rj In memory of
rfrof. D.J. McDougalJ
1983
loWvi
SAN CBLESTINO
SAN CELESTINO
AN ESSAY IN KECONSTEUCTION
BY
JOHN AYSOOUGH
AUTHOR OF "MAROTZ"
Beati pauperes spiritu ; quoniam ipsorum est regnum caelorum.
NEW EDITION
WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
LONDON
SMITH, ELDEE & CO., 15 WATEELOO PLACE
1914
All rights reserved
DEDICATION
To His EMINENCE
THE LORD CARDINAL GASQUET
My Lord Cardinal,
There was a fine inappropriateness in asking
a great Historian to accept the Dedication of a little
romance that is not exactly historical. And if Your
Eminence had chastised my presumption by a cold
refusal I could only have been surprised by the temerity
of my own request.
But I fancy that the business of chastisement is one
of the duties that Your Eminence recognises with most
reluctance. In the exercise of discouragement some,
who have themselves achieved literary success and fame,
are pretty accomplished, but I doubt whether Your
Eminence will ever be noted for that accomplishment.
At all events, you said * Yes to me ivithout even an
alarming pause of hesitation. And few favours you
have ever conferred can have given greater pleasure to
the recipient. That Your Eminence s name should be
set in the Dedication of my book gives me my first excuse
for being proud of it ; and many, I daresay, who other
wise would never think of reading this little study of a
wonderful life, may consider it worth while to take up
a book Cardinal Gasquet has not thought beneath Ms
kindness.
iv DEDICATION
The favour I asked it had Ifing been in my mind to
request : but it was one I did not venture to ask in writing.
I did not know that Your Eminence had read this little
booh, and I shrank from trying to explain what was its
nature. It seemed so probable that, to a great and
peculiarly exact Historian, any attempt to set out the
life of a victim of history in a mere romance would appear
a piratical emprise.
On the original title-page San Celestino was called
an Essay in Reconstruction, and I have let the descrip
tion stand. But it would have been more fit, and less
challenging to criticism, to call this short and slight effort
an Essay in Appreciation. And as such I hope Your
Eminence will regard it. Reconstruction is for the
adept ; the humblest admirer may try to set in words his
appreciation. And love and reverence may in that field
supply what only expert knowledge could give in the other.
I cannot tell Your Eminence for how many years
I had pondered the story of San Celestino before at last
I could wait no longer, and had to write it down. To
me he has been for long a tender and intimate friend,
whose voice I seem to know far better than that of many
a man familiar to me in common life. It was ivith an
anguish of compassion I wrote of his dragging from his
cavern to the Papacy ; it seemed, I could only breathe
again when he stepped smiling down from the unearthly
throne which must ever be more beautiful. for his renuncia
tion of it. Of all the millions who have venerated it,
none has ever proved his reverence for Peter s seat more
profoundly than Petrucdo did in descending from it.
It was not vilta, but supreme and indomitable respect.
No greater tribute to the throne of the Fisherman has
ever been rendered than this Saint s renunciation of
DEDICATION v
it because, for reverence, he knew himself unfit to sit
therein.
My Lord Cardinal, I must needs wish to find some
sort of fitness in your generous association of Your
Eminence s great name with this humble attempt at
reparation : if I have only tried, Your Eminence has
succeeded, more than any man, in a parallel though
wider task : my effort has concerned one hermit handed
over to easy misunderstanding. Your Eminence has
moved efficiently to the rescue of the whole body of monks,
complacently relegated by the ignorant to the limbo of
lost causes. No one that knows your contributions
to History will ever dare again to speak of the English
Monks as a folk on whom a deserved disaster fell. And
had I never met Your Eminence, I, who have ever loved
and venerated the monks, must for that have loved and
revered you. But I have met Your Eminence : I have
been your fellow-guest in the house of the kindest and
most delightful of hosts, of one ivho for many years has
made for me the duty of ecclesiastical subjection and
obedience a filial pleasure. With you and with him I
have lingered a long summer s day in your monastic
home, and been, like Petruccio in the tale, a guest of
St. Benedict, your Patriarch and father. There are
days so dedicated to Memory that she seems to claim them
while they are yet in being : and that glamour of hers
lay all the while upon that day at Downside, so that it
seemed at the moment more irrevocably mine than happens
with common present things. It was already a picture,
with all a picture s serene permanence . . . the noble
abbey in its exquisite setting of lawn and ( immemorial
elms, and the happy, black figures of the monks gathered
about their Cardinal and fellow-monk. Looking down
vi DEDICATION
QP
from your seat towards monastery and fane, school and
guest-house, it seemed to me that you, who have written
so poignantly of the death-warrant and death of many
a monastery and many a monk, must be filling your
heart and eyes with that triumphant instance of noble
and lovely resurrection. Nothing of God s can die
for ever ; the knighthood and chivalry of feudal days may
lie dead, but the monasticism that was alive long before
them lives on after their death.
And, seeing you there, it could no longer seem strange
to me that the kindness of St. Benedict had made his
illustrious son grant, instantly, my little presumptuous
request.
Begging your blessing, and kissing the Sacred Purple,
I am, My Lord Cardinal,
Yours most respectfully,
JOHN AYSCOUGH.
INTRODUCTION
SINCE the first publication of this book, five years ago,
a cheaper edition has constantly been demanded,
and the inclusion of it among what I find are called
4 set- books/ that may be taken in by Junior Candidates
in the Oxford Local Examinations, has seemed to
the publishers to provide the fitting occasion for
compliance.
It has also been urged that to any new edition notes
and an introduction should be added. The author
yields with reluctance and misgiving to this suggestion.
Notes and introductions have a sort of solemnity that
challenges criticism, and they seem to him to be a
weighty burden for a modern work of fiction to carry.
And, while it may be true that, to candidates who
read the book for examination, notes and introduction
may be of some slight use, he fears that it is more
certainly true that to other readers they will only
prove forbidding. He can only judge how the general
reader of a work of historical romance would feel from
what he feels himself : and he would certainly never
choose to read such a work in an annotated edition if
he could read it in a copy free from the pother and fuss
of notes.
Notes must either be set at the foot of each page
where the passages to which they refer occur, or
Vlll
INTKODUCTION
they must be relegated to an appendix at the end of
the book. In the former case they are, in a mere
historical tale, quite intolerable, an officious interrup
tion perpetually distracting the reader s attention and
breaking in upon any interest he might otherwise
find in the text. In an appendix they may seem hardly
worth the trouble of referring to them, but they are, at
least, out of the way, and to an appendix they are
in this case banished.
Thus those who wish to read San Celestino for
pleasure will have as little to complain of as possible ;
and the author s advice to them would be to ignore the
appendix altogether.
As to an introduction, the author feels that there
is little to be said in it, unless he were to give (what
space and the scope of his allotted task alike forbid) a
view of the state of Europe during the long period
covered by St. Celestine s life, and an account of what
is meant by Mystical Asceticism.
To himself it seems that all that could be said in
any brief introduction is said in the course of the work
itself.
For instance, by many it has been assumed, and
the assumption itself is a flattery, that San Celestino
is an historical life of the lonely and pathetic figure
whose name it bears. Any such claim is fully dis
avowed in the book itself. It is only a romance,
though an unusual one, since its theme is neither love
or war, with an historical personage for centre and
pivot. A few, and only a few, other real characters
are introduced, and that very slightly : the rest are
creatures of the author s fancy, though he believes
them to be such men and women as Celestine would
INTRODUCTION ix
have met. To distinguish the historic from the
imaginary characters, a list is given of the dramatis
personce, where it is frankly noted which belong to
history and which do not.
But an introduction is certainly a good place for a
further confession, if confession it be.
Our great masters of historical romance have
freely created not only imaginary personages but also
imaginary episodes, in imaginary scenes ; and, so
long as lesser writers of romance do not pretend to
be historians, a similar freedom may be conceded to
them.
That Angelario s widow found means to send her
son Pietro to some seat of learning is plainly stated,
but whether this allusion is merely intended to the
time the lad spent with the Benedictines at Faifoli, in
the diocese of Benevento, the author does not know.
Owing to the nearness to Petruccio s home of the
University of Salerno, its importance and great repute,
it is there that he has taken the liberty of representing
Petruccio s later education as taking place. Such a
liberty would be unpardonable in a life of the saint :
to remove it from a romance would not alter the
character of the work, or, perhaps, improve it it
could certainly be removed by re-writing the book.
If its non-removal should incite any better qualified
writer to give us a real history of Celestine V in
English it would have served a very good purpose.
That Dante did mean Celestine when he spoke
of him who * fece per villa lo gran rifiuto has been
constantly assumed : that he did not, has been main
tained by grave critics. It is a question for grave
critics to debate, and (if they can) to decide. In
x INTBODUOTION
this small work it is only pleaded that the Gran Eifiuto
of Celestine was not made per villa : that may be a
question for gentler readers than the critics to settle
for themselves.
Finally, the author has been asked to translate,
where they occur, such little scraps of Italian as appear
here and there. In the notes he has done this, against
his own judgment : such translations appear to him
officious and impertinent ; to place them in the text
itself would be a mere disfigurement. The whole
paraphernalia of notes, introduction, and translations
can have, as he fears, but one effect to give some
air of parade to a little book that has no merit beyond
that of simplicity.
The note on Barbara, celarent., was most kindly
supplied by the Eight Eeverend Monsignor Burton,
D.C.C., Lord Bishop of Clifton. If all the notes, and
the introduction as well, could have come from the
same learned pen, the author would not apologise for
them, or deprecate their presence.
FEAST OF ST. CELESTINE V,
May 25, 1914.
CONTENTS
BOOK I
PAGE
PETRUCCIO . ... 1
BOOK II
THE FOUNDER OF THE CELESTINI ; . . .125
BOOK III
THE POPE 185
BOOK IV
IL GRAN RIFIUTO . . 245
PERSONS REPRESENTED
SAN CELESTINO. Pietro, called di Murrone or di
Morone, afterwards Pope Celestine V. Born about
A.D. 1221. Ordained in Borne, but returned to the
Abruzzi, where he had already made himself a
hermitage, in 1246. Elected Pope by the Conclave
at Perugia, July 7, 1294. Crowned at Aquila in
the Abruzzi, August 29, 1294. Abdicated the
Papacy at Naples, December 13, 1294. Died at
the Castle of Fumone, near Ferentino, May 19,
1296. Canonised by Clement V in 1318.
PETBUCCIO. A diminutive of Pietro ; the name given
here to Celestine during his boyhood, etc.
ANGELAEIO. The father of Pietro di Murrone and
his eleven brothers.
*CABMELA. Petruccio s mother. So far as I am
aware her actual name is not preserved. Carmela
in Italy, and Carmen in Spain, are very popular
women s names, and of course commemorate the
popular devotion to the Blessed Virgin of Mount
Carmel. The Carmelite tradition is that the
Blessed Virgin visited Carmel, and found already
established there a body of religious contempla-
* An asterisk indicates a real character whose name is not
recorded.
xiv PEESONS EEPEESENTED
tives, spiritual descendants of a line of hermits
who had been seated there from the time of the
prophet Elias (in Kings c. xviii. ; iv Kings c. iv. ;
A.V. i Kings c. xviii. and n Kings c. iv.) ; and
that a chapel was built by these solitaries in her
honour during her own lifetime.
*EUGGERO. \ Brothers of Petruccio : whose actual
*ASTORGO.
*CARLUCCIO.
*SANDRO.
*GlULIO.
*PlPPO.
names are not recorded.
Carluccio is one of the familiar forms
or diminutives of Carlo : Sandro, a
contraction of Alessandro : Pippo, a
diminutive of Filippo.
**BiAGio. A carter on Angelario s farm. Biagio is
the Italian form of the name of Blase or Blaise,
common throughout Europe in the Middle Ages.
St. Blaise, Bishop of Sebaste in Armenia, was
martyred under Licinius, A.D. 316. In the Greek
Church his feast is kept on February 11. He was
Patron Saint of the Eepublic of Eagusa, and is
still honoured there as the special patron of the
city. He is also patron saint of wool-combers
(perhaps only because he was tortured and martyred
by the laceration of his body with iron combs)
and throughout mediaeval Christendom he was
held in popular veneration wherever the wool
industry flourished. At Norwich there was a
guild and festival in his honour ; the name of
St. Blazey in Cornwall commemorates the ancient
devotion to the Armenian martyr in England, and
there, too, his feast was celebrated on the same
day as by the wool-combers throughout England.
**FELICIA. A widow of Salerno; Petruccio s landlady.
** Double asterisks indicate an imaginary character.
PEESONS EEPKESENTED xv
**MESSER GIAN m SAN MARCO. Gian Marco is John
Mark. A canon of Salerno, uncle of Petruccio s
mother.
**GUITO. A student of Salerno, friend of Petruccio :
who joined the Celestini.
**OMERO (Homer). Another student -friend of
Petruccio s at Salerno.
**EANIERO. A young sculptor from Palermo, also
known to Petruccio at Salerno.
**ALFEO. A fourth student, who afterwards joined
Petruccio and became one of his first monks.
**THE ABBOT OF CAVA.
**DoM PLACID.] Monks of Cava, both named after
**DoM MAURO.J companions of St. Benedict.
FREDERICK II. King of the Two Sicilies, and Holy
Eoman Emperor.
MANFRED. ) XT , , ,, ~
[ Natural sons of the Emperor.
ENZIO. j
BIANOA LANZIA. Manfred s mother.
**DRAGOUDH AND **YAGOURDH. Saracen officers.
**MESSER ANGELO. A country priest.
Students in theology at Salerno :
who afterwards as priest,
**GIACOMO BERTELLI.
**BASTIANO SERLUPI.^
**Lippo CARDONE.
deacon, and subdeacon
helped to persuade Petruccio
to be ordained. Lippo Car-
done tried to be a hermit
under Petruccio, but failed.
**MAURIZIO. A lad of Solmona, who became one of
Petruccio s hermits, and was with him when he
died.
**NETTO. A peasant ; father of Maurizio.
**THE BISHOP OF AQUILA. Friend to the Celestini.
xvi PBESONS EEPEESENTED
**MESSER FBDEBIGO. HiS chaplain,
CARDINAL MALEBRANCA. Latino Malabranca, or Male-
branca, Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, who suggested
the name of Pietro di Morone to the Conclave
at Perugia.
CARDINAL BENEDETTO DEI CAETANI. Celestine s
successor as Boniface VIII.
CARDINAL PIETRO COLONNA. One of those who went
from Perugia to Celestine on his election.
CARDINAL DE GOUTH, represented as announcing
Celestine s death to Boniface VIII.
THE KING OF NAPLES. Charles I of Anjou, brother
of St. Louis IX of France. King of the Two
Sicilies.
THE KING OF HUNGARY. Charles of Anjou, son of the
last-named, afterwards Charles II of the Two
Sicilies, and, in right of his wife, Mary of
Hungary, King of that country.
CARDINAL NAPOLEONE ORSINI, who, with Cardinal
Hugh of Auvergne, went to Aquila for the Corona
tion of Celestine V.
*GIROLAMO, a carpenter who allowed the Pope to use
some boards in the palace.
*GIULIA. The carpenter s wife.
The Governor of the Castle of Fumone, where
Celestine died, soldiers of its garrison, their wives
and daughters, Eoman barons, relations of
Celestine, a profesor of theology, priests, Saracen
and Christian soldiers, etc.
SAN CELESTINO
BOOK I
PETJRUCCIO
CHAPTEE I
1 PETRUCCIO ! Ser Angelario s wife called out, standing
in the great arched doorway and looking out across
the cortile towards the garden.
It was not much of a courtyard, more like that of a
farm than that of a castle, though a strong and high wall
ran round it on two sides, a wall machicolated at the
top, with a parapet along which, if one were not very
fat, one could walk. On the other two sides the space
was inclosed by the house itself and a great stone
granary. All the buildings were of stone, for rocks
were common thereabouts and bricks were scarce. A
triangular flight of stone steps led down from the
door, which was the only one the house had.
Farm implements lay about the yard, and a long,
narrow cart stood in it, from which the white oxen,
with smoke-coloured muzzles, were being unyoked.
* Petruccio, dov e ? inquired the mistress, lower
ing her voice a little to address the carter.
Chi lo sa ! E da-per-tutto, answered the peasant.
He was not much more than forty, but looked old, with
2 SAN CELESTINO
^
a wrinkled face sunburnt nearly as black as one of the
benches in Ser Angelario s kitchen.
He is everywhere : who knows where he is ?
repeated Biagio, leading his oxen away, and beginning
to make a noise which he took for whistling.
Nowhere does he do any harm/ declared the
mistress, as if she were arguing with Biagio.
He who does nothing commits no fault/ rejoined
the peasant, almost without pausing in his whistling.
Biagio liked all of Petruccio s eleven brothers better
than he liked Petruccio : at all events he thought that
he did. Petruccio, he considered, could do nothing.
The others could all do things : the elder lads rode, and
followed the chase, even the younger boys fished and
trapped birds. Petruccio lived in the moon somewhere,
where nobody ever heard of there being any game or any
sport. And Biagio could always understand what the
others said to him : if they asked questions he knew the
answers, for they only wanted to learn such matters
as he could teach them. Whereas Petruccio was not
given to talk much, and what he said was mostly not
worth Biagio s attention.
Ser Angelario s wife came down the steps and walked
across the courtyard towards the broken gateway
leading to the garden. She had room in her heart for
all her twelve sons, but she loved Petruccio with a pecu
liar affection. Long ago, when she was herself a child,
she had had a brother, and Petruccio was like him.
Her brother was dead, had, indeed, never lived to be
older than Petruccio was now. The best patterns are
not the commonest/ she told herself, as she went into
the garden. God is not obliged to make all birds sing.
Carmela had a fine face, about which she never
SAN CELESTINO 3
thought anything, though Ser Angelario had thought
much of it when he married her. Nowadays there
were other things to think of : he had a dozen sons,
and not so very much land, nor any fine relations likely
to help them to a start in life.
The garden was not much of a garden either, though
big enough, and beautiful enough in a careless, shiftless
fashion. The few flowers seemed to grow there of
themselves, for no one had planted them, and no one
attended to them. But there were plenty of trees, and
long walks, rather tangled, and in every direction
glorious views of the valley and of the mountains on
each side of it.
* Petruccio ! his mother called out again. She had
reached the end of the garden farthest from the house,
and now her call was answered.
* Where were you ? she asked, as the boy showed
himself.
Up there, he answered, with an embarrassed air,
nodding his head in the direction whence he had come to
meet her. The garden ran steeply uphill away from
the house, and here there was a jut of rock, perhaps
twenty feet high, covered with bushes and Fichi
cT India.
1 What were you doing ? . . . have you been there
all the time ?
Yes ; up there all the time.
He had not told her what he had been doing, and she
did not urge him. But he took her arm, and pressed it
a little. She knew he was grateful because she had not
pushed her question. Why should a mother be in
quisitive ? Why must parents always suppose their
children s reticences hide something suspicious ?
B 2
4 SAN CELESTINO
jjjpi
They walked along without talking much. Carmela
was not even wondering how he had been occupied.
He knew she was not. She felt his small, thin fingers
pressing her round arm. The sun had dropped
behind the mountain, and already the gorges of the hills
were turning black, though the western heaven was
deep red still.
Petruccio was very hungry, but he was not thinking
of that ; nevertheless his face would have been pale but
for the sunset. He had eaten nothing since last night,
except a crust of bread, and a fig or two early in the
morning. The western glow lighted his face, and
Carmela noticed it.
* Madonna mia ! she said within herself. His
face seems washed in blood.
CHAPTER II
INDOORS it was already dark. The lamps of olive oil
were lighted, and the table was roughly spread for
supper. There was plenty to eat of coarse, common
food : no dainties ever varied their simple diet.
Ser Angelario s house was rather a big, gaunt
masseria than a castle, though it was perched like a
castle among the mountains, and was strong, and
half-fortified. Ser Angelario was, one would say, noble,
but of the small nobility, poor and undistinguished.
No doubt he had ancestors, but he thought rather
of the future than of the past, and was more concerned
how his sons were to live, than how his fathers had
lived before him.
They all sat down to eat, and Petruccio waited his
turn to be served without impatience.
* Help me first, said his brother Euggero. Chiodino
does not eat. He lives on wind, like the plovers.
How is that ? asked their father, filling his big
mouth with pasta.
You are not to call him that, said Carmela. There
are saints enough in heaven for the whole twelve of you
to have decent Christian names without nicknames.
Petruccio looked shy; he, too, disliked the. nick
name, and he wished Ruggero would not tease him
before everybody about not eating. Ser Angelario had
5
6 SAN CELESTINO
forgotten all about it already, but his eldest son,
Astorgo, asked Kuggero why Petruccio was like the
plovers.
Oh, he eats wind ! That is all he cares for. At
dinner-time he came in late when everybody was done,
and carried his portion away with him. I saw him,
and had a curiosity to find out what was the matter
with him. He crept away with it, and I watched him.
He gave it all to blind Cetta, the widow who lives
near the shrine of Santa Barbara. . . .
* Kuggero chatters, said his mother. * If Petruccio
is like the plovers, he is like the jackdaws who gabble
" gracchia, gracchia" all the time.
Petruccio had grown as red as if the sunset were still
on his face. He gave a kick under the table, and his
toes knocked hard against Kuggero s ankle : perhaps
it was accidental, his brother thought it was temper.
Poledro, the young colt, kicks like that, he
observed scornfully. I expect he fasts, too.
Carmela gave Petruccio his supper, and he felt
her hand touch his : he began to eat with a choking in
his throat. He was ashamed of his impatience.
Ruggero loved to torment him, and had an instinctive
knowledge how to go about it.
4 1 caught a hare to-day, observed Carluccio, the
brother between Ruggero and Petruccio.
And I five trout, declared Sandro.
They re out of season, Giulio objected.
1 They re not, asserted Sandro, much offended.
I killed two pigeons with a sling, said Pippo.
Fat ones.
And Petruccio, said Ruggero, sat all day looking
out for a cherubim or a seraphim. But he is so cross
SAN CELESTINO 7
one sees he did not catch any. Petruccio began to
blush again, and his tormentor continued
He has built himself a den on the top of the rock
at the end of the garden. He has made it in the little
cave, and he has filled it with thorns and brambles.
There he has been all day, since he gave his dinner to
Cetta, the blind widow ; when he has laid an egg
he will sit on it, to see if he can hatch an angel out
of it. But Cetta is not at all grateful to him for his
dinner, for he put it in her hands without saying
anything, and stole away. Then I walked in and
told her I had brought it with the padrona Carmela s
compliments.
All this was mere invention about his having told
Cetta anything, for he had not spoken to her at all ;
but Petruccio did not much understand those sort of
lies that are called chaff.
" Gracchia, gracchia" repeated Carmela, remind
ing the tease that he was like a jackdaw. She had not,
however, paid much attention ; and now she and her
husband began talking to each other without listening
to the lads at all.
After supper the maids cleared the dishes and plates
away, and the boys sat about the big table working at
various jobs upon it. One had a cross-bow to mend,
another a net, and so on.
Carmela went to her wheel and began to spin. Her
mother, who seemed to live in her big chair under the
chimney, was spinning also. She was as upright as her
daughter, but pale and wrinkled : her grandsons con
sidered her enormously old.
Tell us a novella, Nonna, one of them begged her.
* What novella, then ?
8 SAN CBLESTINO
* About the Guiscard and Sigilgaita, suggested
Giulio.
That is not a novella : it is history, remarked
Astorgo, who was an accurate person.
Never mind : there s no harm in history when it
is interesting, declared Giulio, who didn t know there
was any difference.
Tell us about the Emperor and Pope Gregory/
whispered Petruccio.
But Euggero overheard him.
Don t tell us about Popes, he objected. We
are none of us monks. Tell us about our own Emperor
Federigo and his Saracens. . . .
The old lady was not so accurate as Astorgo, and did
not remark that that also would be history ; besides,
the Emperor was still alive, at Palermo, in the midst
of his heathenish court of Arab poets and musicians ;
it did not occur to her, perhaps, that the doings of
living people could be called history. Besides, she had
been to Palermo and could describe la Zisa, and the
Martorana, and the tombs of their own Norman kings ;
she had seen Frederick himself, and the Empress
Costanza, his mother. Of all these wonders she liked
to tell.
Si
Some of her grandsons listened, and some whispered
to each other over their work : her daughter listened,
and also thought of all sorts of other things. Ser
Angelario did not pretend to listen at all, but dozed,
and began little plans for his sons and dozed again ;
but Petruccio drank it ill in with eager ears. Never
theless he was shocked by the quarrels of the trouba
dour monarch with one Pope after another, and
scandalised bv his foundation of Saracen Nocera.
SAN CELESTINO 9
He was glad to think that, though the Emperor
might beat the Church s vassals in war, the Pope s
excommunication was too much for him. Kuggero
was sorry.
I hope he will catch the Pope yet, he declared.
Kuggero chatters, said his mother again. But
her husband had no reproof handy. He had not
been attending, and then he was of the Eegno : the
Trovatore was his monarch. So the long evening
wore itself out : it was October now, and cold at night
up here in the mountains. The fire of logs was
pleasant, and rest after a long hard day is grateful.
Ser Angelario dozed, and left the Pope and the half-
pagan Emperor to themselves. So long as neither
of them wanted his cattle or his corn he left them to
God, who, no doubt, understood what they were always
quarrelling about.
CHAPTEK III
IN the middle of the night, as it seemed to Euggero,
some one crept to his bedside and woke him.
What is it ? he grumbled sleepily.
* Are you awake, Euggero ? It is I, Chiodino.
Euggero was too sleepy to notice that his brother
called himself by the nickname he disliked. Had he
been wide awake he would not probably have under
stood that Petruccio, in. thus using the name that was
unpleasant to himself, was doing penance.
* Well ? What do you want ? Do you want my
supper to make up for your dinner ? It has gone too
far down. . . .
I couldn t sleep. I lay awake ashamed. I had
to come and beg pardon. I kicked you under the table
on purpose. It was not a mistake.
Bello ! That is a good thing. It is stupid to do
things by mistake.
Euggero turned round and went to sleep again.
Petruccio stole away, back to his own little hard bed
stuffed with esparto grass. But it was too soft for him.
What business had he to lie comfortable in his body,
whose soul had been wounded by an act of spiteful
impatience ? Was it not mere hypocrisy to fast and
give away his dinner, and then kick his brother for
making game of him ?
10
SAN CELESTINO 11
He crept out of bed and lay on the cold nagged floor,
where the chill moonlight fell on his head, and showed
the strange mark that was the cause of his nickname.
High on the temple there it was, a livid scar, such as
might have been left could a huge square nail have
been driven into his forehead, and he be still alive after
it had been drawn out and the skin have grown
together again.
No accident had caused this ugly mark : it was there
when he was born. It was never red, but of the dark-
bluish colour of a bruise : sometimes darker and
plainer, sometimes paler. To-night in the moonlight
it looked very dark.
Carmela had a shuddering superstitious feeling about
it, and would have forgotten the existence of the mark
altogether if she could ; but she never could forget it.
It annoyed her, however, to be reminded of it, and
she was not pleased with Euggero for nicknaming his
brother Little Nail Chiodino.
Petruccio could perceive his mother s feeling, though
he did not understand it, and was himself ashamed of
the mark, as though it implied some reproach. He
shrank from allusions to it, and from the name that
reminded everybody of it.
Presently he began to shiver, and it came quickly
into his head that perhaps he would get fever from
being chilled : if he were to die would it not be his
own fault ? People had no right to injure their own
health, much less to die of illnesses caused by them
selves. This penance of lying on the stones was his own
idea : perhaps it was wrong. Had he, who was an
ill-tempered boy that kicked his brothers, any right to
imitate the penances of saints ? Era Taddeo, his
12 SAN CELESTINO
confessor, told him not to go beyond his grace : that
would be presumption. Very likely this penance
was beyond his grace and, if he persisted in it, God
would allow the fever to lay hold of him and even
kill him. . . .
At last he crept back into his cold bed, and finally
fell asleep. But the chill was in his bones still, and he
dreamed of it. He thought he was still lying on the
flagged floor, only his room was some dungeon, and he
knew he was not alone in it. He could see no one in the
dark corners, but he felt that some one was there. . . .
Presently these people for there were several of them
came out stealthily from the thievish black corners
where they had lurked, and crept together towards
himself. They were rough, brutal fellows, like men-
at-arms, big and burly ; and now they threw themselves
upon him and laid fiercely hold of him. Two of them
held him tightly down, so that he could feel the rough
stones hurting his shoulders; one of them stuffed a cloth
into his mouth. Where he lay it was moonlight, and he
could see as well as feel them : the fourth ruffian had a
hammer, a great hammer like a smith s, in his hand,
and a huge nail also. He held in his other hand the nail,
and Petruccio knew what he was about to do with it.
It was exactly like the great nail in the church, the
model of one of those with which Gesu Cristo had been
fastened to the cross which had indeed touched one
of the true Nails of the Passion, and had a little leaf
of parchment sealed to it saying that this was so.
It was five inches long, or more, and square, with a
round top like a mushroom. Petruccio knew at once
what they were going to do with it, even before he
felt the cold point of it against his temple, long
SAN CELESTINO 13
before the cruel-faced marf with the hammer had
struck the mushroom-shaped head.
1 In manus tuas, Domine . . . he muttered in his
sleep, and then came the crashing blow and the horrible
pain in his temple.
He had felt that pain already, when he was awake,
often. He could never bear it, and he would feel it,
over and over again, during his long life. But
now, as he slept, the sharp agony lasted but a moment,
and was followed by an exquisite bliss, -j He was ; no
longer cold, or cramped; his body did not ^rouble
him at all. It was no longer dark, or mere moon
light, but he lay quivering in the midst of a thrilling
light that did not dazzle. He was no longer alone
with ruthless and frowning enemies, but in the midst of
smiling friends.
He is come home, some one said ; and they called
him by a name that was not Petruccio. He could not
quite catch it ; was it his old nickname ? Its first
letter was the same and its last : was it * Chiodino ?
No. But Celestino : the Little Heavenly One.
CHAPTEK IV
FRA TADDEO told Carmela that Petruccio should be a
priest.
He is called/ said the friar. Our Lord s voice is
plain. Let him go. Indeed, you can never hold him
back. He has the rare gift donum pietatis.
Carmela would not hold him back.
It is a great honour/ she said.
The greatest. That a man should be called to be
God s own fellow in the saving of souls. That a man
should be given to sit on earth in God s seat and heal
the lepers.
* Nay, but few can work miracles. Put no ideas
like that in the lad s mind.
I meant the worst leprosy sin. Every priest has
the power of that miracle. And the power of the other
miracle, of calling Christ back to earth daily into the
White Disguise of the Blessed Sacrament.
Ser Angelario made no objection. He was glad
enough. Were there not Canons and Bishops, ay and
Cardinals and well, why not? even Popes? Let
everyone follow his own bent. Astorgo was already
gone to follow the profession of arms, and Kuggero
was going. Why should not Petruccio be a priest,
and presently a prelate, with vassals and soldiers of
his own ?
14
SAN CELESTINO 15
But presently Ser Angelario died ; and it was all in
Carmela s hands. She ruled in her husband s stead,
and ruled quite as well as he had ever done. She was a
strong, frugal woman, and had the capacity for govern
ment that many women have ; only her sphere was
always to be a small one. She managed everything,
and kept things well together.
With twelve sons to provide for, she contrived to do
the best for each, and for Petruccio she found the means
to send him to his studies. She fitted him out with
clothes, and a little money for his books, and for his
living at Salerno. He was not vain and wanted no
smart raiment, and she knew he was ready to fare
poorly, and lodge meanly.
The day before he started there was a festa down
at the paese, and she bade him go thither with his
brothers.
It will be the last time, she told him, and you can
condescend to their pleasures this once.
So he went, though he would liever have stayed with
her and wandered about the place that was never more
to be his home. As it was he found time in the morning,
before it was time to start for the festa, to go and say
farewell to this or that spot.
There was the rock at the end of the steep garden,
where he had made his first hermitage, in which he had
spent so many hours of so many days, learning the
alphabet of religious contemplation. He had aban
doned it for some while now, for temptations had come
to him there which had frightened him. By nature he
was timid, and apt to be discouraged. He had come to
doubt if the place were blest. There were, he had begun
to suspect, more devils than angels there. Once a voice
16 SAN CELESTINO
had declared there, plainly in his ear, that he was
already a saint, at an age when other lads had scarce
begun to be sinners. Then he had fled, and for some
time had not ventured back.
But he had gone back at last, and had found God
waiting there, kindly ,iox him. All had gone well for a
space, and he had felt^the place to be quite sacred : the
trysting-place for his first and last love.
^Suddenly, however, another voice had assailed him,
coldly telling him, in his other ear, that he would never
be a saint at all, never even save his soul. He had better
go down and share in the pleasures of life, for, after
death, it would all be darkness and flames for him.
Again he had fled.
That also was long ago, and ultimately he had
gone back a second time. The place was full of
memories for him, not of outward events but of
inward experiences. Looking back it seemed to him
now that he had known nothing at all of God when
he had first begun to go there ; it did not occur to
him yet how little he knew still. He bade farewell to
the spot and to all the garden. He felt a cold sinking
of the heart as he told himself that he should come
no more hither. He had deep, sensitive, human
affections, that clung to the familiar and accustomed.
The very timidity of his nature made him shrink
from the unknown or the distant. To him Salerno, far
away on the coast in Campania, seemed hopelessly
distant. He had lived among the mountains all his
life, and even the idea of going to live by the sea gave
him a sense of passing into exile.
All these human local ties must be broken ; for
his notion of vocation was to rise up and follow the
SAN CELESTINO 17
homeless Nazarene, as homeless himself. But must
not crucifixion be an agony ? Without agony would
it be crucifixion at all ?
He passed down a rough walk of the garden that led
along the brink of what was, in truth, a precipice, so
steep that no wall was needed and none inclosed the
garden on that side. Halfway down it, in a thicket,
was a sort of grotto, where, as a child, he used to play
at saying Mass. There was still the rough altar he
had built ; and his mother, though he was not
aware of it, had still the little vestment she had
made him out of an old bit of silk.
He thought, as he left the garden, that he would
go and find Biagio, the carter, and say good-bye to him.
He was sure to be in the long, draughty stable.
Biagio ! he called out, peering into the shadow, for
it seemed almost dark there going in out of the strong
sunlight.
Who wants me ? What is to do ? the carter s
voice answered gruffly. But Biagio did not himself
come forward : Petruccio had to find him. He was
sifting grain in a corner that seemed quite dark to
Petruccio.
Only I, Petruccio.
Biagio whistled, as much as to say, Only you,
indeed. That is nothing.
I thought I would come to say good-bye. I shall
be at the paese with my brothers all day. . . .
Biagio laughed as well as he could without stopping
whistling. He could not have said more plainly
One does not need to say farewell before going to
the village. But he knew perfectly that Petruccio
was going away altogether on the morrow.
18 SAN CELESTINO
Petruccio blushed a little, and one could almost hear
it in his voice.
Well, but to-morrow, he added, I am going to
Salerno.
It is well for the rich who can afford such journeys/
remarked Biagio, interrupting his whistling but making
as much noise as he could with his sieve.
* I am not going because I am rich ; but to learn
theology, Biagio.
What is that ? It is a sort of grain I never
heard of.
Petruccio laughed a little.
It is all about God, he explained politely.
So it is at Salerno they know all about God. Well,
I can t go. So I must stop here and remain ignorant.
Biagio began whistling again. He prided himself on
being disagreeable, and flattered himself that on the
present occasion he was doing pretty well.
You know I am going to be a priest . . . Petruccio
began again.
That is right. You are not like your brothers.
They are good for other things.
Petruccio blushed again. He did not think himself
cleverer than his brothers, though in truth he was
cleverer than more than one of them. But he disliked
hearing a priest s calling spoken of disrespectfully. It
could not be right, and perhaps he was only causing
the cross peasant to commit a fault.
Well, I thought I would say good-bye. When
I was little you taught me to ride ; that was very
kind of you.
Yes ; but you never learned. Your legs are only
good for kneeling with.
SAN CELESTINO 19
Good-bye, Biagio.
But Biagio was obstinate and would not say
good-bye. It rather hurt Petruccio, and the carter
knew it ; otherwise he would have said good-bye
readily.
o 2
CHAPTEK V
THE festa did not amuse Petruccio, and the fact that
it was, as we would say now, picturesque, did not occur
to him. It was noisy, and he hated noise ; and he
could not be light-hearted when in truth he was
already feeling the first pangs of approaching home
sickness. He did not care to romp and be pulled
about, and he scarcely knew how to take part in the
games his brothers made him play. Some of the
maidens who shared in the sports seemed to him
rough and over-forward. He had no sisters and had
never made friends with any of these peasant -girls,
as his brothers appeared to have done. Besides, he
felt that they were all laughing at him for his awkward
ness and shyness, and he had always shrunk sensitively
from ridicule. He knew he was only their butt ; and
though he cared nothing, even now, for the know
ledge of these foolish games, he had a sort of shame of
his ignorance too.
Presently he stole off, and thought he would seek
out the parish priest and say farewell to him. He
could not go away without doing so, and this was a
good opportunity.
He found the priest in, and told him he had come for
his blessing before leaving.
So you are going to Salerno ? said Messer Andrea,
20
SAN CELESTINO 21
peering at him sideways. He was short-sighted, and it
seemed to help him to look at things on one side.
* Yes. To-morrow. I thought your Eeverence
would bless me before I start.
* Perche no ? Certainly you will deserve a blessing
if you go with the right dispositions.
He coughed a little, just as he did when he was
preaching.
4 So you will be a priest, j ; he added. That is
good, if you have the right vocation. It is bad when
one tries to be a priest without it.
Petruccio looked down, and began to redden
again.
It \\ould be terrible, he almost whispered.
It happens, said Messer Andrea. That is why the
Church has been cursed with false shepherds who have
devoured the simple sheep.
i This truth he Stated harshly, almost as though he
feared Petruccio might prove one of them. He did not
in reality fear any such thing ; but he did not altogether
approve of Petruccio. The lad was, he thought,
visionary, and to be visionary was, in his idea, nearly
the same thing as being conceited. And Petruccio
was, he fancied, an enthusiast, which he also considered
objectionable. He was an excellent parish priest
himself, and had never, so far as anyone remembered,
been much tainted with enthusiasm.
One cannot be quite sure of one s vocation,^ the
boy murmured. One can only go and see.
If it is all a false idea, observed Messer Andrea,
you will have put your mother to great expense for
nothing.
Petruccio hung his head. He was ashamed of
22 SAN C^LESTINO
being a burden on his mother s poverty ; but what
could he do ?
The priest was a little ashamed of his last speech,
and spoke more surlily in consequence.
* As for your vocation, I know nothing. Let us
hope it is all right.
He meant, I have not been consulted. It is all
]?ra Taddeo s doing.
Petruccio knew this very well. When the frati had
come, only a year or two ago, he had at once adopted
Fra Taddeo as his confessor, and, of course, abandoned
the paroco. To him Fra Taddeo had seemed like an
angel out of heaven. The Poor Man of Assisi was only
dead ten years, and his friars had not yet been founded
thirty years ; Fra Taddeo had been one of his best-
beloved companions. He seemed to carry about with
him the very odour of the flowers of St. Francis. Half
his sayings were quotations from his Master, his whole
life the mirror of that which had left the stigmata on him
who had fashioned it. Fra Taddeo s opinion had, for
Petruccio, the weight of an oracle from the third heaven
itself.
But Messer Andrea was not so fond of the friars.
They were approved by the Pope, and their founder
had been canonised within two years of his death by
Gregory IX, who in the same year excommunicated
Messer Andrea s sovereign for his dilatoriness in going
against the Saracens. So there was nothing to be said.
All the same, Messer Andrea thought the friars not much
better than interlopers. The world, in his opinion, had
gone mad about them because they were a novelty,
and the parish priest hated novelties. He did not see
what the Church wanted with them. For twelve
SAN CELESTINO 23
hundred years it had got on, as he thought, excellently,
without them and their new-fangled ways. It was
a pity it should not be allowed to get on without
them still. They were fire-brands, and to the unin
flammable a fire-brand is specially odious. It
seemed to Messer Andrea that his parish had hardly
been his own since Fra Taddeo, and the rest of them,
had invaded it.
1 Will you pray for me ? begged Petruccio.
Oh yes, I must pray for you that the farfalle
build no nests in your head. Butterflies make no
honey and never fly straight.
The lad understood what was meant ; but Messer
Andrea preferred to make it clearer.
To be a priest that is a business matter. Not
an affair of wandering fancies. Visions and ecstasies
will not help you to be of service to your people. Learn
your books. Barbara, celarent. It is necessary to be
solid. That is what is required.
To do him justice Messer Andrea looked solidity
itself as he spoke : the most malignant fancy would
never have found in him the least resemblance to a
butterfly, or even to the most directly soaring bird.
Perhaps he had not always been so solid : in days
far away now, and sunk in mists of oblivion, had
he also had his dreams ? Had he, too, started, along
life s highway with self-promises of uncalculating
generous purpose ? If so, he might have known how
little need there is of preaching down a youth s en
thusiasm. Now it is accounted a rare matter if a
man retain even a little of his first fervour.
The common paths stick to those, he went on.
* Avoid singularity. Shun extremes. Let prudence be
24 SAN CELESTINO
your guide. Oddities are objectionable in religion as
in as in real life. Walk along the high road, the
mountain-tops lead nowhere. There will be plenty
of time in heaven for ecstasies.
Then he spoke of the Church s rights, which were,
above all, to be defended ; nevertheless it was of
the rights of parish priests he appeared chiefly to be
thinking.
Petruccio listened with a sense of respectful depres
sion. Apparently it was a risky thing to attempt the
priesthood ; and yet he could not forget that Fra
Taddeo had encouraged him to attempt it, not certainly
making less of it than Messer Andrea ; neither could he
believe that Messer Andrea was a finer specimen and
example of priesthood than the frate.
Messer Andrea, he knew, was by birth merely a
peasant, and had lost nothing, so to say, even as regards
this world, by becoming a churchman. On the con
trary, his position was altogether better than it could
possibly have been had he remained a layman. Whereas
Fra Taddeo was a noble, a duke s son, and had flung
aside everything wealth, station, the friendship of
his equals ; Messer Andrea was by no means stupid,
but Petruccio was clever enough himself to know that
the parish priest was no genius ; while Taddeo was one
who could have made his mark in any calling but that
also he had thrown away. Messer Andrea could never
have been anything but plain and homely in his person,
but Fra Taddeo was tall and beautiful. For him, surely,
had he chosen it, the paths of human love also would
have lain open.
Nevertheless the friar had never snubbed Petruccio,
as though he were aiming too high. Aim higher still,*
SAN CELESTINO 25
he would have said, had the lad told him the height
was above him. Of course it is above you ; above
anyone. But aim not only at the priesthood, but at
the perfection of priesthood. By yourself certainly you
cannot do it. But Expecta Dominum. Viriliter age.
Sustine Dominum. Have courage, have generosity.
Count nothing spent that is given to Him. . . .
Petruccio went away from Messer Andrea damped,
not in ardour but in spirit. Much of the advice given
was good, but misapplied. He needed encouragement
more than warning, being in truth rather timid than
conceited.
In the street he met Fra Taddeo close to the church,
and from him, too, he asked a farewell blessing.
The friar smiled affectionately on him.
It is no farewell/ he said, seeing whither you go.
He who gives himself to God has begun to turn home.
Let us go in there together. Instead of leaving you
alone let me leave you with Him.
It was very quiet in the church, all the quieter
for the noise and laughter outside, which seemed
far off, though so few yards away. Petruccio felt
less stupid in there : in the streets he had seemed to
himself like an idiot.
The noise of the festa was like the crackling of dry
thorns : it stung him. It almost seemed unclean and
fouling. It certainly deafened him : here in the silence
he could hear.
Close beside the patient divine sentinel of the
Blessed Sacrament the friar and the youth knelt
together ; and presently Fra Taddeo rose gently and
prepared to leave him.
The boy did not turn to him, but listened, his deep
26 SAN CELESTINO
Qp
eyes fixed on the door of the tabernacle ; but the friar s
hand was on his shoulder, and the friar s kind voice was
in his ears.
I will give you our Little Father s blessing, he
said, as he was wont to give it to us all, when he
left us, or when we left him. " May the Lord bless
thee, and keep thee. May He turn the light of His face
to thee, and give thee Peace."
The friar paused a moment, and, thinking of the
Poor Man of Assisi, it seemed to him that, from the
humble place of his world-long waiting, the Poor Man
of Nazareth watched and listened to him.
And always, always he would say the same
thing to us, up to the very end, which was the true
beginning. " Let us now begin," he would beg us,
" to love Jesus Christ a little."
Petruccio scarcely heard him go ; his bare feet made
no sound on the stone floor. But Petruccio never
thought he had been left alone.
CHAPTEK VI
To Salerno Petruccio walked all the long leagues out
of the netted gorges of his home. His mother had
given him a horse, one of the best she had.
For my own ? he had cried, a light of surprised
pleasure in his usually dark and sombre eyes.
For thy very own, my son.
And here let me say at once that Messer Andrea
and everyone used, of course, the second person singular
when they spoke to him, as would, in Italy, be done
still to a boy by his intimates or his elders ; but thee
and thou give an archaic sound to a speech, in English
ears, and if I used that fashion here it would produce
an air of ancientness, and almost of unreality. So in
writing English it is better to use the forms with which
we are familiar ; six hundred years ago men and boys
were made of our own flesh and blood. The times were
different, people were the same.
To do what I like with?
Whatever you choose. Once at Salerno you had
better, I dare say, sell him.
I never owned any horse before. In truth
Petruccio had not owned much ; as this little world s
possessions go, he never would own much.
But the possession of the horse gave him, Carmela
saw, a peculiar pleasure.
27
28 SAN CELESTINO
4
Kuggero, he said, half an hour afterwards.
Well ? I m in a hurry.
Euggero had always something to do, and was
mostly in a hurry.
I want you to see me off. I m just going.
Kuggero looked blank.
* Only just a little way. Just past the turn of the
road. I will never keep you back from anything
again.
Oh well ! Are you ready ?
Petruccio was very nearly ready. He embraced his
mother, and Nonna, and those of his brothers who had
not forgotten he was going and were still about the
place. Nonna wept a little, and gave him a gold piece.
Carmel would not weep, and had given him all she
could spare ; had, above all, given him himself to do
what he liked with.
He 11 break his knees, muttered Biagio to
himself as Petruccio mounted, but not loud enough
for Carmela to hear.
* It is his own horse, snapped Euggero, who never
minded speaking roughly to his inferiors, with whom he
was popular. What is it to you if he breaks his four
legs and his back as well ?
They passed down the steep road, up which
Petruccio would never come again, and Euggero walked
alongside. It seemed odd, for he was used to riding,
though he had no horse actually of his own, whereas
his brother always went on foot.
At the turn of the road Petruccio looked back to
wards the house and waved his hand, Euggero standing
still with elaborate patience.
Petruccio, however, did not keep him long.
SAN CELESTINO 29
Only just a little farther/ he said. And Kuggero
walked on, wondering how far he would be asked to go.
I am going to Kocca di Giove, he reminded his
brother.
* I know. This is my own horse.
So Biagio told me just now.
To do what I like with.
I hope you won t like to break his knees as Biagio
suggested.
Petruccio laughed.
I shall not have the chance, he answered, shaking
his feet out of the stirrups. The horse stood still, and
Petruccio slipped out of the saddle.
Here he is, he said, putting the bridle into
Kuggero s hands, and untying his own bundle from the
saddle-front.
What do you mean ? asked his brother, looking
almost sheepish.
* He is my own. To do what I like with. Our
mother said so. Take him, I never gave you anything
much before. It will please Biagio ; you will never
break his knees.
He slung his bundle over his shoulder.
Get up, he said, laughing. He will take you
quicker to Eocca di Giove than any of the others.
* What a fool you are, said Kuggero. But he had
never spoken more kindly.
* S intende. Everyone knows that. Good-bye ; you
will miss me. There 11 be nobody to tease.
Then why do you go ? said Euggero, holding
the bridle irresolutely. * It seems you think only of
yourself !
Petruccio laughed again and turned downhill.
30 SAN CELESTINO
^p
Your way lies there/ he said, nodding towards
the bridle-path leading up into the mountains towards
Kocca di Giove. Good-bye.
He left Kuggero still standing in the middle of the
road by the horse.
1 Good-bye, Chiodino, the young man called out.
And Petruccio did not mind the nickname.
So Euggero had a good horse, and his brother went
on foot to Salerno.
It took a long time, and he had one or two adven
tures, but they were not much. Once a party of
troopers overtook him, and he wondered if they would
bother him. Soldiers were rough folk and he was not
used to them.
Where away ? one of them asked him.
To Salerno.
* Lontano ! What for then ? To learn to be a
doctor ?
* A sort of doctor/
He means a quack/ said another trooper. They
are mostly that/
I have a broken heart/ cried another, who was
good-looking, and dandified, and put on a languish
ing air. * Can you mend it ?
You see, I have not learned yet. Have patience a
year or two/
4 It will be broken again by then/ said a comrade
of the broken-hearted one. It breaks once a month
or so/
4 Then he must know the cure himself/ declared
Petruccio.
They laughed at this, and said the lad would make
a good doctor.
SAN CELESTINO 81
This is a shady spot, one pointed out, and we
will rest here and dine. We will give the Medicino a
dinner, for his fee.
Petruccio was shy, and would have excused himself,
but they would not hear of it. And they gave him
plenty of bread and meat to eat.
They were a rough, good-humoured lot, and he did
not long feel afraid of them.
You thought soldiers had horns and a tail, one of
them observed cheerfully. Is it not so ?
No one ever told me so. I suppose your horns are
under your helmet. They must be little ones.
So you like us, little doctor ?
Very well. I am grateful for your kindness. If I
gave you a silver piece in memory of me . . . ?
He would get drunk/ declared another trooper.
Then I will keep it, said Petruccio coolly.
But how if I took it by force ? demanded the
soldier, pretending to look very ferocious. I should
get drunk as much as I like then.
* That would not be my fault, however.
Nor mine. I can t help it when I have any
money.
That is a pity, remarked Petruccio. I thought
you were a sensible person.
The others laughed ; and the man to whom
Petruccio had offered the silver piece said
* Give it me of your own accord and I will not
spend it at all, but keep it in memory of the lad who
perceived I was sensible. These other persons are
foolish, he observed.
They use a good many foolish expressions,
admitted Petruccio,
32 SAN CELESTINO
He is shocked at your language/ cried the man
who had been accused of getting drunk. He has not
heard me swear.
If he had ! laughed one fellow.
Perhaps you have been better educated, suggested
Petruccio.
The others did not much like this.
It is natural for soldiers to swear, one of them
protested. * It is no sin in us. It is the custom.
It is the custom for murderers to kill people,
remarked Petruccio dryly.
It is the evil intention which makes swearing
culpable, persisted the soldier. We do not swear with
any evil intention. It is our mode of expression.
Petruccio nodded gravely.
There is a man in my paese who uses dreadful
words. But a certain priest assured me that the man
probably committed no sin. . . .
Ecco ! cried the soldier.
The man is an idiot, added Petruccio
demurely.
The soldier leapt to his feet, and ran at Petruccio as
though to pommel him, but the lad did not budge.
He lay along upon the ground, resting on one arm, and
munching his bread and meat. He had watched the
trooper s face and knew he was not angry.
The others all laughed, and the fellow who pretended
to hurl himself on Petruccio only shook him by the
shoulders, shouting pleasantly
You shall come with us and be a soldier ; it s
too good a lad to kill folks in cold blood !
* Thank you ! But I am not going to kill folks in
cold blood or hot. I am going to be a priest.
SAN CELESTINO 83
A priest ! they all shouted. You re too merry
to be a priest.
What would his brothers have said had they heard
this had they been there to see Petruccio making
game of a dozen strange troopers? At home they
called him the dumb ox, as the comrades of. San
Tomaso of Aquino called him.
But Salerno is the place to learn to be a doctor in/
objected one of the troopers. * It is famous for it.
* Yes ; but there is a faculty of theology too, and
my mother s uncle is professor of Canon Law there.
CHAPTEE VII
PRESENTLY the man in command gave the signal for
the road, and the men got to their horses.
Good-bye, said Petruccio. * I thank you for
my dinner.
Not good-bye at all ; our way is the same for
two leagues yet. You shall ride in front of me.
But Petruccio insisted that he would walk, and
trudged off at once.
It was hot now, for it was about an hour past
noon, and the sun beat down on the white road.
Petruccio pulled off his doublet, and flung it across
his arm ; his little stock of money was stitched up
in it. His knapsack he carried over his shoulder.
After a quarter of a mile the troopers overtook
him. They were all laughing.
* Come, get up, called out the leader. It s hot
walking, and it will save you two leagues.
Petruccio thanked him again,, but said he would
not inconvenience him.
Well, then I will carry your knapsack and your
jerkin ; then you can walk free. Come, I insist. He
stooped down and laid hold of them, and Petruccio let
them go. The man was evidently good-natured, and
it would be uneducated to seem ungrateful.
