ST. ROSE OF LIMA
THE FLOWER OF THE NEW WORLD
ST. ROSE OF LIMA.
ST. ROSE OF LIMA
THE FLOWER OF THE NEW WORLD
BY
F. M. CAPES
AUTHOR OF 'ON A HILL," ETC.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY THB
VERY REV. FATHER J. PROCTER, S.T.L.
LATE PROVINCIAL OF THE ENGLISH DOMINICANS
SECOND EDITION
1 Gaudium Virginum Christ!, est de Christo, in Christo, cum Christo, post Christum, per Christum, propter Christum.'
R. & T. WASHBOURNE, LTD.
PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
AND AT MANCHESTER, BIRMINGHAM, AND GLASGOW
BENZIGER BROTHERS: NEW YORK, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO
I9I3 (All rights reserved]
flDbstat.
JOANNES PROCTER, O.P., ?ROV., CENSOR DEPOTATUS.
Imprimatur.
HERBERTUS CARDINALIS VAUGHAN,
ARCHIEPISCOPDS WESTMONAST
Die 8 Junii, 1899.
TO
no. f.
TENDER LOVER OF ST. ROSE IN TIME : NOW, WE MAY HOPE, HER COMPANION IN ETERNITY.
No need of words to mark your children's love ! And, were there need, what earthly words might fit The thoughts that grow to longing infinite When Mem'ry, changed to Hope, takes flight above To find you dwelling there, and sees you move 'Mid throng of blessed spirits ? How transmit Our thanks in speech ? No tongue could fashion it Meet for your new-tuned ear. But we may prove Our love a better way, by turning thought
To will, and will to deed : so — something done — Some purpose true fulfilled — perchance your smile May find us now, as it was wont erewhile.
Here, then, at last one humble deed is brought : Finished for you, because through you begun.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION BY THK VERY REV. FATHER J.
PROCTER, O.P. - - 9
NOTE OF BOOKS CONSULTED 23
I. PROLOGUE : BIRTH AND BAPTISM OF ST. ROSE - 25
II. ST. ROSE'S CHILDHOOD - - 3^
III. HOW SHE BEGAN TO LOVE AND FOLLOW ST.
CATHERINE OF SIENA - • 53
IV. HER VICTORY OVER VANITY 62 V. ROSE'S DOMESTIC LIFE - - 71
VI. THE PENITENTIAL PRACTICES OF THE SAINT'S
GIRLHOOD • 78
VII. HOW SHE TOOK THE HABIT OF ST. DOMINIC - 91 VIII. HER GARDEN-CELL, AND HOW SHE LIVED THERE 99 IX. OF ROSE'S SPECIAL DEVOTIONS AND CHARITIES ; HOW SHE WAS ENDOWED WITH A PROPHETIC SPIRIT ; AND HOW SHE GAINED GRACES FOR HER NATIVE CITY - - - - 1 1?
8 CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
x. OF THE SAINT'S INCREASED PENANCES, AND OF
THE MIRACULOUS HELP SHE HAD IN THEM ; OF HER MANY ILLNESSES AND HER INTERIOR TRIALS - - 131
XI. HOW HEAVENLY AND DIVINE VISITANTS FRE QUENTED HER CELL ; AND HOW SHE WAS MYSTICALLY ESPOUSED TO CHRIST - 149
XII. HOW ROSE OF ST. MARY DIED - - l66
XIII. WHAT HAPPENED AFTER ROSE'S DEATH- - 180
INTRODUCTION.
IJHE pages which these words introduce to the reader are a graceful tribute from a Dominican Tertiary in the Old World to a Dominican Tertiary of the New World ; they are at the same time a message from a sainted Tertiary of the New World to Tertiaries aiming at sanctity, outside the cloister and within the cloister, both in the Old World and in the New. May they help to knit together in closer bonds of greater practical faith and stronger fraternal love the members of the Third Order of St. Dominic here and there ; for they are all of the same spiritual kith and kin, and all, though separated by seas, are of one flesh and one blood, and all speak the same English mother-tongue in which this book is written. Seas not only separate kingdoms and continents, they unite them as well ; they are not walls of division, but links and bonds of union. St. Ray- mund of Pennafort defied the waves, by crossing
9
10 INTRODUCTION
the sea on his cappa, or cloak. We can cross seas and mountains and deserts and plains with out even a miraculous cloak; we are carried on the wings of thought and love. ' Many waters cannot quench charity, neither can rivers drown it,'1 nor can they be a barrier to its develop ment and extension. English-speaking Tertiaries throughout the world are members of the same family, ruled by the same laws, helped by the same traditions, influenced by the example of the same saints, and encouraged everywhere by the same Dominican spirit. A Dominican saint is the saint, not of a country, but of the Order and of the Church ; not the Saint of an age, but of all time. St. Rose, though a child of America, and a native of sunny Lima, is a Dominican and a Catholic saint. This life will aid in making her known as such on both sides of the great Atlantic Sea.
We may not say that St. Rose was the first saint of the New World, for God only knows His own ; but she was the first of America's children to be placed in the calendar of canonized saints — the first flower gathered from that part of the great garden over which St. Dominic has been placed as the husbandman of Jesus Christ. It was in a sense appropriate that the firstfruits of
1 Cant. viii. 7.
INTRODUCTION II
sanctity in that land of young and hopeful promise should have been a child of St. Dominic, for his Order had a share in the glory of the discovery of the New World — a discovery which changed the face of the Old World, giving it a new life, a new interest, a new hope, and with that life, that interest, that hope, a renewal of power, of vigour, we might almost say of youth. It was on the eve of St. Dominic's Feast — August 3, 1492 — that, in the spirit of a Crusader, Columbus set sail from the shores of Spain into
' A world of waves, a sea without a shore, Trackless and vast and wild,'
in search — a hopeless search, as many said — of a continent as yet unknown. The little ship which was destined to gain a new world to Christendom no less than 9,000 miles long, with an area of more than 13,000,000 square miles, as she ploughed her way through the vast unknown sea, bore on her deck, by the side of the brave Admiral who will be famous to all time, three friars — a Dominican, a Franciscan, and a member of the Order of Mercy. When the unknown land was found, Columbus planted on its shore the flag of the Spanish monarch, and claimed it in the name of the King of Spain ; the friars planted the Cross of Christ, and claimed it for the King of
12 INTRODUCTION
heaven. It was a Dominican, Bartholomew de las Casas, who sang the first High Mass ever intoned in the newly-discovered land. It was this same intrepid son of St. Dominic who, in after years, became the protector of the savage tribes against the persecutions of their cruel oppressors, four several times crossing the great Atlantic (no easy task in those days) to plead their cause before the Spanish King. Another Dominican, Dominic de Delates, founded more than a hun dred convents in America — a hundred centres of light and learning, of sanctity and love. The first Archbishop of Lima, the city of our saint, wore the white wool of innocence and the black robe of penance, which are the characteristic robes of St. Dominic's children. Blessed Martin Porres, a native of Lima, was a holy and exemplary lay- brother of St. Dominic's order. St. Lewis Ber- trand — called at times ' the Xavier of the Western World,' and at other times ' the Apostle of the New World,' who in three years is said to have won to the faith 10,000 souls — was an illustrious son of the same saintly father, Dominic. In the early years after the great discovery of a vast people that ' sat in darkness and in the shadow of death,' no vessel was allowed to leave a Spanish port for the American continent without having religious on board ; no vessel left with-
INTRODUCTION 13
out a Dominican accompanying it to the far-off land.
Little wonder, then, considering the part St. Dominic was called upon to play in the dis covery and the early development of the New World, that the first flower of sanctity culled from a land blessed by a Dominican hand, watered by Dominican sweat and blood, en lightened by Dominican preaching, should have been a Dominican, wearing the white wool and the black robe, and following the Tertiary rule of the Spanish saint whose memory still lives in the great panting heart of Northern as well as Southern America.
Isabel de Flores was born in the city of Lima, the capital of the province of Peru, in the year 1586, not quite a century after the light of the Gospel had shone upon the darkness of the land. Isabel !' How strange the name sounds as applied to the subject of this life ! It hardly seems to fit her. Rose is the name by which we know her — Rose, or St. Rose, of Lima. She was baptized Isabel, but the poetic name of Rose was afterwards given to her on account of her beauty, or, as some writers say, because when she was a little child a lovely rose was placed upon her when asleep by an unseen hand. Her life was modelled upon the life of St. Catherine of Siena. In many
14 INTRODUCTION
ways it resembles her ideal life, but in many ways it is dissimilar. St. Rose had but little to do with the public activity of an apostle ; the prophetic spirit was not pre-eminently hers ; she was not the counsellor of Kings, the adviser of Princes, the confidant of Cardinals, and even of Popes ; her lot was cast in a different hemisphere and in another century ; she was not called to the active life of Martha, to the apostolate of a Xavier or a Lewis Bertrand. All this was the vocation of St. Catherine ; all this was foreign to the life and calling of St. Rose. Her ideal St. Catherine was the seraph of Siena, the mystic saint, the contemplative spouse of Christ. This ideal she realized in her life. It is this life of penance and mysticism which is presented to the reader in these pages. Everything in her life calls for admira tion, many things for imitation, some, maybe, for explanation. The reader of this record of her ways and works will perforce exclaim : ' Wonder ful is God in His saints' — wonderful in their number, in their graces, in their variety. St. Rose's life was eminently wonderful in its mar vellous penance, its deep, earnest, and all but continuous prayer, its perfect union with God. She studied in the school of Christ ; her book was the Cross; her Master the Crucified. Naturally of delicate health, weak in body, and physically
INTRODUCTION 15
feeble, hers was a life of chronic suffering. To this she added much fasting, abstinence, and penances of every kind, as will be seen from the perusal of this interesting and instructive life. But all her sufferings, whether sent by God or self-inflicted, were borne for God, with God, and in God. She could say with the Apostle : ' With Christ I am nailed to the Cross ; and I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me.'1 Her suffering life was a life of detachment from the world, but a life of union with God. If she could make her own the words of St. Paul, ' The world is crucified to me, and I to the world,'2 she could add with equal truth, ' I live in the faith of the Son of God, Who loved me and delivered Himself for me.'3
Men and women of the world do not under stand this gospel of penance and prayer ; even to the tepid Catholic the Cross is ' foolishness.' St. Jerome beating his breast with a stone, St. Francis lying in the cold snow, St. Benedict standing in a frozen or freezing pond, St. Dominic scourging himself to blood thrice each night, or, above all, a young, delicate, beautiful girl like St. Rose chas tising her tender body and bringing it into sub jection in such a hard and almost cruel manner — this to them is folly. It is folly, the folly of the Cross. St. Paul spoke to the Corinthians of this
1 Gal. ii. 19, 20. 2 Gal. vi. 14. 3 Gal. ii. 20.
l6 INTRODUCTION
folly in the ideal Christian nearly nineteen cen turies ago : ' We preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Gentiles foolishness; but to them that arc called . . . Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.'1 The Jews and Gentiles of this nineteenth century arc unbelievers and lax, tepid, worldly Catholics. To these ' the word of the Cross is foolishness,' but ' to them that are saved ... it is the power of God.'2 They who are ' saved ' are the saints and spiritually-minded men.
And where is ' the wisdom of God ' in the Cross ? Where ' the power of God ' in suffering ? What is the secret of a marvellous life, like that of St. Rose, a life of direst penance and yet of the highest mysticism— the mysticism born of penance, the penance generating the mystic life ? Nature precedes grace in the order of time, but grace must take precedence of nature in the supernatural life of man. 'The first Adam was made a living soul ; the last Adam a quickening spirit. Not first that which is spiritual, but that which is animal; afterwards that which is spiritual.'3 Grace must conquer nature, nature must succumb to grace. ' He must increase, I must decrease '4 — ' He ' being God, ' I ' self.
i i Cur. i. 23, 24. 2 i Cor. i. 18.
3 i Cor. xv. 45, 46. 4 St. John iii. 30.
INTRODUCTION 17
Nature must be overcome before grace can reign. Jacob and Esau are struggling for right of primo geniture — Jacob must supplant Esau, although Esau may have been born first ; the ' elder must serve the younger,' the younger must have ' his brother's foot in his hand.' What is all this but saying, that as we are born and then baptized, 'first what is animal and then what is spiritual,' we must subdue the animal to the spiritual ; nature, which is ' the first,' must be subject to grace, which comes after. This work of subjugation is the mission of penance. A saint is essentially and necessarily a man or a woman of penance, not always of external and outward penance, but always and everywhere a victim. Self-denial must of necessity be the precursor of a life of intimate union with God, and the more close the union, the more stern must be the self-denial. Nowadays men will not understand that self must abdicate, if God is to reign. Nowadays, conse quently, saints are few —
' Rari nantes in gurgite vasto.'1
And here we have the answer to the problem, Why are there so few saints in this nineteenth age ? It is an age of luxury, a self-seeking,
1 f Swimming, one here and another there, in the vast deep.
Virgil.
2
l8 INTRODUCTION
pleasure-loving, easy and effeminate age. Penance and self-denial are spectres which terrify us— ghosts which half the world, at least, is spending its ingenuity in trying to lay. How to make life easy and days bright and happy is the problem of the hour. No one dreams that life was in tended to be anything rise. The doctrines of self-punishment are considered old-worldish and obsolete; well enough in the early centuries, or even the; Middle1 Ages, but old-fnshioned now and out of date1. Tile: texts \\hieh te-11 for mortifica tion : 'Unless you deny yourselves and take up vour cross and follow Me,' and 'If nny man will come after Me1, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me,'1 are rarely heard even in the Catholic pulpit. They are in the Bible, it is true, but there they remain as though they were a dead-letter, or as if the law they inculcate had been repealed. Fasting, and absti nence, and disciplines, and early rising, and pilgrimages of penance are relegated to history. They are interesting reading, faithful records of the past, but have no place in our modern life. Paris and London arc not Lima and Bologna; the nineteenth century is not the first, nor the twelfth, nor is it the sixteenth. Yet, although ' times change and we change with them,' the 1 St. Luke ix. 23.
INTRODUCTION ig
Gospel remains the same, the Divine law is immutable, and the conditions for gaining heaven laid down in the first century are binding in the nineteenth. ' Unless you do penance you shall all likewise perish '* is as true at the end of this last century as it was at the beginning of the first ; it is as imperative a condition for eternal life in New York, London, Dublin, or Paris, as it was in Judea, where He spoke the word whose words 'cannot pass away.' Self-denial is out of favour now. Self-will rules, and will not be denied ; self-love reigns, and will not abdicate. Men reverse St. John the Baptist's dictum, ' He must increase, and I must decrease,' and say instead, ' I must in crease, and He must decrease.' The maximum of self and the minimum of God is their standard. Twenty-three hours and three-quarters a day for eating and drinking and sleeping and working and resting and recreating, and a quarter of an hour left for God. Ninety-nine per cent, of life given to self-seeking, one per cent., at most, to self-sacrifice. The principles of this lax and effeminate age are diametrically opposed to the principles of the Gospel ; men and women, even Christian men and women, are ruled by the principles of the world ; hence are there few saints in these days. St. James calls the wisdom 1 St. Luke xiii. 5.
2O INTRODUCTION
of this world 'earthly, sensual, diabolical;'1 the worldly-wise are of the earth ' earthly,' they pamper the senses and so are ' sensual,' they re ject the principles which ' descend from above,' and so they rise not above themselves to God. ' The wisdom of the flesh is death '2 and not super natural life. ' The wisdom of the flesh is an enemy to God ; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither can it be. And they who are in the flesh cannot please God.'3 'Now, if any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of His.'4 Thus does St. Paul summarize, as though by anticipation, the spirit of our age, and solve the problem of the paucity of our saints and the poverty of our sanctity.
This life of St. Rose, 'The First Flower of Sanctity of the New World,' will (we may confi dently hope) be an object-lesson to many in our days who, both in the cloister and in the world, are aiming at a higher and holier life, especially to her fellow-Tertiaries, who, with her, belong to the Order of Penance and serve under the standard of the Cross. It will show, on the one hand, how and why she became a saint — by self- denial, voluntary mortification, hard and rude penance ; by despising ' the wisdom of the flesh,'
1 St. James iii. 15. a Rom. viii. 6.
3 Rom. viii. 7, 8. * Rom. viii. 9.
INTRODUCTION 21
which is 'animal, sensual, diabolical,' which is ' death,' ' an enemy of God,' a rebel to the law of Christ ; by following in its stead ' the wisdom of the spirit,' which ' is life and peace.' On the other hand, these pages, as graceful as they are true, will reveal to them how they are to follow their Christian and Dominican calling, and how by the help of the example and prayers of their youthful and saintly pattern and patron, they may learn ' the wisdom of the spirit, which is life and peace.'
' Rosa soror nostra bene sit nobis propter te, Et vivat anima nostra ob gratiam tui.'
JOHN PROCTER, O.P.
NOTE.
ftHE books that have been consulted for writing this Life are as follows :
(i) 'The Oratorian Life,' edited by F. Faber, which is the translation of a French Life by a Dominican Father, J. B. Feuillet. The edition of this book used for the translation was the third, published in Paris in 1671, the year of St. Rose's canonization by Clement X.
(2) The Latin Life, by F. Leonard Hanson, a German Dominican, published in 1664, and dedicated to Pope Alexander VII.
(3) A very free translation of F. Hanson, by ' 1'Abbe P , formerly Vicar of Evroux,' dated
1845-
(4) ' Le Pcrou et Ste. Rose de Lima,' by the
late Vte. de Bussierre, published in 1863. This last work has been specially valuable, the Life being by far the most attractive among the modern ones hitherto published of St. Rose; and the
24 NOTE
first half of the book, giving a succinct account of Pizarro's conquest of Peru, and of the general state of Peruvian affairs about the time of the Saint's death, being highly interesting and suggestive.
(5) Alban Butler's short but very interesting biography of St. Rose in vol. viii. of his ' Lives.'
ST. ROSE OF LIMA
CHAPTER I.
PROLOGUE : BIRTH AND BAPTISM OF ST. ROSE.
' And I heard a voice from heaven, saying to me, Write : Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. From hence forth now, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours ; for their works follow them.' — Apocalypse xiv. 13.
jjN August 24, 1617, when Louis XIII.
was reigning in France and James I.
in England, ten years after St. Teresa had been canonized, and when Paul V. was on the Papal throne, there died, or rather there entered upon eternal life, the still young and beautiful Isabel de Flores, called by her friends ' Sister Rose of St. Mary,1 known afterwards both as ' St. Rose of Lima ' and as ' The Flower of the New World.' She was not yet thirty-two years old when her pure soul took flight to heaven ; but nearly all these years had been passed in suffer ings so great that we can only account for her
25
26 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
having lived through them as long as she did on the supposition that a gift, so special as to be almost miraculous, had been bestowed on the frail body which endured them to the end with such heroic joy.
Now, fifty years ago, when the congregation of St. Philip Neri was first established in England, and translations of foreign lives of the Saints were being brought out under the auspices, and in some cases by the personal labours, of the new Ora- torian founders, there was much discussion, both in print and in private, over the life of this young heroine of mortification. It was objected to on various grounds, but on two special ones. First, it was said that it contained stories of Devotions to images, etc., and of miracles connected with them, of a nature to shock and startle the then state of English opinion, as savouring of what might appear to the public like idolatry and superstition. Secondly, it was held that the accounts of the penances done by St. Rose were given in a manner unnecessarily plain and likely to produce no good effect, but merely to give the impression of exaggerated and incomprehensible, if not even fanatical, fervour. The idea seems to have been that, whatever Italians or Spaniards might think of such matters, to English people a saint whose holiness took the form of cruel maceration of her
PROLOGUE : BIRTH AND BAPTISM OF ST. ROSE 27
body as one of the chief practices of her life must be an object of repulsion rather than attraction ; and that such lives had better be left in their native tongues, or, if put into English at all, be so written as to throw a veil of Teutonic reserve over details of a harrowing kind.
In spite of discussion and opposition, however, the Life in question was circulated like its compan ions of the series, and has remained the standard Life of St. Rose in English, though whether it has been much read of late years is doubtful. Being written on the categorical and somewhat dull plan of a ' process ' for canonization, it does not appeal to our present needs and tastes in religious biography in such a way as much to excite our interest or devotion.
It seems, therefore, worth while to make an attempt to bring out more clearly the figure of the holy Dominican maiden, and to make her some what of a living reality in the hearts of her own sex, instead of merely the subject of a half-for gotten Life, or of a rather sentimental statue or ' pious ' picture. But it may be asked what interest the life of a saint of this kind, mystical and peni tential, can have for an age almost wholly taken up with outward, active works of benevolence, and but little inclined, even within the pale of the Church, to be attracted by anything that bears
28 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
the mark of severe and solitary prayer and penance.
To such an objection a threefold answer may be made. First, that St. Rose, even in her strictest retirement, was living and making sacri fices, as the saints always do, much more for others than for herself; while, so far from being, though highly mystical, inactive, she was in her whole career essentially a ' working woman,' earning money for her relations with the labour of her hands, as well as a most strong-minded and courageous one.
Next, as regards the physically penitential prac tices of the saint, supposed to be too painful for description, and really not necessary to enter upon, an authority may here be aptly quoted, as supporting and giving grounds for the principle of frankness about such practices, which will command respect on all sides: that, namely, of the great Oratorian thinker and writer who has now passed from among us into the light of eternity, but whose words on any spiritual sub ject must have an ever-fresh interest and im portance to his countrymen for many generations to come.
At the time of the discussion above referred to, Cardinal Newman made the following remarks to
PROLOGUE : BIRTH AND BAPTISM OF ST. ROSE 2Q
the writer of some articles in the Rambler on the subject of St. Rose's life :
' It might be well to show how closely the doctrine of Purgatory is connected with the historical accounts of the Saints'1 Penances. Of course, they who deny Purgatory are shocked at the Penances ; but how is it consistent in Catholics, who confess that doctrine, to exclaim against what is not only in keeping with it, but may be the means of their having less to do personally with it ? As (according to Bellarmine) they who deny Purgatory will never go there, so they who deny the Saints' vicarious Penances will never get out of it (i.e., till the day of doom). It's like quarrelling with one's bread-and-butter. This is fact, not supposition : e.g., some years ago, before (I think) I was a Catholic, I heard that— (naming an old Catholic) made very light of the prospects of Purgatory. No wonder that the Penances of the Saints throw an uncomfortable light on that prospect.'
Now, if ever there was a nature — in its reserve, in its sensitiveness as to propriety, in its horror of everything out of season or exaggerated in religious expression — which was English to the backbone, that nature surely was Newman's. Yet here is he advocating, in the most decided manner and the plainest language, unvarnished accounts of what
30 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
it was supposed to be specially ' un-English ' to make known, and giving a strict doctrinal reason for his advocacy.
