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The Seven Dolors of the
Blessed Virgin Mary

The Seven Dolors of the
Blessed Virgin Mary

By

Eliza Allen Starr

O all ye that pass by the way, attend, and see if there be any
sorrow like unto my sorrow. — The Lamentations of Jeremiah
Chapter i; <z>. 12.

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Chicago
Published by the Author

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Copyright 1898
By Eliza Allen Stark

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TO THE

BELOVED SISTERS OF THE CONGREGATION OF
THE HOLY CROSS

IN WHOSE

MOTHER HOUSE OF SAINT MARY'S

I LEARNED THE LESSON OF COMPASSION FOR THE

BLESSED VIRGIN MARY IN

HER DOLORS,

THESE PAGES ARE MOST AFFECTIONATELY

AND GRATEFULLY DEDICATED

Table of Contents

I. The Presentation in the Temple, . 1 5

II. The Flight into Egypt, . . 31

III. The Three Days' Loss, ... 46

IV. The Meeting between Our Lord and

His Mother on the Way to Calvary, 6 1

V. The Crucifixion, ... 76

VI. The Deposition, . . . 91

VII. The Entombment, . . .106

List of Illustrations

I. Vignette ; Our Lady of Sorrows,

Steinle Cover

II. The Presentation in the Temple,

Raphael 1 5

III. The Flight into Egypt,

Fra Angelico 3 1

IV. The Three Days' Loss,

Overbeck 47

V. The Meeting on the Way to Calvary,

Raphael 6 1

VI. The Crucifixion,

Duccio 77

VII. The Deposition,

Fra Angelico 91

VIII. The Entombment,

Perugino 107

Preface

While several Orders have embodied in
their rule a devout remembrance of the Sor-
rows of Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary,
two, in a most special manner, have associ-
ated themselves to these Sorrows by a daily
recitation of the Beads on which her Sorrows,
or Dolors, are commemorated, and by certain
badges which keep these Dolors uppermost
in the minds, as they are always visible to
the eyes of the members of their Order, con-
gregation or community.

Of these two, we make mention, first, of
the Order of Servites, which in both its male
and female branches, makes a daily com-
memoration of the Seven Dolors of the
Blessed Virgin in its stated devotions, while
all wear the Scapular, carry and recite the
Beads of the Seven Dolors of the Blessed
Virgin Mary in such a manner as to make
the devotion to these Seven Dolors one of
the marks of the Order.

Preface

Our second mention is that of the Con-
gregation of the Holy Cross, in which this
devotion to the Seven Dolors of the Blessed
Virgin, is even more pronounced than in the
Order of the Servites. All the Sisters of the
Holy Cross receive " The Seven Dolor
Beads " with their cord and habit as nov-
ices, and the professed Sisters receive, as
their insignia, a silver heart worn outside the
habit, on which Our Lady of Seven Dolors
is represented in high relief; while their two
patronal feasts are the " Compassion of the
Blessed Virgin Mary," on the Friday of Pas-
sion week, and " The Seven Dolors of the
Blessed Virgin Mary," on the Third Sunday
of September.

The Seven Dolor Beads are worn outside
the habit, and it is one of these large black
beads that every Sister touches, instinctively,
when there is a need of special, instant prayer,
and at the side of the sick and of the dying.
During our last war, many a dying soldier in
tent, in hospital or on the field, learned the
power of these beads to sustain and bring the
graces so sharply needed, " Our Lady of the
Seven Dolors " becoming one of the watch-
words wherever a Sister of the Holy Cross
was at hand ; and — where was she not ?

This chaplet of the Seven Dolors, consists

12

Preface

strictly of a crucifix and seven septaines of
beads; each septaine made up of one bead
on which is said the "Our Father," and
seven on which are said the "Hail Mary; "
these seven septaines commemorating the
Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The recitation of the chaplet, begins with
an invocation to the Holy Ghost, to which
succeeds the recitation of the seven septaines
with a devout meditation upon each of the
Seven Dolors commemorated upon them.
At their close, the Hail Mary is said three
times on the three beads between the crucifix
and the septaines, in veneration for the tears
which Mary shed in her sorrows, and with a
most tender compassion for them; thereby to
obtain a true sorrow for our sins, which
were the real causes of her sorrows.

It is unnecessary to dwell upon the in-
fluence of a lifelong devotion like this of
the Seven Dolor Beads. The little book
which we now present to our readers is the
fruit of the recitation of these beads, given to
us by Mother Angela of the Congregation of
the Holy Cross, at Saint Mary's, Notre
Dame, Indiana, and in the use of which we
were instructed by Sister Angeline of the
same beloved community. Both these dear
friends lie in the Sacred Acre of the Convent

13

Preface

of Saint Mary's, and, closely associated as
they are with our Beads, can be mentioned
by name in our Preface.

The seven chapters or divisions of our
little book appeared in the columns of the
Ave Maria, and it is by the courtesy of its
editor, Rev. Daniel E. Hudson, that we are
permitted to publish them in their present
form, which we do, in order so to present
this devotion to the minds and hearts and
imaginations of good women in the world, as
well as in convents, as to be a source of
heavenly-mindedness at all times, of strength
in seasons of trial, nourishing a lively sympa-
thy with and a most tender compassion for
that Mother of Sorrows, who is also the
Consolation of the Afflicted.

Saint Joseph's Cottage,

Feast of the Compassion,

1898.

H

I. — The Presentation in the Temple

Like a budding almond branch on which
has fallen the light snows of February, comes
the double feast of the Presentation and of
the Purification. " The lonely heights of
Mary's holiness," on which a Saint Jerome
meditated with rapture, are tinged, to-day,
like snowy Alpine summits at dawn, with
the warmth of maternal love. She knows,
this Maiden-Mother of the lineage of David,
that she is returning to those who blessed
her on the day of her espousals, crowned as
a mother only is crowned, — returning to
those under whose eye she conned the
prophecies, and who are still " looking for
the redemption of Israel." She knows they
will welcome her first-born Son with un-
speakable tenderness, unspeakable joy ; but
will they recognize the Redeemer, promised
i5

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

for four thousand years, in the Babe nestling
to her breast, cradled on her arm ?

What could be more tenderly beautiful,
more tenderly joyful, than Mary as she stands
before the benign high-priest ; while Joseph,
her spouse, stands beside her, bearing the two
turtle-doves which are to redeem this first-
born Son as, truly, a Son of Abraham ? But
the question still rises in her heart, " Will
they recognize Him who has been promised ?"
when a wave of awe, as profound as her joys,
floods her soul, thrills every faculty of her
mind, as, moving forth from the deep
shadows of the porticos of the Temple,
comes the aged Simeon — a man upon whom
all Israel looks with a hush of veneration;
for to him it [has been promised that he
"shall not see death before he has seen the
Christ of the Lord." And now he advances
to the little group of Mary and Joseph ;
and, taking the Child into his arms, he breaks
forth into a hymn of praise, blessing God
and saying:

" Now Thou dost dismiss Thy servant,
O Lord, according to Thy word, in peace ;
16

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

because my eyes have seen Thy salvation,
which Thou hast prepared before the face
of all people ; a light to the revelation of
the Gentiles and to the glory of Thy people,
Israel."

Close upon the steps of Simeon comes the
prophetess Anna, giving praise to God, and
" speaking of the Child to all who are look-
ing for the redemption of Israel." And the
holy radiance of Mary's face takes on a rap-
ture which says : " They have seen Him who
was to come!"

Ages on ages have come and gone, eter-
nal cycles have been entered upon ; but
Mary never has forgotten, never will forget,
that moment of holy exultation in her vir-
ginal maternity ! It is the voice of Simeon
which breaks in upon the trance of bliss
into which this double recognition of her
Son, as truly the Messiah of God, has thrown
her soul, — the voice of Simeon, as he spreads
his aged hands over this group of three and
blesses them ; then speaks to Mary, still fold-
ing her Son to her heart, as if a new inspira-
tion had come to his soul :
i7

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

" Behold, this Child is set for the ruin and
for the resurrection of many in Israel, and
for a sign which shall be contradicted. And
thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that out
of many hearts thoughts may be revealed."

O brief moment of perfect joy — a joy
born of heaven without one alloy of earth,
and yet as transient as mortal air could
make it !

The delicacy with which this narrative is
limned by the pen of the Evangelist, Saint
Luke, and the tender significance of this first
sorrow in the life of the Blessed Virgin, gave
this subject a place in the series upon series
in the early catacombs. For, contrary to
the impression fixed in the minds of so many
even among Catholics, the incidents con-
nected with the infancy and childhood of
our Lord were dwelt upon by the Christian
artists, who wrought out their pious concep-
tions of these events on the stucco laid over
tufa walls before the year 200, or even 100,
of the Christian era, in the underground
cemetery of a Saint Priscilla or Saint Domi-
tilla, Pretextatus or Saturninus ; precisely as,
iS

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

in later centuries, the apses of the Middle
Age churches were enriched by them to the
admiration of our own times.

It was from these series of paintings,
especially those in Saint Priscilla's Catacomb,
in which he was deposited after his death,
that Celestine I. caught the inspiration which
led him to plan their reproduction on the
Arch of Triumph in Santa Maria Maggiore
— a plan carried out by his successor, Sixtus
III. On this Arch of Triumph the narra-
tive of Saint Luke concerning the Presenta-
tion of our Lord in the Temple has been set
in the most delicately tinted mosaic, with a
vivacity which delights us. The whole scene
is enacted in a portico of the Temple. We
see Mary, richly attired, bearing her Infant
in her arms, Saint Joseph at her side, stand-
ing before the high-priest, who is followed
by other priests ; and toward them are hasten-
ing the aged Simeon and devout Anna ; while
doves and pigeons, in allusion to the modest
offering of Saint Joseph, are seen in a flock
at one side. This is on the upper line of
scenes represented on the arch opposite the
19

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

Annunciation, showing how conspicuously
the event shone forth to the minds of those
Christians of the fifth century ; all of which
is sustained by the importance given to the
festival itself.

We find in Martigny's " Dictionnaire des
Antiquites Chretiennes," under the head of
"Immovable Feasts," that "on the 2d of
February a feast is celebrated which, in all
the martyrologies of the Latins, is entitled
Purificatio S. Marice Virginis, et Hipapanti
Domini nostri. By this last title, the Greeks
designed to keep in memory the meeting of
Simeon with our Lord in the Temple. The
institution of this festival mounts to the
highest antiquity ; is distinctly mentioned by
Saint Gregory of Nyssa (A.D. 396), and by
many other Fathers, whose testimony is
united by the Bollandists; and there are
very ancient formulas for the blessing of the
candles;" by which quotation we see how
much stress was laid upon Simeon's recog-
nition of Our Lord, and, we must infer, upon
his prophecy of sorrow to Our Lady.

The Byzantine period has left one of its
20

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

most interesting compositions to illustrate the
Presentation. The aged Simeon, standing
on a small dais, holds the Divine Child on
his hands, as if returning Him to His
Mother, toward whom He is stretching
forth one little hand ; and the Mother re-
sponds by extending her own to Him. Saint
Joseph bears the turtle-doves at her side;
while Saint Anna is seen over the bowed
shoulders of Simeon, her hands raised, as if
in joy and admiration.

But in the series of pictures representing
the life of the Blessed Virgin by Giotto, in
the Church of Saint Francis at Assisi, one
of his loveliest groups displays the Presenta-
tion. The architecture of the Temple's
interior affords an imposing background, with
every possible adornment ; and the grouping
is arranged, symmetrically indeed, but effect-
ively. The venerable Simeon, with eyes
raised to heaven in thanksgiving, bears the
Child in his arms with exceeding love ; while
the Babe leans toward its Mother, who stands
with outstretched hands to receive Him. Im-
mediately at her side are Saint Joseph and

21

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

several persons, old and young, attracted by
an incident certainly not uncommon, except-
ing for the remarkable circumstances attend-
ing it; for near to Simeon is the prophetess
Anna, who is addressing, most earnestly,
another group of thoughtful persons; while
one has prostrated herself, with her hands
stretched forth toward the Child, as if wel-
coming the Redeemer of Israel. The whole
is in Giotto's best manner, without a trace of
Byzantine formality.

From this time, every series illustrating the
life of the Blessed Virgin — as the twenty-
eight compartments in the sanctuary of the
Cathedral of Orvieto, or the series by Duccio
of Siena — may be understood as giving the
Presentation. The German schools do not
neglect it ; and Van Eyck gives an elegant
version of the story without neglecting a
single circumstance mentioned in the Scrip-
ture narrative. Most certainly we may expect
to see it in the several series painted by the
immortal Fra Angelico, not only in his choral
books and in the cells of San Marco, but on

2 2

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

the presses of the sacristy of the Camaldo-
line convent ; and we do find it.

