neighbour-
hood of Kilpatrick, early records and existing indications
alike prompt us to exclaim : ' This is indeed the spot indi-
cated by our ancient writers.' And this, too, while we
vainly seek elsewhere for records or indications which could
by any possibility intimate the presence of a serious rival.
Thus we have been led onward, step by step, from Ireland
to Kilpatrick : we have followed in the footsteps of so many
of our ancestors, who believed as we believe, and who so
often came hither on pilgrimage to honour their national
apostle at the spot that gave him birth. Have they and we
been alike mistaken ? Those who profess to think so must,
at least, concede that we have erred iu good company —
that of the saints and sages of ancieni Erin. They must
also admit that the indications by which we have been
guided in the course of our inquiry are such as do not
generally lead to false conclusions. On the other hand,
their view of these indications supposes that inexplicable
agreement of evidence in support of error and that im-
possible * conspiracy of silence ' against truth, to which I
have already referred .
These considerations the anti-Scottish theorists would
do well to weigh carefully, before again attacking a question
which should be regarded as one that was definitely and
finally settled long ago. Above all, they should hesitate to
identify themselves with those of whom the poet says : —
We think our fathers fools ; so wise we grow —
lest perchance they incur the Nemesis that threatens them
in the satirist's next line.^
I have now reviewed the principal arguments in support
of the truth. I hope to consider in a future article the
history and fate of error.
Gerald Stack.
^ See Pope's Essay on Criticism, 1. 439.
[ ^56 ]
Botes anb (Sluevies
THEOLOGY
DISPENSATION IN A VOW OF CHASTITY
Eev. Dear Sir, — Will you please say if a dispensation is
necessary in the following case, and from whom it should be
sought ? A woman who had taken a vow in chastity in the
world obtained from the Pope a dispensation to get married.
Her husband has since died, and now she wishes to marry a
second time. Does she require a dispensation ? If she does, who
can grant it ?
A. M.
We gather from the fact that this person, on the occasion
01 her first marriage, had recourse to the Holy See for a
dispensation, that her vow was one of perpetual and perfect
chastity. Our correspondent's question, then, comes to
this : — What is the precise effect of a dispensation to marry
on a vow of perpetual and perfect chastity? The obligation
of the vow is only partially removed by the dispensation.
Per se the effect of the dispensation is to remove the obliga-
tion in religion forbidding marriage, and the use of the
rights consequent on marriage. Other obligations under the
vow remain intact. Sins against chastity, therefore, com-
mitted by the dispensed person continue to be violations
of the vow. Again, the permission or dispensation is
usually given for one marriage only, and, therefore, a new
dispensation is required for a second marriage. If, however,
the first dispensation were granted absolutely, and if the
reason on account of which the dispensation was given
was universal and permanent, the dispensation also would
be understood to be permanent, and there would, therefore,
be no need for a second dispensation in case of a second
marriage.
If a dispensation be needed, it can be obtained only from
NOTES AND QUERIES 457
the Holy See or someone having special faculties. The vow
was ah initio reserved specially to the Holy See, nor does the
vow cease to be reserved now owing to the fact that its
obligation was partially and temporarily suspended.
ABSOLUTION FilOM A RESERVED SIN
Eev. Dkar Sir, — A person who is under the necessity of
receiving Communion, or of celebrating Mass, i;.^'., finds his
conscience burdened with a reserved sin. There is no time to
go to, or write to the Superior who reserved the case. May he
confess to any priest, and is he bound to confess the reserved sin
even though the confessor has no faculties to absolve from it ?
CONFESSARIUS.
This question has been so often discussed that we will
but briefly recall the principles underlying the solution.
1. The reservation of which there is question may be a
papal reservation or an episcopal reservation.
2. In case of papal reservations, any confessor has, modo
transeunte, the necessary faculties to absolve directly,
provided the penitent be in urgent necessity of receiving
absolution, and if there be no time to refer the matter to the
proper authorities. There remains, indeed, the obligation
to have recourse to the proper authorities within a month.
This has been the clear rule since 1886 in regard to papal
cases.
Theologians are not agreed as to whether the same
procedure is, without a special disposition of the bishop, to
be followed in regard to episcopal cases. For ourselves, in
view of the legislation or decision of 1886, above referred to,
we think it most probable that any confessor has power, and
direct power, to absolve in case of urgent necessity from an
episcopal reserved case, even though the bishop has not
expressly adopted the papal procedure in regard to his
reservations. Others, however, are inclined to think, that,
apart from an express disposition of the bishop, a simple
confessor can, even in urgent necessity, absolve only
indirectly from an episcopal case.
3. If the penitent in our correspondent's question can
#
458 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
get direct absolution from the reserved case, he is manifestly
bound to confess it. If, on the other hand, he can get only
indirect absolution, he is, per se, not bound to confess it :
he may confess other sins, and obtain absolution which will
indirectly extend to the reserved sin. In this latter case an
obligation will, of course, remain of afterwards confessing
the reserved sin to someone who has faculties to absolve
directly; the same obligation would remain, even if the sin
were mentioned in the previous confession.
In reply to our correspondent's question, then, we
say:—
1. The penitent may not confess to any confessor. He
must confess to one having faculties, if any such confessor
be available. Our correspondent may seem to imply the
contrary.
2. In the absence of a confessor with special faculties he
is bound, when the case is a papal case, or an episcopal case
to which the bishop has made the Koman practice apply,
he may select any confessor available, he can be absolved
directly y and he is bound to confess the reserved sin. The
fact that the penitent ca7i be absolved directly removes all
excuse for not confessing, or for withholding the reserved
case. When the case is an episcopal one, in our opinion
the penitent ought to confess ; also to mention the reserved
case, and he can be absolved directly. As it is not certain,
however, that in such a case the absolution of the reserved
case would be direct, we do not undertake to condemn
the penitent who does not consider himself bound to
confess his reserved sin to a simple confessor. Acting on
this latter opinion, a penitent having no unreserved grave
sin since his last confession may confess venial sins, or sins
of his past life, and receive absolution, or he may omit
confession altogether, and receive communion, having made
an act of contrition : a penitent whose conscience is also
burdened with grievous sins, which are unreserved, is, of
course, bound to confess these, though he may withhold the
reserved sin.
NOTES AND QUERIES 459
DISPENSATION OF THE VOWS OE RELIGION
Eev. Dear Sir, — A member of a religious community, for
sufficient reasons, obtained from the bishop a dispensation to
return to secular life. No dispensation was asked or granted in
the view of chastity. Does this person require a dispensation
in the vow of chastity in order to get married ?
Eeligious.
We assume, of course, that the bishop was within his
right in dispensing in the vows of religion. For, the person
belonged, no dcubt, to a mere diocesan congregation which
had got no approval from the Holy See. The bishop retained
power, therefore, to dispense in the vows of the members.
A dispensation is evidently still required fiom the vow of
chastity before the person can lawfully contract marriage.
But from whom is the dispensation to be obtained ? If the
vow be not perfect and perpetual, of course the bishop can
dispense in it ; if it be perfect and perpetual, it will be
necessary to have recourse to the Holy See, unless the
bishop happens to have special faculties. If the vow be
perpetual, and if it were taken freely with full knowledge
and deliberation, it is, almost with a certainty, a perfect
vow, and should be treated as such. It may be worth while
to add, however, that if the person can assert that the vow
of chastity was taken not precisely, oh amorem castitatisy
but for some other reason, the vow is imperfect, ratione
finis, and may be dispensed by the bishop.
D. Mannix.
LITURGY
CARRYING T^E BLESSED SACRAMENT IN OTHER CASES
THAN TO THE SICK
Eev. Dear Sir, — 1. A priest celebrates at an out station,
■where he wishes to remain till evening to give Benediction with
the evening devotions ; but he has to return home that night, and,
accordingly, carries the Blessed Sacrament with him — perhaps
several miles.
2. A priest attends two small churches — one three, the other
six miles from the urban church, where he lives. He remains
460 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
after the late Mass in the former church to give Benediction,
with a Host consecrated at the Mass ; but he has to return to
town for Vespers. Benediction is given at the out church at four
in the afternoon. He has to carry the lunette, with the large
Host, back to town.
3. A priest celebrates on Sunday, thirty miles from his
residence, in a small church. He consecrates for Benediction ;
but, there being no safe in the church, he takes the lunette back
after Benediction to the hotel where he lodges. He consumes
it next morning at his Mass.
4. In the case No. 2 above, the nearer church to town con-
tains the larger congregation ; hence Mass is celebrated there at
11 o'clock about three times in the month, and at 9 in the
farther church. The priest, going out from town every Sunday
morning, takes a number of consecrated particles to communi-
cate people at the nearer church. He then proceeds to the
farther, celebrates Mass at 9, returns to the nearer church, where
he celebrates the late Mass. It is thought too long for the people
to remain fasting till the late Mass.
5. The priest's residence is about five hundred yards from the
church. In the house there is an oratory, vdth a tabernacle.
On other accounts the oratory is legitimate ; but the only reason
for keeping the Blessed Sacrament is for convenience' sake, in
case of sick calls. Mass may be said in the oratory ; but usually
the priest does not hesitate to carry the particles from the taber-
nacle in the church to the oratory, without lights, &c.
I should very much like to have a full treatment of the theo-
logical aspect of the above cases— first, as to whether Benedic-
tion is a justification, under the circumstances ; and, secondly,
whether the devotion and convenience of people and priest
justify carrying the Blessed Sacrament in the other cases. As
to dispensations, I know of none beyond that of taking the Blessed
Sacrament to the sick sine lumine, &c., and of keeping it in the
priest's room when necessary, &c.
In Pabtibis Infidelium.
We are of opinion that the various practices mentioned
by our esteemed correspondent are all quite lawful. But
though we are certain that this opinion is correct, we
experience no small difficulty in supporting it by arguments
sufficiently conclusive to convince one who was inclined to
NOTES AND QUERIES 461
doubt. True, were we at liberty to appeal to the custom
which prevails in missionary countries we could at once
show that the Blessed Sacrament is carried by the holiest
priests in circumstances precisely similar to those described
by our correspondent, and preserved in their houses, though
no farther distant from the church than the presbytery to
which he refers ; and, finally, we could show that bishops in
missionary countries, though aware of the existence of this
custom, do not condemn it. But it would seem that we are
not at liberty to appeal to this custom, because it is this
custom itself which our correspondent impugns, and for
which he seeks from us either condemnation or justification.
We must, therefore, seek some other source for reasons in
favour of the opinion we have already stated.
In discussing questions of this kind one cannot h6pe for
much assistance from the decrees of Eoman Congregations,
or from the works of theologians. For both the Congre-
gations and the theologians, in treating of preserving or
carrying the Blessed Sacrament, have before their minds,
as a rule, the circumstances which prevail, or used to
prevail, in Catholic countries. If they refer to the state of
things existing in missionary countries, they merely give
the words of the dispensation, to which our correspondent
refers in the last paragraph of his letter, without vouch-
safing a word of explanation as to the extent of the dis-
pensation, or as to the practical details which it may cover.
The working interpretation, then, is left to the prudence
and piety of bishops and priests, and the custom to which
we have just referred embodies this interpretation.
But we are not left entirely without assistance. For
though we have not met any theologian who discusses
ex professo any of the points raised by our correspondent,
we can quote many theologians who would permit the
Blessed Sacrament to be carried to others than those who
are subjects for the viaticum, or who are infirmi in the
sense of the dispensation granting permission to carry the
Blessed Sacrament occulte ad injirmos. When a person
suffers from a chronic ailment, which is too slight to justify
him in receiving Holy Communion after having broken his
462 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
fast, and yet is of such a nature that he cannot remain
fasting during the night, theologians generally say that a
priest may, and sometimes ought to, bring the Blessed
Sacrament and administer Holy Communion to him shortly
after midnight.
Si autem morbus diuturnus quidem, sed nullatenus letalis
est, S. Eucharistia non jeiuno dari nequit, etsi aegrotus sine cibo
diu manere non potest ; at haec est ratio cur aliquoties media
nocte vix elapsa ad eum deferri possi*;, vel etiam deheat}
Now Lehmkuhl, as is evident, here contemplates Com-
munion received through devotion only, and yet he would
not merely allow, but would oblige a priest to violate the
law of the Church forbidding the carrying of the Blessed
Sacrament at night, in order to satisfy the devotion of the
infirm person. And, moreover, he would have the priest
to be at hand at the stroke of midnight — media nocte vix
elapsa — in order to obviate all, even the slightest, incon-
venience. The Blessed Sacrament may, then, be carried
for the purpose of administering Communion received
through mere devotion ; and, also, a priest must take into
consideration the convenience of those who are to communi-
cate. We may, therefore, draw the practical conclusion
that, in the case mentioned by our correspondent in No. 4,
the priest is not only justified in carrying the Blessed
Sacrament with him in order to communicate those in the
nearer church, but that he is bound to do it. The inconve-
nience of receiving Communion at an 11 o'clock Mass
is so great, that few would be able, and fewer still would
care, to face it, at least frequently. Hence, if Communion
were not distributed early, no one would be found to
approach the holy table in that church on Sundays ; and
thus, by a pharisaical interpretation of the mind of the
Church, Christ, in the Blessed Sacrament, would be kept
out of the hearts of His people. If priests kept in mind
the dictum, Sacramenta sunt propter homines, they would
be saved many a scruple.
From the Congregation of Kites also w^e obtain clear
I Lehmkuhl, vol. ii., n. 161, Q.
NOTES AND QUERIES 463
and direct confirmation of our opinion that the Blessed
Sacrament may be carried to others than those who are
sick. In 1871 the then Prefect Apostolic of Denmark
asked the Congregation some questions regarding the
extent of the faculties conferred on him by this very
dispensation which we are discussing. We will quote the
part that applies to the present case : —
Inter facultates speciales quae Oratori communicatae fuere,
nona ita jacefc : Deferendi Sanctissimum Sacramentum occulta
ad infirmos sine lumine, etc. Num vi hujus facultatis liceat
deferre et ministrare S. Communionem eis qui longo tempore in
carceribus acatholicis detinentur dicto modo, si secus eodem
carere debeant.
Besp. AfiQrniative si immineat periculum sacrilegii ab haereticis
aut infidelibus, et adsint causae graves pro Communione admini-
stranda.i
The qualifying clause, si immineani periculum, &c., need
not be taken into account. It is on this condition that the
general dispensation is granted, and the condition is sup-
posed to exist wherever the dispensation can be availed of,
even for the purpose of carrying the Blessed Sacrament to
the sick. Hence, when there is a grave cause, as there
certainly is in the case mentioned in No. 4, the Congrega-
tion of Kites would allow a priest to carry the Blessed
Sacrament occulte, and to administer Communion to people
who are not at all sick.
The carrying of the lunette containing the Benediction
Host follows the analogy of carrying the Blessed Sacrament
to administer Communion to persons who are not sick.
Both are intended to excite and strengthen devotion to the
Most Holy Sacrament, and though Holy Communion unlike
Benediction produces this and other effects ex opere operato,
still Benediction holds so prominent a place in the cultus
of the Blessed Eucharist, and is, moreover, so favourite a
devotion with the faithful, that the same cause, or a cause
similar to that which would justify a priest in carrying the
Blessed Sacrament for the purpose of giving Communion,
IN. 5469. Feb. 4, 1871.
464 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
would justify him in carrying it for the purpose of giving
Benediction.
So much for the abstract view of the case. Now for
the case as described by our correspondent. Benediction
has already been established as a weekly, or, at least, as
a regularly recurring devotion in the churches of which
mention is made. Plainly in the circumstances it is
impossible to have this devotion imless subject to the
inconvenience of carrying the Blessed Sacrament for the
purpose of keeping it safe. Now, if there was question of
establishing this devotion in a church in which it had not
previously been established, and in which it could not be
celebrated unless the priest carried the Host from or to
another church, or to his house, there might be some
reason for inquiring whether Benediction alone is sufficient
to justify a priest in carrying the Blessed Sacrament occulte.
But when it has been already established in a church no
speculative doubt on this subject, however well founded it
might be, would justify a priest, or even a bishop, in dis-
continuing it. The doubt should be first changed into
certainty, and that can be done only by a clear and un-
ambiguous statement by the Congregation of Eites or of
Propaganda.
With regard to the priest carrying the pyxis from the
church to the tabernacle in the presbytery without vest-
ments or lights, all we can say is, that it is part of the
general custom ; but a part of which we do not generally
approve. In very many country districts in missionary
countries such is the seclusion of the church and presbytery ;
such, at any rate, is the absence of all danger of insult or
sacrilege, that a priest might transfer the Blessed Sacrament
to his house or thence to the church with the solemnities
prescribed by the church for such occasions.
The inconvenience at night of finding keys, and lights,
of opening the church and the tabernacle, together with the
delays which all this would cause is considered a sufficient
justification for a priest to keep the Blessed Sacrament in
ins house loco tamen decenti.
NOTES AND QUERIES 465
CERTAIN DUTIES OF THE SUBDEACON IN A SOLEMN
MASS
Rev. Dear Sir, — Would you kindly insert an answer to the
following questions in the next number of the I.E. Record: —
1. Must the subdeacon, whilst holding the paten at Solemn
Mass, genuflect at any time, except during the Consecration?
2. In a Solemn Requiem Mass must the subdeacon, standing in
piano from the Consecration to the Agnus Z>ei, genuflect whenever
the celebrant does so ?
C.C.
1. We would recommend our correspondent to look into
some work of recognised merit on the ceremonies of Solemn
Mass, and to follow the directions therein laid down. In
small details, such as those to which he refers, there is a
variety of practice, and, within certain well-defined limita-
tions, each master of ceremonies, and each writer on
ceremonies, adopts or modifies an old practice, or invents
a new one. The author of the Ceremonies of Some Eccle-
siastical Functions, whose work is now before us, directs
the subdeacon to genuflect after receiving the paten —
{a) when he first descends to the foot of the altar ;
{b) before going up to assist at the Sancttts ; (c) on the
predella, after the Sanctus, immediately before descending
to the foot of the altar ; (d) before going up to the altar at
the end of the Pater Noster. All the genuflections of this
series that are made at the foot of the altar are made on the
lowest step, not m piano. During the Consecration the
subdeacon genuflects on both knees, or kneels, during the
whole time.
2. The subdeacon should always genuflect with the
celebrant, in the circumstances set forth in question 2.
THE USE OF A PXTRIFICATOR WHEN A BISHOP DISTRIBUTES
HOLY COMMUNION
Rev. Dear Sir. — Will you please answer the following
question ? When a bishop during his Mass gives Communion,
should the paten be held by the chaplain, ivith or ivithout a
purificator ? The practice does not seem to be uniform. In the
VOL. VI. 2 G
466 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Responsa varia SS. Congregationum given at the end of the
first volume of Scavini, it is stated that the paten, ' est purifi-
catione tenenda.'
C. C.
The pnriBcator is never employed now at the Com-
munion of the faithful. The Ritual prescribes an ablution
of wine, together with a purificator to wipe the lips, to be
presented to every one receiving Holy Communion, whether
from a bishop or a priest. But custom has done away with
both ablution and purificator. What our correspondent has
notic3d in ^Scavini is meraly a reference to a custom once
obligitory, but now obsolete.
D. O'LOAN.
[ 467 ]
CORRESPONDENCE
HOMES FOR AGED AND INFIRM PRIESTS
Eev. Deae Sib, — Some remarks in the last number of the
I. E. Eecobd, under the head 'Correspondence,' and entitled:
* On homes for aged and infirm priests,' have suggested to me to
send you some thoughts on the same subject — thoughts which are
the result of study, and of a rather long experience. My attention
was called to it some years ago by the fact, that I, with two others,
was named trustee for a bequest of £8,000, left to found such a
home in Ireland, for Irish priests. The bequest fell through.
I must say that there is no subject upon which a bishop in
his pastoral, or a priest in his pulpit could appeal with more
power than that of such an institution, because of the extra-
ordinary respect, esteem, reverence, and gratitude which our
people have for the good priest who has for a long, or even
a short time, laboured amongst them.
My contention is — first, that such a home is neither
necessary nor needed for good priests ; second, that though such a
home is desirable for our weak and fallen brothers, it is almost
impossible to get them to stay in, and take advantage of any
home in which even a mild discipline would be insisted on.
Nothing can save some but a religious jail out of which there is
no getting ; and if such a home were established I would prefer
to see it out of Ireland, for the following reason — though not the
only one — that in this country it would be an ever-standing
reminder of what would be most painful to the most priest-
reverencing and priest4oving people in the world, particularly to
the afflicted families of which its inmates were members.
With reference, first, to good priests, * old and unfit for
missionary work, aged or infirm.' Now, if they be parish priests
they are generally left in the possession or part possession of
their parochial house, and they have an annual pension out of the
parish. But this is not all, they are helped by intentions if they
be able to say mass, and also, as a rule, by the generous
kindness of friends and old parishioners. Such men, having had
for years their own home, and a certain independent way of
living, will not be likely to change it for a bom^ such as is
468 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
proposed. They would consider it infra dignitatem, decidedly
and rightly so, if it were not consecrated solely to good priests.
Curates when they break down in health generally die young ;
but if their existences be prolonged, their family, friends, parish-
ioners, brother priests, some or all, never allow them to need,
I will not say, the necessaries, but the ordinary comforts of life.
Also, if they had a small residence of their own — parochial
property — I have scarcely ever heard of their being disturbed,
unless they wished it themselves. I knew cases in which the
bishop kindly offered help to delicate curates out of a diocesan
fund ; which help they refused, first, because they did not need
it ; and secondly, because this fund was generally utilized for the
support of the fallen.
T must candidly say that one remark of your correspondent,
* An Old Reader,' amazed me : — *How sad sometimes to hear of
some old dignitary housed up for months, sometimes even for
years icithout one to visit him, luithout one to breathe to him a
luord of spiritual consolation,' The italics are mine. What must
be the forlorn state of good old priests who were never digni-
taries ? This is entirely against my experience, and I cannot
believe that w^e Irish priests ever did, or could, so neglect a sick
or dying brother. 1 never knew a priest so placed who was not
visited socially and spiritually by his neighbouring brother priests
and also by the bishop whenever he happened to be in the
locality.
"With reference to our fallen brothers, who have got chance
after chance, and again and again have failed, such an asylum or
home is most desirable, but very difficult of accomplishment.
Such an asylum must not be a mere hotel, but, in a certain sense,
a religious house, where a rule and discipline accommodated to
the circumstances must be insisted on under superiors who are
at once strict to a certain limit, considerate, and patient. Even
in such houses breaks down or breaks out are not infrequent ;
and the late venerated Abbot of Mount Melleray stated, if I
mistake not, at the Synod of Maynooth, 1875, that he and his
community were obliged to give up such a house because the
breaks out caused a false suspicion to fall on themselves. In any
case, I should prefer to see such an asylum— desirable though it
be — outside Ireland for many reasons as well as for the one
already given.
An Irish Pkiest.
CORRESPONDENCE 469
HOMES FOB AGED AND INFIRM FBIESTS
Eev. Dear Sir, — I have perused the letter of * An Old Reader '
on the above subject, and I cordially agree with the writer.
He, however, suggests an appeal to the Catholic public for the
funds to establish these homes. I, on the other hand, think such
an appeal unwise and unnecessary : unwise, because we make too
many such appeals to them ; unnecessary, because we can do the
needful for ourselves. We are not so poor as we sometimes try to
make out.
In my diocese (mine not in the sense that it belongs to me,
but that I belong to it) we have a curates' fund to which parish
priests contribute annually £2 each, and curates £1. This
amounts to nearly £200 a year. We give from £60 to £80 to
each retired priest, which, by the way, is not sufficient provision
now-a-days, nor is it a fair method of distribution as between
man and man.
Now, what I suggest is this. Establish iour homes, one for
each province ; let each diocese contribute pro rata according to
the number of its own inmates ; let nothing be given to the men
themselves, but let them be maintained comfortably and respect-
ably. As * An Old Reader ' says, under the existing plan they are
neither comfortably nor respectably housed.
May I, with bated breath, make another suggestion to the
National Council of 1900 ? It is this : that — with the permission
of Rome, of course — a compulsory retirement scheme be passed
under which all priests (whether P.P. or C.C.) be put aside on
reaching, say, the age of seventy-five. This in most cases
would allow them to celebrate their golden jubilee in harness,
and then, free from parochial responsibilities and cares, would
ensure them peace in the evening of their lives in these homes.
It would also be for the good of religion by bringing in younger
and stronger men to work in the vineyard. In the civil
service the retiring age is fixed at sixty-five ; this is rather
early, but the principle is surely a sound one.
In throwing out this suggestion I know I am skating on thin
ice. — Yours,
ViCARIUS.
P.S. — If the above be adopted, I will gladly subscribe £100
towards the building of these homes.
[' Vicarius ' may modify bis views when he reaches the age of seventy-five,
Ed. I, E, R.J
[ 470 ]
DOCUMENTS
TIME REQUIRED FOR DEGREES IN ECCLESIASTICAL
FACULTIES
E. SACRA CONGREGATIONE STUDIORUM
S. SEDES NON SOLET DISPENSARE SUPER LEGE BIENII PRO
ACQUIRENDIS GRADIBUS IN ECCLESTASTICIS FACULTATIBUS
I.
IlLME AC RME DOMINE,
Petitio nuperrime ab Amplitudine Tua ad h. S. Studiorum
Cong, transmissa similis prorsus est petition! tribus abhinc
mensibus ab Emo Arch. Compostellano porrectae, cui ex S.
Pontificis mandato, licet aegre, negative, responsum fuit.
Eationes ab eadem A. T. adductae, ut nempe clerici istius
Seminarii Malacitan, absolutis inibi S. Theologiae cursibus sese
ad Instituta Pontificia nuper in Hispania erecta conferre possent
ut licentiae examina superarent, quin Instituti cursus frequentare
tenerentur, non ita validae ab h. S. C. censentur, ut quae ab EE.
Patribus scifce ac prudenter nuperrime constituta sunt decreta
nedum pro Hispania sed pro omnibus Institutis et Universitatibus
haeic Romae et per Orbem existentibus, ullo pacto corrigi ac
moderari deberent.
Generalis lex est, et praxis ubique terrarum, rigidior profecto
penes omnes laicas Universitates, viget ut ibi gradus alumni
Buscipere possent, ubi studia complevissent. Si qui penes
Hispaniam hucusque contrarius invaluit usus, nonnisi temporaneis
concessionibus pevmissum fuit, quibus profecto per decern Institu-
torum erectionem derogatum est. Lex igitur nova ex rationabili
ac universal! praxi suffulta, ut Ampl. T. optime novit, ita quoad
gradus assequendos in Hispania est proposita, ut nempe baccalau-
reatus penes iSeminaria ex antiquo privilegio conferr! posset,
licentia vero et doctoratus penes decem Instituta et nonnisi
alumnis qui eorumdem scholas celebraverint.
Hac ferme ratione, lex bienni! statuta pro Gallia, statuta fuit
et etiam Romae per litteras circulares anno 1896 ; imo Epis.
Universitatum Parisiensis Tolosanae et Lugdunensis Fundatoribus
numero 74 per procuratorem specialem Romam ad id missum,
dispensationem cursuum pro licentiae examinibus instantissime
DOCUMENTS 471
poscentibus, negative respondendum EE. Patres in plenariis
Comittiis mense Junio anni 1895 habitis. uno ore decreverunt,
ipso Summo Pontifice pluries adprobante, imo et mandante.
Eadem responsio Epis. Bisuntino et Bituricensi facta est anno
1896.
Hand ergo aegre ferat Amplitudo Tua, si huiusmodi recentibus
obversantibus decretis, petitioni facere satis haec S C. minime
possit
Quod ad alumnorum paupertatem et pericula objecta attinet,
poterunt penes Seminaria centralia nisi Sacerdotes sint, degere
per unum annum, quo absoluto, ad licentiae contendere gradum
poterunt, qui licet doctoratu inferior, ad effectus tamen canonicos
sufficit. Quod si, ut A. T. promittit, ratio studiorum penes istud
Seminarium ita constitueretur, ut uniform] s prorsus foret ac apud
centralia praescribitur, nobilissimum hoc propositum nonnisi
valde commendare S. Congregatio poterit, sed non inde sequetur,
ius esse alumnis a Facultatum cursibus dispensari : quia program -
matum uniformitas non sola ratio est sufficiens ad privilegium
collationis, vel ad cursus dispensationem obtinendam : de multis
enim aliisque conditionibus praemuniri S. C. debet et certior fieri,
an reapse ex. gr. et Professores habiles sint et Doctores, an
materiae profundius et maiori amplitudine pertractentur, an
exercitationes scholasticae rite ita fiant ut alumni ad aemula-
tionem in dies excitentur, an Praefectus studiorum suo munere
alacriter fungatur, an examina baccalaureatus et pro annuis
experimentis nimis remisse baud fiant, aliaque nimis complexa
ac innumera concurrant quae propria sunt Universitati, cuius est
quasi alma mater alumnos veluti alere, fovere et ad fastigium
graduum ducere.
Quod si haec omnia comparari posse penes Seminarium
Malacitan. Ampl. Tua testetur, duo poterunt inde concludi, 1
ut vel Seminarium ipsum ad dignitatem Instituti Pontificii rite
evehatur : et hoc opportunum nullus dixerit, sive quia decem iam
constituta fuerunt, sive quia alia Seminaria continue idem poscent.
Vel 2, admissa programmatum uniformitate ob studiorum ampli
tudinem ac profunditatem et alumnorum prae ceteris Seminariis
profectum et superioritatem, nonnisi valde gratulandum erit pro
Ecclesia, cuius sollicitudo est potius doctos requirere clericos.
quam doctores.
Si qui, reapse docti, doctores fieri velint, praescriptis conditi-
onibus subiiciantur necesse est, a quibus in gcnere dispensare
472 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
haec S. Congregatio nee potest nee debet, licet in casibus specia-
libus Am pi. Tuae comniendationibus libenter indulgere sit parata,
prouti pro aliis Hispaniae Dioeeesibus in usu est.
Haec erant pro munere, quo fungor Ampl. Tuae significanda,
cui aestimatioris meae sensus prodere pergratum habeo dum
manum deosculor.
Eomae, die 24 Augusti, 1898.
