Born: Socrates, Grecian
philosopher (6th Thargelion), Inc. 468; Joseph de Tournefort,
botanist, 1656; Dr. Adam Smith, political
economist, 1723, Kirkcaldy; Ernest Augustus, King of
Hanover, 1771.
Died: Count D'Egmont
and Count Horn, beheaded at Brussels, 1568; John Henry
Hottinger, learned orientalist, 1667, drowned in River
Limmat; Rev. Dr.
Henry Sacheverell,
bombastic preacher,
1724; John Paisiello, musical composer, 1816, Naples; Carl
Maria
Von Veber, musical composer, 1826, London; T. H.
Lister, novelist, 1842, London; Jacques Pradier,
French sculptor, 1852.
Feast Day: St.
Dorotheus, of Tyre, martyr, 4th century; St. Doro theus
the Theban, abbot, 4th century.; Other Saints
named Dorotheus; St. Illidius, Bishop of Auvergne,
confessor, about 385; St. Boniface, Archbishop of Mentz, Apostle of Germany, and
martyr, 755.
ST.
BONIFACE, THE APOSTLE OF THE GERMANS
The true name of' this saint
was Winfrid, or Winfrith. He was the son of a
West-Saxon chieftain, and was born at Crediton, in
Devon-shire, about the year 680. Having shown from his
infancy a remarkable seriousness of character, he was
sent, when in his seventh year, to school in the
monastery at Exeter. He made rapid and great
proficiency in learning, and, having been ordained to
the priesthood about the year 710, he was soon
afterwards chosen by the West-Saxon clergy to
represent them in an important mission to the
Archbishop of Canterbury; and it was probably in the
course of it that he formed the design of seeking to
effect the conversion of the heathen Germans who
occupied central Europe. Remaining firm in his design,
he proceeded to Friesland in 716; but, on account of
obstacles caused by the unsettled state of the
country, he returned home and remained in England
until 718, in the autumn of which year he went through
France to Rome, where he formed a lasting friendship
with the Anglo-Saxon princess-nun Eadburga, better
known by her nickname of Bugga.
The pope approved of the
designs of Winfrid, and, in May 719, he gave him
authority to undertake the conversion of the
Thuringians. After making some converts in Thuringia,
where his success appears to have fallen short of his
anticipations, Boniface visited France, and went
thence to Utrecht, where his countryman Wilbrord was
preaching the gospel with success; but he soon
returned to the first scene of his own labours, where
he made many converts among the Saxons and Hessians.
In 723, the pope, Gregory II, invited him to Rome, and
there signified his approval of his missionary labours
by ordaining him a bishop, and formally renewing his
commission to convert the Germans. The pope at the
same time conferred upon him the name of Boniface, by
which he was ever afterwards known. After visiting the
court of Charles Martel, Boniface returned into
Germany, and there established himself in the
character of Bishop of the Hessians.
The favour shown by the pope
to Boniface had another object besides the mere desire
of converting pagans. The German tribes in the country
entrusted to his care had already been partially
converted�but it was by Irish monks, the followers of
Columbanus and St. Gall, who, like most of the
Frankish clergy, did not admit in its full extent the
authority of the pope, and were in other respects
looked upon as unorthodox and schismatical; and
Gregory saw in the great zeal and orthodoxy of
Boniface the means of drawing the German Christians
from heterodoxy to Rome. Accordingly, we find him in
the earlier period of his labours engaged more in
contentions with the clergy already established in
this part of Germany than with the pagans. In the
course of these, the pope himself was obliged
sometimes to check the zeal of his bishop. Still, in
his excursions through the wilds of the Hercynian
forest, the great resort of the pagan tribes, Boniface
and his companions were often exposed to personal
dangers. However, supported by the pope, and aided by
the exertions of a crowd of zealous followers, the
energetic missionary gradually overcame all obstacles.
In his choice of assistants he
seemed always to prefer those from his native country,
and he was joined by numerous Anglo-Saxon
ecclesiastics of both sexes. Among his Anglo-Saxon
nuns was St. Waltpurgis, so celebrated in German
legend. A bold proceeding on the part of the bishop
sealed the success of Christianity among the Hessians
and Thuringians. One of the great objects of worship
of the former was a venerable oak, of vast magnitude,
which stood in the forest at Geismar, near Fritzlar,
and which was looked upon, according to the Latin
narrative, as dedicated to Jupiter, probably to Woden.