A third reason for bringing out afresh a Life of St. Rose lies in her position as a Dominican Tertiary. The existence and origin of the Third Orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic, whose members arc commonly spoken of as Tertiaries, is of course well known among Catholics, and even to some people outside the Church. Never theless, there appears to be among many persons a certain degree of misunderstanding as to the real position and duties of the members of these bodies. The fact that many Tertiary women live the professed Religious life in community has perhaps tended to create an impression that this was the original aim of the Third Orders ; and it seems to have brought about with some Catholics a notion that people in the world have not much to do with such models of sanctity as St. Catherine of Siena, St. Rose, or any other Tertiary Saints, whose true followers — they think — are only to be found nowadays in Convents.
Now, though it is quite true that from very early days women of the Third Order have formed themselves, for various reasons, into communitie under regular Religious rule and obedience, and that some will probably always continue to do so,
PROLOGUE : BIRTH AND BAPTISM OF ST. ROSE 3!
this does not alter the fact that St. Dominic originally instituted his Tertiaries with a view to the special sanctification and usefulness of people living ' in the world.'
Pore Jandel (then General of the Dominican Order), in the year 1849, brought out a very interesting work on the subject of Tertiaries,1 in the course of which he dwells very specially on this point of their true position and origin. ' Whatever,' he says, ' may have been the utility of these holy retreats ' (i.e., regular communities of Tertiary women), ' and the splendour of the virtues that flourished within their walls, it is nevertheless certain that they did not come into the original plan of the Third Order, which was established, on the contrary, for the sanctification of souls living in contact with society. St. Dominic had, in fact, already provided for the contempla tive life by establishing the nuns of the Great Order (called the " Second Order " in distinction from the Friars which was the first creation of his apostolic zeal ; the object of this new founda tion was essentially different.' In the course of further remarks on this point — too long to quote
1 ' Manuel des Frcres et Sccurs du Tiers-Ordrc dc Peni tence de St. Dominique,' par le R"'c P. Jandel, ' Maitre General dc 1'ordre des Freres Precheurs.' Paris, Pous- vielgue Freres. (A new edition in 1871.)
32 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
— he goes on to show how completely the Tertiary is bound now, as formerly, to a life of untiring antagonism with the spirit of the world, and of self-sacrifice, in some form or other, for the good, especially moral and spiritual, of others ; and how utterly mistaken are those who think they can fulfil their obligations by the mere performance of pious practices, however sincerely carried out.
Of this Tertiary life led outside the cloister in unflinching opposition to worldly principles joined to unreserved immolation of self, St. Rose is a perfect example. Like her own model, St. Cathe rine of Siena, she never joined a community, but followed the high call that God had given her as a private individual ; which fact should make her life one of special use and importance to women of the Third Order ; living in the world, who may wish for a Saint as their standard in striving to live according to the true Dominican spirit. To other Catholic women also, who may be devoting themselves to their neighbours' service in some independent career, the study of her history may be not without interest and profit. The differences of condition are doubtless very great between the mystical Spanish maiden of nearly three hundred years ago, living hidden in her mother's garden in South America, and the striving, business-like
PROLOGUE : BIRTH AND BAPTISM OF ST. ROSE 33
English or American woman pursuing her active calling in the glare and bustle of a modern city. Yet, despite the contrast, the account of St. Rose's marvellously generous self-sacrifice, of her en couraging, even though inimitable, spirit of prayer, zeal, and penance, joined to a tender delicacy and charm of character which gave brightness to her severe life, may prove to some of our nineteenth-century toilers a refreshing incentive to renewed effort and to a hopeful spirit; and may, perhaps, at the same time, suggest their turning to St. Rose as a special intercessor for their work.
***** The city of Lima, the scene of St. Rose's birth, life, and death, is described by those who know it as having, for at least a great part of the year, a peculiarly heavy and depressing atmosphere, while all that one reads of its inhabitants tends to the conclusion that indolence is one of their strongest characteristics. The ladies of the capital, at least in the young Saint's day — with the exception of such as were specially devoted to religion — were clearly in the habit of leading lives as inactive as they were frivolous and superficial. In short, all accounts of Lima, its climate and conditions, go to prove that there could hardly be found a place less favourable to a course of per-
3
34 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
petual and energetic self-denial, carried on for a whole lifetime, even though a short one, by a delicate woman born and brought up among its associations. In the case of Isabel de Flores, moreover, there seem to have been no private circumstances to lessen the difficulty of the war with self-indulgence which it was her special calling to wage. Her biographers tell of nothing remarkably high as to example, or in any way out of the common, in any members of her family; in fact, the little we are actually told of her relations and some of her early friends rather shows them to have been commonplace, and like others of their own class in their daily lives. It was, there fore, with but little human aid that the young Saint whose story is here to be told fought her courageous fight against the indolence and soft ness to which her natural surroundings must have constantly tempted her.
The different writers of St. Rose's life give but few particulars of her family history, referring to details or incidents connected with it only now and then, rather casually, as they happen to be connected with her own personal career, so that a complete picture of her domestic circumstances is difficult to form. Her father and mother, Caspar and Marie de Flores, appear to have been what we should now describe in England as ' decayed
PROLOGUE : BIRTH AND BAPTISM OF ST. ROSE 35
gentlefolk,' the father having in his younger days been in the army. ' They were,' says one bio grapher, ' more distinguished by birth than by fortune'; and it is evident from the various accounts of the family that the parents, while holding a social position which made them respected among their neighbours, were never well off, and that, in the course of their holy child's lifetime, their fortunes went down rather than up.
Of these parents, then, St. Rose was born on April 20, 1586. The family home at that time v/as in a street named after St. Dominic, a fact which \vas afterwards noticed as a curious coinci dence. She was brought to the font (having been privately baptized directly after birth) at Pente cost, called in Spain the ' Pasch of Roses,' and the ceremony appears to have taken place in the chapel of a hospice dedicated to the Holy Ghost, opposite to her father's house. Her godmother was her aunt, Isabel de Hercra, and it was after her that the child had the name of Isabel, destined later on to be changed for supernatural reasons.
Various anecdotes, all tending to show her early call to special sanctity, are told of the Saint's infancy in the various biographies, but the only one of real interest is that referring to the incident whence the above-named change of name arose.
36 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
Alban Butler, always jealous for complete authen ticity, and fearful of too ready acceptance of the marvellous, passes over this incident with only these words : ' The figure and colour of her face in the cradle seeming, in some measure, to resemble a beautiful rose, the name of Rose was given her.' Other writers, however, give a more poetical as well as supernatural account of the matter. They say that when the little Isabel was about three months old her mother and several women friends were watching the infant as it lay quiet in the cradle, being all unaccountably attracted, and at the same time filled with a strange awe, by some wonderfully beautiful ex pression on the baby face. Suddenly a lovely and mysterious rose appeared to their wondering eyes, floating up above the child's head. It descended with a gentle movement to the cot, seemed to touch the little one's cheek as with a caress, and disappeared. The mother — so say the biographers — caught the child rapturously into her arms, and fervently protested that she would henceforth consider her as a gift from heaven, and would call her, and let her be called, by no other name than that of ' Rose.'
Whichever account we may incline to adopt, we have here, at any rate, through a deliberate change from her baptismal name, the first Saint
PROLOGUE: BIRTH AND BAPTISM OF ST. ROSE 37
of the New World called by one of the special titles of the great founder whose child she was afterwards to become; and the name thus given was indeed prophetic, for not one of St. Dominic's gifts did his daughter more fully inherit than that of being a true Rosa patienticz.
CHAPTER II.
ST. ROSE'S CHILDHOOD.
' Oh ! say not, dream not, heavenly notes
To childish ears are vain — That the young mind at random floats, And cannot reach the strain !'
KKBLK : Christian Year.
1HE infant who had thus been miraculously re-named in her cradle grew up, according to all her biographers, into a singularly beautiful and attractive little child, though with an attractiveness of no ordinary sort. While still a baby in her mother's arms, there was a sweet serenity and quietness about her, in which deficiency had certainly no part, and which seems to have added to her infant graces rather than to have detracted from them in the eyes of those around her, as though they were instinctively aware that it was a calm not of earth that brooded over the child. As she grew out of infancy into the most taking age of childhood,
38
ST. ROSE'S CHILDHOOD 39
this kind of serious serenity developed with her ; and she is described as being ' silent and reflec tive, and having a longing for solitude, as quite a tiny girl. This tendency, however, was without anything disagreeably unchildlike attached to it ; for Rose, though forward for her age both in talking and in walking alone, had no obtrusive intellectual precocity ; and she was so gentle, bright and sweet, as well as so fresh and lovely in appearance, as a child, that the whole household adored her and she was the very life and joy of the family.
Almost before she was out of her infancy, that love of Our Lord's suffering, which was afterwards to become the ruling passion of her life, began to lay hold of little Rose's heart. Plow God speaks to the baby souls of those early-chosen children of His special delight; by what channels the Divine secrets are imparted to their barely-opened minds ; what marvellous gift enables them to entertain and understand thoughts far beyond their years— we cannot know; but that such special communica tions are made to some of the Saints even as little children is certain. In St. Rose's case the work ing of these mysterious operations in her heart was witnessed to by the fact that, as a little thing barely able to walk, she would often be found, having managed to escape from her guardians or com-
4° ST. ROSE OF LIMA
panions, absorbed in deep infantine contemplation before a picture of the thorn-crowned Christ, in His mantle of scorn, which hung in her mother's room. Her own apprenticeship in her Master's school, too, began early ; for from the time that she was three years old Rose de Florcs was the subject of one accident or complaint after another, and was kept perpetually in states of suffering which were sharp trials to her childish patience. The first of these recorded was a severe pinch in a heavy cupboard - door into which somebody shut her thumb, and over which she showed the most precocious courage. To begin with, when her mother, seeing the accident, ran to help her, she hid the wounded hand under her frock that she might not frighten her, and looked up with a sweet, unmoved little face to reassure her. Then, when the result of the accident was an abscess under the nail, and the surgeon had to be called in, she held her tiny thumb out to him of her own accord, and without a tear or a sound bore the cutting and the tearing out of her nail, with all its painful accompaniments (and we may imagine what such an operation would be under South American surgery nearly three hundred years ago !), even smiling at the lookers-on, as though to convince them that she liked it. The surgeon in question was a certain Jean Perez de Zumeta;
ST. ROSE S CHILDHOOD 4!
and he said, long afterwards, that in the whole course of his practice he had never met with such heroism as was shown by this baby of three years old.
Again, not many months later, the poor child endured agonies from a bad abscess behind her ear, and from wounds in her head brought about by the surgical treatment for it. Here, as before, she showed not only her wonderful courage in suffering, but the extraordinary thoughtfulness for others which became marked in her even at this early age. The pain that her ear caused her, it seems, was so violent for some nights, owing to a mistaken remedy used by her mother, that it made her shake and tremble with her strong efforts to restrain herself from even a groan, to such a degree that the little cot she was in shook with her. At last Marie de Flores discovered her thus trembling in her bed, and anxiously asked if her head was hurting her. ' A little,' was all that Rose would reply, in such a manner as to make her questioner think she wanted no help and so to turn away ; but determination not to hurt her mother's feelings by letting her know how much she was suffering made the heroic child actually compel herself during the whole of that night to lie motionless, thus, of course, adding much to the agony she was bearing. It was only on undoing
42 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
the bandages that her head had been dressed with, next morning, that they discovered the state of violent inflammation that had set in; and all she would say even then, in answer to their pity, was ' Our Lord's Crown of Thorns was much worse.'
And so it was in other cases of sickness or suffering mentioned in the various accounts of the Saint's childhood, with details of which we need not take up space. She was constantly acting in this same way throughout all those years when the natural instinct — of a girl especially, and of a demonstrative Southern nature still more — is to cry out or lament at the first touch of pain as the best means of relief. Whether the suffering came from the complaint itself, or from the remedies which must have been often worse than the evil, the child endured in silence, keeping cheerful and even merry through all, and never causing a moment's trouble to anyone else of her own accord. It was as though she had drunk in, with her frequent contemplation of the picture of her babyish affections, a spirit which even in these tender years gave her the resolution and the soft- heartedness combined which all the world agrees to reckon as the special marks of a hero in the natural order, but which in this young heroine no one could suppose to be any mere natural gift.
St. Rose's childish troubles, however, were not
ST. ROSE S CHILDHOOD 43
all of a physical sort ; she had very early to suffer from an injustice which must have given great pain to a loving child's heart, and which was earned for her by the miraculous change of name recounted above. Isabel de Herera, her god mother, was apparently a woman both of uncon trolled temper and of strong pertinacity in her own way, as well as full of trivial jealousy for her own rights and dignity. Perhaps she did not in her heart believe that the occurrence which had so impressed Marie de Florcs was supernatural ; but, be that as it might, she could not forgive her for the change in her little daughter's name ; and she privately resolved that, from herself at least, her god-child should never hear any but the name that had been given her at the font. Accordingly, no sooner was the little girl old enough to under stand and answer to her name than there began between the two women, when they were together at the Florcs' house — which seems to have been often the case — a contention equally undignified in itself and painful to its unlucky subject. When ever (we are told) either of these ladies called the little girl by the name she herself preferred, the other immediately made a point of calling her by the one she had adopted ; and the poor child was perpetually being scolded, and even struck, for answering to one or other of her two names in
44 ST- ROSE OF LIMA
obedience to the respective wills of mother and godmother. This sort of squabble, which reads to us as almost incredibly childish and silly between two grown people, both bred as gentlewomen, was constantly carried on over the devoted head of the child-Saint for three or four years ; but the re currence of such scenes between her elders never seems to have roused in her the smallest inclination to take her own way and disobey one of the two, or to respect either of them the less. She was used to their hot temper, and took all angry expres sions as a sign that she herself was probably to blame, though she could hardly see how; and so she bore everything with the greatest sweetness and docility, albeit the feeling of being perpetually in disgrace with those she warmly loved, and whose real love for her she did not doubt, hurt her childish affections keenly. This state of things went on till St. Rose was somewhere about six years old, when the question of her name was settled by no less a person than the Archbishop of Lima, who in the Sacrament of Confirmation definitely bestowed on her the name of Rose. Whether merely subdued by the act of so high an authority, or convinced at last of a really super natural intervention in the matter, does not appear; but from this time forth Isabel de Herera withdrew her opposition and called her godchild
ST. ROSE'S CHILDHOOD 45
by the name which was henceforth to be hers throughout her native city, and beyond it.
One more incident in connection with the Saint's name will be best told in this place, so that we may have done with the subject, though it is forestalling matters as to time. As the child grew into girlhood that dread of personal vanity which was the cause of so many of her after acts grew with her; and, becoming very soon aware of the purely vain motives and aims that were perpetually actuating the frivolous women among whom she lived, she grew almost excessively sensitive as to the smallest germ of such a motive in anything connected with herself. She could not help discovering very early how much her looks were admired among her friends. There can be no doubt, from all accounts, that St. Rose in her youth was singularly lovely, and, above all, that her complexion was exquisitely fair, with a beautiful colour of a kind most uncommon among her countrywomen. Seeing this, knowing Marie de Flores' overweening interest in matters of personal appearance generally, and also, appar ently, either not having heard or having paid but little attention to the story of the mysterious appearance over her cradle, Rose could not help the springing up in her heart of an unwilling suspicion that her mother's keen attachment
46 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
to her name sprang from a vain fancy that it suited her looks, and that, in fact, she wished by means of it to draw attention and admira tion to her daughter's beauty. Now, \vc shall see better later on what powerful causes were at work within to make the bare notion of such a thing as this inspire a feeling of simple horror in the humble maid, to whose natural bashfulness alone the idea of such conspicuous- ness would have been painful. It is enough to say here that the thought was so repugnant to her as to be a real distress, and that when it had once taken possession of her mind, she could not rest satisfied till she had poured out her trouble, and the humiliation it caused her, to the Blessed Mother of Our Lord, to whom she was wont to go with all her wants and anxieties in the most simple and childlike spirit. Rose had a special devotion to a certain image of Our Lady kept in the Rosary Chapel of the Dominican Church ; and here she was one day kneeling in fervent prayer, when it pleased God by means of the image to show once more that His will was con cerned in this apparently trivial matter of a girl's name. Looking earnestly up into the face of the statue, which to her young imagination had always appeared full of divine motherliness and beauty, the young petitioner saw it suddenly
ST. ROSE'S CHILDHOOD 47
appear as though lit up and instinct with life, smiling down at her with the sweetest kindness ; and as she gazed with delight at the marvel, she further heard a voice distinctly say : ' Your name is infinitely pleasing to the Son I bear in my arms ; but henceforth you must add mine to it, and be called Rose of St. Alary. Your name is to be a fragrant flower, consecrated to Jesus of Nazareth.'
It may well be supposed that after this no further doubts about her name troubled the over awed but enraptured maiden. She told her mother of the incident when she got home, doubtless with much compunction of heart for having unjustly suspected her motives, and simply begged that she would keep her constantly in mind of the duties that were henceforth implied in the use of her name.
But to return to the time with which we are here properly concerned: — if St. Rose was by so many ways early practised in suffering, her child hood had its joys as well as its sorrows. To begin with, she had the greatest earthly happiness of the young in the possession of a mother's warm love ; for Marie de Flores, despite her hot temper and many faults of character, was in reality tenderly attached to her children, and seems even to have bestowed a special portion of her affection on this chosen one of God, though she sometimes
4 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
took perverse ways of showing it. Then, again, as one of eleven boys and girls, Rose had of course plenty of life around her; and being a favourite with brothers, sisters, and other companions, was sought after in their games and occupations, and thus had plenty of scope for natural affection, which was strong in her. Her taste in recreation, however, was somewhat different from that of most children, and her joy in associating with them must very often have consisted in lovingly giving up her own way and seeing them pleased. When she could freely consult her own pleasure, she liked to steal away into quiet corners and refresh herself either with telling her beads and saying her prayers, or with letting her innocent mind dwell on such thoughts of Divine things as were a foretaste of the joy and strength that her soul was to receive in after years from its un broken union with God.
Again, the child had planned for herself a means of imitating Our Lord which it may sound strange to place among the list of her pleasures, but which was, nevertheless, as true and enjoyable a recrea tion to her as the games of her companions were to them. From thinking constantly of the story of the Passion, she had imbibed a childish longing to follow the ' Man of Sorrows ' in the Way of the Cross literally and actually; but she could not
ST. ROSE'S CHILDHOOD 49
manage what she wished quite by herself. Now, the Flores family had a Peruvian servant named Marianne, who clearly had some sort of holiness in her which early attracted the Saint's confidence, for she became and remained her friend and support in all her spiritual enterprises; and on Marianne little Rose now spent all her powers of persuasion, to coax the devoted girl into helping her in her plan, and keeping it secret. The plan was to have a load of wood, so heavy that she could hardly bear its weight, placed on her tiny shoulders; and so, with joined hands and closed eyes, to stand till her strength gave way, in imagination following Him whom she already called ' her dearest ' on the road to Calvary. Further, when she could by any means induce her confidant to grant her her will completely, which was not often, she would stretch her small form on the ground and get the reluctant Marianne to strike, push, and even kick her, in remembrance of the humiliations of Jesus. Such were the chosen pleasures of this child-lover of suffering, whose soul grew and waxed strong at a marvellous pace while she was yet but little more than an infant in age and outward guise; and her companions wondered what she was so often doing alone.
There was one point in especial on which Rose
4
50 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
could never be got to agree with her fellow- children's tastes, and in which she would not even join in their amusement out of good nature, and that was in the other girls' love of dolls. She absolutely hated them, and evidently showed her hatred with a vehemence quite unlike her usual character, and which made her appear before she was five years old in the light of an ardent enthusiast for truth. The fact of the matter was this : in St. Rose's time idolatry was still very prevalent and very conspicuous in South America ; and one of the earliest impressions made on the child was abhorrence of everything connected with false worship, from hearing the idols of the native Peruvians discussed by her elders. Naturally, she knew nothing very definite about them, only that they were things worshipped in the place of that true God whose love was already so domin ant in her own heart that she longed for it to be so in the hearts of others; and seeing the devotion of her girl friends to their dolls (probably very hideous and unhuman-looking figures), she took it into her head that these playthings were idols. Hence her violent aversion to them, which made her protest with childish eloquence against the love of such things, and even sometimes go into floods of tears over her companions' wickedness, as it seemed to her, in treasuring them.
ST. ROSE'S CHILDHOOD 51
This early antipathy in the little Saint was at last the means of bringing about an act which may be said to have put an end once for all to her childhood, and fairly started her on her supernatural career. Some girl friends were one day playing with their dolls in her father's garden, and lavishing all sorts of childish caresses on them. Rose was trying with her customary earnestness to persuade them to look at the matter as she did, when her elder brother, Ferdi nand — who was a special playfellow and com panion of hers, but who liked to tease his holy little sister occasionally — answered her exhorta tions, while some of the other children laughed at her, by throwing a handful of mud and dust over her head. The child seems to have had a weak ness for neat and proper ways, for she could not bear having her hair messed, and was as much put out as her sweet temper would let her be at anything. She brushed the dirt off hastily, turn ing away from her companions with a look of annoyance ; and Ferdinand, seeing that his \vish to tease had succeeded, thought he would pursue his advantage and vex her a little more.
' Silly child !' he called after her, probably imitating some preacher he had heard, ' to care for such rubbish as your curls. Remember that women's locks were only made to tempt men ! A
52 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
holy girl would not mind a little dirt on her head — she would know it was all vanity !'
The boy's words reached Rose in full before she escaped into the house, and took effect in deed, but in a very different way to what he had supposed and intended. Small child as she was, her enlightened spirit felt the Spirit of God pierce it by this mock exhortation, intended only to give temporary human annoyance. 13 y the time the little girl was alone, and safe from discovery in some attic or other dark corner of the house where she used to take refuge when she wanted solitude, her brother's words had long lost all power to vex nature. There had come into her young soul, with them, a vision of the possibility of sin on the one hand, and on the other a certainty of the loving call from Christ to be His and none other's, which overpowered all else and turned the child — even though barely understand ing, humanly, what it all meant — into a Saint with a passionate heart. Then and there, after kneel ing in humblest contrition to beg pardon of Jesus for her momentary fault, she vowed herself to be His Spouse for ever; and, getting hold of a pair of scissors, she cut right off the shining golden locks that had caused both the wrong feeling and the inspiration that followed, offering them in child-like sacrifice to Our Lord.
CHAPTER III.
HOW SHE BEGAN TO LOVE AND FOLLOW ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA.
