ページの画像
PDF
ePub

"No, I don't think they do," said Melissa, afraid to say much more lest it should plainly appear that she herself did not quite know what the summons was. But she felt more deeply impressed than ever with Montana's words. If he had gone deliberately about to make himself attractive to Melissa, he could not have taken any step more aptly fitted for the purpose than this way of at once addressing her as if she were a grave and responsible being, interested like him in the problems of life. Montana was not really thinking about Melissa. He was only, after his fashion, finding vague imposing sentences to express some general idea. If he had been desirous to captivate the little girl, it is not impossible that he might have gone about it in the usual way, by addressing to her some graceful compliments and conveying with his eyes the impression that he admired her. That would have been powerless indeed, compared with the course he unconsciously took. He had lifted, as it seemed, poor little Melissa into his own atmosphere, into sympathy with him. She stood on the same plane with him; and, metaphorically at least, they were hand in hand. To her it seemed as if for the moment they two were alone.

(To be continued.)

285

A

A HOLY MISSION.

MONG those exiles who during the turbulent days of the Reformation found a home in the Eternal City, none occupied a more conspicuous position than Reginald Pole. On his father's side descended from Cadwallader, the last of the British kings, there ran in his veins the proud blood of the Plantagenets from his mother, the ill-fated Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, the daughter of George, Duke of Clarence; thus by birth he was one of the most illustrious of the English subjects of his time. From his youth he had been a severe student, with the intellectual tastes of his class; and there had proceeded from his pen works which had made his name honoured amongst the men of letters on the Continent. In a dissolute age, scandal could find no fault in him; destined for the Church, his life was pure, and had been throughout consistent with the sacred calling to which he was to belong. Educated at Oxford, and afterwards at Padua, he had thrown his whole soul into the cause not so much of Catholicism as of the Papacy. He was broad and tolerant in interpreting certain of the doctrines of the Church of Rome —indeed, he had even been accused of heresy-but he permitted no discussion as to the position and authority of the Pope. He was a Papist first and a Catholic afterwards. Sovereigns who adhered to the creed of Rome, but refused to admit the authority of the Vicegerent of Christ within their dominions, were deemed by him as outside the pale of the faith, and fit only for the curses of excommunication.

As an Ultramontane and an Englishman, Reginald Pole had specially interested himself in the affairs of his country. To the Reformation he had no reason to be grateful. He had opposed the divorce of Henry the Eighth, had written a bitter treatise against it, and had been branded as a traitor, and a price set upon his head. His mother and brother had been imprisoned in the Tower, and had ended their days on the scaffold. He saw England, the country of his birth, declaring, through her Convocation and her Parliament, that a Catholic king, within his own dominions, was independent of the Papal power, and supreme over all causes and persons ecclesiastical and civil. His cherished tenet had been discarded by his countrymen, and

the consequences that such repudiation entailed had not been slow to assert themselves. He saw England placed under the ban of excommunication, and the Catholic religion cast down from its lofty pre-eminence; for Englishmen refused to profess a creed which forced them to acknowledge as Head of the Church a vindictive and brutal sensualist. He saw Protestantism and Atheism walking hand in hand over the ruins of the one true faith; he saw the monasteries and nunneries emptied of their inmates, and their wealth and lands seized by the state; he saw the poor wandering about, ignorant where to turn for relief, not knowing what to believe, and ending by swelling the ranks of the seditious and disaffected. On all sides plunder, debauchery, and treachery were laying low proud England, and making her a byword and reproach wherever her name was mentioned. "The shadows cast by the Reformation are already darkening the land," exclaimed the enthusiastic Ultramontane.

So thought Pole, as he lived amongst his Italian friends and discussed the future of his country. His devotion to the cause of the Papacy had not gone unrewarded. He had been raised to the dignity of a cardinal; he had been employed on various important political missions; he had played an important part at councils and theological meetings; he had even been a candidate for the tiara. Yet, though for years he had never seen the shores of his country ; though his friends were Italian cardinals and prelates; though he held office under a foreign power-he never forgot that he was an Englishman, and that the land of his birth had the first claim upon his devotion and sympathy. "There is not a better English heart," wrote Sir John Masone, our ambassador at Brussels, to Queen Mary shortly after her accession,1 "within the realm than Cardinal Pole's ; and if things were as he wishes, Her Majesty would govern in a blessed estate. He always praises ripe, temperate, and modest proceedings. I wish to God the whole realm knew him as the Bishop of Norwich and I do, and had that opinion of him as in effect all states of Christendom have." As the prayer of St. Paul was that all Israel might be saved, so the chief petition in all Pole's devotions was that excommunicated England might be restored to the unity of the Roman Church and repent her of her past transgressions. The one fixed object of his life was, that through his instrumentality this union might be effected. He kept himself in constant communication with the leaders of the English Catholic party, he embraced every opportunity of stemming the tide of English Protestantism, and he showed by his polemical treatises, his sermons, and his prayers, 1 State Papers, Foreign, May 5, 1554; ed. by W. B. Turnbull,

that he had, above all things, the spiritual welfare of his country sincerely at heart.

