Part 11 (1/2)
When she came to the place of execution, she knelt down and prayed; and suddenly appeared at her side a beautiful boy, with hair bright as sunbeams:
A smooth-faced glorious thing, With thousand blessings dancing in his eyes.
In his hand he held a basket containing three apples, and three fresh-gathered and fragrant roses. She said to him; ”Carry these to Theophilus; say that Dorothea hath sent them, and that I go before him to the garden whence they came, and await him there.” With these words she bent her neck, and received the death-stroke.
Meantime the angel (for it was an angel) went to seek Theophilus, and found him still laughing in merry mood over the idea of the promised gift. The angel placed before him the basket of celestial fruit and flowers, saying: ”Dorothea sends thee this,” and vanished. What words can express the wonder of Theophilus? Struck by the prodigy operated in his favour, his heart melted within him; he tasted of the celestial fruit, and a new life was his; he proclaimed himself a servant of Christ, and, following the example of Dorothea, suffered with like constancy in the cause of truth, and obtained the crown of martyrdom.
We have chosen this legend just because it is in itself as superst.i.tious and fantastic as any in the book. We happen to hold the dream of ”The Spiritual Marriage,” as there set forth, in especial abhorrence, and we have no doubt Mrs. Jameson does so also.
We are well aware of the pernicious effect which this doctrine has exercised on matrimonial purity among the southern nations; that by making chast.i.ty synonymous with celibacy, it degraded married faithfulness into a restriction which there were penalties for breaking, but no rewards for keeping. We see clearly enough the cowardice, the shortsightedness, of fancying that man can insure the safety of his soul by fleeing from the world--in plain English, deserting the post to which G.o.d has called him, like the monks and nuns of old. We believe that the numbers of the early martyrs have been exaggerated. We believe that they were like ourselves, imperfect and inconsistent human beings; that, on the showing of the legends and fathers themselves, their testimony for the truth was too often impaired by superst.i.tion, fanaticism, or pa.s.sion. But granting all this, we must still say, in the words of one who cannot be suspected of Romanising--the great Dr. Arnold--
Divide the sum total of reported martyrs by twenty; by fifty, if you will; after all, you have a number of persons of all ages and s.e.xes suffering cruel torments and deaths for conscience' sake, and for Christ's; and by their sufferings, manifestly with G.o.d's blessing, insuring the triumph of Christ's Gospel. Neither do I think that we consider the excellence of this martyr spirit half enough.
Indeed we do not. Let all the abatements mentioned above, and more, be granted; yet, even then, when we remember that the world from which Jerome or Anthony fled was even worse than that denounced by Juvenal and Persius--that the nuptials which, as legends say, were often offered the virgin martyrs as alternatives for death, were such as employed the foul pens of Petronius and Martial--that the tyrants whom they spurned were such as live in the pages of Suetonius, and the Augustae Historiae Scriptores--that the G.o.ds whom they were commanded to wors.h.i.+p, the rites in which they were to join, were those over which Ovid and Apuleius had gloated, which Lucian had held up to the contempt of heathendom itself--that the tortures which they preferred to apostacy and to foul crimes were, by the confessions of the heathens themselves, too horrible for pen to tell--it does raise a flush of indignation to hear some sleek bigot-sceptic, bred up in the safety and luxury of modern England, among Habeas Corpus Acts and endowed churches, trying from his warm fireside to sneer away the awful responsibilities and the heroic fort.i.tude of valiant men and tender girls, to whose piety and courage he owes the very enlightenment, the very civilisation, of which he boasts.
It is an error, doubtless, and a fearful one, to wors.h.i.+p even such as them. But the error, when it arose, was at worst the caricature of a blessed truth. Even for the sinful, surely it was better to admire holiness than to wors.h.i.+p their own sin. Shame on those who, calling themselves Christians, repine that a Cecilia or a Magdalen replaced an Isis and a Venus; or who can fancy that they are serving Protestantism by tracing malevolent likenesses between even the idolatry of a saint and the idolatry of a devil! True, there was idolatry in both, as gross in one as the other. And what wonder?
What wonder if, amid a world of courtesans, the nun was wors.h.i.+pped?
At least G.o.d allowed it; and will man be wiser than G.o.d? ”The times of that ignorance He winked at.” The lie that was in it He did not interfere to punish. He did more; He let it work out, as all lies will, their own punishment. We may see that in the miserable century which preceded the glorious Reformation; we may see it in the present state of Spain and Italy. The crust of lies, we say, punished itself; to the germ of truth within it we partly owe that we are Christian men this day.
But granting, or rather boldly a.s.serting all this, and smiling as much as we choose at the tale of St. Dorothea's celestial basket, is it not absolutely, and in spite of all, an exquisite story? Is it likely to make people better or worse? We might believe the whole of it, and yet we need not, therefore, turn idolaters and wors.h.i.+p sweet Dorothea for a G.o.ddess. But if, as we trust in G.o.d is the case, we are too wise to believe it all--if even we see no reason (and there is not much) for believing one single word of it--yet still we ask, Is it not an exquisite story? Is there not heroism in it greater than of all the Ajaxes and Achilles who ever bl.u.s.tered on this earth?
