More Italian Yesterdays - Mrs. Hugh Fraser

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one by one and with a special prayer for each, because he thus figures the Son of God putting on the garment of our humanity. And because Christ, as man, prayed to His Father and ours, the Bishop comes forth from the tent and prostrates himself before the steps of the church in fervent prayer, with all his clergy kneeling around him.

      Now the natural soul is cold and blind, and closed to Grace; so the church stands, unlighted and with fast-closed doors. And because the Spirit of God is all gentleness and mercy, and condescends to most patient stratagems to capture the heart He covets, the Bishop goes three times round the great building, praying and knocking softly at its doors, while the clergy follow him and pray too, as the angels pray for us. At last the first barrier falls; the doors open, reluctantly as it were. The Bishop crosses the threshold saying, “Peace eternal to this House, in the Name of the Eternal.” The procession passes within, the shadows swallowing up the gold and crimson of the vestments that had been sparkling in the sun.

      A strange sight the empty church presents now. On the pavement two broad paths of ashes traverse its entire length and breadth, in the form of a Greek cross. The assistants stand in silent groups while the Bishop, slowly moving down from the apse to the entrance, and then across from one transept to the other, traces in the ashes the Latin and Greek alphabets with his crozier. Why? Because the first need of the soul is instruction. “How shall they know except they first be taught?” And since God will not take possession of a soul without its own concurrence and consent, it must know Him before it receives Him.

      Knowledge brings the desire for purification from sin, original or actual; and now the church, the symbol of the soul, must be purified. The Bishop mingles wine with water, to denote the Humanity and the Divinity of Christ; to these he adds ashes to commemorate His death, and salt as an emblem of His resurrection; the mystic flood is poured in waves over the altar, and thence all down the pavement of the church, while hundreds of acolytes scale the ladders placed against the walls and the mystic liquid runs down them in glistening sheets to mingle with the mimic ripples on the floor. Let it run. When it has drained away the holy oil flows golden and fragrant over the carved and gleaming walls, and pious hands are applying it to the exterior of the building—sometimes even to its roof—in copious floods.

      Now indeed the church is ready for its destiny, even as the Christian emerges from Baptism ready for his God. The chants swell louder and sweeter, the Alleluia rings out triumphantly from a thousand hearts, the incense sends up its first perfumed spirals to hang among the fretted arches of the deep vault; the sub-deacons approach the Pontiff and offer for his blessing the rich vessels and vestments which are the wedding presents of the Faithful to the new-born Bride of Christ—the House is ready for the Master and His guests.

      The guests are waiting still in the exiles’ tent, with Knights and Prelates for their Guard of Honour. Such nobility could not be entertained save in a spotless mansion. Their names? Oh, they had many—Greek and Latin and Persian and Armenian—besides the “wonderful new names” that had been given them in heaven, for these guests were Holy Martyrs, and their relics were to be placed in the stone of the High Altar, because the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass must always be offered on them to-day, even as when the fervent yet trembling Christian knelt before their tombs in the catacombs, and the doomed priest asked the Lord to accept the sacrifice in honour of those whom perhaps he had laid there an hour before.

      Oh, the adorable continuity of the Church! In my eyrie in the Rockies, one of the loneliest spots on earth, there came to my door quite unexpectedly one summer evening—it was June 28—a missionary priest, very tired. He had driven some hundred and fifty miles to get to us; his game little horses, his buggy, his coat—everything about him was covered with dust, but his eyes beamed with benevolence as he said, “I have come to say Mass for you.” We could have kissed his feet. The next morning, very early, in the sitting-room that was a bower of wild flowers, my son and I knelt and watched him prepare the altar. From his worn portmanteau the first thing he drew out was a square of white alabaster of which the centre had been removed, replaced, and sealed with a cross sunk into the stone. Very reverently he slipped it under the white linen “corporal,” lighted the blessed candles on either side—and began “Introibo ad altare Dei.”

      ROME. THE PANTHEON.

      The alabaster square contained relics of the Martyrs;—and our humble home-made altar was, through them, His friends, as worthy of Him who was about to descend upon it as the High Altar of St. Peter’s on that morning of his Feast in Rome.

      When St. Boniface cleansed and consecrated the Pantheon, he showed, in the name he gave it, that it was to be the shrine of many valiant ones, a shrine of which, more truly than of any of our battlefields, it could be said:

      “On Fame’s eternal camping-ground

      Their silent tents are spread,

      And glory guards, with solemn round,

      The Bivouac of the Dead!”

      But one almost doubts whether the Pontiff himself appreciated the magnitude of the task he had undertaken. In person he went through the many catacombs, for he was resolved that no smallest, humblest hero of the Lord should miss his share of the final triumph. He had had great cars prepared, decked with all possible richness, to convey the precious remains, which had so long held the outposts of the city, to the Pantheon in its very heart; but when he had gone through all the dark, intricate passages of the underground cemeteries, tapping at the walls and examining every atom of surface that might conceal a once-proscribed tomb, I think his artificers must have had to build more chariots for the returning army than they had expected, for it was very great.

      At last, however, all was ready. It was May 13, A.D. 609, and a glorious morning, when the converging processions set forth, met, and entered the city in triumph. The Pontiff in his splendid vestments led the procession, swelled as it went along by all the inhabitants of Rome. Long, serried ranks of prelates, priests, and monks followed him, carrying tall lighted tapers that gleamed but faintly in the Roman sun; the air was sweet with fragrances that grew stronger as the convoy passed along the flower-strewn streets, and the perfume of hundreds of censers swung up on the bright air. Rome was poor then, but the Romans had still found blue and crimson tapestries to hang from the windows, and every portico and window was crowded with eager onlookers who, as the procession approached, took up the roar of welcome with which the city greeted its dead.

      But I think a hush fell when the dead came into sight at the turn of the street or the entrance of the square, and the enormous cars moved nearer, their dear terrible burden piled high above the sides, and covered with silks and flowers through which here and there showed just enough of a coffin’s outline to wring the heart and let loose a rain of tears. “Twenty-seven great cars filled with the bones of the Martyrs did Boniface the Pope bring to the Pantheum now consecrated to the service of God and the honour of the Blessed Virgin.”

      Truly may that splendid temple, open to the sky, claim its title of “St. Mary of the Martyrs,” and rightly did the Pontiff and his followers, as they brought them in, raise the triumphal shout, “The Saints shall rejoice in their beds! Arise, ye friends of God, and enter into the glory He has prepared for His elect!”

      After all these great names it seems strange to have to record a very humble one, that of a poor working-man, in connection with the Pantheon, but I can never pass the famous church without remembering a certain Giovanni Borgi whose memory was held in great benediction in Rome in my young days.

      During the preceding century the city was really in a fairly peaceful and prosperous condition, but the many institutions of charity which flourished under Gregory XVI and Pius IX had not reached the point where they could provide night refuges for its many waifs and vagrants. There were numbers of poor boys—street Arabs, as we should call them—who wandered about in the daytime, earning a little here and there, but subsisting chiefly on charity and having no fixed dwelling-place of any kind. To these the broad steps and portico of the Pantheon offered at least shelter from the weather, and they used to gather there in crowds after dark, and sleep—as boys can sleep—on the stones.

      Now

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