' Out of the mouth of babes and o. sucklings Thou hast perfected praise, because of Thy enemies, that Thou mayst destroy the enemy and the avenger.' — Ps. viii. 3.
|HE lovingly impetuous act of little Rose, which thus bound the holy child to a heavenly Spouse in what one may almost describe as her babyhood, was very likely in part inspired by feelings that had been taking a strong hold of her young heart for some time past of love and veneration for a Saint whose life was well known to the world, and whom she had begun to study as a model for herself even at these tender years. This Saint was the great Catherine of Siena, whose early life was like in many points to that of St. Rose, widely different as were their after external careers. As little children, to begin with, there would seem to have
53
54 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
been a likeness between them ; for Catherine is said, just as Rose, to have had a singular charm of sweetness and brightness about her which attracted everybody to her, and even caused her to be nicknamed ' Euphrosyne,' from the spirit of joy that her presence brought with it. St. Catherine also was inspired, though in a different manner from her little follower, to make the vow of chastity at a wonderfully early age : and, further, the very means by which St. Rose became acquainted with this act of her great predecessor was associated with a miraculous occurrence of the same nature as one which took place in con nection with the earlier Saint, though at a different time in her life. When Rose was about four and a half years old Marie de Flores took a fancy to teach her child to read ; but after she had got a very little way in her attempt, her quick temper got the better of her, and she gave it up in a fit of impatience, having taught her small pupil really nothing. What, then, was her surprise when one day the little girl came running to her knee, planted a book upon it, and — attract ing her mother's attention by some pretty coaxing way — read aloud a page of the said book, and further displayed a page of writing done by herself. ' My dear child 1' questioned the astonished
HER LOVE FOR ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA 55
mother, ' where did you learn all this ?' And the child's answer was as simple and daughterly as it was wonderful :
' Mother dear,' she said, ' I asked God to teach me to read and write, that you might not have the trouble — and He heard me !'
Now, St. Catherine, as will be remembered by those familiar with her life, had been taught reading miraculously and at her own prayer, though in her case it did not happen till she was about nineteen years old, when her keen desire to read was inspired by a longing to say the Divine Office, and when, having failed to learn of her sister, she prayed prostrate on the ground that God would grant her the faculty if this desire was pleasing to Him.
No sooner had little Rose's request been heard, and answered by the bestowal of the wished-for gift, than she began using it to study the life of this renowned servant of God, which was evi dently in the possession of the family ; and so great a hold did the thought of holy Catherine's life take of the child's mind and heart that she very soon came to a resolution — which never seems to have failed her from the tender years when she made it to the day of her death — that she and no other should be her example and companion in following Christ. Before long she
5 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
named the Saint of Siena her ' mistress '; and, having the image of such a mistress constantly present to her young imagination, the pupil grew more and more strengthened in that desire for not only loving, but suffering with, her dear Lord, which had begun with her even as an infant. Opportunities did not fail her. To begin with, the very act of childlike consecration, by cutting off her hair, in which she first imitated her chosen example, brought her mother's anger down on her and caused her to be severely punished by blows, hard words, and a long time of disgrace. Then, as she was growing older, a most keen suffering was again inflicted on the poor girl by an act of her mother's, though this time unin tentionally. The family, for some reason of con venience which is unexplained, went to live for about four years in a place not far from Lima that was rich in gold mines, called in some of the Saint's lives Cante, but supposed by the Bol- landists to be meant for Quanta. This place had a cold, unhealthy air, and disagreed so terribly with Rose that she fell ill there, with sharp pains and loss of power in her limbs. Marie de Flores had an idea that wrapping the child in furs, and keeping these on for a long time, would cure her ; and accordingly she fastened her up in this way, and told her on no account to take off the wrap-
HER LOVE FOR ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA 57
pings. Her daughter's double spirit of obedience and silent suffering was thus called into full play ; for the extraordinary treatment quickly brought on violent inflammation of the skin, resulting in sores all over the body; and this state of things the Saint bore in perfect silence for four days, not even asking to have its cause removed. It was only when her mother, at the end of this time, asked her how she was, that she quietly said, ' I am no better '; and when Marie de Flores, on this, undid the furs, she was horrified to discover the result of her prescription.
' My dear child !' she cried, in real grief at having been the cause of such suffering, 'why did you not pull off the things if they tortured you so ?'
' Because, mother, you told me to leave them till you took them off yourself,' was the simple reply.
This visit to Guarita — if such was really the name of the place — was the occasion of much voluntary self-denial on St. Rose's part, as well as of this inflicted pain. During the whole time she was there she habitually remained at home, except just when she had to go to church, a course which must have been a real sacrifice to a young girl coming to a new place, and one which appears to have been looked upon as
58 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
of some interest. The only time that she was forced, by the wishes of others, to break through this habit and go with a company of people on a day's visit to a place in the neighbourhood celebrated for fine scenery and certain interesting mills, she imposed on herself the penance of silence, and of keeping her eyes down for the whole day.
Before this time little Rose had begun that one among the many combats with nature that she waged throughout her whole life which must have been the hardest to a child — the war, namely, with love of food. At four years old she began this, by strictly denying herself all enjoy ment of fruit, a thing of which she happened to be particularly fond, and which in a Southern climate must be much more keenly longed for than by the inhabitants of the North. She took to giving away all the fruit she got to her brothers and sisters, never yielding to any weakness of desire for it herself ; and by the time she was six years old she had added to this mortification the farther one of a diet of bread and water on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and this not touched until sundown. Farther, the bread she ate on these days was stale and hard, and the water tepid, and as nasty as she could make it.
HER LOVE FOR ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA 5Q
At what age St. Rose made her first Com munion, none of her biographers mention for certain, though they all seem agreed that it was made earlier than is usual. But an important incident in the history of her early passion for suffering, and especially for the suffering of fast ing, is connected with the time of this event, at whatever age it may have taken place. Having been once admitted to the Heavenly Feast, the child grew to have an intense craving for it, a craving which often made her wish for, and practise, abstinence from all other food. Before long a sign of Divine approval of this feeling was granted to the ardent young heart. Our Lord appeared to her one day, after Communion, and Himself desired her to fast in His honour, promising that His own Sacred Flesh should henceforth support the life of her body as well as that of her soul. Then the Saint, without hesitation, fixed her habits of food once for all by taking a vow never again to touch flesh meat unless actually compelled to it by obedience ; and here, once more, her mother was the cause of a severe trial to her, by compelling the child occasionally to eat meat, the consequence of which was an immediate rising of the stomach and sickness. It must be said, however, in justice to Marie de Flores, that in this instance
60 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
she really seems to have acted from an honest desire to try the reality of her daughter's spirit, rinding it, very naturally, difficult at first to believe in a supernatural confirmation of fasting propensities carried to such extremes. Once, also, the doubts of the doctors as well as of the mother as to the supernatural character of the child's extraordinary life very nearly caused her death. She had a dangerous illness not very- long after this vow of perpetual abstinence ; and when she began to grow better the doctors ordered her meat to get up her strength. With unfailing obedience she took it as ordered; but the first taste of it brought on such agonies that if they had not retracted their orders — utterly astonished as they were at the effects — and let her go back to bread and water, it seemed that she must soon have died. So it is that God, when He has marked out, for His own all-wise purposes, some special road to sanctification for a soul, interferes occasionally Himself in what may seem like trivial matters, to prevent inter ference on the part of creatures with the carrying out of His design. Whether the strength of a sick girl should or should not be restored by the eating of ilesh meat might appear in itself a question not likely to have an important bearing on her future spiritual life; but her Maker has
HER LOVE FOR ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA 6l
appointed strict abstinence from this particular food as the path by which Rose is to go to Him ; and to preserve her obedience to His appointment intact, He thenceforth endows it with unwhole some qualities for her which it has not in its own nature.
It is obvious what preparation for a life of heroic suffering, and triumph of spirit over body, is implied in these progressive acts of stern self-denial practised by a child of from ten to eleven yeais old. In ordinary cases, a child of this age who was perfectly free from greedi ness of all sorts, never eating for the love of nice things, or more than it wanted, would be looked upon as a marvel; we can there fore hardly wonder that in due time even little Rose's own family, witnessing her daily perse verance in this strange abstinence, became con vinced that there was something above the power of their interference in such conduct, and, giving up the contest for their own way, left her to follow her heavenly inspirations in the matter.
CHAPTER IV.
HER VICTORY OVER VANITY.
' Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain : the woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.' — Prov. xxxi. 30.
' And the King shall greatly desire thy beauty : for He is the Lord thy God, and Him shalt thou adore. ... All the glory of the King's daughter is within.' — Ps. xliv. 12, 14.
]S Rose grew from childhood into early girlhood, there grew with her a daily keener longing to be bound entirely to her God. She had said nothing to her mother of the vow made in her childish days; but the strength of her determination to keep it had only increased with her years ; and as she became old enough to feel that her parents would be thinking about a husband for her, she shrank more and more from everything that could tend to make her specially attractive to others, or draw her openly into society. Many incidents are men tioned by the Saint's biographers concerning this early period of her womanhood, which show that 62
HER VICTORY OVER VANITY 63
she had to go through that painful contest with her mother which seems to be so often the lot of women early called to peculiar sanctity, especially in Southern countries. St. Rose has been com pared in this respect, as in others already men tioned, to her model St. Catherine of Siena, whose mother, Lapa, for a long time offered strong opposition to her daughter's call to devote herself to God, using even bodily violence sometimes in support of her own views.
Marie de Flores, despite the fact that by birth and position she was in a rank of life where ungentle treatment was more to be wondered at than in the case of Lapa Benincasa, seems never theless to have subjected Rose, when she was growing into a woman, to almost as undignified treatment as that she had bestowed upon her when a child, in her anger at finding the girl opposed to her will.
It is as difficult to arrive at exact dates in con nection with this point as with others in St. Rose's life ; but it was probably when she was about fifteen or sixteen years old that the difficulties began. They arose when her mother considered her old enough to begin going out with her. Paying visits — apparently equivalent to our own afternoon calls — seems to have been a most frequent amusement among the South American
64 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
ladies of that period ; and it is clear that Marie de Flores was especially addicted to it, and that when she saw her daughter beginning to develop the great beauty and charm of which mention has been made before, she was naturally anxious to introduce her amongst her friends, and to sec her make a favourable impression.
The first contest between mother and child was on the subject of dress and cosmetics. As regards the last point, Rose seems to have gained her way without very much painful discussion, by gently persuading her mother to sec the incon sistency of such things with real Christian modesty; but with regard to the question of dress there was a longer struggle. On this subject Rose evidently had a strong conviction, apart from the motive of her vow and her con sequent desire not to attract attention, that a sacrifice of even the smallest indulgence in the pleasures of dress was specially required of her. Therefore, when her mother began giving her smart clothes and the various personal decorations commonly in use for girls just old enough to go into society, the young Saint, unable at once to avoid appearing in them without rousing her parent's anger too far, determined at least to counteract any girlish satisfaction she might be tempted to feel from such things by calling into
HER VICTORY OVER VANITY 65
play her marvellous capacity for secret suffering, and turning the ornaments into instruments of torture. We read of her fastening a wreath to her head with a large needle driven deeply into the flesh ; and for some time she never put on a smart dress or complied in any way with customs that savoured of vanity in appearance without punishing herself in some severe way, as if she had been guilty of a fault. Once Almighty God Himself interfered miraculously with the course of things in connection with this point of attention to bodily adornment, just as He had done before when His will about her food was in question. She had put on a pair of scented gloves which her mother had wished her to wear, and had appar ently either done so with less unwillingness than was usual with her in such cases, or had at least omitted to do any corresponding act of penance. Our Lord therefore took the punishment into His own hands, and caused the gloves first to benumb and then to burn her flesh with such intensity that she had to tear them off. The night after this happened she had a vision of the gloves she had worn surrounded by flames. This occurrence was taken by the holy girl as a direct intimation that her instinct against indulging in the slightest personal vanity came from God and not from self; and, so long as her mother compelled her
5
66 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
to appear fashionably dressed, she was never again weak enough to refrain from secretly punishing the body that was so attired. At last, finding that her outward compliance in dressing after her mother's taste led, which it was of course intended to do, to the spending of more and more time in idle visiting, and, what was still worse from her own point of view, to the greater frequenting of actual public assemblies, Rose determined to try what a more open experiment might effect in obtaining her freedom to follow her inward call. She knew very well, as we have seen that she had begun to do even as a mere child, how much pride in her daughter's beauty of face had to do with the mother's pleasure in her ; so one day she got some burning Indian pepper, called pimento, with which she actually had the courage to rub her eyelids till they \vere all swollen, and the beautiful eyes which formed one of her great charms were as red as fire and as burning. As she wished that it should do, such an act brought on her first a sharp reproof and then a remonstrance for folly in endangering eyesight from her angry mother, who instanced some acquaintance of theirs as having lost his eyesight from the use of pimento. Here was the opportunity that Rose sought : she boldly told her mother that she would rather be blind than use her eyes for seeing the follies and vanities of the world 1
HER VICTORY OVER VANITY 67
This uncompromising declaration, following on such heroically inflicted suffering, seems to have put the finishing stroke to Marie de Flores' oppo sition in the matter of dress, and she gave her daughter leave to wear what she liked : — a per mission which was immediately carried out by the adoption of a severely plain costume of coarse stuff, then frequently worn by older women who were openly devoted to the service of God. But there was a yet severer contest to come before the saintly maiden could be really at peace.
Try as she would, both to keep hidden from society and to lessen her attractiveness with ugly dressing and personal disfigurement (which she did by extreme fasting, and trying to destroy her beauty in various ways besides the special one just mentioned), Rose was still sought after by several of her mother's friends as a wife for their sons. Since it is evident from all accounts of her life that she cannot have had a penny to take as a bridal dowry to any husband, it is much to the credit of her friends that they should have been so anxious to receive her into their families, for the desire must have been prompted by pure admiration for her personal charms and virtues. For some little time the Saint seems to have contrived to keep out of the way of the aspirants to her hand without
68 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
the necessity of a positive refusal ; but at last a proposal of marriage made for her was con sidered by her parents to be so advantageous that they distinctly wished her to accept it. This offer came from a lady of Lima who earnestly desired Rose for her daughter-in-law. Her name is not given, but she is said to have been a most distinguished person, and apparently was also wealthy. The De Flores family being such a very large and poor one, it was only natural that the father and mother should be glad of an opportunity of providing so well for one of the children ; and they put the matter before Rose in the way that would be hardest for her to resist, as a duty towards them and her brothers and sisters.
This offer brought matters to a climax, and compelled her to speak out her reason for refusing it, and for declining all thoughts of marriage. She acknowledged the early vow which she had hitherto kept as a secret within her own breast, and told her parents that since she had arrived at an age to judge better for herself than when she was a child, and had seen more of the world, her determination to keep it was stronger than ever. She would have no bridegroom but Christ, and it was useless for anyone to try to shake her resolution.
HER VICTORY OVER VANITY 69
Then it was that the full violence of Marie de Flores' temper broke forth ; much as she had been vexed at her young daughter's apparently inexplicable dislike to fine clothes and to society, and exaggerated as she may have thought her dread of admiration and fear of vanity, she had evidently never suspected that Rose really in tended to give up the world altogether and lead a single life, and she quite lost self-control on hearing the announcement of her firm resolve. At first, indeed, both she and her husband appear not to have believed their gentle child to be in earnest in refusing to bow to their wishes, for they tried hard to coax and persuade her to give way. But when they saw that she really meant it, they took to threatening her with their anger ; and, finding her unmoved by this, father and mother alike are said to have ill-used the poor girl in every way, to have insulted her in words, and finally proceeded to blows, hoping that such treatment would in the end effect what they desired; while the taunts of her brothers and sisters at what they were persuaded to think her ' hard-heartedness ' in refusing to help the family were added to the parents' reproaches.
It is hardly necessary to say that they were disappointed. With her warmly affectionate nature, and just at that most delicately sensitive
70 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
age of early womanhood, we cannot doubt that the girl-Saint suffered, even more keenly than she had done as a child under her mother's dis pleasure, from this harsh usage by both parents ; but not for an instant was she tempted to take back the gift she had made to God of her pure heart. Indeed, we may well believe that, how ever great the pain she may have felt on the human side, her higher nature must have rejoiced more than it had ever yet done that she was able to suffer something from others for the sake of her beloved Spouse.
Nothing definite is said in St. Rose's biog raphies about the length of time that this persecution lasted, and that she was kept in disgrace by her parents, but it was at any rate final. When they found that absolutely nothing shook her resolution, they not only ceased trying to get their way in this particular instance, but seem to have made up their minds that in opposing their daughter's call they must be opposing God Himself; for they withdrew hence forth all prohibitions or restraints as to her actions and mode of life, and left her to pursue her own course in peace.
CHAPTER V.
ROSE'S DOMESTIC LIFE.
' I saw her upon nearer view, A Spirit, yet a woman too ! Her household motions, light and free, And steps of Virgin liberty ; A countenance in which did meet Sweet records, promises as sweet ;
* * * *
A Being breathing thoughtful breath, A traveller between life and death —
* * * * And yet a Spirit still, and bright With something of angelic light.'
WORDSWORTH.
jjEFORE going on to an account of what followed this release from parental per secution and restraint, it will be best to give a glance back over the time during which the conflict about the Saint's state of life had been going on. This time, of course, had not been spent entirely in either contests with her mother as to dress and society, or in going
, 72 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
out with her under compulsion. There was the hourly, daily life to be lived, and the everyday duties to be done, such as must fall to the lot of any girl living at home in a large family— be she Saint or ordinary Christian— whether in England in the nineteenth or Lima in the seventeenth century. What has already been said of Rose's childhood will have shown that her high aspira tions to sanctity, and consciousness of a special Divine call, in nowise diminished her family affec tions, or made her feel set apart from domestic interests; and all the particulars that can be gleaned as to these years of her maidenhood serve to form a graceful and interesting picture of the way in which she lived this ordinary life, and fulfilled ' the daily round, the common task ' in a most uncommon spirit. We find her, just as she was when a little girl, amongst her brothers and sisters, sympathizing in their joys even when of a kind she did not share; never 'preaching' or making much of herself, but trying her very hardest to make the ways of holiness attractive by unfailing gentleness, and by doing such kind nesses as lay in her power. Especially it was clearly her habit to do all she could to shield her brothers from 'scrapes' with the father, whose hot temper made him apt to punish too violently. To her mother, in all things where no higher
ROSE'S DOMESTIC LIFE 73
principle came in to prevent it, Rose was as simply obedient in growing up as she had been when quite a child ; she tried to save her trouble as far as she possibly could; and it is evident from various little incidents in her life that she helped in household matters and was no stranger to manual tasks about the house. For these there must have been plenty of opportunity, for we never hear of the De Flores family as being able to afford more than one servant ; and the maid Marianne, formerly mentioned as the aider and abettor of the child - Saint in her precocious mortifications, appears to have been that one, as long as her favourite young mistress lived. It may easily be guessed how anxious Rose would be, persuading Marianne to help her so often in her darling projects of penance, to return the faithful girl's services by sparing her labour in every feasible way. Indeed, there is per haps hardly a prettier or more touching picture in the story of any Saint's life than that called up by the relations of humility and mutual confidence existing between this lovely daughter of the house and the simple, ignorant hand maiden.
As regarded strangers and friends of the family with whom she was unadvoidably brought into contact from time to time, we have seen how
74 ST- ROSE OF LIMA
great was the charm exercised by St. Rose. Three things in especial went to make up this charm : her uncommon beauty, which in itself made her unusually attractive, being doubtless greatly enhanced by the simplicity and un consciousness that went with it ; her great sweet ness, unselfishness, and tact of manner towards everyone ; and a very excellent gift of mother-wit and brightness in conversation which is greatly insisted on by the biographers as having been a marked characteristic in her. The young Saint was no great talker from choice — what human being whose inward faculties are constantly fixed on God ever would be ? — and that a word to wound humility or charity never passed her lips we may be very sure ; but there can be no doubt that one of her great difficulties in avoiding company, whether at home or abroad, came from the fact that, when circumstances made social intercourse a duty, her natural manner of talking was so unusually lively and fascinating as to make her a universal favourite. Probably a person who joined to youth, beauty, and great super natural gifts the power of bringing amusement and change of ideas to the dull or empty-headed, or consolation to the sad, by her conversation, was as rare in those days as in these, and as welcome.
ROSE'S DOMESTIC LIFE 75
But besides domestic duties and intercourse with relations and friends, there were personal occupations of her own in which the girl was interested ; and of these two in particular are frequently mentioned as her favourites, which played a part in her spiritual as well as her material life. Almost from her childhood Rose had loved embroidering in silks, and she became so proficient in the art that she is said to have excelled all the embroidresses of Lima in doing flowers. It was not, however, only a recreation to her, but a very serious work ; for she em broidered things for sale among the ladies of the city, to earn money for the family, and often found a very good market for them. Her pursuit of this art, whether because of her filial object in prac tising it or for something He specially chose to sanction for her in the industry itself, was marked throughout the Saint's life by Our Lord with peculiar signs of His favour. To the early evi dence collected just after her death, with a view to future canonization, several of her friends contributed their testimonies that the exquisite beauty of form and colouring in Rose's em broidered flowers had something in it that appeared beyond what mere natural power could produce ; also, that the delicate bloom and fresh ness of her work when it came from her hands,
76 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
no matter how long she might have been about it, made it look as if angelic fingers only could have touched it. Moreover, it was well known in Lima that she could do more needlework in a few hours than other embroidresses could have got through in twice the time. All these facts leave no doubt that she was supernaturally helped.
Her other favourite occupation, and one that seems naturally associated with the embroidery, since she chiefly worked flowers, was gardening. There are gardens attached to most houses in Lima, and that of the De Flores family was evi dently a large one. Rose's love of flowers was a taste that she shared with her fellow-citizens, in whom it was, and is said to be still, a perfect passion. She took entire charge of several flower-beds in her parents' garden, and at the times of their greatest poverty cultivated flowers which the faithful Marianne took to sell at the market for her. Here again she received a special heavenly gift of success; her flowers were always found more glowing in colours and more delicious in scent than any others ; and as soon as it was known that nosegays from Rose de Flores' garden were on sale, buyers in the market flocked to get them. So far did God bless this work that He even allowed flowers to bloom in her borders out of their ordinary time, so that plants of different
ROSE'S DOMESTIC LIFE 77
seasons might be seen blossoming there together. She was rallied once by some ecclesiastic who was visiting the family on her ' little trade ' of market- gardening, and asked whether she could possibly get any profit for the household out of it, when she gave answer with a bright smile :
' It is but a little trade, certainly, but my heavenly Spouse's goodness makes the profits large.'
This incident, of course, must have happened after her vows had been publicly made, as we shall see that they were in time; otherwise nothing could have induced the humble girl to break through her reserve upon such a subject.
In addition to these employments, Rose took upon herself from time to time the office of sick- nurse. If any member of her own family, or her godmother, or other close friend or relation, was taken ill, she immediately made it her business to look after the invalid; and her power of sooth ing a sick-bed, and persuading the most captious or impatient of invalids to take medicines and submit to treatment, made her services as wel come in this capacity as they were readily and lovingly given.
CHAPTER VI.
THE PENITENTIAL PRACTICES OF THE SAINT'S GIRLHOOD.
' Athirst and weary, sitting by the brink Of waters clear and sweet That gush beneath their feet, They hold the chain, and count its every link, Yet, bound by some strange spell, they will not drink.
* * * * *
Did they but guess at all we have to tell !
Our hearts' best blood should flow That gift to make them know : To draw the blinding veil, to break the spell, And loose the golden chain into the well.'
