Part 27
It is observed by Dr. Forster in the “Perennial Calendar,” that about this season the purple spring crocus, _crocus vernus_, now blows, and is the latest of our crocuses. “It continues through March like the rest of the genus, and it varies with purple, with whitish, and with light blue flowers. The flowers appear before the leaves are grown to their full length. The vernal and autumnal crocus have such an affinity, that the best botanists only make them varieties of the same genus. Yet the vernal crocus expands its flowers by the beginning of March at farthest, often in very rigorous weather, and cannot be retarded but by some violence offered; while the autumnal crocus, or saffron, alike defies the influence of the spring and summer, and will not blow till most plants begin to fade and run to seed.
_On the Seasons of Flowering, by White._
Say, what impels, amid surrounding snow, Congealed, the Crocus’ flamy bud to glow? Say, what retards, amid the Summer’s blaze, The autumnal bulb, till pale, declining days? The God of Seasons, whose pervading power Controls the sun, or sheds the fleecy shower: He bids each flower his quickening word obey; Or to each lingering bloom enjoins delay.
We may now begin to expect a succession of spring flowers; something new will be opening every day through the rest of the season.”
FLOWERS
A writer under the signature CRITO in the “Truth Teller” dilates most pleasantly in his fourth letter concerning flowers and their names. He says “the pilgrimages and the travelling of the mendicant friars, which began to be common towards the close of the twelfth century, spread this knowledge of plants and of medical nostrums far and wide. Though many of these vegetable specifics have been of late years erased from our Pharmacopœias, yet their utility has been asserted by some very able writers on physic, and the author of these observations has himself often witnessed their efficacy in cases where regular practice had been unavailing. Mr. Abernethy has alluded to the surprising efficacy of these popular vegetable diet drinks, in his book on the ‘Digestic Organs.’ And it is a fact, curiously corroborating their utility, that similar medicines are used by the North American Indians, whose sagacity has found out, and known from time immemorial, the use of such various herbs as medicines, which the kind, hospitable woods provide; and by means of which Mr. Whitlaw is now making many excellent cures of diseases.” He then proceeds to mention certain plants noted by the monks, as flowering about the time of certain religious festivals: “The SNOWDROP, _Galanthus nivalis_, whose pure white and pendant flowers are the first harbingers of spring, is noted down in some calendars as being an emblem of the purification of the spotless virgin, as it blows about Candlemas, and was not known by the name of snowdrop till lately, being formerly called FAIR MAID OF FEBRUARY, in honour of our lady. Sir James Edward Smith, and other modern botanists, make this plant a native of England, but I can trace most of the wild specimens to some neighbouring garden, or old dilapidated monastery; and I am persuaded it was introduced into England by the monks subsequent to the conquest, and probably since the time of Chaucer, who does not notice it, though he mentions the daisy, and various less striking flowers. The LADYSMOCK, _Cardamine pratensis_, is a word corrupted of ‘our lady’s smock,’ a name by which this plant (as well as that of _Chemise de nôtre Dame_) is still known in parts of Europe: it first flowers about Lady Tide, or the festival of the Annunciation, and hence its name. CROSS FLOWER, _Polygala Vulgaris_, which begins to flower about the Invention of the Cross, May 3, was also called _Rogation flower_, and was carried by maidens in the processions in Rogation week, in early times. The monks discovered its quality of producing milk in nursing women, and hence it was called _milkwort_. Indeed so extensive was the knowledge of botany, and of the medical power of herbs among the monks of old, that a few examples only can be adduced in a general essay, and indeed it appears that many rare species of exotics