Boniface resolved to destroy this tree; and the
Hessians, in the full belief that their gods would
come forward in its defence, seem to have accepted it
as a trial of strength between these and what they
looked upon merely as the gods of the Christians, so
that a crowd of pagans, as well as a large number of
the preachers of the gospel, were assembled to witness
it. Boniface seized the axe in his own hands, and,
after a few strokes, a violent wind which had arisen,
and of which he had probably taken advantage to apply
his axe to the side on which the wind came, threw the
tree down with a tremendous crash, which split the
trunk into four pieces. The pagans were struck with
equal wonder and terror; and, acknowledging that their
gods were conquered, they submitted without further
opposition. Boniface caused the tree to be cut up, and
built of it a wooden oratory dedicated to St. Peter.
In 732, a new pope, Gregory
III, ordained Boniface Archbishop of the Germans, and
he soon afterwards built two principal churches�that
of Fritzlar, dedicated to St. Peter; and that of
Amanaburg, where he had first established his
head-quarters, dedicated to St. Michael. From this
time the number of churches among the German tribes
increased rapidly. In 740, he preached with great
success among the Bagoarii, or people of Bavaria. He
subsequently divided their territory into four
dioceses, and ordained four bishops over them. About
this time a new field was opening to his zeal. The
throne of the Franks was nominally occupied by one of
a race of insignificant princes whose name was hardly
known out of his palace, while the sceptre was really
wielded by Charles Martel; and, as it was in the power
of the Church. of Rome to confirm the family of the
latter in supplanting their feeble rivals, they
naturally leaned towards the orthodox party, in
opposition to the schismatical spirit of the French
clergy.
In 741, Charles Martel died,
and his sons, Karlomann and Pepin, were equally
anxious to conciliate the pope. During the following
years several councils were held, under the influence
of Boniface, for the purpose of reforming the Frankish
Church, while the conversion of the Germans also
proceeded with activity. In 744, Boniface founded the
celebrated monastery of Fulda, over which he placed
one of his disciples, a Bavarian, named Sturm, in one
of the wildest parts of the Thuringian forest. In 745,
at the end of rather severe proceedings against some
of the Saxon ecclesiastics, the arch-bishopric of
Mentz, or Mayence, was created. Next year Karlomann
retired to a monastery, and left the entire kingdom of
the Franks to his brother Pepin. The design of
changing the Frankish dynasty was, during the
following year, a subject of anxious consultation
between the pope and the bishops; and, the authority
of the pope Zacharias having been obtained, King
Childeric, the last of the Merovingian monarchs of the
Franks, was deposed and condemned to a monastery, and
Pepin received the reward of his zeal in enforcing the
unity of the church. In 751, Boniface performed the
coronation ceremonies at Soissons which made Pepin
king of the Franks. Thus the Roman Catholic Church
gradually usurped the right of deposing and creating
sovereigns.
Boniface was now aged, and
weak in bodily health; yet, so far from faltering in
his exertions, he at this moment determined on
undertaking the conversion of the Frieslanders, the
object with which. especially he had started on his
missionary labours in his youth. His first expedition,
in 754, was very successful; and he built a monastery
at a town named Trehet, and ordained a bishop there.
He returned thence to Germany, well satisfied with his
labours, and next year proceeded again into Friesland,
accompanied by a considerable number of priests and
other companions, to give permanence to what he had
effected in the preceding year. On the 4th of June
they encamped for the night on the river Bordau, at a
spot where a number of converts were to assemble next
day to be baptized; but that day brought the labours
of the Anglo-Saxon missionary to an abrupt conclusion.
The country was still in a
very wild and unsettled state, and many of the tribes
lived entirely by plundering one another, and were
scattered about in strong parties under their several
chieftains. One of these had watched the movements of
Boniface and his companions, under the impression that
they carried with them great wealth. On the morning of
the 5th of June, before the hour appointed for the
ceremony of baptism, the pagans made their appearance,
approaching in a threatening attitude. Boniface had a
few armed attendants, who went forth from his
encampment to meet the assailants; but the archbishop
called them back, probably because they were evidently
too weak to resist; and, exhorting his presbyters and
deacons to resign themselves to their inevitable fate,
went forth, carrying the relics of saints in his
hands.
