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Skilled labor should, Once workmen receive

make should go to provide for the future. of course, receive proportionately more. this amount they have no just reason to complain. They should stifle envy, and, to use the words of Pope Leo XIII., learn to live. contented with the lot God has given them. What will certainly make the Catholic workman so live is the truth so beautifully announced by the Apostles: we have no permanent citizenship here, but we look for another. We are not here forever; we are journeying to our real country and home, the hereafter; and our status or condition there depends not on worldly wealth or influence, but upon our works done here; so that it is in every man's power to secure for himself a high position and a great degree of glory in his true home. If any man will keep this well before his eyes he will find it a powerful help to make him content with the station of life Providence has allotted him.

We close these few remarks with an observation regarding the importance of our Catholic Societies looking to the Church more than ever for guidance. There never was a period when wilder theories were broached, more extensively circulated, or more read by the people. In our own midst we have hosts of Europeans, many of them clever and well-educated, who were forced to leave their respective countries because of their efforts to overthrow social order. These men have become editors of newspapers, and have been feeding our simpler American population with what they call their advanced ideas, till we hardly recognize the land of our youth. These false ideas in religion and in the social order the Church examined thoroughly where they first arose. She has condemned them, and her condemnation has been met with an acknowledgment that she has spoken truly, but at the same time with a cry of defiance. Let us, therefore, stand to this Church, which has the Spirit of Wisdom from above; let us have as our compass the Syllabus of the great Pius IX.; let us reverently receive and emblazon on our banner the late Encyclical of the learned Leo XIII.

THE RELATION OF THE POPES TO LITERATURE, PRIOR TO THE ELEVENTH CENTURY.

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O one can deny that the Popes have always been the patrons of theology. It is a science which particulary becomes their state and office as priests and spiritual guides. Consequently there has been little or no attack made on their reputation as advocates of theological science. Nor in view of their countless productions of a theological character, running from the Epistles of St. Peter, the first Pope, down to our own times, through letters of Leo the Great, Homilies of Gregory I., theological works like that of Benedict XIV. on "Diocesan Synods," and the whole array of Bulls, Briefs, and Encyclicals, treating of every dogmatical, moral, ascetical, mystical, canonical, and rubrical subject that has ever been discussed within the last nineteen centuries, and filling scores of ponderous tomes, large and numerous enough to crowd the shelves of spacious libraries, can any one reasonably assert that the Popes have not been the Mæcenases of theological studies. been, at the same time, the patrons of literature? tion upon which there has been much discussion. of writers, not content with blaming them as having been adverse to the progress of the natural sciences, for having imprisoned mathematicians, and subjected astronomers like Galileo to the pains and penalties of the Inquisition, accuse them of general obscurantism, of impeding the progress of art, and of being like so many drags on the chariot-wheels of human intellectual development. According to these writers the Popes have been opposed to poetry, to the drama, to painting, to sculpture, and to music. They have abhorred universal education and detested inventions, especially that of printing, for the reason that they wished to keep the people in ignorance. According to these gentlemen, ignorance and popery are correlative terms. They point to the dark ages for proofs of their theory, especially to those centuries in which, owing to the misfortunes of the times and to lay intrusion in clerical affairs, a few Pontiffs, more like unto Judas than to Peter, disgraced the tiara, while they proved the divinity of the Church by illustrating the fact that she can live in spite of the vices of her rulers or of her children. These scandals of sin and ignorance are taken as proofs that the Popes were unfriendly to literature and to the arts; these spots on the sun are assumed to show that the whole orb is an opaque body.

Now, it is not our purpose, in this article, to refute in detail all

the objections of such enemies of the Papacy; nor do we intend to give all the proofs which might be adduced to show how erroneous is their opinion. We do not mean to go over ground in a special manner, which has been already trodden by the champions of the Popes, to show that they were the friends of the mathematicians as well as of the littérateurs; and that the story of Galileo's punishment has been distorted into a calumny against the Roman Church. All these subjects have been exhausted by men like De Maistre, Donoso Cortes, Montalembert, Lacordaire, Auguste Nicolas, Dr. Brownson-a name never to be forgotten by American Catholics -by Cardinal Wiseman, and others, who have left nothing for their successors to investigate or to establish. We wish to restrict ourselves to a special inquiry into what the Popes have done particularly for that branch of the fine arts comprised under the head of Literature or Belles-Lettres, in the ages preceding the eleventh century. The reason for this proceeding is, that the most difficult part of the theme may be made the most manifest. The cathedrals of Europe, with their exquisitely beautiful stained glass windows, built while the Popes enjoyed full sway over the European conscience; the masterpieces of painting and sculpture handed down to us by those favorites of the Popes, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Fra Angelico, Guido Reni, Bernini, and others; easily convince the impartial student that the Popes have been patrons of those arts and of architecture. History tells us that a Pope, Gregory the Great, is the father of plain music in all its forms. He reformed the Ambrosian Chant, which had been used in the Church up to the sixth century. Nor can it be said that the Popes are unfriendly to the full development of the art of music, because of their opposition to the introduction of operatic airs into the choir-singing of the mass. This objection would hold good only in case the reprobation of an abuse, or the preference for a certain mode, of art could be fairly construed into a condemnation of all its modes. No Pope ever condemned operatic music in its own place, nor has any Pope ever condemned the proper use of what is called modern music in the Church. The Popes have reprobated abuses of the art of music as they would reprove the nude in statuary or paintings intended for the Church. It is a mistake to infer from the expressed preference of a Pontiff for plain chant, that he necessarily condemns the masses of Mozart or of Haydn. He simply reproves the music of certain church choirs for being as indecent in the sacred edifice as would be the Venus of Milo or the Apollo of Belvidere in the niches around the altar. The Ambrosian Chant and the gay measures in use before Gregory the Great's time were permitted by Pontiffs as holy and learned as himself, and it would be illogical to conclude that he intended to condemn them absolutely, since some of them were mar

tyrs for the faith, when he reformed the sacred song.

