Part 6

The Cara Vita is a small church situated in the Corso, and not possessing within itself any thing to attract the stranger's particular attention. It is interesting, however, from the solemn services which take place there every Friday in Lent. On these occasions, after an exciting harangue from the officiating priest, the lights are extinguished, knotted scourges are handed round by the sacristan, and each individual of the congregation takes one and begins to flagellate himself. We have been told--for we were never present at these exhibitions--that the noise and excitement are terrible--every penitent seeking to ease his inner at the expense of his outer man, and proportioning the amount of his physical suffering to that of the moral evil which it is intended to counteract. But all the ceremonies in the Cara Vita are not of this character; and the same friend who described the above, informed us that the preaching there was often eloquent, and the music always fine; so, when we read in the _Diario di Roma_, that at twelve o'clock on Good Friday there was to be a solemn _funzione_, or Service in commemoration of our Saviour's Passion, and that in all probability the church would be crowded, we repaired thither on that day an hour before the time mentioned in the paper, in order to secure a place. Doubtful of the propriety of witnessing, as a pageant, a representation of the most awful and affecting scene that the mind of man can contemplate, yet fearing, from some experience in Roman ceremonies, that our visit might issue merely in _that_, we lingered some time about the porch; then, pushing aside the heavy curtain, irresolutely entered; and what a contrast presented itself between the two sides of that matted door! It seemed the portal between life and death: light, noise, confusion, reigned without; within, all was dark, solemn, still. The ear that had been stunned by the babel of the streets, was startled at the unwonted calm; and the eye, dazzled by the splendour of the meridian sun upon the pavement, experienced a temporary blindness, and required some time before it could accommodate its powers to the obscurity of the interior. By degrees, however, it was, apparent that the church, notwithstanding the voiceless quiet which prevailed, was full. The whole assembly sat as if spell-bound; not a whisper was to be heard; an awful curiosity tied every tongue. The business and pleasures of life were forgotten; the sexes exchanged no furtive glances; men and women, alike unobservant of their neighbours, counted their beads and bent their eyes upon the ground; while each new comer, awed by the deep silence, entered with cautious tread, and took his seat noiselessly. When our eyes had become somewhat familiarised with the artificial light, they were attracted to two elevated extempore side-boxes, brilliantly illuminated with wax, and filled with choristers in full costume. Between them was stretched a voluminous curtain, not so opaque but that a number of tapers might be seen faintly glimmering through it; and before this curtain a dark temporary stage was erected. The, religious calm that prevailed around was at length gently broken by some soft and plaintive notes, proceeding from the white-robed choir. In a few minutes these died away again upon the ear, and a figure, suddenly rising from the stage, exclaimed in a voice of strenuous emotion--"Once again, ye faithful ones! ye are assembled here to accompany me to Calvary! Yes! another Good Friday has come round, another anniversary of the day announced by God himself for man's deliverance from the wages of his sin; this is the great day when typical sacrifice was done away with, and our blessed Lord made of 'himself a full and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the' _faithful_. But in order to triumph, my brethren, we must conquer--to conquer we must contend; there is no warfare without wounds, and our Saviour, while in the flesh, must partake of our infirmities: he must be 'the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,' before he can 'lead captivity captive, and receive gifts' _for his holy Church_; the ransom of his faithful followers must be at the expense of his own blood. He bled, as you know, on Good Friday; and accordingly, we are met here--not to celebrate a triumph, but to learn humility, patience, and forgiveness of injuries at the foot of the cross, in order that _we_, like our great Head, may become perfect _through suffering_. Permit me, then, to ask you, with the Psalmist, 'Are your hearts set upon righteousness, O ye congregation?' and are your minds prepared to follow the Lord to Calvary? Have you, for instance, been studying lately his sufferings at _the different stations of the cross_? have you been thinking at all upon his passion? thinking what it must have been to be hooted at, spit upon, reviled, buffeted, and friendless upon earth? If not, ponder