VII. ANGLO- BOOK constitutes an accessary, must not be denied. This charge is inseparably associated with his memory, and darkens it with a funereal shade. As human judgment may err, the topic shall be urged no further. He is now gone, where that which is alone infallible, will CAN be passed upon him. May every good intention that actuated him, produce in his behalf every possible extenuation ! MONASTE- But his name is connected with two other inventions, on which human criticism will variously appreciate him; the institution of the celebrated devotion of the Rosary; and that of the terrible, and to every human eye and heart, the ghastly Inquisition.. The Catholic devotion of the rosary, consists of the repetition of the Lord's prayer fifteen times, and of the verse addressed by the angel to the Virgin Mary, called the Ave Maria, one hundred and fifty times; 26 while a corresponding number of the beads strung in a rosary, are counted or moved. How can reason separate such things from the precept which discourages all vain repetitions of prayer to the Supreme! Only by supposing that the votary can connect with each bead and recital, "the exercise of a sublime contemplation," or intense feelings of "faith, hope, divine love, praise, and thanksgiving."" Some gifted minds and sensitive hearts may raise themselves to high sentiments of adoration with the first part of the pater noster; and may dissolve in supplicating pathos as they pronounce its imploring petitions; but in general such numerous recitals will be only rapid, formal, and unfeeling reiterations. But if the effect of these pater nosters be to set the mind "commercing with the skies," can it be right II. CAN AND DOMINI that the heart should be excited one hundred and CHAP. fifty times for the Virgin Mary, and but fifteen for her Creator?-Was not the aim of the inventor to give her the predominance in the devotion of the votary; CAN PERand has it not had the effect amid the promiscuous SECUmultitude, of making supplications to her supersede the worship of her Divine Superior? TIONS, ETC. That St. Dominic was the author of the Inquisition, Establishand the first inquisitor, has been the prevailing belief ment of the Inquiof both the Protestant and Catholic world, which his sition. friendly advocates wish now to destroy and attempt to shake, by noticing some prior commissions of a similar tendency." But it is admitted, that in 1215, he received a commission from the Pope, to judge and deliver to punishment, apostate and relapsed and obstinate heretics.29 It is not denied that he acted upon this. His most favoring biographers display him exerting himself with an extraordinary—impartial men would say, with an inordinate, zeal against the Albigenses; and if the project of the actual court, which we now dread, and which humanity has long deprecated and lamented, was formed in the council of Thoulouse in 1229,30 eight years after his death, yet this only transfers the guilt of its fabrication from St. Dominic to his church; even with this transfer, the two first inquisitors are acknowleged to have been two Dominican friars, who were nominated by 28 Manriquez and Baillet make the legate, Peter of Castelnau, the first inquisitor, in 1204. Fleury dates the origin of the tribunal from the decree of Verona in 1184, which ordered the bishops of Lombardy to detect heretics, and deliver them to the civil magistrate. Al. Butler, 76. 29 Malvenda states this ad An. 1215. Butler 76. The Catholic continuators of Bollandus assert, that Dominic, in quality of inquisitor, delivered those among the Albigenses that were taken, and who persisted in being obstinate, to the secular judges, to be put to death. His Dominican biographers, Echard and Touron, dispute this, and Mr. Butler thinks they are right. 30 Al. Butler, 77. VII. ANGLO- MONASTE RIES, BOOK Gregory IX. in 1233." More than this I will not attempt to press, that I may not calumniate where I have no right to injure. But whatever was his individual concern in this terrific institution, the voice of history seems to be clear and decided, that his order has claimed as its privilege to be its chief supporters and executive instruments. The wise and happy jealousy of more cultivated nations forbidding it elsewhere, it has been established only in some part of Italy, in Malta, in Spain, and in Portugual.3 CAN St. Dominic died in 1221, at the age of fifty-one; and it is curious to observe how perfect a contrast to the principles of his institution the future history and practice of his order speedily became. Tho Mr. Alban Butler, not unjustly, ascribes to St Dominic, an earnest desire to produce by it that apostolic "spirit which is founded on a sincere contempt of the world, and a perfect disinterestedness: for so long as the love of the world, or a relish for its vanity, delights and riches, keeps possession of a heart, there can be no room for an holier guest." Yet the Dominican friars, in no long time after their founder's demise, were distinguished not only for their preaching and learning, 31 Al. Butler, 77. It was a favorite maxim of St. Dominic, that 'It is better to be the hammer than the anvil,' p. 95. Yet his friends deny that he was ever the hammer! Can they also deny, that this sentiment is in direct contradiction to the first chapter of the sermon on the mount? 