Part 2

Molto consolante è poi, riuscito alla S. Congr. la nuova, che sia riuscito, allo stesso Monsig. Milner di ottenere un’ assai piú grande libertà per gli soldati cattolici nell’ esercizio della S. Religione; e che abbia ben dispositi gli animi, per fare riconoscere validi nella legge civile i matrimonj contratti avanti un sacerdote cattolico. V. Paternità gliene faccia i più vivi ringraziamenti, per parte di questa S. C.

In fine l’ Arcivescovo, che scrive, con piena stima se le rassegna.

A RECENT PROTESTANT VIEW OF THE CHURCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

The history of the Church in the middle ages has ever forced upon Protestant minds a difficulty which they have met by many various methods of solution. The middle age exhibits so much of precious side by side with so much of base, so much of the beauty of holiness in the midst of ungodliness, so much of what all Christians admit as truth with what Protestants call fatal error, that the character of the whole cannot readily be taken in at first sight from the Protestant point of view. Some there are who dwell so long on the shadows that they close their eyes to the light, and these declare the medieval Church to have been a scene of unmitigated evil. To their minds the whole theology of the period is useless, or worse than useless, harmful. They connect the middle ages with wickedness as thoroughly as the Manicheans connected matter with the evil principle.

Others there are who honestly admit that these ages, especially their earlier part, are not Protestant, but at the same time contend that neither are they favourable to Roman doctrine. These believe that facts abundantly prove that in the bosom of the Church which was then, the two Churches were to be found, which afterwards disengaged themselves from one another at the Reformation. This is the philosophy of medieval history which, as we learn from the preface to his collection of _Sacred Latin Poetry_,(1) has recommended itself to Dr. Trench, the present Protestant Archbishop of Dublin. “In Romanism we have the residuum of the middle-age Church and theology, the lees, after all, or well nigh all the wine was drained away. But in the medieval Church we have the wine and lees together—the truth and the error, the false observance and yet at the same time the divine truth which should one day be fatal to it—side by side.” For such thinkers the sum of all the history of that period amounts to this: a long struggle between two Churches—one a Church of truth, the other a Church of error—a struggle which, however, ended happily in the triumph of the Church of truth by the Reformation, in which the truth was purified from its contact with error.

It is not without its advantages to know what views the occupant of an Irish see so distinguished, is led to take, of the Church to which seventy-seven out of every hundred Irishmen belong, with all the convictions of their intellects, and all the love of their hearts. It seems to us that his theory is not likely to satisfy any party; it goes too far to please some, and stops short too soon to be agreeable to others. But what strikes us most of all in it is the fatal inconsistency of its parts. Of this the very book to which it serves as preface is proof enough. Dr. Trench’s position is this. He tells his Protestant readers that whereas in the medieval Church there was a good church, and an evil, all the good has found its resting place in Protestantism, all the evil in tyrannical Rome. Whatever of good, of holy, of pure, has ever been said or done within the Church, Protestants are the rightful inheritors of it all. From the treasury of the Church before the Reformation he proposes to draw, and to collect in this work what his readers may live on and love, and what he is confident will prove wholesome nourishment for their souls. He would set before them the feelings of the Church during these thousand years of her existence, and would summon from afar, from remote ages, “voices in which they may utter and embody the deepest things of their hearts”. Such, he assures them, are the voices of the writers whose poems have found a place in his book. Now, if we are to understand that the two ante-Reformation Churches stood out quite distinctly, one from the other, in open antagonism, like Jerusalem and Babylon, each having its own position more or less clearly defined, we should naturally expect to find in Dr. Trench’s book the thoughts and words only of the Reformers before the Reformation, of the men, that is, who never bent the knee to Baal, but ever cherished in their hearts the true doctrine of salvation. If his own theory be worth anything, he must have recourse for his present purposes, to that one of the two Churches which alone has been perpetuated, victorious after conflict, in Protestantism. Where else shall he find sympathies that answer to those of Protestants? But he does not do so. For in the beginning of his preface he tells us that he has not admitted each and all of the works of the authors whose productions he inserts. He tells us that he has carefully excluded from his collection “all hymns which in any way imply the Romish doctrine of transubstantiation”, or, “which involve any creature-worship, or speak of the Mother of our Lord in any other language than that which Scripture has sanctioned, and our Church adopted”, or which “ask of the suffrages of the Saints”? These certainly are not the doctrines which have been perpetuated in Protestantism.