Amplitudinis Tuae Illmae ac Emae, Humus servus
J. Magno, a Secret.
TUmo ac Emo Dno Dn. Joanni
Munoz et Herrera, Episcopo Malacitan.
WHAT IS A SEMI-PUBLIC ORATORY ?
DECRETUM #
SUPER ORATORIIS SEMIPUBLICIS
A Sacra Eituum Congregatione saepe postulatum est, quaenam
Oratoria ceu semipublica habenda sint. Constat porro Oratoria
publica ea esse, quae auctoritate Ordinarii ad publicum Dei
cultum perpetuo dedicata, benedicta, vel etiam solemniter con-
S3crata, ianuam habent in via, vel liberum a publica via Fidelibus
universim pandunt ingressum. Privata e contra stricto sensu
dicuntur Oratoria, quae in privatis aedibus in commodum
alieuius personae, vel familiae ex Indulto Sanetae Sedis erecta
sunt. Quae medium inter haec duo locum tenent, ut nomen
ipsum indieat, Oratoria semipublica sunt et vocantur. Ut autem
quaelibet ambiguitas circa haec Oratoria amoveatur, Sanctissi-
mus Dominus Noster Leo Papa XIII ex Sacrorum Eituum
Congregationis consulto, statuit et declaravit : Oratoria semi-
publica ea esse, quae etsi in loco quodammodo privato, vel non
absolute publico, auctoritate Ordinarii erecta sunt ; commode
tamen non Fidelium omnium nee privatae tantum personae aut
familiae, sed alieuius communitatis vel personarum coetus
inserviunt. In his omnes qui saerosancto Missae Sacrificio
intersunt, praecepto audiendi Sacrum satisfacere valent. Huius
generis Oratoria sunt quae pertinent ad Seminaria et Collegia
ecclesiastiea ; ad pia Instituta et Soeietates votorum simplicium,
aliasque Communitates sub regula sive statutis saltern ab
Ordinario approbatis ; ad Domus spiritualibus exercitiis addictas ;
ai Convictus et Hospitia iuventuti litteris, scientiis, aut artibus
instituendae destinata ; ad Nosocomia, Orphanotrophia, nee non
DOCUMENTS 473
ad Arees et Carceres ; atque similia Oratoria in quibus ex insti-
tnto, aliquis Christifidelium coetus convenire solet ad audiendam
Missam. Quibus adiungi debent Capellae, in Coemeterio rite
erectae, dummodo in Missae celebrations non iis tantum ad quos
pertinent, sed aliis etiam Fidelibus aditus pateat. Voluit autem
Sanctitas Sua sarta et tecta iura ac privilegia Oratoriorum?
quibus fruuntur Emi S. E. E. Cardinales, Kmi Sacrorum Anti-
stites, atque Ordines Congregationesque Eegulares. Ac praeterea
confirmare dignata est Deere turn in una Nivernen. diei 8 Martii,
1879. Contrariis non obstantibus quibuscumque- Die 23
lanuarii, 1899.
C. Ep. Praen. Card. Mazzella,
L. ii« S. S. B. C. Praef.
DioMEDES Panici, S. B. G. Secretarius.
MASSES IN CONVENT CHAPELS
E.mus D. Stephanus Antonius Lelong Episcopus Nivernen ;
quae sequuntur Sacrae, Eituum Congregationi exposuit, oppor-
tunam declarationem seu resolutionem humillime expostulans,
videlicet.
I. Potestne Episcopus iure ordinario concedere licentiam
etiam plures Missas qualibet die celebrandi 1 in Capellis seu
Oratoriis publicis piarum Communitatum , etiam earum quae
clausuram non habent ; 2". in Capellis seu Oratoriis piarum Com-
munitatum, quae licet non habeant ingressum in via publica,
inserviunt tamen quotidianis exercitiis totius Communitatis ;
3°. in Capellis seu Oratoriis ad personas quidem privatas pertinen-
tibus, sed quae sunt publica vel semipublica in eo sensu quod
habeant ingressum in via publica vel prope viam publicam, ut
semper cuilibet volenti intrare permittatur.
II. Potestne Episcopus alia oratoria praeter Capellam seu
principale Oratorium erigere in piis Communitatibus, sive ob
numerum Sacerdotum ibi degentium ut ab omnibus Missa dici
possit, sive in gratiam infirmorum, qui nequeunt adire Capellam
seu Oratorium principale ?
III. Potestne Episcopus iure proprio concedere facultatem
asservandi SS.mum Sacramentum 1, in Ecclesiis seu Capellis
publicis quae tamen titulo parochiali non gaudent, etsi utilitati-
bus Paroeciae inserviant ; 2, in Capellis piarum Communitatum
publicis, id est qua rum porta pateat in via publica vel in area
474 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
cum via publica communicante, et quae habitantibus omnibus
aperiuntur ; 3, in Capellis seu Oratoriis interioribus piarum Com-
munitatum, quando non habent Capellam seu Oratorium publicum
in sensu exposito ut evenit ex. gr. in Seminariis ?
IV. Potestne Episcopus iure proprio licentiam concedere uni
Sacerdoti secundam Missam diebus Dominicis aut festivis de
praecepto celebrandi 1 in Oratoriis seu Capellis quae a S. Sede
vel vi indulti ab ea concessi fuerunt approbata, quando propter
distantiam a Parochiali Ecclesia ista secunda Missa proficere
potest veto Parochianorum qui aliter missam non audirent
ve] saltem difficillime ; 2 in duabus Ecclesiis in eadem Parochia
existentibus quando pro utraque deservienda unicus adest Sacer-
dos, et tamen non sine detrimento religionis Missa in una
tantum celebraretur ; 3, in eadem Ecclesia quando aliter pars
sat notabilis Parochianorum Missam non audiret ; 4, quando
valde utilis est, sin autem necessaria ista secunda Missa ut
communicari a Fidelibus cum maiori facilitate et aedificatione
frequentius possit ?
Sacra itaque Rituum Congregatio, referente subscripto Secre-
tario, hisce postulatis sic respondit :
Ad I. Episcopus utatur iure suo in omnibus casibus expo-
situs.
Ad II. Si porro ex piarum Communitatum conditione neces-
saria sit erectio alterius Oratorii, pro eius erectione facultas erit
a Sancta Sede obtinenda.
Ad III. Implorandum est indultum a Sancta Sede quoad
omnia postulata.
Ad IV. Posito quod P^piscopus iam facultatem obtinuerit a
S. Sede concedere Sacerdotibus suae Dioecesis indultum bis in
die festo sacrum litandi, erit suae prudentiae hac speciali facuL
tate in casu necessitatis pro populi bono uti, si vero eiusraodi
facultate ipse non sit instructus, eam impetrare poterit. Atque
ita respondit ac declaravit. Die 8 Martii 1879.
Ita reperitur in Actis et Regestis S. R. Congnis. Die 23 Ian.
1899.
DioMEDES Panici, S. R. C. Secret.
[ 475 ]
NOTICES OF BOOKS
Occasional Seemons on Vaeious Subjects. By T. O'Korke,
D.D., P.P., Archdeacon of Achonry. Dublin : James
Duffy & Co., Limited, 15, Wellington-quay. Price 3s. ijd.
The merits of this graceful little volume are exactly inversely
as its size. The eleven discourses which it contains are each
a model of sacred eloquence. It is an exceedingly rare and
refreshing experience when so much that is scarcely up to the
mediocre standard of pulpit oratory sees the light of publication,
to come across a style of preaching which flavours strongly of the
simplicity commended in Scripture and which possesses, at the
same time, in its choice purity of expression, warm recommenda-
tions to popular taste and favour. Above- and beyond all things
these sermons are eminently readable. Few persons can take up
an ordinary sermon-book, and read an instruction to the end
without a feeling of weariness. Yet we are convinced that any
of our readers may take up any of the sermons contained in this
pithy but pregnant collection, and derive even positive pleasure
from its perusal. Dr. O'Korke is well known to the general
public as a man of letters and a ripe scholar. The erudite works
that have emanated from his prolific pen have worthily heralded
the accuracy and extent of his learning in fields of Historical and
Archaeological research. But it will, perhaps, occasion a pleasant
surprise, even to those who know him best, to discover that his
abilities are so versatile as to enable him to invest the dryest and
most hackneyed of subjects with an attractiveness that will
ensure their being read not alone by the Pastor in search of the
bread to break to his flock, but even by the religiouslj'-minded in
quest of stimulants to still deeper devotion. Kecognising that
the inspired narratives afford the most appropriate setting for the
Word of God, our author has largely cast his language in the
Scriptural mould. Indeed the whole fabric of these lectures,
warp and woof, is Sacred Scripture. There is one of these
sermons in which the author seems to have excelled himself.
No doubt the subject appealed to his heart, and the theme was an
inspiration. The funeral oration on Dr. Durcan (late Bishop of
Achonry) places our author in the first rank of Panegyrists,
476 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
while it will enshrine the revered memory of his departed friend
in a monument more enduring than stone or brass.
Four of the sermons were preached on ' special occasions.'
The others are on such ordinary subjects as Scandal, the Blessed
Virgin, the Passion, Detraction, &c. We know that Archdeacon
O'Eorke was induced to publish this choice selection only out
of deference to the urgent solicitations of many friends, and
that he intends them primarily as a token of regard towards,
and for the use of his parishioners, to whom they are inscribed.
Yet we would predict that their sphere of usefulness will be by
no means so circumscribed, and that the w^ell-merited reputation
of the author in the literary world, as well as their own intrinsic
worth, will secure for them a wide circle of readers among clergy
and laity. P. M.
Carmel in England. A History of the English Mission
of the Discalced Carmelites, 1615 to 1849. Drawn from
Documents preserved in the Archives of the Order.
By Father B. Zimmerman, O.C.D. London : Burns
and Gates, Ltd. New York, Cincinnati and Chicago :
Benziger Brothers.
By this volume Father Zimmerman has done for England what
Father Patrick, another priest of the Order , has recently done for
Ireland in his history of the rise and spread of Carmel in our own
country. The origin of the Carmelites is sufficiently romantic to
fire the enthusiasm of the historian. Tradition surrounds the
founding of the Order with a halo of antiquity, tracing its con-
nection with the ' Sons of the Prophet,' founded by EHas and
Eliseus, and this link with pre-Christian times is still preserved
in the name of the Congregation. The records, then, of the
introduction and institution of the Carmehte Order in these
countries ought to stimulate the interest of everyone who is alive
to [the reputation which its sons enjoy for their lives of self-
renunciation and religious zeal, and who is acquainted with the
success that attends their missionary labours, especially among
the poor and lowly of Christ's flock.
Disturbed by the incursions of the Saracens, in their peaceful
abode in the Holy Land, where they seem to have been cradled,
the Carmelites spread into Europe, and they were afforded
protection and patronage in France by Louis IX, From France
NOTICES OF BOOKS 477
they crossed over to England, about the twelfth century, and one
of their early converts in this country was the celebrated ' Simon
Stock,* who has been accredited with receiving the Brown
Scapular at the very hands of our Blessed Lady. Here they
soon multiplied rapidly until the confiscations of Henry VIII.
threatened them almost with extinction. Our author takes up the
revival of the Order in England subsequent to the Eeformation,
and treats of the Foundation of the English Mission, its progress
during the Eestoration, and the trials and victories it has borne
and achieved during these troublous periods. He confines himself
to the Discalced Carmelites. It may be interesting to point out
that there are two well-known branches of the Order. The
division arose out of the exigencies and circumstances of the
times. The original Eule, first written for them by John,
Patriarch of Constantinople, in the fifth century, and afterwards
enlarged and approved by Innocent IV., was rigorously severe.
Later on, to increase the practicability of the Order, a mitigation
of some of the austerities prescribed by the original Constitution
was granted by Eugene IV. After a. time a yearning arose for a
return to the pristine rule, and St. Theresa, the glory of Carmel
succeeded in bringing about a reform to stricter observances in
many convents of nuns and friars. All the houses did not
fall in with these reformations, and from this time forward
there have been two branches — the Calced, or Friars of the
Mitigation, and the Discalced, or Friars of Reform, each having
its own Superior-General. P. M.
De Justitia et Jure et de Quarto Decalogi Praecepto*
Tractatus Compendiosus in Usum Scholarum Praesertim
in Britannia. Auctore Thoma Slater, e, Soc. Jesu.
Editio. Altera Multum Aucta. Londinii : Burns et Oates.
The early demand for a new edition of Father Slater's tract
bespeaks appreciation, on the part of students, of his goodly
effort to supply a much-felt want. It were surperfluous to com-
mend a work whose value has been so quickly recognised. It
will suffice, for the sake of those who may be as yet unacquainted
with the work, to state, that the author sets forth, clearly and
succinctly, the principles of the Justice treatise, together with
their special determination and application as affected by English
law. In the new edition a very substantial appendix of fifty
478 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
pages has been added. In it the author deals with some special
contracts of frequent occurrence, and with the fourth precept of
the Decalogue. The sole reason, as far as we can judge, why
these questions are placed in an appendix, is their absence from
the first edition. This reason will scarcely be deemed sufficient.
The contents of the appendix have every claim to rank as an
integral portion of the principal work, as in importance and
practical utility we can by no means regard them as secondary.
The book is professedly a synopsis and supplement, and must
be judged accordingly. Yet we cannot help expressing regret,
that it has not been expanded to at least once and a half its
present size. Failing this, we should certainly eschew a number
of questions of altogether minor importance. Either course
would enable the author to give a fuller treatment to the more
important questions, and to extend a more generous recognition
to rival opinions. As a deficiency in this latter respect we would
instance the author's treatment of the questions on ' Cessio bono-
rum,' and the obligations arising from copyright law. The strict
opinion in the former case, and the liberal one in the latter (at
least if understood in regard to the rights of the publisher as
distinct from those of the author), have enough to recommend
them to deserve being commemorated even in a compendium.
At times we should look for greater precision of statement at
the author's hands. For instance, as a proof of the necessity, for
valid Prescription, of bona fides theologica, we find the following
reason assigned : ' quando quis cognoscit se rem alienam yossi-
dere, earn restituere tenctur.'' As a statement this is a truism, but
as a proof in the particular instance it is scarcely satisfactory,
If the State could transfer ownership, notwithstanding the absence
of bona fides, the object would cease to be a res aliena. The
point to be proved is that the State has no such power.
However, in noticing these imperfections, we should be sorry
to be understood as implying that they detract in any way
seriously from the value of the book, We fully recognise the
great utility of the work, especially in so far as it expounds and
applies English law, and we are certain that, in its present
amplified form, it will be found eminently worthy of a place
among the books of the ' practical ' order in the sacerdotal study.
W. B,
NOTICES OF BOOKS 479
De Paucitate salvandorum quid docuerunt sancti ?
Auctore F. X. Godts, C.SS.K. Kollarii Flandrorum :
Julius De Meester.
Seigneur, Y en aura-t-il peu de Sauves ? (Luc. XIII.
23.) Par le P. J. Coppin, C.SS.E. Bruxelles : Societe
de St. Charles Borromee.
These two works have been written as a refutation of the
teaching of K. P. CasteHen, S.J., put forth in his work ' Le
Eigorisme et La Question du Nombre des elus.' The learned
Jesuit teaches that by far the greater number of the human race
will be saved. The purpose of the two books before us is to
show that the greater number will be lost. This is an age of
controversy. French authors have been specially active in
Catbolic circles. All those authors whose ordinary language is
French we may designate by the title of French authors. In all
their writings, there is a clearness of idea and language which
distinguishes them from their German neighbours, and frequently
from their English fellow-workers in the name of truth. The
two works which lie before us are conspicuous for this clearness
of conception and expression.
Both works, though a refutation of the same teaching, set
about their task in different ways. The work of Father Godts
establishes his teaching principally from a positive point of view.
He shows that the almost universal opinion of the saintly and
learned theologians of the Catholic Church is that the number of
the saved is less than the number of the lost. He gives the
doctrine of these men in their own words with their reasons.
This collection is of great interest. It shows clearly what the
mind of the Church is, as made manifest in its doctors. The
work of Father Coppin, on the other hand, faces the question
from a negative point of view. He takes up, page by page, the
book of Father Castelein as it first appeared in the Bevue
Gdncrale. He shows the weakness of its arguments, and in
doing so proves the truth of his own doctrine.
We have great sympathy with both writers in their con-
demnation of the expressions which Father Castelein employs in
reference to the followers of the opposing view and their doctrine.
* Ce vieux legs du Jansenisme ;' ' Un rigorisme qui repand des
idees etroites et de troublants prejuges ;' ' Discours rigoristes,
pessimistes, intolerants, desperants ;' are a sample of the
480 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
expressions which that author uses. We can see how unsuit-
able this style is when we remember that the doctrine which is
thus contemptuously rejected is the teaching of St. Thomas,
St. Alphonsus Liguori, St. Bernard, St. Augustine, and practi-
cally all theologians who have written on the subject. On the
other hand, we do not think it wise on the part of the learned
Eedemptorists, whose books we are reviewing, to urge their
doctrine so far as to make it seem that at present the teaching of
their opponent deserves some ecclesiastical censure. Constituted
authority will, doubtless, in its own good time, give a decision ;
but till that decision be given it is better to abstain from the
use of expressions which cannot fail to give offence to good
Catholics.
J. M. H.
Twenty-two Offertories for the Principal Feasts of
THE Year, for Soprano, Alto, and Bass ad lib., with
Organ accompaniment, composed by Ludv^ig Ebner,
Op. 52. Katisbon : J. Georg Boessenecker.
This collection ought to prove most useful to a great many
choirs. The combination of parts, Soprano, Alto, and Bass is
one, we imagine, that will suit in a great many places, where
male voices are scarce. Moreover, the Bass part being ad
libitum, the choir will not be put out, even if the gentlemen
singers do not turn up. The pieces are easy and short, and at
the same time artistic and effective.
H. B
THE CONVERSION OF GREAT BRITAIN TO
THE CATHOLIC FAITH
IT is through a sense of duty to the Sovereign Pontiff
and to Holy Mother Church that I venture to trespass
on the valuable space of the I. E. Kecord, and solicit
in the name of the Superior and Society of St. Sulpice
the kind attention of its readers. More than two years ago
it pleased our Holy Father Pope Leo XIII. to entrust us
with a mission to the whole Catholic world, ' ad complexum
universi orbis Catholici,' and, more recently, to remind us
of the great importance he attaches to our fidelity in dis-
charging this mission. The object and character of the
undertaking are indicated in the very title of the presenc
article, and all I beg leave to do is to explain more fully
the purpose of the Archconfraternity of Our Lady cf
Compassion, by referring to documents and facts connected
with the first origin and progress of the work.
On August 22, 1897, the Holy Father directed to the
Very Eev. A. Captier, Superior-General of the Society of
St. Sulpice, his apostolic letter, Compertum est, through
which an archconfraternity of prayers and good works for
the conversion of England to the Catholic faith is estab-
lished, having its headquarters ' in ^dibus Sulpitianis.'
The latter words here designate the Seminary of St. Sulpice,
the residence of the Superior-General (henceforth President
FOURTH SERIES VOL. VI. — DECEMBER, 1899. > H
482 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
of the Archconfraternity) , and also the adjoining Church of
St. Sulpice. It is in this church that the meeting of the
Archconfraternity takes place on solemn occasions, and
regularly once a month the whole seminary, superiors,
professors, and students, join in the devotions with the
clergy and faithful of the parish.
In the course of his letter, Leo XIII. repeatedly recalls
his own constant and strenuous efforts to bring together
once more all the Christian nations that have been so sadly
torn away from the centre of Catholic unity. He also bears
testimony to the ardent zeal of the founder of St. Sulpice
for the conversion of England, and finally declares that he
has set his heart upon promoting the good work by a new
crusade of prayers; that he has resolved to have it spread
throughout the Catholic world by the care and instrumen-
tality of the venerable Olier's sons, by the zeal likewise of
so many priests of divers tongues and nations who go forth
A ear after year from the seminaries conducted by the
Society.
Britanniam scilicet vota Nostra petunt, conjuncta cum votis
tot hominum sanctitate, doctrina, dignitate praestantium, in
<|uibus maximi fuit Paulus a Cruce, turn pater legifer Olerius,
Ignatius Spenser et Wiseman cardinalis. . . . Nunc vero aliquid
coeptis addere cupientes quo latior fiat ac validior quasi precum
conspiratio. piam Societatem constituimus instar Archisodalitatis,
cui propositum sit assiduis maxime precibus Britanniae conjunc-
tionem cum Eomana Ecclesia maturare.
^des autem elegimus S. Sulpitii ubi Societas hujusmodi
constitueretur, tum quia Gallia, utpote Britanniae citima, facilius
potest cum ipsa quae opportuna sunt atque idonea communicare ;
tum quia Sulpitianae Congregationis auctor Olerius. Angliae cum
Eomana Ecclesia reconciliandae ingenti studio, suos inter alumnos
flagravit ; tum denique quod eadem Congregatio S. Sulpitii quum
ad omnes fere orbis partes proferatur, potest ubique gentium
alias istius modi sodalitates instituere. Nostra enim interest
maximi, quemadmodum res ipsa suadet piam istam societatem
longe lateque propagari, ideoque hortamur 07?ines vehementer quot-
quot sunt,, non in Gallia modo sed uhique terrarum, catholici de
religionis causa solliciti ut sua eidem societati nomina dare velint.
It is needless for us to comment upon the words of the
Holy Father, to insist upon the pressing character of his
THE CONVERSION OF GREAT BRITAIN 483
desire. After commending so highly the new sodality, His
Holiness proceeds to establish it formally, briefly describing
its organization, patrons, and privileges. As a supplement
to the latter part of the Papal letter, the Statutes of
the Archconfraternity are added under the signature of the
Cardinal Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Bishops
and Regulars.
The nature of the new sodality may be gathered from
either document, and may be summed up in the following
few points : — It is an association of prayers and good works,
having for its sole end the conversion of Great Britain to
the Catholic faith. It is placed under the heavenly patronage
of the Blessed Virgin, under her title of Our Lady of Com-
passion, likewise of St. Joseph, St. Peter, the Prince of the
Apostles, and St. Austin, the Apostle of England.^ A plenary
indulgence is granted available to associates on the feast
day of all the above-named saints, and on certain other
occasions.^ All such indulgences may be gained, on the
ordinary conditions, by all active members of the Arch-
confraternity, viz., by all persons who (1) have been duly
inscribed, and who (2) offer up every day some special
prayers (at least one Hail Mary) for the conversion of
Great Britain to the faith. Those who wish to answer
the fervent call of the Sovereign Pontiff, and become mem-
bers of the pious association, have two means of doing so.
They may either send their names directly to the President
or Director of the Archconfraternity in Paris, or else give
them to the Director of any other of the local sodalities to
be erected all over the world for- the same object, and then
affiliated to the Central Association in Paris. Pastors,
chaplains of colleges, convents, and religious communities,
desirous of erecting a sodality in their church or chapel have
to apply to the diocesan^ authority, viz., to the bishop
' To this list of patrons the name of St. G-regory the Great was most
appropriately added at the special request of Cardinal Perraud.
'^ (1) On the day of enrolment in the Archconfraternity; (2) at the moment
of death ; (3) for attending the monthly meeting. An indulgence of fifty days
once a day for the associates who devoutly recite the Ave Maria for the
conversion of Great Britain.
484 THE IRISH ECCLESIAiJTICAL RECORD
himself, or to the vicar-general when he has received a
special delegation for that end.^
A recommendation from the bishop is required by
canonical regulations when application is made to the
Superior of St. Sulpice for affiliation of the sodality already
erected to the Central Association in Paris. ^ Such associa-
tion is necessary for members of local sodalities to share
in the spiritual privileges granted to the archconfraternity.
Further information on practical points connected with
the foundation or management of sodalities will be cheer-
fully furnished on apphcation to the headquarters of the
work.
The solemn inauguration of the archconfraternity took
place in the church of St. Sulpice, on October 17, 1897,
attended by a large number of Catholic laymen and clergy
from England, many of whom had come over for that
special occasion. English and Irish representatives of the
Benedictines, Franciscans, Dominicans, Servites, Jesuits,
Vincentians, Passionists, Oratorians, and other orders ;
1 The following form for the erection of a confraternity has been printed
for the use of a large diocese, and may, perhaps, be of service elsewhere: —
N. [Nomen Episcopi.)
Dei and Apostolicae Sedis Gratia Episcopus N {Nomen Sedis).
Quum a Nobis rogatum sit ut Confratemitas B. V. Marise perdolentis {de
Compiissione pro conversione Britannise in Ecclesia {iiii. Titularis et Loci)
erigatur ; Nos Confratemitatem prsedictam per has prsesentes erigimus ac R. D.
EcclesisB Rectorem pro tempore existentem (yel alium sacerdoteut) ejusdem
praesidentem constituimus.' Mandamus autem ut pro dicta Oonfraternirate
statim petatur aggregatio ad Archiconfratemitatem ejusdem nominis primariam
a SS. D. N. Leone PP. XIII. in Ecclesia Si Sulpitii. Parisiis erectam.
Datum (Nomen loci) die . . .
2 The following specimen of a form for application may, perhaps, be found
■useful : —
Rmo. Superiori Cong. S, Sulpitii
Rector infrascriptus Ecclesiee . . . Prsesidens Confraternitatis B. V. Mari89
Perdolentis pro conversione Britanniae ab Illm. et Rmo. Dno. (N. Episcopi)
ibidem canouice institutee humiliter postulat ut pro dicta Confrateiiiitate (.-un-
cedatur aggregatio ad Archiconfratemitatem ejusdem nominis primariam a
SS. D.N. Leoni PP. XIII., Parisiis in Ecclesia S. Sulpitii erectam ... die
. . . N. Rector E<'C8e. Confraternitatis Praesidens.
Vidimus et approbamus tum Confratemitatem ipsam
tum praesentem petitionem
die
N Epus. N
THE CONVERSION OF GREAT BRITAIN 485
secular priests, canons, prelates, heads of colleges, members
or the English hierarchy, all mingled with the priests,
students, and faithful of St. Sulpice, in the impressive
<-eremonies of this memorable day. Before this imposing
audience a most eloquent sermon was preached by the
Prench Dominican, Father Feuillette ; and when, after the
celebration, the two Cardinals of Paris and Westminster,
who had alternately presided over the functions of the day,
returned to the seminary, preceded by the long procession
of the secular and regular clergy, they were greeted by
the enthusiastic cheers and applause of a large crowd
of bystanders ; a touching evidence of the ascendancy
which the Catholic feeling retains over the soul of the
French people, and of the power of the same feeling
to reconcile differences upon other points of minor
importance.
Since then thousands of names have been entered in
the register of the head confraternity, and hundreds of
sodalities already erected in various parts of the Catholic
world have applied for affiliation. The number of affiliated
sodalities amounts, at the present date, to very nearly
five hundred and thirty, scattered over France and
England, over Belgium, Italy, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, fully reckoning an aggregate number of myriads
of associates.
To Ireland, however, the work has not yet been suffi-
ciently presented, though very kind encouragement has been
received from eminent members of the Catholic hierarchy.
We should not answer the expectation of our revered and
beloved Pontiff Leo XIII. were we to delay any longer in
inviting our brethren of the Irish clergy to join in the holy
work, particularly such of them as minister to communities
in which reigns a spirit of greater piety and zeal — clerical
colleges, convents, monasteries, &c. ; there, indeed, fervent
:Souls are already united by manifold ties of common
prayer and universal charity ; there, above all, the voice of
our Holy Father is wont to receive a prompt and willing
iresponse. Prayers offered up in Ireland for the conversion
of England will rise to the throne of God, enriched with a
486 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
sweet and singular fragrance of noble generosity which can-
not fail to please and touch the Sacred Heart of the Saviour.
These generous prayers will prove a powerful co-operation
in the work of so many Irish priests who, in all English
speaking countries, are slowly gathering, day by day, into
the one true fold the souls of converts, sweetly winning back
by word and example the hearts of our separated brethren
to the faith of their forefathers.
Were England to become once more a Catholic country,
what a wonderful increase of power would accrue the w^orld
over to our Holy Mother Church, and what prayer could be
more effective for the conversion of England than the prayer
of Ireland !
P. DE FOVILLE, P.S.S.
DERRY'CALGACH
IT is at all times an interesting study to trace the
derivation and origin of names, but frequently it is
a task of no ordinary difficulty when one has but the
faint light of tradition to guide his steps. In such
cases conjecture must often take the place of proof, and
fragmentary scraps of history must be pieced together to
make out a consecutive narrative. The ancient name of
Derry is no exception to the rule. That the place was
known from time immemorial as Doire-Calgach down to the
close of the tenth century, all our writers testify ; that this
Calgach, who gave his name to the place, must have been a
distinguished warrior, all are agreed in saying ; but of his
history or military career there is no authentic Irish record.
Our annals had not as yet begun to be written, and the
heroes of that prehistoric age were doomed to go down to
their graves without having their names emblazoned in
story. In some instances, however, mute memorials have
perpetuated the names of notable warriors in the pillar-
stones or cairns erected to their memory ; or, as in the
DERRY'CALGACH 487
present instance, by giving to a place the name of him who
was the hero of the age.
The original Pagan appellation of this place [says tha
Ordnance Memoir of Templemore] was Doire Calgaic, or Derry-
Calgach — ' the oak-wood of Calgach,' — Calgach, which signifies-
* a fierce warrior,' being the proper name of a man in Pagan
times, and rendered illustrious as Galgacus in the pages of
Tacitus. In support of this etymology may be adduced the high
authority of A.damnan, abbot of lona, in the seventh century,
who, in his life of his predecessor, St. Columbkille, invariably
calls this place * Eoboretum Calgagi,' in conformity with his
habitual substitution of Latin equivalents for Irish topographical
names. For a long period subsequent to the sixth century, in
which a monastery was erected here by St. Columbkille, the
name of Derry-Calgach prevailed ; but towards the latter end of
the tenth century it seems to have yielded to that of Derry-
Columbkille, no other appearing in the Irish annals after that
period.
Similar to this is the statement of Dr. Eeeves, in a note
p. 160 of his Adamnan : —
Daire-Chalgaich — the name is Latinized Eoboretum Calgachi.
