“The dumb, dread people that sat,
All night without screen for the night,
All day without food for the day,
They shall not give their harvest away,
They shall eat of its fruit and wax fat;
They shall see the desire of their sight.
Tho’ the way of the seasons be steep,
They shall climb it with face to the light,
Put in the sickle and reap.”
ONE of the grandest chapters in all history has yet to be written adequately―the epic of the long conflict between humanity and Rome. Should some transcendent poet-historian arise, joining the heart of fire to comprehend high impulses and heroic issues with the hand of patient industry to piece together confused and fragmentary details, he would have to begin far back in the dim twilight of modern society, with―
“The worldwide throes
That went to make the Popedom―the despair
Of free men, brave men, good men.”
But where he would have to end, God only knoweth, who knoweth all things.
Funeral piles, fed with living bodies, flash out here and there, all through the gloomy darkness of medieval times. Now and again some strange, awful tragedy arrests our gaze and freezes our blood with horror; some tale, like Dolcino’s, of cruel oppression provoking wild resistance to be crushed at last with cruelty yet more appalling. Then, there is the great, dark blood stain, never more to be effaced, which blotted out forever the glory and the prosperity of the fair land of the troubadours. There is the long martyr-story of the simple and harmless race who dwelt in Alpine valleys. But besides the Albigenses of Languedoc, the Waldenses of Piedmont and their colonies, there are a few well-known names familiar to every ear—such as Peter Waldo, John Wickliffe, John Huss, Jerome of Prague, the lord of Cobham; samples of many more, which are written only in the book of God’s remembrance.
Yet the historian of Protestantism should be on his guard against a very natural, but very serious mistake. It does not follow that every foe of Borne was a friend of truth, of freedom, of Christ. It must be remembered, on the one hand, that Rome was the representative of spiritual law and of social order, and therefore most of those to whom law and order were abhorrent found themselves in the ranks of her enemies; on the other, that the very darkness of the times engendered hideous forms of moral and mental corruption, so that Rome’s sole responsibility, with regard to some sects of the Middle Ages, seems to lie in this, that they could not have existed at all had she not left the surrounding community in a depth of ignorance and depravity that made all horrible delusions possible and contagious. Without doubt Rome has sent many a man to the stake who, at least, fully deserved the gibbet.
Therefore it is impossible for mortal eye wholly to penetrate the darkness that overhangs this part of the great battlefield between truth and error. Rome herself has been the historian of her enemies; and she has enveloped them all in one black sulphureous smoke of undistinguishing anathemas. Here and there, through the smoke, we may catch the gleam of a robe so white that malice itself cannot tarnish its puro luster; for instance, the Waldenses of Piedmont and the Poor Men of Lyons may be considered above reproach, their enemies themselves being judges. But, besides these, a vast multitude of indistinct and shadowy forms throng and press around us; and sometimes we dimly recognize the mystic, the Manichæan, the profligate materialist, side by side with the devout believer, whose only heresy was the rejection of an absurd and degrading superstition.
Unworthy indeed were the Protestant who, for controversial purposes, should assume aught respecting these enemies of Rome beyond what may be proved, or reasonably inferred, from recorded facts. For it is the very life and essence of Protestantism to set truth before all else; to believe nothing because it is convenient, or comfortable, or interesting, or æsthetic, or even edifying―unless it be true. That God is light, and that in Him is no darkness at all; that God is truth, and that no lie is of the truth, is the keynote of Protestantism. Therefore, for a Protestant to take falsehood as his weapon, and to stab Rome with a lie, would be both a blunder and a baseness.
No time was more disastrous for the enemies of Rome than the second half of the fifteenth century, though it proved eventually only the dark hour before the dawning of the day. It seemed almost as if all protesting voices were to be silenced at last. The fierce religious wars of Bohemia were dying out, and even there the dominant party amongst the Hussites, the Calixtines, could not properly be styled sectaries, as they only differed from Rome upon a point of ceremonial, and were sincerely anxious for the recognition of the Church. It is true that then, as ever, the Waldenses of the Alps maintained their testimony; and the same was done in Bohemia by a few poor oppressed communities of United Brethren. Besides these, and in other countries, isolated witnesses for the faith once delivered to the saints were never wholly wanting.