The Gift of God: MOTHKR FRANCES RAPHAEL'S ' Songs in the Night?
|E have now before us a gracious image of Rose of St. Mary in her parents' home. We see her figure moving quietly from one household duty to another; now cheer ing or soothing an irritable and anxious mother, now keeping the peace between quarrelsome brothers and sisters, now bent over her embroidery-
78
PENITENTIAL PRACTICES OF HER GIRLHOOD 79
frame, tending and watering her plants, or per forming duller household tasks — a true girl's figure which, if we went no further, we might almost be tempted to pronounce
' Not too bright and good For human nature's daily food.1
But we must go further ; for, though most people — even holy ones — might hold that to keep God constantly in their thoughts whilst doing every action simply to please Him, and to spend a life of hourly sacrifice, kindness to others, and unsparing bodily labour, was in itself enough — added to strict observance of religious duties — for the fulfilment of all conditions of both prayer and penance, such was not Rose's view. Sacrifice of her own will, with unhesitating obedience to her mother and to all around her, seemed to her deep and sincere humility only the natural and necessary attitude of such a sinner and nonentity as she truly believed herself to be ; work that would have seemed to others of her age and strength even excessive appeared to her love and zeal nothing at all ; and to do everything she did for God alone was with her as simple a matter as to breathe the air.
How severely she punished herself lest she should contract the smallest habit that could
80 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
make her unpleasing to her Creator, or unfaithful to the least grace He gave her, we have seen in a previous chapter ; but this was not enough. That intense desire for suffering experienced by the Saints, simply for the sake of being like unto Christ, out of pure love for Him, was one of the motives which, as Rose's love of her chosen Spouse grew with her growth, caused her to desire something more than to be merely free from imperfection. Who does not know how a purely human love, when really strong and un selfish, makes us feel actually ashamed to be prosperous and well whilst those we love are poor and suffering ; to lead an indolent and self-indul gent life whilst they are leading an heroic and self-denying one ? And thus it was that the spirit which had prompted the child to stand gazing at the Ecce Homo in her mother's room, and to try in her early years to imitate His journey to Calvary, now caused the maiden to have ever before her the image of Him Who had called her — not glorious and triumphant, not even labour ing in subjection at Nazareth, preaching on the mount to the crowd, or blessing little children — but always and everywhere suffering, and asking her to suffer with Him.
But there was a second motive for that side of St. Rose's character which we have now to
PENITENTIAL PRACTICES OF HER GIRLHOOD 8l
consider. This was one that sprang, and ever must spring, in a perfectly consistent heart, from the first. If Christ had suffered, why had He done so ? For the salvation of all the human race. She too, then, would suffer for the same cause, and would help to win for her dear Lord and Master more of those souls whom He had died to save ; and she would at the same time show her love for her fellows by sparing nothing to gain for them the only thing worth having — the attainment of their true end in eternal life.
Now, before pursuing this point into such detail as belongs to the present part of the Saint's history, it will be well to meet a difficulty about it which may arise with some readers, especially with any outside the Catholic Church. The difficulty we anticipate is one very frequently felt not only about Saints' penances, but about the whole question of vocation to religious Orders devoted to severe penitential practices. The modern view of this, as set forth in fiction and other forms of writing, appears to be that there is some ground for the entrance of those who have been great sinners into such Orders, or even for their practising penance in the world. With out actual faith in it, people can to some extent understand the expiatory view of mortification; and it is not uncommon to find heroes or
6
82 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
heroines of Protestant novels, who have some crime to repent of, sent to a Trappist or other monastery to expiate it. This seems natural to many imaginations. But when it is found that facts do not correspond to these fancies, and that in real life vocations to the enclosed and severe Orders almost always come to the specially young and innocent, then the outcry cannot be strong enough. It is, first, an utter waste of their lives and energies; and next, horrible and unnatural in every way that they should inflict perfectly useless and uncalled-for torture on themselves. How can such practices in any way please God ?
The answer to this question is identical with the explanation of St. Rose's second motive for desiring to suffer, and is at the same time, apart from the transcendent state of pure love already mcntioAed, the only solution of that ' mystery of suffering ' which is so terrible a problem to our age. The answer is simple, could people only be brought to believe it : and it is this :— that the Catholic Christian, now as always, looks upon suffering of all kinds not as a cruel misfortune to be shunned by all means, but as a valuable pos session to be put to a noble, and at the same time most practical, use. This view of it is founded on the belief that, through the merits of those endured by Christ Himself, all sufferings have,
PENITENTIAL PRACTICES OF HER GIRLHOOD 83
besides their purgative or expiatory value, a high intercessory one.* In short, the Catholic treats his pains, of every kind, as prayers, which will be accepted for others as well as for himself. This is not because God likes to see suffering as such, nor, as has sometimes been blasphemously sug gested, because the torments of the innocent give Him pleasure in themselves ; but because, sin having brought suffering into the world, it has been taken and turned to a beautiful use by His own Son, Who made it His offering for man's reconciliation. In His sacrifice on the Cross, Christ did not only bear the punishment of man's sin, but won the ear of His Father to listen to His petitions. Now, what Christ has offered, the
* This special intercessory value belonging to sufferings, and to all acts as distinguished from ordinary prayers, is called in the Church's technical language impetratory. ' Impetration ' means intercession of so forcible a nature that God is almost, so to speak, compelled to grant what is asked through it. It is one of the four great ends for which, the Church teaches, Christ sacrificed Himself on earth, and for which He still offers Himself ' at the right hand of the Father Almighty' in heaven, and daily on our altars in the sacrifice of the Mass. The other three ends are Satisfaction (z>., expiation), Adoration and Thanksgiving. ' Satisfaction,' according to Catholic belief, can be practised vicariously, as well as for one's own sins ; and hence, by the offer of our sufferings, we can 'impetrate' the remission of other people's penalties, besides the positive graces we desire for them.
84 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
true members of His Church may offer also ; and hence His faithful followers, to the end of time, may apply Our Lord's merits to their own pains and turn them into prayers for whatever object they like.
This is the belief within the Church, and it does, in fact, affect not only the trials, but every act of human life ; for the Catholic makes ' offer ings ' of his ordinary daily actions as petitions for whatever objects he has at heart. Here, however, we are concerned only with the question of suffer ing, particularly as it applies to the Saints. It will be readily understood how enormously such a doctrine, when acted up to (as, of course, it always is by a Saint), must influence the whole aspect of life : what a marvellous power it gives to believers of ' binding golden chains about the feet of God ' without ceasing, by the simple act of making use of suffering without stopping to question whether, in their particular cases, it is just or not. It is there, and that is enough ; or, if not there by existing circumstance, it may be voluntarily embraced by those whose love of God makes them care for their fellows' souls as for their own. It is thus embraced by the many innocent hearts whose conduct, in devoting themselves to lives of penance, is so inexplicable where this doctrine is unknown.
PENITENTIAL PRACTICES OF HER GIRLHOOD 85
The question, then, that Rose had to solve during these years of girlhood was how to com bine the severe voluntary penance to which this double motive impelled her so extraordinarily with the duties performed in the midst of her family. She was determined to follow Our Lord so closely that her body should suffer in every form that His had done — in fasting, in watching, and in exterior pain. Her fasting, as we have already seen, she had long ago begun ; as time went on, she gradually increased it, fighting hard and victoriously with all temptations and difficul ties of fatigue or faintness over her daily work, and adding to the deprivation of food sharp mortifications of taste, such as eating the bitter fruit of the Passion-flower, making her only cooked dishes of crusts of bread mixed with bad-tasting herbs which she cultivated in her own garden-plot, and rinsing out her mouth daily with sheep's gall. These three practices in especial are d\velt upon in some detail by all her biographers as being carried on, with the con nivance of her servant-friend, from quite her early youth ; and there were others of the same kind.
The practice of fasting, and also one that she adopted at this time of wearing a horse-hair shirt two feet long, were of course only matters of
86 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
courage and patience; they did not intrench on her time. But Rose prayed in words, as well as in deeds and thoughts ; she was devoted to several forms of vocal prayer, of which special mention will be made later on, for which time was necessary, as it also was for another of the penances that she began to perform with great frequency in these years, i.e., her severe scourg- ings. Our Lord had suffered ' from the crown of His head to the sole of His foot '; and our Saint's ardent love must have made her determine that she would do the same at all times, for she took to so using her body that never for one moment can it have been free from terrible soreness. In a Catholic country, and with a Southern race, no doubt a pretty frequent use of the discipline was not uncommon among people making special pro fession of piety, even outside convents, and even in so luxurious and frivolous a city as Lima in those days ; but the manner in which this girl-Saint practised the penance was very unlike any usual form of it. She scourged herself at this time, it is true, with only an ordinary scourge of cords (though a very heavily-knotted one) ; but she is said to have very often used this several times in the twenty-four hours, and with such violence that she drew blood from her flesh each time. She offered these scourgings for her own sins, as
PENITENTIAL PRACTICES OF HER GIRLHOOD 87
she called her small defects, for those of others, and for turning aside misfortune from the Church and the human race ; also to draw down God's blessing on her country, for the conversion of idolaters, and for the dying and the souls in Purgatory.
How did she find leisure for all this prayer and penance? She managed, not by neglecting any duty to others, but by the use of the third suffer ing we have named, that of curtailing sleep. She had begun this mortification of sloth as a little girl, by creeping out of her mother's bed to lie on the floor ; and, later on, when her mother forbade this, she put bits of wood or other hard substances into her portion of the bed. Marie de Flores' patience was, very naturally, at last worn out by these persistent evasions of her attempts to make her daughter sleep properly, and she grudgingly gave her leave to ' sleep alone and do as she liked.' The final result of this permission was that Rose, when about eighteen, made her self a bed consisting of broken bits of crockery, gnarled tree roots, and any other sharp things she could lay hands on, arranged in a long narrow box with a piece of wood for a pillow. This construction her mother, when at length she discovered it, tried to make her modify by various contrivances, but in vain ; and it remained her
88
ST. ROSE OF LIMA
nightly resort for years. That such a couch was not productive of much rest may be guessed ; and the facts of St. Rose's life show that it was in the long-run her chief instrument in reducing her hours of sleep to two ; the remainder of the time thus gained she took for her prayers and exterior penances.
With regard to the last, it is not quite clear, during the special years we are speaking of, how she managed to keep her terrible scourgings secret for a long while ; we can only conjecture that, generally taking them when others were asleep, cither at night or during a daily siesta, she must have crept to some remote portion of the house where she would not wake them by the sound of her blows. That it was her aim to conceal them whilst living with her vow unacknowledged is certain, from a story told of how the Mother of God came one day to her devoted young servant's help, when she had gone to the Rosary Chapel, leaving her scourge (no doubt covered with blood) where it could be discovered. Suddenly remem bering this, Rose of St. Mary earnestly begged Our Lady not to let it be seen; and, when she got home, found the discipline safely put away in a corner where she usually hid it. She felt sure that it had been put there by her guardian angel at Mary's command, and was deeply moved and
PENITENTIAL PRACTICES OF HER GIRLHOOD 89
comforted by this sign of her heavenly Mother's approval of her penances.
One more detail only need be here touched upon concerning St. Rose's penitential practices, and then we may leave the subject until it becomes necessary to show how they increased in later years. The thought of Our Saviour's Crown of Thorns, which had so impressed her childish affections as it was shown in His picture, de veloped during the period we are treating of into a longing to bear some pain of the same kind in company with Him. Moreover, the desire to imitate her beloved St. Catherine came in here and added ardour to her feelings ; for she knew how the Sienese maiden had endured in her head the pains of that mysterious crown placed upon it in a vision by her Lord Himself. This longing induced Rose, while yet quite a girl, to begin, in its milder form, that heroic course of suffering in her head which has become so especially associated with her name. She made for herself a kind of crown with strips of flexible pewter, into which she fastened small pointed nails ; and this she managed to wear, whenever she could do it without discovery, through all her daily tasks and intercourse with others, never betraying the pain she endured or letting it interfere with her brightness. Her only desire was to make it
go
ST. ROSE OF LIMA
sharper and more nearly like what her Divine Master had borne for her, whenever opportunity should serve.
And now, having given as true a picture as can be drawn from the facts at hand of our holy heroine's daily life whilst the question of her future career was yet under discussion, we may return to the time when, as we have seen, her firmness in the fight with vanity, human respect, and worldly prudence left her victorious.
CHAPTER VII.
HOW SHE TOOK THE HABIT OF ST. DOMINIC.
' I have bought the habit of our Holy Father St. Dominic with so many tears and sighs, and so many fasts and prayers, in order that I may live a hidden life.' (Saying attributed to St. Rose.}
|jT last, then, Rose was free to choose for herself the manner of life she should pursue in future. Marvellous as this choice must appear in any case, it will appear doubly so if the circumstances under which it was made are recalled to mind. For a girl of her age, of singular beauty and attractiveness, of which she had been made well aware, deliberately to choose such a life as the Saint now did, would have been difficult in any case to human nature; but to choose it as a member of a large family, in a country and at a time when independent action on the part of a young woman was most unusual and must have given rise to a great deal of unfavourable comment, and to pursue it though surrounded by older relations and friends of
Q2 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
thoroughly frivolous disposition, was indeed a superhuman act.
The mere fact of resolving to live under a vow of chastity and to give up the world had, of course, nothing unusual in it : many a girl with all the world before her both has given up, and does still give up, everything for the love of God, choosing Christ for her Spouse. But Rose, as we have seen, had from her earliest childhood felt an inner call to give herself to Our Lord by suffering in a peculiar manner for love of Him; and the reality and depth of her conviction on this point was fully proved by the course she adopted when her parents gave her liberty to choose for herself, and by the courage she showed in overcoming all human respect in carrying it out when once she had made sure of what the manner was to be.
Her choice was this : not to seek in the cloister the freedom from temporal care and the tempta tions of the world, with all the other helps to sanctity that the shelter and holy companion ship of community life give ; but to work hard for her family, to practise absolute obedience to her parents, especially her mother, and at the same time to renounce every earthly comfort and satisfaction, sharing her relations' cares and labours, but none of their pleasures; to give as many hours to prayer and contemplation as the
HOW SHE TOOK THE HABIT OF ST. DOMINIC Q3
most strictly contemplative nun, and to practise bodily penance of the severest kind without intermission.
Such was the life that this girl finally made up her mind, with God's help, to lead, in the oppres sive climate of Lima; and the life which He Him self showed to be the one He had decreed for her, by giving her grace to persevere in it to the end of her earthly career. How she carried it out in detail, and how it affected others as well as herself, we have presently to show ; but some account of incidents connected with her final decision must first be given.
In one point of her choice Rose appears not to have made up her mind quite at once ; i.e., as to her outward state of life. To obey, to labour, and, above all, to suffer — as to this she had no doubt ; but whether she would do so by herself or as a member of some religious community seems to have been a matter of consideration and prayer for some length of time after she was left free. All her own special attractions, and notably her attraction to penance, prompted her to follow the holy mistress she had chosen, and become a Dominican of the Third Order ; and her first instinct on becoming mistress of her actions was to say that she would take the habit of St. Dominic. She evidently announced this
Q4 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
intention in some way that was generally, but not quite accurately, repeated among her friends ; for it got noised abroad that Rose of St. Mary intended to become a Religious; and her biog raphers say that nearly all the convents in Lima were anxious to receive her, so high a character for holiness had this child of the De Flores' household already obtained in her native city. Whether from humility, which made her unwill ing to decide at once on her own judgment, or from some real inward temporary uncertainty as to God's will in the matter, does not clearly appear ; but it is certain that, for some reason, Rose thought seriously of two special convents in which to try her vocation. One of these, called the Convent of St. Clare, she would have prac tically founded, as it had only just been built by a niece of Turibius, Archbishop of Lima, who was most anxious for Rose to enter, and to start the new foundation. The other was the Convent of the Incarnation, into which, having decided against the former, she was actually preparing to be received as a postulant, when a miraculous occurrence in the Church of St. Dominic pre vented her. She had prayed a great deal in the Rosary Chapel of this church, and the Sunday before she was to have entered the convent she went in there, with a brother who happened to be
HOW SHE TOOK THE HABIT OF ST. DOMINIC Q5
also in church, 'to bid Our Lady farewell, and beg her blessing,' as the old Lives say. The prayer was strangely answered, for when she had finished it, and meant to go home, she found herself fastened to the spot, unable to rise from her knees. She asked her brother to help her up, but he could not move her by his hardest pulling. A light then flashed into Rose's mind that this marvel was God's own decision as to her voca tion : it had happened in St. Dominic's Church, and was doubtless meant to confirm her original intention to belong to his Order. She then and there resolved once for all to give up the idea of trying any other, and was instantly released from her kneeling position and able to go home. Her brother, having been witness of the strange incident, was of course an ally of her view ; and nobody seems then to have made any further sug gestions or objections to her pursuing her own course.
A pretty story is told of a further confirmation of her wishes that the Saint received. Butterflies of all colours abound in the country round Lima, and are said to be of specially beautiful kinds. One day, when Rose was walking in the fields and thinking earnestly of her wish to take the habit of her beloved St. Catherine, a butterfly, strongly marked with the Dominican colours of black and
0,6 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
white, came and fluttered so persistently round her that the happy girl took it to come as an answer to her thoughts, and a sign that Our Lord willed to grant her wish.
Now, therefore, she determined to carry out her own long-cherished plan in its integrity, and to follow her adopted mistress, not only in being a Dominican, but in her outward manner of life. Giving up all thoughts of a community, she would be a humble Tertiary in the world, living hidden in her parents' house in Lima, as Catherine had lived in Siena ; and with this view she took the habit of St. Dominic, as a novice of the Third Order, in 1606, being then just twenty years old. In those days the habit was worn outwardly by Tertiaries, whether living cloistered or not, so that there was nothing strange in her being formally clothed. The ceremony was performed by her Dominican confessor, a Father Alphonso Velasquez, and took place in the Rosary Chapel spoken of above.
Strange to say, however, there were some waverings again in her decision during her novitiate. Scruples seem to have seized her- though how such scruples could have come into so pure and ardent a heart it is hard to under stand—about the extreme difficulty of attaining the perfection required by the wearers of the
HOW SHE TOOK THE HABIT OF ST. DOMINIC Q7
white habit ; and, to add to these, came the per suasions and advice of an old friend of the family, who was convinced that she ought to be a dis- calced Carmelite. This was Don Gonzalez de Massa, the Royal ' Receiver,' a man of conse quence in Lima, who, as well as his wife, took the greatest interest in Rose's spiritual career, and appears to have taken much to heart what he considered her mistake in trying to live an excep tionally holy life in such a distracting home as hers. He promised that if she would take his advice and enter the Carmelite convent in spite of having taken the Dominican habit, he would himself provide a dowry for her. One more thing seems to have been a source of uneasiness to the Saint in the course of her probation. She found that her wish to live hidden — the chief object with which she had taken the habit instead of remaining a secular — seemed likely to be frus trated, for she was becoming much talked about for her holiness, and even pointed at in the streets when she went to church as another St. Catherine. All these causes combined went very near to shaking her resolution, and making her seek refuge after all in enclosure ; but once more she was supernaturally helped to see the truth. Praying earnestly for light in her favourite Rosary Chapel, she was seized with a heavenly rapture,
7
98 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
which was seen by other people who were in the chapel. What vision of heavenly communication she had while in this state none, of course, knew; but her face is said to have been so marvellously lighted up that it seemed to the onlookers to send forth actual rays of brightness ; and when she came to herself again she told her friends, in words burning with love of God, that she was now absolutely certain of His will, and that He intended her to live and die in the habit of St. Dominic. She was therefore professed with out further hesitation, and great was her joy when she found herself bound for life to the close service of her glorious model, and a member of the great Order founded by their common master.
CHAPTER VIII.
HER GARDEN-CELL, AND HOW SHE LIVED THERE.
' My sister, my spouse, is a garden enclosed ; a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed up. . . . Arise, O north wind, and come, O south wind ; blow through my garden ; and let the aromatical spices thereof flow. ... I to my beloved and my beloved to me, who feedeth among the lilies.' — Canticle of Canticles, iv. 12 and 16 ; vi. 2.
much admired Isabel dc Flores was
)*• v
r-,"; lyj*5 henceforth, then, publicly as well as
privately acknowledged to be Sister Rose of St. Mary, vowed solemnly to God, and no longer subject to any possibility of being sought after either in marriage or for general society. There was, however, one kind of society for which she was even more eligible now than ever, and which pursued her in her parents' house ; and that was the society of some Domini can Tertiary women living in the world, and of a few other ladies — friends of the family — who were really attracted by the girl's extraordinary holi-
99
IOO ST. ROSE OF LIMA
ness and liked spending their time with her from religious motives. For the rest of the Saint's life, we hear of her as surrounded more or less, at times, by friends of this description, amongst whom the most special friend of all was Marie Usetaqui, wife of the Gonzalez de Massa above referred to, who was a kind of second mother to Rose and in many respects more sympathetic with her than her own mother. Among others specially mentioned by the biographers as either Tertiaries or friends of the Saint, and partakers in many of her pious practices, are Isabelle de Mexia, a wealthy woman of high rank, with whom many little incidents in St. Rose's life are associated ; Euphemia de Poreias, a young widow ; Catherine of St. Mary ; three sisters, Philippa, Catherine, and Frances de Montoya ; Frances Bustamente ; and Lucy Guerra de la Daga, whose name should be particularly remembered as the foundress, after the Saint's death, of a Dominican Convent of which she had prophesied the foundation in her lifetime. Another great friend of Rose's was an old com panion of her childhood, Marie de Mesta, who married an artist named Angellini, and whose terribly unrestrained temper was a misery to her husband and to all around her. At last her saintly young friend worked a sudden and entire
HER GARDEN-CELL 101
change in her nature by a few words, and the former fury — as she had really been in her passion — became a perfect model of gentleness and self-control.
Now, Rose had always loved solitude : it was a natural and supernatural attraction to her ; and even in her childish days she had persuaded her favourite brother Ferdinand, who was devoted to her and always ready to please her in spite of his early teasing proclivities, to help her in building a sort of little arbour in the garden where she could go and hide when she wanted to pray un seen, or to escape from the other children. This little hermitage, as she called it, was built only of light branches, with interwoven palm-leaves, and leant against the garden wall or paling — probably a mere boy's construction, though used by the Saint for many years as her oratory, and fitted up with little pictures, statues, etc., just like similar children's garden-chapels in our own time. Her devotion to this rustic hiding-place was so well known to her family that if ever she was wanted and could not be found, it was always said : ' Go and look for her in the garden : that is her bedroom, her workroom, and her oratory.' But when the days of more serious usefulness in the household, and of going out with her mother, came and deprived her of time for getting away
IO2 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
into the garden as much as she liked, the childish resort had to be deserted, and probably fell to pieces. It proved, however, to have been only a forestalling of her after manner of life.
