SOME ADVENTURES UNDER THE MAY LAWS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 175, 4 August 1876, Page 7

SOME ADVENTURES UNDER THE MAY LAWS.

[From the 'Month.'] A young pries'-, one of the many German confessors of our day, has •written a simple account of the persecution which he has undergone. As he modestly snys, it is no greater than that which thousands of his brethren have suffered, less, indeed, than that which has been the lot of many. But still, for that very reason, it is a fair specimen of the treatment received from the men of " culture " by numbers of his countrymen, simply for doing their duty. He tells his story to all true-hearted Catholics, in the hope that their faith may be strengthened, their courage animated, and their love to the Church and their brethren deepened by the " ower true tale "of injustice and oppression, of patience and fidelity. As the sympathy he claims is not for himself, but for his cause, he does not tell his name, but writes as " Eenitentus " — a very German way of expressing his resistance to unlawful authority.

In the October of 1873, the year of the too celebrated May Laws, our author was appointed by his bishop to the parish of N . He found the presbytery locked, the key being in the pocket of the mayor, and so with his goods and chattels he made his entrance at the back. Next morning, the mayor appeared, and gave him notice to quit. Eenitentus declined, and after some blustering, the mayor went into the village and summoned the people to turn out the furniture. Not one of them would stir, and the demenagement had to be effected by the gendarmes. The pastor | and his belongings were housed by one of his parishioners, and the next step was the serving of a formal notice by the mayor, setting forth that the bishop's nomination was null and void, having been made without previous notification to the " Ober-prasident," and that the performance of any of his functions as parish priest would expose him to the full severity of the new laws. A similar document was addressed to the Ecclesiastical [Council, and to the parishioners, while the schoolmaster was charged to refuse his pastor admission to the school, and to give information in case of his presuming to instruct the children of his flock in their religion. This schoolmaster, a young man of advanced opinions, was directed to undertake all the religious teaching himself. Our poor Eenitentus, thus regularly outlawed, began to ask himself in much bewilderment what duties the Government conceived were left to a priest to whom Church and school were forbidden ground. It had been hinted pretty broadly, that by adding the magical prefix " old," to his title of " Catholic priest," all difficulties would be over, and insult aud persecutions exchanged for respectful deference and a fat benefice. But then, as he says — he had a conscience.

Next came a summons to appear before the mayor, to apswer to divers charges. He had baptized children, nurses and sponsors could swear it ; said Mass — & gendarme had heard him ; preached — the " Liberal " schoolmaster had even taken notes of the sermon ; buried the dead — the gravedigger's evidence was read. No notice being taken of this summons, another followed to appear before the magistrates of Treves, and as the culprit neither appeared nor paid the fine incurred by his contumacy, his furniture was put up to auction in the street. The poor priest sold everything to his friendly host, to save from the hammer the things his mother had pinched herself to buy, and then, there being nothing but himself to seize, he Avas sentenced to the payment of a heavier fine or to a month's imprisonment. Accordingly, in the spring of 1874, he was arrested, just as he was leaving the altar after saying Mass. The scene was one which has been often acted in Germany, and which ■will never be forgotten by many a faithful pastor and flock. The news spread quickly through the village, and the church was thronged with men, women, and children, weeping aloud and eager for a last blessing.

Then followed couifort, counsel, and the words, That make a man feel strong in speaking truth, as he bade them, in a broken voice, cling closely and faithfully, come what might, to the one holy, Catholic, Eoman Church, be true to the Pope, to their bishops, and to the priests appointed by them, and to pray for him who was forced from them. He could hardly tear himself from the poor people who accompanied him to the station, cheering him as he went, till in obedience to him, they kept silence. " This sort of thing makes one's duty hard work," said the gendarme ,• " I would rather arrest a hundred murderers than one priest." " Why so ? Don't we follow quietly ? " " Quietly enough ; but you see it makes me feel the culprit. I ■would rather break stones than have much more of this work."

" You are only doing what you are obliged to do : the responsibility lies with yoxir superiors." " That's all very well, but it is not a pleasant business, and my family are the worse for it. Why, my wife can't get so much as a drop of milk in the village, because she is my wife." " That is not fair : and when I come out of prison I shall see to it."

