his splendid letters: "The large majority of Italians are still earnest Catholics."

NOTE.-Irreligion has entered Italy mainly through political agitation; it entered France principally through anti-Christian and philosophical doctrines. The intercourse between France and England, the works of English Deists translated for French readers, the influence of some English freethinkers on the highest circles of French society, made the French mind acquainted with many features of infidelity as it prevailed in England in the beginning of the eighteenth century. French apologists of Christianity, according to Beurier, complained of the number of infidel books that were imported into their country from England. There is no argument, even the most reckless, of French philosophy in the eighteenth century, Villemain maintains, that is not found in the English school at the beginning of the same age. Lecky tells us that “it was from the writings of Locke and Bacon that Voltaire and his followers drew the principles that shattered the proudest ecclesiastical fabrics of Europe," and in his Life of Bacon the German, Fischer, writes: "As Hobbes and Locke have their root in Bacon, so the French philosophy of the eighteenth century had its root in Locke, being related to the English philosophy as a colony to the mother country." These statements are admitted by a writer in the Saturday Review, September 12th, 1874, in a notice of Lange's History of Materialism: "Strange as the fact may seem to some," he says, " England was the hotbed whence sprang the infidelity that spread over France during the years immediately preceding the first revolution, though it attained new forms in a new atmosphere, and especially in the case of Le Mettric assumed a tone of indecency unknown to its native home."

Holland had also its share in propagating infidelity in the last century; it was from her printing-presses those infidel works went forth which were retailed through neighboring nations; it was there that Bayle published his dictionary, and that Spinosa, himself a Dutchman, devised his monstrous system of Pantheism.

Switzerland was as active as Holland in this propagandism of error. In 1763 Voltaire wrote to D'Alembert: "In Calvin's own town there are only a few, shabby, beggarly fellows, who believe in Christ," and elsewhere," England and Switzerland are overrun with men who hate and despise Christianity, like Julian himself." Jean Jacques Rousseau, a Calvinist, hailed from Geneva.

The same causes that have been at the bottom of Italy's troubles in this century have also been at work in Spain. She, too, has been under the grudging policy of the House of Bourbon. Infidel and immoral literature has been introduced among her

people. False ideas on religion and government were brought to her by foreign armies; and secret societies, under the protection of foreign powers, have been trying to destroy her religion and conservative institutions. Her political life is kept in agitation by a bold faction, but, as all travellers tell us, her people are still Catholic to the core.

THE INFLUENCE OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI ON MEDIEVAL ART.

"We owe to the mind of St. Francis that inspiration, nobler than human, which stirred the emulation of the greatest artists."-LEO P. P. XIII., Encycl., 17 Sept., 1882.

A

T times convictions take possession of a human soul and develop therein with such astonishing power over and beyond all that surrounds it, assuming dimensions in their ultimate results which are out of all proportion with the source whence they appear to spring, that we are forced to look for their reason in some design of Providence bearing testimony to the unfailing truth on which they rest, and giving assurance of their predestined accomplishment. The Catholic Church is the soil on which such souls ordinarily grow. The fact of Calvary, of all human failures in an earthly point of view the most complete, yet with its prodigious effects, unaccountable unless in the light of a higher principle, has established a norm by which we may measure like phenomena.

When St. Francis of Assisi suddenly departed from the common course of men about him, those who loved him best mourned, because, as they said, the beautiful youth had grown mad. But he had turned to follow a master, whom with less reason the enlightened world of old Rome had pointed out as a fool; and so he went on securely in his way, "ce fou sublime, dont la folie confondit la sagesse du monde." And when the few short years of his earthly life had come to their end, he had set into motion and given a lasting impulse to a revolution, which in due time overturned the political, social, and religious world from its existing state. Like the sun, which he affectionately calls his brother, and to which Dante aptly compares him, he, "when not yet much distant from his rising, began to bless the earth by his good influence." He illumined

1 Paradise, Cant. XI., 53.

the darkness into which the world of those days was deeply merged, and created a new growth upon its face, breathing by the genial warmth of his spirit fresh life into the decaying members of society. Popes, emperors, nay, the obstinate princes of the East, who hated with a natural and religious hatred alike whatever bore the Christian name, bowed to his will and vied with one another in showering favors upon him to whom nothing was dearer than the contempt and poverty of Christ. Even St. Dominic, if we may believe the annalist of a past day,' intimate and familiar friend of our saint, seemed for a moment to have lost confidence in his own distinct and stupendous mission, when he came within the circle of that radiant fire of seraphic love.

But it is not our purpose to measure the influence of St. Francis upon his own or later times except in so far as it caused the revival of the fine arts, which in point of time and place assumes definite form immediately after the death and at the tomb of the Saint. It were strange indeed if we could not trace the cause of this sudden change in the sphere of taste to the direct influence of him who from that time forth appeared for several generations at once the devout object and the patron of the fine arts. And no doubt it will be well to recall to mind the means which served to raise so admirable a structure as that which the school of Christian art presents to us in the 13th century, at a time when at least the outward conditions of society are much the same as they were then, with perhaps this difference in our favor, of a far more eager search after a high standard of taste.

In order to estimate correctly the influence of St. Francis upon the life of the fine arts for several centuries after his death, it will be necessary to cast a brief glance upon the character of the man who, by the sole force of his personal endowments, without any assistance from without, was able to produce such gigantic effects. We shall next consider this influence in its further results.

