Purgatory by Mary Anne Madden Sadlier (ebook reader 8 inch txt) 📖

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 Mass for him; I beg also that you say a Mass 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 instituted 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 associates joined in the
Miserere, and the Church reached, the corpse was laid there, till the fitting hour, when the Requiem Mass 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 assemblage," 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 assembled 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 God." 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, Masses, 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 manuscripts 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 Mass 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 Herefordshire, 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 hearse, 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. Masses 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 asserted. 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 noble 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 Masses 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, assisters, 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 Mass 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 Mass 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 space 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 Mass 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 Mass daily, when he is disposed, for the heal of their souls, where the said Walter Scott and his friend pleases, for the space of the next three years to come." We may mention that the four pilgrimages are Scoon, 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 superstitions 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 Mass' 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