The pagans rushed upon them,
and put them all to the sword.; and then, separating
into two parties (they were probably two tribes who
had joined together), they fought for the plunder,
until a great number of one party was slain. The
victorious party then entered the tents, and were
disappointed at finding there nothing to satisfy their
cupidity but a few books and relics, which they threw
away in contempt. They were afterwards attacked and
beaten by the Christians, who recovered the books and
relics; and gathering together the bodies and limbs of
the martyrs (for the pagans had hacked them to pieces,
in the rage caused by their disappointment), carried
them first to the church of Trehet, whence they were
subsequently removed to Fulda, and they were at a
later period transferred with great pomp to Mentz.
Such was the fate of one of
the earliest of our English missionaries in his
labours in central Europe. In reading his adventures
we may almost think that we are following one of his
successors in our own day in their perilous wanderings
among the savages of Africa, or some other people
equally ignorant and uncultivated. Boni-face was an
extraordinary man in an extraordinary age; and few
men, either in that age or any other, have left their
impress more strongly marked on the course of European
civilization, at a time when learning, amid a world
which was beginning to open its eyes to its
importance, exercised a sort of magic influence over
society. He was a man of great learning as well as a
man of energy, yet his literary remains are few, and
consist chiefly of a collection of letters, most of
them of a private and familiar character, which, rude
enough in the style of the Latin in which they are
written, form still a pleasing monument of the manners
and sentiments of our forefathers in the earlier part
of the eighth century. Boniface was an Englishman to
the end of his life.
VISITING CARDS OF THE 18th CENTURY
From the lady of fashion�who
orders her carriage every afternoon, and takes the
round of Belgravia, leaving a card at the door of
twenty acquaintances who are all out on the same
errand�to the man of business, and even the postman,
who presents his card on Christmas-day morning, these
little square bits of card-board have become an
established institution of polite society. The last
century has, however, left us an example of how to
make these trifles matters of taste and art. The good,
quiet, moral society of Vienna, Dresden, and Berlin,
in which, according to contemporary historians, it was
so pleasant to live, piqued itself upon its delicacy
of taste; and instead of our insipid card, with the
name and quality of the visitor printed upon it, it
distributed real souvenirs, charming vignettes, some
of which are models of composition and engraving. The
greatest artists, Raphael Mengs, Cassanova, Fischer,
and Bartsch, did not disdain to please fashionable
people by drawing the pretty things which Raphael
Morghen engraved. About four or five hundred of these
cards have been collected by Mons. Piogey, among which
we meet with the greatest names of the empire, and a
few Italians and French whom business or chance led to
Germany.
The taste for these elegancies
was undoubtedly borrowed from Paris; we find there a
whole generation of designers and ornamenters, who
devoted their graving tools entirely to cards and
addresses for the fashionable world, theatre and
concert tickets, letters announcing marriages,
ceremonies, programmes, &c.
It was the recreation and
most profitable work of Choffart, Moreau, Gravelot,
and, above all, St. Anbyn - the most indefatigable of all
those who tried to amuse an age which only wished to
forget itself. But the clouds which rose on the
political horizon darkened that of art. Ennui glided
like the canker-worm into this corrupt society; then a
disgust for these trifles adorned by wit; after that
followed a more serious, grander, more humane
pre-occupation; so that, their task ended, their
academy closed, and their diplomas laid on their
country's altar, these designers without employment
resigned their pencils in despair�Moreau becoming
professor of the central schools under the Directory,
after being the king's designer in 1770.
The other kingdoms of Europe,
and Germany in particular, inherited from the French
the taste for this amiable superfluity, the
ornamenting of trifles for the higher classes. In that
country could such a collection of cards be made,
where every one is so conservative that nothing is
lost; and yet what a curious assemblage of names, with
adjuncts which testify to the taste, character, and
studies of each! What an assistance to the historian,
what a charm for the novelist, the fortuitous reunion
of all these personages affords; the greater part of
whom have left no other remembrance than the card,
addressed as much to posterity as to their friends.
There is an interesting one of
the Marquis de Galle, minister plenipotentiary to the
King of the Two Sicilies, designed and engraved by
Raphael Morghen, representing Neptune. resting on an
urn, looking on the Bay of Naples, which is studded
with lateen sails, and Vesuvius in a state of
eruption. A naiad is advancing towards him, and
between the two lies a monumental stone on which the
name is inscribed, shaded by delicate shrubs; at the
top a Cupid raises a fleur-de-lis resting on an eagle.