His own practice, therefore, is inconsistent with his theory, if that theory means to assert the existence of two Churches in the middle age, distinctly antagonistic, one to the other.

The only escape from this tangle is to reply, that Dr. Trench, although he may find two Churches in the bosom of the middle-age Church, does not, however, place between them a separation so sharp as to suppose the Church of good absolutely without evil, nor the Church of evil altogether destitute of good. In each there is good and some mixture of evil: error relieved by a vein of truth. His favourite authors, by whose labours he wishes to make his readers profit, are, in this last hypothesis, men who are subject to the influence of both Churches; men who belong partly to each in turn, whose doctrines are a pitiable admixture of truth with falsehood—who, in one word, are visited both by “airs from Heaven and blasts from Hell”. At times they say what all, even Protestants, may treasure up in their hearts, to live on and love; at times, again, they are made to utter what all should reject and condemn, as so many snares for unwary feet. We shall say nothing of the difficulty the mind feels in accepting such a description of the position of these writers, nor of the task we have to persuade ourselves that those who teach belief in deadly heresies to be essential to salvation, can be, at the same time, the chosen tabernacles wherein the pure spirit of real piety can ever take up its abode. Such was not the feeling of the ancient Church. We ask, instead, who are the men upon whose writings Dr. Trench would sit in judgment, “to sunder between the holy and profane”, to distinguish between the errors and the truth, to decide what we are “to take warning from and to shun, what to live upon and love”. With the exception of the two, Alard and Buttmann, all are men highly honoured by the whole Catholic world, and all, without exception, are praised for their excelling virtues by Dr. Trench himself. Among the twenty-three names we read with reverence those of Saint Ambrose, Saint Bonaventure, Venerable Bede, Saint Bernard, Saint Peter Damian, Thomas a-Kempis, Peter the Venerable, Jacopone, and others of great reputation for sanctity and learning. These are the men whose writings Dr. Trench is to parcel out into two portions; this to be venerated as sacred, that to be condemned as profane. It needs great faith in the censor, to accept readily his decision in such a case. What test does he undertake to apply? what criterion is to influence his choice? Why does he cast away the poems which celebrate St. Peter as Prince of the Apostles, and approve of those that extol St. Paul? Why should he style Adam of St. Victor’s hymn on the Blessed Virgin an exaggeration, and quote as edifying his _Laus S. Scripturae_? Why are St. Bonaventure’s pieces in honour of Mary visited with censure, and his lines _In Passione Domini_ made the theme of praise? Dr. Trench gives us his reasons very plainly. “If our position mean anything”, says he (page x.), “we are bound to believe that to us, having the Word and the Spirit, the power has been given to distinguish things which differ.... It is our duty to believe that to us, that to each generation which humbly and earnestly seeks, will be given that enlightening spirit, by whose aid it shall be enabled to read aright the past realizations of God’s divine idea in the wise and historic Church of successive ages, and to distinguish the human imperfections, blemishes, and errors, from the divine truth which they obscured and overlaid, but which they could not destroy, being, one day, rather to be destroyed by it”. That is to say, we, as Protestants, in virtue of our position as such, are able by the light of the Holy Spirit to discern true from false doctrine, the fruits of the good Church from the fruits of the evil Church. This enlightening Spirit will be given to each generation which humbly and earnestly seeks it. But, we ask, what are we to believe concerning the working of the same enlightening Spirit in the hearts of the holy men whose exquisitely devotional writings Dr. Trench sets before us? Were they men of humility and earnestness? If they were not, Dr. Trench’s book appears under false colours, and is not a book of edification. And if they were, as they certainly were, who is Dr. Trench that he should take it on himself to condemn those who enjoyed the very same light which he claims for himself? And why should we not then rather believe that as these holy men had, on his own showing, the spirit of God, Dr. Trench, in condemning their doctrine does in truth condemn what is the doctrine of the Church of the Holy Spirit.

