Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 22 June 1911, Page 1141

Current Topics

The Coronation “ It seems to be in the nature of things that rulers should have some emblem of authority, that this should be placed upon the head or brain-box, which is the seat of intellect and will-power, and that the assumption of power ; should be accompanied by public ceremonies of a more or less typical ;or . appropriate kind. Fillets, crowns, feathers, more or less intricate tatooing (as in the case of the Maoris), and the gorgeous or barbaric architectural head-adornments of South Sea Island and Siamese royalties, are all separate conceptions of what constitutes a suitable emblem of the rights and duties of king-ship. Among civilised peoples a simple fillet or band was the earliest symbol of rule. Like the chest of Auburn it contrived a double debt to pay —to point out the bearer of the kingly office and to confine the straying locks of his hair at a time when it was the fashion to leave it to grow like the locks of Absalom. The next advance upon the plain linen or woollen band was a fillet of gold. Such was the shape of the crown worn by Alexander the Great—the first Greek who bore this symbol of royal rank. The Jewish kings at least of later times, wore golden crowns. One of them, Joas, was crowned in the temple of Joiada in the days when the cruel Athalia reigned in the land. And David had the crown taken from the defeated Rabbah and placed on his own head, just as in a later day the Irish king ‘ Malachi wore the collar of gold which he won from the proud invader.’ The crown or head-dress of the high-priest consisted of a linen band adorned with a plate of gold upon the part which surmounted the forehead of the wearer. * In the historic times of the Roman Republic military decorations took the form, not of medals, but of crowns of a more or less perishable nature. There was a golden crown for the soldier who first scaled the walls of a besieged city held by the enemy, and other crowns for those who first crossed an entrenchment, for the naval officer who won a notable victory at sea, and for the leader who delivered a Roman garrison from blockade by an enemy. When the Republic gave way to the Empire, the rulers at first used a plain band of gold as an emblem of their state and dignity. This underwent various modifications until it attained its utmost degree of complication and exaggerated significance in the radiated crown— sort of golden aureole which indicated that the wearer claimed divine honors Assumes the god, Affects to nod. And seems to shake the spheres. The Anointing Ceremony ‘ Theodosius,’ says a recognised authority on the subject, £ was the first Christian emperor to receive the blessing of the Church.’ This was in the fourth century. The Gothic king Wamba was anointed with holy oil at Toledo, in Spain, in the year 672. Floury, writing of this incident, says; r This is the first example that I find of the unction of kings.’ The Catholic Church adopted from the Jewish the ancient ceremony of anointing sovereigns to their office, and this custom has been retained to the' present day, and, as is shown elsewhere in our columns, has even been practised at the coronation services of English sovereigns to the present time. King George’s Crown 1 The English royal crown is a slow and gradual evolution from the Anglo-Saxon fillet of gold set with pearls. The first Norman king wore a crown from the band of which ■ there rose four trefoils. ■; The idea has been gradually elaborated till it found its highest development in the tall and costly crown, studded with gems, surmounted by a cross, and set oyer a cap of ermine, made for the coronation of the late Queen Victoria. It was valued at £113,000. The present King, however, following the example of his father, has reverted to the plainer and loss ornate Tudor crown. ■ . ■ V Other Crowns The most remarkable crown in Europe at the present time is the historic Iron Crown of Lombardy (Italy). It is preserved in the treasury of the famous old fourteenthcentury Church of Monza, and. consists of a handsome gold diadem, within which is a ribbon of iron, which is said to have been forged from a nail of the Cross on which the Saviour of the world hung on Calvary. It was used at the coronation of Charlemagne, and many of his successors, It was also with this notable relic of the far-past day that Napoleon I. was crowned King of Italy at Milan in 1805.

