The Eagle and the Dove

by Vita Sackville-West

  It became increasingly evident that the popular clamour would soon demand some satisfaction, and the first steps towards obtaining it were taken by one of those young women who had presented herself at the gates of the Lisieux convent, and, being amongst the first corners, had obtained admission. She was a Breton, who, contrary to all preconceived ideas of that hardy though pious race, inclined strongly towards a social and elegant life, with an avowed contempt and pity for nuns and all their works. Illuminated suddenly by the Histoire, she abandoned her gay pleasures, proclaimed herself a “conquest of Sæur ‘The’rese,” and became a postulant at the age of nineteen. She must have been rather precocious in worldly cynicism, or perhaps her experience had been unfortunate, for she wrote:

  J’allais avoir vingt ans; je connaissais le monde.

  Hélas! combien mon cæur était desenchante!

  Au lieu d’un doux nectar pur et frais comme l’onde,

  C’est un brerlant poison qu’il m’avait presenté.

  Yet her spiritual qualifications for the good life were evidently outstanding, for in spite of her youth she rose rapidly to the dignity of Prioress where she found herself at last in a position to promote her dearest wish, that of obtaining the Apostolic recognition of Thérèse’s virtues. Unfortunately, as the official chronicler puts it, she had pushed her imitation of her celestial friend to the length of contracting consumption of the lungs and descended to the grave after seven years, but not before she had secured the co-operation of the newly elected Bishop of Bayeux, Monseigneur Lemonnier. The wheels of the vast, ancient, and complicated machine had begun to revolve.

  After some delays, during which the volume of evidence continued to roll in through the doors of the episcopal palace, the Bishop finally received a reply from Rome, authorising him to begin his official investigation of the facts.

  XIII

  IT MAY BE of interest at this point to scrutinise the procedure necessary before the honour of public cultus may be conferred, and to glance at the historical background of the qualifications which set the great machinery of Rome in movement on behalf of the little nun of Lisieux. Such honour is not bestowed without the most relentless examination, the rules having progressed in stringency since the early days of the Church when no formal ritual of canonisation obtained and cultus was awarded, especially to the martyrs, more or less by popular acclaim. The first instance of formal canonisation in fact does not occur until nearly a thousand years after the birth of Christ, when John XV conferred it on Ulric of Augsburg in 993, but another two hundred years were to elapse before Alexander III decreed that even the bishops could not exercise the right without submission to the Holy See. In those days of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the process of canonisation could succeed very rapidly on the death of the person concerned, thus St. Thomas à Becket, St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Anthony of Padua received their title of Saint within three, two, and one years of their decease respectively. Teresa of Avila herself, some four hundred years later in date, had been raised to the fellowship within forty years of her death. To guard against possible abuses, for the Church of Rome is nothing if not cautious, the jurisdiction was gradually tightened up, and in the seventeenth century we find Urban VIII in two separate decrees going so far as to lay down the rule for an exact differentiation between the status of Blessed and Saint. Roughly speaking, a local bishop could authorise beatification carrying with it a local honouring or cultus, but canonisation could only be extended to the whole Church by the recognition of the Holy See. A period of fifty years, moreover, was fixed as the minimum before a cause of canonisation could be begun.

  The stages in the hierarchy of sanctity are three in number: Veneration, Beatification, and Canonisation. The first stage may be skipped, but before canonisation may be conferred it is necessary that beatification should first be pronounced. Even for this second stage the conditions are sufficiently exacting : a genera] reputation for holiness, an heroic quality of the virtues, and the working of recognisable miracles. The privileges of the beatified, however, are relatively limited. No church may be dedicated to them, nor may they become patrons of nations, dioceses, or religious bodies; and their relics may be exposed only in churches where their Mass has been sanctioned. The canonised saint on the other hand is entitled to far wider honours. Benedict XIV who was Pope from 1740 to 1758 and is the authority on these matters, decreed amongst other things that the saints should be prayed to and not for; that their images should be adorned with the halo or other attributes of sanctity; and that their relics should be publicly honoured. Members of the Catholic Church are not compelled to believe in the miracles accepted in support of their claim to sanctity, but they are compelled to believe that every person duly canonised is now in Heaven, since the decision of the Church cannot be wrong and admits of no argument or divergent opinion. A little more latitude is allowed in the case of the merely beatified, when the obedient sons and daughters of the Church may decide for themselves whether or no the blessed one has reached Heaven, although they are warned that it would be “extremely rash not to do so.” Before proceeding to canonisation, at least two miracles must have been worked since the elevation to the ranks of the Blessed. The rites of beatification take place in the great hall above the vestibule in St. Peter’s, when the papal brief is merely read by the officiating bishop, but canonisation takes place with enormous ceremony in the basilica itself and is conducted by the Supreme Pontiff in person.

