have proved, with the character of the meek, but certainly not the most congenial with the loves of those whose eyes have been opened on the difference between things temporal and eternal. Perhaps we have already halted there too long: there was no Diomedian necessity that we should undertake to dwell upon the praise of nobility; we were not driven to it with hands bound, and the edge of a sword laid upon our shoulders, as was Ulysses when he was driven back to the Greeks without having gained the Palladium from Troy; but it was right to produce some features of its institution and manners in ages of faith, in order to show that men might have been meek Christians, and have had the centurion's faith, though they had vassals under them who came and went at their command, and that there was no insurmountable obstacles in the circumstances of each inhabitant of the embattled towers, to prevent his being able to say with truth in the presence of God, "Non est exaltatum cor meum;" it was right to meet an objection upon which men at present lay such great stress, for they produce their arguments founded on the pride of nobility, like a tower which they keep constantly in view, λíav, vруois xάpiv, as the Greek poet says ;* and after all, it is much to have seen that poverty was not then a crime in the eyes of the rich. We are incessantly told that some feudal towers were in the hands of nobles who pillaged travellers, and it is satisfactory to be able to answer that the roads and villages were secure and open for the wandering poor, whom no haughty baron ever thought of consigning to a prison for the general interest of society. The feudal noble, on the contrary, exercised that Homeric hospitality shown by Nestor who received the two strangers with such kindness, although he thought in his mind that they might be robbers who passed over the watery ways bearing evil to men of other nations. He was revered and even sacred whoever came wandering: ἀνδρῶν ὅστις ἵκηται ἀλώμενος. : It least of all becomes the men of our age to declaim upon the pride of feudal nobility. But, indeed, as for those who stand near the sweet mountain to inhale the celestial air which descends thence in the refreshing of ambrosial shower, the present retrospect may have been wearisome and tasteless for how little seems to them all that belongs to the plain which they have left below? To those whose eyes are turned upon the eternal throne of Him who has dissolved the crowns of many cities, and who will dissolve more, for His is the surpassing strength,§ what is nobility of race, what is feudal splendor? why dwell, they may why dwell, they may ask us, upon that piety which would have passed unnoticed with the poor? Why describe these brief distinctions which pass like a shadow on the mountain's side, or like a messenger who runs on his way? "Transierunt omnia illa tanquam umbra et tanquam nuncians percurrans." Nothing was more dreaded by the early Greeks than the extinction of a family and the destruction of a house, by which the dead lost their * Medea, 526 + Od. III. + Od. V. § Hom. II. | Sap. V. religious honor, the household gods their sacrifices, the hearth its flame, and the ancestors their name among the living; but is it for Christians to return to these shadows of past things when all things are made new? Is it for them to search for glories which even this earth has ceased to recognize? It is a voice in paradise which cried: -Mark Luni! Urbisaglia mark! How they are gone; and after them how go No longer new or strange to thee, to hear All things that appertain to ye, like yourselves Ye mark not; they endure so long, and you What remains of the families sung by Homer, Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Pindar? What of the race of Charlemagne, of Alfred, of so many families that shed such a lustre upon our heroic age, which gave imperishable themes to minstrelsy and knighthood to illustrious kings? Our age has beheld the extinction not alone of families, but of monarchies; it has beheld the principles themselves that give permanence to civilized society, and a value to the promise of offspring, erased from the constitution of a great people; it has beheld, and if only for one day there would have been matter for the tears of angels, indifference to religion, that universal solvent of all social harmonies, that fearful representative of atheism, that last heresy which is to precede the tremendous advent, not alone in the shop of the mechanic, not alone on the tongue of creeping sophists, but reigning in principle on the throne of Saint Louis. We began by dreading to approach this subject of nobility: we only expected deliverance from the sea of this discourse, as Plato says, either by means of some dolphin coming up to us or by some other unexpected deliverer. Reader! thou wert aware how perilous was the passage; how only by yielding much we could avoid the shock of its proud billows. But say has the great difficulty been overcome? Have we shown that it was possible to reconcile these institutions and manners with meekness? We only sought a chance for these men, and is this now granted? I am of opinion that we have escaped, and, indeed, it was a formidable danger. So now then I think we may glide on cheerfully, and hope "o'er better waves to speed." * Dante, XVI. CHAPTER VII. 员 HE last development of the principle of meekness which the present view of history will propose to our consideration is seen in the rise of associations among the lower ranks of the Catholic state, and this will lead us at the same time to observe what were the characteristic features and employments of that class of men during the ages of faith, when the people showed forth the wisdom of the saints, while the Church declared their praise. The modern writers acknowlege that the Catholic religion has been the origin of associations.* "Ecclesia in commune orat," says St. Ambrose, "et in commune operatur." The spirit of the Church is eminently social, and opposed essentially to that isolation which appears now equally as the source and fruits of misanthropy in men and nations. Wherever the modern philosophy triumphs, all associations dissolve before it, and the state becomes only a nation of individuals, of wretched men, who have recourse to a system of desolating fatalism, in order to account for their position in regard to life, and to justify their hatred of mankind. Lo! where stands solitary a sublime unhappy spirit that has lately passed upon the earth; he will instruct us if we hearken. "I found myself alone," it cries, "on entering the world, alone in my house, and I shall die alone. I am a being essentially solitary, not from choice, but from necessity." In the ages of faith, it would not have been so with him. We have seen that the spirit of association entered virtually into the courts of nobles, and we shall hereafter observe it in fuller action in the great religious institutions which then covered Europe. It is pride which has dissolved the Catholic associations of the middle ages; it is pride which renders men isolated in the modern states; for each man disdains to be regarded as a member of any body which does not immediately of itself minister to pride by conveying a title to some material advantage, such as the reputation of science, learning, rank, or riches. To associate together to honor God would be a thing in their eyes ridiculous to the last degree, and yet to associate together with any object which does not include this, is only preparing a fresh link to that long chain of disappointed hopes which men drag after them to their graves. There is no alternative between the society of the saints, and the solitude of sin; an age of pride must be also an age of isolation. The middle ages understood that man is born for society; they knew, as Bonald says, "that such is the general law, * De Laborde sur l'Esprit d'Association. De Off. lib. I. 29. that men receive from one another physical existence by generation, moral existence by language, and religious knowledge by communication, according to the apostolic words, Fides ex auditu."