When the great question of her following the call of God to a single life, and giving up the world, was settled, Rose began to feel that the frequent calls made on her time by visitors to the house, who thought they might freely see her at home, even though she would not go out, were incon sistent with both her vow and the state of life she wished to adopt ; and she craved more and more for the solitude to which God Himself seemed to be calling her. The thought of her old hermi tage revived in her, and she began to conceive a strong wish for a refuge of the same kind more suited to her present years and circumstances. Exactly how soon, after her parents left her free, she acted upon this wish, it is difficult to ascer tain : in De Bussierre's life she is represented as having done so at once ; in others it appears not to have been till after she had taken the Domini can habit and become a professed Tertiary. At any rate, it was not later in life than just after her profession that she told her mother how earnestly she desired leave and opportunity to be more alone, and begged to be allowed to build a regular little ' cell " for herself at the bottom of the garden,
HER GARDEN-CELL 103
where she might spend her days with her prayers and her embroidery. Her plan was to let her mother have the key of the door, and to give entrance to no one else, except by special desire or leave of her confessor. Marie de Flores at first flatly refused to listen to such a request, and to allow her daughter to 'bury herself alive,1 as she expressed it. Rose, however, did not despair ; but before taking further means to persuade her mother, she had recourse to Our Lady again in her favourite Rosary Chapel ; and this time she was bold enough to beg Our Lord to give her some special sign, by means of His Mother's image, of His will in the matter. She obtained it in a wonderful way: for a favourite coral Rosary of hers, which she had begged the sacristan of the Chapel to hang round the Madonna's neck, and which he had placed there with great trouble, the statue being so high up that he had to climb a ladder to reach it, was found, after being there two days, miraculously moved from the Mother's neck and placed on the hand of her Divine Infant. This of course showed the holy girl at once that her wish was pleasing to God, as she had spent those two days in the most earnest prayer for the sign needed ; and accordingly she went and asked her confessor (a Dominican friar named Lorenzana), and also her friends Gonzalez and
104 ST- ROSE OF LIMA
Marie de Massa, to go and intercede for her with her mother. This time Marie de Flores gave in at once ; and Rose began the construction of her cell the very next morning. She is said to have built it herself, but as she was very small and slight, she probably only helped : we may very fairly imagine her brother Ferdinand to have been again her chief workman. At any rate, it was finished in a day or two, was made of wood, and was five feet long and four wide ; it had one little window, such bits of furniture as were necessary for her work, and either a plain cross or a crucifix (it is not quite clear, from the accounts, which) of life-size. When Father Lorenzana saw the cell he remarked on its smallness with some wonder. ' It is large enough,' said Rose, ' for the Beloved of my soul and me.'
Within these narrow walls, then, till within about three years of her death, we must picture Rose of St. Mary as leading the chief part of her daily life. She went at times into the garden to look after her flowers, and she returned to the house at night, fetched by her mother, who, when it was winter or the nights were dark, brought her husband with her to protect her — a clear proof that the garden was large enough for the Saint's refuge to be a real solitude. But, with these exceptions, Rose left her cell henceforth for
HER GARDEN-CELL 105
three objects only : to go to church, to help sick friends or relations, and to visit or find out poor and miserable women, whom she made it one of her duties and pleasures to nurse or relieve. Otherwise her days were now regularly filled with two occupations : first, with saying the Divine Office and other vocal prayers, practising her penances, and meditating, or holding communion with God, in a manner which grew more and more sublime as time went on ; and, secondly, in either preparing her nosegays for market or doing needlework for her parents' support. This last occupation she gave herself to with increased ardour after taking up her abode in the garden ; so much so, that Marie de Massa, who some times sat with her, would now and then beg her to work a little less hard, when she saw the perspiration actually streaming down her face from the closeness of her application to the embroidery-frame. But the devoted daughter always made answer that her parents had need of her work, and that she would never slacken in it so long as she had strength to go on ; and, as a matter of fact, it continued to sell so well that she was often able to keep the family quite com fortably on its proceeds.
Rose's conduct in the matter of going to church, at least during the earlier years of her
io6
ST. ROSE OF LIMA
hermitage life, was of a kind that is most striking, as illustrating a characteristic of all the Saints to which spiritual writers constantly call attention, but which very few people appear to realize : — that is, how very much higher they place the practice of actual virtues, and the fulfilment of God's will in their particular duties, than the enjoyment of spiritual advantages for the satisfaction of personal devotion. St. Rose's love of the Blessed Sacrament, and realization of Our Lord's presence and gift of Himself in the Holy Eucharist, were so strong as to be even two of the chief causes of actual rapture in her, as they had been in St. Catherine herself. Her face after Communion would sometimes become all lighted up and glow ing with love, so that people present could hardly look at it, and it was said that at those times she bore a strong likeness to her holy mistress. Moreover, as she increased her fasts and spent more and more time in prayer, the great grace — which has been given to other Saints too — of being able to live for some days at a time on the Bread of Life alone was granted to her; and at one time, when Lima was threatened with an invasion by Dutch heretics who were expected to plunder the churches, the Saint went aside from all her ordinary habits of timid retirement, and rushed impetuously (' like an angry lioness,'
HER GARDEN-CELL 107
her historians say) to the high altar of one of the Dominican churches, there to stand in the hope of being able to give her life in defence of her Lord ; and suffering keen disappointment, in spite of thankfulness that her city was saved, when the expected attack was averted.
Can it be doubted that not to hear daily Mass, or even to visit the Blessed Sacrament for certain every day, must have been a severe penance to such a soul as this ? Yet, in order to keep strictly to obedience, and to the retirement and modesty that she saw to be God's desire for her, when Rose chose her hidden mode of life she made one part of it a strict resolution never to go to church except when her mother could take her, or when she gave her leave to go, escorted by her brother or some older friend.
In Lima it was held to be highly unbecoming for young unmarried women to be seen alone in the streets — indeed, as a rule, they covered their faces with the veil that formed part of their dress ; and if this was the case even with respectable girls of ordinary secular lives, how much more incumbent, our Saint felt, was it not on one in her peculiar position to be particular ? Accordingly, when her mother \vas unable to go to Mass (as was pretty often the case, from either health, indo lence, or household reasons), Sister Rose stayed
108 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
at home, unless she could find some other suitable escort, choosing to mortify her spiritual longings rather than to do the least thing against the duties of her state. She had not made this resolution entirely on her own judgment, but had been told by her confessor that she was not to go out alone ; and the consequence of her strict obedience was that for a great portion of these years she only went to church three times a week. The idle ' pious ' world in Lima liked, as elsewhere, to gossip and make comments on other people's business, and thus the frequent absence of Rose de Flores from church got talked about, and even spoken of as a ' scandal,' when she was known to be vowed to Religious life. The gossip was some times repeated to her, and she was quite aware that she was rather severely blamed in certain quarters ; but it did not move her. She must bear blame, if necessary; and she simply said, 'My mother's many occupations prevent her going out with me, and I am forbidden to go alone.' To one person, however, who made some comment on her conduct — either one likely to be really scandalized, or one more closely intimate than others — she added to her usual answer that God did not desert her, and that she frequently heard Mass in spirit. The fact was — as her confessor, to whom this
HER GARDEN-CELL IOQ
remark was repeated, made her acknowledge — that God rewarded her faithfulness and self- restraint in remaining corporally absent from the Holy Sacrifice, and cheerfully bearing criticism out of obedience, by allowing her to be frequently transported in spirit to the churches where Mass was being said, so that she was present in soul while not in body.
But, though he desired her to keep strictly to the rule of not going out alone, Father Lorenzana, and other confessors whom she afterwards had, did not wish her entirely to refuse intercourse with others, provided it was of a kind in accord ance with her professed state of life. Hence it was that, when thoroughly established in her garden-cell, she had many of the Tertiary women and other friends, spoken of above, to visit her there at times ; but never without the leave or order of the confessor, and of course not for mere purposes of idle talk. They came either to ask her help and advice in their private spiritual matters, or to share in her vocal prayers — pro bably often saying their office with her ; or, again, to help her in certain tasks of devotion that she undertook in the course of this part of her life. One of these, about which we hear a good deal, and which was specially dear to Rose, was the decoration of a statue of St. Catherine of Siena,
110 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
which was carried in procession through Lima three times a year. The peculiar love of Rose for this Saint was only an extraordinary degree of a devotion that belonged to her native city, where the Dominican Order had always been greatly in the ascendant, and where consequently the great Catherine was held in special reverence. During our Saint's lifetime there was no convent of Dominican women in Lima, but there was a very large confraternity dedicated to St. Catherine, whose particular devotion was this procession with the statue ; and as long as Rose lived, after she was once a Tertiary, she was unanimously appointed year after year to adorn it. She had the true Southern love of magnificent garments, as well as of flowers, for the decoration of images as a mark of devotion and respect to the Saints they represented; and there are many pretty stories told of her hard work and that of her companions, of her prayers, and even of actual miracles worked at her intercession, for the suit able adornment of her mistress's statue. She so inspired her holy friends — notably the Tertiarics amongst them — with her own ardour in the cause, that they even sat up all night at times making garments and wreaths for decorating St. Catherine when the processions were to take place ; and more than once, when they seemed destitute of
HER GARDEN-CELL III
all kinds of material for their purpose, her assur ance that something would come in time was justified by the sudden appearance of rich stuffs or jewels sent by friends, or by the miraculous blossoming of flowers. Moreover, Rose's prayers to St. Catherine herself for those who had worked in her service were several times miraculously answered by graces granted at the times of the procession.
We must, then, add to our portrait of Rose de Flores herself, if we would think of her as she really lived in her garden-cell, that of the group of chosen intimate friends, whose society broke in at times on her solitude, and by whom she was tenderly loved. We must not, however, picture St. Rose's relation towards her friends as being the same that St. Catherine bore towards that ' family ' by which she was surrounded, and over which she held the combined sway of spiritual mother and Religious Superior. All readers of the wonderfully beautiful and vivid account of St. Catherine's friends and followers given by M. Francis Raphael in her life of the Saint, must remember the kind of public character that belonged to her relationship with them, and which was in accordance with the general ex terior career appointed by God for the Saint of Siena.
112 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
But Rose's likeness to her chosen model was to be in her inward, not in her outward, life ; and though she was well known in Lima, and her example was of untold value there, she was at no time — except privately or in peculiar individual instances — in the position of a teacher or recognized ' Mother in Israel ' in the way that Catherine had been. Hers was not to counsel Popes, to write spiritual treatises, to direct whole bands of souls, or to take part in the public quarrels and political affairs of her country. She loved her city, and, as we shall see later, won it many blessings by her penances and prayers. But all was done in quiet behind the walls of her parents' garden ; and it is this hiddenness, this influence exerted by purely supernatural means in the midst of hard work and poverty, and under the restrictions imposed by these, which gives its peculiar character to Rose of Lima's sanctity as compared in its outward aspect with Catherine of Siena's. The latter Saint, throughout all her public career, remained essentially womanly in all her ways, and is represented to us as of a delicately feminine nature. All that we read of St. Rose causes us to add to the same womanliness, in our mental image of her, a certain quality of sweet girlishness that seems to have clung to her throughout her short life, and which forms a
HER GARDEN-CELL 113
most attractive contrast to the sternness and un flinching courage of her spiritual career.
Father Faber, in an Introduction he wrote to the ' Oratorian Life,' goes even further than to speak of the Saint as 'girlish,' acknowledging that his own impression of her bright and sweet nature made him almost unable to think of her as any thing but an actual child to the end of her life, in the midst of all her penances. The accounts of her personal appearance emphasize this contrast, and increase the impression of youthfulness, for she is described as short, slight, and altogether very small in make, though graceful and well- proportioned. The strong unlikeness between body and soul in the holy maiden seems to have struck her own contemporaries ; for there is a story that one day, when she went to the church and asked for her confessor, the sacristan went up to fetch the Father, with the remark, ' Little Rose is downstairs asking for you ' ; and that the con fessor, in almost prophetic spirit, made answer, 1 Ah ! all the world will one day know the great ness of that "little" Rose.'
Hence, we think of our young Saint among her friends rather as a sister than as a mother — or, with the older married ones, as a daughter; guiding, when asked to do so, more by bright, playful hints and indirect suggestions than by
114 ST- ROSE OF LIMA
actual advice, but doing more for the spiritual good of her companions by her own spontaneous conversation than by any deliberate direction. The pure love of God burnt so ardently in her that no natural timidity could prevent her burst ing into praises of His goodness on the smallest opportunity that offered, and we are told that her words when she spoke of Him had the most marvellous power of moving hearts — and she did not often, of her own accord, speak of anything else.
But Rose had other visitors than human ones in her cell. Like many Saints who have lived lives of specially ardent love and purity, she pos sessed a strange attraction for the irrational creation ; and more than one story is told of how furious animals had turned aside from her presence, and refrained from harming those who were with her, in her earlier days. Now, in her garden hermitage, around which the soil was damp and the foliage thick, the Saint was con stantly surrounded by a perfect army of mosquitoes — anything but pleasant company to an ordinary person ! Yet Rose was never once assailed by them. She treated the noxious insects as friends ; and even, it is said, commanded them to join her in saying her office by dividing into two groups and buzzing alternately, like the two sides of a
HER GARDEN-CELL 115
choir, which the tiny creatures did ever}* morning when she first arrived in her cell from the house. Then, when she gave the signal, they would fly off in a body, to come back again at the next time for prayers. Some of her friends, however, were not so well treated, the mosquitoes stinging them pitilessly, and sometimes getting crushed in return. This hurt the Saint, and she assured her visitors that if they would promise not to hurt ' her guests,' she would undertake that the insects should let them alone ; and so it turned out, for the friends who agreed to this were left un molested.
Another and more attractive class of the animal creation also played a great part in St. Rose's life — namely, birds. Their song had a peculiar fascination for her ; and they are said often to have sent her into a rapture, so strongly did they fill her with the thought of God's goodness. She would often call upon them, as well as the insects, to join her in singing His praises. Concerning this point, and a propos of her intercourse with Nature generally, such a charming description is given in De Bussierre's ' Life ' of the holy maid in her mother's garden, that we cannot do better than conclude this chapter by giving it word for word :
'When, at sunrise, she crossed the garden to get to her hermitage, she would call upon all
Il6 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
Nature to glorify the Maker of all things with her. Then might the trees be seen bowing over her path, shaking off the dewdrops, and rustling their leaves so as to send forth harmonious sounds. Then would the flowers sway gracefully on their stalks, half opening their petals to give out their sweetest fragrance, and so in their own way celebrate the praises of God. And with this the birds began to sing their songs, and came to perch on Rose's hands and shoulders, the insects greeted her with their joyful hum — all things, in short, with life or motion joined in concert with the early praises that she offered to her Lord. She had reconquered the sovereignty of man over creation that belonged to our first father before his fall.
' A girl-friend, taken by Rose one day across the garden with her at dawn . . . was witness of this extraordinary sight, and of what was to her still more astonishing, the quiet way in which her companion took it. The Saint saw her bewilder ment, but simply said, " Do you think, Sister, that anyone can honour the Maker of the world enough ? And ought not we to praise and serve Him indeed, when we sec all green and flowering things give Him thanks after this fashion ?" :
CHAPTER IX.
OF ROSE'S SPECIAL DEVOTIONS AND CHARITIES ; HOW SHE WAS ENDOWED WITH A PROPHETIC SPIRIT; AND HOW SHE GAINED GRACES FOR HER NATIVE CITY.
'Hail ! O child of Heaven, Glorious within ! to whom a post is given Hard by the throne where angels bow and fear, E'en while thou hast a name and mission here !'
(From a '•Fragment] by St. Gregory Nasianzcn, translated by Nc%vman : ' Verses on Various Occasions.'}
E have referred to certain specially favourite devotions of St. Rose, without some slight account of which one would leave the description of her daily life imperfect. That the Rosary should take a very important place amongst them would naturally be expected of a Dominican ; and we find as a fact that she not only exceedingly loved the practice of saying it herself, because of its wonderful combination of mental with vocal prayer, but did her very best
117
Il8 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
to spread it among her friends and relations : especially, it is pleasant to learn, she never rested till she had inoculated her beloved Ferdinand with her own devotion, and persuaded him to become a fervent lover of Our Lady's Crown of Spiritual Roses. Another very favourite devotion with the Saint was not only to meditate on, but to utter with her lips, the names of God's attributes. She persuaded Father Lorenzana to write out a list of one hundred and fifty Divine perfections ; and these she divided into fifteen portions, which she recited slowly as a kind of Rosary, saying a ' Gloria ' after each division. She pronounced this devotion to be especially potent in driving away evil spirits.
Again, Rose had a special prayer of her own, somewhat corresponding to the ' Spiritual nose gays ' or ' Offerings ' common in Religious com munities and Convent schools, though differing a little in form. She called her devotion ' a gar ment,' and there are two instances of its practice recorded in her own handwriting in a fragment of a journal that has been preserved. To describe it here is a little anticipating things, as these two instances of it, at any rate, belong to the last two years of her life ; but that she must have had some such customs in prayer — customs that may perhaps without disrespect be called graceful feminine
ROSE'S SPECIAL DEVOTIONS AND CHARITIES IIQ
fancies — at all times, is so highly probable that we may connect the thought of them with the years in her garden-cell quite safely. The two prayers preserved, and given at full length in some of her Lives, are respectively in honour of the Infant Jesus and of Our Lady : the former is intended to represent all the garments for an infant, and was offered by her as a loving tribute to the Holy Child for the Christmases of 1616 and 1617, partly in imitation of St. Catherine, who once gave a garment to Jesus Christ Himself under the appearance of a beggar ; the latter was meant to represent a robe which she longed to give to her favourite image of the Blessed Virgin in the Rosary Chapel, but was too poor to buy.*
* This image, so often referred to, was a historical one. It was wooden, five feet in height, and representing the Mother of God holding the Infant on one arm and with a Rosary held out by the other. It had been brought to Peru by the first Spanish Christians who came, and who had it placed in the first church — a Dominican one — built in Lima, and dedicated to the Holy Rosary. In this church a baptismal font was for the very first time erected in the New World. In 1535 there had been a terrible attack on the Spaniards by the natives, who greatly outnumbered the Christians and meant to massacre them. The Spaniards went forth to meet them, invoking the help of Our Lady of the Rosary ; and just as they were about to fight, the Blessed Virgin appeared above them in the very form of the statue. The vision so appalled the natives that they first gave in to the Spaniards, and then became Christians them-
I2O ST. ROSE OF LIMA
Both these ' spiritual garments ' consisted of a number of Paters, A ves, Glorias, and other prayers and Psalms, with equal numbers of fasts, absti nences, and other acts of mortification (including in one ' 3,300 strokes of the discipline '), so arranged as to represent the different parts of the clothing that she desired to offer. They were carefully written down, no doubt to help Rose's memory in fulfilling her task; and the one offered to Our Lady brings touchingly home to us the humanness and self-mistrust of the young Saint, for she has added to the written offering a post script, recording that 'thanks to Our Lord and His blessed Mother, I have finished the garment ' — which she had clearly doubted that she would have the strength to do.
Other favourite devotions, notably a tender love for the Holy Name, and for the sign and form of the Cross wherever she encountered it, are re corded of St. Rose. That she said the Divine Office every day while living in her hermitage is proved by a beautiful story that Our Lord Himself appeared to her sometimes as she was saying it in the garden ; and, walking up and down the paths
selves. The consequence of this incident was an intense devotion of the people to Our Lady under title of the Rosary, and their acknowledgment of her as Protectress of Lima. The statue was carried in procession every year.
ROSE'S SPECIAL DEVOTIONS AND CHARITIES 121
by her side, said the alternate parts with her as if reciting office in Choir. The little Office of the Blessed Virgin, again, was much loved by her.
Such were Rose of St. Mary's vocal prayers. When we add to the thought of these the remem brance of her long hours spent in mental praycr- sometimes in actual meditation (for which one of her favourite text-books was Louis of Granada), sometimes merely thanking God in her heart for His mercies, sometimes rapt in ecstasy, either at home or in church — it seems one of the chief marvels of her marvellous life that she could find time for them all, and for her work at her needle and in the garden as well.
Yet, as she grew older and a little freer to come and go, more was added to her work. No true Dominican Tertiary, even though specially called to contemplation and prayer, could be entirely excused from giving active help to her neighbours. Rose's heart was peculiarly tender, and it went out beyond her own race to the poor Indians of Peru, despised, down-trodden and often ill-treated by her haughty fellow-countrymen. It appears that in Lima, while she lived, numbers of wretched Indian women, diseased as well as outcast and neglected, were to be found ; and it was chiefly to seek these out and help them that Sister Rose began at times to leave her
122 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
solitude. Then she thought of them as she prayed and worked in her cell ; and thought also of much empty room that there was in her mother's house, which from all accounts must have been a kind of rambling, dilapidated place, only half used by the family. Marie de Flores, under the influence of her holy daughter, and perhaps also a little influenced by the respect she saw paid to her by others, was gradually softening and improving in character. Still, the Saint was a little afraid of rousing her anger ; and it wras not till she had lived in her hermitage for some time that she ventured to open her heart to her mother, and beg her help for some of the misery she saw when out on her errands of charity. The plan she proposed was that she might have the use of one or two empty rooms in their house, where she might bring poor, houseless, diseased creatures to nurse and, if possible, to convert, when they were sinners or not Christians at all. She promised that it should be no loss to her parents if they would agree, for she — Rose herself — would be answerable for enough money to pay a small rent for the rooms as lodgings. Marie de Flores was at first furious at such a proposal ; but she calmed down, and in the end agreed to let Rose have her way; as, indeed, it must be owned that Rose usually managed to do with everybody, when she
ROSE'S SPECIAL DEVOTIONS AND CHARITIES 123
pleaded a good cause in her own bright and persuasive style. We may, however, add here at once that, in spite of her freely given leave, the Saint's mother frequently made things most unpleasant for her and her protegees by outbursts of temper and complaint when the objects of charity brought into the house were specially disgusting, or her daughter did anything in con nection with them that she disapproved. Some times she even abused Rose violently as a hypo crite, for practising charity to outsiders at the expense of her family's comfort, and in various ways insulted her. But the gentle girl took it all sweetly, waited till the momentary irritation had passed, and then coaxed Marie de Flores into helping the poor people herself by gifts of old linen, clothes, etc., when she could get them.
Many details of these charities which were henceforth added to St. Rose's ordinary occupa tions, and many touching stories connected with them, are given in the longer biographies; but it is enough here to say that, besides the sick and miserable Indian women, she helped every case of misery among her own sex that she could find out and which she had power to help ; and that most especially she felt sympathy among the Spaniards for hidden cases of poverty in women born to wealth and comfort. She got money or clothes
ST. ROSE OF LIMA
for them from her rich friends, which sometimes came to her miraculously ; and God gave her also frequently, in connection with her work for the sick, miraculous powers both physical and spiritual. One particular instance of this last, which may be mentioned, was her finding out supernaturally that a poor old negress who was near death, and who for some reason persisted in asserting that she was baptized, had never been so. Rose convicted her of her falsehood, caused her to repent bitterly of it, and of all her sins, which had been many, and thus was the means of her receiving the Sacraments and dying a holy death.