Calgach, the Galgacus of Tacitus {Agric. c. 29), is a name
occasionally found in the Annals {Four Masters, 593 ; and in
composition, ibid, 622). It is derived from Calg, * a sword,' or
* thorn ;' and as an adjective denotes * sharp ' or ' angry. Hence
Calgach, gen. Calgaich, became a proper name in the sense of
* fierce warrior.'
Such are the statements about the ancient name of
Derry ; but little seems to be known of the hero from whom
the city derived that appellation. He was evidently a man
of no ordinary mould, a general whose warlike achievements
and military prowess were not only admired in his own
day, but
Which on the granite walls of Time
Cut deep a deathless name.
Unfortunately, however, he lived too early to have bis
name transmitted to us by an Irish scribe, and we are
consequently obliged to turn to the pages of Tacitus for
whatever is known of this clever commander; but even
here the references are only fragmentary.
Calgach is a distinctly Irish name, for neither in English
488 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
nor in Scotch history does such a name occur. He whose
name is associated with Derry must have been a prince as
well as a warrior, for otherwise he could not have collected
and commanded as he did the forces which he sent across
the Channel to aid the Caledonians in their wars against the
Romans. But it may at the outset be asked what could
have induced an Irish king to join the Scotch confederation,
or what interest could he have had in fighting against the
Romans ? It appears to us that the answer to this question
greatly assists us in settling the nationality of Calgach, and
of identifying him with Derry.
From prehistoric times there had been a continued
emigration from the north of Ireland into that part of
Scotland subsequently known as Dalriada, and largely cor-
responding with the present Argyleshire and its borders.
The Irish king claimed dominion over this colony, and
ranked it as part of his territory. We know how in after
times, when it had grown powerful, this colony determined
to throw off the Irish yoke, and in this movement for
Home Eule had no less powerful an advocate at the
Convention of Dromceat than the eloquent and patriotic
St. Columbkille. The native Picts had at first endeavoured
on many occasions to expel these settlers, but finding their
efforts fruitless had to permit them to remain in possession
of the territory. At the period now under consideration
there existed, as O'Halloran tells us,^ a strong alliance
between the Britons, Picts, and Irish against the Romans.
The Irish monarch was Fiachadh, son of the great
Fearaidhach. This king, well knowing the designs of
Agricola upon Ireland, wisely resolved to fight him abroad
rather than at home.
The successes of Agricola [says O'Halloran], far from intimi-
rlating, rather added a new stimulus to the counsels of Fiachadh.
Fresh forces are poured into North Britain ; led on by Cormoc,
called Gealta-Goath, and grandfather to Cathoir-more, whom
Tacitus calls Galgacus ; and to his standard are all the disaffected
in Britain invited.
' History of Ireland, vol. i., ch. 5.
DERRY'CALGACH 489
From this it appears certain that Galgacus was of the
blood-royal, and was completely in command of the Irish
forces. In joining the Caledonian confederation he was
merely defending the property of the Irish monarch and
the lives of his subjects, and warding off at the same time
an invasion by the Eomans. Agricola well knew the impor-
tance of gaining possession of Ireland on account of its
f^plendid harbours, and vast resources ; he knew besides the
military power of the island and the aid it was giving to the
Caledonians, and he felt that by subjugating it he would at
the same time crush the persistent and successful opposition
of Scotland. Circumstances seemed to favour the plans he
^was maturing, for an Irish petty king, who had got into
trouble at home, fled to Agricola, by whom he was hospi-
tably received, and kept to be afterwards turned to account.
Tacitus thus relates the circumstances : —
In the fifth summer Agricola made an ^expedition by sea. He
«em barked in the first Eoman vessel that ever crossed the estuary,
and having penetrated into regions till then unknown, he defeated
the inhabitants in several engagements, and lined the coast,
which lies opposite to Ireland, with a body of troops ; not so
much from any apprehension of danger, as with a view to future
projects. He saw that Ireland, lying between Britain and Spain,
And at the same time convenient to the ports of Gaul, might
prove a valuable acquisition, capable of giving an easy communi-
-cation, and, of course, strength and union, to provinces disjointed
by nature.
Ireland is less than Britain, but exceeds in magnitude all the
islands of the Mediterranean. The soil, the climate, the manner
and genius of the inhabitants, differ little from those of Britain.
By the means of merchants resorting thither for the sake of
-commerce, the harbours and approaches to the coast are well
known. One of their petty kings who had been forced to
fly from the fury of a domestic faction, was received by the
Eoman general, and, under a show of friendship, detained to be
of use on some future occasions. I have often heard Agricola
■declare that a single legion, with a moderate band of auxiliaries,
would be sufficient to complete the conquest of Ireland. Such an
•event, he said, would contribute greatly to bridle the stubborn
spirit of the Britons, who, in that ease, would see, with dismay,
the Eoman arms triumphant, and every spark of liberty extin-
guished round their coast. ^
^ Life of .Agricola, ch. xxiv.
490 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
From this chapter we see the importance Agricola.
attached to the conquest of Ireland. We see, moreover,,
how much he dreaded attacks from that quarter, for when
he sent his fleet (if it can be so called) to circumnavigate
Scotland, or at least to explore part of its coast, he is care-
ful to line that part of the coast opposite Ireland with a
body of troops. Why? 'Not so much,' says Tacitus,,
* from an apprehension of danger, as with a view to f ature
projects.' Of course ; Agricola feared_^no danger. But that
troublesome Calgach had an inconvenient habit of bringing
over his Irish auxiliaries to annoy the poor Komans, and
it was no harm to have an army ready to receive him.
Another fact — a painful one to us, no doubt — is learned from
this chapter, viz,, how early in her history Ireland was
betrayed by her own sons. Here is a petty king, anticipating
the treachery of Dermot McMurrough, prepared to sell his
country to the Eomans, and to guide them in the invasiort
of his native land.
Before proceeding further in this sketch it is well to
inquire what weight is to be attached to the statements of
Tacitus when describing the military achievements of
Agricola. Agricola was his father-in-law, and his object
was to glorify that father-in-law by all means in his power.
The account was written for the Roman people, who were^^
ready to swallow any statement that magnified their glory,.
or ministered to their vanity. Rome was far distant from
Britain, and there was no means of contradicting the
statements of Tacitus. He describes, therefore, with the
greatest apparent minuteness, various engagements of
Agricola in places never heard of since or before, and with
people of whose existence no trace can be found. The
Roman general gains countless victories, and slays thousands
of his enemies ; but, somehow, he seems to reap no advan-
tage from his victories, and his enemies appear none the
worse for the slaughter. He is always on the point of
performing some great achievement, but storms come on,,
or bogs and marshes intervene, and only for these the
Caledonians would have been exterminated to a man. It
seems to have been the weakness of all the Roman invaders
DERRY'CALGACH 491
of Britain to boast of how completely they had subjugated
it, whilst in reality they had often run away. Csesar
boasted that he had completely conquered that country,
but Tacitus says : —
Even Julius Caesar, the first of the Eomans that set his foot in
Britain, at the head of an army, can only be said by a prosper-
ous battle to have struck the natives with terror, and to have
made himself master of the seashore. The discoverer, not the
conqueror of the island, he did no more than show it to posterity.^
How, then, are w^e to believe Tacitus himself when he
tells us : * The fact is, Britain was subdued under the
conduct of Agricola?'^ This fact of the untrustworthi-
ness of Tacitus when recording the exploits of Agricola is to
be carefully borne in mind when reading over the account
of his encounter with Calgach and his forces at the foot of
the Grampians. That under the name of a great victory
over the Caledonians, Tacitus tries to cover what was rather
a defeat to Agricola,4s pretty clear to anyone who reads even
/lis narrative of the event. Again and again in the preceding
portion of his story the Caledonians are represented as
beaten, completely routed, and slain. Now, in the contest
at the foot of the Grampians we see Galgacus at the head of
thirty thousand men confronting the Komans, and with
numbers daily flocking to his standard. This is not at all
a bad muster for men that had been routed and slain so
often already.
After describing the opening of the campaign, Tacitus
depicts in glowing language the enthusiasm of the
Caledonians — how the various clans leagued together to
defend their country, and drive back the invaders.
Undismayed by their former defeat [says he], the barbarians
expected no other issue than a total overthrow, or a brave revenge.
Experience had taught them that the common cause required a
vigorous exertion of their united strength. For this purpose, by
treaties of alliance, and by deputations to the several cantons,
they had drawn together the strength of their nation. Upwards
of thirty thousand men appeared in arms, and their force was
increasing every day. The youth of the country poured in from
* Jffricold, ch. xiii. 2 Jbid., ch. x.
492 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
all quarters, and even the men in years, whose vigour was still
unbroken, repaired to the army, proud of their past exploits, and
the ensigns of honour which they had gained by their martial
spirit. Among the chieftains, distinguished by their birth and
valour, the most renowned was Galgacus. The multitude
gathered round him, eager for action, and burning w^ith
uncommon ardour.
Galgacus before the battle addressed his soldiers in a
speech recorded by Tacitus, and whether he delivered this
speech in the v^ords attributed to him, or that Tacitus,
having heard the substance of what was said, clothed it
in that beautiful language of which he was such a master,
cartain it is that it stands unrivalled in the annals of
military oratory. He dwelt on the motives that impelled
them to engasje in this war, motives than which none more
noble could fire the breasts of men. They were fighting
for home and liberty, fighting against the imposition of a
foreign yoke and against the galling bondage of slavery.
They had ever been freemen— were they now to become the
slaves of the Eoman Empire, that empire whose history was
written in the blood of its victims and in the ruin and
degradation of every land it had subdued. If vanquished,
what, said he, have we to expect but the merciless lash of
the conqueror — our country devastated, our wives the
victims of a brutal soldiery, our children sold like dumb
cattle in the slave-market, and this ancient stronghold of
liberty converted into an appanage for the hirehngs of
tyrant Kome. He thus concluded : —
In the ensuing battle be not deceived by false appearances ;
the glitter of gold and silver may dazzle the eye ; but to us it is
harmless, to the Eomans no protection. In their own ranks we
shall find a number of generous warriors ready to assist our
cause. The Britons know that for our common liberties we
draw the avenging sword. The Gauls will remember that they
once were a free people ; and the Germans, as the Usipians
lately did, will desert their colours. The Eomans have left
nothing in their rear to oppose us in the pursuit ; their forts are
ungarrisoned ; the veterans in their colonies droop with age ; in
their municipal towns, nothing but anarchy, despotic government
and disaffected subjects. In me behold your general, behold an
army of freeborn men. Your enemy is before you, and, in his
train, heavy tributes, drudgery in the mines, and all the horrors
DERRY-GALGACH 493
of slavery. Are those calamities to be entailed upon us ? Or
shall this day relieve us by a brave revenge ? There is the field
of battle, and let that determine. Let us seek the enemy, and,
as v^e rush upon him, remember the glory delivered to us by our
ancestors ; and let each man think that upon his sword depends
the fate of all posterity.
This speech [says Tacitus] was received, according to the
custom of Barbarians, with war songs, with savage bowlings,
and a wild uproar of military applause. The battalions began to
form a line of battle ; the brave and warlike rushed forward to
the front, and the field glittered with the blaze of arms.
In his admirable translation of the Koman historian,
Arthur Murphy speaks thus of the oration of the Caledonian
general : —
Neither the Greek nor Roman page has anything to compare
with it. The critics have admired the speech of Porus to
Alexander; but, excellent as it is, it shrinks and fades away,
before the Caledonian orator. Even the speech of Agricola
which follows immediately after it, is tame and feeble, when
opposed to the ardour, the impetuosity, and the vehemence of
the British chief. We see Tacitus exerting all his art to decorate
the character of his father-in-law : but he had neither the same
vein of sentiment, nor the same generous love of liberty, to
support the cause of an ambitious conqueror. In the harangue
of Galgacus, the pleasure of the reader springs from two prin-
ciples : he admires the enthusiasm of the brave Caledonian, and
at the same time applauds the noble historian, who draws
up a charge against the tyranny of his own countrymen, and
generously lists on the side of liberty.
Tacitus then proceeds to give an account of the engage-
ment, and for brilliancy and vividness of description
nothing could excel the picture he presents. The varyinjz
fortunes of the battlefield ; the alternate victory and defeat
of Boman and Caledonian ; the courage, born of despair,
which rallies again and again the routed forces of the
north, are depicted in so real a manner, that one fancies
as he reads that he is standing at the foot of the Grampians,
witnessing the prowess of Galgacus, and the military tactics
of Agricola. Of course, Tacitus, as usual, gives the victory
to his father-in-law, represents the number of slain on tie
Caledonian side as ten thousand, whilst only a few hundreds
494 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
of the Komans fell ; but it is rather remarkable that, not-
withstanding this signal victory, Agricola, instead of
following it up, withdrew to winter quarters, and shortly
afterwards withdrew altogether from Britain. Another
remarkable fact is, that in the plain where Agricola had his
forces marshalled for the battle, there is a fort, which to the
present day is called Galdachan, or Galgachan Eoss-Moor ;
* not that Galgacus constructed the camp,' says Gordon,^
but here he engaged Agricola's army ; for which reason his
name is left on the place.' We are rather inclined to think
that Galgach took and held the camp, just as his name
holds it up to the present.
Such is the man whose name has been linked with that
of Derry in the past. That the man who impressed his
name on this place must have been a remarkable man, a
man of note above his fellowmen, is evident ; but no such
man is known to history or tradition, except Galgach who
figures in the pages of Tacitus. That he was a prince or
king of the north of Ireland, and as such king also of the
Irish colony in Scotland, is pretty clear ; and this would
explain the part he took against the Romans. That Derry
was his great military fort, where he massed and drilled
his forces for sending to Scotland, is most probable, for from
time immemorial the island of Derry was used as a military
station. The kings of Aileach so employed it, and we know
that ^d, the son of Ainmire, had his great military camp
here at the time St. Columbkille came to seek a site for his
intended monastery. That it continued to be used as a
military station in after ages, we learn from the annalists.
Thus, under the year 832, they record that * Niall Caille and
Murchadh defeated the foreigners, i.e., the Norwegians and
Danes at Derry- Galgach, with great slaughter.' Its natural
position was well suited for this purpose, as well as for
sending out auxiliaries to the Caledonians.
The Scotch annalists, however, lay claim to Galgach as
a countryman of their own, and few can blame them for so
doing, for he was a man of whom any country might well be
1 Itinerary, pp. 39, 40.
DERRY'CALGACH 495
proud. Thus in Gordon's Itinerary, as quote i by Murphy
in his notes to Tacitus, we are told : —
In the chronicles of the kings of Scotland, Galgacus is called
Galdas ; of which name and its etymology, Gordon gives the
following account : — Galgacus was latinized by the Eomans from
two Highland appellations, viz., Galcl and Cachach ; the first
Gald, being the proper name, and the second an adjective to it,
from the battles he had fought, it signifies the same as praeliosus,
* Gald, the fighter of battles : ' which kind of nickname is still in
use among the Highlanders. Thus the late Viscount Dundee
w-as, by the Highlanders that followed him, called John-Du-Nan-
Cach, ' Black-haired John, who fights the battles,' and in like
manner John Duke of Argyle, was known among the Highlanders
by the name of John Eoy-Nan-(Jach, ' Red-haired John, who
fights the battles.' ^
This derivation, however, is too far-fetched, and is put
forward merely as a specious argument in favour of the
Scotch theory. The derivation from the Irish of the name
Calgach is much more natural, and an argument in its
favour is the fact of the name of the hero having been given
io Derry in pre-historic times, and continued so late as the
close of the tenth century. There is one fact which tells
against the Scotch theory more than any other, and it is
that 'the original records of Scotland were wholly destroyed
by Edward I. of England, when he overran that country in
the year 1300, for the purpose, if possible, of obliterating
by their destruction the nationality of the people ; but
■before the close of the same century a new account of the
history of Scotland was given to the world ; a long series of
Scottish kings, who never had any existence, being coined
to fill up the interval of some hundred years before the time
of Fergus, the son of Ere' ^ We fear that the Galdas of
Gordon must be relegated to this list of manufactured
potentates.
The foregoing are all the fragments we have been able to
gather about this remarkable man. They are meagre, it is
true; for the want of historical records at that period
renders the history of Ireland for centuries rather vague and
^ Gordon's Itinerary ^ p. 40.
2 Haveity's History of Ireland^ ch. ix.
496 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
uncertain; but the fact remains, that our writers, taking up
the early traditions of the time, identify Calcagh as the hera
of Tacitus, and link his name inseparably with the green
island in the Foyle. Derry can boast of many glories in the
past ; but not the least of these is, that from her wooded
heights went forth the warrior who spread dismay among
the Eoman battalions, and whose dauntless courage and
burning eloquence have furnished Tacitus with materials for
the most brilliant and glowing passages in his history of
Agricola.
fi«JOHN K. O'DOHERTY.
FATHER MARQUETTE, S J., . DISCO VERERi OF
THE MISSISSIPPI
JACQUES MAKQUETTE was born in 1637, in the old
French town of Laon. He belonged to a family
which, as far back as the fourteenth century had already
achieved considerable distinction. The brilliant talents
which won for so many members of the Marquette family
high honour both in the military and civic annals of their
country, were inherited in the highest degree by the subject
of this sketch. But he was destined to win renown in a
new and very different arena. Young Marquette w^as to
be one of the bravest and most devoted warriors of the
Immaculate Mother of God ; a bold and successful pioneer
in the fields of spiritual conquests, and one of the most
beloved teachers of the ' Eed Man.' Like so many great
and good men, the future apostle had the happiness of
having a truly Christian mother, under whose tender care
he daily unfolded the blossoms of youthful virtue. It was
she who instilled into his innocent heart that deep and
ardent love of our Blessed Lady for which he was ever
so remarkable. In his seventeenth year, Jacques entered
the Society of Jesus, and after twelve years of study and
probation was ordained priest. He at once volunteered
FATHER MARQUETTE, SJ. 497
for the foreign missions, begging to be sent among the
heathens. Before his request could be granted, he had to
be transferred from the province of Champagne to the
province of France. The transfer accomphshed, he was
at once appointed to the Canadian Indian mission.
On the 20th September, 1666, Pere Marquette landed
at Quebec. He was then in the very bloom of early man-
hood, full of life and vigour, glowing with apostolic zeal
and ardour, and resolved — aye, perhaps, already bound by
vow — never to leave this mission, the thorny ways of
which led to the gates of martyrdom, unless at the call
of obedience, 'which is better than sacrifice.' Under no
circumstances has the missionary a bed of roses; but, in
some favoured spots of the earth, his life may be rendered
more endurable. A mild climate, nature in her fairest
aspect, and the good dispositions of the natives in many
instances, lighten his toil, and afford him some little
consolation, although, even then the arch-enemy does
not let his prey be snatched from him without severe
fighting and weary wrestling. But, under the cold sky,
in the gloomy forests, on the stormy lakes and snowy
plains of north-west Canada, whither our good missioner
first bent his steps, the struggle was indeed a hard one.
A barbarous people, firmly bound in the devil's slavery,
ever ready for deeds of violence ; blindly proud ; fiercely
opposed to Christian practices ; fickle as the wind : such
were Father Marquette's first pupils. Every earthly com-
fort and consolation were wanting to the messenger of
faith. He had not even the prospect of speedy and lasting
results to buoy him up in his trials. Still, without some
support, the strongest soul would faint and grow weary.
Like all his brethren on the Indian mission of that time,
Pere Marquette was sustained by the blessed consciousness
that he was drinking of the chalice of his thorn-crowned
Master ; that he must share His poverty and desolation ;
and like Him, be mocked and hated. What mattered any
suffering or privation to the ardent young apostle, if he
could in the end succeed in snatching a few, nay, even
one soul from among the thousands who were wandering
VOL. VI. 2 I
498 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
in the night of separation from God. The baptism of a
dying infant richly rewarded this faithful loving soul for
months of weary wanderings, full of privation and
fatigue.
Three weeks after landi^^g in Quebec, Father Marquette
set out for the Jesuit residence at Three Kivers, where,
tinder the saintly Pere Druillettes, he was to begin the
study of the various dialects spoken by the Algonquins.
A knowledge of these dialects would be indispensable for
the Ottawa mission on the Upper Lake, for which he was
destined. Having acquired the needful knowledge to
which he added some proficiency in the rudiments of the
Huron tongue, the following year (1668) he set out for
the Upper Lake, accompanied by a lay-brother. At
that time this was a difficult and dangerous journey. A
brigade of Indian canoes laden with furs arrived yearly
from the Upper Lakes, Michigan and Superior, and our
travellers availed themselves of the return of this brigade
to reach their destination. In fact, this was the only means
by which the journey could be accomplished. The route
]ay through the Ottawa River into Ijake Nipissing, thence
through the St. Francis Eiver (now French Eiver) into
Lake Huron.
The voyage proved an excellent apprenticeship for his
subsequent missionary Hfe. Usually, it was with the
greatest reluctance that the Indians gave a passage in their
trail bark canoes to strange teachers who condemned their
gods and their vices. Vainly the patient son of St. Ignatius
handled the rudder with the unwearied strength of an
enthusiastic beginner, or waded in the water, as he helped
to push the boat against the stream. Without a murmur
he carried not only his own pack, but also whatever load
the savage Indians chose to add, over the numerous por-
tages, often miles long, from river to river, from lake to
Jake, past waterfalls, smking in marshy ground, stumbling
over rocks and fallen trees. Often, too, did he suffer the
pangs of hunger, by no means a rare occurrence on a
journey where they relied entirely for food on occasional
hunting or fishing. Many a time did he divide the last of
FATHER MARQUETTE, SJ, 499
his scanty stock of provisions, regardless of his own want,
among the sick ones, whom he nursed with angehc
patience, even singing hymns to amuse them, hour after
hour. But his humihty, his gentleness, his unwearied
labour and self-sacrifice were in vain. The savage sons of
the forest regarded all he did as their right. The defence-
less stranger with the hateful hairy face, was at every
opportunity the butt for mockery, and sometimes even
received bodily ill-usage. He might be thankful that they
did not set him ashore, and leave him to his fate in the
pathless woods. Such had happened to earlier missionaries,
in particular to the first apostle of the Chippewayans,
Father Menard, when he made this journey. But the
fiercely savage mood of the Indians had been somewhat
tamed since that time by a closer acquaintance with some
of the fathers, and most of all by the knowledge that the
actual ill-treatment of the ' Black Epbes ' would not pass
unpunished by the French in Canada. All the same,
sufferings of all kinds were not wanting to our father on
the long weary journey from the St. Laurence to the Falls
of St. Mary's River. The deep humility, which was such
a strongly-marked feature of his character, did not permit
him to mention a word of these sufferings in his first reports
written to his superiors. It was only two years later that,
acting under holy obedience, he wrote a detailed account
of his work during his two years' residence on the Upper
Lake.
Sault St. Marie, is the name given to the Falls or
Eapids formed by the mighty volume of water which
rushes from the Upper Lake into Lake Huron, a few miles
east of the lake known then by Sweet-Water Lake, at this
point, sparkling and foaming like the Nile Cataract at
Philae, the crystal flood, a mile in breadth, rolls over the
enormous masses of rock which fill the bed of the river for
about a mile. Here, where no vessel of the white man
dares to venture, the light skiffs of the Indians stem the
rushing, but shallow waters, and make war on their
finny inhabitants, the dainty white fish and the huge lake
trout.
600 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Not less than two thousand Chippewayans and other
Indians were assembled at this spot, when, in 1642, the
first missionaries, Father Charles Eambaut and Father
Isaac Jacques, lingered for a few days on the banks of
the St. Marie Kiver. Fear of the terrible Iroquois drove
these Indians, ten years later, to. the remotest creeks
of the Upper Lake. In 1660, when Father Menard and
Father Allouez wandered about Sault St. Marie, they found
it utterly forsaken.
In Father Marquette's time the partial peace which
existed between the French and their allies, the Algonquin
tribes on the one side, and the Iroquois on the other, had
enticed some of the fugitives back to the old camping
ground. The Kawitigowininiway (men of the river turned
into foam) once more made Sault St. Marie their home,
while other Algonquin bands halted there as guests. The
rich harvest, yielded by the teeming waters, afforded
food for all. The Indians of Sault St. Marie proved
less averse than others to the teachings of the Gospel.
Father Marquette who built a but and lived amongst them
in the summer of 1669, declared of them : — " The harvest
is rich, and it depends on the missionary alone to baptize all
— two thousand in number — who dwelt there." But Father
Marquette was destined by Providence to be the pioneer
of the Gospel in fresh and distant fields. An older
missionary, Father Dablon, recently appointed superior of
all the Upper Algonquin missions, elected to live at Sault
St. Marie, and undertook the cultivation of the newly-sown
field which under his, and more particularly under his
successors, Peres Nowel and Druillettes, blossomed forth
and bore rich fruit.
Our young missionary was sent four hundred miles
further away to Chagoimegom (Schagawanikong), where the
waves break over the long sand banks, called by the Jesuits
La Pointe due Saint Esprit, in these latter days abbreviated
to Pointe. His route lay along the southern shore of the
lake and past the Bay, where now the picturesque town
(the see of a bishop), named after our holy missioner, year
after year stretches further over the fir-crowned sand-hills.
FATHER MARQUETTE, SJ. 501
Had the humble priest, when he camped somewhere along
the shore for his frugal meal and nightly rest, any prophetic
instinct of the future ? We know not. But certain we are,
that if a prophet voice had whispered to him, * Here one day
will thy name be honoured,' the humble priest would answer,
* Oh, rather may it be entered in the book of life ! '
After a canoe journey of four hundred miles, which in
favourable weather was usually accomplished in fourteen
days, but often took much longer, Father Marquette arrived
at La Pointe, on 13th September, 1669. His predecessor
and founder of the mission, Father Claudius AUouez, had
worked here for four long years with burning zeal. No
fewer than eight different Indian tribes, some of them
settlers, some only visitors at La Pointe, had received the
Word of God from the mouth of the Gospel messenger who
spoke in divers tongues.
Hurons, Chippawayans, different bands of the Ottawa
tribes, &c., were acquainted with the principle of the
Christian religion, and some at least out of these tribes
had learned to bend the knee before Him who has made all
things. Many children and a chosen number of adults had
been baptized. But the greater number of the Indians
domiciled at La Pointe obstinately resisted the missionaries.
The invocation of the demons fmanitous), especially in
times of war, sickness, and when hunting ; the worship of
the phenomena of dreams as a divinity ; the savage feasts,
at which everything must be consumed, even at the risk of
life, in honour of the manitous ; the dances and orgies held
in worship of the demons, these were the hell-forged chains
in which the powers of darkness kept these creatures of God
fast bound. And what were the weapons of the solitary
missionary against these Satanic forces ? Instruction,
admonition, persuasion, alike failed. The preaching of the
eternal punishments of hell, which at the time made a
great impression, was usually very soon forgotten. But by
slow degrees the example of a pure self-sacrificing love, and
the heroic renunciation of a saintly life, penetrated with
warm life-giving ray to those hearts so enshrouded in the
darkness of idolatry, and so petrified with self-love. Prayer
502 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
and sacrifice were the missionary's chief weapons. The
unbloody sacrifice of Calvary daily offered by the young
religious ; his countless privations and penances, and the
intercession of the sinless Mother of God, these were the
means he employed.
The Immaculate Conception was Father Marquette's
favourite devotion, the perpetual subject of his contempla-
tions, the central point of all his devotional practices. It
was the constant theme of his sermons ; even in daily con-
versations it was constantly on his lips. He wrote no letter
which did not contain in some part the words Immaculate
Conception. From his ninth year he fasted every Saturday
in honour of the Immaculate Virgin. It was the loving
absorption of his soul in this mystery which, according to
the testimony of his superiors and brethren, yea, of all who
knew him, surrounded him w4th a halo of transfiguration,
and gave to his character an indescribable brightness and
lovingness, and made him so powerful in winning souls.
Four stout bands, one of the Hurons, and three of the
Algonquin tribes — on the whole over two thousands souls —
claimed Father Marquette's spiritual care. The Hurons,
nicknamed Tobacco Indians, fugitives from the Iroquois
War of 1650, were already, for the most part, Christians.
For twenty years they had wandered over the islands of the
great lakes and through the forests of Wisconsin without
spiritual guides, and in constant contact, either friendly or
hostile, with heathen tribes. Consequently, they had
become so demoralized that Father Allouez's efforts to
reform them proved almost fruitless. Our missionary, who
was all things to all men, obtained such influence over them
that they promised him to amend their lives. The Ottawa
Indians were more than all others sunk in witchcraft,
* They mock at the commandments,' wrote the father, * and
will scarcely listen to us when we speak of Christianity.
They are proud and obstinate, and but little is to be hoped
from this tribe.'
The Chippawayans (of the pike), with the exception of
the' few baptized by Father Menard nine years before,
also remained callous, yet wished to have their children
FATHER MARQUETTE, SJ. 603
baptized. The Kischkako tribes (short-tailed bears) were the
missionary's joy and comfort. True, it was only after three
years' unceasing labour that his predecessor had succeeded
in overcoming their prejudices. The whole band declared
for Christianity. Some of the chiefs and many of the
people had been baptized. Father Marquette, with his
winning ways and entire devotion, completed their conver-
sion. Some passages from his reports on these Indians
might here find place : —
On my arrival I found all the Indians in the fields, busy with,
the harvest. They listened with pleasure when I declared to
them that I had come to La Pointe for their sake and that of the
Huron ; that they should never be forsaken, but should be held
dearer than all other tribes, and that they and the French should
be as one people. I had the consolation of seeing how much they
loved prayer, and how highly they esteemed the privilege of being
Christians. I baptized the newly-born children, and visited the
chiefs, all of whom I found well disposed. The principal chief
had allowed a dog to be hung from a pole near his wigwam — a
sort of sacrifice which the savages offer to the STm. When I
told him tbis was not right, he went himself to the spot to take
it down. A sick man who had been instructed, but not yet
baptized, begged me to grant him this grace, or, at least, to stay
near him, as he vvould have no sorcery practised for his recovery,
and he also said that he was afraid of hell-fire. I prepared him
for Baptism. The joy my frequent visits gave him half cured
him. He thanked me for my trouble, and made me a present of
a slave brought to him a few months before from Illinois. He
frequently declared that I had given him fresh life.
I invited the Kis-chkakoer Indians to winter i: ear the chapel,
whereupon they at once separated from the other bands, and
crowded round us, delighted to be near the house of prayer,
where they could frequently receive instruction, and have their
children baptized.
