Church. to his name. one chapter still remains, but it is difficult for thee to speak." The dying monk replied, "Take thy pen and write quickly.' Later the scribe said, Only one sentence remains ;" and the monk said again, "Write quickly." And writing, the scribe said, "It is done." "Thou hast said rightly," answered Bede, "it is done;" and died, repeating the Gloria Patri, closing the service of his long life with the closing words of the service of the Church. The following legend of him is from Wright's Biog. Britan. Lit., I. 269: "The reputation of Bede increased daily, and we find him spoken of by the title of Saint very soon after his death. Boniface in his epistles describes him as the lamp of the Towards the ninth century he received the appellation of The Venerable, which has ever since been attached As a specimen of the fables by which his biography was gradually obscured, we may cite the legends invented to account for the origin of this latter title. According to one, the Anglo-Saxon scholar was on a visit to Rome, and there saw a gate of iron, on which were inscribed the letters P.P.P.S.S.S.R.R.R.F.F.F., which no one was able to interpret. Whilst Bede was attentively considering the inscription, a Roman who was passing by said to him rudely, 'What seest thou there, English ox?' to which Bede replied, 'I see your confusion;' and he immediately explained the characters thus: Pater Patria Perditus, Sapientia Secum Sublata, Ruet Regnum Roma, Ferro Flamma Fame. The Romans were astonished at the acuteness of their English visitor, and decreed that the title of Venerable should be thenceforth given to him. According to another story, Bede, having become blind in his old age, was walking abroad with one of his disciples for a guide, when they arrived at an open place where there was a large heap of stones; and Bede's companion persuaded his master to preach to the people who, as he pretended, were assembled there and waiting in great silence and expectation. Bede delivered a most eloquent and moving discourse, and when he had Richard of St. Victor was a monk in the monastery of that name near Paris, "and wrote a book on the Trinity," says the Ottimo, "and many other beautiful and sublime works"; praise which seems justified by Dante's words, if_not_suggested by them. Milman, Hist. Latin Christ., VIII. 241, says of him and his brother Hugo: "Richard de St. Victor was at once more logical and more devout, raising higher at once the unassisted power of man, yet with even more supernatural interference,less ecclesiastical, more religious. Thus the silent, solemn cloister was, as it were, constantly balancing the noisy and pugnacious school. The system of the St. Victors is the contemplative philosophy of deep-thinking minds in their profound seclusion, not of intellectual gladiators: it is that of men following out the train of their own thoughts, not perpetually crossed by the objections of subtle rival disputants. Its end is not victory, but the inward satisfaction of the soul. It is not so much conscious of ecclesiastical restraint, it is rather self-restrained by its inborn reverence; it has no doubt, therefore no fear; it is bold from the inward consciousness of its orthodoxy." 135. As to many other life-weary men, like those mentioned in Purg. XVI. 122 "And late they deem it That God restore them to the better life." 136. "This is Master Sigier," says the Ottimo, "who wrote and lectured on Logic in Paris." Very little more is known of him than this, and that he was supposed to hold some odious, if not heretical opinions. Even his name has perished out of literary history, and survives only in the verse of Dante and the notes of his commentators. 137. The Rue du Fouarre, or Street of Straw, originally called Rue de l'Ecole, is famous among the old streets of Paris, as having been the cradle of the University. It was in early times a hay and straw market, and hence derives its name. In the old poem of Les Rues de Paris, Barbazan, II. 247, are these lines: Others derive the name from the fact, that the students covered the benches of their lecture-rooms with straw, or used it instead of benches; which they would not have done if a straw-market had not been near at hand. Dante, moved perhaps by some pleasant memory of the past, pays the old scholastic street the tribute of a verse. The elegant Petrarca mentions it frequently in his Latin writings, and always with a sneer. He remembers only "the disputatious city of Paris, and the noisy Street of Straw"; or "the plaudits of the Petit Pont and the Rue du Fouarre, the most famous places on earth." Paris-Straw Street (Rue du Fouarre) into the midst of a description of the highest heavens. . . ... What did it matter to Dante, up in heaven there, whether the mob below thought him vulgar or not! Sigier had read in Straw Street; that was the fact, and he had to say so, and there an end. "There is, indeed, perhaps, no greater sign of innate and real vulgarity of mind or defective education, than the want of power to understand the universality of the ideal truth; the absence of sympathy with the colossal grasp of those intellects, which have in them so much of divine, that nothing is small to them, and nothing large; but with equal and unoffended vision they take in the sum of the world, Straw Street and the seventh heavens, in the same instant. A certain portion of this divine spirit is visible even in the lower examples of all the true men; it is, indeed, perhaps the clearest test of their belonging to the true and great group, that they are continually touching what to the multitude appear vulgarities. The higher a man stands, the more the word 'vulgar' becomes unintelligible to him." The following sketch from the notebook of a recent traveller shows the Street of Straw in its present condition : "I went yesterday in search of the Rue du Fouarre. I had been hearing William Guizot's lecture on Montaigne, and from the Collége de France went down the Rue