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Page 25
II. Of St. Catharine of Egypt there are vestiges of personal tradition
which may perhaps permit the supposition of her having really once
existed, as a very lovely, witty, proud, and 'fanciful' girl. She
afterwards becomes the Christian type of the Bride, in the 'Song of
Solomon,' involved with an ideal of all that is purest in the life of
a nun, and brightest in the death of a martyr. It is scarcely possible
to overrate the influence of the conceptions formed of her, in
ennobling the sentiments of Christian women of the higher orders;--to
their practical common sense, as the mistresses of a household or a
nation, her example may have been less conducive.
III. St. Barbara, also an Egyptian, and St. Catharine's contemporary,
though the most practical of the mythic saints, is also, after St.
Sophia, the least corporeal: she vanishes far away into the 'Inclusa
Danae,' and her "Tunis aenea" becomes a myth of Christian safety, of
which the Scriptural significance may be enough felt by merely looking
out the texts under the word "Tower," in your concordance; and whose
effectual power, in the fortitudes alike of matter and spirit, was in
all probability made impressive enough to all Christendom, both by
the fortifications and persecutions of Diocletian. I have endeavoured
to mark her general relations to St. Sophia in the little imaginary
dialogue between them, given in the eighth lecture of the 'Ethics of
the Dust.'
Afterwards, as Gothic architecture becomes dominant, and at last
beyond question the most wonderful of all temple-building, St.
Barbara's Tower is, of course, its perfected symbol and utmost
achievement; and whether in the coronets of countless battlements worn
on the brows of the noblest cities, or in the Lombard bell-tower on
the mountains, and the English spire on Sarum plain, the geometric
majesty of the Egyptian maid became glorious in harmony of defence,
and sacred with precision of symbol.
As the buildings which showed her utmost skill were chiefly exposed
to lightning, she is invoked in defence from it; and our petition
in the Litany, against sudden death, was written originally to her.
The blasphemous corruptions of her into a patroness of cannon and
gunpowder, are among the most ludicrous, (because precisely contrary
to the original tradition,) as well as the most deadly, insolences and
stupidities of Renaissance Art.
IV. St. Margaret of Antioch was a shepherdess; the St. Genevi�ve of
the East; the type of feminine gentleness and simplicity. Traditions
of the resurrection of Alcestis perhaps mingle in those of her contest
with the dragon; but at all events, she differs from the other three
great mythic saints, in expressing the soul's victory over temptation
or affliction, by Christ's miraculous help, and without any special
power of its own. She is the saint of the meek and of the poor; her
virtue and her victory are those of all gracious and lowly womanhood;
and her memory is consecrated among the gentle households of Europe;
no other name, except those of Jeanne and Jeanie, seems so gifted with
a baptismal fairy power of giving grace and peace.
I must be forgiven for thinking, even on this canonical ground,
not only of Jeanie Deans, and Margaret of Branksome; but of
Meg--Merrilies. My readers will, I fear, choose rather to think of the
more doubtful victory over the Dragon, won by the great Margaret of
German literature.
V. With much more clearness and historic comfort we may approach the
shrine of St. Cecilia; and even on the most prosaic and realistic
minds--such as my own--a visit to her house in Rome has a comforting
and establishing effect, which reminds one of the carter in 'Harry
and Lucy,' who is convinced of the truth of a plaustral catastrophe at
first incredible to him, as soon as he hears the name of the hill on
which it happened. The ruling conception of her is deepened gradually
by the enlarged study of Religious music; and is at its best and
highest in the thirteenth century, when she rather resists than
complies with the already tempting and distracting powers of sound;
and we are told that "cantantibus organis, Cecilia virgo in corde suo
soli Domino decantabat, dicens, 'Fiat, Domine, cor meum et corpus meum
immaculatum, ut non confundar.'"
("While the instruments played, Cecilia the virgin sang in her
heart only to the Lord, saying, Oh Lord, be my heart and body made
stainless, that I be not confounded.")
This sentence occurs in my great Service-book of the convent of
Beau-pr�, written in 1290, and it is illustrated with a miniature of
Cecilia sitting silent at a banquet, where all manner of musicians are
playing. I need not point out to you how the law, not of sacred music
only, so called, but of _all_ music, is determined by this sentence;
which means in effect that unless music exalt and purify, it is not
under St. Cecilia's ordinance, and it is not, virtually, music at all.
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