* Human intelligence was therefore employed in directing the creative and associating spirit of charity to form those numerous colleges, universities, orders, congregations, and brotherhoods, which opened an asylum for every want, and a prospect of fulfilment for every desire of the human soul. It is with the latter we shall be now occupied. Tertullian is an evidence that these different fraternities were as old as the first days of Christianity with which they arose. They were instituted to facilitate the salvation of souls, and to edify the Church, in order that under the fraternal crown of the martyrs the meek might rejoice, and obtain for their faith increase of virtues, and might be consoled by multiplied suffrages. Such was that institute at Paris in the year 1168, called the Confrèrie de Notre Dame, composed of thirty-six priests and thirty-six laymen, in memory of the seventy-two disciples of Jesus Christ. In the year 1224 women were admitted into it. Such were also the fraternities of the blessed sacrament, of the holy name of Jesus, of the blessed Virgin, and others. There were others whose specific object was to assist the poor, to tend the sick, to bury the dead. Others had their origin in pilgrimages; those who had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to Compostella, or to mount St. Michael, entered into their respective fraternity in Paris. Others were established by merchants to draw down the blessing of Heaven upon their commerce; such was the Confrèrie des Marchands de l'eau at Paris, in the year 1170, of those who conducted the trade on the Seine. There were also fraternities instituted by officers of justice, notaries and artisans, all of whom had their respective patrons, churches, statues, and banners.† Great seigneurs in Flanders used to consider it an honor to be received into a corporation, or fraternity of merchants or artisans. At Paris the community of brethren shoemakers was formed in the year 1645, by the charity of the Baron de Rentè. He had already procured instruction for the poor inmates of the hospital of St. Gervais, and he wished to extend this benefit to the artisans, who were in danger of profaning the Sundays and festivals through ignorance and the corrupt habits of life which were then commencing. With this view he associated himself with a shoemaker, whose virtue was so well known that he was generally called le bon Henri. This poor man being thus encouraged, assembled some people of his condition; and a doctor of the Sarbonne gave them rules, and they commenced their exercises. They worked and ate in common, recited certain prayers and psalms, and gave the surplus of their profits to the poor. Similar associations existed in every country of Christendom, and in none were they more numerous than in our own. Machiavel describes the citizens of Florence as divided into numerous bodies of trades, each having rules and banners peculiar to it. A number of Lombards, * Législat. Prim. III. 34. Idem, tom. III. II. 616. De St. Victor, Tableau de Paris, tom I. 564. particularly Milanese, being banished into Germany by Henry I., in the year 1014, in order to console themselves, joined in a devout society, which, as a sign of Christian humiliation, they called the humbled, umiliati. Professing to live by the work of their own hands, they applied to various trades, and particularly to the wool trade, and to the making of cloth. Returning to their country in 1019 they preserved their manner of living; they assembled on particular days in houses purchased at the common expense, afterwards united together in convents, where they worked conjointly. Down to the year 1140 they were all laymen; but at that time an order of religious priests was formed who did not work, but directed the labor of the laymen. The lamb was their emblem. Their rule was approved of by Innocent III., and by other pontiffs. They acquired riches, while their diligence and honesty caused them to be sought for by the government for various offices. In Como charge was given them of the weights and measures; in Florence they had various public duties. They furnished preachers and authors, of whom a long list may be seen in Tiraboschi.* Unhappily they did not escape the degeneracy which accompanied the rise of the Lutheran heresy, and as they resisted the reform which the cardinal Borromeo endeavored to effect, they were suppressed by Pius V. in 1571. In the eighth century these mutual societies and anniversaries in commendation of the living and the dead had been greatly multiplied. A remarkable instance is furnished by Bede, who as a reward for the life which he has written of St. Cuthbert, asks in the prologue addressed to Eadfrid the monk and bishop of Lindisfarn, that he would inscribe his name among those of that society for whose souls after death the holy sacrifice was offered, that in testimony of this future aid he would give orders that his name might appear from that time in the album of their holy congregation. Many other examples occur in the epistles of St. Boniface. Briefs used to be sent from one place to another, containing the names of the persons who desired to be united in the suffrages, and the laity of all ranks, as well as the clergy, were in habits of desiring of this grace. Persons thus inscribed were entitled Fratres Conscripti, as appears from Goldasta on the monastery of St. Gall. The fraternity of the Holy Trinity was founded in the year 1373, in the reign of Edward III. The members were bound to maintain thirteen wax lights burning about the sepulchre in the church of St. Botolph Aldersgate, in the Easter time, and they were to make their offerings and hear mass on Trinity day. They had a common hall; their chaplain was to say mass every day in the year, winter and summer, by five o'clock. A dirge was to be sung on the Sunday night after All Souls' day, and on the morrow a requiem for the dead brothers and sisters. One statute of the order says, "gif eny of the bretherhode be a losed of eny theft, or he be an comm' contellaur, or com'n hasardour, or of eny oth' wycked fame, it is ordeyned that theii ben vputte out of the breth'hode." Taillepied says, "the *Humiliat. hist. |