Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family

by Elizabeth Rundle Charles

  X.

  Fritz's Story.

  ROME, AUGUSTINIAN CONVENT.

  Holy as this city necessarily must be, consecrated by relics of thechurch's most holy dead, consecrated by the presence of her living Head,I scarcely think religion is as deep in the hearts of these Italians asof our poor Germans in the cold north.

  But I may mistake; feeling of all kinds manifests itself in suchdifferent ways with different characters.

  Certainly the churches are thronged on all great occasions, and thefestas are brilliant. But the people seem rather to regard them asholidays and dramatic entertainments, than as the solemn and sacredfestivals we consider them in Saxony. This morning, for instance, Iheard two women criticizing a procession in words such as these, as faras the little Italian I have picked up, enabled me to understand them:--

  "Ah, Nina mia, the angels are nothing to-day; you should have seen ourLucia last year! Every one said she was heavenly. If the priests do notarrange it better, people will scarcely care to attend. Besides, themusic was execrable."

  "Ah, the nuns of the Cistercian convent understand how to manage aceremony. They have ideas! Did you see their Bambino last Christmas?Such lace! and the cradle of tortoise-shell, fit for an emperor, as itshould be! And then their robes for the Madonna on her fetes! Cloth ofgold embroidered with pearls and brilliants worth a treasury!"

  "Yes," replied the other, lowering her voice, "I have been told thehistory of those robes. A certain lady who was powerful at the late HolyFather's court, is said to have presented the dress in which sheappeared on some state occasion to the nuns, just as she wore it."

  "Did she become a penitent, then?"

  "A penitent? I do not know; such an act of penitence would purchaseindulgences and masses to last at least for some time."

  Brother Martin and I do not so much affect these gorgeous processions.These Italians, with their glorious skies and the rich colouring oftheir beautiful land require more splendour in their religion than ourGerman eyes can easily gaze on undazzled.

  It rather perplexed us to see the magnificent caparisons of the horsesof the cardinals; and more especially to behold the Holy Father sittingon a fair palfrey, bearing the sacred Host. In Germany, the loftiestearthly dignity prostrates itself low before that Ineffable Presence.

  But my mind becomes confused. Heaven forbid that I should call the Vicarof Christ an _earthly_ dignitary! Is he not the representative andoracle of God on earth?

  For this reason,--no doubt in painful contradiction to the reverent awenatural to every Christian before the Holy Sacrament,--the Holy Fathersubmits to sitting enthroned in the church, and receiving the body ofour Creator through a golden tube presented to him by a kneelingcardinal.

  It must be very difficult for him to separate between the office and theperson. It is difficult enough for us. But for the human spirit not yetmade perfect to receive these religious honours must be overwhelming.

  Doubtless, at night, when the holy father humbles himself in solitudebefore God, his self-abasement is as much deeper than that of ordinaryChristians as his exaltation is greater.

  I must confess that it is an inexpressible relief to me to retire to thesolitude of my cell at night, and pray to Him of whom Brother Martin andI spoke in the Black Forest; to whom the homage of the universe is noburden, because it is not mere prostration before an office, butadoration of a person. "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty: heaven andearth are full of thy glory."

  Holiness--to which almightiness is but an attribute, Holy One, who hastloved and given thine Holy One for a sinful world, _miserere nobis_!

  ROME, _July_.

  We have diligently visited all the holy relics, and offered prayers atevery altar at which especial indulgences are procured, for ourselvesand others.

  Brother Martin once said he could almost wish his father and mother(whom he dearly loves) were dead, that he might avail himself of theprivileges of this holy city to deliver their souls from purgatory.

  He says masses whenever he can. But the Italian priests are oftenimpatient with him because he recites the office so slowly. I heard oneof them say, contemptuously, he had accomplished thirty masses whileBrother Martin only finished one. And more than once they hurry himforward, saying "Passa! passa!"

  There is a strange disappointment in these ceremonies to me, and, Ithink, often to him. I seem to expect so much more,--not more pomp, ofthat there is abundance; but when the ceremony itself begins, to whichall the pomp of music, and processions of cavaliers, and richly-robedpriests, and costly shrines, are mere preliminary accessories, it seemsoften so poor! The kernel inside all this gorgeous shell seems to theeye of sense like a little poor withered dust.

