Augusta Theodosia Drane

“ This, therefore, is the true rule of philosophy, that all learning and all reading should be made conducive to truth and charity, and then the choir of virtues will enter into the soul as into a temple of God. They most impudently err who think that philosophy consists in mere words, who multiply phrases and propose a thousand ridiculous little questions, endeavouring to perplex their hearers that they may seem more learned than Dædalus. But though eloquence is a useful and noble study, this loquacity of vain disputation is a most hateful thing. ”

“ Clement, his former disciple and assistant, succeeded him. He had visited all lands and studied in all schools in search of truth, and had found it at last on the humble bench of the Catechumen. No one understood better than he the emptiness of human learning when pursued as an end, or its serviceableness when used as a means. His end was to win souls to Christ; and to reach it, he laid hands indifferently on all the intellectual weapons that fell within his reach; poetry and philosophy, science and even satire;—he neglected nothing that would serve his turn. ”

“ The sterile soil, the burning climate, and the squalid population, recalled sad thoughts of Rhodes, with its abundant harvests and odoriferous orange-groves, its fleets and armaments and prosperous commerce, and the palaces of its wealthy nobles. But L’Isle Adam had a greatness of soul that rose superior to circumstances, and at once set about constructing habitations for his knights and laying the foundation of a hospital—not forgetting, at the same time, to provide for his poor Rhodians, and to concert measures for the amelioration of the condition of the inhabitants themselves. ”

“ And what a calendar is that which belongs to the Christian schools! The profession of the teacher, which in our day falls, by choice or duty, on so vast a number, is irradiated by the light which streams from ten thousand saintly aureoles. If the work be often wearisome and seem to promise little hope; if the spirit flag, and, ignorant of those sweet secrets by which the saints kept fresh their springs of devotion in a thirsty soil, the teacher too often finds his heart grow dry with incessant labour of the head ”

“ The parapets are crowded with turbaned heads; the ravelin is not only in the possession of the infidels, but is levelled to the ground; its defenders retreat to the main body of the fortress. But the Turks press hard upon their ranks; and as both parties, mingling together in a hand to hand fight, enter the court between the outworks and the citadel, the confused sound of yells and cries of every description announces to the excited beholders that a combat of no ordinary kind is raging in that narrow space. ”

“ Scholarship was, in short, regarded as an honourable profession, something which almost conferred on its possessor a patent of nobility; the new master of arts had lighted flambeaux carried before him in the public streets, and the conferring of a doctor’s degree was an event which caused as much stir as the dubbing of a knight. Nay, in those days, so permeated with the romantic spirit of chivalry, scholars were not unfrequently spoken of as “the knights of science,” and the disputation at which some youthful aspirant contended for the doctor’s cap was regarded as the intellectual tournament. ”

“ Luxury and magnificence formed the very tradition of an eastern army; and since the days of Xerxes perhaps no such host had been seen, either for numbers or for splendour of equipment, as that which now spread around the walls of the devoted city of Vienna. We should form an imperfect notion of the spectacle presented to the eyes of its defenders, if our idea of the Turkish camp were modelled on the usual military equipages of European nations. The pavilion of the vizier and his principal officers blazed with a wealth which the imperial palaces could hardly rival. ”

“ Gardens, churches, and palaces shining through a vista of stately forest trees, surrounded by green meadows and reflected in the waters of a noble river, make up a picture which may well arrest the eye of the artist or the poet, and suggest a dream which, if it find no substantial reality, is yet a form of beauty evoked from the ancient worship, carrying our thoughts to days when the sanctuaries of Oxford were first raised for cloistered students, and when St. Edmund and St. Richard were teaching in her schools. ”

“ The sultan doubtless thought it a surpassing stroke of policy to suggest to the Rhodian Greeks, as a lure, the unlimited exercise of their religion free from all Latin domination. But the result showed that he knew little of the state with which he had to deal. There was no jealousy of sect or party known in the religion of Rhodes; and every effort to sow dissension among the natives was met by the indignant cry, “We are all of one belief! here there is neither Greek nor Latin; for we are Christians, the servants of Jesus Christ and of His blessed Mother!” ”

“ I have long ago laid aside such follies, for one cannot spend all one’s life in child’s play. We must cease to lisp when we aspire to the true science, and sacrifice to the Divine Word that frivolous eloquence which formerly so charmed our youth. However, take my books, my dear Adamanthus—all at least that are not devoured by the worms, or blackened with the smoke, on the shelves where they have lain so long. Take them, and use them well. Study the sophists thoroughly, and both acquire and teach to others all the learning you can, provided the fear of God reign paramount over these vanities. ”