well these things now; _now_, at _this moment_; for are we not arrived at the most sacred _hour_ of this most sacred but sad and solemn day? About this hour was the Saviour condemned by his unjust judge, delivered up to the rabble to be crucified. Go back in your minds to that moment; see him crowned with thorns, and bearing the cross upon his shoulder, till, lo! he faints under its weight, and his persecutors compel a stranger to carry it to the fatal spot. Then see him toiling onward, surrounded by his deadly enemies; his chosen friends have forsaken him and fled! a few women follow him afar off, bewailing his fate; he turns and speaks; listen to his words--'Daughters of Jerusalem! weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and _for your children_!' Well might the merciful Saviour speak thus, when he had just heard the mad shout of the multitude, 'his blood be upon us and _upon our children_.' The crowd approaches Golgotha! they halt to rear the fatal tree; methinks I hear the exulting outcries of his vindictive murderers as they fix it in the ground!" Here the curtain drawn between the preacher and the back of the stage fell, revealing three wooden crucifixes lit up by a lurid red light from above. The effect was startling, and produced a shudder of horror throughout the whole auditory. After a breathless pause, the preacher, turning towards the cross, exclaimed, "What! are we too late for the beginning of this tragedy! Is the Redeemer of mankind already nailed to the cross? Oh, cruel and fiendlike man, is this your triumph! surely he who came to save will reject you now! Such might be our feelings, but they were not Christ's. No, my brethren, far from it. Oh, let us contemplate, for our own future guidance, the behaviour of Jesus to his murderers, not _after_ but at the _moment_ of his extreme torture; and may the Holy Spirit give us grace to profit by the exercise. Look on your crucified Redeemer writhing and maddened with suffering; and listen to the first words uttered in the depth of his agony: he imprecates no curse upon these guilty men, but exclaims, 'Father, forgive them; they know not what they do!' _Caro Jesu!_" Here there was much emotion both in the preacher and in the congregation; when it had subsided, he added persuasively, "You have heard Christ pray that his _murderers_ may be forgiven, and shall you hesitate to forgive one another?" Then, taking the words of our Saviour for a text, he delivered a short animated sermon upon the forgiveness of injuries; after which came a prayer for grace to perform this duty; the pause which succeeded being filled with music and chanting. Then again the dark form of the preacher rose up. "What, my brethren! did not Christ pass _three hours_ in his agony, and shall we leave him in the midst? He has still more gracious words in store. My dear brethren and fellow sinners, now hear his dying address to the penitent thief, 'Verily I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise!' _Ladro felice!_ but was _he_ then _predestinated_ to salvation, and his companion to be the victim of God's wrath? _Niente, niente_; believe, not a word of this false and heretical creed." Then followed a second discourse, with a diatribe against Calvin (who deserved it!) and _all_ heretics (who might not deserve it), with an anathema against heresy in general, and a prayer for the pardon and acceptance of the true Catholic, _id est_ ROMAN, Church. In like manner the preacher continued to set before his hearers all the circumstances of our Saviour's passion; pronouncing a short discourse upon every sentence uttered by him in his agony. Each sermonette was succeeded by prayer; and that by an interlude of music and chanting, which enabled him to recover himself, and proceed with undiminished energy during a three hours' service. We had listened attentively, not always agreeing with his doctrine, but without any great shock to our Protestant principles, when, in conclusion, he exclaimed, "Now, brethren, before we disperse, let us do homage to the blessed Virgin, and sympathise with the afflicted and inconsolable Mother of our Lord. Think of her sufferings to-day; think and weep over them; and forget not the worship due to her holy name; whom Christ honoured, shall not we honour too? Sons of the blessed Virgin! is not your brother Christ her son also? make her then your friend; propitiate her, in order to obtain pardon from him! Let us all, then, fall down upon our knees before the _Indolorata_." A long prayer to the Madonna followed, then a hymn in her honour; and after a last glorious outburst of the organ, accompanying the ardent and sustained Hallelujahs of both choir and congregation, the curtain falls, the doors are thrown open, daylight rushes in through the no longer darkened windows; and presently the thronged and noisy Corso has absorbed the last member of the much moved, slowly dispersing crowd.

