The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-07-18 00:00:00

CONDITION OF THE PAPAL STATES

(From the Rev. Hobart Seymour's Pilgrimage to Rome.)

IDOLATROUS WORSHIP,

At the top of this magnificent mass of white marble is the
front of the church : and it was on this spot I stood to witness
"the blessing of the most holy Bambino." It was one of those
sites once witnessed can never be effaced ; there on the mind it
must remain ineffably graven for ever. The elevation of this
spot was such as to command a view of a large portion of the
space and ascent of the Capitol ; and further below all the wide
place Or street by which it is approached. together with the long
flight of steps ascending to the church : the whole were thronged
to excess. The masses of the people were wedged together as
closely as possible, presenting to the eye one compact body of
living things from the Capitol above, down the slope, to the
space below, and then up the marble steps to the church.
There could not he less than five thousand persons, every head
uncovered, and every face upturned, gazing intently upon this
scene in front of the church.
And such a scene 1 _

There, Wt they height of an hundred and twenty-four steps
above the people—there stood the priests in their splendid
robes. On one side were arranged about forty monks : on the
other hand about as many more : and clothed in their sombre
dresses and waving their blazing torches in their hands, they
presented a scene of the most striking appearance. In the
midst were the more immediate officials, holding aloft their gi-
gantic torches : and in the centre of these again were the priests,
surrounding the High Priest, who held the little image—the
Bambino, in his hand. At least one hundred torches, each in
the hand of an ecclesiastic, glittered and flamed around. The
monks stood in their places; the ecclesiastics gathered together;
the incense was waved and enwrapped all for a moment in its
clouds and its perfume; the military band filled the whole
place with a crash of music, and the soldiers of the guard pre-
sented arms, as the Chief Priest lifted the little image—slowly
lifting the Bambino, rising it above his head. In an instant, as
if the Eternal Jehovah was visibly present in the image, among
the vast multitude gazing from far beneath, every head was un-
covered before it, and every knee was bent to it, and almost
every living soul was prostrate before it. He raised it slowly a
second time; he raised in the same manner only more slowly
the third time; and the muttered words of prayer ascended from
the vast multitude, and told how deeply and universally rooted
among the people is this worship of the Bambino. I felt as if
my blood was frozen within me at so awful a spectacle.

THE ADORATION OF THE CROSS.
The Cardinal and his assistants left the altar, and placed the
cross on a cushion, on the floor of the chapel, a few paces from
the steps of the altar, and retired.
And here the ceremony commenced indeed. Two or three
Cardinals approached the Pope, they stripped off his splendid
robes, they removed his glittering mitre, they took off his em
broidered shoes, they laid aside his spangled gloves, till he stood
before his throne without one emblem of his royal or papal of-
fice. There stood the old man bareheaded and bare-footed, and
stripped till he seemed to retain little else than a loose white
dressing-gown, the dress of a monk of Camaldoli. There he
stood, not alone, as if the act were a voluntary humiliation, but
in the hands of the Cardinals, who, intending to help him and
uphold him, seemed to be his guards to force and compel him.
There the old man, no longer looking like a Pope, descended
from the throne and seemed like one led away to be punished,
or to do penance. I could not help thinking the old man was,
in a great measure an unwilling actor in this scene; there was
much uneasiness in his manner; there was dissatisfaction in
his face; and his whole appearance was that of a man who was
obliged to act against his conscience, in complying with a cus-
tom of the Church.

Having conducted the Pope to the end of the chapel, they
turned and faced the cross, which lay on the floor near the steps
of the altar. There they made him kneel and adore it. They
raised him, and conducting him some two or three paces nearer,
they again made him kneel a second time and adore the cross.
Then again they raised him, and leading him nearer still, they
again the third time made him kneel and adore the cross.
Here at the cross they raised him, and then again he knelt,
then rose again and then knelt again. Prostrate before it—on
knees and hands, he kissed it, and, according to custom, left an
hundred scudi of gold as an offering beside it. He was after-
wards conducted to his throne and robed, while the most ex-
quisite music from the choir accompanied the whole ceremony.
When this is completed by the Pope, the same act is per-
formed by each of the Cardinals, all without shoes, adoring and
kissing the cross. These are followed by the bishops, heads of
orders, &c., all-adoring it in like manner, and all making to it
an offering of money.
The Deacons then spread the cloth on the altar, light the can-
dles, and reverently place the cross, no longer on the floor, but
on the altar amidst the candlesticks.
Such is—THE ADORATION OF THE CROSS :—An act of wor-
ship that moved me intensely, infinitely more than anything I
had witnessed at Rome. It was an act the most solemn and
impressive, and bore every characteristic of IDOLATRY.

AN ECCLESIASTIC NONPLUSSED.

