The Lily Of Israel By The Abbe Gerbet. Part 35.

CHAPTER XXXIII. THE COUNCIL

TOWARD dusk a new council was held in the palace of the High Priest, Caiphas. The princes of the Priests, the officers of the Temple, the Doctors of the Law, the ancients of the people—all those who had premeditated the death of Jesus, united now to find the means of destroying Him.

One just man, Joseph of Arimathea, in secret a disciple of the Saviour, was there also. He had not been present during the first council, although a Doctor of the Law.

"This Man whom you wish to condemn does not seem a criminal to me" he said. "What is His guilt? He is touched by the miseries of the people, and seeks to appease and console them—not by deceitful hopes of riches and happiness, which can only be realized by revolting against the laws and authorities, but by the innocent and peaceful hopes of death.

"What is Reprehensible in this? To us who are rich and great, who are fed, perhaps unjustly, on the fat of the land, He has said we are not to amass treasures that the moth and rust can consume. If we were to follow these precepts, as wise as they are humane, the poor would suffer less, and would hate us less. What evil do you find in such instructions as these? I find none."

"The real evil is that He flatters the people in order to make Himself head," rejoined Caiphas, hotly. "To overthrow the Law; to destroy the respect which ought to be entertained for us, casting anathema both on our acts and our conduct. He fascinates the crowd by seditious speeches. Works false miracles to gain their affections! An impostor! Whose fallacious doctrines are to be condemned, since He plots against our personal security and against the security of the state."

Joseph saw, with alarm, that the real evil was the fear which Jesus had inspired in the hearts of these men. He tried to defend Him, but he knew how useless it was. The great never pardon those who cause them to tremble.

"But He is peaceable," he continued. "He is poor and He could have riches. He prays when He could menace. He commands patience and pardon of injuries. He returns good for evil, love for hatred. He would not crush the smallest worm. He would not extinguish the tiniest spark. And can you not recall how, in His boyhood, He astonished our intelligence by the force and sublimity of His doctrines?

"And is He not right? Should we not examine everything? Should we not combat all that is contrary to the Law? I have followed Him, I have tested His doctrine. The wisest of men could not, in a single instance, object to it. I have witnessed His miracles. I affirm to you that they are acts of love and mercy."

Seeing that some were listening to him with close attention, hope arose in Joseph's heart.

"Call to remembrance also, my brethren, the fact that He is loved by all, and that His partisans are united at Jerusalem for the feasts of the Passover, from which, as you see, He does not lead them. How would you attack Him in the midst of this crowd, which follows Him, and believes Him to be the Messias promised to the people of Israel? You said in the first council, I believe, that a revolt would occur in His favor if you permitted Him to live. Pear, instead, that the revolt will break out at once if you seek to seize Him in order to kill Him. Be guided by reason. Do not court certain peril to avoid one that does not threaten you. Precipitate nothing. Continue to examine His speech—"

He spoke warmly. He began to hope that he might turn the tide in favor of the Nazarene.

But at that very moment Judas Iscariot arrived upon the scene. He half-opened the door of the council-room. His eyes were wild, his face haggard, he was breathless. And he stood still, saying nothing.

"Who has given thee authority to enter here?" demanded Caiphas, recognizing him as one of the Twelve. (So they were called who continually followed Jesus.) "Dost thou come to spy upon us, that thou mayest repeat our words to thy Master?"

"I do not come to spy upon you," said Judas, contemptuously. "What need has He of spies? Does He not know everything that passes in heaven or upon earth ? I have long believed it and it may be so, but," he added, with a terrible smile, "He knows not what passes in hearts."

"What do you mean?" demanded Joseph of Arimathea. Judas' manner inspired him with dread.

"If He had been able to read the heart He would never have allowed me to approach Him."

"Why not?" continued Joseph, anxious to distract the attention of his fellows. "Perhaps He believed that His goodness toward thee would enkindle repentance."

A cold sweat broke out on the forehead of the traitor. He cast savage glances about him, and his burning hands clutched convulsively at his mantle.

"What does it matter?" he asked huskily. "Whether He could or could not read the depth of the heart? He has wounded me and I have left Him."

"Thou hast left Him!" cried Caiphas. He and several others approached nearer to Judas.

"Thou hast left Him?" repeated Joseph with indignation. "Wretch, what comest thou here to do?"

"Friend, what comest thou here to do?" asked Caiphas, in a soft, insinuating tone.

"Let me breathe," said Judas."I am suffocated. I have walked so quickly."

It was not the walking that made his breathing difficult. Judas was a powerful and indefatigable man, who could Have marched from Jerusalem to Joppe without losing breath.

No. It was that sudden oppression of spirit which seizes upon the heart, overpowering it, when a crime of such dread import is about to be committed.