A heartfelt and affecting ceremony was that we had just witnessed; every body had shed tears, and there had been evidently great _at_trition, and probably some _con_trition also. The strong appeals of the priest had _told_, though they were not legitimate; for what could be less so than, in the end, his misdirecting the thoughts from the _true_ object of worship, to _her_, who was, after all, but a mere mortal like ourselves?

Yet devotional feelings had been called forth, and in this it was unlike, and surely better than, the ordinary cold, formal, glittering, shifting pantomimic service of Te-Deums, and high masses, which, instead of "filling the hungry with good things," send all "empty away;" or worse, _satisfied_ with "that which is not bread." Could piety really be appealed to through the senses, then might the ceremonies of the Romish Church hope to reach it, captivating as they are to most of them. The ear is pleased with exquisite music; the eye is dazzled with pictures, processions, scenic representations, glittering colours, gorgeous robes, rich laces, and embroidery; and even the nostril is propitiated by the grateful odour of frankincense; but the only address to the heart and intellect is a barbarous Latin prayer, unintelligible (were it to be heard) to most of the congregation, and rendered so to all by the mode in which it is gone through. On returning from such exhibitions as these, we feel more forcibly than ever, how much reason we have to thank those pious compilers of our expurgated English prayer-book, who, renouncing an _unknown tongue_, and rejecting all unscriptural interpolations, drew from the rich stores of Rome herself, and from the primitive Church, an almost faultless Liturgy,[G] where every desire of the human heart is anticipated, and every expression so carefully weighed, that not an unbecoming phrase can be found in it.

[G] "We were not" (says Jeremy Taylor) "like women and children when they are affrighted with fire in their clothes; we shook off the coal, indeed, but not our garments; lest we should expose our Church to that nakedness which the excellent men of our sister Churches complained to be among themselves."

It is impossible for any one who has been much in Roman Catholic countries, to avoid drawing comparisons between the two services; and especially at this time, when many of our countrymen are halting between two opinions, and almost persuading themselves that there was no need of a Reformation, it behoves those not under the influence of

"That dark lanthorn of the Spirit Which none see by but those that bear it;"

nor yet led away

"By crosses, relics, crucifixes, Beads, pictures, rosaries, and pyxes; Those tools for working out salvation By mere _mechanic_ operation,"

to protest against the return of Popery to this land, to the surrender of our consciences and our Bibles again into the hands of a fellow sinner.[H] "Quis custodet custodem?"--who shall watch our watcher?--was a question that men had been asking themselves for many years in England, but hitherto without result; till our pious Reformers, addressing themselves to the study of the Scriptures, received the sword of the Spirit, with which they were enabled to wage successful war against that wily serpent, coiled now for centuries round the Church of Christ, and waiting but a little further _development_ to crush her in his inextricable folds. Alike unallured by concessions and unterrified by threats, they boldly denounced the _heretical_ usurpation of Rome; opposing an honest conscience, and Christ the only mediator, to the caprice of councils, and the false unity of a pseudo-infallible head;[I] refusing to purchase their lives by rendering homage to any Phalaris of the Triple Crown.

[H] Bellarmine asserts (and who but a heretic shall dispute it with him?) that men are bound so far to submit their consciences to the Pope, as even to believe _virtue_ to be _bad_ and _vice_ to be _good_, if it shall please his Holiness to say so. (BELLAR. _de Rom. Pontif_, lib. iv. cap. v.) When things came to this pass, were we not justified in the insertion of that rough deprecatory clause that stood in our Litany--"From the tyranny of the Bishop of Rome, and all his detestable enormities, Good Lord deliver us!"

