Purgatory: Doctrinal, Historical, and Poetical Part 17

We shall now leave the wild poetic region of Scotland, and with it conclude Part First, taking up again in Part Second the thread of our narrative, which will wind in and out through various countries of Europe, ending at last with a glance at our own America.

REMEMBRANCE OF THE DEAD THROUGHOUT EUROPE.

PART II.

In Austria we find an example of devotion to the dead, in the saintly Empress Eleanor, who, after the death of her husband, the Emperor Leopold, in 1705, was wont to pray two hours every day for the eternal repose of his soul. Not less touching is an account given by a Protestant traveller of an humble pair, whom he encountered at Prague during his wanderings there. They were father and daughter, and attached, the one as bell-ringer, the other as laundress, to the Church on the Visschrad. He found them in their little dwelling. It was on the festival of St. Anne, when all Prague was making merry. The girl said to him: "Father and I were just sitting together, and this being St.

Anne's Day, we were thinking of my mother, whose name was also Anne."

The father then said, addressing his daughter: "Thou shalt go down to St. Jacob's to-morrow, and have a Ma.s.s read for thy mother, Anne." For the mother who had been long years slumbering in the little cemetery hard by. There is, something touching to me in this little incident, for it tells how the pious memory of the beloved dead dwelt in these simple hearts, dwells in the hearts of the people everywhere, as in that of the pious empress, whose inconsolable sorrow found vent in long hours of prayer for the departed.

In the will of Christopher Columbus there is special mention made of the church which he desired should be erected at Concepcion, one of his favorite places in the New World, so named by himself. In this church he arranged that three Ma.s.ses should be celebrated daily--the first in honor of the Blessed Trinity; the second, in honor of the Immaculate Conception; and the third for the faithful departed. This will was made in May, 1506. The body of the great discoverer was laid in the earth, to the lasting shame of the Spaniards, with but little other remembrance than that which the Church gives to the meanest of her children. The Franciscans, his first friends, as now his last, accompanied his remains to the Cathedral Church of Valladolid, where a Requiem Ma.s.s was sung, and his body laid in the vault of the Observantines with but little pomp. Later on, however, the king, in remorse for past neglect, or from whatever cause, had the body taken up and transported with great pomp to Seville. There a Ma.s.s was sung, and a solemn funeral service took place at the cathedral, whence the corpse of the Admiral was conveyed beyond the Guadalquivir to St. Mary of the Grottoes (Santa Maria de las Grutas). But the remains of this most wonderful of men were s.n.a.t.c.hed from the silence of the Carthusian cloister some ten years later, and taken thence to Castile, thence again to San Domingo, where they were laid in the sanctuary of the cathedral to the right of the main altar. Again they were disturbed and taken on board the brigantine Discovery to the Island of Cuba, where solemnly, once more, the Requiem for the Dead swelled out, filling with awe the immense a.s.sembly, comprising, as we are told, all the civil and military notables of the island.

In the annals of the Knight Hospitallers of St. John, it is recorded that after a great and providential victory won by them over the Moslem foe, and by the fruits of which Rhodes was saved from falling into the hands of the enemy, the Grand Master D'Aubusson proceeded to the Church of St. John to return thanks. And that he also caused the erection of three churches in honor of Our Blessed Lady, and the Patron Saints of the city. These three churches were endowed for prayers and Ma.s.ses to be offered in perpetuity for the souls of those who had fallen in battle. This D'Aubusson was in all respects one of the most splendid knights that Christendom has produced. A model of Christian knighthood, he is unquestionably one of the greatest of the renowned Grand Masters of St. John. There is a touching incident told in these same annals of two knights, the Chevalier de Servieux, counted the most accomplished gentleman of his day, and La Roche Pich.e.l.le. Both of them were not only the flower of Christian knighthood, but model religious as well. They died of wounds received in a sea fight off Saragossa in 1630, and on their death-beds lay side by side in the same room, consoling and exhorting each other, it being arranged between them, that whoever survived the longest should offer all his pains for the relief of his companion's soul.

We have now reached a part of our work, upon which we shall have occasion to dwell at some length, and notwithstanding the fact that it has already formed the subject of two preceding articles. It is that which relates to England, and which is doubly interesting to Catholics, as being the early record of what is now the chief Protestant nation of Europe. To go back to those Anglo-Saxon days, which might be called in some measure the golden age of Catholic faith in England, we shall see what was the custom which prevailed at the moment of dissolution. In the regulations which follow there is not question of a monarch nor a public individual, nor of priest nor prelate, but simply of an ordinary Christian just dead. "The moment he expired the bell was tolled. Its solemn voice announced to the neighborhood that a Christian brother was departed, and called on those who heard it to recommend his soul to the mercy of his Creator. All were expected to join, privately, at least, in this charitable office; and in monasteries, even if it were in the dead of night, the inmates hastened from their beds to the church, and sang a solemn dirge. The only persons excluded from the benefit of these prayers were those who died avowedly in despair, or under the sentence of excommunication.