, The Pope, says Alzog, ‘ wears a triple crown to symbohse the Church militant, the Church suffering, and the Church triumphant.’ The use.of a crown by the Popes is probably as ancient as the temporal power itself. ‘The whole history of the Papal tiara, or triple crown,’ says another writer, 'is uncertain. Nicholas I. (858-867). is said by some to have been, the first to unite the princely crown with the mitre, though . the Bollandists think that this was done before his time. The common statement that Boniface VIII (about 1300) added. the second crown is false, for Hefele show's that Innocent 111. is represented wearing a second crown in a painting older than the time of Boniface. Urban V. (1362-1370) is supposed to have added the third crown. The tiara is place on the lopes head, at his coronation, by the second Cardinaldeacon, in the loggia of St. Peter’s, with the words: Receive the tiara adorned with three crowns, and know that thou art Father of princes and kings, ruler of the VVorid, Vicar of our Saviour Jesus Christ.’ At ceremonies of a purely spiritual character, the Pope wears the mitre, not the tiara. - ’ Other Royal Titles The title ‘ Defender of the Faith ’—to which reference was made in last week’s issue—is not the only one which the opes have conferred upon Christian monarchs as a reward for services rendered to the cause of religion, trance, for instance, was long known in the heyday of her religious enthusiasm and zeal as the eldest daughter of the Church, and it was consonant with the fitness of ‘M Ug ? A hat her T K ln S, should be styled b y the Pope the Most Christian King and the ' Eldest Son of the Church the Spanish r monarch was known as ‘the Most Catholic uV<n le former Portuguese Emperors of Brazil were called Perpetual Defenders’; and Austria’s sovereign is addressed as His Apostolic Majesty ’—the full title of his office inns as follows: ‘His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Ymstnlic r- ° f A V stria ’ Ki «g of Bohemia, and Apostolic King of Hungary.’ A Lesson in Manners ,| According to Pope, ‘An honest man’s the noblest work or trod. A later poet defines a gentleman as he Who claims no honor from descent of blood, But that which makes him noble, makes him good. While a third thus describes the superiority of ‘Nature’s gentleman : But Nature with a matchless hand Sends forth her nobly born, And laughs the paltry‘attributes ~ Of wealth and rank to scorn. She moulds with care a spirit rare. Half human, half divine, And cries exultant, Who can make A gentleman like mine?’ * We have been reminded of these eulogies on the true gentleman , by a. story quoted in the current Are Maria winch m too good to be lost in these days of increasing boorish ness and unmannerliness. ‘Referring,’ says our contemporary, ‘to the decay of good manners, now apparent on all sides, and most strikingly shown by the lack of courtesy, even of ordinary civility, toward women, R. C. Gleaner, of the Catholic Columbian-Record, quotes-" a S story, told in + i recent article by Mr. Thomas Nelson 1 age, of an old gentleman of his acquaintance who, on a journey to Niagara Fads, in a crowded car, noticed with no less indignation than surprise that many men remained aisled w {“ 6 ™ nen > y °T lln ? and old, were standing in the aisle. 1 lesently an Irish workman, who had evidently been expecting a general movement on the part of his sex stood up and offered his seat to a lady near him, saying:’ I always rise for the ladies,—my mother was a lady.”— Ves, added Mr. Pages friend, “and her son “is a frr Maria <!!/'? b ° Ple f ant to kno < adds the , Mana \ that these remarks were overheard by all who should have been on their feet, and that the Irishman’s rebuke was not lost on a single one of them.’ . ‘School Room Humor’ P be trouble with most of the school-boy howlers that are served up for our delectation is that they are either as-venerable as an archdeacon-to quote Dean Hole’s expressive phrase-or they are quite obviously ‘faked’ The cm lent issue of our live eontemporarv, the Triad con tains, however, a selection of children’s'“ witticisms which are alleged to be both new and true. Our contemporary draws chiefly on the recent volume on School-room Kumor by Dr. Macnamara, M.P.; and that author himself vouches