I.

The most superficial reader of the life of St. Francis will be impressed with two features in the singular career of the Monk of Assisi that peculiar asceticism, from which, as we know, arose the mystic school of thought, whose best exponent in theology became St. Bonaventure, and which found its truest illustration in the whole range of Christian schools of art, beginning in faint outlines with Giunta Pisano, the friend of St. Francis, and ending, at least for a considerable time, with Raphael, in his earlier works. The other trait, which aside from this strikes us, is the intense love of and sympathy with nature manifested by the Saint on every occasion.

1 Vita S. Francisci, Bolland.

Nature was, so to speak, poverty, whom he had chosen as his bride, in her fairest apparel. When he had relinquished all for Christ, he had gained all; the whole great world was now his own, and he felt this possession, and it made him happy beyond earthly happiness.

One day, before he had made his choice, when he was returning from a festival, his companions, seeing him strangely pensive and tarrying behind, asked him laughingly what could absorb the lighthearted Giovanni so profoundly at this time. "I was thinking," said he, "of taking a spouse, but one so noble, so beautiful, that I know none like her on earth." From that day the fair young Bernadone changed. "He is lovesick," they said, and so he was. He had seen a glimpse of some beautiful being, a quick vision of some magnificent reality, and his heart went out to it; went out to God, that Beauty everlasting and surpassing all His creatures, And the Saint loved only the more these creatures, now that he recognized them as love-tokens of God's munificent affection towards his humble spouse. He would cast aside the gilded deckings and don the wedding garment to please but his new choice. So by vigils and fasts, terrific stripes and crucifixions of his tender flesh, he called to heaven for a spotless robe, until the folly of a thoughtless boyhood had been wholly wiped out.

As sin disappears in man, its consequences vanish one after another, or lose their hold on him, and the former state of sinless happiness returns. In Paradise all nature had been subject to Adam. But once he rebelled against his Maker, creation declared enmity to its former master, man. Henceforth his life was one continued toil, and sorrow became as his daily companion. Then, as he bore the burden meekly, it lightened, or perhaps his strength increased, and he felt less of the old crushing weight. Nature grew more kind, the ground yielded more readily to the pressure of his spade, and it brought fruit and flower, which lighted up once more his aged care-worn features, and labor, duty, sacrifice, became a consolation. And when the end came they brought to the saintly patriarch the last born of his grandchildren that he might bless it. But he looked strangely out into the open field where stood the tree which he had planted, a twig of Eden's sad tree of life. And in prophetic vision he discerned the fruit that was one day to grow thereon-arbor decora et fulgida! And he saw how the curse which he had brought upon his progeny was to depart by the strength of that fruit. It was a rapturous thought, and he loved the tree for its destiny, and the birds that nestled in it, and the flowers that grew beneath its shade; he loved all nature, for he saw in it expressed the ineffable love of his Maker. Then his dying hand blessed the babe with the strength of the expected Redeemer, and when with his last look he gazed into that blessed child's eyes he

saw there the joy which he had seen in Eve before the fall, the joy of innocence, like to no other joy on earth. How often has that process been repeated in the penitents, saints of the Catholic Church! It was in a manner the process which the soul of St. Francis experienced. He had become again a sinless child, in the baptism of penance, in the strength of his Redeemer's Precious Blood. Nature spoke to him, and like a child he spoke to her, until both understood and loved each other as brother and sister of the same heavenly Father. See how it comes out, this love, in all its virginal freshness and innocence as we meet him in the byways around Assisi, sweetly caressing a rescued pair of turtle-doves: O sirocchie mie tortole, semplici, innocenti e caste-ora io vi voglio scampare da morte e farvi i nidi.1 Or as we see him stooping to gather up the little worms from the road, lest they be crushed beneath the foot of some unthinking traveller; for he remembers how his Master had once said: I am a worm and not a man.

Such was his tender love for the works of God's hand, and like some magic spell it accompanied him wherever he journeyed, and where his shadow fell the ancient curse seemed forthwith to depart from the earth. The birds of the air, the beasts of the forest, came gladly at his call; the timid roe looked trustingly into that beautiful face and gathered its food from the hand that gave a blessing upon the dumb creature. All nature rejoiced when with him, and the lay" Laudate "" of the royal prophet seemed forever on his lips. Well could he write of "true and perfect joy," for it was always in his heart and round about him.

But this intense love of nature, this perfect harmony between his inner being and the rest of God's image in the outward creation, made St. Francis a poet, we might say an artist, in the truest sense of the word. Every artist is a poet. The history of the great masters amply illustrates this. We know how the genius of Giovanni Santi followed that of Petrarch and Dante, and how the father of the immortal Raphael was celebrated in his day alike for his verses and his paintings. Young Raphael himself was, as Lanzi informs us, a poet. Even Leonardo da Vinci, in spite of his practical turn of mind, has left us some verses. And most of the great painters of the early Italian school were enthusiastic students of Dante.

On the other hand, there exists a close and necessary connection between true art and Religion. Indeed art is a species of religion, in which man pays homage to the divine Beauty. Such was the idea of art even among the Greeks in its best days. When high ideals in religion are united to most perfect natural forms, whether My dear little sisters, sweet innocent doves,-yes, I am going to save you from death and build you little nests.

2 148 Ps.

De vera et perfecta laetitia-cited by Wadding.