Virgin. At the close he spoke of how impressed he had been by the scene at S. Maria Maggiore on the previous Sunday, and called on the congregation to express their feelings in the same way; and 'Evviva Maria' was heard at once from all parts of the church. It must have been an exciting thing for the preacher to have such a congregation as Quatrini had before him on that Sunday. The sermons were all listened to with rapt attention, and one could not hear the hearty way in which the creed was repeated without feeling how strong the belief of those present in the faith was, how the great truth of the Incarnation was the moving principle at the bottom of all. The unhappy would-be revivers of Nestorianism, who were the cause of all this, made no attempt to retract or excuse themselves; they put out a short tract, in which bad taste, dishonesty, and theological ignorance were alike manifest. They dared to say in the text of the tract that their doctrine had not been condemned by the Council of Ephesus, quoting in a note from a Roman author that the council of Nice had not determined the question of the OEоTÓKOS; said that they ought not to be accused of blasphemy when so many Roman Catholics use bad language and blaspheme the Blessed Virgin; and lastly printed the Apostles' Creed as giving their own belief, omitting the article of the forgiveness of sins! V. CANONISATION OF NEW SAINTS. A few years ago occurred the canonisation of the Japanese martyrs. Since then an attempt has been made to add Columbus and our own venerable Bede to the roll of saints; but we believe this has been given up. At present the proposal to canonise Joan of Arc is before the authorities; and an elaborate statement as to her life, faith, and whole career has been drawn up. This is not published, but any one who has seen it can bear testimony to the vast amount of pains that is taken in the process. We have spoken of this in connexion with a very curious instance to be observed at present in Rome. In many of the churches in Rome (we believe we might say in most of them) near the entrance may be seen a box for contributions, a portrait above it, and a request for subscriptions in order to procure the canonisation of the Beato Benedetto Giuseppe Labré.1 As he is thus the model Pace, the preacher's subject being the two mothers man has, the Blessed Virgin and the Church. ĭ This may also be seen in London, in the large Roman Catholic Church near the Liverpool Street Station. held up for reverence, if not imitation, to the modern Romans, it is worth while to examine into his life and history. The life, the title of which is prefixed to this article, was published on the occasion of his beatification by Pius IX., and therefore may be regarded as authoritative.' The facts of it are simple enough. He was born at Amettes, in the diocese of Boulogne-sur-Mer, in 1748, of respectable parents. He was brought up by his uncle, F. G. Labré, parish priest of Erin. At first he applied diligently to his studies, but preferred ascetic books to any others. 'I shall not remain in the world; my taste is only to retire into the desert,' were his words on being exhorted to study for the priesthood. His uncle died in 1766, of a contagious disease caught among his parishioners in Erin; and Labré wished to enter the monastery of La Trappe; on failing of admission, he entered the Carthusian monastery of Neoville, near Montreville, and afterwards that of Sept-Fonts, but he soon left it to pursue the employment of his life, that of a pilgrim to the various sanctuaries of Europe. His first pilgrimage was to Loreto; he went to Rome in 1770, which seems to have been his chief residence for the rest of his life, his time being generally spent while there in the various churches, or in the Coliseum; this alternating with visits to distant shrines, such as Compostella, Einsiedeln, &c. He visited Loreto eleven times. His favourite church in Rome was La Madonna de' Monti, where he lies buried. His death took place on April 16, 1783. There is a picture of him in that church, where he is represented in the Coliseum, distributing to others the alms he obtained by begging. His death was followed by miracles, which ultimately procured his beatification; the brief for this is given at the end of the Life, dated September 20, 1859. It was solemnised on May 20, 1860. It was told of him that he was seen raised from the earth rapt in prayer (Vita, pp. 71, 128); many witnesses testified to his being in two places at once (pp. 128, 129); he could read the thoughts of others (p. 129). His memory has been always very popular among the poor at Rome, and we fancy that the idea of his being canonised arises from the wish to show that it is not only martyrs like the Japanese missionaries, or heroines like Joan of Arc, that can obtain the title of saints, but one who was as poor as the poorest, and literally lived the life of a beggar. What then was the life thus held up to especial admiration? In Rome it was spent chiefly in praying or meditating 1 It bears the nihil obstat of P. Minetti, canon of the Lateran, and the imprimatur of Fr. Hieron. Gigli and Archbishop Ligi, the Vicegerent. before the Sacrament or the various pictures supposed miraculous in the churches; the rest of his time in his pilgrimages, during which he was careful to avoid the public ways as much as possible, so as to have as little intercourse with his kind as could be. He was even unwilling to give his prayers for others. On being asked once, he replied, That is too heavy a burden; I will do it when I remember it;' on another occasion one of his benefactors in Loreto asked him to visit in his name the Philippine church (S. Maria in Vallicella) when he returned to Rome, whenever he should pass it; 'I will only do it once,' said he (Vita, p. 64). On another, a priest in Loreto asking for his prayers while he was in church, he showed by a sign that he did not like being interrupted (Ib. p. 68). There is much said in the Life about the disgusting food on which he managed to support life, in some cases literally picked up from the dunghill (p. 100), and the tattered rags it was his delight to wear; what his personal habits and condition were will be seen from the following passage, which we do not venture to translate (Vita, p. 71) : 'Portando