[I] "We must seek to enter into the real divine unity; if not, the _pseudo_ unity to which Mr Newman would bring us back will be attempted once more among us; only to be followed, when its hollowness, its nothingness, its implicit infidelity, is laid bare, by an explicit infidelity, an anarchical unity, without a centre, without a God." (MAURICE'S _Lectures on the Epistle to the Hebrews_, p. 111.)

Their perjured faith, though zealot Popes command, Point to _their_ Bull, and raise the threatening hand: They deem'd those souls consummate guilt incurr'd, At conscience' fearful price, who life preferr'd: No length of days for bartered peace can pay, And what were life, take life's great end away?[J]

[J] Imitated from JUVENAL, _Satire_ viii.

THE BEATIFICATION.

"_Sanctis_ Roma, suis jam tollere gestit ad astra, Et cupit ad _superos_ evehere usque deos."

MILTON'S _Sonnets_.

To receive Beatification, which is the first step towards Canonisation, and may in time lead to a fellowship with the saints,--to be pronounced "blessed" by him who arrogates to himself the title of _Holy_, and must therefore know the full value of the dignity he confers--_sic laudari a laudato_, and that too in the finest church in Christendom, before the eyes of a countless assembly of all the nations of Europe,--is an honour indeed! No wonder, then, that every promotion should be jealously canvassed, and that sometimes the rumour of "unfairness," or "favouritism," should be heard among the people, when each fresh brevet comes out. For example--"Who's this third St Anthony? Are not two enough in the Calendar? The great St Antonio, and he of the pig!--(_del porco_,)--another will only create confusion;" or else, "Surely the _Beata_ _Ernestina_ has not been long enough dead to have attained to such an 'odour of sanctity;'" or, "Though the good Pasquale might deserve the title, the pious Teodoro's miracles are as well attested, and much more numerous, and should therefore have been first recognised." Of such sort are the comments of the crowd. All this grumbling, however, is at an end, when once the _Festa_ comes round; the Church, by the brilliancy of her exhibitions, wins over her discontented children, and the installation is sure to be well attended. Sometimes the saint expectant stops short of true canonisation; and, having gained one step, finds himself like a yellow admiral, placed on the shelf without chance of further promotion. (This by the way.) No one can say precisely what entitles the dead to these honours. Large bequests alone are not always sufficient; witness the rejection of a certain distinguished Begum, who left much of her enormous wealth to the Pope, with a well-known view to this distinction. Some imagine that eminent piety is a necessary condition; but no! there is very little talk of religion. It seems chiefly to be the attestation of a sufficient number of miracles at a tomb, which confers the title of Beatus on its tenant, and converts it into a shrine, sure ever after to be profusely hung with glass eyes, wax fœtuses, silver hearts, discarded crutches, votive shipwrecks, &c., &c.,[K] in token of cures and deliverances which have emanated from it. Next to miracles, perhaps, we may reckon _dates_--_seniores priores_--first buried, first beatified, and no superannuation here: on the contrary, holiness, like many other good things, requires time to ripen its virtues and to bring it to perfection; and it is a rule of the Church that chemistry must disintegrate the mortal before she can build up the saint. Thus it happens of two candidates of equal merit; he whose dissolution took place half a century or so before his rival, obtains the preference. The first steps are taken by the lawyers; one being retained to advance the merits of the aspirant saint, another to asperse them if possible. Should the election be contested, much special pleading is then resorted to. Both sides are paid by the Church, but he who opposes the nomination is termed the _devil's_ counsel. This title, however, is a legal or rather a theological fiction; the miracles alleged to have been performed by the defunct being only more triumphantly established and set off by the apparent disposition of the rival pleader to deny their reality; who, after a proper show of resistance and incredulity, allows himself to be foiled. This is indeed beating Satan with his own weapons; but the advocates of saints belong to that party who

"E'en to the Devil himself will go, If they have motive thereunto; And think, as there is war between The Devil and them, it is no sin If they by subtle stratagem Make use of him as he does them."

