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he had courage enough to look perpetual banishment in the face, it was his wisdom to do so. Yet the holy office did not always attend to the formality of citation. If there was reason to believe that the accused would endeavour to escape, or if the proofs of his guilt were considered ample, or if the crime of which he stood accused was very heinous, or, finally, if he happened to be personally obnoxious to any one connected with the office, it was not an unusual thing to arrest him without warning. Whenever this fell out, neither personal privilege nor the sanctity of place stood him in the smallest stead; he was seized wherever he might happen to be, and no delay was granted. Nay, so completely were the minds of men bound down by terror of the inquisition, that a single official would suffice to lead away a captive from the midst of a whole circle of friends. Thus fathers were dragged from the bosoms of their families, husbands from the sides of their wives, wives from their husbands, and children from their parents, without so much as a syllable being uttered in complaint, or a prayer offered for time to put affairs in order, to adjust which the captive might, and probably would, never return.

The accused being thus in the hands of the inquisition, his fate appeared, even to himself, to be sealed. From no one was he permitted to receive a visit. No one could give him counsel, no one could write to him, no one could intercede for him, no one could labour to make his innocence manifest. In a moment, all communication between him and the world ceased; and the wretched being saw himself without friends, without parents, without advisers, without support, abandoned without the faintest grounds of investigation to his judges, and to himself, with the horrible conviction on his mind that his most deadly enemy aimed at his destruction, yet left him without means so much as to discover the process by which his ruin was sought to be effected. In such situations, the consciousness of innocence itself could bring but slender comfort in its train. True, the mind at ease with itself cannot absolutely despond: for the good man feels that whatever he may undergo will be undergone justly; while the Christian looks above for that eternal weight of glory with which the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared. But of hope that he shall escape the cruelties of his fellow men, even the innocent entertains little expectation. He knows that to crush the guiltless is, with such an engine, not more difficult than to punish the guilty; and he is well assured that he who has once passed the gloomy portal of the holy office may vainly pray for justice, far less for mercy.

So acutely was all this felt when the power of the inquisition was at its height, that the instances of suicide among persons arrested were by no means rare. Once immured within the walls of a dungeon, that indeed was difficult; for the first thing done VOL. VIII.-Dec. 1835.

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was to search the prisoner, and to remove from him every weapon of offence. But men with daggers, which they carried in their clothes, women with long pins, with which they dressed their hair, were not unfrequently known to take away their own lives while passing from their own homes to prison. And as to poison, it was still more common for those who had reason to regard themselves as objects of suspicion to carry such continually about them. For one purpose, however, and for one only, was this done; so that it often happened that the captive who was dragged in high health and spirits from his companions, arrived at the inquisition door a corpse.

Of the kind of trial to which such were subjected as came alive within that hell, it will be the business of another chapter to describe.

CHAPTERS AND RESIDENTIARYSHIP.

NO. III.

THERE were one or two points omitted in the last article on this subject, which deserve a notice.

There is a book on ecclesiastical law, by a civilian, named Cosin, called "Ecclesiæ Anglicana Politeia,' of which more than one edition appeared. This professes to give an account of our church in the form of tables. In the eleventh table (in the edition published at Oxford, in 1684), we have a description of cathedral churches, a part of which follows

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I have heard it said, that they who do not agree in the views taken in the two preceding papers, rely on this assertion of Dr. Cosin. I have been unable to find that they rely on anything else. To this they are perfectly welcome. It amounts simply to this, at most, that one civilian, without alleging any authority, ancient or modern, or appealing to any historical evidence, or any document, says, that non-residentiaries have no vote in chapter. Is this to weigh against the fact that, not only in his

time, but down to the present hour, non-residentiaries are admitted to a place or voice in chapter, and exercise it on all great occasions; that an election is not good unless it can be shewn that they have been summoned ; that the records of all cathedrals shew the exercise of such a right from time immemorial? The fact, however, is, that one should do Dr. Cosin injustice in supposing that he meant to assert this. The fact is, that he was only describing certain facts, and (as is obvious from his inaccuracy in other respects) not very carefully. He knew that, in his day, the residentiaries administered, as he says, all the (common and money) business of the cathedral, as every one is aware that they do now; and that the non-residentiaries neither did nor could interfere or give a vote in their meetings for such purposes. How carelessly Dr. C. wrote, is apparent from the fact, that he assigns certain dignities to the old foundations only; for example, sub (or vice) dean. It is only necessary to refer to Christ Church, Oxford, and Canterbury, both cathedrals of the new foundation.

THE DARK AGES.-NO. X.

"HABET unumquodque propositum principes suos. Romani duces imitentur Camillos, Fabritios, Regulos, Scipiones. Philosophi proponant sibi Pythagoram, Socratem, Platonem, Aristotelem. Poetæ, Homerum, Virgilium, Menandrum, Terentium. Historici, Thucydidem, Sallustium, Herodotum, Livium. Oratores, Lysiam, Gracchos, Demosthenem, et ut ad nostra veniamus, episcopi et presbyteri habeant in exemplum Apostolos et Apostolicos viros: quorum honorem possidentes, habere nitantur et meritum. Nos autem habeamus propositi nostri principes, Paulos, et Antonios, Julianos, Hilarionem, Macarios."-HIERONYMUS.