Palestrina's reform of music, at the time of the Council of Trent, was also needed; but the papal sanction given to his “Mass of Pope Marcellus," did not necessarily exclude further progress in the study of harmony or counterpoint. In disputed cases of this kind, namely, as to the proper kind of music to be used, there is generally some fanaticism on both sides of the question. Those who indiscriminately condemn plain chant, are not more in error than they who would restrict our gorgeous liturgy, which like Joseph's coat is of many colors, to the slavery of any undeveloped and imperfect art. We admit into the Church paintings of the Madonna, from various schools, for there is no papal exclusiveness as to the color or form which must serve as the artist's ideal. The various styles of architecture are equal before the Papal See. The fact that there is but one Gothic church in Rome, and that a modern one, argues nothing against the Gothic style of architecture; nor, consequently, does the Roman preference for plain chant in the ordinary services of the Church prove aught against figured music, properly adapted to the divine service, and properly sung at it. The general custom of having musical vespers in the city of Rome at the great feasts, the Palestrina music of the Papal choir, and the beautiful Misereres sung in the Sistine Chapel during Holy Week, sufficiently prove the truth of this statement. When making a charge of this kind, it is always beneficial to recollect what Horace says: "In vitium ducit culpæ fuga." (Ars Poetica, v. 31.)

Even the modern drama owes its origin to the Church. Who does not know that during the Middle Ages, when Papal influence was supreme, the "Mystery" plays were often performed in the church or the churchyard, the clergy taking the principal parts. The "Moralitics," as another species of mediæval dramatic composition was called, were also of religious origin. It was only when these plays degenerated and became blasphemous that the Church authorities condemned them. The oft-recurring drama performed under Church sanction at Oberammergau, is a reminder of the Church plays of the past, and the fact that even the ecclesiastical colleges in Rome allow their students, during Carnival time, to take part in dramatic performances, proves that the Church sanctions the drama, when it does not degrade itself by immorality or infidelity. The Church prohibitions of theatres, and condemnation of actors and actresses, at certain times, were not universal, but either local or in consequence of abuses which had crept into and defiled the temples of the Muses. The Pontificate never put its ban upon the Muses, unless they laid aside the robes of decency. St. John's Gospel is a beautiful drama, full of dialogue and sparkling with wit. St. Peter's Epistles show

that the first Pontifical Fisherman had a poetic soul, and poetic tastes which have been imitated by many of his successors, down to the present poet-pontiff, Leo XIII.

It would be hard to find, even without their divine inspiration, two more eloquent discourses than St. Peter's two Epistles. They are more earnest than Cicero's attacks on Catiline, or Demosthenes' invectives against Philip; and superior to the best productions of these great pleaders in force of argument and clearness of statement. After reading them, it would be difficult not to obey the holy Fisherman, when, in language prompted by what he had often seen when he watched by the sea of Galilee to draw his nets at break of day, he says: "Attend as to a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the daystar arise in your hearts." (II. Ep., chap. i. v. 19.)

At the very threshold of our investigation into the literary taste of the Papacy, we are met with an objection taken from a text in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter xix. v. 16, in which we read that the Christian converts "brought together their books and burnt them. before all: and counting the price of them, they found the money to be fifty thousand pieces of silver." From this passage it is argued that the early Christians, and consequently the Popes, were hostile to literature, and that they burned all the books which were not of service to religion. But the context proves that this inference is illogical; for there is question only of books of astrology or magic: "Izavot de Tav ta nepiepra пpažávτwv;" besides, allusion is made to some of the Ephesians alone, and not to the conduct of all the Christians. We have a manifest proof that whatever the Ephesians may have done, they had not the sanction of St. Paul, who, speaking to the Athenians, quotes frequently from the Greek poets, as St. Jerome demonstrates in his seventieth epistle. Moreover, the Christian writers of the first ages show a full knowledge of the opinions and of the works of the pagan authors; and, in fact, we get full information regarding many points of ancient philosophy from the writings of Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, Lactantius, Eusebius of Cæsarea, and other Christians. This shows that there was no prohibition against reading or studying the pagan classics. It is true that we have a Canon of an early Council (iv. Council of Carthage, chapter xvi.), forbidding bishops to read the works of pagan authors; but this is a prohibition made for the bishops of those times only, whose principal care should be to attend to the wants of their flocks, which they had been neglecting. In this sense we are also to understand St. Jerome's complaint in his twenty-first epistle: "That there are some priests who, throwing aside the Gospels and the Prophets, read comedies, sing love songs, and continVOL. IV.—15

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