“ Palatines, senators, and nobles, they fell with headlong impetuosity on the masses of their foes; and such was the fury of their attack, that as man and horse went down before their lances, the huge body of the Ottomans was cleft in twain, and a road, as it were, cut in their centre, formed by the passage of the Christian troops. The shock was so terrible, that nearly every lance of the Polish squadrons was snapped asunder; those lances of which one of their nobles once said, that should the heavens fall, they would bear them up upon their points. ”

“ Henceforth, for nine centuries at least, grammar and the Cantus, the Latin tongue and the Roman music, were to take their places side by side as the two indispensables of education. Up to this time even the Christian learning had been coloured by a civilisation of pagan growth; but a new era had now begun: the Holy Scriptures and the Liturgy of the Church were to become to Christian Europe what the profane poets had been to the ancient world—the fountains of inspiration and the intellectual moulds wherein a new generation was to be cast ”

“ It seemed insufferable that one small island should presume to withhold its allegiance to a monarch whose dominions exceeded those of Alexander and of every conqueror the world had ever seen, and whose power was acknowledged by the Christian sovereigns of Anatolia, as well as in all the provinces of the East; yet Rhodes, small as it was, presented so formidable an aspect, with its masses of fortifications, that he determined on first of all reducing the city of Smyrna, whose position in the very heart of the Asiatic provinces seemed to bid defiance to his arms. ”

“ How could they care to listen to what Ovid had to tell them of the Golden Age, they to whom the glowing imagery of the Prophet had painted the kingdom of the Son of Jesse, where the wolf was to dwell with the lamb, and the kid with the leopard, and a little child should lead them? And what great wonder was it if the degrading tales of heathen deities, even when sung by the Muse of Virgil, should fall somewhat flat and profitless on their ears, accustomed as they were to the sublime marvels of God’s dealings with His ancient people, and the history of the Incarnate Word? ”

“ In vain does the impious Mahomet, who recognises no God but power, threaten to exterminate us: his troops may be more numerous, but ours at least are no vile slaves like his; I look round me, and I see only men of noble and illustrious blood, brought up in virtue, and sworn to conquer or die, and whose piety and courage might alone be the pledges of a certain victory. ”

“ National vanity came in to swell the pretensions of the Parisian doctors. France was the centre of Christendom, and the heart of France was the University. “Not Rome, but France,” said Nicholas Oresme, in his oration to Urban V., “is the country beloved by God. Charlemagne transplanted the liberal sciences from Rome to Paris, whose doctors may be compared to the stars of the firmament and the voice of many thunders; and on that holy soil, therefore, and not at Rome, ought the Pope to reside.” ”

“ The assault is all along the front; the grand master stands at the breach, and around him his gallant knights, making a rampart with their bodies. The ladders are thrown down, only to be raised again by the determined foe; massive stones and boiling oil and streams of flaming fire are launched upon them,—still they press on; and those who are below in the boats and triremes discharge volley after volley of musketry and showers of arrows from their cross-bows at the knights, or endeavour with grappling-irons, which they throw upon the ramparts, to drag them down and stab them as they fall. ”

“ To this desert, then, Peter’s new friends conducted him, on a visit to their hermitage, which had been founded a few years previously by the Blessed Ludolf. He found there a community who took the same view of human life as himself. They regarded man as a being made up of two noble and immortal parts, that were to be served and cherished—the soul and the intellect; and of one base and perishable part, that was good only to be mortified—the body. Simple men as they were, they had conceived the idea of doing penance for the huge evil world that lay outside their wilderness. ”

“ The great tie of religious unity was broken which had given the nations of Europe a common interest even in the midst of the continual warfare in which they were engaged, and which had inspired them with so many generous enterprises in defence of the faith. But when that bond of brotherhood was lost, there was no longer a common cause to fight for: a profound selfishness may thenceforward be discovered in the whole history of Europe, and the chance alliances of one power with another had no nobler basis than the political interests of the hour. ”

“ From these men derive their food, their shining jewels, the various pictures so pleasantly woven in their hangings, their variegated colours, the sweet melody of strings and organs, the splendour of gold and silver, and the pleasant streams of water which bring us ships and set in motion our mills, together with the fragrant aroma of myrrh, and the sweet form of the human countenance.” Bede’s love of music reveals itself in a thousand passages. ”

