care exclusively to the nursery.* And in like manner the tenderest regard for children breathes in the monastic code. "Children till the age of fifteen," says the rule of St. Benedict, "must be treated with discretion; and no one should act with rigour towards them, because it is written, 'Quod tibi non vis fieri, alii ne feceris."" Only on Holy Saturday would the Church permit children in monasteries to fast; and therefore Lanfranc, saying that on that day after mass the bells should be rung for vespers, adds, " Vadant infantes ad refectorium, si qui adeo parvi sunt, ut usque post vesperas expectare non possint."+ Indeed such indulgence was but a tradition of the spirit which animated the patriarch of the western monks. In the great Spanish chronicle of the Benedictine order, there is a chapter under the title "St. Benedictus it auxilio teneræ ætati,"§ in which many instances are given of the supernatural aid vouchsafed to children and to boys in Spain through the singular love which the glorious father always entertained for them. And here a lovely avenue reveals the Catholic Church as again coming with the tenderness and fervour of a real mother to the help of those poor children who had fallen into the hands of the Sarasins. The glorious orders of our Lady of Mercy and of the Trinitarians were her instruments to redeem children and youths, with an especial regard to the superior claim which they derived from the peculiar danger and suffering of their age. The Fathers of the Order of Mercy, in their great history, observe, that "children and women, from being more particularly exposed to various dangers, were always the chief objects of solicitude with the Fathers of Redemption." Under the rule of Francis de Ribera the numbers of young children and women ransomed, they say, were immense. They give the full catalogue of those redeemed in 1615, whose ages varied from nine to fifteen, the country, town, or village of each being also specified. In the year 1601, after the general procession of the returned slaves at Seville, Father Bernal ascended the pulpit, and after describing the sufferings of the slaves in Tunis, he told the people that he was to have remained in hostage for the twenty children whom he had seen walk that day, but that the King of Morocco had been so generous as to allow him to return with them to demand the money. He told them, therefore, that he was determined to return immediately, if they did not come forward to supply him with the sum required. The assembly was so moved, that he received the same day more than sufficient to pay the ransom of the children. * L'Horloge des Princes. ii. 13. + Reg. c. 70. Decreta pro Ord. S. Ben. ap. Thomassin Traité des Jeunes, § i. c. 10. This peculiar solicitude for the young gave rise to an incident which the Fathers record as miraculous: for Jesus Christ, in the form of a boy-slave, was thought to have served mass one day for St. Peter Paschasius, or Paschal. This father had ransomed and sent home to Spain all the boy-slaves that used to serve his mass; and fearing he should have no one to serve at the altar, he went into the Matemores to pray some captive to discharge that office, when a child about four years of age presented himself, whom he had never seen before, and whom after the holy sacrifice he never saw more.* The Fathers observe that they deemed no pecuniary sacrifice too great to prosecute the work of ransoming the children. Describing one procession of redeemed slaves, they say that the girls and boys that appeared in it, as also the women, had been ransomed at an excessive price, though some of these innocents were still in arms. Speaking of the children ransomed in the years 1671 and 1675, they specify the price which they had paid for each. Joseph Rodriguez, of Cadiz, aged twelve years, cost 346 crowns. Diego Hernandez, born at Algiers, aged six, cost 252 crowns. Joseph de la Barriere de Ribadesella, aged fifteen, cost 409 crowns. Antonio Ginovarte Maillorquin, aged fifteen, cost 357 crowns; his brother, Pedro Ginovarte, aged fourteen, cost 357 crowns. Louiza Benitez, of Flanders, cost 199 crowns. Mary Rodriguez de Tuynée, in Algiers, still at the breast, cost 200 crowns. We have no right to expect that children should be able to recognize those material benefits which they derive from the Catholic religion, of which they can now in general know nothing; but that there is still, in the absence of a systematic and violent hindrance, a certain instinctive reverence for the Church to be discerned in them, arising from some spiritual mysterious source, is a fact which daily observation and the terror of her adversaries must place beyond all question. The child of Hector recoiled in alarm from the embraces of his armed father: ἂψ δ' ὁ πάϊς πρὸς κόλπον ἐϋζώνοιο τιθήνης δεινὸν ἀπ ̓ ἀκροτάτης κόρυθος νεύοντα νοήσας· But from the embraces of the Catholic Church the true rórvia μήτηρ, even in her most sorrowful moments θαλερὸν κατὰ δάκρυ xéovoa, no child left to its own sweet nature has ever yet been seen to recoil; for besides that the spirit of those who represent her, like genius, loves to caress little things, to sing the * Hist. de l'Ord. de la Mercy, 195. songs of children, to talk not always of kings and magnats, arma virumque cano, but much oftener, sweetly and wisely, of what is humble and, to appearance, puerile,—in regard to all surrounding objects and relations, before a child's awakening intelligence Catholicism stands full in view, invested with infinite charms. 0, "how its soft smiles attract the soul! as light lures winged insects through the lampless air." How does the very aspect of the Church itself speak to the child's or stripling's soul! There, even more than under heaven's canopy, will reverence seem an instinct of its nature. "There let him breathe his matin thought Of pure unconscious love, There taste the dew by angels brought In silence from above."* The stranger knew a boy, of tender age, who literally was enamoured of the Church in which he served a voluntary acolyte. When walking out with him, this little companion would cunningly propose to return by some way that would lead past it, that he might at least salute it from the portal. How lovely was religion to his mind, occupying him thus in his diversions, as well as in his serious moments. Taílovτá TE Kai Tovdálovτa, as Plato said, was necessary. Of the puerile imitation of holy things, St. Athanasius with some other little boys of Alexandria furnishes a memorable instance, when the bishop of that see recognized the validity of the rites which they had enacted in their simplicity, as Sozomen in his history relates. Antonio de Escobar mentions that when St. Peter Nolasco was a little boy of eight years he had such love for blessed Mary, that in all the palaces of the Viscountess of Narbonne, his aunt, where he was educated by the monk Gaufred, he had made little altars, on which he placed her image.