Curiosities of Olden Times Part 20

Gregory relates another story akin to the subject. Clovis, at the moment when he was marching against Alaric, king of the Visigoths, sent his deputies to the Church of St. Martin, at Tours, saying to them, "Go, and maybe, in the holy temple you will find some presage of victory." After having given them presents for the sacred place, he added: "O Lord G.o.d!

if Thou art on my side, if Thou art determined to deliver into my hands this unbelieving nation, hostile to Thy name, grant that I may see Thy favour, or the entry of my servants into the basilica of St. Martin, that I may know if Thou deignest to be favourable to Thy suppliant."

The envoys having hastened to Tours, entered the cathedral at the moment when the Precentor gave out the Antiphon: "Thou hast girded me with strength unto the battle: thou shalt throw down mine enemies under me.

Thou hast made mine enemies also to turn their backs upon me: and I shall destroy them that hate me" (Ps. xviii. 37, 40).

Hearing this, they gave thanks to G.o.d, presented their offerings, and returned with joy to announce the omen to their king.

Divination by Scripture has been forbidden by several national councils, probably on account of the superst.i.tious use made of it. The sixteenth canon of the Council of Vannes, held in 465, forbids clerks under pain of excommunication, consulting the Sortes Sacrae. This prohibition was extended to the laity by the forty-second canon of the Council of Agde, in 506. "Aliquanti clerici sive laici student auguriis, et sub nomine fict religionis, per eas, quas sanctorum sortes vocant, diviniationis scientiam profitentur, aut quarumcunque scripturorum inspectione futura promittunt."

It was also forbidden by the Council of Orleans in 511; again by that of Auxerre in 595; by that of Selingstadt in 1022; by that of Enham, in 1009; and by a capitulary of Charlemagne, in 789.

Related to Sortes Sacrae are those messages which are supposed to be conveyed by the chance hearing or reading of a pa.s.sage of Scripture. These are not, however, to be regarded in the light of superst.i.tion, and it is quite possible, and indeed probable, that certain texts accidentally met with may influence for good or bad those who are in a disposition of mind to be so affected.

The well-known story of St. Augustine's conversion is to the point. He relates himself how sitting in a garden-house, in great trouble of mind, he heard a voice say, "Tolle, lege"; whereupon he took up the sacred Scriptures and read, "Not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the l.u.s.ts thereof" (Rom. xiii. 13, 14).

St. Anthony was moved to the a.s.sumption of the religious life by accidentally hearing--"If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me" (St. Matt, xix. 21).

St. Louis when trying a murderer was much inclined by his natural tenderness of disposition to pardon the man; but his resolution to let justice take her course was strengthened by opening his Psalter at the words, "Feci judicium et just.i.tiam."

But, to conclude, the true use of Holy Scripture is best learned from our English Collect, which asks that we may read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest its glorious lessons, taken as a whole, and not wring disjointed directions for conduct from stray pa.s.sages.

CHIAPA CHOCOLATE

Gage, the Dominican, a great admirer of chocolate, a man who combated with all his energy the objections which medical men of the seventeenth century made to its use, derived its name from _atte_, the Mexican word for water, and the sound it makes when poured out,--choco, choco, choco, choco!

O Professor Max Muller! what do you say to this? Whatever the derivation of the name may be, the composition of the beverage is well known. Cacao, sugar, long-pepper, vanilla, cinnamon, cloves, almonds, mace, aniseed, are the main const.i.tuents, and the cake-chocolate used in Britain is believed to be made of about one-half genuine cacao, the remainder of flour or Castile soap.

We are not going any further into the mysteries of its composition, which may be ascertained from any encyclopaedia, for our business is with a circ.u.mstance in connection with its history probably known to few.

And first for our authority--the afore-mentioned Dominican. Thomas Gage was born of a good family in England; his elder brother was Governor of Oxford in 1645, when King Charles retreated thither during the Great Rebellion. Whilst still young, Thomas had been sent to Spain for education, and had entered the Dominican order, and having been, like so many Spanish ecclesiastics, fired with missionary zeal, he embarked at Cadiz for Vera Cruz, whence he betook himself to Mexico, near which town he made a retreat, previous to devoting himself to a life of toil in the Philippines.

However, the accounts he received of these islands were so discouraging, and the monastic life in Mexico was so inviting, that he postponed his expedition indefinitely. But Gage had no intention of spending his life in ease: he hurried over the different districts of Mexico and Guatemala, making himself acquainted with the languages spoken wherever he went, and he laboured indefatigably as priest to several parishes of great extent.

Gage's account of the cultivation of the cacao and the manufacture of chocolate is interesting, his treatise on its medical properties--conceived in the taste and spirit of his day--curious, and his personal narrative lively and amusing.

