This bore the relics in a chest of gold,
On arm of that the swinging censer hung;
Another loud a tinkling hand-bell rung;
Four fathers went that ringing monk behind,
Who suited psalms of holy David sung;

Then o'er the Cross a stalking sire inclined,

And banners of the Church went waving in the wind "." Genoa probably considers herself bound to allure her sons and daughters to devote themselves more exclusively to the invocation of St. Mary; for upon her gate, towards Nice, she inscribes herself "The City of the Most Holy Mary," and M. de Genoude, in his book, expatiates with delight upon her preeminency among the other cities of Europe in the Culte de la S. Vierge.

It would be a subject of deep interest, though many ways distressing, to trace the estimation and honor in which the holy Mother has been held by Christians, since the time when the Council of Ephesus asserted her, in defence of Catholic doctrine, to be the Mother of God; as of course she was, if her Son was indeed, and at that time, very God and true Man. The language which occurs in St. Bernard certainly goes beyond that of most of the Fathers. But the same remark which has been made about the vague definitions and multiform doxologies of Antenicene times, regarding the consubstantiality of the Son-namely, that the authors wrote before heresy, and, like children, were uncramped in their

2 Fosbroke's Economy of Monastic Life.

language, and enjoyed a freedom which heresy cut off from us, may, in its measure, be applied to glowing words about St. Mary, and the transcendent dignity which her relation to the Divinity confers upon her. The writers could not foresee, they would hardly have believed the possibility of, a system so gross, so degrading to the memory of the Lord's Mother, and so tending to steal hearts from Christ, as that which lives and is upheld in Italy, Belgium, and Spain at present. But it appears, on good authority, that this is not all. The lofty language about St. Mary has slid away from the place it occupied in the Fathers; it has slipped down into a context which would have shocked them as much as, perhaps from their greater affectionateness more than, it shocks us. This should be remembered, as high words about the Blessed Virgin have not unfrequently been imputed to the Fathers, as an objection to their weight as teachers. The difference between Patristic and Romish language, on this subject, is thus stated 3. "It should be noticed, that there is an essential difference between the way in which men's salvation is in any passages of the Fathers said to be derived through St. Mary, and that in which it is attributed to her by these later writers. The object of St. Irenæus and other Fathers, in the first place, is not to magnify St. Mary,

Pusey's Letter to Jelf. Appendix on Liguori's Glories of Mary, p. 215.

but to point out the reality of the Incarnation, which was denied by the Gnostic heretics; but then, further, (1) the benefits are said to be derived through her, in that, of her, according to the flesh, Christ was born; in the later writers, they are attributed to her by virtue of the dignity, since bestowed upon her: (2) in the Fathers, they are spoken of as coming from her indirectly; in later writers, directly: (3) in the Fathers, from her when on earth; in later writers, from her in heaven: (4) in the Fathers, from the Nativity of our Lord; later, from her sovereignty, rule, intercession, command, with which, for her merits, she is alleged to be invested." It appears, then, from this contrast, that the Fathers, however vivid their language might sometimes be, (and what was there to make them fear vivid language then?) never left the standingpoint of the Council of Ephesus. They spoke of the Virgin of the Gospels, with their eyes fixed upon the mystery of the Incarnation; whereas Roman divines speak of the Virgin in heaven, with their eyes fixed upon her assumption thither.

Montalembert himself, in his introduction to the Life of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, includes among the blessings of the thirteenth century the systematizing, if not the rise, of the service of the Virgin. Certainly it occupies a very prominent place in the systems of St. Dominick and St. Francis, and in the whole of that revival of religion which distinguishes the thirteenth century; an age not unfrequently

misunderstood or misrepresented, and which Mr. Gladstone, whose sobriety of style and thought make it very unlikely that he should have any imaginative preference for a dark age, speaks of as a time when the soil of the Church had more vigor in throwing up great plants than at present. He instances Roger Bacon, Dante, and St. Thomas Aquinas. It has suited controversy to make De Montfort a type of this century, a man whose conduct was as emphatically condemned by St. Dominick, and his religious contemporaries, as it can be now. This is unfortunate, for a study of the revival of religion in the thirteenth century would bring out singularly applicable lessons both for us and for our Roman brethren.

The tenet of the immaculate conception, which took such strong root in Spain that the common forms of polite intercourse still bear it upon them3, and which is not, I believe, a doctrine of the Roman Church, was foremost in all Franciscan preaching. St. Bonaventure, who wrote the famous life of St. Francis, twice paraphrased the Psalms, in honor of the Lord's Mother; a task certainly of no great difficulty, seeing how continually the Church appears there, and how easy it would be to twist that figure;

4 Church Principles, p. 10.

5E. G. The frequent salutation, "Ave Maria purisima!"responded to by "Sin pecado concebida!"

This, and the facts which follow, are from Montalembert. Vie de St. Elizabeth.

yet of very questionable reverence. St. Philip Benizzi, who wrote the manual called the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin, was a servite or serf of Mary, a Florentine order, dating from the thirteenth century.

The effects of this adoration (surely it must be called so) of the Lord's Mother have been prodigious, both in and out of the Church. The Christian elevation of the female character, so notorious in the Middle Ages, cannot, with anything like historical accuracy, be linked to chivalry. It would not be hard to show that it was owing mainly to the growing reverence for the Blessed Mother of the Lord. It is very questionable, whether chivalry went nearly so deep down into the European mind as is often said, and many vestiges of picturesque good-feeling, which interest us in later centuries, may fairly be claimed by other causes, though mostly attributed to chivalry. Chivalry had three epochs; first, when it was real, and consequently had fruits,-secondly, when it grew unreal, and consequently had no fruits,-thirdly, when it was unreally revived, and was a mere folly or magnificent caprice, as under Francis I. In addition to the influence upon female character, which the reverence for St. Mary may have exercised, we must take into reckoning the amount of works of Christian art, churches, statues, pictures, and poetry, which have sprung from devotion to her. In this matter alone, we discover, in the honor paid to her, an overwhelming influence exerted over the