Principal, who is having passages read out
to her from some standard Hebrew writer. The statues are the work
of a local sculptor, named Aureggio, who lived at the end of the
seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century.
The highest chapel must be a couple of hundred feet above the main
buildings, and from near it there is an excellent bird's-eye view
of the sanctuary and the small plain behind; descending on to this
last, we entered the quadrangle from the north-west side and
visited the chapel in which the sacred image of the Madonna is
contained. We did not see the image itself, which is only exposed
to public view on great occasions. It is believed to have been
carved by St. Luke the Evangelist. I must ask the reader to
content himself with the following account of it which I take from
Marocco's work upon Oropa.:-
"That this statue of the Virgin is indeed by St. Luke is attested
by St. Eusebius, a man of eminent piety and no less enlightened
than truthful. St. Eusebius discovered its origin by revelation;
and the store which he set by it is proved by his shrinking from no
discomforts in his carriage of it from a distant country, and by
his anxiety to put it in a place of great security. His desire,
indeed, was to keep it in the spot which was most near and dear to
him, so that he might extract from it the higher incitement to
devotion, and more sensible comfort in the midst of his austerities
and apostolic labours.
"This truth is further confirmed by the quality of the wood from
which the statue is carved, which is commonly believed to be cedar;
by the Eastern character of the work; by the resemblance both of
the lineaments and the colour to those of other statues by St.
Luke; by the tradition of the neighbourhood, which extends in an
unbroken and well-assured line to the time of St. Eusebius himself;
by the miracles that have been worked here by its presence, and
elsewhere by its invocation, or even by indirect contact with it;
by the miracles, lastly, which are inherent in the image itself,
{23} and which endure to this day, such as is its immunity from all
worm and from the decay which would naturally have occurred in it
through time and damp - more especially in the feet, through the
rubbing of religious objects against them.
* * *
"The authenticity of this image is so certainly and clearly
established, that all supposition to the contrary becomes
inexplicable and absurd. Such, for example, is a hypothesis that
it should not be attributed to the Evangelist, but to another Luke,
also called 'Saint,' and a Florentine by birth. This painter lived
in the eleventh century - that is to say, about seven centuries
after the image of Oropa had been known and venerated! This is
indeed an anachronism.
"Other difficulties drawn either from the ancient discipline of the
Church, or from St. Luke the Evangelist's profession, which was
that of a physician, vanish at once when it is borne in mind -
firstly, that the cult of holy images, and especially of that of
the most blessed Virgin, is of extreme antiquity in the Church, and
of apostolic origin as is proved by ecclesiastical writers and
monuments found in the catacombs which date as far back as the
first century (see among other authorities, Nicolas, "La Vergine
vivente nella Chiesa," lib. iii. cap. iii. SS 2); secondly, that
as the medical profession does not exclude that of artist, St. Luke
may have been both artist and physician; that he did actually
handle both the brush and the scalpel is established by respectable
and very old traditions, to say nothing of other arguments which
can be found in impartial and learned writers upon such matters."
I will only give one more extract. It runs:-
"In 1855 a celebrated Roman portrait-painter, after having
carefully inspected the image of the Virgin Mary at Oropa, declared
it to be certainly a work of the first century of our era." {24}
I once saw a common cheap china copy of this Madonna announced as
to be given away with two pounds of tea, in a shop near Hatton
Garden.
The church in which the sacred image is kept is interesting from
the pilgrims who at all times frequent it, and from the collection
of votive pictures which adorn its walls. Except the votive
pictures and the pilgrims the church contains little of interest,
and I will pass on to the constitution and objects of the
establishment.-
The objects are - 1. Gratuitous lodging to all comers for a space
of from three to nine days as the rector may think fit. 2. A
school. 3. Help to the sick and poor. It is governed by a
president and six members, who form a committee. Four members are
chosen by the communal council, and two by the cathedral chapter of
Biella. At the hospice itself there reside a director, with his
assistant, a surveyor to keep the fabric in repair, a rector or
dean with six priests, called cappellani, and a medical man. "The
government of the laundry," so runs the statute on this head, "and
analogous domestic services are entrusted to a competent number of
ladies of sound constitution and good conduct, who live together in
the hospice under the direction of an inspectress, and are called
daughters of Oropa."
The bye-laws of the establishment are conceived in a kindly genial
spirit, which in great measure accounts for its unmistakeable
popularity. We understood that the poorer visitors, as a general
rule, avail themselves of the gratuitous lodging, without making
any present when they leave, but in spite of this it is quite clear
that they are wanted to come, and come they accordingly do.
