An Enormous
Batch Of Miracles Accompanied His Sanctification.
But he only employed these divine graces by the way; he was by
profession not a taumaturgo, but a clerical instructor, organizer,
and writer.
The Vatican has conferred on him the rare title of "Doctor
Ecclesia," which he shares with Saint Augustine and some others.
The biography from which I have drawn these details was printed in Rome
in 1839. It is valuable because it is modern and so far authentic; and
for two other reasons. In the first place, curiously enough, it barely
mentions the saint's life-work - his writings. Secondly, it is a good
example of what I call the pious palimpsest. It is over-scored with
contradictory matter. The author, for example, while accidentally
informing us that Alfonso kept a carriage, imputes to him a degrading,
Oriental love of dirt and tattered garments, in order (I presume) to
make his character conform to the grosser ideals of the mendicant
friars. I do not believe in these traits - in his hatred of soap and
clean apparel. From his works I deduce a different original. He was
refined and urbane; of a casuistical and prying disposition; like many
sensitive men, unduly preoccupied with the sexual life of youth; like a
true feudal aristocrat, ever ready to apply force where verbal
admonition proved unavailing. . . .
In wonder-working capacities these saints were all put in the shade by
the Calabrian Francesco di Paola, who raised fifteen persons from the
dead in his boyhood. He used to perform a hundred miracles a day, and
"it was a miracle, when a day passed without a miracle." The index alone
of any one of his numerous biographies is enough to make one's head swim.
The vast majority of saints of this period do not belong to that third
sex after which, according to some, the human race has ever striven - the
constructive and purposeful third sex. They are wholly sexless, unsocial
and futile beings, the negation of every masculine or feminine virtue.
Their independence fettered by the iron rules of the Vatican and of
their particular order, these creatures had nothing to do; and like
the rest of us under such conditions, became vacuously introspective.
Those honourable saintly combats of the past with external enemies and
plagues and stormy seasons were transplanted from without into the
microcosm within, taking the shape of hallucinations and
demon-temptations. They were no longer actors, but sufferers; automata,
who attained a degree of inanity which would have made their old
Byzantine prototypes burst with envy.
Yet they vary in their gifts; each one, as I have said, has his or her
strong point. Why? The reason of this diversity lies in the furious
competition between the various monastic orders of the time - in those
unedifying squabbles which led to never-ending litigation and complaints
to head-quarters in Rome. Every one of these saints, from the first
dawning of his divine talents, was surrounded by an atmosphere of
jealous hatred on the part of his co-religionists. If one order came out
with a flying wonder, another, in frantic emulation, would introduce
some new speciality to eclipse his fame - something in the fasting line,
it may be; or a female mystic whose palpitating letters to Jesus Christ
would melt all readers to pity. The Franciscans, for instance, dissected
the body of a certain holy Margaret and discovered in her heart the
symbols of the Trinity and of the Passion. This bold and original idea
would have gained them much credit, but for the rival Dominicans, who
promptly discovered, and dissected, another saintly Margaret, whose
heart contained three stones on which were engraven portraits of the
Virgin Mary. [Footnote: These and other details will be found in the
four volumes "Das Heidentum in der romischen Kirche" (Gotha, 1889-91),
by Theodor Trede, a late Protestant parson in Naples, strongly tinged
with anti-Catholicism, but whose facts may be relied upon. Indeed, he
gives chapter and verse for them.] So they ceaselessly unearthed fresh
saints with a view to disparaging each other - all of them waiting for a
favourable moment when the Vatican could be successfully approached to
consider their particular claims. For it stands to reason that a
Carmelite Pope would prefer a Carmelite saint to one of the Jesuits, and
so forth.
And over all throned the Inquisition in Rome, alert, ever-suspicious;
testing the "irregularities" of the various orders and harassing their
respective saints with Olympic impartiality.
I know that mystics such as Orsola Benincasa are supposed to have
another side to their character, an eminently practical side. It is
perfectly true - and we need not go out of England to learn it - that
piety is not necessarily inconsistent with nimbleness in worldly
affairs. But the mundane achievements, the monasteries and churches, of
nine-tenths of these southern ecstatics are the work of the confessor
and not of the saint. Trainers of performing animals are aware how these
differ in plasticity of disposition and amenability to discipline; the
spiritual adviser, who knows his business, must be quick to detect these
various qualities in the minds of his penitents and to utilize them to
the best advantage. It is inconceivable, for instance, that the
convent-foundress Orsola was other than a neuropathic nonentity - a blind
instrument in the hands of what we should call her backers, chiefest of
whom (in Naples) were two Spanish priests, Borii and Navarro, whose
local efforts were supported, at head-quarters, by the saintly Filippo
Neri and the learned Cardinal Baronius.
This is noticeable. The earlier of these godly biographies are written
in Latin, and these are more restrained in their language; they were
composed, one imagines, for the priests and educated classes who could
dispense to a certain degree with prodigies. But the later ones, from
the viceregal period onwards, are in the vernacular and display a marked
deterioration; one must suppose that they were printed for such of the
common people as could still read (up to a few years ago, sixty-five per
cent of the populace were analphabetic). They are pervaded by the
characteristic of all contemporary literature and art:
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 103 of 129
Words from 103949 to 104977
of 131203