It is a great consolation for a missionary to find such docility
among a barbarous people. I lived in perfect peace with these
savages, and often spent whole days instructing them and pray-
ing with them. The severity of the winter did not prevent them
from coming to the chapel, and there were many who never
failed in their daily attendance. From morning until night I
was busy receiving them, preparing some for baptism, some for
confession, and at other times admonishing them against
superstitious practices.
Some vague tradition of the Tower of Babel seems to have
lingered amongst these tribes. They said that their fathers had
-04 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
told them of people who had once tried to build a great house as
high as the sky, but that the wind had blown it down.
They now despised all the gods whom they had honoured
before their baptism, and wondered how they were ever so silly
as to offer sacrifice to such fabulous things.
Father Marquette was appointed, in the summer of
1670, to the new mission among 'the Illinois. He only
awaited the arrival of his successor to leave the flourishing
mission field of the Upper Lake in order to begin anew bis
labours elsewhere. But, alas ! before long no successor
would be necessary. The fruitful vineyard was destined
to destruction, and one hundred and sixty-five years were
to pass away before a Christian missioner — the saintly
Bishop Baraga — would again land in the lovely bay of the
Chagoimigon.
The circumstances which led to such 'an unexpected
change form one of the darkest spots in the annals of the
Huron and Ottawa Indians. Sinago, the chief of the fierce
heathen band of this name, had, some years previously,
paid a visit to the neighbouring Sioux, and had been
received with high honour. They welcomed him as a son
of their nation with festive dances and smoking of the
calumet. By these ceremonies, which in their significance
resembled a solemn oath, Sinago' s person, as well as those
of all his tribe and allies, became as sacred as the person of
a mighty ambassador, or of a monarch himself would be
among civilized people. On the other hand, the insulting
of a Sioux, by either the chief or one of his tribe, would be
an act of treachery for which no revenge was too great.
In the autumn of 1670, the same Sioux chief, who had
smoked the calumet of peace with the chief of the Ottawa,
came to La Pointe for the purpose of settling misunder-
standing which had arisen between the tribes. Full of
unsuspecting trust, he took up his abode in Sinago's
wigwam, who greeted him as a brother. But the savage
Hurons were thirsting for blood, and no amount of palaver-
ing prevailed ; even bribery, often the surest method among
the Indians, failed to secure a pacific settlement of the
dispute. Sinago proved treacherous, and his guest's rich
l^resents could not purchase his fidelity. At a signal, the
FATHER MARQUETTE, SJ. 505
Sinago warriors feirupon the unsuspecting Sioux chief and
lais companions, three men and one woman ; they were cut
to pieces, and then, according to their fiendish custom, eaten
in triumph.
Dire punishment followed closely upon such shameless
treachery, rare even among savages. No sooner was the
deed done than terror seized the band. As if the whole
Sioux nation was already at their heels they took to their
<canoes and fled to the mouth of the Upper Lake and
farther ; most of them as far as the Island of Manitoulin
in Lake Huron, others to the straits of Mackenzie. The
lemainder of the population followed them, some in early
winter, some in the spring of the following year : all knew
that the vengeance of the mighty Sioux was certain. One
can imagine the pastor's feelings at such a calamity. His
own extremely reticent reports, as they reach us, are silent
on the matter. He tarried at La Pointe until the beginning
of the winter, but his ministrations were no longer needed.
'Confusion reigned in the colony. Perplexity and frightened
suspense filled all hearts. The Sioux formally declared war,
and at the same time, they returned to Father Marquette a
picture of the Immaculate Virgin, which he had sent them
as a greeting and token of friendship. He then resolved
also to leave the terror-haunted spot, and to repair to Sault
St. Marie, in order to consult with his superiors as to
future proceedings. He embarked in his frail canoe, and
at the end of a month arrived at the Falls of St. Marie,
utterly worn out, after having made his way through snow-
storms, hurricanes, and dangers of every sort. In all
probability, it was on this fearful journey that the seeds
^ere sown of the wasting disease which a few years later
caused the devoted priest such suffering.
The terrible occurrence at La Ponte rendered the
opening of the Illinois mission an impossibility. The
scattered flock must be gathered together again. A number
of the Huron and Ottawa Indians had long been settled in
the neighbourhood of Mackinac. Hither now came many
«Qf the fugitives from La Pointe. The missionaries followed
;them, and towards the end of winter a poor little chapel
506 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
was built on the cape opposite the Island of Mickilimackican
(Big Turtle) on the west, henceforth to be known as Point
St. Ignace. Here, where one day his bones were to rest.
Father Marquette began, in the spring of 1671, the work of
his third mission. Tbe success of his labours at St. Ignace
is best described in his own words. , In his report, written
the following year (1672), he says : —
They have been faithful in their attendance at chapel, have
willingly listened to my instructions, and have given their
consent to every regulation which I consider necessary to make
in order to wean them from their barbarous and dissolute
practices.
We must have patience with these wild souls who have
learned none but the devil's lessons, whose slaves they have ever
been, and who continually relapse into sin. God alone can
steady these fickle minds, grant them His grace, and preserve
them in it ; He alone can soften their hearts, whilst we weak
creatures try to stammer in their ears.
Even of the savage Sinago, of whom there were about
sixty in the mission, he was able thus to report : —
They are no longer the same as when at La Pointe. They
now desire to become Christians ; they bring their children to be
baptized, and come regularly to the chapel.
The humble missioner ascribes this change to the
influence of a brother Jesuit, Pere Andre, in whose mission
at Green Bay some of these had wintered. He continues : —
No matter how severe the weather, it did not prevent the
Indians from coming to the chapel. Some came twice daily last
autumn. I prepared some for confession who had not approached
the sacrament since their baptism, while others made a general
confession of their whole lives. I could not have believed thai
Indians could give such an exact account of everything that had
happened. Some spent a fortnight in preparation. From that,
time I noticed a complete change in them. With some, indeed, I
am not satisfied ; but if I only let fall a word of disapproval of
their conduct, they come at once to the chapel. I have hopes
that what they now do from motives of fear or respect, will be
one day done from love of God and the wish to save their souls.
The report ends with these words : —
So much, Rev. Father, have I to communicate about this
mission. They are milder, more tractable, and inclined to accept
THE CHURCH IN *THE DARK AGES' 507
instruction, than in any other district. But, at your word, I am
ready to leave them in the hands of another missioner, and go
forth to seek unknown tribes, to preach the great God of Whom
they know nothing.
Father Marquette was not mistaken in the good opinion
he had formed of his flock. In the course of a few years ^
Point St. Ignace became a model mission. Most of the
Hurons were thoroughly converted, and hundreds of the
Christian Ottawa Indians, whose numbers increased daily,
vied with them in devotional practices. The services of
three priests were required for the zealous flock. But our
missioner, meanwhile, had determined to follow the path
marked out to him by God, and to preach the Gospel to-
the tribes of the lovely Mississippi Valley.
To he continued. I^' LEAHY.
THE CHURCH IN *THE DARK AGES'
A.D. 800-1200.
THE old legend of * the dark ages ' is dead and buried,
and we have no wish to disinter it. Invented by the
Reformers, as an excuse for their rebellion, it did duty for
centuries as a war-cry, and was received as gospel by at
least ten generations of Protestants. All Catholic protests
and refutations were unheeded until, on the revival of
historical studies, some learned Protestants discovered the
imposture themselves. It needed no little courage to pro-
claim the discovery to their co-religionists, and the names
of Voigt, Hurter, and Maitland, the pioneers in the cause
of truth, deserve to be preserved and remembered. ^
Although no respectable writer ventures to quote the old
legend now, it still holds its ground in Gibbon, Hume,
^ History of Gregory VII., 1815, by Voigt, Professor of the University of
Halle. History of Innocent III., 1838, by Hurter, Swiss pastor. The DarkAye-o,
second edition, 1845, by Rev. S. R. Maitland, Librarian to Archbishop of
Canterbury.
508' THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Eobertson, and all our old writers. For writers of every
kind managed to give it a place in their books. Who
could expect to find it in Kobertson's History of
Charles F. ? Yet, in this single work, Maitland counts
thirteen cases of what he calls ' gross mistake or bare-
faced falsehood ' regarding this subject. Thus : ^ ' Many
of the clergy did not understand the Breviary which
they were obliged daily to recite; some of them could
scarce read it.' Again : ^ * Many dignified ecclesiastics could
not subscribe the canons of those councils in which they
sat as members.' Again : ^ * Even the Christian religion . . .
degenerated during those ages of darkness into an illiberal
superstition. . . . Instead of aspiring to sanctity and
virtue . . . they imagined that they satisfied every
obligation of duty by a scrupulous observance of external
ceremonies.'
These are not the worst cases, but they are fair
specimens of the barefaced assertions one may expect to
find in any English work published before the middle of
this century.
But we must not reopen a controversy which every
historian now looks upon as closed. Our object is to notice
a fact not much attended to by the disputants, namely, the
extraordinary manifestations of the Church's innate sanctity
during these *dark ages.' The legend was expressly in-
tended to proclaim to the whole world the complete
disappearance of her note of sanctity during this period.
Well, we confidently assert, that at no period of her history
was her innate sanctity more conspicuously manifested than
during these same * dark ages.'
No one ventures now to assert that any change took
place during this period in her doctrine, sacraments, or
sacrifice. We can, therefore, confine our attention to her
members. Not that we hope to find them all living up to
their profession, for * the wheat and the cockle ' must com-
mingle to the end ; but that the works of holiness were so
^general, and the number of singularly holy persons so great,
1 Page 10. 2 Page 16. '^ Page 103.
THE CHURCH IN *THE DARK AGES' 509
as to prove the mother that bore them and nourished them
by her doctrine and sacraments, to be the true Spouse of
Christ.
After the Church's successful labours during three
centuries for the conversion of the new races that suc-
ceeded the Koman Empire, she found herself suddenly
confronted by new difficulties. The new Christian states
formed under her influence were threatened with destruc-
tion ; and with them all her institutions of religion, learning,
and charity. Hordes of pagan Norsemen, delighting in
rapine and slaughter, strong, brave, and fearless, issued from
the north, and fell upon the Christian states. We know the
results in England and Ireland. Well, the state of the
Continent was not much better. Eohrbacher tells us^ that
during the ninth century the Norsemen had penetrated
everywhere by the great rivers, and had sacked Eouen,
Paris, Treves, Hamburg, Toulouse, Ajx-la-Chapelle, Tours,
Cologne, Blois, Beauvais, Bordeaux, Nantes, Liege, Angers,
Amiens, Cambrai, Arras, Metz, &c. ; and that the Saracens
had ravaged the whole south, even to the walls of
Kome. Churches and monasteries had a special attraction
for these fierce marauders, whose hatred of Christianity
equalled their love of plunder. Wherever they passed,
the churches and monasteries were in ruins, the clergy
and monks slain, dispersed, or carried into captivity ;
the schools closed, and the people like sheep without a
shepherd.
Such was the state of Europe about the close of the
ninth century. But the mercy of God was at hand. By
the conversion of Kollo, Duke of Normandy, in 912, an end
was put to the continental ravages of the Norsemen ;
King Alfred (871-900) broke their power in England ;
Pope Leo IV., in 849, secured Rome and Italy against the
Saracens ; and, though last not least, Brian Boru, in 1014,
delivered the schools and churches of Ireland from the
tyranny of the Danes.
It was no easy matter to repair the ruins, moral and
' Vol. xii.
510 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
material, that had accumulated during a whole century ;
but the Church and her children were equal to the emergency,
and in an incredibly short time the churches and monas-
teries were restored, the schools reopened, the parishes
supplied with pastors, abuses corrected, new institutions
founded, and almost every trace of devastation and ruin
obliterated.
But just at this point a persecution began, the most
dangerous that the Church had ever endured. The feudal
princes who had just been so liberal in their endowments,
claimed the right to dispose of the chief dignities of the
Church ; that is, in practice, to impose unworthy pastors
on the Christian people. The emperors of Germany and
the internecine factions of Italy, even claimed the right to
give Popes to the Church, and actually set up nineteen
anti-popes during this period. We need only name
Henry IV. of Germany, Philip I. of France, and our first
Norman kings, to remind our readers of the exorbitant
claims made by the princes of this period. A single example
will suffice to illustrate the working of this system.
St. Arriulph^ is a good specimen of the bishops at this time.
Born of noble parents, his early life was spent in the army,
and in the ordinary pursuits of a country gentleman. But
even then his morals were pure, and his virtues conspicuous.
One day, accompanied by his two esquires, he set out as if
to visit the court; but on arriving at Soissons they hung up
their arms in the Church of St. Medard, and entered that
great monastery as * soldiers of Christ,'
Arnulph made rapid progress in virtue and learning, and
voluntarily undertook the care of an aged monk who had
long inhabited a lonely hermitage within the enclosure. On
the death of this hermit he asked permission to occupy his
place ; and here he spent three years and a half in most
rigid silence, terrible austerities, study of Holy Scripture,
meditation and prayer, and even in the composition of
books, as his biographer thus tells us : lihrosque componejidi
own contemnendam adeptus est gratiam. At this time the
1 Surius, vol. viii.
THE CHURCH IN ^ THE DARK AGES^ 511
:abbot died, and the King intruded an unworthy favourite
named Pontius ; speedy ruin, temporal and spiritual, was
the result, until at last the monks, aided by the bishop and
the notables, appealed for mercy to the King, and Pontius
was withdrawn. Arnulph was elected, and compelled by
the bishop to quit his hermitage and undertake the charge.
In a very short time the havoc wrought by Pontius was
repaired, and Arnulph's gift of miracles became so notorious
that people flocked to him from all sides. But another
trial awaited him. An ambitious monk, named Odo, to
create a vacancy, induced the King to summon Arnulph to his
standard at the head of his tenants. Rather than return to
his old profession he resigned, and went back to his beloved
hermitage, taking care to have a holy and learned monk
named Gerald elected in his stead. But Pontius soon
reappeared, and took forcible possession by the aid of
Queen Berta ; Gerald had to retire, bjat Arnulph remained
unmolested in his hermitage. His fame had spread more
and more, and his cell was now constantly surrounded by
persons of every class seeking advice or the cure of their
diseases. At this time the bishop died, and a courtier named
Ursio was intruded. On hearing of this St. Gregory VII.
ordered his legate to call a provincial council to examine the
matter, and Ursio was deposed. Arnulph was elected, and
compelled by the legate to take charge of the see. Excluded
from his cathedral he took up his residence in the castle of
Ulcia, placed at his disposal by Count Theobald. Attracted
by his sanctity and miracles the whole diocese rallied around
him ; under the protection of the people he made his visita-
tions, administered confirmation, consecrated churches,
reformed abuses, and performed every other duty of his
office. He died in 1087.^
We have here a vivid picture of the times, and can easily
see how abuses were multiplied. These abuses were great
and numerous, but were never universal, and seldom of
long duration. An intruder was often followed by a saint,
or counterbalanced by a saint in the next diocese.
^ Our Snrius is the critical Turin ed. 1880.
512 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
St. Hugh of Grenoble found the diocese in a deplorable^
state, but long before his death (1132) it was the model
diocese of France. The notorious intruder Vidon (Gui) of
Milan found himself confronted by St. Peter Damian and
St. Anselm of Lucca. This constant succession of holy
bishops dimished the evils of lay-investiture ; the nominees^
of princes were not always unworthy ; and princes were not-
always able to have their own way. Yet the abuses arising^
from the system were enormous ; so enormous that, at first
sight, the Church's note of sanctity would seem to hav&
disappeared altogether.
But it is only at first sight ; for on closer inspection we
see clearly that never was her vitality and innate sanctity
more strongly manifested than during this very crisis^
Against the most powerful princes, the intruders in some
of the principal sees, the pretended rights of numerous
dignitaries and unworthy pastors, the temporal interests of
numberless families and dependants, the dead-weight of
custom, and the absence of all human aid, the cause of the
Church seemed quite hopeless ; and yet by the force of her
own innate sanctity she swept away all these abuses. The
first impulse came, as usual, from Kome. The Popes had
often condemned these abuses ; but they only yielded at
last to the open war against investitures which was pro-
claimed by St. Gregory VII., in 1075, and followed up ta
complete victory by his immediate successors. This victory
appears all the more glorious by contrast, for all these
abuses survive to this day in the East, where the schism
was consummated in 1053, and in the Kussian, English,
Prussian, Swedish, and every other national Church sepa-
rated from Kome. They are all mere slaves of the state,
departments of the civil government.
These signal victories over barbarism and Erastianism
would suffice to prove the Church's innate sanctity; but
much more remains to be told. Alban Butler's list of saints
for this period mounts up to one hundred and seventy-two ;
* all approved,' he tells us, * by the Holy See or by some
particular churches.' They had also the unanimous testi-
mony of their contemporaries, founded on their known
THE CHURCH IN *THE DARK AGES' 513
lives of heroic virtue, and their notorious gift of miracles.
Even such men as Alfred, Lanfranc or Urban II., great and
good as they were, had no claim to this distinction with
their contemporaries. It was only the notorious gift of
miracles that decided public opinion, lay and clerical ; for
the idea that miracles had ceased with the apostolic times
was unknown in those days. Lourdes has, in our own
time, almost completely silenced not only this Protestant
fiction, but also the rationalistic paradox regarding the
impossibility of miracles. It is not necessary for our pur-
pose to prove each and every miracle attributed to a saint ;
it is enough for us to know that the gift was so notorious as
to attract to him persons of every class and condition. That
there were many such the reader can verify for himself in
Surius, Guerin's Petits Bollandists, or even in Butler't;
abstracts.
In reading the lives of saints- one is struck by their
mysterious influence over their contemporaries. This
influence produces far-reaching effects if the saint happens
to occupy some responsible position. Let us now see
whether the Church produced such saints in those days.
"We begin with bishops, and, to enable the reader to judge
for himself, an authentic list is given, with the dates of
death ; —
St. Leo IV., Rome ... 855
St. Nicholas I., Rome - - - 8G7
St. Leo IX. , Rome - - - 1054
St. Gregory VII., Rome - - - 1085
St. Tharasius, Constantinople - - 806
St. Nicephorus, Constantinople - 828
St. Methodius, Constantinople - 846
St. Ignatius, Constantinople - - 877
St. Dunstan. Canterbmy - - - 988
St. Elphege, Canterbury - - - 1012
St. Anslem, Canterbury - - - 1109
St. Thomas Becket, Canterbury - 1170
St. Celsus, Armagh - - - 1129
St. Malachy, Armagh - - - 1148
St. Laurence, Dubhn - - 1180
St. William, York -• - - 1154
St. Ethelwald, Winchester - - 984
St. Wolstan, Worcester - - - 1095
VOL. VI. 2 K
514 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
St. Osmond, Salisbury - - - 1099
St. Kichard (Eng.), Andria - - 1199
St. Anscarius, Bremen - - - 865
St. Eembert, Bremen - - - 888
St. Frederic, Utrecht - - . 838
St. Ado, Vienne . - . 875
St. Ludger, Munster - - , • - 809
St. Conrad, Constance - - - 976
St. Donatus (Irish), Fiesoli - - 874
B. Peter Igneus, Albano - - - 1089
St, Uldaric, Augsburg - - - 973
St. Adalbert, Prague - - - » 998
St. Gerard, Toul ... 994
St. Wolfgang, Eatisbonne - - 994
St. Peter Damian, Ostea - - - 1072
St. Anselm, Lucca - - - 1086 .
St. Arnulph, Soissons - - - 1087
St. Gerard, Hungary - - - 1046
St. Boniface, Eussia - - - 1009
St. Stanislas, Cracow - - - 1079
St. Godhard, Hildesheim - - - 1038
St. Bernward, Hildssheim - - 1021
St. Annon, Cologne - - - 1075
St. Hugh, Grenoble - - - 1132
St. Peter, Tarentaise - - - 1174
St. Ubaldus, Gubbio - - - 1160
St. Anthelm, Bellay - - - 1178
St. Godfridus, Amiens - - - 1118
St. Galdinus, Milan - - - 1176
St. Otho, Bamberg . - _ ]139
St. Briino, Segni - - - 1125
SS. Cyrii and Methodius - - ninth century.
All these names are found in the Koman Martyrology.
Alban Butler has just a third more. How many such bishops
have the Eastern Churches produced since the schism ; or
the Anglican Church since its origin?
*Eex Justus erigit terram.'^ In these days when
kings not only reigned but ruled, a good king or queen
was an inestimable blessing. We all know the set form
in which the English people used to petition their kings :
' give us the laws of good King Edward.' It was so also
in Hungary, and wherever saints had reigned. Well, in
1 Prov. xxix. 4.
THE CHURCH IN 'THE DARK AGES' 515
those days the Church produced not only a Charlemagne
(814), and an Alfred the Great, but also —
St. Edward the Confessor - - 1066
St. Stephen of Hungary - - 1038
St. Ladislaus of Hungary ^ - 1095
St. Henry of Germany - - 1024
St. Winceslaus of Bohemia - - 938
St. Clans of Norway - - - 1030
St. Canute of Denmark - - - 1086
St. Eric of Sweden - - - 1151
St. Edward of England - - - 979
St. Margaret of Scotland - - - 1093
St. Mathildes of Germany - - 968
St. Leopold of Austria _ - . 1136
Alban Butler has a few more, but only these are found in
the Koman Martyrology.
But it was in the conversion of nations the Church's
holy fecundity was most strikingly manifested during this
period. It was precisely during those ' dark ages ' the light
of the Gospel was diffused in the north by the mission-
aries who converted Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland,
Moravia, Servia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Muscovy, and
several minor divisions of the Slavonians. To see the close
relations between the apostles of these nations and Eome,
we need only read the lives of SS. Cyril and Methodius,
St. Boniface, St. Anscarius, St, Kembert, and St. Adalbert.
That all these nations were converted by Catholic mission-
aries is beyond all question ; it is only about Eussia that
any doubt has been raised, but Alban Butler (July 24) has
clearly proved that Russia was Catholic long before the
Greek schism reached her.^ What a contrast between this
prodigious fecundity and the notorious sterility of the
Eastern Churches since the schism. They have been able,
by fraud and violence, to pervert Catholic populations, but
not to convert pagans, of whom Bussia has whole nations
under her rule. The extension of the schism into Siberia
and northern Russia was not by the conversion of pagans,
but by the migration of the populations to those unoccupied
1 See also Rohrbacher, vol. xiii., p. 236, xix. 130.
516 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
regions. To form an idea of the sterility of the Anglican
and other Protestant Churches, we need only read Marshall's
Christian Missions. The conclusion from all this is manifest.
* Go teach all nations . . . and behold I am with you all
days, even to the end of the world.' It is easy to see where
this promise has been realized.
Even Protestants have begun at last to see the value of
the religious orders, and to envy the Church's power of
producing them, just as they are needed for the wants of
the time : for the preservation of learning and culture, the
redemption of captives, the nursing of lepers, the care of
the sick, the improvement of agriculture, the foundation of
schools and colleges, the education of children, and all the
other wants of the Christian people. For, besides the
common object of their own sanctification, each of them
has some one of these special objects. Montalembert, m
his Monks of the West, has given a detailed account of the
immense services rendered by the monasteries from the
sixth to the tenth century ; but the blight of lay-investiture
had gradually fallen upon a great many of them, thus
creating an immense void. The Church thus finds herself
again confronted with many and urgent wants. Will she be
equal to the emergency ? Let us see.
New orders, protected in some way from this blight,
could alone meet the difficulty. Well, such orders she
produced : they spread with amazing rapidity, and were
protected by their poverty and the fame of their sanctity.
Cluny was founded in 910, and soon found itself at the
head of two hundred houses. Before 1158 it had given
to the Church many bishops and three great Popes,
St. Gregory VII., Urban 11. , and Pascal II. So great
was its influence on the culture and learning of the period
that the freethinker, Violet ie Due, does not hesitate to
call it * the cradle of modern civilization/ ^
The Carthusians were founded in 1085, had two hundred
houses at the end of the thirteenth century, and edify the
Church by their example and writings to this day.
* Dictioiwaiie des Dictionnairec, art. ^ Clnnj.
THE CHURCH IN 'THE DARK AGES* 517
The Cistercians were founded in 1098, and had five
hundred houses at the end of fifty years ; of these seventy-
two were founded by St. Bernard himself, five of them in
Ireland, five in England, thirty-five in France, eleven in
Spain, six in Belgium, five in Savoy, four in Italy, two
in Germany, two in Sweden, one in Hungary, and one
in Denmark.^ He was the most remarkable of the dis-
tinguished men produced by the Order, among whom were
two popes, forty cardinals, and a great number of bishops.
The Order of Premontre was founded in 1120. They
were Canons Kegular, spread rapidly, and had at one time
as many as thirteen hundred houses. Missions and
preaching were its chief external work. One can form
some idea of the effect produced by these missions from
the single instance given by Alban Butler in the life of
St. Norbert, June 6th. But more ample details are given
by Rohrbacher.^
Besides these great cosmopolitan orders, important
local ones were founded by St. Benedict Anian (821),
St. Romuald (1027), St. John Gualbert (1073) : stimulated by
the example and influence of all these new orders, bishops
and nobles everywhere began to restore or reform the
older monasteries ; most interesting details regarding this
movement are given by Montalembert.^
Yes, these fruits of sanctity are great and undeniable ;
but what about the masses of the people? Is not the
testimony of Robertson amply confirmed by the learned
Mosheim's account of these ' dark ages ' ?
Robertson only copied from Mosheim, one of the chief
agents in circulating these calumnies. No popery is the
main feature of his so-called History. At the tenth century
he exhausts the whole vocabulary of slander. Thus, ch, iii. :
Tbe state of religion in this century was such as might be
expected in times of ignorance and corruption. . . . The whole
Christian world was covered at this time with a thick and
gloomy veil of superstition. . . . Corruption and impiety now
reigned with a horrid sway ; licentiousness and dissolution had
infected all ranks and orders of men.
Rohrbaclier, vol. xv. ^ YqI. xv. ^ Vol. v., ch. 12.
518 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
By what proofs does he support these charges ? Were
these people atheists or agnostics ? Were they socialists or
anarchists? Were they wholesale swindlers, like our
French and Italian Masons ? Did they deal in fraudulent
monopolies, syndicates, or corjiers ? Did they exterminate
whole populations, like Irish landlords ? Were they hard-
hearted to the poor or the afflicted ? Was there any
abnormal licentiousness like that which exists not only in
the great cities of Europe and America, but even among
a great many rural populations? Not a bit of all this.
What then? Well, then, they believed in saints, relics,
monks, penance, reparation, pilgrimages, masses, festivals,
and devotion to the Virgin Mary. Is that all ? Absolutely
all that this so-called historian offers in proof of these
atrocious charges.^
The Church of God could not allow her children to lapse
into such a state. All these writers argue sophistically,
from the particular to the general, as Maitland fully proves;
his exposure of Eobertson's many sins of this kind is most
interesting and instructive. Garbled extracts formed another
weapon in their unholy warfare ; Mosheim used it freely and
without shame or remorse. The reader should see for
himself Maitland's exposure of his conduct.
We have no Mores Catholici for this period like that of
Digby for the middle ages; but we cannot believe in the
moral degradation of people subject, at least periodically,
to such influences as these already mentioned. Saints rose
up amongst them, like the prophets of old. Holy bishops
repaired the injuries inflicted by intruders. Holy kings
and queens reformed whole nations. Strict and fervent
monasteries arose upon the ruins of others. Who can calcu-
late the reforming influence of preachers like St. Bernard or
St. Norbert ? Or that of the many holy bishops whose
names we have given ? Not to go beyond our own country,
did not St Celsus and St. Malachy repair in a few years the
disorganization of two centuries ?
* He accepts as gospel all that Luitprand had written ag-ainst the
Popes ; but for this he is not so culpable, since even Catholic writers had
been deceived for a long time. See Rohrbacher, vol. xii., for the credence due
to Luitprand.
THE CHURCH IN *THE DARK AGES' 519
This and many similar examples remind us, that the
hearts of the people remained always sound in spite of the
scandals that arose from the confusion of the times. We
have numberless proofs of this. At the preaching of saints,
feuds and enmities were extinguished, restitutions and
reparations effected, calumnies retracted, and good works
set on foot, such as hospitals, roads and bridges, churches
and monasteries. Protestants deride this zeal for the
foundation of monasteries, and call it a superstition by
which great criminals hoped to atone for their iniquities ;
but they forget that the monastery in those days was the
school of the district, the medical dispensary, and the
centre of outdoor relief.^ Yes, even the Strongbows of
those days believed in the necessity of reparation, and made
some atonement to society ; a superstition not much in
fashion at present. How many hospitals have been founded
by the Panama robbers, or by our Irish exterminators ?
But works of spontaneous piety were far more numer-
ous than works of reparation. It would be impossible to
give any idea here of their number, but the reader can see
it in detail in vol. v., ch. xii., of Montalembert's great work.
In vain does Mosheim attempt to trace this prodigious
liberality to the scare that preceded the year 1000 ; for that
scare was transient, whereas this movement existed for
generations before and after.
In these chapters Montalerabert describes in detail a
movement still more extraordinary. Countless men and
women of rank and fortune devoted not only their wealth
but their own persons also to works of charity and religion.
This movement was no local or sudden outburst ; it was
universal, and ran through the whole of these * dark ages/
We have seen how numerous saints were in those days.
In reading their lives one is struck by two things ; nearly
all had received a liberal education, and their parents and
relatives were remarkable for great piety and intelligence.
This is just the reverse of what Mosheim tells us about
these ' dark ages.' Only that these saints had biographers,
* Moatalembert, vol. v.
520 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
we should never have known this interesting fact. These
saints had fellow-students at school and college ; but as
we know nothing about them they are counted among the
ignorant.
At the close of this period there is one landmark about
which there can be no mistake — the first crusade. Apart
from its merits or demerits, we learn from it one thing, the
spirit of the time. Can anyone say that there was then
any lack of faith, religious earnestness or self-sacrifice in
any rank or class whatever ?
We may now ask, what enabled the Church in those
days to repair the ravages of barbarism ; to save Christianity
and civilization from utter extinction ; to resist the erastian-
ism of the princes ; to save the Holy See from the despotism
of German emperors and Italian factions ; to convert so
many nations ; to overcome so many superhuman difficulties ?
