BROWNING'S ITALY (35 page)

While hearts are men's and so born criminal;

Which one fact, always old yet ever new,

Accounts for so much crime that, for my part,

Molinos may gq whistle to the wind

That waits outside a certain church, you know!'

Though really it does seem as if she here,

Pompilia, living so and dying thus,

Has had undue experience how much crime

A heart can hatch. Why was she made to leara

— Not you, not I, not even Molinos' seif —

What Guido Franceschini's heart could hold ?

PICTÜRES OF SOCIAL LIFE 349

Thus saintship is effected probably;

No sparing saints the process! — which the more

Tends to the reconciling us, no saints,

To sinnership, immunity and all."

Guido, again, must bring Molinos into his argument by telling a piece of gossip about the Cardinars tract which illustrates his ideas of the ways and means by which one may "get on" in life. The story is of a clown who

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. . . dressed vines on somebody's estate His boy recoiled from muck, liked Latin more, Stuck to his pen and got to be a priest, Till one day . . . don't you mind that telling tract Against Molinos, the old Cardinal wrote ? He penned and dropped it in the patron's desk, Who, deep in thought and absent much of mind, Iicensed the thing, allowed it for his own; Quick came promotion, — suum cuique, Count! Oh, he can pay for coach and six, be sure!' c —Well, let me go, do likewise: war 's the word— That way the Franceschini worked at first, 111 take my turn, try soldiership.' — ' What, you ? The eldest son and heir and prop o' the house, So do you see your duty ? Here's your post, Hard by the hearth and altar' (Roam from roof, This youngster, play the gypsy out of doors, And who keeps kith and kin that fall on us ?) Stand fast, stick tight, conserve your gods at hörne!' 'Well — then, the quiet course, the contrary trade! We had a cousin amongst us once was Pope, And minor glories manifold. Try the Church, The tonsure, and, — since heresy's but half-slain

Even by the Cardinal's tract he thought he wrote, — Have at Molinos!' — 'Have at a fool's head! You a priest ? How were marriage possible ? There must be Franceschini tili time ends — That's your vocation. Make your brothers priests, Paul shall be porporate, and Girolamo step Red-stockinged in the presence when you choose, But save one Franceschini for the age! Be not the vine but dig and düng its root, Be not a priest but gird up priesthood's loins, With one foot in Arezzo stride to Rome, Spend yourself there and bring the purchase back! Go hence to Rome, be guided!"

Caponsacchi relates how he was told by the judges the priest's duty— to "labor to pluck tares and weed the com of Molinism," and how when he, through the awakening influence of Pompilia, found his society life flat, stale and unprofitable and decided never to write another canzonet, his patron spoke abrupt:

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Young man, can it be true That after all your promise to sound fruit, You have kept away from Countess young or old And gone play truant in church all day long? Are you turning Molinist?'

I answered quick: 'Sir, what if I turned Christian? It might be. The fact is I am troubled in my mind, Beset and pressed hard by some novel thoughts. This your Arezzo is a limited world; There s a stränge Pope, — 'tis said, a priest who thinks.

Rome is the port, you say: to Rome I go. I will live alone, one does so in a crowd, And look into my heart a little.'"

Pompilia, as one would expect, only quotes what the priest said in regard to Molinism.

"'Forsee — If motherhood be qualified impure, I catch you making God command Eve sin! — A blasphemy so like these Molinists, I must suspect you dip into their books.' "

Each of the lawyers refers to the Molinists. To illustrate his argument, Hyacinthus de Archangelis declares:

"Yea, argue Molinists who bar revenge — Referring just to what makes out our case! Under old dispensation, argue they, The doom of the adulterous wife was death, Stoning by Moses' law."

Bottinius, on the other hand, would like to impress the Molinists as he would eveiy one eise with his own importance:

"Rome, that Rome whereof — this voice Would it might make our Molinists observe, That she is built upon a rock nor shall Their powers prevail against her! — Rome, I say, Is all but reached."

