Current Topics.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 10, 7 March 1901, Page 1

Current Topics.

Valery divides historical error into two kinds. 'That which precedes truth,' says he, 'is only an ignorance of it ; that which follows is a hatred of it.' The former class of historical heterodoxy is committed by an over-enthusiastic writer in the course of a controversy in the Westport Times on certain books, the presence of which on the shelves of the local public library was objected to as an insult to the faith and feelings of Catholics. The writer referred to enlivens the columns of the Westport Times with the following charming bit of historical fiction -.—. — Pope Clement VIII. received no leßß a total than 300,000 crowns under the rubric of quitrente or penalties for crime, from the wickedest man on record — Francesco Cenci. No fiction is half bo damaging 1 to the doings of the Papacy or half so hideous aa the undeniable historical facts connected with the Cencis. We notice this statement partly because it has given annoyance to many Catholics on the West Coast, partly because it is a case in which ' the insignificance of the accuser is lost in the magnitude of the accusation.' The writer referred to perpetrates his grim historic joke in apparently perfect simplicity and in a state of impressive earnestness and indignant good faith. He vouchsafes the information that the ' undeniable historical facts ' to which he so darkly alludes are to be found in the Encyclopaedia Bvitannxca. We now understand why the late Oliver Wendell Holmes poked such merciless sarcasm at the witless wights whose sole fount of historical information is a mere encyclopaedia — the perusal of which has about as much relation to systematised historical knowledge as the reading of old almanacs has to the study of meted ology. The edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica from which our over-positive West Coast triend professes to draw his information must be a very old and frowsy one indeed — one of those that were written at a period when its publishers deemed it just to entrust the treatment of Catholic subjects to tenth-rate Protestant writers whose sole qualification for the work was, not their historical lore, but a capacity for putting forward an invariably hostile view with much needless heat and vapid declamation. The only editions before us are the two last — the eighth and the ninth. The eighth is a sufficiently reckless sinner in this respect. But its editors had sufficient conscience left to withdraw the wretched fairy tale quoted above regarding the 300,000 crowns. There is, moreover, nothing in it which reflects directly on the personal character of Clement VIII. In the ninth edition the story of the wretched Cencis is for the first time brought pretty closely into line with historical truth, and a cordial tribute is paid to the virtues of the saintly Pontiff whom the befogged writer in the Westport Times holds up to public odium on the authority of * undeniable historical facts ' which are merely undeniable historical fables.

SENTIMENTAL NONSENSE.

\ thick web of sentimental nonsense has seen spun by one or two wild-eyed poets and by the very small fry of reputed ' historians ' about the story of the Cencjs, and especially about that of Beatrice Cenci. The eighth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (in its article, ' Cenci ') furnishes a melancholy example of how ' popular ' history is manufactured, like cotton prints and tinned tacks, to suit a particular market.

A FABLE FROM THE WEST COAST.

It contains a few strands of truth, just as imported shoddy contains a few fibres of honest wool. Thus, it tells how Francesco Cenci, a Roman noble, was a man of very wicked private life ; that he treated his second wife (who was childless) and the children of his first wife with great harshness and even cruelty ; that he had illicit relations with his daughter Beatrice, who — strangely enough — is made the heroine of the little romance ; that Francesco was most cruelly murdered at a country house (Petrella) to which he had retired in the summer of 1598; and that, after the judicial proceedings customary to the time, his wife, his daughter Beatrice, and one of his sons were executed in Rome in 1599 for complicity in his murder. So much of the story is faithful and true. But the small historian of the eighth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica tricks out these grains of fact with the glittering gewgaws of his perfervid fancy. Thus, we are told that Beatrice Cenci was a maiden of ' surpassing beauty,' c formed to adorn and be admired'; (2) that she was 'gentle' and 'noble-minded'; (3) that Francesco's wife alone instigated the assassination of her husband; (4) that Shelley 'used a poet's license in implicating Beatrice unjustly in the guilt of her family ' ; that Guido Reni painted a portrait of ' the beautiful, the nobleminded, the ill-fated Beatrice Cenci' 'just before her execution ' ; and a charming variety of other gaudy scraps of ficton that it is not necessary to catalogue here.