St. Jacques, passing at the back of the old church of St. Severin, whose gargoyles still stretch out their long necks over the street. Turning into the Rue Galande, a few steps brought me to the Fouarre. It is a short, and narrow street, with a scanty footway on one side, on the other only a gutter. The opening at the farther end is filled by a picturesque vista of the transept gable and great rose-window of Notre Dame, over the river, with the slender central spire. Some of the houses on either side of the street were evidently of a comparatively modern date; but others were of the oldest, and the sculptured stone wreaths over the doorways, and "A common idealist would have the remains of artistic iron-work in the been rather alarmed at the thought of balconies, showed them to have been introducing the name of a street in once of some consideration. Some Rabelais speaks of it as the place where Pantagruel first held disputes with the learned doctors, "having posted up his nine thousand seven hundred and sixty-four theses in all the carrefours of the city"; and Ruskin, Mod. Painters, III. 85, justifies the mention of it in Paradise as follows: dirty children were playing at the door of a shop where fagots and charbon de terre de Paris were sold. A coachman in glazed hat sat asleep on his box before he shop of a blanchisseuse de fin. A woman in a bookbinder's window was folding the sheets of a French grammar. In an angle of the houses under the high wall of the hospital garden was a cobbler's stall. A stout, red-faced woman, standing before it, seeing me gazing round, asked if Monsieur was seeking anything in special. I said I was only looking at the old street; it must be very old. 'Yes, one of the oldest in Paris.' And why is it called "du Fouarre"?' 'O, that is the old French for foin; and hay used to be sold here. Then, there were famous schools here in the old days; Abelard used to lecture here.' I was delighted to find the traditions of the place still surviving, though I cannot say whether she was right about Abelard, whose name may have become merely typical; it is not improbable, however, that he may have made and annihilated many a man of straw, after the fashion of the doctors of dialectics, in the Fouarre. His house was not far off on the Quai Napoléon in the Cité; and that of the Canon Fulbert on the corner of the Rue Basse des Ursins. Passing through to the Pont au Double, I stopped to look at the books on the parapet, and found a voluminous Dictionnaire Historique, but, oddly enough, it contained neither Sigier's name, nor Abelard's. I asked a ruddy-cheeked boy on a doorstep if he went to school. He said he worked in the day-time, and went to an evening school in the Rue du Fouarre, No. 5. That primary night school seems to be the last feeble descendant of the ancient learning. As to straw, I saw none except a kind of rude straw matting placed round the corner of a wine-shop at the entrance of the street; a sign that oysters are sold within, they being brought to Paris in this kind of matting.' 138. Buti interprets thus: "Lecturing on the Elenchi of Aristotle, to prove some truths he formed certain syllogisms so well and artfully, as to excite envy.' Others interpret the word invidiosi in the Latin sense of odious,-truths that were odious to somebody; which interpretation is supported by the fact that Sigier was summoned before the primate of the Dominicans on suspicion of heresy, but not convicted. 147. Milton, At a Solemn Musick: "Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heaven's joy; Sphere-born harmonious sisters, Voice and Verse; Wed your divine sounds, and mixed power employ Dead things with inbreathed sense able to pierce; And to our high-raised fantasy present With saintly shout, and solemn jubilee ; Hymns devout and holy psalms That we on earth, with undiscording voice, Broke the fair music that all creatures made To their great Lord, whose love their motion swayed In perfect diapason, whilst they stood To his celestial concert us unite, To live with him, and sing in endless morn of light!" CANTO XI. 1. The Heaven of the Sun continued. The praise of St. Francis by Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican. 4. Lucretius, Nature of Things, Book II. 1, Good's Tr. : "How sweet to stand, when tempests tear the main, On the firm cliff, and mark the seaman's toil! To mark the strife for honours and renown, 16. Thomas Aquinas. 20. The spirits see the thoughts of Thy speech infuses into me, my Lord, Thou seest as I see it." 25. Canto X. 94 : "The holy flock Which Dominic conducteth by a road 26. Canto X. 112: "Where knowledge So deep was put, that, if the true be true, 32. The Church. Luke xxiii. 46: "And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit; and having said thus, he gave up the ghost." 34. Romans viii. 38: "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." 'La cui mirabil vita Meglio in gloria del ciel si canterebbe,' was inspired by love for all created things, in the most insignificant of which he recognized a common origin with himself. The little lambs hung up for slaughter excited his pity, and the captive birds his tender sympathy; the swallows he called his sisters, sororcula mea, when he begged them to cease their twitterings while he preached; the worm he carefully removed from his path, lest it should be trampled on by a less careful foot; and, in love with poverty, he lived upon the simplest food, went clad in the scantiest garb, and enjoined chastity and obedience upon his followers, who within four years numbered no less than fifty thousand; but St. Dominic, though originally of a kind and compassionate nature, sacrificed whole hecatombs of victims in his zeal for the Church, showing how far fanaticism can change the kindest heart, and make it look with complacency upon deeds which would have formerly excited its abhorrence." 37. The Seraphs love most, the 35. St. Francis and St. Dominic. Cherubs know most. Thomas AquiMr. Perkins, Tuscan Sculptors, I. 7, nas, Sum. Theol., I. Quæst. CVIII. 