[K] It is singular to observe how the "_votiva paries_," in the churches of Papal Rome, are hung with similar offerings to those which formerly ornamented her temples in Pagan times. We possess several of these ancient offerings; _inter alia_--a _uterus_ and a _mamma_, in _terra cotta_, from the Temple of _Elvina Ceres_ at Aquinum, and an _abortion_, in lead, from the same source.

We had never witnessed a Beatification: so, when the Pope, in his character of umpire, had pronounced his fiat in favour of "good sister Frances," and all that remained to be done was the church ceremonial necessary to admit her to piety's peerage, we procured one of the many thousand tickets printed for the occasion, and followed the crowd to St Peter's. Here all was prepared to give due effect to the scene: the interior was studiously darkened, that the rich upholstery might be set off by a grove of countless wax lights, thick and tall as young pine trees. The workmen, after a whole fortnight of bustle and activity, had done their part well. Curtains had been hung and carpets spread; organs wheeled up towards the throne of St Peter; and a whole gallery of villanously painted historical pictures, blasphemous and absurd, were suspended round, representing the miracles for which the new "beatified" was to receive her first degree towards sainthood; and showing amongst other wonders, how in one case her blood, in another her image, restored a blind man to sight, and so completely cured the palsy of one Salvator di Sales, that he is dancing a hornpipe on his recovery, while a priest is looking on approvingly. We were too early for the ceremony; and after curiously scanning these preparations, our attention was attracted to a group near, eagerly listening to the recital of a bare-footed Capuchin. On approaching, we found that he was discoursing on the virtues of a picture of the Virgin, known by the name of _Sta Maria del Pianto_, a fresco daub, painted in a very dirty back street. He was affirming that it had lately taken to _winking_, and had also been seen to shed tears over the body of a man recently found murdered under the lamp. "Who saw her weep?" inquired one of his hearers. "Do you doubt the miracle, my son?" said the friar. "No indeed, father," returned he; "but why did she not call out to the assassin; and what is the use of weeping over a dead man?" "It was owing to the gentleness of her sex," said another, who appeared interested in proclaiming the notoriety of the shrine: he proceeded, therefore, to inform the attentive listeners, that he had the face newly painted some months back, since which operation there was no end to the miracles performed by it. Several persons round hereon testified to having heard repeatedly of these wonders. "Ah!" said a sceptical craftsman, "I dare say you live in another quarter of the city, for it is well known that those at a distance see these things more clearly than the neighbours, unless, like our friend here," nodding to the restorer of the shrine, "they hope to attract customers to the shop by drawing votaries to the shrine." "I don't believe a word of it," said we, taking part in the colloquy. "_Caro lei_--who can help that? we can only pity your unbelief," said the good-humoured Capuchin, offering us, however, a pinch out of his snuff-box. "_You_," continued he, "should call to mind '_in dubiis fides_;' and _we_, in compassion to your being a heretic, will remember '_in omnibus caritas_.'" We accepted the good man's courtesy, albeit no snuff-taker; and he was resuming the interrupted narrative, when a stir among the crowd outside announced the near approach of the procession, and every one hastened to secure a good seat. Presently the Swiss guards enter, the choristers take their places, in come priests, bishops, cardinals, all sumptuously arrayed; at length the Pope himself arrives and assumes his throne. Mass commences.

And here the reader doubtless expects, if not a full description of the ceremony of canonisation, at least an accurate detail of the various steps of the process by which it was effected; but, as we have stated above, the incubation had been completed six weeks before in a private Eccaleiobion, and the pageant to-day was merely to give publicity to the metamorphosis--to read in, and to enrol among the saints the Beata Francesca. As we cannot give a particular account of the _funzione_, we give a general one of all masses:--