The Press. — London, England, 1858-12-11 00:00:00

1214 fittraturt. THE THEOLOGY OF BOCCACCIO. Boccwocio can scarcely be pronounced either a very moral or a very religious writer. His opi nions on the fair sex are decidedly lax, and his reverence for Holy Mother Church is by no means up to the orthodox filial mark. It is always, indeed, where there is most dearth of " the decorums" that the racy naivete which gives to his tales their highest zest seems most abundant, while it positively overflows when the chief actor in licentiousness is a priest or a nun. Such being the case, although poets and play wrights—a Chaucer, a Shakespeare, or a Dryden —may be permitted to apply to the Decamerone for a character or a plot, still it would seem rather anomalous when grave and earnest men search its pages for a lesson in theology. That such instances, however, are far from rare will, we think, be freely admitted by those who shall have patience to accompany us to the end of this article. In, we believe, one only of the cents novelle does a theological question—a conversion to Romanism—form the pivot and Gnouement of the plot. Two Florentine merchants, Antonio and Abramo (if we rightly remember) by name, have formed a close friendship, based on sympa thetic characters and joint-stock speculations in silks and woollens. But Antonio is a fervent Catholic ; Abramo a rigid Jew. Their post humous paths, therefore, must necessarily diverge —an oppressive conviction which urges upon the former unremitting efforts to convert his friend. Deaf at first to the pious importunity, Abramo begins at length to waver. He recognizes some weight in this argument—some truth in that. Christianity, after all, does not strike him as half so bad as he had once imagined, and he confesses to a long-standing persuasion that pork is a wholesome and sap►d diet. Thick-coming doubts rack his brain, disturb his rest, disorder his diges tion. He can bear this no longer. A solution must be arrived at. Yes! he will investigate Catholicism at its fountain head—he will go to Rome at once ! Those days were the medieval days—that Papal golden ogc dice whose poetic purity PPG.. Raphaelite; PUgiiliSta, and PUSeyttes so pas sionately pine. Strange to say, however, the mores catholiei of the Eternal City did not strike our friend Antonio under the same light in which they have since presented themselves to Mr. Kenelm Digby. A visit to Rome—a personal inspection of the abuses and iniquities which kept open revel around the pontifical throne— wouid, Antonio felt convinced, undo at once even the ambiguous results so painfully won ; and it was with a heavy heart that he aided his friend to pack up his carpet-bag and charter a rettura fir this fatal journey. Weeks, months elapse without any news of the hproblematical proselyte. At length, however, a ilrried messenger announces his approach ; and, , with steps alternately accelerated by friendship and retarded by foreboding, Antonio hastens forth to meet and greet him. But does he dream ? Can this advancing figure be, indeed, Abram° ? A " Roman collar" clasps his throat ; a close fitting soutane-shaped frock (very much resem bling the orthodox Puseyite garment) clings to his somewhat lanky person ; a boxwood rosary, blessed by the Pope, adorns his neck ; and, as he stretches forth one hand to the grasp of friend ship, he piously brandishes in the other a conse crated tallow candle. " How !" exclaims the enraptured and mystified Antonio. " Art thou, indeed, one of us at last ? But explain. Is Rome all thou couldst hope ? Are my ideas of its depravity exaggerated—false ?" "False !" echoes the convert; "yea of a verity, if, as vain philosophers hold, imperfect truth be falsehood ; for know, my friend, that all thy imagination can paint of the iniquities of Rome falls immeasu rably short of the reality." "Thou speakest in riddles ; or has some special miracle been vouch safed to cancel from thy mind the diabolic dis suasion of so much foulness ?" "It needed no miracle beyond the clear exercise of reason," replied Abram° ; "once arrived at a faint con ception of the ineffable abominations around me, ' Surely,' I said within myself, Sodom and Go morrah were pure as crystal beside this loathsome town ! And yet did not the Lord of Hosts smite and utterly destroy then from the face of the ROsMiftrait THE PRE S S, DECEMBER 11,1858. earth ? Why, then, do his thunders sleep here— unless it be that this Popish creed has found a grace and a favour in his eyes which no con ceivable amount of iniquity and sin can out weary ?' And day by day, my friend, did this view gain new strength within, as new corrup tion revealed itself