Part 24 (2/2)
The respect they pay to the Virgin Mary is far greater than what they pay to the Son, and whatever English Roman Catholics may be made to believe by their priests or impose upon us, it is certain that the devotion to the Madonnas in Itally is something more than a bare representation of the Virgin Mary when they desire her intercession. Miracles they pretend not only to be wrought by the Madonnas themselves, but there is far greater respect paid to a Madonna in one place than another, whereas if this statue were only a bare representation of the Virgin to keep them in mind of her, the respect would be equal. I visited all the famous ones, and it would fill a volume to tell you the fopperies that's said of them. That of Loretto, being what they say is the very house where the Virgin lived, is not to be described, the riches are so great, nor the devotion that's paid to the statue....
The Lady of Saronna is another famous one and very rich; she is much handsomer than she of Loretto and a whole church-full of the legend of the miracles she hath wrought. She is in great reputation, and it's thought will at last outtop the Lady of Loretto; there is another near Leghorne that I also visited called _La Madonna della Silva Nera_, to whom all Itallian s.h.i.+ps that enter that port make a present of thanks for their happy voyage, and salute her with their cannon, and most s.h.i.+ps going out give her something for her protection during their voyage. I could tire you with she at the Annunciata at Florence, she within a mile of Bollognia, for whom the magistracy have piazza'd the road all the way from her station to the city, that she may not be enc.u.mbered with sun or rain when she makes them a visit, and hundreds more that would fill a volume of fopperies that I had the curiosity to see, but it would be imposing too much upon your patience.”[459]
This only confirms Dr. Middleton's conclusions, which received the approval of Gibbon, and those of later writers. ”As I descended from the Alps,” writes the Rev. W. H. Blunt in 1823,
”I was admonished of my entrance into Italy by a little chapel to the Madonna, built upon a rock by the roadside, and from that time till I repa.s.sed this chain of mountains I received almost hourly proof that I was wandering amongst the descendants of that people which is described by Cicero to have been the most religious of mankind. Though the mixture of religion with all the common events of life is anything but an error, yet I could not avoid regretting that, like their heathen ancestors, the modern Italians had supplied the place of our great master mover by a countless host of inferior agents.”[460]
Mr. Blunt goes on to give interesting details of the close connection between the modern religious festival, ceremony, or service, and those of cla.s.sical times, and the conclusion is obvious. In modern days Dr.
Mommsen has lent the sanction of his great authority to the identification of the birthday of Christ with that of Mithra,[461]
and Mr. Leland has given such numerous identifications not only of the cults of pagan and Christian Italy, but of the G.o.d-names of ancient Rome with the saint-names or witch-names of modern times,[462] that it seems impossible to deny a place for this evidence. ”It was,” says Gibbon,
”the universal sentiment both of the Church and of heretics that the daemons were the authors, the patrons, and the objects of idolatry; those rebellious spirits who had been degraded from the rank of angels were still permitted to roam upon earth, to torment the bodies and to seduce the minds of sinful men. It was confessed, or at least it was imagined, that they had distributed among themselves the most important characters of Polytheism, one daemon a.s.suming the name of Jupiter, another of aesculapius, a third of Venus, and a fourth perhaps of Apollo.”[463]
This, then, is recognition and adoption of pagan beliefs, not the uprooting of them. If the Roman Jupiter was a Christian daemon, his existence at all events was recognised. But even this negative way of adopting the old beliefs gave way as the Church spread further. The tribe of daemons soon included the popular fairy, elf, and goblin. And then came the positive adoption of pagan customs. Gibbon describes how the early Christians refused to decorate their doors with garlands and lamps, and to take part in the ceremonial of lifting the bride over the threshold of the house.[464] Both these customs have survived in popular folklore, in spite of the recorded action of the early Church, and it would be curious to ascertain whether they have survived by the help of the Church. We cannot answer that question of historical evidence just now, but it is a question which, in its wider aspect, as including many other items of folklore, ought to be examined into. There is no doubt, however, that by a.n.a.logy it can be answered, because we have ample evidence, if the writings of reformers may be taken as historical facts and not polemical imaginations, that many very important customs, among the richest as well as the poorest treasures of folklore, have been, so to speak, Christianised by the Church, and that the Church has taken part in and adopted non-Christian customs, the survivors of olden-time life in Europe.[465]
Now it is clear from these considerations, and from the vast ma.s.s of information which is gradually being acc.u.mulated on the subject, that not only the arresting force of Christianity but also its toleration has a.s.sisted in the preservation of pre-Christian belief and custom.
