ST. PATRICK'S DAY IN ROME
By LADY BURGIICLEIIE.
THERE are 365 churches in Rome. A friend of mine divides them into two categories, the live and the dead churches ; the first warm with human emotions, fragrant, not only with incense, but with the atmosphere of devotion ; the second, historical and architectural monuments,. often admirable, but monuments rather than houses of prayer in common life.
Until I attended the celebrations for St. Patrick's Day at San Clemente, I confess I had included that church in the second category. But on this occasion, when a great festival was combined with a Lenten " stazione," I was forced to revise my judgment. Of all the Roman churches, this ancient basilica, built over the house of Clement, the Wall of Tarquin and the Temple of Mithras, is perhaps the most interesting from. an archaeological point of view. But on St. Patrick's Day I found it crowded no longer by the curious tourist, but by a throng of seminarists, priests, monks, and men and women of the people. Indeed, the only religious body conspicuous by its absence was the band of scarlet-coated German students, who permeate the streets- of Rome,. for St. Patrick, the Patron of the Irish,. does not .appeal to the mind Teutonic. With the conclusion of Benediction. began the processions. They were led by a tall Dominican carrying a crucifix, escorted by two brothers carrying lighted tapers. All three were young and clad in white. Behind them, in their severe black and white habits; intent, calm, the ." intelligentsia " of the Church, marched the Dominican Fathers, Bishops and Mou...qi.rutor introducing a welcome note-of rose colour into the sombre band of priests and monks in black and brown, a cohort which finally resolved itself into a serried mass of men, women and children lustily intoning the Lenten litanies.
Just as the metrical Psalms of the Kirk should only be sung to the tuneless tunes growled of old by.Covenantens on the hillside, so the spirit of Gregorian chants can only be satisfactorily rendered by a full volume of men's voices. In truth they are the battle song of the Church Militant, the urge of Christian to the long-drawn fight with Apollyon. Not otherwise can the great St. Gregory have conceived these austere harmonies, and thus they must often have struck upon his ear in this Very bas- ilica, as he stood at the marble ambons where he delivered so many of the homilies, long treasured by the mediaeval Church, under the shadow of the blue -and gold mosaics of the apse in which the sleek, docile, long-nosed sheep--so like the sheep browsing to-day in the Carnpagna—stand ranged around the . Immaculate Lamb.
The restrained glow of. colour, the insistent beat of the ora pro nobis as the procession winds its way through the three churches, about the atrium and back to the altar where the flame of the tapers burns, a thin clear flame, under the exquisite baldachin, all this is part and portion of a properly organised " stazione.". We -gaze, we listen, and arc thankful. But in all pageants it is the side-shows which live in our memory, and on St. -Patrick's Day at. San Clemente- these have the strong appeal of the unstudied and elemental: The austerity of the setting merely throws into higher relief the little vignettes of family life blossoming on all sides in the warmth of the kindly atmosphere.
A " stazione " is a festa for the younger members of the congregation. When the little boys and girls weary of the honour and glory of sitting on chairs side by side with the " grown ups," they find ample amusement in collecting bouquets from the bay and box strewn on the lovely Cosimato pavement for their long-suffering parents and their own favoured contemporaries. And, as Mr. Pepys would have said, " pretty it was to see " the court- ships of these Latin infants. If they got too obstreperous the parent intervened. • But in a Catholic country the Church is recognized as la ,naison du *re de famille, and no scandal is caused by these games, any more than the choristers of Toledo Cathedral risk rebuke or punish- ment by playing at hide and seek in the chauntries. Close to me,- a young and beautiful mother, who might have sat to Bellini for one of his dark Madonnas, held her-boy- as active as a young prisoned in her arms, stroking his locks; while her heart was reaching out to the Tabernacle. My other neighbour was an aged crone clothed in handkerchiefs, vast handkerchiefs, one serving as headgear, one wrapped round her shoulders, and another almost covering her skirt. _ Herself devout and happy, she was bent on promoting our well-being of soul and body. She was determined that we should not catch cold by kneeling on the marble floor,- and yet -she realized that we must not omit-customary reverence,. so she made it her business to- fetch' us chairs on which we could kneel as the long procession marched past us to the courtyard, and then climbed back towards the resplendent altar. The dear old lady found equal joy and pride in doing the honours of St. Clemente on this gala day. - It was, however, the huge crucifix in the transept and its worshippers that held one's attention. Around it crowds of peasant women clustered, eagerly kissing the Saviour's feet-. and-holding up their children to do-likewise. Onc-good. mother, whose babe was too young to achieve even this simple act of worship, after kissing and laying her own fingers on "those blessed feet which were nailed for our advantage on the bitter cross," then carefully made the sign of the cross on the tiny creature's forehead, _lips and heart. She was evidently determined that her child should lack nothing of the blessing to be garnered at the foot of the crucifix.
In such manner is the memory of St. Patrick honoured in Rome at the present day. Nothing of pomp was wanting to the ceremonial. Yet if its glories were over- laid by the spectacle of devotion and the loving kindness of the poor, the workers and the toilers, who shall say that this would have seemed amiss to the Apostle of the Irish ?
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