Avanti I cried the Serjeant. And the men all
34
SAN CELESTINO 35
spurred their horses and trotted on, each of them
laughing as he passed Petruccio. At the next turn of
the road they disappeared. It was a pretty road,
but Petruccio did not pay much heed to it. There
were high hills on every hand, and the way wound
along the side of one of them. A clump of olives
covered the jut of rock round which the soldiers had
ridden out of sight. Far below in the valley the river
made a cool noise, and a peasant was singing some
where as he tended his goats.
Petruccio walked on, not hurrying himself. It was
certainly cooler without his doublet and bundle. If
presently his money should be all gone he would beg
his way on to Salerno, like one of the frati.
It took him nearly ten minutes to reach the place
where the soldiers had passed out of sight. As he
turned the corner of the rock he found them all grouped
together in the shade.
They were evidently impatient for his appearance.
Why didn t you run after your things ? asked
the Serjeant. You seemed to be never coming.
* Because I have only two legs and a little sense.
The soldiers were quite disappointed.
Didn t you think your things were gone ? they
asked him.
If they were gone it was not my fault ; why
should I make myself uncomfortable as well ? That
would not punish you.
Perhaps you are a philosopher, said one of them.
I don t know what I am, replied Petruccio simply.
Who does ? muttered the man who had ridden
away with his things, smiling, as it were ruefully.
He handed back the things.
36 SAN CELESTINO
And won t you get up and ride now ? he asked.
1 I have a good mind to snap you up, and carry you
off as I did them.
I will come of my own accord.
And the boy clambered up. It was not really
very comfortable ; he would as lief have walked. But
the men seemed pleased, and off they all trotted
again. Perhaps it would bring him a little quicker
to Salerno.
Little priest/ said the Serjeant in his ear.
I am not a priest ; not even a cleric.
Will you do a thing for me ?
If I can.
Will you say a prayer for me ? Only one little
one. My name is Kinaldo. Will you say a small
wee prayer for Kinaldo, once ?
Einaldo, I will pray for you every day until I die.
And when you are Pope, will you give me a
plenary indulgence out of Purgatory ?
When I am Pope, said Petruccio with a low laugh.
Do not forget.
* Mai:
Then the horse stumbled, and the soldier swore at it.
* Niente I he protested. It means just nothing.
The little priest is swearing already, declared
the man who rode next them.
* Bad habits are quickly learned, retorted Petruccio.
He didn t swear, cried the Serjeant angrily. It
was I.
I joked, observed the other.
Learn to joke, then, said the Serjeant.
They had come to the cross-roads, and Petruccio
got down.
SAN CELESTINO 37
Good-bye/ he said, smiling round at them all.
1 Addio.
They seemed sorry to leave him ; and Petruccio
felt lonely as he trudged on alone. He began at once
to pray for Rinaldo.
He is not a bad man. If I can see that . . . he
murmured. Make him good altogether. And all
of them. Let them see. Show Thyself.
He felt very lonely. They had liked him, and
had made him feel it. So few people seemed to have
liked him. None of his brothers cared for him ; not
even Ruggero, who, he knew, liked him better than
the others. Ruggero liked him in a way, but only
well enough to take some pleasure in worrying him.
Nonna cared for him less than for any of them : he
was not gay enough for the cheerful, gossiping old
lady. His mother loved him, but he knew that she
loved all her sons. He did not know that she had
loved him better than them all. She had never
made him a favourite, and he was too diffident to
perceive that the protecting, excusing air she had
held towards him covered a special affection. He
merely imagined that she considered him stupid, and
was kindly unwilling that his stupidity should be
mocked at.
In reality she, too, had been shy.
* He belongs more to God than to me, she had
told herself, and had not ventured to thrust herself,
as it were, into the first place.
But these strangers, these noisy, swearing soldiers,
had not thought him stupid : they had liked him at
once, without any necessity. He had almost scolded
them, as he had never dared to scold or reprove
38 SAN CELESTINO
anyone at home, and they had not minded, but had
taken it all lightly, with careless good nature. It did
not occur to him that if he could have behaved at
home as with them his brothers might have been
different also.
He missed the soldiers and their laughter, almost
as though he had known them a long time. The
great mountains seemed emptier now, and the long
road more desolate. His little human heart, that
was in truth not little, had been warmed by them,
and now, as the quick twilight fell, it grew chill too.
The world had grown bigger since he had met them,
and he felt himself smaller in it, more solitary. The
youngest of them had been perhaps half a dozen
years older than himself, but they had treated him
with a pleasant familiarity, as though he were of an
age with themselves.
He soon prayed again for Einaldo, and wondered
what he was doing, what they were all doing. And
the shadows crept up from the valley and began to
mount the hills. An hour or two ago he had been
hot, but now, although he had on his doublet again,
he almost shivered.
A footfall sounded close beside him the echo of
his own from the rocks, no doubt.
It was nearly dark now, but not so dark that
anyone could have walked so near and he not have
seen. He knew there was nobody ; nay, he knew there
was somebody. He was not afraid of ghosts, and
never imagined that this was any such fellow-traveller.
But he thought of Tobias, and of Eaphael who had
journeyed with him, and of Eaphael s Master who
had sent him to bear the youth company.
SAN CELESTINO 39
I cannot see him, he said to himself, but he is
here, and his footstep echoes mine.
He was ashamed of his lonely feeling, which he
told himself was a poor leaning to the human and
visible, the outward and tangible.
Here and there a light crept out of the quick-
falling darkness, a little red light of some one s home,
but he did not now feel homeless and solitary himself,
though wandering along strange ways, among the
great and sombre hills, unknowing where he should
lie at night. The air of the mountains was colder,
but the chill at his heart was less ; though the soldiers
who had been pleasant to him were gone, his own
friend would never leave him.
I shall always feel Him close beside me along all
the way, he thought.
CHAPTEK VIII
NEVERTHELESS, when he actually came to Salerno,
and found himself in the streets, Petruccio was stricken
again by the same sensation of loneliness, and it did
not so quickly pass away. Salerno was a much bigger
place then than the traveller sees it now, and was
crowded with people. It had one of the most famous
universities in the world, and to learn medicine
students came thither from far and wide. The city
seemed full of them, all, or mostly, young, and careless,
many of them noisy and pert. They did not all pass
him unheeded, but some nudged each other to look
at the rustic lad, country-born, and country-bred, and
poorly clad, who walked uncertainly as not knowing
whither he was going. Of none of them did he feel
moved to inquire his way. He still carried his bundle,
and one of them asked him if he had brought his
mother in it. This was a common-looking fellow,
with a coarse voice and a coarse face, who had not
learned to walk or speak like a gentleman, however
much of medicine he might have learned. His two
companions were vulgar like himself.
A smaller bundle might carry all your ancestors
and all your education, Petruccio felt disposed to
retort ; and, perhaps, if he had spoken up for himself
in that way they might have liked him none the worse.
40
SAN CELESTINO 41
But Petruccio was not ready to chaff with them as
he had been with the soldiers. The troopers had been
rough creatures enough, but they had no pretension
and were not vulgar ; these students were not rough,
having, indeed, some smear of what they took for
fashion, which gave them a sham and swaggering air ;
they were, however, mean and common.
Petruccio scarcely looked at them, and turned
silently up another street. The young men laughed,
not at all as the soldiers had laughed, out of a mere
light-heartedness, but as though they wished their
jeering to confuse him.
It was the middle of the day, and the sun was
everywhere ; Petruccio felt himself shabby and was
ashamed of being ashamed of it. The students he
met everywhere were not all well-dressed, but they
had, most of them, some pretence of smartness, or so
it seemed to the mountain- bred lad in his coarse
home-spun.
Where did his mother s uncle live ? Of whom
should he ask ?
Presently, in a little street where there were fewer
people, he came up with a young woman who was
sauntering idly on, as though in no hurry about her
business.
Scusi, signorina ! he said, overtaking her. * Can
you tell me where Messer Gian di San Marco, the
Professor of Canon Law, lodges ? I am a stranger
here in Salerno.
The girl stopped and looked into his face in a fashion
that was new to him. She was scarcely a couple of
years older than himself.
I cannot precisely tell you now, she replied.
42 SAN CELESTINO
But meet me here to-night and I will take you where
he lives.
She laughed as she said this, and Petruccio, young
lad as he was, grew red as he heard her. He had
doffed his cap to speak, and as he crammed it on
again, and hurried away, the girl laughed more than
ever.
He turned uphill into a wider street, though still
narrow enough, leading to the cathedral. Coming
down the steep steps of it he saw a priest, a canon
perhaps, portly, and with a slow, deliberate manner.
He also appeared to be in no haste.
To him Petruccio repeated his question.
The priest stood still, and eyed him over, not
curiously, but with a sort of cautiousness.
You know Messer Gian, the Professor, then ?
He inquired, not, Petruccio thought, as though he
cared to know, but as if he must put a question of his
own before ever answering one.
Nay, I have never seen him ; but he is my
mother s uncle, and I come hither to learn the theo
logy. I bear a letter to him.
Petruccio had, in fact, himself written the letter,
his mother, who knew not the art of writing, having
affixed her mark and seal to it.
Come then, said the priest. I am going to dine
with him.
They walked on together, the priest not talking
much to him as they went, but casting an eye now
and then on the lad and his bundle.
Presently they met another group of students,
who sniggered at them.
They perceive you are from the mountains,
SAN CELESTINO 48
remarked the priest complacently. He was of Salerno
himself. But one of the young men made a jesting
observation which seemed to refer to the Canon.
They are sons of Belial, said Petruccio s new
friend, frowning heavily.
Petruccio s uncle lived pretty near, in a good sort
of large house. An ancient serving-woman or house
keeper opened the door. She had only one eye, but
she could count with it.
Messer Professore, she observed crossly, expects
but four to dinner. This, with a sour glance at
Petruccio, * makes five.
Messer Gian did not seem particularly pleased to see
his grand-nephew either. He embraced him, as one
gives the Pax in High Mass, peering over Petruccio s
shoulder, first over the right, then over the left, but
never touching his cheek with his lips. He was a
small dry man, with a small dry manner, and a thin
dry voice that sounded in the lad s ears as if it had
grown dusty with talking of the Canon Law. He
forgot to tell the traveller he was welcome.
* That will make six at table, he squeaked out
to the old housekeeper.
There will be enough to eat for ten, I warrant,
declared another priest, with a jovial face and a good-
natured manner that made Peruccio feel as grateful
as if it were all for himself, and was not merely the
man s natural habit.
It s not that, said Messer Gian in a half-
grumbling voice. But it will disarrange the table,
and that upsets servants, you know. Ser Angelario,
your father, is deceased, it appears, he added, turning
to Petruccio.
44 SAN C^LESTINO
* He is dead nearly three years, answered
the lad.
God rest him. He was a good man I never heard
to the contrary.
The dead are all good men, observed another
priest pleasantly to the guest who was nearest him.
But he spoke in a low voice, and Petruccio neither
heard or was intended to hear him.
They were all priests, and Petruccio felt shy of
them, though he was to be a priest himself. He had
never sat down to table with five priests before. They
did not know quite what to talk about to him.
So you are come to Salerno to study medicine,
said the one next him, swallowing the minestra rather
noisily. But he was a little deaf and probably did
not know this.
No, sir. I am come to learn the theology.
The priest did not hear him, but smiled
amiably.
* To heal the sick that is a good thing, he re
marked ; it is one of the corporal works of
mercy.
He is for the ecclesiastical state, shouted the
priest opposite.
For the Ecclesiastical States, eh ? Only passing
through Salerno. I thought he had come here as a
student.
He is as deaf as the statue of San Matteo, observed
the priest opposite.
1 The son of my niece aims at the priesthood, said
Messer Gian, and his dry voice made itself heard
better than the other priests shouting. Besides,
Messer Gian was nearer.
SAN CELESTINO 45
Ah ! That is better. To instruct the ignorant is
a spiritual work of mercy. Much better.
And the deaf priest nodded more than once, with
a sort of shining amiability.
He is ignorant enough himself, I doubt, said
Petruccio s uncle. * He will have to begin there,
Messer Orfeo.
It seemed funny to Petruccio that the lumpy old
deaf priest should be called Orfeo ; one could not
fancy him with a lute.
They were all kind to the lad, his uncle, perhaps,
least of the five, but then he may have remembered
that more would be expected of his kindness. His
civility was on its guard, as it were, as if the professor
was loath to raise warm expectations. But none of
the five knew a bit how to treat a youth of Petruccio s
age ; the boy tried in vain to remind himself that
they, too, must have all been young in their time
themselves. So far as he could see they had
all been born in cassocks, and could never have been
slimmer.
His presence, he supposed, was a restraint on them,
so that they were less familiar with one another than
they would have been had no inconvenient youth, with
listening eyes, dropped among them.
His uncle tried hospitably to ignore him, to make
his real guests more comfortable, and led the con
versation to important matters, such as the Emperor s
quarrels with the Pope, and the scandals of all sorts
that Frederick was profuse of.
The jovial priest did not seem to disapprove of the
haughty Emperor nearly as much as Petruccio would
have expected.
46 SAN CELESTINO
1 No doubt he is an atheist, he observed. But
he is a galant uomo, and clever. It s a pity if the
Holiness of our Lord sends him to hell ; he has a good
heart, and he makes first-rate verses.
He has done much for this University, said the
deaf priest with the shining manner, whose name it
appeared was Messer Sandro. He was a Professor of
Moral Theology. The School of Medicine here was
founded by the Saracens, he added, turning politely
to Petruccio. * Carlo Magno, the first Holy Eoman
Emperor, re-edified it.
Our Emperor loves anything that the Saracens
had a hand in, remarked Petruccio s uncle ; one could
never tell exactly what he meant, his voice was so dry.
On the whole it did not seem to Petruccio that the
excommunicated Emperor was unpopular ; neverthe
less he was condemned. They were all priests ; and
a sovereign in arms against the Head of the Church,
a suspected heretic and even atheist, a patron of
infidels, could not be approved by them. On the
other hand they were all of the Kegno, and it seemed
to the lad that the great Conti, who sat now in St.
Peter s chair, was criticised nearly as freely as his
adversary.
The deaf priest, Messer Sandro, did not, however,
really care much for these high matters. He had a
vineyard up the hill towards Annunziata, and seemed
more interested in talking of it. He smiled more
radiantly than ever when his friends complimented
him on the wine from it.
* It will be better than ever this last vintage ; you
will see, he declared, nodding repeatedly.
* Our vineyards have done well, too, this last
SAN CELESTTNO 47
season, said the priest on Petruccio s left, a thin man
with a slight limp, who was Bursar of the University,
but not a professor in any faculty. The Barbary-bug
injured us the season before.
He spoke even more severely of these Africans than
of the Saracens.
CHAPTER IX
PETRUCCIO did not lodge with his uncle even the first
night. Messer Gian found him suitable quarters in the
house of a certain widow, called Felicia, whose dwelling
was at the end of the town, on the Marina. It was a
poor place, not nearly so comfortable as the professor s,
but Petruccio was not displeased with it on that
account. He scarcely noticed the humble character
of his lodging, and would not have noticed it at all had
Messer Gian not drawn attention to it by his apologies.
One must begin at the bottom of the ladder, he
explained. When I was your age I lodged as meanly.
Canons are not born in rochets.
He shuffled off and left his grand-nephew to his
solitary meditations.
Petruccio had no objection to the bottom of the
ladder, but he had no desire to mount it. No doubt
his uncle and his uncle s friends had got a good way
up. He did not in the least wish to overtake them.
He would have liked his small bare room better
than his uncle s fully furnished house but for the smell
that came in by the open window : it was a strange
and unfriendly odour, not at all like anything he had
known at home in the mountains, as was natural, it
being due to a pile of refuse fish entrails that lay
rotting in the hot sun on the beach.
48
SAN CELESTINO 49
He was sure he did not wish to climb his uncle s
ladder. He would as lief listen to his brother s talk
about sport, or Biagio s about the horses, as to the
Bursar s conversation about the college vineyards.
Nor did he care a bit more for their politics : it was all
as far out of his range as the planets whose names he
did not care to know, and whose good or evil influences
seemed to him all heathenish. The Pope was the
Pope, Christ s Vicar on earth, and it was all the same
to him whether he were called Honorius or Gregory,
whether he had once been a Savelli or a Conti ; he did
not suppose he should ever see a Pope. But the
Emperor had nothing, anyway, to do with him. It
was terrible that he should be, as they said, an atheist ;
that he should, as was certain, be an excommunicated
rebel at war with the Head of Christendom, his
suzerain ; but Petruccio could do nothing for him
except pray for him, and he would rather do that than
talk about him.
Probably on his very first night at Salerno, Petruccio
had made up his mind that the secular priesthood was
not the goal he would ever arrive at. He did not
judge all the secular clergy by the few specimens he
had seen that day, or those, such as Messer Andrea at
home, that he had known already. Nor did he judge
these severely : he did not call them in his own mind
worldly or tell himself that their standard was a low
one, but he felt sure he could never be one of them.
Still, he had come here to study theology, and he must
set about learning it. He had no thought at all of
turning back, though he might have to go further
than he had perceived at first.
His landlady came to call him to supper, but he had
50 SAN CELESTINO
eaten so well at his uncle s that he wanted none, or
told himself that he wanted none, and excused himself.
But Felicia did not go away. She enjoyed con
versation ; that is, she liked talking, even when it was
all left to herself.
I will tell no one, she promised, that Messer Gian
di San Marco is your uncle.
She loved keeping secrets, and, as nobody told her
any, she made secrets of matters that might have been
published on the housetops.
You will find me very prudent. If you eat an
egg, the hen that laid it shall not know.
Petruccio thanked her.
* That is the way, she added. Were I as some
... I could tell you the names of all the students
that have lodged here, but I mention them no more
than if they had been told me in Confession.
She was, one could see at once, a most good-
natured person. She would have been quite delighted
had Petruccio been taken seriously ill at once, that
she might have had the trouble of nursing him and
assuring him in whispers that no one on earth should
hear from her what was the matter with him.
But you had better eat your supper, she declared.
It is well to leave no room in one s inside for a pain
to creep in. A student in medicine told me that : an
intelligent person of a good family ; he also lodged here,
not in this room, however. I could show you his room,
it is larger than this ; but there is no necessity : though
even then I should not mention his name a good
name, too, that noble persons bear. We will not
inquire whether they are barons or even greater rarities.
Such things are of no consequence. All cannot be
SAN CELESTINO 51
born in palaces, or the cabins would stand empty.
Nevertheless it is true that that student in medicine
advised me thus. He is a professor now in such a
University in a certain province, not the Basilicata ;
no, I never said so.
Petruccio tried to attend to her, but, though he
listened politely, his ears would not carry her words
into his brain. They seemed to tumble out again on
each side of his head and never met in the middle. He
was thinking of Kinaldo and the other soldiers, and
also of Messer Gian and the four priests who had dined
with him. He compared them without intending it,
arid was scandalised at himself for preferring the
troopers. One about to enter the ecclesiastical state
should have felt more at home with the clergy. He
did not fully understand that he liked the soldiers best
simply because they had evidently liked him, whereas
the elderly priests had neither liked nor disliked him.
And he supposed that Messer Gian had been displeased
at his coming, whereas his uncle had not really cared
much one way or the other.
In the morning Felicia brought him some bread and
a little milk for a breakfast, but Petruccio would only
take the bread. Milk he only used once in the day at
a meal. He would not even take a few common wine-
grapes that she came back with.
There is a youth lodging with me who is a saint,
she whispered to a friend at Mass that morning. He
fasts perpetually on bread and water, like one of the
saints in the desert whose names we will not mention.
There is no need. God knows their names. That is
enough. Do not ask me how this youth is called a
student in, let us say, a certain faculty ; perhaps
E 2
52 SAN CELESTINO
medicine, though I do not say that it is so. Prudence
is well, but to assert what is not the case is not neces
sary ; that is to mistake the matter.
Petruccio was at Mass too, and Felicia could see him
from where she knelt ; she stared, however, at another
young man, so that her friend thought that was the
person.
When the Mass was over Petruccio wandered about
the church ; he scarcely noticed the tomb of Sigilgaita,
Eobert Guiscard s second wife, who was said to have
poisoned his son, Prince Bohemund, though Nonna at
home, on winter nights, had often told the story. He
did not know that all the columns had been brought
from the heathen temples at Paestum, nor did he
perceive their beauty. But he came to the tomb of
St. Gregory, built by the great Guiscard, and there he
knelt with a strange thrill of reverence and even
affection. Of all Nonna s stories, he had loved best to
hear of St. Gregory VII and his ceaseless struggle to
lift God s Church higher. Here, close to himself, lay
all of Gregory that was not, now this moment, in
Heaven. Here were the tired exiled feet, here the
brave hands that had held so strongly the rudder of
St. Peter s barque, steering it through rocks and storms,
undismayed ; here the now quiet heart that had been
never broken, though so near breaking, in Christ s
quarrel with the selfish, haughty world. Here, ever so
near, were the lips that had said
1 have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore
I die an exile.
Petruccio s own lips trembled as they framed the
words again, his own heart beat more eagerly, his pale
face glowed with an inward light outshining, as he
SAN CELESTINO 53
called to mind how the dying Pope s companion had
cried out
An exile ! Thou ! Vicar of Christ, thou canst
not, wherever thy mortal breath leaves thee, die exiled,
for God hath given thee the heathen for thine inheri
tance, and the uttermost ends of the earth for thy
possession.
Kome might drive him forth, and suffer an intruder
and usurper in his place, but God s Viceroy could never
die out of his kingdom.
Petruccio felt a horror of Kome, a horror that was to
last his life long. He crept nearer, and none being
by to watch, laid his lips to the feet of the cold tomb.
He felt his own weakness close to the great pontiff s
strength ; for everything that he believed himself to lack,
he gloried in the memory of this undaunted warrior
of Christ. Gregory was fearless, he himself timid ;
the Pope had never hesitated or wavered, he was
himself for ever wavering and hesitating. Gregory
had ever been certain, knowing clearly where right
and justice lay, and declaring it aloud, in clear, un
dismayed tones, that had been heard above all the
din of camps and courts.
I was wrong, Petruccio told himself, * to think
I had no friend in Salerno.
One chooses one s friends often among the most
unlike to oneself. But Petruccio was not so unlike
Gregory as the Bursar. Gregory had a care also of
a vineyard, but it was that whereof his Master was
the true Vine, and even Petruccio himself one of the
branches.
CHAPTEK X
SEVERAL lads lodged in Felicia s house, all students in
one faculty or other of the University, but Petruccio
was not forward in making friends with them : he was
too shy, and felt himself too little fitted for the company
of other young men. Nor, as he was the new arrival,
would it, perhaps, have been becoming that the first
overtures should have come from him. Sooner or later,
however, some sort of acquaintance did spring up
between him and them. Neither on Sundays or Feasts
were there any lectures, and on one Sunday, a few
weeks after his arrival, Petruccio was walking, solitary,
on the side of the hill behind which lies Annunziata.
The pain in his head had troubled him for several days,
and he had found it impossible to study in his close
room, into which the southern sun poured full. So he
had come out to walk, though not much given to it. By
the sea he hardly ever went. He did not care for it or
admire it ; he disliked its hot glitter, and its soft moist
smell. The hill here was not like his own mountains
at home, but it was a hill, and pretty high and steep.
Behind lay higher and wilder mountains, drawing up
into the Apennines.
A quick step sounded behind him, and he was
presently overtaken.
* Good-day, comrade, said a pleasant voice, and he
54
SAN CELESTINO 55
turned to give back the friendly greeting. It was one
of his fellow-lodgers at Felicia s, a youth he had met
often enough going in and out. He was a year or so
older than Petruccio, and a more assured manner made
the difference seem more.
It is rare to see you out, observed the new-comer,
slowing his pace now to suit Petruccio s, and showing
that he meant to keep him company.
I have few acquaintances !
And that is mostly your fault. Who can make
friends with a mountain-wolf ?
Arn I like a wolf ? asked Petruccio, smiling.
In some ways. Not a very savage wolf, but one
that seems rather wild.
Yes ; perhaps I am wild.
Let us tame you. And the youth laughed cheer
fully. Petruccio liked the lad s voice, and his pleasant
air, but he was not sure about being tamed. Nor was
he used to talking about himself.
* My name is Guito, said the stranger. I am in
liter ae liumaniores.
My name is Pietro Murrone : in philosophy but
only beginning. I wish it were over ; I want to get on
to theology.
Philosophy is dry enough, especially at the begin
ning. But I think theology is worse ! I like real
things.
Eeal things ?
Things one can see, and feel, and smell, and hear.
Whoever smelt an archangel ? I like the sun up there
on the face of the cliff, and down there on the strand ;
I like the colour of the sea out yonder, where the purple
and blue and green weave together.
56 SAN CELESTINO
Petruccio looked and saw that the colours were as
Guito said. God had arranged them so that was, it
seemed to him, the only thing about it that mattered.
I could make a sonnet on that, declared his com
panion. If I were alone I would. No, no ; do not
look as if you would run away among the bushes, don t
be a wolf just at present. I want some one to talk
to. The sonnet can wait. . . . Well, I like also the
smell of the earth here after the shower, and the sound
that just whispers up from the shore it is like a kiss.
Petruccio remembered that he had once heard a
woman kissing her bambino loudly, as he had passed
her, sitting on her doorstep, but it did not seem to him
that the sounds were much alike. But then he could
not make sonnets : no doubt this youth was a poet.
It was, he supposed, the business of poets to see
everything as it would strike no one else.
Over there, said Guito, standing still and pointing
across the gulf, is Paestum. I go there. I love to
sit among the ruins and adore them.
Are they ruins of churches ?
Churches ! No ! But temples. Temples of the
divine Greeks.
Petruccio remembered that the Greeks were heathens
and opened his big eyes wider. But he said nothing, and
Guito, who would just as lief talk himself, rattled on.
The gods are there still. One feels them all about.
When it is moonlight, and the asphodels are shaking in
the breeze, one hears them worshipping as the old gods
only they never have grown old pass by. Demeter
comes, and Poseidon he hasn t far to come ; and I
play eavesdropper, and afterwards make it into sonnets.
* To be a poet, then, one pretends to be a heathen ?
SAN CELESTINO 57
* Pretend ! Poets pretend nothing. It is they who
see the truth, and are honest enough to tell it. It is
they who know what life is and death, and tell no lies
about them. What is a heathen ?
, Quito s question came so sharply it hit Petruccio s
ear like a hot stone out of a sling.
He who worships a false God, replied Petruccio.
* Such as money, and dignities, and popularity.
You are to be a priest, and of course you would hate
to be a canon, and would on no account consent to be
a bishop !
Petruccio laughed.
You are poet enough to tell the truth sometimes,
even without meaning it, he answered.
Come ! That is better. You can speak up for
yourself, it seems.
They moved on, Guito still looking everywhere for
sonnets.
* Look over there, he cried, where the young hills
come out from the old ones to play near the sea. Look
at the old ones, grey and purple, and even black where
the clouds stoop. . . .
Petruccio looked.
Even they, he said, are not like ours at home.
It spoils them, the sea being, after all, so near.
The young poet caught here something he did not
quite follow but thought worth understanding.
Tell me how the sea spoils them.
But Petruccio could not.
* It makes them less secret, he tried to explain,
commoner, opener to the foreign world. No strangers
can come in ships and stare in among the valleys of our
hills.
58 SAN CELESTINO
Bravo ! You are half a poet yourself.
Absit ! said Petruccio.
Guito turned on him.
4 Why then ? What better could you be ?
Petruccio knew well what better ; but this, too, he
found it hard to say.
You must have some idea : everybody has his idea/
grumbled Guito. Tell me yours. Mine is to drink
life out of the poet s golden goblet ; to taste its bitter
sweet, beauty and love, and sweet sounds, and fair
sights, and smells that breathe from the earthly paradise ;
to pick the flowers that fling themselves under the
gods feet, and catch the smile of the gods that pass,
to bask in the sun of my youth, and give back every
kiss of life gratefully.
Petruccio s idea was the opposite of all this. But
how could he, a lad, explain without arrogance to this
other lad, older than himself ? A lad, he saw, honest
in spite of a hundred little affectations, sincere and
kindly.
Come, tell me your way of it, insisted Guito.
* I do not like to, Petruccio answered shyly.
Guito watched him narrowly and shrewdly.
* Come then, I will guess. Your idea is to die at once,
every day while life goes on, because we must all die at
last. To crucify the flesh as if God made the soul only,
and some rival, god or devil, made our body. To shut
out the sun, because clouds gather before the rain, as if
the rain never ceased, and no cloud ever melted in the
noontide light. To fly from love as if Christ s chosen
friend had declared that God is hate. To eat grass
because grapes taste better, and drink tears because
wine is full of wise laughter. To be old now, because
SAN CELESTINO 59
youth is not for ever. To fly into the desert alone,
because God has filled the world with other men. To
shut your ears to every whisper of the breeze, that you
may listen to the dull monotone of your own dry
thoughts. To blind your eyes to every lovely spirit
lest you should see something finer than yourself. To
plug your nostrils against the fragrance of flowers, and
sea, and forest, that you may sniff up the stuffy odours
of your own sanctity. To prostrate yourself alone on
the bare rock, in the mouldy cavern of the hills, lest you
be forced to move forward with other men in the peopled
plain. To be a saint !
I shall never be a saint, was all that Petruccio
could stammer.
But for that last accusation he could not have
answered Guito at all. It was all so rapid, so vehement ;
the handsome lad spoke with such an energy of angry
protest that Petruccio, much slower-minded, could
scarcely keep pace with the brawling torrent of his
words.
He knew it was an untrue presentment : it did not
alter one jot his own standard and his own intentions ;
it was, he felt, by an instinct that could not fail or
deceive him, pagan, devilish. But to answer it was as
easy as to talk louder than the whirlwind.
CHAPTEK XI
THAT was the beginning of a sort of friendship between
the two youths : it never became a friendship altogether.
All his life Petruccio never made but one real friend, and
the rest of this acquaintance with Guito answered more
or less to its beginning. He interested Guito a little and
irritated him a good deal : Guito irritated him a little
and scarcely interested him at all. Petruccio had not
the faculty of being interested in what he disapproved,
and it was impossible for him to approve of the talkative
poet. If Guito meant what he said, he was barely a
Christian ; if he^did not mean it, then his chatter was
idle talking. Petruccio did not love talking, and to talk
idly was to him a weariness of the flesh, nay, worse, a
weariness of the spirit.
He knew that Guito was good-natured, and that
Guito rather liked him : for that he was grateful, but he
was not grateful to his new acquaintance for trying to
drag him into the company of other young men. Their
manners and their talk dazed him, would often have
scandalised him had his real humility not saved him
from proneness to take scandal. Who had made him a
ruler or a judge ? How could he expect them to submit
to a standard that he knew, by the instinct of conscience,
to be true, but which he had no glibness of speech to set
out convincingly ? Some men are born with the mis-
dO
SAN CELESTINO 61
sionary teaching spirit and faculty : he felt himself
without it. The very acquaintance he was forced into
by Guito convinced him that he could not have the
vocation of a secular priest. A priest in the world must
have the power of effective protest against the world s
faults, the capacity for putting it in the wrong, the
genius of proving right all the principles that the world
opposes. None of these gifts was his, and lacking them,
he felt that his presence in the world, silent and unable
to break silence, was a condoning of the false maxims
he heard uttered and saw practised.
This is my friend Omero, said Guito, one day,
pushing into Petruccio s ugly little room. He should
be a poet, but in spite of his name he is only a painter.
" Only," indeed ! protested the stranger whom
Guito had brought with him.
He was a young man of five or six and twenty, not at
all smart in dress or figure, and not good-looking.
He is so ugly himself, observed Guito frankly,
that he is driven to make beautiful people out of
paint.
Petruccio never noticed that anyone was ugly. To
his mountain-bred notions, however, this easy, townish
criticism of a person s looks in his own presence
appeared very bad education.
Perhaps, he said, * your friend has the good sense
to think less of looks than you do. He considers the
inside of things/
That is exactly what he does not. The outside of
things is his trade. Whoever painted anybody s soul ?
4 Some think I have myself done that, the painter
remarked complacently. He was saying to himself that
Petruccio s soul might be worth painting. In any
62 SAN CELESTINO
street, he told himself, one can see a dozen Guitos,
but a Petruccio is a rarity.
He was engaged on certain frescoes in a monastery
chapel, and thought Petruccio would make a fine
model for one of them.
Petruccio was not good at doing the honours of his
room. There was only one chair, and that had fewer
legs than an elephant.
Guito sat down on the window ledge and hospitably
bade Omero accommodate himself on the bed.
* As for Petruccio, he said, he never sits down.
He only knows how to kneel.
He might teach you, observed the painter, not
sitting on the bed but leaning against the arch of the
window. The light fell on Petruccio s face and Omero
was determined to study it. He knew already that it
would be useless to ask the shy recluse from the moun
tains to come and pose as a regular model, though it was
for that that Guito had brought him.
If one could catch him praying ! he said to Guito
afterwards.
That is easy. He goes every day and spends ages
learning to be a saint from San Gregorio Settimo in the
duomo. He becomes so rapt that he would never
know you were watching him.
Meanwhile the painter tried courteously to induce
Petruccio to talk, without teasing or embarrassing him.
You despise art, I suspect ? he said, with a smile
that was less sincere than Guito s, but more civil.
I do not think I know what it is.
Guito laughed loudly.
* Nor does Omero. They none of them do.
Omero flushed slightly.
SAN CELESTINO 68
It is to adorn nature, he said sententiously.
* I thought God had done that, suggested Petruccio ;
he spoke shyly. Such subjects were out of his range, he
thought.
Oh, but the artists adorn whatever God has for
gotten, declared Guito. If God left a man with one
leg, they would give him half a dozen. The artists
fasten gold plates behind saints heads, a thing that
God never thought of.
Foolish people, said the painter, would not know
which were the saints in a picture but for the gold plates
as you call them.
I thought you could paint the saints souls !
Yes, but people like you do not know a saint s soul
when they see it.
I do not believe you would know a sonnet when you
heard it.
You may be right. Certainly you recited one to me
that I should have taken for so many lines of prose.
Guito looked vicious, and kicked his heels against
the wall.
But, the painter went on, addressing himself in
quite a different tone to Petruccio, you must learn not
to disapprove of art. Surely it must be like God to try
and make all things beautiful ?
I never heard that God " tried," interjected
Guito.
God made all things, said Petruccio. They are
not all what you would call beautiful.
* The ugly things were mostly made by men,
pleaded the artist.
That is as much as to say that God did not make
the Professor of Dogma, who is like a carved spout on
64 SAN CELESTINO
fp
the duomo, Manicheanism heresy, isn t it, Petruccio?
interrupted Quito again.
This battle of words almost made Petruccio giddy.
I scarcely know what is beautiful, he said simply,
nor does it seem to me to matter much.
It must be a mistake, urged Omero, * to admire
what is unlovely, just as it is error to believe what is
not true.
I did not mean that one should admire what is
ugly. I meant only that I do not myself care whether a
thing is ugly or not, and, perhaps, do not always know.
One cannot know everything.
Omero does, observed Guito.
The painter tried to take no notice of him, but even
Petruccio saw that he was becoming out of patience.
Guito also perceived it and was elated by his own
success. Omero had been pleased with his own last
observation and Guito s flippancy dimmed, he thought,
its lustre.
The function of art, he said, is to adorn life (he
wished he had put it thus before), to ignore the Fall.
To Petruccio it seemed silly to ignore any fact, to
ignore that special fact profane also.
You mean this life, he remarked. May it not be
adorned overmuch ? Is it not already at its worst
so attractive to us that we dislike being reminded of any
other ? Would it not be wiser to strip it of its gauds
rather than hang new ones about it ? Why should you
do anything to make men more besotted than ever
with the love of it ?
Guito hated this doctrine, but his malice was de
lighted at any argument that seemed to push Omero,
who was his very good friend, into a corner.
SAN CELESTINO 65
Bravo, Petruccio ! he called out gleefully. One
sees you are in logic.
Poets/ said Omero, you think Petruccio will
approve ? They had such a horror to life as to make
any who know them eager to be quit of it.
CHAPTEK XII
OMERO would not go away till he had extracted a
promise from Petruccio to go and see him at work on his
frescoes. Nor, afterwards, would Guito let him forget
this promise.
At last he teased him into actually going.
I would rather stay at home, declared Petruccio
very sincerely.
Bene ! It will therefore be an excellent mortifi
cation for you to come.
But perhaps I shall think the painting ugly, and
it will be impossible to say anything satisfactory if
I do.
I wish you would say they are ugly ! That would
be better for Omero than a dose of medicine/
All the same, I am not his doctor, and do not feel
disposed to give him" medicine. Besides, I know nothing
about the matter ; they may be ever so beautiful with
out my perceiving it.
1 Oh, he will help you to perceive it, with all the
good-will in life.
In fact Petruccio did not, when confronted with
them, see that Omero t* paintings were beautiful. Many
people, at the present time, would be much of his
opinion. It is to be remembered that even Cimabue
was not born till a year or so ater, and Giotto remained
66
SAN CELESTINO 67
unborn another quarter of a century. Religious paint
ing and there was then scarcely any other was tied
fast in the stiff Byzantine tradition.
Does he really think people look like that ? the
mountain-bred lad asked himself. He knew nothing of
art, and nothing of criticism, but perhaps for that very
reason he looked with simpler eyes and more frank
observation ; he had no conventional knowledge of
what he ought to see.
Petruccio doesn t know what to make of it all,
remarked Guito, maliciously amused.
He is not used to paintings, said Omero
indulgently.
No, I am not, Petruccio confessed with ready
humility, surveying a Madonna with narrow eyes like
slits, and fingers at least ten inches long. The bambino
in her arms, if the figure were proportionate, could not
have been larger than a rabbit.
Nevertheless, he observed, the figures have a
dignity.
Guito almost tittered at the first word in his sentence,
which the painter did not miss noticing either.
They are very devout, Petruccio added hurriedly.
He was quite sincere in saying this. If the lank,
angular, and flat figures expressed anything at all, it
was a sort of stiff devoutness. His opinion of Omero
rather improved ; he would not have expected,
somehow, that his work would have been remark
able for that quality. Had the painting been more in
accordance with what he had supposed to be Omero s
theory he would have liked it all the less. Omero s
talk suggested the pride of life, his work had no
connexion with life at all.
F2
68 SAN CELESTINO
They express, said Petruccio, that the blessed are
not of this world.
They certainly did. No one in this world was ever
quite flat, or was clad in a succession of triangles.
Guito wanted to titter again, but Omero snatched at
the praise eagerly.
That is what one aims at, he said hastily, with one
eye pretty severely fixed on Guito. i The business of
sacred art is to raise men s minds from the real to the
ideal.
This sounded so well that Omero was rather pleased
with Petruccio for having, as it were, occasioned it.
In heaven, observed Guito demurely, one s nose
will not stick out from one s face.
This did not please Omero nearly so well, especially
as even the grave Petruccio looked as if he would like to
laugh. But Petruccio was both courteous and kind-
hearted. He had not come to see Omero s work in
order to make fun of it,
In heaven, he reminded Guito, you won t have
any nose at all till after the General Judgment.
Nor any tongue either, cried Omero savagely.
The blessed will not be tormented with sonnets.
While they were talking, a friend of Omero s
joined them, a Sicilian from Palermo, who was also an
artist but of a different branch, as he explained himself,
not without a glance at Omero s frescoes that Petmccio
thought rather equivocal. Strictly speaking, it should
be observed that Omero s mural paintings were not
frescoes. They were painted not on wet plaister, but
on the stone itself, and the whole composition was
drawn at once in outline, and filled in colour by
colour ; neither was the medium employed by Omero
SAN CELESTINO 69
that sort of paint which was used by the real
frescoist.
The Sicilian was of very mixed origin. His father
was half Greek, and his mother had been a Saracen.
He did not much resemble the Italians whom Petruccio
had known.
I practise/ he said, without any false modesty, an
art that is even more forgotten than Omero s.
He calls himself a sculptor, explained the painter,
who was getting out of temper.
Others call me that our Emperor among the
number. I call myself Eaniero da Monreale, at your
service, said the new-comer airily. He was a worldly-
looking young man, Petruccio considered, with long
black locks very profusely scented. His style of dress
was a compromise between what was fashionable at the
court of Frederick and what Eaniero himself deemed
artistic. He was a good deal handsomer than any of
the saints in Omero s paintings, but it is probable
that Petruccio recognised this about as little as
Omero.
Quito knew him too, and Petruccio perceived at
once that the poet admired the sculptor much more
than he admired the painter. As for Petruccio, he did
not feel at home with any of the three ; but he felt even
less drawn to the Sicilian than to either of the others.
To him a Palermitan was a foreigner, even more than
the Tuscan Guito, and this particular foreigner struck
him as altogether outlandish. And there was an un
mistakable savour of the courtier about Eaniero whereas
Omero and Guito were, comparatively, unsophisti
cated. And yet Guito had better manners, flippant
and mocking as he was. The young Tuscan was of
70 SAN CE^ESTINO
better birth than either of the others, of much better
birth than Eaniero, and this gave all his impertinence
an air of mere ease and light-hearted ness. Omero
came from Benevento, in papal territory, and was of a
class just a trifle higher than Petruccio s. Eaniero s
father was merely a merchant, who traded with the
Levant, as his father had been before him, where he
had picked up his Greek wife. Eaniero s mother had
been the daughter of one of the Saracen artists, who
thronged the court of Frederick at Palermo. No doubt
she had been baptised before her marriage, but such
conversions were not held of much account among
serious Catholics.
My art/ declared Eaniero, had to be exhumed.
Omero s is merely in a catalepsy. There have been a
sort of painters all along, but it is a new idea to be
a sculptor.
Some new ideas are not good for much, said Omero
superciliously.
Petruccio was quite of the same opinion, but he
kept a listening silence. Of all these matters he knew
nothing, and cared to know no more.
It would be a new idea/ suggested Guito, * to say
that the earth moves round the sun. I think I shall
propound it.
You had better/ said Omero scornfully.
Let us help it to move, at any rate/ said Eaniero.
1 Let us begin with ourselves, and vow to be discon
tented with the ugliness our forefathers have be
queathed to us. Suppose you all three move as far as
my house ; I will show Pietro di Murrone my San
Sebastiano.
( His house ! whispered Guito in Petruccio s ear.
SAN CELESTINO 71
He has a room and a half up sixty stairs. But come
along and look at his San Sebastiano. )
If the reader has any sympathy at all he will feel for
poor Petruccio ! He had but a light digestion in these
artistic affairs, and had bargained for but one meal,
and was forced to swallow two. But he was modest
and civil ; how to excuse himself now he could not see,
and certainly, as Guito had said, it was all in the way
of mortification. He would far rather have been at
home, even with the chance of Felicia coming up to
make a mystery of the name of the fish she was giving
him for dinner.
This no doubt was * the world, and such a gulp of it
made Petruccio more than ever sure that he had better
get out of it.
Eaniero s house was but a street or two off, and
they were all four soon climbing the steep and dirty
stairs that led to the two rooms that the sculptor
occupied in it. They only entered his workshop, or
studio, as people would call it nowadays.
His other room, whispered Guito, is only
furnished with an onion.
The Palermitans love of onions is famous ; one
might have fancied Guito had never tasted one.
In the workshop there was no furniture at all. But
off a very large block of marble Kaniero pulled a veil of
rough canvas. St. Sebastian was emerging from it, in
the costume in which his first martydom took place.
Petruccio gasped. Even Omero and Guito were
almost startled.
The statue was by no means without merit.
Eaniero was a genius, or the making of one, and like
other geniuses was bold enough to rush on before his
72 SAN CELESTINO
time. No one could doubt that the figure he was calling
out of the marble was copied from life : that was why
Petruccio shuddered and Omero and Quito stared.
Kaniero perceived this and was nattered. He was
pleased enough to hold his tongue. Petruccio, not
pleased by any means, held his.
For this you must have models/ said Guito.
Omero, who never thought of anything without
reference to himself, understood this as an implication
that his own painted figures might have been produced
by some one who had never seen a living woman or man.
Of course, said Kaniero. If one copies a tree one
has to look at a tree, or else one might as well call it
a mattress.
Trees ! Yes ! But naked human beings !
Were there no martyrs who died in their clothes ?
thought Petruccio. Omero and Guito quite understood
that if San Sebastiano had been shot to death with
arrows in his, Eaniero would not have chosen him.
CHAPTER XIII
A DAY or two after this Petruccio was by himself in the
cathedral. For a long time he had been kneeling by
the tomb of San Gregorio Settiino, whose companion
ship was far pleasanter to him than that of the three
artists.
Eising to his feet he walked slowly and reluctantly
away, for he always left this silent friend with regret.
Gregory had hated the world, though he had never
feared it, and had been ever ready to do stern battle
with it. Petruccio hated it too, but he feared it, and
would rather fly from it altogether than fight it.
He remembered very well how Gregory, as Nonna
had told them, had set his foot on the Emperor s neck :
that seemed to him an allegory rather than a personal
episode, though Nonna had made it all as personal as
possible, caring nothing for allegory. To Petruccio the
picture was but a modern presentment of the endless
struggle between the heavenly force and the lower,
that began with Michael and Lucifer. He no more
pitied Frederick prostrate under the Pope s foot than
he would have pitied Lucifer in the other picture.
He walked slowly away and passed through a
narrow door leading, by a winding stair, down into the
crypt of St. Matthew. Here there were a few people
kneeling, as there always were, and always are still. In
73
74 SAN CELESTINO
the middle of the dim chamber was the altar and tomb
oHhe Apostle. Itjs on the level of the street outside,
and one could hear the people passing, some chattering,
some laughing. That made it seem all the more in
tensely still inside. Now and then one heard the chink
of beads from some of those who were saying the rosary,
the ancient devotion that San Domenico had lately
propagated and revived. Occasionally one of those
who prayed sighed, or said a word or two almost aloud.
There was no other sound except the indifferent
laughter outside.
The walls were adorned with frescoes even then
ancient, not, as now, with panelled marbles. Petruccio
did not wonder what the folk in the street were amused
by : he was thinking how often the exiled successor of
the Apostles must have knelt here, no doubt on the
very spot where now he himself was kneeling close to
the tomb of the evangelist. It was so great a privilege
to be able thus to come and be quite near the sleeping
Apostle, it seemed strange to Petruccio that many more
people did not come. Then he remembered how few
comparatively find time to pass half an hour near the
Master of the Saints Himself, not dead, or sleeping, but
waiting, with wakeful heart, for the hearts of His
children.
When he was coming out of the cathedral, in the
atrium he met Kaniero, who greeted him with a sort of
worldly friendliness. Petruccio told himself that he
liked the silence of the saints he had left better.
But it struck him that it would be contrary to
charity to yield to such a feeling, and he gave back
Eaniero s greeting with a smile.
Here we meet, said the Sicilian. You, I sus-
SAN CELESTINO 75
pect, come from praying. Indeed, one sees it in
your face.
( It would be hard/ he told himself, to catch such
an expression in marble. )
I come here often, answered Petruccio, to meet
some one. And you ?
* I come often, too, to admire these columns, and
these sarcophagi. The Church is wise enough to
steal from the temples.
He turned, and showed that he intended to walk
with Petruccio. In the street they met a youth to
whom Kaniero spoke.
Pietro di Murrone, he said, this is my friend
Alfeo Sacchi. Let us go with him and hear him sing.
I know no more of music than of sculpture, said
Petruccio.
Ah, but his music will not shock you, laughed
Kaniero cheerfully.
Alfeo Sacchi was not worldly-looking like the
Palermitan ; in fact he was quite as shabby as Petruccio,
and had a quiet, inward manner, as if he were listening
to some sound that his ears could not bring to him.
Petruccio was not frightened of him ; he looked poor
too, and had blushed when Kaniero spoke of his singing.
He seemed sensitive, and Petruccio fancied that it
would be easy to hurt his feelings. Besides, Petruccio
almost always did as he was asked when there was
nothing wrong in doing so. Otherwise he would rather
have gone home.
Alfeo s room was as poor as Petruccio s, nearly at
the top of a tall house in a steep street behind the
duomo. There was almost too little of anything in it
for it to be untidy, and it was as clean as it was bare.
76 SAN CBLESTINO
There were a couple of wooden stools on which Petruccio
and Eaniero were made to sit, Alfeo seating himself
on the low bed. He took his instrument, a sort of lute,
el oud of the Saracens, having only eight strings ; it was
made of one and twenty pieces of maple, most delicately
fitted together, the face being flat, with three rosettes,
the back or belly rounded, as in a modern mandolin.
With his left hand he held the instrument and stopped
the strings, striking them with the right. The bare stone
walls and vaulted roof helped the sound.
Eaniero expected a love-song, such as the trovatori
about the Emperor were wont to sing, and was not
much pleased when Alfeo sang the following prose :
Ubi cha-ri-tas et amor, De-us i-bi est. Con-gre-ga-vit nos
in u-num Chri-sti a-mor. Ex-ul-te-mus et in i-pso ju-cun-demur.
Ti-me-a-mus ct a-me-mus De-urn vi-vum. Et ex cor-de di-li-
ga-mus nos since-ro. U-bi cha-ri-tas et a-mor, De-us i-bi est.
Si-mul er-go cum in u-num congre-ga-mur. Ne nos men-te
di-vi-da-mur ca-ve-a-mus. Ces-sent jur-gi-a ma-li-gna, cessent
li-tes. Et in mc-di-o no-stri sit Christus De-us. A-mea.
He sang the melodjr, but played an accompaniment
that seemed to Petruccio s unskilled ear altogether
different, so that he wondered how the singer was not
himself carried away from the air by it. Alfeo s voice
was exquisite, clear and sweet, a tenor, almost as high
as a boy s, but fuller and more round. As he sang, the
austere, almost thin simplicity of the theme seemed
richly plaintive. Kaniero ceased to look cross, and
Petruccio was glad that he had come. It seemed as if
Alfeo had power to catch his soul and lift it into
heavenly planes. Every note of the lute, every syllable
of the singer s words, echoed within Petruccio himself,
and brought into his dark face a light that Kaniero
SAN CELESTINO 77
had never thought to see there. As it changed, ebbing
and fleeting every moment, the sculptor confessed that
more than ever would it be impossible to reproduce
such expressions in marble ; he might as well have
tried to reproduce in marble Alfeo s music.
In my town, said Alfeo when he had finished * I
am of Celano is a friend of my family who has joined
the frati ; we call him Fra Maso ; he has written this.
He drew out of his lute a low cry, like the wail of
a night wind, monotonous and cold, and sang
* Dies irso, dies ilia,
Solvet sseclum in favilla :
Testc David cum Sibylla.
Then the moaning breath drew nearer, as when, on a
night of winter, the rain is dashed against the wall
outside, and the watcher within shudders.
Quantus tremor est futurus
Quando Judex est venturus
Cuncta, stricte, discussurus.
Each syllable, as he sang, each note as he charmed it
out of the lute, was a single separate blow, as of a
tempest deliberately assaulting.
Before the next strophe he paused in his singing and
a sharp loud trumpet -note burst from his fingers.
Tuba mirum spargens sonum
Per sepulchra regionnm.
To Petruccio it seemed as if he could hear the
hollow echo of that trumpet-call, rousing the long
sleepers of the shadowy realms of death.
Coget omnes ante thronum.
78 SAN CELESTINO
It was astounding how Alfeo could give such an
effect of compulsion : one almost saiu the reluctant
spirits driven through the dark out into the intolerable
radiance of the Judge s throne.
" Mors stupebit," sang Alfeo, " et natura,"
and it sounded as though death itself, outraged and
discomfited, were there ; and nature, all the visible,
familiar order of things, reeling to meet him, terrified
and fainting.
* Mors stupebit, et natura
Cum resurget creatura
Judicanti responsura.
It was like acting, though Alfeo used and could use
no gesture ; it created a visual picture of the horrified
creature, roused from the flattering oblivion of death to
memory and shame and dread : nothing really for
gotten, nothing past, the old lie that death ends all
unmasked pitilessly.
Liber scriptus proferetur
In quo totum continetur,
Unde mundus judicetur.
Eaniero knew that Petruccio could see the book,
nay, he could not help himself seeing it : the roll,
black and endless, of the world s untiring offence
against God.
Judex ergo cum sedebit,
Quidquid latet apparebit,
Nil inultum remanebit.
When Alfeo sang of the Judge, inexorable, as He
shall take His seat, there broke from him and from his
lute a strain of ruthless majesty : calm, sovereign,
SAN CELESTINO 79
unemotional, measured, solemn, and blindingly sincere.
All the folly of affectation and excuse seemed expressed.
Nothing shall go "unavenged.
Quid sum miser tune dicturus ?
the young man cried ; as though the unavailingness of
every plea for leniency then first dawned upon him.
Quern patronum rogaturus
Cum vix Justus sit securus.
Alfeo himself was pale, and Eaniero s pretty smart
ness yielded to a pallor that was ghastly, almost
squalid. He had no eyes to spare for Petruccio.
Noe, Abraham, and Job could lend no one their
sanctity : it was their own, and could not be borrowed.
Let no one flatter himself with the holiness of the
saints : it would stand only in damning comparison.
Then Alfeo s voice broke into a cry of absolutely
childish pleading.
Rex tremendae Majestatis !
Qui salvandos salvas gratis
Salva me, fons pietatis !
King of terrific Majesty ! What am I that thou
shouldst have vengeance on such as me ? Art thou
not a King in truth, that givest, to whom the richest
has nothing to give ? The saved, are they not saved
by thine own infinite generosity and pity ? Save me,
me, me, fountain of all kindness.
