ST. FRANCIS AND FATHER MATHEW.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVIII, Issue 10, 4 July 1890, Page 13

ST. FRANCIS AND FATHER MATHEW.

Mr. Denny Lank'b speech at the laying of the corner-stone of the Father Mathew Memorial Church at (Jork on Tuesday, May 6, has been noted and eulogised <>s the most eloquent deliveied on such an occasion for many a day ia Ireland. The Bishop of the diocese, Mo3t Rev. Doctor O'CalUghan, and a large number of the clergy and laity of the city and county were present. Mr. Lane spoke in support of a resolution congratulating the Capuchin Fathers on the event of the day. He said : — The resolution which you have heard has joined together in a triple bond three subjects— the Order of St. Francis, his faithful disciple, Theobald Matnew, and the architectural work which thelatter commenced, and which it will be our privilege to finish. I will ask you to unroll the chart of the centuries, and to go back with ma for 700 veara, to the year 1190— say not long after the Norman invader set foot upon our shores. I will also ask you to carry your thoughts across sea and land to that Old Town of Assisium. Well, this day 700 years ago you might in the streets— streets even then old and decorated with the ruins of Pagan temple3 — you might have seen a handsome boy on whose brow only eight summers had shown as he played in the public placas ; this boy was Giovanni Bernardiui. His father waa a wealthy merchant, who had travelled much in France and who had brought back to Italy the early French tongue then beginning, like the othsr romance languages, to evolve itself from the more classical Latin. The boy, as we say, rapidly picked up this language from his father, and as he was a pet with his townsmen h<? got the pet-name of Francesco, or Franceschino, meaning " the little Frenchman." His old name of John was forgotten, and now, for the first time, we bear that name of Francis, which was borne by so many Baints, and which 90 many a duke, a king, and an emperor was proud to r-Biume, (applause). The handsome boy grew up into a handsome young man, and became skilful in all the knightly exercises of the time. Kemember, we are in the era of the Crusades, when the most popular of the saints were like tit. Georg3 and St. Maurice— knights first and saints afteiwarde. Then were men inspired with that spirit of chivalry, which has been described by the greatest genius our county, perhaps our country, ever produced—" that chastity ot honour which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired coura'ga while it mitigated ferocity." The knight roamed through the world to succor the week, to set the captive free, ready with strong sword to cleave the monßters and giants when he could fiad them, and wearing in hi 3 helmet the colours ot the fair lady to whom he had plighted hfs troth. The knight was essentially a mounted soldier — rhe Roman " eques," and the ''chevalier "of later limes implied a horseman. When we think of a knigbt of old we always picture to ourselves an armoured warrior in the saddle, and such was the young Francis. To such a "cavalier" his horse waa his most valuable chattel— his almost essential possession, and yet we he tr that this young Francis sold the very horse that bore him, his companion amid the clash of spears, and for what? Listen and thiuk of it. He sold him that he might give the price to a poor priest who was struggling to repair his ruined chapel, just as the tfnars Minor, his disciples, are to-day striving to do, complete this consecrated spot where we are assembled (applause). Seven centuries have passed away, and history rcpeits ithelf. When Francis became a saint he did not cease to be a knieht. He still wandered m quest of adventure to right or wrong, to succour the distressed, to bet his lance in rest against tha monsters of cruelty and sin. He, too, selected his lady, and wore her colours m his cap. But the lady-love he hnd chosen was one whom ne called " his ladie poverty " ; and in the pictorial history of St. Francis no subject is more frequently portrayed than tLut of St. Francis embracing poverty ; no fair maiden robed in silk and decked with pearls and gold, but a woman, poor and old, ragged and emaciated, wearing no pearls except the tears that trembled in her eyelids, no ornament save that silver coronal that age had plaited on her brow (applause). What was the spiritual and moral work which Si. FraDcis wrought it is for others to tell, but I may refer to one material work with which tne spirit of St. Francis and St. Dominic was the inspiring element. We must remember that when Francis founded the Order of the Friais Minor the world was on the threshold of the thirteenth century. The classical architecture had passed away. Beautiful ot its kind it was, but it was cold, severe, almost mathematical, and somewhat monotonous. Tae Greeks had not got beyond the straight lintel which they imposed on the architecture of their colonnades. The Romans invented the circular arch, and the Romanesque architects wonderfully developed this style, adding t3 it more light and shade, more variety, more of the complexity of nature. But it remained for this great thirteenth century, if not exactly to invent, to develop that wonderful proauct of human art, the aichitecture of the pointed arch, contemptuously called Gothic, although the Gotns had pa&sed out ot the history of iiurope ceu tunes before it was invented. The name was uncrue as the slight was undeserved. Perhaps the earliest example in Italy still stands at Assisium, constructed probably under the eye of Francis or his immediate successors. The historian of architecture has said that from the time of Pharaoh, not in the age of Phidias, not in Imperial Rome did aichitecture show such a marvellous development aB in the glorious reriod of the thirteenth century. The age of faith, of Francis and of Dominic, has left its lxcotds in stone, never since excelled, perhaps never equalled. The era cf the Crusades has left imperishable monuments ot its faith throughout Western Europe, and the woik in whicn we are now engaged is, by its style, a lineal descendant cf the ait if the thirteenth century. Dyn»aties and kingdoms have passed away. Lite is sbort, but art is stioug. I have sat in a French cathedral of the thirteenth century as the warm rays of the sunset still streamed through tho western windows, and waited until the rosy tints had faded into gray ; 1 have watched until the lighted tapers cast their feeble gleam through the gloom of the groined arches, and waited again until the silver moonlight filtered through traceried windows of the eastern apse, and I have thought could any other architecture have so elevated the thoughts above the earth, could iLe biuoborn stonu have been molded into plastic forms of greater

