James Paterson

“ He called on the holy places, on Zion, on Calvary, on the holy sepulchre, to give forth their voices against these infidels. He held up the crucifix, as if Christ Himself was imploring them to be ready and act at once. Peter’s eloquence struck the true chord of sympathy, and electrified the crowds who listened and echoed his enthusiasm. Gifts showered upon him. All ages and both sexes crowded to touch even his garment. The very hairs that dropped from his mule were caught and treasured as relics. All Western Christendom gradually rose as one man in obedience to the spell. ”

“ I am living amongst Catholics and followers of Christian worship. I am well received. All show me abundant kindness for the love of our Father Benedict and for the sake of your own merits. But compared to your convent, this palace is a prison in contrast to the great serenity of your life; my life here seems only a continual storm. I am only detained in this country by the weakness of my body, but my whole soul goes out to you. Now I seem to be in the midst of your Divine songs, now to be sitting with you in the refectory, where the reading is even more satisfying than the bodily food. ”

“ In Venice, one day in 1552, when the tribunal of Quaranthia, consisting of the Doge and senators, sat to try causes of life and death, a hermit or friar suddenly called out with a terrific voice, “To hell shall go all who do not administer true justice—to hell the mighty who oppress the poor—to hell the judges who shed the blood of the innocent!” After the first emotions of surprise, the intruder was recognised to be a Capuchin friar who had been a well-known preacher in Venice, and not only admonished sinners, but spent his days in works of mercy. ”

“ When it begins, the Pope and cardinals prostrate themselves on their knees. The grand picture by Michael Angelo of the Last Judgment which is over the altar is then discovered to be brilliantly illuminated by tapers. These are gradually extinguished till the pale light scarcely reveals the forms of the miserable creatures as they listen to the slow and dirgelike wail of the voices. It sounds as if the sinner, confounded before the majesty of God and prostrate with fear, awaited in silence some awful doom. ”

“ Eternal life would be the portion of all who fell in battle or in the march to the Holy Land. For himself he must remain aloof; but while they were slaughtering the enemy, he would be perpetually engaged in fervent and prevailing prayer for their success. At the close of this harangue all admitted and felt the force of the enthusiasm, and exclaimed, “It is the will of God! it is the will of God!” The contagion spread. France, Germany, Italy, England, furnished wild multitudes, eager and ready to enlist in this glorious warfare. ”

“ Prostrate on the earth are Peter, James, and John, in attitudes of great and varied beauty: one has his head bent entirely to the ground; another defends himself with his hands from the brightness of that immense light which proceeds from the splendour of Christ, who is clothed in vestments of snowy whiteness, His arms thrown open and the head raised towards heaven, while the essence and Godhead of all the three persons united in Himself are made apparent in their utmost perfection by the Divine art of Raphael. ”

“ Ye weave gold into your tunics, he had not even the vilest garment of your bondslave. But, on the other hand, to that poor man Paradise is open; you, gilded as you are, Gehenna will receive. He, though naked, kept the garment of Christ; you, clothed in silk, have lost Christ’s robe. Paul lies covered with the meanest dust to rise in glory; you are crushed by wrought sepulchres of stone, to burn with all your works. Spare, I beseech you, yourselves; spare at least the riches which you love. Why do you wrap even your dead in golden vestments? Why does not ambition stop amid grief and tears? ”

“ The sculptor then came down, not without compassion for that class of people who desire to appear good judges of what they do not understand. Vasari says he may truly affirm that this surpasses all others, whether ancient or modern, Greek or Latin; neither the Marforio at Rome, the Tiber and the Nile in the Belvedere, nor the giants of Monte Cavallo can be compared to such a model of beauty and excellence. The outline of the lower limbs is most exquisite. The connection of each limb with the body is faultless, and the spirit of the whole form is divine. ”

“ It is not to be a great bishop, but a good clerk. Everybody knows that by the voice of three rascally canons, to whom is given the power of election, a bishop is made; but if all the saints in Paradise and all the sensible men in the world said together in one voice before God, ‘Martin is a good clergyman,’ Martin would not on that account be a good clergyman if he remained an ignoramus. ”

“ The music, instead of being beaten down by low, broad arches, or lost within the heavier aisles, soared freely to the lofty roof, pervaded the whole building, was infinitely multiplied as it died and rose again to the fretted roof. Even the incense, curling more freely up to the immeasurable height, might give the notion of clouds of adoration finding their way to heaven. The Gothic cathedral remains an imperishable monument of hierarchical wealth, power, devotion. ”

“ Dear cell! I shall weep and mourn for thee always. But thus it is: everything changes and passes away; night succeeds to day, winter to summer, storm to sunshine, weary age to ardent youth. And we—unhappy that we are!—we cling to this fugitive world. It is Thou, O Christ, that puttest all away, that we may love Thee only, and Thou canst satisfy every heart. ”

“ High indeed are the heavens, vast the earth, immense the sea, beautiful the stars, but more immense and beautiful is He who created them. And if those things that we see are so incomprehensible—that is, the various sights of the earth, the beauty of flowers, the diversity of fruits, the races of animals, the prudence of the bees, the winds and the dew, and the lightning and the succession of the seasons, all which things no human mind can fully comprehend,—if these things are such which we behold, what must be those heavenly things which have not yet been seen? ”

“ Compassionate here the confusion of the Divine Child, who, blushing, holds His little hands out to receive what the love of poverty has reduced Him to want. Pity likewise His holy parents, who share with Him His confusion; and think on the great lesson here set you when you see Him who made the earth and all that is in it make choice of so rigorous a poverty and so penurious a life for His blessed parents and Himself. What lustre does not the virtue of poverty receive from their practice! And how can we behold it in them without being charmed to the love and imitation of the like perfection! ”