The ornate arches of Giotto's interior give
place to a long avenue of columns, support-
ing narrow, round arches, which reminds one
of a monastic ambulatory, and giving one
also a feeling of the deepest serenity. There
are no groups in waiting, no lookers-on.
Simeon holds the Child — more than this,
presses Him to his cheek; wraps Him, as it
were, with his aged hands. One can hear
him, in tremulous notes, chanting his Dimittis.
The Child does not turn from him, as in the
picture by Giotto or Van Eyck, in fear; but
nestles to the wrinkled cheek, and His eyes
almost close under the soothing pressure of
that holy embrace. Mary's hands are raised,
not to call Him to her, but as if she had
just laid her Treasure into Simeon's waiting
arms; and her look is one of peace. At her
side, or rather following her, is Saint Joseph
with the turtle-doves, a sweet smile on his
face; for he hears only the welcome given to
the Babe, sees only the love which greets
Him.

23

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

Opposite this group we see Anna, hasten-
ing forward, her hands joined in rapture, de-
claring the coming of Him for whom all
Israel is waiting. It is never quite safe to
say where the charm lies in one of the An-
gelicaPs compositions ; for the charm is over
it as a whole, by reason of the spirit which
inspired it. One thing is certain : Fra An-
gelico could never overlook Mary's part in
the prophecy, " A light to the revelation of
the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people,
Israel;" followed by those words which
never ceased to echo in her heart : " Behold,
this Child is set for the fall and for the
resurrection of many in Israel, and for a
sign which shall be contradicted. And thy
own soul a sword shall pierce.0 Simeon
knew, when he uttered these words, that the
sword at that very moment pierced the Heart
of Mary. Fra Angelico feels this — feels
that the tender joy which was so justly hers,
as we should say, had been disturbed, never
more to rest; and all that sympathy which
people of the world, even, feel for a first
grief, was in the soul of the Angelical.
24

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

Therefore, while he gives her an expression
of peace, it is the peace of perfect resigna-
tion j the repeating of that word by which
she accepted her part in the mystery of the
Incarnation — " Behold the handmaid of the
Lord ; be it done to me according to Thy
word."

Fra Bartolomeo was a monk, a Dominican
monk ; but how differently than to the An-
gelical this scene came before his mind's eye!
The Divine Child, in all His beauty, is held
on Simeon's arms; one foot rests in Mary's
loving palm, and He looks out on the world
with one hand raised in blessing, the other
on His baby-breast — an enchanting picture
of infancy, and that a Divine Infancy. Saint
Joseph bears the turtle-doves most gently ;
one sees also the kneeling figure of a nun ;
another figure, standing with an aureole, may
be Saint Anna. Simeon himself is most
benign, but his eyes look into Mary's as if
he were at this very moment speaking to her
of this Child, to be "the fall and resurrection
of many in Israel, a sign which shall be con-
tradicted ; " while " the sword is to pierce
25

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

her own soul also;" for there is compassion
on his face, and on Mary's the tenderest
shade of sorrow.

In a niche on the wall we see Moses with
his horns of power, and a scroll in hand, on
which is the command which Mary has
obeyed with such simplicity, as if she had
needed purification after giving birth to the
Redeemer who had saved her, from the first
moment of her own conception, from any
shadow of sin. The picture itself is one of
consummate skill, of the most beautiful
technique and delicate sentiment ; one on
which rests the fame of the brother-monk of
Fra Angelico and worthy of San Marco.

In the Vatican Gallery is one of Raphael's
youthful conceptions, a " Coronation of the
Blessed Virgin;" her empty tomb, filled
with growing lilies and roses, around which
stand the Apostles, wondering. This picture
had three smaller pictures attached to it
as a predella, or footstool ; and one of these
gave the Presentation and Purification under
a portico of the Temple, with a vista leading
to its very interior. When the still young
26

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

Raphael went to Rome at the call of Julius
II., he must have felt a little like wondering
at himself to find that he had represented
this event more according to the idea of the
old artist who had put it in mosaic on the
Arch of Triumph in Santa Maria Maggiore,
than like any other picture he had ever
seen. It is, in fact, wonderfully like while
unlike.

The central group gives us the high-priest,
who is returning the Child to His Mother,
having " done for Him according to the law."
Opposite Blessed Mary stands Simeon ; and
the eyes of the high-priest, like those of
Simeon, are bent upon her with the tenderest
compassion, while the Child goes to her
grieved, and she receives Him grieving. One
little hand touches her bosom, the other is
raised as if to console her, — as if He were
saying : " I know you are grieved for Me,
that I must be a contradiction to My genera-
tion, a word to be spoken against. And I,
My Mother, grieve for you." Never, in
one of the school of Siena's tenderest pic-
tures, was there a more sympathetic look
27

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

between Son and Mother than in this early
picture by Raphael.

I often think this Sorrow, or Dolor, might
be made the special devotion of the young.
How often I have heard them say, how often
when young have I said myself: u If I could
only know what to expect ! " Everything in
the prophecy of Simeon is vague. The when,
the how, the what, utterly indefinite — not
even an outline to shadow forth its possible
circumstances j lying off on the dim horizon,
ready to assume shapes too dreadful to
imagine. The first sorrow, the altogether
indefinite sorrow, it belongs to the young to
compassionate Our Lady with all the tender-
ness and sympathy so natural to youthful,
untried hearts. To carry out this idea, the
personages on either side of Raphael's cen-
tral group are young — at least none are old ;
and all seem to partake, by their pensive ex-
pression, in this first grief of the Mother of
a Babe so lovely as to stir envy in all who
behold Him.

So far from giving every attractive ex-
ample of the treatment of this Dolor in art,
28

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

we have chosen those only which were most
significant as to date or character. The sub-
ject has never lost its charm for great artists :
for those whose inspirations are drawn from
sources rich in associations teeming with
thought. In our own age, " The Presenta-
tion of Jesus in the Temple " has made one
of Overbeck's immortal illustrations, forty in
number, which should be the treasure-trove
of every institution for the young, pouring
over the Sacred Text floods of a right under-
standing and a beauty-loving erudition.

Three arcades, through which come charm-
ing distances, frame in the principal group
with its accessories. Strongly relieved against
the open sky, stands Simeon, bowed with
years, bearing lovingly on his arms the
gracious Child, and looking adoringly into
His eyes ; singing softly, as if to himself, his
Dimittis. Two young girls kneel before this
seemingly temporary altar on which are
offered the oblations of the first-born in
Israel, — one bearing the turtle-doves, the
other a lighted taper. And Mary, Virgin-
Mother? Her hands in the mantle that
29

The Seven Dohrs of the Blessed Virgin

wraps her whole figure, leaving only the
beautiful, tender, virgin face, bending pen-
sively like a lily on its stem, the bright aure-
ole over her head, standing between the whole
world, which is to contradict Him, and her
Divine Son, — shielding the whole group, as
it were, by the majesty of her first Dolor !

We see Anna, the aged prophetess, ap-
proaching Simeon, her lifted hands welcoming
the promised Deliverer of His people ; we
see groups of mothers and beautiful children.
But Mary sees no one: her first Dolor
wraps her as closely as does her blue mantle.

3o

FRA ANGEL1CO

THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT

II. — The Flight into Egypt

Our Second Dolor is heralded by a pageant
and a tragedy, and neither pageant nor tragedy
can be overlooked in its contemplation. The
vision of three Wise Men, who were kings
as well, crossing the desert on their camels,
led by an inspiration from heaven to seek
Him whose coming was to be heralded by a
star, and that star burning steadily in the
clear sky of the Orient with a brilliancy
altogether unheard of; the visit of these
three Wise Men, kings as well, to Herod,
King of Judah, in the holy city of Jerusa-
lem; and, obedient to the prophecies, turn-
ing to the little town of Bethlehem, there to
find the One whom they sought, not in
kingly state, but lying in a manger ; there,
also, to offer to this Babe of days their pre-
cious gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh,
— the whole has passed into the poetry and
3i

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

the art of all succeeding ages, and even into
modern story.

We speak literally when we say of all
succeeding ages. It was one of the favorite
subjects of the first, second and third cen-
turies on the walls of catacomb chambers ;
and when the Arch of Triumph lifted its
head in Santa Maria Maggiore, our three
Kings were there, and so was the star, and
so were Herod and the unwilling readers of
holy prophecy ; and the Divine Babe was
there receiving their gifts. And the tragedy
was there also ; and the wail of the Bethle-
hem infants and the frantic cries of their
mothers were lifted up in testimony to the
Incarnation, to which the whole arch is a
monument.

But our actual dolor, " The Flight," was
not one to be treated easily in mosaic.
Landscapes at that early time were very
rarely attempted, and had little interest for
the primitive Christians, whose minds were
so seriously occupied by the fundamental
dogmas of a religion for which they might
at any time be called to die. The accesso-
32

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

ries, therefore, of " The Flight " being tech-
nically difficult, they included all its signifi-
cance in those graphic representations, of
the Murder of the Holy Innocents, which
are still to be found among the cathedral
treasures of Southern Europe.

We cannot suppose Our Lady to have
been actually present at any of those scenes
so brutally enacted at the command of Herod;
but that visit of the angel to Saint Joseph in
his sleep, saying, " Arise, and take the Child
and His Mother, and fly into Egypt ; and be
there until I shall tell thee ; for it will come
to pass that Herod will seek the Child to
destroy Him," opened to Mary all the possi-
bilities of the danger before her. Saint
Matthew is the only one of the Evangelists
to give this narrative ; but it is told by him
so circumstantially, that this Second Dolor
stands as sharply defined as Simeon's proph-
ecy was vague, and which she now reads
with an awful sense of what is still to come.

Archbishop Kenrick, in his note upon
this passage in Saint Matthew's Gospel,
says : " It is probable that immediately after
33

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

their (/. e., the Wise Men's) departure, the
Child was brought to Jerusalem to be pre-
sented in the Temple." Then, in another
note following immediately, he says of the
dream : " This took place probably as Jo-
seph, after the presentation, was on his way
to Nazareth." The Gospel tells us that he
arose and " took the Child and His Mother
by night, and retired into Egypt."

This subject could not fail to have been
treated in the miniatures which illustrated so
lavishly and so touchingly all the choir books
of the Middle Age monasteries ; and even
in the large representations of the Murder
of the Holy Innocents it comes into the
backgrounds, especially in architectural dec-
orations of churches dedicated to the Blessed
Virgin, as Notre Dame de Chartres ; and in
Mrs. Jameson's " Legends of the Madonna"
we are told, in a note, that it is " conspic-
uously and elegantly treated over the door of
the Lorenz Kirche at Nuremberg;" indi-
cated, as she remarks, rather than repre-
sented.

But while we are preparing ourselves for

34

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

disappointment in our search for early repre-
sentations of this dolor in its entirety, we
find to our delight, in spite of technical diffi-
culties as to mosaic, the whole story, pageant,
tragedy, and flight, beautifully given in the
second row of mosaics encrusting the
domed ceiling of the ancient baptistery of
Florence. These wonderful mosaics date
to the year 1213, and were begun by Andrea
Tafi, assisted by Gaddo Gaddi, a friend- of
Cimabue; and by Apollonio, a Greek master,
under whom both Andrea Tafi and Gaddo
Gaddi had learned their art. This row be-
gins with the Annunciation to Our Lady, the
Visitation to Saint Elizabeth, the Nativity ;
and next comes the visit of the Magi, their
dream in which they are warned to return
another way into their own country, which
they do in a sail-boat; then the Presentation
in the Temple followed by Saint Joseph's
Dream, in which an angel communicates the
danger awaiting the Holy Child, and the
actual Flight. The gentle animal on which
Our Lady is seated with her Child is led by
an angel, but the Child Himself stands on
35

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

His Mother's knee and points the way,
while Saint Joseph follows the holy group ;
and the Murder of the Innocents occupies
the next compartment. The vivacity with
which these groups are executed would make
them perfectly intelligible to a child.

Still, the event can hardly be said to have
been treated as a dolor, except in choir
books, before the year 1400 — that century
in which rare tenderness of devotion quick-
ened the imaginations of so many gifted
sons of Italy. It is on the wall of a cell in
the Monastery of San Marco, Florence, that
we find our Flight treated as a dolor, with
no other idea in mind ; for it was painted
there by the hand of the Angelical Brother
wno painted but for one purpose on these
convent walls — which was to assist the med-
itations of the Brothers who dwelt there,
whose lives were shaped and colored by the
indwelling thought, not by the execution of
the picture whatever it might be.

