Curiosities of Christian History Part 13

Though the Jews were often treated with gross cruelty and injustice in the Middle Ages, they sometimes had it in their power to retaliate. The Jews, often acquiring great wealth, defied the clergy and refused to pay t.i.the.

It was often a question whether the clergy should admit servants of the Jews to baptism. Once large numbers of bishops forbade Christians, under pain of excommunication, to frequent the banquets of the Jews. In 1478 one Francis de Pizicardis, a great and cruel usurer, was buried in the Church of St. Francis in Placentia. It happened to rain torrents during many days, till a report spread through the city that it would never cease as long as the said body was in holy ground. The young men of the city in a body, as if convoked by the bishop, went to the church, burst open the gates, dug up the body, and dragged it by a cord through all the streets of the city. And as they pa.s.sed the house of one old woman, she ran out and insulted it, saying, "Give me back my eggs!" for she had given him two fresh eggs every day as interest for a ducat which she owed him. At length the body was dragged out of the city, suspended from a willow tree, and finally thrown into the Po. And, strange to say, according to the annalist, the rain then ceased. Some Polish rulers were so indebted to the Jews that, in order to keep their creditors quiet, they favoured the Jewish merchants more than the Christian.

TORQUEMADA'S ZEAL AGAINST SPANISH JEWS (1492).

After the Spanish sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella had succeeded in driving the Moors from Spain, and when at last they had agreed to send Columbus on his expedition to the New World, the clergy inflamed the minds of the sovereigns and the Inquisition against the Jews, who obstinately resisted all efforts to convert them. While the Jews were negotiating with the sovereign to avert this odium, Torquemada, the Inquisitor-General, burst into the apartment of the palace, and, drawing a crucifix from under his mantle, held it up, and exclaimed, "Judas Iscariot sold his Master for thirty pieces of silver. Your Highnesses would sell Him anew for thirty thousand. Here He is; take Him and barter Him away." So saying, this demon priest threw the crucifix on the table, and left the apartment. The royal pair were overawed, and their superst.i.tious forebodings were so effectually worked upon that they signed, in 1492, the edict for the expulsion of the Jews which caused so much misery. The Jews, who were then estimated to be about six hundred and fifty thousand, resolved to abandon the country and sacrifice all rather than their religion. They had to sell their property for a trifle, owing to the market being glutted. A house would be sold for an a.s.s and a vineyard for a piece of cloth. Some Jews swallowed their jewels; others tried to conceal them in clothes and saddles. Some s.h.i.+ps carrying the fugitives were visited by the plague.

Those suffered all the miseries of hunger who travelled by land, and many sold their children for bread. Some were cast naked and desolate on the African coast. Some tried to escape into Portugal; and King Joan II. drove a hard bargain, fixing a high capitation tax, which his tax-gatherers lined the frontiers in order to collect. This was only for permission to pa.s.s through the country and embark for Africa. The new king, Emanuel, acted still more brutally, and ordered all Jewish children to be kidnapped and torn from their parents' arms, in order to be brought up in the Catholic faith. The Dominicans watched, during these years of ma.s.sacre and pillage, the moment when a Jewish person was visible, rushed forth with crucifix in their hands to hunt and roast the offender, and for this brutal work of merit the reward was said to be that the sufferings in purgatory should be confined to a hundred days. This expulsion of Jews seriously marred the national prosperity.

THE PREJUDICE AGAINST JEWISH PHYSICIANS.

Southey says that nothing exposed the Jews to more odium, in ages when they were held most odious, than the reputation which they possessed as physicians. So late as the middle of the sixteenth century, Francis I., after a long illness, finding no benefit from his own physicians, despatched a courier to Spain, requesting Charles V. to send him the most skilful Jewish pract.i.tioner in his dominions. This afforded matter for merriment to the Spaniards. No Jewish physician being heard of, a Christian one was sent, but was dismissed without a trial; and at last a Jew came from Constantinople, who, however, prescribed nothing more for the royal patient than a.s.ses' milk. This reputation of the Jewish physicians was said to be founded on the notion that they had stores of knowledge not accessible to other people, especially as to all the drugs known in the East. Yet at the same time there were tales as to the disreputable knowledge they had, such as killing Christian children to use their fat as cosmetics. The conduct of the Romish Church tended to strengthen this obloquy. Several councils of the Church denounced excommunication against any persons who should place themselves under the care of a Jewish physician; for it was said to be pernicious and scandalous that Christians, who ought to despise and hold in horror the enemies of their holy religion, should have recourse to them for remedies in sickness. The decree of the Lateran Council, by which physicians were enjoined under heavy penalties to require that their patients should confess and communicate before they administered any medicines to them, seems to have been designed as much against Jewish pract.i.tioners as heretical patients. The Jews on their part were not more charitable, and used to forbid rabbis to attend upon either a Christian or Gentile unless he dared not refuse, and above all never to attend such patients gratuitously.