Such a witness was the wandering scholar who, for reasons of his own, had consented for a time to act as servant to Dr. Theodore Benedetto. Giulio was by birth an Italian, and he had been early trained in the practice of a curious and delicate handicraft, which was almost a fine art. Thus faculties naturally keen were developed and educated; but he was thoughtful and speculative as well as quick and dexterous, and as he watched beside the furnace where his crystal vases were being annealed to the point of absolute perfection, he had time to ponder many things in heaven and earth. He grew dissatisfied, first with the parish priest to whom he applied for the solution of some of his difficulties, then with priests, monks, and friars in general, lastly with the whole Church system. By night and by day his dreams were of reform, possible and impossible. Already had his soul felt the magnetic touch of spiritual aspiration, but there were many vibrations of the needle before it pointed to the pole of Truth and settled there, to move no more forever. There was a time when he seemed likely to become the founder of a new religious order; and indeed Rome has cursed many whom, under conditions slightly altered, she would have canonized, and canonized some whom she might easily have cursed. Giulio’s indignation against the prevailing Mariolatry decided his fate. In an ebullition of ill-regulated zeal he one day destroyed an image of the Virgin which was an object of especial reverence to the workmen of his craft. He had to flee from their vengeance for his life, although afterward their esprit de corps led them secretly to repair the image and to hush up the scandal amongst themselves.
He made his way to the south of France, where the art he was able to practice and to teach secured him the means of comfortable subsistence. It would even have raised him to honor and affluence could he have found rest for the sole of his foot. But he was still in search of a faith, and his unquiet heart made him a wanderer up and down the land. Blood and fine had extinguished almost every trace of the Albigenses, but here and there a few hidden sparks of the old life smoldered amongst the ashes. Wherever Giulio perceived a disposition to resist the tyranny of the Church and the exactions of the priesthood, he followed up the scent carefully and patiently, though in most cases with no result except disappointment. Once, however, he was fortunate enough to meet an intelligent and enlightened old man, who put into his hand the celebrated “Nobla Leycon” of the Waldenses. It came upon his thirsting soul like rain from heaven. Its brief, calm words, simple with the unadorned simplicity of Scripture narrative and exhortation, showed him what he longed to know, how to refine the evil and to choose the good in the creed of his childhood. With this help, and that of such fragments of Holy Scripture as he could gather out of missals and breviaries, he shaped his faith. A whole Bible he had never seen; but he afterward visited a community of United Brethren in Bohemia, and he found with them the Gospel and the Revelation of St. John, and the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, which they had obtained from the Waldenses in the Romance dialect, although they had translated them into German for their own use. Giulio copied them for himself, and profited greatly by the occupation.
He was now as one who had dwelt all his life amidst the obscure alleys of a city, and who yields, perhaps reluctantly, to those who persuade him to go forth and see green fields and budding flowers. The loss of old surroundings and associations, which he had feared so greatly, was swallowed up in the sense of a gain absolutely immeasurable―for a narrow strip of blue, the whole vault of azure; for crowded streets and dusky laves, the free campaign and the boundless, limitless ocean. At last his soul found freedom and peace. No longer was there any veil between him and God his Father, Christ his Redeemer, the Divine Spirit his Sanctifier.
The impulse to teach was as strong upon him now as the desire to learn had been before. He went to and fro through the earth, seeking out the sorrowful, the lonely, the doubting, to bring them the message of the love of God, and the way of access to Him which is open evermore through Christ. Of course, his path was one of continual peril, as that of the apostle who “died daily;” for the message he bore had in it the seed of Rome’s downfall, oven if his own hostility to the dominant Church had not been like “the ointment of his right hand,” that “bewrayed itself” continually.
But this very hostility gave him a powerful friend in Dr. Theodore, who made his acquaintance first as a patient, and then was attracted by his shrewdness and insight as well as by the courage with which he avowed his opinions. Giulio was anxious, for many reasons, to revisit his native land, and Theodore offered to take him thither if he would assume for the time the position and the duties of his confidential servant. The arrangement succeeded admirably. Giulio proved abundantly useful to his temporary master, and the relation between them became every day more intimate. As they labored together for the deliverance of Raymond, Theodore could not sufficiently admire the courage, the tact, and the fertility of resource which Giulio had learned in half a lifetime’s conflict with persecution.
Giulio entered the capital of Christendom full of the hope of finding secret brethren there, as he had done already in other cities. He was disappointed; the nobles seemed abandoned to violence, luxury, and profligacy, while the common people were sunk in sloth and venality. True sons of the slaves of Caligula and Tiberius, who used to raise the cry “Panem et circenses,” love of gain and love of pleasure seemed the only passions they were capable of cherishing. Giulio’s brightest hours in Rome― except perhaps those spent in penning the letter that soothed the deathbed of Campano―were the hours in which he sought to lighten the dark cloud that overhung the soul of Viola di Porcaro. It was something to make her understand that to die, as her father died, “unhousel’d, disappointed, unanel’d,” was not necessarily to die unrepentant and forsaken of God; it was more to make her see that she herself was not alone in the world, a mere burden upon the cold good will of relatives who cared not for her―since she too had a Father in heaven.