"We may also ask at what period in those * dark ages '
did she cease to produce these other fruits of sanctity?
When did she cease to beget saints, to exhibit the gift of
miracles, to found religious houses, to provide for the poor
and the sick, to redeem captives, to protect the weak, to
defend the sanctity of marriage, to denounce the vices of
the great, to found schools and colleges for the poor, to
proclaim and defend the whole law of Christ ? We may
ask Reformers what Church separated from Rome ever
produced manifest fruits of sanctity like these ? We may
ask, in fine, in what period of her history, since the age of
the martyrs was the Church's note of sanctity more
strikingly manifested than during those so-called * dark
ages ' ?
Philip Burton, cm.
[ 521 ]
ST. PATRICK^S BIRTHPLACE
THEORISTS AND THEOEIES
The School of Lanigan
^ T710E more than a thousand years,' says Cardinal Moran,*
J] ' it was the uninterrupted tradition of Ireland and of
Scotland, that our apostle, St. Patrick, was born in the
Talley of the Clyde, not far from the city of Alclyde.' And
so long as the Irish tradition was preserved and handed on
by native Irish scholars, it was impossible that the truth
concerning this matter could ever be effaced, or even
obscured in the Irish heart. But the time came when the
succession of native Irish scholars was almost brought to
an end, through the disastrous influence of English misrule
and oppression.
The Irish nation had reverently carried on the history of her
apostle in £^n unbroken sequence from the saint's death, at the
end of the fifth century, until the compilation of the Booh of
Armagh, in the middle of the seventh, and thence down to the
age of the Four Masters. With the death of the latter, in the
seventeenth century, night began to gather round the history of
the Irish Church.^
Indeed, it was during the lifetime of the Four Masters
that this period of darkness and trial was ushered in. To
the government of Elizabeth belongs the odium and infamy
of having inaugurated that system of political oppression
and religious persecution which was for centuries identified
with English policy in Ireland : the Scottish princes of
the Stuart line can only be reproached with the minor
disgrace of having continued and extended a system of
jnisgovernment to which they must have felt themselves
' Irish Saints in Great Britain, p. 131.
2 See article in Dublin Bevieiv, July, 1880, 'The Apostle of Ireland and
his Modern Critics,' p. 85. The writer of these words is here an unexception-
able witness, no other than Father Morris himself. Why the knowledge of the
saint's birthplace, and that alone, must be excluded from this ' unbroken
sequence ' of tradition is a question worth answering ; but Father Morris
prudently refrains from suggesting an answer, and, indeed, even from'
.considering the question.
522 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORQ
already committed. It is worthy of note that the repres-
sive measures of the Virgin Queen contrast unfavourably
even with those of her polygamous father. ' Henry's
treatment of Ireland was, on the whole, considerate and
conciliatory, though with an occasional outburst of
cruelty.' ... * His policy, as carried out by Sentleger,
was thoroughly successful ; for the end of his reign found
the chiefs submissive and contented, the country at peace,
and the English power in Ireland stronger than ever it was
before.' Under Elizabeth, however, systematically reject-
ing the one wise alternative of a policy of conciliation, ' the
Government deliberately chose the other (alternative), and
carried it out consistently and determinedly. And not only
did they rule by force, but they made themselves intensely
unpopular by needless harshness.'^
No wonder, then, that in such a period of darkness and
trial the Irish people began to lose sight of some of the
traditional beliefs of their ancestors. The children of Erin,
persecuted for their religion, and oppressed by an alien rule,
had little leisure to turn their attention to such questions
as that of St. Patrick's birthplace ; and, besides this nega-
tive influence, another influence of a very positive and
tangible kind was now brought to bear upon Irish opinion*
The old kindly feeling which had united the Scotch and the
Irish — a feeling founded in a sense of kinship and of com^
munity of interest — now gave place to a sentiment of a
widely different nature. The time had gone by when the
Irish could willingly accept for their chosen king the gallant
brother of the Scottish hero-monarch, and the native
country of Edward Bruce was now only looked upon as
the recruiting-ground from which were drawn the instru-
ments of political and religious oppression. It was under
such altered circumstances, and, as it were, at the
* psychological moment ' (the reader will pardon the over^
worked phrase), that Dr. Lanigan came forward with
^ The above quotations are from Dr. P. W. Joyce, our latest and most
trustworthy Irish historian. See his Hhort History of Ireland, pp. 388, 39 1>.
foil.
ST. PATRICKS BIRTHPLACE 52^
his theory. Let us briefly review the history of his
attempt.
I. A prelude to Lanigan's theory
It must not be forgotten that Dr. Lanigan had a remark-
able, if not a distinguished rival as a claimant to the
discovery of St. Patrick's French birthplace. Mr. Patrick
Lynch published his Life of St. Patrick in 1828. This is
the gentleman who undertook to set our ancient authors
right as to the meaning of the word Lethal and whose rash
presumption Eugene O'Curry was afterwards at pains to
correct.^ Mr. Lynch, Hke all the rest of the theorists,
seriously professed to found his conjecture upon the testi-
mony of our early writers. He took the word Nemthur,
and, changing its supposed meaning of ' heavenly tower '
to ' holy tower,' he gravely informed the world that the
apostle of Ireland was born at (hqly) Tours ! The reader
who will take up a map of France, and observe the hope-
lessly inland situation of Tours, will have some idea of the
utter absurdity of this baseless conjecture.
In thus giving the first place to Lynch's theory, I am
moved by a special object. The reader will observe the
characteristics of his method — an utter disregard of the
traditional belief of both the Irish and the Scottish nation :
an unholy licence in dealing with the words of our vener-
able authorities ; a reckless daring in the framing of
conjectures ; and, finally, a seeming conviction that any
wild theory is good enough for the Irish race, and likely
enough to secure ready acceptance. And these same
characteristics will be found almost equally prominent in
the whole series of what we may call * holy tours ' of dis-
covery, undertaken by erratic theorists with the object of
finally 'fixing' St. Patrick's birthplace. From first to last,
from Mr. Patrick Lynch to Dr. Edward O'Brien, their
methods are ahke arbitrary, and their results are equally
improbable.
^ See MS. Materials of Ancient Irish History, p. 503.
524 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
II. Lanigan's theory
Of course Dr. Lanigan rejected the 'ingenious*^ con-
jecture of Mr. Lynch. Tours, he said, would not do at all ;
and in this judgment I fancy that all sane men will agree
with our distinguished ecclesiastical historian. But let
us see how Dr. Lanigan proceeds 'to make out his own
view.
The question of St. Patrick's birthplace is discussed in
the third chapter of the Ecclesiastical History of Ireland.
The writer begins with an appeal to authority : all our
theorists do this. * In these inquiries,' he says, 'my
principal guides shall be, next, after St. Patrick's confession
and his letter against Coroticus, Fiech's hymn or metrical
sketch of the life of our saint, and the life by Probus.*
He then proceeds to express a very high opinion of the
antiquity and authority of the hymn; but he arbitrarily
rejects the gloss which identifies Nemthur with Dumbarton,
though it is obvious that, without the gloss, the evidence
of the hymn is incomplete, and indeed almost unmeaning.
As to Probus, I hope later on to show how important this
writer's testimony really is, if only it be properly appre-
ciated ; and how conclusively his true meaning confirms the
claims of Kilpatrick, In the meantime it will suffice to
observe that, in spite of the pretended marshalling of
1 Dr. Lanigan had no difficuly in admitting that Mr. Ljnch's conjecture
was ' ingenious,' a fact which I recommend to the serious consideration of
Father Sylvester Malone : for this writer, more ingeniously than ingenuously
tries to make his readers believe that Dr. "Reeves favoured the ' Honna-Ventha-
Burii fiction, and this, simply because the deceased scholar promised to 'weigh
well your ingenious theory ' ! Father Malone adds, without the smallest
perception of the humour of the statement, that the letter containing this non-
committal phrase ' was probably the bishop's last literary correspondence.' At
the most, this only shows that the learned prelate should have been more
careful ; and that it is positively dangerous to treat Father Malone with
o' dinary unrestrained courtesy, seeing that we may be thus exposed to the risk
of being misconstrued and misquoted by one who is all too eager to grasp at any
pretence of support for his house of cards. See Lanigan's History, pp. £'2, 102 ;
and Malone's Chapters, p. 61. By the way, Father Malone in his strictures on
Dr. O'Brien (I. E- Recced, Aug., 1899), alludes to the author of the Spanish
theory as • our ingenious writer ' no less than nine timex. Is this Father Malone's
* ingenious ' method of intimating that he accepts Dr. O'Brien's view? For
myself, I have no difficulty in describing Father Malone as ' ingenious ' : I only
wish I ould call him ingenuous. But all this, by the way : I hope to deal with
the * Bonna-Ventha-Burii-ac ' fiction more directly later on.
ST. PATRICK'S BIRTHPLACE 525
* authorities,' what Lanigan really does is to appeal to pure
conjecture, and to endeavour to support the conjecture by
a reference to the text of the Confession. His additional
pretence of a local tradition in favour of his theory may be
at once dismissed. He signally fails to give anything like
a coherent statement of such a tradition ; and his failure has
been shared by all who have endeavoured to support a
similar contention. If the reader desires to appreciate the
value of the alleged local French tradition, let him turn to
pages 96-97 of the Ecclesiastical History, where he will
see a most amusing instance of flimsy special pleading,
which, in any other writer, Dr. Lanigan would have
torn to tatters with triumphant glee. If the reader
further desires to see what can be advanced at tlie present
day in favour of local French tradition, even by those who
are most willing to prove St. Patrick a Frenchman, let him
turn to the article by Fathei; Morris^ in the Dublin Beview
of Jan., 1883, where he will find that all the evidence forth-
coming consists of a * blackthorn ' producing the * Flowers
of St. Patrick,' and the name of the saint attached to a
local 'station,' S.Patrice. But these flowers, Hke those
immortalized by a certain popular lyricist, ' have nothing
to do with the case '; and the name of the * station ' has just
as little. Both flowers and railway station are ■ about
twenty miles from Tours,' between Tours and Angers.
Father Morris is no believer in Mr. Lynch's wild theory,
and he does not pretend that either flowers or station mark
the place where St. Patrick was born ; these objects merely
mark the place where the saint crossed the river Loire !
Having thus disposed of irrelevant matters, we may confine
our attention to a consideration of Lanigan's conjecture.
1. Dr, Lanigan s motives and partiality
At the outset one may be inclined to ask, Why did
Dr. Lanigan feel moved to put aside the old belief, and to
supply its place by arbitrary theory ? The answer to this
question is not far to seek. Let the reader remember
what has been already said about the gradual alienation of
Irish sentiment and Irish sympathy from Scotland and
526 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
from the Scotch. This feeling of hostility was at its height
when Dr. Lanigan was engaged in writing his history/
and sufficiently explains why Irishmen were disinclined
any longer to believe that their national apostle was a
Scotchman. It is as easy to indicate the reason why they
were ready to believe that he was a Frenchman. While
Scotland had been losing the sympathy of Ireland, France
had been gaining what Scotland lost. Then, towards the
close of the last century, the hopes excited by the French
devolution, and the events of '98, intensified the feel-
ing of good- will towards France ; and this sentiment of
cordiality and sympathy had, on the whole, grown rather
than diminished during the time Dr. Lanigan spent upon
the compilation of his history. Above all> France, in spite
of her crimes and blasphemies, was still regarded as a
Catholic nation, whereas Scotland was known to be un-
compromisingly Protestant and Presbyterian. These facts
must be steadily borne in mind by those who would
understand either the action of Dr. Lanigan, or the extra-
ordinary success by which his action was attended.
We are thus prepared to find that Dr. Lanigan treats
with scant courtesy the Irish and Scottish traditions in
favour of Kilpatrick. At the outset, we remark that his
knowledge of the locality, as in the case of all other
theorists, seems to have been singularly defective. One
meagre note sums up his sources of information, and this
note refers to Statistical Survey of Scotland (vol. v., at
' Old Kilpatrick '), and Garnett's Tour (vol. i., p. 6), and ends
with an unworthy sneer at a local popular story connected
with a tombstone in the Kilpatrick churchyard.^ Again, we
are amused at his special pleading, when he attempts to
explain away the force of the gloss on St. Fiacc's hymn.
His [the scholiast's] fixing upon Alcluit was very probably
owing to there having been a church there, or in the neighbour-
1 Dr. Lanigan published the first edition of his Ecclesiastical History in
1822 ; the second edition is dated 1829. But he seems to have been engagfed
upon the work for some twenty years before the earlier publication.
^Laniaran, p. 91, note (48). This unworthy sneer is unworthily reproduced
by Father Morris, See ray first article, I.E. Recced, October, 1S99, p. 34:1,
note 1.
ST, PATRICK'S BIRTHPLACE 527
hood, bearing the name of St. Patrick, whence he supposed that
Alcluit might have been the place of his birth. Or it might have
easily happened, that the name Kilpatrick gave rise to a vulgar
opinion among the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, that the
reason of its being so called was the saint's having been born
there.
This explanation reminds us of the eastern fable repre-
senting the earth as supported by an elephant, which in
turn is supported by a tortoise; but the comparison
between the fabulist and the historian is decidedly to the
advantage of the former, for Dr. Lanigan forgot the tortoise.
He omits to explain the striking fact, that the neighbour-
hood of Dumbarton was so peculiarly favoured above all
possible rivals by the existence of the church of the saint,
and by the possession of the name Kilpatrick,
Of course, Dr. Lanigan was not without a specious plea,
which might be made to serve as an apparent justification
for his arbitrary rejection of the claims of Scotland. The
plea is one which offers no difficulty to the minds of such
representative Irish scholars as Cardinal Moran, Bishop
Healy of Clonfert, or Dr. P. W. Joyce, or to the minds of
the long line of Protestant scholars, Irish, Scotch, English,
and foreign, from Dr. Petrie's day to the present time.
This fact alone is quite enough to dispose of the assumed
and recklessly asserted ' impossibility ' that St. Patrick
could be born at Kilpatrick. Nevertheless, as this fallacy
still continues to disfigure the pages of theorists and
sciolists, we may as well once for all give it its quietus^
We are told, that there was in Scotland no Eoman town
which bore the name of Bonavon Taberniae. Now, from
the times of Strabo and Ptolemy onwards, we have no
writer who can be relied upon as giving an exhaustive, or
€ven a complete account of the geography and topography
of Eoman Britain. Ptolemy, the latter of these two
writers, only brings us down to about the middle of the
second century. The materials used by both were certainly
collected from accounts compiled at a period anterior to the
actual date at which these geographers wrote. How, then,
can we argue from what these writers do not mention,
528 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
when there is question of the existence of a Koman town
in the latter half of the fourth century, ^.g., at least one
hundred and fifty years later ! To argue thus is simply to
argue from the plenitude of admitted ignorance.^ In any
other case the traditional account of the saint would have
been admitted, and the ancient .records of his life would
have been accepted as illustrating the state of his native
country at the time of his birth ; but, because certain
Irishmen preposterously claim the right to choose their
national apostle's birthplace, his own works are cross-
questioned and harrassed under torture, in order to wring
from them an avowal flattering to national vanity, or to the
conceit of a would-be ' discoverer.' But the most ludicrous
form of the objection is, when we are gravely assured that
St. Patrick could not have been born in Kilpatrick, because
his father was a decurio, and because in the neighbourhood
of Dumbarton there was in his time no municij)ium, or
colonia, or town that could have boasted of a curia. Once
more, the reader will remark, that this objection is not
recognised by Cardinal Moran, Bishop Healy, Dr. Joyce,
Dr. Petrie, &c., or indeed by any competent scholar, whether
Irish, Scotch, English, or foreign. We know something of
the character and attainments of the men who do recognise
and urge it. And we are forced to ask : Do these objectors
knov/ what they are talking about? Do they understand
what period of Eoman history they are discussing ? It is
notorious that from the time of the Emperor Caracalla, i.e.,
from the second decade of the third century, the full rights
of Eoman citizenship were conferred upon all the free
inhabitants within the limits of the Eoman world. Observe,
it is not merely a question of the minor privileges, or
inferior degrees of autonomy hitherto enjoyed by certain
coloniae or municipia ; we are not dealing with the limited
Latijiitas : for the full Eoman Civitas, with all its attendant
1 That Dr. Lanigan (should refer to the supposed Richard of Cirencester
was excusahle ; but that Father Malone, in the year 1892, in his Chapters, p. bl,
should still rely on Eetram's ' impudent forgery ' (as Dr. Skene terms it), is
positively disgraceful — all the more so as Father Malone would apparently have
his readers believe that he is acquainted with the contents of Dr. Skene's
works.
ST, PATRICK'S BIRTHPLACE 529
rights and privileges, was conferred upon every free inhabitant
of every town throughout the Eoman Empire.^ The fact is
recorded by Gibbon ; it is commented upon by Niebuhr :
indeed, I believe it would be difficult to find an historian o i
the Eoman Empire who does not refer to the action of
Caracalla. Yet our theorists assure us, that in references
to a period nearly two hundred years after Caracalla's death,
i.e., at the close of the fourth century, they cannot find a»
municipium, or a curia, in north Britain. They can find
what nobody wants — the birthplace of St. Patrick, in places
where nobody expected it, and where none but themselves
will acknowledge it ; but they cannot discover a fact ol
which any intelligent schoolboy might well be ashamed to
remain in ignorance.
2. Dr. Lanigan's conjecture
It would be tedious and unprofitable to enumerate and
correct all Dr. Lanigan's erroneous guesses and statements.
He was certainly a man of great learning for his time.
Indeed, the great pity was that he had no rival in his own
day and in his own particular department. He had merely
foils, whose efforts to oppose or rival him would simply
have served to emphasize his absolute supremacy in his
own department. But the progress of knowledge cannot
be arrested by any man or for any man's sake ; and many
of Dr. Lanigan's mistakes have long since been corrected.
There is no use in * slaying the slain.' We may, therefore,
be content to state his hypothesis. Indeed, to state it is
to refute it ; for it would be hard to find any competent
scholar at the present day who would venture to uphold
Lanigan's theory in the particular form in which it was
1 The writer of the article * Civitas ' in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and
Roman Antiquities, while recognising a certain limitation in the application of
Caracalla's decree, hears decisive witness to the main fact here noted. ' The con-
stitution of Antoninus Caracalla, which gave the Civitas to all the Roman world,
applied only to communities, and not to individuals ; its etiect was to make
all the cities in the empire municipia.' I may add, that some writers carry
back this extension of the ' Civitas ' to an earlier date, ascribing the measure
to Marcus Aurelius (a.d. 161-180). These authors suppose that Caracalla.
merely removed ctrtain restrictions which limited the application of tLe
earlier measure.
VOL. VI. 2 L
530 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
first advanced. Nay, more, we shall presently see that his
own immediate followers were compelled to acknowledge
his error, and were driven to seek such modifications of
bis view as might seem to render the French hypothesis
still in some measure defensible. Here, then, is what
Dr. Lanigan boldly advanced : — ^ «
Bonavem, or Bonaven Taberniae was in Aremoric Gaul, being
the same town as Boulogne sur mer in Picardy. The addition
of Taberniae marks its having been in the district of Taravanna
or Tarvenna, alias Tarabanna, a celebrated city not far from
Boulogne, the ruins of which still remain under the modern name
of Terouanne. The name of the city was extended to a consider-
able district around it, thence called pagus Tarabannensis, or
Tarvanensis regio, &c.
Probus calls St. Patrick a Briton, and so is he usually called
in chronicles, breviaries, &c. In the older tracts of this kind
Britain was said in general terms to have been his country ; but in
some of the later ones the word Great has been added to Britain.
To guard against this interpolation, the corrector of the Breviary of
Eouen has in the lessons for St. Patrick marked the Britain, his
real country, by adding Gallicana. This was the Britain which
Probus had in view, and which St. Patrick himself must have
meant, when he mentions his having been in Britain with his
parents ; for there is no other Britain, in which the town
Bonaven Taberniae can be met with. But this Gallican, or
rather Armoric, Britain must not be confounded with the
country now called Brittany ; for it lay much farther to the
north. Pliny places in the very neighbourhood of Boulogne,
a people called Britons, whose territory stretched to near
Amiens, &c.2
The above extracts present a strange medley of bad
fzeography, and contain as many mistakes as phrases.
These mistakes have long been generally acknowledged ;
and the reader shall presently see how even Lanigan's own
followers did not fail to take exception to his statements.
But the misrepresentation in connection with the Eouen
jBreviary calls for immediate protest. From the first
occurrence of the earliest forms of the name Britain, the
word, when used absolutely, admittedly applies to Great
Britain rather than to France. This has always been true,
and remains so even to the present time. If, then, we find
1 Ilistcry, p. 93. ^ n^d^ p. 103.
ST. PATRicK^s Birthplace 531
the word Britain used apparently without definite quali-
fication, and add the word Greats with a view to making
the expression more definite or more emphatic, we are
hardly going beyond the limits of legitimate comment, or
doing what any honest man may fear to do. But to take
upon ourselves to add the word French, or its equivalent, so
as to give to the word Britain its less usual sense, is obviously
tantamount to taking such a liberty with the text as
amounts to absolute falsification. We have already seen
how such a falsification was committed in the case of the
Eouen Breviary ; ^ and in the very passage now under
consideration Dr. Lanigan admits the late introduction
of the word GaZZw;a?ia, an addition whose significance has
been already pointed out, as indicating that the original text
was felt to be adverse to the French theory. Yet here we see
Dr. Lanigan actually endeavouring to fix upon the natural
and obvious change that odium of 'interpolation' which
justly attaches to a change to the unusual and ujinatural
sense of the word Britain. It has over and over again been
pointed out that in the whole history of Latin literature,
down to a period long posterior to the time of St. Patrick,
i.e.y down to the end of the sixth century (one hundred
years after the saint's death), no writer ever referred to any
part of France under the name of Britanniae ; yet this
plural form is that which occurs in the saint's own writings.
Again, even at the late date mentioned, the plural form
only received such an application from the influence of
an obviously false analogy : because both Britannia and
Britanniae had been applied to Great Britain, people
began to think that both forms indifferently might also
be applied to part of France. But this is not all.
Even the singular form, Britannia, was not used until a
period [so late as must render its use by St. Patrick to
indicate a French province practically impossible. The
earliest occurrence of this usage is in the year a.d. 458 ; and
as^St. Patrick wrote his Confessio towards the close of
the century, and had long ceased to have direct personal
1 See I. K. Record, Ntvember, 1899, p. 447, note 2.
532 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
intercourse and contact with France, it is utterly un-
reasonable to suppose that the saint could have adopted
the late French usage, or that such usage could have
penetrated to Ireland and influenced his style within
a period of some thirty years. Indeed, no one who has
ever read a single line of St. Patrick's works can be
ignorant how little they favour the supposition that
the author could have copied his modes of expression
from the fashions of speech then prevailing on the
Continent.
To these considerations another may be added.
Would a native of New Britain^ New Ireland^ or Nova
Scotia, be likely to announce to a Cape Town or New
York audience that he was born in Britain, Ireland, or
Scotia? If he did, everyone would denounce him as a
pretender and a deceiver. Yet, the case is in some respects
stronger with regard to St. Patrick. He could not look
towards France without having his attention called to that
Britain which intervened. How, then, could he apply the
name Britain to a French province, ignoring at the same
time that nearer, more obvious, and better known Britain
which must have inevitably suggested itself to the minds
of his readers ? From whatever point we view the
matter, it is quite clear that the attempt to make out that
St. Patrick was born in France violates all the laws of
probabiHty and all the rules which govern the interpretation
of documentary evidence.
So much for Dr. Lanigan's principal geographical
argument. That argument is hopelessly wrong ; and may
serve to give a fair idea as to the question, how far he may
be trusted in the rest of his topographical speculations.
3. Dr, Lanigan's controversial tone
Before passing on to the consideration of the attempts of
Dr. Lanigan's followers, a few words must be said about
the historian's manner of discussing his predecessors.
O'Curry justly characterizes him a 'far too dogmatic writer.'
Such, indeed, he is ; but, as already intimated, we may
charitably find a partial excuse for this fault when we
ST. PATRICK^S BIRTHPLACE 533
remember that Dr. Lanigan's unchalleoged and unrivalled
position as an historical authority was only too apt to
encourage a somewhat recklessly dogmatic manner. But
what shall we say of his contemptuous tone, when he was
engaged in opposing the very greatest and most respected
writers who had preceded him ? Think of how he treats
the learned and venerable Father John Colgan ! Colgan
is accused of having * committed heaps of blunders,' of
indulging in * reasoning too pitiful to produce any effect,'
of ' swallowing all this stuff ' about the Campus Taher-
naculorurriy of practising * evasion,' and of not having read,
at least with attention, the Confession of St. Patrick ! ^
Usher also * swallows' things, i.e.^ 'fables,' and uses
* evasion ! ' ^ And the Bollandists, like a set of forward
and peevish children, are rebuked for being * angry with ' a
writer, whose unsupported assertion not even Dr. Lanigan's
special pleading can serve to render^ probable.^ Further-
more, the Vita Quarta, published by Colgan, and ascribed
by him to St. Eleran the Wise, is represented as contain-
ing ' many fooleries ;" and the Scholia on St. Fiacc's hymn
are recklessly lumped together, and denounced as a ' hodge-
podge collection of contradictory notes ! ' *
The writers thus scoffed at by Lanigan have since been
amply avenged ; their traducer has been convicted of having
misapprehended the meaning of those very documents
which he so scornfully refused to follow. But is it not
time that Lanigan's uncritical methods of criticism were
more generally recognised, and that a distinct and forcible
protest should be entered against the tone of one whose
irreverent and dogmatic theorising has proved the fruitful
parent of confusion in Irish opinion and in Irish literature ?
III. Cashel Hoey^s supplement to La?iiga7i^s theory
Whatever be Mr. J. Cashel Hoey's defects, it is a relief to
turn to his more gentlemanly utterances after the crudities
^ See Lanigan's History, pp. 85, 91, 93, 87, 89, .and 92. In the last two
passages the more obvious sense conveyed certainly is ' that Colgan had not
read the Confession at all.'
2 Ibid., pp. 99, 105. 3 j{,ifi^ p 96_ 4 jhid,^ pp. 85, ''0
534 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
of expression indulged in by Dr. Lanigan. Mr. Hoey
undertook to ' perfect ' and to ' complete ' ' the proof which
Dr. Lanigan had commenced.' ^ The work of the disciple
was composed for delivery before the members of the
* Academia of the Catholic Keligion,' a society founded in
London by Cardinal Wiseman in «the year 1861, and was
published along with other essays in a volume edited by
Dr. Manning, in 1865. The work of the master had then
been before the world for some forty years, and the world
had begun to discover certain insuperable difficulties in
Dr. Lanigan's theory. The first difficulty arose from a
recollection of the long and venerable series of authorities
in favour of the Scottish view.
1. Casliel Hoey's admissions
The following extracts, though they fail to do justice ta
the point, are still worthy of special attention : —
The theory most generally accepted, and which certainly has
the greatest iveight of authority in its favour,- is that which
assumes that St. Patrick was born in Scotland, at Dumbarton, on
the Clyde . . . The opinion that St. Patrick was a Scotchman
has the unanimous assent of all the antiquaries of Scotland. . . .
I have to add to the Scotch authorities and pleadings, however,
all the best of the Irish. That St. Patrick was born in Scotland,
is the opinion of Colgan, a writer whose services to the history of
the Irish Church cannot be excelled and have not been equalled.
. . . The Bollandists accepted it without hesitation ; and 1 hasten
to add to their great sanction that of the two most learned anti-
quaries of the latter days of Ireland, Dr. John 0 'Donovan and
Professor Eugene O'Curry. They, I am aware, were also of
Colgan' s opinion ; and so, I believe, are Dr. Eeeves and Dr. Todd,
whose views on most points of ecclesiastical antiquities connected
with Ireland are entitled to be named with every respect.
This significant passage, penned by an adversary who
was candid so far as his unconscious racial prejudices
allowed him, does credit to the writer ; but I cannot let
it pass without protesting against the words, Vtheory,'
* assumes,' and 'pleadings.' It is notorious that the
* theory,' * assumption,' and special ' pleading ' are entirely
1 Essays on Religion and Literature, p. 109 foil.
ST. PATRICK^S BIRTHPLACE 53 >
on the side of our adversaries. I must also protest against
some phrases which I have here omitted, and which show
the writer's ignorance concerning the true state of th?"
Strathclyde district during the interval between St. Niniaii
and St. Mungo.^
Mr. Hoey also complains that he could not, * in the
course of a careful examination of the district, and the
recognised authorities, concerning its topography, arrive at
any acceptable evidence on the subject.' Well, the reader
knows that the local topography and local authorities have
succeeded in satisfying better scholars and better judges^
than Mr. J. Cashel Hoey. And a glance at my last article
will furnish him with a good deal of very relevant local
information, much more than can be found respecting any
other place in Europe, so far as the question of St. Patrick's
birthplace is concerned.^
2. Cashel Hoey's refutation of Lanigan.
Mr. Hoey partly agrees with Dr. Lanigan's conjectures,
and partly dissents from them ; but his dissent is more
emphatic than his agreement. The pupil says of the
master : —
1 will not say that his proof with regard to the identity of
Boulogne with Bonaven is conclusive ; but if the whole of his
proof rested on as strong presumptive grounds, little would
remain to be said on the subject. The second part of it is^
^ One has to complain of a similar display of ignorance en the part of alt
the anti-Scottish theorists. I have already warned the reader against their
ignorance of the topography of the Kilpatrick neighbourhood ; I must now
warn him against their ignorance of the civil and ecclesiastical history of the
country. I claim to be in a much better position than any of them to recon-r
struct the history of the period above referred to, the period coincident with
St. Patrick's early life. I hope, in time, to publish i-uch a reconstruction,
which will serve to confute the wild and general assertions of interested critics.
Meantime, I may call attention to the significant fact, that those who talk 8C»
glibly about the supposed utter desolation, dechristiani^ing, and barbarism of
the Dumbarton district at the time referred to, are unable to produce a swgla
line from any authority who ever gave such an account of the district in
question. Our theorists, therefore, are merely arguing, to use a phrase already
employed, from the plenitude of admitted ignorance.