When she happened to have no private cases of charity to look after, Sister Rose got leave to help at the hospitals in Lima, or tended people in her friends' houses. It was in nursing a servant of her friend Isabel de Mexia that she performed an act of self-conquest which once for all cured her of all difficulty in facing disgusting sights or smells when practising her charities. Her patient was in a very terrible state, and Rose felt her stomach rise, and was tempted to give in, before some very unpleasant duty. She determined to conquer, and, taking up a vessel filled with half- corrupted blood, swallowed it straight down. It did her no harm, but had the effect she wished ;
ROSE ENDOWED WITH A PROPHETIC SPIRIT 125
and it was from that day forth that God often granted her the gift of healing.
There were yet other ways, besides actual works of chanty, in which the saintly virgin helped her neighbours. One of these was a prophetic spirit with which God endowed His little servant, and which she frequently used for the help of her relations, her friends, her spiritual guides, and even people whom she knew either slightly or only by name. Very often she exer cised this faculty (which remained with her to the end) merely for the purpose of giving comfort to sad or anxious hearts ; as when she assured her great friends the De Massas that they need not trouble themselves over a distant appoint ment that was about to be conferred on Gonzalez, which would separate him from his wife, as it would never take place ; or when she promised one of her confessors that he should recover from an illness in time to preach a sermon he was very anxious about ; with other assurances of a like nature. At other times she used it to preserve people from dangers by warning them how to act, or what courses to avoid ; and, again, and this most frequently, for spiritual purposes of con version from sin. In the last cases her gift of prophecy was reinforced by that of discernment of spirits, for she read the hearts of those she
126 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
wished to help, and foretold matters connected with the state of their consciences. Innumerable instances of her possessing these high powers, and of the gratitude felt by those for whose benefit she used them, are scattered through our Saints' Lives, and, of course, formed some of the chief evidence for her canonization. But of all the actual prophecies she made, that which was associated with one of her friends mentioned in the last chapter is specially dwelt on as having excited peculiar interest in Lima. The friend referred to was Lucy Guerra de la Daga, a lady whose acquaintance Rose made at Isabel de Mexia's house, where she had had to go quite accidentally for some piece of business, entirely against her usual customs of life. Now, for some time before this (the meeting appears to have happened in the latter part of her life) the Saint had been persistently assuring her friends, against all human probability, that a convent of Third- Order Dominican nuns would be founded in Lima. This had long been desired in the city, where there had hitherto only been Friars of St. Dominic ; but everything — want of land, want of money, and all sorts of delays or refusals of leave from Rome — had seemed against it ; and Marie de Flores had been positively enraged with her daughter for reiterating the prophecy, telling her
ROSE ENDOWED WITH A PROPHETIC SPIRIT 127
that she was ' making a fool of herself and her family ' by persisting in such senseless talk. Rose had humbly begged her mother's pardon for annoying her, and promised to say no more in public if it really vexed her ; but had assured Marie, nevertheless, that she would not only live to see the prophecy verified, but would ' be a Sister herself in the convent' — which, it may well be believed, did not improve matters.
Now, when the Saint and the Senora de la Daga were introduced, they took a strong mutual liking for each other, and the result of the friend ship they formed was to bring about in the end (though not till after Rose's death) the foundation of the very convent predicted, by Lucy, who was left a widow with money. The whole details of this matter may be found in our Saint's biographies by any who care to read them ; and De Bussierre gives in full a most charming story of how Rose one day, inspired by a prophetic vision, stood in their garden, with her brother Ferdinand gazing on her in wonder, while she flung roses one after another into the air. The youth saw to his astonishment that the roses remained over his sister's head, and gradually formed a magnificent cross high above where they stood. St. Rose afterwards explained this marvel to symbolize the numerous virgins who ' would
128 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
crucify their flesh for the love of Jesus ' in St. Catherine's Convent.
One other special means by which the Saint, while dwelling in her garden-cell, brought relief to her fellow-citizens must be spoken of before we turn from considering what may be called the public influence of this hidden life. Rose de Flores cared intensely not only for the good of individual friends or objects of her own charity, nor, on the other hand, only for the salvation of the whole human race (which, however, she was always earnestly entreating God to save, even by miracles of grace), but for the people of her own country and native city as one particular whole. When they were in trouble, she was in trouble ; and the zealous priests of Lima found this out, and made use of her influence with Heaven when any great and special grace was needed.
Of prayers and penances offered on such occasions for the Saint's compatriots several instances are recorded ; but there is one above all in which the figure of the girl-hermit seems almost to stand like the prophets of the Old Testament — a shield between an angry God and His people. The exact date of this occasion we cannot find, but it appears to have been when Rose was about five or six and twenty. A number of the native Peruvians — partly driven to it by resentment at
ROSE GAINS GRACES FOR HER NATIVE CITY I2Q
the continued tyrannies of their conquerors — had escaped from Christian rule and the hated Spanish surroundings to their old haunts, and returned to idolatry. Turibius, the Archbishop of Lima, who had confirmed our Saint, and who was himself afterwards canonized, did his very utmost to bring them back to faith, and Rose set herself to pray hard for his success, but in vain. One entire village went back to the most abomin able practices, and became the subject of an awful judgment of God, being swallowed up in the earth, and wholly disappearing in a night.
Then the plague of idolatry and demoralization spread to Lima itself, and the whole population was seized with mad wickedness. The authorities, secular as well as spiritual, were in terror, for the people seemed ripe for a second terrible vengeance from on high. However, a great preacher, St. Francis Solan, who was then at Tucuman (in the present Argentine Republic), had an inspira tion from God to come to Lima and preach repentance. He is described as another Jonas, and in a short time had almost the entire city listening to his terrible denunciation of sin and threats of Divine punishment. But at first his words produced only a panic, and things seemed even worse than before.
Now came Rose of St. Mary's share in the
9
130 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
matter. Hearing of the general terror, and the unmoved hardness of heart on the part of the sinful populace, and inspired to gain God's mercy for them herself, she shut herself into her cell with her instruments of penance. There she scourged herself pitilessly till she was one mass of blood, striking the sharp crown she wore on her head with vigorous blows, calling on her Lord for pardon, and offering herself a victim for her people — and so she won Heaven by her violence. That night a sudden change came over the capital. The hardened sinners melted, their pride gave way, and the devil departed from them. With penitent hearts they besieged the confessionals all through the night, and the dawn broke on a forgiven and deeply thankful city. Rose had saved her countrymen.
And now we must leave the story of our Saint's helpfulness towards her kind to follow again, for a time, the course of her own spiritual history.
CHAPTER X.
OF THE SAINT'S INCREASED PENANCES, AND OF THE MIRACULOUS HELP SHE HAD IN THEM ; OF HER MANY ILLNESSES AND HER INTERIOR TRIALS.
' Chastity ... is stern, strong, masculine, jealous of the least deviation, delicate and difficult in practice, but never theless full of delights.' — MGR. GAY : Lit vie et les -vertus CJiretiennes.
' Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up those things that are wanting in the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for His body which is the Church.' — Col. i. 24.
|NE of the first things done by Rose of St. Mary when she had once definitely adopted her hermitage life had been to take advantage of the greater solitude and free dom from observation to increase her penances. To begin with, she managed to get (no doubt once more pressing Marianne into the service) two heavy iron chains, which she made into a whip and substituted for her knotted-cord dis cipline in scourging herself, and as she used this
132 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
as often and as violently as she had used the lighter one, the consequence was the loss of so much blood as to make her sometimes almost unable to walk. Another thing which greatly weakened and emaciated her was a penance she practised at times of pouring quantities of cold water over her body; and it was now also that she brought her practice of fasting to such a pitch that she would go for days without any food — especially after receiving the Blessed Sacra ment — and for weeks with nothing but a few mouthfuls of bread. All these causes combined produced such extreme exhaustion that on the mornings when she went to Communion she could often barely manage to get to church, and nearly fainted on her way to the altar. It was this state of exhaustion that became a public proof of the marvellous effect experienced by her pure soul from the Holy Eucharist, for her friends and the general congregation in the churches where she communicated were many times wit nesses of the entire change wrought in her by the Bread of Life. After receiving it, the weak, half-fainting girl, who had perhaps been helped to the altar by her mother or a fellow Tertiary, would rise and walk back to her place with firm, brisk tread and glowing face — in every way a new creature. Sometimes, even, rays seemed to
OF THE SAINT'S INCREASED PENANCES 133
come from her countenance, so as to inspire positive awe in the priest as he communicated her ; and she acknowledged, to those of her confessors at different times who obliged her to tell them, that the inward effect of the Blessed Sacrament on her was not only a spiritual joy and a kind of transportation into God, absolutely impossible to express, but a bodily satiety and vigour which made her walk home after Com munion, and remain for many hours, just as if she had not fasted at all.
These specially weakening penances were the cause of a beautiful act of humility on the part of the girl-Saint which was most characteristic of her simplicity, and which is a wonderful lesson in the real meaning of the virtue. She found at one time that the pale, thin, and generally emaciated look of her face and complexion were getting noticed by strangers, and causing her to be pointed at and talked about in the streets as a ' Saint,' a new anchorite of the desert, a girl who had lost all her beauty from fasting and austerities, and so forth. Her sensitive heart took fright, and she began to dread that the vanity she had feared from contact with the gay world would find her out in her pieties. It will be remembered how she had spoilt her beauty as a girl by various devices to avoid admiration.
134 ST- ROSE OF LIMA
She now, in the most simple way, took the oppo site course with the same object. She prayed our Lord to let her complexion be restored, and her face resume its natural appearance in all respects, in spite of all the fasting and other austerities, so that she might no longer pass for a holy person. He heard the humble, sincere prayer. All her beauty came back ; and the expressions of admiration as she passed along the streets were changed for contemptuous jeers at the ' holy Sister ' who wore St. Dominic's habit and did no penance ! Rose joyfully let them mock, and thanked God for this proof that He accepted her penances as done for His eye alone.
But penances of this kind did not complete the catalogue of Rose's increased austerities while she lived in her garden-cell. There was hardly a way in which it was possible to make her body suffer that she did not adopt as time went on, and her desire both to follow Christ's road to the Cross more perfectly and to do all she could for others constantly grew. She would bind her arms tight with cords till they swelled, and whip her self with nettles or thorns, so that the skin was blistered or wounded. The short hair-shirt that she had worn earlier was changed for one that reached to her knees, and was armed inside with needle-points ; and when, after using her chain-
OF THE SAINT'S INCREASED PENANCES 135
scourge for a long time, she was ordered by her confessor to give it up, through her mother's interference, she bound it tight round her body, fastened the two ends with a padlock, and threw the key into the most out-of-the-way corner she could find, so as not to be tempted to undo it. This terrible girdle she had the almost incredible courage to wear in silence till it had pierced the skin and gone deep into her flesh. Then one night it caused her such intolerable anguish that she had to call Marianne to her help ; but, the padlock-key being gone, they could not undo the chain, though they got it to the surface by actually tearing the flesh ; and the frightened servant went in search of a stone to break it. The Saint, left alone, prayed, and the padlock was miraculously opened. There was, of course, a fearful wound caused by this business; but Rose was not deterred thereby from continuing the penance, for she put the chain back directly the place was healed, and wore it again until it was buried in her flesh, when her confessor (having perhaps been warned by Marianne) ordered her to take it off once for all and give it to him, which she did.*
Readers will not have forgotten how Rose had
* This chain became after her death a precious relic of the Saint. Some links of it, possessed by Marie de Massa, sent forth a supernatural odour.
136 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
early begun to imitate Christ's Crown of Thorns, and how much she had longed to copy that special suffering of her Redeemer even more exactly than her crown of plaited pewter and little nails enabled her to do. When fairly a Dominican, and so by actual profession bound to penance, Sister Rose's child-like and simple heart began to form projects of an actual crown of thorn's like our Lord's own ; and she at last summoned courage to ask her director if he would let her make and wear one ; for she did not feel justified in carrying out what might seem like a presumptuous dream without his consent. However, he strictly forbade such a thing, and said she must be content with the circlet she wore already.
Little, however, did the holy man dream what the ' circlet ' for which he was now innocently giving leave was like ! Though Rose had scruples about adopting a crown of thorns without authority, she had had none, as soon as she found herself professed, in changing her old crown for another of the same character, but far worse to bear, on her own account. How she had obtained the materials or managed to get such a thing made, we are not told : perhaps she had begged the money from one of her rich friends who would have let her have it without any inquiry
OF THE SAINT'S INCREASED PENANCES 137
as to the use it was to be put to ; but it is certain that she did have manufactured a broad flat circlet of silver, studded inside with three rows of spikes, each row containing thirty-three (in honour of the thirty-three years of our Lord's life), so that ninety-nine wounds should be constantly made in her tender head. The girl was not content with wearing this, but had put strings to it so that on Fridays, or other penitential days, she could tie it down tight so as to pierce her very ears, and cause more excruciating pain than usual ; whilst, if she had committed a fault in her own eyes, or was subject to a strong temptation, she gave blows to her crown and drove the spikes sharply in as a punishment or a help to her courage. This practice was rewarded by a miraculous power imparted to the silver circlet; for if, pressed by temptation, she struck three times in the Name of the Blessed Trinity, the Evil One was at once vanquished and compelled to leave her unmo lested.
The kind of head-gear which Rose wore as a Dominican was, if pictures of a time near her own may be trusted, very much like that of Religious of the Order now ; and this it was that enabled her for a long time to wear the fearful crown undetected. But at last the old sisterly habit of sometimes taking her brothers' part
138 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
brought about discovery. One day Gasper de Flores, in a violent passion, was beating one of his little sons unmercifully ; Rose, being near — either walking in the garden or for some reason spending a time in the house — rushed between father and child to separate them ; and Caspar, giving her a rough push, accidentally struck the circlet and drove some of the spikes deep into her head, at the same time disarranging part of the head-dress under her veil so as to show three streams of blood that trickled down. Marie de Flores, coming up, saw the sight ; and when Rose ran off to her cell or bedroom as fast as possible, hoping to wash off the blood and escape questions, her mother followed and positively insisted on seeing the whole thing. It is said that her sensations on beholding the crown were such as to almost completely silence her, from combined awe and pity at the sight of her child's heroism and suffering. She did not attempt to remonstrate or argue, but simply went straight to the Jesuit Father Villalobos (who at that time was Rose's director), regardless of the girl's assurance that she had leave to wear the instrument. Father Villalobos sent for the Saint to come to him, and to bring her crown with her . and some of the biographers say that when the Father saw it he was moved even to tears at the
OF THE SAINT S INCREASED PENANCES 139
thought of his tender girl-penitent's silent heroism — which it is easy to believe. At any rate, he remonstrated quite gently with her, as she stood smiling before him, on the excessive nature of such a penance, and the advisability of giving it up. But the maiden pleaded so ardently and so humbly to have her cherished circlet restored — maintaining that the spikes could do no real harm, and that it was nothing compared to what her Lord had done for her, with many other loving arguments — that at last the director of her soul yielded to what he felt must be a super natural inspiration, and gave back her crown ; only he insisted on diminishing the number of wounds it could inflict by first blunting some of the spikes.
Rose returned home, happy in being allowed to continue her favourite penance even in a modified form ; and we may here so far anticipate matters as to say that, after the Saint's death, God showed his approval of it by causing some holy person who kissed the circlet she had worn to be in flamed in the act by a marvellous gift of Divine love, and to be sensible of a wonderful fragrance coming from the crown.
But of all the penances, of whatever kind — even including this appalling head-dress — practised in the course of her short life by Rose of St. Mary,
14° ST. ROSE OF LIMA
not one was so hard to her as the fight she carried on with sleep. We have described the bed she made to help herself in the combat, and by means of which she gradually reduced her sleep to two hours. Now, it appears that, despite all her courage, all her supernatural gifts and loving ardour, the Saint occasionally found a difficulty in keeping up the use of this self-made couch with out respite; and that when, after a hard day's work and prayer — her body spent with fasting and loss of blood — she came to stretch her weary young limbs on such an instrument of torture, Nature at times shrank back and fought hard for victory; but God, Who had His own purposes in inspiring the undertaking, came to her help in carrying it out.
One night, feeling specially feeble, Rose had almost given in, and seems to have been on the point of turning away from the suffering, when she saw in a vision a gracious Form, and heard a gentle Voice say :
' Remember, My child, the much more terrible bed whereon I consented to be stretched, on Calvary, to redeem your soul ! Have you for gotten what I suffered ? I was not content with merely lying on stone and wood : My feet and hands were pierced, and I bore unspeakable suffer ings till the very moment when I gave up My
OF THE SAINT'S INCREASED PENANCES 141
spirit. Think of this, My child, when you are inclined to yield.'
It may well be believed that, after such en couragement from her Divine Master, His faithful spouse never again hesitated to cast herself on the bed of anguish that he had approved.
Still, the victory over sleep was not entirely gained by means of the sharp couch. The hot and heavy atmosphere of Peru is most sleep- inducing to its inhabitants, even in ordinary strength, and Rose, more and more worn out, as time increased her prayer and her suffering, had to wage war with this enemy till nearly the end of her life. And a tierce war it truly was that she waged ; for when Nature and the devil together tried to stop her prayers by overpowering her with sleep, she would fasten her hands to the arms of a large cross in her room, holding by them so as to keep herself hanging above the ground. Again, she would strike her head roughly against a wall, or give herself blows ; and when overcome in spite of all these, she had a yet more terribly heroic way of gaining the mastery, for she had a large nail in her wall, to which she fastened the little hair she had left, in such a manner that the pain prevented her falling asleep.
This strong, persevering fight that she might keep watch with her Spouse was eminently
142 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
pleasing to that Spouse's Mother; and in the latter part of her life, when she had almost lost the power of slumber at the proper time, and hence was compelled by her director to use remedies which often caused her to fall asleep towards dawn, Mary answered the Saint's earnest prayers for help by herself coming to rouse her in the morning, and by letting Rose's waking eyes behold her face in vision, and her ears hear words encouraging her to get up and begin prayer. The story is told that once, when the weary girl fell asleep again after waking, the Blessed Virgin reproved her sloth, and denied the usual vision of her countenance.
Had St. Rose been a woman, even though slight and frail of body and naturally timid of heart, yet always in good health, her voluntary sufferings might be a trifle less astonishing than they are ; but when we find, on studying her life, that her strength was frequently consumed by intermittent fevers, and that she was incessantly suffering from other illnesses (and this in no common way, but from complicated diseases that seemed from their violence to be sometimes supernatural in character), our wondering awe at such practices of penance not only undertaken, but persevered in to the end with unremitted patience and fervour, is increased tenfold. We can but be
OF THE SAINT'S INCREASED PENANCES 143
silent ; not attempt to understand, but accept in simple faith the fact that God chose this gentle, loving, delicate girl, for His own inscrutable reasons, to fulfil a mission for which but few, even among His Saints, are chosen in so exclusive a manner — that of passive victims for their kind, destined to spend their whole lives in impetrating graces, and satisfying for the sins of others by their own suffering.
Having chosen her for this, He gave her super natural strength to do it — not diminishing her power of suffering, but increasing her power of endurance to a point that can only be reverently compared to that of her Divine Master Himself, Who came on earth not to choose His own methods of working for man's redemption, but to ' do the will of His Father,' which is just what all those who follow Him perfectly do after Him. Rose did not choose her state ; she simply followed the Divine call all through, and suffered with love and gladness. Who can say, who can even con ceive, the number of souls that will enjoy eternal life, and behold the vision of God, on account of her life here below as a holocaust ? They must be countless.
Still, there is the personal side of such a life as well as the vicarious one ; and when God singles out a soul for so high a vocation, He will have
144 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
that soul itself purified in the highest possible degree before He admits it to its final reward. Now, though bodily sufferings sent by God, even more than those voluntarily undertaken, are of course extremely purging and destructive of self and sensuality, on the physical side of nature, there is a yet higher and closer purification needed for the spiritual self ; and this Rose of St. Mary had to undergo in its severest form to make her wholly pleasing to her Lord. It is not the object of a Life of this kind to enter into what may be called spiritual or theological tech nicalities, or to discuss details of inward states of the soul ; but we should give only a very im perfect picture of the Saint's earthly course if we omitted all mention of the terrible spiritual pro bation which throughout a great part of it accompanied her physical sufferings and exterior penances. The probation was of two kinds. First, she was frequently tormented in her earlier years, and again with special violence in the time preceding her death, by sensible attacks from the devil. These took the forms of noises to interrupt her prayers, of most violent bodily assaults and actual injuries, and temptations of every kind. Rose met all these attacks, and overcame their author by silent contempt, actual ridicule, or flight and self-castigation, as the case might be,
OF THE SAINT'S INCREASED PENANCES 145
always simply trusting in God, and calling on His Mother to help her by her prayers. Once, when the enemy tried specially hard to make her desire forbidden pleasures by means of a beautiful and attractive apparition, and she was tempted to think that God had deserted her, she rushed away, found a very heavy chain, and scourged her tender body so pitilessly that she nearly died from loss of blood ; humbly complaining the while to her Lord that He had deserted her and left her to herself, or she could never have been exposed to such a temptation. Then Christ rewarded her effort and self-inflicted pain by appearing at her side, and saying gently (Oh, most helpful saying to remember for those who feel tempted and desolate throughout all time !) : ' Would you have conquered, Rose, if I had not been present in your heart?' In this encouraging vision and Divine utterance the Saint of Lima was once more like her holy patroness of Siena ; for our Lord had granted the same favour to St. Catherine, on occasion of a similar temptation and victory.
The second kind of spiritual purgation, however, was far more searching and hard to endure than that of contests with the Prince of Darkness. It consisted of purely interior trials of so deep and subtle a nature that it needs a theologian to write of them in any detail, but which seem to have
10
146 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
been inflicted by God on Rose's pure and loving soul because, without them, the many Divine favours He granted her, and the great spiritual joy and sweetness which none of her outward struggles and sufferings prevented her from feel ing, might have produced vainglory even in her humble heart.
Both the 'Oratorian Life ' and M. de Bussierre's (the latter particularly) enter minutely into the nature of these trials; but all that need be said further about them here is that they consisted mainly of her having to endure every day, for fifteen years of her life, some hours of such utter misery and desolation of spirit that she felt while it lasted not only as if God had deserted her for a time, but as if He actually hated her, and that she would certainly lose her soul. She was spiritually in Egyptian darkness and enduring the horrors of hell as fully as if she had been an unrepentant sinner. The fact that these terrible hours were succeeded by torrents of inward sweet ness and ever-increased sense of union with God — to which Rose is said to have attained even while very young in a most extraordinary degree — made not the slightest difference to the sense of desolation when it came on, nor did the further fact that God had actually by some means (as one of the Saint's directors made her acknow-
OF THE SAINT'S INCREASED PENANCES 147
ledge once under obedience) revealed to her that she should not be lost. Every thought or cer tainty that could comfort her was forgotten as if it had never existed during these times, and the Saint was left a prey to utter loss of all sensible hope and love. But her faith and her strong will to cling to God enabled her to overcome even such a trial as this. Through all the hours of darkness she made acts of submission to His will, calling out, in imitation of her Saviour, ' My God, Thy will, not mine, be done !' and reminding herself that she belonged to her Creator, no matter what He might choose to do with her, and could not take herself from Him. So she fought through the awful darkness till the hour of trial had passed, leaving her soul each time many degrees purer for the anguish it had gone through, and thus more and more fit to be the instrument of God's work.
