Purgatory: Doctrinal, Historical, and Poetical Part 16

"It is customary amongst the Indians to give all the goods of the dead to their relatives and friends, to mourn their death; but the husband of Catherine, in his quality of first captain, a.s.sembled the Council of the Ancients, and told them that they must no longer keep to their former customs, which profited nothing to the dead; that, as for him, his thought was to dress up the body of the deceased in her best garments, as she might rise some day,--and to employ the rest of what belonged to her in giving alms to the poor. This thought was approved of by all, and it became a law which was ever after strictly observed.

"The body of his wife was then arrayed in her best clothes, and he distributed amongst the poor all that remained of her little furniture, charging them to pray for the dead. The whole might have amounted to three hundred francs, which is a great deal for an Indian."-- _Relations_, 1673-4.

"They [1] have established amongst them a somewhat singular practice to help the souls in Purgatory. Besides the offerings they make for that to the Church, and the alms they give to the poor,--besides the devotion of the four Sundays of the month, to which is attached an indulgence for the souls in Purgatory, so great that these days are like Easter; as soon as any one is dead, his or her nearest relations make a spiritual collection of communions in every family, begging them to offer all they can for the repose, of the dead."--_Relations_, 1677-8.

[Footnote 1: The Hurons of Loretto, near Quebec.]

SUPERSt.i.tIOUS BELIEF AMONGST SOME OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS.

CABRAL.

When they are asked what they think of the soul, they answer that it is the shadow "or living image" of the body; and it is as a consequence of this principle that they believe all animated in the universe. It is by tradition that they suppose the soul immortal. They pretend that, separated from the body, it retains the inclinations it had during life; and hence comes the custom of burying with the dead all that had served to satisfy their wants or their tastes. They are even persuaded that the soul remains a long time near the body after their separation, and that it afterwards pa.s.ses on into a country which they know not, or, as some will have it, transformed into a turtle. Others give all men two souls, one such as we have mentioned, the other which never leaves the body, and goes from one but to pa.s.s into another.

For this reason it is that they bury children on the roadside, so that women pa.s.sing by may pick up these second souls, which, not having long enjoyed life, are more eager to begin it anew. They must also be fed; and for that purpose it is that divers sorts of food are placed on the graves, but that is only done for a little while, as it is supposed that in time the souls get accustomed to fasting. The difficulty they find in supporting the living makes them forget the care for the nourishment of the dead. It is also customary to bury with them all that had belonged to them, presents being even added thereto; hence it is a grievous scandal amongst all those nations when they see Europeans open graves to take out the beaver robes they have placed therein. The burial-grounds are places so respected that their profanation is accounted the most atrocious outrage that can be offered to an Indian village.

Is there not in all this a semblance of belief in our doctrine of Purgatory?

REMEMBRANCE OF THE DEAD AMONGST THE EGYPTIANS.

In Egypt, as all over the East, the lives of women amongst the wealthier cla.s.ses are for the most part spent within the privacy of their homes, as it were in close confinement: they are born, live, and die in the bosom of that impenetrable sanctuary. It is only on Thursday that they go forth, with their slaves carrying refreshments and followed by hired weepers. It is a sacred duty that calls them to the public cemetery. There they have funeral hymns chanted, their own plaintive cries mingling with the sorrowful lamentations of the mourners. They shed tears and flowers on the graves of their kindred, which they afterwards cover with the meats brought by their servants, and all the crowd, after inviting the souls of the dead, partake of a religious repast, in the persuasion that those beloved shades taste of the same food and are present at the sympathetic banquet. Is there not in this superst.i.tion a distorted tradition of the dogma by which we are commanded not to forget the souls of our brethren beyond the grave?-- _Annals of the Propagation of the Faith_, Vol. XVII.

REMEMBRANCE OF THE DEAD THROUGHOUT EUROPE.

PART I.

ANNA T. SADLIER.