were known by them, and were inhabitants of their monastery gardens, which Beckmann in his ‘_Geschichte der Erfindungen_,’ and Dryander in the ‘_Hortus Kewensis_,’ have ascribed to more modern introducers. What is very remarkable is, that above three hundred species of medical plants were known to the monks and friars, and used by the religious orders in general for medicines, which are now to be found in some of our numerous books of pharmacy and medical botany, by new and less appropriate names; just as if the Protestants of subsequent times had changed the old names with a view to obliterate any traces of catholic science. Linnæus, however, occasionally restored the ancient names. The following are some familiar examples which occur to me, of all medicinal plants, whose names have been changed in later times. The _virgin’s bower_, of the monastic physicians, was changed into flammula Jovis, by the new pharmaciens; the _hedge hyssop_, into gratiola; the _St. John’s wort_ (so called from blowing about St. John the Baptist’s day) was changed into hypericum; _fleur de St. Louis_, into iris; _palma Christi_, into ricinus; _our master wort_, into imperatoria; _sweet bay_, into laurus; _our lady’s smock_, into cardamine; _Solomon’s seal_, into convallaria; _our lady’s hair_, into trichomanes; _balm_, into melissa; _marjorum_, into origanum; _crowfoot_, into ranunculus; _herb Trinity_, into viola tricolor; _avens_ into caryophyllata; _coltsfoot_, into tussilago; _knee holy_, into rascus; _wormwood_, into absinthium; _rosemary_, into rosmarinus; _marygold_, into calendula, and so on. Thus the ancient names were not only changed, but in this change all the references to religious subjects, which would have led people to a knowledge of their culture among the monastic orders, were carefully left out. The THORN APPLE, _datura stramonium_, is not a native of England; it was introduced by the friars in early times of pilgrimage; and hence we see it on old waste lands near abbeys, and on dunghills, &c. Modern botanists, however, have ascribed its introduction to gipsies, although it has never been seen among that wandering people, nor used by them as a drug. I could adduce many other instances of the same sort. But vain indeed would be the endeavour to overshadow the fame of the religious orders in medical botany and the knowledge of plants; go into any garden and the common name of _marygold_, _our lady’s seal_, _our lady’s bedstraw_, _holy oak_, (corrupted into holyhock,) the _virgin’s thistle_, _St. Barnaby’s thistle_, _herb Trinity_, _herb St. Christopher_, _herb St. Robert_, _herb St. Timothy_, _Jacob’s ladder_, _star of Bethlehem_, now called ornithogalum; _star of Jerusalem_, now made goatsbeard; _passion flower_, now passiflora; _Lent lilly_, now daffodil; _Canterbury bells_, (so called in honour of St. Augustine,) is now made into Campanula; _cursed thistle_, now carduus; besides _archangel_, _apple of Jerusalem_, _St. Paul’s betony_, _Basil_, _St. Berbe_, _herb St. Barbara_, _bishopsweed_, _herba Christi_, _herba Benedict_, _herb St. Margaret_, (erroneously converted into _la belle Marguerite_,) _god’s flower_, flos Jovis, _Job’s tears_, _our lady’s laces_, _our lady’s mantle_, _our lady’s slipper_, _monk’s hood_, _friar’s cowl_, _St. Peter’s herb_, and a hundred more such.--Go into any garden, I say, and these names will remind every one at once of the knowledge of plants possessed by the monks. Most of them have been named after the festivals and saints’ days on which their natural time of blowing happened to occur; and others were so called, from the tendency of the minds of the religious orders of those days to convert every thing into a memento of sacred history, and the holy religion which they embraced.”
It will be perceived that CRITO is a Catholic. His floral enumeration is amusing and instructive; and as his bias is natural, so it ought to be inoffensive. Liberality makes a large allowance for educational feelings and habitual mistake; but deceptive views, false reasonings, and perverted facts, cannot be used, by either Protestant or Catholic, with impunity to himself, or avail to the cause he espouses.