"... Till the hour of burial, which was often delayed for some days to allow time for the arrival of strangers from a distance, small parties of monks or clergymen attended in rotation, either watching in silent prayer by the corpse or chanting with subdued voice the funeral service.... When the necessary preparations were completed, the body of the deceased was placed on a bier or in a hea.r.s.e. On it lay the book of the Gospels, the code of his belief, and the cross, the emblem of his hope. A pall of linen or silk was thrown over it till it reached the place of interment. The friends were invited, strangers often deemed it a duty to attend. The clergy walked in procession before, or divided into two bodies, one on each side, singing a portion of the psalter and generally bearing lights in their hands. As soon as they entered the church the service for the dead was performed; a Ma.s.s of requiem followed; the body was deposited in the grave, the sawlshot paid, and a liberal donation distributed to the poor." [1]

[Footnote 1: "Lingard's Antiquities of the Anglo Saxon Church," Vol.

II, pp. 46-47.]

In the northern portico of the Cathedral of Canterbury was erected an altar in honor of St. Gregory, where a Ma.s.s was offered every Sat.u.r.day for the souls of departed archbishops. We read that Oidilwald, King of the Deiri, and son of King Oswald, founded a monastery that it might be the place of his sepulture, because "he was confident of deriving great benefit from the prayers of those who should serve the Lord in that house." Dunwald the Thane, on his departure for Rome to carry thither the alms of his dead master, King Ethelwald, A.D. 762, bequeathed a dwelling in the market in Queengate to the Church of SS. Peter and Paul for the benefit of the king's soul and his own soul.

As far back as the days of the good King Arthur, whose existence has been so enshrouded in fable that many have come to believe him a myth, we read that Queen Guenever II., of unhappy memory, having spent her last years in repentance, was buried in Ambreabury, Wilts.h.i.+re. The place of her interment was a monastery erected by Aurelius Ambrose, the uncle of King Arthur, "for the maintenance of three hundred monks to pray for the souls of the British n.o.blemen slain by Hengist." Upon her tomb was inscribed, "in rude letters of ma.s.sy gold," to quote the ancient chronicler, the initials R. G. and the date 600 A.D.

In the Saxon annals Enfleda, the wife of Oswy, King of Northumbria, plays a conspicuous part. Soon after her marriage, Oswin, her husband's brother, consequently her cousin and brother-in-law, was slain. The queen caused a monastery to be erected on the spot where he fell as a reparation for her husband's fratricide, and as a propitiation for the soul of the departed. This circ.u.mstance is alluded to by more than one English poet, as also the monastery which Enfleda, for the same purpose, caused to be erected at Tynemouth. Thus Harding:

"Queen Enfled, that was King Oswy's wife, King Edwin, his daughter, full of goodnesse, For Oswyn's soule a minster, in her life, Made at Tynemouth, and for Oswy causeless That hym so bee slaine and killed helpeless; For she was kin to Oswy and Oswin, As Bede in chronicle dooeth determyn."

The most eminent Catholic poet of our own day, Sir Aubrey de Vere, in his Saxon legends, likewise refers to it. He describes first what

"Gentlest form kneels on the rain-washed ground, From Giling's Keep a stone's throw. Whose those hands Now pressed in anguish on a bursting heart.

... What purest mouth

"Presses a new-made grave, and through the blades Of gra.s.s wind shaken, breathes her piteous prayer?

... Oswin's grave it is, And she that o'er it kneels is Eanfleda, Kinswoman of the n.o.ble dead, and wife To Oswin's murderer--Oswy."

Again, describing the repentance of Oswy:

"One Winter night From distant chase belated he returned, And pa.s.sed by Oswin's grave. The snow, new fallen, Whitened the precinct. In the blast she knelt, She heard him not draw nigh. She only beat Her breast, and, praying, wept. Our sin! our sin!

"So came to him those words. They dragged him down: He knelt beside his wife, and beat his breast, And said, 'My sin! my sin!' Till earliest morn Glimmered through sleet that twain wept on, prayed on:-- Was it the rising sun that lit at last The fair face upward lifted?

....... Aloud she cried, 'Our prayer is heard: our penitence finds grace.'

Then added: 'Let it deepen till we die.

A monastery build we on this grave: So from this grave, while fleet the years, that prayer Shall rise both day and night, till Christ returns To judge the world,--a prayer for him who died; A prayer for one who sinned, but sins no more!'"

In the grant preserved in the Bodleian Collection, wherein Editha the Good, the widow of Edward the Confessor, confers certain lands upon the Church of St. Mary at Sarum, occurs the following:

"I, Editha, relict of King Edward, give to the support of the Canons of St. Mary's Church, in Sarum, the lands of Secorstan, in Wilts.h.i.+re, and those of Forinanburn, to the Monastery of Wherwell, for the support of the nuns serving G.o.d there, with the rights thereto belonging, for the soul of King Edward." [1]

[Footnote 1: "Phillips' Account of Old Sarum."]