  To the eye of _sense_! Yes, I forget. These are the splendours of_faith_, which faith only can behold.

  To-day we gazed on the Veronica,--the holy impression left by ourSaviour's face on the cloth St. Veronica presented to him to wipe hisbrow, bowed under the weight of the cross. We had looked forward to thissight for days; for seven thousand years of indulgence from penance areattached to it.

  But when the moment came Brother Martin and I could see nothing but ablack board hung with a cloth, before which another white cloth washeld. In a few minutes this was withdrawn, and the great moment wasover, the glimpse of the sacred thing on which hung the fate of seventhousand years! For some time Brother Martin and I did not speak of it.I feared there had been some imperfection in my looking, which mightaffect the seven thousand years; but observing his countenance ratherdowncast, I told my difficulty, and found that he also had seen nothingbut a white cloth.

  The skulls of St. Peter and St. Paul perplexed us still more, becausethey had so much the appearance of being carved in wood. But in thecrowd we could not approach very close; and doubtless Satan uses devicesto blind the eyes even of the faithful.

  One relic excited my amazement much--the halter with which Judas hangedhimself! It could scarcely be termed a _holy_ relic. I wonder whopreserved it, when so many other precious things are lost. Scarcely theApostles; perhaps the scribes, out of malice.

  The Romans, I observe, seem to care little for what to us is the kerneland marrow of these ceremonies--the exhibition of the holy relics. Theyseem more occupied in comparing the pomp of one year, or of one church,with another.

  We must not, I suppose, measure the good things done us by our ownthoughts and feelings, but simply accept it on the testimony of theChurch.

  Otherwise I might be tempted to imagine that the relics of pagan Rome domy spirit more good than gazing on the sacred ashes or bones of martyrsor apostles. When I walk over the heaps of shapeless ruin, so many feetbeneath which lies buried the grandeur of the old imperial city; or whenI wander among the broken arches of the gigantic Coliseum, where themartyrs fought with wild beasts,--great thoughts seem to grow naturallyin my mind, and I feel how great truth is, and how little empires are.

  I see an empire solid as this Coliseum crumble into ruins asundistinguishable as the dust of those streets, before the word of thatonce despised Jew of Tarsus, "in bodily presence weak," who was beheadedhere. Or, again, in the ancient Pantheon, when the music of Christianchants rises among the shadowy forms of the old vanquished gods paintedon the walls, and the light streams down, not from painted windows inthe walls, but from the glowing heavens above, every note of the serviceechoes like a peal of triumph, and fills my heart with thankfulness.

  But my happiest hours here are spent in the church of my patron, St.Sebastian, without the walls, built over the ancient catacombs.

  Countless martyrs, they say, rest in peace in these ancient sepulchres.They have not been opened for centuries; but they are believed to windin subterranean passages far beneath the ancient city. In those darkdepths the ancient Church took refuge from persecution: there she laidher martyrs; and there, over their tombs, she chanted hymns of triumph,and held communion with Him for whom they died. In that chu
rch I spendhours. I have no wish to descend into those sacred sepulchres, and pryamong the graves the resurrection trump will open soon enough. I like tothink of the holy dead, lying undisturbed and quiet there; of theirspirits in Paradise; of their faith triumphant in the city whichmassacred them.

  No doubt they also had their perplexities, and wondered why the wickedtriumph, and sighed to God, "How long, O Lord, how long?"

  And yet I cannot help wishing I had lived and died among them, and hadnot been born in times when we see Satan appear, not in his genuinehideousness, but as an angel of light.

  For of the wickedness that prevails in this Christian Rome, alas, whocan speak! of the shameless sin, the violence, the pride, the mockery ofsacred things!