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Leo the XII., the present pope, on the 24th of May, 1824, put forth a bull from St. Peter’s at Rome. “We have resolved,” he says, “by virtue of the authority given to us by heaven fully to unlock the sacred treasure composed of the merits, sufferings, and virtues of Christ our Lord, and of his Virgin Mother, and of all the saints, which the author of human salvation has intrusted to our dispensation. Let the earth therefore hear the words of his mouth. We proclaim that the year of Atonement and Pardon, of Redemption and Grace, of Remission and Indulgence is arrived. We ordain and publish the most solemn Jubilee, to commence in this holy city from the first vespers of the nativity of our most holy saviour, Jesus Christ, next ensuing, and to continue during the whole year 1825, during which time we mercifully give and grant in the Lord a Plenary Indulgence, Remission, and Pardon of all their Sins to all the Faithful of Christ of both sexes, truly penitent and confessing their sins, and receiving the holy communion, who shall devoutly visit the churches of blessed Peter and Paul, as also of St. John Lateran and St. Mary Major of this city for thirty successive days, provided they be Romans or inhabitants of this city; but, if pilgrims or strangers, if they shall do the same for fifteen days, and shall pour forth their pious prayers to God for the exaltation of the holy church, the extirpation of heresies, concord of catholic princes, and the safety and tranquillity of christian people.” The pope requires “all the earth” to “therefore ascend, with loins girt up, to holy Jerusalem, this priestly and royal city.”--He requires the clergy to explain “the power of Indulgences, what is their efficacy, not only in the remission of the canonical penance, but also of the temporal punishment,” and to point out the succour afforded to those “now purifying in the fire of Purgatory.” However, in February, 1825, one of the public journals contains an extract from the French _Journal des Debats_, which states that there was “a great falling off in the devotion of saints and pilgrims,” and it proves this by an article from Rome, dated January 25, 1825, of which the following is a copy:
“The number of pilgrims drawn to Jerusalem (Rome) by the Jubilee is remarkably small, compared with former Jubilees. Without adverting to those of 1300 and 1350, when they had at least a _million_ of pilgrims; in 1750, they had 1,300 pilgrims presented on the 24th of December, at the opening of the holy gate. That number was increased to 8,400 before the ensuing New Year’s day. This time (Christmas, 1824) they had no more than thirty-six pilgrims at the opening of the holy gate, and in the course of Christmas week, that number increased only to 440. This is explained by the strict measures adopted in the Italian states with respect to the passports of pilgrims. The police have taken into their heads, that a vast number of individuals from all parts of Europe wish to bring about some revolutionary plot. They believe that the _Carbonari_, or some other Italian patriots, assemble here in crowds to accomplish a dangerous object. The passports of simple labourers, and other inferior classes, are rejected at Milan, and the surrounding cities of Austrian Italy, when they have not a number of signatures, which these poor men consider quite unnecessary. They cannot enter the Sardinian states without great difficulty. These circumstances are deplorable in the eyes of religious men. We are all grieved at this place.”
On this, the _Journal des Debats_ remarks, “Notwithstanding the excuse for so great a reduction of late years in the number of these devotees, it has evidently been produced by the diffusion of knowledge. Men, in 1825, are not so simple as to suppose they cannot be saved, without a long and painful journey to Jerusalem (Rome.)”
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FLORAL DIRECTORY.
Peach. _Amygdalus Persica._ Dedicated to _St. Walburg_.
~February 26.~
_St. Alexander._ _St. Porphyrius_, Bishop of Gaza, A. D. 420. _St. Victor_, or _Vittre_, 7th Cent.
_St. Alexander._
This is the patriarch of Alexandria so famous in ecclesiastical history for his opposition to Arius whom, with St. Athanasius and Marcellus of Ancyra, as his especial colleagues, he resisted at the council of Nice, till Arius was banished, his books ordered to be burnt, and an edict issued denouncing death to any who secreted them. On the death of St. Alexander in 420, St. Athanasius succeeded to his patriarchal chair.
FOGS.
The fogs of England have been at all times the complaint of foreigners. Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, when some one who was going to Spain waited on him to ask whether he had any commands, replied, “Only my compliments to the sun, whom I have not seen since I came to England.”--Carraccioli, the Neapolitan minister here, a man of a good deal of conversation and wit, used to say, that the only _ripe fruit_ he had seen in England were _roasted apples!_ and in a conversation with George II. he took the liberty of preferring the _moon_ of Naples to the _sun_ of England.
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_On seeing a_ LADY _walking in the_ SNOW.