The theory is therefore as inconsistent as on historical grounds it is false. Such as it is, however, the conclusions we may draw from it are of great importance.

1. Dr. Trench declares that, both by omitting and by thinning, he has carefully removed from his selection, all doctrine implying transubstantiation, the cultus of the Blessed Virgin, the invocation of saints, and the veneration of the cross. Now, as the great bulk of the poems he publishes belong to the middle ages, strictly so called, it follows, on Dr. Trench’s authority, that these doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church were held long before the Reformation, and that the Church was already in possession when Luther came.

2. Since he tells us (page vi) that he has counted inadmissible poems which breathe a spirit foreign to that tone of piety which the English Church desires to cherish in her children, it follows that the spirit of piety in the Church of old is not the same as that in the present Church of England. Now in such cases the presumption is against novelty.

3. Dr. Trench (page vii) reminds his readers that it is unfair to try the theological language of the middle ages by the greater strictness and accuracy rendered necessary by the struggle, of the Reformation. A man who holds a doctrine _implicitly_ and in a confused manner, is likely to use words which he would correct if the doctrine were put before him in accurate form. This is a sound principle, and one constantly employed by Catholic theologians, when they have to deal with an objection urged by Protestants from some obscure or equivocal passage of a Father. It is satisfactory to be able for the future to claim for its use the high authority of Dr. Trench.

4. A special assistance of the Holy Spirit is claimed for all those who humbly and earnestly invoke him. This assistance is to enable those blessed with it to distinguish between error and divine truth. Is this happy privilege to be exercised either independently, without the direction of the ministers of the Church, or is it one of the graces peculiar to the pastoral office? In the former case, every fanatical sectary may judge in matters of religion as securely as if he had the whole world on his side. In the latter case, it would be interesting to know how much does this privilege differ from the infallibility claimed by the Catholic Church.

5. Finally, the contradictions inherent to the whole theory are most clearly to be seen in the following passage about the noble lines which Hildebert, Archbishop of Tours, in the beginning of the twelfth century, places on the lip of the city of Rome:

“I have not inserted these lines”, says Dr. Trench, “in the body of this collection, lest I might seem to claim for them that entire sympathy which I am very far from doing. Yet, believing as we may, and, to give any meaning to a large period of Church history, we must, that Papal Rome of the middle ages had a work of God to accomplish for the taming of a violent and brutal world, in the midst of which she often lifted up the only voice which was anywhere heard in behalf of righteousness and truth—all of which we may believe, with the fullest sense that her dominion was an unrighteous usurpation, however overruled for good to Christendom, which could then take no higher blessing—believing this, we may freely admire these lines, so nobly telling of that true strength of spiritual power, which may be perfected in the utmost weakness of all other power. It is the city of Rome which speaks:

Dum simulacra mihi, dum numina vana placerent, Militiâ, populo, moenibus alts fui: At simul effigies, arasque superstitiosas Dejiciens, uni sum famulata Deo; Cesserunt arces, cecidere palatia divum, Servivit populis, degeneravit eques. Vix scio quae fuerim: vix Romae Roma recordor; Vix sinit occasus vel meminisse mei. Gratior haec jactura mihi successibus illis, Major sum pauper divite, stante jacens. Plus aquilis vexilla crucis, plus Caesare Petrus, Plus cinctis ducibus vulgus inerme dedit. Stans domui terras; infernum diruta pulso; Corpora stans, animas fracta jacensque rego. Tunc miserae plebi, nunc principibus tenebrarum Impero; tunc urbes, nunc mea regna polus. Quod ne Caesaribus videar debere vel armis, Et species rerum meque meosque trahat, Armorum vis illa perit, ruit alta Senatûs Gloria, procumbunt templa, theatra jacent. Rostra vacant, edicta silent, sua praemia desunt Emeritis, populo jura, colonus agris. Ista jacent, ne forte meus spem ponat in illis Civis, et evacuet spemque bonumque crucis.