  The precautions observed are many, especially in regard to the miracles. The medical point of view receives the utmost consideration. In the case of a healing, physicians, surgeons, and specialists are called as witnesses, and have to testify under oath that the alleged cure could not have taken place under natural laws. Their refusal to make this declaration leads to a rejection of the miracle, which will no longer be considered by the Congregation of Rites. All cases of auto-suggestion, hysteria, and epilepsy are automatically rejected; nor will any cure be accepted where a surgical operation has been performed, since it is held that the operation and not the intercession of the proposed saint may have been responsible. Similarly on the spiritual side, although heretics and even infidels may be admitted as witnesses, the father confessor is debarred, even though his penitent may have released him from the seal of confession. No shorthand is permitted, and all evidence must be taken in longhand by the notary. The cost of such proceedings is naturally very high, and in order to economise several causes may be considered simultaneously. Even the final ceremony of canonisation may take place jointly, as in the case of Teresa of Avila, St. Philip Neri, St. Francis Xavier, St. Isidore the Labourer, and St. Ignatius Loyola, who were all five canonised on the same day.

  The actual examination of the claim is executed precisely in accordance with the disposition of a court of law. The procedure amounts to the presentation of a suit, before a jury which is the tribunal of the Congregation of Rites, a permanent commission of cardinals supported by subordinate officers and under the presidency of a Cardinal, but with the Pope in the background as supreme and ultimate judge. The proofs in support of the claim, which have first been very circumspectly assembled before presentation by the local bishop’s court, are offered to the Roman court by a Postulator who in secular law would be termed the solicitor or counsel for the plaintiff. There is also a counsel for the defence, technically known as the Promoter of the Faith, but popularly as the Devil’s advocate,—advocatus diaboli,—a term used by many people without any realisation of its true origin. His duty is to pick any holes he can find in the pleadings. Conversely, the Postulator is known as God’s advocate,—advocatus Dei,—a term which for some reason has never passed into such general use, perhaps because human nature, or so it would appear, seems always to seize more gleefully upon the mischievous than upon the inspiriting theme.

  Among the priests concerned in the enquiry on this occasion was a Vice-Postulator named Monseigneur de Teil, whom Thérèse had seen when he gave a lecture at her convent. H
e did not know that Thérèse had then exclaimed, “Is he not touchingly zealous! How happy one would be to point out some miracles to him!”

  She had supplied him with plentiful miracles now. The case of the abbe Anne was considered, and also that of Sæur Louise de Saint Germain, who in her convent at the foot of the Pyrenees was dying of internal ulcers and had in fact received the Last Sacraments, when an intercession to Thérèse produced not only a vision of Thérèse herself and, some days later, a complete return to health, but also a strewing of rose petals of all colours round the patient’s bed. No one knew how they had come there: they had arrived during the night. Moreover, on the eve of her exhumation Thérèse appeared to the Italian Carmelite Prioress whose debt had been so opportunely provided for, and informed her that nothing but her bones would be found in her grave. The Prioress was quite unaware that any exhumation was about to take place, but learnt afterwards that her ghostly visitor had spoken correctly.