"Hark! the whirlwind is in the wood, a low murmur in the vale; it is the mighty army of the dead returning from the air." These beautiful words occur in one of the ancient Celtic poems quoted by Macpherson and dating some thousand years later than Ossian. For the Celts held to the doctrine of the immortality of souls, and believed that their ethereal substance was wafted from place to place by the wind on the clouds of heaven. Amongst the Highlanders a belief prevailed that there were certain hills to which the spirits of their departed friends had a peculiar attachment. Thus the hill of Ore was regarded by the house of Crubin as their place of meeting in the future life, and its summit was supposed to be supernaturally illumined when any member of the family died. It was likewise a popular belief that the spirits of the departed haunted places beloved in life, hovered about their friends, and appeared at times on the occasion of any important family event. In the calm of a new existence,

"Side by side they sit who once mixed in battle their steel."

There is a poetic beauty in many of these ancient beliefs concerning the dead, but they are far surpa.s.sed in grandeur and sublimity, as well as in deep tenderness, by the Christian conception of a state of purgation after death, when the souls of the departed are still bound to, their dear ones upon earth by a strong spiritual bond of mutual help. They dwell, then, in an abode of peace, although of intense suffering, and calmly await the eternal decree which summons them to heaven; while the time of their probation is shortened day by day, month by month, year by year by the Ma.s.ses, prayers, alms-deeds and other suffrages of their friends who are still dwellers on earth, living the old life; and in its rush of cares and duties, of pleasures and of pains, forgetting them too often in all save prayer. That is the reminder. The dead who have died in the bosom of the Holy Church can never be quite forgotten. "The mighty army of the dead returning from the air" might in our Catholic conception be that host of delivered souls who, after the Feast of All Souls, or some such season of special prayer for them, are arising upwards into everlasting bliss. But it is our purpose in the present chapters to gather up from the byways of history occasions when the belief in prayer for the dead is made manifest, whether it be in some noted individual, in a people, or in a country. It is "the low murmur of the vale" going up constantly from all peoples, from all times, under all conditions.

In Russia not only is prayer for the dead most sedulously observed by the Catholic Church, but also in a most particular manner by the Schismatic Greeks. The following details under this head will be, no doubt, of interest to our readers:

"As soon as the spirit has departed, the body is dressed and placed in an open coffin in a room decorated for the purpose. Numerous lights are kept burning day and night; and while the relations take turns to watch and pray by the coffin, the friends come to pay the last visit to the deceased.... On the decease of extraordinary persons, the Emperor and his successor are accustomed to visit the corpse, while the poor, on the other hand, never fail to lament at the door the loss of their benefactor, and to be dismissed with handsome donations. Total strangers, too, come of their own accord to offer a prayer for the deceased; for the image of a saint hung up before the door indicates to every pa.s.senger the house of mourning.... The time of showing the corpse lasts in general only three or four days, and then follow the blessing of the deceased, and the granting of the pa.s.s. The latter is to be taken literally. The corpse is carried to the Church, and the priest lays upon the breast a long paper, which the common people call 'a pa.s.s for heaven.' On this paper is written the Christian name of the deceased, the date of his birth and that of his death. It then states that he was baptized as a Christian, that he lived as such, and before his death, received the Sacrament--in short, the whole course of life which he led as a Greek Russian Christian.... All who meet a funeral take off their hats, and offer a prayer to Heaven for the deceased, and such is the outward respect paid on such occasions, that it is not until they have entirely lost sight of the procession that they put on their hats again. This honor is paid to every corpse, whether of the Russian, Protestant, or Catholic Communions.... After the corpse is duly prepared, the priests sing a funeral Ma.s.s, called in Russian clerical language, _panichide_.... On the anniversary of the death of a beloved relative, they a.s.semble in the Church, and have a _panichide_ read for his soul.... Persons of distinction found a lamp to burn forever at the tombs of their dead, and have these _panichides_ repeated every week, for, perhaps, a long series of years. Lastly, every year, on a particular day, Easter Monday, a service and a repast are held for all the dead."