NOTE. — It is said that the inward torments which the Saint suffered during this trial so affected her body while they lasted, that for a long time her mother, and even her director, or other spiritual people who sometimes saw her in these conditions, thought she was afflicted with some extra ordinary illness, and that she was going to die. It was only when at last she was made to explain, as far as she could, the nature of her state to some eminent priests and theologians who were sent to examine her, that the purely spiritual nature of the extraordinary exhaustion they brought on was properly understood. No one must wonder at such an
148 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
examination, obscurely as Rose lived ; for the Church is so fearful of anything- like either imposture or self-deception in the case of all apparently supernatural states, that the faintest report of such a life as St. Rose's — even though led in her father's home and not obtruded on the world — would be certain, when it reached the ears of ecclesiastical authorities, to raise some doubts ; and, when it was found to last, would naturally both excite interest and lead to an inquiry.
In the case of our Saint, we need hardly say that the result of the inquiry, on the sides of both desolations and consolations, was perfectly satisfactory. Anyone who feels interested in the details of it will find a full and most interesting account, both of the examination itself and of the various theologians, lay and secular, who took part in it, on page 390 of M. de Bussierre's ' Life.'
CHAPTER XI.
HOW HEAVENLY AND DIVINE VISITANTS FRE QUENTED HER CELL; AND HOW SHE WAS
MYSTICALLY ESPOUSED TO CHRIST.
' Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.'— St. Matt. v. 8.
|]T is a relief to put aside the thought of Rose's suffering and turn to that side of her life which not only supported her through them, but gave her, even here below, some little share in the joys and glories of the Saviour for Whose love she inflicted and endured them.
At the same time, her spiritual happiness is far more difficult to write of than her mortifications or her labours, for it belongs to that mystical ground which demands the unshod feet of wonder ing reverence for venturing on it. Her penances, indeed, and her relentless self-sacrifice, compel our respectful astonishment at her own extra ordinary correspondence with grace, but when
149
150 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
we come to God's return for her deeds of love,
heaven itself seems to open before our awe-struck
gaze over the little spot that made her earthly
home. If there is hardly another Saint in the
calendar whose calling was to such extraordinary
suffering, so their seem to have been scarcely
any who enjoyed such marvellous privileges of
sensible heavenly favours. The high inward
graces that came to compensate her after the
terrible inward darkness, and her ecstasies,
raptures, and incessant union with God in prayer
we have spoken of : — these, doubtless, were the
rewards of her courage in fighting temptation
and ' possessing her soul in patience ' through all
spiritual trials. But God was pleased to grant
Rose, with great liberality, another kind of favour,
which we cannot but believe to have been His
special reward for her unsparing bodily penances
and labours; and when we see her in company
with the human companions of her Order, or even
the most holy of her spiritual guides, we only see
her with the lowest and humblest rank of visitors
in her cell.
The story has been given of our Lady's con descension in coming to waken her Son's hand maid, and of many other proofs of love that she had given her from her early days, but it still remains to be told that, after Rose had taken to
DIVINE VISITANTS TO HER CELL 151
her cell for some little time, the visits of the Mother of God in visible form were sometimes almost daily, and that she helped and inwardly instructed her in many wonderful ways.
Another frequent companion of the maiden's from the time of her receiving the Dominican habit was her own holy mother and ' mistress.' St. Catherine came to her in vision constantly, held long conferences with her on heavenly things, treated her with the closest intimacy, and made herself in every way her young disciple's adviser and, friend. This wonderful intercourse with her model is said at times to have produced a likeness of feature to her in St. Rose, which was noticed by her friends, the appearance of St. Catherine as represented in her portraits having been appar ently well known in Lima. Many witnesses de posed to this fact after our Saint's death.
It is a thing we have heard of in many Saints' histories, that they were able to see and converse with their guardian angels, owing to their perfect vanquishing of that flesh which comes between the ordinary mortal and the spirit who stands ever beside him. Considering the marvellous purity that belonged to Rose of St. Mary, it is no wonder that she had this privilege ; and her familiarity with her angel was very great indeed. She is said to have talked with him constantly,
152 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
and he to have attended on her and done her bidding almost like a servant. More than once when she was seriously ill he brought her the necessary remedies miraculously and at un heard-of hours ; he would open the garden-gate for her at night, so that she could get into the house when her mother sometimes forgot to fetch her. He was seen once by an accidental onlooker standing by Rose's side at her cell window to contemplate the starry heavens — both of them shining more brilliantly than the stars themselves — and in innumerable ways acted through life as her comrade and helper.
But the glory and beauty of even such visitants as these pale before the One of Whose familiar intercourse with the holy maid we hear most. This was no other than our Lord Himself, Who deigned perpetually to appear to her in the most touching form of His Divine infancy. He has done this, we know, to St. Antony and other Saints ; but His visits to Rose of Lima have a character of tender familiarity and brightness, and of loving frequency — as if the Holy Child could hardly keep away from that childlike soul — which seems quite unique.
These visible presences of the Infant Jesus appear to have begun almost simultaneously with her hermitage life, and to have gradually increased
DIVINE VISITANTS TO HER CELL 153
until they became a nearly everyday occurrence. He came to her on all occasions : when she was reading — especially when she kissed the Holy Name in her book, which she often did from pure love, and which so pleased the Child Jesus that He would appear with His little hand placed on the leaves, and would then honour Rose with loving childish caresses ; when she was praying ; in her garden ; and, above all, when she was at her needlework. Then He would place Him self on a cushion at her side while she sat at the embroidery frame, and, telling her that, ' as she was all His, He would be all hers,' would so fill her heart with heavenly joy that she became lost in contemplation, but nevertheless went on sew ing or embroidering as regularly as if she was thinking of nothing else.
The Divine Infant not only came to her when at home or alone, but more than once let Himself be seen by her side in other people's houses by a third person — generally a child — either standing by her side or walking hand-in-hand with her, and all glorious with light.
One beautiful story is told of how the Holy Child came to her when she was very ill with a terrible sore throat, and playfully challenged her to some mysterious game of skill, which Rose won. She asked for the cure of her throat as a
154 ST- ROSE OF LIMA
prize ; but, after granting this, her Divine Child- visitor claimed His revenge, and in the second supernatural contest the Saint lost, and immedi ately all the pain of her throat returned. Then her eyes were opened to understand that the meaning of the mystic game was that we win much more for God by lovingly bearing pain than by asking Him to take it away, and she prayed not again to have her throat cured.
The frequency of these Divine condescensions brought out a poetic faculty latent in Rose. She grew at last so certainly to expect the gracious Infant's visits at a regular hour of the day that, if He sometimes did not appear, she felt a holy impatience or anxiety, to which she often gave vent in pathetic, reproachful, or imploring verse. Once she was heard by some friends outside her cell singing these improvised reproaches to a plaintive air ; and another time a devout woman, who was standing near the hermitage just when Rose expected the Holy Child's daily visit, heard her distinctly bidding her guardian angel go and warn our Lord that the hour for His coming had passed, in rhythmic language of which we give here a rough paraphrase, and which the maiden intoned to a kind of sweet melancholy chant :
DIVINE VISITANTS TO HER CELL 155
St. Rose's Message to the Infant Saviour, sent by her
Guardian Angel. ' Fly, O swift messenger, Fly to our Lord ! Oh, haste to our Master adored ! Ask why He delays, and remains Far from our side. 'Tell Him I cannot live Parted from Him ; My life then no happiness knows : In Him only my heart can repose, Or pleasure can find.
' Fly, noble messenger, fly ! Tell Him when He is not here I languish alone.
Tell Him His Rose must her sorrow bemoan Till the moment when He shall return.'*
Such favours as these recorded are what make people sometimes say that it is very well to talk of the trials and struggles of Saints, and the wonder of their victories, but 'how could they help persevering when they had such help and consolations straight from heaven ?' And on this idea the critics base an envy of the Saints which takes the form of declaring it impossible to feel any very cordial admiration for them, still less to take them as encouraging models in their own temptation and difficulties.
* This rhythm is a transcription of St. Rose's poem taken from M. de Bussierre's version (page 272 of his ' Life '), and is as much like it as English can be like French.
ST. ROSE OF LIMA
This sort of envy, if we examine it, we shall sec to be founded on a false notion that, while the Saints' visions and ecstasies caused them intense happiness, their troubles and combats were, in fact, unreal: — in short, we misunderstand the chosen ones of God because we forget, or do not realize, that they were nothing but weak human beings of flesh and blood like ourselves, and won these privileges that we envy by an actual fight with sensuality, and a perseverance in intense bodily and mental suffering that ought to make us blush for our love of ease, if we consider it honestly. True, these visits of the Infant Jesus to Rose of Lima must have filled her spiritually with a joy and courage inexpressible in human words, and which gave wings to her soul that it might fly over obstacles.
But, then, if He came to her thus familiarly, how did He find her when He came ? Was it in comfort, ' in purple and fine linen,' on soft couches and at full leisure after delicately served repasts ? Or, again, with impassible body, intellect un trammelled by the flesh, spirit and heart free to enjoy His presence in absence of all earthly cares ? He found her with body smarting and sore all over from penance; strength so exhausted with labour that the drops of sweat stood on her brow as she worked without stopping for her family's
DIVINE VISITANTS TO HER CELL 157
living ; and with bright words and smiles forcing themselves through faintness, hunger, and thirst which made it a keen effort to move her parched lips at all. Moreover, these conditions were not temporary or occasional : they had been those of her whole life in ever-increasing degree. They were not suspended while the Holy Infant conversed with her ; and they were brought about by no desire for human sympathy or approval, but by the love of God and her neighbour in its purest form.
Let us steadily consider such facts as these before we envy or cavil at the sensible consola tions of the Saints who are raised on our altars.
But we have yet to tell of the crowning grace that was to bestow upon Rose her most perfect likeness to her seraphic model. The story of St. Catherine's heavenly espousals is well known, and of that mystic ring — invisible to all but herself— which her Divine Spouse placed on her ringer in memory of them. Her humble follower was destined for the same honour, though she had not presumed to dream of wishing for, still less of expecting, such a thing. About this great event of the Saint's life her biographers are as tantalizing as on some other points in respect to the exact date of it, which is nowhere given ; we can only gather that it must have been about five or six years before her death (perhaps sooner) that
ST. ROSE OF LIMA
certain supernatural intimations of something wonderful to come— though at first she knew not what— were vouchsafed to her. Two of these previsions, as well as the manner of the actual Divine espousals, are so beautifully told by M. de Bussierre that we will once more quote him verbally.
' One day,' he says, ' Rose was employed in needlework with some devout girl-companions, when she saw a black-and-white butterfly, like the one that had fluttered round her before she took the Dominican habit, appear again. The mysterious insect, after hovering for some time around her, settled on her left side, where it began to flutter its wings and make movements like a bee gathering honey. Rose's companions watched the butterfly in silence. At last it flew away, and then they wonderingly beheld a heart perfectly traced on Rose's habit ; and at the same time the latter heard a gentle inward Voice say : "Give Me thy heart!" The words pierced to the very depth of her soul; still, she did not grasp their meaning.
' Some time after, Rose, being asleep, saw in a dream a man of indescribable beauty and majesty, clothed like a sculptor, and carrying the tools of his art. It seemed to the maiden in her dream that this man was going on a journey, and that
DIVINE VISITANTS TO HER CELL 159
before starting he had come to demand her heart and hand; and though the very notion of mar riage had never before so much as crossed her mind in a dream, she now felt as if a union with this mysterious stranger would be an untold happi ness, and gave him instantly an affirmative answer. Now, the stranger was none other than our Lord Himself, as He then made known to Rose ; at the same time showing her some blocks of marble which she was to carve into shape in His absence, and telling her that He would meanwhile provide for her family, so that she need not spend her time in earning for them.
' By-and-by (but in the same dream) the Master seemed to have come back from His journey, and to find her with the task He had set her un finished, for which she excused herself by saying that as, being a woman, she knew no art but that of the needle, she had not been able to work in marble. Then the Betrothed of her vision said kindly : " Do not fancy, My beloved, that you are the first of your sex to whom I have given such a task : look ! and judge for yourself." Then the Sculptor seemed to open a door, and Rose saw within a vast studio, full of marble blocks, which a crowd of maidens, armed with chisels, hammers, and other tools, were carving and polishing, whilst they moistened them with
i6o
ST. ROSE OF LIMA
their tears. Notwithstanding their dusty work, these maidens were all clothed in rich and beautiful garments, like guests at a great feast or wedding.
''I he Saint — not living in the nineteenth cen tury—thought this a strangely unfcrninine occu pation ; but her dream then went on to reveal to her that the chiselling of marble was an admirable image of the sufferings, efforts, and tears that the attainment of every virtue must cost the soul. While she was watching the workers, she sud denly seemed to find her white habit and black veil of St. Dominic changed for a magnificent robe of gold brocade, ornamented with pearls and various sorts of precious stones.
' Soon after this she woke, her heart filled with supernatural joy and comfort, but even yet not foreseeing what was to happen to her.
'A few days later it was Palm Sunday, and Rose was in the Rosary Chapel with the other sisters of the Third Order, who had places there together. The Sacristan, who, according to the custom of that church, was distributing the palms to both clergy and laity, overlooked Rose, so that she, alone among her companions, remained empty-handed. She was exceedingly upset at this, and began to think that perhaps God had sent her the deprivation in punishment of her sins. However, she walked in the procession
DIVINE VISITANTS TO HER CELL l6l
as devoutly as usual, and came back to her customary place in the chapel ; then, lovingly raising her eyes to her favourite statue of the Blessed Virgin, she humbly accused herself with tears of having perhaps too ardently desired a palm-branch.
' Then God once more worked a miracle by the image. It became animated, and smiled down on Rose with even more sweetness than before. Then the Saint forgot all her trouble and cried out, full of happiness : " O most loving Lady, hence forth I will never take a palm-branch from human hands, because you will give me one, O Palm of Cades ! that will never fade !"
' As she uttered these words, she saw Mary turn her eyes towards the Holy Infant in her arms as if to ask Him a favour, and then look down on her again with increased tenderness ; whilst the little Jesus too gave her a most sweet smile. Her heart became filled to overflowing with super natural joy that penetrated her whole being, while she felt as if quite separated from earth and called by the Choir of Seraphim. Then'the image of the Child Jesus became more and more living in appearance, and at last distinctly pronounced the words : " Rose of My heart, be My Spouse."
1 At first the holy maiden could not speak, being almost crushed by the sense of her own
ii
162
ST. ROSE OF LIMA
unworthiness. She prostrated in the dust; and when at last she got back her speech, cried out : " O Lord, King of glory, I am Thy servant and the last of Thy slaves. I belong to Thee, and will have none but Thee ; I will be eternally faithful to Thee, and I long to die for Thee !" Her love and humility, overpowering her at sight of the Lord's condescension, prevented her saying more ; but she heard the Virgin Mother say softly : " Oh my Rose, you know and understand the favour my Son has done you !" '
Such is the story of how the Flower of the New World was mystically espoused to the Master of her soul. She, too, like St. Catherine, afterwards wore a ring in memory of the espousals ; but in her case it was one that she placed herself on her finger, to remind herself always of the signal grace bestowed on her. She commissioned her favourite brother to get it for her, though without telling him why. Ferdinand, without asking any questions, received a strange inspiration about it ; for when his sister asked him to think of an inscription to put inside the ring, he suddenly took his pen and wrote : ' Rose of My heart, be My Spouse ' — to the Saint's great joy. This ring had another miracle worked for its sake ; for Rose, having persuaded the Father Sacristan at her favourite church to put it inside the tabernacle
DIVINE VISITANTS TO HER CELL 163
for a little while that it might there get a special consecration before she wore it, the circlet after wards mysteriously returned to her finger in her mother's presence, without her having the least idea who had placed it there. After her death the ring worked a miracle of great beauty; but the story of it is too long for insertion here.
The favours granted to Rose of St. Mary by our Lord when this supreme honour had been conferred on her, in sensible appearances and communications, were even more marvellous and frequent than before. Many instances of her Divine Spouse's condescension after He had marked His love of her pure soul in this special way are recorded : such as how He once let her find the floor of her hermitage covered with magnificent roses in mid-winter, appearing to her Himself, with His immaculate Mother, in His favourite form of a child. Then, as Rose hastened to gather up all the most beautiful of the roses to present to Him in her scapular, He told her to choose out one only and give it to Him ; and when she tremblingly obeyed, He said lovingly : ' You are this Rose, which I shall take care of and keep fresh myself. Do what you like with the rest.1 Another time her Saviour granted the Saint a favour of a similar kind to one that He had con ferred on St. Catherine. Feeling so much ex-
164 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
hausted one night that she hardly knew how to get through it without taking some food, but unwilling to do this because she was to communi cate in the morning, Rose prayed for help. Then our Lord came in vision to her, and let her take from the wound in His Divine side a super natural draught, which refreshed and strengthened her as no material food could have done, so that she felt power revive in her whole body, and was able to make her communion as she wished.
But of all the many touching stones told for us of Christ's intercourse with this favoured Spouse, perhaps the most beautiful is the following, which is the last we can find space for.
Among the many flowers that the young hermit cultivated in her garden, and in which she took special delight, was a sort called Crown Im perial, which flourished with unusual luxuriance and beauty of colour in her own plot of ground. Now, in a certain summer when these flowers were doing remarkably well, Rose was greatly rejoiced, because she intended them for the Quarant' Ore, and she was watching their progress as that devotion came near with keen interest. One morning, going to water them, she found the whole bed destroyed— all the plants pulled up, crushed, and withered, she knew not how. Sadly she turned away, full of grief at her disappoint-
DIVINE VISITANTS TO HER CELL 165
ment. But as she turned, behold Jesus her Spouse stood there, and she heard Him say : 1 Why this sadness, My child ? Am I not dearer to you than all flowers on earth ? / wish to be your Imperial Crown, and therefore I destroyed those that you had been so cherishing in your garden. Rose, you are My flower ! Henceforth let Me be the only flower of your heart !'
Verily and indeed ' the Lord our God is a jealous God ' where the hearts of His specially chosen ones are concerned, when a Saint dare not love even a flower overmuch lest His interests should suffer !
CHAPTER XII.
HOW ROSE OF ST. MARY DIED.
' Yeni, Sponsa Christ! I accipc coronam, quam tibi Dominus pneparavit in a?ternum.' — Magnificat Antiphon for Common of Virgins.
ijIGHT years — or, if we accept the earlier time of her taking to the hermitage, ten — passed over Rose de Floras' head without any outward change in this hidden life of combined prayer, penance, and charit able deeds, its inward change consisting only in progress from grace to grace as every fresh temptation or difficulty was triumphed over. This private domestic lot, limited to an outwardly narrow sphere of duty, which the Divine will had appointed for her, was by no means entirely in accordance with her own inclinations. She craved intensely to preach to idolaters, and is said to have constantly grieved that her sex prevented her from being a priest and missioner to the heathen ; whilst her ardent spirit would gladly
1 66
HOW ROSE OF ST. MARY DIED 167
have undertaken some widespread outer work for promoting the love of God among her fellows, had He only seen fit to grant her some such special privileges and opportunities for an apostolic life as He had given at times to women-Saints. Hence her hearty acceptance of the lot that her Creator had actually chosen for her formed one of her most heroic victories over self; and no doubt the penances she offered for the conver sion of pagans all over the world were amongst those that she endured with the greatest joy.
But now a change, indicative of the great change from time to eternity, was to come in Rose's life. When she was eight-and-twenty she became seriously ill, and everybody thought she was going to die ; so much so that her confessor actu ally said the prayers for the dying by her side, and exhorted her to final acts of contrition and submission. But the Saint knew this was not her last illness, for long ago— though she had never told anyone— God had revealed to her the time of her death ; so she roused herself to tell her family and friends, who were weeping round her as she lay in a state of exhaustion, that she was not going yet, ' for the time had not come.' Very soon her words were proved true, for she rose from her sick-bed in spite of the doctor's predic tions. But though she lived to remain on earth
l68 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
some little time longer, her bodily strength was nearly gone ; and from this time forth her confessor forbade the use of her sharp couch and ordered her to take more sleep. He gave Marie de Flores leave to pull the penitential bed to pieces, and we may imagine the satisfaction, not unmingled with awe at her holy daughter's perseverance, with which her mother carried out the task. She put a mattress into the box in place of the stones and wood ; but Rose thought this was going too far in bodily indulgence, and insisted on having a bit of carpet thrown over some rough planks for her bed.
However, she was not to have much more of her mother's care or authority, for almost imme diately after this illness she had to give up her hermitage and her parents' home altogether. For some cause unexplained — it may have been simply at their own request, which the Saint and her family granted in return for the many kindnesses of the De Massas to them, or possibly from an idea that the hermitage was no longer fit for her state of health — Rose went to live in the Receiver's household for the rest of her life. Gonzalez and Marie, too, had a family, and, being rich, of course a good house and plenty of servants. But Rose lived amongst them, to their great edification, as simple and hidden a life as she had done in her own
HOW ROSE OF ST. MARY DIED l6g
cell ; she did not even leave off working. They gave her, as she begged them, a tiny room in the roof for her own, where she could pray and do penance in the daytime, and where she kept out of the way of all visitors; and very often she would creep down at night for her penances and meditations to an underground cellar into which she locked herself.
It was whilst with the De Massas that several of her worst combats with evil spirits took place, both in this cellar and in the garden, where she also sometimes prayed. Having no longer her mother to obey, she transferred her obedience to not only Gonzalez and Marie de Massa them selves, but to their whole household, obeying the least wish of children and servants as humbly as if under a vow to do so. She loved the De Massa children and did all she could for them, and kept up her bright sweetness with everyone.
As she to some extent recovered from the im mediate effects of her illness she treated her body again more and more as a slave, rejecting even her plank and carpet bed for a hard stool on which she slept sitting : — sometimes just leaning her head against the wooden crib of the youngest De Massa child, always kneeling upright for her long hours of prayer, and standing when she worked.
During the Lents that she spent with this
170 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
family she persuaded her confessor to let her make up a sharp couch like her old one again to use through the penitential season ; and sometimes she got leave to pay a short visit to her garden- cell at home, which it had been a terrible mortifi cation to her to leave. Her fasts remained as before, or even increased ; for her director had now given leave for her to receive her Lord in Communion every day, so that the constant super natural support frequently enabled her to go for long periods without material food.
