and whom common report accuses that he was habitually wont to put out his money to use.' دوو But, in regard to the objects of alms in general, hear a more express testimony. John, abbot of Fescamp, in the preface to his book of instructions for the empress Agnes, says to her, "Having found you to be much given to works of mercy, I did not hesitate to write this, namely, that without all doubt the proper objects of eleemosynary gifts are not ecclesiastics, who are already possessed of large property, but widow widows, orphans, sick persons, foreigners, and especially those who are truly the poor of Christ." * Further, mark the wise discretion prescribed by Catholicity in regard to the distribution of alms. "A dispenser," says St. Isidore, "ought not to be prodigal, but discreet, so as not to give all to one."† The rule of the angelic doctor is thus abbreviated : "Largè quamvis eroganda Pro cujusque copia, And yet men are warned not to scrutinize the poor with eyes of a severe judge, and withhold assistance on the ground of their unworthiness. Catholicity knows not such discretion. The poor whom St. Catherine of Sienna visited and consoled, used often to insult and to defame her. "What matters it," used St. Thomas of Villanova to reply, -a man no more wanting in good sense than the keenest of our contemporaries," if the poor at our gate should deceive us, and laugh at us, provided that we relieve them in security of heart, and in the name of Him, who to enrich us was willing to live and die poor." "Even to an excommunicated man," says Ives de Chartres, "we may give alms, provided it be non pro sustentatione superbiæ sed humanitatis causa, as Pope Gregory VII. says."§ "There was," says an old writer in the monastery of Crutched Friars, in the diocese of Munster, "a lay brother deputed to receive guests, and he fearing to judge another man's servant, without the least distinction of persons, used to receive all laymen alike, good and evil, civil and insolent, with as much humility and love as if he had been their mother." || Such, then, is the instruction of Catholicity respecting the * Ap. Mab. Annal. i. 167. || Joan. Major, Magnum + De Sum. Bono, iii. 64. obligation and dispensation of alms; and may we not now fearlessly ask, What has the world elsewhere to oppose to this great constant voice? It is true, at the epoch of the false reform, great promises were made to the indigent, and immense hopes excited in the rich, that they would have no more burdens arising from charity to others; but where did they end? It is true, also, that in the seventh year of the French republic the sophists proclaimed their wish that the poor man might find in the new system the relief and assistance "que trop longtemps on a cru que la superstition seule pourrait lui procurer."* But was the result in the latter case different from what it was in the former? Let us proceed, then, to observe the practice of Catholicity, and remark how pre-eminently it exceeds all that vain and ungrateful generations have reaped from what, under diabolic suggestion, they substituted in its place. "he Pope Innocent III., when treating on the contempt of the world, and on the misery of the human condition, devotes a separate chapter to considerations on the misery of the poor. "Pauperes," he says, "vilescunt, tabescunt, spernuntur, et confunduntur." ↑ "Persecution is so allied to poverty," says Antonio de Escobar, "that we can hardly think of the one without the other. When I would take the case of a man afflicted with worldly tribulations and injuries, and wounded by insulting words, I immediately suppose him poor; for persecution follows poverty, as the shade a body." Such is the natural condition of the poor, in which we find them wandering on this sad road, till, directing their eyes forward to the central light, they are drawn towards it by an experience of the benefits which emanate to them from the Catholic Church. For, in the first place, in their lowest state of desolation, as common mendicants, they will instinctively look to Catholicity as to the source of their chief temporal hope. O Church of Christ, founded on Peter, and governed by Roman pontiffs, how dear shouldest thou be to the forlorn! "For thou art still the poor man's stay, The poor man's heart, the poor man's hand; While the world, grown obdurate beyond what paganism showed itself, rejects the plea of old Homeric times, when a poor wanderer could say πτωχεύω δ ̓ ἀνὰ δῆμον ; ἀναγκαίη γὰρ ἐπείγει.§ * Egron, Liv. du Pauvre. + In Evang. Comment. tom. vi. 386. + c. xiv. § xix. 73. and only some of the younger men, without influence, reprove the modern Antinous for reviling the strange beggar,* the Catholic Church impresses those who hear her with reverence for what the Fathers call "the sacrament of the poor," that is, the recognising Christ under the rags of a poor man, as faith recognises him under the sacramental species.† So, wherever her influence extends, "If he's press'd by want of food, Him the simple traveller loves; him the artist, as in the evening scene on a highway painted in the Louvre; him the Catholic, ever still the man of Homeric taste whatever be his state of life, must love, as one who goes about like Ulysses, πτωχεύσων, saying, κατὰ δὲ πτόλιν αὐτὸς ἀνάγκη Πλάγξομαι, αἴ κέν τις κοτύλην καὶ πύρνον ὀρέξῃ.