Couple of quick notes.
First, I just finished a healthy walk – got to really work on my uphill stamina – and so, as per usual, listened to an episode of In Our Time– the episode on Edward Gibbon, the author of the magisterial Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
I really can’t recommend it enough. Very thorough and engaging survey of Gibbon’s life, his purpose in writing the work, what influenced him and the work’s greater influence.
One thing I absolutely did not know and that came as a great surprise to me was that Gibbon…converted to Catholicism.
No, not late in life, producing remorse for his ironic contempt on the role of Christianity in the fall, but very, very early – at the age of 16, a lonely student at Oxford, he read his way into Catholicism and converted.
Which lasted for three weeks, essentially.
His landed father would not have this turn of events of course – being a Catholic would render Gibbon disqualified from public life and participation in polite society. So he wasted no time and shipped Gibbon off to Lausanne to live with and be tutored with, of course, a right and proper Calvinist.
That will teach you!
It worked, of course, although Gibbon’s early study of Catholicism did impact his viewpoint on the role of Christianity in the Roman Empire, in, truth be told an ironic way – although one of the scholars on the program did defend Gibbon, saying that yes, he was harsh on Christianity early on in the work, but his views did become a bit more nuanced as time went on.
Another random Catholic culture note.
I’ve not read all of it, honing in on the chapters about The Vatican and Assisi – I’m sure you are shocked. It’s an excellent antidote to triumphalism of one sort or another, taking in what outsiders and skeptics make of all of that – in short, the reaction to such experiences is not, as some would have you believe, always stunned humility before the Throne of Peter.
It was dreary business waiting. Loud talking was not to be thought of, and the whispering on all sides as the company increased was oppressive. There was a group of ladies from Venice who were obviously friends of the Holy Father’s family. There were two brown monks, barefooted and with long gray beards, patriarchal types, who stationed themselves by one wall near the door. There were three nuns and a mother superior from somewhere who looked as if they were lost in prayer. This was a great occasion to them. Next to me was a very official person in a uniform of some kind who constantly adjusted his neck-band and smoothed his gloved hands. Some American ladies, quite severe and anti-papistical if I am not mistaken, looked as if they were determined not to believe anything they saw, and two Italian women of charming manners had in tow an351 obstreperous small boy of say five or six years of age in lovely black velvet, who was determined to be as bad and noisy as he could. He beat his feet and asked questions in a loud whisper and decided that he wished to change his place of abode every three seconds; all of which was accompanied by many “sh-sh-es” from his elders and whisperings in his ear, severe frowns from the American ladies and general indications of disapproval, with here and there a sardonic smile of amusement.
Every now and then a thrill of expectation would go over the company. The Pope was coming! Papal guards and prelates would pass through the room with speedy movements and it looked as though we would shortly be in the presence of the vicar of Christ. I was told that it was necessary to rest on one knee at least, which I did, waiting patiently the while I surveyed the curious company. The two brown monks were appropriately solemn, their heads bent. The sisters were praying. The Italian ladies were soothing their restive charge. I told my correspondent-friend of the suicide of a certain journalist, whom he and his wife knew, on the day that I left New York—a very talented but adventurous man; and he exclaimed: “My God! don’t tell that to my wife. She’ll feel it terribly.” We waited still longer and finally in sheer weariness began jesting foolishly; I said that it must be that the Pope and Merry del Val, the Pope’s secretary, were inside playing jackstones with the papal jewels. This drew a convulsive laugh from my newspaper friend—I will call him W.—who began to choke behind his handkerchief. Mrs. W. whispered to me that if we did not behave we would be put out and I pictured myself and W. being unceremoniously hustled out by the forceful guards, which produced more laughter. The official beside me, who probably did not speak English,352 frowned solemnly. This produced a lull, and we waited a little while longer in silence. Finally the sixth or seventh thrill of expectation produced the Holy Father, the guards and several prelates making a sort of aisle of honor before the door. All whispering ceased. There was a rustle of garments as each one settled into a final sanctimonious attitude. He came in, a very tired-looking old man in white wool cassock and white skull cap, a great necklace of white beads about his neck and red shoes on his feet. He was stout, close knit, with small shrewd eyes, a low forehead, a high crown, a small, shapely chin. He had soft, slightly wrinkled hands, the left one graced by the papal ring. As he came in he uttered something in Italian and then starting on the far side opposite the door he had entered came about to each one, proffering the hand which some merely kissed and some seized on and cried over, as if it were the solution of a great woe or the realization of a too great happiness. The mother superior did this and one of the Italian ladies from Venice. The brown monks laid their foreheads on it and the official next to me touched it as though it were an object of great value.
I was interested to see how the Supreme Pontiff—the Pontifex Maximus of all the monuments—viewed all this. He looked benignly but rather wearily down on each one, though occasionally he turned his head away, or, slightly interested, said something. To the woman whose tears fell on his hands he said nothing. With one of the women from Venice he exchanged a few words. Now and then he murmured something. I could not tell whether he was interested but very tired, or whether he was slightly bored. Beyond him lay room after room crowded with pilgrims in which this performance had to be repeated. Acquainted with my newspaper correspondent he gave no sign. At me he353 scarcely looked at all, realizing no doubt my critical unworthiness. At the prim, severe American woman he looked quizzically. Then he stood in the center of the room and having uttered a long, soft prayer, which my friend W. informed me was very beautiful, departed. The crowd arose. We had to wait until all the other chambers were visited by him and until he returned guarded on all sides by his soldiers and disappeared. There was much conversation, approval, and smiling satisfaction. I saw him once more, passing quickly between two long lines of inquisitive, reverential people, his head up, his glance straight ahead and then he was gone.