5, says: "In warring against Frederic, says, in substance, that the Seraphim are whose courage, cunning, and ambition so called from burning; according to the gave them ceaseless cause for alarm, three properties of fire, namely, conand in strengthening and extending the tinual motion upward, excess of heat, influence of the Church, much shaken and of light. And again, in the same by the many heresies which had sprung article, that Cherubim, being interpreup in Italy and France, the Popes re-ted, is plenitude of knowledge, which ceived invaluable assistance from the in them is fourfold; namely, perfect Minorites and the Preaching Friars, vision of God, full reception of divine whose orders had been established by light, contemplation of beauty in the Pope Innocent III. in the early part of order of things, and copious effusion the century, in consequence of a vision, of the divine cognition upon others. in which he saw the tottering walls of the Lateran basilica supported by an Italian and a Spaniard, in whom he afterwards recognized their respective founders, SS. Francis and Dominic. Nothing could be more opposite than the means which these two celebrated men employed in the work of conver- 43. The town of Ascesi, or Assisi. sion; for while St. Francis used persua- as it is now called, where St. Francis sion and tenderness to melt the hard-was born, is situated between the rivers hearted, St. Dominic forced and crushed Tupino and Chiasi, on the slope of them into submission. St. Francis, Monte Subaso, where St. Ubald had 40. Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican, here celebrates the life and deeds of St. Francis, leaving the praise of his own Saint to Bonaventura, a Franciscan, to show that in heaven there are no rivalries nor jealousies between the two orders, as there were on earth. Ampère, Voyage Dantesque, p. 256, says: "Having been twice at Perugia, I have experienced the double effect of Mount Ubaldo, which the poet says makes this city feel the cold and heat. 'Onde Perugia sente freddo e caldo,' that is, which by turns reflects upon it the rays of the sun, and sends it icy winds. I have but too well verified the justice of Dante's observation, particularly as regards the cold temperature, which Perugia, when it is not burning hot, owes to Mount Ubaldo. I arrived in front of this city on a brilliant autumnal night, and had time to comment at leisure upon the winds of the Ubaldo, as I slowly climbed the winding road which leads to the gates of the city fortified by a Pope." is hermitage. From this mountain and saw visions. In the church of he summer heats are reflected, and the St. Damiano he heard a voice say three old winds of winter blow through the times, 66 Francis, repair my house, Porta Sole of Perugia. The towns of which thou seest falling." In order Nocera and Gualdo are neighbouring to do this, he sold his father's horse owns, that_suffered under the oppres- and some cloth at Foligno, and took sion of the Perugians. the money to the priest of St. Damiano, who to his credit refused to receive it. Through fear of his father, he hid himself; and when he reappeared in the streets was so ill-clad that the boys pelted him and called him mad. His father shut him up in his house; his mother set him free. In the presence of his father and the Bishop he renounced all right to his inheritance, even giving up his clothes, and putting on those of a servant which the Bishop gave him. He wandered about the country, singing the praises of the Lord aloud on the highways. He met with a band of robbers, and said to them, "I am the herald of the Great King.' They beat him and threw him into a ditch filled with snow. He only rejoiced and sang the louder. A friend in Gubbio gave him a suit of 50. Revelation vii. 2: "And I saw clothes, which he wore for two years, another angel ascending from the east, with a girdle and a staff. He washed having the seal of the living God." the feet of lepers in the hospital, and These words Bonaventura applies to kissed their sores. He begged from St. Francis, the beautiful enthusiast and door to door in Assisi, for the repairs Pater Seraphicus of the Church, to fol- of the church of St. Damiano, and carlow out whose wonderful life through ried stones for the masons. He did the details of history and legend would the same for the church of St. Peter; be too long for these notes. A few he did the same for the church of Our hints must suffice. Lady of Angels at Portiuncula, in the St. Francis was the son of Peter Ber-neighbourhood of Assisi, where he renadone, a wool-merchant of Assisi, and mained two years. Hearing one day in was born in 1182. The first glimpse church the injunction of Christ to his we catch of him is that of a joyous Apostles," Provide neither gold nor silyouth in gay apparel, given up to plea- ver, nor brass in your purse, nor scrip sure, and singing with his companions for your journey, neither two coats, through the streets of his native town, neither shoes, nor yet staves," he left like St. Augustine in the streets of Car- off shoes and staff and girdle, and girt thage. He was in the war between himself with a cord, after the manner Assisi and Perugia, was taken prisoner, of the shepherds in that neighbourhood. and passed a year in confinement. On This cord became the distinguishing his return home a severe illness fell mark of his future Order. He kissed upon him, which gave him more seri- the ulcer of a man from Spoleto, and ous thoughts. He again appeared in healed him; and St. Bonaventura says, the streets of Assisi in gay apparel, but "I know not which I ought most to meeting a beggar, a fellow-soldier, he admire, such a kiss or such a cure. changed clothes with him. He now be- Bernard of Quintavalle and others asgan to visit hospitals and kiss the sores sociated themselves with him, and the of lepers. He prayed in the churches, | Order of the Benedictines was founded. |