But the preservation has been in fragments only. The system which supported the older faith and might, if it had been allowed a natural growth, have produced a newer religion of its own, was completely shattered. It left no preservative force except that of tradition, the traditional instinct to do what has always been done, to believe what has always been believed. Pre-Christian belief and custom has thus become isolated beliefs and customs in survival. It has been broken up into innumerable fragments of unequal character, and containing unequal elements. It has been forced back into secret action wherever Christianity was wholly antagonistic, and hence primitive public wors.h.i.+p has tended to become local wors.h.i.+p, or household wors.h.i.+p, or even personal wors.h.i.+p, while all such wors.h.i.+p which is not the authorised Church wors.h.i.+p has tended to become superst.i.tion. Where Christianity was not wholly antagonistic, it absorbed rites, customs, and even beliefs, and these primitive survivals have taken their place in the evolution of Christian doctrine, and thus become lost to the students of Celtic and Teutonic antiquities. But even so, there are discoverable points where the dividing line between non-Christian and Christian belief has not been obliterated by the process of absorption. In all cases it is the duty of the student to note the stage of arrested development in the primitive rite, custom, or belief, whether it be caused by antagonism or by absorption. It is at this point, indeed, that the history of the survival begins. It is here that we have to turn from the polity, the religion, or cultus of a people to the belief, practices, or superst.i.tion of that portion of our nation which has not shared its progress from tribesmen to citizens, from paganism to Christianity, from vain imaginings to science and philosophy. It is from this point we have to turn from the dignity of courts, the doings of armies, and the results of commerce, to the doings, sayings, and ideas of the peasantry who cannot read, and who have depended upon tradition for all, or almost all, they know outside the formalities of law and Church.
FOOTNOTES:
[444] _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ (Bury), iii. 214-15.
[445] _Royal Irish Academy_, viii. 258; _Brit. Arch. a.s.soc._ (Gloucester volume), 62.
[446] ”The Story of the Ere Dwellers,” Morris, _Saga Library_, ii. 8.
[447] Camden, _Britannia_, s.v. ”Ireland.”
[448] Henderson, _Folklore of Northern Counties_, 16.
[449] Glas, _Canary Islands_, 148.
[450] Betham, _Gael and Cymbri_, pp. 236-8.
[451] _Decline and Fall_, iii. p. 214 (edit. Bury).
[452] Grimm, _Teutonic Mythology_, by Stallybra.s.s, iii. pp. 35, 36. A pa.s.sage from Hakon's Saga, quoted by Du Chaillu in his _Viking Age_, i.
p. 464, shows that the northern peoples adopted the same measures.
[453] Beda, lib. i. cap. 30; and consult Mr. Plummer's learned notes on this (vol. ii. 57-61).
[454] Stanley, _Memorials of Canterbury_, 37-38.
[455] _Cf._ my _Ethnology in Folklore_, 30-36, 136-140. Compare St.
Patrick's dedication of pagan sacred stones to Christian purposes.--_Tripart.i.te Life of St. Patrick_, i. 107.
[456] Thus Henry of Huntingdon records that Redwald, King of the East Angles, after his conversion to Christianity, ”set up altars to Christ and the devil in the same chapel” (lib. iii.).
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