The history of France, like that of all Catholic nations, abounds in instances of public intercession for the dead, the pomp and splendor of royal obsequies, the solemn utterances of public individuals; the celebrations at Pere la Chaise, the magnificent requiems. In a nation so purely Catholic as it was and is, though the sc.u.m of evil men have arisen like a foul miasma to its surface, it does not surprise us. We shall therefore select from its history an incident or two, somewhat at random. That beautiful one, far back at the era of the Crusades, where St. Louis, King of France, absent in the East, received intelligence of the death of Queen Blanche, his mother. The grief of the Papal Legate, who had come to announce the news, was apparent in his face, and Louis, fearing some new blow, led the prelate into his chapel, which, according to an ancient chronicler, was "his a.r.s.enal against all the crosses of the world." Louis, overcome with sorrow, quickly changed his tears and lamentations into the language of resignation, and desiring to be left alone with his confessor, Geoffrey de Beaulieu, recited the office of the dead. "He was present every day at a funeral service celebrated in memory of his mother; and sent into the West a great number of jewels and precious stones to be distributed among the princ.i.p.al churches of France; at the same time exhorting the clergy to put up prayers for the repose of his mother. In proportion with his endeavors," continues the historian, "to procure prayers for his mother, his grief yielded to the hope of seeing her again in heaven; and his mind, when calmed by resignation, found its most effectual consolation in that mysterious tie which still unites us with those we have lost, in that religious sentiment which mingles with our affections to purify them, and with our regrets to mitigate them." [1]

[Footnote 1: "Michaud's Hist. of the Crusades," Vol. II., pp. 477-8.]

In the Instructions which St. Louis addressed on his death-bed to his son, Philip the Bold, is to be found the following paragraph:

"Dear Son, I pray thee, if it shall please our Lord that I should quit this life before thee, that thou wilt help me with Ma.s.ses and prayers, and that thou wilt send to the congregations of the kingdom of France, to make them put up prayers for my soul, and that thou wilt desire that our Lord may give me part in all the good deeds thou shalt perform."

[1]

[Footnote 1: These instructions were preserved in a register of the Chamber of Accounts. See Appendix to "Michaud's History of Crusades,"

Vol. II., p. 471.]

Philip, on the death of his father, in a letter which was read aloud in all the churches, begs of the clergy and faithful, "to put up to the King of kings their prayers and their offerings for that prince; with whose zeal for religion and tender solicitude for the kingdom of France, which he loved as the apple of his eye, they were so well acquainted." In the Chronicles of Froissart, as well as in the Grande Chronique of St. Denis, we read that the body of King John, who died a prisoner in England, was brought home with great pomp and circ.u.mstance, on the first day of May, 1364. It was at first placed in the Abbey of St. Anthony, thence removed to Notre Dame, and finally to St. Denis, the resting-place of royalty, where solemn Ma.s.s was said. On the day of his interment, the Archbishop of Sens sang the requiem. Thus did Holy Mother Church welcome the exile home.

A pretty anecdote is that of Marie Lecsinska, Queen of Louis XV., who, on hearing of the death of Marshal Saxe, a Lutheran by profession, and but an indifferent observer of the maxims of any creed, cried out: "Alas! what a pity that we cannot sing a _De Profundis_ for a man who has made us sing so many _Te Deums_."

We cannot take our leave of France, without noticing here the beautiful prayer offered up by the saintly Princess Louise de Bourbon Conde, in religion _S?ur Marie Joseph de la Misericorde_, on hearing of the death of her nephew, the Duc d'Enghien, so cruelly put to death by the first Napoleon. Falling, face downwards, on the earth, she prayed: "Mercy, my G.o.d, have mercy upon him! Have mercy, Lord, on the soul of Louis Antoine! Pardon the faults of his youth, remembering the precious Blood, which Jesus Christ shed for all men, and have regard to the cruel manner in which his blood was shed. Glory and misfortune have attended his life. But what we call glory, has it any claims in Thy eyes? However, Lord, it is not a demerit before Thee, when it is based on true honor, which is always inseparable from devotion to our duties.

Thou knowest, Lord, those that he has fulfilled, and for those in which he has failed, let the misfortunes of which he has been at last the victim, be a repararation and an expiation. Again, Lord, I ask for mercy for his soul." On the death of Napoleon, the murderer of this beloved nephew, the same holy religious wrote to the Bishop of St.