A HOLY FATHER CONVERTING A JEW (1600).

In the seventeenth century one Engelberger, a Bohemian Jew, was sentenced to imprisonment for stealing the plate from a synagogue at Prague. In prison he became a great reader; and a holy Father, who visited him and took an interest in him, promised him not only absolution but a considerable reward if he would renounce his faith. He did so, and was received into the Church, thereby drawing on him the contempt and vengeance of the other Jews, and the praise and congratulation of the Christians. He published a book vindicating his conversion, became a favourite of high society, and was invited to Vienna, where he was well received by the Emperor Ferdinand III. But the convert by degrees was suspected of hypocrisy; and on the first opportunity he robbed the royal treasury, and after trial was condemned to death. He again affected sincere piety and contrition, expecting that his sentence would be remitted. But at the last moment, being told the contrary, and while receiving the last Sacrament on the scaffold, he spat the sacred wafer from his mouth; he shouted to the mob that he deserved his fate for abjuring the faith of Moses, and he called on them to bear witness that he died in the faith of the patriarchs. The mob, who had formerly almost deified the renegade, were now enraged at this insult to the Catholic faith, and wanted to tear him to pieces; but he was withdrawn for a few days. He was then again exposed, and drawn on a hurdle through the streets of Vienna. And a more diabolical sentence had meanwhile been pa.s.sed. His right hand was first cut off; his tongue torn from his mouth; he was suspended from the gallows with his head downward, and dogs were allowed to tear him to pieces; and then his dead body was thrown into the Danube.

An inscription in the Guildhall at Vienna records the date of this appalling example of religious fanaticism.

THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT IMAGE WORs.h.i.+P (A.D. 726).

The mode in which the great controversy about wors.h.i.+p of images in churches arose was said to be as follows: A hermit had sent to Gregory the Great, who was appointed Pope in 589, for an image of Christ and other religious symbols. The latter sent him a picture of Christ and the Virgin Mary, also of St. Peter and St. Paul, and added some observations as to the right use of images. The Pope observed that, though it was grounded in man's nature that he should seek to represent things invisible by means of the visible, yet the representations were not to be wors.h.i.+pped as G.o.d, but only used to enkindle the love of Him whose image was present to the eye.

About that time country bishops reported that the wors.h.i.+p of images was spreading, and that those opposed to that tendency demolished them and cast them out of churches. Parties began to be formed on both sides. In the Greek Church the church books had long been ornamented with pictures of Christ, of the Virgin, and the Saints; and private houses and household furniture also had like embellishments. There were legends connected with each. Some prostrated themselves whenever they approached within sight of these symbols. The most noted and determined enemy of images was the Emperor Leo, the Isaurian, who was full of zeal, and paid small respect to what he thought to be wrong. He was very arbitrary. He forced the Jews to receive baptism, which only made them more and more tenacious of their antipathy. He also forced the Montanists to join the dominant Church, and this so enraged them that they burned themselves in their own churches.

Leo's first ordinance of 726 forbade any kind of reverence to be paid to images or pictures, and any prostration or kneeling. One bishop in defence attributed miracles which were wrought to these images, and said he knew from his personal experience this was not a delusion; moreover, an image of Mary at Sozopolis, in Posidia, distilled balsam, as was well attested.

