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here, by the way, that the government of Italy has of late insisted so strenuously on the necessity of bishops asking for the Exequatur, as to make it an indispensable condition to their entering upon the duties of their ministry. Hitherto, the only penalty incurred by the new incumbents for not asking the Exequatur was the withdrawal of the stipend paid by the State. This, however, was a trifling loss to men of apostolic spirit. On the other hand, the charity of the Holy Father supported them in default of the secular contributions. But now, despite the crying injustice of the act, and in direct contradiction to an article in the Law of the Papal Guarantees, which says: "The Exequatur and Royal Placet, and every other form of governmental assent for the publication and execution of the acts of the ecclesiastical authority are abolished,"-the government demands, under penalty of a legal nullification of the public acts of the ecclesiastical ministry, the postulation of the Exequatur. In this juncture, which, as the reader will easily perceive, is a direct hindrance of the exercise of the ecclesiastical ministry, the Italian bishops addressed a quæsitum to the Holy Office of Rome, asking what was to be done, or, considering the circumstances, was it lawful for them to ask for the Exequatur? The Congregation of the Holy Office published the response on the 29th of November, 1876. It was in these terms: Tolerari posse; it can be tolerated. It is a question of saving souls.

very most I can do, at least until I have palpable and unimpregnable proofs of his evil designs, is to be on my guard. But I dare not kill him. Neither can I imprison him; no more than can the laws of any country, however despotic its form of government, incarcerate a subject, simply because there is a possibility of his offending against them. It would be the excess of tyranny. But, setting aside these considerations, let us glance at the law of the gospel; and by the law of the gospel here, we do not mean to designate that precept of charity, and love, and mutual forbearance, concerning which the Allcharitable, the All-loving, and the All-forbearing was divinely eloquent, but that other law, the constitution of Christianity, which makes us children of a common parent, the Church. The very conception of a Church excludes the idea of a Placitum or secular interference. The power of binding and loosing, of extending and restricting, was given to the Apostles alone. The princes of this world were not alluded to, except in the light of persecutors. For the rest, the Divine Founder comprised them in the universal obedience to be given to the Apostles and to their successors, couched in the "Teach all nations," and in that other declaration commendatory and condemnatory, "He that heareth you, heareth me; he that despiseth you, despiseth me." One consideration more. The Royal Placitum has been imposed upon the Church by Catholic princes, her own children. They have stood up to judge her, they have bound her, they punish her. What is this but a matricide, against which nature spiritualized cries to heaven for vengeance with a vehemence, and an efficacy, too, impossible to the ordinary relationship of blood between mother and children? We assert no paraIf dox, but speak as Christians; the relationship between Mother Church and her children is dearer and more

But the law of nature cries out against such an arbitrary use of power. Were there never such an institution as human laws to regulate the relations between man and man, between one society and another, nature herself would reason thus: Neither the Church nor the civil power has a right to exercise the Placitum, each over the other. in my soul I suspect a man to have designs upon my life or property, the

sacred than that existing between a human mother and her offspring, as the life for which she nourishes them is more important and more lasting. Therefore, sanctified nature execrates this matricide, and with holy indignation exclaims, with the Romans of old, Parricidarum pœnas, robur et saxum! In the old Roman laws it was a received maxim: 66 Leges ERVBESCVNT correctores patrum filios facere;" the laws blush to institute children the correctors of their fathers. And Pascal II, in his letter to Henry, King of England, expressed a similar sentiment regarding the Church, in deprecating the pretensions of the king in ecclesiastical matters: Nec enim decet ut a filio mater in servitutem abducatur; nor

does it become a son to lead his mother into slavery. But the rulers of to-day have forgotten these maxims, as they have forgotten those of justice. They have forgotten the groanings of their Mother, and have conspired against her, who always defended their birthright. Her Bridegroom is a witness of her reproach, and will comfort her in good time. But even now, her unnatural sons are bearing the marks of their degradation about them. They have lost their birthright, and have become mere constitutional creatures, pitiful sufferances, staggering under an incubus more degrading still than that which they imposed upon the Church. We would call it the Popular Placitum.

ORVIETO.

THAT last glimpse of Saint Peter's on the way to Orvieto ! How like a vision it lingered in the blue of that Italian distance; a thing of heaven rather than of earth. And when the near hills, with their olive groves and vineyards, came between it and us, we realized how much grandeur had passed into our lives, not only from the sight of it, but from our fealty to its traditions.

We were still under the exaltation of this sublime moment in the life of 2 pilgrim to the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles, when the old fortified Etruscan town of Orvieto came in sight. As we step from the car, what views open before us, through arches which seem to have no other use than to frame in those pictures of magnificent mountain ranges and valleys slumbering in the noonday sun of July; while on the other hand rise the heights of Orvieto, empurpled in their own delicious atmos

phere, terraced with verdure and crowned by its Duomo !