One little statement must not be pa.s.sed over. Chocolate, it seems, is useful as a cosmetic; Creole ladies eat it to deepen their skin tint, just on the same principle, observes Gage, as English ladies devour whitewash from the walls to clarify their complexion.

Chiapa was a central point for Gage's labours during a considerable period. At that time it was a small cathedral town, containing 400 Spanish families, and 100 Mexican houses in a faubourg by itself.

The cathedral served as parish church to the inhabitants: one Dominican and one Franciscan monastery, besides a poverty-stricken nunnery, supplied the religious requirements of the diocesan city. No Jesuits there! quoth Gage, with a little rancour. Those good men seldom leave rich and opulent towns; and when you learn the fact that there are no Jesuits at Chiapa, you may draw the immediate inference that the town is poor, and the inhabitants not liberally disposed.

Liberally disposed! The high and stately Creole Dons, who claimed descent from half the n.o.ble families of Spain; the grand representatives of the De Solis, Cortez, De Velasco, De Toledo, De Zerna, De Mendoza, who lived by cattle-jobbing and by pasturing droves of mules on their farms, and who gave themselves the airs of dukes, and were as ignorant and not so well behaved as the donkeys they reared; who ate a dinner of salt and kidney-beans in five minutes, and spent an hour at their doors picking their teeth, wiping their moustaches, and boasting of the fricasees and fricandoes they had been tasting--these men liberally disposed!

They contributed nothing to the treasury of the Church, but gave the clergy considerable trouble. These Creoles particularly disliked and resented any allusion to their duty of almsgiving, and a request for charity was by them regarded as a personal affront.

Gage was soon intimate with the bishop, Dom Bernard de Salazar, a very worthy prelate, perhaps a little _wee_ bit too fond of the good things of this present life, but otherwise most exemplary, very energetic, and as bold as a saint in reforming abuses which had crept into the Church.

Talk of abuses, and you may be sure that woman is at the bottom of them! A certain czar, whenever he heard of a misfortune, at once asked, "Who was _she_?" knowing that some woman had originated it. The same view may perhaps be taken of abuses and corruptions in the Church.

Dom Bernard de Salazar had the misfortune to live in a perpetual state of contest with the ladies of his flock, and the subject of dispute was chocolate. It was a brave struggle--bravely fought on both sides.

The prelate fulminated all the censures at his disposal in his ecclesiastical armoury; the ladies, on their side, made use of all the devices and intrigues stored in their little heads, and gained the day--of course.

Now the great subject of altercation was as follows. The ladies of Chiapa were so addicted to the use of chocolate, that they would neither hear Low Ma.s.s, much less High Ma.s.s, or a sermon, without drinking cups of steaming chocolate, and eating preserves, brought in on trays by servants, during the performance of divine service; so that the voice of the preacher, or the chant of the priest, was drowned in the continual clatter of cups and clink of spoons; besides, the floor, after service, was strewn with _bon-bon_ papers, and stained with splashes of the spilled beverage.

How could that be devotion which was broken in upon by the tray of delicacies? How could a preacher warm with his subject whilst his audience were pa.s.sing to each other sponge-cake and cracknels?

Bishop Salazar's predecessor had seen this abuse grow to a head without attempting to correct it, believing such a task to be hopeless. The new prelate was of better metal. He commenced by recommending his clergy, in their private ministrations, to urge its abandonment. The priests entreated in vain. "Very well," said the bishop, "then I shall preach about it." And so he did. At first his discourse was tender and persuasive, but his voice was drowned in the clicker of cups and saucers.

Then he waxed indignant. "What! have ye not houses to eat and to drink in?

or despise ye the church of G.o.d, and shame them that have not? What shall I say to you?" The ladies looked up at the pulpit with unimpa.s.sioned eyes, while sipping their chocolate, then wiped their lips, and put out their hands for some comfits.

The bishop's voice thrilled shriller and louder--he looked like an apostle in his G.o.dly indignation. Cras.h.!.+--down went a tray at the cathedral door, and every one looked round to see whose cups were broken.

"What was the subject of the sermon?" asked masters of their apprentices every Sunday for the next month, and the ready answer came, "Oh! chocolate again!"

After a course on the guilt of church desecration, the bishop found that the ladies were only confirmed in their evil habits.