In short, party spirit ran high, and at last a great champion of images arose, named John of Damascus. Leo waged war against images for twelve years, until his death. His son Constantine was as zealous an iconoclast as his father; but great disturbances were caused by his proceedings. In 754 he convoked a council of three hundred and thirty-eight bishops, who agreed with the Emperor. They denounced the wretched painters who with profane hands attempted to depict the sacred feelings of the heart, and laid down the rule of faith to be, that there was only one true image or symbol, which was the bread and wine used in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Painting was described as a Pagan, G.o.dless art, which degraded the Divine Majesty; and whoever in future should manufacture an image to wors.h.i.+p it either in church or dwelling-house should, if an ecclesiastic, be deposed; if a monk or a layman, he should be expelled from the communion of the Church. An anathema was p.r.o.nounced accordingly against all images. Though the council by a majority so decided, yet the monks as a body were equally zealous and determined to resist all attempts to do away with images. It was said the monk Stephen was thrown into prison for his zeal in favour of images; he refused to touch the food which the gaoler's wife secretly brought to him, until she secretly a.s.sured him that she kept a casket in her own chamber containing several images of Divine persons, and which she showed to the monk to rea.s.sure him of her genuine devotion. Constantine, during the thirty years of his reign, flattered himself that he had struck a final blow at image wors.h.i.+p; but after his death the next emperor married Irene, an Athenian lady, who was an unscrupulous supporter of images, and she cunningly brought about a reaction and restored things to their former footing.

THE ICONOCLASTS AND THEIR FIRST REVOLT.

Thus a strong feeling grew up, maintained by the Emperor Leo, the Isaurian, that the Christians were going to an excess in their wors.h.i.+p of images, and the contest raged for a hundred and twenty-five years, and led to bloodshed and civil war. The precise occasion of this revolt is not known with certainty; and it was thought afterwards to be unfortunate, for Christians at that time were called upon rather to combine against Mohammedanism than think of dividing their forces. When Leo had reigned ten years, he issued in 726 a prohibition against the wors.h.i.+p of all statues and pictures of the Saviour, the Virgin, and the Saints; and all statues and pictures were to be raised sufficiently high that they could not receive pious kisses. Soon after a second edict was issued, commanding the total destruction of all images and the whitewas.h.i.+ng of the walls of churches. The clergy and monks were driven to absolute fury by this tyrannical measure. An imperial officer had orders to destroy a statue of our Saviour in a church in Constantinople, an image renowned for its miracles. The crowd (as stated _ante_, p. 112), consisting chiefly of women, saw with horror the officer mount the ladder. Thrice he struck with his impious axe the holy countenance which had so benignly looked down upon them. Heaven interfered not; but the women seized the ladder, threw down the officer, and beat him to death with clubs. The Emperor sent his troops to put down the riot, and a frightful ma.s.sacre ensued; but the image wors.h.i.+ppers were viewed as martyrs, and cheerfully encountered mutilation and banishment, while the Emperor was denounced as worse than a Saracen. The Pope prohibited the Italians from paying tribute to the Emperor, and wrote letters defending the practice of the Church. He alludes to that practice as including pictures of the miracles, of the Virgin with choirs of angels, of the Last Supper, the Transfiguration, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and other like subjects. The Pope's letter, however, had no effect.

JOHN OF DAMASCUS, CHAMPION OF IMAGES (A.D. 756).

The great champion who rose to defend image wors.h.i.+p against Leo, the iconoclast, was John of Damascus, the most learned man in the East, and a subject of the Sultan. The ancestors of John, when that city was taken by the Mohammedans, had remained faithful Christians; but, being wealthy and respectable, were employed by the Sultan in high judicial posts. One day, when John's father was a judge, a Christian monk, named Cosmas, was about to be executed, and was weeping and bewailing so much that he was asked why he, a monk, should so earnestly plead for his life. The monk answered that he did not weep so much for losing life as for the treasures of knowledge that would be buried with him, for he knew nearly everything under the sun--rhetoric, logic, philosophy, geometry, music, astronomy, theology. All he wanted was some heir who could inherit this vast patrimony of knowledge, so that he might not go down to the tomb an unprofitable servant. John's father saw at once that this was a remarkable monk, begged his life, and made him tutor to his son; and in due course the son John became, under such tuition, the greatest master of knowledge extant, as the monk took care to a.s.sure the grateful father. With these accomplishments John of Damascus entered the lists in due course, and composed three immortal orations in favour of image wors.h.i.+p, in which all the learning of the world was brought to bear upon that delicate subject.