CFTTINO AT THE lACTS.

There lies a wise appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober. And a like recourse may be lad from the rabid Encyclopaedia Britannica of its uncritical and hysterical days to the same publication in its later and soberer moods, when it made a conscious effort to write history sanely. Practically all the romance that surrounded the story of Beatrice Cenci in the eighth edition is swept away in the ninth. It has been scattered to the four winds of heaven by Moroni in his Dizionario di Erudizione Storico-Ecclesiastica (vol. xiv., pp. 50-51); by Rohrbacher {Histoire Universelle de I'Eglise Catholique, vol. xii) ; by Muratori ; by Bertolotti's painstakinginvestigations, the results of which appear in his Beatrice Cenci c la sna Famiglia (published in 1577) ; and by an able article on the subject in the Edinburgh Review for January, 1879.

Briefly: (i) Beatrice Cenci, instead of being so intolerably beautiful, had a rather plain face — one of the kind on which Kinglakc used to waste such an unconscionable amount ot syrripathy. (2 ) Guido Reni never painted a portrait of her, either just before her execution, or at any other time, for the simple reason that he did not come to Rome till nine years after her death. The picture which is traditionally associated with her name is not, nor was it ever intended to be, a counterfeit presentment of her, but of some other mayden that was far more fayre to see. (3) Beatrice was a vicious creature, led an immoral life, and (as the Encyclopedia Britannica, and all competent authorities agree) gave herself up to 'shameless depravity.' Her step-mother and the brother who were executed with her were also persons of bad character and evil life. (4) So far from being ' unjustly ' implicated in the unnatural and brutal murder of her father, Beatrice was up to the eyebrows in the plot, was one of its chief instigators, and is known in history as ' the fair parricide.' (5) Beatrice and her partners in guilt

received a fair ti ial, in accordance with the judicial customs of the time. They were allowed counsel — and the most learned counsel at that— to plead in their defence, a right which was not accorded to accused persons in British courts of law till the nineteenth century was far advanced. The punishment of the Cenci murderers (beheading, etc.) was less severe than was customary under Knglish law at that peiiod. A century after the execution of the Cencis, Knglish women who murdered their husbands were adjudged guilty of petty tieason and were oUIi.CIH.t-o! IU l"_ LuifH-li clllVO. As 1,1 Lt. rt~) till. LIUH. of CiiC eighteenth century the horrible torture known as the picket was in lull lorce as a recognised otticial punishment in the British army. In 170.7-98 this, together with the newly-devised torture of the pitch-cap, was practised on a wholesale scale, and without the formality of judicial procedure, upon the unfortunate Irish peasantry for the purpose of goading them into insurrection. As late as the year 1809 no fewer than six hundred oilenres were punishable by hanging under British law — from pocket-picking, killing a hare, forgery, and coining up to wilful murder. During the hunger troubles of 18 16 children of ten years of age were slowly strangled to death by the common hangman for peccadilloes for which they would nowadays be, at worst, let off with a caution. And for long after that date — to use the words of Horace Walpole — the country was 'one great shambles,' aud the people (says Erskine May) 'were brutalised by the hideous spectacle of public executions.' Those who have tears to shed for human woe can, in all reason, find abundant subjects to bestow them upon without having to go so far back as the year of grace 1599. And all this maudlin sympathy over such hideous and unnatural crimes as those of the Cencis reminds one of the blubbering and foul-spoken Sterne shedding salt tears over the carcase of a worthless mule.

