" Qui with their leaden mace they smite the muse of history and then peep into horrible recesses, and finger and lay bare deformity which they create, turning every object the wrong side out, and " never giving to truth and virtue that which simpleness and merit purchaseth." multum peregrinantur raro sanctificantur," says a holy book, and in this respect, historians are like travellers, for the quick and unnatural, and forced succession of evil which is made to pass before them, diminishes their confidence in virtue, and deadens their susceptibility, and prevents them from looking inwardly at the evil which lies within themselves. Even poets have been guilty of calumniating mankind. If the divine muse of Sophocles painted men as they ought to be, Euripides represented them worse than they are; he seemed to cherish a most odious pride in bringing down the greatest of men to a level with the base and vulgar; and his mantle has been eagerly caught up and worn by many in our time. "Nos in vitium credula turba sumus." Those who have studied our Christian antiquity, speak of generous knights and of holy men, who had celestial revelations, the deeds of chivalry and the sacrifices of the just, "les dits et gestes des bons trépassés? Negemus omnia; comburamus annales; ficta hæc esse dicamus: quidvis denique potius quam virtutem apud homines inveniri, quam Deum res humanas curare fateamur." But how unjust and how feeble are you who thus condemn antiquity? As the gallant Benedick says with Shakspeare, "You break jests as braggarts do their blades, which, God be thanked, hurt not." You have not shaken the confidence of honourable men, nor shall you even hear them condemning the odious object which you take such pains to expose. They say with Socrates, "I will not reprove him; for I am not fond of reproving, οὐ γὰρ εἰμὶ φιλόμωμος. For there is no end to the number of the unwise, so that if any one takes pleasure in reproving, he may be satiated with reproving them *.' But what then? Are there no objects for those who seek rather to love, to admire, and to bow down with reverence? Crito indeed, when he looked upon the men who professed philosophy, had not courage * Plato Protagoras. S to turn youth inì piλooopiar, but Socrates reproved him, saying, Ω φίλε Κρίτων, οὐκ οἶσθ ̓ ὅτι ἐν παντὶ ἐπιτηδεύματι οἱ μὲν φαῦλοι πολλοὶ καὶ οὐδένος ἄξιοι, οἱ δὲ σπουδαῖοι ὀλίγοι καὶ παντὸς ἄξιοι ; In every profession τοὺς πολλοὺς οὐ καταγελάστους ὁρᾷς; therefore he argues we are not to consider the men who embrace a profession, but the profession itself *. Still it is a difficult, and one of the most glorious triumphs of wisdom, when a person is able to separate in his mind the truth from the folly, and vices of the vulgar and weak, and undisciplined men who may happen to be its nominal supporters. But it is even a dangerous error to be unacquainted with the wickedness of men. Socrates shews that the opinion that all men are good, leads one to a hatred of the species, for when he discovers his error, μισεῖ τε πάντας, καὶ ἡγεῖται οὐδένος οὐδὲν ὑγιὲς εἶναι το παραπάν †. It only remains to say with St. Bernard, we do not accuse all, but neither can we excuse all. "Reliquit sibi Dominus multa millia;" but the multitude of the wicked, even in the brightest ages of chivalry, who can count? René d'Anjou wrote his book, "L'Abuzé en court," to shew the vanity of ambition at court; and in that we find that all hateful vices existed then as they do now. Edward the Confessor lived in a corrupt age: St. Bernard had to determine between Innocent and Anaclet, both nominated to the Pontifical chair: there were scenes of debauchery close to the tent of Saint Louis. Our modern sagacious adversaries, who are ever raking and grubbing into old folios to discover corruption, do only lose their time; for it is ecclesiastical writers who are ever the most anxious to discover and record these horrible examples, for the purpose of their own instruction. We must all come to St. Augustin's conclusion, "Vera justitia non est, nisi in ea republica, cujus conditor rectorque Christus est ." It is in vain you point out the liability to abuse. "Omnia perversas possunt corrumpere mentes." The piety of the adulterous Ægistheus, πολλὰ δὲ μηρί ̓ ἔκηε θεῶν ἱεροῖς ἐπὶ βωμοῖς δε Plato Euthydemus. De Civitate Dei, lib. ii. 21. Plato Phædo. § Od. iii. 273. may have had imitators in that very England, where a pope's legate declared, "God accepts no pay, nor even holocausts for sin *. Christian knights may have had to entreat Christian knights in words like those of Edipus to the Athenians, when he warned them not to make their piety an excuse for crime: καὶ μὴ θεοὺς τιμῶντες, εἶτα τῶν θεῶν βλέπειν μὲν αὐτοὺς πρὸς τὸν εὐσεβῆ βροτῶν, "It is for the sins of Christians," said Louis of Grenada, "that so much of Europe, Asia, and Africa, formerly filled with churches, is now possessed by the barbarians; and so far from wondering that so many have fallen from the Church in these days, I give God thanks for what remains sound amidst so much depravity." But then our modern adversaries must be addressed in the words of St. Augustin: "Nunc vos illud admoneo, ut aliquando ecclesiæ Catholicæ maledicere desinatis, vituperando mores hominum, quos et ipsa condemnat, et quos quotidie tamquam malos filios corrigere studet +." As for the violence and disorders which characterized these ages when society had no artificial and hollow surface, much may be advanced in extenuation. How many brave and generous men were incited by them to devote themselves to the protection of the weak? And were not these disorders accompanied with virtues of the most exalted kind ? ἦ οἴει τὰ μεγάλα αδικήματα καὶ τὴν ἄκρατον πονηρίαν ἐκ φαύλης ἀλλ' οὐκ ἐκ νεανικῆς φυσέως τροφῇ διολομένης γίγνεσθαι, ἀσθενῆ δὲ φύσιν μεγάλων οὔτε ἀγαθῶν οὔτε κακῶν αἰτίαν ποτὲ ἔσεσθαι † ; this is the question of Socrates. "Formerly," says Sismondi," greedy and unjust men seized the goods of others by violence; to-day they obtain them by fraudulent bankruptcies. Every attempt formerly was open; to-day every thing is secret §." "It may be noted," says Izaac Walton, "that in this age there are a people so unlike the God of mercy, so void of the bowels * Othobon was the Legate in MCCLXVIII. De Moribus Ecclesiæ Catholicæ, 76. Plato de Repub. VI. § Hist. des Repub. Ital. III. 259. of pity, that they love only themselves and children; love them so as not to be concerned, whether the rest of mankind waste their days in sorrow or shame; people that are curst with riches, and a mistake that nothing but riches can make them and theirs happy." We hear of the dungeons and chains in the castles of chivalry; but what tales of misery and of cruelty are unfolded before the legal tribunals of the moderns? Search the annals of the poor in our great cities, and how often will you have to say with Jeremy Taylor, "This is an uncharitableness next to the cruelties of savages, and at infinite distance from the mercies of the holy Jesus." "Zeal hath drowned charity," says Hooker," and skill meekness." You do not find the ancients accusing their contemporaries of this want of charity; they rather prophesied, saying with Albertus Magnus, that “the element of fire seems chosen for the instrument of final destruction, to punish the coldness of charity which in those last days shall reign in the aged and decrepit world." But the moderns accuse their chivalrous ancestors of being over-zealous: and "What if they were all on fire and inflamed, if it was with them," says Taylor, as Homer sings of the Sirian star, it shines finely, and brings fevers, splendour and zeal being the effects of their first grace," are there not times when anger becomes charity and duty? When Charilaus, King of Sparta, was commended for a gentle, a good, and a meek prince, his colleague said, "Well, how can he be good, who is not an enemy even to vicious persons?" St. Augustin contrasts the Christian with the stoical notion, and says, Denique in disciplina nostra non tam quæritur utrum pius animus irascatur, sed quare irascatur Plato had said that one thing to be learned to make up the harmony of virtue was μισεῖν ἃ χρὴ μισεῖν †. And after all, it is a baseness and an infamy to apologize for any thing, when we are recording the deeds and dispositions of our Christian chivalry ανθρώποις γὰρ διαλεγόμεθα αλλ' οὐ θεοῖς, Look at those poor dead figures on the tombs of knights, with the cross on their breast, and their armed hands raised up in prayer. Where shall we find as much reli re *De Civitate Dei, IX. 5. * De Legibus, II. gion and honour and dignity among the living, as beam from that cold stone ? Is it for the kind of people who' finger them with a vacant stare to name chivalry? But the superstition of the knights is the subject of declama tion. The Church was careful to cut off the branches of this crime*, though it may have been unable to pull up all the fibres of its roots "ita sunt altæ stirpes stultitiæ." "In the faith which is infused," says Father Lewis of Grenada," there is not the medium which exists in moral virtues, as there is no medium in the love of God: the more we love, the more we believe in him; but in human faith there is a medium, separating credulity from incredulity, and these two are vices, because it is a vice and a lightness of heart to believe too readily, as it is a vice not to believe upon reasonable evidence + . In the third chapter of the Songe du Vergier, the clerk proves to the knight the sin and folly of astrology, divination, and necromancy. On being asked whether all knights and squires may continue their custom of wearing relics,or some writing and divine words about their neck, he replies as follows: "Je vous respons que si ils le font pour la très parfaicte fiance qu'ils ont à Dieu et à ses saints, adoncques ils le peuvent faire loisiblement, mais si en portant telles reliques ils font ou pensent auscunes va * For the zeal of the Church against superstition, see Art. 3. De la Censure de la Faculté de Théologie de l'Université de Paris, in 1398. St. Eloi, cap. 220, lib. De Vera Relig. c. lv. The Penitential Canons, published by D'Achery. T. II. Spicil. The Sixth Council of Paris, in 829. Eadmeri Historias Novorum, III. c. 8. Boniface Epist. 132. 182. M. de Marchangy remarks, that " all beneficial civilization comes from the Church," and he contrasts her gentleness in combating the follies of men with the bitter zeal of human societies. "The zeal of men is furious and devouring, because it is always mixed with passions and error; that of the Church is unimpassioned, patient, and eternal. The Church had exposed the folly of superstition. The parliament of Toulouse, in the 15th century, in one year, put to death more than 400 persons accused of magic." Pierre Grégoire de Toulouse, lib. xxxiv. Syntag. Juris Univ. cap. xxi. No. 10. He might have appealed to James the First's proceedings against witches. For the condemnation of interpreting dreams, vide S. Greg. Nyss. de Opib. Homin. 13. De Sarisb. 11. Polycrat. 17. The diviners of dreams were excommunicated by bulls, councils, and synods. Wherever men abandoned the Church, they gave way to superstition in the proper sense of the word; that is, they had recourse to a faith which was not founded in Jesus Christ. t Catechism, Part II. c. 27. |