And what is this picture which, in despite
of four centuries, keeps its place in every
work of art, and challenges the critic with
36

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

any or all of its imperfections? A barren
landscape, hills and valleys, with here and
there an abode more or less humble, and far
off a line of the sea ; just four trees, shaped
for all the world like the toy trees of a
child's Christmas-box. Edging the path is
delicate herbage, as if it had sprung up at
the moment from the atmosphere of this
group ; and close to us the barest outline of
a mouse-colored donkey, such as we see in
Italy, but living and moving, and intent on
accomplishing his journey. No bridle, no
rein of any sort ; but we know the donkey
is on the right path, that he will not falter
or need urging or stumble ; for on his back
is seated the gentlest rider that a donkey
ever bore, — the gentlest rider and the most
wonderful; for she is a Virgin-Mother, and
she holds to her. cheek, without a thought of
aught else in the world, the promised One
of Israel, the Messias of her people ; the
Redeemer of the whole human race, foretold
to Adam and Eve even after their sin, and
now come ; the very Word Himself made
flesh and committed to her arms, while the
37

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

nation that should welcome Him and the
king who should bow down to Him are
seeking His life. Her soul is utterly aban-
doned to this one thought, all the instincts
of motherhood inspiring her to shield Him,
while the tender face is calm even in the
anguish of her heart ; and this anguish to
be divined only by a gentle lifting of the
eyes heavenward, and a pressure, which we
feel rather than see, of the hands that hold
her Babe to her cheek ; while the Infant
looks into His Mother's face with a confi-
dence which assures her that all will be well.
Saint Joseph follows with a step as firm,
as untiring as that of the patient animal that
needs no urging. The white locks fall in
waves on his shoulders from under a close
cap; but the simplicity of the drawing gives
us a deep, far-seeing eye, and the profile of
a face as intelligent in heavenly things as it
is benign. He carries, on a stick over his
shoulder, the garments for his family, and in
his hands certain utensils which you know
will be used when they pause to rest. The
soul of the picture could be given in a cir-
38

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

cle which would enclose the head of the
Mother, of the Child, and the encir-
cling arms and hands. The terror which
seized her when Joseph gently roused her
from her sleep, told her of the vision and of
the command, still freezes her ; we see that
she has but one care — to shield her Infant
from "the terrors of the way."

A more direct contrast to this conception
of our dolor could not be found than " The
Flight," by Titian. A glorious landscape,
umbrageous trees, a beautiful Mother and
sleeping Babe, a foster-father; but, nearly
lost in the magnificence of the landscape as
they are, we feel that they were introduced
as an after-thought, to give significance and
perhaps tenderness to the scene. It is the
world's way of looking at all these events
simply as events and circumstances point-
ing the story. Pinturicchio, in one of
his pictures in Sant' Onofrio, Rome, has
rendered the Flight with all the hurry
and trepidation which is usually seen in
figures fleeing from imminent danger of
any sort; and in the background we see the
39

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

brutal Murder of the Innocents and the dis-
tracted mothers. Guido represents the Holy
Family flying on foot; while Nicolas Pous-
sin embarks them in a row-boat, with angels
in the air bearing a cross.

We turn from all these — for our dolor is
not to be found in them — and come to an
artisl in our own century who has given this
dolor in all the supernatural environment that
belongs to it, and with a charm which should
convince us, once for all, that it is not the
century in which we find a picture, nor the
technique, however perfect, which has pro-
duced it, which makes its value (and this not
only for one age but for all time), but the
mind which has meditated upon, the soul
which has apprehended, actually laid hold of
the mystery contained in the event ; and the
sensibility which has come in touch with the
subtlest chords in the human Heart of Mary,
the human Heart of Jesus Himself. Only
by a transporting of one's whole self into
this subject can any artist in the least hope
to put before our eyes what the Flight really
was as an event even, and what it will con-

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

tinue to be as a dolor so long as there is one
heart left on earth to compassionate that
Mother guarding her Divine Infant with her
virginal arms from "the terrors of the way."
These two precious pictures are included
by Overbeck in his " Forty Illustrations of
the Four Gospels." The first of these two
gives us the Dream. This Holy Family,
whose never-to-be-spoken joy had come to
it in the Stable of Bethlehem, had paused for
the night, it would seem, in another stable,
or perhaps courtyard accessible to travellers ;
for we discern faintly the patient donkey un-
bridled at his crib in the background ; while
sitting on the bare floor, supported by the
wall, we see Saint Joseph, his staff in his
hand, in a deep sleep ; made apparent by the
one hand hanging limp over his knees, and
by the very soles of the feet pressing on the
floor, supporting him equally with the wall ;
a deep, deep sleep. Opposite Saint Joseph,
sitting also on the bare floor, is the Virgin-
Mother just leaning against the wall, one
foot partly beyond her robe, the head under
its mantle bent until the cheek touches the
41

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

head of her Child; a very brooding of the
nestling, folded — O how closely ! — in her
arms ; one hand of exquisite grace sustaining
her elbow, to make a cradle for her darling,
her first-born, of whom no slumber can
make her, for one instant, unconscious.
Near Saint Joseph, on a rude block of stone,
stands a lamp.

But what apparition is this flooding the
bare stable with a heavenly radiance ? An
angel, fair and strong, vested, girded and
winged, bends in haste over Saint Joseph ;
one hand points downward to the sleeping
Mother and her Babe ; the other, with a
wonderfully speaking gesture, points outward
and onward ; and just outside the open wall
we see the Mother and her still sleeping
Babe, placed by Joseph's strong and gentle
arms on the donkey. Above them is the frag-
ment of an arch; and still above, in the
clear, wintry air of a February night, is the
crescent moon. We understand it all.
Joseph, roused at once from his deep sleep,
knew that he had seen a vision, understood
the voice, the command. The donkey was
42

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

led from his crib ; the Mother was roused
without awakening the Child, and placed
securely on his back, and the flight was be-
gun ; a flight, because made suddenly but
without any trepidation ; and we expect to
see them — just as we do see them afterward,
by the hand of the Angelical Brother on the
wall of a cell in San Marco — two scenes in
one act.

But our second picture ? Nothing that
we can recall in all the representations of the
Murdered Innocents in the least equals the
heartbreak of this scene. The little ones
are dead, — and so beautiful in death that the
hymn of Prudentius, of the fourth century,
comes to mind :

Ye lovely flowers of martyrs, hail!

Two lie directly before us like twins, one
over the other ; but the group of six mothers
fills the foreground. One bears her dead
infant on her knees, with uplifted arms ;
another buries her face, but she cannot bury
her grief, in her hands ; a third throws her-
self on the ground over her dead child and
43

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

bewails him, with such tears as angels only-
can dry ; a fourth lays the little lifeless face
to her cheek, as if trying to bring it back to
life by her caresses ; but the fifth, her back
toward us, sees her child dead, does not
touch him, but mourns, with one hand to her
tortured brain, the other hanging listlessly over
the little form on the ground before her; and a
sixth we see rushing off* in wild despair, her
hands to her ears as if to forget the death-
wail of her darling.

All this in the foreground. But a middle
distance comes in, the court of the Temple
it might be ; and up the many steps flies a
mother, her child hugged frantically to her
shoulder, and pursued by a murderer, who
actually clutches her robe, threatens the
child with his dagger; and still higher, within
the portico, is another, whose child has been
wrenched from her by one foot, but clinging
to it still even while the murderous wound is
being given.

Quite to the left stretches a line of arches,
and we see — what ? The Virgin-Mother
closely veiled, looking neither to the right
44

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

nor to the left, her Babe held close to her
cheek; the donkey ambling gently, without
rein or bridle, through one of the arches;
Saint Joseph following, as if the wind stirred
his mantle, a bundle over his shoulder, and
looking backward. O Virgin-Mother, have
you heard the cry of one of these murdered
Innocents, the wail of one of these mothers?
And do you bear in your compassionate
Heart, adding still another pang to your own
dolor, the sorrows of the mothers of Bethle-
hem, while knowing that you are saving, by
your flight, their Redeemer and your own ?

45

III. — The Three Days' Loss

The pain of pains, whether — as Dante
puts such comparisons — a man measures
himself by himself or measures himself with
God, — still the pain of pains is the mystery
of our Third Dolor; for it is the pain of loss.
It was the dread of loss which had made the
anguish of the Flight; but to this had suc-
ceeded the peaceful sojourn in Egypt, even
if it were an exile. When the angel appeared
again to Saint Joseph, it was to assure him
that they were " dead who sought the life of
the Child," and the Holy Family took its
way, according to his command, to the land
of Israel and to Nazareth, its peaceful hills
and valleys not more peaceful than the gentle
tenor of these three holy lives.

The bliss of these years has inspired many
a Christian artist to give the lovely inter-
course not only between Jesus, Mary and
46

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ISSf^lv

&j$P^

rt|gitoips,,'s

•

.

I'

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

Joseph, but with Elizabeth and the young
John the Baptist and Zachary, — all of
whom had been included in the events con-
nected with the Incarnation, as recorded by
Saint Matthew and Saint Luke, so that a
peculiar oneness of thought must have made
their intercourse second only to that of the
blessed in heaven.

Beautiful and most peaceful these years
certainly were; but more to Mary than any
joy of occupation, even with her Son, must
have been that of watching from week to
week, from month to month, from year to
year, the unfolding of the Godhead in the
manhood, in a way strictly according to the
laws of increasing intelligence with children,
yet so marvellous as to fill the soul of the
Mother with continual and delightful aston-
ishment. It was the blossoming time of that
Mother's life. Thoughts of danger must
have been lulled; a sense of security must
have relieved the tension of soul and of
body ; and when the time came for her
grave and beautiful Boy to accompany Joseph
and herself to Jerusalem, she must have
47

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

looked forward to that journey and to His
first appearance in the Temple since His pre-
sentation.

That presentation ! O Virgin-Mother ! did
no shadow pass over thy soul, like those
which chase each other over verdant mead-
ows and fields of waving grain, from we
know not what, unless from the dreamy
clouds of the welkin? Mary could not for-
get Simeon's prophecy, and, as she neared
the Temple with this Son of twelve years at
her side, the natural exultation of the
Mother's heart must have died out, if only
for the instant; and Simeon's aged face and
trembling voice must have come, for that
instant, between her and the radiant Being
whose hand was held so dutifully, so lov-
ingly, within her own.

Seven days — filled, as none of Mary's days
had ever before been filled, by contact with
noisy crowds, — completed the sojourn of the
Holy Family in Jerusalem, as it did of all
the devout Jews, who had come from every
part of the civilized world, to keep the Feast
of the Passover. The streets were thronged,
48

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

so were the gates. For one instant her Boy
was missing — carried from His place, as she
supposed, by the crushing multitudes. She
would see Him when they had passed the
gates, she said to herself, and Joseph assured
her of this also. But the gates were passed;
every living being must have been pressed
through by the weight of multitudes throng-
ing from the rear; and it was not possible to
turn back, or go to the right or to the left :
they must simply drift with the strong tide.

Their caravan, which was from Galilee,
was made up of several thousand persons; so
that when they were again on the highway it
was still impossible to seek for any missing
member of a family; and as it was then
noontide, they must be content to wait until
the caravan paused for the night, as it did, we
are told by an ancient tradition, at Beeroth.

But although a diligent, and very soon an
agonized, search was made for the Boy Jesus;
and while, as on all suchf occasions, every one
was eager to find the missing Child, no trace
could be found of Him. No one could
remember having seen Him after the first
49

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

ranging of the family in the band to which
they naturally belonged. "We have sought
Him," they said sorrowfully to each other,
"among all our kinsfolk and acquaintances;
He must have remained in Jerusalem."

The earliest dawn saw them in the Holy
City, threading the same streets through
which they had walked with Him, hand in
hand, on their departure ; to the very house
where they had found hospitality during their
sojourn of seven days; but the Boy Jesus was
not there — had not been there since leaving.
One street after another, one locality after
another, drew them, they hardly knew why,
until Mary, no longer able to contain her-
self, asked every one they met if he had not
seen a beautiful Boy of twelve years, — more
beautiful, she would add, than any of the
children of men. Thep even made their way
to the Temple, now almost deserted; but
when they found Him not, the weary search
from house to house began. There were few
in Jerusalem who had not seen the anxious
but still gentle face of the young Mother
from Nazareth who had lost her Son; nor
50

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

did the accents of her voice cease to echo in
their hearts even when they had passed her
by, and a sympathetic tone came into the
harshest voice with the "Nay, good woman,
we have not seen thy Son."

In vain did Joseph try to persuade her to
take some rest, some nourishment; for what
could rest her or what could nourish her
when not only the light of her eyes, the sun
of her soul, had been taken from her, but the
Hope of Israel, who had been confided to
her — the very Son of the Most High, who
had taken flesh of her; He who had created
her, had come to redeem her, with all the
souls that had lived, still lived, were ever
to live on this earth ? The infinite magni-
tude of the possession, the infinite magnitude
of the loss, surpassing mortal understanding !
— even Saint Joseph, T 7ith the infused percep-
tion of spiritual things, which came from his
intimacy with Jesus, could not fathom the
agony of her search for this infinite trust
committed to her care, of all the daughters
of Eve.