A. ( MA MNY ON CLtMtNI \ I 1 1 .

As regards the character of Pope Clement VIII., history has built around it a rampart which is proof against popgun attacks such as are volleyed olt in the columns ot country papers. The Emvilopa'dia Britamiica, even in its latest edition, shows its fangs to Catholics here and there by distorting, or by^uing a false coloring to, the tacts of personal or ecclesiastKTil history. Yet it admits that the pontificate of Clement VIII. was an ' exemplary ' one. ' Clement,' it says, • was an able ruler and a sagacious state-man. 1 And again : 'He died in Maich, 1605, leaving a hi^h character for prudence, munificence, and capacity for business.' The only Blame that it attaches to his memory is the execution of the erratic filar,i lar, (uord inn Bruno. And Bruno was executed, not merely fur hi-, <j<-occntnc theories but — as a perusal of his trial show-,-- lor "iion, criipe-- against the existing laws of the State. X irk(_, the CiL'iman Protestant hi'-toi lan, cannot be accused ot ary K.^niny towaul-, the PanaC} or the Catho'ic Chun h. lie 1-, on the contra' \ , muJi yuen to ih it contemptible if.im ot 1 ilumiv whit'i < opm-ils in halting, suggesting, or dii(-Ltl\ imputing '•i i;-i.' 1 01 unworthy motives tor actions whose intunsiL Luiodutss is beyond the reach of doubt or cavil. Yet, after detailing the extraoidinary labois ot th.it great Pontiit, he sa\s (//, s/.r-y of the Popa, vol. 11., pp. 44-5, Bohn) .—. — Nur would ho Clement ' permit him«elt to incur the blame of the pli^rhte-<t in L'litfenee in lm spiritual duties Bamnius received his confe^Mon every e\enin;> . lie a lebrated Ma^-s every morning at noon. 'J wclve poor men dined daily in the^ame room with himself, at lea=~t during the early year-i of hi-* pontificate, and the pleasures of the table were in lm casu altogether out of the iiuestion. Un Fridays an 1 Saturdays moieover, he fa^ttd. Wheu he hal labored earnestly through the week, his recreation on huuday was 10 send for certain pious monks or for the Fathers of the Vallicella, and hold divour-ie with them on the more profound questions of divinity. The reputation for virtue, piety, and an exemplary hfe that he had always enjoyed, was rai.-ed to an extraordinary degree by Buch moded oi proceeding. On the same page the noted German Protestant author says that ' Clement VI II. conducted himself on all occasions with enlightened deliberation,' and that ' he desired that nothing should be perceived in him but was becoming in itself and consonant with the idea of a good, pious, and wise man.'

It may be remarked that the infliction of monetary penalties for crime is part of the judicial system in every civilised country in the woild. Why it should be made to appear a deordinalion in the case ot Clement VIII.- — who was also a temporal King — '-imply passes our comprehension. The story of the 300, 000 crowns alleged to have been received by Clement VII I. ai 'quitrents or penalties for crime' probably arose from the fact that in a.d. iOoo — two years after the murder of Francesco Cenci — Clement distributed this precise sum among 1 the poor (Rohrbachcr, vol. xn., p. 7 He rescued one of the Cenci m udent, whose life was not corrupt, had her honorably married, and compelled her father to provide her with a suitable dowry. 11 is respect lor law is referred to in terms of warm commendation by Rmke (11. , 45). He was the trrror of evil-doci s ot l\ci y degree, and spared not even the powerful families of the Cuici, the Santacroce, and the Massimi, when legal proof 01 t'lur 01 imes was available. ' The strength of the I'apacy :ts<.lf,' s,i\s Rmke (v., 46), ' was immeasurably

increased ' by his personal virtues and by his fair and faithful and unselfish administration of his high office. And this is the man whose fair memory we are called upon to execrate out of mistaken sympathy for a little knot of wretched assassins of immoral life who met with their deserts over three hundred years ago. i

THF. CONKESSIONU

The Rev. Dr. Horton has probably the usual niimhfr nf hrqin-rf>!lc \l .* they appear to be bulged out with nightmare views and scr.rcd npp;chi_n-,iou-, of wliaL he is pleased to term the ' evils ' of ' Romanism.' Under the stress of one of those attacks of no-Popery hysteria to which he has been subject with painful frequency of late years, he lectured recently on the confessional. His ungentle discourse reminds one of tha parody that was published some years ago by the Glasgow Herald, with profound apologies to the shade of Tommy Moore : There was a little man, And he had a little soul And he said : Little soul, let ua try, try, try, If it isn't in our reach To get up a little speech, Just between little you and little I, I, I.