2 Father Morris also expresses dissatisfaction with the result of his personal
visit to Kilpatrick. This dissatisfaction I can understand, for better reasons
than any wluch he could assign. That a distinguished writer like him should
6^6 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
however, in my humble opinion, wholly erroneous . . . The
passage identifying the Taberniae of Boulogne with Therouanne
is, in my opinion, altogether incorrect.'^
Mr. Hoey then adds some reasons for his dissent, and
finally sums up his judgment on his master's performance
m the following pitiless exposure of .Lanigan's ignorance f —
In fine, he confuses Therouanne, which is at a distance of
thirty miles from Boulogne, and certainly did not stand in the
relation he supposes to it, wath another city so7ne tweyity miles
still farther away. But Malbrancq, who was his chief authority,
does not omit to mention that Tervanna and Taruanna are tivo
absolutely distinct places : Tervanna was the old Roman name of
the town now known as St. Pol — Taruanna that of Therouanne.
Cashel Hoey's conjectures
Having thus played Balaam to Lanigan's Balac, and
condemned what he was rather expected to approve,
Mr. Hoey next endeavours to establish some conjectures
of his own. The attempt was somewhat rash. If Lanigan
had failed, how could Hoey hope to succeed?
Magna petis, Corydon, si Tityrus esse laboras.
But, as Tacitus puts in, * speciem magnae excelsaeque
gloriae vehementius quam caute petebat.' The desire to
distinguish himself as a discoverer betrayed him, as it has
betrayed other Patrician theorists, into a course of action
in which he showed more zeal than discretion. He first
proceeds to look for Emtur, or Nemtur, incidentally giving
Professor 0' Curry a lesson in Irish. He fixes upon the
river, Em, or Hem, and upon the neighbouring town, and
triumphantly observes : —
The name is Tournehem, or, as it was written in Malbrancq' s
think it worth his while to repeat his misleading- jibe and absurd etymology in
his Ireland and St. Patrick, published in 1892 (see p. 27, note 2), is a disgrace
to Irish scholarship, or, rather, to pretended Irish scholarship. Cf . my first article
I. E. Recoed, October, 1899, p. 341, note. Tt may be added that, so far as I
can ascertain, Mr. Hoey and Father Morris are the only anti-Scottish theorists
who have honoured Kilpatrick with a visit. Neither writer was satisfied with
his visit. But as neither takes the trouble to explain either what he expected
to find, or what he actually found, their dissatisfaction is of no consequence to
anyone but themselves. All we can say is, that Father Morris apparently ' came
to scoff,' and that Mr. Hoey did not 'remain to pray.'
1 Essays on Religion and Literature, pp. 119-120.
■^ Ibid'., ^.\2^.
ST. PATRICK'S BIRTHPLACE 537
time, Tur-n-hem. The toiocr and the river show the derivation of
the word ab a glance. The exigencies of Irish verse simply caused
their transposition!
And so St. Fiacc's Nemthur turns out to be Tur-n-hem !
Poor St. Fiacc ! Did ever Irish saint or writer suffer such
a reverse before ? But Mr. Hoey makes another discovery.
^ight miles from Tournehem be finds Taberniae at Desvres.
IHe solves the etymological question by assigning to the
name of this latter town two different derivations.^ When
death overtook Mr. Cashel Hoey, he had not yet; apparently,
made up his mind which derivation he should accept. Neither
has the present writer yet decided this delicate question :
the reader may choose for himself.
I am not aware that any serious scholar, or, indeed, any
serious person, has ever been moved to adopt Mr. Hoey's
ingenious conjectures. They, therefore, need not detain us
any longer. It would be superfluous to refute them : one
does not refute the nonsense oi Alice in Wonderland, But
before dismissing Dr. Lanigan's disciple, it is worth while
to remark that his work was not entirely in vain. He
betrayed the fact that his master's theory was no longer
tenable. He set out intending to * complete ' Dr. Lanigan's
view : he did more ; he * finished ' it.
IV. Father Morris s forlorn hope
The French theory of St. Patrick's birthplace is dead :
it died of inherent weakness. The reader who has attentively
perused the preceding pages can have no doubt of the fact.
But, just as on the death of Mohammed, some of his
infatuated followers refused to believe that their idol had
passed away, so there are some people who, in defiance of
tail that history and tradition can say, and in contempt of
the weight of authority derived from the highest type of past
and present scholarship, are so entirely dominated by their
preconceptions that they will not believe that Laniganism
is no more. Such a man is Father Morris. He may be
taken as the last representative of a view which is so
1 Essnijf. pp. 126-133.
538 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
destitute of any power of self-defence that it dares not take
up a definite position. Observe his own words : —
It is not our intention to entangle ourselves and our readers-
in the controversy concerning the precise place in Gaul where
St. Patrick was born : our only concern here is with his nationality ,.
as evidenced by his own language, and his relations with.
St. Martin. We regard this fact as much more important than-
the identification of his birthplace.^
We have already seen that St. Patrick's * nationality, as-
evidenced by his own language,' is certainly British, not
French ; and to this point we shall presently return. But,,
without any intention of a joke, we may congratulate
Father Morris on his unconscious frankness. * Anywhere
in France ' will suit him ; and his own language shows that
this simply means * anywhere but Scotland.'
1. Father Morrises attack ;
In this spirit of unworthy prejudice, he makes a last
desperate attack upon the Scottish traditional view. His
weapon is a sum in simple addition — a weapon as simple as
David's pebble from the brook ; and if it be not equally
effective, the failure arises from want of skill on the part of
the wielder. He triumphantly presents us with a sum in
simple addition ; and the sum is wrong ! Let him speak for.
himself: — '
St. Patrick died a.d. 492, and he himself tells us that he was^
* about sixteen years of age' (fere sexdecim) * when carried captive^
to Ireland, and that he remained six years in servitude ; ' he was>.
therefore, in his twenty-second year when he escaped. Now^
St. Martin died a.d. 397. Ninety-five years, therefore, intervened
between his death and that of his disciple. As St. Patrick was-
twenty-tivo incomplete at the time of his escape, if we add to this
the four years of Probus, then the one hundred and twenty years
of St. Patrick's life follow as a necessary consequence of his
connection with St. Martin ; we have the beginning and the
end.^
Passing over this dogmatic definition of the date of
St. Patrick's death, I remark that according to Father
1 Ireland and St. Patrick, p. 21 : cf. Dublin Review, January, 18S3, p.
2 Ireland and St. Patrick', p. 11 ; Dublin Review, p. 6.
ST. PATRICK'S BIRTHPLACE 539
Morris's own figures, we have more than one hundred and
twenty years ; we have one hundred and twenty-one years
incomplete. Why neglect the extra months ? Is it because
it suits the author's purpose ? If so, I protest, not only
against his want of accuracy, but against his want of
candour ?
If Father Morris indignantly replies that he states the
sum at one hundred and twenty years because the one
hundred and twenty-one years are incomplete, I rejoin,
with equal, but more just indignaion, that I will force him
to be consistent. The ninety-five years are also incomplete.
So, as we must assume, are the four years of Probus, during
which St. Patrick and St. Martin were together ; for who
can suppose that they were years of mathematically exact
length ? If Father Morris can thus add together three terms
of incomplete years, and obtain a sum of years complete
and 'precise, will he kindly show us how he does it?
This is the sort of pretended demonstration with which
Irishmen are to be cheated out of the belief of their
fathers !
And how long does Father Morris suppose St. Patrick
would have taken to go from his home at Dunbarton to
St. Martin's abode — he who apparently believes that the
saint voyaged from Ireland to France in the impossibly short
interval of three days ? I say * impossibly short ; ' for a
modern steamer will take about the time in question to
accomplish the voyage. If he cannot find room in his
calculations for the short interval of a feio days, or weeks
required for St. Patrick to visit his friends at Dumbarton, let
him abandon his incomplete chronology; for Father Morris's
mathematics and logic are as incomplete as are the items
with which he trifles. This is the last desperate attack
upon the Scottish position; desperate, not because it is
formidable, but because it is obviously despairing,
2. Father Morris's defence
The same distinguished writer has the credit of making
the last attempt to defend the illogical statement, that the
word Britanniae used by St. Patrick can refer to France
5f0 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
instead of to Britain. Once more, let him speak for him-
.self:—
It has been argued that this predominance of the plural form
points to Britannia Major, and its various divisions under the
Komans. We find, however, in the writings of St. Jerome, that
in more than one place he adopts the singular, Britannia, in
referring to Great Britain, while Venerable Bede uses the
■singular and plural indiscriminately. So, even supposing the
texts were unanimous, no valid argument can be drawn from
them.^
Passing over some minor points, let us observe the
writer's main contention. He desires to prove that the
plural form Britanniae can be applied to France ; and he
proves instead that the singular^ Britannia can be applied
to Britain ; he would fain show that singular and plural
indiscriminately can be referred to France ; and, instead of
this, he shows that singular and plural indiscriminately can
be referred to Britain. He attempts to prove what none
"but the prejudiced can admit ; he succeeds in proving that
which no one has the least inclination to question.
There is a story told of an Irishman who was once
directed to give * an evasive answer ' to an expected inquiry.
The point of the story consists in the fact that the answer,
when given, was not merely * evasive,' but utterly irrelevant.
-Now, I have no certain knowledge of Father Morris's
nationality ; but, after this attempt of his to answer a very
pertinent objection, I am strongly inclined to claim him as
a fellow-countryman. The only thing which makes me
hesitate is the reflexion that my countrymen are generally
considered to be * good at mathematics.'
We have now reviewed the history of the attempt to
make out a French birthplace for St. Patrick. We have
seen the character of the theorists : we have noted their
contempt for national tradition, their recklessness of state-
ment, their wildness in conjecture, and their ignorance of
Iiistory and topography. We have seen them reduced to
silence, or to a feebleness of utterance more significant than
silence itself. In spite of the knowledge that the prejudices
1 Ll. cits., pp. 13 and 25.
ST. PATRICK'S BIRTHPLACE 541
of my countrymen and of the Irish priesthood are deeply
engaged in this matter, I do not hesitate to call for a
reversal of their former judgment. * And they said : These
are thy gods, 0 Israel, that have brought thee out of the
land of Egypt.' ^
These are thy guides, 0 Erin, who engaged to deliver
thee from the unwelcome Scottish view, and to lead thee to
the promised land of France ! What must we think of
them now ? Their promises are unfulfilled ; and the only
result of their efforts has been to make us disunited amongst
ourselves, and to render us a laughing-stock amongst the
nations of the earth. The French view is dead : it died of
an incurable disease — congenital asthenia. Is it not time
that we returned to the view of our ancestors, to the view
of O'Donovan and O'Curry, of Petrie and of Eeeves, of
Cardinal Moran and Bishop Healy, of the Bollandists and
of Alban Butler, of all that is best and -most trustworthy in
scholarship, whether at home or abroad, whether in the past
or in the present history of our land ?
I shall give the words of some of these authorities in
a subsequent article, for I have yet to review the South
British theories. This, however, will be a comparatively
simple task. In the meantime, I commend these pages to
the earnest consideration of my countrymen ; for what I
have written has been written in the best interest of
Ireland, as well as in the cause of truth.
Gekald Stack.
Note.— In my last article (I. E. Record, Nov., 1899, p. 447, line 12),
I must ask the reader to delete the intrusive syllable ' op,' which occurs in
the quotation of the gloss on St. Fiacc's hymn. In the same passage it
will be observed that I have followed the reading, ♦ tuaiscirt,' North,, as
given by Cardinal Moran and Bishop Grant {Dublin Review,, April, 1880,
p. 294, and April, 1887, p. 336, note 3), rather than the reading of the
1. E. Record, March, 1868, p. 282, note 1. In the present instance I am
merely correcting a printer's error ; in other matters, I may be allowed to
crave the reader's kind indulgence. I write at a distance from ail our
great collections of Celtic manuscripts, and I am debarred from consultmg
many valuable sources of information which are open to my more fortunate
contemporaries. 1 am ready to acknowledge with gratitude any authentic
corrections with which I may be favoured.
^ Exod. xxxii, 4.
[ 542 ]
Botes anb (Sluedes
THEOLOGY
PROTESTANTS AS SPONSORS AT THE BAPTISM OF
CATHOLICS
Rev. Dear Sir, — May Protestants be admitted to act as
Sponsors for Catholic children ? Sometimes Protestants present
themselves on these occasions, and a priest does not always find
it easy to refuse to admit them. J. J. C.
The practice of admitting heretics is manifestly opposed
to the ends which the Church has in view in enjoining that
sponsors should assist at baptism, and undertake, if needs be,
the spiritual care of the person baptized. No wonder, there-
fore, that the Ritual excludes heretics from the office of
sponsor, and that the prohibition of the Eitual has been
frequently confirmed by the replies of the Roman Con-
gregations. The Holy Office in a reply, May 3, 1893,
stated that, when a heretic had been named as sponsor
by the parents, it would be better, if necessary, to administer
baptism without any sponsor. '
DISPENSATION TO READ FORBIDDEN BOOKS
Eev. Dear Sir, — Will you kindly state in the I. E. Record
whether the bishops of Ireland have power to permit the
faithful to read books of heretics propounding heresy ?
CONSULENS,
I. A bishop cannot, of course, permit the reading of
these books unless there be some necessity for reading
them ; morevoer, there must be no serious danger to the
faith or morals of the person to whom the permission is
granted.
^ Act. S. S. t. 20, p. 448
NOTES AND QUERIES 543
II. By his ordinary power any bishop may, in particular
€ases of urgency, when, v.g-, the necessity for immediate
refutation does not permit the delay of referring to Kome,
grant a dispensation to anyone — a layman or a cleric — to
whom the work of refutation may be entrusted.
III. The Irish bishops have, in virtue of the Formula
Sexta, power to grant, for sufficient cause, to priests quos
j)raecipue idoneos et honestos esse sciant — not to other clerics,
or to laymen — a dispensation ad tewpus permitting the
reading of forbidden books. In this faculty a few books
are by name excepted, together with all those treating de
■obscoenis et contra religionem ex professo. A dispensation
granted in virtue of this faculty is subject to the condition,
that the holder of the dispensation keeps the forbidden
books out of the reach of those who are not authorized to
read them. The faculties of the Formula Sexta require,
as everyone knows, to be renewed periodically. The bishop,
as we have above remarked, can grant the dispensation
only ad tempus. How is the restrictive clause ad tempus
to be interpreted ? It is commonly held to convey, that the
bishop cannot grant a dispensation available beyond the
time at which his own indult expires. It has been,
however, suggested by some, that this clause may exclude
a permanent dispensation only,^
DANGER TO CATHOLICS IN PROTESTANT INSTITUTIONS
Eev. Deab Sir, — You would greatly oblige me by giving
your opinion on the following case in the I. E. Eecord. In
the city 2 in which I exercise the ministry there is a home for
governesses under Protestant management, and conducted on
distinctly Protestant lines. The inmates are obliged to attend
prayers and Bible readings, which take place twice daily, and
are occasionally conducted by an Anglican minister. No one is
admitted to the establishment except on condition of compliance
with this regulation. There is a home under Catholic auspices
1 N. Rev. Theol. vol.ii., p. GGO.
'^ Not in Great Britain or Ireland.
544 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
in the same city, where board and lodging are offered at o,
reasonable rate
CONFESSAEIUS.
It is, we think, quite obvious that Catholics entering-
this sectarian institution, on the , conditions stated, are
seriously endangering their faith. Every legitimate means
should be used to rescue them from the peril in which they
are placed ; nor should a confessor continue to absolve those
who refuse to sever their connection with the institution.
D. Mannix.
545
CORRESPONDENCE
HOMES FOR AGED AND INFIRM PRIESTS
Eev. Deab Sir, — I have read with much interest the letters
that lately appeared in the I. E. Eecord on the above important
subject. * Vicarius ' has thrown out a new and startling sugges-
tion— the compulsory retirement of priests at the age of 75.
This will not find favour with those who consider only their
personal comfort, but surely the good of religion ought to be
considered before the comfort of individuals, and who can deny
that religion suffers from maintaining in the arduous and re-
sponsible position of pastors, old men who, no matter how
zealous, holy, and energetic they were while blessed with health
and vigour of manhood, are now beyond their work. In this
diocese there are several such, good priesjbs in their time, but
now, on account, of their advanced years, and consequent weak-
ness of body and mind, they can no longer discharge their duties
in the Lord's vineyard to the satisfaction of their Divine Master,
or with advantage to souls entrusted to their charge. If new
schools, or churches, or confraternities are needed in their
parish, these old men block the way. They will do nothing, and
in the meantime religion suffers.
Though yet some years removed from threescore and ten,
which to my mind is the proper age for priests to retire from the
mission, I long for the day when I shall be able, if the admirable
suggestion of * Vicarius ' be acted on, to retire from the constant
cares, anxieties, and grave responsibilities of a pastor, and spend
the remainder of my life in peace and holy retirement in a home
for aged priests.
Paeochus.
VOL. VI. 2 M
[ 546 ]
DOCUMENTS
INDEX OF INDULGENCES GRANTED TO THE MEMBERS
OF THE CONFRATERNITY OF THE HOLY ROSARY
E SACRA CONGREGATIONB INDULGENTIARUM
I.
s. coi>'g. indulg. transmittit locorum ordinariis indicem
indulgentiarum concessarum tum sodalitiis mariali
rosario tum universis fidelibus
Emb Domine,
In ea, quam Summus Pontifex Leo PP. XIII de Bosarii
MariaUs sodalitatibus anno superiore Constitutionem edidit,^
haec, praeter cetera, edicebantur : * Magistri Generalis Ordinis
Praedicatorum cura et studio, absolutus atque accuratus, quam-
primum fieri potest, conficiatur index indulgentiarum omnium,
quibus Eomani Pontifices Sodalitatem Sacratissimi Rosarii cete-
rosque fideles illud pie recitantes cumularunt, a Sacra Congrega-
tione Indulgentiis et SS. Reliquiis praeposita expendendus et
Apostolica auctoritate confirmandus.' Quod igitur imperatum
erat, iam demum exequutioni mandatum est ; mihique grato
quidem ofiQcio, a Beatissimo Patre commissum, ut praedictum
Indicem diligentissimis curis confectum supremaque Sua aucto-
ritate adprobatum, Episcopis universis, ceterisque, quorum
interest, mitterem.
Hanc vero Sanctissimi Domini voluntatem dum obsequens
facio, nil sane dubito, quin Amplitudo tua constans illud studium
mirabitur nee sine Dei instinctu esse aestimabit, quo Summus
Pontifex, multos iam annos, ad augustam Dei Matrem confugere
fi9<nctissimi Rosarii ritu fideles omnes hortatur.
Kalendis primum septembribus anni mdccclxxxiii, Litteris
Encyclicis Supremi Apostolatus, beneficia per Marialis Rosarii
preces in christianum nomen collata recolens, in spem certam se
adduci professus est, hanc eamdem precandi rationem, hisce
etiam difficillimis Ecclesiae temporibus, contra errorum vim late
serpentium exundantemque morum corruptionem ac potentium
1 Cfr. Ami EccL, vol. vi., p. 439.
DOCUMENTS 547
adversariorum impetum profuturam. Quamobrem, additis
Indulgentiarum praemiis, edixit ut a catholicis ubique terrarum
magna Dei Mater, Rosarii ritu, toto octobri mense coleretur.
Ex illo Beatissimus Pater, quotannis fere, hortari populos
christianos baud destitit ut Rosarii consuetudine validum Deiparae
patrocin^.um demereri Ecclesiae perseverarent. Ad studium vero
fidelium augendum quidquid Marialis Rosarii dignitatem com-
mendaret, datis a se litteris, sapientissime illustravit ; seu naturam
precationis eius rimando, seu vim extoUendo qua pollet ad Chris-
tianas virtutes fovendas, seu demum maternam ad opitulandum
Tirginis miserationem scite amanterque explicando.
Quern modo sacrarum Indulgentiarum Indicem ad te mitto,
is veluti constantis operis fastigium est ; hoc etenim Beatissimus
Pater et fidem promissi praestat, et quae hue usque egit ad pro-
movendam Rosarii religionem luculenter confirmat.
Rifariam Index dispescitur; pars altera Indulgentias exhibet,
quae unis Sodaliciis a Mariali Rosario conceduntur ; altera, quae
iidelibus universis communes sunt.
Haec Apostolicae largitatis munera ut commissus tibi populus
norit proque merito aestimet Amplitudo tua curabit. Qua occa-
sione Beatissimus Pater sollicite te usurum confidit ad fidsles
ipsos efficacius incitandos, ut reflorentem Rosarii consuetudinem
studiose pieque servent, turn nomen Sodaliciis dantes, turn
octobrem mensem Reginae a Rosario dicantes, tum etiam in sua
quisque domo et familia pium Rosarii officium quotidie pera-
gentes.
Assidua hac imploratione mota, miseros Hevae filios Regina
coelestis gloriosissima audiet clemens et exaudiet ; quamque
opem afflictis Ecclesiae rebus efflagitamus uberrime sine dubio
impertiet.
Amplitudini Tuae diuturnam ex animo felicitatem adprecor.
Romae, die 30 Augusti an. 1899,
Amplitudinis Tuae uti Frater addictissimus.
Fr. H. Ma Card. Gotti
S, C. Indulgentiis et SS. Beliquiis praejpositae Praefectus.
L. ^ S.
^ A. Sabatucci Aechiep. Antinoensis,
Secretarius.
548 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
INDULGENTIAE CONFRATERNITATIS SANCTISSIMI ROSARH
PARS PRIMA INDULGENTIAE CONFRATRIBUS PROPRIAE
I.
Pro Us qui confraternitati nomen dant
1. Indulgentia Plenaria, si confess! sacraque communione
refecti in confraternitatem recipiuntur (Gregorius XIII, Gloriosi,.
15 Tul. 1579).
2. Indulgentia Plenaria, si legitime inscripti et confessi,
eucharistiae sacramentum sumunt in ecclesia sen capella confra-
ternitatis, tertiam partem Rosarii recitant et ad intentionem
Pontificis orant (S. Pius Y, Consmverunt, 17 Sept. 1569).
NoTA. — Qui confraternitati adscribuntur, has indulgentias aufc
ipsa adscriptionis die, aut die dominica vel f estiva proxime
sequenti lucrari possunt (S. C. Indulg. 25 Febr. 1848).
II.
Pro Us qui recitant rosarium
A. — Quovis anni tempore
3. Indulgentia Plenaria, semel in vita, si Eosarium ex insti-
tuto confraternitatis per hebdomadam recitant (Innocentius VIII,
15 Oct. 1484).
4. Si integrum Eosarium recitant, omnes consequuntur
indulgentias quae in Hispania conceduntur coronam B. Mariae V,
recitantibus (Clemens IX, Exponi nobis, 22 Februarii 1668).
5. Indulgentia quinquaginta annorum, semel in die, si tertiam
partem Eosarii recitant in capella SS. Eosarii seu saltem in con-
spectu altaris praedictae capellae, vel si extra civitatem, in qua
erecta est confraternitas, commorantur, in ecclesia vel oratorio
publico quocumque (Adiianus VI, Illius qui, 1 Apr. 1523).
6. Indulgentia decem annorum et totidem quadragenarum, si
ter in hebdomada Eosarium recitant, pro qualibet vice (Leo X,
Pastoris aeterni, 6 Octobr. 1520).
7. Indulgentia septem annorum et totidem quadragenarum,
pro qualibet hebdomada si integrum Hosarium recitant (S. Pius V,
Consueverunt, 7 Sept., 15691.
8. Indulgentia quinque annorum et totidem quadragenarum
quoties, recitando Eosarium, in salutatione angelica nomen lesu
devote proferunt (Pius IX, Deer. S. C. Indulg,, 14 Apr., 1856).
9. Indulgentia quorum annorum si integrum Eosarium per
hebdomadam dicendum per tres dies distribuunt,Ipro unoquolibet
DOCUMENTS 549
ex his tribus diebus, quo tertiam partem Rosarii recitant
(Clemens VII, Etsi temporalium, 8 Mail 1534).
10. Indulgentia tercentum dierum si recitant tertiam partem
Eosarii (Leo XIII, 29 Aug. 1899).
11. Indulgentia centum dierum quoties alios inducunt ad
tertiam partem Eosarii recitandum (Leo XIII, 29 Aug. 1899).
12. Indulgentia tercentum dierum, semel in die, si dominicis
vel testis diebus in aliqua ecclesia Ordinis Praedicatorum assis-
tunt exercitio, recitandi vel canendi processionaliter singulas
Eosarii decades coram singulis mysteriis sive in pariete, aive in
tabulis depictis (S. C. Indulgent, 21 Mali 1892).
'B. — Certis anni diebus velfestis.
13. Indulgentia Plenaria, in festo Annuntiationis B. M. V., si
confess! et communione refecti Eosarium recitant (S. Pius V
hiiunctum nohisy 14 lun. 1566.)
14. Indulgentia decem annorum et totidem quadragenarum,
in festis Purificationis, Assumptionis, et Nativitatis B. M. V. si
Eosarium recitant (S.Pius V, loc. cit.). ,
15. Indulgentia decem annorum et totidem quadragenarum,
in festis Resurrectionis, Annuntiationis et Assumptionis B. M. V.
si tertiam partem Eosarii recitant (S. Pius V. Consueverunty
17 Sept. 1569).
16. Indulgentia septem annorum et totidem quadragenarum
in reliquis festis D. N. I. C. et B. M. V. in quibus sacra ipsius
Rosarii mysteria recensentur (scilicet, in festis Visitationis B. M. V.
ISFativitatis D. N. I. C, Purificationis et Compassionis B. M. V.
(feria sexta post dominicam passionis], Ascensionis D. N. I. C,
Pentecostes et Omnium Sanctorum), si saltem tertiam partem
Eosarii recitant. S. Pius V, loc. cit.).
17. Indulgentia septem annorum et totidem quadragenarum
in festis Nativitatis, Annuntiationis et Assumptionis B. M. V. si
integrum Eosarium ex instituto confraternitatis per hebdomadum
recitant (Sixtus IV, Pastoris aeterni, 30 JMaii, 1478 ; Leo X,
Fastoris aeterniy 6 Oct. ]520).
18. Indulgentia centum dierum in festis Purificationis Annun-
tiationis, Visitationis, Assumptionis et Nativitatis B.M. V. (Leo X.
loc. cit.).
in.
Pro Us qui comitantur processionem ss. Eosarii.
19. Indulgentia Plenaria, si confessi et communicati processioni
prima msnsis dominica intersunt, ibique ad intentionem Summ'
550 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Pontificis orant et insuper capellam SS. Rosarii visitant (Gregorius-
XIII, Ad aiLgendam, 24 Oct. 1577).
NoTA. — Hanc Indulgentiam, confratribus concessam, consequi
poterunt confratres itinerantes, navigantes aut alicui inservientes-
(quos inter milites actu servientes adnumerantur) intega Eosarii
recitatione ; infirmi vero, vel legitime impediti si tertiam partem
Eosarii recitant (Gregorius XIII, Guyientes, 24 Dec. 1583).
20. Indulgentia Plenaria si processionem associant in festri&
Purificationis, Annuntiationis, Visitationis, Assumptionis, Nativi-
tatis, Praesentationis et Immaculatae Conceptionis B. M.V. (Pius^
IV. Diim praeclara, 28 Febr. 1561), vel aliquo die infra octavas-
istorum festorum (S.C. Ind. 25 Febr. 1848).
21- Indulgentia quinque annorum acquirenda, quando ex:
eleemosynis confraternitatis virgines matrimonio iungendae
dotantur, si processioni intersunt (Gregorius XIII, Desiderantes^
22 Mart. 1580.)
22. Indulgentia centum dierum, si processionem debitis diebus-
faciendam associant (Gregorius XIII, Gum sicut^ 3 Ian. 1579).
23. Indulgentia sexaginta dierum, si processiones ordinarias^
tarn confraternitatis, quam alias quascumque de licentia Ordinarii
celebratas, etiam SS. Sacramenti ad infirmos delati, comitantur
<;Gregorius XIII, Gloriosi, 15 lul. 1579).
IV.
Pro Us qui visitant capellam vel ecclesiam confraternitatis
24. Indulgentia Plenaria qualibet prima mensis dominica, si
confessi et s. communione refecti id faciunt, ibique ad intentionem
Summi Pontificis orant (Gregorius XIII, Ad augendam, 12 Mart.
1577),
NoTA. — Hanc indulgentiam etiam confratres infirmi, qui ad
eamdem ecclesiam accedere non valent, lucrari possunt, si praevia.
confessione et communione, domi ante devotam imaginem
Eosarium seu coronam (h. e. tertiam partem Eosarii : (S. C.
Indulg. 25 Febr. 1877 ad 6), aut septem psalmos poenitentiales
devote recitant (Gregorius XIII. loc. cit. Ad augendam, 8
Nov. 1578). 1
25. Indulgentia Plenaria, quavis prima mensis dominica, si
sacramentis muniti, expositioni sanctissimi eucharistiae sacra-
menti in ecclesia confraternitatis, quatenus de Ordinarii licentia
^ Verba : Foenitentiales ei Ad augendam % Nov. 1578, quae non reperiuntur in
foliis hue usque editis, fuerint addita in originali asservato in archive S. Cong.,
proinde sunt ab omnibus addenda, — N. D.
DOCUMENTS 551
locum habet, per aliquod temporis spatium devote intersunt, ibi-
que ad intentionem Summi Pontificis orant (Gregorius XVI, Ad
augendam, 17 Decembris 1833).
26- Indulgentia Plenaria, si confess! ac s. commuDione refecti
capellam SS. Eosarii aut ecclesiam confraternitatis visitant, ibi-
que ad mentem Summi Pontificis orant a primis vesperis usque
ad occasum solis in festis Domini Nativitatis, Epiphaniae Eesur-
rectionis, Ascensionis et Pentecostes : item in duabus feriis sextis
quadragesimae ad arbitrium eligendis ; nee non in festo Omnium
Sanctorum, ac semel infra octiduum Commemorationis omnium
fidelium defunctorum (Gregorius XIII, Pastoris aeterni, 5 Maii
1582 ; Gregorius XVI, Ad augendam, 17 Decembris 1833 ; S. C.
Indulg., 12 Maii 1851).