Jerusalem had been searched with eyes
5i

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

keener than lamps. Once more would she
go to the Temple. Could one so gentle, so
considerate, resist the drawings of her heart
any more than the steel can resist the load-
stone ? She was confident that He had hidden
Himself from her — for what reason she did
not seek an answer. It was enough for her
that He had withdrawn Himself from her;
that she was to seek Him until she found
Him. Never had the fifteen steps to the
Temple seemed to her so long, and a dizzy
faintness came over her at the last; for, if
He were not there, whither should she go ?
The first court was passed; but "on Sab-
bath days the Jewish doctors were accus-
tomed to meet in one of the lofty halls of
the Temple, there to solve any difficulties
occurring in the interpretation of the Law.
In the time of the Pasch, particularly, when
Jews from all over the world flocked to
Jerusalem, there were throngs about these
far-famed masters, eager to be instructed by
them."* To this hall pressed forward Mary,

*See " La Vie de N. S. Jesus Christ." By Abbe Fouard.
Translated into English by George F. X. Griffith.

52

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

followed by her faithful spouse; and as she
entered the door, what sight met her eyes ?
Truly her grief, her solicitude, must be
measured by her joy ; for there, in the midst
of the great doctors of her nation, all look-
ing eagerly into His face, all listening with
rapt attention to the words which came from
His lips, was her beloved Son !

Never had that face been so radiant even
to the eyes of Mary; never had that voice so
transported her soul. A majesty, hitherto
restrained, uplifted His whole being, yet took
nothing from its divine modesty. Asking
questions, listening to their solving,-— -the
very question was an instruction, and floods
of light poured over the minds of the grave
doctors to whom the questions were pro-
pounded. It was another stride onward in
the manifestation of the divinity. Mary un-
derstood it all now, but her heart was still
sore; the ache had not yet died out; and,
advancing with Saint Joseph at her side, she
stood before the teacher in all the plentitude
of her Divine Motherhood, breathing rather
than speaking: u Son, why hast Thou done
53

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

so to us ? behold Thy father and I have
sought Thee, sorrowing."

Dante, in the fifteenth canto of his " Pur-
gatory," brings this scene before us as one
of those sculptured on the marble walls illus-
trating sweet Patience :

.... I saw we had attained
Another terrace ; whence I speech restrained.
There by an ecstatic vision rapt away

J suddenly seemed; and, 'neath a temple's dome,
A crowd I saw of many people come;
And, at the door, a dame, whose sweet, mild
way
Was that a mother hath, and soft and low.
"Son, why hast Thou thus dealt with us?
For lo,
Sorrowing Thy father and myself," she said,
"Were seeking for Thee." More she did not
say."^

Dante and Giotto were school-fellows, and
much that Dante put in verse our Giotto
painted. This scene he placed on the walls
of the famous Arena Chapel at Padua. Jesus
strictly as the Boy Jesus, is seated on a high

*See Wilstach's Translation.
54

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

bench. We see His profile only \ one hand
holds His mantle, the other arm is out-
stretched to the doctor nearest to Him,
toward whom He leans, with a gentle per-
suasiveness in which there is majesty as well.
Advancing toward the group of doctors, we
see Mary, her face still wearing the traces of
her sorrowful search, both hands extended
toward her Child; the star on the shoulder
of her mantle, and beside her is Joseph. Not
one strained gesture, not one line of enforced
majesty ; but the sorrow is there as well as
the joy, and the Boy Jesus is instructing even
while He asks questions.

A charming picture by Spagnoletto, in the
Vienna gallery, preserves the youthful gentle-
ness of the Divine Boy. The beautiful,
eager face, the boyish curls, the hand grasp-
ing the arm of the chair, from which He has
half risen, and this arm a bit of choice carv-
ing— an eagle's bent head,— the right arm
and index finger raised heavenward as He
inclines toward a turbaned doctor earnestly
scanning the pages of a book resting on the
table, around whom are five magnificent
55

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

heads of doctors, earnest also, and seventeen
press forward at the rear. But at His side
we can see the head of the Virgin-Mother,
and also of Saint Joseph, both of a noble
type, and Joseph's staff just visible, the
whole full of the true spirit of the scene.

Among the Diisseldorf series of religious
prints is a very beautiful one after Ittenbach.
The youthful Christ, gentle, modest, is seated
on a bench of honor, His feet on a stool on
the raised dais; in His hand a roll, and the
right hand and index finger slightly raised as
if by the energy of speaking. Eight doctors
are standing or seated on low benches around
Him, but one is deeply in earnest, and is
drawing out answers to his questions from
the Child, who is listened to with admiration.
Upon this scene appears the Mother Mary,
ecstatic with joy, yet bearing traces of her
grief, as well as Saint Joseph, and both are
so demonstrative as to cause one of the grave
doctors to turn his eyes upon them. A
tender, reverential feeling runs through the
picture, and the spontaneous action of the
Blessed Virgin and of Saint Joseph is pre-
56

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

cisely what we ourselves would imagine
after this three days' loss.

Overbeck has given two renderings of this
scene; but the one in his "Forty Illustra-
tions of the Four Gospels" seems to us to
have been inspired by a deeper, sweeter feel-
ing than the other; although, evidently, the
same conception runs through both. In this
the Divine Child is even younger than in
the first, still seated on the heavy tomes ;
but He has turned from one eager, impatient
questioner to listen to another, and the atti-
tude is in itself eloquent, while it is a marvel
of technique in drawing. Slight as the posi-
tion allows our view of the face to be, it is
that of a listener and speaker as well; but
the irrepressible rabbi who touches His'hand
to compel His attention, does not disturb the
serenity of the exposition being made by the
raised fingers and thumb. Every ear, every
eye, among the fourteen doctors is riveted —
spellbound, as it were — on the wonderful
Child.

Upon this scene comes, in the far back-
ground, the Virgin-Mother, with a dejected,
57

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

heart-broken mien. She has not yet discov-
ered her Son, has not yet heard His voice ;
and Joseph is encouraging her to proceed
with him, for she follows him. It is the only
picture I know which gives the actual search
and at the same time the young Christ in the
midst of the doctors. The heads of the doc-
tors are wonderfully individualized, every
shade of attention being given; while the
figures of the Virgin-Mother and Saint
Joseph express the weary, heart-breaking
search, and the youthful Christ is a dream of
beauty and of supernatural intelligence.

But the Beuron, which we may also des-
ignate as the modern Benedictine School of
Ideal Art, gives another rendering of this
scene too precious to be omitted. The
youthful beauty of the Child Jesus is entranc-
ing. No conception yet embodied in any
picture I know rivals it. The oval face has
the length of a boy's of twelve; the sim-
plicity of the pose is altogether as youthful.
He is seated on the high base of a double
column, connected by classic garlands to two
other columns. It would seem to be a seat
58

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

for an instructor; but His feet do not touch
the footstool, intended for some adult, to
which lead four steps, all richly draped. To
one side are five doctors, who have been
occupied with the rolls beside them, while in
in the hand of the Boy Jesus, resting on His
knee, is an open volume.

But neither Boy nor doctor is now occu-
pied with grave questions ; for directly on the
opposite side appear the Virgin-Mother and
Saint Joseph. She comes close to the steps,
raises her rapturous, yet still questioning,
hands, looks into the eyes of her beloved
One, and the sweet words, " Son, why hast
Thou done so to us ? " come from her lips.
The Boy's eyes are bent upon, meet the
eyes of His Mother, and the hand is raised
slightly, in gentle expostulation, saying:
"Did you not know that I must be about
My Father's business?" Saint Joseph stands
at her side with his staff, one hand raised in
that worshipful admiration which beseems
him so well; and the sweet affection, divine
majesty, of the Boy Jesus leaves nothing to
desire, even when he says : " Did you not
59

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

know that I must be about My Father's busi-
ness ? "

We have given the traditional treatment of
this dolor, and the action of the Divine
Child, from Giotto to our own decade, these
traditions being altogether on the side of
fealty on the part of the Virgin-Mother her-
self; on the part of her Son, everything
which endears youth to age ; setting on the
brow of the Boy Jesus, of twelve years, that
aureole of meekness which beautified His
cruciform nimbus as the Redeemer of men.

60

RAPHAEL

THE MEETING ON THE WAY TO CALVARY

IV. — The Meeting between Our

Lord and His Mother on

the Way to Calvary

How like a dream, in an atmosphere of
inconceivable loveliness, must not have
seemed to Mary the hidden life of Jesus at
Nazareth! Of all the Nazarene youths,
none was more retiring than " the Son," as
He was accounted, " of Joseph the carpen-
ter." Not one was more assiduous at his
occupation ; and in the early days of the
Church the faithful were reminded of the
ploughs and yokes made from the hard wood
by this Youth who had confounded, by the
wisdom of His questions, the perfection of
His replies, the wise men of His nation ;
and until the age of thirty this marvel con-
tinued.

Saint Joseph died during these years,
breathing out his soul most peacefully on the
61

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

bosom of Jesus, with Mary at his side; and
this unity of the Holy Family once riven,
we feel that it is a signal for the breaking
up of the household itself. The ears of
Jesus and of Mary were quick to hear the
cry of the Baptist. It was the call to the
public life of Jesus Himself, and was obeyed
as implicitly as Saint Joseph had obeyed the
voice and gesture of the angel charging him
to flee into Egypt.

That Mary followed we can have no
doubt; and thus the home at Nazareth was
a deserted one. We can see her blue
mantle flitting among the crowds that
flocked to Saint John on the banks of the
Jordan. She saw that Dove, symbolizing
the same Holy Spirit which had flooded, her
soul with an awful joy at the moment of
the Incarnation, descend upon the head of
Jesus; she heard the voice, and she knew
that the beginning of the end had come.
The vocations of the several Apostles were
so many revelations to her; and when they
appeared with their Master at the marriage
in Cana of Galilee, the miracle which she
62

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

evoked from her Son disclosed Him in all
His beauty to the admiring guests. It was
the opening of a celestial flower under the
smile of Mary's virginal maternity.

Thenceforth the story of the " three
years' ministry " absorbs the Evangelists.
She appears once with His brethren while He
is preaching and working wonders, and the
word is sent to Him that His Mother and
His brethren are without, desiring to speak
with Him. But while she hears that voice
declare, " Whosoever shall do the will of My
Father who is in heaven, he is My brother,
My sister, and mother," she knows that her
presence has been a consolation to Him.

But the plots of Pharisees and Sadducees
are deepening : closer and closer around Him
are their nets woven ; and closer and closer
around Mary draws that circle of holy
women who are to^be her companions to the
last : Mary, the wife of Cleophas, the
brother of Saint ;, Joseph, the mother of
James and Jude, and a near relative of the
Blessed Virgin ; and Saint Mary Magdalene,
the sister of Lazarus of Bethany.
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The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

During these last days she is always rep-
resented with these devoted women ; above
all, with Saint Mary Magdalene. They are
with her when the tidings come to her, by
the mouth of the Beloved Disciple, of all
that passed in the Garden of Olives, the
judgment hall of Pilate ; but now she sees
with her own eyes that the murderous sen-
tence is to be carried out. She sees the pro-
cession of centurion and guards and soldiers
taking its way from Pilate's house; in the
midst she sees Jesus bearing His cross with-
out one helping hand ; sees Him sinking to
the ground under its weight. With a cry of
anguish, she darts forward, makes her way
through the ranks of armed soldiers, kneels
beside her Divine Son, stretches toward Him
the hands that wrapped Him in His swad-
dling clothes, but which are not allowed to
touch Him now in His humiliation. All the
dolors of her thirty-three years — since she
presented Him in the Temple, fled with Him
to Egypt, sought Him through the streets of
Jerusalem ; all the grief at seeing Him re-
jected by His nation, persecuted, calumnia-
64

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

ted, at last condemned, and actually led to a
most shameful and bitter death, — seize her
heart like a death spasm. The eyes of the
Son meet the eyes of the Mother; the same
spasm that wrenches the heart of the Mother
wrenches that of her Son ; and her broken,
tearless sobs are the only sounds that mark
their meeting.

In that " Way of the Cross" in which the
late beloved Father Sorin, of the Congrega-
tion of the Holy Cross, has given us his
meditations while making the actual Via
Crucis in Jerusalem, we read : " The pilgrim
is told where Jesus and Mary met on the
road to Calvary ; the sacred spot which even
now, from tradition, is called c The Spasm,'
and which has been kept ever since in the
greatest veneration. Here, in overwhelming
affliction, met the two tenderest hearts that
ever lived. O Mother of Sorrows, to whom
shall I liken thee ? For thy pain is bound-
less as the sea."

Cimabue, at Assisi, gives the mounted
soldiery, awful in helmets and armor and
lifted spears, pressing through the gate of the
65

The Seven Doiors of the Blessed Virgin

Holy City ; and just outside we see the pro-
cession on foot, led by two mounted men-
at-arms. In their rear are the two thieves
who are to be crucified, urged on by
blows \ followed by Our Lord carrying His
cross with a meekness that might disarm the
malice of His executioners, if not of those
who had sought His condemnation. Behind
Our Lord are two other armed men, who are
addressing a group of sorrowful women that
have braved soldiers and horsemen to fol-
low the Crucified ; and here we recognize
the Blessed Virgin, Saint Mary Magdalene,
Mary of Cleophas, the Beloved Disciple
Saint John ; while scowling horsemen, as we
have said, press upon them at the gate.