Ordinary mortals are content to hold fast by the oldfashioned belief that ignorance of a subject is a bar to its proper treatment in pamphlet, book, sermon, or lecture. But Dr. Horton is no ordinary mortal. He evidently regards complete ignorance as the best qualification for dealing with a subject. The good little man in his little speech naively confessed that he had no practical experience of confession. He likewise pleaded ignorance of any theoretical acquaintance therewith, serenely assuring his hearers that he had never read any Catholic manaal on the subject, 'and if God gives me the grace,' he piously added, ' I never will.' And with this scant mental equipment he launched forth in the style of the Slattery impostors on the sacred tribunal of penance, with a wealth of amazing blunders that render his previous confession of ignorance of his subject absurdly superfluous. His published lecture reminds one of what the chalk says in Kipling's tale : ' The blackboard told all I knew, and very much that I did not.' All the polemical Doctor knew is stated in the one word : Nothing.

Following the example of the fradulent and sensational adventurers referred to above, Dr. Horton attacks the confessional as bjing inimical to the virtue ot purity. His statement has been repeated in the columns of a small religious weekly published in New Zealand. Happily, we are able to put the gross and unsupported assertion to the test. There is probably no country in the world where more frequent use is made of the confessional than in Ireland. On the theory of Dr. Horton and his colonial echo, Ireland should therefore present to the rest of the astonished world a spectacle of unexampled moral degradation. We will take the statistics of illegitimacy. These are, according to Dr. Leffingwell, a good test of the morality of a people living in the same country, under the same laws and customs, and with the same methods of collecting statistics. ' The Registrar-General's Reports for IS9S for the United Kingdom, 5 says a recent and timely C.T.S. learl- 1, ' are open before us as we write ; and from them we gather that the proportion of the illegitimate births for England is 42 per 1000 ; for Scotland, 6.8 per cent.; for Ireland, 2.7 per cent. Let it be noted that Ireland, where, assuredly, the confessional has full sway, stands in a noble pre-eminence, and that Scotland, the type of unswerving and unadulterated Protestantism, comes lowest on the list.'

But this is not all. Ulster is the most Protestant province of the Green Isle, its non-Catholic population being 1 52 per cent, of the the total, as against 14 per cent, in Leinster, 6 per cent, in Munster, and 5 per cent, in Connaught. The Registrar-General's returns give Ulster 37 per cent, of illegitimate to total births; Leinster, 26 ; Munster, 24; and Connaught, the most Catholic province in Ireland, only o"6. But the most significant fact of all is this : that in Ulster the percentage of illegitimate births rises with the increase of the Protestant population and falls with the increase of the Catholic population in the various counties of the province. Returns from the separate counties have not bee^i published since 1891. The following table is compiled by us from the statistics of that year : —

In the first five counties mentioned above, the people who go to confession predominate; in the remaining four, nonCatholics. In the five counties in which the Catholics are in a majority the rate of illegitimacy, according to the census returns of 1891, was 4/9 per cent. In the four counties in which non-Catholics predominate the rate is 10*4 per cent. These figures will take a good deal of strenuous explanation The noted Presbyterian clergyman, Dr. Watson, (better known by his pen-name, ' I<iij MacLarcn ') said to f»n American interviewer a few years ago that among the admirable qualities of the Irish people ' is that moral purity which is one of the glories of the Catholic Church in Ireland.' And the Times of November 16, 1572, reports that virulent enemy of Irish Catholics, James Anthony Froude, as having said in the course of his fifth lecture in New York : ' In the last hundred years, at least, impurity has been almost unknown in Ireland. This absence of vulgar crime and this exceptional delicacy and modesty of character were due, to their everlasting honor, to the influence of the Catholic clergy,'

THE PETTICOAT CAMPAIGN.