32 Al. Butler, ib. His personal mortifications may be true. They suit his ardent character. He practised all the austerities of the ancient fathers of the desert. He spent often whole nights in the church, watering the steps of the altar with his tears. He often allowed himself in his fasts, especially during Lent, no other nourishment than bread and water. He reserved only a short time for rest, which he took lying on a board.' -Ib. 64. 78, 79. 33 Al. But. p. 81. He took all possible precautions to prevent riches ever becoming the portion and the bane of his order.' Ib. p. 92. Could, then, the Dominicans justly blame those nations and governments which afterwards disposssessed them of their unduly acquired wealth and possessions ?. CAN II. but for their wealth, pomp, luxury, ambition, love of CHAP. power, worldly activity, and worldly prosperity. The world soon flattered, conquered, rewarded, seduced, and governed those who came into being, only to rebuke, spiritualize and regenerate it.34 can and CAN PER DOMINI SECU TIONS, ETC. The Fran The life of St. Francis is not connected with those violent and questionable actions, which give at times ciscan a dark and sanguinary hue to the features of St. Do- order. minic. He was as mild, as the other was martial, or at least martially zealous. He never accompanied armies of persecution. He loved devout privacy, and sought to ally religion with tender feelings and affectionate effusions of the heart: but he also connected it with those extreme self-mortifications, which his contemporaries admired as much as we lament. In 1209 he began the foundation of his order, and made the abnegation of all property and manual labor two of its great distinctions. He would not suffer any temporal goods to be vested in it. His personal austerity was extreme: and he cultivated his pious sensibilities with a fervency which few could imitate. In 1219 he went to Egypt, to convert the Mahomedans of that country. In 1220, his order planted itself in England, at Canterbury, and soon after at Northampton. Their convent in London was built near Newgate, in 1306, by the queen of Edward I. ; and Whittington, the lord mayor, in 1429, presented it with a large library. They had about eighty convents in this island, 34 I wish not to abuse any man for his sincere belief, yet I cannot but regret that a mind so valuable as Mr. Alban Butler's, should seriously credit, that St. Dominic was raised in ecstasy, in a church, several cubits from the ground, and was seen for a considerable time, in that posture, in the air, till he gently fell down, p. 79. That on another occasion, he was lifted up in the same manner a whole cubit from the earth, and that he afterwards raised a cardinal's nephew, the lord Napoleon,' from the dead, p. 89. BOOK besides a few female nuñneries. They were known by the name of the Friars Minors, or Franciscans. VII. ANGLO- FRANCIS 35 The order soon became so popular, that it forgot the poverty of its founder, and his self-denying principles, and rivalled the Dominicans in ambition, CAN power, wealth and influence. It peculiarly directed itself to the cultivation of the disputatious talents of the mind, and became, as will be hereafter noticed, one of the great mental assailants of the established and possessioned hierarchy. The Reformation was peculiarly indebted, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, to their intellectual pugnacity and scholastic disquisitions. Persecut of the Romish church. But the great peculiarity, sin, and inseparable, tho ing spirit sometimes concealed appurtenance and principle of the Roman church, wherever it has been dominant, and whenever its possessioned hierarchy has been attacked or endangered, and has had sufficient power, and has been permitted to indulge its severities, is its steady, active, intolerant and unrelenting persecution of its religious opponents, till they have been crushed into debility or finally extirpated. Whereever other causes have not restrained it, the conclu→ sion to which it has always unshrinkingly advanced, has been violent, unsparing and unpitying extermination. This conduct is so offensive to the human heart, and has so often put the human mind into censuring and hating hostility against it, that, in defiance of all that councils have in their canons enjoined, Popes in their bulls enforced, able casuists in their writings justified, and the most impartial history recorded, the charge is still repelled as calumny, tho the 35 See Al. Butl. Lives; v. 10.71-106. This order has had in it five popes, and forty-five cardinals, p. 100. |