“ Hovering in the sunny air, reposing on clouds, or sporting amongst their silvery folds, these ministering shapes give life and movement to the picture, and relieve the Virgin’s statue-like repose. Some of them bear the large white lilies, others roses, sprays of olive and palm boughs, like those which are still annually blessed in churches, and hung as charms on balconies and portals. As a painter of children Murillo has caught with matchless insight all the nameless ways and graces of the bright-eyed Andalusian boys and girls he loved to depict. ”

“ He fixed his eyes on the glittering pinnacles of ice and snow, and settled down in solemn silence, with nothing but the creaking of the pines and the chatter of the magpie within hearing. He made a little pine house interlaced with boughs, and a widow who entertained him at a half-way house built for him a little chapel and oratory. The mysterious noises of this lofty abode, and its grand panorama of shining realms and flitting colours, made his hut a constant pleasure. But pilgrims found him out and began to increase, so that he had to leave it and retire far into the forest. ”

“ The imagination of the audience is worked upon, and all are hushed with breathless curiosity while the penitential psalm is sung. At last the veil of the Temple appears to be rent asunder, and the Saviour on the cross appears resplendent, while silvery voices are heard in the distance, and the pall again closes over this great central figure. After the service and later in the day the public are allowed for a small fee to ascend a ladder and see behind the machinery of ropes and contrivances for moving the various scenes which make up the impressive representation. ”

“ We grieve at his sin and prevarication in the fact that, not content with spending money in order to gain over the nobles and chiefs of Romania to become his followers and adherents, he wasted the possessions of the Roman Church. Condole therefore, my good friend, with us as well as those dear to thee, and not only with us, but the Church which is the congregation of all faithful Christians; for its head is sick, its prince is in the midst like a roaring lion, its prophet mad and faithless, its priest polluting its sanctuary and unjustly acting against the law. ”

“ She had joined with her nuns in the penitential psalms and litany, and she then lay in a trance for her last fourteen hours in the posture in which the blessed Magdalene is commonly drawn by painters, holding a crucifix firmly in her hands, so that the nuns could not remove it till after her death. They all noticed her lips moving and a glow of heavenly hope on her face. Her body was so sacred that parts of it were dispersed throughout the Christian world. ”

“ The treasury of the cathedral has a rich collection of relics in shrines of great beauty. There is a locket of the Virgin’s hair; a piece of the true cross; the leathern girdle of Christ (bearing Constantine’s seal) ; a nail of the cross; the cord which bound the rod that smote Him; the sponge which was filled with vinegar; that arm of Simeon on which he bore the infant Jesus; some blood and bones of St. Stephen; some manna from the wilderness; and some bits of Aaron’s rod. These relics were presented to Charlemagne by the Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Caliph Haroun Al Raschid. ”

“ The brutal spectacles in which Pagan Rome delighted—the fights of gladiators, and the combats of men with beasts—roused the indignation of the Christians. Not merely did women crowd the amphitheatre during these fierce and almost naked encounters, but it was the especial privilege of the Vestal virgins to give the signal for the mortal blow, and to watch the sword driven into the quivering entrails of the victim. ”

“ He said those who worship the images of the saints have not forsaken idols, but changed their names. Whether the walls of churches are painted with figures of St. Peter and St. Paul or of Jupiter and Saturn, the latter are not gods, and the former are not apostles. Better worship the living than the dead. If the works of God’s hands, the stars of heaven, are not to be worshipped, much less ought the works of human hands to be worshipped. Whoever seeks from any creature in heaven or on earth the salvation which he should seek from God alone is an idolater. ”

“ Master Alan, the celebrated doctor, but still poor, was invited to dinner by a former disciple already a bishop, who, seeing his poverty, said, “Master, I marvel not a little that your scholars are already become great men: one is an abbot, another is a bishop, another an archbishop, and you are left in ridiculous poverty.” Alan, indeed, thinking otherwise—for he had a true and right judgment as to the gradations of merit—is said to have answered thus: “You do not know,” quoth he, “what is the height of the most perfect dignity, and the true greatness of man? ”

“ Charlemagne ordered that lodging, fire, and water be always supplied to them. In Jerusalem there were caravansaries for their reception. The pilgrim set forth amid the blessings and prayers of his kindred or community with his simple outfit—the staff, the wallet, and the scallop-shell; he returned a privileged, in some sense a sanctified, being. Pilgrimage expiated all sin. The bathing in the Jordan was, as it were, a second baptism, and washed away all the evil of the former life. ”

“ For when I consider the leisure, filled with sacred occupations, the delectable refuge of my dwelling, your pious and holy dispositions—when I think of the holy band of so many soldiers of Christ, zealous in all Divine offices, and the shining examples of special excellence in particular brethren, and the sweet converse we had on the perfections of our celestial home—I tremble, I gaze, I languish, I cannot restrain my tears, and my breast is rent with many sighs. ”

“ During the controversy raised by the iconoclasts, when all the monks resisted the decrees against image worship, one monk, Stephen, a hermit who had lived thirty years in a cave at Sinope, greatly distinguished himself. The monks had flocked to the desert to watch in security over their tutelary images, and the most devout of the laity crowded round the cell of Stephen, who furiously denounced the iconoclasts. So many pilgrims resorted to him as their champion that the Emperor ordered him to be carried away from his cell, and shut up in a cloister at Chrysopolis. ”

“ As he rode, his chaplain chanted or recited the offices. When challenged for these constantly repeated exercises, he would say, “If I spent twice as much time in dice and hawking, should I be so rebuked?” A woman, one day as he sat in court, exclaimed, “Fie! you are not King of France; you are only a king of friars, of priests, and of clerks. It is a great pity you ever were King of France; you should be turned out of your kingship.” ”