Read Ebook: The Atlantic Monthly Volume 06 No. 36 October 1860 A Magazine Of Literature Art And Politics by Various

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Ebook has 682 lines and 88432 words, and 14 pages

"Vendit Alexander claves, altaria, Christum: Emerat ille prius, vendere jure potest."

"Alexander sells the keys, the altars, Christ. He bought them first, and has good right to sell."

Alexander had gained his election by bribes which he did not pay, and promises which he did not keep; and Guicciardini tells in a few words what use he made of his holy office, declaring, that, "with his immoderate ambition and poisoned infidelity, together with all the horrible examples of cruelty, luxury and monstrous covetousness, selling without distinction both holy things and profane things, he infected the whole world."

In 1503, after a pontificate of eleven years, Alexander died. Rome rejoiced. Peace, which for a long time had been banished from her borders, returned, and she enjoyed for a few days unwonted freedom from alarm and trouble. Her happiness found expression in verse:--

"Dic unde, Alecto, pax haec effulsit, et unde Tam subito reticent proelia? Sextus obit."

"Say whence, Alecto, has this peace shone forth? wherefore so suddenly has the noise of battle ceased? Alexander is dead."

"Cum Petri nihil efficiant ad proelia claves, Auxilio Pauli forsitan ensis erit."

"Since the keys of Peter profit not for battle, perchance, with the aid of Paul, the sword will answer."

Julius was the first of the Popes of recent times to allow his beard to grow, and Raphael's noble portrait of him shows what dignity it gave to his strongly marked face. The beard was also regarded traditionally as having belonged to Saint Paul. "For me," the Pope was represented as saying, "for me the beard of Paul, the sword of Paul, all things of Paul: that key-bearer, Peter, is no way to my liking."

"Huc barbam Pauli, gladium Pauli, omnia Pauli: Claviger ille nihil ad mea vota Petrus."

But the most savage epigram against Julius was one that recalled the name of the great Roman, which the Pope was supposed to have adopted in emulation of that of Alexander, borne by his predecessor:--

"Julius est Romae. Quid abest? Date, numina, Brutum. Nam quoties Romae est Julius, illa perit."

"Julius is at Rome. What is wanting? Ye gods, give us a Brutus! For when Julius is at Rome, the city is lost."

"Me miserum! Copista etiam mihi carmina figit; Et tribuit nugas jam mihi quisque suas."

"Non homo me melior Rome est. Ego nil peto ab ullo. Non sum verbosus. Hic sedeo et taceo."

"Inter bella, tubas, caedes, canis ipse, lyramque Percutis. Hoc sapere est ingenium Domini."

But the character of most of those pasquinades which belong to the pontificate of Leo is so coarse as to render them unfit for reproduction. A general licentiousness pervaded Rome, and the vices of the Pope and the higher clergy, veiled, but not hidden, under the displays of sensual magnificence and the pretended refinements of degraded art, were readily imitated by a people taught to follow and obey the teachings of their ecclesiastical rulers. Corruption of every sort was common. Virtue and vice, profane and sacred things, were alike for sale. The Pope made money by the sale of cardinalates and traffic in indulgences. "Give me gifts, ye spectators," begged Pasquin; "bring me not verses: divine Money alone rules the ethereal gods."

"Dona date, astantes; versus ne reddite: sola Imperat aethereis alma Moneta deis."

Leo's fondness for buffoons, with whom he mercilessly amused himself by tormenting them and exciting them to make themselves ridiculous, is recorded in a question put to Pasquin on one of his changes of figure. "Why have you not asked, O Pasquil, to be made a buffoon? for at Rome everything is now permitted to the buffoons."

"Cur non te fingi scurram, Pasquille, rog?sti? Cum Romae scurris omnia jam liceant."

Leo died in 1521. His death was sudden, and not without suspicion of poison. It was said that the last offices of the Church were not performed for the dying man, and an epigram sharply embodied the report. "Do you ask why at his last hour Leo could not take the sacred things? He had sold them."

"Sacra sub extrem?, si forte requiritis, hor? Cur Leo non potuit sumere: Vendiderat."

The spirit of Luther had penetrated through the walls of Rome; and though all tongues but those of statues might be silenced, eyes were not blinded, nor could ears be made deaf. Nowhere was the need of reform so felt as at Rome, but nowhere was there so little hope for it; for the people stood in equal need of it with the Church, whose ministers had corrupted them, and whose rulers tyrannized over them. "Farewell, Rome!" said Pasquin.

"Roma, vale! Satis est vidisse. Revertar Quum leno, meretrix, scurra, cinaedus ero."

"Curtis occidit Clementem. Curtius auro Donandus, per quem publica parta salus."

Nor was this all. Pasquin declared, that, on occasion of Clement's death, a bitter strife arose between Pluto and Saint Peter as to which should receive the Pope:--

"Noluit hunc coelum, noluit hunc barathrum."

The Saint has no place for him, and the ruler of the lower regions fears the disturbance that he will make in hell. The quarrel is cut short by the arrival of Clement himself upon the spot, who, finding no entrance into heaven, declares that he will force himself into hell:--

"Tartara tentemus, facilis descensus Averni."

"Oremus pro Pap? Paulo, quia zelus Domus suae comedit illum."

At another time Marforio addressed a letter to Pasquin, in which he tells him of the Pope's reply to an angel who had been sent to him with the message, "Feed my sheep" "Charity begins at home," had been the answer of the Pope. And when the Roman people had prayed Paul to have pity on his people, Paul had replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and give it to dogs."