  In the Coliseum, in the Pantheon, in the Church of St. Sebastian, I feelan atom--but an atom in a solid, God-governed world, where truth ismightiest;--insignificant in myself as the little mosses which flutteron these ancient stones; but yet a little moss on a great rock whichcannot be shaken--the rock of God's providence and love. In the busycity, I feel tossed hither and thither on a sea which seems to rage andheave at its own wild will, without aim or meaning--a sea of humanpassion. Among the ruins, I commune with the spirits of our great andholy dead, who live unto God. At the exhibition of the sacred relics, myheart is drawn down to the mere perishable dust, decorated with themiserable pomps of the little men of the day.

  And then I return to the convent and reproach myself for censoriousness,and unbelief, and pride, and try to remember that the benefits of theseceremonies and exhibitions are only to be understood by faith, and arenot to be judged by inward feeling, or even by their moral results.

  The Church, the Holy Father, solemnly declare that pardons and blessingsincalculable, to ourselves and others, flow from so many Paternostersand Aves recited at certain altars, or from seeing the Veronica or theother relics. I have performed the acts, and I must at my peril believein their efficacy.

  But Brother Martin and I are often sorely discouraged at the wickednesswe see and hear around us. A few days since he was at a feast withseveral prelates and great men of the Church, and the fashion among themseemed to be to jest at all that is most sacred. Some avowed theirdisbelief in one portion of the faith, and some in others; but all in alight and laughing way, as if it mattered little to any of them. Onepresent related how they sometimes substituted the words _panis es, etpanis manebis_ in the mass, instead of the words of consecration, andthen amused themselves with watching the people adore what was, afterall, no consecrated Host, but a mere piece of bread.

  The Romans themselves we have heard declare, that if there be a hell,Rome is built over it. They have a couplet,--

  "Vivere qui sancte vultis, discedite Roma: Omnia hic esse licent, non licet esse probum."[7]

  [Footnote 7: "Ye who would live holily, depart from Rome: all things areallowed here, except to be upright."]

  O Rome! in sacredness as Jerusalem, in wickedness as Babylon, how bitteris the conflict that breaks forth in the heart at seeing holy places andholy character thus disjoined! How overwhelming the doubts that rushback on the spirit again and again, as to the very existence of holinessor truth in the universe, when we behold the deeds of Satan prevailingin the very metropolis of the kingdom of God!

  ROME, _August_.

  Mechanically, we continue to go through every detail of the prescribedround of devotions, believing against experience, and hoping againsthope.

  To-day Brother Martin went to accomplish the ascent of the SantaScala--the Holy Staircase--which once, they say, formed part of Pilate'shouse. I had crept up the sacred steps before, and stood watching himas, on his knees, he slowly mounted step after step of the hard stone,worn into hollows, by the knees of penitents and pilgrims. An indulgencefor a thousand years--indulgence from penance--is attached to this actof devotion. Patiently he crept half way up the staircase, when, to myamazement, he suddenly stood erect, lifted his face heavenward, and, inanother moment, turned and walked slowly down again.

  He seemed absorbed in thought, when he rejoined me; and it was not untilsome time afterwards that he told the meaning of this sudden abandonmentof his purpose.

  He said that, as he was toiling up, a voice, as if from heaven, seemedto whisper to him the old, well-known words, which had been hisbattle-cry in so many a victorious combat,--"_The just shall live byfaith._"

  He seemed awakened, as if from a nightmare, and restored to himself. Hedared not creep up another step; but, rising from his knees, he stoodupright, like a man suddenly loosed from bonds and fetters, and, withthe firm step of a freeman, he descended the Staircase and walked fromthe place.

  _August_, 1511.

  To-night there has been an assassination. A corpse was found near ourconvent gates, pierced with many wounds. But no one seems to think muchof it. Such things are constantly occurring, they say; and the onlyinterest seems to be as to the nature of the quarrel which led to it.

  "A prelate is mixed up with it," the monks whisper: "one of the latePope's family. It will not be investigated."

  But these crimes of passion seem to me comprehensible and excusable,compared with the spirit of levity and mockery which pervades allclasses. In such acts of revenge you see human nature in ruins; yet inthe ruins you can trace something of the ancient dignity. But in thisjesting, scornful spirit, which mocks at sacredness in the service ofGod, at virtue in woman, and at truth and honour in men, all traces ofGod's image seem crushed and trodden into shapeless, incoherent dust.