  The very strange case of another Theresa must be mentioned here, not only on account of its own inherent interest but also on account of its association with Thérèse of Lisieux. This concerns the well-known Theresa Neumann, a peasant girl of Konnersreuth in Bavaria. To all appearances Theresa, or “Resl” Neumann, was a very ordinary and rather stupid child, one of ten children in a healthy family, and herself so strong that when working on a farm she could carry sacks of flour weighing over a hundred and fifty pounds from the cellar up to the third floor. Nothing abnormal here. When Resl was nineteen, however, a series of accidents, culminating in total blindness, rendered her completely helpless; and before long she began to suffer from cramps and convulsions so violent that on one occasion all the teeth in her upper jaw were broken. She, so robust, was now bedridden and incapable of standing alone. The doctors marvelled that she could remain alive at all. They had given up all hope of doing anything for her, but it was the turn of Sæur ‘Thérèse to intervene. Resl had a great devotion to Sæur ‘Thérèse, a devotion which was to be rewarded by no less than seven miraculous cures. The first one was perhaps the most dramatic, though the other six, which included the straightening of her twisted leg, the restoration of the power to walk, the disappearance of all symptoms of sudden and acute appendicitis, and the cure of pneumobronchitis when the prayers for the dying had already been begun, were sensational enough. But on the first occasion, Resl, who had just been preparing a novena in honour of Thérèse’s beatification, woke in the morning to find herself as usual unable to see. Then, she says, she felt as though someone were touching her pillow, and, raising her eyes, she was surprised to see her own hands and the picture of Thérèse of Lisieux hanging on the wall. Her sister came into the room, but as she had not beheld her for four years she could recognise her only by her voice. The entry of another sister caused Resl to exclaim “Is it believable that you have grown so much?fn11

  Thérèse during one of her appearances had announced that her rain of roses would become a torrent, and with the outbreak of war in 1914 her legend grew in proportion to the fulfilment of her promise. The French army adopted her extensively as their special protector. “It is true that we have Jeanne d’Arc,” wrote one soldier, “but the little Sister is nearer to us.” Whole regiments placed themselves under her protection. Gun batteries were called after her. Men going into battle carried her medal on their persons. Pilots, including the ace Bourjade, either called their aircraft Sæur Thérèse or decorated it with her portrait. Meanwhile the enormous process of enquiry lumbered on, undisturbed by war, taking seven years (from 1910 to 1917) to reach its first conclusion, a period of time which is perhaps less surprising when we learn that the preliminary report ran to five thousand pages after a hundred and nine sessions of many hours each. During the apostolic process at Rome a further ninety-one sittings took place, resulting in a dossier of two thousand five hundred pages.

  XIV

  THE CHURCH, ALWAYS thorough, had been in no hurry, but finally Cardinal Vico, Prefect of the Congregation of Rites, remarked that they had better hasten to glorify the little saint, if they did not want the voice of the peoples to run ahead of them. In the early days of the Church, he said, where beatification was accorded by popular acclaim, Sæur Thérèse would long since have become Blessed. It was a fact that petitions from all quarters of the world were now pouring into the Vatican; Brazil sent a processional reliquary of gold and precious stones, and some 80,000 pilgrims flooded Lisieux annually with visits to her tomb, a number which before long was to increase to 300,000. It would be wearisome to follow the stages in detail to that crowning ceremony which took place on May 17th, 1925, or even to record the various authenticated miracles which were submitted to the examination of the Congregation of Rites. It suffices to mention two amongst the many which took place immediately after the beatification, the first a Belgian girl brought in a dying condition to the tomb where she was instantly cured of pulmonary and intestinal consumption; the second, a nun of Parma, cured through intercession of arthritis and spinal tuberculosis.

  There was room for a congregation of only fifty thousand in the Basilica of St. Peter’s, but over two hundred thousand applications for seats were received. Thirty-four Cardinals, over two hundred Archbishops and Bishops, and an enormous concourse of priests, prelates, members of the religious Orders, and Apostolic Notaries preceded the banner of the new saint down the brilliantly lit aisle under innumerable garlands of Thérèse’s roses, succeeded by the arrival of the Pope, borne to his throne in front of the Chair of St. Peter. The roaring crowd was silenced only by the command to stand while Peter should speak through the lips of Pius. Strange, awesome ritual of this Church with all its hierarchy, tradition, power, splendour and organisation, so self-contained within the framework of the temporal realms of this world, so immutable, so secret in its workings among the hearts of millions, so apparent in its majesty on such occasions of affirmation in its Roman stronghold! As the Basilica had risen by the banks of the pagan Tiber, as the genius of Michaelangelo and Bernini had devoted itself to the glorification of God at the command of the Vatican, so had the strange and magnificent institution which is the Church of Rome, both visible and invisible, risen from the small peasant beginnings of the carpenter’s shop and the fishing-boats of Galilee. The company of twelve men, brown and barefooted, had swollen into the company of the Princes of the Church, grave and billowing in their silks of red and purple, with their immense authority and the unrestricted apparatus of pomp. Yet in the underlying spirit there was no difference at all.

