it to the faithful by recalling the triumph won by united Christendom against the Saracenic invasion, a triumph which he attributes to the Rosary. In the days when the Moslem hordes threatened to bring all Europe under the yoke of their superstition and barbarity,' the Pontiff Pius V., his successor tells us, having exhorted the Princes of Christendom to defend the common cause, 'sought that the most powerful Mother of God, through the prayers of the Rosary, should hasten propitiously to help.' Pope Leo dwells on the grandeur of the spectacle then presented to heaven and earth. One company of the faithful, assembled near the Isthmus of Corinth, awaited with fearless daring the onset of the foe; while elsewhere a multitude of unarmed devotees 'called on Mary for aid,' supplicating her 'with the alternating prayers of the Rosary,' praying her to lead on the soldiers of Christendom to victory. She did answer their prayers,' for it is to the Madonna of the Rosary that Leo, with all his predecessors, from Pius V. to Gregory XIII., ascribes the great naval victory of Lepanto. Gregory, indeed, decreed that the anniversary of that victory should be consecrated, under the title of the Rosary, to 'Mary the Victorious.'

The constantly repeated Papal attribution to the Madonna of the Rosary of the Christian victory over invading Mahommedanism has had its due effect on the mind of Catholicism at large, and has disposed it to esteem Mary as the ruler of the universal earth, and as holding in her hands the issues of life and death, of victory and defeat.

It is a very short-sighted view of the Rosary and its influence which finds its exponents in historians such as Milner. We cannot with him regard this institution of Dominic as a matter' egregiously trifling,' though with him we regard the Rosary devotion as the degradation of prayer into a mere mechanical exercise. Milner speaks of it as an instance of 'the religious taste' of the days of Dominic. It is, so far as Romanism is concerned, in perfect harmony with the religious taste of to-day, and it still fatally subserves the original intention of its founder by offering to the soul that hungers

and thirsts after righteousness, not the Living Bread of the Word of God, but that poisonous substitute, the Marian Psalter, holding up Mary, not Christ, as the fittest object for devotion and as the saviour from sin and its penalties. It is not as a trivial, a puerile aid to devotion that the Rosary has been so earnestly and persistently pressed on the attention of the Catholic world by so astute a Pontiff as Leo XIII. Out of the long list of his Encyclicals, no fewer than eleven were devoted to the championship of the Rosary. It would to-day be found a weapon still very serviceable to Papal diplomatists for the 'conversion' of any twentieth-century Albigenses, or for ensuring victory in any Papal contest with modern prince or potentate. Not for nothing have the countless Rosary confraternities been enrolled under the banner of Mary.

The Romish clergy of to-day laugh in their sleeves at those who blindly deem the Rosary movement trivial, who look on it as a mere matter of beads and prayers. They know what this 'devotion' has accomplished in the past, what it is capable of accomplishing in the future.

A Liberal Italian paper scoffed at the Rosary. The Papal organ controlled by the Archbishop of Naples, La Libertà Cattolica, replied promptly: What would you have, gentlemen? Before you were born or thought of that toy of ours, that string of fifty-eight beads, had already won victories far more brilliant than yours. . . . Ferdinand of Castile, under the banner of the Rosary, swept the Moors from Spain; under that banner Don John of Austria and Marc Antonio Colonna destroyed the Turkish fleet at Lepanto; Louis XIII. of France captured the Huguenot stronghold of La Rochelle; Poland repulsed the Muscovites; and John Sobieski raised the Turkish siege of Vienna; while in Austria. Charles VI. gave freedom to Hungary.'

Here are proud triumphs of the Rosary! But the Libertà Cattolica goes further, and shames not to boast how, under the Rosary banner, the great Knight Crusader Simon de Montfort' slew 'not less than twenty thousand Albigenses.' The Rosary devotees of to-day are proud of the ferocious De

Montfort, as though they were his contemporary bigots! The spirit is unchanged. We know a little of history!' is their boast. 'From Toulouse to Lutzen, from Caspé to La Rochelle, from Granada to Vienna, the most splendid victories have been won by the Holy Rosary. . . . It is only your ignorant stupidity that makes you deride it '!

ΧΙ

OUR LADY OF THE ROSARY AND ST. CATHERINE

S

6 THE BANNER OF THE POPES-THE BANNER OF GOD'

IGNOR BARTOLO LONGO would have us accept New

Pompei and its institutions as signs of the renewing of the Papacy and of its fresh vitality; that New Pompei, amid the materialism, unbelief, and corruption of the age, stands forth the herald of a better and more hopeful religious epoch for Italy and for the world. In the pure spiritual atmosphere of the Sanctuary we shall feel, so he says, the thrilling of the new life of Italy, the pulses that stir the great heart of the nations, the growing tendency towards universal peace. These nobler, higher impulses are, he says, the life and soul of Pompei. And yet another attraction is set forth on behalf of the Sanctuary. Its champions and promoters are lay rather than clerical; its founders are neither priest nor nun, but a Neapolitan lawyer and his Countess-wife. The lay element is to have fair play at last, and the weariness of everyday existence is to be lessened by noble spiritual activities.

Alas! some who have been behind the scenes receive such statements with disappointing scepticism. 'Is Signor Longo a layman?' they mutter. Nay, he is thrice a priest.' According to Romanelli, once a coadjutor, but now an adversary of Bartolo, the title of Papessa was pinned to the skirts of the Countess de Fusco by no less a person than Monsignor Formisano, the late Bishop of Nola. A priest appealed to the Bishop, complaining of the Countess as intermeddling too much in religious matters. The Bishop answered: 'I can

not hinder it. Don Bartolo has taken into his head to play the Pope, and the Countess to play the Papessa.'

And it is no new thing, as Signor Longo would have us believe, for the Roman Catholic laity to be gathered into associations for devout and philanthropic purposes. Rome has ever been wise enough to enlist the sympathies of the laity in this way. There is the Third Order of the Dominicans, the Third Order of St. Francis, each controlled by the General of its Order, each composed of women as well as of men. There are the lay followers of St. Francis de Sales, the Salesians; there is the Brotherhood of St. Vincent de Paola. There are many societies, such as the Misericordia of Florence, engaged in works of mercy. There is the Society of Catholic Youth, which inspires and directs all the Romish young men's associations; and so on, ad infinitum.

Don Bartolo was too shrewd not to appreciate to the full the value of lay co-operation. A priesthood has to be paid, but lay workers would work and pray, and even pay-a priceless consideration. He found the organization he required ready to his hand in the Third or lay Order of St. Dominic, the Order of the Rosary.

We would not depreciate the devotion and the heroic work of many of these lay associations-we honour those Sisters of Mercy who train the young and who tend the sick, both in civic hospitals and on the field of battle; but it is a grievous reflection that all these associations of devoted workers are but so many regiments fighting under the banner of the Madonna-Saviour, generalled and directed by the Romish clergy to subserve the aims of ambitious, imperious Rome. And Don Bartolo is not the one to assert the people's rights, and turn the currents of superstition into a swelling stream of Christian truth and philanthropy. He, too, is a vowed soldier of the Papacy.

He has told of the improvement effected in his wonderworking picture by the judicious metamorphosis of St. Rosa of Lima into St. Catherine of Siena. Indeed, he had acted with great judgment when making this change. For of all the Saints canonized by Rome, Catherine of Siena is the one