§ But what shall we say of the holy joy of children on the festivals, when they witness or assist at the procession? The amiable writer of "Letters from Belgium," most charmingly describes the little representatives of angels who assisted at the solemnities of Corpus Christi in a village of Flanders. "You would so love Catholic children," she exclaims; "they carry one back to the days when mothers took them to Jesus that He should bless them; for they are ever speaking of Him with the same childish affection as that which we may suppose those children felt and expressed when just fresh from his maternal arms." Truly, it is of children, as yielding to the influences his Church supplies, that our Divine Redeemer says, 'Of such is the kingdom of heaven.' No one who has ever compared young minds * Lyra Inn. + De Legibus, i. § In Evang. Com. Paneg. tom. vii. 201. i. 17. and hearts under the two directions of the Church and her antagonist will be able to controvert this assertion. Again, what attestations of the truth and what manifestation of the love of Catholicity are seen in the minds of children when they are first instructed for the sacraments by holy priests, when they are accosted familiarly or solemnly blessed by them! How was that young maiden Geneviève sweetly moved when the holy Germain of Auxerre, being on his journey to the sea with St. Loup, bishop of Troyes, travelling on foot, on coming to Nanterre, singled her out of the crowd of children, kissed her forehead, saying to her parents, happy was the day of her birth, for it was a festival not only in their hearts and in their house, but also in heaven, and then, giving her a medal, bestowed upon her his parting benediction! St. Peter of Alcantara, when a child, being missed from home at dinner-time, his parents sent to look for him, and he was found in the church absorbed in contemplation.* St. Martin was only ten years old when he fled to the church, against the wish of his parents, to become a catechumen. Le Febvre, one of the first companions of St. Ignatius of Loyola, when a child of six years, used to mount on a great stone and preach on the mysteries of faith on festivals to the country people, who listened to him with admiration.+ Marina de Escobar beheld in a vision, among spirits glorified, Marina Hermandez of Valladolid, who died in her fifth year, saying with her last breath, "I am going to heaven to bless and praise God in the choir of angels. "Ah, my little darling, how well I know you," she exclaimed now, on seeing her in ecstasy; to whom the child replied, "Dear aunt, my occupation here is what I said it would be as I expired." The admirable and affecting history of the holy child Mary Theresa of Jesus, of the town of San Lucan de Baramede, who died in 1627, aged five years, one month, and seventeen days, a prodigy of sanctity in the third order of our Lady of Mercy, is related by the reverend fathers of that order. Her charity to the poor, which was so great that she used to give them a portion of her own dinner, her reverence in the church, her sweetness at home, and her wonderful perception of the mysteries of faith, furnish matter for some delightful pages in their history.§ The Church received the homage of children on earth in the spirit in which a poet supposes that the choirs above hearken * Le Père Marchese, Vie de S. Pierre d'Al. 3. 6 to them, "Distinguishing in the deep song of millions round the throne the tone of each feeble innocent, each little air upon the faltering tongue, and storing every lowly word even by the utterer's self unheard." And we may observe, too, that, in proportion as persons were imbued with the spirit of the Catholic religion, did they lovingly minister to children, to guide them on to truth. "It used to happen sometimes," says Marina de Escobar, "that while walking in the streets, and meeting little boys, I could not restrain the desire I felt of accosting them, through a desire of inducing them to love God; and I used to interrogate them, saying, Little one, do you know the angelic salutation and our Lord's Prayer?' and when they used to reply that they knew them well, I would add, Pray thus, my pupils, daily, and beseech the blessed Virgin that God may make you his servants, and give you a great love for Himself.' They used to look at me while I spoke, and say, 'So we will do, lady."* The same spirit was evinced by the gravest men towards the young who crossed their path. Don Lopez de Vega thus treated his little son Carlos with a Christian gravity. Having finished his poem of "The Shepherds of Bethlehem," he dedicated that sacred pastoral to him. "This prose," says he," and these verses, addressed to the child-god, are suitable to thy age. Begin to study in Christ in reading of his childhood. He will instruct thee how thou shouldst conduct thyself in thy childhood. May he protect thee!" In the first dialogue of Palmieri the venerable Angelo Pandolfini begins by observing, that great things should be discussed before many auditors, and, unlike Milton, who promises one day to edify his readers with the beauty of philosophy "when there shall be no children present," he proposes that the little boys of the house should be called in. Accordingly, in they come; when one of them requests that nothing may be said but what they can all understand. Pandolfini then assures him that he will utter nothing but what will be intelligible to the least little head amongst them all.† "Sometimes when we speak of grave high matters," says a poet, "a child comes in: farewell then the dark or intricate theme." The disputants stop short and smile ""Tis as the dawn that puts to flight The melancholy reveries of a troubled night." The Church, moreover, invested some children with a dignity that history itself is obliged to admit and chronicle. A humble child of seven years, a shepherdess, admitted to the presence of the most illustrious strangers, becoming the patroness of * Vit. Ven. Virg. Marinæ, lib. i. c. 23. + La Vita Civile. |