27. Indulgentia Plenaria, sub iisdem conditionibus, a primis
vesperis usque ad occasum solis, in festis B. M. V. Immaculatae
Conceptionis, Nativitatis, Praesentationis, Annuntiationis, Visita-
tionis, Purificationis, Assumptionis ac in festo septem Dolorum
(feria sexta. post dominicam Passionis (Gregorius XIII, loc. cit. :
Clemens VIII, De salute, 18 Ian. 1593 ; Gregorius XVI, loc. cit.)-
NoTA a. — Indulgentia Plenaria in festis B. M. V. Conceptionis,
Nativitatis, Praesentationis, Annuntiationis, Visitationis, Purifi-
cationis et Assumptionis acquiri etiam potest par octavam, sed
semel tantum in quovis octiduo (S. C. Ind. 25 Febr. 1848).
NoTA b. — Indulgentia Plenaria in diebus Paschatis, Ascen-
sionis et Pentecostes, ac in festis B. V. M. Immaculatae Concep-
tionis, Nativitatis, Annuntiationis, Visitationis, Purificationis^
Praesentationis et Assumptionis, nee non in duabus feriis sextis.
quadragesimae acquiri potest etiam visitando quamcumque aliam
ecclesiam vel publicum oratorium (S. C, Indulg. 12 Maii 1851
NoTA c. — Quoad itinerantes, navigantes, inservientes vel
infirmos aut alias legitime impeditos, pro acquisitione Indulgentiae
Plenariae ecclesiam seu capellam SS. Eosarii visitantibus concessae
diebus quibus festa mysteriorum Eosarii celebrantur, idem dicen-
dum, quod superius de iis, qui processioni intervenire nequeunfe
(n. 14), dictum est (Sixtus V. Diim ineffabilia, 30 lanuarii 1586).
28. Indulgentia Plenaria, sub iisdem conditionibus, dominicsa
infra octavam Nativitatis B. M. V. (Clemens VIII, Ineffabilia.
12 Febr. 1598).
29. Indulgentia Plenaria, sub iisdem conditionibus, dominica
tertia Aprilis, a primis vesperis usque ad solis occasum (Gregorius
XIII, Cu7n sicut, 3 Ian. 1579).
652 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
30- IndulgentJa septem annoram totidem quadragenarum ,
si confess! sacraque communione refecti capellam seu altare
confraternitatis visitant, ibique ad intentionem Summi Pontificis
orant in diebus Nativitatis D.ni, Paschatis, Pentecostes, et in
festis Immaculatae Conceptionis, Nativitatis, Annuntiationis,
Yisitationis et Assumptionis B. ]M. V., nee non in festo Omnium
Sanctorum (Clemens VIII, SalvatoiHs, 10 Ian. 1593 ; Idem, De
salute, 18 Ian., 1593).
31. Indulgentia centum dierum pro quolibet die quo visitant
capellam seu altare SS. Rosarii, ibique ad intentionem Summi
Pontificis orant (Gregorius XII I, Cum sicut, 3 Ian. 1579).
NoTA. — Moniales in clausura viventes, iuvenes utriusque sexus
in collegiis, seminariis, conservatoriis degentes, omnesque demum
person ae viventes in institutis ex quibus ad libitum egredi non
possunt, imo et membra societatum catholicarum, omnes indul-
gentias pro quibus praescriberetur visitatio capellae seu ecclesiae
confraternitatis — dummodo huic riti adscript! sint — lucrari possunt
visitando propriam ipsorum ecclesiam, seu capellam, sive oratorium
(S. C. Ind. 11 Aug. 1871 ; 8 Feb. 1874).
Confratres infirmi vel quomodocumque impediti quominus
sacramentum eucharistiae recipiant, aut ecclesiam vel capellam
visitent, indulgentias omnes pro quibus istae conditiones praescri-
fountur lucrari possunt, si confess! aliisque iniunctis operibus
adimpletis, aliquod pium opus a confessario iniunctum exequuntur.
Cum in quibusdam festis pro visitatione ecclesiae seu capellae
SS. Rosarii praeter plenariam indulgentiam aliqua etiam indul-
gentia partialis concessa fuerit, ad banc quoque acquirendam
distincta ecclesiae seu capellae visitatio necessaria est.
V.
Pro Us qui visitant quinque altaria
32. Confrates qui visitant quinque aUaria cuiuscumque
ecclesiae vel orator!! public!, vel quinquies unum duove altaria
ubi quinque non reperiuntur, lucrantur easdem indulgentias ac si
Romae stationes visitarent (Leo X, 22 Mai! 1518).
VL
Pro Us qui dicunt vel aucliunt missam votivam ss. Rosarii
33. Indulgentiae omnes integrum Rosarium recitantibus con-
cessae, pro confratribus sacerdotibus si missam votivam secundum
missale romanum pro diversitate temporis ad altare SS. Rosari
celebrant (quae missae votivae bis in hebdomada die! possunt)
DOCUMENTS 553
pro aliis autem confratribus si tali missae assistunt et ibi pias ad
Deum fundunt preces (Leo XIII, Uhi 'primum^ 2 Oct. 1898).
34. Indulgentiae omnes concessae lis qui processionem prima
Tiniuscuiusque mensis dominica fieri solitam associant, pro iis qui
<5onsuetudinem habent celebrandi vel audiendi banc missam,
«emel in mense, die quo confessi sacramentum communionis
recipiunt (Clemens X, Coelestium munerum, 16 Febr. 1671).
35. Indulgentia unius anni pro iis qui in sabbatis quadra-
gesimae assistunt coniunctim missae, concioni de B. M. Y. et
antiphonae ' Salve Kegina ' (Gregorius XIII, Desiderantes,
22 Mar. 1580).
YII.
Tro iis qui devotionem quindecim sabbatorum ss. Bosarii peragunt
36. Indulgentia Plenaria in tribus ex quindecim sabbatis,
iiniuscuiusque arbitrio eligendis, si per quindecim sabbata con-
«ecutiva (vel immediate praecedentia festum SS. Rosarii, vel
«tiam quolibet infra annum tempore) confessi et s. communione
refecti ecclesiam confraternitatis visitant ibique ad intentionem
Summi Pontificis orant (S. C. Indulg, 12 Dec. 1849).
37. Indulgentia septem annorum et totidem quadragenarum
in duodecim sabbatis n, 36 non comprebensis (S. C. Indulg.
12 Dec. 1849).
VIII,
Tro iis qzoi mense rosariano certas devotiones lyeraguni
38. Indulgentia Plenaria, si exercitio mensis octobris, in eccle-
siis Ordinis Praedicatorum institui solito, saltern decies inter-
fuerunt, die ab ipsis eligendo, si sacramenta recipiunt et ad
intentionem Summi Pontificis orant (S. C. Indalg., 31 Aug. 1885).
39. Indulgentia septem annorum et totidem quadragenarum
-quoties devotionibus in ecclesiis Ordinis Praedicatorum mense
octobris quotidie instituti solitis inter sunt (S. C. Ind.^ 81 Aug.
i885).
IX.
Pro iis qui assistunt antiphonie * Salve Begina ' cantatae
40. Indulgentia trium annorum et totidem quadragenarum,
5si in ecclesia confraternitatis cum candelaaccensa (ubi ususviget,
.alibi adiungatur una ' Ave Maria ') assistunt antiphonae ' Salve
begina ' cantari solitae in festis B. M. V. quae ab universa
554 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
ecclesia celebrantur (S. C. Indulg., 18 Septem. 1862 ad 4), et in
Apostolorum natalitiis, ac festis Sanctorum Ordinis Praedicatorum
(Clemens VIII, Ineffahilia, 12 Febr. 1598).
41. Indulgentia centum dierum omnibus diebus per totum
annum, si huic antiphonae post completorium assistunt (Clemens
VIII, loc. cit.).
42. Indulgentia quadraginta dierum in omnibus sabbatis ae
diebus festivis per annum (Leo X, Pastoris aeterni, 6 Oct. 1520).
NoTA. — Indulgentias nn. 40 et 41 recensitas legitime impediti,.
quominus in ecclesia huic antiphonae adstent, lucrari possunt si
eamdem flexis genibus coram altari vel imagine B. M. V. recitant
(Clemens VIII, Ineffabilia, 12 Febr. 1598).
X.
Pro iis qui orationem mentalem aut alia Sjnritualia exercitia
yeragunt
43. Indulgentia Plenaria, semel in mense, si per integrum
mensem quotidie per mediam horam vel saltem per quartam
horae partem mentali orationi operam dant, die ad eorum arbi-
trium eligendo, quo sacramenta poenitentiae et eucharistiae
recipiunt (Clemens X, Ad ea^ 28 Ian., 1671).
44. Indulgentia Plenaria, si in memoriam quadraginta dierum^
quibus dominus lesus stetit in deserto, per eumdem numerum
dierum in oratione, mortificatione et in aliis piis operibus sese
exercuerint, semel in anno, die ab ipsis eligendo (Pius VII, Ad
augendam, 16 Februarii 1808).
45. Indulgentia septem annorum et totidem quadragenarum,
quoties per mediam horam mentali orationi operam dant
(Clemens X, Ad ea, 28 Ian. 1671).
46. Indulgentia centum dierum quoties per quartam horae.
partem meditationi vacant (Clemens X, loc. cit.).
XI.
Pro iis qui visitant confratres infirmos
47. Indulgentia trium annorum et totidem quadragenarum^
quoties infirmos confratres visitant (Clemens VIII, Ineffahiliay
12 Feb. 1598).
48. Indulgentia centum dierum si confratres infirmos ad
ecclesiastica sacramenta suscipienda hortantur (Gregorius XIII,
Cumsicuty 3 Ian, 1579).
DOCUMENTS 555-
XII.
Pro Us qui suffragantur animahus confratrum defunctorum
49. Indulgentia Plenaria, si in quatuor anniversariis (diebus-
4 Feb., 12 lul., 5th Sept., 10 Nov.) quotannis in ecclesiis publicis
turn fratrum, turn sororum Ordinis Praedicatorum institui solitis,
officiis defunctorum intersunt, ac confessi sacraque communions
refecti ad intentionem Summi Pontificis orant, semel quolibet ex.
illis quatuor diebus (Pius VII, Ad augendam, 11 Feb. 180B).
50. Indulgentia octo annorum si exequiis adstiterint sequentes
processionem quae in suffragium defunctorum quolibet die
sabbati aut semel in mense per ecclesiam confraternitatis sive--
per claustrum ducitur (Gregorius XIII, Desiderantes, 22 Mart.
1580).
51. Indulgentia trium annorum et totidem quadragenarum,
quoties corpora confratrum defunctorum ad ecclesiam confrater-
nitatis associant (Clemens VIII, Ineffahilia, 12 Febr. 1598).
52. Indulgentia centum dierum si cadavera confratrum cum
vexillo confraternitatis ad sepulturam associant, vel si anniver-
sariis pro animabus defunctorum confratrum celebratis intersunt,
et ibidem ad intentionem Summi Pontificis orant (Gregorius XIII,
Gum sicutf 3 Ian. 1579).
XIII.
Pro lis qui qTwdcumque caritatis vel pietatis pous peragunt
53. Indulgentia sexaginta dierum quoties confratres aliquod
opus caritatis et pietatis exercent (Gregorius XIII, Gloriosip
15 lul. 1579).
XIV.
Pro morientihus
54. Indulgentia Plenaria, a sacerdote etiam extra confes-
sionem per formulam communem applicanda, si Eosarium per
hebdomadam recitare consueverunt (Innocentius VIII, 13 Oct.
1483 ; S. C. Indulg. Deer. 10 Augusti 1899).
55. Indulgentia Plenaria, si ex hac vita migrant manu tenentes
candelam benedictam SS. Rosarii, dummodo semel saltem in
vita integrum Rosarium recitaverint (Hadrianus VI, Illius quiy
1 Apr. 1523).
56. Indulgentia Plenaria, si sacramenta poenitentiae et
eucharistiae recipiunt (S. Pius V, Consueverunt, 17 Septemb-
1569).
^56 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
57. Indulgentia Plenaria, si contriti ss. nomen lesu saltern
corde, si ore non possunt, invocant (Leo XIII, Eescr. S. 0.
Indulg. 19 Aug. 1899).
58. Indulgentia Plenaria, si susceptis Ecclesiae sacramentis
fidem Eomanae Ecclesiae profitentes et antiphonam ' Salve
Eegina ' recitantes, B. Virgini se commendant (Cldmens VIII,
Ineffabilia, 12 Febr. 1598).
NoTA. — Quamvis heic relata sit pluries indulgentia plenaria
in mortis articulo, tamen ad tramitem Decretorum S. C. Indul-
gent, una tantum acquiri poterit in mortis articulo sub una vel
altera ex diversis conditionibus supra expositis.
XV.
Pro defunctis
59. In ecclesiis Ordinis Praedicatorum altare SS. Eosarii pro
sacerdotibus eiusdem Ordinis privilegiatum est pro anima cuius-
cumque confratris (Gregorius XIII, Omnium saluti, 1 Sept.
1582).
60. In ecclesiis confraternitatis altare SS. Eosarii pro sacerdo-
tibus confratribus gaudet privilegio, non solum in favorem confra-
trum defunctorum, sed etiam cuiuscumque defuncti, etiamsi aliud
altare privilegiatum in eadem ecclesia existat. Imo, si in ecclesia
non extat aliud altare privilegiatum, altare SS. Eosarii etiam pro
-quocumque sacerdote, quamvis confraternitati non adscripto, et
in favorem cuiuscumque defuncti privilegiatum est (S. C. Ind.
Cameracen. 7 lun. 1842 ; Pius IX, Omnium saluti, 3 Mart.
1867).
PARS SECUNDA
INDULGENTIAE CONFRATRIBUS CUM ALUS FIDELIBUS COMMUNES
61. Indulgentiae septem annorum et totidem quadragenarum,
prima dominica cuiuslibet mensis, si processioni intersunt
(S. Pius V, Consueveni7it, 17 Sept. 1569).
62. Indulgentia plenaria toties quoties in festo SS. Eosarii,
sacramentis refecti, a primis vesperis usque ad occasum solis diei
ipsius, in memoriam victoriae super Turcas apud Echinadas
insulas ope Eosarii reportatae, capellam (vel efl&giem B. M. V.
-in ecclesia expositam: S. C. Ind. 25 Ian. 1866) visitant, ibique
DOCUMENTS 557
ad intention em Summi Pontificis orant (S. Pius V, Salvatorisy
5 Mart. 1572 ; S. C. Indulg., 5 Apr. 1869, 7 lul. 1885).
NoTA. — Ad lucrandam praefatam Indulgentiam, confessio
poterit anticipari feria sexta immediate praecedenti festum
SS. Eosarii (Leo XIII, Rescr. S. C. Ind., 19 Augusti 1899).
63. Indulgentia plenaria in uno die octavae festi SS. Eosarii
ad arbitrium uniuscuiusque eligendo, si, sacramentis refecti,
capellam SS. Eosarii, vel simulacrum B. M. V. in ecclesia
expositum, visitant, ibique ad intentionem Summi Pontificis orant
(Benedictus XIII, Pretiosus, 30 Maii 1727 ; S. C. Ind., 7 lul.
1885).
64. Indulgentia Plenaria sub iisdem conditionibus in festo
Corporis Christi et in festo Sancti Titularis ecclesiae (Gregorius
XIII, Desiderantes, 22 Mart. 1580).
65. Omnes et singulae indulgentiae in hoc Indice contentae
possunt per modum suffragii applicari animabus fidelium qui
vinculo caritatis Deo coniuncti supremum diem obierunt ; excepta
tamen Plenaria in mortis articulo (Innocentius XI, Ad ea, 15
lun. 1679).
DECRETUM
Cum Magister Generalis Ordinis Praedicatorum mandato
obtemperans articuli xvi Constitutionis Apostolicae Ubi yrimum
anno superiore editae, novum Induigentiarum Indicem huic
S. Congregationi exhibendum curaverit, H. S. Congregatio ilium
diligentissime exp,endit, adhibita etiam opera quorumdam ex suis
Consultoribus. Cumque, mature perpensis omnibus, existima-
verit nonnulla demenda, addenda vel brevius exprimenda esse,
has omnes immutationes, in Indicem praefatum inducendas^
SSmo Dno Nostro Leoni Pp. XIII per infrascriptum Cardinalem
Praefectum subiecit.
Sanctitas autem Sua in audientia diei 29 Augusti 1899 eas
benigne approbare dignata est, simulque novum hunc Indicem
uti supra redactum in omnibus et singulis partibus probavit,
Indulgentias omnes in eo contentas Apostolica Sua Auctoritate
confirmavit, et, quatenus opus sit, denuo concessit ; simul edicens
praeter eas quae in praesenti Indice referuntur quascumque alias
Confraternitatibus ss. Eosarii tributas, abrogatas seu revocatas
esse concendas, ita ut quaecumque iam erecta vel in posterum
erigenda sit Sodalitas ss. Eosarii a Magistro General! CrJinis
558 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Praedicatorum iis tantummodo gaudeat Indulgentiis quae in hoc
Tndice insertae reperiuntur. Contrariis quibuscumque non obstan-
liibus.
Datum Eomae ex Secretaria eiusdem Sacrae Congregationis
die 29 August! 1899.
Fr. Hieronymus M. Card. Gotti, Praef.
^ A. Sabatucci Archiepiscopus Antinoensis,
Secretarius.
APPENDIX
Summarium indulgentiarum omnibus christifidelibus pro
devotione SS, Bosarii concessarum
1. Indulgentia Plenaria, semel in anno, si singulis diebus
■saltern tertiam partem Eosarii recitant, et die ab ipsis eligenda
•sacramentis reficiuntur, dummodo adhibeant coronam ab aliquo
religioso Ordinis Praedicatorum, vel ab alio sacerdote deputato
benedictam (Baccolta, Editio 1898, n. 194),
2. Indulgentia centum dierum pro quolibet 'Pater noster '
et qualibet 'Ave Maria,' si integrum Eosarium vel saltem tertiam
-eius partem recitant, dummodo Eosarium sit benedictum ab aliquo
religioso Ordinis Praedicatorum, vel ab alio sacerdote deputato
(Ibid.).
3. Indulgentia quinque annorum et totidem quadragenarum,
quoties tertiam partem Eosarii recitant (Ibid.).
4. Indulgentia decem annorum et totidem quadragenarum,
semel in die, si una cum aliis, sive domi, sive in ecclesia, sive in
aliquo oratorio publico seu privato, saltem tertiam partem Eosarii
recitant (Ibid.)
5. Indulgentia Plenaria in ultima singulorum mensium
dominica, si saltem ter in hebdomada tertiam partem Eosarii
una cum aliis sive domi, sive in ecclesia, sive in aliquo oratorio
recitant, et in dicta ultima dominica ss. sacramentis refecti aliquam
ecclesiam seu aliquod publicum oratorium visitant, ibique secun-
dum mentem Summi Pontificis orant (Ibid.).
6. Indulgentia Plenaria in uno ex quindecim sabbatis continuis,
arbitrio uniuscuiusque eligendo, si singulis sabbatis sacramenta
suscipiunt, et tertiam partem Eosarii recitant, vel aliter eiusdem
mysteria devote recolunt {Baccolta, edit, cit., n. 197).
NoTA, — Quoties fideles legitime impediuntur quominus praefa-
tum exercitium die sabbati peragant, absque induJgentiarum
iactmti illud die dominica explore possunt (Ibid.).
DOCUMENTS 559
7. Indulgentia septem annorum et totidem quadragenarum,
omnibus sabbatis n, praecedenti non comprehensis (Ibid.).
8. Indulgentia Plenaria, si quovis anni tempore per novem
dies in honorem Eeginae SS. Eosarii piis exercitiis operam dant,
recitando preces a legitima auctoritate approbatas, die ad arbi-
trium uniuscuiusque eligendo, sive intra novendiales sive infra
octo dies immediate sequentes novendium, quo vere poenitentes,
confessi et s. communione refecti iuxta mentem Summi Pontificis
orant (BaccoUa, edit, cit., n, 149),
9. Indulgentia tercentum dierum pro omnibus aliis diebus
novendii, quibus in dictis orationibus se exercent (Ibid.).
Pro recitantibus tertiam partem Bosarii in mense Octobris
A SSmo Dno Nostro Leone PP. XIII (1 Septembris, 1883,
■20 Augusti, 1885, 23 lulii, 1898), concessae fuerunt in perpetuum
Indulgentiae quae sequuntur :
10. Indulgentia Plenaria, si in die festo B. V. de Eosario, vel
^liquo die infra octavam, sacramenta rite suscipiunt, et aliquam
sacram aedem visitant, ibique ad mentem Summi Pontificis orant,
dummodo die festo et singulis per octavam diebus sives publice
in aliqua ecclesia, sive privatim tertiam partem Eosarii recitent.
11. Indulgentia Plenaria, si post octavam festi SS. Eosarii
saltem decies infra eumdem mensem octobris, sive publice in
aliqua ecclesia, sive privatim, tertiam partem Eosarii recitant et
die ab ipsis eligendo sacramenta rite suscipiunt, aliquam ecclesiam
visitant ibique ad intentionem Summi Pontificis orant.
12. Indulgentia septem annorum et totidem quadragenarum
pro quovis die mensis octobris, quo fideles tertiam partem Eosarii
sive publice in aliqua ecclesia, sive privatim recitant,
13. Omnes et singulae Indulgentiae in hoc Summario recensi-
tae sunt applicabiles animabus igne purgatorii detentis (Baccoltay
edit, cit., p. XXII, n. 4).
Sacra Gongregatio Indulgentiis Sacrisque Eeliquiis praeposita
praesens Summarium Indulgentiarum omnibus Christifidelibus
pro devotione SSmi Eosarii concessarum uti authenticum recog-
novit typisque imprimi ac publicari permisit.
Datum Eomae ex Secretaria eiusdem S. Congregationis die
29 Augusti, 1899.
Fr. HiERONYMus M, Card. Gotti, Praefechis.
L. ^ S.
^ A. Sabatucci, Archiepiscopus Antinoensis,
., Secret.
560 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
II.
indultum quo prorogatue ad annum, i. e. usque ad diem 2 oct-
1900, tempus concessum in constitutione * ubi primum "
d. d. 2 oct. 1898, ad petendas litteras patentes rml
magistri generalis ord. praed. pro confraternitatibus
ss. eosakii sine talibus litteris ab. initio institutis.
Beatissimo Padre,
Fr. Giacinto Maria Cormier, Procuratore Generale dei Pre-
dicatori, umilmente prostrato ai piedi di Y. S. espone che :
II ^o. Ill della Costituzione Apostolica ' uhi privium ' ^ avendo
suscitato alcuni dubbi, sutto posti alia S,V. da Monsignor Vescovo
di Aosta, e la risposta ai dubbi essendo stata data dalla S. Con-
gregazione delle Indulgenze con approvazione di V. S., solamente
il 10 agosto 1899,2 I'anno concesso da V.S. nel mentovato No. III,,
perche le Confraternite del S. Eosario che non stanno in regola^
abbiano tempo di mumirsi delle Lettere Patenti del Maestro
Generale dei Predicatori, sembra ormai insufl&ciente per raggi-
ungere lo scopo, giacche la sullodata Costituzione venn&
pubblicata Sexto Nonas Octohris, 1898.
Percio I'Oratore nell' interesse delle anime e del lucro delle
Indulgenze, implora la Concessione di un altro anno di tempo
durante il quale gli Ordinari ed i Eettori delle Confraternite, con-
osciute le risposte del 10 agosto 1899, avranno tutta facilita di
munirsi, dato che facesse d'uopo, dei richiesti documenti.
Che della grazia, etc.
Ss, D. N. Leo PP. XIII in Audientia habita die 8 Septembri^
1899. ab infrascripto Card. Praefecto S. C. Indulgentiis Sacrisque
Eeliquiis praepositae, benigne annuit pro gratia iuxta preces.
Contrariis quibuscumque non obstantibus.
Datum Eomae ex Secretaria eiusdem S, Congregationis die
8 Septembris, 1899.
Fr. HiERONYMUS M. Gotti, Praefectus.
L.ii<S.
Pro E. P. Ant. A. Archiep. Antinoen, Secretario,
los. M. Canonicus Coselli, SubsL
iCfr. Anal. Eccl., vol. vi, p. 4S9.
2 Cfr, Anal. Uccl., fasc. praec. p. 366.
DOCUMENTS 561
CANONIZATION OF THE BLESSED JOHN BAPTIST DE LA.
SAIiLE, FOUNDER OF THE CHRISTIAN BROTHERS
EOTHOMAGEN. — DECRETUM ,
CANONIZATIONIS BE ATI lOANNIS BAPTIST AE DE LA SALLK FUNDATOEIS
CONGREGATIONIS FRATRUM SCHOLAEUM CHRISTIiNARUM
SUPER DUBIO
AN ET DE QUIBUS MIRACULIS CONSTET IN CASU ET AD EFFECTUM
DE QUO AGITUR
Quam praecellens quamque frugifera sit virtus naturalibus
baud relicta viribus, sed altis fidei cbristianae fixa radicibus
divinaeque gratiae suffulta praesidio, mire ostendunt, eorum
exempla, quotquot Ecciesia ad Beatorura Coelitum bonores
evexit. Nam praeter innumeros, qui causa Religionis martyres-
occubuerunt irivicti ; alii consepulti cum Cbristo solitariam vitam
egerunt eamque intaminatam sic, ut cum Angelis de virtut&
certare visi fuerint ; alii vero, quasi fluctibus obiecti quotidiana©
ac publicae vitae, mirum quantum in communibus etiam obeundis.
ministeriis profuere.
Extremis bis est accensendus loannes Baptista de La Salle
Religiosae Familiae Institutor, cui nomen a Scbolis Christianis.
quo viro insigni gloriatur iure saeculum XVII. Rhemis in Galliar
ortus est anno MDCLI., nobili genere. Adolescentia pie inte-
greque exacta, adlectusque anno aetatis suae XVI. inter canonicos
metropolitanae Ecclesiae Rhemensis sui expectationem, suscepto
sacerdotio, non cumulavit solum, verum etiam longe superavit.
Optime enim ratus, non siia esse quaerenda, sed quae lesu Christie,
mature coepit officio fungi sanctissime ad plurimorum salutem.
Quo in ministerio etsi omnis generis muneribus parem se pro-
baret^ nihilominus visus est a divina Providentia designari
maxime ad cbristianam adolescentium popularium institutionem.
Itaque scholas, quas primarias vocant, condidit in Gallia, eamqu©
invexit docendi instruendique rationem, quam institutione
religiosae familiae perpetuam reddidit, et diuturnus usus per
omnes fere orbis regiones maxime probavit. Idem tyrocinia esse
voluit formandis praeceptoribus qua disciplina aetas nostra,
gloriatur quasi reeens inducta. Quamobrem mirum non est quod
viro de hominum societate tarn egregie merito Gallia statuani
posuerit publice.
Verum longe maximam gloriam ei pepererunt praeclarae
virtutes ab intimo sensu religionis profectae, quibus fructus est
VOL VI. 2 N
562 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
consequutus uberrimos, civili quoque societati valde proficuos.
Sincera sane in viro fides nee sine operibus mortua ; singularis
pietas ; vehemens ardor procurandae salutig proximorum. Cari-
tatis enim igne sic exarsit, ut reiectis paternis bonis suaeque
familiae commodis, abdicatis etiam honoribus humile et asperum
vitae genus I'uerit persequutus, nullis non obnoxium difficulta-
tibus, insectationibus, contumeliis. Quibus ad ultimum confectus
decessit septimo idus apriles anno mdccxix propagata iam per
Tarias orbis regiones ab se instituta Familia Fratrum a Scholis
Ohristianis de re Christiana et civili optime merita.
Quamquam autem, tanti viri sanctitate prodigiis etiam con
£rmata, de Beatorum Coelitum honoribus eidem decernendis
multo antea poterat agi, divino tamen consilio factum videtur
Tit ipse ea aetate pubhco proponeretur obsequio atque exemplo,
qua plurimorum excidit animis divina sententia initium sapientiae
iimor Do7nini, quum nempe adolescentes aut erudiuntur amoto
Deo, aut sin minus ea disciphna aguntur quam non informat
spiritus Christi sed humana prudentia, adeo ut vera maneat
S. Augustini sententia ^ Begnat, Enchirid. c. 117, carnalis cupidi-
tas, uhi non regnat Dei caritas.' Ex quibus facile intelUgitur,
non modo opportunum esse sed etiam perutile, in albo Sanctorum
inscribi hoc te^mpore virum, imaginem referentem divini magistri,
qui dixit : Sinite parvulos venire ad me.
His de causis instantibus b^odahbus Scholarum Christianarum
Tit Beato ipsorum Patri loanni Baptistae de La Salle supremum
honorum fastigium imponeretur, eiusque rei gratia bina vulgaren-
tur eius intercessione patrata miracula, Sedis Apostolicae venia,
accurata in iJla inquisitio facta est ^processualesque tabulae a S.
Jvituum Congregatione et recognitae et probatae sunt.
Horum primura contigit anno mdccclxxxix. in collegio
Kuthenensi in Gallia. Leopoldus Tayac adolescens giavissima
pneumonite detinebatur sic, ut medicorum spe omni abiecta,
affecto lethaliter centro, in eo esset ut spiritum ageret. B.
loanne Baptista de La Salle apud Deum sequestro repente morbus
omnis evanuit.
Alterum accidit miraculum eodem anno in religiosa domo
vulgo Maison neuve prope Marianopolim. Netheelmus e Con-
gregatione Scholarum Christianarum insanabili poliomielite adeo
iaborabat e spinae laesione orta, ut neque gradum facere neque
n^lo vel minimo sese pedum motu agitare iam posset. Immobilis
iirtoue et medicorum omnium spe destitutus, procidens ante
DOCUMENTS 563
imaginem B. loannis Baptistae multo cum fletu obtestatur ut
ipsum aspiciat opemque ferat. Mirum ! Subito vivere ac vigere
pedes sensit, redire motum et qui modo semimortuus apparebat
iam vedivivus ac vegetus videretur.