On the eventful day of which we are tracing the history, Giulio returned at once from the church to the lodging of his patron, thinking that now Count Raymond had gone forth (as he doubted not, with Theodore’s, full concurrence), Theodore would probably wish to take counsel with him.
He was struck at once by a change in the appearance of his patron. Theodore looked an older and a sadder man―and, if all must be said, a worse man too―than he had done that morning. His dark eyes burned with a dull and sullen glare, and there was a shadow on his brow, as though he were brooding over some bitter wrong.
“So, Signor Doctor, Count Raymond has gone forth, and in daylight. Is that prudent?” said Giulio.
“How do you know?” asked Theodore sharply.
“I met him just now in the church yonder. I left him there, holding converse with the Signorina Viola di Porcaro, at her father’s grave.”
The words were fuel to the fire of Theodore’s wrath. “Ay? Then he has gone straight from my presence to hers! And it was for this I saved him, the traitor!”
“Master, dear master, what is the master?” asked Giulio in great surprise. Partly from Theodore’s reserve of character, partly from the singular want of observation in such matters sometimes shown by men otherwise exceedingly shrewd, he had no idea of his patron’s feelings towards Viola.
Theodore turned on him a look half-indignant, half-imploring. “Go, Giulio,” he said; “go from my presence while yet I can restrain myself. Go, or I shall say that which will ring in your ears forever. I gave my substance, my time, my thought, ay, and freely would I have given my life, to save that boy from his Boom, and now―would to God I had let him rot in the dungeon of St. Angelo!”
“Master, you are giving place to the devil,” said Giulio with sorrowful sternness, drawing nearer and laying his hand on his arm.
“Curse your old-world superstitions!” cried Theodore, roughly shaking off his grasp. “Go! I would be alone.”
“I obey. But, Signor Doctor, the young Count, however he may have offended you, is friendless, penniless, and in great peril. Let me try to find him.”
“No; let the Porcari look to him, if they will. Go!”
Giulio obeyed, and for a perplex. ed and anxious hour listened to Theodore’s agitated footsteps, as he paced up and down above his head.
Then he was summoned once more to his presence. Theodore had regained the outward composure and dignity of bearing he so seldom allowed himself to lose; but he looked pale and stern. “Have you completed your business here?” he asked quietly, and even courteously.
“Yes, Signor Doctor. There is, indeed, but little I can do. There seems no fuel here to be taken hold of by the sacred fire. Men’s hearts are eaten out by sloth and sin and selfishness; there is no earnestness even in error. But God can do all things,” he concluded with a sigh.
“Pack up, then, for we leave this tomorrow at daybreak. Best away from Rome now, at all events; the heat is stifling.”
“And whither next, Signor Doctor?”
“To Venice.”
A flash of pleasure lit up Giulio’s grave features as he responded briefly, “I am glad!” In all the world, Venice was the place whither he most desired to go.
Meanwhile, the stern admonition he had addressed to his patron was becoming every moment more sadly true. Theodore was giving himself up to the power of the spirit of evil, the “Divider,” the “Accuser” Under that malignant spell, the strong love of which his soul was capable was changing into hatred. He could be tender, self-sacrificing, faithful―he could have been all this even unto death―but there are stronger things than death. Treason loosens all bonds. “No friendship,” he assured himself, “could have endured this strain and lived. No; not that of my namesake and ancestor, though his love for David was ‘wonderful.’ Saul’s javelin was easily borne: had David aimed his at him in the dark, I wonder what would have become of the oath of God that was between them. ―Ah, yes; I remember! No doubt I spoke of Viola, hinted my hopes, in that last letter I wrote to him from Montpellier. He kept his secret well that night we met―that night of his arrest. Nigh six months of my life since then worse than lost, toiling and striving for him. No; on second thoughts I cannot go to Venice, to meet my father’s eye, and to tell him all. My dear father! After all, no friend so true as a good father. Between the young and the old there is a great gulf fixed; yet the old care for the young as the young never care for each other, steadfastly and selflessly. Still, no―not now to Venice. His mother, too, is there. I will send Giulio with letters and messages; that will please him, since he evidently desires to go on his own account. But as for me, I will take another way.”
All this passed through the mind of Theodore, not in the form of soliloquy―his nature was too strong and direct for that―but as thought final red-hot in the fire of passion. Wroth with Raymond as he was, “even unto death,” he never dreamed of avenging himself by any overt act. All he would do was to stand aside and leave him alone. But if that meant, as most likely it did mean, leaving him to perish, “His blood be upon his own head,” said Theodore Benedetto.
Half an hour afterward, Giulio opened the door and ushered in a gentleman rather showily attired, and with a kind of bravado in his look and manner which concealed, not very successfully, no small amount of anxiety and uneasiness. “Il Signor Gaetano Benedetto,” he said; and Theodore, much surprised, rose up to welcome his eldest brother.