  When all was over, when the Te Deum had been sung, when three white roses had without recognisable cause floated down from a pilaster and settled themselves at the right hand of the Pope, when the Cardinals had made their traditional offerings of doves and pigeons in gilded cages, or wine and water in little kegs of silver and gold, when Mass had been celebrated and all the dignitaries had withdrawn, the great temple was left open to the irruption of the crowd that blackened the piazza outside. All day long the lights burned, but when the evening came, the warm soft evening of a Roman May, an even more splendid spectacle delighted the Roman people and the half-million strangers surging in pilgrimage into the Eternal City. Not since 1870 when another child of France received a similar honour at the hands of Pius XI, had such a spectacle been offered. Illuminated by thousands and thousands of candles outlining the cupola, the façade, and Bernini’s colonnades, the apparent conflagration of the Basilica was reflected even into the waters of the Tiber, much as the humble signpost candle of Thérèse’s Little Way was now throwing its beam along the darkness of a troubled world.

  Not long after the ferment in Rome had died down, a more modest and perhaps more touching procession wound its way, carrying indigenous relics, into the little garden of Les Buissonnets.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As it proved very difficult under the war-time conditions in which this book was written to obtain necessary works of reference, particularly in foreign languages, I am more than ordinarily grat
eful to those who came to my assistance, and would wish to thank especially the Right Reverend Lady Abbess of Stanbrook, Dame Laurentia McLachlan, 0.S.B., and the Rev. R. H. J. Steuart, S.J., for loans from the libraries at Stanbrook Abbey and 114, Mount Street respectively. Without their generous help this book could not now have been written.

  V. S.-W.

  Appendices

  ST. JOSEPH OF CUPERTINO

  (See here, here).

  THE REMARKABLE CASE of this Italian saint (1603–1663) is regarded as a classic example of attested levitation. His mentality was extremely simple; his intellectual achievements were confined to reading with difficulty and writing with even more difficulty; as a boy he was known in his village as the gaper (Bocca aperta); he was so absent-minded that he forgot to eat; at the various trades to which he was apprenticed he got into perpetual trouble, partly owing to his clumsiness and partly to his forgetfulness. There seemed nothing left for him but the religious life, which at first he pursued in the humblest capacity as a lay-brother, though even then he could not be trusted to carry a pile of plates without dropping them or to remember to light the kitchen fire. Later, through sheer luck and the casualness of the examiners, he was ordained as a priest. But in this capacity, for other reasons, he had to be prevented from fulfilling his duties. He could not be allowed to say Mass, to take part in processions, or even to share in the meals of the community, for at any moment he was apt to rise into the air and remain suspended for a long time. They tried hitting him and burning him and pricking him with needles, but once he had passed out of his senses nothing would bring him back to them except sometimes a sharp order from his Superior. The accounts of his flights are numerous and amazing; some of them doubtless have gained in the telling, but the residue, related by eye-witnesses, makes up a story sufficient to satisfy the curious. Among the less credible tales is the account of his picking up “as though it were a straw” a cross thirty-six feet high and too heavy for ten men to lift, and flying with it in his arms to set it in its place. He frequently flew up to holy statues in order to embrace them, and, carrying them off their stands, floated about with them; he sometimes picked up a fellow-friar and carried him around the room; on one occasion the sight of a lamb in the garden sent him into such an ecstasy, thinking of the Lamb of God, that he caught up the little creature and rose with it into the air. The lamb was probably not much alarmed for it was said of this simple though surprising saint that all animals had an instinctive trust of him, the sheep especially coming round to listen to his prayers.