Volume I Part 48 (2/2)
Melchior Inchoffer, a Jesuit, published a book to vindicate the miracle of a _Letter_ which the Virgin Mary had addressed to the citizens of Messina: when Naude brought him positive proofs of its evident forgery, Inchoffer ingenuously confessed the imposture, but pleaded that it was done by the _orders_ of his _superiors_.
This same _letter_ of the Virgin Mary was like a _donation_ made to her by Louis the Eleventh of the _whole county_ of Boulogne, retaining, however, for _his own use the revenues_! This solemn act bears the date of the year 1478, and is ent.i.tled, ”Conveyance of Louis the Eleventh to the Virgin of Boulogne, of the right and t.i.tle of the fief and homage of the county of Boulogne, which is held by the Count of Saint Pol, to render a faithful account before the image of the said lady.”
Maria Agreda, a religious visionary, wrote _The Life of the Virgin_. She informs us that she resisted the commands of G.o.d and the holy Mary till the year 1637, when she began to compose this curious rhapsody. When she had finished this _original_ production, her confessor advised her to _burn_ it; she obeyed. Her friends, however, who did not think her less inspired than she informed them she was, advised her to re-write the work. When printed it spread rapidly from country to country: new editions appeared at Lisbon, Madrid, Perpignan, and Antwerp. It was the rose of Sharon for those climates. There are so many pious absurdities in this book, which were found to give such pleasure to the devout, that it was solemnly honoured with the censure of the Sorbonne; and it spread the more.
The head of this lady was quite turned by her religion. In the first six chapters she relates the visions of the Virgin, which induced her to write her life. She begins the history _ab ovo_, as it may be expressed; for she has formed a narrative of what pa.s.sed during the nine months in which the Virgin was confined in the womb of her mother St. Anne. After the birth of Mary, she received an augmentation of angelic guards; we have several conversations which G.o.d held with the Virgin during the first eighteen months after her birth. And it is in this manner she formed a _circulating novel_, which delighted the female devotees of the seventeenth century.
The wors.h.i.+p paid to the Virgin Mary in Spain and Italy exceeds that which is given to the Son or the Father. When they pray to Mary, their imagination pictures a beautiful woman, they really feel a _pa.s.sion_; while Jesus is only regarded as a _Bambino_, or infant at the breast, and the _Father_ is hardly ever recollected: but the _Madonna la Senhora, la Maria Santa_, while she inspires their religious inclinations, is a mistress to those who have none.
Of similar works there exists an entire race, and the libraries of the curious may yet preserve a shelf of these religious _nouvellettes_. The Jesuits were the usual authors of these rhapsodies. I find an account of a book which pretends to describe what pa.s.ses in Paradise. A Spanish Jesuit published at Salamanca a volume in folio, 1652, ent.i.tled _Empyreologia_. He dwells with great complacency on the joys of the celestial abode; there always will be music in heaven with material instruments as our ears are already accustomed to; otherwise he thinks the celestial music would not be music for us! But another Jesuit is more particular in his accounts. He positively a.s.sures us that we shall experience a supreme pleasure in kissing and embracing the bodies of the blessed; they will bathe in the presence of each other, and for this purpose there are most agreeable baths in which we shall swim like fish; that we shall all warble as sweetly as larks and nightingales; that the angels will dress themselves in female habits, their hair curled; wearing petticoats and fardingales, and with the finest linen; that men and women will amuse themselves in masquerades, feasts, and b.a.l.l.s.--Women will sing more agreeably than men to heighten these entertainments, and at the resurrection will have more luxuriant tresses, ornamented with ribands and head-dresses as in this life!
Such were the books once so devoutly studied, and which doubtless were often literally understood. How very bold must the minds of the Jesuits have been, and how very humble those of their readers, that such extravagances should ever be published! And yet, even to the time in which I am now writing,--even at this day,--the same picturesque and impa.s.sioned pencil is employed by the modern Apostles of Mysticism--the Swedenborgians, the Moravians, the Methodists!
I find an account of another book of this cla.s.s, ridiculous enough to be noticed. It has for t.i.tle, ”The Spiritual Kalendar, composed of as many Madrigals or Sonnets and Epigrams as there are days in the year; written for the consolation of the pious and the curious. By Father G.
Cortade, Austin Preacher at Bayonne, 1665.” To give a notion of this singular collection take an Epigram addressed to a Jesuit, who, young as he was, used to _put spurs under his s.h.i.+rt_ to mortify the outer man!