De quibus miraculis triplici ad iuris normas actione est dis-
oeptatum. In Comitiis nimirum antepraeparatoriis decimotertio
calendas augusti anno mdcccxcvii. habitis in Aedibus Emi
Oardinalis Lucidi Mariae Parocchi Causae Relatoris ; in Conventu
praeparatorio ad Vaticanum coacto tertio calendas septembres
posteriore anno mdcccxcviii. ; ac demum in generali coetu ibidem
coram Sanctissimo Domino Nostro Leone Papa XIII. indicto
hoc vertente anno, nono calendas martias. Qua postrema in
Congregatione Emus Oardinalis Lucidus Maria Parocchi dubium
ad discutiendum proposuit : ' An et de quibus miraculis constet
in casu et ad effectum de quo agitur.' Omnes Rmi Cardinales
ceterique Patres Consultores suffragium singuli tulere ; quibus
Beatissimus Pater : ' Vestras de propcsitis sanationibus sen-
tentias intento secuti animo sumus. Nostfam tamen indicium de
more differimus, divinum lumen humillime imploraturi. Cupimus
quidem ut tali viro qui Galliae nomen auxit Ecclesiamque totam
virtute sua illustravit, maxima altarium honorum incrementa
contingant quanlocius et feliciter.'
Hodierna igitur die, Dominica quarta post Pascha promeritam
laudem novensili Beato, loanni Baptistae de La Salle, deferendam
censuit. Eei igitur sacrae devotissime operatus, banc Vaticanam
aulam adiit et arcessi iussit Emos Cardinales Camillum Mazzella
Episcopum Praenestinum S. E. C. Praefectum, et Lucidum
Mariam Parocchi Episcopum Portuensem et Sanctae Eufinae
Cauda: Ponentem, nee non loannem Baptistam Lugari Sanctae
Eidei Promotorem, meque insimul infrascriptum Secretarium
iisque adstantibus solemniter edixit : ' Constare de duobus
propositis miraculis ; scilicet de primo : Instantaneae perfectaeque
sanationis adolescentis Leopold i Tayac a gravissima pneumonite
cerebralibus atque letiferis stipata symptomatis ; et de altero :
Instantaneae perfectaeque sanationis Fratris Netheelmi e Congre-
gatione Scholarum Christianarum a poliomielite cronica transversa
lumbari et ab ulceribus in cruribus."
Hoc autem Decretum in vulgus edi et in S. R. C. acta referr
mandavit pridie calendas maias anno mdcccxcix.
C. Ep. Praenestinus Card. Mazzella, S. E. C, Praef,
L. li. S.
DiOAiEDEs Panici, S. E. C, Secret.
5G4 THE IRISH ECCLLSIASTICAL RECORD
FACULTIES GIVEN TO MAYNOOTH COLLEGE TO CONFER
DEGREES IN THEOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY, AND CANON LAW
On the 25th of June, 1898, a letter, with the approval
of Cardinal Logue, was addressed to Cardinal Ledochowski,.
Prefect of the Propaganda.
EMO. AC KMO. DNO. CAKD. LEDOCHOWSKI
S. CONGREGATIONIS DE PROPAGANDA FIDfi PRAEFECTO
EME. AC RME. PATER,
Die 29' mensis Martii anni 1896, litteris ad Emum. Hiberniae'
Cardinalem missis, Eminentia tua significavit, facultatem bacca-
laureatum in philosophia omDesque gradus academicos in S^
theologia conferendi, Collegio nostro Manutiano, Sanctae Sedis
gratia, fuisse benignissime concessam.
Isidem litteris mandatum est ut ' appositum studiorum statu-
turn ' pro nostro Collegio redigeretur, et ad Sacram Congre-
gationem de Propaganda Fide examinandum et adprobandum
infra annum mitteretur ; sed per litteras Eminentiae tuae, diei
5 Aprilis, 1897, tempus hoc mandatum adimplendi usque ad finem
mensis Junii hujusce anni 1898, fuit protractum. Nunc igitur ad
Eminentiam tuam haec nova mittimus Statuta CoUegii nostri
Manutiani, quae omnes Hiberniae Episcopi in comitiis suis paucis
abhinc diebus habitis probarunt.
In hisce statutis res ita constituuntur ut non modo in
S. Theologia juxta facultatem jam benigne concessam, sed etiam
in philosophia et jure canonico omnes gradus academici in nostra
Collegio dehinc conferri possint. Quam novam facultatem,
nomine omnuim Hiberniae Episcoporum, enixe supplicamus^
tum quia Collegium ubi totus fere clerus Hiberniae formatur,
seu potius ipsa in Hibernia Ecclesia, schola aliqua completa ae
perfecta non modo S. Theologiae sed etiam philosophiae et juris
canonici muniri debet, tum quia nil magis conferre potest ad
studia philosophica et canonica in ipso Collegio et in tota
Hibernia elevanda ac perficienda quam incitamentum graduum
academicorum alumnis Manutianis praebere. Humillime igitur
petimus ut haec facultas non denegetur.
Heic adjicimus tabulam quae numerum lectionum in discip-
linis philosophicis, theologicis, canonicis, singulis hebdomadibus
habendarum, uno conspectu exhibeat. Insuper exemplar mit-
timus Kalendarii quod singulis annis in Collegio editur,
Paucis demum hie exhibere juvabit quomodo Collegium
DOCUMENTS 665
gubernetur, et quinam regimini domestico ac pietati discipliaeque
ibidem praeponantur. Summa regendi potestas, sub ipsa Sede
Apoatolica, residet penes coetum Curatorum, qui constat ex Emis
■et Ems quatuor Archiepiscopis et tredecim ex Episcopis totius
Hiberniae. A Curatoribus autem deputantur Visitatores —
quatuor scil. Archiepiscopi et quatuor Episcopi — qui Collegium
bis in anno visitent, et omnia quae turn compererint ad Curatores
defer ant.
In CoUegio ipso residet Praeses, Propraeses, quatuor Decani
(uti vocantur) qui pietati ac disciplinae invigilent, duo Patres
Spirituales, novem Professores in Facultate tbeologia jurisque
oanonici, quatuor in Facultate philosopbica, sex in Facultate
artium, quinque Adjutores seu Magistri Supplentes.
Superiore anno (1897-1898), 16 presbyteri cursum superiorem
sequebantur ; 383 erant alumni in S, theologia ; 208 in philo-
sophia ; et 52 in scholis linguarum ; isto igitur anno 659 alumni
in Collegio degebant.
Eminentiae tuae, summa cum rev^entia,
Addictissimi sumus servi,
DioNYSius Gabgan, Praeses,
Thomas O'Dea, Propraeses.
Datum Manutiae,
Die 25* Mensis Junii, anni 1898.
Tisum et Commendatum,
liji Michael Cabdinalis Logue.
On the 18th of May, 1899, His Eminence Cardinal Logue
sent to the College the following important Eescript from the
Propaganda : —
S. CONGBEGAZIONE DE PBOPAGANDA FIDE PBOTOCOLLO, N. 32959.
Mentionem facias, quaeso, hujus numeri in tua responsione.
On prie de citer le meme numero dans les responses.
EOMA Ll 15, MlAGGIO, 1899.
Oggetto,
Sug i Statuti del Collegio di Maynooth.
Eme. AC Eme. Dne. Mi Obine,
In Plenaria Congregatione horum Emorum Patrum S. Consilii
Christiano Nomini Propagando habita die 27. Superioris Mensis
Martii ad examen revocatn sunt statuta CoUegii S. Patricii apud
566 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Maynooth de studiis ibidem colendis, quae Eminentia Tua una^
cum litteris Diei 29 Junii superioris anni transmisit, pariterque
ratio habita est de petitione a Preside eiusdem Collegii, Nomine
universorum Hiberniae Antistitum, exhibita ad obtinendam pro
Collegio Maynoothiano extensionem privilegii iam concessi circa
collationem graduum academicorum ; Porro ad proposita dubia.
1^ Utrum et quomodo adprobanda sint exhibita Statuta Studiorum
pro Collegio Maynoothiano. Q*" Utrum eidem Collegio con-
cedenda sit facultas conferendi gradus academicos universos
etiam in Jure Canonico et in Philosophia, iidem Emi Patres
respondendum censuerunt ; Affirmative ad utrumque, cum nodifi-
cationibus in statuta Collegii Maynoothiani iuducendis, iuxta
mentem. Mens est. 1" In ferendis suffragiis pro exitu experi-
mentorum haec ratio servetur. In examinibus cujusvis Facultatis
separatim ferri suffragia debent circa experimentum scripto
habitum et circa experimentum orale. Ad obtinendum gradum^
Baccalaureatus et Prolytae majoritas absoluta suffragiorum
requiratur, h.e. unum saltem suffragium supra dimidium omnium
disponibilium votorum ; Verum ad assequendam lauream duae
saltem tertiae partes suffragiorum omnium requirantur, tum in
periculo scriptis facto, tum in orali experimento, Examinatores
et qui ferendi suffragium jus habent, de decem votis singuli dis-
ponant. In diplomate vero exprimatur numerus suffragiorum
quern quisque consecutus fuerit (Statuta specialia Facul. Theol.
c. v., n. 5, pag. 17. St. Spec, Facul. Phil, c, iv., nn. 7-8,.
pag. 21.)
2. In superiori cursu philosophico alumni tertii anni quatuor
saltem horas singulis hebdomadis ab apposito Professore dis-
ciplinas philosophicas edoceantur, adhibito tanquam textu Summa
Philosophica S. Thomae, quae dicituv contra Gentiles. Curae erit
magistro opportune commentari textuales ejusdem Summae
Philosophicas doctrinas, una cum aliis ejusdem angelici Doctoris
operibus, praesertim opusculo De Ente et Essentia et Quaes-
tionibus Disputatis ad rem facientibus ; comparatione insuper
instituta cum erroribus refutandis, praesertim Positivismo et
Evolutionismo (Stat. Spec. Facul. Phil, c, ii., n. 6, pag. 20).
3. In universo theologico cursu tamquam textus generalis
Dogmaticae et Moralis Scientificae habeatur Summa Theologica
S. Thomae. Curae tamen sit Moderatoribus ac Professoribus ut
perdurante theologico cursu adjiciatur, quod ad Dogmaticam
spectat, Theologia Positiva, et Polemica nee non Patrologia et
DOCUMENTS 567
historia dogmatum. Quae Disciplinae tradi poterunt aut a
peculiaribus Professoribus aut ab iisdem illis, qui textum Summae
Theologicae explicant, ut ita integrum Theologiae scholasticae et
Positivae Systema exurgat, ratione habita aliorum probatorum
Theologorum etiam recentiorum, et eorum notitia auditoribusi
indita. Qua ratione, post quatuor annos cursus generalis, alumni
Seniores ad gradus academicos candidati, amplum temporis
spatium habebunt ad profundum, scientificum, positivum atque
historicum Catholicorum dogmatum studium. Distinctus autem
Professor habeatur pro tradenda Theologia Morali, casistica et
pastorali (Stat. spec. Facut. Theol. c. IT. pp. 14-15).
4. Insuper, quod spectat ad disciplinas cursui philosophico
adnexas, necessarium existimatur ut duo distincti Professores
habeantur, unus pro disciplinis Blathematicis abstractis, atque
unus saltem pro scientiis naturalibus tradendis (St. spec. Facut.
PJiil. c. I. n. 1., p. 19).
Hisce modificationibus adjectis, quae in praxim proximo anno
scholastico traducentur, Statuta exhibita ad Septennium adpro-
bantur ; quo tempore experientia edocebit' quaenam utilitas ex
iisdem modificationibus, atque ex integro studiorum programmate
dimanabit. Atque sub talibus studiorum Statutis, guadeat
Maynoothianum Collegium S. Patritii pariter ad Septennium
privilegio conferendi universos academicos gradus in singulis
Facultatibus Philosophica, Theologica ac Juris Canonici. Haee
fuit horum Emorum Patrum sententia ; quam Ssmo D. N. Leoni
PP. XIII, ab infrascripto Archiepiscopo Larissensi ejusdem
8. Congregationis Fidei Propagandae, Secretario, relatam ia
audientia diei 23 superioris Mensis Aprilis, Sanctitas sua benign©
ratam habuit atque probavit ; presentesque litteras hac de re
Eminentiae Tuae dari praecepit.
Interim manus tuas maximo cum
obsequio humillime deosculor
Eminentiae Tuae,
humillimus addictissimus servus.
►Jj M. Card. Ledochowski, Praef.
A, Archiepiscopus Larissens, Secret.
568
NOTICES OF BOOKS
Adeian 1Y. and Ieeland. By the Very Kev. Sylvester
Malone,M,E.I.A.,F.E.S.A.L Dublin: M. H. Gill&Son;
Browne & Nolan, Ltd. London: Burns & Gates, Ltd.,
1899- Price Is. 6d.
The case of the authenticity or spuriousness of the letter of
Pope Adrian IV., that is alleged to have been addressed to
King Henry II. of England, entrusting him with the mission of
correcting certain abuses that existed in Ireland in the twelfth
century, has recently been discussed, with great learning and a
good deal of spirit, by antagonists worthy of one another —
Laurence Ginnell, B.L., and the Very Kev. Dr. Malone, Vicar-
General of Killaloe. Both of the learned combatants have now
published their version of the facts and arguments, covering the
whole ground, and presenting the case as completely as it is
likely ever to be presented. Dr. Malone, as is well known, has
always been a supporter of the authenticity of the privilege, and
none of the arguments that have recently been used to dislodge
him from his position have had the effect intended. They have
had rather the contrary effect, for they have evidently convinced
him more clearly than ever of the weakness of the arguments
employed on the other side. Never have his powers of destructive
criticism been brought out with greater effect.
If ever the authenticity of Adrian's letter is to be upset,
Dr. Malone has clearly shown that it has not been done so far
He has proved that the matter is one of purely historic interest,
and is of no political significance whatever, at the present day,
that the letter of privilege neither ordered subjection of Ireland
to England, nor led to the invasion of 1171; and that the Pope
was acting within his right, and according to the principles of
international law prevailing in his time, by granting the privilege.
We are very glad that the whole case has been so clearly and
ably stated by the learned Vicar-General of Killaloe. All future
historians will feel indebted to him for the great service he has
rendered by the publication of this interesting little volume ; and
those who are not historians, but who are anxious to form a correct
and accurate judgment of the episode with which he deals, and to
NOTICES OF BOOKS 569
put aside irresponsible statements which may happen to be more
popular, cannot afford to ignore his presentation of the facts, and
iihe proofs by which the facts are supported.
A. L.
Abeidgment of the Histoky of the Church for the
Use of Schools. Compiled from various Sources by
a Member oi the Ursuline Community, Sligo- Dublin :
Browne and Nolan, Ltd., 1899.
We offer a hearty welcome to this Abridgment of the History
of the Churchy and feel pleased at being permitted to introduce it
to the readers of the I. E. Eecobd. The Most Eev. Dr. Clancy,
Bishop of Elphin, in his admirable preface, speaks of this as *an
unpretentious little book,' and states that it ' will furnish every-
thing that the ordinary school child will be required to know on
the more salient features of the history of the Church.* We
agree with his Lordship that the book is unpretentious. It
contains only 134 pages, and yet traces the history of the Church
irom the days of Peter to the days of Leo XIII. We agree, too,
with his Lordship's statement that it contains everything * that
the ordinary school child should know about the salient features
of the history of the Church ; and we feel quite justified in going
still farther by saying that our so-called university students and
a considerable number of our priests would know more of the
liistory of the Church than they do now did they know all that
is contained in these 134 pages. It is really marvellous what an
amount of historical information has been compressed into this
small volume. When it was handed to us for review we could
not help smiling at the idea of the history of the Church, which
several authors have extended over a score of quartos, being
contained in the diminutive 16mo placed in our hands. Yet,
thanks to the judgment and self-restraint of the compiler, as she
modestly styles herself, there is not a vitally important question
in the history of the Church excluded from discussion, and all
questions discussed are made intelligible even to the mind of a
■child. We heartily congratulate the compiler for having so
:successfully filled a void in our religious literature, and although
her name may never become 'a household word,' for the reason
that she keeps it concealed, her little book will be known, and its
-effects felt and appreciated long after she herself has begun to
<enjoy the rewards of her zeal in compiling it.
D. OL.
570 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
The Eve of the Kefoemation. By Francis Aiden
Gasquet, D.D., O.S.B. London: John C. Nimmo,
14, King William-street, Strand. Price 12s. Qd.
The main object Dr. Gasquet has in view in this new volume
with which he has enriched the history of the ' Eeformation '
and considerably enhanced his already well-established reputation,
is * to ascertain, if possible, what was really the position of the
Church in the eyes of the nation, at large, on the eve of the
Eeformation, to understand the attitude of men's minds to the
system as they knew it, and to discover as far as may be what
in regard to religion they were doing and saying and thinking
about, when the change came upon them.' The work does not
pretend in any sense to be a history of the Eeformation, or of
the causes that led to it, or even of the initial steps by which it-
was introduced.
' Those who know most [writes Dr. Gasquet] about this
portion of our national history will best understand how im-
possible it is as yet for anyone, however well informed, to write
the history of the Eeformation itself, or to draw for us any
detailed and accurate picture of the age that went before that
great event, and is supposed by some to have led up to it.'
Dr. Gasquet, therefore, confines himself to giving us, in a series
of essays, sorae very vivid sketches of the condition of things-
religious and intellectual that existed when the divorce proceed-
ings of Henry \TII. suddenly plunged the country into the most
calamitous war that ever disturbed the soil of Britain.
In an introduction to these essays the author takes a general
survey of the field before him, and then enters into his subject
dealing in succession with ' The Eevival of Letters in England,'
* The Two Jurisdictions,' ' England and the Pope,' ' The Clergy
and the Laity,' * Erasmus,' * The Lutheran Invasion,' * The
Printed English Bible,' 'Teaching and Preaching,' ' Parish life
in Catholic .England,' ' Pre- Eeformation Guild Life,' 'Mediaeval
Wills, Chantries, and Obits,' ' Pilgrimages and Pelics.'
His chapter on the * Eevival of Letters in England ' is full
of interest. He completely shatters the pretention that the
awakening of minds, the intellectual activity of the sixteenth
century, the general advance of culture in England was due to
the Eeformation. It was already in full development when the
Eeformation broke out, and was, if anything, rather retarded
than promoted by the religious war. He traces the influence of.
NOTICES OF BOOKS 571
such scholars as SelHng, Linacre, Grocyn, the Lillys, Sir Thomas
More, Warham, Fisher, Colet, Lupset, and Dee. He shows
that the humanist movement in England under the guidance
of these men was not divorced from religion as it was to-
a great extent in Italy, and quotes facts and figures to prove how
the intellectual movement dwindled in the universities under the
influence of the innovators.
Those ardent young Catholic journalists who will he satisfied
with nothing less than the complete separation of Church and
State in France at the present day would do well to read and
ponder over Dr. Gasquet's chapter on the two jurisdictions.
They will recognise there what tremendous issues depend on the
forbearance and disinterested wisdom of the Holy See in dealing
with the material arrangements of the Church in the heart of
a great nation. They will note that it is to the Concordat
between Leo X. and Francis I. that so good an authority as-
M, Hanotaux attributes the maintenance of the o]d religion in
France. Dr. Gasquet's chapter on the clergy and laity is also
most instructive. Every priest should read it. The causes of
friction are ever the same, and the evil results of worldliness and
ignorance are ever sure to proceed from a similar condition of
things.
One of the most interesting and masterly chapters in the
book is, however, the sketch of Erasmus. It throws a flood of
light on the whole period. It is a perfect sketch, giving in a
short space the result of accurate study and research.
We have said enough to show how thoroughly we appreciate
the value of the service done to the Church by the publication of
a work in which accuracy, clearness, and erudition are so well
combined. We wish the distinguished author health and strength
to continue his labours, and we sincerely hope that this last
volume of his will find a place in the library of every priest.
J. F. H.
Daily Thoughts for Priests. By the Very Eev. J. B,
Hogan, S.8., D.D., President of St. John's Seminary,
Brighton, Mass. Boston: Marlier, Callanan & Co.
Price One dollar net.
This is a small octavo volume, comprising in all about two
hundred pages, and containing fifty short chapters, some might
572 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
•call them lectures, others meditations, for the use of missionary-
priests. In the preface the author explains the purpose of his
book so aptly, that I cannot do better than transcribe the
passage : —
* Most priests, especially in missionary countries such as ours,
:are busy men. Interests of all kinds,' religious and secular, their
own and those of their people, claim their attention almost every
day, and at all hours of the day. Those who escape this
■constant pressure of business, or of duty, are still liable to be
caught up and carried along by the rush of the world around
them, and too often they yield to it without resistance. Some
:are so restless by temperament, or by habit, that even when
entirely undisturbed from without, they find it difficult to settle
■down quietly to anything of a purely mental kind. How detri-
mental such conditions are to that " life with things unseen " so
necessary in the priesthood, need not be insisted upon. The Non
in commotione Dominus of Scripture, and the In silentio et quiete
j^roficit anima devota of the Imitation, have become axioms of the
spiritual life. No priest who consults his experience will be
tempted to question them, and this is why we find all those who
-have seriously at heart their own spiritual welfare coming back
from time to time to the resolution of not denying to their poor
■souls, whatever may happen, the daily nutriment without which
they cannot but languish and decline. What the most compe-
tent authorities agree in recommending, in one shape or another,
as the normal sustenance of a priestly life, is the practice of medi-
tation, and the habitual reading of devotional books, especially
the Lives of the Saints. These helps are guaranteed by their
rules to members of religious orders, and a growing number of
secular priests faithfully employ them. Yet too many still permit
themselves to be deprived, of a part at least, of this daily allow-
.ance, nor can those who desire it most always succeed in getting
it. Shall they, then, because they have failed to secure their
regular repast, go all day long, or, it may be, several days without
nutriment ? Should they not rather, as men of business often do
when compelled to miss their meals, try to sustain their strength
by getting some nourishment when and where they can ?
' It is to supply a need of this kind that the following pages
;have been written. They consist of truths almost entirely
borrowed from the Gospel, and viewed in their bearing on the
spirit and duties of the priesthood. The text which introduces
-each subject is generally a saying of our Lord Himself, and the
•development of it is gathered from other recorded utterances of
His, or from the inspired writings of the Apostles, or from the
■daily experience of life. A passage from the fathers, the
.Imitation, or some other authorized source is generally given at
NOTICES OF BOOKS 5;^^
the end, reflecting in human form the heavenly truth, and help-
ing to impress it on the mind of the reader. As a substitute
for morning meditation, whenever passed over, one of these
thoughts may be taken up at any free moment in the course of
the day, or before retiring to rest at night. In its condensed
form it will be found sufficient for one spiritual meal, but on
condition that it be assimilated slowly. Quickly swallowed food
is no better for the soul than for the body.'
So much for the purpose and plan of the book. The next
question of interest for the possible purchaser is, what kind of
fare has the writer provided? Is the volume in the style
of the Preijaration for Death, or rather in that of the Imitation ?
It is between. There is not a word in all the fifty lectures about
death, or hell, or eternity ; and though there is constant reference
to the moral virtues as preached and practised by Christ and His
Apostles, still there is not so much perfection supposed or expected
as in the Imitation. Dr. Hogan is very human ; makes allow-
ance for the difficulties of the missionary priest's position ; appeals
to his sense of honour, refinement, loyalty; and is content to help
on those who do not aim so much at becoming great saints, as at
falling away quietly and without effort into the condition of
mere sensible men of the world.
To enable the reader to form a clearer idea of what the
book is hke, I have thought it well to give a complete list of
the Tho2ights which it contains, and then to submit one of the
little lectures in its entirety, to serve as a sample. The list of
subjects is as follov/s : — The beatitudes ; the poor in spirit ; the
humble ; the meek ; the mourners ; the merciful ; the pure of
heart; hungering after justice; the peacemakers; the persecuted;
lost opportunities ; the worldly spirit ; openings ; the voice of
God ; the divine fragrance of Christ ; the forgiving spirit ; asking
forgiveness ; belonging to Christ ; the servant of Christ ; pity ;
how to bear honours ; self-denial ; through death to life ; the love
of children ; Christ the comforter ; the priest a comforter ; the
religious man ; holiness and helpfulness ; the priest a soldier ;
the saving power of the priest ; young priests ; carrying the
cross ; piety ; preaching ; purity of intention ; the barren fig-tree ;
Christ's sufferings and ours ; unselfishness ; the priest's happi-
ness ; success ; a good name ; teaching by example ; spiritual
sweetness ; spiritual influence : scandal ; ideals, false and true ;
the unfaithful shepherd ; the divine guest ; detachment.
574 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Such are the subjects on which Dr, Hogan would have
missionary priests to ponder now and then, if not in formal
meditation, at least in some kind of serious thought. As a
•specimen of how he works out his own reflections, I submit
the following, which is but a fair specimen of these fifty
lectures : —
^ XI. — LOST OPPOKTUNITIES.
' Si cognovisses.
' If thou hadst known ! ' — (Luke xix. 42.)
' The thought which filled the mind of our Lord when He
uttered these words may well haunt every serious mind — the sad
thought of lost opportunities. God's mercies towards His chosen
people had been countless, and their response had been miserably
inadequate. The crowning grace was vouchsafed in the coming
of Christ Himself. But '* He came unto His own, and His own
received Him not." Jerusalem, in particular, was hostile to Him
from beginning to end, and this, politically and religiously, sealed
her fate. And so our Lord, as He crossed the summit of Mount
Olivet, and looked down on the doomed city, forgot the clamor
-of triumph which surrounded Him, and shed tears of pity on the
fate of His people blind to the value of the gift offered to them
for the last time. " If only thou couldst understand, even at
this last day, what would bring thee peace and happiness ! "
'What Christ saw in the destiny of Jerusalem, each man
lias to recognise in his own life ; opportunities of all kinds lost
through thoughtlessness, or bliDdness, or carelessness, or weak-
ness. Who does not find himself with natural gifts undeveloped,
which, if cultivated in due time, would have added considerably
to his usefulness? How many are constrained to acknowledge
that impatience of discipline, disregard of counsel, love of ease
and self-indulgence in early life, have unfitted them for the
noblest tasks of later years. How often do men let go the
-chances of making a due return in love and kindness, until those
to whom they owe most are beyond their reach? How often
have they not to grieve over occasions they let slip, to be morally,
spiritually beneficial to others, especially to those they knew and
loved. Kindness implying little sacrifice, a word of sympathy,
of encouragement, of timely advice, would have done much ; but
it was not forthcoming. And now when they would give any-
thing to be able to make up for their coldness or carelessness, it
is too late.
' There are few, if any, more open to this manner of regret
than priests. Their opportunities for doing good are so many
and so great that it is rlifticiilt to keep alive to them all. Yet they
4ill bring with them . their corresponding responsibilities. Every
NOTICES OF BOOKS 575
soul that opens itself to the influence of a priest, as he speaks
from the pulpit, or sits in the tribunal of penance, or visits the
sick, or listens to the story of trials, perplexities, and sorrows
that are poured into his ear day after day — every soul gives him
a fresh opportunity to do God's work, and to gather fruit for life
eternal. Of those he misses, some he can never recall : that
unique occasion to stand up and speak out at any cost for what
was noble and true ; that great charity which appealed to him
in vain, because it could be done only at the cost of some great
sacrifice ; that long-wished-for advantage, finally secured, but at
the cost of self-respect ; that friendship preserved only by being
unfaithful to principle. These opportunities are rare, and if not
grasped at once, are gone for ever — gone like the souls a priest
might have won from sin, or lifted up to sanctity, if he had been
watchful, but which he suffered to go before God as he found
them.
' Happily there ar-e occasions which come back, opportunities
which remain. The action of the priest is mostly continuous,
and what is missing in it at one time may be made up for at
another. Souls neglected may become the^objects of special care ;
works allowed to languish for a time may receive a fresh infusion
of vigour, and recover all their usefulness. In many ways the
past may be redeemed. St. Paul speaks on several occasions of
/'redeeming the time " (Eph. v. 16 ; Col. iv. 5) ; that is, making
the most of the present and its opportunities. This is a means
ever open to those who have to grieve over past losses. YvT'hile
life remains, they can always begin afresh, take up new and still
higher purposes, organize new campaigns, fight new battles, and
win them.'
The reader is now in a position to judge for himself of the
value of Dr. Hogan's book. To me it seems very suitable, either
for purposes of meditation, or, now and then, of spiritual reading,
or even as suggesting lines of thought for sermons. The young
priest who would make an effort to reproduce these lectures
under forms suited to the laity, could not fail to cultivate his
own powers and to produce notable effects on his audience.
He may not attain Dr. Hogan's excellence — few will arrive
at that ; but the effort could not but result in an improve-
ment of the character of the discourses delivered even by good
jpreachers.
W. McD.
576 THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD
Cantiones Saceae. Musical Settings of the Koman
Liturgy. Edited by Samuel Gregory Ould, Monk of
the Order of St. Benedict. London : Novello & Co.
This is a collection of twenty-two numbers issued separately^
and varying in price from 2d. to Qd. We regret very much
not being able to recommend it. True, there is nothing,
scandalously bad in it. We must admit that the tone generally
is reverential, and that, compared jvith much that is performed
in our churches, this music is a decided improvement. Still we
cannot recognise in it the true church style. There is some-
thing in it, whether we call it hysterical or sensual or sentimental,,
that is not in accordance with true devotion or genuine religious
fervour. A strange contrast with the rest is formed by a solitary
piece, a fine part Hodie sanctus Benedictus by Peter PhiUps. I'he^
chasteness and purity of style of this sixteenth century composer
make him look quite out of place in his surroundings, and the
only reason we can see for this piece being included in the
collection is that the editor is a Benedictine. Choirs that have
an opportunity of performing this piece will, no doubt, please
both themselves and the audience. We would recommend them,
however, to transpose it a tone lower. With the two sopranos
resting very frequently on the high g, it sounds too shrill in the
original key. W^e should think, moreover, that' the proper tempo
is not allegretto 4/4, but andante 21/2. This may be the same
in the actual speed of the notes, but it makes a difference for the
aesthetic perception. The only other piece one could recommend
is a Miserere in /, by F. E. Gladstone. If a choir want a very
simple setting of the Miserere, they may take this one.
To be perfectly accurate, we should state that we have not
seen Nosv 16, 17, and 18 of the collection.
H. B.
IRISH Ecclesiastical Record. 1^99
4th series. July-Dec. v. 6
BX 801 .168 1899 Pt . 2 BMC
The Irish ecclesiastical
record 47085658
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