  From such thoughts I often take refuge in the Campagna, and feel arefreshment in its desolate spaces, its solitary wastes, its traces ofmaterial ruin.

  The ruins of empires and of imperial edifices do not depress me. Theimmortality of the race and of the soul rises grandly in contrast. Inthe Campagna we see the ruins of Imperial Rome; but in Rome we see theruin of our race and nature. And what shall console us for that, whenthe presence of all that Christians most venerate is powerless to arrestit?

  Were it not for some memories of a home at Eisenach, on which I dare notdwell too much, it seems at times as if the very thought of purity andtruth would fade from my heart.

  ROME, _August_.

  Brother Martin, during the intervals of the business of his Order, whichis slowly winding its way among the intricacies of the Roman courts, isturning his attention to the study of Hebrew, under the Rabbi EliasLevita.

  I study also with the Rabbi, and have had the great benefit, moreover,of hearing lectures from the Byzantine Greek professor, Argyropylos.

  Two altogether new worlds seem to open to me through these men,--one inthe far distances of time, and the other in those of space.

  The Rabbi, one of the race which is a by-word and a scorn among us fromboyhood, to my surprise seems to glory in his nation and his pedigree,with a pride which looks down on the antiquity of our noblest lineagesas mushrooms of a day. I had no conception that underneath the miseryand the obsequious demeanour of the Jews such lofty feelings existed.And, yet, what wonder is it! Before Rome was built, Jerusalem was asacred and royal city; and now that the empire and the people of Romehave passed for centuries, this nation, fallen before their prime, stillexists to witness their fall.

  I went once to the door of their synagogue, in the Ghetto. There were noshrines in it, no altars, no visible symbols of sacred things, exceptthe roll of the Law, which was reverently taken out of a sacred treasuryand read aloud. Yet there seemed something sublime in this symbolizingof the presence of God only by a voice reading the words which, agesago, He spoke to their prophets in the Holy Land.

  "Why have you no altar?" I asked once of one of the Rabbis.

  "Our altar can only be raised when our temple is built," was the reply."Our temple can only rise in the city and on the hill of our God. But,"he continued, in a low, bitter tone, "when our altar and temple arerestored, i
t will not be to offer incense to the painted image of aHebrew maiden."

  I have thought of the words often since. But were they not blasphemy? Imust not dare recall them.

  But those Greeks! they are Christians, and yet not of our communion. AsArgyropylos speaks, I understand for the first time that a Church existsin the East, as ancient as the Church of Western Europe, and asextensive, which acknowledges the Holy Trinity and the Creeds, but ownsno allegiance to the Holy Father the Pope.

  The world is much larger and older than Else or I thought at Eisenach.May not God's kingdom be much larger than some think at Rome?

  In the presence of monuments which date back to days beforeChristianity, and of men who speak the language of Moses, and, withslight variations, the language of Homer, our Germany seems in itsinfancy indeed. Would to God it were in its infancy, and that a gloriousyouth and prime may succeed, when these old, decrepit nations are wornout and gone!

  Yet Heaven forbid that I should call Rome decrepit--Rome on whose browrests, not the perishable crown of earthly dominion, but the tiara ofthe kingdom of God.

  _September._

  The mission which brought Brother Martin hither is nearly accomplished.We shall soon--we may at a day's notice--leave Rome and return toGermany.

  And what have we gained by our pilgrimage?

  A store of indulgences beyond calculation. And knowledge; eyes opened tosee good and evil. Ennobling knowledge! glimpses into rich worlds ofhuman life and thought, which humble the heart in expanding the mind.Bitter knowledge! illusions dispelled, aspirations crushed. We havelearned that the heart of Christendom is a moral plague-spot; thatspiritual privileges and moral goodness have no kind of connection,because where the former are at the highest perfection, the latter is atthe lowest point of degradation.

  We have learned that on earth there is no place to which the heart canturn as a sanctuary, if by a sanctuary we mean not merely a refuge fromthe punishment of sin, but a place in which to grow holy.

  In one sense, Rome may, indeed, be called the sanctuary of the world! Itseems as if half the criminals in the world had found a refuge here.