"Well, then, we shall listen," said one of the Doctors, and the whole council seated itself in order to hear him.

"I come," said Judas, in a steady tone, "to offer to betray unto you, secretly, Jesus, the Nazarene."

"Infamous ingrate!" exclaimed Joseph.

But the others, rising at once, surrounded the traitor.

"If you do this you will merit well of your country," said Caiphas. "Your name will be famous from age to age."

"As the name of Cain is famous," said a voice in the crowd. It was lost in the midst of the interested encouragement of Priests and Doctors.

"What is the price you would set upon your treachery?" asked Joseph in a tone of contempt.

Judas looked at him with resentment, but Caiphas had no intention of letting such an opportunity as this slip by. They made Judas seat himself, and presently Joseph heard the bargain being concluded.  The traitor agreed to deliver Jesus for thirty pieces of silver—the price for which the death of a slave was bought among the Hebrews.

During this frightful bargaining, hell leaped with joy, and the devil in the soul of Judas saw the accomplishment of his dearest desire. All the chiefs of the damned accompanied him, and rejoiced around him—for the children of darkness live in an ever-present, blind hatred and the future is hidden from them.

They hate the just, and behold the~accomplishment of a crime with as much pleasure as the angels of light view with joy a noble and generous act. But had it been able to see the future, hell would have been shaken to its depths. For this crime was to limit its power and set bounds to its daring.

The Priests and Doctors applauded the deed of this wretched being. He swore to deliver Jesus into their hands on the following day, and they paid him the money agreed upon.

At that very moment the evil spirits came forth from the abyss. They spread themselves upon the earth. Bad passions were loosed. Trouble entered into every soul. At once a combat arose; for the celestial angels redoubled their solicitude, striving to make their voices heard by those with whose guardianship they were entrusted.

They spoke of the joys of heaven and the horrors of hell of the promises of God, and of His threats; of the joys of the elect, and of the wailings and gnashings of teeth of the reprobate. They wept and moaned, and strove to bring back those who went astray.

But the fallen angel laughed derisively at the works of God, at His menaces and His promises.

"What matters the future? Is not life its own goal? To pass through it happily is all that need be sought after."

So they promised to some the favor of Caesar if the impostor were destroyed. To others the favor of the tetrarch if this object of his fears should be taken from before his eyes. To superiors the favor of the prince's favorites; to the lowest some object of ambition or cupidity—that ever powerful bait which the rebellious angel has successfully employed to lure souls to destruction.

At a distance the world continued to be plunged in the same distractions, giving itself up to works of foolishness, to ephemeral joys, to brute pleasures, to agitations ending in death. And the destiny of the human race was here decided, in this small corner of Judea—between a God, a voluntary victim—and His blind creatures.

And Mary, with the gift which her Son had bestowed upon her intensified in this atmosphere of hate and anger and bitterness, cast a look of sorrow upon the Magdalen.

"It has come," she murmured. "The Son of God has been betrayed."

The History Of The Blessed Virgin, Translated From The French By The Very Rev. F. C. Husenbeth, D.D., V.G. Part 47.

MARY ON CALVARY. PART 5.

By this arrangement, which added a new and cherished interest to her life, the Virgin must have understood that it was not granted her to follow her Son to the tomb, and that she had not arrived at the termination of her pilgrimage on earth. She resigned herself to the divine decrees out of love for us, whom she adopted in the person of the holy apostle. The sacrifice of Mary almost equalled then, humanly speaking, that of Jesus Christ. He willingly consented to die; and she to live! . . . They were two mighty hearts, inflamed with love for men, and which alone fully understood each other; for their thoughts were not our thoughts, and the gold of their virtues was without alloy.

The manner in which Jesus bequeathed Mary to the young fisherman of Bethsaida was dignified and simple, like every act of his mortal life: "Woman, behold thy son;" and to the beloved disciple, "Behold thy mother."

If he did not use a more tender name when speaking to his mother, it was because he knew the power of the name which he thought proper to omit, and because he would not reopen wounds already so painful and profound.

"Afterwards, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scriptures might be fulfilled, said I thirst.

"Now there was a vessel Set there full of vinegar. And they put a sponge full of vinegar about hyssop, and put it to his mouth."

Infamous wretches to the very end !

Jesus having taken the vinegar, said, "It is consummated." Then, willing to prove to the world that he died, not by the power of death, but by a formal act of his will, he uttered a loud cry, bowed down his head, and expired ! . . . .