Three times Alfeo sang " Salva me ! " " Salva me ! "
" Salva me ! " as though to creating Father, and
Redeeming Son, and holy-making Spirit. And each
cry was louder, more poignant, more humble, but not
more abject ; nay, more confident as the view of
80 SAN CELESTINO
majesty became clearer, and the memory of Omnipotent
Justice naked, clad itself in the memory of Omnipotent
Compassion.
Recordare, he pleaded, Jesu Pie,
Quod sum causa tuae viae,
Ne me perdas ilia die !
His listeners scarcely heeded that the lute had
ceased, and lay for a moment idle in his hands clasped
upon it, as he called to the mind of Christ why He had
come, the purport of His three and thirty years, of
the goal of God s pilgrimage on earth. For one soul,
even his own, the divine exile would have abdicated
His throne just the same, if all the world else had been
sure of safety. And should it be in vain ? To what
purpose then should have been this waste ?
Quaerens me sedisti lassus ;
Redemisti crucem passus,
Tantus labor non sit cassus.
Should weary Christ have toiled in vain !
* Juste judex ultionis
Donum fac remissionis,
Ante diem rationis.
Oh Judge, and Just Judge, he gasped, give it, that
supreme divine present of remission; for what so
kinglike as to give ?
Ingemisco tanquam reus,
Culpa rubet vultus meus,
Supplicanti parce, Deus !
Guilty, his face reddened at the memory of things that
he had done, of the almost all left undone ; he shivered,
like a guilty thing ; and now from the lute came a
SAN CELESTINO 81
shudder as of torn leaves condemned to drive before
the chill autumn blast.
Then a sterner memory struck, and with a crackling,
bursting sound, as of flames among dry sticks, came
the almost screaming cry
Confutatis maledictis,
Flammis acribus addictis.
To Petruccio it seemed that the hot westerly glare
shining into the room was as a reflection of the licking
flames described in these astounding notes of Alfeo s ;
sharp, discordant, untuneful, were the horrible false
chords the player struck out of his lute, and then
the high strained voice dropped ;
Voca me cum benedictis,
came the low, nearly inaudible, sobbing cry for exemp
tion and pity.
Neither Baniero or Petruccio knew that there
should have been three more strophes : Fra Tommaso
da Celano s hymn was new to them both. But though
there were three more strophes Alfeo could not sing
them. He could not have sung another word without
the passion into which he had worked himself breaking
in actual sobs.
CHAPTEE
PETRUCCIO lay long awake that night, listening to the
reverberation of Alfeo s music, and when he slept at
last, it was to dream of it. Nothing in his life, nothing
external or merely human had ever stirred him to any
thing like the same extent ; in the same manner he had
never been stirred at all. His nature was not what we
understand by the term emotional, and when an
emotion arrived strong enough to affect him it affected
him all the more powerfully.
Neither was he imaginative : he looked at external
things with that species of indifference that is described
as detachment ; not, as it were, caring for them, or
attaching to them much interior importance. Not to
care was in a sense the business of life, the life he was
drawn to. He had never been occupied with the imago
of things whose outward face had been presented to
him. That sort of idealising had hardly occurred to
him, and would, if it had occurred to him, have
appeared unnecessary and, perhaps, frivolous.
He who is habitually given to imagination dismisses
each image quickly for another, and is not permanently
much affected by any one. But Petruccio, once struck
as he now found himself by a group of images, could
not easily rid himself of them. Alfeo had roused a
dormant, embryonic faculty in him ; and being fresh
82
SAN CELESTINO 83
and unsophisticated it was the more active, the
more vivid.
What Alfeo had called into his sense was not a mere
series of pictures. They were much more forcible in
their effect than if they had been actually visible to the
eye. And though they came as a succession of ideas,
they remained as one many-sided impression. Mixed
with the crackling of flame had been the smash of
storm and hiss of rain, and a wailing that was both
human and elemental. He could certainly see them,
and saw still, in spite of himself, the rush of the driven
spirits, into whose slumber the irresistible trumpet-call
smote mercilessly. And yet they were spirits, invisible,
intangible, formless, and colourless. The most terrific
sense of all was that he had seen the Judge too ; how,
he could not divine, for the stupendous impression was
not only formless too, but was even unlocalised. The
throne itself was so wrapped in whirling mist, dark,
lurid and yet perceptible in the universal darkness
around, that no concrete image of a seat presented
itself to his eyes, even the eye of fancy. It was an
impression purely mental. Of Him who sat upon the
throne still less was there any mere portrait. No
figure of a man, bearded and old, was hidden behind
the cloud. But the Judge was there, not terribly
human, but inexorably Divine. There was no scenery,
no background of grim rock and black valley, as
painters have since impotently striven to represent it.
Space was as little concerned as time, and time, he
felt, was shrivelled up in quenchless eternity.
It was with a shrinking relief that he turned to the
mere human, and thought of Alfeo himself. From
the cold vastness of the supernatural Petruccio sought
a 2
84 SAN CELESTINO
relief, for the first time in his life, in the warm comfort
of the natural.
He liked Alfeo : why might he not love him ?
Except the half-inherited affection, habitual and
almost perfunctory, that he had for his kindred,
nothing of human love had ever entered into his life.
He liked Alfeo, who was poor like himself, of the
Abruzzi as he was, speaking the familiar dialect that
he had never till now known was dear to him. Alfeo
was no smart worldling, half-heathenish, held fast in
the net of pride of life, and lust of eye, and lust of
flesh. He had lifted even Eaniero, if only for a
moment, up into a terrible third heaven. He had
made the eternal more real than the terrene trivialities
of common life. He must himself be one who dwelt
on the threshold of heaven ; might he not be a guide
thither ?
Why should Petruccio refuse such a friendship that
God had provided ? Christ, God as He was, had not
disdained a special, human friendship. It is enough
if the servant be as his master. It is not good for man
to be alone : two may stand together where one will
fall. Had Alfeo been rich and handsome, like Kaniero,
Petruccio would have never thought of him as of a
possible friend. Wealth was almost necessarily
worldly, and beauty itself had a snare of worldli-
ness. But Alfeo was not only poor, he was homely in
face and figure ; and the light which could shine
in his eyes was not, Petruccio thought, of this earth.
At last he slept, and the vision of judgment swam
through his dreams, as intensely real as it had seemed
in the waking darkness.
The next day was a festa, and there were no
SAN CELESTINO 85
schools. Petruccio longed to go and find Alfeo, but
this he would not do. He was too shy by habit ; he
had no practice in making friends. But Alfeo came
to him.
He had been intensely flattered by the effect his
music had had, and especially by its effect on Petruccio.
That Eaniero should be moved was natural ; he knew
that the Sicilian was an artist like himself ; but Pietro
di Murrone was altogether different, and his undisguis-
able emotion had been a compliment of the highest
worth. Alfeo knew of Petruccio s reputation for
austere, almost fierce sanctity ; he knew that Petruccio
had not wanted to hear him sing, had only condescended
to it out of courtesy and charity. For that reason he
had disarmed the ascetic s prepossession by the plain
simplicity of Ubi charitas et Amor, and had then assailed
him with the vehement onslaught of his Dies Irae. Alfeo
had the pleasure in his achievement that almost every
human genius has, though he lacked Quito s and
Eaniero s franker vanity. From mere verbal praise
he would have shrunk almost as sensitively as Petruccio
would have shrunk from any allusion to his sanctity.
Petruccio was, however, really humble. Alfeo was
only artistically sensitive and reticent. The incense
of appreciation he had accepted greedily, and hungrily.
He wanted more of it.
Come with me, Pietro di Murrone, he said, to
Cava dei Tirreni, to the Badia of the Benedictines.
There are no schools, and it is an easy walk.
He did not even notice that Petruccio s room was not
merely poor like his own, but untidy as well. Even
Eaniero, whose lodging was as plain, would have had a
sniffing air of criticism. To do Eaniero justice he might
86 SAN CELESTINO
have lived far more luxuriously, but his vanity was an
artist s, and he only remembered that his father was
wealthy when he indulged himself in his rather expensive
craft. An artist, he thought, should live roughly, and if
he was smart in his costume it was because he thought
it a duty to look as well as possible.
CHAPTEE XV
ALONG the road to Cava the two new friends walked^
both somewhat silent Petmccio because it was his
habit, Alfeo because he could not speak without betray
ing how much he was thinking of himself, and of the
effect his music had produced.
He had been intensely sincere while he sang, but it
was the sincerity of an artist, and of a great one ; ho
could not have moved Raniero and Petruccio unless he
had been much more moved himself. All the same, it
had been a yielding to the inspiration of the moment,
not the passionate outburst of an inward habit. He
knew Era Tommaso da Celano, and had never forgotten
his face while interpreting the f rate s sublime vision.
He had been able to translate a saint s meaning into an
artistic rhapsody. He knew he could play upon the
lute, but he now desired to prove his power to himself by
playing on the human heart of a living saint.
The road slopes easily up from the marina of
Salerno to the corner where Vietri sits looking along the
golden shore to Paesturn and towards Amalfi : then, to
him who means Cava, it turns sharply inland, still a
little uphill.
Presently there came the noise of riders, and the
youths turned to see a score of Saracens on their way
to the Emperor s colony of Nocera.
87
88 SAN CELESTINO
They drew near, walking their horses leisurely up
the sloping road. Soon they overtook Petruccio and
his friend. They might have passed them without a
word but that Alfeo carried his lute, wrapped in a Milken
scarf and slung by it over his shoulder. Petruccio
wanted to hear it again or he might not have been
delighted to walk with a man who carried an instru
ment, like a stroller to a fair. The leader of the
Saracens caught sight of the lute, in its silken wrapping,
and knew very well what it was.
1 The Nizreni borrow our arts, he said to his com
panion. They were both young, though older than
Petruccio and Alfeo, and were both gay and handsome.
Their dress was rich, and their horses fine ; they rode
as men who almost live in the saddle.
Good morning, Signori, the Saracen called out,
with a very courteous salutation, and speaking in
Italian.
Alfeo returned the greeting easily, Petruccio more
stiffly. All men are God s creatures, but he had never
before exchanged speech with an unbaptised infidel.
He cast a curious glance at the manjaniks the Arab men
carried, which seemed to him devilish weapons, spit
fires like the devil himself ; but the two young men who
rode in front, the leaders, evidently of higher rank,
carried no manjaniks but only curved swords in richly
ornamented scabbards. The Christian sword has the
cross for hand-piece, but the Saracen had the crescent
for hilt.
The Saracen leader, whose name was Dragoudh,
drew his horse nearer to Alfeo.
El oud, he said, smiling, you can speak the music
of our people.
SAN CELESTINO 89
* Music needs" no words or any tongue, replied
Alfeo. But I can sing in my own speech only or
the Latin.
And I understand both. It would shorten our
journey to hear you.
Petruccio thought the request impertinent, and
never supposed that Alfeo would agree to it. He
thought of the Dies Irae only, and could not think his
friend would profane it by singing Fra Maso s words to
infidel ears.
Alfeo had no such intention ; but he could sing other
things, and could play without singing at all.
Here is a pleasant shade under these trees, said
Dragoudh. Let us rest, and listen. He turned to
his friend, Eh, Yagourdh ?
Neither Petruccio nor Alfeo knew that this was a
nickname. The Arab youth was very fair in com
plexion, though his large eyes, and his hair, were darker
than their own. Yagourdh is solid milk, a dish often
eaten at the beginning of a meal. Dragoudh gave a
brief word of command, and his men dismounted ;
still holding their horses by the long bridles, they sat
down in groups upon the grassy bank. Alfeo sat down
too, with the two Saracen gentlemen close to him.
Petruccio stood up, leaning stiffly against a tree.
* I am called Alfeo da Celano, said the musician,
unslinging his lute and taking off the faded scarf of thin
silk that wrapped it. My friend is Pietro di Murrone,
student in theology in our master s University at
Salerno.
Petruccio bowed as his name was mentioned, but he
thought the introduction unnecessary, and was not
better pleased when Dragoudh, with a quick, sharp
90 SAN CHESTING
glance, said with very grave respect, We reverence all
holy men/
It seemed monstrous to Petruccio to hear an un-
baptised follower of the false prophet talking of hdy
men ; and he was not holy.
There was a pleasant breeze that made a light
rustling in the leaves overhead, and there was a buzz
of innumerable insects among them. One could just
catch the murmur of the river far below in the gorge.
Alfeo s fingers did not now seem to strike the strings
of his lute but to caress them, and there came just such
a whirr, and lisp, as the bees made, just the same tone
less whisper as the leaves were making, and through it
the cool, liquid gurgle of scarcely sounding water. But
it was different too. Petruccio had not known of these
slight sounds till Alfeo borrowed them, and now they
came from the lute woven together into a soft luxury
that was not plainly innocent and simple as they were.
He made them sensuous, amorous. He made them
speak not to the ear only but to the emotions and to the
senses. Petruccio in spite of himself knew that they
were beautiful, alluring, but it was a beauty of which
he had known nothing, and would not learn. He felt
that a specious plea was embodied, the plea of the
exquisite charm of life, of noon, and sun, and caressing
breeze, warm shadow, and leafy secret. Had he been,
as he was not, a classicist, he would have presently
heard the voice of dryad and faun, their invitation to
mutual play and pleasure. But without recognising
he could divine.
Alfeo did not yet sing ; all the same, he made the
lute sing for him, as he intended, to show that his art
was greater than any need of syllabled words.
SAN CELESTINO 91
The Saracens listened with delight, and Alfeo saw
their appreciation in their eyes. It inspired him
as effectually, though so differently, as Petruccio s
appreciation of his Dies Irae had inspired him yesterday.
He was just as sincere now, pleading the sufficiency
of life, as then he had been ruthlessly describing its
inexorable end.
Out of such a theme, as wind and sun and woodland
smell had suggested, it would seem hard to produce
anything but monotony. But he made it as various
as Nature herself, though he deliberately abstained
from suggesting any mood of hers but one. Her
frown and storm he ignored altogether. Nor was
it external nature he paraphrased, but her inward
pagan soul.
He knew that he was shocking Petruccio ; if he had
not shocked him he would have done nothing. He
meant to shock him, and to conquer. In the first he
succeeded.
Petruccio knew as well as the eager Saracens what it
all meant. That life is enough, to-day our only sure
inheritance ; that the world has been decked fair
enough to satisfy every want ; that beauty is every
where, lavished free for everyone ; a little bread, a little
wine, and ears to hear, eyes to see, nostrils to gather
in the fragrance of the world s garments ; and no need
of more. The ascetics of sense ; wealth needless,
pomp and rank a burden, youth and open heart the
only necessary treasure and qualification.
All this Alfeo meant, and meant to teach. But
Petruccio heard more. In such a gospel what need
of any heaven ? What need of any God ? With a sure
instinct Petruccio divined the poison in the sweet, sweet
92 SAN CELESTINO
wine that Alfeo was pouring out. Exquisite as the
golden cup was, there was death in it.
It was a temptation, as Alfeo in his artist s vanity
intended it to be. He desired to stir Petruccio s cold
blood, to send soft human whispers to perturb his
steady heart of a saint. But he glanced often at his
friend s face and knew that he had failed. Petruccio
was not himself aware how entirely the tempting had
failed ; long years afterwards in his lonely penance he
accused himself of this day as though it had in part
succeeded.
i Not so readily does God yield His hold on hearts
that have been laid into His keeping. Not so lightly
does the Divine strength leave us to our own weakness.
Out of the far-off past another voice sounded in
Petruccio s inward ear : a voice as sweet as that of
Alfeo s heathen lute, but gentler, and more still. But
all men are vain in whom there is not the knowledge of
God : and who, by these good things that are seen,
cannot understand Him that is : neither by attending
to the works have acknowledged Who was the workman
. . . with whose beauty if they being delighted took
them for gods, let them know how much the Lord of
them is more beautiful than they : for the first author
of beauty made all these things.
CHAPTEK XVI
DRAGOUDH, the Saracen, had been a keen watcher of
Alfeo and Petruccio. He was a keen watcher of life
in general, and here was a bit of it that appealed with
all the force of novelty. Musicians he had met in plenty
at the Emperor s half -Arab court of Palermo and else
where, though he did not think he had met many of a
more subtle genius. Artists 1 of almost every sort were
welcomed by Frederick, and Dragoudh knew almost
every variety of the breed. A saint was a finer rarity,
and he at once recognised that Petruccio was one ; he
had known another, intimately indeed, for it was his
own brother ; and different as the saint of Islam is from
the saint of Christianity he fancied he perceived some
thing in common. His brother, Massoudh, was an
ascetic ; and he had become aware almost in a moment
of Petruccio s asceticism ; he read as on the open scroll
of a book Petruccio s fear and dislike of the world, his
distrust of art, his instinctive craving for solitude and
contemplation. And he, who cared little for prayer
himself was able to note in Petruccio the signs of one
whose life was spent in praying.
Alfeo had interested him a little, and amused him
more ; the young Christian mystic interested him
immensely without amusing him at all.
Dragoudh understood that Alfeo wished to prove to
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94 SAN CELESTINO
his Saracen audience that on the borrowed Saracen
instrument he could so excel as to win their admiration ;
but he saw that Alfeo had a further ambition, and that
to himself it seemed a higher one, at all events one more
difficult of achievement.
Perfectly worldly himself, he was oddly pleased that
Alfeo had failed ; he had looked on with a sort of excite
ment, something of a gambler s, for he had wagered to
himself for the success of the saint ; he would, he con
fessed, have been disappointed had Petruccio yielded
to his friend s subtle temptation ; he would, indeed,
have ridden on to Nocera dei Pagani, pagan as he was
himself, depressed. Aiming at no high standard he
saw a standard far higher than that of his or of the
common Christian world, and he believed in it. Asceti
cism seemed to his own taste as austere as a mountain
top, aloof, chill, forbidding even, lonely, and only
laboriously accessible. Nevertheless he could admire it.
The valley was for him, and he wished to taste its
sweetness ; but he had intuition enough to divine the
rare, cold splendour of the solitary alp, its exquisite
clean air, its neighbourhood to heaven ; and he was
without jealousy. He was glad to believe that others
could stand where he was too indolent to climb.
Alfeo was receiving the compliments of his listeners ;
Petruccio still held apart, and Dragoudh drew near to
him.
You do not like me to speak to you/ said Dragoudh.
But it is not your wont to do that which pleases you.
They were not after all many paces from the others,
but something in Petruccio s attitude and air suggested
to the young Saracen a poignant loneliness. He saw,
almost as one sees in a vision, the predestined isolation
of this silent, sombre-eyed youth. He could not fore-
SAN CELESTINO 95
see the final utter isolation that was laid up for him,
when he who knew himself the least of Christ s weakest
lambs should be forced to become shepherd of the
whole flock ; when the intolerable weight of the keys of
heaven should have been thrust between his reluctant,
cold fingers ; when he should be compelled to stand as
God s vicegerent in the huge world that terrified and
disgusted him.
You are kind, though, said Petruccio simply. His
own dark, quiet eyes had met the Saracen s, and he read
in them sympathy. To crave any human sympathy he
had found was dangerous, but to turn roughly from
courtesy was not in him. What was he that he should
scorn any man made in God s image, though the man
were as an unlighted lamp, empty of the oil of faith,
and lacking the flame of supernatural charity, that
comes only with baptism ?
I hope not unkind.
Dragoudh paused ; he wanted to speak, but he was
too much a gentleman to find it easy to thrust in his
friendliness to a stranger s reluctant reserve.
Your friend, he said, is a great artist.
* I cannot tell. Yes, he must be what you mean.
But I am ignorant in that matter.
* You know better things.
I know almost nothing.
You know T one thing.
Petruccio lifted his eyes again, and again met Dra-
goudh s : they were so grave, and so sincere, that he
answered in a voice so low that it was scarcely to be
heard
I know that there is one thing.
God, whispered the Saracen.
Petruccio in his life had never heard that Name
96 SAN CELESTINO
uttered in a tone more reverent. From Christian lips
he had heard it often as an oath ; sometimes almost
as a jest.
So you hated your friend s music ? said Dragoudh,
after a pause that, to Petruccio at least, was like a gasp.
I feared it.
For yourself you need not. You knew it was a lie.
Petruccio s eyes were once more given to the
Saracen s.
You also heard the lie ? he said, with a kind of
wonder.
I heard his music telling us that life itself is good
enough.
The rest were waiting now, and Dragoudh prepared
to go.
Farewell, he said, perhaps we shall never meet
again. But for this once we have looked across the
gulf that divides us, by the bridge that spans it.
* There is no bridge, said Petruccio stoutly. He felt
that it sounded churlish ; nevertheless he must tell the
truth.
There is, insisted Dragoudh, with a smile as grave
as any word he had used.
Conversion ? said Petruccio.
God, answered the Saracen.
He uttered the ineffable Name with the same solemn
reverence as before, and with it for farewell he turned
to his men.
Mount, he called out.
Dragoudh and * Yagourdh mounted also, and
turned to thank Alfeo once again.
A Christian triumph, laughed Yagourdh.
A pagan failure, said Dragoudh to himself.
CHAPTEK XVII
ALFEO did not feel sure that Petruccio would go on with
him. Petruccio had no idea of doing otherwise, and
they walked on together. At the bridge that enters
Cava dei Tirreni they turned steeply up to the left
among the hills towards the Badia.
Alfeo could not leave well alone or ill, whichever
it was.
You are angry with me ? he asked uneasily.
Or you with me, Petruccio replied, laughing.
Alfeo laughed too, but uncomfortably.
Well, it is tiresome to fail.
One is ultimately glad of tiresome things some
times. " Success " makes one ashamed now and then.
I only meant, grumbled Alfeo, to show you, in a
parable, that you are too good for this world.
I saw you meant something wicked ; I did not
know you meant something silly.
It is all very well. How would the world go on if
everyone acted on your theories ?
I have no theories.
If everybody became monks and nuns and hermits,
the world would come to an end.
Everybody never will become monks, or nuns, or
hermits. But even if the world did come to an end,
well, I think it would be better than going on badly.
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98 SAN CHESTING
* Is it bad of the world going on marrying and giving
in marriage ! cried Alfeo, very unfairly. Of course he
deserved no answer ; but Petruccio was not himself an
adroit talker and was unused to dexterous argument.
It is bad to marry without a vocation to it.
Perhaps that is why sometimes marriage turns out ill.
But in heaven, at all events, there will be neither
marrying nor giving in marriage, so I suppose if the
world ever gets heavenly, it will give up both.
But it never will get heavenly.
There is to be a millennium, I have heard, but I
agree with you that one sees no sign of it being at
hand yet.
Alfeo had talked chiefly to get Petruccio into good
humour again, and thought himself clever in having
succeeded. In reality Petruccio had never been out of
humour. His temper was better than Alfeo s, sober
but sweet ; he was no kill-joy, though his own joys
could never be made to flow from the same sources as
Eaniero s, or Guito s, or Omero s, or even, as he had
found, Alfeo s.
He was not now cross with Alfeo, though he was
certainly disappointed.
The road was very beautiful, with new and splendid
views of mountain and valley at every turn of it. High
over all was Monte Finestra, bare and austere ; but
the lower heights stood waist-deep in forest, and the
gorges running among them had hanging brackets of
pasture and terraces of cultivated land. Often the
broad valley, winding up from the sea towards Nocera
and Sant Agata dei Goti, was lost to sight ; but then it
would reappear, smiling in green and gold.
Presently they came to a high bit of road whence
SAN CELESTINO 99
they could look across the gulf to Pesto, whose temples
shone out of the opal haze like three pearls.
See, Pietro di Murrone, said Alfeo, pointing not
to Paestum, but to a tiny chapel close at hand on a slab
of rock, part of which ran under it, and part jutted
out. * On that rock another Pietro stood and preached
the first crusade a hermit as you will be. That was
a hundred and forty-seven years ago.
He looked at Petruccio s quiet face on which a still
light glowed, the more wonderful, as Alfeo perceived
readily, that it shone from within.
You know, Alfeo went on, that when the Arabs
first conquered the Terra Santa they were generous to
the Christians. Their prophet was only lately dead
and he had venerated and envied Christ, and honoured
His Immaculate Mother too ; I have read that.
* One reads things that are false, however, said
Petruccio, who was sure that Mahomet was altogether
a son of perdition.
I like to believe the best things. Anyway the first
sons of Islam did not interfere with our people. They
did not destroy the Santo Sepolcro, but allowed us to
build there a church and a hospice for pilgrims.
* It brought them money, said Petruccio.
Certo ! Even Saracens like money. That is the
only point in which they resemble us. ... Then came
the Turks, Seljuks, who had only just been converted.
I never heard Christians called Turks, objected
Petruccio.
I mean to Islam/ laughed Alfeo, and they under
stood it as little as they understood Christianity. Im
mediately they began tormenting the pilgrims. That
other Pietro, the hermit, went on pilgrimage ; and
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100 SAN CgLESTINO
here, on this rock where we stand, he described what he
had seen : pilgrims beaten, and flung into dungeons,
and even mutilated.
That, at all events, is true, said Petruccio.
Here he preached, as he preached everywhere all
over Christendom, and then he urged the Christians to
cease fighting with each other, and go and fight against
the enemies of the Cross of Christ. Gregory, your own
saint, down there, had urged the same thing. But the
Christian kings were too busy fighting against him,
and they would not listen. It was easier to make
war on one tired priest than on hordes of warlike
barbarians. Here, however, Pietro FEremita made
them ashamed, as he did everywhere, and they cried
out loud Iddio lo Vuole, Deus Vult. And they received
the cross from his hands, here among these trees, and
went off to fight for the Holy Places.
Alfeo was pleased with himself, for he liked a good
listener, and there was no more chance for the lute to
day. Into his voice, however, he knew how to put the
same tones in talking that he could use in singing.
He was an artist, only that, but he could not help trying
to be a great one, even when raw from recent defeat.
Soon after, he went on, * Urban himself came
here : your Pope s successor. And with him Kuggero,
the Conte Grande, and a crowd of nobles and warriors.
When they got here the Pope lighted down from his
white mule, and bade them all go afoot. " For this,"
he said, " is holy ground " ; and Pietra Santa they call
it still, and will call it till the rocks melt at the last.
From this place they walked on, as we must, to the
Badia down yonder.
So the lads went forward and came to Corpo di
SAN CELESTINO 101
Cava, lying like a cluster of nests against the side of the
steep mountain.
Petruccio was happier here ; there was a smell
almost like the smell of the gorges of the Abruzzi, fresh
and clean, and all about lay the odour of the sanctity
of great men.
Then they came to the bit of straight road leading
down to the abbey, where the statue of Urban II stands
blessing it now.
Clapped against the precipice hangs the huge monas
tery, with gaunt mountain peaks above and all around.
Far beneath foams the torrent, and of all other sounds
there is a remote silence.
CHAPTEE XVIII
THEY were in the great church.
Here, whispered Alfeo, leading Petruccio to the
chapel beside the high altar on the left, is the tomb of
Sant Alferio the founder. Here he lived in this grotto
as a hermit. There was no marble here then ; it lay
open to the damp wind of the mountain. Here he died.
Died ! expostulated Petruccio.
On Holy Thursday, in his hundred and twentieth
year. This is the tomb of his successor, the second
abbot, a Lucchese, another saint, Leo, who alone
could tame the cruel beast of Salerno, Gisolfo, the
Prince. And here is the third abbot, all of him that is
not singing in heaven, another of your namesakes,
Pietro da Salerno, nephew of Sant Alferio, and himself
tutor of Urban II. When he died three saints came to
show him the way to heaven he was so humble that
otherwise he might have lost his way Saint Odo, and
Saint Mayeul, and Saint Odilon, all abbots of Cluny.
But I like this fourth saint best. This is Const abile,
" puer inclytus et venerandus," who wore the mitre
here one year. After he was dead some of his monks
God knows what they were doing there were taken
prisoners by the Mori on the African coast ; he came
down from heaven and looked at those Saracens in
a way to which they were not accustomed, and they
102
SAN CELESTINO 103
let him go off with his monks, whom he steered safe to
the shore down there. Then he went back to heaven,
and finished the tune he was playing on his lute.
There are no lutes in heaven, said Petruccio very
decidedly.
On the contrary, said Alfeo, the saints have one
apiece. But come here. You can pray when you get
home. Look at this tomb.
It was a plain austere slab, with a mitre standing on
its head, incised upon it.
What saint ? asked Petruccio.
I never heard that he was a saint. It is where
Gregorio Ottava gets what sleep he can. He died here
just a hundred and eighteen years ago. Callisto
Secondo sent him here. He was anti-pope.
Petruccio shuddered. To be pope at all seemed to
him terrible ; to be false pope too horrible to imagine.
Some say he is not here at all, observed Alfeo,
but if not it is just as bad ; for then this is the grave
of Teodorico, another anti-pope, who tried to grab the
keys out of the hands of Pascale Secondo. Three anti-
popes have been prisoners here. For Innocent God
knows his numberis trying to sleep somewhere here
abouts.
Alfeo liked doing cicerone ; he had the knack of
telling all he knew as though it were merely part of
what he could say if there were time. Petruccio had
none of that sort of cleverness, and began to think the
young musician very learned. He himself could never
say a quarter of what he knew and he believed himself
very ignorant, which is the first condition of knowledge.
Alfeo showed him many more things in the great
church ; they were, however, chiefly objects of art, for
104 SAN CELESTINO
which his friend cared far less than for the Corpi Santi ;
indeed, all these things seemed to him but an anticlimax.
How could he think of opus reticulatum and giallo antico,
of the ambones and silver lamps, with his mind caught
in the memory that four saints lay sleeping close at
hand?
In the antique sarcophagi he took scarcely any
interest, and would not have taken much in the tomb
of Roger Bursa s second wife, Sibylla of Burgundy,
Duchess of Puglia and Calabria, but that it reminded
him of Nonna and her tales by the fireside of a winter
night. While Alfeo was talking of Sibylla, Petruccio
was thinking of his home far away among those other
mountains, of his mother and his eleven brothers.
Presently a monk came slowly down the church,
clad in the black habit of St. Benedict, but with a gold
cross upon his breast, and a great ring on his finger.
He was quite young, with a face like an angel s, grave
and sweet, and he smiled kindly at the two youths, and
stopped to ask if they had seen the library of the
monastery.
You are students from Salerno, eh ? I was a
student there too, not so very long ago, he said, and
his voice was like his eyes, gentle and clear.
To Petruccio he seemed very boyish to be an abbot,
but he was a bishop also.
I will show you the library myself, he said, if
you are not pressed for time. Then he smiled again.
You carry a lute, like a trovatore? he added to Alfeo.
Would you like to play upon our organ ?
Alfeo blushed for pleasure.
My lord, he answered, I thank you for your
geniilezza, but I do not play well upon the organ.
SAN CELESTINO 105
We shall see. Perhaps he is not the best judge,
and the abbot-ordinary turned to Petruccio.
On the organ I cannot tell ; on the lute he plays
too well.
The monk laughed gently. You think it a worldly
instrument ? Well, our sort of organ was invented by
Pope Sylvester II of blessed memory.
He was leading them into the monastery, where they
passed several monks pacing the cloisters in silent
meditation, but none of them thought it an interruption
to lift their heads and smile at the lads, and give them
courteous and friendly salutation.
Here is our Archivio, where we have many
thousands of donazioni, and hundreds of bullae. This
one dates from 840, and the signature is that of Kadelchi
of Benevento ; here is the original donation of the abbey
to Sant Alferio, from Waimar da Salerno, written in the
Lombardic script. This with the golden seal is a
charter from King Euggero, and all these are letters
from the holy Eoman Emperor Carlo Magno ; and now
I will show our two treasures a Bible of the seventh
century, and the " Codex Legum Longobardorum.". . .
The youths listened to the great names, and were
duly impressed, without knowing very much about it all.
The sweet-faced abbot was very kind, but how little
he guessed that the more silent of the two lads would
one day hold the keys of Peter in his trembling hands,
and be himself a canonised saint. It would have aston
ished him still more could he have foreseen that the
gravest of poets would represent the Pope, that this
unearthly- visaged youth was to be in hell.
* And now, he said, * we shall call Dom Mauro,
who has the keys of the organ, and he will help us to
106 SAN CELESTINO
decide if you play but ill upon it. For he is our
musician.
Presently Dom Mauro appeared, a little crippled
monk, who limped on a crutch ; with an old withered
face, but very pleasant eyes. His mouth, too, had a
queer but friendly twist in it.
This is a trovatore, said the abbot, who pretends
that he cannot play also upon the organ. But we will
not believe him till you have told us if he is telling the
truth. Some tell fibs because they are too vain, and
some because they are too modest.
Musicians are never modest, declared Dom Mauro,
twitching his bright little eyes, and giving a kind of
hop upon his best leg. That is why I am only a
middling musician.
Or why you are such a good one, suggested the
abbot cheerfully.
It was all very well for the young abbot to chaff
the old monk, but the lads scarcely knew if they were
to laugh too.
Well, we will go and see, said the abbot, whether
you are both modest or both musicians.
So they all went back into the church, the crippled
monk skipping up the stone stairs quickest of the four.
* If he had two good legs he would skip up to
heaven before any of us could catch him, said the
abbot, * and then we should have no one to play for
us in choir.
Your Most Eeverend Excellency will be in heaven
before me, though I am twenty-nine years older,
declared Dom Mauro. He is not at all strong, that
is his great fault, he added, twisting himself towards
the lads.
SAN CELESTINO 107
It was quite surprising to see how the crippled
monk got up the narrow and steep steps leading to
the organ.
Here is he, he said proudly, taking out his keys,
every bit of him made here in the monastery.
Monks have always been great organ-builders,
explained the abbot. * And Dom Mauro says ours is
the best in all the Kegno. For that he. will have to go to
Purgatory. It is his vanity. There is a much better
one at Monte Vergine.
Monte Vergine ! Even to-day his Most Keverend
Excellency does not know how many pipes ours has.
I know there are about half as many as you say.
The organ was open and Dom Mauro forced Alfeo
to sit down.
In vain is the snare set in the sight of any bird, and
Petruccio had not the least idea of being again carried
away. It seemed to him a hundred years since the
Dies Irae of yesterday.
Alfeo did not know the organ as he knew the
lute. But he made friends with it, as certain men
know how to make friends even of a stranger, almost
instantly.
Dom Mauro s eyes twinkled.
He cannot be a musician, for he was modest, the
old monk whispered. * Listen, then !
Sing, too, begged Petruccio, into Alfeo s ear.
He is a good fellow, thought Alfeo, and he sang the
Urbs Beata Jerusalem of the Cluniac monk, Bernard of
Morlaix.
It was a contrast to the Dies Irae, but inevitably
made Petruccio think of it. Now there was nothing
terrible ; it was again a vision translated into sound,
108 SAN CEhESTINO
but a vision not of judgment to come, of judgment come
already on a horrified, guilty world, but of assured
salvation and beatitude. It was as vivid as the music
of yesterday, but no longer lurid ; there was light
ineffable, not blinding, every colour but blackness ;
it was in reality a far higher and far more difficult
achievement. Alfeo suggested a peace that was void
of monotony, a bliss whose sweetness was never over-
sweet, a rapture that was free from passion or excite
ment, a loveliness that had nothing of sense ; in variety
it was miraculous, with a completeness that added
unity. He who so sang must remember the infinite
variety of holiness, and its substantial unity.
Petruccio was almost provoked with Alfeo. Why
was he not himself a saint ? How could he so inter
pret the final goal and fruition of sanctity and be him
self held fast to this lower world which is the saint s
obstacle and snare ?
Alfeo s art now was as pictorial as that of yesterday,
if less dramatic ; by sound he gave pictures which each
of those who listened could see : lawns of paradise,
flower-pied, such as Fra Angelico would paint long after ;
heavenly gardens and streams, heavenly glades, and
even heavenly city-walls. Just as Angelico was here
after to paint a city that should suggest no earthly
city-stain, so did Alfeo already paint those citadels of
perfection in his song. But most exquisite of all was the
impression he conveyed of light, a light that drew from
out no sun or star.
For the Lamb is the light thereof, the abbot
whispered to his soul ; and the light shone already on
his own face.
Petruccio noticed that he never again called Alfeo
SAN CELESTINO 109
trovatore, as he had done with laughing good-humour
before.
When he had finished Alfeo begged Dom Mauro to
play for them, but the little monk shook his head.
* Not unless his Most Keverend Excellency gave me
an obedience to do it, he said, and he is too kind to do
that now.
The abbot smiled, and gave Dom Mauro a little pat
upon his crooked shoulder, but gave him no obedience
to do what he did not wish. He thanked Alfeo very
gracefully and simply, and led the way down, not into
the church but into the monastery.
You must come and eat now, he said to the lads.
It is a long walk from Salerno, and a long walk back.
Nay, you cannot refuse ; I am not your host, but St.
Benedict.
And he made them come to the refectory, Dom
Mauro still jumping himself alongside upon his crutch.
The little old monk made no speeches, but he did make
Alfeo understand very well how his music had been
valued.
The abbot himself waited on the two youths, and
seemed determined that they should eat and drink well.
It is a giorno di festa, he declared, and you must
both be honest trencher-men, or our holy patriarch,
San Benedetto, will be appearing to Mauro and me in a
vision to-night, and reproving us for giving strangers
untempting fare.
Except a scrap of crust Petruccio had eaten nothing
all day, and he now ate heartily, knowing somehow
that the abbot specially meant him. The fare was
simple enough, though good and plentiful, but it tasted
better to Petruccio than any food he had ever eaten.
110 SAN CELESTINO
To him it seemed no pretty figure of speaking that he
was guest of the great prince of monachism. He was
prouder to eat at St. Benedict s table than he could
have been to be served at that of any king.
When they had finished, the abbot and Dom Mauro
accompanied them up the sloping road to the corner
where Urban II s statue now stands. Alfeo was
readier than Petruccio, and when the time for farewell
came he dropped upon one knee to kiss the abbot s ring.
Petruccio was nearer to Dom Mauro, and kneeling, he
lifted the monk s scapular to his lips.
Come again, both of you, cried the abbot ; and the
lads, still bareheaded, turned away.
At the turn of the road they looked back : the two
monks were still standing to see the last of them, as if
it would have been inhospitable to hasten away.
In holy religion, said Alfeo, there is ever time for
courtesy. They can leave God for a few minutes to be
civil to two poor students.
The exaltation of his own music and of its apprecia
tion was still hanging about him.
They do not ever leave God, answered Petruccio.
He never forgot the picture of the two kind monks,
standing in the road in their black habits, with the
ruddy mountain behind them, on which the afternoon
sun was glowing.
The road back to Salerno seemed like one that led
down from the gate of heaven. Alfeo read this in his
face.
So God does riot live at Salerno too, he said
sharply. It was not easy for him to forgive Petruccio
for his own noonday failure.
CHAPTEE XIX
NOT many days after this the Emperor came to Salerno.
In those days Salerno was almost as important as
Naples ; its University was more important, and
Frederick often landed there when coming from Palermo.
He had a palace in the town, and would sometimes
spend a day or two there on his way to his Saracen
colony of Nocera, or to one of his wars.
He landed there this time, and the fleet of sails
came in the early morning over the gulf, like great
sea-birds driven by a favourable breeze. The peasants
crowded in from the mountains and from the scattered
villages of the Calabrian shore. There were tapestries
and fine carpets hanging from the windows and
balconies, and everybody in the streets was smarter
than usual. The bells rang from the municipio, though
not from the churches, for the Emperor was excom
municated ; and bombs were fired off from roofs
and along the marina.
Some of the professors had wanted to keep the
schools open, for it was the festa of no saint, and they
reminded their brethren that Frederick was out of the
Church s pale, but the others shrugged their shoulders
and declared that the Emperor was their patron and
second founder.
Besides, the boys will all go to see his entry
ill
112 SAN C^LESTINO
whether we close the schools or no, said one burly
professor of medicine.
And we want to go and see him ourselves/ added
a dried-up professor of civil law.
Anyway the professor of medicine was right ; all
the students did go.
Petruccio would as lief have been at lecture, though
he disliked the lectures as much as he disliked anything
on earth. As a student he was not specially industrious,
only as industrious as conscience forced him to be.
At all events he was not zealous, for how can one be
zealous about what seems tedious and almost futile ?
He lived in religion, but he did nob succeed in caring
much to learn that hell was in the lower parts of the
earth prope centrum. Nevertheless he went to lecture,
but he found no one there except the professor, an
arid old Fleming with beady, shallow black eyes high
up in a pallid, wooden face.
The professor did not like him, and was wont to
pounce on him with dry questions in difficult, entangled
Latin. Once he had dropped on Petruccio, while the
Latin was still very unfamiliar to the lad, and asked
him something which he could have answered with a
little time ; but while the shy student was arranging
the Latin for his reply, the professor had stared round
and cackled.
* Ohm asinus locutus est prophet ae, he said, leering
at his pupils. Utinam nunc loqueretur !
And Petruccio s answer had dribbled out of his
head. Most of the class giggled at the professor s wit,
but the cleverest of them did not even smile.
Ma, non c e qui profeta, he observed in the vulgar
tongue, quite loud enough for the professor to hear.
SAN CELESTINO 113
For that retort of the clever student the professor
still disliked Petruccio. He was not now at all grateful
to him for coming to the schools. He did not wish to
go and see the Emperor, but he wanted to go and finish
a thesis as to how many angels he could fit on to the
point of a needle.
C e 1 Asino, he said to himself in a loud aside.
But he pretended not to see Petruccio at all, and
collected his papers as though to go away.
A good little devil entered into the future saint to
his terrible discomfiture afterwards. Petruccio coughed.
The professor was annoyed ; he was determined to
settle the question of those angels.
There are no schools, he called out. It is
giorno di festa.
Of what saint ? asked Petruccio demurely. The
professor was as deaf as a post when he liked, and he did
not hear a word. He bustled off with his papers, and
Petruccio was left alone to the fusty smell of desks,
and stale dust, and badly cured pens. So he, too,
strolled off and saw the entry of the Emperor.
He was only one lad in the crowd, but it happened
that Frederick came quite near him. Manfred was
beside him and Manfred s mother Bianca, who only
became the Emperor s wife as he lay upon his deathbed
more than ten years later.
Enzio was also there, his elder natural son, whom he
had lately proclaimed King of Sardinia, earning a second
excommunication from Gregory IX by doing so.
From the ship they came in a barge to shore, landing
quite close to where Petruccio stood. Up the slope of
the marina they had all to walk to where their horses
stood awaiting them,
114 SAN CEI.ESTINO
Frederick looked quite a young man, gay and beau
tiful : and all above him hovered, as an atmosphere, the
gleeful pride of life. His air was gracious and free,
masterful but friendly ; his eyes danced merrily, and
his smile was that of one who is wont to hear his words,
his very presence, applauded. His figure and his mien
alike proclaimed him what he was soldier, and sage,
and poet. His eyes danced merrily, but they were
deep and capable of sadness ; one saw that he was
a man of changing humour, who could be sorrowful,
and even thoughtful, though his habit was to
laugh. His form was that of a young man, so
young that it seemed almost impossible he should
be Enzio s father. He was splendidly made, and
his face as handsome as any that Petruccio had ever
seen : the expression of it not bad, but only careless
and wilful. In spite of his fair skin and blue eyes he
was a southern, Italian born ; and yet his Teuton
blood showed itself.
For a moment the Emperor and Bianca, Manfred
and Enzio were quite close to Petruccio ; the crowd
pressed, and Frederick did not mind it, but took it all
good-humouredly. He liked his people to wish for a
sight of him, and did not grudge them the opportunity.
He had just the qualities that a crowd admires. They
saw his beauty, and knew him to be a genius, and free
handed ; they knew he was a brave fighter, and were
themselves too careless to inquire on what side he
fought. And was he not a Crusader ? Had he not
beaten the paynim, and with his own hand crowned
himself King in Jerusalem in right of his second wife,
the^Empress lolanthe, daughter of Jean de Lusignan ?
They loved a happy life, and did not all his own
SAN CELESTINO 115
proclaim its happiness ? The pagan must be more
popular than the preacher.
In a sense Petruccio understood it all, though his
own feeling was altogether different from that of the
eager crowd about him. He, too, saw a gay and comely
figure, a face that smiled with a genuine if shallow
sweetness, and he perceived what it was to be an
Emperor, and a man of mark, a world s favourite ; but
he thought more of other things. In some things this
lightly laughing, irresponsible prince was more unhappy
than the Saracens he favoured : they were born dis
inherited, he had wilfully disinherited himself. By
birth a child of Christ, whose son was he now ? They
called him an atheist, and certainly he was a heretic ;
eleven years ago he had been excommunicated, and now
he was excommunicated again. An instinct might
have told Petruccio, even had he not heard a whisper,
that Bianca, gorgeous as she w r as, was not the
Empress ; but she smiled, and bowed to right and left,
and assumed imperial airs of graciousnesS and con
descension unashamed of the misbegotten son walk
ing between her and his father.
Enzio was even more condescending, but his
urbanity was not so free and gracious : his new-made
royalty sat on him a little tightly.
Manfred was only a big child of nine years old, and
he assumed no royal airs at all, but looked quickly
about, with an honest boyish interest. He was alto
gether more like their father than Enzio. Petruccio
knew they were all bound for Nocera Nocera dei
Pagani, the Emperor s monstrous Arab colony in the
midst of a Christian country and he guessed that
Frederick might be going also to fight against the Pope.
i 2
116 SAN CELESTINO
A man behind, whose oniony breath was close in
Petruccio s ear, pushed him forward, as the crowd
pushed him, and Petruccio and the Emperor almost
touched each other.
The lad blushed, for he was courteous and modest,
and Frederick saw that he was thrust forward in
voluntarily.
Coraggio ! he said pleasantly, in a crowd one
must take one s chance.
Petruccio doffed his cap, but his eyes met the
Emperor s, and Frederick saw in them a very rare
expression.
He was most used to adulation, but he had seen
scowling faces too, and knew well the look of hatred
and animosity.
Petruccio s eyes held no adulation, no hero-worship,
neither did they express scorn, or hate, or enmity :
what they spoke of was compassion, wistful and sincere,
and unaffected.
Frederick was not given to blushing. Those who
have enough to blush for have mostly lost the habit, but
his cheek reddened now. The pity in Petruccio s grave
eyes disconcerted him.
If he could have seen the future he would have
pitied the lad from the Abruzzi too.
The crowd swayed again, and the princes moved
forward and were passed.
The next time Petruccio saw any there were two of
them, two kings, leading by the bridle the beast on
which he himself rode, weeping.
CHAPTER XX
ALL this time Petruccio s grand-uncle had not quite
forgotten him.
In the main he left the lad to himself, wisely enough,
but he heard of him, and took note of what he heard.
Some said that his niece s son was half a fool, stupid
and slow. But others said he was a saint. Nor would
the professor of Canon Law have heard much talk of
Petruccio s stupidity had it been his habit to mix
with the students who knew him best.
He is even clever, they would have told him, but
without care for his cleverness, and without the least
ambition or emulation. He can think, and, if lured to
it, could put his thoughts into words, simple words and
straight, but not at all foolish. But he does not love
to speak. He holds his tongue until the chance for
speech has passed.
Petruccio s uncle, however, did not mix with
students, and the professors gave a poor account of
his nephew.
He was not brilliant, and he was not emulous. He
seemed submissive, but such sort of submission looked
like doggedness. The professor of dogma declared that
he was sullen, and as incapable of theology as a
as a ... The professor was not handy at simile, and
could not think of anything as incapable of theology
as poor Petruccio.
117
118 SAN CELESTINO
4 The truth is, said his uncle, who had sent for him,
you take no interest in it.
Petruccio hardly knew if this accusation were true
or no. He did not feel sure enough that it was untrue
to venture on contradicting it.
1 That is no sign of vocation, said his uncle. I
am afraid you lack the ecclesiastical spirit.
Petruccio merely held his peace.
* You met several priests here once, and you seemed
like one who had no interest at all in what they spoke
about. Yet those matters were such as concern
priests.
Petruccio could not honestly say that those matters
had interested him. So he said nothing. His dumb
ness rather irritated the old gentleman.
* Do you suppose you could ever preach ? he asked,
perhaps sharply.
I am sure I could not.
But a priest must preach, and preach often.
As a matter of fact the professor of Canon Law had
never had much preaching to do. But Petruccio did
not plead that in his own excuse, though no doubt he
remembered it instantly. He certainly had no wish to
be himself a professor of Canon Law.
Come now, urged his uncle, what are you going
to do ? Do you think, like this, you will ever make a
priest ?
No.
The old professor fidgeted in his leather-seated chair.
He picked up a pen and rubbed the plume of it against
the leg of the table.
* What, then, are you to do ? You think yourself
you have no vocation ?
To be a secular priest ? No.
SAN CELESTINO 119
How could he say that he knew very well that he
had a vocation, though not in his uncle s direction ?
How could a lad like him say that he felt called
to be a hermit ? It seemed like declaring that he
desired to become one of the fathers of the desert.
To holy religion, then ?
His uncle s phrase was very correct ; nevertheless
his tone implied that he did not care very much, himself,
about holy religion.
Yes.
Petruccio quite perceived that though his uncle did
not in the least sneer at the idea of holy religion, he did
somehow imply that he was annoyed, as if he had
hoped for better things of his nephew.
Perhaps that is all you are good for.
This also the professor of Canon Law by no means
said aloud all the same he expressed it. And his
nephew understood that the accusation was not against
holy religion but against him.
One may be a good religious without much learning,
the professor observed aloud, though many of the
Church s most brilliant sons have been monks.
Petruccio felt sure he would never be one of the
Church s most brilliant sons. Nor did he wish to be a
monk.
Even without being brilliant one may be a friar,
he said.
His uncle did not care much for the friars, but he
thought he detected a note of argument in the youth s
remark, and said promptly
Perhaps ; but St. Francis and St. Dominic are not
to be reckoned as otherwise than brilliant. Had they
chosen they might have risen to any eminence.
So far, at all events, Petruccio resembled them, for
120 SAN CELESTINO
he had no desire whatever to rise to eminence. If he
could rise to union with God it would suffice him.
The professor of Canon Law was disappointed.
Little as anyone might suspect it, he also had dreams of
his own, and latterly he had now and then woven
Petruccio into them. He thought much of his good
house, and of the big garden behind it, of his books and
of his furniture ; he had bought the house and garden
out of his savings on first coming to Salerno, and to him
they were different from any other house and any other
garden. He had never owned any property before, and
now he found that one necessity of possession was to
arrange to whom he should hand it on, when he should
himself have to quit the ownership of earthly properties.
Come and walk in the garden, he said, and led his
nephew down some marble steps out into the large piece
of ground where his fruit trees grew, and his vegetables ;
it sloped up the hill, and from the terrace at the top
there was a beautiful view over the city to the gulf.
He had, perhaps, brought the youth there on purpose.
All this I will give thee. . . .
They stood still, and the old gentleman purled a
little, for the hill was rather steep, and Petruccio s
young legs were long and active.
* Latterly, said the professor, I have had a notion
that if you behaved well, and did us credit, you might
some day live here instead of me. One bringeth
nothing into this world and one can carry nothing
out.
He made the observation piously, but not without
some obvious regret that it should be so.
I am growing old, he added, and man knoweth
not the day of his visitation.
SAN CELESTINO 121
This he said more cheerfully, for after all he was only
fifty and had an excellent constitution.
Petruccio understood quite well both his regret and
his cheerfulness. What he did not understand was his
uncle s obvious hint that he had been thinking of leaving
his possessions to himself. He knew that his arrival had
given very little pleasure to the professor, and he did not
suppose that before he came his uncle had ever given
a thought to his existence.
One likes land to continue in one s own family,
said the professor, with a complacent glance down the
garden to the house. And I have nobody but your
mother and her sons.
There are twelve of them, observed Petruccio.
Wasteful fellows, I dare say, said his uncle
suspiciously.
Petruccio laughed.
They have never had much to waste.
And that is the sort who are readiest to waste as
soon as they have got it.
Petruccio might have said that his mother was the
reverse of wasteful, but he would not say anything that
might sound like a plea for his family in reference to
their uncle s possessions.
In a way I like you, observed the old priest
candidly. He did not say what way, and Petruccio was
at a loss to guess what way it might be.
You are very good, he said, almost blushing.
Not so bad as you suppose, I dare say.
The professor gave something like a chuckle as
he said this.
In reality he was not bad at all. He was well off,
but he might have been rich had he not possessed a
122 SAN CELESTINO
conscience. He gave much to the poor, though scarcely
anyone suspected it, not even his stingy old house
keeper. And he would take no usury on his money,
believing that the Church condemned it. He could,
and would, set a good dinner before his friends, but
alone he lived frugally enough. He loved to know
that he had a good cellar of wine, and he took a solid
pleasure in his guests praises of it, a pleasure that was
almost artistic. He would, however, have no pleasure
at all in drinking his good wine alone, and never opened
a bottle for himself.
Petruccio was mistaken in supposing that he had
never turned his thoughts towards his niece and her
sons in the far-away masseria among the gorges of the
Abruzzi. But it was true that he had been disap
pointed, almost annoyed, when the unearthly-visaged
lad, lean and gaunt, had turned up, rather inoppor
tunely, just as he was about to entertain his clerical
friends. He was shrewd, and in a way sensitive, and
he had made up his mind that the raw ascetic would,
consciously or unconsciously, set him down as a selfish,
self-indulgent, perhaps lazy, lover of the table and of
the wine-flask. And yet, partly on that very account
he had been grimly pleased when his guests discoursed
of temporalities and vineyards. Young men should
not be censorious and uncharitable.