  When I think of Rome in future as a city of the living, I shall think ofassassination, treachery, avarice, a spirit of universal mockery, whichseems only the foam over an abyss of universal despair; mockery of allvirtue, based on disbelief in all truth.

  It is only as a city of the dead that my heart will revert to Rome as aholy place. She has indeed built, and built beautifully, the sepulchresof the prophets.

  Those hidden catacombs, where the holy dead rest, far under the streetsof the city,--too far for traffickers in sacred bones to disturbthem,--among these the imagination can rest, like those beatified ones,in peace.

  The spiritual life of Rome seems to be among her dead. Among the livingall seems spiritual corruption and death.

  May God and the saints have mercy on me if I say what is sinful. Doesnot the scum necessarily rise to the surface? Do not acts of violenceand words of mockery necessarily make more noise in the world thanprayers? How do I know how many humble hearts there are in thosecountless convents there, that secretly offer acceptable incense to God,and keep the perpetual lamp of devotion burning in the sight of God?

  How do I know what deeper and better thoughts lie hidden under that veilof levity? Only I often feel that if God had not made me a believerthrough his word, by the voice of Brother Martin in the Black Forest,Rome might too easily have made me an infidel. And it is certainly true,that to be a Christian at Rome as well as elsewhere, (indeed, more thanelsewhere) one must breast the tide, and must walk by faith, and not bysight.

  But we have performed the pilgrimage. We have conscientiously visitedall the shrines; we have recited as many as possible of the privilegedacts of devotion, Paters and Aves, at the privileged shrines.

  Great benefits _must_ result to us from these things.

  But benefits of what kind? Moral? How can that be? When shall I effacefrom my memory the polluting words and works I have seen and heard atRome? Spiritual? Scarcely; if by spiritual we are to understand a devoutmind, joy in God, and nearness to him. When, since that night in theBlack Forest, have I found prayer so difficult, doubts so overwhelming,the thoughts of God and heaven so dim, as at Rome?

  The benefits, then, that we have received, must be ecclesiastical--thosethat the Church promises and dispenses. And what are theseecclesiastical benefits? Pardon? But is it not written that God givesthis freely to those who believe on his Son? Peace? But is not that thelegacy of the Saviour to all who love him?

  What then? Indulgences. Indulgences from what? From the temporalconsequences of sin? Too obviously not these. Do the ecclesiasticalindulgences save men from disease, and sorrow, and death? Is it, then,from the eternal consequences of sin? Did not the Lamb of God, dying forus on the cross, bear our sins there, and blot them out? What thenremains, which the indulgences can deliver from? Penance and purgatory.What then are penance and purgatory? Has penance in itself no curativeeffect, that we can be healed of our sins by escaping as well as byperforming it? Have purgatorial fires no purifying powers, that we canbe purified as much by repeating a few words of devotion at certainaltars as by centuries of agony in the flames?

  All these questions rise before me from time to time, and I find noreply. If I mention them to my confessor, he says,--

  "These are temptations of the Devil. You must not listen to them. Theyare vain and presumptuous questions. There are no keys on earth to openthese doors."

  Are there any keys on earth to _lock_ them again, when once they havebeen opened?

  "You Germans," others of the Italian priests say, "take everything withsuch desperate seriousness. It is probably owing to your long wintersand the heaviness of your northern climate, which must, no doubt, bevery depressing to the spirits."

  Holy Mary! and these Italians, if life is so light a matter to them,will not they also have one day to take death "with desperateseriousness," and judgment and eternity, although there will be no longwinters, I suppose, and no heavy northern climate, to depress thespirits in that other world.

  We are going back to Germany at last. Strangely has the world enlargedto me since we came here. We are accredited pilgrims; we have performedevery prescribed duty, and availed ourselves of every profferedprivilege. And yet it is not because of the regret of quitting the HolyCity that our hearts are full of the gravest melancholy as we turn awayfrom Rome.

  When I compare the recollections of this Rome with those of a home atEisenach, I am tempted in my heart to feel as if Germany, and not Rome,were the Holy Place, and our pilgrimage were beginning, instead ofending, as we turn our faces northward!