Flour: "Bonaparte is dead; he was your enemy, for he persecuted you. I think you will say a Ma.s.s for him; I beg also that you say a Ma.s.s on my behalf for this unfortunate man."

Turning to the History of Rome, it will be of interest to take a glance at the pious Confraternity _della Morte_ which was inst.i.tuted in 1551, and regularly established in 1560, by His Holiness, Pius IV. It was chiefly composed of citizens of high rank. Its object was to provide burial for the dead. Solemnly broke upon the balmy stillness of the Roman nights, all these years and centuries since its foundation, its chanting of holy psalmody, and its audible praying for the dead, borne along in its religious keeping. The glare of the waxen torches fell upon the bier, the voices of the a.s.sociates joined in the _Miserere,_ and the Church reached, the corpse was laid there, till the fitting hour, when the Requiem Ma.s.s should be sung, and the final absolution given, preparatory to interment.

Florence supplies us with a brilliant picture of that sixth day of July, 1439, the feast of Saint Romolo the Martyr, in the ninth year of the Pontificate of Pope Eugenius IV., when long-standing differences between the Greek and Latin Churches were brought to an end in a most amicable manner. Alas! for the Greeks, that they did not accept the decisions of that day as final. On the 22d of January, 1439, Cosmo de Medici, then Gonfaloniere of Florence, received the Pope and his cardinals, with a pomp and splendor unknown to the history of modern Europe. On the 12th of the following month came the Patriarch, Joseph of Constantinople, and his bishops and theologians. On the 15th arrived the Greek Emperor, John Paleologus, who was received at the Porto San Gallo by the Pope and all his cardinals, the Florentine Signory, and a long procession of the members of the monastic orders. "A rare and very remarkable a.s.semblage," says a chronicler [1] "of the most learned men of Europe, and, indeed, of those extra European seats of a past culture, which were even now giving forth the last flashes from a once brilliant light on the point of being quenched in utter darkness, were thus a.s.sembled at Florence."

[Footnote 1: T. A. Trollope, in "History of the Commonwealth of Florence," Vol. III., pp. 137-8.]

This was the inauguration of the far-famed Council of Florence, which had the result of settling the points at issue between the Eastern and Western Churches. "The Greeks confessed that the Roman faith proceeded rightly (_prociedere bene_), and united themselves with it by the grace of G.o.d." Proclamation was accordingly made in the Cathedral, then called Santa Reparata, that the Greeks had agreed to hold and to believe the five disputed articles of which the fifth was, "That he who dies in sin for which penance has been done, but from which he has not been purged, goes to Purgatory, and that the divine offices, Ma.s.ses, prayers, and alms are useful for the purging of him."

In the history of Ireland, as might be expected, we come upon many instances wherein the dead are solemnly remembered from that period, when still pagan, and one of the ancient ma.n.u.scripts gives us an account of certain races, it calls them, which were held for "the souls of the foreigners slain in battle." This was back in the night of antiquity, and was no doubt some relic of the Christian tradition which had remained amid the darkness of paganism. But to come to the Christian period. The famous Hugues de Lasci, or Hugo de Lacy, Lord of Meath, and one of the most distinguished men in early Irish annals, founded many abbeys and priories, one at Colpe, near the mouth of the Boyne, one at Duleek, one at Dublin, and one at Kells. The Canons of St. Augustine, as we read, "in return for this gift, covenanted that one of them should be constantly retained as a chaplain to celebrate Ma.s.s for his soul and for those of his ancestors and successors." We also read how Marguerite, wife of Gualtier de Lasci, brother of the above, gave a large tract in the royal forest of Acornebury, in Herefords.h.i.+re, for the erection of a nunnery for the benefit of the souls of her parents, Guillaume and Mathilda de Braose, who with their son, her brother, had been famished in the dungeon at Windsor. In the account of the death in Spain of Red Hugh O'Donnell, who holds a high place among the chivalry of Ireland, it is mentioned that on his death- bed, "after lamenting his crimes and transgressions; after a rigid penance for his sins and iniquities; after making his confession without reserve to his confessors, and receiving the body and blood of Christ; after being duly anointed by the hands of his own confessors and ecclesiastical attendants," he expired after seventeen days'