beauty than those which I saw in the mellowed light that faded from gloom to silver. Miny of you, no doubt, saw that beautiful picture, by a French artist, which represents the dying St. Francis borni on a litter by his monks that he may once more lay his eyes on his beloved Assisium. He wa9 then but forty-four yeara old.

Theobald Mathew, although previously engaged in many other good works, was 4S years old before he began his greatest task— a proof that one may never be too old to enter on a great enterprise. To that great crusade he brought the same knightly spirit as St. Francis. As a knighterrant he went forth to a world larger than Sr. Francis dreamt of in his day ; neither Columbus nor Vasco de Gama bad spread their sails across the deep. He went forth to help the opprebsad, to liberate the captive of his own vices, to spread his shield over the defenceless, with hia sword to smite a monster worse than msditeral romance ever dreamed of, to scatter the foul offspring if unrestrained self-indulgence. He, too, selected his lady love, and from the Choir of the Virtues he chose that lady — Temperance, to whom he had plighted his troth. As in the mystical marriage of St. Katherine, he placad the ring on her finger, binding them together until death did them part — " part" I was about to say, but I should have eaid unite until death bound them in a closer, a stricter, an indissoluble, an eternal union. (Applause.} I have endeavoured to weave together the three thoughts which the resolution has suggested to me — St. BVancis, Theobald Mathew, and this building, consecrated first, to God and then dedicated to the memory of two great men — one the Apostle of the thirteenth and the other the Apostle of the nineteenth century. That same lofty spirit which elevates the minds of men abo^e things earthly, found its expression in an architecture which raised the vaulted arch and the traceried window and noble towers of the mediaeval cathedral. That spirit which denied itself in order that it mignt give to God's house and God's poor — let us hope that it is not yet extinct amongst us, Indeed, when I think what my poor coantry has done even within my own time in erecting churches and fchools and convents and refuges for the poor, I feel we are not without a little of that noble prodigality which inspired thope bygone ages. I look into those ages, my mind swims back against the stream of time, and I see in the street of Assisi a poor priest who begs for aid to restore his ruined chapel ; beside him a rich and selfish chafferer, who denieß him, but straightway up rides a gallant knight whose purse is empty. He springs from his saddle, and sells his well tried steed to the man of ducats and pours the price into the lap of the poor mendicant priest. Which of these two will you imitate — the miser wilh his ducats or the cavalier without his steed ? It is for you to decide. I think I may decide for you. I have been reminded that I stand beneath a window wnich was erected to commemorate Daniel O'Connell, the Liberator of his country, who struck off from the limbs of the Irish people the last fetters of the penal laws. At the opposite end of the church we are completing a memorial to another liberator who emancipated our people from a worse bondage, and bent as under the links of a chain that rusted into their very hearts. (Applause.) I do not doubt that Irishmen will do what Irishmen have done before, and thu every day we shall see, lik^s a tree stretching up towards the skies, this memorial growing heavenward dedicated to God under the invocation of St. Francis and in loving memory of Theobald Mathew. (Applause.)