Purgatory, Mary Anne Madden Sadlier [books to get back into reading .txt] 📗

Saxon annals Enfleda, the wife of Oswy, King of Northumbria, plays a conspicuous part. Soon after her marriage, Oswin, her husband's brother, consequently her cousin and brother-in-law, was slain. The queen caused a monastery to be erected on the spot where he fell as a reparation for her husband's fratricide, and as a propitiation for the soul of the departed. This circumstance is alluded to by more than one English poet, as also the monastery which Enfleda, for the same purpose, caused to be erected at Tynemouth. Thus Harding:

"Queen Enfled, that was King Oswy's wife,
King Edwin, his daughter, full of goodnesse,
For Oswyn's soule a minster, in her life,
Made at Tynemouth, and for Oswy causeless
That hym so bee slaine and killed helpeless;
For she was kin to Oswy and Oswin,
As Bede in chronicle dooeth determyn."

The most eminent Catholic poet of our own day, Sir Aubrey de Vere, in his Saxon legends, likewise refers to it. He describes first what

"Gentlest form kneels on the rain-washed ground,
From Giling's Keep a stone's throw. Whose those hands
Now pressed in anguish on a bursting heart.
... What purest mouth

"Presses a new-made grave, and through the blades
Of grass wind shaken, breathes her piteous prayer?
... Oswin's grave it is,
And she that o'er it kneels is Eanfleda,
Kinswoman of the noble dead, and wife
To Oswin's murderer - Oswy."

Again, describing the repentance of Oswy:

"One Winter night
From distant chase belated he returned,
And passed by Oswin's grave. The snow, new fallen,
Whitened the precinct. In the blast she knelt,
She heard him not draw nigh. She only beat
Her breast, and, praying, wept. Our sin! our sin!

"So came to him those words. They dragged him down:
He knelt beside his wife, and beat his breast,
And said, 'My sin! my sin!' Till earliest morn
Glimmered through sleet that twain wept on, prayed on: -
Was it the rising sun that lit at last
The fair face upward lifted?
....... Aloud she cried,
'Our prayer is heard: our penitence finds grace.'
Then added: 'Let it deepen till we die.
A monastery build we on this grave:
So from this grave, while fleet the years, that prayer
Shall rise both day and night, till Christ returns
To judge the world, - a prayer for him who died;
A prayer for one who sinned, but sins no more!'"

In the grant preserved in the Bodleian Collection, wherein Editha the Good, the widow of Edward the Confessor, confers certain lands upon the Church of St. Mary at Sarum, occurs the following:

"I, Editha, relict of King Edward, give to the support of the Canons of St. Mary's Church, in Sarum, the lands of Secorstan, in Wiltshire, and those of Forinanburn, to the Monastery of Wherwell, for the support of the nuns serving God there, with the rights thereto belonging, for the soul of King Edward." [1]

[Footnote 1: "Phillips' Account of Old Sarum."]

This queen was buried in Westminster Abbey, her remains being removed from the north to the south side of St. Edward's shrine, on the rebuilding of that edifice, and it is recorded that Henry III. ordered a lamp to be kept burning perpetually at the tomb of Editha the Good.

It is related of the celebrated Lady Godiva of Coventry, the wife of the wealthy and powerful Leofric, that on her death-bed she "bequeathed a precious circlet of gems, which she wore round her neck, valued at one hundred marks of silver (about two thousand pounds sterling) to the Image of the Virgin in Coventry Abbey, praying that all who came thither would say as many prayers as there were gems in it." [1]

[Footnote 1: Saxon Chronicle, Strickland's "Queens of England Before the Conquest, etc."]

The following is an ancient verse, occurring in an old French treatise, on the manner of behaving at table, wherein one is warned never to arise from a meal without praying for the dead. This treatise was translated by William Caxton.

"Priez Dieu pour les trepassés,
Et te souveigne en pitié
Qui de ce monde sont passez,
Ainsi que tu es obligez,
Priez Dieu pour les trepassés!"

[We subjoin a rough translation of the verse.

To God, for the departed, pray
And of those in pity think
Who have passed from this world away,
As, indeed, thou art bound to do,
To God, for the departed pray.]

Speaking of his early education, Caxton says:

"Whereof I humbly and heartily thank God, and am bounden to pray for my father and mother's souls, who in my youth set me to school." [1]

[Footnote 1: "Christian Schools and Scholars."]