Is there not power greater than of kings--G.o.d's strength made perfect in woman's weakness? Tender forgiveness, the Saviour's own likeness; glimpses, brilliant and true at the core, however distorted and miscoloured, of that spiritual world where the wicked cease from troubling, where the meek alone shall inherit the earth, where, as Protestants too believe, all that is spotless and beautiful in nature as well as in man shall bloom for ever perfect?
It is especially in her descriptions of paintings that Mrs. Jameson's great talents are displayed. Nowhere do we recollect criticisms more genial, brilliant, picturesque than those which are scattered through these pages. Often they have deeper merits, and descend to those fundamental laws of beauty and of religion by which all Christian art must ultimately be tested. Mrs. Jameson has certainly a powerful inductive faculty; she comprehends at once the idea {210} and central law of a work of art, and sketches it in a few vivid and masterly touches; and really, to use a hack quotation honestly for once, ”in thoughts which breathe, and words which burn.” As an instance, we must be allowed to quote at length this charming pa.s.sage on angel paintings, so valuable does it seem not only as information, but as a specimen of what criticism should be:
On the revival of art, we find the Byzantine idea of angels everywhere prevailing. The angels in Cimabue's famous ”Virgin and Child enthroned” are grand creatures, rather stern, but this arose, I think, from his inability to express beauty. The colossal angels at a.s.sisi, solemn sceptred kingly forms, all alike in action and att.i.tude, appeared to me magnificent.
In the angels of Giotto we see the commencement of a softer grace and a purer taste, further developed by some of his scholars. Benozzo Gozzoli and Orcagna have left in the Campo Santo examples of the most graceful and fanciful treatment. Of Benozzo's angels in the Ricardi Palace I have spoken at length. His master, Angelico (worthy the name!), never reached the same power of expressing the rapturous rejoicing of celestial beings, but his conception of the angelic nature remains unapproached, unapproachable: it is only his, for it was the gentle, pa.s.sionless, refined nature of the recluse which stamped itself there. Angelico's angels are unearthly, not so much in form as in sentiment; and superhuman, not in power but in purity.
In other hands, any imitation of his soft ethereal grace would become feeble and insipid. With their long robes falling round their feet, and drooping many-coloured wings, they seem not to fly or to walk, but to float along, ”smooth sliding without step.” Blessed blessed creatures! love us, only love us! for we dare not task your soft serene beat.i.tude, by asking you to help us!
There is more sympathy with humanity in Francia's angels: they look as if they could weep as well as love and sing.
Correggio's angels are grand and lovely, but they are like children enlarged and sublimated, not like spirits taking the form of children; where they smile it is truly--as Annibal Caracci expresses it--con una naturalezza et simplicita che innamora e sforza a ridere con loro: but the smile in many of Correggio's angel heads has something sublime and spiritual, as well as simple and natural.
And t.i.tian's angels impress me in a similar manner--I mean those in the glorious ”a.s.sumption” at Venice--with their childish forms and features, but an expression caught from beholding the face of ”our Father that is in heaven:” it is glorified in fancy. I remember standing before this picture, contemplating those lovely spirits, one after another, until a thrill came over me like that which I felt when Mendelssohn played the organ--I became music while I listened.
The face of one of those angels is to the face of a child just what that of the Virgin in the same picture is compared with the fairest of the daughters of earth: it is not here superiority of beauty, but mind, and music, and love kneaded, as it were, into form and colour.
But Raphael, excelling in all things, is here excellent above all; his angels combine in a higher degree than any other, the various faculties and attributes in which the fancy loves to clothe these pure, immortal, beatified creatures. The angels of Giotti, of Benozzo, of Fiesole, are, if not female, feminine; those of Filippo Lippi and of Andrea, masculine; but you cannot say of those of Raphael, that they are masculine or feminine. The idea of s.e.x is wholly lost in the blending of power, intelligence, and grace. In his early pictures, grace is the predominant characteristic, as in the dancing and singing angels in his ”Coronation of the Virgin.” In his later pictures the sentiment in his ministering angels is more spiritual, more dignified. As a perfect example of grand and poetical feeling, I may cite the angels as ”Regents of the Planets,”
in the Capella Chigiana. The cupola represents in a circle the creation of the solar system, according to the theological and astronomical (or rather astrological) notions which then prevailed--a hundred years before ”the starry Galileo and his woes.” In the centre is the Creator; around, in eight compartments, we have, first, the angel of the celestial sphere, who seems to be listening to the divine mandate: ”Let there be light in the firmament of heaven;”
then follow in their order, the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The name of each planet is expressed by its mythological representative; the Sun by Apollo, the Moon by Diana: and over each presides a grand colossal-winged spirit, seated or reclining on a portion of the zodiac as on a throne. I have selected two angels to give an idea of this peculiar and poetical treatment.
The union of the theological and the mythological attributes is in the cla.s.sical taste of the time, and quite Miltonic. In Raphael's child-angels, the expression of power and intelligence, as well as innocence, is quite wonderful; for instance, look at the two angel- boys, in the Dresden Madonna di San Sisto, and the angels, or celestial genii, who bear along the Almighty when he appears to Noah.
No one has expressed like Raphael the action of flight, except perhaps Rembrandt. The angel who descends to crown Santa Felicita cleaves the air with the action of a swallow: and the angel in Rembrandt's Tobit soars like a lark with upward motion, spurning the earth.