for the authenticity of most of the specimens provided. The following are instances in which similarity in sound between two expressions has proved a pitfall to the pupil; ; The Equator is a menaoeri lion running round the centre of the earth. ; - .. , ... A focus is a thing like a mushroom/ but if you eat it you will feel different to a mushroom. - The cause of the Peasants’ Revolt was that a shilling poultice was put on everybody over sixteen. . / Occasionally - impudence, rather than innocence, is at the root of the trouble as in the case of est Ham School Board boy who told the inspector that ‘ W.H.S.B.’ over the door of the school stood for ‘ What Ho! She Humps.’ The following have more or less of a religious connection: • ‘What is a martyr?’ asked the inspector. ‘A watercart.’ A water-cart?’ Yes, sir.’ The inspector was puzzled; but after long cogitation he recalled the fact that he was in the parish of St. George-the-Martyr. This parish does its own contracting, and the boy had seen St. George-the-Martyr ’ painted on the ater-carts. :: A London infant school. ‘The Raising of the Widow’s Son-’ illustration, Religious Tract Society Scripture Roll. Story told by teacher. Pointing to the bier; ‘What is lie Tying on?’ Ans.: ‘A stretcher.’ Dues.: ‘"What is a stretcher?’ Ans.: ‘Wat lydies rides on when they yds drunk!’ A dfear Tittle child was saying her prayers aloud beside her mother’s knee, and added a prayer on her own account. ‘ Oh, please, dear God, make me pure, absolutely pure, as Epps’ cocoa.’ The last-quoted story is by no means as new as it is alleged to be; but it is one.of those we would not willingly let die. To the same category belong the two following: ‘ Parliament is a place where they go up to London to talk about Birmingham! _ " The conquest of Ireland was begun in 1170, and is still going on. But probably the best story in the collection is one in which the inspector himself received a very palpable hit: The school had been closely questioned by the. inspector in Scripture, and at last a bright idea seemed to strike him, for he said: Suppose Christ came into this room now and offered to perform a miracle for you,! what would you ask Him to do?’ There was silence for some moments, and then up went a hand. The inspector asked for a reply, which was -.‘Cast out a devil, sir!’ ‘Lead, Kindly Light ■/ Newman’s great hymn, ‘Lead, kindly light’—probably the most Widely-known , hymn in the English language was published at ,first under the not very felicitous title of ‘ The Pillar of Cloud ’; but the opening words—which express the dominant idea of the whole poem—gradually became the popular and permanent title. The circumstances under which the opening lines suggested themselves to Newman are related in the May Catholic World, by William Henry Sheran, whose version is presumably as authentic as it is interesting. Before quoting it, however, let us first give Newman’s own account of the writing of the hymn. It was written, at the close of a visit to Italy, in 1833—some twelve . years before his reception into the Catholic Church. ‘ I was aching,’ he writes in his Apologia ‘to get home; yet for want of a vessel I was kept at Palermo for three weeks. - T.began to visit the churches, and they calmed my impatience, though I did not attend any services* . I knew nothing of the Presence of the Blessed Sacrament there. At last I got off in an orange boat, bound for Marseilles. Then/ it was that I wrote the lines, “Lead, kindly light,” which have since become well .known,’ / / - - T * This account is quite consistent with that of the Catholic World writer, which is as follows: The story is related of him (Newman), that when travelling in Sicily, shortly before he wrote the immortal hymn, ‘Lead, kindly light,’ he took refuge, one day, from a blinding storm in the recesses of a large church, and found himself before a shrine of the Virgin. A solitary taper glimmered before the statue and ; served to make more awful the gloom around. A tropical storm with vivid flashes of lightning and ; intermittent thunder raged outside. But a wilder storm'raged ■ in his soul; he was tortured by doubts and fears, those fearful wrestlings of a human spirit turning upon a bed of pain; terribly in earnest about its eternal salvation and beseeching heaven .to rend the veil. The prayer of the Grecian hero seemed to tremble on his lips; “ Give me to see, and Ajax asks no more.” The modern hero who was to shake or rather restore a nation’s faith, sat silently. before the Madonna and the calm beautiful

face carved in“ the richest Carrara, lit by the taper’s" glow, seemed to be gazing as from another world. He looked up at that ..winsome countenance, as countless mortals hi trouble have done before, but not as yet with the eye of Catholic faith. It was the. taper at her feet that suggested the title of his hymn—the “Kindly Light that came through her favor to enlighten those who sit in the valley of the shadow of death.’ ,*; . . The hymn, written as it was in Newman’s Protestant days, is not so well known, . perhaps, amongst Catholics as amongst non-Catholics; and many of our . readers will be glad to have the verses: / .. Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead Thou me on; The night is dark and I am far from home. Lead Thou me on. Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me. I ms not always thus, nor pray’d that Thou f Shouldst lead me on; I loved to choose and see my path; but now Lead Thou me on. I loved the garish day, and spite of fears Pride ruled my will; remember not past years. , So long Thy. power hath blest me, sure it still Will lead me on,. O’er moor and.fen, o’er crag and torrent, till The night is gone; And with the morn those angel faces smile, Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.