"THE monks were abominably illiterate." Well, good friend, and if you are not so yourself, be thankful in proportion as you are sure that you are the better for your learning. But suppose it were otherwise-suppose you were "abominably illiterate"would you like me and all other writers in great books and small, in magazines and newspapers, to rail at you and run you down, as a creature not fit to live? If you were too modest to speak in your own behalf, it is likely that some of your friends might suggest such redeeming qualities as would shew that you were not only tolerable, but useful in the world. "Very true, very true," says the march-of-intellect man, "I dare say he may be a very good Christian, good subject, a good husband or father or landlord, a person of great integrity and benevolence, and all very well in his way, but he is abominably illiterate, and I will throw it in his teeth whenever I come within a mile of him." Now surely the compassion of a mere by-stander would lead him to say, " Well, suppose he is abominably illiterate, do let him alone; he makes no pretence to learning."

But did not the monks pretend to it? Certainly not.

"C'est

une illusion de certaine gens, qui ont écrit dans le siècle précédent que les monastères n'avoient esté d'abord établis que pour servir d'écoles et d'academies publiques, où l'on faisoit profession d'enseigner les sciences humaines." Very true, Dom Mabillon, and it is very right that you should contradict in plain terms a vulgar error, which, for want of proper discrimination on the part of the public, has been confirmed rather than corrected, by the labours of yourself and Montfaucon,and your other brethren of the Benedictine order. The "Editio Benedictina et Optima," which figures in every bookseller's catalogue, has a tendency to mislead even those who do not take the trouble to inquire who the Benedictines of St. Maur were, or why their editions of books cost three times as much as others. This, by the way, however; for it is here only necessary to say, that the abuse heaped on monks for being unlearned is altogether unjust and absurd. The monastic life, whatever it might have of good or bad, was, I apprehend, that point of rest in which the minds of men settled after they had been driven, partly by fierce persecution, and partly by the natural tendency of man towards extremes, into a mode of life purely solitary. Man might have known, at that stage of the world, from experience, as well as from the Word of God, without putting it to a fresh trial, that it was not good for him to be alone; and that it was as truly, if not as great, a sin to live without man, as without God, in the world-that is, to renounce the second great commandment, under pretence of keeping the first. The eremitical life was contrary to nature, reason, and religion, and seems only to have been permitted in order to the introduction of a system which was, to say the least, more rational-namely, that of societies, not individuals, forsaking the world, and living in seclusion. The solitary ascetic, by his self-constructed, self-imposed, rule (self in all things, self the boundary of his horizon), was required to renounce the duties, the charities, the sympathies, of life, and to cut himself off from all the means of grace which God has given to man in his fellows; but, in the monastery, the idea was to carry out into some remote place of safety one mind dispersed and diversified in various bodies, guiding many hands and uniting many hearts, and directing, sanctifying, and governing the various gifts of the many members of one body, whose head was Christ. Such was the idea; and when once suggested it spread rapidly. Small companies nestled down in solitude.To study the classics?—to stimulate the march of intellect? No such thing" tota rusticitas, et extra psalmos silentium est. Quocunque te verteris, arator stivam tenens, alleluia decantat. Sudans messor psalmis se avocat, et curva attondens vitem falce vinitor, aliquid Davidicum canit. Hæc sunt in hac provincia carmina; hæ, ut vulgo dicitur, amatoriæ cantiones. Hic pastorum sibilus: hæc arma cultura." Solitude, labour, silence,

and prayer-these were the elements of monastic life; and the question was not how the monk might most effectively gather and diffuse learning, but-when, indeed, any question came to be raised-whether he might lawfully cultivate learning at all?

"Nemo est qui ignoret"—says Dom Joseph Porta; but it is certainly quite a mistake, or, if it was true when he wrote it, it has long since ceased to be so; for there are plenty of people, who are very far from being abominably illiterate, who nevertheless know nothing whatever about the "Dissidium Literarium circa studia monastica," of which he undertook to be the historian. If he had said that most people have heard of De Rancé, of his noble birth, his profligate life, his sudden and mysterious conversion, his persevering austerities of the solitary and silent horrors of La Trappe, and of a great deal of picturesque truth so like romance that one can hardly imagine the hero sitting at a wooden table, with a real pen and ink, writing a book-if Father Porta had said this, we might have assented; but to tell us that there is nobody who does not know that De Rancé's "Traité de la Sainteté et des Devoirs de l'état Monastique" began the fray between him and Dom Mabillon, is too much, seeing that there are, as I have said, a great many very well informed persons, who do not know that these two famous men ever had any controversy about monastic studies, or even, perhaps, that there were any such studies to dispute about. The work of De Rancé, I am told (for I have never seen it), was professedly written for his own monks, and represented to them that the pursuit of literature was inconsistent with their profession, and that their reading ought to be confined to the Scriptures and a few books of devotion. This seemed likesome thought it was meant to be-an attack on the Benedictine monks of St.Maur-for that they were learned every body knewand they were, urged to reply. They, however, remained very quiet; and it was long before they could be persuaded to take the field. The Benedictine historian whom I have mentioned, and to whom I am indebted, suggests as a reason for this, that the Benedictines really were (and everybody knew they were) following the footsteps of their learned predecessors in the cultivation of letters, and that they thought it quite sufficient to tell those who talked to them on the subject that the abbot of La Trappe had his own reasons for what he did*—that he neither had, nor pretended to have, anything to do with them-and that it was no

"P. Abbati peculiares subesse rationes, cur ita sentiret ;" but I really know not what it means. It looks like an insinuation of ignorance-as if De Rancé undervalued what he did not possess. This cannot, however, be the meaning; for not only the credit with which he took his theological degrees, but his even premature proficiency in profane literature was notorious. If it points at his early immoralities it is as foolish as it is heartless; and I should doubt whether Dom Joseph Porta had any right to represent it as the language of the Benedictines-at least, of Mabillon.

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