This queen was buried in Westminster Abbey, her remains being removed from the north to the south side of St. Edward's shrine, on the rebuilding of that edifice, and it is recorded that Henry III. ordered a lamp to be kept burning perpetually at the tomb of Editha the Good.

It is related of the celebrated Lady G.o.diva of Coventry, the wife of the wealthy and powerful Leofric, that on her death-bed she "bequeathed a precious circlet of gems, which she wore round her neck, valued at one hundred marks of silver (about two thousand pounds sterling) to the Image of the Virgin in Coventry Abbey, praying that all who came thither would say as many prayers as there were gems in it." [1]

[Footnote 1: Saxon Chronicle, Strickland's "Queens of England Before the Conquest, etc."]

The following is an ancient verse, occurring in an old French treatise, on the manner of behaving at table, wherein one is warned never to arise from a meal without praying for the dead. This treatise was translated by William Caxton.

"Priez Dieu pour les trepa.s.ses, Et te souveigne en pitie Qui de ce monde sont pa.s.sez, Ainsi que tu es obligez, Priez Dieu pour les trepa.s.ses!"

[We subjoin a rough translation of the verse.

To G.o.d, for the departed, pray And of those in pity think Who have pa.s.sed from this world away, As, indeed, thou art bound to do, To G.o.d, for the departed pray.]

Speaking of his early education, Caxton says:

"Whereof I humbly and heartily thank G.o.d, and am bounden to pray for my father and mother's souls, who in my youth set me to school." [1]

[Footnote 1: "Christian Schools and Scholars."]

In 1067, William the Conqueror founded what was known as Battle Abbey, which he gave to the Benedictine Monks, that they might pray for the souls of those who fell in the Battle of Hastings. Speaking of William the. Conqueror, it is not out of place to quote here these lines from the pen of Mrs. Hemans:

"Lowly upon his bier The royal Conqueror lay, Baron and chief stood near, Silent in war's array.

Down the long minster's aisle Crowds mutely gazing stream'd, Altar and tomb the while Through mists of incense gleamed.

"They lowered him with the sound Of requiems to repose."

These stanzas on the Burial of William the Conqueror lead us naturally to others from the pen of the same gifted auth.o.r.ess on "Coeur de Lion at the Bier of his Father."

"Torches were blazing clear, Hymns pealing deep and slow, Where a king lay stately on his bier, In the Church of Fontevraud.

"The marble floor was swept By many a long dark stole As the kneeling priests, round him that slept, Sang ma.s.s for the parted soul.

And solemn were the strains they pour'd Through the stillness of the night, With the cross above, and the crown and sword, And the silent king in sight."

We forgive the ignorance of the gentle poetess with regard to the Ma.s.s, for the beauty and solemnity of the verse, which is quite in keeping with the nature of the subject.

We read, again, of tapers being lit at the tomb of Henry V., the n.o.ble and chivalrous Henry of Monmouth, for one hundred years after his death. The Reformation extinguished that gentle flame with many another holy fire, both in England and throughout Christendom.

We shall now pa.s.s on to another period--a far different and most troublous one of English history, that of the Reformation.

In the Church of St. Lawrence at Iswich is an entry of an offering made to "pray for the souls of Robert Wolsey and his wife Joan, the father and mother of the Dean of Lincoln," thereafter to be Cardinal and Chancellor of the Kingdom. An argument urged to show the Protestantism of Collet, one of the ante-Reformation worthies, is that he "did not make a Popish will, having left no monies for Ma.s.ses for his soul; which shows that he did not believe in Purgatory." The dying prayer of Sir Thomas More concludes with these words: "Give me a longing to be with Thee; not for avoiding the calamities of this wicked world, nor so much the pains of Purgatory or of h.e.l.l; nor so much for the attaining of the choice of heaven, in respect of mine own commodity, as even for a very love of Thee." The unfortunate Anne Boleyn, who during her imprisonment had repented and received the last sacraments from the hands of Father Thirlwall, begs on the scaffold that the people may pray for her. In her address to her ladies before leaving the Tower, she concludes it by begging them to forget her not after death. "In your prayers to the Lord Jesus forget not to pray for my soul." In the account of the death of another of King Henry's wives, the Lady Jane Seymour, who died, as Miss Strickland says, after having all the rites of the Catholic Church administered to her, we read that Sir Richard Gresham thus writes to Lord Cromwell:

"I have caused twelve hundred Ma.s.ses to be offered up for the soul of our most gracious Queen.... I think it right that there should also be a solemn dirge and high Ma.s.s, and that the mayor and aldermen should pray and offer up divers prayers for Her Grace's soul."