But most threatening of all is one of the
horsemen leading the procession, who looks
angrily back and points his naked sword at
the sorrowing women, as if ordering them
from the ranks. The Magdalene meets his
eye and the glint of his sword, and seems to
remonstrate; but the Mother, like her Son,
bows meekly to the command, as do her

66

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

companions ; Saint John holding his cheek in
his hand, in his anguish.

In the Franciscan church of Santa Croce,
Florence, Taddeo Gaddi gives this scene
with a beauty of conception worthy of the
artist who adorned the Spanish chapel in
Santa Maria Novella. The towers of the
Holy City are seen above the walls, from
which pour crowds following in the wake of
the cross, which rests on the shoulders of
Our Lord, surrounded by armed men in their
helmets and banners, with spears raised high.
Close in the rear we see a group of women,
and a soldier is raising his mace at them
threateningly. But one darts forward, throws
out both her hands to the full-length of her
arms toward the holy Sufferer, with an ex-
pression on her face of such anguish, such
agony, as only a gesture like this could
express ; while the meek Lord turns upon
her that look of divine compassion which
only a mother could claim, and that a virgin-
mother. The dolor is here in all its full-
ness, in all its supernatural intensity. No

67

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

one who ever looked upon that picture could
fail to compassionate Mary, even when the
meek Son of God is seen bending under
His cross as a malefactor ; for this it is
which pierces the soul of Mary, rending her
heartstrings.

Once more our Fra Angelico takes up
the story of Mary's Dolors. Can we not
picture to ourselves the Dominican Brother
who had never dreamed of taking Holy
Orders ; who took his place in the stalls
instead of before the altar ; who thought not
of edifying his brethren, only of saving his
own soul, and by the pious practice of his
art to help them to save theirs ; whose mod-
esty shrank from preferment, and who loved,
next to his prayer-stall in the choir, the
solitude of his cell and the silence of his
special calling, — can we not imagine this
humble lay-brother shedding silent tears, as
meditating, with his brethren, on the Passion
of his beloved Master, the thought of Our
Lady and of her part in that Passion comes
over him like a wave of compassion, until
he realizes that the sorrows of Jesus were
68

Ihe Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

Mary's sorrows as well, and the anguish
that pierced the Heart of Jesus pierced hers
also ?

To pass from the choir to his own cell, or
to the cell of the Brother whose book of
meditation he was painting on its walls, was
only to pass from one place of prayer, from
one place of meditation, to another ; and
when he addressed himself to delineating the
scenes in the story of Jesus of Nazareth, he
had only to bow his head with an invocation
to the Holy Spirit, to bring everything before
his mind with the vividness of the actual
event. No wonder that these conceptions,
so simple in their outlines, often so barren as
to details, lift the imagination, rouse the
sympathies, and open, we know not how,
vistas of thought which attract us, lead us
out of the beaten paths of worldly concep-
tions, worldly criticisms, to yield ourselves to
the gentle spell of genius lighting its flame
at the lamp of the sanctuary.

Again we see the lofty towers that
strengthen the walls of Jerusalem; a few
cypresses lift their heads beside them ; a few
69

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

olive-trees are scattered over the hillside.
The gate is open, and horsemen in helmets
and armor come forward on their war steeds,
but without haste or animosity. To the
right we see a road winding among rocks,
and an armed procession following its sharp
curves; while between these is a group
which tells us the bitter story. Under the
very heads of the horsemen issuing from the
gate is a group of women, gentle, with
clasped hands, as if adoring while they walk.
The first full figure that comes to view is
that of the Magdalene. A fillet binds modestly
the hair which once wiped the anointed
feet of her Master. Her hands are clasped
in pain; her eyes look steadfastly before her,
as if they could not turn from the object of
her adoration; and directly before her, a tall,
gentle figure, the hands clasped even tighter
than those of the Magdalene, the star shining
on her mantled shoulder, is Mary. She
bends forward with a longing gesture, as if she
must touch the object of her soul's worship-
ful love; and the eyes meet His whose
glance has been the sunshine of her life.
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The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

But as she leans forward a soldier puts
out his hand toward her as if to say :
"You must not advance one step!" That
" must not" was all that need be said to
break Mary's heart. The anguish on that
tender, thin face — the unresisting anguish —
is like His only who goes before her, His
unshod feet cut by the stones in the way,
the slender hands balancing the heavy cross
on His own shoulder; but the head, with its
cruciform nimbus, turning toward His Mother
with an agony of compassion. No other
compassion we have described has been like
this compassion ; no other has probed like this
the depth of Mary's dolor.

We pass from the quiet cloister of Saint
Mark's, from the silent presence of its lay-
brother, called "the blessed one" even by
his brethren of the monastery, to a studio in
Rome — the studio of one beloved as few in
this world have been beloved ; and yet
bereaved of father, mother — every relative
but an uncle, by whose loving, appreciative
care his genius has been sheltered from the
age of eleven years. The world, its nobles,
7i

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

its princes, its emperors, its pontiffs, have
lavished upon him their highest honors, their
unbounded admiration. The wonder is that
no flattery has altered his gentle modesty, no
worldly grandeur taken from him the vision
of heavenly things. Some mysterious virtue
surrounds him, men say; but angels know
that he has kept his youthful piety.

In the midst of all the commissions of
imperial and pontifical favor comes one from
the monks of Monte Oliveto, Palermo,
Sicily; the scene to be that in which Our
Lord is met on His way to Calvary by His
most sorrowful Mother. In a moment of
tender exaltation, of pious emotion, the artist
of the Vatican, the almost worshipped
Raphael of Urbino, of entire Italy, and of
civilized Europe, conceives the picture which
is still called to-day Lo Spasimo, or "The
Spasm." In this there is all the charm of a
receding landscape, of a vernal sky, of trees
putting forth their tender leafage; and the
winding road, over which are scattered many
and differing groups, leads to a hill on which
stand two crosses, the ominous space between
72

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

them to be filled by Him who had come to
redeem the world from the consequences of
its sin by His own most bitter death.

The broad standard of Rome, with its
S. P. Q. R., carried by an officer superbly
mounted, helmeted and in full armor, floats
between us and that hill of skulls. The
centurion, a model of manly beauty, with
uncovered head, but otherwise in complete
armor, mounted on his charger, surrounded
by his staff with their long lances, issues
from a strong gateway; but standard-bearer
and centurion are alike occupied with the
scene that fills the foreground. The victim
of His nation's hatred, of Pilate's timorous
selfishness, has fallen under the heavy cross
laid on His shoulders ; and the centurion,
with a look of deep anxiety on his face,
motions to an attendant to relieve the con-
demned One of its cruel weight, which taxes
even the trained muscles of the executioner
to raise. There is no rudeness, no urging ;
all are simply performing the conditions of
the sentence — an ordinary sentence, and yet
it would seem upon some extraordinary man.
73

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

Under the shadow, the shelter for the mo-
ment, of His own cross, on which He still
keeps one hand, the other grasping a stone
of the road as He falls on His knees, is the
King of Glory, His cruciform nimbus ming-
ling with His crown of thorns ; His divine
beauty unobscured by the blood that mats
the hair falling on His shoulders, crimsoning
his robe ; and, looking upward, half prostrate
as He is, to meet the eyes — of whom ?

Directly in front of the centurion and his
war charger, on her knees, is Mary, as if
when her Son fell she had fallen also ; the
yearning, agonized face looking into His ; and
the arms — how can we put into words what
those long arms and hands, extended to their
utmost, tell of that Mother's agony ! Mary
Magdalene, Mary of Cleophas, and still
another, with Saint John, are sustaining her;
but she heeds them not. For herself, even,
she has no thought. One only fills her soul,
seizes her heart like a spasm — which is, to
see the Incarnate One trodden upon as " a
worm and no man " by the creatures He has
created, whom He sustains in life while
74

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

hastening to His own death. Seas may be
convulsed, rocks may be rent ; but, to Jesus,
Son of God and Son of Mary, none of this
compares with the spasm that clutches at His
Mother's heart as He turns on her His
divinely compassionate eyes.

Yet devotion, genius, the skill which the
world admires, craves, have set this dolor
before the eyes of one century after another,
for one purpose only, whether by the hand
of Cimabue, Taddeo Gaddi, Fra Angelico
or Raphael — to win us to its contemplation.

75

V. — The Crucifixion

The Via Crucis, that Way of the Cross,
which was a way of unutterable sorrows, has
been made. Blood is tracked along the
streets of Jerusalem from Pilate's hall to the
city gate through which that procession
passed ; is tracked along the winding, rocky
way which it took from the gate. Simon
of Cyrene has borne — first unwillingly, then
with a mysterious joy, which flooded his soul
and was succeeded by the gift of faith — that
same cross on which Jesus is to redeem the
world. Veronica, too, has won, by her ardent
devotion, her uncalculating charity, that image
on her mantle, which is still shown on Good-
Friday from a balcony in Saint Peter's
Basilica. Both have been immortalized by
their compassionate service to the Man of
Sorrows.

And now we approach, actually stand on
76

THE CRUCIFIXION

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

the summit of that hill of Calvary, bearing
the ghastly name of Golgotha, or place of
skulls ; and here, in full sight of the Holy
City, the City of David, they crucify Him of
whom the prophets spake and the psalmist
sang; for whom the world had waited and
longed for four thousand years ; — crucify Him
between two thieves, adding ignominy to
ignominy ; thus fulfilling the prediction of
Isaiah : " He was reputed with the wicked ;
and He hath borne the sins of many, and
hath prayed for the transgressors."

But in return for these ignominies, these
tortures, there comes from the inexhaustible
patience of the Divine Heart this one ejac-
ulation: " Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do."

It was high noon, and the March sun
shone unclouded from the sky, when that
space which was seen between two crosses
on the summit of Calvary when Mary met
her Son in the way, was filled, bearing on its
beam the Body of the God-Man, on its
arms the pierced hands of the Victim of sin ;
but no sooner was He thus lifted up than a
77

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

darkness more appalling than any blackness
preceding a tornado covered not only Mount
Calvary, Judea, but the entire earth. For
three hours it hung like a pall over the
world, so that Dionysius the Areopagite
exclaimed in his fair city of Athens : " Either
the God of nature is suffering or the frame-
work of the world is breaking up ! " And
for three hours that Body of the Incarnate
Word hung white amid the surrounding
darkness, was seen distinctly from the Holy
City ; and for three hours Mary, maiden and
mother, stood by the cross of her crucified
Son. She did not lean against that cross,
she did not lean upon the faithful women
who had accompanied her ; simply stood
under His pierced right hand.

The first hour had been passed when the
eyes, clotted and bloodshot, sought those of
Mary lifted to His own ; and the lips parted
with these words : " Mother, behold thy
son \" Then the eyes turned to the Beloved
Disciple standing under His left hand as He
said : " Behold thy Mother ! " « O what
change to thee!" exclaims Saint Bernard ;
73

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

"Thou art given John for Jesus; the servant
for his Lord ; the disciple for his Master ;
the son of Zebedee for the Son of God ; a
mere man for very God ! " A dolor in itself.

Again that voice is heard in its low minor
key : " I thirst ! " Jesus thirsts ! He who
made the world ; who set the springs of
water in the deep rocks, protects them by
shadows in the dense forests where the shy
stag can quench its thirst at noonday ; sends
down the dew at evening to revive the faint-
ing flowers over the whole earth, — calls for
one drop of all that He has created and
blessed both for man and beasts and fowl of
the air; and Mary cannot give Him the drop
for which He sighs so piteously. Another
dolor within our dolor.

Again a voice, but not the voice of Jesus,
breaks on Mary's ear — the voice of the Good
Thief, the only alleviation which was vouch-
safed during three hours of agony on the
cross : " Lord, remember me when Thou
comest into Thy kingdom." And the tender
voice she loves so well is heard : " This day
thou shalt be with Me in paradise."
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The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

But now it is a cry — a cry that pierces
the heart of Mary, close beside Him in the
awful darkness : u My God, My God ! why
hast Thou forsaken Me ?" Not only pierces
her heart, but opens before her undreamed-of
abysses of anguish in the soul of Jesus !
Another dolor within our dolor.

To this agonizing appeal succeeds a cry
which is an utter offering up of his dying
humanity — an offering, too, in behalf of
humanity all over the world dying at that
moment, of all who are to die to the last
moment of time, to be echoed by the dying
through all ages — "Father into Thy hands
I commend my spirit."