“ But every one worked with equal ardour night and day. D’Aubusson superintended all himself, and set the example to the rest by incessant labour; men and women, Christians and Jews,—all lent their aid; the very nuns coming out of their convents, and bearing provision to the workmen; and when the Turks thought they had effected an easy entrance into the place by the destruction of the wall, they were confounded to find a new and stronger rampart, risen as if by magic behind the ruins, and beyond it a wide deep ditch, which had to be filled before any approach could be made. ”

“ They had picked up, it may be, a knowledge of medicine at Salerno, and of mathematics at Cordova, but the claustral rule, the strict subjection to authority, the holy atmosphere or devotion and obedience, had not entered into their intellectual life. They had gained their learning from the lips of professors, in order to become professors in their turn; but a wandering life through half the cities of Europe was but a poor exchange for the claustral discipline; and not a few were found to embrace this kind of life for the very sake of its greater license and freedom from restraint. ”

“ Many knights in armour and scarlet surcoats, the three standards floating over their heads, each borne by chosen men, to whom they had been solemnly delivered in charge; and one, whereon the white cross was quartered with the arms of the grand master, was carried by a young Englishman, who found an early death at the very beginning of the siege. L’Isle Adam, in golden armour, was at their head; and as the procession came along, and the trumpets sounded with a loud triumphant flourish, such a thrill of glad and glorious enthusiasm stirred through the crowd as banished fear ”

“ Without dogmatising on this point, we may be permitted to regret that through any defect in the system of our parochial schools, Catholic congregations should in our own days be deprived of the solemn and thorough celebration of those sacred offices which in themselves comprise a body of unequalled religious instruction; and that in an age which makes so much of the theory of education, we should have to confess our inability to teach our children to pray and sing the prayers of the Church, as the children of Catholic peasants prayed and sang them six hundred years ago. ”

“ But a blindness had come over the judgment of the Turks. Some of their wandering Tartar bands even encountered the outposts of the enemy, and, with singular simplicity, are said to have inquired what all this bustle meant. “It means that the King of Poland is behind,” replied the soldiers. “The King of Poland!” answered the Tartar, with a sneering laugh: “we know very well that he is far away from here.” And this scrambling weary march lasted three days. They climbed the rocks like cats, and threw themselves down the crags, clinging to the bushes. ”

“ Not far off is a great forest and a well-wooded chase, having good covert for harts, does, boars, and wild bulls. The cornfields are not of a hungry, sandy mould, but as the fruitful fields of Asia, yielding plentiful increase, and filling the barns with corn. And there are near London abundance of wells, sweet, wholesome, and clear, such as Holy-well, Clerken-well, and St. Clement’s-well, much frequented by scholars and youth of the city in summer evenings when they walk forth to take the air. ”

“ As our eye wanders over the royal and noble ranks, glittering with the insignia of their rank and military command, it rests on a slender youth of middle stature, whose eye has in it the promise of a future career of glory. Yes, you have guessed aright: the prince, his eldest brother, has already fallen in the cause; but Eugene of Savoy has escaped [269] to draw his maiden sword in the defence of the faith, and to learn under Sobieski his first lessons of that science in which he was hereafter to share the battle-fields and renown of our own Marlborough. ”

“ All the power of human government had come to nought, and while men’s hearts were failing them for fear, the reins were falling into the hands of a frail and feeble monk, worn out with sickness and austerity, and so little conscious of possessing in himself the capacity of ruling, that, when the unanimous voice of clergy and people raised him to the pontifical dignity, he fled in terror to the woods, and was brought back weeping, and giving vent to his anguish in accents almost of despair. ”

“ Filelfo, perhaps, may be regarded as the most venomous disputant of them all. He who talked so much of being “loved” by everybody, hated and made himself hated by the entire world. He hated the men of learning who shared with him the favour of the Florentines, because he regarded them as his rivals. He hated the great Cosmo, the Pericles of the New Athens, because his benefits were not exclusively showered on himself. He hated the good and honest citizen Niccoli, the founder of St. Mark’s public library, because he was a friend of the Medici. ”

“ Solyman Sultan, by the grace of God King of Kings, Sovereign of Sovereigns, most high Emperor of Byzantium and Trebizond, most powerful King of Persia, Arabia, Syria, and Egypt, Supreme Lord of Europe and Asia, Prince of Mecca and Aleppo, Possessor of Jerusalem, and Ruler of the Universal Sea, to Philip Villiers de L’Isle Adam, Grand Master of Rhodes, wishes health.
“We congratulate you on your new dignity, and on your arrival in your states, desiring that you may reign there happily with yet greater glory than your predecessors have done. It only rests with you to share in our good graces. ”