egli sempre indosso le medesime sudicie [filthy] vesti, nè mai curando di mondarle, gli si produssero schifosi insetti pedicolari. Questi non mai molestati dal Beato, si moltiplicarono senza numero, e ben si vide dopo la sua morte, quando sei persone incaricate a ripulire i cenciosi suoi abiti, ebber che fare a riuscirvi, non senza loro naturale ribrezzo, mentre non vi era parte di quelle vesti ove non si trovasse annidata una quantità prodigiosa di tali insetti, di cui n' eran persino ripieni i piccoli fori de' grani della corona che portava sempre al collo [i.e. the holes of the beads of his rosary]; nè poteva esser diversamente, poichè Benedetto era sollecito, se ne vedea muovere alcuno sull' esterno degli abiti, a riporselo entro. Ora chi non sa che anche un solo di simili ospiti che si abbia indosso è capace di turbar la quiete, l'orazione, e persino la pazienza? E tanti e poi tanti, quale tormento, quale disturbo recar non doveano al nostro Eroe! Eppure per anni molti soffrì questo inaudito genere di martirio, cui non ostante durava immobile per giorni intieri in orazione nelle chiese.' There are frequent mentions of this in the Life; his dress is described as being a 'nido d' insetti schifosi' (p. 113); one of the proofs of his love to his neighbour is his keeping apart from other poor people not to cause them disgust 'co' suoi sudici e poveri panni, ben provvisti d' insetti' (p. 87). His state was such that once (apparently in his favourite church of La Madonna de' Monti) he was literally swept out of the confessional: 'Ubbidì ad un rev. padre che colle brusche lo cacciò dal suo confessionale, perchè le sue penitenti non si attaccassero gli insetti' (p. 113). To give some other instances of his acts of mortification; his wooden soup basin, which he carried to receive the doles of soup given at the various convent gates, had its rim broken, so that most of the soup when poured in ran out (p. 99); to make his pilgrimage journeys more disagreeable, he filled his wallet with stones (pp. 29, 119); and to mortify his sense of smell, he was frequently seen saying long prayers on his knees close to the sewers (p. 124). This is the man who is styled 'questo novello Eroe di cristianesimo' (p. 165), for whom contributions are now being asked in so many churches to procure canonisation; a man living in squalid savagery, as if he had no duties to his kind, with views of the relation of man to God, or of the ends of life, scarcely better than those of an Indian fakeer. In concluding this paper, we cannot but ask ourselves from such evidence as thus may be seen by anyone in Rome and elsewhere in the Roman Church, what hopes there are of its clearing itself from its accretions to Christianity, of its abandonment of what we must not shrink from calling errors of doctrine. The great hope is in the better education of the clergy. No doubt in dogmatic theology they are better trained than our own. But the fact of their education being entirely different from that of laymen tends not only to keep them apart, but to prevent their giving due weight to all that is going on around them in the world. We do not believe that a body of clergy who had anything like an English public school and university education could take part in such a scene as the blessing of the people with the Bambino at Ara Coli, could display solemnly such pretended relics' as those at S. Croce, could put forward a man like Benoît Joseph Labré as an object for imitation. From the present Pope, if only his life and strength are spared, everything is to be hoped. He has already been moving actively in the matter of the education of the seminarists, and we believe is doing all that is possible to raise the tone of the country clergy. He has already done something, if not to put down altogether, yet at least to modify, the miserable imposture of La Salette. We cannot but see in his first promotion of cardinals the evidence of a very different line of policy than that which was his predecessor's. May God bless him in all his endeavours to feed the flock entrusted to his guidance. As to any hope of the Roman Church modifying its doctrines on any of the disputed points, so as to approach nearer 1 This is represented in the portrait prefixed to the Life. to ourselves, we fear there is no prospect as yet. There is the cruel column of the Piazza di Spagna, which proves the acceptance by Rome of that dogma, so protested against by S. Bernard, which seems to our ideas to attack the truth of the Incarnation, if not so wilfully as Nestorius himself did, yet in a very important point. There are the closed doors of the transept of S. Peter's, which remind us of the last Roman council, when the Infallibility dogma was promulgated in spite of so much opposition. All we can do is to wait and bide our time; to go on our way with the deepest sympathy for that Church which, after all, is the great mother Church of the West, but yet resolutely maintaining our position, holding our own in the sight of God and the whole world, and remembering that there is one thing still more to be valued even than Unity, and that is Truth. ART. II.-S. HUGH OF LINCOLN. 1. Magna Vita S. Hugonis, Episcopi Lincolniensis. Edited by the Rev. JAMES F. DIMOCK, M.A. (London, 1864.) 2. Metrical Life of S. Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by the Rev. J. F. DIMOCK, M.A. (Lincoln, 1860.) 3. Giraldi Cambrensis Opera. Vol. vii. Edited by the Rev. JAMES F. DIMOCK, M.A. (London, 1867.) 4. The Life of S. Hugh of Avalon, Bishop of Lincoln, with some Account of his Predecessors in the See of Lincoln. By GEORGE G. PERRY, M.A., Canon of Lincoln. don, 1879.) (Lon HUGH, Bishop of Lincoln, and Richard, Bishop of Chichester, share the unique distinction of being the two medieval English bishops who, on the revision of the Book of Common Prayer in 1604, were restored to the places in the Calendar from which, together with their other canonised brethren, they had been ejected at the Reformation. The name of the former stands against November 17, that of the latter against April 3. We know that the principle of selection in this case was not the survival of the fittest;' but the retention of old dates ingrained in the national mind by popular festivals and parochial wakes and fairs, with which, from time imme |