I saw fair JULIA walk alone, When feather’d rain came softly down, ’Twas JOVE descending from his tower, To court her in a silver shower, A wanton flake flew on her breast, As happy dove into its nest, But rivall’d by the whiteness there, For grief dissolv’d into a tear, And falling to her garment’s hem, To deck her waist, froze to a gem.
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FLORAL DIRECTORY.
Lesser Periwinkle. _Vinca minor._ Dedicated to _St. Victor_.
~February 27.~
_St. Leander_, Bishop, A. D. 596. _St. Julian_, _Chronion_, and _Besas_. _St. Thalilæus._ _St. Galmier_, or _Baldomerus_, A. D. 650. _St. Nestor_, A. D. 250. _St. Alnoth._
_St. Thalilæus._
This saint was a weeper in Syria. He hermitized on a mountain during sixty years, wept almost without intermission for his sins, and lived for ten years in a wooden cage.
_St. Galmier._
Was a locksmith at Lyons, and lived in great poverty, for he bestowed all he got on the poor, and sometimes his tools. An abbot gave him a cell to live in, he died a subdeacon about 650, and his relics worked miracles to his fame, till the Hugonots destroyed them in the sixteenth century.
_St. Alnoth._
Was bailiff to St. Wereburge, became an anchoret, was killed by robbers, and had his relics kept at Stow, near Wedon, in Northamptonshire.
TIME.
‘Time is the stuff that life is made of,’ says Young.
“BEGONE _about your business_,” says the dial in the Temple: a good admonition to a loiterer on the pavement below.
The great French chancellor, d’Aguesseau, employed _all_ his time. Observing that madame d’Aguesseau always delayed ten or twelve minutes before she came down to dinner, he composed a work entirely in this time, in order not to lose an instant; the result was, at the end of fifteen years, a book in three large volumes quarto, which went through several editions.
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FLORAL DIRECTORY.
Lungwort. _Pulmonaria Officinalis._ Dedicated to _Leander_.
~February 28.~
_Martyrs to the Pestilence in Alexandria_, 261, &c. _St. Proterius_, Patriarch of Alexandria, 557. _Sts. Romanus_ and _Lupicinus_.
_Sts. Romanus_ and _Lupicinus_.
These saints were brothers, who founded the monastery of Condate with a nunnery, in the forest of Jura. St. Lupicinus prescribed a hard regimen. He lived himself on bread moistened with cold water, used a chair or a hard board for a bed, wore no stockings in his monastery, walked in wooden shoes, and died about 480.
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FLORAL DIRECTORY.
Purple Crocus. _Crocus vernus._ Dedicated to _St. Proterius_.
_Five Sundays in February._
The February of 1824, being leap-year, consisted of twenty-nine days; it contained five Sundays, a circumstance which cannot again occur till another leap-year, wherein the first of February shall fall on Sunday.
FOR THE MEMORY
_Old Memorandum of the Months._
Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November, All the rest have thirty and one, Except February, which hath twenty-eight alone.
--Sturdy March with brows full sternly bent And armed strongly, rode upon a ram, The same which over Hellespontus swam; Yet in his hand a spade he also hent, And in a bag all sorts of weeds ysame, Which on the earth he strewed as he went, And fill’d her womb with fruitfull hope of nourishment.
_Spenser._
March is the _third_ month of the year; with the ancients it was the first: according to Mr. Leigh Hunt, from Ovid, the Romans named it from Mars, the god of war, because he was the father of their first prince. “As to the deity’s nature, March has certainly nothing in common with it; for though it affects to be very rough, it is one of the best natured months in the year, drying up the superabundant moisture of winter with its fierce winds, and thus restoring us our paths through the fields, and piping before the flowers like a bacchanal. He sometimes, it must be confessed, as if in a fit of the spleen, hinders the buds which he has dried from blowing; and it is allowable in the less robust part of his friends out of doors, to object to the fancy he has for coming in such a cutting manner from the east. But it may be truly said, that the oftener you meet him firmly, the less he will shake you; and the more smiles you will have from the fair months that follow him.”