“ Calling Luanus to him, he said, “My child, thou hast asked a perilous gift from God; many, out of undue love of knowledge, have made shipwreck of their souls.” “My father,” replied Luanus, with the utmost humility, “if I learn to know God I shall never offend Him, for those only offend Him who know him not.” “Go, my son,” said the abbot, charmed with his reply, “remain firm in the faith, and the true science shall conduct thee on the road to heaven.”
Luanus was the founder of the monastery of Clonfert, in Leinster, and the author of another religious rule highly prized by his countrymen. ”

“ When the intellectual powers of Europe again woke into action, men were not unnaturally induced to regard mere elegances of style with a certain rude indifference. Like soldiers who, when about to engage in a conflict for life or death, are careless whether or no they wear their holiday trappings, the scholastics of the thirteenth century, while they exercised their mental powers in subtle disputation, conceived a contempt for the charms of mere rhetoric, and valued language only as the vehicle for expressing the distinctions of philosophy. ”

“ Leo did his best to restore peace to Italy, and raised Rome to the dignity of a great capital. Few princes have ever been more richly endowed than he with the qualities which make princedom popular; a liberality which bordered on profuseness, a generous readiness to reward merit, and a charming urbanity of manners, which made every one who approached his person believe himself the object of the Pope’s particular regard. Erasmus felt the magical influence of his presence, and wrote to his friends, saying, that Leo was as far superior to the rest of men, as men are superior, to beasts. ”

“ I leave to others fortune, birth, and every other fancied good which can flatter the imagination of man. I value only science and letters, and regret no labour that I have spent in their acquisition. I have preferred, and shall ever prefer, learning to all earthly riches, and hold nothing dearer on earth, next to the joys of heaven and the hopes of eternity.” The decree was revoked by Valentinian at the request of St. Ambrose, so unanimous were the Christian prelates in regarding human learning as a treasure the possession of which the faithful were jealously to vindicate. ”

“ A sad avowal for the greatest scholar of his age, but a scholar whose character, whatever may be said of his genius, was utterly hollow and superficial. The mere man of letters—and whatever may have been his sincere regret for the graver irregularities of his youth,—we must add, the unworthy ecclesiastic, ever sensible in the midst of his literary triumphs of a want and a weariness, is a poor exchange indeed, with all his erudition, for the race of Christian scholars with whom we have hitherto been engaged. ”

“ Yet though universally present, light never really quits the sun, for we behold it there; and heat, too, is never separated from it; and the whole is one sun, comprised within a circle, which has no end and no beginning. He shows the same analogies in other forms of nature, as in water, wherein we see the fountain, the flowing river, and the lake—all different in form, yet one in substance, and inseparable one from the other. In his treatise, De Natura Rerum, he not only exhibits vast erudition but often expresses himself with a certain unadorned eloquence. ”

“ Are we then to give up literature? you will exclaim. I do not say that; but I do say that we must not kill souls.... When the foundations of a building are sapped, we should seek rather for architects to reconstruct the whole edifice, than for artists to adorn the walls. In fact, the choice lies between two alternatives; a liberal education which you may get by sending your children to the public schools, or the salvation of their souls, which you secure by sending them to the monks. Which is to gain the day, science or the soul? ”

“ In them he extends his protection in a special manner to the masters and scholars. “It is our duty to protect all our subjects,” he says, “but specially those whose science enlightens the world, and who teach our people the obligation of obeying God and us, the ministers of His Divine power. Who will not have compassion,” he continues, “on those precious exiles, whom the love of learning has banished from their own countries, who have exposed themselves to a thousand dangers, and, far from their friends and families, live here without defence, in poverty and peril?” ”

“ The grave troubles of the Church drew to her capital men of earnest and exalted piety, who responded to the cry that came from every Catholic land for a General Council that should not only vindicate the doctrine of the Church against heretical innovators, but courageously enter on the reform of practical abuses. Delivered by her terrible chastisement from the meretricious splendour of a false prosperity, Rome prepared to put on her beautiful garments as of old, and to purify herself from the contagion which worldly men had brought into the very presence of the sanctuary. ”

“ Abelard, in his extravagant exaltation of the claims of reason, had gone so far in his “Introduction to Theology,” as to define faith as an opinion, and to depreciate a too ready belief, praising that cautious philosophy which does not yield its faith till it has subjected all things to the test of reason. To believe without doubting, according to this view of things, was the religion of women and children; to doubt all things before we believe them was alone worthy of the dignity of man. ”