Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

ped at Canterbury to found a house, and the remainder came on to London. The simplicity of their manners and mode of life made them popular at once, and they speedily acquired the means of building a house and church. Among other benefactors, John Ewin, or Įwin, a citizen of London, gave them an estate, as he says in the deed of conveyance, "for the health of my soul, in pure and perpetual alms," and became a lay-brother in the house, leaving behind him, when he died, a holy memory as a strict and devout observer of the rule. A large church adapted to their wants was completed in the year 1327, and dedicated to "the honor of God and our alone Saviour Jesus Christ." It was three hundred feet long, eighty-nine feet broad, and seventy-four feet high. Queen Margaret gave two thousand marks towards it, and the first stone was laid in her name. John of Brittany, Earl of Richmond, and his niece, the Countess of Pembroke, gave the hangings, vestments, and sacred vessels. Isabella, the mother of Edward III., and Philippa, his queen, also gave money for its completion. The thirty-six windows were the gifts of various charitable persons. The western window, being destroyed in a gale, was restored by Edward III., "for the repose of the soul" of his mother, who had just been buried before the choir. In 1380, Margaret, Countess of Norfolk, erected new stalls in the choir, at a cost of three hundred and fifty marks. Many nobles were buried here-four queens, four duchesses, four countesses, one duke, two earls, eight barons, thirtyfive knights-in all, six hundred and sixty-three persons of quality. Among them was Margaret, the second wife of Edward I., and grand-daughter of S. Louis, King of France. She was buried before the high altar.

In the choir lay Isabella, wife of
Edward II.-

"She-wolf of France with unrelenting fangs, Who tore the bowels of her mangled mate

beneath a monument of alabaster, with the heart of her murdered husband on her breast! Near her lay her daughter Joanna, wife of Edward Bruce of Scotland. Here too was buried Lady Venitia Digby, so celebrated for her beauty, the wife of Sir Kenelm Digby, who erected over her a monument of black marble.

In the middle ages the great ones of the world, at the approach of death, the all-leveller, feeling the nothingness of earthly grandeur and riches, often sought to be buried among Christ's poor ones, and not unfrequently in their habit, not thinking "in Franciscan weeds to pass disguised," but as an act of faith in the evangelical counsels, and a recognition of the importance of being clothed with Christ's righteousness. It was a public confession that the vain garments they had worn in the world had been as poisonous to them as the tunic Hercules put on. Dante laid down to die in the cowl and mantle of a Franciscan. Cervantes was buried in the same habit. Louis of Orleans, who was murdered by the Duke of Burgundy, was buried among the Celestin monks in the habit of their order. Anne of Brittany, twice Queen of France, wore the scapular of the Carmelites, and wished it to be sent with her heart in a golden box to her beloved Bretons.

The Grey Friars' church was destroyed at the great fire, and the monastery greatly injured. There are still some portions of it remaining, however, which are at once recognized. Some of the books of the old monastic library are stiil preserved-a library founded by Sir Richard Whittington, thrice Lord

Mayor of London, the hero of the nursery rhyme, to whom the Bowbells sounded so auspiciously. He laid the foundation of this library in 1421, and gave four hundred pounds towards furnishing it. The remainder of the books were given, or collected by one of the friars.

It seems that, after all, Edward VI. was not the founder of the modern institution of Christ's Hospital.

He merely gave it its name, and added to the endowment. When the monastery was suppressed by his father, it was given to the municipality of London, and the city authorities conceived the idea of converting it into a refuge for poor children. It was chiefly endowed by the citizens themselves, though aided by grants from Henry VIII. and Edward VI.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE LIFE OF S. ALPHONSUS LIGUORI. By a Member of the Order of Mercy. New York: P. O'Shea. 1873.

The Life of the Same. By the Rt. Rev. J. Mullock, D.D., Bishop of Newfoundland. New York: P. J. Kenedy. 1873.

S. Alphonsus has never found a perfectly competent biographer, and perhaps never will. F. Tannoja has written full and minute memoirs, containing all the facts and events of his life, but he wrote under the fear of the Neapolitan censorship, and could not speak openly of the miserable infidel Tanucci and the other Jansenists and infidels, or faithless Catholics, of the wretched period in which the saint lived, and the corrupt court with which he had to contend. Moreover, Tannoja had not a sufficiently elevated and comprehensive mind to be able to appreciate and describe the life and times of S. Alphonsus in their higher and broader relations. The Oratorian translation of his life is a most wretched and shabby affair in respect to style and accuracy. The religious lady who has prepared the first of the lives placed at the head of this notice has therefore done a very great service to the Catholic public by compiling a careful and readable biography from the other earlier works of the kind, and adding some interesting particulars concerning the history of the modern Redemptorists.

Bishop Mullock's life of the saint is

quite brief and compendious, but of the best quality so far as it goes. The publisher has made a great blunder in omitting the title of Doctor of the Universal Church, which has been given to S. Alphonsus since Dr. Mullock's life was first published, on the title-page.