But he, too, made his mistakes, for Petruccio had
been quite free from censure or uncharity ; he had
never doubted that his uncle and his uncle s friends
were all that secular priests should be ; he had merely
felt that he could never learn to care for the things
that it seemed they thought one ought to care for.
It was true, however, that in a way the old professor
SAN CELESTINO 123
liked him. He was not a stupid old professor at all,
and he saw more in his niece s son than any of that
niece s other sons had ever seen ; he was not far from
judging quite justly of his character and disposition
though the truth disappointed him, in some fashion,
he recognised the truth, or very nearly recognised it.
Petruccio was not for this world. He was no heathen,
and did not really want to alter the youth s hopeless
unworldiness. All the same he was disappointed.
What, after all, was the good of his own possessions,
if some one that he had never seen was to come after
him and probably waste and squander them, as if
they had not been earned slowly and laboriously ?
He sighed, and Petruccio heard the sigh. Would
he have sighed just the same if he could have foreseen
that the nephew whom he felt it almost a duty to snub
a little, should be the head of Christendom, should
reach such an eminence as he, the professor, certainly
never dreamed of for himself ?
Well, said Petruccio s uncle, I will not stand in
your way. I will send word to your mother that it is
useless keeping you here, that your bent is not to the
distinctions of the schools. But you are not to despise
them. Such distinctions are the worthiest any cleric
can attain.
I do not despise them in the least, Zio. Only they
are not for me. I might as well despise the Emperor s
crown.
Ah, the Emperor ! Poor young man. (He was
not ten years older than Frederick.) * God help him.
I saw him, said Petruccio.
Did you ? I have never seen him. What did you
think of him ?
124 SAN CELESTINO
I am sorry for him, answered Petruccio, almost
guiltily.
Sorry !
* Yes. He seems to me to be in the gall of
bitterness.
The old professor knew that his nephew was not
stupid.
Very few people, scarcely any young man, I
should think, would dream of pitying the Emperor.
I could not help it, said Petruccio apologetically.
They were both silent for a minute or two. And
they both gazed out over the gulf to where Paestum
lies in the opal-green, pink haze, between the Apennines
and the sea.
So your way of it, said the owner of the garden,
and of the good substantial house at the bottom of it,
is to go and live in a cave, and live upon grass.
There was no scorn in the words, and no chiding,
though they might have sounded sarcastic. They
were spoken with a little twisted smile, and the smile
was rather kind and rather wistful.
Ubi vult spiritus spirat, he almost whispered,
* and man knoweth not whence it cometh, or whither it
bloweth. Opus Domini est, et mirabile in oculis
nostris.
He knew that he had tried to tempt his nephew a
little, but, unlike Alfeo, he was thankful to God that he
had failed. Petruccio, this time, did not even know
that he had been tempted. But he found that he
loved his dry old uncle a little.
BOOK II
THE FOUNDER OE THE
CELESTINI
CHAPTEE I
WHEN Petruccio turned his back upon the schools he
was twenty years old, and though he had made no
friends, unless Alfeo and Guito, Kaniero and Omero
could be called so seeing that he was as intimate with
them as with anybody, not being in truth intimate with
anyone he had some admirers. Of this he was not at
all aware ; they were quieter people than the poet and
the artist, much quieter than the sculptor, and more
reserved than the musician. They had made no overt
show of trying to be friends with their fellow-student of
the divinity school, and Petruccio never suspected that
they thought particularly about him. This, however,
they did. To them he had not appeared an ordinary
person ; indeed, the four artists had also perceived, in
their way, that he was not ordinary ; if he had been,
none of the four would have cared in the least to see
anything of him, and they had seen as much as they
could, if that much was little enough after all.
In this book only the beginning of his acquaintance
125
126 SAN CELESTINO
has been described, but enough for our purpose, and
the acquaintance never grew to much, certainly not to
friendship. Still, such as it was, Petruccio was aware
of it : he was not at all aware of the interest felt in him
by one or two of his comrades in the school of theology.
They were shyer than the artists, if not so shy as Pietro
di Murrone himself. Their advances were hardly
perceptible to him, and then they drew back, believing
that he did not encourage them. Nevertheless they
thought of him, and among themselves spoke of him.
When they heard that he was leaving the schools
they remarked upon it with regret, not feeling able to
remonstrate with himself, on account of the slightness
of their acquaintance with him.
It is a mistake, said Giacomo Bertelli, the pro
fessors have never encouraged him. That is a pity.
He it was who had said * there is no prophet here
when the Flemish professor of theology had remarked
that once an ass had spoken to a prophet and would
that he would speak again.
They have got the notion that Pietro di Murrone
is stupid, he added, that is because they are stupid
themselves.
They do not seem to consider that sanctity is a
mark of vocation, observed Bastiano Serlupi, who was
a year younger than Giacomo and more sarcastic.
His sanctity is peculiar, though it is genuine, said
Lippo Car done, who was a just person, and afraid of
uncharitable judgments, and peculiarity of any sort
is always suspected by professors.
4 That Fleming is peculiar himself, declared Bas
tiano. I have a walking-stick just like him.
So fine priests are lost, said Giacomo. It is
SAN CELESTINO 127
partly Pietro di Murrone s own fault, he added, for
he is pusillanimous. He ought to know that he has a
vocation in spite of their discouragement.
But Petruccio went away and had not the least idea
that they had been discussing him. He almost stole
away, and there were no leave-takings. He hardly
knew whither he was going, and took little note of the
road, being buried in his own thoughts. Perhaps he
scarcely knew how long he had been travelling when he
brought his journey to an end.
It was enough that the place was lonely and seemed
remote, more remote probably than it really was. He
paid but slight attention to surroundings, and almost
none to such beauties of landscape as Guito would have
found by instinct.
The place was barren he saw that and not culti
vated by any farmer ; he saw no dwellings near, and
had seen none for some time. It lay off the road, and
if he stayed there, one would say his only neighbours
would be the wolves of the mountains. But of them
he had no fear : it was the wolves and foxes of the
world he avoided.
Here he found a sort of den, under a jutting rock,
that made some sort of shelter against rain and sun, and
this den he scooped out, painfully, for he had no tools
but his hands and a bit of stick. He made himself a
lair, more like a badger s earth than it was like a monk s
cell, or even a hermit s cave. He could get into it and
that was all ; it was too short to lie down in, too low to
stand up in ; indeed, the roof would have fallen in had it
not been of rock. He could only crouch upon his knees
in it, and there he knelt all night and nearly all day.
128 SAN CELESTINO
Sometimes, not every day, he would get up and steal
forth to beg a crust of bread, sometimes from any chance
wayfarer, at others from the nearest hut or village. If
he could meet any traveller, journeying alone, and get
from him his bit of bread he was best pleased : such a
person, he supposed, would travel on and forget all
about him. But often he was compelled to go to the
village. On Sundays he had to go there to hear Mass
and confess himself, and receive Holy Communion ;
then he would generally beg a little food, and what he
got would last him for a day or two, for he never ate
more than once in the day ; money he would never
take, though the contadini would often press some tiny
coin upon him.
From the time he left Salerno he never held a coin
in his hands until he died fifty-five years after. When
he had paid Felicia there remained a very little money
in his hand, and that he gave to a beggar outside the
cathedral, after he had made his farewell to St. Gregory
VII and to St. Matthew. They were the only friends he
had ever made in Salerno.
On Sundays he had to go to the. village, and having
to confess himself he could not help making himself, in
a fashion, known to the priest. But the priest did not
seem inquisitive : he neither asked whence his ragged
penitent came, or where he lived ; and Petruccio, no
doubt, supposed that the priest neither knew nor cared
anything about him. This, of course, was far from being
the case. The contadini had plenty to say about their
new neighbour : a hermit who wants to be unknown
should make his hermitage in the midst of a populous
city. The peasants talked a great deal among them
selves about Pietro di Murrone, though none of them
SAN CELESTINO 129
knew his name, and they were apt to talk about him to
the priest also.
Such gossip was not unpleasant to Messer Angelo
and he did not severely discourage them, though he
would permit none of them to go and tease his penitent
with officious visits. He was himself a humble, kindly
man, without a grain of envy for the sanctity of the
young hermit. He did not in the least suspect that he
was half a saint himself. Yet he lived as poorly as any
monk, never desiring anything but poverty, and devoted
himself to his poor and their interests, just as whole
heartedly as any friar. His only companion was Our
Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, for none of his rough
contadini was capable of making any real companion
for him. Yet he was never lonely, and never told him
self that his energies were buried, and his talents thrown
away. He had been a clever lad and had distinguished
himself, modestly, in the schools ; but he had never
pushed himself, and no one had ever dreamed of pushing
him. At thirty years old he had become paroco of this
forgotten hamlet hidden among the hills ; here he
would live contentedly, labouring hard in his tiny, arid
plot of the great vineyard, and here he would more than
contentedly die, when the pearly gates should open to
let him in to see his Friend. Of him, too, his people
were proud, less proud than they were now becoming of
their hermit, though with a pride more full of uncon
scious affection. They were used to him, that was all,
whereas the saint in the underground den was a novelty.
Messer Angelo was not a bit jealous of their keener
interest in Petruccio ; he only tried to make them draw
lessons of greater unworldliness from the life of the
youthful hermit. He knew very well that, poverty-
130 SAN CELESTINO
stricken as they all were, some of them could be just
as worldly as if they were princes.
Messer Angelo only made one mistake, if it were a
mistake. He felt sure that Petruccio should be a priest.
It did not seem to him that the hermit s sanctity was
wasted : he was too good a Catholic, and too intelligent
a man. But he longed to see such sanctity appro
priated, as it were, by the Church ; and surely the
best way would be to adorn the priesthood with it.
Every priest, he thought, who came within the
range of such a priest s influence and example, must
become a better one ; he did not assure himself that he
had himself become better since this marvellous penitent
had come to him, but he did humbly acknowledge an
indebtedness to him. Fire kindles fire, and he felt
himself warmed. He desired higher things since he
had been brought close to the heights of Petruccio s
humility and unworldliness and clear vision of God.
There are always clouds, he told himself, and this
lad rolls them away. Absolute purity teaches one to
recognise one s own spots.
It no more occurred to him to pity Petruccio than it
occurred to him to envy him.
Sometimes, on a bitter night of winter, as he laid
himself in his own cold bed, he would think of the frozen
lad crouching in his damp hole of the earth, far up on
the mountain side ; he would listen to the scolding
wind, rattling the loose shingles of his own wretched
roof, and remember how the sleet in its teeth must
drench down into that inhuman den ; but he knew of a
light brighter than that of any lamp, of a fire warmer
than that of any hearth, and he never thought of
Petruccio as cold and in darkness. Domine, lux tua
SAN CELESTINO 131
illuminatio nostra, he would whisper, ignis cordis tui
ignis vitae nostrae. He never thought of Petruccio as
hungry when he sat down, weary after long tramping
among his scattered peasants of the mountains, to his
own warm if frugal food.
Non in solo pane vivit homo, he remembered ;
nevertheless he was not content that Petruccio should
be anything less than a priest.
Kct
Z
CHAPTER II
FOE three years Messer Angelo bore his discontent, and
then it seemed that the time had come when he ought to
bear it no longer.
Certain strangers came to him, one of them himself
a priest, Messer Giacomo Bertelli, one a deacon called
Bastiano Serlupi, and the third a sub-deacon by name
Lippo Cardone. They had all, it seemed, known his
neighbour and penitent, and had all now heard creeping
whispers of his sanctity.
He was always a saint, declared Messer Giacomo.
Some people are born saints : they can t help
themselves, said Bastiano.
Messer Angelo shook his head mildly.
; We are born in original sin, he remarked, * out
casts of grace.
* Well, Pietro di Murrone was only disinherited till
his baptism, insisted Bastiano. * He came of age at
the font.
Messer Angelo was not used to this manner of talk
ing, but he was ready enough to agree that Pietro di
Murrone was a saint now. Deacons, he remarked, are
apt to be young, and young persons have an ex
aggerated fashion of expressing themselves. Mere
exaggeration of expression is often as truthful as
under statement. That also he remembered.
132
SAN CELESTINO 183
Of course he ought to be a priest, said Messer
Giacomo.
In remaining a layman he defrauds the Church,
suggested Lippo, who was quite ready to endow the
priesthood with all that he had of personal sanctity to
offer it.
Messer Angelo was almost of the opinion that Lippo
Cardone had just expressed.
The stupid professors down there put it into his
head that he had no vocation, said Bastiano, whose
own ordination had been delayed a turn because he had
failed in an examination. The only vocation they
can understand is to invent riddles to fit answers they
have devised beforehand.
Messer Angelo listened courteously to what each of
his visitors had to say, and understood each of them as
well as so charitable a person would permit himself to
understand anybody who had a defect or so. The
young priest, he could see, was intelligent and sincere ;
indeed, as much could be said for all three, but Messer
Giacomo somehow permitted the impression that he
was the most learned. Messer Angelo did not, even to
himself, add that the lately ordained priest was also
a little self-opinionated. Bastiano was hearty, and
rather clever : Lippo Cardone w r as serious, and a person
of reflexion. Messer Angelo did not tell himself that
the deacon was a little pert, and the sub-deacon inclined
to be sententious.
He sympathised with all three in the object of their
visit, which was to move him to induce Petruccio to
become a priest, and he admired them for their dis
interestedness in taking so much trouble, on account
of what seemed to them a point of conscience.
134 SAN CELESTINO
Messer Angelo bade them wait till morning. This
was Saturday ; on the morrow his penitent would
certainly come to the church. Then he undertook to
see that they should all three have an opportunity of
uniting their persuasions with his own. Poor Petruccio
had, of course, no suspicions of what was in store for
him ; he went to the village as usual, and as usual
confessed himself, heard Mass, and went to Holy
Communion.
After Mass they caught him.
Messer Angelo, not without some compunction and
sensation of treachery, came to him in the church,
while he was still making his thanksgiving, and said
that he wished to speak to him in his house. Petruccio,
always docile, did as he was bidden, and in the priest s
bare parlour found his three former fellow-students.
He was utterly ragged, and his hair hung in long,
unkempt locks about his neck, his feet were bare, and
his appearance was so meagre and gaunt that the
three young men were genuinely startled. But
Petruccio never gave a thought to his own appearance,
and, though he was taken aback to find three visitors,
his dark face lightened with a smile of pleasant re
cognition. But for that smile they would have been
altogether afraid of him ; as it was they did not feel
easy, and because their task, now they were face to
face with it, suddenly appeared much harder than it
had seemed in the distance, they put on all the more
energy and obstinacy.
They smiled too, but not so naturally as Petruccio.
Without quite intending it they treated him at once
as a sort of culprit, who was to be held as on his defence.
And they showed plainly that no defence of his would
SAN CELESTINO 185
be admitted. Messer Angelo felt almost afraid of
them himself, for he was not a stern person, and these
young men were evidently prepared to be stern if
necessary. He could not help pitying Petruccio,
though he wanted them to get the upper hand of him.
* I am now a priest, said Messer Giacomo, after a
little pause, during which Petruccio only looked at
them patiently. He could not go straight away, but
he would have liked to return there and then to his
cell in the earth.
Petruccio knelt and kissed the young priest s hands
and asked his blessing.
* May God bless you, my friend. As He will if you
endeavour to do what He requires of you, said Messer
Giacomo with considerable solemnity, assuming an air
of authority that he found easier now his former
fellow-student was on his knees before him. Petruccio
felt vaguely uneasy. When people talk to us of doing
what God requires of us, they generally consider that
that is not what we are doing at present.
But the hermit of three-and-twenty was very meek,
and lacked the fine obstinacy of his friends. He was
going to be almost helpless in their hands, especially
when Messer Angelo, whom he trusted and reverenced,
took their part against him.
He knelt on, and Giacomo did not bid him rise,
though Messer Angelo thought he should immediately
have done so.
Messer Giacomo s manner was not caressing, no
more caressing than that of the professor of Canon
Law ; it was even drier, and not even so human.
Messer Giacomo had not come all this way to caress
an old friend, nor was his errand a matter of human
136 SAN CELESTINO
business. He was terribly priestly, having been a
priest about six weeks, and still lacking faculties to
hear confessions.
He opened out firmly, almost severely, on Petruccio,
and told him plainly that he was shirking the call
of God, turning away from the labour of the vineyard
to indulge a private taste. He waxed more eloquent
at the sound of his own well-chosen words, weighted
with quotation and enriched with metaphor. He
found it easier to say the things he had in mind than
he had feared he might find it. For anyone could see
that the kneeling hermit was humble and gentle, meek
and altogether free from self-will or obstinacy.
Bastiano already rather pitied Petruccio, and did
not listen as closely to Giacoma s arguments as that
able young man would have thought they deserved.
Lippo did not attend very sedulously either, for he
was impatient for his own turn, and was preparing
what he had to say. It rather annoyed him that
Giacomo forestalled him and took, as it were, several
points out of his mouth. It was not quite fair that
the first speaker should say all there was to be said.
But Messer Angelo listened carefully, and not being
at all eager to shine himself, was much impressed by
the young priest s acumen and brilliancy.
Messer Giacomo for his own part was fully im
pressed by the first-rate manner in which he had stated
a case which he fancied he had made pretty well
unanswerable.
If Petruccio was not impressed in the same way he
was overborne and dazed, almost stunned. Bastiano,
if he had not thoroughly hated the idea of that damp
cell under the ground, and sincerely desired that
SAN CELESTINO 137
Petruccio s great light should not be smothered under
a bushel, would have had it in his heart to have veered
round and taken up his brief against Giacomo.
Lippo had his say at last, and said it at greater
length than Giacomo could perceive to be now neces
sary. Such points as he had not himself made seemed
to him very immaterial.
Bastiano was not nearly so long-winded, nor nearly
so ponderous as the sub-deacon, but he warmed to his
work, and did not spare Petruccio now that he had
him in his own hands.
Finally Messer Angelo gave judgment, mildly and
sweetly, with a diffidence that neither Giacomo or
Lippo thought half sufficiently assured or positive,
but his judgment was against Petruccio, that is, it
was all on the side of the other three. And it had
more weight with him than all their vehemence.
Trembling, and pale, with scarcely restrained tears,
Petruccio meekly submitted. It was the forestalling
and premonition of a yielding, far more agonised, than
was to be extorted from him more than fifty years
later.
CHAPTER III
IT was in Eome that Pietro di Murrone received
ordination to the priesthood ; why that place was
chosen does not appear, or whether he was there also
ordained to the lower orders.
In approaching the Eternal City he felt scarcely
any of that elevation of spirit which has affected so
many devout pilgrims. He knew that it was the seat
of God s earthly vicegerent, the metropolis of faith,
the capital of the universal kingdom of the Church.
He reminded himself of this, and of the priceless relics
it contains ; of the tomb of the Apostolic princes, St.
Peter and St. Paul ; of the tombs of so many other
martyrs, popes, and saints.
But in spite of all these memories, he drew near
the place with a sinking dread and reluctance, as if
by some instinct of premonition he felt himself being
dragged to the cross on which at last he was to be
crucified.
Many a youthful cleric, and many an earnest one,
may have seen Eome for the first time with an invol
untary recollection that for him, too, the future might
hold concealed the highest greatness. The simplest
tonsured youth may live to be Pope, and the memory of
the possibility may be rather a dream than an ambition.
Even if an ambition it need not be selfish or ignoble.
138
SAN CELESTINO 139
Certainly no ambitious fancy cast a halo of romantic
hope over the great city as Petruccio first saw its
ancient walls. He felt safe enough from any dangers
of greatness : for him no prelate s purple, no cardinal s
scarlet hat, beckoned on to distinction. Of such things
he never dreamed, even with aversion. Nor did
those who accompanied him, more as guards than as
comrades, dream them for him. If they had fancies
of their own, they had none for him. He had nothing
to recommend him. He came of obscure people, and
was wholly without influence ; he was not merely
poor but penniless ; he lacked learning, knowledge of
the world and of men ; he had not the slightest training
or experience ; he had, indeed, sanctity, but it was
of so rare a type, so peculiar, so unpopular, almost
repellent in its character, that it only served to isolate
him, and was unlikely to create either admiration or
sympathy.
He and his companions entered Rome by the
Appian Way and the Porta San Sebastiano. Along
the Appian Way they had been travelling ever since
leaving Capua, and now as they drew near Rome it
was lined by the tombs of famous heathens, some of
which Messer Giacomo was learned enough to point
out. Petruccio glanced at them indifferently. He
knew little of history, and did not care much for it.
He had not the least idea that he himself was to be
enshrined in history as one of its most tragic and
pathetic figures. His mighty libeller, Dante, was not
born, and would not appear on the earth for another
twenty years.
Scipio was nothing to him, and the tomb of the
Scipios interested him no more than that of Caecilia
140 SAN CELESTINO
Metella a few miles back. The Caetani Castle opposite
the latter had attracted a sort of wondering attention
from him. Popes had come of that illustrious,
arrogant house ; for all he knew, popes had been
born there, or had lived there as children with their
parents.
But the little meagre church of Domine Quo Vadis
was different.
* Here, the learned Messer Giacomo informed
him, St. Peter met Our Lord. Nero had begun to
persecute the Christians, hoping to throw on them
the odium of having fired the city ; for the people
were outrageous because of his having fiddled and
sung while it was burning. It was certain that on the
Pope the Emperor s malice would fall heaviest, and
the Christians entreated Peter to fly for a while from
Eome. At last he yielded, and he had got thus far
when he met another wayworn traveller, hurrying
wearily towards the city. He had often seen Him
before, and knew His figure and His face ; he had
heard Him teach, and seen Him. die, seen Him risen
from death, seen Him rise into the living air as He
took His homeward way to heaven. " Domine, quo
vadis ? " he stammered. And Christ showed him His
scarred hands and feet. " To Kome," He answered,
" to be crucified again." And so He vanished, but
His footprints showed still in the hard pavement, as
though it had been of moist sand. Then Peter turned
back to Kome and was crucified himself.
Petruccio hardly heard him. He heard higher
voices : his namesake s, and that other to which all
his life long he had been listening.
Petruccio knelt where Peter had knelt, not daring
SAN CELESTINO 141
to kneel where Christ had stood. He did not even
kiss the place : what were his lips that they should
press the spot where God s feet had been ? Then he
rose and went on to Kome, which was to crucify him
too, and not with mere wood, though not yet. At
this time Petruccio never saw the Pope : he was too
obscure and too humble to crave any audience, and
his reverence was paid to the many tombs of popes
who were long dead.
His ordination was not an affair of any public
consequence, and he was ordained among many
others, none of whom were so absolutely insignificant
as himself. Their parents stood near, and they had
congratulations to receive, little family feasts after
wards to share in. His three friends commended
him, because he had been obedient, but, now their
point was gained, it may not have seemed, even to
them, a matter of much consequence. He had
listened to reason, that was all. No doubt they
assisted at his first Mass, but it is not likely that
they took much further interest in him. They had
their own affairs to attend to. So they presently
melted away, and the forlorn, bewildered hermit was
left to himself in the heartless loneliness of a turbulent,
scolding capital, occupied with matters of world-wide
importance. Like the pelican in the wilderness, like
the sparrow alone on the housetop, was he solitary.
Oh, if it had been a wilderness, how much more con
tented would he have been ! And back to the real
wilderness he fled at last, not one human heart in
Rome grieving for his going, not one human eye
missing him. That was in 1246, just half a century
before his tardy death. No one had pitied him in
142 SAN CELESTINO
Home, and no one bade God speed him upon his long
and hard journey back homeward, into the far-off,
intricate net of gorges that make up the Abruzzi.
In exitu Israel de Egypto, he sang to himself, as
he left the city behind, and came out on to the weird
solitude of the campagna. Its grey emptiness
welcomed him, its unearthly silence cheered him, its
waste and starving poverty enriched him ; he wanted
to hear no voice but One, he shrank from every society
but that of God, who alone bore with him ; he loathed
every possession but that of Him who possesses all
things.
Here and there a shepherd, almost as haggard and
silent as himself, would give him a bit of hard bread,
and now and then, at a peasant s dark hut, he would
be given a corner where he might sleep at night, on a
sheepskin, or on the bare mud floor. But even to
them he seemed a fugitive, flying they knew not
from what.
CHAPTEE IV
AT last, after weeks of slow but not, to him, wholly
tedious journeying afoot, he came to the rocky heights
called Monte Murrone, or Morone, as austere as they
were desolate and empty.
Here was a hanging bit of forest, and here he
found, hidden among the windy trees, a horrible cave.
He had come home. For five years it was his home,
all the home on earth he needed or cared for. Such
happiness as we mostly strive after he never thought
of ; nevertheless he was happy here, happy but
cruelly tried, and stricken continually. Shelter the
wretched cave scarcely afforded, for it lay open to the
howling mountain breeze, so that, at his Mass, the
two candles of coarsest brown beeswax would often
gutter and run down ; the rain would enter, in the
wind s mouth, and be his bedfellow, who had no bed
but the naked rock ; yes, and the snow, in midwinter,
would push in and be his blanket.
None of these things tried his soul, and his body
was but a harshly treated step-brother. The colder
blew the blast the warmer glowed his sense of love
and companionship.
The foxes have holes so have I, he would think,
the Son of Man had not where to lay His head.
It was not that. Starving as he often was, fasting,
143
144 SAN CELESTINO
as though all the year were a Lent, as he always was,
it was not that : he had meat to eat that the world
knows not of.
But there came agonies of the soul, too, uncer
tainties that dazed him for hours and days together ;
and temptations that grew out of his incessant victories
over temptation. Sometimes every argument of his
three friends would rise up in his memory loudly, and
assume a power they had not seemed to possess when
they had been urged by them to his face, that he was
a coward Hying from the Church s conflict with the
world ; a mere idler afraid to bear the outward burden
of the day and of its heats ; a self-indulgent shirker,
lying at ease in his own way of perfection, instead of
girding on a priest s armour to toil and fight like the
rest. Had Christ been a hermit ? Had he not lived
among men, and taught them by His word and by
His life ? Had He not condescended to the common
life of men, so that they blasphemed Him as a glutton
ous man and a wine-bibber ? Had He not sat at the
tables of the rich, and joined in the feasting of village
marriages ?
For hours and days together these accusations
would beat themselves against his brain, as the sun
beat against his rock at summer noon, and the shrieking
winds beat at winter night. Often his brain itself
seemed wracked with storm, till it reeled to and fro,
and he was at his wits end. Then at last he could
remember that Christ, who had scorned the accusation
that He was Himself a wine-swiller, and a lover of
feasts, had scorned equally the accusation of his
forerunner of the desert, of whom the same liars
declared that he had a devil. They said he had a
SAN CELESTINO 145
devil ; Christ said, Of them that are born of women
there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist.
So the temptation would swing round and attack
him in a fresh place.
He would tell himself that his three friends were
like the three who beset holy Job : smooth and
plausible, but sons of Belial after all, dressing up
worldly maxims in pious phrases, incapable of seeing
higher than their own heads, accusers like him who
walked to and fro in the earth, the ruined angel. And,
seeing that Messer Giacomo and Bastiano, and Lippo
the sub-deacon, were as Eliphaz the Themanite,
Baldad the Suhite, and Sophar the Naamathite,
swiftly came the conclusion that he was himself the
Job of the comparison : the holy Job whose part God
Himself took against the carping reproaches of the
unfit, incapable, insincere critics.
If he were misappreciated and miscalled, were not
all the saints misunderstood and misinterpreted ?
And then came the soft, caressing flattery of suggestion
that it was even so, and that he was thus attacked
because he also was a saint. This trial was the most
intolerable.
He knew himself for the least of men, and he knew
that he so knew himself ; and yet there would creep
stealthily in this monstrous whisper that he was a
saint, one of God s intimates, one who had heard God
talking as a man talks with his friend, one who has
overheard Divine secrets which it is not given to
man to utter. And he had heard them. He saw the
world naked, and truth undisguised. The trappings,
in which pomp and pride dress themselves, had been
stripped off from them, and it had been given to
146 SAN CELESTINO
him to know those ugly idols as no gods ; he had been
able to discern the difference between the unchanging
voice of eternal truth, and the plausible, adroit maxims
that masquerade as truth expressed in contemporary
language, so that the modern ear may comprehend
it, and the modern taste savour it.
Was not his own way of Christianity Christ s way
of it, and his three friends formulation of it a practical
abdication of its sovereign simplicity and austerity ?
Were they not hard at work reconciling God and
Mammon, gathering and scattering, doing all the
impossibles that Christ had forewarned His followers
against ?
Was not their cry * Peace, and Christ s A sword ?
With all their theology were they not pagan ? Had
they not invented their own present-day Christianity,
and was it not wholly alien from Christ s ? Christ
possessed nothing ; and did not they want to possess
as much as they could ? What did Christ care for
books He who had written only once, and then upon
the dust, for the next breeze to scatter, what no man
had ever read ? Whereas books and the piling up of
books was the glory of these foolish-wise.
My Kingdom is not of this world, He had declared
inexorably ; whereas Messer Giacomo and his two
adjutants were, above all, busied about the consolida
tion of a kingdom that should be above all patent to
the world, and master it, yet be like it, and com
pounded of elements that were such as its own. All
this he would hear himself pleading in his own favour,
and in their condemnation ; and through it all would
run the subtle whisper that he was wiser, and better,
and more Christlike than they.
SAN CELESTINO 147
That temptation to feel himself a saint was the
most hateful, the most cruel of all. How could he be
deaf to it ? How could he stifle it down with the
most passionate, most piteous contradiction ?
A saint ! he would wail. Nay, the lowest and
most abject of sinners. A castaway unless God spare
me, and hold me in arms against myself. He wo aid,
with weary iteration, declare that it was so, and
memory would coolly contradict, and bid him not lie,
even under pretence of humility.
No one ever had a clearer or more just memory.
His life lay open to him as a plain book, with every
fact recorded, and nothing extenuated. What had he
done amiss ?
If it were some one else s life, and he the judge of it,
must he not pronounce it blameless ? Why should he
lie humbly about it, because it was his own ?
A calm, relentless voice would bid him search his
own life, and see if he could find there any impurity,
any cruelty, any sordid self-seeking, any disobedience.
He had never once taken, or desired anything of any
other human being s not their goods, or their endow
ments, or their advantages. Little as he had ever
possessed, it had more than sufficed him : he had only
longed to cast away that little. Never once had he
sighed for pleasures or for pleasure. He had never
even desired to be praised, much less courted praise
at expense of any competitor. Not once in his life
had he been spiteful, or envious. He had belittled no
one ; felt no grudge against anyone ; despised no one.
In no living human being had he told himself that he
beheld an inferior. The very beasts he had admired
as superior, the very inanimate trees and hills, in that
L 2
148 SAN CELESTINO
they were, in their appointed place, that which God had
set them there to be. To the beasts, and the soulless
rocks, he might not call himself inferior in that he was
made in God s image, and had been given a human
soul like Christ s own. But he took humbly their
example of fulfilment. Could he help remembering
that millions of men were lustful and base, cheats and
thieves, and malignant, sodden with self, lower than
the brutes in their lives, much more cruel, incom
parably harder of heart ?
What real sense or meaning was there in calling
himself the most abject of men? In truth he had
never been abject, and what truth was there in crying
out that he was basest of all ?
Might he not have lived as the rest ! Ay, and died
a good death too ; as countless numbers did, so his
charity bade him believe, in spite of it all. Was not
his body made like theirs, liable to the same desires,
capable of the same delights ?
Softness, and sweetness ; delicate tastes and
thrilling pleasures could he have learned no taste
for them ? Nay, was any learning needed, had not
Nature taught it all ? Was his tongue obtuse to
pleasant flavours, his ear dull to lovely sounds, his eye
blind to fair images, his body numb to exquisite sensa
tions ? The same God who had made Alfeo s ears had
made his ; eyes like Eaniero s looked out upon the
world of beauty from his brow ; what had held him
back ? Fear ? No ; he knew well that he was not a
coward, nor distrustful of infinite mercy and divine
patience. He did not for one instant believe that
Guito and Omero, Alfeo and Eaniero, were doomed
to damnation because the light of life danced in their
SAN CELESTINO 149
eyes, and the pleasant zephyr of time s noonday
wooed their youth.
They would, he stedfastly and frankly believed,
be saved, by God s generosity and Christ s infinite
merit. Why not he, if he had been as they ? What
was the difference between himself and them ? Divine
grace !
They were venturing all without grace : he was
living wholly in it. They were gambling on God s
limitless, princely generosity : was not he higher ?
Even Divine Justice could scarcely condemn him.
This was the subtlest, the most intolerable tempta
tion. Keason herself bore a hand in it ; common-
sense worked in it. Fairness, equity, flung it against
him. For reason applies to ourselves as to others :
common-sense is not for everyone except oneself ;
it must be a sheer affectation to allow every advantage
of fairness and equity and candour to all the world, and
deny that we ourselves are concerned in them.
Surely, then, it must all come to this, that he was
a saint : one who desired to give, and would not be
content with mere greedy taking ; one who aimed, not
at selfish, indolent salvation, but at the glory of God.
He was not puzzle-headed, and the ruthless
argument urged itself irresistibly. If the others were
good enough, he must be better than mere necessity
called for.
CHAPTEK V
WHILE it lasted it was intolerable. But it did not last
for ever. Suddenly the temptation would fall silent, as
if it had forgotten him. And then came that which
made his life, after all, blissful. It seemed like God
Himself, as if God had come and the abashed spirits of
evil had withdrawn shamefaced.
There came a happiness like a child s, who knows no
past and fears no future, but plays, with unquestioning
content, in the presence of its smiling father.
Petruccio then scarcely even felt ashamed of the
temptation that was over : it left no sting and no scar.
He could hardly remember it. The wind growled and
expostulated, the rain wept, the cold bit sharply ; but
Petruccio believed none of them. There was nothing to
moan about, no matter for tears, the heart within him
was a hearth where God sat at home with him, warmly.
The sufferings of the time that had been so present
were not worthy to be compared with the glory that was
revealed in him. The very world beneath his feet, the
world whereof so infinitesimal a part touched even his
feet, became suddenly sacred, one shrine of God, for God
moved in it, as of old in the garden. God s hand held it,
as the king s holds the golden orb, and it smelt of the
hand of God, fragrant and holy. And his cave, narrow
and low, dank and cheerless, lighted up with warmth
150
SAN CELESTINO 151
and sweetness : he was not alone there. Is the best
home most sumptuous ? Is it costly plenishing, or love,
that makes the home ? And this eagle-nest of his,
hung above the gorge, among the clouds and winds, was
suddenly changed into a home of exquisite love and
intimacy. He felt the presence of his Friend, the neigh
bourhood of his Father ; sometimes he had to bend
down and hide his face on the stony floor lest he should
see the face that even Moses, on the mountain, durst not
for reverence stedfastly behold. With his human eyes
he did not wish to see. He desired only to feel, to know,
to experience the actual presence of God : by no sense,
but by the higher faculty of appreciation. It was not
with his ears that he heard, and yet he did hear con
solation, encouragement, and kind, unflattering, father-
like commendation.
Thou canst never please every man : let it suffice
thee to satisfy Me. Tease not thyself with the blame
of men.
The gentle, omnipotent Voice bade him be at peace,
seeing that by It he was not condemned. All men, it
told him, need not to be alike : even the best among
men are suffered to differ, as the stars have not each the
same glory. To some, of the Spirit, is given the gifts of
tongues, to some the gift of prophecy by the same Spirit.
It is the same God that worketh all in all. Every man
need not be a teacher, nor every messenger an Apostle ;
some messengers have not far to go on a little errand ;
some are called one way, some sent in another. The
task of some is large and visible, of others tiny and out
of sight. Joshua must fight, it was enough that Moses,
on the hill above the battle, should lift up his arms and
pray. There is the perfect law of liberty.
152 SAN CELESTINO
He felt himself now tortured by no accusation of
sanctity, but had the peace of a happy child whose
father smiles on him for having done his best. There
are children who must needs go forth and work, sons
whose duty it is to sally roughly out and fight, but there
is a child as dear, whose business it is to stay at home
and love.
From God he never heard one reproach of sloth ;
sufficit tibi gratia mea, came the gentle whisper of en
couragement. Be content, the inward voice said ;
so long as I ask nothing that thou hast left undone.
And then would come the old reminder, I will not
suffer thee to be tempted above that which thou canst
bear.
Of the temptations of these rare saints the world
has heard much, always misunderstanding. To the
bestial, filthy world temptation means for ever one
thing, the thing with which it is most familiar ; and the
dirty world smirks and ogles over the imagined tale of
the temptations. The sin it lives with is about the only
name of sin it knows. And it likes to think that on the
brink of such dungheapsthe saints stumbled and groped.
In reality God is God, and He will not suffer His holy
ones to taste corruption. And Satan is Satan, not a
sodden, sensual fool : what a fool he would be to tempt
the saints as these flesh-bound sons of his imagine ! An
archangel, ruined and perverted by pride, does not fool
himself by urging on a saint sins he never himself com
mitted. His huge, poisoned intellect knows better than
to lay out before spiritual eyes traps that his own
spiritual nature despises, as he sets them for the carnal.
It is not possible to describe truly the real tempta
tions of the saints, because we who try are not saintly ;
SAN CELESTINO 153
nor to make intelligible their intervals of reward, side-
gleams of heaven, because we who would do it cannot
ourselves comprehend the peace of God that passeth
understanding.
So the anguish of Petmccio, and his sudden re
vulsions of bliss, must remain untold until another
saint shall tell of them. And that is not the saints
business. Theirs it is to keep the secret of the King.
CHAPTEE VI
ON one wild night of winter God had been with him, and
Petruccio sat warm in his freezing den among the groan
ing, naked trees. He came to the gaping mouth of his
cave and stood on the edge of the rock that fell sheer
down into the dark valley. It was a night of clear
darkness, not cloudy, and the moon flung a desolate,
cold light down upon the jags of white rock. The wind
came dry and bitter cold, tearing out of the north with
iron in its teeth. The trees ground their bare arms
together noisily, and the leaves they had shed long ago
whirled about like squandered, poor coins that had
bought nothing. Far below lay Solmona, and Petruccio
could see its lights glimmering, not warm, but sug
gesting homes and comfort.
Suddenly the temptation flew at him, like a black
mastiff at a man s throat in the darkness.
Why not for him too ?
Every light meant a home, a hearth, a family. He
alone shivered, on the topmost crag of rock, outcast
from humanity. They were good, frugal folk those
peasants down yonder : clean-living, hard-working,
unspotted by the world and wealth, bound together
in the most human, most simple bonds of mutual
kinship.
The poorest hut below, hundreds of feet beneath
154
SAN CELESTINO 155
him, was warmed by the fire of human charity. Hus
band and wife, child and father, were all knit together
in the holy bond of family, as Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
had been at Nazareth. What room had they for selfish
ness in the narrowness of their lives, so narrow and yet
so crowded ? Was there a father of them, or a mother,
who did not live in the hope of their children s life after
them, laying aside unconsciously all personal desire ?
He remembered, the winter after he went to Salerno,
how once this cry of home had suddenly made itself
heard in his loneliness. That day a chill fog was
driven in from the gulf, and the mountains behind the
city were cloaked in snow ; the sea-breeze, sluggish
and biting, filled the streets with mist. It was late
afternoon, and he was walking home from the schools,
back to his bare and friendless garret. Passing by a
poor house on the marina he saw a fisherman enter,
just as he w r ent by ; as the door opened to admit him,
Petruccio saw in a common room, scantly furnished,
but warm with the light of glowing logs ; he saw the
grandam spinning by the hearth, the children run to
greet their father, his wife look up smiling from her
frugal cooking. It had given him a gasp of home
sickness, and now the same clutch of home-sickness
gripped him at the throat and at the heart.
To what purpose is this waste ?
The valley lay beneath him, between the hills,
black like a deep well, and at the bottom gleamed the
home-lights, like stars borrowed from heaven, that
shine up out of a dark water. Every light meant a
home, and in every home the father of the family was
breeding souls for heaven, as well as bodies for the
rough struggle of the work-a-day world. Among
156 SAN CELESTINO
God s ancient chosen people barrenness had been
esteemed a reproach, childlessness a husband s dis
grace because every child was a new member of the
nation God had chosen, a possible saint, or a saint s
forerunner and ancestor.
But he was homeless : he had set his own veto on
any soul that might have sprung from him : his
spiritual inheritance was higher and greater than the
Hebrew s, as the church that God had made Catholic
was greater than the church that Moses had made only
national ; but he was wilfully defrauding of their birth
right whole generations, that might have owed their
spiritual as well as their bodily existence to him.
God had thought it not beneath His Majesty to bid
man increase and. multiply that he might replenish the
earth ; and how much better worth while to make
citizens of the heavenly city. But he was a priest :
that die was cast. Only might it not all have been a
mistake ? Had he not been over-persuaded to become
a priest, wholly against his will ? Had he perhaps dared
to become a priest without vocation, not at God s call,
but at the officious bidding of mistaken men ?
If so he was an intruder, standing profanely on holy
ground where he had no business. He went back into
his cave, and found it empty, though God had seemed to
be there with him an hour ago. Was it even empty ?
Might not its thick obscurity hold spirits worse than
his own ?
The wind screamed, with hateful laughter, outside,
and the gnashing of the dry branches was like a cackling
devil s merriment.
All night long he paced up and down the brief length
of the cave, sometimes, as he strode too far, dashing his
head against the shelving roof. Terrible unfleshed
SAN CELESTINO 157
hands grabbed at him out of the darkness, plucking at
his rags, like thorns, and the hunger of his empty body
burned within like a cold fire.
He thought of the ruin of Judas, the false priest.
Was he himself any true priest, he who had submitted
almost sullenly to ordination, as it seemed now, for mere
peace and quietness, to avoid being scolded and re
proached ? Would his end be the same ? Outside his
cave, just beneath the rocky shelf, a wild fig-tree jutted
out over the precipice. On such a tree the false
apostle had hanged himself, to give the devil justice,
that he might go to his own place.
He saw it all, not willingly as one who weaves an
arras of meditation, nor as in a picture, but as though
he had been there with Judas. He remembered the
wild March afternoon, with the portent of darkness; the
narrow, slagging path under the city wall, the valley
beneath ; the accursed lonely spot, the dead fig-tree,
sprawling its dry and naked branches out over the
blackness. How Judas had slunk thither, desperate
and maddened, scorned by the very priests who had
been his accomplices ; with their gibe still hissing in his
ears, What is it to us ? See thou to it.
How Iscariot had peered furtively about, unwinding
the hempen halter from his waist ; how he had crept
out upon the creaking tree that withered and shrieked
beneath its unbidden, wicked burden. He had shed
the innocent blood, and was accursed, though it must
needs be shed : by him it need not have been shed.
And he himself, Petruccio, should Christ s blood be
shed again in the mystery by him ? It must be offered,
but need it be offered by him ? If he were no called
priest, but an interloper, was not every offering a
blasphemy and an outrage, a sacrilege like Iscariot s ?
CHAPTEE VII
IN the morning came his server, a pious, simple lad
from the village ; but Petruccio sent him off. He
would not say Mass. He durst not. The lad crept
back, puzzled, and full of doubt, but held his peace.
Next day he came again, but the cave was empty,
for the hermit had fled. All the weary road to Eome,
the Kome he dreaded, he would wend, to cast himself
at the feet of Christ s Vicar, and ask what he should do.
He did not think now of the Pope as of a great man
of the earth, but simply as of one who stood in the world
in God s place. So he, even he, Petruccio, would have
courage to seek him, and beg of him what it was that it
behoved him to do.
He walked fiercely, with stammering steps, bruising
his feet against stones, tearing himself through briars,
heeding nothing by the way, starving, fainting ; but
he never reached Kome.
He went like a dead man walking, and this death
lasted till the third day. Then came his resurrection.
It was in the breaking of a red dawn that he came to
a place, almost like a garden for its gentleness and
beauty ; and there he met one who came graciously
to meet him.
No doubt he had met others on the road, but he
had taken no note of them, and given them no greeting.
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SAN CELESTINO 159
Neither did this one greet him, except by a smile
that he remembered. The figure was still youthful,
and the face unlined by time ; nor would it have
mattered, for on it lay the radiance of eternity.
They were face to face, and Petruccio could not pass
without discourtesy. He looked up from the earth and
saw a face that belonged to heaven.
I am Placid, the monk, said the stranger, and
Petruccio remembered the abbot of Cava.
Far away, in the abbey there, there was happy
weeping among the sons of St. Benedict. They had
need of a new abbot, but they had a new saint to swell
the train of Benedict in heaven.
Quo vadis ? the monk asked Petruccio. The
young abbot did not tell him that for his sake he was
himself delayed upon his way home. He had the old air
of youthful sweetness, of pleasant patience.
Petruccio did not know that the abbot was what
the world calls dead. He did not argue or wonder
how the abbot of far-off Cava should be here in the
Abruzzi. But he remembered his gentleness and
kindness, and told him of his doubts, of his misery,
of his horror.
The abbot Placid never touched him, but his face
pointed, undoubtingly, back, whence Petruccio had
fled. He lifted his hand and with it showed the way
thither.
God knows all, he said.
He used no ponderous arguments ; he urged no
patent proofs. In all his calm friendliness there was
no reproach.
God is waiting there for you, he*said,and Petruccio
knew that he meant in the cave whence he had fled.
160 SAN CELESTINO
Then Petruccio turned back. Only once he looked
behind him, and the abbot was still standing, smiling,
in the middle of the road, as he and Dom Mauro had
stood at the brow of the way that leads from the abbey
at Cava towards Salerno, when the two students had
bidden them farewell. It was the same heavenly
courtesy that expressed itself in his attitude, free from
impatience to be gone. Only this time the abbot s
hands were not folded in his loose black sleeves as
then : one pointed towards Solmona, and one was
lifted upwards towards his present road.
Petruccio went quickly still, but without hurry ;
and his gait was no longer stumbling and disordered.
He was not now faint, and weary, or perturbed. The
way seemed pleasant and easy, as though it had been
all downhill. And so, after a fast of nearly six days,
he got back to his cave above the valley of Solmona,
and in it he found some one waiting for him.
Alfeo ! he cried out.
So you remember me ! It is over five years
since we saw each other.
Kemember you, of course I remember you.
I have come all this way to visit you. Are you
angry ?
How could I be angry ?
Nevertheless he wondered how Alfeo had found
him out. He did not know that, hidden as he was
in the savage depths of the Abruzzi, there were many
who spoke of him. And he wondered, too, to find
Alfeo there, because the abbot had only said that he
would find God.
* Do you know why I am come, Pietro di Murrone ?
To see me, you said, answered his host, smiling.
SAN CELESTINO 161
More than that. To ask if you would let me stay.
Now Petruccio was really astounded. He had
never thought of any companion, never imagined
that anyone would wish to join him. And Alfeo !
Do you mean altogether ? he asked, thinking
that he must have been mistaken.
1 Altogether, if you will allow it.
Perhaps it was strange that Alfeo s purpose did not
alter at sight of Petruccio. He naturally remembered
him as he had been at Salerno, not more than a youth,
and with something of a youth s comeliness, in spite of
poverty and austerity. Now Pietro di Murrone was
six and twenty, and looked many years older, utterly
gaunt and wild ; his rags were such as no beggar
would have worn, and his hair hung about his neck
in long rough locks, untended and ugly. His beard
was matted and unkempt, and his huge melancholy
eyes burned like black fires out of the deathly pallor
of his face. He was all but a skeleton, the skull
scarcely covered by the dusky white skin, his naked
arms mere bones held together by muscles like rough
strings. But no multiplication of mere details can
give any idea of the unearthliness of the hermit s
appearance.
For six days he had tasted no food, and his body
was worn out : only the burning spirit shone out of
him like a lamp.
Would Alfeo become like him ? He did not ask
himself whether he should grow to look like him, he did
not care ; but he wished to be like him. That was
what was most strange.
I can give you nothing to eat, laughed Petruccio.
* See what a host you have come to.
162 SAN CELESTINO
His laugh was still pleasant as it had always been,
and Alfeo noted it with a sort of wonder ; for it was
peculiar, as is the speech of a man who has not spoken
for years.
But I have something ; look ! And Alfeo opened
his wallet and took out bread and a few dried figs.
So you are to be host after all, said Petruccio,
and he accepted frankly his guest s hospitality.
He asked no questions, not prying at all into the
reasons that had brought Alfeo on so strange an errand.
He hated questions : he had always been tormented
by them.
Not far off, but a little lower down, was another
cave, better perhaps than his own, and thither he led
his guest.
Alfeo surveyed it with an odd satisfaction, as one
might look at a lodging that struck one as convenient
and suitable.
When the server came again next mcrning, he
was surprised to find that there was a stranger kneeling
in the upper cave near Petruccio, but he showed no
sign of astonishment, for that would have been a lack
of education. He made up his mind that the hermit
had gone away to fetch him. After a while he under
stood that the new-comer was going to stay : he did
not think it strange, but only envied him.
* I did not know, he observed one morning, after
Mass, that Fra Pietro would allow anyone to join
him.
Nor did I, said Alfeo, * but I came to see.
They were walking down the narrow, very steep
path that led to Alfeo s own cell.
Later in the day Alfeo and Petruccio met ; they
SAN CELESTINO 163
took it in turns to go down to Solmona to beg : after
wards they divided the poor scraps of bread between
them. They would accept nothing else, except the
refuse outside leaves of cabbage. On Fridays and
fast days Petruccio would eat nothing but the cabbage,
insisting, however, on Alfeo s always eating bread,
or a sort of cold porridge made of a handful of Indian
meal, mixed with cold water.
Little brother, said Alfeo, there is some one
else who wants to join you.
Not Raniero ! laughed Petruccio. Perhaps you
had a letter from him when you went down there to
Solmona.
I did not know letters were permitted, said Alfeo
cheerfully. His old, occasionally moody, manner was
gone, and he had acquired an almost boyish light-
heartedness.
No, it is not Raniero. It is the lad who comes
to serve your Mass.
Maurizio !
* Yes. It surprises you ? Me, no. He always
comes up quickly, and goes down slowly : whereas it
is downhill going away.
You think he prefers climbing up ?
That is my idea.
Alfeo was right : Maurizio longed to stay with them,
though he did not dare to say so. He perceived that
they were both gentlemen, whereas he was a peasant.
He hardly remembered that in heaven sons of goat
herds and kings are all mixed up.
Fra Alfeo thinks you want to stay up here with
us, Petruccio remarked to him, after a day or two,
during which he watched the lad.
M 2
164 SAN CBBBBTINO
Maurizio blushed.
* It may seem an indiscretion, he said, twisting his
rosary in his hands. I do not know any Latin.
But God understands our talk of the Abruzzi ;
which is lucky, as I pray badly in Latin. What would
your father say ? It would not do to annoy him.
4 There are six of us, and I am the stupid one. He
would not mind.
* I also was the stupid one, declared Petruccio,
believing what he said.
But Maurizio was scandalised : he already felt the
esprit de corps of a religious for his founder.
4 Up here, added Petruccio, it does not so much
matter being stupid. And God overlooks it.
Maurizio was right. His father did not mind in
the least.
4 One gets to heaven that way for very little, Netto
observed to his wife.
4 And it is not far off, said she. 4 If he fell ill, one
could send him a medicine.
4 That might help him to heaven all the quicker,
said her husband.
So Maurizio came up the mountain to stay, and
the order of the Celestini had been founded, without
its founder suspecting anything about it.
CHAPTEE VIII
IN 1251 a misfortune happened to them.
One day they heard an unwelcome noise, mixed
with loud voices and laughter.
The baron who owned their mountain wanted wood,
and he had sent men to cut down all the trees that
modestly veiled their dwellings. They did not dream
of expostulating : it was not their wood, and they
did not see why the baron should not have his trees
if he needed them.
So they made no complaint and went off to Monte
Majella. There were no caves there, but as many
rocks as any reasonable person could wish for, and
they found a kind of tough bush with long branches
like wattles. These they cut and made into a sort of
hurdle, with which they built little huts against the
shelving rock. It was not difficult to roof them over
with sods, supported on long sticks, and covered with
boughs of wild olive with the leaves left on.
They made a fourth hut for their chapel, and it was
quite big enough for three people to worship God in.
But presently there were more than three.
One day during Mass some one came in and knelt
behind Alfeo. This happened now and then, and he
was not, therefore, surprised. After Mass the stranger,
however, did not go away, but knelt on until Alfeo got
up to return to his own hut. Then he was surprised.
165
166 SAN CELESTINO
Guito ! he exclaimed, just as Petruccio had cried
out * Alfeo when he came.
Guito was as neat and prosperous-looking as he
had been at his own coming, and he was now himself
not much less wild than Petruccio had looked.
Why not ? asked Guito, when they had gone
outside. If you could find the way, why not I ?
So you too have come to see Pietro di Murrone !
Like you. It was easier for me to carry my
baggage, for I have no lute.
Alfeo laughed : he had flung his lute into the sea
near Vietri, where it led to a report that he was
drowned.
I hope you have not brought many sonnets, he
said demurely. In our little company we mostly
talk in prose.