The Emperor being indignant at John's oration, procured a letter to be forged in a similar handwriting, containing a proposal to betray his native city of Damascus to the Christians, and purporting to be signed by John. This letter was sent by the Emperor to the Sultan with specious friendly comments. The result was that John's right hand was cut off for his wicked treason. John, however, entreated the Virgin to restore his hand; and after kneeling before her image and praying fervently, he fell asleep, and when he woke his hand was restored and was as well as ever.

This astonished and convinced the Sultan, who reinstated John at once in all his honours. These orations, while containing some puerile matter, are distinguished for zeal and ingenuity. John of Damascus maintained that pictures were great standing memorials of triumph over the devil; that whoever destroys these memorials is a friend of the devil; that to reprove material images is Manicheism, as betraying the hatred of matter, which is the first tenet of that odious heresy; and that it was a kind of Docetism too, a.s.serting the unreality of the body of the Saviour. In support of his doctrine John concluded by citing a copious list of miracles wrought by certain images. This question of images was so serious a disturbance that a council met, called the Third Council of Constantinople, in 746; and three hundred and forty-eight bishops attended, and all these united in condemning images and excommunicating those who set them up. The Empress Irene, however, afterwards favoured the image wors.h.i.+ppers; and in 787 another council, called the Second Council of Nicaea, again considered the subject; and three hundred and eighty-seven bishops and monks came to a decision the reverse of the decision of the former council. Succeeding emperors, however, again favoured the iconoclasts, till the Empress Theodora, in 842, at last restored the images and made the clergy happy.

They all then met and held a solemn festival, marching with processions of crosses, torches, and incense to the church of St. Sophia, in Constantinople. They made the circuit of the church, and bowed to every statue and picture; and the heresy of the iconoclasts was extinguished for ever from that time.

JOHN OF DAMASCUS AND HIS TAUNTS.

John of Damascus, the champion of image wors.h.i.+p, in his many eloquent discourses in support of it, sneered at Leo's arbitrary decrees against what was noticed to be a rising influence among the nations of the West.

"You have only to go," said John, "into the schools where the children are learning to read and write, and tell them you are the persecutor of images, and they would instantly throw their tablets at your head. Even the ignorant would teach you what you would not learn from the wise."

"Men," he further said, "spent their estates to have these sacred stories represented in paintings. Husbands and wives took their children by the hand, others led youths and strangers from Pagan lands, to these paintings, where they could point out to them the sacred stories with the finger, and so edify them as to lift their hearts and minds to G.o.d; but you hinder poor people from doing all this, and teach them to find their amus.e.m.e.nts in harp-playing and flute-playing, in carousals and buffoonery."

CLAUDIUS OF TURIN AGAINST IMAGES AND PILGRIMAGES.

Claudius of Turin, a bishop who flourished about 795-839, was great in censuring the gross superst.i.tion attaching to the use of the cross and pilgrimages. Though a chaplain of King Louis I. of France, who became emperor, he devoted himself to purifying the ritual of the Church by writing commentaries on the Scriptures and exposing the abuses of image wors.h.i.+p. He said those who wors.h.i.+p the images of the saints have not forsaken idols, but changed their names. Whether the walls of churches are painted with figures of St. Peter and St. Paul or of Jupiter and Saturn, the latter are not G.o.ds, and the former are not apostles. Better wors.h.i.+p the living than the dead. If the works of G.o.d's hands, the stars of heaven, are not to be wors.h.i.+pped, much less ought the works of human hands to be wors.h.i.+pped. Whoever seeks from any creature in heaven or on earth the salvation which he should seek from G.o.d alone is an idolater. Those who pretend to honour the memory of Christ's pa.s.sion forget His resurrection. If one must wors.h.i.+p every piece of wood bearing the image of the cross because Christ hung on the cross, for the same reason one should wors.h.i.+p many other things with which Christ came in contact while living in the flesh. G.o.d has commanded us to bear the cross, not to adore it.