The prison was the old Dominican convent at Treves, and the venerable Bishop of the diocese and several priests were confined there. The thought gave encouragement as well as pain : " Dollinger was wrong when he talked of a thousand priests who think like him ; but I can say that a thousand priests not only think, but act and suffer like me ! The unbelieving enemy who persecutes, scorns, and insults us, must bow to the fact that, in spite of prison, banishment, and hunger, the whole Catholic priesthood stands firm as one man in fidelity to the Church, and will not trample on their convictions and their conscience for the sake of worldly goods. This is the strength, the unity of the Church, which is rooted in nothing human, and which, therefore, does not stand and fall with human weakness. Here is her divine character shown. If the Catholic Church were the work of man, if we priests had not the living consciousness of her divinity, how easily would hundreds of the clergy who have boon victims of the May Laws have yielded f a

the weakness of nature ! On the one side sharp suffering, on the other temptation ! But it was not so, and therefore, because the results of the ' war of culture' are nothing, indeed, for the Government, but great moral victories for the Church, the continuation of the war cannot bring about the issue desired by the State. On the one side there is physical force, on the other men's consciences ; and they are not to be crushed by legal proceedings, gendarmes, arrests, ijnprisonment, or banishment." The prison discipline and diet were hard enough. ' The latter consisted entirely of soup, more or less watery, known as " slime soup," so that, " a potato would have been hailed as a delicacy," and there was real suffering, from hunger through lack of all solid food. The bed "might be called a rack; it was an iron frame supporting a narrow sack tightly stuffed with straw, which reminded one more of the trunk of a tree than of anything, much too short into the bargain. . . . The pillows were two bits of rag filled with straw, very like the unleavened cakes of the Jews, both as to breadth and thickness." Books and writing materials were, at first, forbidden. Later on, this severity was relaxed, and poor Eenitentus made his first acquaintance with Silvio Pellico in a very suitable place for appreciating his book, which he thinks ought to be in every prison library. His pockets had been cleared, and the solitary prisoner vainly longed for the solace of looking at his watch or smoking a cigar. Well may he say that it is easy for the Liberal Press to make light of the imprisoned priests and bishops. Theirs is not indeed a martyrdom like that of the early Christians, yet surely such a solitary confinement as he describes is full of suffering, which, he truly says, is all the more keenly felt by men of education and refinement. A man who was condemned to a fortnight of it for some offence against the laws of the Press wrote : " I am certainly no Ultramontane, but I marvel at the steadfastness, the courage, and the fidelity to their convictions of the Catholic priests." The only recreation permitted to the priests was a " walk," as it was called, in the inner court of the prison, in the centre of which was a pump round and round which they went, " like horses in a circus trotting round the groom who stands in the middle." One can imagine what these meetings must have been to the prisoners. Here our friend made acquaintance with Franz Schneiders, of St. Laurence's Church, who had not then appeared in the columns of the * Titnes.' He was a young man of twentysix, full of kindliness, "an excellent priest, and a first-rate companion." At this time he was strong and healthy-looking; but " seventeen months of confinement and prison diet have changed him now." Then we hear of an old priest, whose health is very frail, but who is a pattern of fortitude and cheerful trust : "he never complained, was always in good spirits, and put all his confidence in God, who never forsakes His own."

Another was the life of his companions ; full of a spirit of fun which no amount of " slime soup " and " straw-sacking could repress, and which prompted him to play off a trick on the overseer, a conceited fellow, who gave himself airs of superiority and imagined himself born for higher things. One day, when the prisoners were discussing some historical question, the overseer informed them that history was among his numerous accomplishments. This inspired the mischievous prisoner with the idea of dictating to him a sketch of the battle of Cannse in the. hope that he would boast of the performance as his own. Eenitentus had not been long back in his cell, when the overseer appeared with a paper — " a historical study," which he offered for his perusal. It ran as follows :

THE BATTLE OF CANNJ3.

