And in a later age François Maynard could affirm in song, "that all the pompous houses of princes," Ne sont que de belles prisons What did a splendid palace profit Cosmo de Medicis when, after the death of John, he used to walk in sorrowful meditation through the vast apartments, observing that it was too large a house for so small a family? Yet such is moral blindness! Our Lord never inhabited any house which he could call his own, and we must establish ourselves in castles and Louvres which are to be called ours, as if we were never to leave our present habitations. Riches were also known to be evil in a Christian sense, because of the innumerable obstacles which they evidently oppose to the spiritual life. "Ubi rerum omnium abundantia est,ibi plerumque etiam vitiorum," says Drexelius.† Fuller confesses, in his quaint style, the secret which explained many changes which had lately occurred in his unhappy country: "The possession of superfluous wealth sometimes doth hinder our clear apprehensions of matters." "Merchants," says Cardan, "and they who arrive at riches by a continued course of smiling fortune, and also the majority of nobles, are time servers." "Avoid the great, and confer no benefit upon them, for they are by nature ungrateful; and the experience of this fact is more known than the reason is evident."§ Nobility, when it is not bound by the chains of the Catholic religion, will generally be proud and terrible in proportion to its power; and men who have only the sentiments of nature will be found to regard it alternately with abhorrence and with a kind of superstitious awe. Children dread the approach of those great men of the earth; and even age forgets, in his presence, what is due to its own native dignity. The proud rich man shows himself to his visitors and guests, as Plutarch says, “ὑποσκελίζεσθαι προσκυνούμενον καὶ καταστολιζόμενον καὶ ἀναπλαττόμενον ὑπ' αὐτῶν ὥσπερ ἄγαλμα βαρβαρικόν. In ages of faith, when such men did appear they were sure to hear language as bold and severe as that of St. Jerome, when he said, "Do not say to me, I am sprung from an illustrious race; I have always lived in delights, in the midst of every luxury; I cannot deprive myself of wine, nor of these exquisite meats, nor adopt so severe a mode of life. I would answer you with all the rigor of my ministry. Well, then, live according to your law, since you cannot live according to the law of God." They would have been reminded, that some centuries before the very title on which they prided themselves signified a miscreant, for the méscreants and infidels were the "Gentiles." Father Louis of Grenada was unable to take any other view of the great nobles of his age, of whom he said pub * Ib. Tom. XVI. 69. De conformit. humanæ voluntatis cum Divin. Lib. V. cap. 7. + Prudentia Civilis, cap. VI. § Ib. cap. XL. How to discern true Friends XXXV. TS. Hieronym. Epist. ad Eustath. licly, that almost all by pride and heaping up riches precipitate themselves and their heirs into hell.* Curst be estate got with so many a crime, Yet this is oft the stair by which men climb.t To follow the spirit and manners of the gentle by denomination, from the times described by Spelman in his history of sacrilege to the present, one might almost suppose that the world had receded to that state during which the title passed under its heathen signification. That balance of Critolaus, of which the goods of the soul were placed in one scale and those of the body in the other,‡ places them in no dilemma, for they decide without deliberation. They stigmatize the choice of a Francis and an Anthony as the folly of an abject superstition; and it would be hard even to find among them an example such as that of the heathen youth Lysiteles, who says of his poor friend, "Quia sine omni malitia est, tolerare egestatem ejus volo.§ Speak to them of "loving holy poverty, humility, and patience, following the way of Christ and of his saints," like such multitudes of men of all ranks as did embrace this way in the ages of faith, and they reply, as in the words of Spencer, "Lett be thy bitter scorne And leave the rudenesse of that antique age Thy works for wealth, and life for gold engage."¶ And even when their language is intended to be all disinterestedness and noble sentiment, even when these high-minded followers of reformers and patriots are for declaring their ardent desire to make every personal sacrifice to further some end which is to bear the semblance and win the honors of a holy cause, their tongues are unable to complete a sentence without providing always that there shall be "a reasonable equivalent" for themselves. Here an important reflection suggests itself. We often seem lost in astonishment at the slowness of men to comply with the loving invitations of the Church of Christ; we are amazed that unanswerable arguments should produce no effect upon the crowd of rich philosophers, who are all considered by the world as such enlightened judges. Ah! we might learn the reason of this from the Evangelist, where he says of some who heard all the things spoken by Christ, "erant avari et deridebant illum.' How should we expect them to answer otherwise to the dispensers of his mysteries? especially in a land like that the poet speaks of, "where for lucre a 'no' is quickly made?” "Wisdom herself," says Pindar, "is fettered by gain." ἀλλὰ κέρδει καὶ σοφία δέδεται.