‡ But of course not so the modern economist; not so the sophist who associates alms with Catholicity, and who, when God would borrow of him, rather than lend, forsakes God. Yet, as if such reasoners had ears, deem not this poor man useless, says the Church, seeming to repeat a poet's words, addressing statesmen, who are so restless in their wisdom, and who have a broom still ready in their hands to rid the world of what they fancy nuisances. Catholicity deems useful the presence of the poor, even sometimes of those whom its antagonist will style "stark, errant, downright beggars; ay, without equivocation, statute beggars, couchant and passant, guardant, rampant beggars." In the fifteenth century, Don Rodriguez de Castro, archbishop of Seville, having by advice of the canons published an edict commanding all beggars and indigent people, from a supposition that many impostors were among them, to leave the city, the blessed Father, John Bernal, resolved to prevent its execution, and, preaching before the archbishop and chapter in the cathedral, spoke with such force, ending with the words, "the poor you will always have with you," that on the same day, not only the edict was revoked from the town-hall, but one of a contrary nature published, to proclaim that the city, in chasing away impostors, would assist all poor persons; and the magistrates caused to be inserted in the registers of the city that they had revoked their first edict at the exhortations of Father * xvii. + Père de Ligny, Hist. de J. C. ‡ xv. 310. R Bernal, and especially by his assuring them that God would leave the city along with the poor.* So the character of the mendicant is still to be met with, and within the forest itself we hear such songs as the old dramatic poet introduces, like that beginning "Within a hollow tree I live, and pay no rent; The poor man, therefore, who may love personal liberty as dearly as the rich, and who may, perhaps, feel called to lead a life that saints, wiser than some legislators, have praised, will hardly be insensible to the attractions which Catholicity contains, in permitting him, after giving security of innocence, to wander thus, a dedicated beggar to the air, with his disease of all-shunned poverty, walking like contempt alone. Nor will he disdain the source from which men learn to have compassion on his state, and to relieve his wants, though the sophists may pronounce it to be superstition, recommending rather the alleged motive of Don Juan, "Va, va, je te le donne pour l'amour de l'humanité," as says that representative of atheism to the beggar, giving him a louis-d'or, after first trying to persuade him to sin against his conscience by a wanton oath. The poor man has other thoughts. Perhaps experience has settled his notions respecting the force of different motives; but, at all events, his heart will hail the principle that recognises, on relieving him, an occasion to relieve his Saviour; and he will advance with love and reverence towards that church which says, that charity for our neighbour is a theological and divine virtue, inasmuch as it is God that we love in our neighbour.† Eagerly, in fact, do the poor avail themselves of the Catholic image under which they are represented by faith. "Poor boys! they came back stript and emaciated, like two Christs," said an old grandfather, as if he had a painting by Morales before his eyes, speaking of his grandsons, whom want and sickness had chased from Paris to their native town, where the stranger was appointed to visit them by a conference of St. Vincent of Paul. In Britany, we are told, that beggars are honoured, and almost the objects of a kind of worship. The tenderest epithets are applied to them, * Hist. de l'Ord. de la Mercy, 600. They are styled "the good man, the dear poor, the cherished, the friends, the brothers of the good God." They are never sent away with scorn. They are sure to find an asylum in the manor or in the cottage.* "Towards sunset," says the song of Iannik Skolan, "the beggar comes to us. When the beggar enters, she has a smile for every one." The day after marriage, in Britany, "is the day of the poor. They arrive there by hundreds, at the gate, and sitting down at table, the bride waits upon the women, and the bridegroom on the men, after which banquet they all dance together." But everywhere Catholicity smooths, yea, strews with flowers, the road for the indigent. Egron remarks, that the engravings of the time of Louis XIV., and those of later date, show poor beggars in their rags admitted within parks, close to the sumptuous equipages of kings. The lame and the blind appear in all the groups around the royal residences. In the old Breton song, these manners are indicated by an affecting incident: "Messenger, disguise yourself as a beggar, and speed on your way to my family," says the knight Bran in his prison. Accordingly, when the messenger arrived in the country of Léon, the lady being at supper with her family, and the harpers at their post, the beggar enters the hall immediately, and saluting them delivers the letter. Catholicism thus gives to beggars what kings confer upon their highest favourites, the privilege of private entrance. "Tο the honour of Spain be it said," observes a recent traveller, "it is one of the few countries in Europe where poverty is never insulted, nor looked upon with contempt. Even at an inn the poor man is never spurned from the door, and if not harboured, is at least dismissed with fair words, and consigned to the mercies of God and his Mother." Those works of fiction, we may remark, in modern times, like that entitled a "Christmas Carol," may be said, therefore, to point to Catholicity by dwelling on that love of the poor, and that amiable grace of generosity towards them, which nothing else can so effectually inspire; for only charity, in its Catholic religious acceptation, can produce such manners. it is which draws the widow's mite, the scholar's penny, the noble's gold, the Pontifical Bull, the bishop's Indulgence. The Church makes alms of every kind glorious. She commemorates on pages that are to last with the world, not the triumph of conquerors, but the cure of the beggar : * Hersart de la Villemarque, Chants Pop. de la Bretagne. + Le Livre du Pauvre. + Hersart de la Villemarque, Chants Pop. de la Bretagne. R2 This |