THE MSS. REMAINS OF PROFESSOR O’CURRY IN THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY. NO. II.

_Prayer of St. Aireran the Wise, ob._. 664.

[In the first number of the RECORD we published from the manuscripts of the late Professor O’Curry the Prayer of St. Colga of Clonmacnoise. We now publish another beautiful devotional piece from the same collection.

Speaking of ancient Irish religious works now remaining, O’Curry says (at page 378 of his great work): “The fifth class of these religious remains consists of the prayers, invocations, and litanies, which have came down to us”. The Prayer of St. Colga, published in our last number, is placed by O’Curry in the second place among these documents, which he sets down in chronological order.

“The first piece of this class (adopting the chronological order) is the prayer of St. _Aireran_ the Wise (often called _Aileran_, _Eleran_, and _Airenan_), who was a classical professor in the great school of Clonard, and died of the plague in the year 664. St. Aireran’s prayer or litany is addressed, respectively, to God the Father, to God the Son, and to God the Holy Spirit, invoking them for mercy by various titles indicative of their power, glory, and attributes. The prayer consists of five invocations to the Father, eighteen invocations to the Son, and five to the Holy Spirit; and commences in Latin thus: ‘O Deus Pater, Omnipotens Deus, exerci misericordiam nobis’. This is followed by the same Invocation in the Gaedhlic; and the petitions to the end are continued in the same language. The invocation of the Son begins thus: ‘Have mercy on us, O Almighty God! O Jesus Christ! O Son Of the living God! O Son, born twice! O only born of God the Father’. The petition to the Holy Spirit begins: ‘Have mercy on us, O Almighty God! O Holy Spirit! O Spirit the noblest of all spirits!’ (See original in APPENDIX, No. CXX.)

“When I first discovered this prayer in the _Leabhar Buidhe Lecain_ (or Yellow Book of _Lecain_), in the library of Trinity College, many years ago, I had no means of ascertaining or fixing its date; but in my subsequent readings in the same library, for my collection of ancient glossaries, I met the word _Oirchis_ set down with explanation and illustration, as follows:

“ ‘_Oirchis_, id est, Mercy; as it is said in the prayers of Arinan the Wise’:—Have mercy on us, O God the Father Almighty!” See original in APPENDIX, No. CXXI.

“I think it is unnecessary to say more on the identity of the author of this prayer with the distinguished _Aireran_ of Clonard. Nor is this the only specimen of his devout works that has come down to us. Fleming, in his Collecta Sacra, has published a fragment of a Latin tract discovered in the ancient monastery of St. Gall in Switzerland, which is entitled ‘The Mystical Interpretation of the Ancestry of our Lord Jesus Christ’. A perfect copy of this curious tract, and one of high antiquity, has, I believe, been lately discovered on the continent.

“There was another _Airenan_, also called ‘the wise’, who was abbot of _Tamhlacht_ [Tallaght] in the latter part of the ninth century; but he has not been distinguished as an author, as far as we know”.

It seems to us that there are three things specially worthy of our consideration in this beautiful prayer.

In the first place, we find in it an explicit and most clear declaration of the Catholic Faith regarding the Blessed Trinity, especially the distinction of three persons, and the Divinity of each of these Divine Persons. “O God the Father Almighty, O God of Hosts, help us! Help us, O Almighty God! O Jesus Christ! Help us, O Almighty God, O Holy Spirit!”

We are in the next place struck by the extraordinary familiarity with the Holy Scripture which the writer evinces. There is scarcely one of the epithets which is not found in the sacred pages, almost in the precise words used by him, beginning with the first words, addressed to the Eternal Father, “O God of Hosts”, the _Deus Sabaoth_ of the Prophets, and going on to the last invocation of the Holy Ghost, “Spirit of love”, which comprises in itself the two inspired phrases: “_Spiritus est Deus_”, and “_Deus Charitas est_”. We may also remark the coincidence between Saint Aireran and the liturgical prayers of the Church, especially in the invocations of the Holy Ghost found in the office of Whitsuntide and in the administration of the Sacrament of Confirmation, “_Tu septiformis munere: Digitus Paternae dexterae_”. “O Finger of God! O Spirit of Seven Forms”.