The following cable message appeared in the daily papers of last Friday : — ' In the House of Commons Mr Brodrick stated that the Boer women detained in British camps, whose husbands were on commando, were on reduced rations, but that the other women were on full rations.' It is scarcely necessary to point out the lurid significance of this callously brutal declaration of war policy. In circumstances such as those referred to by Mr Brodrick, the rations for each family are served out to its head — in this case the Boer vrouw or house-mother. Boer women, therefore, and their families — daughters included — after having been compelled to witness the wholesale burning of their homes, and the looting or destruction of their property, are subjected to systematic, deliberate, and unnecessary starvation in the midst of military camps scattered over wide areas of South Africa. Briefly and in plain terms, these hapless Boer females, whose husbands, brothers or sons are out on commando are practically placed between the alternatives of slow starvation or selling themselves to degradation and infamy. That is just what it comes to. In all the history of what is termed — too often by courtesy

— • civilised ' warfare, we have never stumbled across a more ■cool and calculating piece of villany than is exposed in this openly avowed campaign of starvation against helpless and unoffending women and girls. War is a rough and evil game. It often compels a resort to stern repressive measures. But this woman-hunling and womin-starving cannot be justified by any plea of military necessity or even of political policy. Another evil feature of this tad business is this : — That the newspapers wiiicli piciceu llic quivering ethe r \v> f h «hr!ll rries of indienation at the alleged flogging of a Kaffir by a Boer have not one word ot protest — nor even of comment on this new and shocking phase of military barbarism. There was a time when the honor of a British officer was something to swear by. The wearers of the gold lace were, in this respect, an example to their men. But in the later phases of this farcical War of the Thousand Surrenders, so much of military honor as is meant for everyday use seems to have centred chiefly in the rank and file. From the ranks, at least — and especially from the ranks of the colonial troops — there has come many a. manly protest against the petticoat campaign into which the war, on the British side, has of late degenerated.

It was an evil day for the honor and fair fame of the British army when its officers in South Africa began to devote to the slow torture of helpless females the brain power which was insufficient to cope successfully with a few armed farmers in the field. Conquered peoples are slow to forgive or forget a policy of persecution or of outrage against their women. The brutalities of the Orange yeomnnry, of the Hessians, and of the ' Ancient Britons 'in Ireland in 1797-9 are still to d w'l^w ' l^ burning indignation by thousands of firesides in Leinster and Ulster. And the story of the burning farmsteads of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, and of the systematic starvation of Boer women in British camps will, in all probability, make many a pulse quicken and many an eye flash in Boer homesteads in South Africa in a hundred years to come. Quite apart from its moral and humanitarian aspects, such treatment of women and children is distinctly bad policy. This capitalists' war has brought many an evil in its train. But not the least of these is the enduring legacy of undying racial hate which for generations to come will be a thorn in the side of British administration in South Africa.

(Juunty Cavan Donegal Monaghan Fermanagh Tyrone Armagh Londonderry Down Antrim Tot.il Population 111/Jl7 80 206 74,170 171,401 143.289 1.V2.009 267.3Uf> 428,128 Per Cent. Catholic 80 8 76-9 73 2 554 54 6 46-6 44-5 36 3 246 Per Cent. non-Cath. 192 23 1 26-8 44 6 45-4 534 65-5 63*7 75-4 Illegit. Births 32 60 88 55 130 139 143 281 560 Per Cent. Illegit. 28 31 44 7-4 71 9-0 94 10-5 13-0