MICHAEL.
"It Is Very Salutary To Hold In Esteem The STONES Which Are Taken From
The Sacred Cavern, Partly Because From Immemorial Times They Have Always
Been Held In Veneration By The Faithful And Also Because They Have Been
Placed As Relics Of Sepulchres And Altars.
Furthermore, it is known that
during the plague which afflicted the kingdom of Naples in the year
1656, Monsignor
G. A. Puccini, archbishop of Manfredonia, recommended
every one to carry devoutly on his person a fragment of the sacred
STONE, whereby the majority were saved from the pestilence, and this
augmented the devotion bestowed on them."
The cholera is on the increase, and this may account for the rapid sale
of the STONES at this moment.
This pamphlet also contains a litany in which the titles of the
archangel are enumerated. He is, among other things, Secretary of God,
Liberator from Infernal Chains, Defender in the Hour of Death, Custodian
of the Pope, Spirit of Light, Wisest of Magistrates, Terror of Demons,
Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the Lord, Lash of Heresies, Adorer
of the Word Incarnate, Guide of Pilgrims, Conductor of Mortals: Mars,
Mercury, Hercules, Apollo, Mithra - what nobler ancestry can angel
desire? And yet, as if these complicated and responsible functions did
not suffice for his energies, he has twenty others, among them being
that of "Custodian of the Holy Family " - who apparently need a
protector, a Monsieur Paoli, like any mortal royalties.
"Blasphemous rubbish!" I can hear some Methodist exclaiming. And one
may well be tempted to sneer at those pilgrims for the more enlightened
of whom such literature is printed. For they are unquestionably a
repulsive crowd: travel-stained old women, under-studies for the Witch
of Endor; dishevelled, anaemic and dazed-looking girls; boys, too weak
to handle a spade at home, pathetically uncouth, with mouths agape and
eyes expressing every grade of uncontrolled emotion - from wildest joy to
downright idiotcy. How one realizes, down in this cavern, the effect
upon some cultured ancient like Rutilius Namatianus of the
catacomb-worship among those early Christian converts, those men who
shun the light, drawn as they were from the same social classes towards
the same dark underground rites! One can neither love nor respect such
people; and to affect pity for them would be more consonant with their
religion than with my own.
But it is perfectly easy to understand them. For thirteen centuries this
pilgrim-movement has been going on. Thirteen centuries? No. This site
was an oracle in heathen days, and we know that such were frequented by
men not a whit less barbarous and bigoted than their modern
representatives - nothing is a greater mistake than to suppose that the
crowds of old Rome and Athens were more refined than our own
("Demosthenes, sir, was talking to an assembly of brutes"). For thirty
centuries then, let us say, a deity has attracted the faithful to his
shrine - Sant' Angelo has become a vacuum, as it were, which must be
periodically filled up from the surrounding country.
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