So deeply are they ingrained here that if the Mother of God had
not existed, the group would have been deemed incomplete; a family
without a mother is to them like a tree without roots - a thing which
cannot be. This accounts for the fact that their Trinity is not ours; it
consists of the Mother, the Father (Saint Joseph), and the Child - with
Saint Anne looming in the background (the grandmother is an important
personage in the patriarchal family). The Creator of all things and the
Holy Ghost have evaporated; they are too intangible and non-human.
But She never became a true cosmopolitan Nike, save in literature. The
decentralizing spirit of South Italy was too strong for her. She had to
conform to the old custom of geographical specialization. In all save in
name she doffed her essential character of Mother of God, and became a
local demi-god; an accessible wonder-worker attached to some particular
district. An inhabitant of village A would stand a poor chance of his
prayers being heard by the Madonna of village B; if you have a headache,
it is no use applying to the Madonna of the Hens, who deals with
diseases of women; you will find yourself in a pretty fix if you expect
financial assistance from the Madonna of village C: she is a
weather-specialist. In short, these hundreds of Madonnas have taken up
the qualities of the saints they supplanted.
They can often outdo them; and this is yet another reason for their
success. It is a well-ascertained fact, for example, that many holy men
have been nourished by the Milk of the Mother of God, "not," as a
Catholic writer says, "in a mystic or spiritual sense, but with their
actual lips"; Saint Bernard "among a hundred, a thousand, others." Nor
is this all, for in the year 1690, a painted image of the Madonna, not
far from the city of Carinola, was observed to "diffuse abundant milk"
for the edification of a great concourse of spectators - a miracle which
was recognized as such by the bishop of that diocese, Monsignor Paolo
Ayrola, who wrote a report on the subject. Some more of this authentic
milk is kept in a bottle in the convent of Mater Domini on Vesuvius, and
the chronicle of that establishment, printed in 1834, says:
"Since Mary is the Mother and Co-redeemer of the Church, may she not
have left some drops of her precious milk as a gift to this Church, even
as we still possess some of the blood of Christ? In various churches
there exists some of this milk, by means of which many graces and
benefits are obtained. We find such relics, for example, in the church
of Saint Luigi in Naples, namely, two bottles full of the milk of the
Blessed Virgin; and this milk becomes fluid on feast-days of the
Madonna, as everybody can see. Also in this convent of Mater Domini the
milk sometimes liquefies." During eruptions of Vesuvius this bottle is
carried abroad in procession, and always dispels the danger. Saint
Januarius must indeed look to his laurels! Meanwhile it is interesting
to observe that the Mother of God has condescended to employ the method
of holy relics which she once combated so strenuously, her milk
competing with the blood of Saint John, the fat of Saint Laurence, and
those other physiological curios which are still preserved for the
edification of believers.
All of which would pass if a subtle poison had not been creeping in to
taint religious institutions. Taken by themselves, these infantile
observances do not necessarily harm family life, the support of the
state; for a man can believe a considerable deal of nonsense, and yet go
about his daily work in a natural and cheerful manner. But when the body
is despised and tormented the mind loses its equilibrium, and when that
happens nonsense may assume a sinister shape. We have seen it in
England, where, during the ascetic movement of Puritanism, more witches
were burnt than in the whole period before and after.
The virus of asceticism entered South Italy from three principal
sources. From early ages the country had stood in commercial relations
with the valley of the Nile; and even as its black magic is largely
tinged with Egyptian practices, so its magic of the white kind - its
saintly legends - bear the impress of the self-macerations and perverted
life-theories of those desert-lunatics who called themselves Christians.
[Footnote: These ascetics were here before Christianity (see Philo
Judaeus); in fact, there is not a single element in the new faith which
had not been independently developed by the pagans, many of whom, like
Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, were ripe for the most abject
self-abasement.] But this Orientalism fell at first upon unfruitful
soil; the Vatican was yet wavering, and Hellenic notions of
conduct still survived. It received a further rebuff at the hands of men
like Benedict, who set up sounder ideals of holiness, introducing a
gleam of sanity even in that insanest of institutions - the herding
together of idle men to the glory of God.
But things became more centralized as the Papacy gainedground. The
strong Christian, the independent ruler or warrior or builder saint, was
tolerated only if he conformed to its precepts; and the inauspicious
rise of subservient ascetic orders like the Franciscans and Dominicans,
who quickly invaded the fair regions of the south, gave an evil tone to
their Christianity.
There has always been a contrary tendency at work: the Ionic spirit,
heritage of the past. Monkish ideals of chastity and poverty have never
appealed to the hearts of people, priests or prelates of the south; they
will endure much fondness in their religion, but not those phenomena of
cruelty and pruriency which are inseparably connected with asceticism;
their notions have ever been akin to those of the sage Xenocrates, who
held that "happiness consists not only in the possession of human
virtues, but in the accomplishment of natural acts." Among the latter
they include the acquisition of wealth and the satisfaction of carnal
needs.