Another cry, the last cry, so strong that it
startles the centurion, who exclaims : "Verily
this Man was the Son of God ! " For that
cry, Consummatum est! — " It is consum-
mated ! " — tells Mary that the soul of her
Jesus has left the earth which He had blessed
with His incarnate presence for thirty-three
years ; has left the world He came to redeem ;
and who can tell the absolute vacuum left in
the heart of Mary ! She sees the beautiful
80

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

head — gory indeed, ghastly indeed, but, oh,
how beautiful still ! — fall on His breast ; and
she knows that her Jesus is dead. While
Jesus lives Mary stands. Can we wonder if
she sinks on the arms of her friends as
gently as the head of Jesus had sunk on His
breast ?

At this moment the veil of the Temple,
the veil that hid the Holy of Holies, is rent
in twain from the top to the bottom ; the
earth quakes beneath her; the very rocks are
rent ; the graves of Jerusalem are opened ;
but none of these horrors can stir the heart
of Mary, for they stir not the Heart of Jesus.

While no hand is yet known to have de-
lineated this divine tragedy on any wall of an
early catacomb, or upon any wall of chapel
or basilica before that which in this last half
of our present century has been laid open to
view in the subterranean Church of Saint
Clement, Rome, the perfection of this Cruci-
fixion, as a type, is proof that it was treated
in the liturgical books from a very early
period ; and this Crucifixion itself must have
been executed long before the year 800,
81

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

when the Church of Saint Clement was so
severely injured by an earthquake as to neces-
sitate the building of another basilica on its
still sound walls ; and from that time until
1858 was hermetically sealed to the eyes of
men. It is painted on a wide pilaster form-
ing a right angle with the end of the nave.
Our Lord is represented attached to the
cross by four nails, the arms horizontal, the
head above the cross-beam ; so that He
seems literally to hang there of His own
free will.

On the right side stands His Blessed yet
sorrowing Mother, both hands raised to Him
as if in sympathy ; on the left hand Saint
John, his right hand raised also in the same
spirit, but in his left hand is the scroll of an
Evangelist. Simple as the conception is, it
embodies the Gospel story, and in no Cruci-
fixion have the relative places of the Blessed
Virgin and of Saint John been deviated from.
Although the old Saint Clement was in dark-
ness, the tradition which it followed in this
instance was the inheritance of Christendom ;
and from that time to this has been adhered
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The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

to; and from that time no subject has been
so near to the heart of Christendom, or so
universally chosen by her artists.

From the first, the Blessed Virgin and
Saint John were introduced, we think, in-
variably; and later, in the Church of Saint
Francis at Assisi, in the series begun by
Cimabue and finished by Giotto, the Cruci-
fixion is given with all its attendant circum-
stances. In this picture Longinus has already
pierced the side of Our Lord ; and, as if this
act had opened the eyes of his mind, he has
left his steed and is kneeling on the ground
with his hands lifted in adoration. Saint Mary
Magdalene is embracing the cross on one
side, Saint Francis on the other ; and in the
centre of a group of pitying women is Our
Lady, who has sunk to the ground in a swoon.
Troops of horsemen are leaving Mount Cal-
vary, and the space on the right is occupied
by the followers of the crucified One.

Duccio's Crucifixion dwells upon the sor-
row of Our Lady in a still more marked
manner. The Lord of Glory is dead ; the
spear has pierced His side ; and directly in
83

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

the foreground is the beautiful group of Our
Lady tenderly supported by the holy women
who are her companions, while Saint John
takes her hands on his own. She does not
actually swoon, but the revulsion of mortal
weakness has come after those three hours of
standing immovably ; — one of Duccio's love-
liest groups, and in no way contradicting the
account by Saint John ; since it represents, we
may say, the scene a few moments after the
death of Our Lord, and is full of the ten-
derest human sentiment.

Simoni Memmi, in the series painted by
him in the Spanish chapel of Santa Maria
Novella, gives a magnificent epitome of the
event in the arch above and around the altar ;
so arranged as to give the procession to
Mount Calvary, the scene immediately fol-
lowing the Crucifixion — soldiers, guardsmen,
mounted officers, and those who derided Our
Lord, saying : " Vah ! vah ! " All are there,
with the crucified thieves, the angels in the
air lamenting. But on the right side are the
holy women around Our Lady; and Saint
Mary Magdalene is entreating a soldier, who
84

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

turns toward her, to allow them to go near
to the cross. In this, Our Lady stands, with
clasped hands but perfectly quiet, looking at
her suffering Son, while the Magdalene en-
treats for her.

On the bronze panels of the pulpit in Saint
Lorenzo, in Florence, Donatello has given
the whole story of the Passion and death of
Our Lord with a vividness which seems to
throw all other representations into shadow,
as we follow out the awful story. In this
Crucifixion, how cuirassed men, soldiers with
their spears, horsemen who draw their hel-
mets over their eyes to shut out the horrors
of a scene more awful than the eye of man
had ever before witnessed, throng upon one
another! How the three crosses and the
three victims, how angels and demons, how
the spears and the banners fill the air ! And
we actually see the blackness, the more than
midnight darkness of that eclipse ; see and
feel it as actual. But in the midst of all
this how the head of Jesus bends toward the
Mother, standing, with bowed head and
clasped hands, beside Him ! Our dolor is
85

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

there in all its intensity: fills the eye, fills the
heart, as it fills the very centre of our fore-
ground.

With the Crucifixion by Fra Angelico, in
Saint Mark's at Florence, we enter upon
another phase of its representation. We
have the reality of the three crosses, the
Lord of Glory crucified between two thieves ;
but instead of helmeted warriors, guardsmen,
executioners, we have the saints of all times,
especially of those religious orders that favor
meditation j for it is the reality, as it comes
before the faithful by way of meditation, that
Fra Angelico delineates in his Crucifixion ;
drawing forth that bundle of myrrh of which
Saint Bernard speaks as lying always on his
breast " to make up for the sheaf of merits "
which he knew he had not. "To think
of these troubles and griefs," he says, uis
real wisdom. In them I have determined
to find perfect righteousness, full knowledge,
plentiful salvation, and abundant merit. It is
the thought of these troubles and woes of
His that cheereth me when I am afflicted,
and maketh me grave when it is well with
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The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

me. Do ye also gather you a bundle of this
beloved myrrh."

Here we have the motive of Angelico's
picture. This is why we see Saint John
Baptist, still as the precursor, beside the
cross ; why we see Saint Lawrence with his
gridiron, Saint Benedict with his book of
rules, Saint Dominic and Saint Francis with
their disciples. But meditation is sure to
keep in mind Our Blessed Lady and her
Dolors ; and the " Stabat Mater " echoes in
every line of this picture ; sets to its plain-
tive measure every thought of the mind,
every compassionate impulse of the heart of
him who conceived and executed it. She
is seen here sustained by Mary of Salome,
and by Saint John as her son; while before
her, on her knees, the Magdalene embraces
her as the Mother of Sorrows ; in the aband-
onment of her own grief, compassionating
Our Lady.

Luca della Robbia, a contemporary of Fra
Angelico, whose tender piety has interpreted
in so many of his works the choicest senti-
ments of the Christian soul, has companioned
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The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

the Angelical in the ways of meditation. In
his Crucifixion, how close to that cross
stands the Mother, looking down in her own
anguish upon St. Francis, as if to console
him for the wounds borne for the love of
Jesus ; while " the most beautiful Saint John
in the world " stands and adores the Master ;
adoring angels filling the air, bringing heaven
and its transports to the King of Glory in
His humiliation !

It was in this same spirit of meditation
that Perugino composed his " Great Cruci-
fixion," as it is called, for the chapel of Saint
Mary Magdalene of Pazzi in Florence. In-
stead of a crowded scene, the very air vibrating
with the ghastly horrors of a midnight at
noonday, three wide arches stand between us
and a vast landscape — hills, valleys, inland
seas, towns. Trees, just foliating as if in
spring, crown the near hills, and fleecy clouds
float through the broad spaces of sky. Within
the central arch stands the cross which bears
the crucified One, the beautiful head, with its
circlet of delicate thorns and the cruciform
nimbus, slightly bowed as if in death; the
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The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

arms are nearly horizontal; the whole figure
self-sustained and of the perfection of beauty
in its proportions, breathing repose, as it
were, in every line. At the foot of the
cross kneels Saint Mary Magdalene, — one of
Perugino's Magdalenes, unlike all others in
the tenderness of its absorbed devotion ; the
eyes raised to her Lord, but the lids heavy
with weeping ; the hands gently joined at the
finger tips. It is Mary of Bethany, who had
chosen the better part.

Within the left-hand arch stands Saint
John, his eyes fixed upon the face of his
Divine Master ; the arms and hands dropped
at his side, as if saying : u Was ever sorrow
like this sorrow ? Was ever love like this
love ?" Nothing more compassionate, nothing
more gentle, nothing more affectionate, was
ever imagined as a Saint John. Very near
to him kneels Saint Benedict," his face, with
its deep look of abiding compassion for his
Lord, raised to Him hanging on His cross.

Within the right-hand arch stands Our
Lady, looking out upon the world which was
given to her by Our Lord when He gave her
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The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

Saint John as her son. A desolation not to
be put into words pervades the whole figure.
The hands, held downward, do not clasp, but
interweave in the distress of this desolation ;
there is a weariness in the eyes like those of
patient watchers by beds of sickness and of
death; and the sad sweetness of the mouth is
that of one who suffers without complaint.
Near her kneels Saint [Bernard, his tender
words of sympathy giving him this place
beside Our Lady.

But Steinle, of our own day, brings us
back to the actual keynote of our theme.
We see the domes of Jerusalem; before the
cross stands Mary ; Jesus is not yet there,
only the sword promised by Simeon. The
head is bowed ; the hands and intertwining
fingers raised to her agonized breast, not to
avert but to accept this dolor of the Cruci-
fixion.

90

VI. — The Deposition

Just at the first shout in the streets of
Jerusalem from the fierce rabble that appre-
hended Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane,
at the first gathering in the hall of Pilate, at
the appearing of Our Lord, crowned with
thorns, the reed-sceptre in His hand, on the
balcony overlooking the riotous crowd, cry-
ing, "Crucify Him! crucify Him!" at the
departure of the procession from the door of
Pilate's house ; all along the Via Cruets to
the very summit of Calvary ; during the awful
darkness of the three hours of agony on the
cross, till the death-cry, Consummatum est!
rent the veil of the Temple, cleft the rocks,
opened the graves around Jerusalem, — two
figures moved as silently as shadows through
all these scenes, not as participants, but as
men whose intelligent eyes read and noted
9i

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

every incident, yet so abstractedly as to
escape observation.

These were Joseph of Arimathea, a good
and just man, a noble counsellor of the San-
hedrim, privy to all its doings, but without
consenting to them ; and Nicodemus, a ruler
of the Jews, like Joseph of Arimathea a
member of the Sanhedrim, who had come,
very early in the three years' ministry, to
Jesus by night. Both at heart have been,
from the first, disciples of Jesus, but secretly,
out of regard to their wordly position. Now,
however, as the darkness rolls away from
Calvary, these noble souls rise from their
abject bondage to Sanhedrim and Synagogue;
and when the soldiers come to take down
the three bodies from their crosses, Joseph
of Arimathea finds the centurion, whose
spear had attested the death of Jesus, and
whose faith had been born of the death-cry,
ready to accede to any request of the noble
counsellor, who forthwith presents himself
boldly before Pilate and begs the body of
Jesus.

Together Joseph and Nicodemus buy fine
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The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

linen and spices, returning to Calvary, where
the centurion and the holy women and
Saint John keep watch over the sacred hu-
manity of Jesus of Nazareth. How carefully
and how tenderly they place the ladders at
the back of the cross ! How gently they
ascend, these noble senators, the coarse
rounds. Not only how gently, but how rev-
erently ! Not only how reverently, but how
worshipfully ! And now they actually touch
the lifeless body of Jesus — touch it with a
feeling like nothing in the world so much as
that with which the priest touches the body
of Jesus in the Sacrament of the Altar. With
an adoring pitifulness they lift the crown of
thorns from the bowed head, drawing out the
sharp points slowly from the flesh, from the
hair matted with blood — never had thorns
seemed so cruel, — and lay it into the uplifted
hands of Saint John.

Adoringly — they know not how, so firmly
are they fixed in the hard wood of the cross,
so glued do they seem to the fleshly wounds
of the pierced hands, — they draw forth those
large, rudely-fashioned, blunt nails, that have
93

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

bent under the stroke of the hammer, leav-
ing wide open those two wounds, like rings
set with jacinths; and thus, half released, the
body, gently sustained by Joseph of Arima-
thea, leans forward till Mary's arms are
raised to receive it, while Nicodemus de-
scends and draws out the one dreadful nail
on which both sacred feet have borne down
through three hours of mortal agony ; the
wide-open wounds, livid, yet tinged with
blood, bringing to mind that word of the
psalmist, " They pierced my hands and my
feet," when the arms slide, rather than fall,
upon Mary's shoulders, and the lifeless lips
touch hers, clinging to them with the sweet-
ness of a mother's anguish.