Nor is this enchantment of distance broken, as we ascend the heights by a road which has not one steep angle, so carefully has it been graded. The eye is drawn, first by the distance below us, then by the heights above us, without knowing which to lose for the other. Here is a tower we must remember to sketch; and before this is fairly passed another object has charmed the eye. All at once we have entered the gate, and our wheels are rumbling over narrow, paved streets, between tumbling-down old houses and crumbling palace fronts. The world of beauty, all around Orvieto, seems to be suddenly shut out from us. Our spirits fall. Is this the Orvieto we have heard of, read of, dreamed of? The swift turns of the heavy vehicle around the corners make us dizzy, a little sick, in truth; and we begin to

think how tired we are, when another turn of the street brings us, face to face, with what! our dream? Yes, and still more, with the reality of our dream, and with a reality so far surpassing it, that all we have heard or read shows dull before it. For, here, as fresh as the New Jerusalem sent down from heaven to her Bridegroom, stands the facade of the Cathedral of Orvieto, in all the beauty of its unfading mosaics, its untarnished gold and venerable sculptures. No need of guide-books to tell us that at last we are before the Duomo of Orvieto.

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We have time to exclaim joyfully not more than once, when we find the sunny square has been crossed. Again we plunge into the gloom of narrow streets and tall towers with sculptured armorial bearings, into the medley of shops, and artisans and cooks, of peasants in costumes and donkeys with panniers. Every street seems to have been built on a curve, and it is with a sense of relief roughly earned, that we find ourselves driving into the courtyard of the Albergo delle Belle Arti. But what a profound quiet reigns through these wide halls, and up and down these solemn flights of stone stairs. every one enjoying a siesta?" we ask ourselves. Meanwhile one flight of stairs and a hall overlooking the courtyard, bring us to apartments, spacious, scrupulously clean, with open fireplaces and high ceilings. What could we ask more? But when we step to the windows, we find our selves so near the neighboring house across the street that we can almost shake hands with the inmates. It is a pleasant-looking house, and a pot of carnations, in full bloom, stands in the open lattice. But for all that, we seem to be in a prison, "We must go up higher; where we can have some off-look," we say impatiently.

"Signora will find none," remarks the civil attendant. But we are not convinced; and the light feet

of our companion willingly climb story after story only to find the same neighbors, the same pot of blossoming carnations; and we are forced to believe we shall never see the sky, so long as we remain in our Orvieto apartments. In half an hour dinner is served, and served for us two with as much care as if for a full table d'hôte. This over, we make no delay in threading the narrow, shaded streets back to the cathedral, to find its beauties breaking upon the eye with the same startling radiance as at first.

"Like nothing in the world but the festal page of an illuminated missal!" we say, again and again, as we stand opposite this facade, which embodies the faith and piety, as well as the imagination and skill of an efflorescent period of art. How like spikes of flowering plants those Gothic pinnacles, with their leafy finials, spring up into the air. But see! on those topmost ones are angels; or, are they saints? saints, no longer bending under the crosses of mortality, but buoyant with the joys of a celestial state, and pausing on these airy pinnacles like birds in a flight between heaven and earth. What a weaving in and out of black basalt and of cream-white marble, which, by dwelling together for centuries, have lost both blackness and whiteness, and blend to the eye only as light and shadow, while niche and column, mosaic and sculpture, rose-window and relief form a unit of inconceivable beauty against this tender blue sky, and the mountains lying off in a dreamy haze.

It was long before we could make up our minds to leave this facade, which seemed born of sunshine as much as any flower of the field. But the doors standing open so invitingly prevailed, and with a feeling like those who sang the fifteen gradual psalms, as they mounted the fifteen steps of the temple, we passed up these steps of alternate white and purple Apennine marble. We had

resolved not to linger on the threshold, but who can pass these reliefs on either hand without pausing? For here are represented, in spaces divided by branches of the vine, symbol of the mystical vine of the Church, the history of nan from the creation to the last judgment; not that exterior history of man which regards his civilization, but a history of the interior, universal man, in his relations to God and to eternity. We have seen the Loggia of Raphael, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, where these same subjects are treated in fresco with a sublimity we can never forget. But, wonderful as they are, we turn now to the predecessors, and in a certain sense the teachers, of Michael Angelo and of Raphael, and realize that we have come nearer to the traditions of the Pentateuch, Gospels, and Apocalypse, by more than even the two hundred years intervening between John of Pisa, Lorenzo di Maitani, the scenic artists who worked in Rome and Albano under his inspirations, and the masters of the Loggia, Stanze, and Cappella, of the Vatican. If on the ceiling by Michael Angelo the Creator, by a touch of his own omnipotent finger, is seen to give life to the inanimate form of the first man, with what a paternal tenderness is he seen in this sculptured pilaster at Orvieto to lay his hand on the head of the newly created man, as if giving him the paternal benediction! These angels, too, are no strange beings in a world foreign to their own. With their feet just lifted from the earth, they come a single pair to our first parent, talking together of his happy destiny. This sculptured Eden is full of the most delicate sympathy, of the most exalted love. In the creation of Eve, and even in the expulsion from Eden, it is the Father rather than the Creator, whom we see, while the vines are in the full exuberance of summer. We pass from one pilaster to another, to wonder at the fertility