That you always did, and thought in it too,
retorted Guito.
When Petruccio came out he did not look much
astonished. Alfeo s arrival had used up all his faculty
of surprise.
I hoped to find Alfeo more improved, said Guito ;
* even here one perceives there are disappointments.
Nevertheless one could see that his air was very
friendly to both his old comrades.
He has lacked example, laughed Petruccio. * It
will be different now.
Guito noted instantly that they were both more
cheerful than of old ; it was much more remarkable
than their appearance, which was saying something.
Guito liked his own appearance ; he would have to get
over that.
Maurizio was introduced, who rather wished that
SAN CELESTINO 167
the new-comer might have looked less aristocratic ;
he did not actually wish that he had stayed away.
Guito really had come to stay.
You wonder why, he said to Alfeo. You
thought I had more sense than you.
But he did not, when they were alone, talk like
that to Petruccio. Petruccio seemed to think it quite
natural that he should come, and therefore Guito
explained himself to him.
From the beginning, he said, * you disturbed me.
I could never give over considering you, and your ideas
worried me. I always laughed at you, and felt a
grudge, because you seemed to know something I did
not. The business of poets is to know everything,
and I was irritated to suspect that you understood
the inside, whereas it was only the outside I had
perceived. Who had taught you ? You were as
ignorant as a professor, though you had learned none
of their absurdities. How came you to see deeper
than myself, who kept watching everything ? I found
out your teacher.
He had found out Petruccio s teacher, and, what
was more surprising, had submitted to learn cf Him.
He had always loved the wcrld ; not exactly that
which proud people mean when they talk of it, but
the visible world of mountains and plains and valleys,
of sapphire sea, and opal cloud, of secret-telling woods,
and sedgy meadows by flat streams, of flowers and
winds, and sunrise and noon, sunset and sweet night.
And in a way he had loved God for making all these
things, but not for Himself, and he had prized the
lesser gifts more than the greater Giver.
Suddenly he perceived his mistake, and the detail
168 SAN CELESTINO
of creation no longer contented him, if he had ever
been contented ; he aimed at the loftier possession, and
would be satisfied with nothing short of the Creator.
It happened that to Petruccio he owed the first
quest of God, and Petruccio s way of attaining Him
seemed the only obvious way, now that his own object
was the same. This was no more than what we call
an accident ; but so it fell out.
The outward beauty of God s intimations of himself
would never again feed his hunger for loveliness, he
must have the inward and infinite beauty, of which
these things only hinted ; he perceived that even the
sense can never be satisfied with that which appeals
to it : the eye is not filled with seeing, nor the ear
with hearing. And the sense is a small part of
awakened apprehension. That which lies behind
creation must be infinitely more lovely than any item,
or all the items, of creation. But it is not patent :
its loveliness is not unveiled, or appreciable by the
easy channels of sense. In order to possess God he
must cease to possess himself ; or rather, until he had
finally arrived at the possession of God he would
never, in fact, possess himself.
Nevertheless he was, and had always been, generous,
and the cost of this inheritance he did not count. The
just price of anything is what it is worth, and he knew,
without delusion, that only by giving everything could
he fairly hope to gain everything. He did not expect
God for nothing.
Guito was better able than Petruccio to state his
case to himself. Probably Petruccio had never stated
it. He was much less articulate than Guito. Nor
had he proceeded by judgment, but by instinct. Both
SAN CELESTINO 169
were called to the same thing, and by the same voice,
but by different steps.
Alfeo had also been called to the same point, but
by yet another road.
It is quite possible that Petruccio would have been
almost bewildered had Alfeo s process been expounded
to him.
Alfeo imagined that he had made this discovery
that he was, and must be, unhappy, because he had
desires which could never be fulfilled. No desires,
except the poorest, seemed to be capable of fulfilment.
To lay aside every desire must therefore be the only
sure road to happiness here on earth, and above all
the most hopeless desire of all, the desire of happiness
itself.
His life had been a ceaseless perturbation. There
had been endless and desperate clutchings at bliss ;
sudden and sharp delusions that it had been attained,
and swift discoveries that the exquisite light had
faded, and left a chill gloaming, threatening lonely
night. If youth failed of her promises, what would
age do ?
!>Yet he knew himself the heir of happiness. The
conviction of his destiny for it, the certainty of his
being meant for it, was unalterable and ineffaceable.
Nothing could cheat him of the absolute, innate
conviction that for it he had been created. Nothing
could persuade him that mere pleasure would do
instead.
The pleasures he had tasted were the highest, he told
himself, that present conditions could afford. On
music he had lifted himself at times into a region that
was almost the third heaven. But even music could be
170 SAN CELESTINO
a sycophant and waft him into a paradise that was after
all earthly, with a serpent hidden among the branches.
It could not be here : the happiness that he would
not give up aiming at ; or if here, it could not proceed
hence.
Happiness was inalienable, his birthright ; but to
attain it he must fling courageously away the desire for
it. At all events, every effort to catch it in a human
net must be given up as childish. Being infinite, it
must proceed from infinity, and he abruptly recognised,
as anyone may who chooses, that there is nothing
infinite but God.
So God must be his one object, and against God
there is only one really redoubtable enemy self. So
self must be abdicated.
There are other rivals of God, though of lesser
practical significance : the three old rivals, to which
three old-fashioned names are given. In order to
achieve God, therefore, the world must be utterly
thrown aside, the flesh must be entirely mastered, the
devil must be deprived of any mastery. In other words,
desires of every kind must be eradicated, With
ordinary worldliness he was quite untainted, but much
more would be needful the absolute rejection of
applause. He was not what is called sensual, but the
flattery of sweet sounds was itself another presentment
of the same Promethean lure : the devil is the
expression of spiritual rebellion, and there must be the
total abdication of will, since individual will is the gate
leading to the pathway of disobedience.
Petruccio might very easily have failed to grasp, or
if grasping might have refused to approve, this process.
He was himself a hermit for a far simpler reason. He
SAN CELESTINO 171
must be alone with God. He hated the world, with an
instinctive dread that was quite unreasoned and in
voluntary. It confused and bewildered him, and its
selfish turmoil drowned the silence through which he
could listen to the only voice he loved.
Neither Alfeo or Guito hated it ; by inclination they
liked it. But in that friendliness towards it they had
come, very unusually, to recognise an enmity to them
selves. And so they turned away from it as from a
trap : Petruccio fled from it as from a persecutor.
CHAPTER IX
ALFEO and Guito both remained, as did the simple
Maurizio, who knew nothing about his vocation, any
more than Petruccio. To Maurizio it had been merely
a question of following an example, the highest he
happened to have seen.
But there came another aspirant, who did not
remain.
One day Lippo, the sub-deacon, presented himself,
not without circumstance, and intimated that he
intended to join their community.
They were, in fact, a community by then. The
bishop, moved in the first instance by their confessor,
had approved of their institute, 5 Petruccio meekly
expostulating against there being any institute at all.
* We do not follow any rule, Petruccio declared.
We are not monks, said Alfeo. * But four people
who find their account in living up here in the way
we can.
The Bishop of Aquila, though firm, was a very
kindly man, and very supernatural.
He was altogether touched by the simplicity and
absence of form that he found. He had heard much of
the solitaries, and perhaps had wondered if it would all
tend to the benefit of the Church. He was not old
himself, and had no grudge against the incalculable
172
SAN CELESTINO 173
generosities of youth, but his office compelled him to
be prudent. He was very learned, and very clever,
and entirely devout. He feared God, but regarded
the person of no man. He had a rough-hewn, beautiful
face, nob handsome, but graced by grace itself. He
would rumple his queer reddish hair, and his pontifical
vestments were often awry upon him, for he had none
of the trim mind of a sacristan. He would wear any
thing the Pope bade him, and reverence it too, because
it was ordered by the Church, and symbolised a dignity
that he dissociated from himself. Nevertheless he did
not care a bit for trappings, and made small account
of manner and address.
The four solitaries received him with all due respect,
and readiest subjection. But he perceived that there
was Someone for whom they cared more than for him,
and he cared more for Him as well. He hated being a
bishop, but he may have made a finer bishop on that
very account. Being what he was, he laid aside his
former tastes and occupied himself with quiet
government, though he would far rather have been
governed.
He had been, and could be still, a better poet than
Quito, but of that he said nothing, and did not think
much. He was not effusive in manner, and he listened
almost silently while the four solitaries answered his
few, direct, straightforward questions. When he went
away, however, he blessed them with a benediction
that was not merely formal and official. It was
affectionate, and it conveyed a simple, satisfied
approval. Opus Domini mirabile in oculis nostris, he
said, not to them, as he went away. Of course he had to
go on foot : there was no driving or riding to the heights
174 SAN CELESTINO
of Monte Majella. He had walked all the way from his
bare palace, half like a castle and half like a monastery,
down there in the hot valley. And he had come alone,
not caring to bring even his chaplain ; for, though he
knew how good-natured and friendly the chaplain was,
the four solitaries could not, and he wanted above all
things to avoid disturbing them. So he went by him
self, in a decent but old cassock, and no outward show
of being one of the Church s nobles. That he was one
of God s nobles, too, the four hermits soon found out
for themselves.
He saw them each alone, for it was only for an hour
every day that they met, more than half of which was
taken up with Mass. Afterwards they talked together
for less than half an hour.
4 Tell me your rule, he had said to Petruccio, and
Petruccio had answered that they had no rule.
Tell me, then, your way of life : your hours and
how each is passed.
Even this was difficult. They were not monks,
but hermits, and each followed more or less his own
order of life.
I would tell you if I could, said Petruccio, with an
air almost puzzled. And then he answered the bishop s
questions one by one. Almost the whole day was spent
in contemplation ; indeed all of it, for though they
had now some patches of ground on which they laboured
to grow a little maize, and some common vegetables,
each patch was separate, and each worked in silence
and alone, not interrupting contemplation by labour.
The bishop perceived that it would be hard to
reduce to a written rule such a manner of life. Con
cerning Petruccio s own vocation to it, he asked very
SAN CELESTINO 175
little. It seemed as superfluous and impertinent as
inquiring why he had been born.
The other three he questioned more closely as to
their reasons for following Petruccio s example.
Alfeo s did not so entirely satisfy him.
It is not necessary to be without desires/ he
objected, perhaps it is not possible. Only one must
fix one s desires in the right place.
* On God. It is personal desire I mean. The
desire of oneself.
Alfeo had been now for a long time a hermit, and he
felt it less easy than he might have done at first to state
his case glibly. He shrank from seeming to argue ;
from setting a personal opinion against that of one so
much his superior in religion.
Must one not desire heaven for oneself ? asked the
bishop.
Only by implication, by desiring God one desires
the less in the greater.
Nevertheless the bishop was convinced that here also
was a true vocation to a very rare state. A smoking
flax should never be quenched by him : he remembered
who had come to cast fire on earth, and how He had
been straitened till it should be kindled.
The bishop went away, and not long afterwards
Lippo Cardone, the sub-deacon, came. He had been to
the bishop first to find out if Petruccio s institute had
really been approved : he had no idea of committing
himself.
* Oh yes, I have approved. It would be difficult
not to approve of them. And you think of joining
them ? It is a rare vocation and very austere.
Lippo looked as austere as possible, and he could
176 SAN CELESTINO
do a good deal that way. It flattered his intention to
hear of the rarity of the vocation. He wanted,
particularly, to do something out of the common.
So long as there is nothing the Church condemns,
he said sententiously, * I shall feel quite safe.
There was no fear of Lippo becoming a heretic. He
was self-sufficient, but not audacious, and had none of
the itching appetite for originality and novelty that
makes your heretic. But he was rather cross with the
Church. He had intended to adorn it, and had re
mained a sub-deacon for a number of years ; his bishop
had refused to advance him, even to the diaconate, and
he believed himself to have been harshly dealt with.
The present bishop did not ask him why he was only a
sub-deacon, and he volunteered no explanation.
I may assume then, he observed, that I have
your Most Eeverend Excellency s permission to join
this new institute ?
His air was very important.
It is Pietro s permission, rather, that you have to
obtain, answered the bishop, without any importance in
his air at all. May God bless your desire for perfection.
He rose from his chair, and Lippo felt himself dis
missed : he was not sure that he was not being snubbed
also. He was apt to imagine himself snubbed.
So he betook himself to Petruccio, and explained his
desire to join him, at some length. He was able to
explain more to him than he had found possible with
the bishop. Petruccio submitted patiently to all his
explanations, without gathering anything very definite
from them. He did not himself declare, as the bishop
had done, that the vocation was rare and the way of life
austere.
SAN CELESTINO 177
1 No doubt a holy man, said Lippo to himself, * but
not a born superior.
Lippo had a frosty nose, and it chilled Petruccio
more than the wintry winds had ever been able to do.
His manner had none of the freedom and cheerfulness
that Alfeo and Guito had brought with them. He had
been, falsely of course, accused of some worldliness
and laxity, and it behoved him to look sourer than if
that had not been the case. He was not a hypocrite,
but he felt a necessity of appearing at least as good
as he was.
He knew that God is just, and if he took the very
unpleasant step of becoming a hermit, it would be
hard if God did not right him. And to turn thus
indignantly from the world was, he felt, a very
spirited step.
Originally he had not minded the world : the
Church was in it, and ought to possess a good deal of it .
He had altogether repudiated the notion that anyone
with two legs could not have one in heaven and the
other firmly, though correctly, planted on earth. In
deed, to serve God, Mammon must be reduced to the
condition of a useful domestic servant, not a despised
slave.
But he had had severe disappointments, and his
part of the world had made itself quite unpleasant. He
wanted to spite it, and to annoy its comfortably smiling
face he would even cut off his own frosty nose.
People should see if he were worldly. That bishop,
who had refused him the diaconate, should hear in his
fine palace how he, Lippo, was living on Monte Majella.
That bishop, he felt sure, kept an excellent table, with
a dozen well-fed chaplains round it, and they should all
178 SAN CELESTINO
know how he, Lippo, was content to eat cabbages and
carrots.
He revelled in the thought of their discomfiture.
Of how they would have to admit that he was a saintly
person. Of how his name would be held in veneration,
and his wonderful illumination of spirit be talked of far
and wide.
Solitaries have not always been left alone : awaken
ings have come to the purblind rulers, and hermits have
been, with vehement reluctance, called from their cells
to infuse new life into the Church by their unworldly
virtue as bishops, or what not. Lippo was sure of his
own reluctance ; they would have to drag him away
from his weeping fellow-hermits almost with cart-ropes.
In fact he should refuse to go unless the Pope himself
ordered it, as the Pope very properly did on such
occasions.
CHAPTER X
BUT he did not remain a hermit very long. The world
wagged on, and the Church seemed to have forgotten
that he existed. Of Petruccio there was talk here and
there, though the world probably heard none of it.
Of Lippo neither world or Church talked at all.
It is very dull being heroic when no one is aware
that you are a hero. And the business of heroes
generally is quick and prompt : people are struck at
once, and the hero has not always to keep at boiling
point. After his heroism the hero goes to bed as usual,
but has a good supper first.
But Lippo had no bed, and there was no supper.
He slept more than the other four, but the damp rock
made him rheumatic ; and he ate more, too, of such
food as there was, and perhaps a voracious consump
tion of raw cabbage or cold meal porridge is likely to
try a weak digestion. Lippo had never complained of
his digestion in the world, where he had played a good
knife and fork without any dread of the consequences.
The solidity of baked meats had never incommoded
him.
Now, however, he felt at once hungry and oppressed.
Cabbage sat heavier on his chest than beef had ever
done, and yet he always wanted more than he could
get. Though accused of certain lapses, Lippo was an
179 N 2
180 SAN CELESTTNO
irritably conscientious person, and it began to strike
him that it could not be right to kill himself with
austerities. At a distance the word austerity had
delighted him : it affected that part of his nature
where his imagination ought to have been.
But though he had been quite able to imagine the
respectful surprise with which his terrible life as a
hermit would be spoken of, he had not been able to
foresee what such a life would practically feel like.
Nor had he realised that the gift of contemplation is
not vouchsafed to everyone. In reality he had no
capacity for it. To occupy yourself with thoughts
about yourself is not contemplation. And Lippo could
scarcely think of anything but himself. In his narrow
heart there was no room for God, and what there was
of it was already occupied with himself.
Petruccio begged him to modify his austerities,
since they were evidently too much for him, and he
was quite obedient in this matter, though it annoyed
him, for he had resolved to surpass them all in austerity.
But he had no spirit of obedience, for he was full
of criticism and self-importance. His suggestions
were innumerable, and it irritated him that they were
mildly disregarded, though patiently listened to.
A candle under a bushel, he would say, is of no
use. It should be set high on a candlestick.
We are set pretty high up, Petruccio would answer
cheerfully.
Ay ! But I speak of the moral plane. We should
have a church : the people would throng to it.
Perhaps the parish priests would not care much
for that. There are plenty of churches in the paesi.
But the people would feel here a new warmth.
SAN CELESTINO 181
Petruccio, hermit as he was, longed to say, It is
cold you chiefly complain of. But he did not, and
managed to say instead, It is hot enough in summer
during the day, certainly.
Lippo sniffed. He had no idea of being chaffed ;
it seemed to him quite scandalous that a hermit, and
reputed saint, should be jocular.
I was speaking of spiritual heat, he said severely.
Down there they are tepid enough.
No, said Petruccio quietly, that is not so. The
priests of the paese are excellent fervent men.
Well, we might ourselves go forth and preach, one
at a time. Our light would then so shine among men
that they would see our good works, and glorify God
who is in heaven.
* We are none of us licensed to preach. . . .
* The bishop would give leave readily. I saw that
when I was with him. I had a good deal of talk with
him. He is entirely well-disposed to us. You are
yourself, perhaps, too modest to be aware how highly
he thinks of your institute.
Petruccio looked unhappy.
* There is no institute, he said gently. And we
are quite unqualified to preach. Only one of us is a
priest, and he without any capacity for preaching.
Lippo felt an intense capacity for it, and he would
be rejoiced at so noble a reason for periodical and
protracted escape from the tedium of that horrid
mountain.
1 The friars are not priests, and they preach.
That is their vocation. . . .
I am not sure that it is not mine. At times I have
a scruple that I am burying my talent in a napkin.
182 SAN CELESTINO
Perhaps your vocation may be to preach. It is
not mine, or Alfeo s, or Guito s, or Maurizio s.
Maurizio s ! and Lippo s tone was both frosty
and supercilious as he spoke of the utterly unlettered
peasant.
Petruccio flushed, for he knew that Maurizio was a
true contemplative, to whom much had been revealed
that is hidden from the wise and prudent.
Would you like me to consult the bishop 9
asked Lippo.
About your vocation to this little life of ours ?
Certainly, if you will.
But Petruccio saw no reason why the bishop should
be troubled. They had their confessor. It seemed to
him fussy and presumptuous to go to the bishop.
No, but about the idea of preaching.
* You should not do that. Let me first consult
the others.
1 Why ? You are our head.
I am not, replied Petruccio, almost angrily.
The others would not hear of the preaching.
Maurizio said little, for he felt that he was least fitted
to preach. Alfeo and Guito said a good deal, and
Lippo s notion was utterly scouted by them both.
* Let him go and preach, said Alfeo, * but not as
one of us. A hermit on a mountain can annoy nobody ;
but hermits tramping about, interfering with the
priests, would be insufferable.
Lippo did go, first to the bishop, who received him
with a mild absence of surprise that was not altogether
agreeable.
He quite agreed that it was right for Lippo to
consider his health.
SAN CELESTINO 183
It would be almost suicide for me to remain
there, said the meagre sub-deacon.
Suicide is a fearful crime, said the bishop.
Under the cloak of religion it would be more
impious, said his chaplain, who, to Lippo s annoy
ance, remained in the room. He thought the bishop
ought to have sent him away. But the poor bishop
was busy, and hoped that Lippo would not stop long.
But other considerations besides those of health
have weight with me, added Lippo. I endeavoured
to convince Fra Pietro that we should add action to
our contemplation.
The Church does not expect activity from people
who live on cabbage, observed the chaplain with a
laugh. He was extremely active himself, and did not
pretend to live on cabbage.
* It is very unwholesome, declared Lippo.
Unless taken in great moderation it must be,
agreed the chaplain, who was thoroughly enjoying
himself. He could not help chuckling, and the bishop
interposed.
* What form of activity seemed suitable to you in
connexion with the life of a hermit ?
* Preaching - began Lippo.
That would not do at all, said the chaplain.
Fra Pietro did not readily adopt your suggestion ?
surmised the bishop.
He did not adopt it all. Fra Pietro is not a
person very open to suggestions.
* He has adopted mine, said the bishop, but I
have not ventured to make very many. I certainly
never suggested that he and his comrades should go
about preaching.
184 SAN CELESTINO
Lippo had another proposal to make, and it was
not easy to get it out. But he did at last contrive to
make it understood that he would not be averse to so
going about himself.
I have no doubt you would do it very well/ said
the bishop.
I could show your Most Keverend Excellency if
you liked.
Do you mean here ?
Lippo intimated that he meant there. The chap
lain looked terrified. The idea of being preached at
there and then in cold blood seemed to him quite
inhuman. But the bishop betrayed no alarm. A
danger that one has the power of averting can never be
redoubtable.
Well, no, he said. The better you preached, the
more personal it would seem to Messer Federigo and
me. Let us take your powers for granted. Unfor
tunately we have preachers enough ; it is practice
we are in want of.
BOOK III
THE POPE
CHAPTER I
OVER forty years is a long gap in a man s life, and to
skip two score years out of Petruccio s may seem a
strong measure. But it would be a stronger to expect
any reader to follow step by step the long silence of
such a life as his.
During those years nothing happened but such
things as have been hinted at. Profound trials, and
unfathomable joys ; temptations that the commonly
tempted can never comprehend, and consolations that
the commonly contented could never imagine : the
coming of new recruits, the departure of many, the
perseverance of some, changes that worked daily,
hourly, and so left no visible mark to those who were
daily and hourly at hand.
Petruccio was now an old man, seventy-four years
of age, who had once been in some faint measure
like other men, but who had almost ceased to bear
any resemblance to them. Alfeo was dead, and
Guito ; only Maurizio remained of his first three
faithful companions.
185
186 SAN CELESTINO
After many years together Petruccio, who had
been ready to love them at first, had grown to love
them very well, and their passing from his sight was a
sorrow, but a sorrow that had no sting in it. They did
not seem far off, and it was not a sad thought that
part of the new community was already in heaven.
Out in the troublous world there had been many
changes.
The year before they left Monte Murrone, in 1250,
Frederick had died at Castel Fiorentino, marrying, as
has been said, on his death-bed, Manfred s mother,
that Madama Bianca Lanzia, whom Petruccio had once
seen at Salerno. Manfred was proclaimed regent in
the absence of Conrad IV, the Emperor s son by the
Empress lolanthe ; but Conrad died four years later,
and Conradin his son being an infant, Manfred was
crowned in 1258 King of Calabria and Sicily. He
declared that he held the crown only as regent for his
nephew, nevertheless Urban IV excommunicated him
as a usurper, and offered his throne to the King of
England, who refused it, and afterwards to Charles
of Anjou, who did not refuse, but made haste to invade
Southern Italy.
Above all, the sovereigns of the Church had been
angered by the foundation of the two Saracen colonies
of Nocera and Lucera.
Even to the hermits on Monte Majella came the
tidings of these great struggles in which the whole
country was involved, and Petruccio had grieved for
the death of Frederick, and still more did he mourn
when the news came of Manfred s, after the battle at
Benevento. He remembered freshly the lad s pleasant
face and frank air, and now he, too, had died, excom-
SAN CELESTINO 187
municate, and had been refused even Christian burial,
so that the tomb he had made ready for himself in the
monks church at Monte Vergine was never occupied.
Then, four and twenty years later, came news of the
Sicilian Vespers, in which four thousand of the intruded
French were massacred, on that hot Easter Monday
evening at Palermo. Before that, ten years after
Manfred s death, his nephew Conradin had been
murdered at Naples.
All this was terrible to hear of, and hours and years
of prayer did the lonely hermits devote to the souls of
all these victims of tragedy.
Petruccio had lived under fifteen popes, and now the
last of the fifteen was dead, and the cardinals sat
debating, at Perugia, as to who should be his successor.
Petruccio s home was not now on Monte Majella : he
and his followers had gone back to Monte Murrone,
where he occupied his old cavern-cell, his monks
living in a rude monastery, for they had become very
numerous.
In 1274 Gregory X had approved of his order, and
they took as the basis of their rule that of St. Benedict,
wearing a white habit like the religious of Monte
Vergine, but a black scapular like those of Cava and
Subiaco. There were already over thirty other
monasteries of Petruccio s order, and six hundred
monks lived under his obedience.
His own life was the same as ever ; he dwelt in the
old wretched cave where his bed was the rock, and
his pillow a stone. Only, multitudes of people came
to him for guidance and consolation, except in his four
lents, during which he kept perpetual silence. The
interior of the cavern was dark, and its mouth was
188 SAN CELESTINO
now filled with an iron grating through which he gave
his counsels.
Nicholas IV was dead more than two years, and
still there was no Pope. The cardinals at Perugia
debated, but no one was chosen to fill St. Peter s
empty chair ; and wolves devoured the fold that had
no shepherd. Some were for choosing a pontiff whom
the French would approve, some looked to the favour
of the Emperor, but no decision was arrived at. One
candidate after another was put up, and each in turn
had been thrown out.
The cardinals were utterly weary, and the people
and their rulers murmured. There was danger that
Emperor or King would come down over the mountains
with a pope of his own making in his train.
Then Cardinal Malebranca had an idea, some said
a vision, but more probably a memory. For he,
Latino, Bishop of Ostia, had known Pietro di Murrone
well, and was fully certain that he was a saint. And
the tired Church needed a saint more than it needed
any adroit politician.
One broiling day of July, as the cardinals sat
together in the papal palace at Perugia, he seemed
almost absent-mindedly to recall the name of the man
whom he revered.
The long discussion wearied him, and he leant back
in his throne, unheeding of the talk around.
* Your Eminence is thoughtful, said his neighbour.
I was thinking of one far removed from all our
trouble. For my part I would change with him, and
esteem myself blest.
The cardinal on his left leant forward to listen.
1 Of whom do you speak ? he asked, glad enough
SAN CELEST1NO 189
to turn his thoughts away from the endless discussion
that never led anywhere.
The Cardinal of Ostia, said the prelate beyond
Malebranca, is envying one who is free from our
trouble, with whom he would wish to change places
if he might.
I would change places with almost anyone,
declared the cardinal on Latino s left.
Except with him whom we shall choose to be our
Pope, suggested Malebranca s other neighbour.
The cardinal on Latino s left shuddered. Perhaps
it was a premonition.
With him certainly I would not change, he said.
I was thinking, said the Cardinal of Ostia, of
one who is as likely to be Pope as he is to be Emperor.
1 Tell us about him since you would like to be
what he is.
That would I ; for he is a saint.
Other cardinals, who had left their places, and were
walking about in groups, drew near.
The Cardinal of Ostia, said Cardinal Benedetto
dei Caetani, is envying a saint.
Who is he ? asked the others.
Pietro Murrone, the hermit of Solmona, and
Malebranca, in a clear, not loud, voice told of him,
while the rest listened earnestly. He spoke of
Petruccio s unworldliness and simplicity, his lack of
guile, his pure zeal for God, his utter abandonment
of self, his heavenly spirit.
Let us have him for our Pope, cried out one of
Malebranca s listeners.
For a moment there was an astonished silence, as
though by sudden chance the answer to an unanswer-
190 SAN CELESTINO
able riddle had been given aloud by some one who
had not even seemed to be guessing it. Nobody knew
if Malebranca had intended this : he stopped speaking
abruptly, and rubbed his head with a nervous, withered
hand. He, too, was very old, and not given to
extravagances.
For a moment there was silence : all the cardinals
in conclave were gathered near now, and all had been
listening to the Cardinal of Ostia while he talked of his
admired saint.
Then, just as a wind rises after a gasp of expectant
stillness, there went a murmur through them all.
Let us have this saint for Pope !
All spoke together, not loudly, but in an earnest
undertone. It was easier to see their unanimous
meaning than to hear their individual expression of it.
* Let us have Pietro di Murrone, the Cardinal of
Ostia s saint, for Pope.
Not my saint, but God s, said Malebranca.
Let God have his saint for Christ s Vicar.
It was not one voice that urged this, not Male-
branca s certainly, but the voice of all. It was an
acclamation. There was no scrutiny, no writing, no
voting ; but a weary cry. All hands went up, some
trembling perhaps, but among them, as high as any,
that of the eager Cardinal, strong and purposeful,
fearless and stout, Benedetto Caetani.
The master of the scrutiny watched ; he had no
function, for there was nothing to scrutinise.
Habemus Pontificem, he said confidently.
Habemus Pontificem, they all cried out. * Domi-
num Petrum, di Murrone dictum, qui sibi imponit
nomen.
CHAPTEE II
So the terrible blow had been dealt to Petruccio and
he had no notion of it.
Up on his rocky mountain he watched the night
through, alone with God and the temptations and
blisses God sent to him for his perfection.
It was a night of summer, close and stifling, and
even his cave was invaded by the terrific heat. There
was no cool mountain breeze, but a steam of intolerable
deadness.
The smell of Borne, said Petruccio to himself.
It was half a century, all but two years, since he
had fled from the world s capital, and he shrank still
from the thought of it. Now and then the memory
came back on him, like a nightmare, of its greatness,
and its heartlessness, its ruthless power, and its selfish
splendour.
He tried to think of its sacredness ; of the tomb
of Peter and of Paul ; of Peter s successor, God s
viceroy on earth. But there was no successor of St.
Peter there. The fisherman s throne stood empty,
and the Church had no head. He could not think of
Kome as of the metropolis of Christianity ; he could
only remember it as the centre of the world s strife,
as the battleground of noisy interests, of quarrelsome,
rebellious barons, whose pastime was their quarrel
191
192 SAN CELESTINO
with whomsoever happened to be carrying there the
intolerable weight of the triple crown.
The smell of Kome, he told himself. The walls
of mountain could not keep it off, the deep gorges
between could not hold it aloof.
He was not thinking then of the cardinals, far off
in Perugia, debating who should be made to carry the
intolerable keys ; though for seven and twenty months
he had been praying that God would guide their choice
aright.
His body was very old, and nearly worn out. For
all those years he had been a hard master to it. And
now his spirit seemed to fail also : a dark oppression
lay on it, as of some threatening disaster. He prayed,
but his prayer came back upon himself, and would not
lift him with it above the burden of age, and weariness,
and dread. Dryness of soul swallowed him, and the
outward sultry stifle had taken a hateful power of
parching his spirit too.
There seemed no cleanness in the high air of the
hills, and heaven was farther off than the reeking
valley. The morning brought no cool breath, but
only a steamy exhalation, and the night gave no
freshness, only a darkness that was thick and turgid.
All day long the air shook in the fierce heat, so
that the rocks, seen through it, seemed to tremble.
All night there was a black stillness, unrelieved by the
stirring of any breeze ; there was no moon, and, looking
out from his cavern into the darkness, Pietro Murrone
could see nothing ; the mountains and the sky were
muffled in a smother of sables.
Petruccio had never been one much affected by the
influence of outward things, and the changes of season
SAN CELESTTNO 198
and weather he had been used to ignore, and scarcely
notice.
The oppression that now weighed him down was
inward and mental, but it seemed palpable and
physical. It felt as though every faculty of sense was
in arms to avenge itself against him. In the daytime
the cry of the cicada became insufferable, and he
never remembered having even noticed it before. The
rock on which he lay burned him like a hot plate
of iron.
But most insufferable of all was the smell of Kome :
it affected two other senses, and by an involuntary
association filled his sight and ears, with staring shows
and a confused, confounding din. Borne seemed to
him like a cruel mouth agape for a fresh victim. Had
it not martyred and driven out popes enough ?
The sorrows of hell have gat hold upon me, he
cried out. When he scrambled to his feet he felt his
knees shake and his head swim.
* I reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man,
and am at my wits end, he moaned.
Sometimes the mountains reeled too, and, as he
gazed across the blazing valley, they had a strange
and forbidding mien, as if his old intimacy with their
arid faces was dissolved, and they belonged to some
raw and new picture that had just been painted.
One of his monks came to the ledge outside
his cave.
Little father, there are men coming, he said, in an
odd voice.
Men often came for advice and consolation ;
Petruccio could not understand why the brother should
appear disturbed.
194 SAN CELESTINO
* Two of them, the monk went on, clad finely,
and stumbling up the rocks like folk that are used to
city ways, and to riding on beasts backs.
Petruccio dreaded the coming of anyone : he had
never felt less able to counsel and console. But that
at least was nothing new. How often had he doubted
his power to guide, and yet had been given the grace to
advise and help ! How often had he poured balm into
troubled souls, when to himself his own had seemed all
dark and empty !
* They are close beneath now, said the monk, peer
ing over the brink of the rock. Two men in scarlet
robes, and their folk clambering after them.
For all their stumbling gait in climbing they had an
assured air, and the frate did not believe they had come
to seek advice.
Petruccio scarcely heard ; what did it matter to him
of what colour were the garments of them who came
to him?
The monk went down to guide the strangers to an
easier path. The August sun was beating on the face
of the rock, and the valley was like a stewing-pan, for
the air was thick and moist. It was a day of scirocco,
when, even had there been no sun, the heat would have
been insufferable.
Fra Maurizio brought the strangers up, and they
stood, panting and sweating, on the ledge outside his
master s cell. Their faces were nearly as red as their
garments, and their knees quivered with the hard,
unwonted toil of climbing.
Let us in, they said.
For between them and the object of their quest were
the rough bars of rusted iron behind which the hermit
SAN CELESTINO 195
crouched, staring out at them. * Like a mad wolf
in a cage, one of them said afterwards.
* No one enters there save our little father himself/
objected Era Maurizio, almost scandalised. To him
Petruccio was a much greater person even than a red-
robed prelate. There were plenty of prelates, but there
was only one Petruccio.
But the sun was blazing on the ledge, and Petruccio
himself had pity on the baked strangers. He undid
the fastening of his grille, and it opened at one end with
an opening just wide enough for the passage of such a
fleshless figure as his own. It was not very easy for the
strangers to enter, but one after the other they managed
to squeeze in. There was not much room inside for
them. They had crept in on hands and knees, and they
knelt still ; it did not seem as if they could very well
have stood upright.
Petruccio had half arisen, and was trying to stand up
in his own end of the den, but his tall lean figure was
bent nearly double, for the roof of rock shelved low
there.
His eyes gleamed black and bright out of the tangle
of his hair, though they were deeply sunken beneath
the bony brows ; his lids were red and swollen with
watching and weeping ; his long grizzled beard hid his
mouth, but nothing could hide the ghastly meagreness
of his frame.
CHAPTER III
4 I AM Pietro Colonna, Cardinal of the Holy Eoman
Church/ said one of the kneeling strangers.
Petruccio sank on to his knees, and tried to take
his visitor s hand, that he might kiss the blazing emerald
on it. But the Cardinal buried it in his robes and
himself laid hold of Petruccio s lean fingers, lifting
them to his lips.
My lord, do not, cried the hermit, striving to drag
his hand away, it is not fit.
The old horrible thought flashed .back : He comes
to kiss my hand as that of a saint. And he shuddered
and groaned in his misery.
It is very fit, said the Cardinal.
Pra Maurizio was not alone outside on the ledge now,
other monks had come thither, and those who had
followed the prelates were arrived there too. They
squeezed up to the iron bars and peered in, darkening
the cavern more.
It is very fit, said the Cardinal gravely. His tone
made Petruccio tremble.
1 I am the least of the servants of God, he protested.
* The servant of the servants of God. " Servus
servorum Dei," said Colonna, giving him the Pope s
title.
The monks outside listened eagerly, and Petruccio
196
SAN CELESTINO 197
tried to hear, but a dizzy singing noise was in his ears,
and the strange voice sound far off and above him,
as though he had been drowning.
I come from the Conclave at Perugia, said the
Cardinal gently ; he saw well enough how cruel his
errand was, and he could almost wish he had not taken
it upon himself. It was not he whom they had deputed,
but he had come on his own account, and overtaken
the envoys, and being higher than they in dignity had
let himself become their spokesman.
Please God we have a Pope, murmured Petruccio.
We have a Pope, praise God for it. I am come to
tell you, said Colonna solemnly.
Petruccio did thank God. With all his heart he was
glad that the headless Church should have a head again
at last. But why should they send to tell him ? How
would their telling inform him ? He knew none of
them : one cardinal s name or another s was all one to
him. He had never lived among the Church s masters,
and was wholly ignorant of these high matters.
Cardinal Colonna still held fast the hermit s reluc
tant hand. For a moment he loosed it, and under
his red robe drew the ring from his own finger, then
took hold of it again.
We have a Pope, he said, thrusting the great ring
on Petruccio s finger. The Conclave is dissolved
after choosing a Pope by acclamation, unanimously.
The voice of God has spoken. I come to salute your
Holiness.
With a loud and exceeding bitter cry the hermit
started back ; it was too cruel to be true. The cave
grew black, as in the smothering night, and a rushing
noise whirled through his ears ; he grew deadly sick,
198 SAN CELESTINO
and his heart felt like lead within him. His tongue
was dry and clave to his mouth, refusing to make words
for him. He pressed his shaking hands to his eyes to
shut out the darkness. Through them burning tears
oozed out. He swayed, and would have fallen had
Colonna not held him compassionately.
Santo Padre, he urged, his own eyes streaming
with pitying tears, it is God s will.
Oh, my lord ! Oh, my lord ! cried the Pope. It
was scarcely human, that wail of unutterable horror
and misery.
Oh, my lord, my lord ! I have lived here so long,
and strange voices torment me, saying hateful things ;
and I cannot tell what I have really heard. Just now
a terrible word seemed to be said. But not true, not
true.
* It is true that you have been called to rule over us
as God s vicegerent on the earth, said Colonna with a
clear slowness.
To rule ! I that have not learned to serve !
None of those who listened had ever heard so terrible
a voice, so agonised, so full of horror.
Santo Padre, it is God s will . . . that He has
declared through us.
* Oh, may He forgive you ! What have you done !
What have you done !
His hands were dropped from his face now, and lay
at each side of him, pressed against the rough rock.
His wild and horrified eyes were set in a stare of
anguish.
It cannot be His will, he wailed ; * it is another
temptation. It is another vision. Go ! he cried out,
crouching back against the rock. Let me be. Oh
SAN CELESTINO 199
God, am I not mocked enough ? Thou hast let them
call me saint, and I have borne it, loathing the lie, and
knowing it all the time, holding fast to penitence and
the memory of my sins. But now Thou hast let them
come again, with a new mockery. Oh God, remember
how old I am, and how weary, and worn out with
answering them. I cannot hold for ever : I am too
weak. Suffer them not to be so strong. I would not
do Thee any harm ; I know what I am, but hast Thou
not pity for the worms that crawl beneath Thy feet ?
And I, even I, am Thine own. . . . Go, go, he called
out, scarlet persecutor ! I have listened in my folly,
but I will not/ and he crammed his lean fingers into
his ears, and swayed again.
Cardinal Colonna himself felt a creep of dread, but
he came close to the shrinking Pope, and held
him.
There is no vision/ he said gently. I am no
spirit, bad or good, but a living man with a true
message, that it cuts me now to insist upon ; never
theless, I must insist. It is no delusion, the word of
mine, that you have heard. Listen again, and believe
me that God has been pleased to lay this burden upon
you.
Evviva il Papa/ cried a voice outside. It was
a familiar one, and Petruccio shrank from it the
more.
Even thou, mine own familiar friend in whom I
trusted/ he complained the first reproach Maurizio
had ever heard from him.
God save the Holiness of Our Lord ( Evviva la
Santita di Nostro Signore ), shouted another monk.
Next to his being canonised, which could not be yet,
200 SAN CELESTINO
it was the finest thing that their founder should be
called to the summit of the Church.
1 1 know my faults/ moaned the hermit. But my
punishment is greater than I can bear.
Be strong and of a good courage and play the man/
urged the Cardinal. Sustine Dominum et conforta
cor tuum.
There is no comfort. I am not strong, and I have
no courage. And He leaves me to myself/ cried the
shrinking Pope, with unspeakable groanings, as
Colonna told afterwards.
CHAPTER IV
THE Pope was dragged from his cell more like a culprit
than as one who was their master. Pope he would not
yet believe himself, though he could no longer refuse
to believe that he was held to be so by his relentless
captors. He still intended to withhold his consent to
what they were trying to do with him.
But they succeeded in getting him out of his cave,
and conveying him, somehow, to the monastery of
Santo Spirito at the foot of the mountain, outside
Solmona.
The arrival there was a fresh torment to him, for
by this time the news had spread far, and thousands
of people were there to see him come. They were all
delighted ; every one of them felt a personal pride in
the elevation of their neighbour to the highest dignity
on earth.
As they saw him pulled down the mountain-side,
their cries and shouts filled the valley, and the wretched
Pope grew sick as he heard them.
It is a mistake a mistake, he moaned, when the
crowds rushed to meet him, waving kerchiefs and tear
ing down leaves and branches to scatter under his feet.
It is no mistake, said Cardinal Colonna firmly.
* Good people, behold your Pope. Ecco il nostro santo
Padre !
201
202 SAN CELESTINO
* Evviva il Papa ; il nostro Papa Santo ! they
screamed, pressing and swaying in a great block, so
that the prelates could scarcely get him forward.
Some of the people nearest to him fell upon their
knees and tried to kiss his feet. But he shrank back
with such horror, and looked so much as if he would
sink down and so cover his feet under himself, that the
prelates bade the folk be patient, and remember that
the Sovereign Pontiff was not thus to be jammed in
and jostled.
It is all for love, the people cried out. No
disrespect !
Nevertheless they obeyed, and held back a little.
Vox populi, vox Dei, said the Cardinal Pietro
Colonna in the Pope s ear.
* Vox populi crucifixit Jesum Christum, retorted the
Pope bitterly.
At last they were within the monastery, where the
abbot and his monks received the new Pontiff with all
the hurried pomp available. They knelt to receive his
blessing, but he bade them rise.
May God bless us all, he cried, but I am not the
Pope. The cardinals have made a mistake.
Cardinal Colonna did not look as if he thought that
very likely ; and here was another cardinal waiting
to confirm the news that he had brought. This was
Malebranca himself.
There has been no mistake at all, Santissimo
Padre, he said, coming forward respectfully, but with
a firm air.
He too knelt and kissed the Pope s hand, for the
ring had fallen from his lean finger, and was dropped
no one knew where. The election of this Pope had
SAN CELESTINO 203
been, in the first instance, his own idea, and he had
no idea of admitting any mistake.
In vain the reluctant Head of the Church appealed
to him. He was full of reverence, and duty, and
submission, but he was as immovable as one of the
rocks above. For this once he would plainly tell the
Pope his duty.
For twenty-seven months, he reminded him,
the Church has been without a master. The fold of
Christ has been without a shepherd. It has been a
scandal and a disaster. The wolves have eyed the
sheep, and longed to break in and devour them. God
has pitied us, and has ended our trouble at last ; many
may have desired to be Pope, and none of them has
been found worthy. No one ever imagined that you
desired it, and God has declared you worthy. Do not
pretend to judge of that yourself.
Pietro di Murrone urged, with vehement tears, his
incompetence, his ignorance of men, and of the world,
his inexperience of business, even of that of the
Church.
* I am like an owl, he cried piteously, that has
lived so long in the dark he cannot see things that
move in the day.
An eagle, rather, that has lived so near the sun he
can stare into its light, said the Cardinal of Ostia.
It may have been a fine metaphor, but Pietro
Murrone knew that he was no eagle.
* God has said that with the ignorance of the simple
He will confound the wise, persisted Malebranca.
The Church does not now need one learned in kingly
arts : but one who will confound their dark policy
with the direct ray of honesty and truth. Most Holy
204 SAN CELESTINO
Father, forgive me for seeming to argue, and even to
chide, but this matter is no longer to discuss ; the
thing is done, and you are Pope as truly as I am
Cardinal. God has thrust the keys into your hands,
and He will strictly demand account of you if you
fling them back upon the ground.
So the weary argument went on, and at last Pietro
was overborne, as he had been fifty years before by
the three friends who had insisted that he should be
a priest.
With heart-broken sobs he yielded, and left
himself, crushed but passive, in their hands. For the
rest he cared scarcely at all. The detail was insigni
ficant once the main point had been conceded.
His long hair was cut off, and his shaggy beard.
When the matted locks fell off they disclosed the lurid
mark of the nail upon his temple ; it throbbed and
pulsed.
The Holy Father has had a wound ? said the
inquisitive wielder of the scissors.
To death, the Pope answered, like one who scarce
knows what he is saying.
He suffered them to put on him the white wool
woven of the fleece of lambs ; but he would not take
off his hermit s rags, and they were fain to cover them
with the papal garments. He was so lean that it did
not matter.
1 " Like a lamb was He led to the slaughter,"
whispered the chamberlain who dressed him in the
mystical white robe.
Finally the ring of the fisherman was thrust upon
his finger.
" Thou shalt catch men," one murmured.
SAN CELESTINO 205
They have caught me/ moaned the Pope.
Then they took him to Aquila, mounted on an ass,
to the scandal of those who knew he should ride upon
a white palfrey.
If I must ride at all, he said, there is no beast so
well beseems me. It was good enough for Him.
He had never owned but one horse, and that he
had given to Kuggero, after owning it for an hour.
But he had two kings to walk beside him and hold
his bridle as he rode : the King of Naples, whose
subject he had been, and his son the King of Hungary.
They thought it a fine thing to have him for Pope, and
counted keenly on using him for their purposes. A
greater than he had been forced between two thieves.
They brought him to the new church of Santa
Maria di Collemaggio, scarcely seven years old, half a
mile outside the city gate. He had never seen it ;
it had been built since he and his hermits had gone
back to Solmona. He stared up at its beautiful facade,
which was the face of no familiar friend. He could
not heed the loveliness of its three round-headed
doors, nor that of the glorious rose-windows above
them. Some of his own monks walked near, and to
them he cried in the words of Job
Miseremini mei, miseremini mei, saltern vos amici
mei, quia manus Domini tetigit me. * Pity me, pity
me, at least you friends of mine, for the hand of the
Lord has touched me.
But they could not really pity him : they could
listen sharply enough, and remember very well ever
afterwards all that he said ; it should all be brought
up in the process of his canonisation for that it was
excellent ; but they could not find room in their
206 SAN CELESTINO
hearts for anything but exulting. They were young
monks, and most of them were still alive when he
actually was canonised nine and twenty years later ;
these young monks did not know their founder, as his
first companions had known him, and they could
only think of the glory of their order. No founder
of an order had ever been chosen Pope before.
They smiled, and tried to look compassionate, but
made only a poor hand of it.
The bells jangled out their jubilation from the
machicolated campanile to the right ; and, from the
gallery over the entrance, prelates and nobles looked
down as the Pope came near. Some of them must
have pitied him, for his face expressed nothing but
incurable dread and misery. But they all acclaimed
and waved hands and kerchiefs as they squeezed up,
two or three deep, against the wrought -iron rails,
hung with cressets ready to be lighted when night
should fall.
The crowds were immense, and there was not room
in the church even for the clergy. It was hard to make
a lane for the Pope and his attendant prelates to pass
up to the sanctuary. Other cardinals had now arrived
from Perugia, among them Napoleone Orsini, so that
the Pope had on either side of him, not only the two
kings, but two princes of the Church representing the
two highest rival houses of Koman princedom.
On the gospel side of the high altar was a tall
throne, and on it Pietro Murrone was made to sit, the
two kings having lesser thrones opposite.
Cardinal Orsini brought the red mozzetta and
set it on the Pope s shoulders, and also the mitre,
jewelled and golden. And he it was who announced
SAN CELESTINO 207
the election to the people and told them the name
chosen by the new Pontiff.
Habemus Pontificem, he cried in loud sonorous
tones. Dominum Petrum, di Murrone dictum, qui
sibi imposuit nomen Celestinum. We have a Pope,
the Lord Peter of Murrone, who has assumed to
himself the name of Celestine.
But the French cardinal, Hugh of Auvergne,
anointed Celestine, and the actual crowning was
performed by the senior cardinal present, Matteo Kossi.
Then came the obeisance. The cardinals, the
kings, the bishops and prelates, the nobles, drew near
in order, and knelt to kiss Celestine s feet. Finally
he was raised aloft for the homage, and the air rang
with the cries of all who had been able to squeeze
into the church
1 Evviva ! Evviva il Papa Nostro Celestino !
One who stood at hand, close beside the Pope,
drew out a whisp of tow, and passed it sharply through
a torch ; it blazed and flared up, and died out in an
instant, leaving a smoke and an acrid smell.
Thus passes the world s glory, he called out.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Gloria mundi ! What was the glory of the world
to Celestine ? As they lifted him high upon their
shoulders, he thought of Him who said, I, when I
shall be lifted up, will draw all things to Myself. And
he, would he ever be able to draw to Him those who
stood aloof ? What power of attraction had he to lure
back those who had become alienated ? He had, he
told himself miserably, no tact, no grace of attraction
nothing. Perhaps he would alienate them more.
That seemed far more likely ; wandering sheep he
208 SAN CELESTINO
might scare further afield with his uncouth look and
rough, untrained voice.
Gloria mundi ! He had always dreaded and disliked
it, and now it had gained a new power of tormenting
him. In truth he had almost forgotten it ; it had
become a vague, uneasy memory ; but now it had
rushed back upon him, close, in arms.
He had always been lonely, seeking no friends and
hardly accepting the few who had offered ; of ordinary
human friendships he had actually had none. For
between him and his hermits and monks it had not
been that, but merely the silent sympathy bred of a
common spiritual object and a common pursuit.
But now a wholly different loneliness was decreed
against him like a sentence : not merely personal and
accidental, or the result of disposition, but official, and
implied in what he had become.
As he was raised aloft and saw every knee bent,
every head bowed in homage, he felt what it was to be
that which no one else alive could be also ; hence
forward he, who had wished to be beneath all, must
inexorably be over all, without an equal, without a
comrade, almost without a fellow-creature. A
creature he was, and one that felt himself the weakest,
but his personal existence had ceased to matter,
merged in his official existence. Pietro Murrone was
of no consequence to anyone, Celestine mattered to
all heaven and earth.
He looked down, with frightened eyes, upon kneeling
cardinal and king, bishop and baron, prince and prelate
and peasant, and his heart froze within him : for it
meant that he was viceroy of God in place of Christ.
Gloria mundi !
CHAPTEK V
IT must not be supposed that the accession of Celes-
tine V was unnoticed by his own family. For fifty-five
years they had forgotten him, and some of them had
already passed out of sight and memory themselves ;
but those who were left remembered him now very well.
Out of the twelve brothers he was by no means the sole
survivor, and they now declared that it seemed to
them but yesterday since he was among them. Still,
fifty-five years is a good while, and they could hardly
be blamed for forgetting that he had not then been
made much of.
Several of them hurried to Aquila, but the Pope had
already been carried off to Naples, and thither they
followed him. The Angevin King was determined to
keep Celestine in his own hands, and use him in
the interests of his house both there and in France.
Accordingly it was in the Castello Nuovo that the Pope s
relations found him ; it was really new then, having
been begun only eleven years earlier, and being still
unfinished. The people outside were already murmur
ing that the Pope was a prisoner, though Charles
heeded such mutterings very little if any of them
were reported to him.
Celestine s family arrived in some force. Several
of the brothers had brought their wives, and all of them
209 p
210 SAN CELESTINO
had brought sons and daughters. To the Pope they all
seemed equally strangers. He had been a lad when he
had seen any of them last, and some of these brothers
of his had been scarcely more than children then. They
were all old now, and he could trace nothing familiar in
their anxious, eager faces. One or two of his nephews
had a little more the look of what their fathers had been
in those far-away days than the fathers themselves ; but
even the sons were past their youth, and were mostly
married men with children of their own.
The Pope gazed at them, peering from one to the
other in search of a face he could recall, and at last
found one.
This is Bugger o, he said, with a faint smile that
was sad enough.
1 His grandson, said one of the lad s grand-uncles
promptly. Kuggero is still alive, but he would not
come.
He did not care to intrude upon your Holiness,
declared the youth s father.
And this was true enough.
Go, all of you, if you like, Kuggero had told them.
1 1 teased him as long as we were together, and he must
think I have forgotten him ever since. I will not
hobble off to fawn upon him now.
* I wish he had come too, said the Pope. Of all his
brothers he had been fondest of Euggero, though none
of them had plagued him more, and he remembered
very well how Kuggero used to torment him with the
nickname of Chiodino.
My grandfather is very old, said the grandson
in excuse. It is no want of respect to your
Holiness.
SAN CELESTINO 211
This sounded very strange in the Pope s ears. He
could not think of Kuggero respecting him.
My father remembers very well/ Euggero s son,
the lad s own father, put in, how your Holiness gave
him your horse the day you went away from home.
If I had had it at Solmona they would have made
me ride upon it, said Celestine.
It would be about sixty years old, thought his
grand-nephew.
His relations had a great deal to say. At home they
assured him he was held in reverent remembrance.
I dare say Era Taddeo remembers me/ the Pope
observed mildly, we were always friends. He kept
forgetting the great intervening gulf of time, and his
thoughts were far back in the past as if it were still
present.