Archbishop Manning, who has given, though in brief form, the best appreciation of the character and work of the great doctor which we have seen, truly says that S. Ignatius, S. Charles, and S. Alphonsus are the three great modern leaders of the church in her warfare. As one of this great trio, S. Alphonsus deserves to be universally known and honored among the faithful, and we rejoice in the publication of the biography compiled by the accomplished Sister of Mercy as the best we have in English, wishing it a wide circulation, as a means of promoting devotion to the latest of the doctors and one of the greatest of the saints.

LIVES OF THE IRISH SAINTS. Vol. I., No. 1. By Rev. John O'Hanlon. Dublin: Duffy & Co.

It is not often that we have the privilege of noticing such a work as thisthe labor of a lifetime, the history of a whole nation's sanctity. Since Alban Butler, no such hagiographer as F. O'Hanlon has appeared, nor has any work on hagiology so full of interest and importance been given to the world. Up to this time the saints of Ireland, with

few exceptions, were nidden saints; of the three or four thousand souls who have shed upon her the light of their sanctity, and earned for her the glorious title of the "Island of Saints," the world knew scarcely anything. It was in vain that the ancient annalists compiled voluminous records for the benefit of posterity; those that escaped the hands of the spoiler were left unexamined, and the learned of the nation seemed to have forgotten that their country had a holy and heroic past, whose history it was their sacred duty to look into and perpetuate. No attention was given to traditions of bygone days; no light was thrown upon them; they were fast becoming dim and obscure, and what was, in reality, fact, the rising generation was beginning to regard as fable. This neglect, so ruinous, and even criminal, might have gone on till it became irreparable, had not this learned and devoted priest undertaken the great task of redeeming the past of Erin's sanctity from the oblivion into which it was rapidly sinking. How carefully he prepared himself, and how well qualified he is to perform this labor of patriotism and love, the first number of his work gives ample proof. His acquaintance with Irish lore, his erudition and research, his fine style, all combine to make him the fittest person that could have engaged in so great a work.

Were we disposed to find fault with him at all, we should say he is rather critical; at least, we fancy we perceive in him a tendency to conform to the critical spirit of the age, which perhaps is prudent, after all, and may enhance the historical value of the work, though it will mar somewhat, we think, the poetic beauty it ought to possess.

No literary effort has yet been attempt ed that appeals so strongly to the national and religious sentiments of the Irish people; and none should receive so large a share of their interest and support. F. O'Hanlon's Lives of the Irish Saints, when completed, will be a noble monument to Erin's faith and Erin's glory, to which his countrymen in every land should feel proud to contribute; the appreciation that he meets with may encourage others to enter the comparatively unexplored mine of Irish history, and bring to light the treasures it contains.

We learn that F. O'Hanlon, who is a citizen of the United States, has copy

righted the work here, and it is to be hoped will make arrangements for its reissue in this country. Meanwhile, intending subscribers may address the author directly, or order the book through "The Catholic Publication Society," New York. It will be published serially, and the American price is fifty cents per number.

JESUITS IN CONFLICT; OR, HISTORIC FACTS illustrative of the Labors and Sufferings of the English Mission and Province of the Society of Jesus in the Times of Queen Elizabeth and her Successors. By a Member of the Society of Jesus. London: Burns & Oates. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

Another publication throwing light on the period of the Elizabethan persecution of Catholics, and more especially on the part borne by the Jesuits themselves in this heroic struggle. So many books have appeared lately on this subject that we may almost say that a new branch of Catholic literature has been opened in the English language. The "getting up" of this book is worthy of the subject, and we rejoice that it is so; for, to take a simile from a passage in this very volume, we may say with truth of the outward appearance of a book in these times what the holy lay-brother, Thomas Pounde, considered his rich dress in prison to be: "A means of inspiring Catholics with greater courage, and conciliating autho rity" (p. 42). The history of the three confessors of the faith. Thomas Pounde, George Gilbert, and F. Darbyshire, is very interesting. In the two former we have examples of lay sanctity and constancy, as distinguished from that of priests, though both saints were in heart members of the Society of Jesus, to which one was affiliated by extraordinary dispensation of the ordinary novitiate, and the other received the habit and pronounced his vows in articulo mortis. Thomas Pounde, of Belmont, a man of old family and high connections, had all the burning zeal of a convert whose soul had narrowly escaped the everlasting infamy of the life of a court minion. Not only his fearlessness and constancy, but his high intellectual attainments, claim our attention. Thirty years of perpetual imprisonment had not enfeebled his mind, and his one desire was a public disputation with his adversaries, nay, "with

Beza and all the doctors of Geneva," if it pleased his foes to reinforce themselves with such noted aid. In a lengthy paper, written in 1580 to show that the Bible alone is not the true rule of faith, he brings forward the same reasons which we hear so much about in our day, and after specially dwelling on the many articles of universally held Christian faith that are not directly and plainly traceable to Scripture, he says pointedly: "Do not these blind guides, think you, lead a trim daunce towards infidelitie ?" He could not have spoken otherwise had he meant his apology for the XIXth instead of the XVIth century.