Η True, such men may sometimes appear to be convinced, and even perhaps moved in their will to embrace the holy law of Catholics, but it will be only to furnish an example of a most strange and awful phenomenon in the human heart. Father Lewis of Grenada points out this, "How subtle is self-love, and how it seeks some utility for itself, even amidst noble affections. When Paul disputed concerning the judgment to come, before Felix, with such force, that we are told that Felix was filled with awe, and that he trembled, what do we find was the consequence of this terror? Truly a wonderful thing. 'At the same time,' says Luke, 'he hoped that he would receive money from Paul.' Who could have conceived this?"* No longer, then, let any one be surprised at finding every intellectual force unavailable with the rich, or with those who love money, in poverty: with those whom Cicero describes as, "a race of men horrible and fearful, who hold their possessions embraced with such love, that rather than relinquish them, you would say, their limbs might sooner be torn from their bodies."† It But how far have we wandered from beatitude? Beati pauperes ! Ah! how deeply did these words sink into the hearts of men in faithful ages! Such is the eminent dignity of the poor in the Church, that Bossuet declares that already, even in this world, by means of the Church, God has partly fulfilled that sentence which will hereafter be fully accomplished, that the last shall be first, and the first last. In the world, the poor seem born only to serve the rich; on the contrary, in the holy Church, the rich are only admitted on condition of their serving the poor; for those that are the last in the world are first in the Church. "The Church, therefore," says Bossuet, " may be called the city of the poor, as it is the city of God." To the poor was the Saviour sent, to the poor he preached his first sermon. was the poor who first entered into the Church; it was the poor whom God chose, that they might be rich in faith and heirs of his kingdom. St. Paul besought the brethren to pray for him, that the service which he was about to render to the poor, that is, the alms he was about to give, might be agreeable to them. With such honor did he revere them! In the world the rich may assume and bear proud titles, but in the Church of Jesus Christ they are only recognized as the servants of the poor.§ Observe how this philosophy prevailed in the middle ages. "The Church," says Jona, "wishes to have rich men, such as the Apostle decribes, men rich in good works; for the Church understands, by a rich man, one who is rich in Christ; but as for others, they should have no honor among Christians. They are rich at home in gold and silver but in the Church they are beggars." It is most curious to observe how in these ages the love which men entertained for the beauty of the divine temples Pro L. Flacco. * In Festo B. Jacobi Concio II. Rom. xv. 30, 31. | Iona Aurelianensis Episcop. de Institutione Laïcali, Lib. I. cap. 20. apud Dacher. Spicileg. Tom. I. induced them to labor with constant diligence in order to qualify themselves for entering them; so that to this end they strove with as much care as men now seek to heap up temporal riches to support their living in the secular courts. They cared not if they were beggars in the world's eye, if they were conscious of having sent that treasure before them which they might hope to find When that the two assemblages shall part, One rich eternally, the other poor." Hereafter we shall have occasion to show in detail, how, under the influence of the Church, a multitude of institutions arose to minister both to the spiritual and material wants of the poor, founded too without gold or silver, but with prayers and fasting, and meek humility; but of these, one instance must be sufficient for the present, to give an idea of the spirit which animated them all. In a letter of St. Theresa written to Father Dominick Bagnez, there is the following sentence: "Be assured, Father, that it is an occasion of the greatest joy to me whenever I receive sisters who bring nothing with them to the convent, whom I receive for the love of God; I wish I might receive them all in this manner."