He remembers your Holiness perfectly/ declared
one of his nephews boldly. There was, as it happened,
another Era Taddeo in their paese, and the nephew did
not consider that the frate was only about fifty
years old.
It is not only Era Taddeo ; everyone speaks of
your Holiness/ said another nephew.
* And at home we talk of nothing else/ interposed
a niece, who had sons of her own very ready to be
promoted.
That may be/ said one of her uncles. It is not
every family that possesses the Pope. But your
father was not married when his holiness left, and I
never heard that you were born/
Sandro had always been sharp, and there was some
thing in his tone that really reminded Celestine of the
days at home.
p 2
212 SAN CELESTINO
The niece was a good-natured, plump creature,
with only a natural amount of ambition for her own
children, and the Pope scarcely noticed that she had
been over-reminiscent for possibility.
They all wanted something, though most of them
had not any very clear idea as to what it was. The
fathers and mothers were much inclined to discern
in their sons vocations which had not until lately
struck them very forcibly.
My boy, Roberto, is made for a priest, one
nephew asserted. * He hates ordinary occupations.
And our Pippo is for ever at the monastery,
declared Pippo s mother. They call him the young
abbot.
He is lame, explained Sandro, * and no good at
anything out of doors.
It is better to limp into heaven, protested Pippo s
mother, * than to canter into perdition on all the
unbroken colts one can catch hold of.
Our son, Arrigo, is already in minor orders,
observed another nephew. He knew he had a voca
tion before we any of us heard that our kinsman was
to be Head of the Church.
But not before you had discovered he was the
dullest of your five, Sandro remarked sourly.
I, at least, have no vocation, confessed Rug-
gero s grandson. I would like to be a captain in
the Pope s bodyguard.
And he got his wish, for the Pope saw his own
brother, Euggero, reflected in him.
Sooner or later they nearly all of them got something.
But at present Celestine was dazed by them. They
suggested and hinted, and presently grew bolder and
SAN CELESTINO 213
demanded plainly. No doubt he was ashamed of them,
but they were not in the least ashamed of themselves.
He really promised nothing ; but they came back,
one by one, and persisted that he had promised all
sorts of things, and in the long run they squeezed all
sorts of things out of him.
He knew nothing about these matters ; and his
courtiers assured him that it was quite right that he
should do as this or that kinsman asked, and then asked
something for themselves or for kinsmen of their own.
Apparently it was the business of the Pope to give
titles, promotions, offices : things of which he knew
nothing, and for which he cared nothing. It all seemed
part of the weary business of being Pope. He had no
desire to favour his own folk, but he had no desire in
the matter at all, and the courtiers impressed upon
him that this nephew, or grand-nephew, was peculiarly
suitable for such and such an office, or such and such
a dignity. The cardinals said nothing, perhaps
because they did not at once see how the helpless
Pope was being twisted hither and thither. All they
wanted was to get him away from Naples to Kome,
out of the obvious clutches of Charles and Anjou.
These others were little matters not likely to be con
sidered by them. What concerned them was of far
greater moment. Their affair was with national and
international interests, with the freedom of the Head
of Christendom, with his independence, and release
from the Angevin thraldom.
If the Pope made this or that nephew a baron, and
appointed such and such a grand-nephew to his body
guard, it was all within his rights ; and some of them,
who had not been among the most convinced of his
214 SAN CELESTINO
electors, only wondered to find the hermit so accessible
to worldly applications from his kindred.
To get him away from Naples was, however, very
difficult. Celestine was ready to go wherever they
bade him, though his old dread of Kome was as power
ful as ever. But the King was resolved to keep him
where he was as long as possible.
And Charles was clever enough to know how to be
kind to the shy and unhappy Pontiff. The King of
Hungary, his son, was equally adroit, and between
them they managed to convince Celestine that he was
best where he was. They were most gracious to his
kinsmen, and showered more upon them than the
Pope, with all his simplicity, could be induced to do.
According to the two kings the Pope s family was
composed of the most excellent people they had ever
met ; and they warmly espoused every claim of these
deserving creatures, so that, at their pressing and
reiterated instance, he did much for them which of
himself he would never have agreed to.
How could a generous, simple creature, who had
never been suspicious, refrain from giving when it was
urged upon him that to give was his first duty, and to
refuse would be a niggardly churlishness ?
CHAPTEE VI
BUT the cardinals who wanted to get the Pope away
to Kome did not get their way. Celestine himself no
doubt knew that they were right. He was Pope because
he was Bishop of Eome, and in Kome, if it might be,
it behoved him to be. He only wanted to do right,
and, though he dreaded Eome, and preferred being
the almost prisoner he was in the Castello Nuovo at
Naples to lording it in his own palace in his own
capital, still he was ready to bear that part of his
burden with the rest of it. But Charles, and those
who were on the King s side, were too strong : and
they continued to keep the Pope where he was. After
all it was not for long.
Celestine had never been given to thinking ill
of people, and the astute monarch worked hard to
impress him favourably. He so spoke of St. Louis
that the Pope was continually reminded how the two
kings were brothers, and was more and more led to
forget their singular unlikeness to each other. Charles
freely alluded to the fate of Conradin, bemoaning
and weeping over it ; it had all been the fault of
Eoberto di Lavena, the judge.
1 They killed him, protested the" King, who was
in reality much more like Louis XI than Louis IX.
I only gave him a king s burial and a king s tomb,
215
216 SAN OELESTINO
He did not enter into particulars and explain that
the King s tomb consisted of a plain stone slab marked
* K.C.C. (Eegis Corradini Corpus) hidden behind the
church of Santa Maria del Carmine, a church built not
by Charles, but by Corradino s mother, Margaretta
di Baviera, widow of Conrad IV, with the very money
she had brought, too late, to ransom her already
slaughtered son.
Though he swore that Corradino s execution, as
a rebel and a felon, had been none of his doing, but
the work of a cabal among the Neapolitan party
opposed to the Hohenstauffen, and carried out for
them by Berto di Lavena, Charles expressed intense
penitence for the deed, and probably more than half
persuaded the honest Pope of his sincerity. The
King entreated Celestine to offer Masses for the dead
lad s soul, declaring at the same time that he had
already caused thousands to be said, and the Pontiff
very readily undertook to do this.
Charles had said so much of his sorrow that he
almost began to feel the grief he spoke of ; and, being
a man of imagination, as very clever persons are apt
to be, there was plenty to aid him in his access of
tardy compunction. He knew the story very well,
much more of it than he had thought necessary to
repeat in detail to the Pope. How Lavena s sen
tence had horrified everyone, how unanswerable had
been Guido di Suzana s pleading for the kingly
victim. How the brutal decree had been read
aloud to Corradino as he played at chess with his
friend and fellow-victim, Frederick of Austria. How
the lad of the Hohenstauffen heard it with calm indig
nation, saying, * I am a mortal man and must die, now
SAN CELESTINO 217
or a little later. Yet ask of the kings of the earth
if a king be a felon for seeking to win back the heritage
of his fathers. . . . How Charles s own brother,
Eobert of Flanders, struck dead the wicked judge.
And how Corradino had gone bravely to die, saying
only as he waited the death-stroke, my mother !
What will be thy sorrow !
Meanwhile Celestine was more and more distracted
by petitions and demands for favours. Towns and
abbeys, prelates and barons, sent embassies, or came in
person, to snatch gifts or privileges out of those tired
hands that had never held anything of his own.
Celestine thought of Alfeo s theory, that the sole
root of misery is desire, and everyone seemed to desire
something and to be in misery till it was obtained.
Abbots wanted to be made * ordinaries independent
of their bishops ; bishops wanted- to have their sees
raised to archiepiscopal rank.
I would you could grant me my favour/ said
the Pope to one of these, with his tired, wistful smile.
The prelate declared that if there were anything
in the world he could do for his Holiness it would be
the proudest privilege of his life.
You ask for independence ; ah, if you could make
me the least of your own subjects !
Hardly any of them could understand that he
really loathed being what sternest providence had
made him ; they had heard of his reluctance, but now,
they supposed, he must be accustomed to his dignity.
Not to covet high place is one thing, to be actually
eager to descend from the highest, once possessed, is
altogether different. They were puzzled, like history,
rather than edified.
218 SAN CELESTINO
So the Pope s weary life dragged itself on, and
every thought of Home only added to his dread.
If he was thus beset, here in Naples, what would
it be there, where there would be so many more
importunate suitors for favours ?
Scarcely any of his courtiers pitied him. They
were courtiers, and the old monk was not of their
world. Their talk dazed him, and his few words were
in the language of a world they knew not. They watched
him coldly, with shrewd observance, and many called
him, almost aloud, poor-spirited. The beatitudes are
not maxims of popularity, and the least popular of
them all is * Beati pauperes spiritu ; to be of a poor
spirit has always been a reproach in the world, for it
wants nothing so little as to see God.
The greatest figure, among all the great about him,
was that of Cardinal Benedetto. He came of people
accustomed to rule, and he was as ready for rule as
any of the Caetani. People already declared he looked
like the Pope, and that the Pope hardly looked big
enough to be his chaplain.
Between two great men there is not always
sympathy, even between two good men it is often
wanting. Celestine lacked almost every quality that
the Cardinal thought the Church s need demanded
in her ruler ; and to the hermit nailed to Peter s
downward cross, with eyes that could see nothing
clearly under heaven itself, the Cardinal s figure was
only that of a prince, all its priestliness blurred by
a prince s instinctive usage of every appurtenance
of his state.
Cardinal Benedetto was a born leader, sure of
himself and of his indomitable policy, ambitious
SAN CELESTINO 219
because he felt equal to every call that the realisation
of his ambition could make upon him. Celestine was
a born follower, though it was God alone whom he had
followed, and to rule was for him a crucifixion, because
nothing could heal his certainty of his utter unfitness
for ruling.
Caetani had heard much of the hermit ; ever since
the hermit had been Pope he had seen much of him :
but little of it had impressed him as he would choose
to be impressed by the Head of Christendom. Humility
and diffidence were, no doubt, great virtues, especially
in an obscure monk, but how would they help a Pope
at that time, with nearly every prince in Christendom
pitted against him ? To be reluctant to accept the
papacy was very well : perhaps Pietro di Murrone
had so far been wiser than those who had made him
Pope in spite of himself ; but, now that the thing was
done, Cardinal Benedetto could not admire his uneasi
ness. The Head of the Church should hold up his
own head ; and, being of right master, he should show
himself able and ready to hold the mastery.
Finally, there was at that moment a rankling sore
of quarrel between the Cardinal and the Angevin King :
and here was the Pope the King s puppet and prisoner.
On his side Celestine felt all this disapproval with
intuitive sensitiveness. The shiest people are the
quickest to discern hostile criticism. He had never
courted human approbation, but all his life had
fled from it ; nevertheless the knowledge of being
disapproved is a cold sensation.
And, after all, he was Pope. With all his princely
bearing, and willingness to hold high place, Benedetto
was only one of Celestine s own cardinals.
CHAPTEE VII
* IN spite of his meek looks he knows he is the Pope,
thought Cardinal Caetani. And he is obstinate ; these
meek people always are.
Soon he found that he had been mistaken ; except
in his certainty of his own unfit ness to be Pope,
Celestine was no more obstinate than he was proud.
And little natural sympathy as there was, or could be,
between him and the masterful Cardinal, he was much
inclined to submit to his grievance so far as Charles s
counter-influence would suffer it.
If Celestine could have seen what the years would
bring upon the Cardinal it would have been for him to
pity. After nineteen of them, filled with strife and
weariness, on a blazing day of September in 1303, he,
Boniface, the hermit s successor, shall sit in Anagni
Cathedral, throned and clad in the papal habit dis
carded by Celestine, waiting waiting till Nogaret
and Sciarra Colonna burst in on him with their soldiers,
drag him thence, smiting him in the face with mailed
glove, bind him on a vicious horse, with his face to its
tail, and thus parade him through the staring streets to
prison with cries of anti-pope !
Celestine had a good and kindly heart ; could so
ghastly a mirage of the future have risen before his eyes
he would have wept for pity and for horror : even his
220
SAN CELESTINO 221
meek spirit would have flamed into indignation at such
insults to be heaped upon Christ s Vicar, his own
immediate successor.
As things stood the Cardinal was civil, and the
silent Pope recognised his great capacity, not perhaps
admiring it, and quite soon began in a fashion to lean
upon him. Benedetto was full of certainty and decision,
never in doubt himself and unable to understand
hesitation in the Head of Christendom. Decisiveness
of character is not always attractive, but Celestine
would take refuge over-often, many thought, who
called Caetani prepotente in the Cardinal s obvious
strength and assured opinion. Of his own opinion the
Pope was ever diffident.
From the first the Cardinal divined the Pope s
foreboding dread of Kome, and how the King, for his
own purposes, would play upon it. Caetani had no
dread of Eonie himself, to him it was familiar, and in
it he felt was his own proper sphere and battle-ground.
He desired that the Eternal City should be the mistress
of all other capitals, her government the centre and
arbiter of all other governments. To Celestine the
whole idea of governing was repugnant. He was
ready enough to believe that kings should listen to the
Pope, but he shrank from the thought that it was
now himself they were to obey, and that he was in fact
himself a king. Such counsels as the Cardinal gave
would have been useful, perhaps, had he to whom they
were given been a different person. He advised Celes
tine as though Celestine had been like himself. As it
was, the Pope could barely understand it all, and what
he did understand he disliked as applied to himself.
To assert himself, to impress himself on the quarrel-
222 SAN CELESTINO
some world and its jealous rulers was wholly beyond
what he could undertake even to attempt.
I am an old monk, he would plead, and all
these matters of state are a thorny tangle to me.
(In his heart he heard an echoing whisper, The
princes of this world have nothing in me. )
But, holy father, the Pope must deal with matters
of state. Gregory VII, of most holy memory had
been a monk, like many others of his predecessors
and yours, nevertheless his foot was on the Emperor s
neck.
Celestine sighed, but would not promise to try
and overcome emperors : he had not overcome any
body but himself, or had had any other enemy.
He who holds Peter s keys, urged Caetani, may
not only think of opening heaven for himself : he
has other cares beyond that of his own sanctification.
Absorbed like a monk in his cloister, the wolves would
rush in and devour the sheep. The liberties of the
whole Church are in his hands ; he must fight for
them, lest Christendom be enslaved. Christ warned
us that He came to bring not peace but a sword.
The millennium is not yet : the lamb durst not lie
down near the lion lest he be devoured. And the
Shepherd of all the shepherds can never be at peace
with the greedy-eyed wolves.
None of this cheered the Pope. No doubt the
courageous, belligerent Cardinal, who in truth had
no shrinking from just fighting, meant to inspirit him ;
but he only discouraged and depressed.
Why, my lord, Celestine would cry bitterly,
1 did not you and the rest of them leave me
alone ?
SAN CELESTINO 223
It seemed now as if he had been altogether happy
in his grated den on Monte Murrone. He could never
be happy again.
Why?
Was there not already some echo of the poor
Pope s question in the Cardinal s own heart ? Some
times they would make Celestine ride abroad, and then
the people crowded to look at him. Everyone had
heard of his wonderful election, and many wonders were
told of his life up there among the rocks above Solmona.
The Neapolitans have not all been saints, but they
had had saints among them, and they had no objection
to another. Nor was it a novelty to have a saint
for Pope : and novelties are disliked by all Italians.
So far so good. Sanctity was very well, and meekness
in the highest office was not offensive : but the people
admire dignity, and the downcast, unhappy-looking
Pontiff had no dignity they could recognise. He
blest them, almost falteringly, and some thought the
Cardinal at his side looked as if he could have done it
with a better air. Others already disliked Caetani
all the Angevin faction did and liked Celestine none
the less for being different from him.
It is a good thing to have a saint for the Vicar
of Christ, said a shoemaker sententiously. That is
not out of place.
Anything out of place is objectionable to the
decorous Latin mind.
St. Peter was a saint himself, observed a yellow-
faced notary with red eyes. He began it.
But that was not yesterday, said a third citizen,
who considered himself trenchant. In these evil
days one wants a Pope who is not too holy to keep the
224 SAN CELESTINO
cattiva genie in order. The bad folk are mostly in
the majority.
* He looks, remarked a gaoler, as if the keys hurt
his fingers. I am used to it.
But yours aren t the keys of heaven, as I
understand, said a barber much frequented for
his wit.
He has not a kingly air, declared a Eoman
belonging to the Cardinal Benedetto s kitchen.
He has no occasion, retorted his companion, also
a Koman ; Eome is no kingdom. Senatus Populusque
Romanus, it runs. We are always a republic even
the emperors could not change that. There is nothing
more out of place than for the Holy Father to put on
the air of having inherited the Lateran from his late
Majesty his father.
This one has not that air. It is better. Proud
Pope, poor people.
Certo ! But it does not do for the Pope to be
piano-piano to all the world outside : he can be as
meek as he likes to us. Here in this detestable Naples
he might hold up his head, and rattle the reins, and
no harm done. A cattiva gente these, and their King
a Frenchman. We suffer no kings in Eome : but she
is their mistress. We want no Papa Imperator in the
Lateran ; in our city the people are sovereigns : but
sovereigns are Eome s subjects, and he who sits in
the Lateran should keep it in their mind. Thus
is the glory of our republic, and of the Church,
maintained.
This one looks as if he would rather have stayed in
the hole in the ground out of which those cardinals dug
him up like truffle-dogs/
SAN CELESTINO 225
A good thing. Tis the more likely he will remem
ber, when he comes home to us, that he was not born our
master, nor we his subjects.
Humility, said a pursy butcher, with a fat
voice, as greasy as his hair, is a rare virtue ; wedded
to discretion it becomes the mother of perfection.
In some families, cackled a weazened little
apothecary, it never gets married at all : but remains
an old maid after refusing the best offers.
* The Cardinal Benedetto seems to manage him
already, whispered the great man s scullion, throwing
away the sucked skin of a fig. The Pope is only
peeping out of his pocket.
Wait till he gets to Eome, said the apothecary,
who had overheard the whisper. In the Lateran he ll
know who he is.
Or forget who he was, suggested the trenchant
citizen.
1 One can always remind him, remarked the Koman
who had so much to say about the republic. Tis
our fashion.
Through them all the Pope rode slowly on, his weary
eyes unlighted by any glimmer of complacence. The
throng of watching folk troubled him. They were
his children, and he had a hunger for their souls,
but the crowd of bodies was too visible and insistent :
the countless faces reflected curiosity, but nothing
gently filial. No doubt there were among them many
devout and simple, but it was the vulgar, the hard and
worldly- eyed, who had jostled themselves everywhere
to the front, nearest to him as he passed.
CHAPTEK VIII
UP in the windows and balconies were many who had
filled them to see the Pope go by : great folk of the
principatura. Not all princes love to have a hermit,
whom they have regarded as a saintly peasant, raised
far above them.
He passed a palace of the Colonna ever unruly
subjects of the Popes, with eyes that turned as often
to Naples as to Borne.
Our Cardinal went to fetch him, said a lady,
wondering what the Pope s policy would be. He
should remember that.
* Ay. But the Orsini put on him the mozzetta at
his crowning.
Yes. And it was the Cardinal of Auvergne that
gave him unction. He wasn t a bishop, see you,
when they chose him.
I doubt he isn t much grateful to our Cardinal
Pietro for fetching him out of his cave. He would
rather be conquering devils there, said the lady,
than seeing what he can do with our people and the
Orsini.
1 If he can manage the Orsini, laughed her
husband, * twill be good practice for the other devils.
1 Per caritd! How tired he looks, said the lady.
And how sad, said her daughter.
226
SAN CELESTINO 227
Tis a grievous burden, observed her brother,
a young ecclesiastic the weight of the keys.
1 His arms are very thin, and he s old, remarked the
young priest s father. Your own are stout and young.
You could carry a good deal if anyone asked you.
Absit ! cried his son, devoutly.
The old prince laughed.
There is plenty of time. Cardinal Benedetto
intends to be the next, and he ll last
As long as we let him/ whispered Sciarra Colcnna
in his teeth.
Celestine s eyes were seldom lifted to the fine
folk in the windows : in general they were bent wist
fully on the people nearest him, the sweaty crowd
that pushed up close and often impeded his way.
They were not destined to see much of him ; his
whole reign lasted little over four months, and he
went abroad only when he was made to do so : for
the most part he was nearly as close a hermit in the
King s palace as he had been in his own cave on the
mountain-top.
He could not possibly become popular, but the
people had no dislike to him : his gentleness was
touching, and his absence of all pride and self-sufficiency
too obvious to be unmarked. It must not be sup
posed that his appearance was wild and uncouth now as
it had been : he wore the insignia of his office, and no
one could see the hermit s rags under them ; his face
was only wan and sad, deadly pale, and with melancholy
eyes, troubled, and faded with long weeping.
The people liked him better than the princes.
If he had anything to give he would give it/ said
a woman with a keen, honest face, scanning the Pope s.
Q 2
228 SAN CELESTINO
He had given himself, all he had ever had, and there
was nothing left.
He hasn t come to be Pope for what he can get,
the woman added to her husband.
Si vede !
The great folk looked down as he passed, and none
felt any enthusiasm, though none were free from con
jecture. What he would turn out meant so much to
them ; and of a pope with no political antecedents, who
had never been a cardinal, who had emerged out of a
life-long obscurity, it was impossible to know anything.
There was the more to guess.
He will be somebody s victim. Some of them
will get hold of him/ grumbled an old prince who had
bothered more than one of Celestine s predecessors in
his time.
We must see it is the right party, declared his son.
I don t know. These simple saints are not the
easiest to manage, maintained the prince s brother.
He may surprise us all, and act for himself.
He doesn t look as if he would care to act at all.
One would say he only knows how to pray. ,
At the palace Celestine would receive their homage,
weary in body and much more jaded in spirit. After
all he had a dignity, which they, being gentlemen,
could perceive in a fashion ; but it was only the dignity
of simplicity and humility. He seemed an odd master
for them. Even in his audience-chamber some of them
could scarcely keep the peace ; even the hereditary
rights, or claims, that some of them had to the per
formance of duties about his person, led to rivalries and
bickerings. He had not the faintest idea that one
SAN CELESTINO 229
prince had the privilege of standing at his right hand,
and another that of being on his left ; that one might
have a place upon the steps of his throne, and another
only the right to kneel at the bottom of them.
Some assumed the privilege of sitting, after their
obeisance, upon stools, and certain cardinals bade him
resist this as an encroachment. It utterly dazed him.
Who am I that they should wrangle as to their
places near me ? he groaned.
The Supreme Pontiff, he was reminded coldly.
How could the weary hermit understand that if he
permitted this or that he was condoning the breach
of some one else s ancient and historic privilege ? If
everyone is allowed to crowd to the Sovereign s right
then the distinction is lost, and the courtier would as
lief be upon his left. He had to address them, and they
were all strangers ; he could find nothing appropriate
and personal to say. When he spoke to all together it
was not much better ; he had never loved talking, and
for the largest part of every year, for half a century,
he had kept entire silence. His tongue was not nimble ;
he had no adroit prettiness of speech ; and the delicate
shy spirituality of his few sentences was scarcely
audible.
His wan eyes had no fire in them, and the sensitive,
tremulous lips were not clever in framing such words
as please inquisitive ears. He had been able to give
wise and tender counsel to thousands, but they had
come one by one, and alone, and they had each had a
special need which he understood. The princes had
wants enough, but they were worldly, and the wants
of one were at war with those of his next neighbour.
Spiritual counsel was very little in their way ; and it
230 SAN CELESTINO
was all the Pope had to give, and even that must be
given in general.
No one thought his speech so lame as he felt it
himself, bat most of them found it lame enough.
He s a good Pope, no doubt, for the nuns and the
priests, declared a burly old baron from the Sabina,
who had put off burning down a village belonging
to another baron for the sake of going down to Naples
and making his obeisance. He felt rather bored and
annoyed, and wished he had set fire to that village
before starting ; he could not now do it with quite
so good a conscience on his return. He considered
himself a good Christian in his position in life (it was
God who had created him a baron of the Sabina),
and the rnild Pope s words about brotherly love were
still uncomfortable in his ears.
He is not much in our line, said another noble,
from near Segni. He had a cause of complaint against
Segni, which was an obstreperous city and inclined
to cavil at certain tributes. At first he had almost
thought of getting the Pope to arbitrate ; he was old
and rheumatic, and his only son was just dead ; pro
vided the arbitration went in his own favour it might
save him trouble and worry. But though he was
certain of his own rights he did not feel so sure of
this Pope s understanding justice. Saints should be
all for justice, but saints like Celestine would not, he
began to fear, know much about feudal prescriptions ;
and even saints have two ears, and the duke saw the
Syndic of Segni not far off. That was out of place ;
why need a syndic come to Naples, as if he were of the
principatum, to make homage to the Pontiff ?
Many of the princes felt themselves too strong to be
SAN CELESTINO 231
dependent on the Pope s goodwill ; it would rather
behove him to secure theirs. And they liked to be
courted for it. These were among the greatest, such
as had the right to be very near him. But, close to
him as they were ranged, his sensitive, shy nature
felt instinctively their aloofness.
They were civil, and treated him with a courtly
respect ; princes as they were, with names that carried
the fancy back almost to the beginnings of Eome,
they knew how to show all outward deference to the
obscure hermit now he sat upon the papal throne.
But it was all courtiers deference, impersonal and
unsympathetic ; Celestine found even Cardinal Bene
detto s bold criticism more friendly.
These great nobles watched with chill, polite eyes,
waiting for their time and chance, each willing to be
his friend and partisan if they could thus turn him to
their own account, and each knowing that he could not
thus be of use to all. Not one of them but reverenced
him as Head of the Church, not one but was ready
to squeeze and torment him if such a course should
seem likely to advance his own personal interest.
The Pope spoke of their souls, which was all very
right, for they had souls like the peasants, but they
thought of their families and of their names, which
the Pope did not know. Of policy he did not speak,
evidently because he had none ; nevertheless it would
be necessary to provide him with one. Each of them
was prepared to look to that.
CHAPTEK IX
IN another great hall of that palace the Pope built
himself a little hut.
He had wandered thither alone, eluding his chamber
lains, and found it desolate and empty. It was only
used on rare occasions : for state audiences with kings,
banquetings, and so forth. In a corner of it he saw
a pile of dusty planks, that had perhaps been used for
making tribunes or tables.
An old carpenter with one red eye was hovering
about.
Let me have some of those, said the Pope, as
meekly as if the wood belonged to the carpenter.
What for ? demanded the grimy old man, blinking
his one red eye, as suspiciouly as if the planks were
really his. It was a pity he could not keep his eye
shut altogether : he would have looked less disagree
able.
The Pope hesitated.
* It is no harm, he said, more apologetically than
ever.
One can t do much harm with a plank, admitted
the carpenter.
It was half an hour after the Ave Maria, and nearly
dark ; the Pope s white cassock was covered by a
crimson cloak that looked black in the dusk. Perhaps,
232
SAN CELESTINO 233
too, that one eye could not see very clearly. Certainly
the old carpenter did not know who was talking to him.
Come now, he said, with some concession in
his dry and musty manner, * let us hear what you
want planks for.
He smelt of sawdust and perhaps of not having
recently washed himself, for it was late in the week and
no festa ; but Celestine did not notice it.
I want to build a little hut, anywhere you like,
not so as to spoil the walls ; out here if you like,
or there behind the heap of wood.
* A little hut ! One never heard of such a thing.
What for ? he asked again, with quite a lively sense
of suspicion.
To live in, confessed the Pope.
The one red eye could not blink though it wanted
to ; the eyelid without lashes was quite paralysed
with astomsment.
Madonna ! Are we mad^! the carpenter squeaked
out.
Well, I only wanted it. If it cannot be I am
sorry ; that is all.
It never occurred to the gentle, timid Pope to
insist. He was used, now, to feeling himself disap
proved of.
He turned to creep away, and lifted his hand to
bless.
God bless you, my son, he said, as sweetly as if the
old curmudgeon had at once granted his meek request.
The red eye noticed sharply the uplifted hand, and
the great ring upon it. The moon, indeed, inquisitive
like all women, had come round the corner and was
just able to peer down through one of the tall windows.
284 SAN CELEST1NO
Who are you, though ? faltered the old carpenter.
1 Oh, did you not know ? I am the Pope.
The hut in the great hall was built, though not
that night ; and Celestine built it himself very badly,
the red -eyed critic assured himself for the Pope
would not let him help, though he borrowed his tools
and his nails, and let him choose the planks of a proper
size.
It was not all done in one night, and before it was
finished the chamberlains had tracked the Pope, and
stood peeping in at the door while he worked. No
doubt it was a peculiar sight to see him, with his red
cloak thrown off and his white cassock girded up, the
old colourless hermit-rags showing underneath.
But he was not so unhappy while he worked, and
his red-eyed friend did not think him at all mad now.
He knows all about poor people, the carpenter
assured his wife, who had the usual number of eyes,
and ears that might have heard enough for a score of
people. He doesn t care for the princes, he never
mentions them, but he understands about our sort
of people.
Giulia listened greedily ; her husband was nob
always so fond of talking as she would have liked him
to be. One who had worked in the palace ought to
have more to say, she considered.
It is well known already that he is not proud, she
observed, to encourage him to go on.
* I find him a good man, said Girolamo calmly, as
though his decision were of some consequence.
But he is a saint ! That is what everyone knows.
No doubt ; but he is also, as I say, a good man.
SAN CELESTINO 285
As to saints, one does not remember having met any ;
such a thing might not turn out agreeable.
He is agreeable, then ?
But Girolamo would not answer. He was thinking
of a good word ; * agreeable was not the word at all.
And he goes on building himself a hut to
live in ! said Giulia, who was anxious to keep up the
conversation.
Certo, he goes on. It is nearly finished ; it is not,
you will understand, a palazzo, with a piano-nobile
and a grand staircase.
Only one room, eh ? inquired Giulia, who had
heard it fully described already.
One little room with no floor ; for he intends to
lie on the pavement. But he has taken a short piece
of wood for a pillow. " I am very old now," he told
me, " and need such indulgences."
After a little pause, during which his wife managed
to keep quiet, the old carpenter went on. Giulia saw
very well he had something else to say ; that was why
she had been able to hold her tongue.
To-day Cardinal Benedetto came and caught
him.
* Caught the Holy Father ! What was he doing ?
Finishing the hut of course ; I was almost as
frightened as the Santo Padre.
Giulia shivered with delight.
Was the Cardinal angry ?
Angry ! You will be good enough to remember
that my friend is the Pope, Girolamo snapped out.
Cardinals are not to be angry with the Pope.
So he liked it ! He is not to live in it himself si
vede.
236 SAN CELESTINO
Who said he liked it ? Nobody asked him if he
liked it. The Santo Padre said nothing about it, but
just left off working to listen to the Cardinal.
Did the Cardinal speak to you ?
Yes, he did. . . .
Ever so proudly, I guess ; not like the Holy
Father.
Not proudly at all, then, though not in the least
like the Santo Padre.
How, then ?
How ? You ask as many questions as an examina
tion of conscience ! The Cardinal was gracious ; he is a
prince, and a prince of the Church ; such persons are
always gracious to poor people. It does them no harm.
It is to one another they are haughty . . . nevertheless
he was condescending. The Pope has no condescen
sion ; he treats one as if he did not know any ranks
existed.
And the Cardinal did not object to the Holy
Father s building himself a hut to live in ?
No one asked him, I tell you, whether he objected
or no.
4 But could you not see ? You see most things out
of that eye of yours.
It seems to me that in such things he will let the
Pope have his own way.
4 Ah ! in such things ?
But Girolamo did not feel disposed to explain in
what things the Cardinal might be likely to want the
Pope to do as he had determined.
Quite soon after this Celestine began to live in the
hut ; and, if the great Cardinal made no objection,
many others chattered. Some raved about the Pope s
SAN CELESTINO 237
sanctity, and began to look about for convenient corners
for huts for themselves. Others shook their heads and
even tapped them. Almost everyone had something
to say.
As far as possible Celestine seemed determined to
live in the palace the old life from which he had been
dragged. But it could not always be even in part pos
sible, and anyway it was but the shell of the old life.
His occupations could not be the same. There could
be little silence, and in truth there could be no
solitude.
Weighty matters were brought for his decision, and
he declared plainly that he did not understand them ;
could not they, who had experience, decide them with
out him ? As to matters of policy, questions of nations
and kings, he utterly protested his incompetence. He
was not in the least obstinate, being, in fact, only too
diffident ; but his very diffidence seemed obstinacy to
the self-confident and proud.
* I told them when they came to me, he urged with
tears and trembling, that I was ignorant, and I am
still as ignorant as ever : only it is worse, for I was then
only ignorant of a few simple things, and now I am
ignorant of a thousand difficult matters. I would tell
you if I could, but I know not what to say. It is
folly and presumption to decide in affairs of which
one knows nothing. . . .
Let the Holy Father alone, Cardinal Benedetto
would say, scornfully some thought, some said with a
certain real pity.
You, my lord, understand it. Decide it, the Pope
would plead. And the Cardinal was not usually back
ward in deciding.
288 SAN CELESTINO
He might as well be Pope at once, grumbled the
politicians in the French interest.
But the Pope favoured no interest. He only stuck
to it that the matters were beyond his capacity. And
if then there came other cardinals, opposed to the course
Caetani was following, and urged upon him that such
course was wrong, Celestine would bid them decide it
their way, and they would go from him declaring, and
no doubt believing, that they had his authority, that
he had decided it in such a way. So both opposing
decisions were said to be his.
CHAPTEE X
ALL this was in matters of high policy.
In some affairs of more personal interest he also got
into deep trouble.
Princes from his own states would come and urge
a right or a prescription, and pour into his dazed ears
a yard-long tale. He listened patiently, but they did
not always even wish to be clear, and perhaps were not
unwilling that he should be confused ; what they
wanted was an assent. At all events, it was all about
feudal affairs of which he was absolutely ignorant.
They would go away, boasting of success. Then their
rivals would come and confuse him with a longer tale
still, utterly contradictory of the other, but like it in
obscurity and entanglement ; and they would also go
away declaring that his Holiness had revoked and
annulled the previous decision.
His simplicity and humility made him far too easily
accessible, and they all knew how to take advantage of
it ; Cardinal Benedetto would then scold him so his
enemies declared ; but if he took the Pope to task, it
was not unfairly. He wanted the Pope to defend him
self, to save himself from persecution.
After all, etiquette is not such a bad thing, he
would urge. Not every squabble between these wild
beasts of barons can be brought to your Holiness.
240 SAN CELESTINO
Etiquette would defend you from much of all this. If
two dogs want to wrangle over a bone they need not
be free to drag it here and growl over it. He who
separates snarling dogs gets bitten.
Perhaps the Cardinal s words were rough some
times ; he was of the mountains, and his nature was
rough in a fashion ; but Celestine, also from the
mountains, did not mind that much. Many were
gentler with the weary, dazed Pope than was the
energetic, self-assured Cardinal ; but, though dreading
him, because of his frequent disapproval, and because
of that lack of sympathy that must always be in their
natures, Celestine leaned on him more and more.
One day the Pope received for visitor an old man
three years his senior, whom he had known, and of
whom he had been once nearly as much in awe as he
now was of Caetani.
This was Messer Giacomo, the priest who had
dragged him off to Eome for ordination.
Messer Giacomo was seventy-seven years old, and
had been a canon for over a quarter of a century. He
made it very plain, even to Celestine, that he thought
he ought to be a bishop. Certainly it was high time,
if he was ever to be a bishop at all. In three years he
would be eighty, and he was feeble in everything
but speech.
In that he was as vehement as a fiumara, and his
vehemence utterly disconcerted the Pope. His un
abashed urgency made the Pope ashamed ; but the
canon was too eager to be ashamed himself. One
could see it was a matter about which he had been
brooding for years, and there was now so little time to
lose.
SAN CELESTINO 241
There was a particular see vacant on which Canon
Giacomo had set his eyes, and, before he went away
he had extracted a promise from Celestine that he
should have it. In fact, the Pope promised hurriedly
anxious to end a scene which troubled him. He was
sure Giacomo was a good man, and had always been
good ; no doubt he was fit to be a bishop though old ;
and was not he, whom they had made Pope, old too ?
And it seemed to him unseemly that, when one who
had always behaved as his superior came to supplicate,
he should refuse ; nevertheless the memory of that
supplication was repulsive.
Then came Lippo, who had remained so long a sub-
deacon, but had now been a priest for ever so many
years, and for over twenty had been chancellor of the
very diocese whereof Messer Giacomo wanted to be
bishop.
He declared that the canons of the chapter wished
to have him, and brought two of them with him to bear
up his assertion. They said it was so, and, becoming
keen because they had espoused his cause, urged it
almost with heat.
They protested that the diocese was peculiar, and
not easily to be governed by a stranger. It was not in
the regno, whence came Messer Giacomo, but in the
papal territories, and a foreigner would be disagreeable.
It would be bad if a Neapolitan were imposed on them,
and would cause people to murmur that the Pope acted
so because he was of the regno himself and wanted to
favour the subjects of King Charles. The Chancellor
was native-born and understood the people, who were
very peculiar. . . .
I dare say you are peculiar in your diocese, thought
242 SAN CELESTINO
the Pope. But his tongue was too gentle to say this
aloud.
He remembered Lippo very well, and had not found
him pleasant as a fellow-hermit ; but he had nothing
against him, and would very much dread seeming to
bear a grudge because the man had left them.
Basta ! he said. And when Lippo went away he
considered that a promise had been made to him.
The Pope had made none, nevertheless he had been
kind in manner, and had not declared the thing
impossible.
Cardinal Benedetto took Lippo s part, and
persuaded the Pope that it would be right to give that
see to the Chancellor ; and Lippo was made bishop,
though a promise had actually been given to Messer
Giacomo, who nearly died of anger.
So people said the Pope had given the same see to
two bishops, and all sorts of mutterings resulted.
The Pope was not spared the repetition of them,
for each claimant had picked up a friend or so among
his courtiers, and Celestine was so meek, and so acces
sible, that people who had no delicacy said what they
liked to him. He had never known how to snub, and
being Pope had not taught him.
He was nearly distracted ; he was always ready to
believe he had done wrong, and it seemed to him that
the wrong he did was more miserable and disastrous
every day.
Some of these mistakes of his were really about very
little matters, but nothing could seem little, or unim
portant, to his irritable conscientiousness. Had they
been other people s mistakes he would have thought
nothing of them, but being his own, he bore heavily
SAN CELESTINO 243
on them, and they bore him down to the very ground.
Then Advent drew on, and Celestine resolved to spend
the season in retreat. He shut himself up in his hut
altogether, and placed the government of the Church in
the hands of a committee of three cardinals Caetani,
Colonna, and Malebranca. It is very unlikely, indeed,
that he was allowed to remain undisturbed ; probably
it was wholly impossible. Matters would arise con
cerning which the cardinals could not take the responsi
bility of acting without so much as referring to him.
They might practically decide, but it would not have
been decent for them to proceed without, at least,
asking the Pope s approval of their decision ; and then
they would insist on explaining the grounds of their
action, and try to insist on his understanding them.
It is not even certain that all three were invariably
agreed in every opinion; then, of course, recurrence must
be had to the sovereign pontiff. The Pope may bear the
weight of a triple crown, but the papacy is not a tripod.
Even if they left him alone, they could not leave
him undisturbed ; for he must disturb himself. He
could not shut himself up from himself, and from him
self he had to endure unceasing reproach.
After all he was Pope, and never for a moment could
he forget it, however he might lay aside the insignia of
temporal and spiritual sovereignty. He was Pope, and
the responsibility of everything must, in the final appeal
the only appeal he cared about, the appeal to God s
judgment be his. He could not make three cardinals
Pope, or thirty-three.
The more they really did leave him alone, the more
miserably he felt the sting of this self-accusation.
It is not even to be taken for granted that when
B 2
244 SAN CELESTINO
they acted without him he would invariably be satisfied
that they had done rightly. The treatment of diplo
matic matters by three trained diplomatists was not
necessarily the treatment that would commend itself to
a hermit. The wisdom of the serpent might be called
for, and he cared only for the simplicity of the dove.
It all came to this ; he was Pope, and the burden of
popedom could not be delegated.
All his life he had allowed himself little sleep, but
now he could not sleep when he tried. The night
long he would stare into the darkness, finding it full of
accusing spectres. Unfitness, incompetence, ineptitude,
all made themselves forms and declared they were his.
Of God he had never been afraid ; for perfect love
casts out fear, and he loved God, and had never loved
anyone else, certainly not himself, except as being
something belonging to Him, and dear to Him. But
he was afraid of offending God, and was full of dread
that now he was continually offending Him and doing
Him harm.
He was crucified on the papacy, head downwards ;
St. Peter on his cross had glorified God and the Church.
And Celestine would willingly have borne his own
crucifixion, had God been glorified by it. But he told
himself with bitter tears and shame that God was
dishonoured, and that he himself, God s Vicar, was
giving to God s enemies occasion to blaspheme.
When Christ had taught the people He drew off
from them in a boat, and in that boat His vicegerent
had sat teaching them ever since. But Celestine could
not hold the rudder in his powerless hands ; it wavered,
and the navicella was by him being driven on the rocks.
BOOK IV
IL GRAN RIEIUTO
CHAPTEK I
ONE morning the three cardinals came to the Pope, and
he received them with a light upon his face that not one
of them had ever yet seen there. Perhaps no one had
ever seen a light so strange ; certainly no one had
ever yet beheld on human countenance a breaking
dawn that was caused by the advent of a day desired
for such a reason.
They told their business, and Celestine listened with
a more than common patience, with a lightening of
spirit that struck each of them.
Nevertheless he did not agree with them.
Nay, he said, not thus. To such judgment as
God has given me, that does not seem best.
They were astonished, but not at all displeased.
If only he would be more ready to act upon his own
judgment !
He almost smiled as he went on, and none of them
had ever seen him smile, though old Girolamo had seen
him out of his one red eye. It had only been a wan,
wistful smile, then, like a humble child s.
You think I am a bad carpenter, the Pope had
245
246 SAN CELESTINO
said to the self-sufficient old curmudgeon, and yet I
have the Carpenter s work to do, and His place to fill.
As long as I am Pope I can only agree to what I
think right, said Celestine to the three cardinals.
None of them could have perceived the slightest
glimmering of his meaning, No doubt, they imagined,
he meant to say * as long as I live.
That is a good resolution, observed Caetani
heartily.
The Pope said no more then of the matter they had
come about. He fell into a reverie less dark and
troubled than his reveries usually were, but thoughtful
and solemn.
My lords, he said at last* in a low, clear voice,
God has sent me an answer to all my doubts.
He looked them bravely in the face. And they
thought he had resolved to lay aside his scruples, to
believe in his own fitness, by God s help, and to take
courage.
* That is what I urged upon your Holiness at the
first, said Malebranca. Expecta Dominum. Viri-
liter age. Et sustine Dominum.
The Pope bent his head.
I have waited for Him. And He has answered.
The man who is vice-God I cannot play. . . .
He paused and lifted his face to theirs again. They
had never seen such a face, so old, so worn, so haggard,
and yet with such an exquisite grace of simple patience
in it. Well they knew he was a saint ; and none of
them at that moment doubted that he had served
God s turn. His papacy, whatever it was, could never
have been in vain.
Perhaps they had often been impatient with him ;
SAN CELESTINO 247
his doubfc and hesitations had perplexed and almost
angered them. Now they felt ashamed.
The plane on which he lived was so near to heaven
it was no wonder the world had been disconcerted by
it, they thought.
My Lords, he said, as simply as if he was telling
them he intended to go abroad next day, I have
resolved, if it may be, to lay down the office that God
has given me.
Without adverting to it, all three of them yet
noticed that he did not speak as one who doubts that
God had made him what he was.
No wonder there was silence. It seldom can
happen to a man to say something that has never been
said before. It was Caetani who broke it.
It is a temptation, he cried, falling at the Pope s
feet, and grasping his thin hand in both of his. Holy
Father, it is a temptation. . . .
The Cardinal s strong mouth trembled, and his
large frame shook with sobs. No one had ever seen him
weep before, and he never wept again till the brutal
Colonna struck him, the Pope then, in the face with his
steel glove. That day his heart broke. His heart
was whole enough now, but it was a great one, all said
and done, and human, and it was shaken with emotion,
through which a shudder of foreboding may have passed.
Santo Padre, he cried, still kneeling and clinging
to the gentle Pope. Put it away. Drink the chalice,
bitter, bitter as we know it is to you.
I have drunk it, said Celestine. And he thought
of Him, in whose place he stood, who said, * I have
trodden the winepress alone, and of the people there
was none with Me.
248 SAN CELESTINO
Nay, he added gently, but with quite a new firm
ness. I have thought of it all. It is not for myself.
" Though He slay me, yet would I trust in Him." It is
for the Church. St. Peter s ship is wrecking, with me
at its helm. God has used me ; He knows wherefore.
Now I abuse Him. Let me go. I came when He bade
me. " Nunc Dimittis."
The other two cardinals had long ago cast themselves
also at his feet, and he hardly noticed it. What were
postures to him ?
* Holy Father, it cannot be, they protested.
* It can. It will, he answered. They hardly knew
him in his new-found decision and firmness. He was
as strong and courageous in laying down the papacy as
another might have been in taking it up.
Once Pope, always Pope, they urged.
Why? The Pope is Bishop of Eome. Every
Bishop of Kome is Pope because he is Bishop of Kome,
and St. Peter, whom Christ made head, was Bishop of
Eome first ; therefore everyone who is Bishop of Eome
is Peter s successor, and inherits his privilege. . I am
Pope. Do I not know it to my cost ? And Pope I
must be while I hold this See of Eome. But other
bishops lay down their sees when they are old, or
grown useless, and the Church commends them, accept
ing their resignation of an office for which they have
ceased to be fit. I also will lay down this Eoman
mitre, and be Bishop of Eome no more, so shall I cease
to be Pope, and the see will be vacant, for a better man to
fill, whom your most reverend lordships will choose.
They were staggered, not at all convinced ; least
of all Caetani.
He was the best canonist in the Church, and in an
instant his mind rushed through the whole question.
SAN CELESTINO 249
In Canon Law, as in all other, precedent goes for much ;
and for this there was no precedent. Nevertheless
there was much in what Celestine pleaded, as an ab
stract principle, and in all law the first precedent must
arise from principle alone.
Cardinal Benedetto s position was not comfortable,
and the other two cardinals understood this as well as
he did himself. The more they talked to the Pope,
the more plain was it that Celestine was quite resolved
to lay down the papal crown ; and if the thing were
possible they would find it hard to quarrel with his
decision. The present condition of affairs was almost
intolerable.
But it seemed now a foregone conclusion that in
the event of Celestine s abdication Cardinal Caetani
would be the new Pope, as in fact he became within a
few weeks.
How could he listen to Celestine s scheme without
being accused by the uncharitable world of favouring it
for his own sake ? What a fury of opposition and
obloquy would burst upon him from France and all
in the French interest ! To be the successor of an
abdicated Pope would be the most trying of all positions ;
over and over again before now had a pope s claims
been questioned, out of policy, out of rebellious spirit,
out of the ever irritable itch of schism among the
unworthy. And in his case such question and rebellion
appeared almost as certain as the elevation which
Celestine s action would make inevitable for him.
Caetani was strong enough for any burden that
might be laid upon him, and of a hard, rather warlike
courage ; had Celestine died, and he been elected in his
place, he would have been ready to accept the weighty
task entrusted to him ; but to take the keys from the
250 SAN CELESTINO
hands of a still-living Pope would be a matter of alto
gether different difficulty.
Nevertheless it was obvious that Celestine in
tended to do as he had said. He would appeal to the
canonists, but he already seemed to feel an almost
serene confidence that their decision would enable
him to carry out his own. He was calm in com
parison of his habitual nervous uncertainty, and no
longer seemed miserable; he was not even impatient,
though his eagerness was uncontrollable.
He never forgot that he was Pope, though it was
easy to see that he believed his tenure of the papacy
would now last but a week or two.
They left him with earnest pleadings that he would
reconsider his idea ; but all three knew that he would
cling to it.
Caetani, in taking leave, solemnly adjured him to
look well to what he did.
1 It is a deeper responsibility to lay down the keys,
he urged, * even than to take them up.
( Were I Pope, he might have said, I would not
dare to do this thing.
But the timid Celestine dared.)
* It is a novelty, he continued, and the Church
suspects novelties. " Walk in the old paths." See
that your Holiness does not breed a new mischief for the
Church whose head you are.
The greatest mischief I can do is in continuing to be
her head, replied the Pope gently. After all, there
must be new things. It was a new thing when God
chose to leave a vicar of Himself on earth.
They had never known him so ready to argue. His
only argument, hitherto, had been a weary, puzzled
silence.
CHAPTER II
THE appeal to the canonists was made secretly ; but
such a secret could not be kept. Immediately it leaked
out, and a whirlwind of comment arose. Celestine, in
his hut within the palace, heeded none of it. He went
on praying and fasting as if no one in the world was
concerned about him. His prayers were happier, and
his fasting lifted him more and more out of the turmoil
into the high serene of contemplation.
The over-fed world can never understand the
thoughts of the ascetic. For over fifty years he had
eaten no flesh, and had lived on a few herbs, and now
and then a little bread ; water had been his drink.
His spirit was not bound by the fat trammels of an
over -nourished body.
Of course he was blamed. By some because they
loved him, by others because they hated Caetani and
dreaded his accession.
Some were so mad with apprehension and spite
that they flatly declared Celestine was mad
himself.
I am not mad, said the Pope gently ; God does
not suffer madness to destroy His Vicar. But if I
were mad, then indeed should I be unfit to remain
where I am.
Charles of Anjou hurried to Celestine.
251
252 SAN CELESTINO
He found the Pope in his hut in the great hall
where kings should be received in state, and he was
received with a plain simplicity that was more discon
certing than any state.
For many days they had not met, and the King
perceived a vast difference in the pontiff. He was
more aged, and more worn, indeed very nearly worn
out altogether. But Celestine was more accustomed
to being Pope, he was not to be so easily managed
by Charles, and he was undeniably less melancholy.
He was as humble as ever, as diffident, but not
lacking in a quiet dignity. He listened patiently to
everything the King said ; but he did not commit him
self.
These saints are always obstinate, the King
grumbled to himself.
No one had ever accused Charles of sanctity,
nevertheless he was proud of his own obstinacy. It
was his obstinacy that had made and kept him King
of Naples.
Celestine had been much accused of favouring those
who had been his fellow-subjects, and something in
his quiet manner reminded the King that he was no
one s subject now.
When the King left him to his silence, Charles knew
he had not prevailed and would not.
During those last days many knew him better,
or now discovered that they had known him better
all along than they had thought. His patient sweetness,
his humility, were all remembered. He had never
reproached anyone, or been hard. He had never
expected perfection except in himself, and there alone
had cruelly found fault with its absence. He begged
SAN CELESTINO 253
their pardon, submissively, but without affectation
or meanness, yet as if the faults he imagined in himself
had been against each of them individually.
* You are the Church s princes, he said simply to
his cardinals, and the weakness of the head has been
a wound to you all.
Even his old horror and dread of Eome had softened
and faded into a mere consciousness that it was too
great for him, now that there would be no further
question of his going thither.
A capital should be proud of its king ; no one
could be proud of me, he declared. The popes have
hitherto all been great. It is hard for the proud Home
to acknowledge that there has been one little one. All
the same, his old air of shame had vanished. He was
no more ashamed than a child is of being a child only.
It has been one of God s incomprehensible provi
dences. If He had not meant it I should never have
been Pope. All He meant has been fulfilled ; one
cannot see it, but it must be so, because He never
bungles or makes mistakes. And now He has ready
a different providence. Do your part in it.
Of his successor he said nothing and thought
nothing. That was not his affair. The papacy was
not his to bequeath, as an abdicating monarch may
devise his crown. He gave no hint ; it was not for
him to give hints to the Holy Ghost.
Out of his palace he went hardly ever, when he went
it was as humbly as he had entered it, though less
miserably. The trappings of his office had never been
anything to him. Palace, or wooden hut in it, was all
one to him.
He went in a king s chariot, as indifferently as if
254 SAN CELESTINO
it had been a farmer s waggon. The King would sit
upon his left, thinking much of it ; the Pope sat upon
the right, not noticing it at all. If he had noticed, it
would have been all the same. He was still Pope,
and above every king.
The people came out and thronged about him to
receive his blessing, and he gave it like a dying father
who is pained to leave his children, but glad to go home.
Not every father is vain enough to natter himself that
his going must be a disaster to them. A great people
has often a rather hard heart, but it is seldom heartless,
and the people by this time had a fair enough notion
of what the Pope was. It was impossible to despise
him, it was not easy to fail of a certain love for him ;
not the noisy affection shown to a popular, smiling
figure, but a rarer, less earthly, impulse to tenderness
and respect.
By this time they knew of what he intended, and
the Gran Kifiuto he was set oil making gave him in
their eyes a distinction altogether peculiar. He who
in the most exalted place does something never before
done in it must at least be secure from appearing
insignificant.
As they saw him getting ready to pass away out
of their midst, they did not fall into the shallow error
of supposing that Celestine V was determined on ceasing
to be Pope per viltd. He was no coward, unless he
is one who is afraid of doing God an injury. That wan
face, unearthly as it was, was no coward s, nor was it
the face of a common man, or mean.
