A FLORENTINE PREACHER.*
TIIS sermons of Padre Agostino da Montefeltro, called by his countrymen "the modern Savonarola," can hardly fail to have a deep interest for any one who cares to study the thoughts and influences of our time. Not that the comparison with Savonarola seems the happiest possible. It is, no doubt, a natural one to be made by the Florentines, when they see their cathedral crowded daily by seven or eight thousand people, chiefly poor, struggling to push themselves nearer to the pulpit, so as to lose nothing of the preacher's words, murmuring, "Eccolo ! Ecc,olo !" when he comes in, listening in breathless silence from the beginning to the end of the sermon, when "a low murmur of Bene, bene,' would swell up like the sound of the sea from the vast multitude." Bat we have only to look at the history of Florence in the fifteenth century, to meet with an enthusiasm as much greater than this, it seems to us, as the minds of that day were wilder, more imaginative, more easily influenced than ours ; and we should be much amazed by the expressed opinion of the translator of these sermons, that Padre Agostino is greater than Savonarola, were we not forced by the sermons them- selves to acknowledge how entirely he has done without one of Savonarola's chief weapons, the excitement of politics. He is
• Selections from the Sermons of Padre Agostino do Montefeltro. Edited by Catherine Mary Phillimore. London : The Church Printing Company.
an orator, of course, with a great personal charm, large-minded, sympathetic, possessing a knowledge of the world which his
admirers think wonderful in a Franciscan monk. We are not sure, however, that such instances are very rare. Knowing nothing of Padre Agostino's history, one may suggest that an intimate experience of life in the world is sometimes itself the means of leading some natures to life in the cloister.
The fact remains that in Lent, 1887, by his eloquence and his personal goodness, Padre Agostino attracted these great crowds to the Duomo at Florence; and they came to listen, with the enthusiasm already described, to sermons on the deepest yet simplest truths of religion, and the practical results of some of these truths. As translated—and the passages left out are very few—these sermons might have been preached with great benefit to congregations of English working men. Whether these would have listened as the Florentines listened, or bought the reports of the sermons in the streets, to devour them afterwards, as the Florentines did, is quite another question.
It is impossible to judge coldly in print, and through the obstructing fog of another and an alien language, of words which touched the hearts of the hearers like fire; but we have read the book with interest, in order to find out what the sub- jects and the arguments were, to which the working classes of Florence listened with such enthusiasm. And what strikes us chiefly is a kind of clear, outspoken simplicity in the way of treating these subjects; and at the same time a very great dignity. As read, the sermons are quite free from any sensa- tionalism, or from the slightest touch of that familiarity which some people think good for that class of hearers. They are full of earnestness and reality, but never realistic. Padre Agostino is not afraid of long words—the old woman who complained that her parson gave her "no dictionary words, and never a gob o' Latin," would be gratified by him—neither is he afraid of a story now and then, nor of bringing examples from history, nor of quoting classics or anything else. O'Connell, Alphonse Karr, and Guizot appear in the same page; elsewhere, we meet with Plato, Bacon, Le Maistre, and Victor Hugo ; Dante, of course, and St. Augustine are often on his lips.
Before pointing out the sermons that strike us as the most powerful, we may as well give a list of their subjects :—" God," "The Soul," "The Spirituality of the Soul," " The Immortality of the 'Soul," "The Purpose of Life," "The Claim of God upon our Lives," "Family Life," "Pain," "Hope," "The Observance of Sunday," "Liberty." "The Working Classes." The argu- ment of all these sermons is more or less against materialism, the great enemy in Italy, as in other civilised countries ; the enemy that grows stronger every day, and to the greatness of whose influence, and the certain results of that influence, so many Christians seem unaccountably blind. Padre Agostino's hearers, at least, will not accept materialist doctrines without knowing all about them. He traces in his strong words their effect on man's nature, beliefs, loves, sorrows, hopes, rights, duties, spiritual and earthly life :—
"According to the doctrine of Materialism, man can only act from
necessity It says, again, Do good : keep yourselves from evil ;' bat, I ask, is this the language of reason ? You speak to me of liberty, and you say that I am subject to the forces which rule matter. You speak to me of good and evil, and you teach me that I am only an apparatus of matter organised by chance ; that the soul will cease to exist when this apparatus falls to pieces. But why, then, not speak of the responsibilities of duty and liberty to a piece of falling granite, or to a hurricane let loose ? Why not preach moderation to the wild beasts of the forest, or regard for life to the plants which poison us? And, I ask you, what is this if not the kingdom of universal bondage ? And, farther, where can you hope to find morality in this kingdom ? You will find there not virtue, but pleasure ; not vice, but suffering. If there are rights, they are those of the strongest; if there is a duty, it is only that of sacrificing everything to individual caprice ; if there is a law, it is that of the tiger which tears its prey in pieces I say that Materialism causes the destruction of all social order. Social order is based upon the rights and duties of the individual, upon the rights of property, upon the liberty of the subject. All these rights vanish before Materialism, which recognises alone the right of enjoyment."
Perhaps the most telling of the sermons is that on "The Purpose of Life," in which the beautiful story of St. Augustine on the seashore, Qusere super nos, is brought in with excellent effect. This, we think, is the sermon which gives the best idea
of Padre Agostino's eloquence. The sermon on "Family Life" will, we should hope, be long remembered in Florentine families. That on "Liberty" is fine and reasonable in its way of setting true meanings in the place of false ones. Here also comes in that liberality of mind in whose existence in the Roman Church so many people refuse to believe :—
" There is no doubt that if a man is born outside the fold of Christ's Church, and is trained, without any fault of his own, outside the fold of Christ's Church, and, in his ignorance of better things, believes his religion to be the true one, while no doubt to the contrary has ever entered his mind,—if he has consoientionsly followed the dictates of his conscience, this man will be saved, for in his soul he belongs to the true religion."
On the whole, this is a striking little book, and well worth the trouble which Miss Phillimore has bestowed on translating it. She dedicates it to the "Church of England Working Men's Society." We hope that this Society, and other people too, may read it ; but we doubt, at the same time, whether it is quite suited to the genius of the Anglo-Saxon race. Mingled with such religion as Padre Agostino's there is a great deal of poetry, and that not of the revivalist kind, the only kind that seems to touch the heart of the English working man. Without any dis- respect to his possibly superior faculties, we fear that he is neither the reader nor the hearer to be touched as he ought to be by the sermons of Padre Agostino.
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