Csesar liad crossed the Rubicon. On the one bank stood Leonidas with, ten elephants and six four-pounders ; on the other Caius Julius Csosar, by Poinpey's Pillar- The battle raged long amid the snioke of batteries. At last Leonidas sprang upon tho foremost elephant, rushed into the ranks of the enemy, and telegraphed to Rome : " I came, saw, and conquered." After a, while, Renitentus was placed in another part of the prison with six companions, a relief for which he was intensely thankful. In spite of all their hardships they were cheerful and contented : the one great loss remained, for which nothing could make vp — they could not offer the Holy Sacrifice. Twice a week Mass was said for the prisoners in the prisonchapel, and there, kneeling among criminals of all grades and. ages, from young boys to grey-haired men, was the Bishop of the diocese, his calm face and bearing telling plainly that he bore his troubles cheerfully for the good of the Church and in defence of his convictions. Such, indeed, was the feeling of all. Once, when the author expressed his sorrow at seeing the sick priest who has been mentioned before growing paler and thinner day by day, he answered, smiling : "If hundreds and thousands go to battle full of enthusiasm, and endure all sorts of labours and privations for the sake of an idea — for the love of their country — why should not I sacrifice everything for the sake of so great and glorious an idea as tha-t which is being fought for in this battle ? " On the whole, the warders and overseers behaved well to the imprisoned priests. "We can hardly bear it," said one of them, " and we are ashamed to set this trough before you j " but we cau and dare do nothing for you." Renitentus was kept in prison five months and a half, at the end of which time, as he says, the Government appeared to have become convinced that he was an incorrigible subject, entirely impenetrable to the ideas of " culture," in spite of the opportunity which had been afforded him of meditating thereupon at his leisure. His return to his people was a gala ; thousands met him on the road ; the whole place was gay with flags and garlands, and his room was dressed with bouquets of flowers. But much as he was touched by the affectionate welcome, he felt obliged to repress all these outward demonstrations, for which the good people were likely enough to pay dearly. He had seen more than one in the prison he had just left whose wtrst crime was a "hurrah!" to greet the return of his pastor.

So ends the prison experience which forms the first part of the story. The second and more interesting portion tells the tale of his wanderings, the " Odyssey," as he calls it, which followed the imprisonment. Before resuming his duties among his flock, Renitentus went to recruit his strength by a short visit to his relations, and during this time there appeared an official warrant for his capture, with a full description of his person, notwithstanding which he returned to N , where the first thing that met his eyes was a notice nailed to his door, ordering him to quit the district ("Bezirk") within twenty-four hours. The prescribed time had long since elapsed, and he left the notice where it was. Next morning, after saying Mass in a densely crowded church, he he was arrested a second time, and the heart-breaking scene of six months ago was repeated. "Where are you taking me?" he inquired of his captor. "I do not know, sir ; my orders were to arrest you, that is all." He was conducted to the Mayor's Court, where the extraordinary proposal was made to him that he should defray the expenses of a conveyance for himself and the gendarme to X , and on his naturally declining, he was told that he must, in that case, go on foot. It was a three days' journey, and he said it was out of his power to do so ; so they locked him up in the engine-house while the question was referred to a higher authority, and a doctor consulted, who certified his inability to walk the distance. A carriage was offered by a gentleman in the neighborhood ; but they had not gone far before a gendarme rode up, stopped the carriage, and demanded the written permission of the Landrath for its use. No such document was forthcoming, so the* poor wearied priest was ordered) out, and proceeded on foot, while the man in charge who had accompanied him went back for the written order. The scene which followed is one which could hardly be believed on less credible evidence, and the sufferer himself says that if had been described to him he should have thought it untrue, or at least grossly exaggerated. The gendarme rode his horse at the prisoner, so that he was literally upon him {auf den, Naeken). If he attempted to get out of the way the man followed, the horse rearing, so that the priest was every moment in danger of being ridden down; and hundreds of persons who witnessed this disgraceful scene cried out to implore the gendarme to keep at a greater distance. " It's the way we do to them all ! " was the brutal answer. And so the priest was. driven on, like a hunted animal, for an hour, before the carriage|re-appeared with the order for its use. It was noon before he biokehis fast at a village inn where the good people not only set their best before him, and gave him provisions for the rest of the journey, but absolutely refused all payment — a proof of generous devotedness greater than it may seem at first sight, when we consider that far slighter marks of attachment to a faithful priest have been often treated as crimes "by the " Liberal " Prussian Government. Late in the evening a halt was made for the night, and at the Mayor's office Renitentus recognized in the presiding authority an old schoolfellow whom he had helped over many an imposition in former days, but who now ignored his outstretched hand, observed a strictly official demeanor, asked his name, and consigned him for the nisrht to the ruins of an old castle, which did duty as a temporary prison. Next morning the journey was continued on foot, as leave for using the carriage had not been given any further. This time the gendarme in charge turned out a very good fellow, in spite of a ferociously martial expression. After some hesitation he agreed to his prisoner's proposal to lighten the fatigue at the cost of lengthening the journey, by stopping at the different presbyteries on the way for a short visit. The glass of wine which he got on these occasions no doubt reconciled him to the delay, but he confessed that he was heartily ashamed of his employment ; and though he stared a little at first when the peasants greeted his prisoner with the good old Christian salutation, " Praised be Jesus Christ," it was not long before he joined him in the answer, " For ever, amen." It was quite dark when they crossed the district frontier, and the gendarme shook hands with his prisoner as he asked him where he thought of going ? "I have no notion, my good fellow ; but I must look out for a lodging somewhere." And then and there they parted, high among the hills, with a keen wind driving the snow in the face of the exile. He was a perfect stranger to the neighborhood, and so, no sooner had his companion left him, than he turned back, recrossed the forbidden frontier, and walked back for a good two hours to the house of the confrere he had last visited, who was greatly astonished to see him again, bxit gladly fed and housed him. " These days of ours," said he, " remind one of the fate of the French priests in the Revolution. The few who took the constitutional oath were favoured by the Government, but despised by the people for sacrificing their consciences to the Moloch of the State. Even Napoleon said as muchj but history praises the others now, though they had to wander about, to lose their position, and sometimes to die by the guillotine. And history will one day pass the same judgment on those German priests and bishops who esteemed conscience more highly thin a fat benefice."