We made our way out and somehow I was very glad I had come. I had thought all along that it really did not make any difference whether I saw him or not and that I did not care, but after seeing the attitude of the pilgrims and his own peculiar mood I thought it worth while. Pontifex Maximus! The Vicar of Christ! What a long way from the Catacomb-worshiping Christians who had no Pope at all, who gathered together “to sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a God” and who bound themselves by a sacramental oath to commit no thefts, nor robberies, nor adulteries, nor break their word, nor deny a deposit when called upon, and who for nearly three hundred years had neither priest nor altar, nor bishop nor Pope, but just the rumored gospels of Christ.
And then to Assisi:
Side by side we proceeded through the church of St. Clare, the Duomo, the new church raised on the site of the house that belonged to Pietro Bernardone, the father of the saint; and finally to the Church of San Damiano, where after St. Francis had seen the vision of the new life, he went to pray. After it was given him by the Benedictines he set about the work of repairing it and when once it was in charge of the poor Clares, after resigning the command of his order, he returned thither to rest and compose the “Canticle of the Law.” I never knew until I came to Assisi what a business this thing of362 religion is in Italy—how valuable the shrines and churches of an earlier day are to its communities. Thousands of travelers must pass this way each year. They support the only good hotels. Travelers from all nations come, English, French, German, American, Russian, and Japanese. The attendants at the shrines reap a small livelihood from the tips of visitors and they are always there, lively and almost obstreperous in their attentions. The oldest and most faded of all the guides and attendants throng about the churches and shrines of Assisi, so old and faded that they seemed almost epics of poverty. My good priest was for praying before every shrine. He would get down on his knees and cross himself, praying four or five minutes while I stood irreligiously in the background, looking at him and wondering how long he would be. He prayed before the tomb of St. Francis in the Franciscan church; before the body of St. Clare (clothed in a black habit and shown behind a glass case), in the church of St. Clare; before the altar in the chapel of Saint Damiano, where St. Francis had first prayed; and so on. Finally when we were all through, and it was getting late evening, he wanted to go down into the valley, near the railroad station, to the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, where the cell in which St. Francis died, is located. He thought I might want to leave him now, but I refused. We started out, inquiring our way of the monks at Saint Damiano and found that we had to go back through the town. One of the monks, a fat, bare-footed man, signaled me to put on my hat, which I was carrying because I wanted to enjoy the freshness of the evening wind. It had cleared off now, the sun had come out and we were enjoying one of those lovely Italian spring evenings which bring a sense of childhood to the heart. The good monk thought I was holding my hat out of reverence to his calling. I put it on.
We went back through the town and then I realized how lovely the life of a small Italian town is, in spring. Assisi has about five thousand population. It was cool and pleasant. Many doorways were now open, showing evening fires within the shadows of the rooms. Some children were in the roadways. Carts and wains were already clattering up from the fields below and church-bells—the sweetest echoes from churches here and there in the valley and from those here in Assisi—exchanged melodies. We walked fast because it was late and when we reached the station it was already dusk. The moon had risen, however, and lighted up this great edifice, standing among a ruck of tiny homes. A number of Italian men and women were grouped around a pump outside—those same dark, ear-ringed Italians with whom we are now so familiar in America. The church was locked, but my Abbé went about to the cloister gate which stood at one side of the main entrance, and rang a bell. A brown-cowled monk appeared and they exchanged a few words. Finally with many smiles we were admitted into a moonlit garden, where cypress trees and box and ilex showed their lovely forms, and through a long court that had an odor of malt, as if beer were brewed here, and so finally by a circuitous route into the main body of the church and the chapel containing the cell of St. Francis. It was so dark by now that only the heaviest objects appeared distinctly, the moonlight falling faintly through several of the windows. The voices of the monks sounded strange and sonorous, even though they talked in low tones. We walked about looking at the great altars, the windows, and the high, flat ceiling. We went into the chapel, lined on either side by wooden benches, occupied by kneeling monks, and lighted by one low, swinging lamp which hung before the cell in which St. Francis died. There was much whispering of prayers here364 and the good Abbé was on his knees in a moment praying solemnly.
St. Francis certainly never contemplated that his beggarly cell would ever be surrounded by the rich marbles and bronze work against which his life was a protest. He never imagined, I am sure, that in spite of his prayer for poverty, his Order would become rich and influential and that this, the site of his abstinence, would be occupied by one of the most ornate churches in Italy. It is curious how barnacle-wise the spirit of materiality invariably encrusts the ideal! Christ died on the cross for the privilege of worshiping God “in spirit and in truth” after he had preached the sermon on the mount,—and then you have the gold-incrusted, power-seeking, wealth-loving Papacy, with women and villas and wars of aggrandizement and bastardy among the principal concomitants. And following Francis, imitating the self-immolation of the Nazarene, you have another great Order whose churches and convents in Italy are among the richest and most beautiful. And everywhere you find that lust for riches and show and gormandizing and a love of seeming what they are not, so that they may satisfy a faint scratching of the spirit which is so thickly coated over that it is almost extinguished.
Or it may be that the ideal is always such an excellent device wherewith to trap the unwary and the unsophisticated. “Feed them with a fine-seeming and then put a tax on their humble credulity” seems to be the logic of materialism in regard to the mass. Anything to obtain power and authority! Anything to rule! And so you have an Alexander VI, Vicar of Christ, poisoning cardinals and seizing on estates that did not belong to him: leading a life of almost insane luxury; and a Medicean pope interested in worldly fine art and the development of a pagan ideal.
Charlotte was Both 