From the references of these various characters to Molinism it would be quite impossible to discover the truth in regard to this sect. Each

one uses it as a stalking horse for any evil he wishes to account for or any opinion he wishes to combat. There could not be a better way of showing what a pervasive influence Molinism had become in the Roman world at the same time that, once having fallen under the bau of the Church, all sorts of lies about its tenets would gain credence.

Browning, however, has been clever enough to show the influence for good in the ideas of Molinos, indirectly in the independent and en-lightened vision of Caponsacchi and Pompilia and directly in a passage in the "Pope," where the Pope says:

"Must we deny, — do they, these Molinists, At peril of their body and their soul, — Recognized truths, obedient to some truth Unrecognized yet, but perceptible ? — Correct the portrait by the living face, Man's God, by God's God in the mind of man ? Then, for the few that rise to the new height, The many that must sink to the old depth The multitude found fall away! A few, E'en ere new law speak clear, may keep the old, Preserve the Christian level, call good good And evil evil, (even though razed and blank The old titles,) helped by custom, habitude, And all eise they mistake for finer sense O' the fact that reason Warrants, — as before, They hope perhaps, fear not impossibly."

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PICTURES OF SOCIAL LIFE 353

Here comes the first experimentalist

In the new order of things, — he plays a priest;

Does he take Inspiration from the Church,

Directly make her rule his law of life ?

Not he: his own mere impulse guides the man —

Happily sometimes, since ourselves allow

He has danced, in gayety of heart, 'i the main

The right step through the maze we bade him foot.

But if his heart had prompted him break loose

And mar the measure ? Why, we must submit,

And thank the chance that brought him safe so far,

Will he repeat the prodigy? Perhaps.

Can he teach others how to quit themselves,

Show why this step was right while that were wrong ?

How should he ? 'Ask your hearts as I ask mine,

And get discreetly through the Morrice too;

K your hearts misdirect you, — quit the stage,

And make amends, — be there amends to make!'"

This lenient attitude toward impulse, espe-cially such an impulse as that of Caponsacchi's, in saving Pompilia by flying with her to Rome, and so outraging churchly and social proprieties, shows the influence of the teachings of Molinos in regard to sin not having any effect upon the soul, which might safely be left in the hands of God. The whole passage is really an interpre-tation on the part of the poet indicating that the sins Molinos thought unimportant were really the sins against imperfect human concep-tions of right and wrong, and that these im-perfect conceptions of right and wrong could

only be changed to something better by follow-ing human vision without regard to the Church. Pompilia reaches the greatest height in her at-titude toward sin in her forgiveness of Guido:

"We shall not meet in this world nor the next, But where will God be absent ? In His face Is light, but in His shadow healing too: Let Guido touch the shadow and be healed!

Nothing about me but drew somehow down His hate upon me, — somewhat so excused Therefore, since hate was thus the truth of him, — May my evanishment for evermore Help further to relieve the heart that cast Such object of its natural loathing forth! So he was made; he nowise made himself: I could not love him, but his mother did.

Whatever he touched is rightly ruined: plague It caught, and disinfection it had craved Still but for Guido; I am saved through him So as by fire; to him — thanks and farewell!"

We may add to this pervasive atmosphere of the time that envelops the poem, a few special illustrations of customs which were then rife. The resort to torture to extract truth from criminals was still practised and Guido gives graphically his experience of the torture to which he was subjected:

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PICTURES OF SOCIAL LIFE S55

Thanks, Sir, but, should it please the reverend Court,

I feel I can stand somehow, half sit down

Without help, make shift to even speak, you see,

Fortified by the sip of . . . why, *t is wine,

Velletri, — and not vinegar and gall,

So changed and good the times grow! Thanks, kind Sir!

Oh, but one sip's enough! I want my head

To save my neck, there's work awaits me still.

How cautious and considerate . . . aie, aie, aie,

Nor your fault, sweet Sir! Come, you take to heart

An ordinary matter. Law is law.