illness at the king's palace in Simancas. "His body," says the ancient chronicler, "was conveyed to the king's palace at Valladolid in a four- wheeled hea.r.s.e, surrounded by countless numbers of the king's State officers, council and guards, with luminous torches and bright flambeaux of wax lights burning on either side. He was afterwards interred in the monastery of St. Francis, in the Chapter, precisely, with veneration and honor, and in the most solemn manner that any of the Gaels had been ever interred in before. Ma.s.ses and many hymns, chants and melodious canticles were celebrated for the welfare of his soul; and his requiem was sung with becoming solemnity."

On the death of the celebrated Brian Boroihme, historians relate how his body was conveyed by the clergy to the Abbey of Swords, whence it was brought by other portions of the clergy and taken successively to two monasteries. It was then met by the Archbishop of Armagh, at the head of his priesthood, and conveyed to Armagh, where the obsequies were celebrated with a pomp and a fervor worthy the greatness and the piety of the deceased monarch.

In view of the arguments which are sometimes adduced to prove that the early Irish Church did not teach this doctrine of prayer for the dead, it is curious to observe how in St. Patrick's second Council he expressly forbids the holy sacrifice being offered up after death for those who in life had made themselves unworthy of such suffrages. At the Synod of Cashel, held just after the Norman conquest, the claim of each dead man's soul to a certain part of his chattels after death was a.s.serted. To steal a page from the time-worn chronicles of Scotland, it is told by Theodoric that when Queen Margaret of Scotland, that gentle and n.o.ble character upon whom the Church has placed the crown of canonization, was dying, she said to him: "Two things I have to desire of thee;" and one of these was thus worded, "that as long as thou livest thou wilt remember my poor soul in thy Ma.s.ses and prayers." It had been her custom in life to recite the office of the dead every day during Lent and Advent. Sir Walter Scott mentions in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border "a curious league or treaty of peace between two hostile clans, by which the heads of each became bound to make the four pilgrimages of Scotland for the benefit of those souls who had fallen in the feud." In the Bond of Alliance or Field Staunching Betwixt the Clans of Scott and Ker this agreement is thus worded: "That it is appointed, agreed and finally accorded betwixt honorable men," the names are here mentioned, "Walter Ker of Cessford, Andrew Ker of Fairnieherst," etc., etc., "for themselves, kin, friends, maintenants, a.s.sisters, allies, adherents, and partakers, on the one part; and Walter Scott of Branxholm," etc., etc., etc. For the staunching of all discord and variance between them and so on, amongst other provisions, that "the said Walter Scott of Branxholm shall gang, or cause gang, at the will of the party, to the four head pilgrimages of Scotland, and shall say a Ma.s.s for the unquhile Andrew Ker of Cessford and them that were slain in his company in the field of Melrose; and, upon his expence, shall cause a chaplain to say a Ma.s.s daily, when he is disposed, in what place the said Walter Ker and his friend pleases, for the weil of the said souls, for the s.p.a.ce of five years next to come.

Mark Ker of Dolphinston, Andrew Ker of Graden, shall gang at the will of the party to the four head pilgrimages of Scotland, and shall gar say a Ma.s.s for the souls of the unquhile James Scott of Eskirk and other Scots, their friends, slain in the field of Melrose; and, upon their expence, shall gar a chaplain say a Ma.s.s daily, when he is disposed, for the heal of their souls, where the said Walter Scott and his friend pleases, for the s.p.a.ce of the next three years to come." We may mention that the four pilgrimages are Sc.o.o.n, Dundee, Paisley, and Melrose. This devotion of praying for the dead seems, indeed, to have taken strong hold upon these rude borderers, who, Sir Walter Scott informs us, "remained attached to the Roman Catholic faith rather longer than the rest of Scotland." In many of their ancient ballads, at some of which we have already glanced, this belief is prominent. The dying man, or as in the case of Clerk Saunders, the ghost begs of his survivors to "wish my soul good rest." This belief is intermingled with their superst.i.tions as in that one attached to Macduff's Cross. This cross is situated near Lindores, on the marsh dividing Fife from Strathern. Around the pedestal of this cross are tumuli, said to be the graves of those who, having claimed the privilege of the law, failed in proving their consanguinity to the Thane of Fife. Such persons were instantly executed. The people of Newburgh believe that the spectres of these criminals still haunt the ruined cross, and claim that mercy for their souls which they had failed to obtain for their mortal existence.