At that moment the idols of paganism shook upon their pedestals; the star of Moses, which had shone from only one point of the globe, and was to shine only for a time, descended to the horizon of the valleys, and the sun of the gospel, destined to give light to the world from one pole to the other, and to endure as long as the world, arose brilliantly from the side of the aurora. But God owed prodigies to the despised dignity of his Son, and they were not delayed. To the supernatural darkness, which began to clear away, succeeded the horrible convulsions of an earthquake, which overthrew twenty cities in Asia. 1 At the same time, the veil of the temple was rent, the rocks were split, and many bodies of the saints, which were in the sleep of death, arose and came into Jerusalem, where they caused fresh alarm among the people, already filled with consternation.

Then it was that a wonderful reaction was effected in favour of Jesus: the centurion and his soldiers,- who had presided at the execution, cried out with one voice that the prophet of Nazareth was certainly more than man; and that immense multitude of people, who had overwhelmed Christ in his agonies with insults, shouts, and mockery, returned down the mountain striking their breasts, and repeating with terror, " Indeed this was the Son of God !"

In the midst of the cries of distress of the people, who fled without knowing which way to direct their steps, and while Golgotha was rending her rocky sides, there was seen, by the pale light which gleamed on this scene of horror, a woman standing and completely unmoved in the midst of the convulsions and ruins of nature. This woman seemed inaccessible to the general alarm ; with her hands joined in the attitude of prayer, she was absorbed in the sorrowful contemplation of the crucified prophet.

And the daughters of Jerusalem began again to shed tears, saying with compassion, " Poor mother!"

Towards evening, the Pharisees, unwilling that the bodies should remain on the cross, lest the sanctity of the Sabbath, which would begin at nightfall, should be violated, went to request of Pilate permission to take them away. This permission being obtained, they set up ladders against the gibbets, where the two crucified thieves were still in agonies, and after rudely unfastening their feet and hands, they finished them by breaking their arms and legs. As to Jesus, as he was quite dead, 2 a soldier contented himself with piercing his side with a lance, and the divine blood which was to wash away the crimes of the world ran down in great drops upon the earth. At some distance, two women covered with veils, one of whom leaned upon the other in an attitude which betrayed the most heartrending grief, timidly beheld the proceedings of the Roman soldiers: they were Mary and Magdalen, for Magdalen too was there; and in the distance were perceived the other women from Galilee, who had left all to devote themselves to Jesus, and who had not forsaken him in the hour of punishment and ignominy. " Honour to them !" says Abeilard, " for when the disciples and apostles fled like cowards to the mountains, these weak but courageous creatures accompanied Christ even to the foot of the cross, and did not leave him till he was laid in the sepulchre !"

Then Joseph of Arimathea came up, a rich senator, who had obtained of Pontius Pilate the body of Jesus, of whom he was a disciple in secret, to pay him the honours of sepulture. He took him down from the cross, and prepared to wrap him up in a winding-sheet of fine linen from Egypt, which he had purchased at Jerusalem, when he beheld at his feet a woman pale as death, who stretched out her arms with the most affecting and sublime sorrow, to receive the crucified God. This woman, whose whole body trembled and was convulsed with shudderings of agony, had no voice left to articulate the request which seemed to move upon her lips, hut there was not, upon her face bathed in tears, a muscle which did not petition. The senator, who recognised Mary, made a sign of sympathetic compassion, and laid upon her trembling knees the divine burden with which he had respectfully laden his shoulders. Then the Blessed Virgin could give herself up to the bitter joy of pressing to her suffering and bleeding heart the disfigured body of her Son, and of applying her colourless lips to the wounds which had been made by the nails of the cross. Magdalen on her knees, bathed with her warm tears the bleeding feet of her Lord, and moaned like a wounded dove. In the background of this picture of desolation were the women of Galilee, weeping. 3 During this time, some of Joseph's servants prepared the perfumes on the stone of unction, 4 and others opened the sepulchre hewn out of the rock, which was to receive the mortal remains of the Son of God.

1 Pliny and Strabo speak of this earthquake. " It was so violent," say both these authors, " that it was felt even as far as Italy."

2 According to the Mussulmans, Jesus Christ is not dead. " The Jews did not put Jesus Christ to death," says Mahomet; " a phantom body deceived their barbarity; they did not crucify him; God assumed him to himself." (Koran, c. 4.) The Mussulman tradition says, that when the judgment trumpet shall sound, Aisa (Jesus Christ) will descend from heaven to the earth, and will announce to all its inhabitants the great day of the last judgment: then he will die, and be buried at the side of Mahomet: when the dead shall come forth from their graves, both shall arise together, and ascend into heaven. Burckhardt, who visited the great mosque of Medina, where are the tombs of Mahomet, Aboubekir, and Omar, three tombs of black stone, covered with precious stuffs and surrounded with magnificent ex voto's, says that a vacant place has been left by the side of Mahomet's tomb for the reception of Jesus after his death. Above this place and the tomb of Mahomet, was hung a magnificent brocade cloth enriched with diamonds, which was stolen by Sioud when he took Medina.