The populace of a great city is never likely to con
sist entirely of over-supernatural persons, nevertheless
this crowd of Catholics was capable of perceiving a
SAN CELESTINO 255
spectacle that was supernatural. Celestine did not
tower aloft on a pinnacle of illustrious achievement,
but he dwelt in a region so elevated that they could
realise, by the instinct of faith, how high it was above
them. He had himself spoken of the greatness of the
popes, his own mark was to be set upon the papacy so as
never to be forgotten, and as they saw the last of him
they were already conscious of it.
They crowded about him, receiving no largess but
his blessing, for all the time he had been Pope, as for
over fifty years before, he had never possessed a penny
of his own, and did not now. It is easy enough to
scatter coins, and they had appreciation enough to feel
that only a saint can give a saint s benediction. Of
the palace he was leaving and the throne he was to
come down from Celestine thought nothing, yet even
in that palace a fragrance would linger that owed
itself to him. One passes through a room, and the
odour of it calls up no vision of the roses that once
bloomed, and then in their death sweetened that place,
yet the sweetness could not have been there without
them. The Castello Nuovo of Naples would be as
dark and grim a King s house as any there is in the
world, but for the unearthly wan light of that old
man s ever-haunting presence in it.
CHAPTEE III
THE time drew near the Birth of Christ. It was the
13th of December, in the year 1294. On the 29th
of August Celestine had been consecrated Bishop, and
crowned Pope, at Aquila.
The canonists had given their answer. There
appeared to be nothing in the principles of Canon Law
that would be contravened by the Pope s laying down
the sovereign dignity.
That being so, Celestine listened to no one else ; and
all expostulation was so plainly thrown away upon him
that even Charles of Anjou ceased to expostulate. The
King no longer regarded him as a practicable piece in
his game of politics.
On that bright day of winter Celestine V held his
last consistory in the Sola di San Luigi, named in
honour of the King s canonised brother. The King
himself was present, and his son the King of Hungary
with the cardinals, and they were all seated when
Celestine V entered, attended for the last time by his
court, and clad in the pontifical vestments. They rose
in silence, and the Pope slowly, but with an assured
step, walked to his throne, a protonot-ary beside him
carrying an unwonted document.
Consistories are usually for the making of princes
and bishops of the Church, this one was for the un
making of the Church s supreme head.
256
BAN CELESTINO 267
The Pope took his seat upon the throne, and saluted
the cardinals and monarchs, who drew near one by one
to make their obeisance, which Celestine V received with
a quiet gladness. They were never again to render it to
him, and it was very different accepting it now for the
last time from what it had been when he submitted to it
on the first occasion. Those who had been present
at his coronation marked well the change in his
demeanour.
Then they returned to their places and sat down to
listen. The Pope turned to the protonotary and took
from his hands the solemn act of his renunciation, and,
still seated, read it aloud in a clear though low voice
which everyone could hear.
No cardinals were created, no bishops preconised,
only the See of Home was declared vacant, by the free
and voluntary resignation of him who held it.
The Act of Abdication was short and simple, and
the whole ceremony was as brief and plain as Celestine
could force it to be.
When he finished reading there was a silence broken
only by the words Placeat Deo/
Celestine himself looked as if he had no doubt of that.
Then bending his head he allowed the tiara-bearer to
lift the pontifical crown from his head, and stood up.
The white skullcap was removed by himself and handed
to the cardinal next him Cardinal Benedetto. He
drew the fisherman s ring from his finger, kissed it
devoutly, and gave it to another cardinal, who imme
diately broke it.
The fastening of the heavy cope was undone, and he
seemed to stand more easily as it was borne away. The
broad stole, and the patriarchal cross on its heavy
258 SAN CELESTINO
golden chain, were taken off ; and so, one by one, the
insignia of the highest dignity below heaven were cast
off by him. Finally, the white cassock of lamb s wool
was removed, and Celestine stood there clad in the poor
rags he had worn as hermit.
Before this was done he had left the throne and was
standing at the foot of its steps almost hidden by the
little crowd about him.
Then they drew away, for they were his attendants
no longer ; and Celestine knelt alone on the cold stone
of the floor.
My lords, he pleaded, forgetting the two kings, I
kneel here to beg your pardons, as it was not fit I should
kneel at your feet while I was still Pope. You all
know what I have done amiss ; wherein I have failed.
But God s pity has healed the wound my being Pope
caused, or will heal it. Choose a new head of the
Church, one able and worthy. And let me go.
His eyes glistened, and a few tears trickled down
his aged cheek, but they were very joyful, and his thin,
tired face was shining with gladness. No one could now
pity him.
His weary eyes saw little in that crowded hall, for
they saw God. Beati pauper es spiritu. He was of a
poor spirit, and, for that, a proud and great spirit set
him at the mouth of hell ; but the keys of heaven and
hell were not lent by God to any poet, however sublime.
For the first time in the history of Christianity the See
of Peter was empty though no pope had died since
the last election : he who had been Pope knelt in
the midst of the cardinals begging their pardon, and
yet with a face of shining happiness that they could
hardly believe was his. They all watched him in
SAN CELESTINO 259
silence, appreciating something too sacred for comment.
Not one doubted his sanctity, though many had criti
cised his action or inaction during the four months
past. They were men of mark, great men of their day,
but in his voluntary littleness he was greater than any
of them, and they realised it.
In a way it made them suddenly regret his deposi
tion of himself with a new feeling. He who was able
thus to lay down the keys must have been able to hold
them, it seemed to them.
Their silence, and that of the two foreign kings, was
very peculiar ; it was a complete tribute of a unique
respect.
Charles of Anjou and his son saw in Celestine some
thing they had been hitherto blind to, something even
now quite beyond their capacity to measure. They
had no balance in which to weigh him ; he eluded their
valuation and could not be appraised by them. But
they both knew that in despising him they had con
victed themselves of stupidity.
One by one the cardinals arose and went to the old
man kneeling in his rags and embraced him, earnestly
begging that he would pray for them, and, above all,
help them by his prayers in the work he had now given
them to do.
Pray for me, too, whispered Charles, when his turn
came. None of them needed prayer more.
You are a saint s brother, said the hermit. * He
is praying for you. But pray for yourself. The
fashion of this world changes, and its comfort grows
stale . . . there was a crown made for you before any
earthly crown was yours, see you gain it.
Then his gentle and forgiving heart reminded him of
s 2
260 SAN CELESTINO
the sort of intimacy there had been between them, and
he added, more gently still
* For your friendship I thank you.
If Charles of Anjou did not feel ashamed he must
have been incapable of shame altogether.
Among those who wear Christ s livery, he said, I
have met some as ambitious as any warrior fighting
for a throne. In you I found one who himself despised
that which he bade others hold of no account.
The winter day had not darkened into night before
the founder of the Celestini was far from Naples, on
his happy homeward way to his monastery of the
Holy Ghost, of Solmona.
I have lifted up mine eyes unto the hills whence
cometh my help, he sang in his heart.
In exitu Israel de Egypt o, cried one of his
companions.
One month and two days later Cardinal Benedict
Caetani was crowned Pope in Home by the name of
Boniface VIII.
When he had taken his turn of bidding Celestine
farewell he had held him tightly in his strong arms.
Pray specially for me, he had whispered, almost
trembling.
CHAPTEE IV
LONG as was the journey, tedious as was the way, from
Naples to Solmona, Celestine sped upon it with happy
dispatch. It was in a manner a flight, for he dreaded
the ovations which the people were ready to accord him.
All he wanted was to be at home and hidden in the
friendly seclusion of his order.
It was under cover of night that he made his entry
into the monastery, but it was ablaze with light, and
warm with welcome. The winter cold was all left
outside.
Such a smiling face as their founder brought them
none of his monks had ever seen. At his departure,
riding with two kings to hold his bridle, he had carried
a countenance troubled and distraught.
I have brought our little father back, said Fra
Maurizio proudly.
When he went away Celestine V had begged
Maurizio to accompany him, but had been almost
roughly refused.
I come to you, the monk had said, to copy your
life of a hermit, not to be the courtier of a pope.
But at the tidings of Celestine s impending deposition
of himself Fra Maurizio had hurried to his old master
at Naples. He was much prouder of the Pope s abdi
cation than he had been of his elevation.
261
262 SAN CELESTINO
Some of the brethren shook their heads. How
could they help regretting that their head should no
longer be the head of the whole Church ? And, simple
as they were, they foreboded trouble from the astound
ing act that left the fold once more without a shepherd.
[% But most of them were simply glad to see their
old master back among them.
It is bad for a family when the father stays abroad,
they told him comfortably.
* Only his body stayed abroad, declared Celestine,
his spirit was always here.
They had sung a Te Deum with a glow of elation
when he was chosen Pope, now he had returned to them
they sang another with a more homely satisfaction.
Of course they wanted him to stay in the monastery ;
and for a while he indulged them, pretending it was to
indulge himself.
This little brother, he said, tapping his old body,
is very nearly worn out. One must be easier with
him. Little brothers are a trouble, but it does not do
to be over-harsh in families.
So he remained a week or two, and then clambered
up the steep path, if a path it could be called, to his
cavern at the mountain-top.
* Those poor lords, he cried, stopping to take breath,
* what a climb it must have been for them ! It was
August then, and the sun had no more pity on them
than if they had been Eoman eagles. There are no
mountains in Eome ; the seven hills are little mounds
with shallow dips between them. There is no such
a thing as going really uphill in Eome.
He turned to with a will, and was soon at the top ;
his cell was just as he had left it. Once inside, he
SAN CELESIINO 268
found it hard to believe he had ever really been away,
though the absence had seemed so long. He stood on
the narrow shelf of terrace outside, and looked down
into the deep, bare valley.
His eyes shone, and the wintry sunlight was not
brighter than the gleeful radiance with which they
welcomed every old familiar object.
After all, there is nothing like mountains/ he
declared. In that palace I made a hut. It was a good
hut, though the old carpenter, who let me have the
wood to make it, said it would cause him to lose his
place if anyone were to suppose he had built it. He
was an honest creature, though cross at times. That,
he would say, was owing to his wife, who was a tedious
person. I find married people often find each other
tedious. That is their cross ; but God gives them
grace to embrace it. And if Giulia dies I fancy my old
carpenter will be lonely . . . but a cave is far better
than a hut, especially if one s hut is in a palace. You
have no idea, Maurizio, what a disagreeable place a
palace is.
I never wanted to find out, observed Maurizio
calmly.
* No, in that you were, perhaps, disobliging. It
would have served you right if I had given you an
obedience to go with me, and made you a secretary
of briefs or something.
What are briefs ?
They are long things on parchment. . . . But I am
here again now, and they do not matter. What a good
cave it is. Not too large. That floor of the hall, in
which my hut was, was also of stone, but it did not feel
like this rock ; it was smooth.
264 SAN CELESTINO
Maurizio went away, and the old hermit was left
alone in his happy solitude.
How good God is ! he said to himself, as the cold
moon shone out. I never thought of coming home.
Alas ! ; It was not for long.
The new Pope had many and bitter enemies, and
his unique position laid him open to their malice. Not
every canonist had agreed as to the possibility of a
sovereign pontiff deposing himself.
Loud murmurs arose from all whom Boniface had
to check and oppose and there were many such. A
strict and strong Pope was necessary after so long an
interregnum, followed by four months of such a rule
as Celestine s. And Boniface was courageous and
determined. He cajoled none of them, and carried
out his drastic measures as sternly as Sixtus V did
centuries afterwards.
To the powerful French influence he neither bowed
nor truckled. I am Pope, every act of his declared,
* and own no master among the kings of the earth.
But he is not Pope, retorted his enemies, * only
an anti-pope. The real Pope is at Solmona.
So Celestine s troubles were not over.
First there came to him these wily emissaries of the
party opposed to Boniface ; and all they could do
they did to work upon his scruples. Pope he still was,
they maintained, treating him as such, and alluding to
his successor, carefully, as cardinal only.
He knew very well there had been anti-popes ; but
he was sure Cardinal Caetani s election had been valid.
Valid enough if your Holiness had been dead,
urged the emissaries. But a valid election is im
possible when the papacy is not vacant.
SAN CELESTINO 265
Celestine wept, and entreated them to leave him in
peace. It was worse than when Colonna had come from
Perugia. Not all of his own monks were on his side.
They were not canonists, but they loved their
founder, and had been proud when he had been un
animously chosen Pope by acclamation. Of Cardinal
Caetani they had known nothing at all, till rumours
reached them that Celestine was not well treated by him.
It was not difficult for them to believe that a proud,
princely cardinal had cajoled their own simple Pope
out of his crown.
* Look well to it, some of them urged him, that
you are not resisting the Holy Ghost the unpardon
able sin.
r .&iPt a ^ crmies the most damnable must be that of
favouring an anti pope. What if the true Pope should
himself be guilty of such a fault !
The seamless coat of Christ ! For Christ s Vicar
himself to join in rending it ! What horror !
Celestine was more than ever distraught. He had
never doubted the validity of his own amazing act ;
but now others doubted it. And himself he had always
doubted.
He drove the emissaries away, but others came
in their place, and he was flatly accused of condoning a
theft, of favouring an anti-pope, of having made himself
responsible for a schism.
There on his mountain-top, far from authentic news,
he was assured that the Church was divided, half for
him, the true Vicar of Christ, and half for the haughty
intruder who had grabbed his keys, and thrust himself,
out of ambition, into his place, which never could be
empty while he lived.
266 SAN CELESTINO
He had meant to save all by taking his weak hands
off the tiller of Peter s boat, and now they told him
that he had ruined .all by letting an impostor usurp
his seat.
Then came his arrest, as all the enemies of Boniface
declared it. He was being used as a tool ; things were
said, as in his name, which he had never said, and a real
schism threatened. Even the devout and simple did
not always know what to think. More than one anti-
pope has had innocent, ignorant partisans. To Celestine,
there seemed only one course open, flight, and he fled
from his beloved home ; it was all one to him where he
was if only God would go with him, and he might save
the Church from disaster.
That he was still Pope he did not believe. But how
hard it was to hear himself called Pope and to know
that he had been Pope, as truly as any who ever sat in
Peter s seat and to feel as certain as he wished.
No doubt his act had been hurried, beyond all
custom, and that haste was now blamed.
He would fly Italy altogether. Almost alone, in the
dark night, like an animal, he sped away towards the
eastern coast, hoping to get across the Adriatic into
Dalmatia.
He reached the sea, and was able to find a small
vessel, though it was not ready to set sail immediately.
Meanwhile he was pursued. Boniface had taken alarm,
and most likely the Pope was not the only one who
dreaded a schism with an unwilling anti-pope for its
head. Celestine was the subject of Charles of Naples,
and was living in his dominions, and Boniface sent
to the King begging that he would not let the hermit
of Solmona fall into designing hands. Pope and King
SAN CELESTINO 267
were for the time friends, though it still seems uncertain
why Charles should have seconded his wishes. He
dispatched messengers to secure Celestine s person, but
they failed to intercept him ; he was already at sea.
But the ship was small and the weather proved
unpropitious. As the wretched vessel tossed and
heaved, and spars groaned and rigging creaked,
Celestine could not help thinking of that Navicella
of Peter which he believed himself to have nearly
wrecked. Perhaps the master of the ship also thought
him unlucky. At all events, he declared that the
voyage was impossible, and suffered himself to be
driven back to the Italian shore. The governor of the
little coast town of Tapagia was Charles of Anjou s
subject, and he confined Celestine in his castle, handing
him over presently to the King s emissaries. They
led him to Anagni, where he was lodged in the Pope s
own palace, remaining there some time.
CHAPTEE V
THE first interview between Boniface and his prede
cessor must have been remarkable. The Pontiff had
been assured that Celestine was not only being made a
tool in the hands of those who wished nothing better
than a rival to himself, but that they had persuaded him
of the nullity of his renunciation. Of all the Pope s em
barrassments no doubt his predecessor was the heaviest.
That he had forboded this did not make it the easier.
Boniface was as good a canonist and jurist in the
civil law as any man alive, and he knew that Celestine s
act of abdication was perfectly valid, and that his own
election was, therefore, equally so. What pope can
patiently support an anti-pope ? Even the meekest
man who ever sat on Peter s throne could find no pity
or excuse for such an one. Celestine himself would
have regarded with horror anyone who had called
himself head of the Church, had any such false
claimant arisen, before his own deposition of himself.
And, until he had seen him again, Boniface was
not sure that Celestine was innocent. It was certain
there was a turbulent party who claimed the papacy for
him, and not certain to Boniface that the hermit
disavowed and disapproved of them.
Nevertheless the two men had been intimate, and,
in a manner, friends. The meeting was very difficult,
268
SAN CELESTINO 269
Of course, the world was saying that Celestine was a
prisoner, and in the hands of a new pope who could
never have borne the papal crown had his predecessor
not voluntarily laid it down ; and Boniface, necessarily,
was aware of this, and of the ungracious part he had
to play. He was being accused of ingratitude, and
himself was half disposed to accuse Celestine of playing
unfairly by him.
Boniface received his unwilling guest coolly, with
the respect due to his former rank, his age, and his
great reputation for sanctity. But Celestine must not
be allowed to forget that he was Pope no longer ; and
one who lets himself be made into an anti-pope cannot
be a saint.
Boniface had a stout sincerity, and he had not the
least intention of beating about the bush.
* It is a pity, he said, that you are my guest for
the first time in a manner somewhat different from
that which I would have chosen. You are here, it
must be confessed, not wholly with your own goodwill.
1 Where I am matters nothing to me. If it is
your Holiness s desire that I should be here, I have no
desire but to obey you.
Boniface led him to a seat, as though he had been a
cardinal, and sat down near him, looking closely and
frankly into the familiar face.
I know well, he went on, that you would rather
be in your cell on Monte Murrone than in my palace of
Anagni.
It is true that I love my cell, and that I have never
loved palaces.
The greatest palace in the world was your own ;
if you renounced it, that was of your own free act.
270 SAN CELESTINO
The most free act of my life.
You do not repent it ?
Celestine s gentle smile was all the answer he deigned
to give, at first.
* I am glad to see it is so, said the Pope gravely.
Nevertheless he may have been disconcerted.
I was not so happy on my throne that it should
cause me regret to know I shall sit in it no more,
said Celestine quietly.
* Men do not always know when they are happy.
1, at least, know when I am unhappy.
Boniface watched him attentively.
1 And now ? he asked, more gently ; it would
grieve me if you were unhappy.
Holy Father, in this life I have never looked for
what most men esteem happiness. If I can be at peace
to serve God in my fashion, I have all of happiness
that I crave.
Boniface knew that Celestine was not now suffered
to serve God in the fashion that he must mean.
If you are not in your cell, or in your monastery
of the Santo Spirito, that, you will think, is my fault.
It has been my doing. I heard that which made it
seem to me necessary that you should not remain there.
It was by my request that the King of Naples sent to
you, and caused you to come to this place.
Celestine did not say that he had known this, for
he had not known ; neither would he say that he had
not supposed it, for he did suppose it.
* Your Holiness is not answerable to me for anything
which it may seem fit to you to do with this poor body
of mine.
I am not answerable, except to God, for any act
SAN CELESTINO 271
of mine, Boniface answered promptly. Nevertheless
he had noted every phrase. Celestine s body was in
his hands ; the hermit held his soul his own. But he
had not spoken stiffly. In utmost sincerity he had
frankly admitted the Pope s authority over him.
To you, however, Boniface continued, I will
speak as I would not to any other man. . . .
His manner, losing nothing of its authority, was
even more respectful to his guest than it had been at
first. To God only am I answerable, because I sit here
on earth in His place. In that same place you sat,
and I was your subject. That I cannot, and I would
not, forget.
Celestine uttered a sharp cry.
Do not remind me ! I know I sat there to my
misery and God s dishonour.
That you should not say. In my presence you
shall not. Now I will explain to you why you are here
as my prisoner as my enemies will say for ever.
Celestine s eyes were old, and faded pale with
weeping ; but they could see clearly enough still ; and
he saw, with a pang of compassion, that the iron had
already entered into the new Pope s soul. From
henceforth he pitied him.
Holy Father, I am most willingly your guest, if my
being so can serve you.
Boniface remembered him well, and saw that he
had not changed ; the old simplicity and goodness
was unclouded ; of himself Celestine could never think.
The stern and strong man was moved. It seemed
only yesterday that he had been this patient monk s
servant, only yesterday that he had seen him gladly
strip himself of every symbol of pre-eminence.
272 SAN CELESTINO
I will tell you how it serves me. This world is full
of wicked men. . . .
Celestine sighed. Only when he had become Pope
had he begun to perceive that men were not all good.
Those who had thronged to him in his solitude had
come each with a spiritual trouble, but such a trouble
as only the spiritual can have ; and they have been of
every sort, nobles and peasants, soldiers and priests.
At Naples, he had been assailed by a new crowd,
selfish and self-seeking, blind with ambition and greed,
corroded with envy and mean jealousies.
And these enemies of God and of His Church love
strife and divisions. They see in you an instrument
for their purposes, and they would seek to use it. They
have sought. Is it not true that they came to you, and
strove to make you help in their devil s work of re
bellion and schism ? ^ . ,..,; ,-)^W^.^ 7 X^^^4^
Men came to me/ Celestine replied simply, and
accused me.
Of what?
That I had looked back from the plough whereto
God had set my hand.
For the first time Boniface stirred uneasily, and his
face grew harder.
That is a metaphor, he said coldly. * Tell me
plainly what they urged.
If he thought Celestine would fence or shuffle he had,
for the moment, forgotten him.
That I am still Pope ; that the papacy cannot be
voided at the will of him into whose hands God has
given it.
Boniface turned to him sternly.
* And what answer did you give ?
SAN CELESTINO 278
I bade them go. . . .
" Vade retro Satana," you should have said/
interrupted Boniface.
Celestine remembered that even Michael brought
no railing accusation against Lucifer ; but he did not
say so.
I bade them go. And I pleaded that they
should leave me alone. When they would not I
fled.
Some temptations we must fly, others are to be
faced.
Holy Father, it was no temptation to me. Did I
ever seem so much in love with being Pope that
I should long, being free of that intolerable burden,
to seize it up again ?
Nevertheless Boniface was not wholly satisfied.
That is not the point, he said, with a cool logic.
Every man knows you renounced the papacy of your
own free will. . . .
That did I.
, I am not accusing you of wanting to be Pope again.
A man may do what he wants not, because he fancies it,
he believes it, his duty. Thus did you accept these keys
of Peter, not desiring them. Do you believe they are
still yours ?
For a moment Celestine hesitated. He had been
solemnly assured that his act of renunciation was in
valid ; if so they were still his, those terrible keys. But
Boniface had asked him what he thought, not what
others might have said.
God give me light ! he whispered in his soul. It
might be the terrible truth that he was still Pope. But
God must know the truth, and would show it. His
274 SAN CELESTINO
hesitation was but for an instant ; but Boniface noted
it sharply.
( An anti-pope/ he said bitterly in his heart.)
At that moment a knock was heard at the door, and
a cardinal entered.
The Pope/ said Celestine quietly, has put to me a
question. May I answer it now ? and he turned to
Boniface for permission to speak.
Shall I go away ? asked the Cardinal.
Nay, stay and hear his answer.
The Cardinal saw the stern face of Boniface, and
wished heartily he had not been there.
I have told him, said Boniface, * that men are
willing to use him as an instrument of evil ; for that
reason he is here, that he may be free from their
attempts. I asked him plainly what he thought.
* And I answer, said Celestine, * I was Pope. And I
made free renunciation. I acted quickly, but not
without opinion given. Counsel I did not seek. Had I
listened to it, most of all to that of his present Holiness,
I should have held the keys still, unworthily.
He spoke slowly, and with a certain difficulty, for
he had always hated words ; and now they would
not come and be his willing servants. But he
went on
I would not listen to Cardinal Caetani or any of
them ; I only asked " could I lay down the papacy,"
and the answer was that I could. I laid it down, and
the Holy See was validly vacant, and another Pope was
validly elected.
They pretend, said the Cardinal, that you
are now persuaded that your renunciation was null
and void/
SAN CELESTINO 275
* They tried so to persuade me.
And failed ?
1 And failed. They tormented me. But God does
not tease me, and He has shown me all. It was He
who told me I need not go on being Pope. It is He
who has told me I am Pope no more. 1
T J
CHAPTER VI
OVER and over again Celestine protested this, then and
afterwards, so that many urged upon Boniface that
he had better let him go. It would be better, they
declared, for the Pope s reputation. His keeping
Celestine prisoner would wear an ugly look.
But Boniface did not care for looks. Or, if he cared,
he cared more for other things. Of course he would be
evil spoken of that had to be reckoned with. He had
known from the beginning that it must be so. What
was his reputation in comparison of the unity and peace
of the Church ?
Of Celestine he could not feel sure. He was
too gentle, too diffident, too hesitating, and too
persuadable.
He had himself ever been of a strong, swift judgment,
arriving at fixed decisions with a clear directness, and
abiding by them stoutly and immovably. Celestine s
hesitation and doubts had always provoked him ; now
they appeared to him to constitute a risk and menace
to the unity of the Church.
He probably imagined that the hermit was more
undecided than he was, because Celestine could not
readily catch the word he sought for to express the
meaning he had. His speech had always been more
276
SAN CELESTINO 277
uncertain than his judgment. Some speakers are
continually over-expressing themselves ; he was apt
to under-express himself.
As long as he is here with me, Boniface replied to
those who suggested Celestine s release, * I am sure of
him ; he is incapable of duplicity. But once accessible
to those vipers he may be bitten.
So Celestine remained at Anagni, seeing the Pope
frequently.
Their meetings were never unfriendly : Boniface
was never harsh, nor even suspicious, though he was
probably to the end uncertain of his guest ; and his
guest was never reproachful. He assumed no airs of
an unwilling captive, and neither by word or look
accused the Pope of treating him hardly.
All his life long the patient saint had thought himself
only too well treated by everybody.
But Boniface must have been continually perturbed.
Eeports which may never have reached Celestine
reached him, of the noisy activity of those who pro
claimed themselves partisans of a captive pope against a
haughty and unscrupulous usurper.
The injustice of these accusations did not sweeten
them, and Boniface was not a man who was patient
of criticism which he believed himself above.
Nor could he remain for ever at Anagni.
If I leave this place will you go with me ? he
abruptly inquired of Celestine one day.
To Borne ? asked the hermit, blankly.
I may have to go there. You would not like to
go there ?
Certainly Celestine would not like it ; nor is it likely
that Boniface would have liked to take him.
278 SAN CELESTINO
Celestine looked unhappy, and the Pope observed
him closely, but with a certain sympathy or compassion.
I may send you to Fumone, to my castle there ;
you would prefer that to accompanying me to Eome ?
* Holy Father, I will go whither you send me ; but I
would much rather go to Fumone than to Home.
And to Fumone he went, escorted by a guard of
soldiers ; the Pope himself had his body-guard, and
would not have gone there without one. But, of course,
it appeared that the soldiers had charge of a prisoner.
It was nine miles from Anagni to Fumone by rough
mountain ways, and Celestine was old and feeble, so
that the journey was tiring.
After this I do not know if he and Boniface ever met
again, nor do I know how they parted. Probably their
last interview was like all the others.
The citadel at Fumone was strong and gloomy a
fortress, not a palace and the rooms were all like cells.
Celestine made no complaint of his.
* I always wanted a cell, and the Pope has given me
what I wanted, he said.
The castle crowns a steep, conical hill, and about it
grow a few dismal cypress trees. The view from the
castellated battlements is glorious and far-reaching ; but
the window in Celestine s cell was high up and closely
grated.
One day he thought he would like to look out and
try if he could see the mountains.
He was clambering up upon a stout wooden table,
made of a solid block of wood on stone supports.^. No
doubt it would bear his meagre frame.
But one of his guards entered the cell and bade him
desist.
SAN CELESTINO 279
* It is no use your trying to get out that way, the
soldier told him brutally. You would have to take
your bones to pieces and poke them out one by one.
And when I was all outside, I should not know
how to put them together again, the old man answered
gently. * Though I was a student at Salerno, where
all the famous scholars of medicine go, I learned no
anatomy.
He obeyed meekly and climbed down upon the stone
floor again, trembling a little. He knew he was being
treated as a culprit, and that he had not meant to do
anything wrong.
He would not make any reproaches, or say to the
man that he durst not let the Pope know he acted thus ;
and he never accused Boniface in his mind of wishing
him to be thus treated disrespectfully. If a soldier or
two said rough and rude things to him, how had they
spoken to One more innocent than he ! The servant is
not to be greater than his Master ; it is enough for him
if he be as his Master. And there were much ruder
soldiers at Fumone than that one. Once the trooper
who brought his daily dole of bread found the imprisoned
hermit in his way, and gave him a push that was almost
a blow.
There is not much of you, the man said crossly,
but that little is always where it shouldn t be. Can t
you see that I want to put this rat s food down there ?
He was going himself to a savoury hot dinner,
and Celestine s ration of hard, dry bread irritated him.
The monk who was with Celestine was angry, and said
indignantly
How dare you strike my master ? He was your
master s master once.
280 SAN CELESTINO
Celestine laid a patient hand upon his friend s
sleeve.
Nay, you are in the wrong to speak thus, my
brother. It was but a push ; and if it had been a
blow, how many had my Master to bear ?
1 No one ever struck Boniface, cried the soldier ;
I should be sorry for him who tried !
The quiet hermit almost smiled at the poor rude
trooper s mistake. And yet it was a soldier, though
no common man-at-arms, who would strike Boniface,
and on the mouth, too.
Another trooper caught Celestine upon his knees,
and not for the first time.
You must want a tremendous lot of things, he
sneered, and must imagine God has plenty of time to
listen to you.
Nay, my friend, said Celestine. gently, and truly.
I was just then praying for you. You seem not to
have much time to pray for yourself.
Well, let it alone. I do not choose to have every
snivelling captive whining Pater Nosters for me. Do
you think I am penniless, like you ? I would have you
know that I can afford to get Masses said for me, if I
feel inclined.
* If that is how you spend your money you lay it out
better than every soldier does, the hermit answered
cheerfully.
You know as much of soldiers as I know of saints,
declared the man-at-arms.
I am assuredly very ignorant, admitted Celestine,
and the other monk laughed. But it is very unlikely
that his master meant any sarcasm.
Look here, Fra Maurizio, declared the soldier,
SAN CELESTINO 281
turning on him, if you are pert I will see that you are
not allowed to come here.
Nay, said Celestine, braver for others than for
himself, he but laughed, and it is bad to be always
glum.
I did not know you had so many jokes here,
grumbled the trooper.
Nor I, said Fra Maurizio.
The soldier clanked away and banged the door,
turning the key in the lock viciously.
Fra Maurizio laughed again.
I never learned much manners, he said, * but a
prison seems a worse school even than a farm.
You did wrong to tease him. Some are of an
impatient habit, and it is not right to give them
occasion.
I gave him an occasion to be better tempered, but
he missed it ; that was his fault.
Not altogether/ said Celestine, pleasantly.
They both laughed a little, and were quite com
fortable over their musty bread and tepid water.
Fra Maurizio was rather funny to look at. But it
is unlikely that Celestine knew this. His friend was
much younger than himself, but had grown altogether
bald ; his polished crown had queer knobs on it, and
there was an odd roundness about him. He was not
fat, but he was round in every direction. He had round
eyes, and a round short nose, a round mouth which
looked as if he were on the point of laughing when he
was not even intending to smile. He had ugly, honest
hands with round fingers like sausages, and he walked
in a round manner, and had a round back.
He had not the least objection to being in prison
282 SAN CELESTINO
with his beloved master, but he did not understand as
well as Celestine himself why the founder of his ap
proved order should be there. He had never troubled
himself about high policy, and what looked like harsh
ness and injustice was merely harsh and unjust to him.
Celestine often tried to explain, but without any
brilliant success. He was not a gifted explainer, and
even he understood high policy but vaguely, although
he had been sovereign pontiff.
Nevertheless Fra Maurizio wanted to please his
master, and, at the end of every explanation, expressed
himself satisfied, though the force of the explanations
generally oozed away, out of his round head, in an hour
or two.
1 1 wish the Pope knew how you are treated/ he
grumbled now.
I am glad he does not. It would trouble him. He
is of a high, noble nature.
That is why he has such high and noble servants,
I suppose/
Maurizio ! Be good. As if the Pope knew the
things his under-servants do in his name ! If a prisoner
was scolded while I was Pope, I suppose you think it
was my fault ?
No prisoners were scolded while you were Pope,
declared Maurizio stoutly, merely on first principles.
I m sure I don t know.
Probably there were no prisoners. You would
have let them all go.
Then I should have done wrong. And you say
that to tease me. Bad children must be locked up till
they grow good again.
He only wanted Maurizio to stop complaining
SAN CELESTINO 288
of the Pope. But Maurizio darted off on another
tack.
I wonder how long it will take us to get good again,
he soliloquised.
1 We never were very good, suggested Celestine.
1 Everyone" knows how bad you were/ observed
Maurizio demurely.
CHAPTEE VII
ONE day Celestine said to Fra Maurizio
* My time here is drawing to an end.
* The Pope is going to let you go !
Maurizio s eyes grew rounder than ever.
* He in whose place the Pope sits/ said Celestine.
Fra Maurizio looked at his master narrowly. Cer
tainly he was frailer than ever ; and the spirit seemed
more than ever bursting out of that meagre, fleshless
frame. And Celestine was old and had lived hardly.
But Maurizio could not see that he was ill. Indeed, he
never had been ill ; or, if he had, no one had ever heard
of it. It is the occupation and amusement of some
good people to be ill, but Celestine had always been
otherwise engaged.
Nay, he said cheerfully. I am well enough. But
I am not to be here long. He who opened Peter s
prison gates will presently open mine. I should not say
that : it sounds as if I thought myself Peter s successor
still. I was not thinking of that ; only I am Peter too
Petruccio they always called me.
He fell silent, and his old, tired thoughts strayed
back to his far-away boyhood.
Maurizio came to him, and knelt by him, on his
round knees, upon the hard damp floor. His round,
black eyes were full of tears.
284
SAN CELESTINO 285
You will not leave me ! You must not leave us.
Think of the Order.
Let God think of it, if at is worth His thoughts.
Let it serve His turn, and then, if He no longer wants
it, let it fade the flower cannot bloom for ever, or
there would be no seed.
The Order, though he loved it, was his own work,
and he could not think any work of his important.
Last night, he said cheerfully, * I lay awake, and
then I suppose sleep came. One does not know when
tired waking rests in sleep. My brother Kuggero stood
by me here ; he was my favourite brother (there were
twelve of us altogether, like Jacob s sons). He used to
call me Chiodino, very pleasantly. That was his name
for me.
" Chiodino " ?
* Yes. " Little Nail." Because of this mark : as
if a square nail had been driven into my left temple. It
used to pain me ; but for a long time 1 have never
felt it.
Being called " Chiodino " ?
No. I did not mean that. Though, sometimes,
when I was a boy, that teased me, too ; I was wayward
when I was young. " When thou art young thou wilt
gird thyself and go whither thou thyself wiliest ; when
thou art old another will gird thee and lead thee whither
thou wouldest not."
Fra Maurizio remembered very well who had said
this, and to whom. His own master had been that
first Peter s successor. But his little round mouth
was working and he could not speak.
* Yes, Kuggero came, here, into this pleasant cell
which the Holiness of Our Lord has granted me,
286 SAN CELESTINO
because he knows that I have ever loved one . . .
Ruggero, my brother, came here ; just as he used to
be. And he said " Petruccio," but I did not quite
hear, for my ears grow dull. " Chiodino," he cried,
louder I suppose, and 1 heard him very well. He told
me he was going home. So I knew that he was
dead. " I would wait for you," he told me, " but I
must find the way alone."
Celestine paused, and smiled a little.
When I was Pope, he went on, Euggero would
not come. The others came, but he would not. " I
used to bother him," he told them, " and now he is
Pope I will let him be." That was just like him.
He often teased me ; but, if he saw I was bothered
by the rest, he would let me alone. That was his nature,
lively and generous. He loved our mother better than
any of us, except one of them ; and he was always gentle
with her, though full of nonsense and teasing for us.
Out of the dim distance very old figures gathered
round this old and patient figure of a self-deposed
pope. And he loved them tenderly.
Even to Maurizio it was a revelation. The gentle,
sweet heart had not been fully understood even by
him until now.
* My mother ! the feeble happy voice went on,
she let me go away for ever from the little old home
among the mountains ; God had given her all her sons,
and if He asked for one she would not refuse. She is
with God ; she always was. When they sent me
word of her death I felt she was come nearer. Thus it
is. Maurizio, if life lasted a thousand years, could one
learn how sweet He is ? St. Francis used to say to
his friars, " Little brothers, let us begin to love Jesus
SAN CELESTINO 287
Christ a little." Maurizio, I arn beginning. Even I. In
heaven one will go on learning. Some learn slowly.
I was always slow. God will give me time. He is never
impatient, like us ; He doesn t watch us, in a hurry,
but attends to other things and waits till we are ready
for Him. Then He looks again.
Maurizio did not try to answer. It was enough
for him to be there. Suddenly a ray of tenderness
shot out of the old, ever-young heart so near his own,
into his, and he felt simply grateful to the Pope who
had suffered him to remain near his master. For the
first time it occurred to him that, after all, Boniface
might have understood his master better than he did
and what the few things were that his master cared
about.
Maurizio/ the very soft, failing voice continued
presently, are you listening ?
1 Yes, little father.
1 was talking of my mother and of Our Father ;
I was never afraid of Him, only of hurting Him.f It is
stupid to think one is afraid of making those we love
angry when we are only in dread of hurting them.^
When I was a little ragazzino I used to be afraid like
that of being a trouble. We were poor, you know ;
not great baron-folks, but little, threadbare gentry.
Our castle was more like a masseria ; and my father
worked hard, so did our mother. It was tiresome to
find clothes for twelve of us, and I had a new doublet
one Easter, and I tore it, scrambling through a hedge
of ficU d India. I was ashamed, because it would
be a nuisance to my mother : not as if I were afraid
of her being angry and scolding ; she never scolded,
any more than God. However, it must have been a
288 SAN CELESTINO
mistake, for when I got home I could not see the hole
I had made any more. . . .
A miracle/ murmured Maurizio ; but his master
did not hear him.
So it was at Naples. It was only that I hated to
think of troubling Him. I was not afraid of His being
angry and punishing me. , He knew how ignorant
I was, and He knows everything. Those who do,
never mind other people being ignorant. . . . When
He came here Himself, He did not swoop down like
a know-all, but crept in in the middle of the night,
just a small bambino as each of us was ; and He learned
things, as if He needed to, to encourage us to be
patient, and not be in a hurry about being wise. No
doubt you have thought of that.
* No, never, declared Maurizio candidly.
But so it was. He did not talk all at once, though
He was the Word Eternal. He did not walk about,
though He had made all our feet and taught them how
to stand. He did not make tables and things better
than St. Joseph, the minute He began, but just
learned of him, as if He knew nothing about it, to
encourage us. Could anyone but God have thought
of that ?
* Little father, you never preached ? asked
Maurizio after a silent pause during which two little
round tears, one out of each of his little round eyes, had
trickled down, one on each side of his funny round
nose. He would have wiped them away with his little
round finger only he did not want to attract his
master s attention and trouble him.
No, answered Celestine simply, 1 never knew how.
One of the small tears dropped on Celestine s
withered hand.
SAN CELESTINO 289
Do not cry, little brother. It is not far that I am
going.
Dio lo sa, whispered Maurizio. God knows it.
From hence to heaven the next room.
They neither of them said any more for a while ;
then the dying hermit shifted a little in his place.
* One should not have a lot of wishes. Alfeo used
to say that it was that that made our miseries. But
I wish some things.
Maurizio did not cross-question him about them ;
and after a while he brought them out of himself.
Those three soldiers, he said, * the one who caught
me climbing up there to the window, the one who gave
me a little push, and the third who was annoyed because
I prayed for him, it is about them.
They do not count. When asses bray the angels
in heaven do not stop singing.
Maurizio, do not talk like that ; they are not asses.
They are men, like us.
* I do not perceive any particular resemblance.
Little brother, if God is content to let them be in
His likeness . . .
God would scarcely recognise the likeness that
remains/
Celestine looked troubled, and Maurizio immediately
repented.
1 No doubt they have souls and are immortal, he
admitted handsomely. It is a pity they do not think
more of them.
* Yes, but it is a pity, too, when we do things that we
have to be sorry for afterwards. They are not bad men ,
and I am afraid that some day they will be troubled to re -
member that they used a helpless person unhandsomely.
Ah ! You think so.
u
CHAPTEE VIII
CELESTINB was right.
But happily for his sweet and gentle spirit they felt
sorry sooner than one might have expected.
Look here/ said the soldier who had pushed him,
coming into his cell and finding him alone, are you
hungry ?
Yes, a little.
It was nearly four and twenty hours since he had
eaten anything.
Well, here is some meat, good hot meat with
gravy to it. Eat it. I stole it from my own dinner.
Would you kindly lock the door ? asked Celestine.
The soldier stared at his seeming irrelevance.
On the inside ?
Yes.
1 Oh, if you like. You like to have a fellow-
prisoner ?
He was in a mood to be gracious, softened by his own
softening, but graciousness was not an old habit of his.
If I ate meat it would give me indigestion, said
Celestine gently. He would not say that for fifty
years he had not tasted it, and that his holy rule forbade
it. But I would be happy if you would take it back
from me, and be my guest and eat it here.
The soldier grumbled ; but he wanted to be
290
SAN CELESTINO 291
pleasant, and they really were the best pieces out of his
dinner, so he ate them, Celestine waiting on him. He
knew all about him, ignorant as he was, and used to
boast afterwards that Celestine V had attended him
at table.
If that shove of mine hurt you . . . he began,
wiping his moustache.
It didn t.
* Well, but it was a beastly thing to do. I was a
brutta bestia. I was in a bad temper. The captain
had been scolding me. Otherwise I would have
remembered who you were. I come of decent people,
and my mother would have had an apoplexy had she
known of it. She is a good woman, though stout.
There is no harm in being stout. It seems to make
people good-tempered.
You are not very stout, objected the soldier,
not agreeing with the logic, and that captain of
mine is.
Perhaps, suggested Celestine shrewdly, his
colonel had been scolding him. 9
1 I had not thought of that. Very likely. He often
deserves it. But that was no reason for his abusing me.
I had done nothing amiss. That which I detest is
injustice.
Not many days after, the soldier came on duty
again who had been offended at Celestine s prayers ; and
he, too, found Celestine alone.
1 I am a married man, he informed his prisoner.
It is a holy state, observed Celestine.
It has its drawbacks. You were never married ?
No, never.
Then you can t know. We were five years without
u 2
292 SAN CELESTINO
any children, and my wife grumbled. She said people
would think it odd. Then a bambino arrived, about
as big as my foot or even smaller at first.
Celestine looked at the soldier s foot, and thought it
must have been a fine child.
Now it is dying, whimpered its father. It began
to dwindle the day I scolded you for praying for me.
Celestine laid his withered old hand on the soldier s
young and brawny one.
It was not for that. Perhaps God wants it, he
said tenderly.
Ay. But He has lots of them up there in heaven,
and Giannetta has only this one. Will you pray that
she may keep it ?
1 Yes, if you will also. God will listen to the two of
us ; and they did it there and then. So Giannetta
kept her baby.
That soldier, whose name was Sangro, told the man
who had hauled Celestine down from the window, and
he listened anxiously.
He was a lover, and the contadina whom he admired
had looked of late askance upon him.
What is the matter ? he asked her that afternoon.
* They say that among you all Papa Celestino is
ill-treated, she answered coldly, * and my father
declares he is a saint.
I know more about him than your father.
Perhaps you pretend he is not a saint ?
No. I know nothing about saints. Very likely
they are in your father s line. But your father is not
at all like that old signer e.
This was not a politic observation ; but the young
lady was inquisitive.
SAN CELESTINO 298
What is he like, then Papa Celestino ? she asked
eagerly.
He is a very good man, and when one is cross
because certain persons have been unpleasant he
smiles as if one had been delightful.
4 I hope you begged his pardon.
What for ? I never said I did anything.
Oh, one sees. You were intolerable. Do I not
know what a temper you have ! Poor saint ! Go and
beg his pardon. To think a man who wants to marry me
should have been impertinent to one who was last
year pope !
Who said I was impertinent ? One must do one s
duty.
Duty ! sneered the young woman, with all a
civilian s scorn of a soldier s notion of duty.
Presently her father appeared.
Come sta, Maruccio ? he inquired, coolly though
civilly. He was a * well-educated person and knew
better than to be rude to his own guest, nevertheless he
was not enthusiastic about his daughter s engagement.
No doubt Maruccio was a handsome fellow, but that
did not appeal to him so much as it had done to
Petronilla.
I was telling him, she remarked, that we suspect
Papa Celestino is not well treated among them all.
It was true that her father had told her so, but he
had not meant it to be repeated to someone from the
Castello.
Some persons say that, he observed, cautiously.
All, however, is not true that idle people talk.
No, said Maruccio. Celestine has never once
complained of anything.
294 SAN CELESTINO
Saints are not quick at complaining, said Pet-
ronilla, pulling a gold pin out of her hair and digging
the sharp end of it into the table.
I am glad, her father declared, to hear that he
has nothing to complain of. It is not rumoured so ;
and such rumours are very injurious to the credit of
the Holiness of Our Lord,
Maruccio felt awkward. He had not expected his
proposed father -in law to be sensitive concerning
Celestine s treatment ; for that respectable and pros
perous person was a vassal of Boniface, and held his
land from the Caetani.
Petronilla s father was a politician in his way ; and,
clearing his throat, he observed sententiously
There are important reasons why his late Holiness
should be retained as the guest of Pope Boniface, here
at Fumone ; if Celestine were unprotected he would
fall into the hands of dangerous persons. But when
people believe that he is harshly dealt with it does harm
to our master. The evil done by underlings is laid to
his door, though he knows nothing of it.
When Maruccio went back to his quarters he was
thoughtful. The first person he met was Annibale, the
fellow who had pushed Celestine.
My fidenzata is cross, Maruccio told him, because
we do not treat our prisoner as civilly as people approve.
* You had better speak for yourself. I treat him
excellently. Last week I took him some of my dinner.
1 Your dinner indeed ! As if one who was pope the
other day would gnaw your stale bones, like the guard
room dog. Do you know, my little person, that no
king would have been allowed to sit at table with him,
there in his palace at the Lateran ?
SAN CELESTINO 295
Maruccio had been hearing from Petronilla s father
a number of remarkable circumstances in connexion
with papal grandeur. That well-informed person by
no means forgot that his own lord was pope now. It
tickled his vanity very much to dwell on the inferiority
of kings to his master.
4 Well, he did not eat my meat it wasn t bones at
all, but the best pieces. It was certainly honest of
Annibale to admit the rejection of his offering, but it
was to lead up to his triumph.
Of course not !
He said to eat meat would give him an indigestion.
To eat your meat ! A nausea, he meant.
Annibale looked annoyed.
You know nothing, he retorted. * Celestine
accepted my gift. Then he made a feast with it, and
invited me. He spread the table and waited on me
while I ate. I have been his guest like a king, only I
sat down.
Maruccio stared.
My little soldier, you dreamed this, he declared
scornfully. But he believed it all the same ; it was
exactly like what Celestine would do. He was green
with jealousy. Petronilla would be proud to wed a
soldier on whom a pope had waited at table ! Why
had he not thought of it ? However, he cudgelled his
brains and thought of something else, not so good, but
the best he could think of.
Holy Father, he said politely, next time he was
on duty, here are some good grapes.
Celestine flushed.
Do not call me that, he said quickly. That is
your master s title.
296 SAN CELESTINO
I would have called you so sooner if I had been in
time/ remarked Maruccio. A few months ago I
had not the honour to be in attendance on your
Excellency.
All good things come in time, observed Fra
Maurizio demurely. In his palace, Pope Celestine
was not served by men-at-arms.
He purposely spoke in a low voice and his master
did not hear.
Well, they are good grapes/ Maruccio continued,
ignoring Maurizio. * And even you, Excellency, can
see no harm in eating a little fruit with your bread.
That will not cause indigestion.
Somehow Maruccio s grapes did not please Celestine
as well as Annibale s meat, though there was certainly
nothing in his rule to forbid them. He accepted
them, however, with his usual mild sweetness and
afterwards made Maurizio eat them.
They come/ said Maruccio, from the garden of
my fidenzata s father. Devout people. Petronilla
(the name of my Signorina) begs the blessing of your
Excellency.
This was a brilliant thought of his own. But he
was used to take her things, and this would be easy
to carry, and was not costly.
Celestine gave a little uneasy movement every time
he was called * Excellency. It was not a title at
all suited to a hermit ; but, after all, he was a bishop,
and he was not fond of expostulating about trifles.
To be addressed as Excellency is a very small
trifle to one who has had the highest title on earth.
Maruccio went away rather pleased with his own
diplomacy, which he reported to Petronilla with
SAN CELESTINO 297
complacency. Celestine, it appeared, had wept at his
gentilezza.
Since I came here, the prisoner was declared to
have said, your kindness is the greatest I have met
with.
Her father was not present at the narration, but
his daughter repeated it.
Maruccio s tongue is as long as his left leg, said
his future father-in-law.
Petronilla was rather hurt. Her soldier s legs were
of the same length, and he had evidently done his
best to make up for past lapses.
It is true they are good grapes, observed Maurizio,
spitting out the skins.
* It was kind of him to bring them, said Celestine :
but he still preferred to think of Annibale s meat.
CHAPTEE IX
THE Governor of the citadel had never liked his
prisoner ; and now reports made him fancy that some
of the guards were over-indulgent. He would change
them.
Celestine and the Governor met seldom, and they
exchanged little conversation.
* He does not know his place/ the Governor declared
to his wife, to whom he was frequently disagreeable.
* Perhaps he doesn t consider this is his place.
Psh ! You know what I mean. When I go to
his cell he smiles upon me. That is quite out of place.
* It is certainly odd that he should smile. If I
were he I would scowl like a devil in a Last Judgment.
1 It is for me to smile on Mm, if I choose to con
descend. I am Governor of Fumone.
People who have been pope are not apt to think
a great deal of governors of small fortresses.
This was touching a sore point. Her husband
was a far-away cousin of Boniface, and considered
that, now his kinsman was Head of Christendom, that
relationship should be remembered ; whereas he was no
more now than he had been any time these five years.
That this man should be sent here, he said sourly,
1 is a sign of the great confidence that is placed in me
by the Holiness of Our Lord.
298
SAN CELESTINO 299
1 Apparently he wished " this man "to be un
comfortable.
4 Of course you take the hermit s part. All women
think every priest a saint.
Not at all. Your brother is a priest, and he is as
like you as one wild olive is like another hard inside
and bitter outside.
This was unjust to the priest ; but the Governor s
wife, in domestic relations, did not scruple at a little
injustice. She was thinking, less of her brother-in-law
than of her husband. The priest in question was a
far more estimable person than his brother ; their
resemblance was only in feature.
This Celestine has corrupted his guards. They are
all milk and honey to him, I learn.
* Milk and honey are allowable even to hermits, said
the Governor s wife.
She was not a perfect wife ; but people are apt to get
the wives they deserve, and the Governor of Fumone
deserved only half as good a one.
Well, I will see his guards are changed. All
soldiers are not made of bread and sugar.
And he did see.
He was a stupid, vulgar-minded fellow, who was
proud of his authority, which was all his relationship to
the Pope had given him. He could only see an inch or
two out of his pig-eyes, and had no idea that he could be
harming Boniface more than Celestine.
The captive s guards were changed, and the new
ones quite understood what the Governor expected of
them. They were as surly as possible, and even a
captive s captivity can be made harder.
Up to now Era Maurizio had slept in a second cell,
300 SAN CELESTINO
opening out of Celestine s. After this he was made to
change his quarters and only allowed to visit Celestine
at certain hours. He could not be forbidden all access,
for Boniface had expressly authorised the monk s
attendance on his master.
Celestine bore these changes uncomplainingly, as he
bore everything. That Boniface was responsible for
them never even occurred to him.
Perhaps Maurizio was less unsuspicious, for a whole
legend arose of Boniface s malignant persecution of
his prisoner ; and devoted championship is seldom
coolly impartial.
In spite of these new annoyances, those last weeks of
Celestine s life were full of peace. God s peace passes
understanding, and Celestine breathed in it as in an
atmosphere.
The release he had felt approaching did not come
quite so soon as he expected ; but he had never been
impatient.
During those days faded figures out of the past
visited him in gentle memories.
* I saw the Emperor Federigo once, he told
Maurizio. I pitied him. It was at Salerno, where I
was so idle ; I could not learn theology. That was
bad ; when I became Pope I was ashamed, for I had
forgotten the little I learned. " Barbara, celarent."
How that worried me. . . . When I became Pope the
courtiers were shocked that I was of no great family.
So one of them discovered that my real name was
Marone, not Murrone, and that we were descendants
of Virgil Maro, you see. It was a fine idea, but too
fine for me. And that courtier was offended when I
laughed at him and said that perhaps the poet came of
SAN CELESTINO 301
a younger branch, for we were certainly derived from
Adam much further back.
A good Catholic, anyway, said Maurizio, none of
your heathens.