Perhaps the ascription of this month to Mars, by the Romans, was a compliment to themselves; they were the sons of War, and might naturally deduce their origin from the belligerent deity. Minerva was also patroness of March.
Verstegan says of our Saxon ancestors, that “the moneth of March they called _Lenct-monat_, that is, according to our new orthography, _Length-moneth_, because the dayes did then first begin in length to exceed the nights. And this moneth being by our ancestors so called when they received Christianity, and consequently therewith the ancient christian custome of fasting, they called this chiefe season of fasting the fast of _Lenct_, because of the _Lenct-monat_, whereon the most part of the time of this fasting alwayes fell; and hereof it cometh that we now cal it _Lent_, it being rather the fast of Lent, thogh the former name of _Lenct-monat_ be long since lost, and the name of March borrowed in stead thereof.” _Lenct_, or _Lent_, however, means _Spring_; hence March was the _Spring_-month. Dr. Sayer says the Saxons likewise called it _Rhed-monath_, a word derived by some from one of their deities, named Rheda, to whom sacrifices were offered in March; others derive it from _ræd_, the Saxon word for council, March being the month wherein wars or expeditions were usually undertaken by the Gothic tribes. The Saxons also called it _Hlyd-monath_, from _hlyd_, which means stormy, and in this sense March was the _Stormy_ month.
No living writer discourses so agreeably on the “Months” as Mr. Leigh Hunt in his little volume bearing that title. He says of March, that--“The animal creation now exhibit unequivocal signs of activity. The farmer extends the exercise of his plough; and, if fair weather continues, begins sowing barley and oats. Bats and reptiles break up their winter sleep: the little smelts or sparlings run up the softened rivers to spawn: the field-fare and woodcock return to their northern quarters; the rooks are all in motion with building and repairing their nests; hens sit; geese and ducks lay; pheasants crow; the ring-dove coos; young lambs come tottering forth in mild weather; the throstle warbles on the top of some naked tree, as if he triumphed over the last lingering of barrenness; and, lastly, forth issues the bee with his vernal trumpet, to tell us that there is news of sunshine and the flowers.--In addition to the last month’s flowers, we now have the crown-imperial, the dog’s-tooth violet, fritillaries, the hyacinth, narcissus, (bending its face like its namesake,) pilewort, scarlet ranunculus, great snow-drop, tulips, (which turned even the Dutch to enthusiasts,) and violets, proverbial for their odour, which were perhaps the favourite flowers of Shakspeare. The passage at the beginning of ‘Twelfth Night,’ in which he compares their scent with the passing sweetness of music is well-known, and probably suggested the beautiful one in lord ‘Bacon’s Essays,’ about the superiority of flowers in the open air, ‘where the scent comes and goes like the warbling of music.’”
Now, Winter, dispossessed of storms, and weak from boisterous rage,
Ling’ring on the verge of Spring, Retires reluctant, and from time to time Looks back, while at his keen and chilling breath Fair Flora sickens.
~March 1.~
_St. David_, Archbishop, A. D. 544. _St. Swidbert_, or _Swibert_, A. D. 713. _St. Albinus_, Bishop, A. D. 549. _St. Monan_, A. D. 874.
ST. DAVID.
_Patron of Wales._
St. David, or, in Welch, Dewid, was son of Xantus, prince of Cardiganshire, brought up a priest, became an ascetic in the Isle of Wight, afterwards preached to the Britons, founded twelve monasteries, ate only bread and vegetables, and drank milk and water. A synod being called at Brevy, in Cardiganshire, A. D. 519, in order to suppress the heresy of Pelagius, “St. David confuted and silenced the infernal monster by his learning, eloquence, and miracles.” After the synod, St. Dubritius, archbishop of Caerleon, resigned his see to St. David, which see is now called St. David’s. He died in 544. St. Kentigern saw his soul borne by angels to heaven; his body was in the church of St. Andrew. In 962, his relics were translated to Glastonbury.[13]
Butler conceals that St. David’s mother was not married to his father, but Cressy tells the story out, and that his birth was prophecied of thirty years before it happened.