In 1067, William the Conqueror founded what was known as Battle Abbey, which he gave to the Benedictine Monks, that they might pray for the souls of those who fell in the Battle of Hastings. Speaking of William the. Conqueror, it is not out of place to quote here these lines from the pen of Mrs. Hemans:

"Lowly upon his bier
The royal Conqueror lay,
Baron and chief stood near,
Silent in war's array.
Down the long minster's aisle
Crowds mutely gazing stream'd,
Altar and tomb the while
Through mists of incense gleamed.

"They lowered him with the sound
Of requiems to repose."

These stanzas on the Burial of William the Conqueror lead us naturally to others from the pen of the same gifted authoress on "Coeur de Lion at the Bier of his Father."

"Torches were blazing clear,
Hymns pealing deep and slow,
Where a king lay stately on his bier,
In the Church of Fontevraud.

* * * * *

"The marble floor was swept
By many a long dark stole
As the kneeling priests, round him that slept,
Sang mass for the parted soul.
And solemn were the strains they pour'd
Through the stillness of the night,
With the cross above, and the crown and sword,
And the silent king in sight."

We forgive the ignorance of the gentle poetess with regard to the Mass, for the beauty and solemnity of the verse, which is quite in keeping with the nature of the subject.

We read, again, of tapers being lit at the tomb of Henry V., the noble and chivalrous Henry of Monmouth, for one hundred years after his death. The Reformation extinguished that gentle flame with many another holy fire, both in England and throughout Christendom.

We shall now pass on to another period - a far different and most troublous one of English history, that of the Reformation.

In the Church of St. Lawrence at Iswich is an entry of an offering made to "pray for the souls of Robert Wolsey and his wife Joan, the father and mother of the Dean of Lincoln," thereafter to be Cardinal and Chancellor of the Kingdom. An argument urged to show the Protestantism of Collet, one of the ante-Reformation worthies, is that he "did not make a Popish will, having left no monies for Masses for his soul; which shows that he did not believe in Purgatory." The dying prayer of Sir Thomas More concludes with these words: "Give me a longing to be with Thee; not for avoiding the calamities of this wicked world, nor so much the pains of Purgatory or of hell; nor so much for the attaining of the choice of heaven, in respect of mine own commodity, as even for a very love of Thee." The unfortunate Anne Boleyn, who during her imprisonment had repented and received the last sacraments from the hands of Father Thirlwall, begs on the scaffold that the people may pray for her. In her address to her ladies before leaving the Tower, she concludes it by begging them to forget her not after death. "In your prayers to the Lord Jesus forget not to pray for my soul." In the account of the death of another of King Henry's wives, the Lady Jane Seymour, who died, as Miss Strickland says, after having all the rites of the Catholic Church administered to her, we read that Sir Richard Gresham thus writes to Lord Cromwell:

"I have caused twelve hundred Masses to be offered up for the soul of our most gracious Queen.... I think it right that there should also be a solemn dirge and high Mass, and that the mayor and aldermen should pray and offer up divers prayers for Her Grace's soul."

Anne of Cleves some two years before her death likewise embraced the Catholic faith. At her funeral Mass was sung by Bonner, Bishop of London, and many monks and seculars attended her obsequies. The infamous Thomas Cromwell, converted, as it seems evident from contemporary witnesses, on his death-bed, left what might be called truly a "Popish will." After bequeathing money or effects to various relatives and friends, he speaks of charity "works for the health of my soul." "I will," he says, "that my executors shall sell said farm (Carberry), and the money thereof to be employed in deeds of charity, to prayer for my soul and all Christian souls." Item. "I will mine executors shall conduct and hire a priest, being an honest person of continent and good living, to sing (pray) for my soul for the space of seven years next after my death." Item. "I give and bequeath to every one of the five orders of Friars within the Citie of London, to pray for my soul, twenty shillings. ..." He further bequeaths £20 to be distributed amongst "poor householders, to pray for his soul."

In this he closely resembled his royal master, Henry VIII., who ordained that Masses should be said "for his soul's health while the world shall endure." And after his death it was agreed that the obsequies should be conducted according to the observance of the Catholic Church. Church-bells tolled and Masses were celebrated daily throughout London. In the Privy Chamber, where the corpse was laid, "lights and Divine service were said about him, with Masses, obsequies, etc." After the body was removed to the chapel it was kept there twelve days, with "Masses and dirges sung and said everyday." Norroy, king at arms, stood each day at the choir door, saying: "Of your charity pray for the soul of the high and mighty prince, our late sovereign lord and king, Henry VIII." When the body was lowered into the grave we read of a De Profundis being read over it. God grant it was not all a solemn mockery, this praying for the soul of him who was styled "the first Protestant King of England," and who by his crimes separated England from the unity of Christendom! May these "Popish practices," which were amongst those he in his ordinances condemned, have availed him in that life beyond the grave,