of imagination which marks each group, until we come to the Last Judgment, where the vines are found to be weighed down with fruit, and only here and there a shrivelled leaf. In these planes, one above another, are given the mystery of the resurrection from the dead, the awful depths of hell, the condemned passing with lamentations and gestures of despair to their place of punishment; and, in contrast to all this, the joy of the newly awakened just, and their gratitude for their happy sentence. There is a wonderful solitariness expressed by the condemned. Huddled together in their misery there is still no companionship, no sympathy for each other's distress. Each one is occupied with his own. The wicked spirits who receive and welcome them to this dreary abode, are their tormentors not their companions. But how charming are the relations between the redeemed and their angel guardians! With what gratitude do those who have received a happy judgment kneel at the feet of their guides through all the perils of mortality; and then, in what a delighted intercourse do they pass onward together to heaven! Here, indeed, is that companionship which the Church calls "the communion of saints." They are dear members of our household, that of the Heavenly Father!

Days would not suffice to study all these groups; but, happily, their story is told with such simplicity that "he who runs may read ;" and even on a first visit we can enter into the spirit of the designs. How admirable, too, the framing in of these sculptures, the weaving of these themes into the gorgeous web of colors above! The columns which adorn the three portals are carried, like coils of the most delicate marble, over the entire arch of each door, taking along in their grooves a mere thread of mosaic, caught in with them like a string of brilliant gems, which now flashes into light,

now falls into shadow; the columns themselves, divided from each other by flat spaces, filled alternately with mosaics and knobs of acanthus leaves, giving an elaborate beauty to this story of the facade altogether unique, and allowing the eye to pass with delight from the colorless sculptures of the pilasters to the glowing resplendence of the upper stories.

How easily do we credit, in the actual presence of these wonders of skill, the touching narrative of that devoted Christian architect, Lorenzo di Maitani, who, during forty consecutive years, according to M. Rio, labored to beautify this reliquary of the Corporal of Bolsena, which was to him instead of a country; and who, when compelled to make short absences to Siena or Perugia, whose cathedrals were constructed under his care, still returned to his dear summit at Orvieto with renewed ardor. It is from M. Rio, too, that we have learned the several artists to whom we are indebted for the sculptured pilasters. All the bronzes must be given to Lorenzo himself. The Last Judgment he gives to John of Pisa; but the Creation, so redolent with the joys of a newborn paradise and the innocent happiness of our first parents, he gives to those Sienese artists who modelled in Rome and its neighborhood under the influence of the grandest works of sculpture in the world; to whom Lorenzo was a master, and also, as we have said, an inspiration.

But what of the interior of this temple to which such varied beauties are merely the exterior?

On a summer afternoon, the sun not only pours its light through the three front portals, but through the western window, set with alabaster instead of glass, thus sending a mellow radiance through the upper arches of the grand nave. And how grand and how serene that nave is! At first, it seems cold and almost bare, compared with the gorgeous exterior; but in a few moments the eye measures

both length and height;* takes in the majesty of the vast arches, and their columns of black basalt and cream-white marble, with gigantic statues of the Apostles at their base. A repose, such as only grand spaces, comparatively bare, can inspire, takes possession of the soul. The mind, undistracted by multiplicity, dwells calmly on everything before it. The floor, so often elaborately set with colored marbles, is here of an even tint, and the eye is free to explore the very depths of this sanctuary, all aglow with its stained glass, and its frescoes, from the very stalls in the choir to the height of the lofty arch. On the right is that wonderful chapel, to which Fra Angelico and Luca Signorelli draw so many feet; but to the left is the one which has been drawing our own, steadily but surely, from the time we set foot on Italian soil. It is, in truth, the very soul of the cathedral itself, for this wonder of art was designed as a receptacle for the relic which gives its name to the chapel: Cappella del Santissimo Corporale.

The Bleeding Host of Bolsena is a name familiar to every Roman sightseer, as it makes one of the subjects treated by Raphael on the walls of the Stanza d'Eliodoro. Its story, which has passed into theological works on the Holy Eucharist, and even into the treatise on the Mass by our own Father Muller, C. S. S. R., reads thus:

In the year 1263 a Bohemian priest was celebrating Mass in a church at Bolsena. This priest had a serious doubt concerning the doctrine of transubstantiation. Perhaps this doubt had come over him more actively than usual, and in a way to make consecration a sacrilege, a grievous wound to the most tender heart of our Lord; for, straightway, as he holds the newly consecrated host in his hands, drops of blood start from its sacred pores; and when, in his fright, he lays down the host, 97 yards long, 35 yards wide, and 111 feet high.

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