At the accession of Edward the Sixth the hopes of the Cardinal had run high. The King was young, his opinions were not formed, he was free from the prejudices of his father-why should he not return to the fold and stamp out the heresy from his kingdom before it had taken fixed root? The Cardinal wrote to the Privy Council. He had suffered much, he said, during the last reign, but he bore no malice; he forgot and forgave the past. The Supreme Pontiff had always looked upon England with a fatherly eye, and to prove this affection his Holiness was now willing to send a legate with full powers to reconcile Edward VI. to Rome. Willingly would he, said Pole, if wished, accept the holy office. No notice was, however, taken by the members of the Council of this letter; but so hostile were they to its contents, that the bearer of it had to fly for his life. Nothing discouraged, Pole now wrote to the young King; but with no better success. Edward had been educated in hatred of that Church which had excommunicated his father, and was staunchly in favour of the new religion; the rejection of the Papal authority suited the stout feelings of English independence; whilst the lords and gentry who had been enriched by the spoliation of the monasteries had no intention of re-establishing the old religion, and thus being compelled to disgorge their illicit wealth. It was evident to Pole that it was now idle to force measures; he must bide his time and study a more favourable opportunity. The young King was sickly, and it might be that within a few years, before he had time or health to provide a successor to the throne, he would quit the world and leave the kingdom to his sister Mary, whose devotion to the Holy See none could doubt. The Cardinal withdrew himself from public affairs and retired to the convent of Magguzzano, on the banks of the Lago di Guarda. Here for the next few years he studied, wrote, and said masses for the conversion of heretic England, only varying his seclusion by occasional visits to his friend Julius the Third, who then wore the tiara.

Then the event occurred for which Pole had so long hoped. Edward the Sixth, who soon after his accession had given his subjects no expectations of a long reign, had, after a lingering illness, been gathered to his fathers. Mary, though hindered for a time by the intrigues of Northumberland in favour of Lady Jane Grey, claimed the crown, and was welcomed by the people. When the news of the accession of his cousin reached Pole in the solitude of his monastery, his joy was unbounded. At last the dream of his life was to be realised! England was to return to the faith of her ancestors, and the

blessing of the Holy Father was once more to illumine the land; the cold maimed rites of Protestantism were to give way to the splendid ceremonial of the one true Church; processions, with their banners, incense, and white-robed priests, were again to walk the streets with the Host held on high for adoration : monasteries and nunneries once more were to spring up from the ruins that now strewed the ground; the poor would now know where to seek for shelter and relief; the priests were to be really the ordained servants of the altar, and no self-elected intruders; England was again to be Catholic and Popish! The enthusiastic Cardinal already saw himself the ambassador of Rome, blessing his countrymen and receiving their homage.

He at once penned an epistle to the Pope informing him of the good news. "I cannot delay congratulating your Holiness," he wrote; "the nature of the event appearing to me such, that since many years nothing has occurred in Christendom on which one could more reasonably congratulate any Christian mind, and especially that of your Holiness, this being a manifest victory of God over the long-cogitated malice of man corroborated by such great forces and means for the attainment of his perverse ends. And God of His goodness, to render His proceedings more illustrious, has chosen to annihilate in one moment all these long-cherished projects by means of a woman, who for so many years has suffered contrary to all justice, being in a state of oppression shortly before this took place, and who is now victorious and called to the throne ; thus affording reasonable hopes that together with her there will be called to reign in that island justice, piety, and the true religion, which have hitherto been utterly crushed, and that the kingdom will return to its obedience in like manner as its alienation was the commencement and cause of its utter ruin." Pole was summoned to Rome. His birth, his devotion to the cause of Katherine of Aragon, his talents, his loyalty to the Holy See, all pointed him out as the one man to watch over the spiritual interests of England. He was appointed Legate from the Apostolic See, with full powers to effect a reconciliation between Rome and the heretic island. He wrote to Mary. He blessed the "right hand of the Lord" for having placed so faithful a daughter of the Church upon the throne. Her accession without bloodshed only proved how powerfully she was protected by the Almighty, and how the Holy Spirit had willed that the malice of her enemies should be defeated. Therefore, having received such especial favour from the Divine goodness, she was more

'State Papers relating to English affairs existing in the Archives of Venice. Edited by Rawdon Brown. August 7, 1553. The letters of Pole in these volumes are of great importance.

« 前へ次へ »