without. What sickening horror it was that finally achieved my entire conversion, I cannot—l dare not—relate to thee. Let it suffice that that conversion is achieved— in further testimony whereof I bid thee here with to my simple table, there to renew our twice holy friendship over a generous flask of Aleatico and a pork chop." That this, or something akin to this, must be the line of reasoning adopted by those seceders from Protestantism to Catholicism, who take the trouble to reason at all, may fairly enough be pre sumed. At any rate no conscientious eliminative process seems to have any other residual argu ment at all worthy of the name. But it may not unreasonably be urged that the force of this argument, albeit still obvious, is considerably below the standard of Boccaccio's times. The physical aspect of Rome—spite of the present Pope's inconsistent disregard of his predecessor's warning Bull ag,ainst gas illumination—retains, indeed, much of the mediaeval character. The accumulated dirt of ages still imparts a venerable tint to her narrow streets, her mouldering monu ments and sombre palaces ; unctuous and odoriferous Friars, black, white, and brown, still jostle the shrinking passer-by on her scant trottoirs ; ghastly confraternities, in hooded masks, glide mournfully along the darksome alleys ; glittering processions, heavy with gold and drowsy with incense, thread their intermin able way through squalid kneeling crowds ; and miserable shops, far filthier in their exterior and little less demoralizing in their contents than the receptacles of the erst unpurified Ilolywell-street, supply to a populace at once superstitious, bigoted, infidel, and depraved, the congenial food of monkish legends, modern miracles, and dream books for the Papal lottery. But in her moral aspect Rome has, thanks to the irksome surveillance of Protestantism, decidedly improved. The ineffable demoraliza tion which sullied the hierarchical above every other class of her inhabitants, from the days of noccaccto down to the Kerdrmation, is certainly no longer a general characteristic of the Romish Priesthood, however flagrant (and we speak from personal knowledge) in individual instances . Even here, however, quite enough remains whereon to hang the argument, evidently borrowed from Boceaccio's Jew by the modern pervert. A brief glance at some of the considera tions which may fairly be turned to this account will not perhaps be so out of place here as might at first sight be supposed. And, generally speaking, the notorious Euro pean fact that moral light in all its constituents— intellect, progress, national prosperity, wise toleration —reverses, where Rome is taken as a centre, Nature's great law, and diminishes in intensity directly, instead of inversely, as the squares of the distance, must prove, for the reasoning pervert, consolatory and encouraging. Consolatory and encouraging, too, must be the recent recollection that, when outraged humanity protested, with one voice, against that lawless Government, so terribly characterized by Mr. Gladstone as " ignoring the existence of a God," the pervert's " Vicar of Christ " pressed to his heart that Government's directing tyrant, and showered upon him benedictions, as the Church's worthiest and most faithful son ! Was it equally consolatory when, in 1854, the weak-minded and infirm old man who fills the Papal Chair, with the complicity of a few dozen middle-aged gentlemen in petticoats, more or less weak-minded and incapable than himself, deli berately proceeded to revise the revelations of the Almighty,—to contradict the recorded con victions of Rome's own canonized saints, and, approaching their creed still nearer to Marianism —estranging it still further from Christianity— to proclaim, as a new dogma, the Immaculate Conception ? But whatever feelings this blasphemous and open forgery of a codicil to the Saviour's Testa ment may have created, it is pretty certain that the indignation roused through the length and breadth of Europe by the recent Mortara case must prove eminently satisfactory to the "reason ing" pervert. In throe familiar with Rome and pohelritimicaml,utianbtelieleperteutaeln,siaonnds toa ll t llO ( spiritual, wh • iacihio lsm wtedce peculiar conditions of medieval Eur o p e her to erect, instances of this kind can awaken no surprise. That feeling, however, may legitimately wait upon the perusal of a p ph in whi c h the Giornale Officiale di RomaaTaide THE P RESS of the 13th ult.) refers to this disgraceful affair. In this paragraph the universally acknowledged sacredness of that tie which bind s together parnt and child is directly characterized as one of "the " Pagan prejudices of modern society" ! A doctrine like this seems utterly beyond all nerd of comment—the sense of every Christian sect in Europe has, indeed, already appreciated an d condemned it. But it is worthy of remark that, by thus establishing an absolute opposition between the natural and the revealed law of God, Rome is directly falling into that Mani chean heresy which, when the persisting will was backed by the evanescent power, she made the pretext for so many ruthless and sanguinary persecutions ! In the above instances we have looked at recent Roman history from the moral and reli gious points of view. An article in La Press(' of the 20th ult. suggests a cursory glance at her political, or, to speak more particularly, her financial position. For very many years the state of the Roman finances has been notoriously deplorable. But it is only since 1847 that any but a conjectural estimate could be made of the amount of their disorder. On the 20th of November in that year, under the impulse of that wild attempt to reconcile the Popedom and civil liberty which is fresh within the memory of us all, Monsignor (now Cardinal) Morichini, then Minister of Finance, presented to Pius IX. a Report "On the State of the Pontifical Finances ; " whence it appears that, from 1828 up to the date in ques tion, there had been a constant excess of expen diture over income, fluctuating between a mini mum of 168,401 scudi (about 36,0001.) and a maximum of 4,518,0.53 scudi (about 1,060,000!.) Now, under circumstances of this kind. the duty of a State is as clear as that of an individual — while the sacredness of that duty is enhanced in the former case by all the excess of the interests of a few creditors over the interests of a whole people. Let us see now how this duty has been ful filled—how this Government, which pretend' to be the direct earthly representative of Him 'who enjoined as the complement of piety to " sell all and give to the poor "—watches over the welfare of the flock intrusted to its charge. And here we shall content ourselves with simply quoting from our French namesake and contemporary : According to a statistical account published by Cardinal Miles', when Minister, there are in the Roman States more paid . functionaries than soldiers. The support of the various churches for the lest ten years is equal to that of all the other extraordinary expenses in the budget. The Church of Ostia alone stands in the account for seven millions, and that is only a third-rate town. The commission for putting an end to mendicity has swal• lowed up, since 1827, no less than forty millions. This would be a trifle, if the commission had only shown some signs of existence. All that is known of it, how ever, is, that the cardinal-president had for his share of the alms 60,000 f. a year. Wbat, then, has become of all the millions, since any one who has spent hat one hour in the Eternal City must be satisfied that it is the Eldorado of mendicity ? The ni.)st probable supposition is that a part of the same which leave the Pontifical Treasury wander awat from their proper destination , and the same is, unfortunately, too much the case with those which ought to find their way into it. The mon. main property, which represents a value of more than 500 millions, pays to the State neither registration not legacy dues. The Treasury does not under this head lose less than one million a year. M. Rossi, during his short Ministry, obtained a promise, in order to partlY indemnify the Government for this loss, that the clergy should pay down at once a sum of twenty millions, and that such property should thereafter be exempt from any charges. This promise was among the many which the clergy forgot at the period of the flight to Gaeta, and the estates in question continue to increase about two millions a year. The palaces of the Roman princes, in the rating for taxes, are set down at the most paltry sum, and a great number of prope rti es --estimated is 1. , 51 at 90 m i llions—escape taxation altogether. The collection of even the smallest sums entails on the State enormous expenses, and the sources of public revenue which are elsewhere profitable are in the Roman. States next to nothing. The salt and tobacco monopolies, the . clamps and registration of journals, produce but ver) trifling sums. The alrninistration of the domanial pro perties pay 169,250 f. into the State Treasury, wh• l3, however, pays for that sum not less than t'40,527f., being a loss to the Holy See of 471;277r. There is an alum mine -*bleb of itself is worth its weight in gold. It brings to the State 64,293 f., and the salaries of the per' iiillibk N.