† There is at present before me a task which might seem to some very difficult, to show that the influence of this philosophy was diffused in some degree even over the rude and troubled scene of civil society. There exists a long letter from Pope Gregory the Great to the sub-deacon Peter, who had been charged with the administration of the goods of the Church of Sicily, in which the Pontiff desires him to attend minutely to the interests of the rustic population, and to abolish various customs which oppressed them, and which he adds, "he detests altogether." Guizot observes that these prescriptions of benevolence and justice will explain why the people were always so anxious to be placed under the domination of the Church, for that the lay proprietors were then very far from watching so carefully over the interest of the inhabitants of their domains.§ This is a just observation; but yet it is no less true that the principle of respect being due to the poor, was forced by religion even upon the secular society. The famous ordinance of Louis le Hutin for the enfranchisement of the serfs began thus; "Since according to the right of nature, every one should be born free, and that by certain usages and customs, which have been introduced and kept from great antiquity in our kingdom, and that by adventure many of our common people are fallen into condition of servitude which greatly displeases us; We, considering that our kingdom is called the kingdom of the Francs, and wishing that the thing should in truth agree with the name, by deliberation of our great council have ordained, and do ordain, that generally throughout our kingdom, as far as in us lies, and in our successors, such servitudes should be abolished, and that *Dante, Pur. XIX. S. Greg. Epist. Lib. I. 44. Vie de S. Thérèse, par de Villefore, Tom. 1. § Cours d'Hist. Mod. IV. 8. poor as well as freedom should be given on good and agreeable condition to all those who are fallen into servitude, either by origin, or by marriage, or by residence."* Guizot says, speaking of this ordinance, that in our age the emperor Alexander would not have dared to publish a similar ukase in Russia: he would not have dared to proclaim that, according to the right of nature, all men should be born free. † In these ages, life was all in harmony with itself, and poetry, united with domestic marners and with social activity, was a source of consolation to the to the rich. The greatest part of men's time was not devoted to business and speculations, and to what is now called the positive of existence, while only some rare hours belonged, as a privilege, to a select few, during which they might procure emotions by purchase, at a theatre or in a library: and how small is even this privileged number! A late French writer makes this reflection: "The immense majority," he remarks, " are delivered over to labors which nothing ennobles, to cares which nothing can console." There is no more servitude we are told; the emancipation of the people is accomplished. Well, but liberty alone is not sufficient for man; it can be only a mean, never an end. Witness the savage; he is free, and yet what is he? In the middle ages the social state was no doubt imperfect; Christianity had not terminated her work, but was it not better to be one of the people then, than to be so now in the nineteenth century? Was there not more movement around him, and did he not participate in it in a manner more immediate and direct? He was a serf, it is true, but now is he not a workman? The first held to something; a moral tie attached him to the family of his master, to the castle whose old towers protected him as they had his fathers; to the Church at whose door he assumed all the dignity of a man and of a Christian, and which offered an inviolable asylum against the power of the world. Around him all was animated; his habits, his labors, his privations, his perils, were all connected with ideas in which he had faith, and for which he would have died gladly. Behold that great sensation caused by Peter the Hermit, and by St. Bernard. Hearken to the voice of the millions of obscure priests, who are each a power, and who like Foulques de Neuilly, Martin Litz, Herloin, Eustache de Flay, &c., repeated throughout Europe the words which Rome was addressing not to kings, but to Christianity at large. It was in speaking to nations, and in stirring up all the popular convictions, that Urban II. made himself be understood at Clermont, and it was by speaking the same language that Innocent III., Innocent IV,, Gregory IX., Pius II., and so many other great Pontiffs, kept alive the sacred fire and enthusiasm, which was to preserve the Christians of the east. It may be observed that all the negociations of Rome, purely political, to determine kings to bear assistance to the Christian colonies of Asia, and afterwards to the Greek empire, when it was menaced by the successors of Othman, were ineffectual against the rivalry of interests or the implacable enmities of courts; but when the Popes, afflicted by the sad news which *Ordonnanc. des Rois, T. I. p. 588. + Cours d'Hist. IV. 8. |