One moment more, and Joseph of Arima-
thea and Nicodemus and Saint John bear the
body of the Lord in their arms to where
Mary is being led by the Magdalene and
Mary of Cleophas, to a rock pushing up
through the turf, and lay on her knees the
still, limp form of her lifeless Son — the one
indulgence granted to her motherhood; the
same Son whose infant limbs she had wrapped
94

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

in their swaddling clothes in the Stable of
Bethlehem; whose tender cry she had stilled
with a few drops of milk from her virginal
breast ! There is no cry now : the silence
is that of death ; and the pierced hands, the
pierced feet, the pierced side, the long hair
clotted with blood, the still livid marks of
the scourges, tell the awful story as no word
of man or of angel could tell it to Mary.

The actual Deposition, or the taking down
of the Crucified One from the cross, was
chosen early by the Greek artists; and the
deepest veneration was adhered to in the con-
ducting of this descent of the sacred body.
The Greek traditions had been transmitted
to Duccio of Siena, and to his representation
we turn as to the most perfect exponent of
the sentiments of that age. In this we see
Joseph of Arimathea descending the ladder,
one arm thrown over the arm of the cross in
order to steady himself, but the right support-
ing the body of the Lord under both arms.
Saint John has one arm around the body, the
other around the knees, and Nicodemus is
drawing the one nail from the crossed feet.
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The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

Thus, as the body inclines forward, one arm
and hand fall on the shoulder of Mary, who
takes His face between her hands and kisses
it most fondly ; the other hand and arm have
been taken by the Magdalene in her mantle,
and pressed to her cheek with an exceeding
mournfulness of pity. Four other pitying
women surround this group, in which the
dolor of the Blessed Virgin may be consid-
ered as the chief motive, and this motive ex-
pressed with a tenderness, a loveliness, which
leaves it, as a conception, unequalled in art.
Again and again had this type been hinted
at, but never carried out in its perfection
until the Sienese painter, inheriting, as he
had, the sensibility which belongs to his race,
conceived it, in a moment of tearful trans-
port, for one of the compartments of the
great altarpiece in the cathedral of his own
city.

In the sacristy of the Church of " The
Trinity," Florence, Fra Angelico painted a
Deposition, which is now in the Belle Arti
of that city, so elaborate in its arrangement,
so carefully executed, that it has been re-
96

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

garded always as one of his greatest works.
The city of Jerusalem and its hills make the
background, sorrowing angels filling in the
points of the side arches, the middle taken up
altogether with the cross and the ladders and
the figures of the noble senators, who are
supporting the body under the arms ; the
beautiful head rests on its own shoulder, —
the whole figure so sustained by Saint John
on one side, on the other by two disciples, as
to give the perfection of grace and beauty in
death: no distortion by reason of the agony
that is past ; no effort on the part of those
who have entirely released the precious body
from its bed of suffering ; Saint Mary Mag-
dalene is holding the pierced feet adoringly
on her hands, as she touches them with
her lips.

At the left hand, near Saint John, is a group
of figures — holy men, who have followed the
Lord, and are now with Him at His burial;
and one, carrying in one hand the three
nails, in the other the crown of thorns, holds
them pityingly before them; while a youth,
with a shining halo, but not an aureole, kneels
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The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

in a transport of adoration, gazing at the
dead Christ descending from His cross on
the hands of those who love Him. On the
right hand, the holy women, a group of
seven, sorrowingly surround the Blessed Vir-
gin, who is on her knees, waiting, with hands
joined, to receive her Son into her arms ;
while, standing over her, is Mary of Cleo-
phas, looking down upon her, with clasped
hands and streaming tears, as if pitying the
heart-break of this Mother of Sorrows.

The holy tranquillity of an adoring com-
passion is unbroken by one movement of
haste or of anxiety, and the line of blood and
water that trickles from the wounded side,
and a few drops on the forehead where the
crown of thorns rested, only recall that copi-
ous blood-shedding by which the world had
been redeemed ; while on the countenance
rests a serene brightness, as if the Divine
Sufferer had entered into His rest.

It is told of Murillo that, as a mere child,

he would linger for hours before the great

picture by Campana in the sacristy of the

Cathedral of Seville, a Descent from the

98

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

Cross, — "waiting," as he said, "until those
holy men should take down the Blessed
Lord." The most beautiful fruit of this
early predilection is a mystical Deposition —
the dead Christ lying on the lap of the
Eternal Father, the arms resting horizontally
to the elbows across the knees, the head held
in one hand, the other lifted over the fore-
head of the Eternal Son, as if in benediction ;
still above planes the Dove of the Eternal
Holy Spirit ; the winding-sheet on which re-
pose the lifeless limbs, upheld by angels,
dense clouds closing around it; while above
is a burst of glory, as if from the Beatific
Vision.

The scene following immediately upon
the actual Deposition, when Our Lord rests
from the grievous travail of Redemption on
the knees of His Blessed Mother, called the
ct Pieta," or the Compassion, has found a
place in sculpture and in painting through all
the most beautiful periods of Christian art,
calling forth the most delicate sentiments of
sympathy from the soul of the artist, and de-
manded by the people of every nation which
99

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

has heard the story of Redeeming Love and
of Mary's woes. The Byzantine School,
from first to last, made it one of the subjects
of predilection ; and when Cimabue painted
in the upper Church of Saint Francis at
Assisi, Giotto in the Arena Chapel at Padua,
it was not forgotten. Ambrogio Lorenzetti's
" Pieta " is in the Academy at Siena ; Dona-
tello's, on one of the bronze panels of the
pulpit in San Lorenzo, Florence; Botti-
celli's, in the Munich Gallery ; Mantegna's
can be studied in the Brera Gallery ; Bel-
lini's, in Florence. Fra Angelico painted
this scene several times; but while the title
is allowed to cover many scenes in the same
act, we limit our own presentation of it to
the literal lying of the dead Christ on the lap
of His Mother.

It is this which Michael Angelo sculptured
with all the fervor of youthful piety, as the
spring flower of his mighty genius, and which
stands to-day in the first chapel to the right
hand as we push back the ponderous leathern
curtain that hangs before the entrance to
Saint Peter's Basilica, Rome. The right

IOO

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

hand of the Virgin-Mother supports the
slender body of her Son under its right shoul-
der, the hand dropping helplessly in death;
the head is pillowed once more on her arm,
the limbs upon her knees, as she bends over
Him with all a mother's compassion; and
her left hand is put forth slightly, with a
gesture of irrepressible anguish, as if saying :
" Was ever sorrow like unto my sorrow ? "
In the Belle Arti, Florence, is a " Pieta,"
strictly so-called, by Perugino ; not the
actual scene on Mount Calvary, but by way
of meditation. The body of the dead Christ
rests on His Mother's knees ; the head is
borne on the shoulders of a kneeling youth,
who looks out from the picture as if asking
our pity; but above him is seen a Saint John,
who seems to be still gazing on his Lord
upon the cross. The feet rest upon the
knees of Saint Mary Magdalene, who, with
clasped hands, deeply meditative countenance,
contemplates those wounded feet, which she
anointed for their burial. At her side stands
Joseph of Arimathea, the clasped hands held
downward, the face full of the deepest com-

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

passion, looking upon Our Lady, as she, too,
looks with unspeakable compassion upon the
face of her Divine Son — that face so benign
in death, yet so solemn in its adorable sweet-
ness. The whole group is sublimely con-
ceived ; the sorrow a sublime sorrow, and the
grandeur is of that sort which takes in the
beginning and the end : the eternity of Re-
demption in the mind of God, as well as the
eternity of its duration for those who em-
brace it.

To the right, as one enters the Chapel of
San Brizio, in the Cathedral of Orvieto
(where we see on the walls the unrivalled
groups of the Last Judgment, in all their ter-
rible significance, by Luca Signorelli, and on
the ceiling those groups of the blessed after
their last judgment by Fra Angelico), in the
midway arch stands high on a pedestal, so as
to break in between Signorelli's groups, a
"Pieta" in marble by Ippolito Scalza, — a
veritable Dead Christ on the lap of His
Mother. Her hand lies under His right arm,
hanging downward ; His head rests upon His
own shoulder; His left arm is slightly raised
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The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

by Saint Mary Magdalene, so that her cheek
presses upon the pierced hand; while her
own left hand is laid gently under His pierced
left foot. Joseph of Arimathea stands to the
right of the Blessed Virgin, one hand on the
ladder, the other holding to his breast the
pincers with which he detached the Lord
Christ from His cross ; and he looks down
into the dead face, pillowed on its own shoul-
der, with a manly tenderness of sympathy
which is also worship.

The grandeur of the Mother of Sorrows is
emphasized by the raised hand, as if she were
uttering one of the Lamentations of Jere-
miah over the lifeless Saviour of her people,
as well as her own Son. The terminal forms
of the Christ have not the delicacy of those
in Michael Angelo's "Pieta:" the whole
form is heavier ; but the head is very beauti-
ful, the relaxed expression of the whole fig-
ure most pathetic, and the sublimity of Mary
in anguish is worthy of all the prophecies
which she and her Divine Son have fulfilled.

The Campo Santo, not of Pisa, but of
Siena, gives us a " Pieta" which proves that
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The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

neither piety nor inspiration is to fail with
the ages. This is by Giovanni Dupre, born
at Siena, March I, 1817. Let us quote his
own words : " When I was engaged by the
Marquis Ruspoli to make the 'Pieta' for the
Campo Santo of the Misericordia in Siena, I
said: cThe Son of God crucified and dead,
the Mother mourning for Him, — these are
the two grand thoughts of my subject; two,
but virtually forming only one.' This idea
called up in my mind the image of the group,
and I made my small model in clay." To
this followed studies from a model ; but noth-
ing satisfied. " One day, in summer," he
says, " I fell asleep ; and lo ! I seemed to
see what I had long sought in vain, my
1 Pieta : ' Jesus stretched on the ground, sus-
tained upon the knee of the Madonna, His
right arm resting upon her, the left hanging
down, His head gently inclined upon His
breast ; while the Madonna was bending
over him with that look of unutterable woe.
I woke up, ran to my studio and instantly
made the new model. I tremble to think
how this design, so simple, after I had
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The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

in vain tried to find it by art and by long
study, came to me almost of itself." And
indeed it is easy to believe that the artist was
really inspired !

Our century closes with a " Pieta " from
the School of Beuron, so tender, so altogether
heavenly in its sorrow, so exquisite in its
technique, that our own words may well
close with it as gently as on on the strings of
a harpist would die the last strains of the
" Stabat Mater."

Note. — My first acquaintance with the School of Beuron
was made through this picture, during my visit, in 1876, to
Monte Cassino. Dom Bonifacio Krug, O. S. B., then Prior,
now Archabbot, of Monte Cassino, had a small print of it in
his possession, which he showed to me, with great veneration,
as exemplifying the aesthetic and technical motives of this ideal
school of art, founded by Benedictines during the last half or
this present century. Under his priorship, the ancient mon-
astery was glorified anew at the hands of the Beuron artists.

E. A. S.

I05

VII. — The Entombment

The sun is near to its setting, and to-mor-
row is the Sabbath ; and Mary, with her life-
long habit of obedience to the law, resigns
her Son, as she resigns herself, to the prepa-
ration which Joseph of Arimathea and Nico-
demus have already made for His honorable
burial. The fine linen is spread upon the
turf of a quiet spot, which has escaped the
trampling of armed men, of brutal soldiery,
not far from the cross itself, and upon this
they lay the body of our crucified Redeemer.

For the first time it lies before their eyes
at its full length ; for the first time not only
the five open wounds, the livid marks of
the whips, of the cords which bound Him to
the pillar, are visible at one glance, but the
wasting from the bloody sweat, the scourg-
ing, the crucifixion, the absolute fast from
the hour of the Last Supper, — all like a rep-
106

THE ENTOMBMENT

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

etition of the scenes in Gethsemane, in Pilate's
hall, along the Via Crucis^ the nailing to the
cross, the three hours' dying, and this one
instant opens anew the floodgates of Mary's
sorrow, of all those who surround her, of all
who are taking part in this last act of love for
the dead. "They shall look upon Him
whom they have pierced ; they shall mourn
for Him as one mourneth for the death of
the first-born," in this moment is fulfilled ;
and He who had wept at the tomb of Laz-
arus suffers these dear ones to pour out their
anguish like rivers of water. He who groaned
at the tomb before He said, " Lazarus, come
forth ! " allows their sobs and their cries to
testify to their grief for Him. It is the out-
burst of a grief allowed by the God-Man
Himself to the creatures He has created.
There has never been a death-bed over which
some mourner has not thrown himself in an
agony of tears ; and it must not be denied
to the tenderest of all mothers, to the heart,
broken, as no other heart has been, or can
be, or to her companions.