Those are not adoring it who are unwilling to bear it either spiritually or bodily. In like manner it is foolish in people, and an undervaluing of spiritual instruction, to be always striving to go to Rome in order to obtain everlasting life. It is vain to ascribe so much merit to pilgrimages, and forget the seal of true penitence in the soul. One gets no nearer to St. Peter by finding himself on the spot where his body was buried, for the soul is the real man. In this manner Claudius displayed his aversion to the monastic life as misleading. It was thought that he must soon be proceeded against as a heretic; but after publis.h.i.+ng works which made a great impression on his age, the bishop died.

TRYING TO CONVERT THE IMAGE WORs.h.i.+PPERS.

When Leo the Isaurian had secured his empire against foreign enemies, he set himself resolutely to convert heretics. He issued a decree that Jews and Montanists should be forcibly baptised. In 724 he issued his first decree against the superst.i.tious use of images, which made the monks and John of Damascus so furious. When Leo died in 741, his son, Constantine Cop.r.o.nymus, so called from his having polluted the baptismal font, succeeded him, and reigned thirty-four years. He was also a resolute enemy of image wors.h.i.+p. He procured a council of three hundred and thirty-eight bishops to sit in 754, and resolve unanimously that all pictures and sculptures of sacred subjects were Pagan and idolatrous, and that all images must be removed out of churches. They p.r.o.nounced anathemas against John of Damascus and other champions of images. Constantine, on the strength of this council, ordered paintings on church walls to be effaced, and paintings of birds and fruits to be subst.i.tuted. The monks were furious; and he ordered, in retaliation, monasteries to be destroyed and turned into barracks. One of his governors, named Lachanadraco, put many rebellious monks to death. He anointed the beards of some of these with oil and wax, and set them on fire; he burnt the monasteries, the books, and the relics. The relics of St. Euphemia at Chalcedon, which used to exude a fragrant balsam, were thrown into the sea, though the monks afterwards narrated that these were miraculously preserved. One monk, named Stephen, exasperated by these brutalities, boldly defied the Emperor, and to show his contempt produced a coin stamped with the Emperor's head, threw it on the ground, and trod on it. The Emperor ordered him to prison; but noticing that some sympathy seemed to be shown by his attendants, exclaimed, "Am I or is this monk emperor of the world?"

The courtiers in turn, in their zeal to defend the Emperor, rushed to the prison where Stephen was kept, brought him out, and, tying a rope round his neck, dragged the body through the streets, and then tore it to pieces. The patriarch being also charged with abetting the monks, was stripped of his robes, set upon an a.s.s with his face towards the tail, led through the streets, jeered by the mob, and then beheaded. Constantine died in 775, a resolute enemy of images to the last.

THE EMPRESS IRENE RESTORING IMAGES (A.D. 780).

Though Leo the Isaurian and his son Constantine had for thirty years worked so energetically in stamping out image wors.h.i.+p, yet at the death of the latter a reaction was brought about. The Emperor Leo, grandson of the Isaurian, married an Athenian wife, Irene, who was const.i.tutionally devoted to image wors.h.i.+p and sensuous art, and her devotion to these so worked on her irresolute husband as to baffle the labour of years. She took care to procure all the important vacancies in the Church to be filled by monks. Her household officers were encouraged to practise in secret the adoration of images, and there were concealed some figures under her pillow; and though the Emperor, on discovering this petty treason, ordered the chief actors to be scourged, yet on his death in 780 Irene a.s.sumed the government and changed everything. She took care to get a patriarch appointed who was of her way of thinking, and for that purpose first induced the then holder of the office to resign and retire into a monastery. She then spread the report that this change was due to remorse of conscience; and the new patriarch, acting in concert with her, professed his inability to a.s.sume the high office unless she would convoke a council to review the late heresy of the iconoclasts. After great manoeuvring on the part of the monks, and secret meetings to canvas the chief men of the a.s.sembly, and by the Empress deciding to attend in person and with great state, she so managed affairs that a council of three hundred and fifty bishops met, and they all in her presence returned to the old traditions, declaring the wors.h.i.+p of images agreeable to Scripture and reason, and shouted their approval and ended with the enthusiastic exclamation, "Long live the orthodox Queen Regent!"

EMPRESS THEODORA CONQUERING FOR THE IMAGES (A.D. 842).