George Gilbert, also of a good English family, was one of those rich men who, in truth, make themselves the stewards of the Lord. With him originated the useful and ingenious Catholic Association, in which young men of the world bound themselves to become the temporal guides, helpers, couriers, furnishers of the priests who labored spiritually for the conversion of England. The companion of F. Parsons, as Pounde had been of F. Campion, he, too, was a convert not only from courtly vanities, but from actual Calvinism. Ardently desiring martyrdom, he nevertheless embraced obediently and lovingly the cross of a "sluggish death in bed"; but at least the pain of exile had been added to imprisonment, for he was banished from his native land, and died at Rome in 1583. His whole substance was offered to the service of God, and what little remained at his death he left to the Society for the spiritual needs of his country. It was not till he lay upon his death-bed that he pronounced his

Vows.

F. Darbyshire was as learned as he was zealous. While in France preparing for his perilous English mission, he refused the honors of the pulpit and the professorial chair, and confined himself to giving catechetical instruction; but God so rewarded his humility that grave scholars and theologians would flock to hear him, and make notes of the wonderful learning he displayed, while they admired the eloquence he could not hide. He and his friend, F. Henry Tichborne, might well congratulate themselves, later on, on the holy efficacy of persecution, which had caused the "confluence of the rares and

bestes wittes of our nation to the semina

ries," and of the happy increase ntne num ber of fervent inmates of the foreign seunnaries. They descant, too, on the unwise policy of persecution, and the fact that no religion was ever permanently established by the sword. The faith might have been reft of one of its greatest glories in England had not a short-sighted fanaticism resorted to violent means to uproot it. F. Darbyshire died in exile in France in 1604, in the very same place, Pont-àMousson, where he had so signally dis tinguished himself for learning and for modesty in the beginning of his apostolate.

This book is written in simple, Saxon style. The author trusts rather to facts than to rhetoric, just as of old the acts of the martyrs were chronicled without much comment, whether descriptive or panegy rical. The volume bears "First Series" on its title-page, as a promise that it is but the prelude to other biographies as interesting. Let us hope that the promise will be speedily fulfilled.

THE LIFE of the BLESSED JOHN BERCHMANS. By Francis Goldie, S. J. (F. Coleridge's Quarterly Series, Vol. VII. London: Burns & Oates. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publica tion Society.)

At last we have in English a biography of this angelic imitator of S. Aloysius, as charming as himself. The other lives we have seen are edifying but tedious. This one is equally edifying, but as fascinating as a romance, and published in an attractive style. It is specially adapted for the reading of young people.

LECTURES UPON THE DEVOTION TO THE

MOST SACRED HEART OF JESUS CHRIST. By the Very Rev. T. S. Preston, V.G. New York: Robert Coddington. 1874We cannot do more than call attention to the publication of this work, just issued as we go to press. It embraces stenographic reports of four extempore lectures by the pastor of St. Ann's, New York, upon a subject of special interest at this time. In an appendix is given the pastoral of the archbishop and bishops, announcing the consecration of all the dioceses of this province to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus; together with a Novena, from the French of L. J. Hallez.

NEW-YORK

SOCIETY LIBRARY

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XVIII., No. 108.-MARCH, 1874.

JOHN STUART MILL.*

IN 1764, Hume met, at the house of Baron d'Holbach, a party of the most celebrated Frenchmen of that day; and the Scotchman took occasion to introduce a discussion concerning the existence of an atheist, in the strict sense of the word; for his own part, he said, he had never chanced to meet with one. "You have been unfortunate," replied Holbach; "but at the present moment you are sitting at table with seventeen of them."

Whether or not the leading men among the positivists and cosmists of England to-day are prepared to be as frank as the Baron d'Holbach, we shall not venture to say; at all events, John Stuart Mill, to whom they all looked up with the reverence of disciples for the master, has taken care that the world should not remain in doubt concerning his opinions on this Autobiography. By John Stuart Mill. New

York: Holt & Co. 1873.

subject, which, of all others, is of the deepest interest to man. Among those who in this century have labored most earnestly to propagate an atheistic philosophy, based on the assumption that the human mind is incapable of knowing aught beyond relations, he certainly holds a place of distinction, and, as a representative of what is called scientific atheism, the history of his opinions is worthy of serious attention.

It was known some time before his death that he had written an autobiography; and when it was announced that his step-daughter, Miss Taylor, whom he had made his literary executrix, was about to publish the work, the attention of at least those who take interest in the profounder controversies of the age was awakened.

As an autobiography, the book has but little merit; though this should not be insisted on, since success in writing of this kind is

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by Rev. I. T. HECKER, in the Office of

the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

« ПредишнаНапред »