There are no less than four
cards of Cassanova; the best is an aqua fortis of
large size, in which an Austrian soldier is crushing a
Turk under his feet; he holds a flag in his left hand,
and a sword in his right, whilst in a tempestuous sky
an eagle is hovering. Thescene is both grand and
poetical. The ass, carrying the flag with the name
inscribed, is another; and a man playing a drum, on a
fiery charger, forms a third.
Adam Bartsch, the celebrated
author of the Pientre Graveur, a work published at
Vienna in twenty-one volumes, was evidently a great
lover of the canine species; here is a spaniel holding
the card in his mouth, and there is a second, in which
a savage dog has just torn a roll of paper with the
date 1795; beneath is written, 'Adam Bartsch has the
pleasure of presenting his compliments and good wishes
for the new year.'
Fischer of Berne, makes a
rebus of his name, an artist's fancy and mono-gram of
a new kind; namely, two men and a woman drawing out a
net.
Raphael Mengs has not
disdained drawing the card of the Marquis de Llano�a
wreath of roses, bordered with olives. Another is that
of the Comte Aloyse d'Harrach, lieutenant-general, of
whom Georges Wille, in his interesting memoirs,
writes:
'12 Feb. 1767.�M. le
Comte and Madame la Comtesse d'Harrach, Austrian
nobles, came to visit me; they are well known here,
and perfectly amiable; the Comtesse draws very
beautifully.'
Generally the name of the
artist is unknown; for most people bought the subject
engraved, and wrote their name on it, thus beginning
at the end. Such. is one of the Aulic Councillor de
Martines, and that of the Comtesse de Sinzendorf.
Great amateurs and persons of high rank, such as the
Prince d'Auersperg, Count d'Harseg (Envoy
Extraordinary of his Imperial Majesty), and the Prince
Ester-hazy, did not do so; the last mentioned has a
beautiful vignette of a Cupid supporting a medallion
wreathed with flowers, on which is the name of Francis
Esterhazy, one of the illustrious family of
diplomatists and statesmen who trace back their title
to A.D. 960. This one sat as councillor in the last
German Diet of 1804, when the Germanic empire ceased
to exist. Some have engraved the bust of their
favourite hero beside their name: as the Comte of
Wrakslaw has that of the Archduke Charles defending
the approach to Vienna, which is recognisable by the
spire of its cathedral. We meet with the name of
Demidoff, then a simple captain in the service of the
Empress of Russia. Two Englishmen also appear in the
collection�Lord Lyttelton with his dog, and Mr.
Stapleton with a medallion portrait; and many others
whose names may be found in the Almanac's de Gotha,
but not many in the memory of man. One peculiarity
belongs to the cards of English society, that all
landscapes are more or less authentic; Bath, the city
of English elegance at that period, is a frequent
subject. Sometimes it is Milsom Street, with its long
perspective of fashionable houses; North Parade, or
Queen's Square, where Sheridan might point out his
favourite residence, and Beau Brummel recognise
himself parading the terrace.
The Italian cards are in a
very different style; you see at once the imitation of
the antique, and in some cases the Greek and Roman
chefs d'oeuvres are copied. Bas-reliefs, bronzes,
niellos, mosaics, are found on these bits of card,
which are changed into objects of great interest. The
Comte de Nobili has several different and always
tasteful ones; sometimes a sacrifice of sheep or oxen,
or the appearance of Psyche before Venus and her son,
seated in family conclave.
Among other noble strangers,
we notice the Marquis de Las-Casas', Ambassador of
Spain: the sun, mounted on his car, is leaving the
shores of the east. The architect Blondel inscribes
his name above the cornice of a ruined monument; and
M. Burdett places his in the centre of the tomb of
Metella. Long as we might linger over these relics of
the past, we have given sufficient examples to point
out the taste of the age, and a fashion which has had
its day, and perished.
SACHEVERELL'S
RESTING-PLACE
Of the famous Sacheverell�whose
trial in the latter part of Anne's reign almost
maddened the people of England it is curious to learn
the ultimate situation, from the following paragraph:
'The skeletons in our
crowded London graveyards lie in layers which are
quite historical in their significance, and which
would be often startling if the circumstances of
their juxtaposition could be made known. A cutting
from an old London newspaper (title and date
uncertain), and which exists in the well-known
repertory of Green, of Covent Garden, contains an
example of skeleton contact which is unusually
curious, if reliable. It is there stated that Dr.
Sacheverell is buried in St. Andrew's, Holborn, and
that the notorious Mother Needham of Hogarth is
lying above him, and above her again is interred
Booth, the actor�a strange stratification of famous
or notorious day.'