The Empress Irene having in 780 so skilfully turned the tide in favour of images, the contest was still maintained during the five succeeding reigns, a period of thirty-eight years between the wors.h.i.+ppers of images and the iconoclasts. The final victory of the images was achieved by a second female, the widow Theodora, after the death of the Emperor Theophilus in 842. Her measures were bold and decisive. She sentenced the iconoclast patriarch to a whipping of two hundred lashes instead of the loss of his eyes. At this stroke of power the bishops trembled, the monks shouted, and the festival of orthodoxy preserves the annual memory of the triumph of the images. The only point left unsettled was, whether images were endowed with any proper and inherent sanct.i.ty, and this continued to be discussed in the eleventh century. The Churches of France, Germany, England, and Spain had steered a middle course between the adoration and the destruction of images, which they professed to admit into their temples, not as objects of wors.h.i.+p, but as lively and useful memorials of faith and history. Charlemagne had used his authority in a.s.sembling a synod of three hundred bishops at Frankfort in 794, who professed to blame the superst.i.tion of the Greeks. But the wors.h.i.+p of images advanced with silent progress, and reached to the idolatry of the ages which preceded the Reformation. Theodora skilfully gained over many bishops by representing that her husband the Emperor on his deathbed repented of his errors, and that her young son at the same time had also registered a vow to restore images.

IMAGE WORs.h.i.+P IN SPAIN.

In Spain image wors.h.i.+p reached a height hardly attained in any other part of Christendom. Besides the most holy effigies heaven-descended, like the Black Lady of the Pillar at Saragossa, and the Christ of the Vine Stock at Valladolid, there were many sacred images, which, even before the hands which fas.h.i.+oned them were cold, began to make the blind see, the lame walk, and friars flourish and grow powerful. St. Bernard was modelled and clothed like a brother of the order in his own white robes; St. Dominic scourged himself in effigy till the red blood flowed from his painted shoulders; and the Virgin, copied from the loveliest models, was presented to her adorers gloriously apparelled in clothing of wrought gold. Many of these figures not only presided in their chapels throughout the year, but, decked with garlands and illuminated by tapers, were carried by brotherhoods or guilds inst.i.tuted in their honour in the religious processions. The colouring was sometimes laid on canvas, with which the figure was covered as with a skin. The effects and gradation of tints were studied as carefully as in paintings on canvas. The imitation of rich stuffs for draperies was a nice and difficult branch of the art. For single figures real draperies were sometimes used, especially for those of the Madonnas, which possessed large and magnificent wardrobes and caskets of jewels worthy of the queens of the Mogul.

THE AMBITIOUS POPE HILDEBRAND (1046-1085).

During the time that Hildebrand, son of a carpenter of Soan in Tuscany, became noted and acquired an ascendency with the Popes, he advocated certain reforms. The first was to make the Popes independent of the Emperor: this he achieved by procuring a decree that the Pope should be chosen by the cardinals, bishops, and priests a.s.sembled in college. He also put a stop to the immorality of the clergy by enforcing celibacy of priests. He also procured more stringent laws against simony. He succeeded to the popedom in 1073 as Gregory VII., and in carrying out his ambitious schemes he summoned the German king, Henry IV., and ultimately excommunicated him, in retaliation for Henry having procured a sentence of deposition by the Synod of Worms against himself as Pope. These two potentates exchanged some defiant and insulting letters. Henry at last was reduced to such difficulties that he had to go in the guise of a penitent, clad in a thin white dress, while the ground was deep in snow, and he waited humbly at the outer gate of the Castle of Canossa three days before he was received into the presence of his Holiness, who gave him absolution, but under most humiliating circ.u.mstances. Gregory, however, at last was punished in his turn in 1080, and he had to become an exile, in which condition he died friendless and deserted in 1085, and muttering the words: "I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore I die an exile."

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, THE ANGELIC DOCTOR (A.D. 1227).