3 There are some authors who hold that these holy women picked up some of the earth quite saturated with the precious blood of Jesus Christ, and that it was by this means that some of it has been in the possession of certain churches in France, as St. Denis, and the Sainte-Chapelle, of Paris.

4 The stone of the anointing is at present in the chapel of Calvary; it has been necessary, for its preservation, to cover it with white marble and surround it with an iron balustrade.

The Seven Dolours of the Blessed Virgin. 7.—The Entombment

Perugino - The Entombment

The sun is near to its setting, and to-morrow is the Sabbath ; and Mary, with her lifelong habit of obedience to the law, resigns her Son, as she resigns herself, to the preparation which Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus 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 scourging, the crucifixion, the absolute fast from the hour of the Last Supper,—all like a repetition 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 Lazarus 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 outburst 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 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 followers 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 Jerusalem, 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 exclamation : " Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bosra, this Beautiful One in His robe ? . . . Why is Thy apparel red, and Thy garments like theirs that tread in the wine-press?" Adding in the sorrow of their souls: " Truly He has trodden 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 disciples, 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 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 inheritance of the oral tradition, which quickened the meagre word and filled all the empty spaces. These traditions have never died out of the memory of the faithful, and 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 laying Him in His winding-sheet. In Cimabue'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 perfection of sentiment which leaves us nothing to desire.

The dead Christ has just been laid, on His winding-sheet in a half-reclining position. Saint Joseph of Arimathea, on his knees, supporting 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 Bernard 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, bitterly. 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 Responsory 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 History of Our Lord, says : " Perugino's exquisite 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 Godhead 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 Cleophas 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 exaltation of its pathos. A landscape stretches far off, with the towers of Jerusalem between the rocky hills which enclose this scene of 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, Florence, gives to our Dolor one of his most exquisite conceptions, embodied in the perfection 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 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 unutterable devotion. But Mary, mother and martyr, 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 compassion 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 anatomists ; but our dolor is not in every one of these, and we turn to those which have been 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 picturesque, Titian had, deep in his soul, the sound Venetian faith. As a child, he painted Madonnas, 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 garment 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 in her arms. The liveliest sympathy is expressed 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 sepulchre. Low clouds, such as come at sunset, 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 Four Gospels by Overbeck, to which we so often allude, is the Entombment—the bearing 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 shoulders 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 weeping, 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 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 procession 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 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 swollen 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 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.

From The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary By By Eliza Allen Starr 

The Seven Dolours of the Blessed Virgin. 6.—The Deposition

The Deposition

Just at the first shout in the streets of Jerusalem from the fierce rabble that apprehended 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, crying, "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 every incident, yet so abstractedly as to escape observation.

These were Joseph of Arimathea, a good and just man, a noble counsellor of the Sanhedrim, 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 worldly 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 linen and spices, returning to Calvary, where the centurion and the holy women and Saint John keep watch over the sacred humanity 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 reverently ! 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 bent under the stroke of the hammer, leaving wide open those two wounds, like rings set with jacinths; and thus, half released, the body, gently sustained by Joseph of Arimathea, leans forward till Mary's arms are raised to receive it, while Nicodemus descends 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 sweetness of a mother's anguish.

One moment more, and Joseph of Arimathea 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 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.

Duccio - The Deposition

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 conducting 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 supporting 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.

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 considered as the chief motive, and this motive expressed 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 transport, for one of the compartments of the great altarpiece in the cathedral of his own city.

Deposition of Christ (Fra Angelico)

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 regarded 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 Magdalene 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 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 Virgin, who is on her knees, waiting, with hands joined, to receive her Son into her arms; while, standing over her, is Mary of Cleophas, 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 compassion 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 copious 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.

Campana - Descent from the Cross (detail)

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 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 forehead of the Eternal Son, as if in benediction ; still above planes the Dove of the Eternal Holy Spirit; the winding-sheet on which repose 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 " 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 demanded by the people of every nation which 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 ; Donatello's, on one of the bronze panels of the pulpit in San Lorenzo, Florence; Botticelli's, in the Munich Gallery; Mantegna's can be studied in the Brera Gallery; Bellini'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 hand of the Virgin-Mother supports the slender body of her Son under its right shoulder, 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 compassion, 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 sweetness. The whole group is sublimely conceived ; the sorrow a sublime sorrow, and the grandeur is of that sort which takes in the beginning and the end : the eternity of Redemption in the mind of God, as well as the eternity of its duration for those who embrace 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 terrible 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 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 shoulder, 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 Jeremiah 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 beautiful, the relaxed expression of the whole figure 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 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: ' The 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 nothing 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, sustained 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 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 monastery was glorified anew at the hands of the Beuron artists.

From The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary By By Eliza Allen Starr