After a day's rest Renitentus, provided by his friend with the necessary funds, made his way to the nearest railway, and so, right " into the jaws of the wolf," that is, to the capital of the forbidden district, where he bought a suit of clothes in character with the part he had resolved to play, that of commis-voyageur to an imaginary wine-merchant. Thus equipped, he could defy the police officials, especially as h<* now wore a thick beard, a la Dr. Falk. He walked with mingled feelings of sadness and thankfulness round the prison which still held the venerable bishop and so many of his brethren, and then went to the Cathedral to pray for strength and courage for them, himself, his flock, and all true German Catholics.

Two days later, the stage-coach was taking him to the place which he had been banished from a week ago. Little did the gendarme (the same who had behaved so brutally on the road) guess who was the travestied person in the corner, when he looked into the coach at the journey's end. He passed him again in the village,

but who could suspect a recalcitrant priest in the singer of so "patriotic " a song as loh bin ein Preusse : Kennt ihr tneine Farben ? — " lam a Prussian : do you know my colors ? " which stood him in good stead on more occasions than one. His own house, he knew, would not be safe, so he only stayed there long enough 'to pack a few necessaries, and then went to that of a friend, who took care to let the people know that their* pastor was among them, and would say Mass early in the morning. JSvery place in .the churoh was full, and the sobs of his hearers often interrupted him when he charged them in a few earnest words from the pulpit to be true to the faith of their fathers, and pledged himself, come*what might, to remain faithful to the Church and to his bishop. After Mass, a sum of money was handed to him, whioh had been collected without his knowledge for his support in the wandering, uncertain existence which lay before him. - ' Of course the presence of the contumacious priest could not * remain a secret long. He had heard confessions after Mass, given Communion, administered Baptism, and visited the sick ; and by eight the police were astir. In due time a gendarme presented bim- , self at the house where he was lodged, but his host had already placed himself in a safe hiding-place, safe, that is to say, from fear of discovery, but not without some danger. It was a dark corner of the " well-house," on a few boards laid over the water, behind ♦he turning-wheel. The house was searched from cellar to loft, beds and presses were rummaged, casks overturned, even the door of the well-house opened. Here, however, the gendarme did not care to pursue his researches too far, and left the house with the promise " to wring the confounded fellow's neck when he did catch him."

(To be concluded next week).