St. Thomas Aquinas was born in 1227, and became the greatest theologian and master of logic and powerful reasoner of his age. He was at first thought dull at school, and used to be called the great dumb Sicilian ox; but his genius soon broke forth, and he came to be called the angelical doctor. His versatility, power of abstraction, and memory astonished everybody. Louis IX. of France (St. Louis) made him a privy councillor, and often consulted him. Once at dinner with the king, after a long silence, Thomas thumped the table energetically, muttering to himself, "That is an overwhelming argument against the Manicheans!" and the king, curious to know what sudden thought it was, begged him to explain it, which was done, and committed to writing by clerks. While praying one day in the church at Naples, his friend Roma.n.u.s, who had died some time before, appeared to Thomas and spoke to him, and said that his works pleased G.o.d, and that he (Roma.n.u.s) was now in eternal bliss. Thomas then asked whether the habits which are acquired in this life remain to us in heaven. Roma.n.u.s answered, "Brother Thomas, I see G.o.d, and do not ask for more." He then vanished. One day Thomas was writing a treatise on the Sacrament, and was praying, when the figure on the crucifix turned towards him and said, "Thomas, thou hast written well of Me: what reward desirest thou?" "Nought, save Thyself, Lord," was the saint's immediate reply.

Another time Thomas, while celebrating Ma.s.s, was seized with a sudden rapture, owing to a vision which appeared to him, and which he said was so glorious that all he had written appeared worthless compared with what he had just seen. In his last illness the monks of Fossa Nuova, near Maienza, waited on him with unceasing devotion, and begged of him to expound to them the Canticle of Canticles, as St. Bernard did. The saint replied, "Get me Bernard's spirit, and I will do your bidding." He yielded to their wish. The saint, growing feebler, died; and while a corpse, a blind man begged to approach and pay his last tribute of respect, when the man's sight was restored that moment.

ATt.i.tUDES OF POPES TO FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS.

Guizot thus sums up the att.i.tude between Popes and foreign governments: "From the tenth century and the accession of the Capetians (989) the policy of the Holy See had been enterprising, bold, full of initiative, often even aggressive, and more often than not successful in the prosecution of its designs. Under Innocent III. (1198-1216) it had attained the apogee of its strength and fortune. At that point its motion forward and upward came to a stop. Boniface VIII. (1294-1303) had not the wit to recognise the changes which had taken place in European communities, and the decided progress which had been made by laic influences and civil powers. He was a stubborn preacher of maxims he could no longer practise. He was beaten in his enterprise; and the Papacy, even on recovering from his defeat, found itself no longer what it had been before him. Starting from the fourteenth century, we find no second Gregory VII. or Innocent III. Without expressly abandoning their principles, the policy of the Holy See became essentially defensive and conservative, more occupied in the maintenance than the aggrandis.e.m.e.nt of itself, and sometimes even more stationary and stagnant than was required by necessity or recommended by foresight. The posture a.s.sumed and the conduct adopted by the earliest successors of Boniface VIII. showed how far the situation of the Papacy was altered, and how deep had been the stab which, in the conflict between the two aspirants to absolute power, Philip the Fair (1283-1314) had inflicted on his rival."

THE POPES AS TEMPORAL PRINCES (1118-1185).

The feuds of Guelphs and Ghibellines kept up constant irritation at Rome.

In 1118, when Paschal II. was officiating at the altar on Holy Thursday, he was interrupted by a mob, who demanded that he should confirm the appointment of a favourite magistrate, and his silence only exasperated them. During the festival of Easter, while the bishop and clergy barefoot and in procession visited the tombs of the martyrs, they were twice a.s.saulted with volleys of stones and darts. The houses of the Pope's friends were demolished, he escaped with difficulty, and his last days were embittered by the strife of civil war. His successor, Gelasius II., in 1118 was dragged by his hair along the ground, beaten and wounded, and bound with an iron chain in the house of a factious baron named Cencio Frangipani, who stripped and beat and trampled on the cardinals. An insurrection of the people delivered the Pope for a while; but a few days later he was again a.s.saulted at the altar, and during a b.l.o.o.d.y encounter between the factions he escaped in his sacerdotal garments. He then shook the dust from his feet, and withdrew from a city where, as he described it, one emperor would be more tolerable than twenty. About a quarter of a century later, Pope Lucius II., as he ascended in battle-array to a.s.sault the Capitol, was struck on the temple by a stone, and expired in a few days in 1145. Again in 1185 a body of priests were seized, and the eyes of all put out except those of one. They were crowned with mock mitres, mounted on a.s.ses with their faces to the tail, and paraded as a lesson to Pope Lucius III.

RIENZI AS TRIBUNE OF ROME (1353).