I went, accompanied by many others, into the grotto of sub-
terranean chapels, which constitute the vaults on which St.
Peter's is built. We were conducted by the Sacristan to the
altar, which is said to contain the bodies of the two martyred
Apostles. It is directly under the great high altar of the upper
church; and there in the darkness of that subterranean chapel,
these two Apostles were said to sleep their sleep of death. The
Sacristan with much reverence called our attention to the spot,
and I asked him whether it was indeed certain—whether, inas-
much as learned antiquarians have doubted, and even denied it,
it had ever been clearly ascertained by ocular search, that the
remains of St. Peter and St. Paul were indeed deposited there.
He replied that there was no doubt of the fact, and that they
certainly were there. My wife reminded him that the heads of
St. Peter and St. Paul were said to be in the church of St. John
of Lateran, and that we had seen them exhibited there in pub-
lic; and she asked how they could also be in St. Peter's. He
replied that it was indeed very true, that the heads of the Apos-
tles were at St. John's, but that the bodies were at St. Peters.
My wife again reminded him, that in some other churches we
had seen the arms and legs of these Apostles ; and suggested
that they could not, without unnatural multiplication be also in
St. Peter's. He replied that it was very true that the arms and
legs, &c., were in other churches; but that the bodies were cer-
tainly at St. Peter's where we now stood. I then took occasion
myself to ask, whether the whole bodies, without the heads,
arms, and legs, were there, for that I had seen some of the ribs,
shoulders, vertebrae, were exhibited in other churches. He an-
swered still that the bodies were beneath the altar, beside which
we were then standing. I suggested to him that there could
only be some parts or portions of the bodies, as other parts and
portions were claimed elsewhere. He admitted in reply that
such was the case, and that it was not the bodies, but only
some fractions of the bodies, that were buried beneath St.
Peter's 1 I then again asked whether it was possible to see
them, and whether any one had searched and found them,—an
easy matter it really contained in that altar, and an easy way
of confuting all gainsayers. I placed my hand on the altar and
repeated my question, in a manner free from mere scepticism
or irreverence; and he replied that, though they had searched
for them yet they had never found them, because they were bu-
ried so deep—too deep to find them. They were "molto pro-
rondo," very deep in the earth ! 1 thought the difficulty of
finding them could be more easily solved, by supposing their
absence,—that they had never been there. This conversation
passed in the presence of at least a dozen persons, and it shows
how very slender are the claims to authenticity, on the part of
some of their most valued relics.

THE JESUITS.—Wide as the poles apart must ever be
the Jesuits and all bible societies. But against thrones as
well as bibles are hurled the Jesuits' denunciations, for
" the whole school of theologians, and ecclesiastical

yers," say they, " n4aintain, and it is a thing most cer
Lain, and a matter of faith, that every Christian prince, if
he has manifestly departed from the Catholic religion, and
has wished to turn others from it, is immediately divested
of all power and dignity, and all his subjects are free from
every obligation of the oath of allegiance, and they may
and they must drive such a man from the sovereignty of
Christian men as an apostate; a heretic, a deserter of the
Lord, an alien and enemy to his country." And all this
was written in direct application to our Queen, and then
she is told, from the same authority, that she has no na-
tural right to the throne, as she and we suppose she has,
but that in fact she has usurped it, the free will and ordi-
nation of the people giving the only right to it. When a
king was assassinated, " splendid boldness of soul," cried
a Jesuit, " memorable exploit." And yet a nobleman, a
few weeks since, publicly asserted that the Jesuits were
lovers of order, and stedfast supporters of thrones; he
should read the Jesuit Mariana's works, and especially the
chapter which treats of the speediest and safest way of
getting rid of an adversary. " What matters it," he asks,
whether you kill by the sword or by poison ? especially
as treachery and fraud are conceded in the faculty of ac-
tion." Like all ascetics the Jesuits speak contemptuously
of women ; others had done this before their time, and
enough had been said to satisfy any women-haters on this
matter - but the founder of the Jesuits would not be sa-
tisfied till he had drawn this comparison between women
and the devil, " our enemy the devil imitates the nature
and'manner of woman, as to her weakness and froward-
ness, for as a woman quarrelling with her husband, &c.,
thus the devil." And yet this is the man who is said to
have received thirty visits from the Virgin, and of whom
" a council of Spanish ecclesiastics of Tarragona declared
that " the Holy Virgin in the sanctuary of Montserrat,
conceived to, the sacred Ignatius, and having embraced
him in her bosom, opened and imparted to him the bowels
of her mercy ; and in such a manner, being enveloped in,
thowomb, she cherished him, and fed him with the food
of heaven, and filled him with her divine spirit."-9, The
.Tesuits,7 Bentley's Miscellany.