"Roma meos fratres igni dedit. Unica Phoenix Vivo, aureis venio centum Heinsio."

"Rome gave my brothers to the fire. A solitary Phoenix, I survive, and at cost of a hundred gold pieces I come to Heinsius."

But Heinslus was mistaken in supposing his copy to be unique; and bibliographers of later date, while marking the rarity of the book, have recorded its existence in various libraries. At this moment two copies are lying before us, probably the only copies in America.

Leti, in his entertaining and gossipping life of this most merciless of Popes, tells a story of another pasquinade, which exhibits the temper of Sixtus. One morning Pasquin appeared clothed in a very dirty shirt, and, upon being asked by Marforio, why he wore such foul linen, replied, he could get no other, for the Pope had made his washerwoman a princess,--meaning thereby the Pope's sister, Donna Camilla, who had formerly been a laundress, but was now established with a fortune and a palace. "This stinging piece of raillery was carried directly to his Holiness, who ordered a strict search to be made for the author, but to no purpose. Upon which he stuck up printed papers in all the public places of the city, promising, upon the word of a Pope, to give the author of the pasquinade a thousand pistoles and his life, provided he would discover himself, but threatened to hang him, if he was found out by any one else, and offered the thousand pistoles to the informer." Upon this the author was simple enough to make confession and to demand the money. Sixtus paid him the sum, and then, saying that he had indeed promised him his life, but not freedom from punishment, ordered his hands to be cut off, and his tongue to be bored, "to prevent him from being so witty for the future." This act, says Leti, "filled every one with terror and amazement." And well might such a piece of Oriental barbarity excite the horror of the Romans. Pasquin, however, was not alarmed, and a few days afterward he appeared holding a wet shirt to dry in the sun. It was a Sunday morning, and Marforio, naturally surprised at such a violation of the day, asked him why he could not wait till Monday before drying it Pasquin answered, that there was no time to lose; for, if he waited till to-morrow to dry his shirt, he might have to pay for the sunshine;--hinting at the heavy taxes which Sixtus had laid upon the necessaries of life, and from which the sunshine itself might not long be exempt.

This is a very model of satire in its kind, and of a higher kind than the pasquil, which Coleridge quotes as an example of wit, upon the Pope who had employed a committee to rip up the errors of his predecessors.

"Some one placed a pair of spurs on the statue of St. Peter, and a label from the opposite statue of St. Paul.

With the changes of times and the succession of Popes, new material was constantly afforded to Pasquin for the exercise of his peculiar talent. Each generation gave him fresh subject for laughter or for rebuke. Men quickly passed away, but folly and vice remained. "Do you wonder," said Pasquin, once, in his early days, referring to his changes of character, "do you wonder why Rome yearly changes me to a new figure? It is because of the shifting manners of the city, and the falling back of men. He who would be pious must depart from Rome."

"Praeteriens, forsan miraris, turba, quotannis Cur me Roma novam mutet in effigiem. Hoc urbis mores varios, hominumque recessus Indicat: ergo abeat qui cupit esse pius."

"Tres habuit fauces, et terno Cerberus ore Latratus intra Tartara nigra dabat. Et tibi plena fame tria sunt vel quatuor ora Quae nulli latrant, quemque sed illa vorant."

THE SUMMONS.

My ear is full of summer sounds, With summer sights my languid eye; Beyond the dusty village bounds I loiter in my daily rounds, And in the noon-time shadows lie.

The wild bee winds his drowsy horn, The bird swings on the ripened wheat, The long, green lances of the corn Are tilting in the winds of morn, The locust shrills his song of heat.

Another sound my spirit hears, A deeper sound that drowns them all,-- A voice of pleading choked with tears, The call of human hopes and fears, The Macedonian cry to Paul!

The storm-bell rings, the trumpet blows; I know the word and countersign; Wherever Freedom's vanguard goes, Where stand or fall her friends or foes, I know the place that should be mine.

Shamed be the hands that idly fold, And lips that woo the reed's accord, When laggard Time the hour has tolled For true with false and new with old To fight the battles of the Lord!

O brothers! blest by partial Fate With power to match the will and deed, To him your summons comes too late, Who sinks beneath his armor's weight, And has no answer but God-speed!

DARWIN AND HIS REVIEWERS.

The origin of species, like all origination, like the institution of any other natural state or order, is beyond our immediate ken. We see or may learn how things go on; we can only frame hypotheses as to how they began.

Two hypotheses divide the scientific world, very unequally, upon the origin of the existing diversity of the plants and animals which surround us. One assumes that the actual kinds are primordial; the other, that they are derivative. One, that all kinds originated supernaturally and directly as such, and have continued unchanged in the order of Nature; the other, that the present kinds appeared in some sort of genealogical connection with other and earlier kinds, that they became what they now are in the course of time and in the order of Nature.

The two views very unequally divide the scientific world; so that believers in "the divine right of majorities" need not hesitate which side to take, at least for the present. Up to a time within the memory of a generation still on the stage, two hypotheses about the nature of light very unequally divided the scientific world. But the small minority has already prevailed: the emission theory has gone out; the undulatory or wave theory, after some fluctuation, has reached high tide, and is now the pervading, the fully established system. There was an intervening time during which most physicists held their opinions in suspense.

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