Thus the time passed swiftly on till Rose de Flores completed her thirty-first year, and then she knew that the day was not far off for the Bridegroom's call. What had been revealed to her, even as a child, about her death was that she would not live to be thirty-two, and that she would die on St. Bartholomew's Day. The friends of her childhood, and her parents, had always known that she had a strong devotion to this Apostle, but they never knew the reason. Now, when the year 1617 began, Rose felt a singular calm and peace of heart at the thought that she would so soon be called to enjoy in reality that heavenly union of which she had been allowed a mystical foretaste in the midst of her sufferings. It is said that when this her last Lent upon earth began, she prepared her sharp couch for the last
HOW ROSE OF ST. MARY DIED 17!
time with extraordinary joy, and that the love of God burnt with such ever-increasing ardour in her during these closing months of her life that it was always breaking forth in burning words and expressions that she could not restrain.
Several miraculous incidents marked the ap proach of the Saint's death, of which a few may be told. Throughout her last Lent a little bird, with a ravishingly sweet note, used to come every evening at sunset, and perch on a tree close to Rose's room. Directly she gave the signal, which was a short hymn of her own composition, challenging the bird to a sort of holy contest in singing the due praises of God, the little creature poured forth a rapturous volume of sound, rising higher and higher — but ever sweeter and sweeter —in pitch, till it stopped for Rose to take her turn. Thus the two sang alternately — the Saint proclaiming the goodness of her Maker in inspired language and the bird taking her up with its wordless music, till Rose dismissed it, when it flew away as if satisfied with its work, to appear the next evening.
On April 15 in this year a miracle was worked in the De Massas' house, which seemed to be granted in response tc the intense fervour of their holy guest's love of God. She was praying in front of a favourite picture of Our Lord in their
172 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
oratory which was only sometimes uncovered, when she burst forth into one of her most vehe ment raptures of Divine love, rising from her knees and darting towards the picture as if unable to contain herself, and uttering burning expres sions of longing that the love of God might spread over the whole world.
Marie de Massa and two of her daughters were there, but went into another room when they saw the Saint in such an ecstasy of prayer, not to dis turb her. However, one of the girls soon came back, and she and Rose were together witnesses of an extraordinary sweat which broke out over the face of our Lord in the painting, and rolled down it in large drops. The heads of the family were called, and sent for the painter of the picture to see if he could account in any natural way for the phenomenon, but he said it was inex plicable.
Theologians were called in, and every step taken to test the liquid on the canvas, but the mystery remained insoluble, and was pronounced an undoubted miracle. Rose assured her hosts, who were made very unhappy by a dread lest the wonderful occurrence should be a sign of God's anger for some unknown crime com mitted in their house, that it had been worked by God simply as a token, to all who might hear
HOW ROSE OF ST. MARY DIED 173
of it, of how intensely He thiisted for the love of mankind. The reality of this miracle was further attested by the fact that a sponge which had been used to wipe off the miraculous sweat (which went on for some hours, notwithstanding all attempts to dry it) cured St. Rose herself of the effects of a bad fall she had, which seriously hurt her arm.
Another picture in the same oratory of the Infant Jesus made miraculous signs of accept ance of the Saint's prayers poured out before it ; and, to complete the tale of wonders that happened as signs of her death, St. Catherine worked a miracle in answer to her request, by suddenly curing a terrible attack of gout in her hand, which prevented Rose from taking her usual part in decorating her favourite image for the yearly procession.
As the time came closer when she knew that her departure would take place, Rose told her old friends that she would die in their house ; and she entreated Marie de Massa, for their old friendship's sake, and for love of our Lord, to allow no stranger to touch her body after death, but to help her mother in laying her out; and, further, to help her in her last moments by not letting her be refused a drop of water to moisten her throat, which, she miraculously foresaw, would be parched with a burning thirst. It may
I?4 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
easily be guessed that her friend, heavy-hearted at the thought of losing her, gladly gave both promises.
At the end of July, a day or two before the time when her last illness was to begin, Rose went to take leave of her beloved cell ; and Marie de Flores, who was in the garden and within earshot, un known to the Saint, was astonished at hearing a marvellously sweet flood of song come forth from the hermitage window. A shiver passed through her as she listened, for she found that it was her beloved daughter sending up to God and St. Dorninic, in one of her impassioned rhythmic improvisations, an earnest entreaty to support her mother through the trial of her loss. Three days later the poor mother knew that this had been Rose's ' Swan-song.'
It was on July 31, in the night, that the Saint, having gone to her little room in her ordinary state, was taken sick unto death ; and her last illness from beginning to end was just what her whole life had been, only in an intensified form — sharp suffering in every part of her body. The illness began with an extraordinary seizure, for which there appeared to be no cause, in which her limbs were stiffened and her whole appearance that of a person just departing. She said her self that she wanted only the heavenly Physician,
HOW ROSE OF ST. MARV DIED
and wished to be left on the floor, where they found her ; but to this Marie de Massa would naturally not consent. She insisted on putting her into a bed, and sent for her mother at once, and in the early morning for doctors and for her confessor. Her state, as described by her biog raphers, was a really terrible one, and seems to have had in it some mysterious likeness to that of our Lord on the Cross. When, in obedience to the priest at her side, she tried to describe it to the doctors, it was with great effort that she spoke ; and she acknowledged that, though ' she knew she deserved it all,' she had never known the human body could suffer so many things at once. She said she felt as if a red-hot ball was rolling in her temples, her whole body was pierced with a burning rod, and a fiery dagger was fixed in her left side; the blows of a hammer seemed to strike her head, and every limb to suffer a special torment of its own ; and, moreover, her bones felt as if gradually crumbling away, while their marrow was burnt to a cinder. The doctors could simply believe her own statement, for there was no outward appearance to confirm it, at least for some time.
Rose lay in this state for a week, her suffering greatly added to by the well-meant but most trying attentions of her poor mother, who, hoping
176 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
to find out something in her symptoms that doctors' remedies might assuage, kept plying her with questions as to her sensations, whilst all that she herself longed for was to be left alone with her God. On August 6 (Feast of the Trans figuration) complaints of a natural kind began to attack the Saint. First, she was gradually para lyzed in every bodily power except her speech, so as to become quite unable to move; and after that pneumonia, asthma, and pleurisy attacked her, followed by pains in her stomach, gout in her foot, and lastly by inflammatory fever. The burning thirst she had foreseen set in with full rigour ; but the soothing of it that she had begged from her friend was denied her after all, for the doctors — imagining it to be dangerous for the fever to let her drink — strictly forbade a drop of moisture to pass her lips, and Marie de Massa had reluctantly to refuse her entreaties for it. Rose therefore took refuge in her anguish by uniting her pangs with the thirst of Christ on the Cross. In short, God seemed to gather into one all the separate sufferings that His beloved servant had endured through life, that He might add the finishing touch to her purification by heaping them on her in their full weight ; and at the same time He granted her a mysterious power of joy in the midst of suffer ing that perhaps placed her soul in a more perfect
HOW ROSE OF ST. MARY DIED 177
state of union with her Divine Lord than she had even attained before.
Rose of St. Mary's death-agony lasted over three weeks. Throughout the whole of it there was not only no murmur of impatience, but the most perfect outward serenity, thought for others, acknowledgment of her own sinfulncss, and loving praise of God. As she had been a voluntary victim for others through life, so she now lay a sweetly passive one in the hour of death. She was absolutely certain that her Divine Spouse would give her grace to bear whatever He saw fit to lay upon her, and He justified her con fidence. He granted her, too, the only thing she asked for herself about her illness — that the pains in her head might never reach the point of numbing her intellect. She kept her conscious ness to the very last, though she had hardly an hour's sleep through the whole terrible time.
When the eve of St. Bartholomew came, Rose told her weeping friends that now she was going to die ; and she begged them to fetch her father, who had all this while been kept at home by illness, saying that her soul could not go happily to its Creator until the author of her earthly being had blessed her. So they fetched poor Caspar and carried him to his daughter's bedside, where, as well as he could for sobs, he gave the desired
12
i78
ST. ROSE OF LIMA
blessing. Then she begged for her mother's, and afterwards for that of the De Massas, whom she called her ' second parents.' She took a specially affectionate farewell of her friends' two youngest girls, and in touching words entreated them to fear God and always honour and obey their parents. Before this time she had received the last Sacraments with such joy that she fell into an ecstasy after her last Communion, and looked when she was anointed as if her triumph was being celebrated. She confessed herself a most unworthy daughter of St. Dominic, but begged to have her white scapular placed before her eyes as a reminder to the end of the Standard under which she was to die, as she had lived. She had moved the whole household of De Massa to tears by her sweet humility in calling all the servants, begging their pardon for the trouble she had given, and asking them to bear patiently with her a little longer.
As the evening wore on, Rose saw her mother crying bitterly. Gazing on her with a tender ex pression of sympathy, she said aloud : ' Oh, Lord, I put her into Thy hands ; strengthen and support her, and let not her heart be broken by her trouble.'
So the mother who had been the Saint's first earthly care through life had her last human
HOW ROSE OF ST. MARY DIED 179
thought before death ; for now at last the end came. At eight o'clock Rose said, ' I shall die in four hours,' and begged her old friend Father Lorenzana to give her the last blessing before he left her, which he had to do for the night office. When midnight drew near she begged one of her brothers (not Ferdinand, who was abroad) to take away the mattress and pillows of her bed, that she might die on the wood, like her Redeemer. He did as she asked, and a sweet smile from the dying Saint rewarded him. She begged for a blessed candle, made the sign of the Cross, raised her eyes to heaven, said distinctly 'Jesus ! Jesus! be with me !' and quietly gave up her soul to God.
Thus died Rose of St. Mary, as the clocks, striking twelve, announced the Feast of St. Bar tholomew. Her last prayer for her mother was instantly answered; for the moment Marie de Flores had watched her daughter's last breath she had to go hastily into the next room to conceal from the bystanders, not her grief, but a flood of supernatural joy that suddenly rilled her soul.
CHAPTER XIII.
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER ROSE'S DEATH.
'The setting sun, and music at the close (As the last taste of sweets is sweetest), last, Writ in remembrance, more than things long past.'
Ricliard //.
O sooner had Rose De Flores' spirit de parted from her body than an entire change came over that body. All the wasted and agonized look that her poor face had worn during the anguish of her last purification disappeared. The colour and flesh came back to her cheeks, the childlike mouth took on its bright smile, and the whole countenance became as lovely as it had ever been in her girlish days. So living, indeed, was her look that those who were by when she breathed forth her soul could at first hardly believe that it was indeed death, and had to satisfy themselves by holding a mirror to her lips before they could feel sure that a corpse lay before them. It fell to the lot of Marie and
1 80
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER ROSE'S DEATH l8l
Gonzalez de Massa to lay out the sweet young Saint and place her in her coffin ; and, having no flowers at hand to make a garland for her as they wished, they took the crown with which she her self always decorated St. Catherine's image and put it on her head for her burial.
While all this was happening at the Receiver's, two of Rose's friends in the city saw, in their own separate homes, brilliant visions of her in the midst of saintly and angelic heavenly hosts, she herself bearing a palm - branch and being crowned by the Mother of God. One of these women, Aloysia de Serrano, had been so intimate with the Saint that each had promised to appear to the other if she died first. Another mysterious vision was granted to someone in the De Massas' house, who saw angels singing round Rose's coffin, and had a revelation from heaven that her funeral would be so wonderful and happy a ceremony that no one must think of having it celebrated with black vestments.
With morning came the fulfilment of this pre diction, for the news had spread like wildfire that the De Flores' daughter was dead, and instantly the whole population seemed seized as one man with a conviction of her sanctity and a desire to see her mortal remains. The moment dawn broke an ever-growing crowd streamed to the quarter
182
ST. ROSE OF LIMA
where the Receiver lived, and at last filled not only his house, but the court and gardens adjoin ing, all waiting their turn to get to the side of Rose of St. Mary's coffin. As she lay there with open eyes— for they had found it impossible to close them — and with a mysterious light playing round her corpse, the certainty of her eternal blessedness filled every heart, and guards had at last to be placed round the coffin to prevent the excited people from almost tearing up her very shroud to get relics. If accounts are to be trusted, there was hardly a person in the whole of Lima who did not come to look upon this child of poor parents, who had founded no religious Order or institution, whose charities had been chiefly prac tised in secret, who had never been seen alone in public or mixed in general society at all for more than ten years past: — a humble, private individual, in short, whose living face had not even once been beheld by most of those who now crowded to see her dead body. The whole impulse is firmly believed to have been miraculous — the testimony borne by God Himself to the holiness of His hidden Spouse, that the lesson of her life might be read aright by her fellow-citizens.
The funeral procession was as wonderful as the crowd of the morning. Rose was to be buried at once in the Dominican church where she had so
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER ROSE'S DEATH 183
often prayed. On the evening of the day she died an hour before the Angehis, the great doors of the De Massas' house were thrown open, and the humble maid's body— the face still uncovered— was borne forth on her bier, from the roof that had so long sheltered her, through the triumphant throng. Lima seemed for the time to appropriate her honours as its own. The ecclesiastical and civil authorities claimed the right to carry her bier in turn ; the Viceroy's guard of honour surrounded it to make room for the procession ; and every window, balcony, and roof on the way to the church was crowded with spectators, besides the multitude that followed the bier on foot.
When the body was set down at the entrance of the church for the asperges, and people could see her face more closely, its loving expression so overpowered them that with one impulse they cried aloud : ' This maiden is not dead, but sleepeth !'
A catafalque had been raised in Rose's own favourite Rosary Chapel, and on this the bier was placed. Then, once more, the marvel that had so many times consoled or supported Rose of St. Mary was worked before the whole crowd; for the miraculous image of Our Lady again became apparently animated, was seen to cast a look of tender love on the bier, and was sur-
184 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
rounded by floods of light. The people's joy at the sight may be imagined.
But the burial did not take place that night. A grave had been dug in the cloister attached to the church ; but when the move was made to take the Saint's body there, after the solemn service, the excitement of the populace at the idea of losing sight of it so soon compelled the Archbishop to give way to the general feeling, and to leave the bier shut up in the sacristy for the night. The same crowd, and even more eagerness to press round the body — which showed not the slightest sign of mortification, and worked many cures on the sick who touched it — during the High Mass next morning, again prevented the interment ; and at last the friars had to take advantage of the people's absence in the middle of the day to carry the bier inside the cloister, and reverently to lower Rose's still fresh and beautiful corpse into the grave prepared for it.
When the crowd collected again, expecting to find the holy maid's revered corpse still exposed, and discovered what had been done in their absence, they simply flung themselves on the grave in the cloister and carried away every bit of stone or debris that was let loose around it as relics, by means of which again many cures were wrought. On the following September 4 (feast of
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER ROSE'S DEATH 185
another St. Rose, of Viterbo) an imposing public ceremony was held in her honour at the Dominican church, when her panegyric was pronounced, and preacher and people united in publicly proclaim ing their conviction of her sanctity.
From this time forth the inhabitants of Lima took to treating every place that Rose de Flores had frequented — her father's house, her own garden-cell, the De Massas' palace, the chapel where she had chiefly prayed — as places of pilgrimage, which were visited in crowds, and whence every little thing that could be found as a relic of her was taken away. Cures, both bodily and spiritual, continued to be worked by things that had belonged to her or touched her body, and the ' popular beatification ' of the humble girl was unanimously bestowed by her fellow-townsmen. What, however, was far more striking and impor tant than the spontaneous honours accorded her by an impetuous and excitable populace, was the solid effect of the veneration aroused at her death on the moral and religious tone of Lima. Rose's admirers did not stop short at giving her outward honour ; they showed the reality of it by trying to become worthy of having had her in their midst through a change in their own lives. The move ment of reform that followed on the Saint's decease — the return to religious duties, and to
l86 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
solid and lasting virtue from bad or careless lives —is described as simply marvellous ; and it was a movement that spread from the capital to the whole of Peru and to all parts of ' New Spain,' and which convincingly proved the efficacy of Rose's intercession for the country she had loved so well. Very naturally her fellow-citizens became discon tented at having their beloved Saint's body left within a cloister which it was difficult to get at even for men, and impossible for her own sex to visit at all; and the final result of the strong popular feeling was that the body (found perfectly fresh more than six months after death) was placed in a fresh coffin, and removed first to a niche near the high altar, and then to St. Catherine of Siena's Chapel, where it remained.
It would not come within the scope of a work like this to go into all the details and technicali ties of the early-begun and long-continued efforts to obtain Rose de Flores' canonization, or of the ' process ' of canonization itself ; readers interested in such details may find them in the larger works, of which a list has been given. Two points will be enough to notice here : first, that when the popular devotion paid to her as a Saint, without ratification from the Holy See, had gone on for twenty-three years, it was put a stop to in 1640 by an official letter from Rome to the Dominican
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER ROSE'S DEATH 187
Fathers, enforcing an order of Urban VIII. — issued in 1634, but never yet promulgated in Lima — which forbade the popular cultus of anyone in anticipation of formal beatification ; and secondly, that Rose of St. Mary was finally canonized — her friends having begun to collect evidence for the ' process1 even in the very year of her death — in 1671, the Pontifical diploma being granted by Clement X. August 30 was then fixed for her Feast, and the meek, hidden Tertiary of St. Dominic and imitator of St. Catherine was publicly pro claimed ' Patron-Saint of America and the Philip pine Isles.'
Such is the story of the mystical ' Flower of the New World ' ; but those who have learnt to care for her in reading it will like, as they bid her farewell, to know something of what happened to those for whom she specially cared, and to whom she was allied by human ties — her parents and her favourite brother.
Of Rose's father, after her death, we hear nothing but that he died some time before his wife ; but Marie de Flores lived to fulfil the prophecy that she had once been so angry with her daughter for making. Five years after St. Rose died, Lucy de la Daga, being left a rich widow, founded St. Catherine of Siena's convent
l88 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
for Dominican women, and became herself the first Superior. The spirit of Rose is said to have so completely pervaded this community that it would almost seem as if she had founded it her self, and the Lima people even spoke of it indifferently as ' St. Rose's ' or ' St. Catherine's ' Convent.
In 1629 Marie de Flores actually carried out her child's prophecy by entering the community, where she was professed ; and the violent- tempered, frivolous, prejudiced woman became in her latter years a meek and humble Religious, and died a holy death. In 1657 there were two hundred nuns in this community, and it was celebrated for the holiness of its members.
Ferdinand de Flores — called in the biographies Ferdinand de Herera, which name he apparently got through having for his godmother the same Isabel de Herera who had been sponsor to Rose — had entered the army and been sent to Chili. There he married ; and Rose, having heard of the marriage, wrote a long and beautiful letter to him and his wife, containing a prophecy about her child. She told them they would have a daughter, destined to holiness, who should be born with the mark of a rose on her face ; and she begged them to bring the child up most care fully for God. Two years after this letter was
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER ROSE'S DEATH l8g
written a little girl was born to Ferdinand and his wife, and, behold ! on the lower part of her cheek was a tiny rose, traced on the skin as if painted by an artist. The little maid grew up as her aunt had foretold, singular in goodness, and was an object of interest in her childhood to all the Spaniards in Chili, who had heard of the prophecy, and used to come and visit her. But her parents did not live to finish her education, Ferdinand and his wife both died young, and their little daughter was sent by the Governor of Chili, who had a great veneration for Rose of St. Mary, to be brought up in Lima. When old enough, she too became a nun in St. Catherine's Convent, and there died ' in the odour of sanctity,' the same sacred walls thus witnessing the happy ends of our Saint's mother and her niece.
And now, apart from the general grounds for interest dwelt upon in the beginning of this short history, what special lesson does such a life as Rose of St. Mary's hold for us, living nearly three centuries from her death ? How can we read into our daily commonplace lives the moral of her marvellous one ? What, in short, is the practical use to us of this wonderful girl-Saint's example? Chiefly, it would appear, this one: that all over the world there are still, and always will be, souls
J90 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
to whom God has granted the gift of apostolic hearts— that is, of hearts that care so much for the souls of their fellow-men that they would gladly give their own lives for them; and that, out of this company, numbers are prevented from doing any active apostolic work, temporal or spiritual, by poverty, sickness, or private ties of duty.
Now, if Rose of Lima may well be taken, as we have before suggested that she might be, for patron and intercessor by those who are pursuing active deeds of charity, still more should she be so by such as have outward activity curtailed, and ardent desire kept unfulfilled, by circumstance. There are but few comparatively who can work unfettered ; still fewer who, if they do work, can be sure whether their works do good or harm ; but are there any who cannot suffer ?
If there is one class of people more than another to whom we firmly believe God intends such a life as St. Rose's to appeal, it is to those whose work of love for their race is to be done only by suffering: on a sick-bed, in wearisome toil for daily bread from morning to night, in the dreary endurance of petty annoyances and contra dictions from those to whom duty binds them. If such as these, endowed in their own degree with Rose's spirit of love and desire, will take
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER ROSE'S DEATH IQI
for their model not, certainly, her extraordinary penances or outward practices of any sort — for in these she is essentially a Saint ' for admiration, not imitation' — but her extraordinary faith and patience in following God's call through all diffi culties, and against all human judgments and natural inclinations, to the end, she will doubtless get for them light to see God's will in their own restrictions, as she saw it in hers. Her inter cession will help them to believe more firmly every day that the prayer of suffering is the greatest of all prayers, which will enable them to win more souls for Jesus Christ than all the active works they might do throughout a long life. Further, should such souls happen to be Ter- tiaries of St. Dominic, she will show them more and more clearly that by no possible means could they so perfectly carry out their calling to be ' daughters of penance,' as by the steadfast endurance and cheerful offering of the restraints and pains imposed by God Himself.
Finally, as to those outside the Church into whose hands this volume may happen to come : is it not possible that some of those who give themselves up to working for others, with but little definite aim beyond the alleviation of present pain and trouble, may find in such a life as this a suggestion as to where they may seek for a
IQ2 ST. ROSE OF LIMA
solution of that mystery of suffering which oppresses even while it incites them to work ? May it not even in some cases be the means of showing them that they may meet with a whole company of predecessors and living associates, as examples for their course of self-denying labour, in a very unexpected quarter: — in that Church of the Saints, namely, which produced this ' Rose of the New World ' ; and which lives, to produce Saints and workers for the true good of the human race, in our own day as in hers ?
Hence, we may end as \vc began, with the hope that this short study of her life may help to make the heroic figure of the young Dominican Saint stand out clearly before her modern fellow- women, in all its peculiar beauty of strength-in- swectness ; and that it may thus incline many of her sex to hail her, as those of her own Order do, with the words of the Antiphon :
' Thou art the joy of Jerusalem, thou art the glory of Israel, thou art the honour of thy people, O Rose ! Thou hast done valiantly, and thy heart hath been strengthened.'
THE END.
K. & T. WASHKOURNE, LTD., PATERNOSTER ROW LONDON
*v- /, ; - \v.v« 'A'V i\ </i,'. \vc w. »",y,
:^^-''^^AV^i>VV?H^' >. \% \> y l« » »\-» » /»*,« »rvA * v " ^ ' »* * / 1 < iN * \
^vv^M^^^^tV
fWMl-'ityJt&>$W'{w$fft',if.;i$f;
^^^4vll
^^|Aj^v$^¥
T%*^V?/r i%V//^> «TO