Reluctantly, the bishop had recourse to the only method open to him, an excommunication, which was accordingly affixed to the cathedral gates. By this he decreed that all persons showing wilful disobedience to his injunctions, by drinking or eating during the celebration of divine service, whether of Ma.s.s (high or low), litanies, benediction, or vespers, should be _ipso facto_ excommunicate, be deprived of partic.i.p.ation in the sacraments of the Church, and should be denied the rite of burial, if dying in a state of impenitence. This was felt to be a severe stroke, and the ladies sent a deputation to Gage and the prior of the Dominican monastery of St. James, entreating them to use their utmost endeavours to bring about a reconciliation, and effect a compromise, a compromise which was to consist in Monseignor's revoking his interdict, and in their--continuing to drink chocolate.

Gage and the prior undertook the delicate office, and sought the bishop.

Salazar received them with dignity, and listened calmly to their entreaties. They urged that this was an established custom, that ladies required humouring, that they were obstinate--the prelate nodded his head--that their digestions were delicate, and required that they should continually be imbibing nourishment; that they had taken a violent prejudice against him, which could only be overcome by his yielding to their whims; that if he persisted, seditions would arise which would endanger the cause of true religion; and, finally, the prelate's life was menaced in a way rather hinted at than expressed.

"Enough, my sons!" said the bishop, with composure; "the souls under my jurisdiction must be in a perilous condition when they have forgotten that there must be obedience in little matters as well as in great. Whether I am a.s.saulting an established custom, or a new abuse, matters little. It is a bad habit; it is sapping the foundations of reverence and morality.

G.o.d's house was built for wors.h.i.+p, and for that alone. My children must come to His temple either to learn or to pray. Learn they will not, for they have forgotten how to pray: prayer they are unused to, for the highest act of adoration the Church can offer is only regarded by them as an opportunity for the gratification of their appet.i.tes. You recommend me to yield to their vagaries. A strange shepherd would he be, who let his sheep lead him; a wondrous captain, who was dictated to by his soldiers!

As for the cause of true religion being endangered, I judge differently.

Religion _is_ endangered; but it is by children's disobedience to their spiritual legislators, and by their own perversity. I am sorry for you, my sons, that you should have undertaken a fruitless office; but you may believe me, that nothing shall induce me to swerve from the course which I deem advisable. My personal safety, you hint, is endangered; my life, I answer, is in my Master's hands, and I value it but as it may advance His glory."

When the ladies heard that their request had been refused, they treated the excommunication with the greatest contempt, scoffing at it publicly, and imbibing chocolate in church, "on principle," more than ever; "Just,"

says Gage, "drinking in church as a fish drinks in water."

Some of the canons and priests were then stationed at the cathedral doors to stop the ingress of the servants with cups and chocolate-pots. They had received injunctions to remove the drinking and eating vessels, and suffer the servants to come empty-handed to church. A violent struggle ensued in the porch, and all the ladies within rushed in a body to the doors, to a.s.sist their domestics. The poor clerks were utterly routed and thrown in confusion down the steps, whilst, with that odious well-known clink, clink, the trays came in as before.

Another move was requisite, and, on the following Sunday, when the ladies came to church, they found a band of soldiers drawn up outside, ready to barricade the way against any inroad of chocolate; a stern determination was depicted on the faces of the military--that if cups and saucers _did_ enter the sacred edifice, it should be over their corpses.

The foremost damsels halted, the matrons stood still, the crowd thickened, but not one of the pretty angels would set foot within the cathedral precincts: a busy whisper circulated, then a hush ensued, and with one accord the ladies trooped off to the monastery churches, and there was no congregation that day at the minster.

The brethren of St. Dominic and of St. Francis were nothing loath to see their chapels crowded with all the rank and fas.h.i.+on of Chiapa; for, with the ladies came money-offerings, and they blinked at the chocolate cups for--a consideration. This was allowed to continue a few Sundays only. Our friend the bishop was not going to be shelved thus, and a new manifesto appeared, inhibiting the friars from admitting paris.h.i.+oners to their chapels, and ordering the latter to frequent their cathedral.

The regulars were forced to obey; not so the ladies--they would go when they pleased, quotha! and for a month and more, not one of them went to church at all. The prelate was in sore trouble: he hoped that his froward charge would eventually return to the path of duty, but he hoped on from Sunday to Sunday in vain.

Would that the story ended as stories of strife and bitterness always should end; so that we might tell how the ladies yielded at length, how that rejoicings were held and a general reconciliation effected:--but the historian may not pervert facts, to suit his or his readers'

gratification.

On Sat.u.r.day evening the old bishop was more than usually anxious; he paced up and down his library, meditating on the sermon he purposed preaching on the following morning--a fruitless task, for he knew that no one would be there but a few poor Mexicans. Sick at heart, he all but wished that he had yielded for peace sake, but conscience told him that such a course would have been wrong; and the great feature in Salazar's character was his rigid sense of duty. He leaned on his elbows and looked out of a window which opened on a lane between the palace and the cathedral.