The Kalendar-poet thus gives a point to these spurs:--
Il ne pourra done plus ni ruer ni hennir Sous le rude Eperon dont tu fais son supplice; Qui vit jamais tel artifice, De piquer un cheval pour le mieux retenir!
HUMBLY INTIMATED.
Your body no more will neigh and will kick, The point of the spur must eternally p.r.i.c.k; Whoever contrived a thing with such skill, To keep spurring a horse to make him stand still!
One of the most extravagant works projected on the subject of the Virgin Mary was the following:--The prior of a convent in Paris had reiteratedly entreated Varillas the historian to examine a work composed by one of the monks; and of which--not being himself addicted to letters--he wished to be governed by his opinion. Varillas at length yielded to the entreaties of the prior; and to regale the critic, they laid on two tables for his inspection seven enormous volumes in folio.
This rather disheartened our reviewer: but greater was his astonishment, when, having opened the first volume, he found its t.i.tle to be _Summa Dei-parae_; and as Saint Thomas had made a _Sum_, or System of Theology, so our monk had formed a _System_ of the _Virgin_! He immediately comprehended the design of our good father, who had laboured on this work full thirty years, and who boasted he had treated _Three Thousand_ Questions concerning the Virgin! of which he flattered himself not a single one had ever yet been imagined by any one but himself!
Perhaps a more extraordinary design was never known. Varillas, pressed to give his judgment on this work, advised the prior with great prudence and good-nature to amuse the honest old monk with the hope of printing these seven folios, but always to start some new difficulties; for it would be inhuman to occasion so deep a chagrin to a man who had reached his seventy-fourth year, as to inform him of the nature of his favourite occupations; and that after his death he should throw the seven folios into the fire.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 96: Since this article was written, many of these ancient Mysteries and Moralities have been printed at home and abroad. Hone, in his ”Ancient Mysteries Described,” 1825, first gave a summary of the _Ludus Coventriae,_ the famous mysteries performed by the trading companies of Coventry; the entire series have been since printed by the Shakspeare Society, under the editors.h.i.+p of Mr. Halliwell, and consist of forty-two dramas, founded on incidents in the Old and New Testaments.
The equally famous _Chester Mysteries_ were also printed by the same society under the editors.h.i.+p of Mr. Wright, and consist of twenty-five long dramas, commencing with ”The Fall of Lucifer,” and ending with ”Doomsday.” In 1834, the Abbotsford Club published some others from the Digby MS., in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. In 1825, Mr. Sharp, of Coventry, published a dissertation on the Mysteries once performed there, and printed the Pageant of the Sheremen and Taylor's Company; and in 1836 the Abbotsford Club printed the Pageant played by the Weavers of that city. In 1836, the Surtees Society published the series known as _The Towneley Mysteries,_ consisting of thirty-two dramas; in 1838, Dr.
Marriott published in English, at Basle, a selection of the most curious of these dramas. In 1837, M. Achille Jubinal published two octavo volumes of French ”Mysteres inedits du Quinzieme Siecle.” This list might be swelled by other notes of such books, printed within the last thirty years, in ill.u.s.tration of these early religious dramas.]
[Footnote 97: In Jubinal's _Tap.i.s.series Anciennes_ is engraved that found in the tent of Charles the Bold, at Nancy, and still preserved in that city. It is particularly curious, inasmuch as it depicts the incidents described in the Morality above-named.]
[Footnote 98: The British Museum library was enriched in 1845 by a very curions collection of these old comic plays, which was formed about 1560. It consists of sixty-four dramas, of which number only five or six were known before. They are exceedingly curious as pictures of early manners and amus.e.m.e.nts; very simple in construction, and containing few characters. One is a comic dialogue between two persons as to the best way of managing a wife. Another has for its plot the adventure of a husband sent from home by the seigneur of the village, that he may obtain access to his wife; and who is checkmated by the peasant, who repairs to the neglected lady of the seigneur. Some are entirely composed of allegorical characters; all are broadly comic, in language equally broad. They were played by a jocular society, whose chief was termed Prince des Sots; hence the name Sotties given to the farces.]
[Footnote 99: The peasants of the Ober-Ammergau, a village in the Bavarian Alps, still perform, at intervals of ten years, a long miracle play, detailing the chief incidents of the Pa.s.sion of our Saviour from his entrance into Jerusalem to his ascension. It is done in fulfilment of a vow made during a pestilence in 1633. The performance lasted twelve hours in 1850, when it was last performed. The actors were all of the peasant cla.s.s.]
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