In fine, we find our Irish saint applying to the Son of God the vision of the Prophet Ezechiel regarding the four mysterious animals: “O true Man! O Lion! O young Ox! O Eagle!” The prophecy is commonly interpreted of the Four Evangelists. Saint Augustine and Saint Jerome are quoted as authorities for this interpretation. But it is worthy of remark, that Saint Gregory the Great, whilst giving the same interpretation, applies the mysterious vision also to God the Son.(2) And Saint Aireran, by adopting this opinion, seems to afford us another proof of the great familiarity of our Irish scholars with the writings of the great Pontiff and Father of the Church. And this familiarity is rendered still more remarkable, and serves to give another proof of the constant communication between Rome and Ireland, from the close proximity of the times of our Saint and of Saint Gregory.]

O Deus Pater omnipotens Deus exerce tuam misericordiam nobis!

O God the Father Almighty! O God of Hosts, help us.

O illustrious God! O Lord of the world! O Creator of all creatures, help us.

O indescribable God! O Creator of all creatures, help us.

O invisible God! O incorporeal God! O unseen God! O unimaginable God! O patient God! O uncorrupted God! O unchangeable God! O eternal God! O perfect God! O merciful God! O admirable God! O Golden Goodness! O Heavenly Father, who art in Heaven, help us.

Help us, O Almighty God! O Jesus Christ! O Son of the living God! O Son twice born! O only begotten of the Father! O first-born of Mary the Virgin! O Son of David! O Son of Abraham, beginning of all things! O End of the World! O Word of God! O Jewel of the Heavenly Kingdom! O Life of all (things)! O Eternal Truth! O Image, O Likeness, O Form of God the Father! O Arm of God! O Hand of God! O Strength of God! O right (hand) of God! O true Wisdom! O true Light, which enlightens all men! O Light-giver! O Sun of Righteousness! O Star of the Morning! O Lustre of the Divinity! O Sheen of the Eternal Light! O Fountain of immortal Life! O Pacificator between God and Man! O Foretold of the Church! O Faithful Shepherd of the flock! O Hope of the Faithful! O Angel of the Great Council! O True Prophet! O True Apostle! O True Preacher! O Master! O Friend of Souls (Spiritual Director)! O Thou of the shining hair! O Immortal Food! O Tree of Life! O Righteous of Heaven! O Wand from the Stem of Moses! O King of Israel! O Saviour! O Door of Life! O Splendid Flower of the Plain! O Corner-stone! O Heavenly Zion! O Foundation of the Faith! O Spotless Lamb! O Diadem! O Gentle Sheep! O Redeemer of mankind! O true God! O True Man! O Lion! O young Ox! O Eagle! O Crucified Christ! O Judge of the Judgment Day! help us.

Help us, O Almighty God! O Holy Spirit! O Spirit more noble than all Spirits! O Finger of God! O Guardian of the Christians! O Protector of the Distressed! O Co-partner of the True Wisdom! O Author of the Holy Scripture! O Spirit of Righteousness! O Spirit of Seven Forms! O Spirit of the Intellect! O Spirit of the Counsel! O Spirit of Fortitude! O Spirit of Knowledge! O Spirit of Love! help us.

THE DESTINY OF THE IRISH RACE.(3)

That God knows and governs all things—that whatever happens is either done or permitted by him, and that he proposes to himself wise and beneficent ends in all he does or permits—are truths which lie at the foundation of all religion. The wicked may refuse to obey his commands, but they cannot withdraw themselves from the reach of his power. While their wickedness is entirely their own, _God_ makes them, however unwilling or unconscious, instruments to work out his ends.

It is thus that individuals and nations have each a peculiar destiny. Not that there is a blind fate, such as Pagans imagined; but that an all-seeing and all-governing God proposes to himself certain objects, which he is determined to attain, despite the perversity of man.