Noblemen were exempt, the vulgär thought,

From racking; but, since law thinks otherwise,

I have been put to the rack: all's over now,

And neither wrist — what men style, out of Joint:

If any härm be, 'tis the shoulder-blade,

The left one, that seems wrong i* the socket, — Sirs,

Much could not happen, I was quick to faint,

Being past my prime of life, and out of health.

In short, I thank you, — yes, and mean the word.

Needs must the Court be slow to understand

How this quite novel form of taking pain,

This getting tortured merely in the flesh,

Amounts to almost an agreeable change

In my case, me fastidious, plied too much

With opposite treatment, used (forgive the joke)

To the rasp-tooth toying with this brain of mine,

And, in and out my heart, the play o' the probe.

Four years have I been operated on

r the soul, do you see — its tense or tremulous part —

My self-respect, my care for a good name,

Pride in an old one, love of kindred — just

A mother, brothers, sisters, and the like,

That looked up to my face when days were dim,

And fancied they found light there — no one spot, Foppishly sensitive, but has paid its pang. That, and not this you now oblige me with, That was the Vigil-torment, if you please!"

Caponsacchi's account of his lif e reveals what the lif e of a priest at that time might be, without arousing criticism on the part of the Church. The slackness was due to Jesuitical influence. They winked at anything by means of which they could serve their own ambitions for the aggrandizementoftheir order.

"I begin. Yes, I am one of your body and a priest. Also I am a younger son o' the House Oldest now, greatest once, in my birth-town Arezzo, I recognize no equal there — (I want all argumenta, all sorts of arms That seem to serve, — use this for a reason, wait!) Not therefore thrust into the Church, because O' the piece of bread one gets there. We were first Of Fiesole, that rings still with the fame Of Capo-in-Sacco our progenitor: When Florence ruined Fiesole, our folk Migrated to the victor-city, and there Flourished, — our palace and our tower attest, In the Old Mercato, — this was years ago, Four hundred, füll, — no, it wants fourteen just. Our arms are those of Fiesole itself, The shield quartered with white and red: a branch Are the Salviati of us, nothing more. That were good help to the Church ? But better still —

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Not simply f or the advantage of my birth

I' the way of the world, was I proposed for priest;

But because there's an illustration, late

I' the day, that's loved and looked to as a saint

Still in Arezzo, he was bishop of,

Sixty years since: he spent to the last doit

His bishop's-revenue among the poor,

And used to tend the needy and the sick,

Barefoot, because of his humility.

He it was, — when the Granduke Ferdinand

Swore he would raze our city, plough the place

And sow it with salt, because we Aretines

Had tied a rope about the neck, to hale

The statue of his f ather f rom its base

For hate's sake, — he availed by prayers and teara

To pacify the Duke and save the town.

This was my f ather's f ather's brother. You see,

For his sake, how it was I had a right

To the seifsame office, bishop in the egg,

So, grew i' the garb and prattled in the school,

Was made expect, from infancy almost,

The proper mood o' the priest; tili time ran by

And brought the day when I must read the vows,

Declare the world renounced, and undertake

To become priest and leave probation, — leap

Over the ledge into the other life,

Having gone trippingly hitherto up to the height

O'er the wan water. Just a vow to read!

I stopped short awe-struck. 'How shall höhest flesh Engage to keep such vow inviolate, How much less mine ? I know myself too weak, Unworthy! Choose a worthier stronger man!' And the very Bishop smiled and stopped my mouth

In its mid-protestation. 'Incapable?

Qualmish of conscience ? Thou ingenuous boy!

Clear up the clouds and cast thy scruples far!

I satisfy thee there's an easier sense

Wherein to take such vow than suits the first

Rough rigid reading. Mark what makes all smooth,

Nay, has been even a solace to myself!

The Jews who needs must, in their synagogue,

Utter sometimes the holy name of God,

A thing their superstition boggles at,

Pronounce aloud the ineffable sacrosanct, —

How does their shrewdness help them ? In this wise;

Another set of sounds they Substitute,

Jumble so consonants and vowels — how

Should I know ? — that there grows from out the old

Quite a new word that means the very same —