Catholic enough, for that means universal ; and
Adam and his wife had the Church all to themselves.
Women do a lot of harm in the Church/ observed
Maurizio, on general principles.
* One should not, perhaps, say that. There are,
for instance, our nuns.
More trouble than all the monks ; all the same,
there are good women. I had three sisters. One
married a blacksmith, with a hare-lip, an excellent
woman with five children, all in holy religion, except the
eldest, who died of smallpox. The other two are nuns
in our order, but one of them wanted to be an abbess.
Thus they are.
Gesu Cristo had only one real parent on earth, and
she was a woman. It is not fit to talk thus. If God
had meant us all to be men He would have made
it so.
Scusi, little father. I am an ignorant person. Let
it pass.
Celestine let it pass, with a little squeeze on
Maurizio s round shoulder.
When I was at Salerno I knew several persons, he
went on, all good creatures. There was one who
painted Madonnas, with little eyes like slits. He was
entirely well conducted. And there was Alfeo, who
had a lute, and he joined us. He is in peace. There
was also my landlady, a certain Felicia, a remarkable
person. She would make a mystery about the day of
the week. " I will wash your room on such a morning,"
302 SAN CELESTINO
she would say, but never mention that it would be
Wednesday for fear of complications.
Women are thus/ said Maurizio sagely. They
love mysteries, being themselves of that quality. For
it is a mystery why God made them.
He liked arguing, because he imagined that it stirred
up his master.
Bees are all females, urged Celestine, and see how
they work.
And how they sting.
The quiet days crept by, and the great Feast of
Pentecost drew near.
During that feast I shall die, said Celestine. The
Church s birthday.
Maurizio looked at him, and could not disbelieve.
The old man s life hung about him like a delicate mist
that breeze or sun might dissipate.
Nothing troubled him : neither the roughness of his
guards, or the stifling heat.
Benedicite ignis et aestus Domino, he would
murmur, if anyone grumbled at the burning season,
1 fulfilling His word.
It was unusually hot for the time of year, and Celes
tine heard much complaint about it ; when his guards
came into his cell they grumbled, declaring it was like
an oven. But he never complained, nor did Maurizio.
Fra Maurizio was not bred to finding fault, and he was
one of those lucky people who do not much feel the
variations of heat and cold. Celestine did, but he
accepted the weather respectfully as God had made it.
That summer, two years ago, when the cardinals
were at Perugia, he said one afternoon, they tell me
the heat was terrific ; they were all tired, worn out by
SAN CELESTINO 303
it ; perhaps that was why they suddenly elected me.
He smiled at the notion, then grew grave and took him
self to task. One should not say that. It was not an
accident ; there are no accidents.
That was what I used to tell our brother Luca when
he broke the crockery of our monastery.
Poor brother Luca ! He was a very good-natured
lad.
With a head like a water-melon.
As I was saying, if the hot weather and their weari
ness helped to make those porporati elect me, it was not
an accident, but God s providence, though no one can
understand it, or ever will.
CHAPTEK X
ON Whit Sunday Celestine heard Mass with extra
ordinary happiness and devotion. Immediately after
wards he became very ill, suffering from a quick fever,
and was no more able to rise from the board that was
his bed. He received extreme unction, remarking that
this was his fifth anointing.
First in my baptism, nearly fourscore years ago.
Then when I was a ragazzino, in confirmation. Next,
when I was made priest. Afterwards at Aquila, when
I was consecrated bishop, on the day they crowned
me. And now for the last time, five anointings at
once.
He fell into silence, only stirring a little now and
then in the uneasiness of fever.
Let me bring a little straw and lay it under you,
Maurizio pleaded.
Nay, nay ! I am well enough. They put no
straw between the Cross and Him. It is sufficient
indulgence to have this dry board instead of the hard
stone. But one s body claims a little sign of friendli
ness when the soul is getting ready to bid it farewell.
Pentecost is come but not gone ; I knew I should go
during that feast. There are diversities of gifts ; I
never had that of tongues. Words were always too
slippery for me.
304
SAN CELESTINO 305
Five days, six, crept by, and there was no sign
of the fever lessening ; he took the simple remedies
Maurizio was able to offer him, but they made no
difference.
When the old rag is worn out, Celestine said
quietly, * it is no use trying to stitch on a new bit
here or there. I only joke about my little old brother
no disrespect. The body is the temple of the Holy
Ghost.
When the afternoon of Saturday had come the two
monks said Matins and Lauds of the next day together,
Celestine joining in, with closed eyes, by heart.
At the last psalm of Lauds he opened his eyes and
lifted himself up.
* Praise the Lord in His Saints/ said Maurizio.
Laudate Dominum in Sanctis Ejus.
Celestine s thoughts ran back to Salerno, and the two
saints he used so often to visit there his own mighty
predecessor, and the Apostle-Evangelist.
Maurizio was thinking of Celestine himself.
* Laudate Dominum in firmamento virtutis Ejus,
responded the dying man. There were no clouds for
him, now, on the clear firmament of God s power.
Laudate eum in virtutibus Ejus ; laudate eum
secundum multitudinem magnitudinis Ejus.
Some men feel their own importance so much that
they have scarcely time to remember the multitude of
the greatness of God. Celestine had ever been so full
of his own littleness that the contrast of God s infinity
had overpowered every sense of self.
Laudate eum in sono tubae, recited Maurizio,
wondering if his master already heard the notes of
that heavenly trumpet.
306 SAN CELESTINO
* Laudate eum in psalterio et cithara, Celestine
remembered Alfeo s lute, and how he had flung it into
the sea at last, to make divine music out of no other
instrument than his own soul.
Laudate eum in tympano et choro ; laudate eum
in chordis et organo.
Laudate eum in cymbalis benesonantibus.
Celestine s ear brought back out of the far past the
music he had heard that day at Cava, in the great
church where so many saints lay listening from their
tombs. And, out of the future into which the present
was merging, a diviner music gathered. Well tuned,
indeed, were those cymbals, gentler than the stirred
leaves of the forest when the spring breeze touches
them, sweeter than the song of any bird, more delicate
than the chime of bells of flowers that only angels
ears can hear.
* Praise Him on cymbals of jubilation . . . cried
Maurizio, his eyes fastened on his master s face.
Omnis spiritus laudet Dominum ! Celestine s
voice grew strong in the last response of his last psalm
on earth. Let every spirit praise the Lord.
He said the Gloria at the end too but not there.
While Maurizio was saying it in the cell Celestine was
pouring it out with a new unfaltering voice in heaven.
Tres Saint Pere, said Cardinal de Gouth, coming
into the Pope s cabinet, there is another saint in
heaven.
Would God there were more on earth/ answered
Boniface.
On earth they are not of the same account,
retorted the French cardinal. I bring to your Holiness
SAN CELESTINO 807
the news that a tired head rests, and a sore heart is
healed.
Boniface thought how weary his own head was,
how sore his heart. But he was more given to act of
himself than to speak of himself.
In this troubled world there are countless heads
that ache, he said, and every day a heart is wounded.
Who is it ?
Celestine.
The Pope sat silent, staring with unheeding eyes
upon the paper before him.
It had never yet occurred to him to envy his
predecessor ; should he envy him now ?
No doubt Celestine had been a perplexity and a
trouble to him almost ever since his abdication of the
papacy. And now he was gone. For Celestine
himself it was, beyond all question, better ; was it a
relief ? He could not feel it so. And yet one terrible
tool in the hands of his enemies, the Church s enemies,
was gone. Schism could no longer be dreaded from
that source. Perhaps, clever as he was, he had never
quite understood Celestine ; he was able now to
understand him, at all events, without prejudice, not
personal but official.
1 knew him well, he said at length.
You saw much of him, said the Cardinal.
They were both again silent for a while, and then
the Pope, gently too, inquired about the particulars
of Celestine s end. And the monk, Maurizio, was
with him ? he asked, in a voice that betrayed unmis
takable relief.
Yes, Holy Father.
My enemies would say anything.
x 2
308 SAN CELESTINO
* They would certainly declare that Celestine was a
saint. . . .
1 That I will say for them.
He will be raised to the altars of the Church.
As to that Boniface would, then, say nothing.
That also appears to me certain, declared Cardinal
de Gouth.
But Boniface himself celebrated Celestine s ob
sequies in Home, at the tomb of the Apostles, with all
his cardinals. The dead saint s body was buried at
Ferentino, not far from Fumone, and afterwards trans
lated to Aquila, to the church of the Celestines whom he
had founded. And there one may see his skull, with
the square hole, such as a nail might cause, over the
left temple ; the people, and tradition, averring that
his guards had driven the nail into His head.
The enemies of Boniface were not, therefore, the
friends of Celestine ; Dante put both popes, impartially,
in hell. But the partisans of each were certainly his
enemies. It was such people as the Governor of
Fumone, and Celestine s guards, who did Boniface
most mischief ; they were responsible for almost the
whole tradition of the self-deposed Pope s persecution
and murder. And it was Celestine s irresponsible
partisans who were the cause of all his troubles after
he had laid down the papacy. Against them was urged
by the other side Celestine s incompetence and weak
ness. To make their claim for him more impossible the
rumour of his madness was nourished and encouraged.
Part, however, of the traditional notion of the four
months Pope is due to the shallowness of impression of
such as can see nothing but externals.
That the hermit of Monte Morone was, beyond
SAN CELESTINO 309
measure, gaunt and wild in appearance, almost as
savagely inhuman-looking as his surroundings, engen
dered the supposition that he was equally wild and
savage in character, of a gaunt and meagre spirit,
scarcely human.
It has been Celestine s terrible misfortune that the
key-note of earthly judgment should have been struck
by an unequalled genius who was incurably a politician ;
for Celestine knew nothing, and cared nothing, about
politics. As a politician he was, to Dante s eyes,
merely a failure, and Dante had no pity for failures.
To attempt to tell such a story again, after more
than six hundred years, must appear merely a pre
sumption, though intended as a most humble act of
reparation. History may be supposed to have told the
world all it cares to know about Celestine V, a thirteenth-
century hermit ; and this book is not history. And
yet it is not a novel ; for it contains no love story -
the love of God not counting. It may be called a work
of imagination ; and, if imagination be the faculty of
conceiving an image, such a description of such a book
would be high praise indeed. Nevertheless I believe
that the picture attempted to be drawn here is a true
one ; that where it fails, it fails because a common
writer s pen cannot describe a saint. But affection
and devotion can supply important wants, and he who
has ventured to write here of Celestine writes with such
reverent tenderness that it may be seen how reluctantly
he turns away from his theme.
To have described this book upon its title-page
as a tragedy would have been to challenge just castiga-
tion, for its author cannot handle tragedy. And it
would have caused a misunderstanding, for the tragedy
310 SAN CELESTINO
of Celestine s story does not culminate in his death, as
in heroic tragedy should, we are told, be the case, but
in his forced elevation to the papacy.
Like other men whose life wears downwards to its
present end, the author lies open to the temptation of
praise of past time ; but he believes in his own age too,
which later times may praise, and he trusts that some
may read, even with interest, without impatience, the
description, here attempted, of one whose sorrows ended
over six centuries ago : one who made no figure in the
world, though constrained to sit in its highest place ;
one who carried thither no high gifts of genius ; one
whose ideals were wholly alien from our own ; whose
notion of failure was to fail of pleasing God.
NOTES
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
P. 1. The description of Angelario s farm might serve for that
of many a masseria in Southern Italy ; these lonely houses have
often almost a fortress -like appearance.
The actual house in which St. Celestine was born, nearly seven
centuries ago, if in existence, is not known.
P. 1. Petruccio dotf e ? Where is Peterkin ?
P. 1. Chi lo sa! E da-per-tutto. Who knows ? He is every
where.
P. 3. Fichi d India. Literally, Indian figs; the prickly pear
is so called in Italy.
CHAPTER II
P. 5. Chiodino. Little nail. This nickname alludes to the
peculiar mark, like the hole made by a nail, in Celestine s skull.
Of course those who maintained that he was murdered declared
that the mark indicated the manner of his death. But that the
saint died a natural death seems clearly established.
P. 5. Pasta is a generic name for the countless preparations of
maize-flour which we call macaroni and Italians maccheroni.
P. 6. Cetta, diminutive of Concetta. The various feasts com
memorating the events in the life of the Madonna supply names
for Italian and Spanish women. Thus Assunta reflects her Assump
tion, Annunziata the Annunciation, and Concetta her Immaculate
Conception, i.e. the belief of Catholics that the Virgin Mother was
conceived unstained by Original Sin, the fruits of the Redemption
being pre-applied to her soul from the first moment of its existence.
P. 6. Gracchia. The Italian name for the jackdaw, given to
it as representing the sound of the bird s raucous chatter. The
pronunciation is Gracckia, h in Italian always hardening the pre
vious c.
P. 6. Ruggero talking of a cherubim or a seraphim is not
proposed as a grammatical model. Of course cherubim and seraphim
are plurals. But Ruggero did not know everything. In Italian,
however, he could not really make this particular mistake : for
311
312 SAN CELESTINO
cherubim are cherubini, and seraphim are serafini, and no Italian
boy could possibly say un cherubini or un serafini (alas ! the confes
sions Notes impose upon an author !).
P. 7. Novella. The boy was not asking for a novel in our sense,
but any tale, and not necessarily a long one. The earlier novelle
were often short stories. Even nowadays, however, novelle are
told by heart, by professional reciters, in some street or square of
a town or a village, and they sometimes last for hours.
P. 7. Nonna is simply grandmother, as Nonno is grandfather :
though a highly superior reviewer of the present author s Marotz
(who, having just seen the Sicilian players, did not think Mr.
Ayscough s nobles very Sicilian ) took it for a ducal title.
P. 8. The Guiscard and Sigilgaita. Robert, called the Guiscard
(cunning or sagacious), Duke of Calabria and Apulia, sixth of the
twelve sons of Tancred, a Norman squire of Hauteville near Coutances,
where Robert was born about A.D. 1015. He followed his elder
brothers, William Bras-de-fer, Drogo, and Humphry, to Apulia
and was at the battle of Civitella in 1053, in which Leo IX was
defeated and taken prisoner. When Humphry died, in 1057,
Robert was chosen by the soldiers Duke of Apulia and Calabria, and
Pope Nicholas II, two years later, made him Gonfaloniere (standard
bearer) of the Church, and confirmed him in his dignities. When
the Greek Emperor Alexius Comnenus deposed Michael Ducas,
whose son had married Robert s daughter, the Guiscard turned
his arms eastward on behalf of Michael and defeated Alexius outside
Durazzo in October 1081, and took that place in the following
February. On his march towards Constantinople Robert received
an urgent appeal for help from his suzerain, Pope Gregory VII,
besieged in Rome by Henry IV, the Western Emperor. Returning
to Italy he took Rome, in May 1084, and, after putting the Pope
out of reach of his enemies at Salerno, the Guiscard resumed his
energetic operations against Alexius, defeated his fleet and that
of Venice, and delivered the beleaguered Corfu in November of
the same year. On July 17 of the next year he died of plague
at Cephalonia.
Sigilgaita, daughter of Gisulf, Prince of Salerno, was Duke
Robert s second wife, and mother of Roger Bursa who succeeded
him. William of Malmesbury and Roger of Hovedon accuse her of
having hastened the Guiscard s death by poison : and according
to Ordericus Vitalis she had already tried to remove by poison
Bohemond, her husband s eldest son by his first wife Alberada.
It was perhaps this story that Giulio wanted his grandmother
to repeat. The tale runs that Bohemond, grievously sick of wounds
received while fighting in Greece, came home to Salerno, and his
cure was entrusted by the Duke to the famous physicians there :
SAN CELESTINO 818
but the prince s stepmother sent him a potion, and soon Bohemond
felt that death was drawing on him. He sent for his father, and
the Duke in turn sent for Sigilgaita. He asked her if his son was
alive, and she answered, * Sire, how can I tell ? The Guiscard
then called for his sword and the Book of the Gospels, and said sternly:
Sigilgaita, hear me : by these Holy Scriptures do I swear that
with this sword will I slay thee, if Bohemond die of this malady
whereof he lies sick.
In terror Sigilgaita made ready an antidote and sent it by a
doctor to her stepson, who recovered but kept a strange pallor
during the rest of his life. He survived Duke Robert full quarter
of a century, dying at the Apulian Canossa in 1111, but he did
not succeed his father in his duchies, and received only the Principality
of Tarento.
Sigilgaita is buried in the cathedral at Salerno, rebuilt by her
husband, on the front of which is an inscription in which the
Norman adventurer assumes the imperial title.
P. 8. The Emperor and Pope Gregory. Petruccio asks for the
story of Pope St. Gregory VII and the Emperor Henry IV. But,
after the last long note, allusion to that story may be deferred till
we come to the chapters concerning Salerno.
P. 8. Our own Emperor Federigo and the Saracens. Ruggero s
own Emperor was Frederic II, King of Sicily, then reigning,
concerning whom also a note will be given later on.
P. 8. La Zisa. Built by William I the Bad, King of Sicily
(1154-1166). He more than forestalled Frederic IPs Arab tastes,
and if his Sicilian subjects detested his cruelties, the Saracen women
of his capital lamented his death by running about the streets clad
in sack-cloth, with dishevelled hair and wild shrieks and funeral
hymns. La Zisa (El Aziz The Glory ) is an Arab pleasure-palace,
still extant and beautiful, a noble tower, once set in lovely gardens
through which the road now runs. Around the parapet is an
inscription in Cuphic character.
P. 8. The Martorana. This beautiful and very singular church
was built in 1143 by Georgios Antiochenus, Emir to King Roger II.
The Admiral was Protonobilissimus, first noble of Sicily. In
a mosaic in the church he is shown at the feet of the Blessed Virgin,
who has in her hands a scroll, The Prayer of George the Admiral,
setting forth his merits and asking for mercy upon him. In another
mosaic King Roger appears in a dalmatic, as Apostolic legate for
Sicily. The church blends in itself Greek, Gothic, and Saracenic
architectural types as do others in that marvellous Palermo. Fifty
years after its foundation the church had joined to it an adjacent
convent endowed by Aloisia Martorana, and so became known as
La Martorana.
814 SAN CELESTINO
P. 8. Tombs of the Norman Kings. The royal tombs on the
right-hand side of the Cathedral of Palermo are a singularly interesting
group. Roger, first King of Sicily, had prepared for himself a
porphyry sarcophagus in the Cathedral of Cefalu where he meant
to be buried, but Frederic II brought it hither. It is upheld by
figures of kneeling Saracens. In the adjacent chapel is the tomb
of the Empress Costanza, Queen of Sicily, wife of Henry VI, and
that of the Emperor and King stands before it. He died fourteen
months before his wife, in September 1197, excommunicated by
Celestine III, detested by the Sicilians, and not, if report be true,
regretted by his widow, who loved Sicily better than him. The
enormous sarcophagus of Frederic II, her son, under a great classical
canopy, is, after a massive and ponderous fashion, imposing, but
has nothing Norman about it, nothing Saracenic, and nothing
consonant to his reputation. Ninety-two years after his
death in 1250 the Emperor s tomb was opened, and his body was
found clad in an imperial robe given by the Saracens to his rival
Otho IV.
Adjoining is the sarcophagus of another Empress Costanza,
widow of Emmerich King of Hungary, and daughter of Alfonso II of
Castile, who was the first wife of the Emperor Frederic II.
P. 8. Saracen Nocera. Vide note, infra, on Frederic II.
P. 11. Fra Taddeo. Taddeo is the Italian form of the name
of the Apostle Thaddseus (St. Mark iii. 18).
P. 15. She found the means to send him to his studies. It is
certain that she did this : but, though Salerno was the nearest
university, and a famous one, there is no historic ground for belief
that it was to Salerno she sent her boy. On the contrary, it is probable
that all the learning he had was received from the Benedictines
of Faifoli in the diocese of Benevento.
P. 15. The paese. Paese is literally country, but country
folk in Italy always speak of their town or village as the paese.
P. 21. Perche no ? Why not ? In Italian it is the same word
for Why ? and Because.
P. 23. Farfalle. Butterflies.
P. 23. Barbara, celarent. Stick to your Logic ! The first
two words of the first of four mock-hexameters, consisting of
words, some of which have no meaning, but all of which embody
some combination of three of the vowels, a, e, i, o. By a and
e are denoted respectively universal affirmative and negative
propositions by i and o are denoted respectively particular
affirmative and negative propositions. All or any combination of
three of these kinds of propositions might be used in the construction
of a syllogism ; but a syllogism, to conclude at all correctly and
according to rule, must present some such sequel of propositions
SAN CELESTINO 815
as is set forth by the vowels in Barbara," Celarent, etc. These
or similar mnemonics appear first in the thirteenth century, and
are to be read in the Summulae Logicales of Pope John XXI ; but
the credit of having thrown them into some kind of metre would
seem to belong to a countryman of ours, William Shyreswood.
There is a story of a logician at some place of learning, who,
as he was walking one evening past the public library, was hailed
by an unfortunate person from one of its windows, who told him
he had been locked in by mistake when it closed, and begged
him to send to his relief the official who kept the keys. Our
logician is said to have looked at him attentively, pronounced the
following syllogism, and walked away : " No man can be in the
library after 4 o clock p.m. You are a man : therefore, you are
not in the library." And thus Catholic priests are left duly locked
up by Barbara or Celarent, because forthwith one grain of Pro
testant logic is to weigh more than cartloads of Catholic
testimony. Newman, Lectures on Present Position, &c., L. viii.
P. 29. S intende. It is understood : goes without saying.
P. 29. It seems you think only of yourself. So all the Ruggeros
say to anyone who thinks only of God, not understanding the truth
of their lie since God is more ourself than anyone can be.
P. 30. Lontano ! Far ! A long way !
P. 30. To learn to be a doctor ? It was above all for the training
of physicians that Salerno was famous.
P. 31. The Medicino. The little doctor.
P. 32. Ecco/ There!
P. 33. San Tomaso of Aquino. St. Thomas Aquinas, the
Angel of the Schools. The Angelic Doctor. Silent and of a
bulky habit, his school-fellows nicknamed him Dumb Ox. Even
one s schoolfellows do not always know everything.
P. 34. Avanti / Forward.
P. 36. Mai. Never.
P. 36. Niente. Nothing !
P. 37. Addio. To God ! Good-bye.
P. 41. Scusi, signorina ! Pardon, lady !
P. 44. Minestra. Broth.
P. 45. Orfeo. Orpheus.
P, 46. Regno. Kingdom. In Italy till 1870, and perhaps later,
the Regno always meant the Kingdom of Naples.
P. 46. The Great Conti. The reigning Pope Gregory IX (1227-
1241). The great Conti of all was his uncle Innocent III, whose
character and policy he reflected. Almost throughout his pontificate
he was at strife with Frederic II, first for the Emperor s backwardness
in fulfilling his engagements as to a crusade, then for his share in
the unsuccessful invasion of the states of the Church in 1228, and
316 SAN CELESTINO
later on for another war against the Pope, which had not ended
at his death in 1241. Frederic s offence in founding Saracen colonies
in the midst of a Christian state was one that even to modern ideas
must appear grave, to Gregory it could only seem a flagrant treason
against Christianity and simply inexcusable. In the very year
of Gregory IX s accession, Frederic settled 40,000 Saracens at
Lucera, the key of Apulia, exiling the Christian population beyond
the walls, and only allowing to these latter one small church for
the offices of their religion, and that one (La Madonna della Spica)
not within the city. The ancient town itself was wholly given over
to the practice of the creed of Islam. At Nocera, within a day s
march of Naples, Frederic installed another Saracen colony, whence
the name it still bears of Nocera dei Pagani, and the Emperor s
own nickname of the Sultan of Nocera. For hundreds of years
it had been the ceaseless effort of the Popes to keep back the ever-
threatening onslaught of Islam, and to Gregory IX it must have
seemed an unpardonable offence that the secular head of Christendom
should lodge Saracen garrisons in his own ancestral dominions,
in the heart of a Christian population. It was Gregory IX who
canonised St. Dominic, and St. Francis of Assisi (who had been his
own friend), also St. Elizabeth of Hungary and St. Anthony of
Padua. With our own King Henry III he had difficulties as well as
with the Emperor.
P. 46. Annunziata. A beautifully- situated little place at the
back of Salerno towards Cava dei Tirreni.
P. 47. The Barbary-bug. A beetle rather resembling the
cockchafer, but much smaller, that is a pest to gardeners and farmers
in Sicily and Southern Italy.
P. 48. The Marina. The sea-front.
P. 48. Rochet. The sort of surplice, with tight sleeves, used
by bishops, prelates, and canons. With very puffy sleeves it is
still worn by Anglican bishops.
P. 52. Paestum. Pesto, as they call it there, is in sight of Salerno,
but not from Salerno can you divine its unique loveliness a triple
Greek ghost in an Italian prairie, between the Apennines and the
Ionian sea. But we may be sure that even if Petruccio had lived
at Salerno he would never have gone there much surer than we can
ever be that St. Bernard really said What lake ?
P?" P. 52. St. Gregory VII. Even a meagre account of a life so
full and eventful as that of Pope St. Gregory VII cannot be com
pressed into a note. Very bare must be the bones of any skeleton
epitome in such a case.
Hildebrand, son of a certain Bonizo, was born, about the year
1020, during the pontificate of Benedict VIII, at Rovaco, a hamlet
near Soana or Sovana in the Tuscan maremma. His father is said to
SAN CELESTINO 817
have been a carpenter. As a child he was sent to Rome to be
trained in learning under his uncle, the Abbot of St. Mary s Monastery
on the Aventine. One of his instructors there was John Gratian,
afterwards Gregory VI, who on becoming Pope made Hildebrand
capellanus, in which capacity he was one of the guardians of the
altar of St. Peter. Thus, his first office gave him the protection
of the tomb of the Apostle, the sacred inner citadel of the Catholic
Church. In 1047, when Gregory VI was forced by the Emperor
Henry III into exile, in Germany, Hildebrand went with him,
Gregory soon died, and Hildebrand withdrew in 1048 to Cluny, the
mother-house of his own monastery on the Aventine. The Abbot,
St. Odilo, had known him in Rome ; the grand-prior, St. Hugh,
took him on an embassy to the Imperial Court at Worms, knowing
that Henry thought highly of the young monk. There Hildebrand
met Bruno of Tool, Leo IX, and with him he returned to Rome.
In the following year Hildebrand became Cardinal : and his influence
remained under St. Leo IX all that it had been under Gregory VI.
On Leo s death the Romans desired to have Hildebrand for his
successor, but he refused, and after an interregnum of several months
Victor II (Gebhard of Eichstadt, a kinsman of the Emperor s)
became Pope, in April 1055. Hildebrand s influence still continued,
and he represented Victor as legate in France at the synods for
the repression of the heresy of Berengarius. It was Hildebrand
who was deputed to defend at the Imperial Court the election of
the new pontiff, Stephen IX (X) ; and it was his influence that
secured the keys to Nicholas II, in 1058, against his rival Benedict X.
By Nicholas he was made Archdeacon of the Roman Church. Finally,
it was Hildebrand whose influence placed Alexander II on the throne
of the Fisherman in 1061. Thus, during six pontificates, Hildebrand
had served apprentice to the Papacy. When Alexander died in
1073 his own hour struck : and, if hitherto his life had known little
rest, henceforth it was to know no peace. He was as little anxious
as ever to sit in the supreme seat under Heaven, but this time his
refusals were of no avail, and on April 22, 1073, he was chosen Pope :
still he insisted on awaiting the Emperor s assent, and not till it had
been brought was he ordained priest, on Ember Saturday, May 22.
On Sunday, June 30, he was consecrated in St. Peter s in the presence
of the Empress Agnes. Hildebrand became Gregory VII, taking
the name of his first papal master, between whom and himself
lay five reigns. His policy was what it had ever been no mere
policy, but the expression of two inseparable principles, the
purification and the freedom of the Church. Two bitter wounds
he had to heal in her, the unworthiness of her ministers, and a
worldly willingness to be an appanage of mere regalism. Two
standards he held aloft in hands physically very weak, and their
318 SAN CELESTINO
greatness, instead of obscuring the identity of that little body,
made of it a giant of history. Hated or loved, he stands on Peter s
rock an impregnable figure, to which few of the world s heroes are
comparable. The legend of the one standard was PRIESTLY PURITY
the perfection of the shepherd ; of the other, CHRISTIAN FREEDOM
the immunity of the sheep from wolves in kings clothing.
The story that followed was only that of twelve years, but it
cannot be so compressed as to be told here. In the matter of his
first standard Gregory s foes were of his own household : the wounds
he suffered were dealt him by them who should have been his friends :
but their sins and disloyalty made him seem to them their enemy,
as Christ had seemed to Judas. In the affair of the other standard,
his foe was master of the house over against his own, set up to be
its defence and outwork. So that Gregory s antagonists were the
priests who did not care to be priests, and the Emperor who desired
to be Pope as well. In his own house there were two capital offences
to crush and destroy : for there were prelates everywhere who had
gone to market for their sees, and priests who were living adulterous
lives ; having taken the Church for spouse they had fallen into
concubinage, bringing women into their houses as secondary
wives.
To that mischief, which scarred the Church s face, Gregory set
himself at once. The other was near akin to it.
Simoniacal prelates looked to earthly sellers for what they wanted
to buy : and Gregory forthwith denounced not only the traffic but the
root of it. That root lay in any pretence that bishops could derive
from secular princes. That pretension poisoned the Church s
liberty at its source. To Peter, not Csesar, Christ had said Feed
my sheep : Peter, not Csesar, was arch-shepherd, from whom the
shepherd s crook must be received. Few men could care less for
a ceremony, that was nothing else, than Gregory : but the giving
of that crozier, or shepherd s crook, was no mere ceremony ; it
expressed a principle, and for that principle he was ready to die.
The Emperor knew well what it meant, and because he knew he
would fight for it with all the brute force he had. Of brute force
Gregory never had any. He was viceroy of a kingdom not of this
world, and he too could say, as his Master had said, If my kingdom
were of this world my servants would certainly strive. Gregory
had to oppose, against the king of this world s kings, only the
assured conviction that the King of all kings was with him. In
that sign he conquered. How he excommunicated Henry IV every
one knows, and how Henry came to Canossa, in a snowy winter,
to make show of submission, because his worldly friends had left
him in the lurch : how the emperor did harsh penance, and promised
everything to obtain remission of the sentence that paralysed him .
SAN CELESTINO 819
how hypocritical were his promises ; how the remission was con
ditionally given, and Henry instantly broke the conditions, and
was again excommunicated and carried war to Rome, and drove
the Pope into his final exile. All that is known, and well known
is it too, that the little exile, broken and outcast, was the victor,
and Gregory, in his penniless death at Salerno, bequeathed her
ultimate freedom to the Church, and to her priests the saved
tradition of their unearthly, sanctified state. He died on May 25,
1085, the guest of the rough Norman soldier who had helped,
two-and-thirty years before, to take his master, St. Leo IX, prisoner
at Civitella. Robert Guiscard wept for Gregory s death, and
buried him hard by the Apostle who had been a publican, in the
cathedral the Guiscard had rebuilt and the Pope had reconsecrated.
P. 56. Bambino. Baby.
P. 56. Poseidon. The Greek sea-god, like Neptune. To him
the place was dedicated, and after him it was called Poseidonia.
It was a flourishing city by 540 B.C. Its glory now is its three
glorious Doric temples, of which the one said to be Poseidon s,
not later than 500 B.C., is called the most perfect and complete Greek
temple now existing.
P. 58. Absit. Forbid it ! Anything but that !
P. 61. Education. In Italy a well-mannered person is said
to be ben educate. Ill manners are cattiva educazione.
P. 62. San Gregorio Settimo. St. Gregory VII. He was not
canonized till 1729, by Benedict XIII : but Salerno gave him a local
canonization and a feast immediately.
P. 62. Duomo. Cathedral.
P. 64. Manicheanism. Of this heresy we need only say that
it taught two creative powers, independent of each other, one that
created the soul and all good things, another that created matter
and evil things in spite of God, as if He were not omnipotent.
P. 66. Bene. Well. All right.
P. 66. Cimabue. He, who is called the first of the restorers
of painting in Italy, was born at Florence in 1240. He found only an
effete tradition of the Byzantine masters that knew only Byzantine
forms, and was dead to the great and noble spirit of the early
Byzantine masters of mosaic. Cimabue revered the Byzantine
tradition, but turned to life and nature. His mosaic of Christ
in glory in the Duomo of Pisa, and his Madonna in Santa Maria
Novella at Florence, still stand as monuments of what he did for
Christian art.
P. 66. Oiotto. Cimabue s pupil and heir was not born till, at
all events, 1266 perhaps not before 1276. He carried his master s
standard, but in subtler hands, and planted it higher. His praise
is in all the churches of Italy, most audibly perhaps at Assisi, but
820 SAN CELESTINO
a priceless gem of his lurks, like a ruby in a mine, in the Orotte di San
Pietro, the crypt of the present St. Peter s at Rome.
Petruccio probably knew little, and cared little, for art ; but
it must be remembered that the frescoes he saw were those of a
student who came before Cimabue and Giotto.
P. 69. A Palermitan was a foreigner. Even now, six centuries
after Petruccio s time, and after forty-four years of a United Italy,
Italians regard as foreigners, stranieri, fellow-subjects from another
province : and especially do those of the south so regard those
of the north : but Sicilians and men of the Regno, though both of
the south, peculiarly distrust and dislike each other, and look upon
each other as foreigners.
P. 71. The Palermitans love of onions is famous. Italians say
that the Palermitans eat so many onions that it makes them silly.
P. 71. St. Sebastian s first martyrdom. Sentenced to be shot
to death with arrows, the saint was nursed back to life, only to be
beaten to death with clubs. The Christian artists were supposed
to have a special fondness for depicting the saint s first martyrdom,
as it gave them an opportunity to try their skill in treatment of
the human form.
P. 73. St. Matthew. After labouring in his own country, the
apostle turned east, and St. Ambrose says that God opened to him
the land of the Persians. St. Paulinus tells us that he finished his
work in Parthia, and Venantius Fortunatus that he suffered martyr
dom at Nadabar in that region. Dorotheus gives the place of his
burial as Hierapolis of Parthia, and St. Gregory VII, in a letter of
his, tells how the Apostle s relics were, long before his day, brought
to Salerno.
P. 74. Atrium. Fore-court. At Salerno this is very large;
the columns were rifled from Paestum. Against the walls of the
ambulacrum or cloister, running round, are ancient Christian
sarcophagi.
P. 77. Fra Maso. Maso is the common diminutive of Tommaso.
The Blessed Thomas of Celano, in the Abruzzo Vlteriore, about
four miles from Lago Celano (Locus Fucinus), is the traditional
author of the Dies Irae : he was one of the first Franciscans and a
companion and friend of St. Francis, whose life he wrote by order
of Pope Gregory IX.
Probably the Dies Irae was not written till a few years after
the supposed date of Petruccio s first interview with Alfeo.
P. 77. The frati. Brothers : the name specially given to
friars as distinguished from monks.
P. 87. To Paestum and towards Amalfi. Because one can see
Paestum across the gulf, but one can only see the coast that trends
round to Amalfi.
SAN CELESTINO 321
P. 88. Nizreni. Nazarenes, Christians. The Catholic Cate
chism of the Maltese begins, Are you a Nazarene ?
P. 88. Manjaniks. These fire arms, already long in use
among the Arabs, were by this time being introduced into Europe
by the Saracen soldiers.
P. 92. But all men are vain, etc. Wisdom, c. xiii.
P. 97. The Badia. The Abbey.
P. 98. Monte Finestra. Window Mountain, because near
its peak a hole pierces it.
P. 99. Another Pietro. Peter the Hermit, a gentleman of
Amiens, preached the First Crusade up and down Europe. At the
end of it he came back to Europe, founded a monastery at Huy
in the Low Countries, and died there in 1115.
P. 107. Monte Vergine. One of the most famous places of
pilgrimage in the Regno : a great Benedictine abbey founded by
St. William of Vercelli and consecrated 1182. It stands on the site
of a Temple of Ceres, and takes its name, some say, from Virginius,
a magician who had here his garden of magical herbs. Others
declare that the great wizard Virgil lived there. The relics of
St. Januarius were borrowed from it by Naples four and a half
centuries ago, and have not yet been returned. It is one of the
most intensely interesting places in Southern Italy, and Cava
itself is another. In 1515 it was despoiled of its revenues, and a
little later a poor Franciscan friar, who was its guest, promised
laughingly that when he became Pope, the monks should have them
back. As Sixtus V he kept his word. The Abbot of Monte Vergine,
like the Abbot of Cava, is a bishop : and so is called Abbot -Ordinary.
P. 1<>7. Urbs Beata Jerusalem. It is not intended to be under
stood that Alfeo sang the whole rhythm de Contemptu Mundi, which
has 3000 verses, but the part beginning with the words quoted,
well known in English now as Jerusalem the Golden. This St.
Bernard, though born at Morlaix in Brittany, is said to have been
English by parentage. He nourished about 1140.
P. 109. Trovatore. Troubadour.
P. 110. Urban II. Odo of Lagery, near Chatillon sur Marne
(1088-1099), Archdeacon of Rheims, became a Cluniac monk,
and was prior of Cluny. Gregory VII called him to Rome
and made him Cardinal Bishop of Ostia in 1078. On his death
bed Gregory, who was entreated to suggest his successor, named
Odo among others. Desiderius of Monte Casino immediately
succeeded Gregory as Victor III ; but on his death Odo was elected
by acclamation by the Cardinals at Terracina, March 1088.
Urban IPs policy was that of Gregory VII : in a succession of
synods he condemned simony and lay investiture of bishops, and
insisted on the celibacy of the clergy. He was victorious in a sharp
Y
322 SAN CELESTINO
struggle with Philip I of France. But he is best known for the great
part he took in organising the First Crusade. He died on July 29,
1099, a fortnight after the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders,
but before the great news could reach him.
P. 111. Municipio. Town House, Guildhall.
P. 111. Bombs. Bombe are very noisy little fireworks.
Pp. 112, 113. Olim asinus locutus est prophetce, utinam nunc
loqueretur ! Ma, non c e qui prof eta. Once an ass spoke to a
prophet, would that he would speak now ! But there is no
prophet here. C" e Vasino It is the ass. Giorno di festaS
Feast day, holiday.
P. 113. Manfred. Frederic II s son by Bianca Lanzia, whom
he married at last on his death-bed in 1250, when Manfred was
about nineteen years old. His father had made him Prince of
Tarento three years earlier, and left him regent of the Two Sicilies
in the absence of Conrad IV, Frederic s son by the Empress
lolanthe, daughter of John de Lusignan, king of Jerusalem. Conrad
died in 1254, and Manfred was again regent, and in 1258, on the
false rumour of his nephew Conradin s death, he was crowned at
Palermo. In the following year Alexander IV excommunicated
him for this usurpation. Manfred retaliated by overrunning the
states of the Church, and in 1261 was again excommunicated by
Urban IV. In 1266 Manfred, deserted by his Apulians, was killed
in the battle of Benevento fighting against Charles of Anjon, the
rival claimant of his throne. He was never buried in the tomb
prepared for him at Monte Vergine, but under a heap of stones by
the bridge of Benevento, vide Purgatorio, III. the passage beginning :
Poi sorridendo disse : lo son Manfredi.
One of the most exquisite and poignant in all Dante. Manfred s
name is perpetuated in that of the city of Manfredonia.
P. 114. Was he not a Crusader? To his people he no doubt
seemed one, for he had, on June 29, 1228, sailed from Otranto for
Palestine, two months after the death of the Empress lolanthe,
or Yolanda, in whose right he crowned himself king at Jerusalem.
But it was by treaty with the Sultan, not by fighting him, that
Frederic, got into the Holy City.
The genealogists ascribe to Frederic II the same number of wives
as Henry VIII : Constance of Arragon ; loland of Brienne ; Agnes
of Maravia ; Rutine of Wolfferthausen ; Isabel of Bavaria ; and
Isabel of England, daughter of King John I ; without counting
Manfred s mother, Bianca.
P. 116. Coraggio ! Courage! Nevermind.
P. 117. Petruccio s stupidity. Some have pleasantly assumed
that Celestine V was a man of mean parts because he found the
SAN CELESTINO 323
papacy too big for him ; but no one who was able to found a great
religious order, still existing after six centuries, could have been
an incapable person. The Celestinians never had, I believe, any
houses in England : their German priories were chiefly in the most
Lutheran regions, and perished. In Italy they had nearly 100 priories,
and in France twenty-one in the eighteenth century. The French
houses were suppressed, but the order is still extant in Italy.
P. 123. Zio. Uncle.
P. 124. Ubi vult spiritus spiral. The spirit breathes where
it will breathe. Opus Domini esl, et mirabile in oculis nostris. It
is the Lord s work, and marvellous in our eyes.
P. 128. Contadini. Peasants.
P. 129. Paroco. Parish priest.
Pp. 130, 131. Domine, lux tua illuminatio nostra : ignis cordis lui
ignis vitae nostrae. Lord, Thy light is our enlightening : the fire
of Thy heart is the fire of our life.
P. 131. Non in solo pane vivit homo. Not by bread alone doth
man live.
P. 140. Domine, quo vadis ? Lord, whither goest Thou ?
P. 152. Sufficit tibi gratia mea. My grace is enough for thee.
P. 187. The Sicilian Vespers. When Urban IV proclaimed
Manfred an excommunicated usurper, the Pope, as overlord, declared
the throne of the Two Sicilies vacant and offered it to one prince
after another. Henry III of England, after his brother Richard,
Earl of Cornwall, afterwards King of the Romans, had refused it,
accepted it for his son Edmund, Earl of Derby, then a lad. After
an abortive expedition to the continent to enforce the claim, Henry
stood aside, and allowed the Sicilian thrones to be conferred by the
Pope on Charles of Anjou, whom Clement IV crowned in 1260.
The defeat and death of Manfred at Benevento in February of that
year secured the Angevin king s position : in 1268 his competitor,
the lad Conradin, Manfred s nephew, fell into his hands, sold by
the Frangipani, and on the 29th of October, after a mock trial,
Conradin was beheaded at Naples. That crime left Charles without
a rival in the Two Sicilies, and for sixteen years he was effectual
master of the Regno and the island. The Sicib ans, however, at
all events loathed the French domination : and they had to suffer
grievously at the hands of the foreign garrison. In the last days
of March 1282 the long- smouldering fires of fierce discontent broke
into flame.
On the evening of Easter Monday the Palermitans were keeping
the festa, and crowds of them had gathered to the Church of the
Santo Spirito just outside the town. Games, dancings, and feastings
were beginning, and the folk, as they came out of the church (it
was the hour of Vespers) mingled in the merry-making crowd.
324 SAN CELEST1NO
The appearance of a body of French troops was a sight to irritate
them, and especially as they were supposed to come to search for
arms. The soldiers mixed themselves with the people, and would not
leave the women alone. The Sicilian men made angry remonstrances
and bade the Frenchmen go their way. A beautiful young bride,
daughter of Ruggero Mastrangelo, drew near with her bridegroom,
and a Frenchman, called Drouet, under pretence of searching her
for arms, touched her disrespectfully. As she sank fainting into
her bridegroom s arms, he cried Death to Frenchmen, and Drouet
was stabbed to the heart with his own sword. The cry Death
to the French was taken up on every side, and the two hundred
French on the spot were all killed. At least ten times that number
were massacred in the city, including French friars, priests, women
and children. What was done in Palerno was copied in the other
towns of Sicily, and many thousands of French were slaughtered.
P. 187. Fifteen Popes. Celestine was borne in the Pontificate
of Honorius III : to whom succeeded Gregory IX, Celestine IV,
Innocent IV, Alexander IV, Urban IV, Clement IV, Gregory X,
Innocent V, Adrian V, John XXI, Nicholas III, Martin IV, Honorius
IV, Nicholas IV, which last Celestine himself succeeded.
P. 196. Servus servorum Dei. Servant of the servants of God.
The designation given by the Popes to themselves at the beginning
of their letters, etc., from the time of St. Gregory the Great.
P. 198. Santo Padre. Holy Father. Among his spiritual
children the Head of the Church is much more commonly spoken of
simply as the holy father than by any other title of his, such as
the Pope, the Sovereign Pontiff, etc.
P. 199. Evviva il Papa. Long live the Pope !
P. 200. Sustine Dominum et conforta cor tuum. Wait thou
on the Lord, and comfort thine heart.
P. 202. Vox populi, vox Dei. The voice of the people, the
voice of God. Vox populi crucifixit Jesum Christum. The people s
voice crucified Jesus Christ.
P. 240. Fiumara. A mountain torrent : river.
P. 242. Basta. Enough.
P. 244. Navicella. Boat.
P. 256. The first words of this chapter are quoted from a poet
not born till Celestine had passed from earth for hundreds of years.
P. 257. Placeat Deo. May it seem good to God.
P. 287. Ragazzino. Little boy, urchin.
P. 294. Fidenzata. Betrothed.
P. 302. Benedicite ignis et cestus Domino. Bless the Lord, yc
fire and heat !
P. 303. Porporati. Cardinals ; literally purpled ones
Spottiswoode & Co. Ltd., Printert, Colchester, London and Eton.
New Edition. With an Introduction and Notes.
Crown 8vo. 2s. net.
SAN CELESTINO
A School Prize Book
" San Celestino deserves a place in every Catholic library, and should be
welcome to those seeking volumes suitable for Prize Distribution." Irish
Catholic.
By JOHN AYSCOUGH
Of John Ayscough s dozen or more of books, four are
specially suitable as Scbool Prizes San Celestino, Faustula,
Levia Pondera, and Gracechurch : and of tbese San Celestino
takes foremost place. It is incomparably Ayscough s best
work, and it is in some ways a unique work. Tbougb cast
into tbe outward fasbion of an idealist romance, it is in
reality an accurate appreciation of tbe bermit Pope St.
Celestine V. His poignant story is told, for tbe first time,
six bundred years after bis deatb, witb tender reverence, an
almost passionate loyalty, and an absolute realisation of tbe
saint, bis time, and bis country. Tbe barest bones of
bistory Jobn Ayscougb bas covered witb intensely living
flesb and blood. Tbe drama of a life tbat yearned for
solitude and oblivion and was dragged inexorably fortb into
utmost publicity, is told in sucb fasbion tbat tbe critics
declared tbis bermit s story to be "more enthralling tban
any romance," and it is read by thousands who would never
read a novel. It has been read aloud in the Refectories of
Nuns all over the world, and in the Refectories of Jesuit
and Episcopal Seminaries. Bishops have read it for their
spiritual reading.
As a School Prize it is peculiarly suitable, both in its
subject and in its literary quality ("The Author," says the
London : SMITH, ELDER &&gt; CO., 15 Waterloo Place, S.W.
SAN CELESTINO
New Ireland Review, " is a master of style.") It is specially
a book to keep for deliberate reading, and to read again.
It is a notable chapter in bistory, and it contains a perfect
gallery of thirteenth century portraits, historic and domestic.
It is somewhat surprising to note how many Prize
Books quite regularly given in Convent Schools are by
non-Catholics, and some of them definitely un-Catholic in
tone, while books of equal literary value, by Catholic writers
of distinction, are never thought of as School Prizes.
Some Press Opinions
" Mr. Ayscough has written a very notable book. He has reconstructed
for us, not only a man, but an epoch. With an unfailing tact, which be
speaks imagination of a rare quality, he creates and conserves his atmosphere.
He is a true artist, of an artistry unobtrusive, inevitable, sincere." Daily
News.
" A very telling and sympathetic picture with the mediaeval background
admirably filled in." Country Life.
" Sparkling with quaint humour, full of religious ecstasy, and often touched
with beauty . . . told in a manner which proves Mr. Ayscough a writer
of great gifts." Daily Mail.
"A beautiful story told with exceptional refinement and tenderness . . .
the thirteenth century hermit is depicted with remarkable insight and subtlety,
Every phase of his character, by a few quiet, effective strokes, is rendered
apparent to us." Publishers Circular.
" Interesting and edifying . , . Mr. Ayscough has described with
sympathetic subtlety and power. ... It is a beautiful psychological study of
a man who chose the better part." Truth.
" A reverent and tender study of a saint . . . full of delicate touches and
acute perception." Globe.
" It is a real pleasure to come upon Mr. Ayscough s tender and beautiful
San Celestino . . . the style is in keeping with the subject, simple and
direct. The language is beautiful and clear ... an original and beautiful
work of art." Evening Standard.
" It is long since there has been published a more original and charming
book." Court Journal.
" A book of remarkable grip and interest . . . singularly engrossing."
The World.
London : SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15 Waterloo Place, S.W.
By JOHN AYSCOUGH
Mr. Ayscough tells with exquisite art the story of Celestine V. .
the humour of the early chapters, the religious fervour ... and the pathos
make the book memorable, and the impression it leaves is of great beauty "
Evening News.
" We have the highest admiration for the spirit and dignity with which
the author has performed his task . . . with literary charm and spiritual
reverence he has made a vital and revivifying study of the gentle old Saint s
lite, and brought to it such charm of technique, with sympathetic understanding
and knowledge, that the story or biography, or appreciation . . . i 9 one to
read and be thankful for." Yorkshire Post.
"A quite admirable piece of work . . . every scene presented with
extraordinary force and verisimilitude. All is finely conceived, the best,
as it is the most difficult, part being the development of the ascetic type of
bamthood. Mr. Ayscough is careful not to dehumanise his hero ... he
can be a shrewd observer ... he can be humorous." Spectator.
"The literary reputation of the author of Marolz and Dromina is known
not only to all Catholics, but to all book-lovers. But San Celeslino is
not only his greatest, but his most entirely Catholic work." Catholic
Herald.
"Admirably done." Nottingham Guardian.
" ^. r . Ayscough has shown that he has a particular gift for describing
the religious, and especially the monastic, temperament ... an interesting
picture, clearly
reputation as a
, n ... an neresng
picture, clearly and vigorously painted, and will add much to Mr. Ayscough s
writer of dignified and limpid English." Morning Post.
"John Ayscough is one of the very few . . . who can claim to possess
a style ... a brilliant^ psychological study ... a triumph of telling and
sympathetic description." Liverpool Post.
" An absorbingly interesting and instructive volume. . . . Mr. Ayscough
describes with graphic vigour, and he is very successful in reproducing the
atmosphere and the surroundings of the period." The Bookseller.
" None has done better with the period than is done by Mr. Ayscough."
Manchester Courier.
" It would be impossible to speak too highly of the masterly character of
this Apologia ... a noble achievement." Catholic Fireside.
" Let no reader forgo the pleasure and profit to be derived from San
Celestino. . . . It is a great book, and as good as it is great." Ave Maria.
" Of fascinating interest . . . like that rare description of Convent life
in Marotz, the account of the hermit s temptations shows a skill in the
discernment of spirits which is unique in modern literature, and all
through the book the same profound insight is evident ... a remarkable
London : SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15 Waterloo Place, S.W.
SAN CELESTINO
performance. This story, which is spiritual enough to be read with profit
in any Convent refectory, and yet may compel, by mere human interest and
grace of style, the attention of all worldlings." The Month.
" A remarkably courageous undertaking carried to a remarkably successful
issue. . . . How the young Petruccio grew up to the life of a cave-dwelling
ascetic, how he persevered therein, with what trials, temptations and joys
all the strange world of his mystic vocation is set forth with sympathetic
imagination, with penetrating psychology, and in graphic style." New Ireland
Review.
"A splendid feat of imagination ... of its grace and charm it is im
possible to speak too highly . . . sacred enough for Lenten reading in a
Convent, yet with qualities that make it interesting to the ordinary worldly
person who subscribes to the circulating library. As often as one of the
latter class reads it, the Catholic Church will have been revealed in one of
her tenderest aspects ; and for those who have minds to understand . . here
also is revelation of the profundity of her teaching." Universe.
"The name of John Ayscough is synonymous with fiction of uncommon
quality and interest, and this (San Celestino) strengthens the tradition . . .
the story is contrived with a constant beauty and interest, only possible when
an author is in love with his theme, and equipped with the characteristics of
a particular period. Of its class I have read nothing so vital and impressive."
Dundee Advertiser.
" Inspired with deep sympathy for the pathetic figure of the unsuccessful
Pope . , . the author has a thorough acquaintance with his subject, and has
painted a luminous and striking picture." Aberdeen Free Press,
" All lovers of mediaeval Italy, and all who are capable of appreciating
its beauties of style, should read it." Guardian.
" The author has done his work well ... he has produced a notable and
arresting picture." Athenatum.
" What must appeal is the dignity and dramatic power . . . the rich vein
of human interest through the narrative, the vividness with which he peoples
his pages with men and women of the thirteenth century, and his contagious
sympathy with the hermit. . . . the sustained interest of the work makes it
seem short." Scotsman.
" One side of Celestine s nature, the perfect unworldliness he owes to the
perfect innocence he retained to his old age, could have had no better
exponent than this writer of so refined and gentle a temper." Manchester
Guardian.
" Mr. Ayscough s book deserves more than attention ; it deserves study
. . . his gentle, lucid, almost perfect manner . . . we have here a fine true
picture of the ascetic. . . If we had the power we would put the book into
the hands of every thoughtful person." Westminster Gazette.
London : SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15 Waterloo Place, S.W
;3ickerstaffe-Drew, F.
>an Celestino.
BQZ
745
B5
cop.2