As the crowds had dispersed from Mount
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The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

Calvary ; still later, as the centurion, who had
attended only to the taking down of the
bodies of the two thieves and their burial,
leaving the entombment of Jesus of Nazareth
to His two noble friends of the Sanhedrim, left
the scene of death with his staff, — one by
one the disciples, and even Apostles, who had
fled out of fear of being arrested as the fol-
lowers of the Nazarene, return to the Mount,
clustering around the scene of death. Swiftly
Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus do their
work; for the stars must not shine over Je-
rusalem, ushering in the Sabbath, until they
have laid the Victim of that cruel day in His
tomb. With skilled hands they spread the
myrrh and precious spices over the body,
here and there closing some bleeding gash,
wrapping tightly the linen lengths around the
body, the limbs; swathing them as the manner
of the Jews was to bury. And as the deep
blood stains come through the linen folds,
they repeat to themselves Isaiah's exclama-
tion : " Who is this that cometh from Edom,
with dyed garments from Bosra, this Beauti-
ful One in His robe ? . . . Why is Thy ap-
108

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

parel red, and Thy garments like theirs that
tread in the wine-press?" Adding in the
sorrow of their souls : " Truly He has trod-
den the wine-press alone, and of all who
have followed Him there has been none to
help."

The last fold has been given: Jesus is
ready for His tomb. But "where will they
lay Him ? " some ask of one another. Even
Mary says in her bruised heart: "Where
will they lay my precious One ? " But Joseph
of Arimathea knows of the garden close by
the place of skulls where the divine tragedy
has been enacted; for in that garden he has
had hewn out for himself a new sepulchre,
in which no one has ever lain. Toward this
sepulchre, then, the little procession takes its
way ; Joseph of Arimathea, as its leader, with
Nicodemus and Saint John ; and those dis-
ciples, who have returned to see what would
be done with Jesus, are only too favored,
they believe, to be allowed to take on their
arms, and even shoulders, the lifeless form of
the Master they love even in the midst of
their cowardice. The long twilight of the
109

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

approaching Paschal time favors the hasty
arrangements, and before the first star has
glinted in the blue sky, Jesus has been laid
in the narrow bed of stone which Joseph of
Arimathea had hewn out for himself in the
spacious tomb ; then, laying over it a slab,
and rolling a heavy stone to the door of the
sepulchre, they leave the Lord of Life to His
place among the dead.

The baldness of the written narrative was
supplied, from the first, by the oral narrative ;
the wealth of details, not only, as must have
been, from the Blessed Virgin herself, Saint
Mary Magdalene, and Mary of Salome, but
from the retentive memory of the Beloved
Disciple, whose Gospel must have seemed to
him, and to those few of his contemporaries
who read it — for it was the last of the Four
Gospels that was written, — meagre beyond
all things, when Saint John had so much to
say, had they not come into the beautiful in-
heritance of the oral tradition, which quick-
ened the meagre word and filled all the
empty spaces. These traditions have never
died out of the memory of the faithful, and
no

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

Art took early possession of them as her
birthright.

Cimabue learned from his Greek masters
all the Byzantine traditions, and he gives us
a veritable " Pieta ; " but leaves to Giotto the
enshrouding of the body of Jesus, or the lay-
ing Him in His winding-sheet. In Cima-
bue's u Pieta," the lordly citizen of Florence,
whose Madonna in Santa Maria Novella is a
daughter of the royal House of David, loses
himself utterly in the expressions of grief
which he has given to the Blessed Virgin
herself and her holy companions ; and Giotto,
at Padua, where we see the dead Christ laid
on His winding-sheet, makes no scruple of
giving vent to the most pathetic and, in some
of the personages, the wildest expressions of
grief. But leaving those artists who, like
Mantegna, expressed the natural, rather than
the supernatural, sorrow of this moment, we
come to Perugino, whose Entombment, as it
is called, portrays the very scene we have in
mind with a pathos, and altogether a perfec-
tion of sentiment which leaves us nothing to
desire.

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

The dead Christ has just been laid, on His
winding-sheet in a half-reclining position.
Saint Joseph of Arimathea, on his knees, sup-
porting the body under the arms with the
winding-sheet ; Saint Mary Magdalene His
head ; Nicodemus, on his knee, holding up
the winding-sheet under the feet, while the
Blessed Virgin holds His left arm on both her
hands, looking into His face as if she felt the
divine eyes of her Son would open upon her
under her sorrowful gaze, although " lying
nerveless among the dead." It is Saint Ber-
nard who thus apostrophizes Mary on the
Feast of her Dolors, on the Friday of Passion
Week : " Did she not know that He was to
die ? Yea, without doubt. Did she not
hope that He was to rise again ? Yea, she
most faithfully hoped it. And did she still
mourn because He was crucified ? Yea, bit-
terly. But who art thou, my brother, or
whence hast thou such wisdom, to marvel
less that the Son of Mary suffered than that
Mary suffered with Him? He could die in
the body, and could not she die with Him in
her heart ? " And yet, in the First Respon-
112

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

sory of- this pathetic office, which is one of
the poetic gems of the Roman Breviary, we
read : " Maiden and Mother, thou didst look
on Him with eyes full of tenderness, and
there thou sawest not only that thy Son was
smitten, but that the world was saved." All
this is in Perugino's Entombment.

Of the beauty of this conception there has
been no end of praise. Eastlake, in his His-
tory of Our Lord, says : " Perugino's exqui-
site picture in the Pitti, a work in which
there are more beautiful heads than perhaps
any other in the world." Of the Saint Mary
Magdalene, it was once said to me by a friend
whose faith had never compassed the God-
head of the Son of Man : " It is the most
pitying face I ever saw." Saint John stands
in his grief close to Joseph of Arimathea;
Mary of Cieophas raises both her hands in
the wonder of her soul over this unheard-of
anguish ; and still others come into the
group without breaking in upon the exalta-
tion of its pathos. A landscape stretches
far off, with the towers of Jerusalem between
the rocky hills which enclose this scene of
113

The Seven Dolor's of the Blessed Virgin

scenes. This picture was painted for the
nuns of Saint Clara in Florence. Vasari
tells us that " Francesco del Pugliese offered
the nuns three times as much as they had
paid Perugino for the picture, and promised
to cause another exactly like it to be executed
for them by the same hand ; but they would
not consent, because Perugino had told them
he did not think he could equal the one they
possessed. "

Fra Bartolommeo, of San Marco, Flor-
ence, gives to our Dolor one of his most ex-
qusite conceptions, embodied in the perfec-
tion of that technique, of which he was a
master. Only the upright "tree of the
cross" is visible. At its foot has been laid
Him who, " while we were yet sinners,
died," " the just for the unjust." Saint John,
kneeling, looking out from the picture as if
asking the sympathy of an entire world for
its Redeemer, sustains the sacred body, his
hand placed, reverently, on a fold of the fine
linen, brought by Joseph of Arimathea and
Nicodemus, beneath the arms ; the left one
hanging limp, its pierced hand resting on the
n4

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

winding-sheet, spread on the ground, while
from the wounded side trickle the last roseate
drops of the Precious Blood. Saint Mary
Magdalene, in a transport of grief, kneels on
the ground, embraces, with both her arms
twined around them, those divine limbs with
their pierced feet, just detached from the
cross, laying her cheek to them with unutter-
able devotion. But Mary, mother and mar-
tyr, kneeling, draws the lifeless head to her
breast, breathes over it as a mother breathes
over her cherished, her first-born, her only
son; breathes words we feel, of loving com-
passion for all He has suffered, one arm, with
its pierced hand, lying on her own motherly,
pitying palm ; all that is most tender, most
gentle in sorrow in her face, in every line of
her bending figure, as if saying: " Thou wert
very sweet to me, my Son Jesus !"

The literal bearing of Our Lord to His
tomb, like the Deposition, has excited the
ambition of the most skillful pencils, of the
most subtle colorists, the most learned anato-
mists ; but our dolor is not in every one of
these, and we turn to those which have been
115

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

painted under the inspiration of Our Lady's
part in that sad procession.

The one which comes first to mind is
Titian's. With all his Venetian sense of
the glory of color, the charm of the pictur-
esque, Titian had, deep in his soul, the sound
Venetian faith. As a child, he painted Ma-
donnas, tinting Our Lady's mantle with the
juice of the pretty blue flower which still
grows as commonly as a weed on all the
meadows around lovely Cadore, where Titian
was born, and so brittle that it stains the gar-
ment of the careless pedestrian. The love of
our Blessed Lady never left his heart, and
when he conceived his Entombment she was
one of his first thoughts.

Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus bear
the sacred body on its winding-sheet with
worshipful reverence ; the eyes of the two
senators fixed upon the face of the Master,
watchful of the effect of every step which
they make ; the left hand is pendant, but the
right is held by Saint John, who looks toward
Mary as she presses forward with clasped
hands, the Magdalene at her side folding her
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The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

in her arms. The liveliest sympathy is ex-
pressed among all these personages ; for they
seem to have come to the very door of the
tomb, and are even bending to make its
entrance.

But Titian has given to the lifeless Lord
not only the perfection of his brush as to
form and tint, but over the bowed head, from
which still trickle drops of blood from the
wounds given by the crown of thorns, and
over the lacerated shoulders, has been thrown
a shadow so solemn that He seems to have
entered already into the gloom of His sep-
ulchre. Low clouds, such as come at sun-
set, just tinged with crimson, a jutting point
of the hillside with its verdure and crowned
with foliage, make the garden background
of the picture; the twilight gloom symbolizing
the shadows of death. For years we may
have this picture near us, and it will never
lose its pathetic charm; while Titian gave to
it his superb knowledge and his most careful
skill as an act of devout love to the sorrows
of the Mother and of the Son.

Among those Forty Illustrations of the
117

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

Four Gospels by Overbeck, to which we so
often allude, is the Entombment — the bear-
ing of the dead Christ to that tomb which He
again and again predicted for Himself. The
stars have not yet appeared, but the deep
twilight has come. Light is thrown upon
the sacred body, and on the head resting upon
the shoulder of a disciple, from the torch
held by Nicodemus at the very entrance of
the tomb, into which Joseph of Arimathea is
already passing, as the host to receive his
Guest.

The torch flares upon the head and shoul-
ders of the Master sleeping in death; upon
the arm and pierced hand that lie so meekly
on the breast ; on the pierced feet that still
cross each other as on that gibbet of death,
resting as the limbs do, upon the shoulder of
another disciple. Saint John is seen weep-
ing, in his heart-broken way, above the right
shoulder; and following close is the Blessed
Virgin, one hand holding her mantle to her
breast, the other laid affectionately on the
arm of Mary of Bethany. Close to them
follow the two other holy women ; while
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The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

over the heads of this sad procession, far out
on the hills round about them, mingling with
the evening mists, floats the smoke of the
torch in a long, slender thread of funereal
vapor. To us it is most like what that pro-
cession really was, of any limned by any
master whatsoever.

But Cimabue at Assisi, Duccio at Siena,
have entered that gloomy cavern, wherein is
the tomb hewn from a rock, in which no
man as yet has been laid. Joseph of Ari-
mathea, Nicodemus, Saint John, have laid
the body in its last resting-place, the arms
straight beside Him, the feet side by side.
When Mary bends over Him to give that last
kiss which she can bestow upon her dead
Son, Cimabue twines her arms around His
swathed body; Duccio touches the dead
cheek tenderly with her hand as she presses
her lips to it ; that farewell which has broken
hearts from the time Eve pressed her lips to
the cheek of the murdered Abel, — murdered,
like Mary's son, by his own brother. Through
Eve, death had entered into the world, and
how bitter must have been her sorrow ' But
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The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

the second Eve, Mary, knows that by the
Fruit of her womb she has given life in the
midst of death, and she says to her Beloved :
" Thou art counted with them that go down
to the pit, but God will not suffer my Holy
One to see corruption."

O Mother of Sorrows, how deep is the
night settling over Jerusalem, as, with thy
three loving friends and Saint John, thy feet
tread the same road trod by thy Jesus, still
reddened by His blood, to be lighted up by
the round Paschal moon as it rises above the
now dark purple hills ! " Her face is swol-
len with weeping; on her eyelids are the
shadows of death;" and she sighs, this
maiden and mother : " c He hath made me
desolate and faint with sorrow.' Truly 'a
bundle of myrrh is my Beloved unto me ; '
for I bear under my mantle the cruel thorns
with which they crowned Thee, in my hands
the nails that pierced Thy hands and Thy
feet, and in my heart the spear that cleft
Thine. Very mournful art Thou to me, O
my Son Jesus ! " And we, her children, do
we not compassionate her and say, on our
1 20

The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin

bended knees, her Dolors Seven in our heart
of hearts :

Had I been there my Lady sweet,
I would kiss the printing of Thy feet,
O dear, dear Mother Mary!*

* " Returning to Jerusalem." Austin O'Malley.

121

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LAKESIDE PRESS, CHICAGO, ILL.

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