Thus does the historian [1] mention the burial of St. Ninian, one of the favorite Saints of the Scots: "He was buried in the Church of St.

Martin, which he had himself built from the foundation, and placed in a stone coffin near the altar, the clergy and people standing by and lifting up their heavenly hymns with heart and voice, with sighs and tears."

[Footnote 1: Walsh's Hist, of the Cath. Church in Scotland.]

In the treasurer's books which relate to the reign of James IV. of Scotland, there is the following entry for April, 1503: "The king went again to Whethorn." (A place of pilgrimage.) "While there he heard of the death of his brother, John, Earl of Mar, and charged the priests to perform a 'dirge and soul Ma.s.s' for his brother, and paid them for their pains."

In Montalembert's beautiful description of Iona, he mentions the tradition which declares that eight Norwegian kings or princes, four kings of Ireland, and forty-eight Scottish kings were buried there, as also one king of France, whose name is not mentioned, and Egfrid, the Saxon King of Northumbria. There is the tomb of Robert Bruce, the tombs of many bishops, abbots, and of the great chiefs and n.o.bles, the Macdougalls, Lords of Lorn; the Macdonalds, Lords of the Isles; the Macleods, and the Macleans. Nowhere, perhaps, has death placed his seal on a more imposing a.s.semblage, of truly royal stateliness, of astonis.h.i.+ngly cosmopolitan variety. In the midst of it all, in the very centre of the burying-ground, stands a ruined chapel, under the invocation of St. Oran, the first Irish monk who died in this region.

The church was built by the sainted Margaret, the wife of Malcolm Canmore, and the mother of St. David. Its mission there was obvious.

From its altar arose to the Most High, the solemn celebration of the dread mysteries, the psalm and the prayer, for prince and for prelate, for the great alike in the spiritual and temporal hierarchy.

The Duke of Argyle, in his work on Iona, seems astonished to find that St. Columba believed in all the princ.i.p.al truths of Catholic faith, amongst others, prayers for the dead, and yet he considers that he could not be called a Catholic. The process of reasoning is a curious one.

Mention is made in the history of Scotland of a famous bell, preserved at Glasgow until the Reformation. It was supposed to have been brought from Rome by St. Kentigern, and was popularly called "St. Mungo's Bell." It was tolled through the city to invite the citizens to pray for the repose of departed souls.

In the great cathedrals of Scotland, before the Reformation, private chapels and altars were endowed for the relief of the dead, while in the cities and large towns, each trade or corporation had an altar in the princ.i.p.al churches and supported a chaplain to offer up Ma.s.ses and prayers as well for the dead as for the living. The following incident is related in the life of the lovely and so sadly maligned Mary Queen of Scots. In the early days of her reign, when still struggling with the intolerant fury of Knox and his followers,--it was in the December of 1561--Mary desired to have solemn Ma.s.s offered up for the repose of the soul of her deceased husband, the youthful Francis. This so aroused the fury of the fanatics about her, that they threatened to take the life of the priests who had officiated. "Immediately after the Requiem was over, she caused a proclamation to be made by a Herald at the Market Cross, that no man on pain of his life should do any injury, or give offense or trouble to her chaplains."

The poet Campbell in his dirge for Wallace, makes the Lady of Elderslie, the hero's wife, cry out in the first intensity of her sorrow;

"Now sing you the death-song and loudly pray For the soul of my knight 'so dear.'"