a cure. No truss was ever so efficacious. For the purpose of extending the benefit of this most useful prophylactic, F. Frans Deurwerders, in the middle of the 17th century, with the approbation of Vicencio Candido, the then General of the Order, instituted an association called, in honour of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Militia. All who enrolled themselves in this confraternity were to wear the girdle either openly or secretly, as it pleased them. A form of prayer* for consecrating the girdles usque dum ei persuasit Pater, ut impuros lumbos Thomistica Zona cingulo adstringeret; quod ubi fecit, paucos intra dies vèrsa est in continentia speculum, quæ publicum fuerat libidinis incentivum : et hoc, inquit Corbellinus, propriis oculis vidimus, auribus audivimus, manus nostræ contrectaverunt, et particulari sigillo munivimus in nomine Domini.-Acta SS. ut supra. The Bollandists had two of these girdles, one of which they gave to the Reverend Fathers of the Jesuit Convent at Antwerp, the other they kept for themselves. Henschenius and Papebroche were at that time the Editors of the Acta. They might do very well with one between them, upon the principle of riding and tying. But what would the other be among so many? Madame de Sévigné alludes in one of her letters to the Mantle of St. Ursula as possessing a like virtue. *F. Hyacinthus Choquet drew up the form, which is as follows: Domine Jesu Christe, Fili Dei vivi, puritatis amator et custos, obsecramus immensam clementiam tuam, ut sicut ministerio Angelorum S. Thomam Aquinatem cingulo castitatis cingere, atque was drawn up; and the Dean of St. Peter's at Louvain, with all the Professors of that University, a great number of other clergy, and very many lay persons of both sexes, on the day when the Institution was solemnly announced, received the insignia in public* from his hands, as members of the new company, and girt their loins...not with truth, but with St. Thomas Aquinas's girdle! Pope Innocent X. approved the Institution, and granted indulgences to all who engaged in it: and if this new article from the Dominican manufactory did not become so fashionable as their former inventions of the Rosary and the Scapulary, it a labe corporis et animæ præservari fecisti; ita ad honorem et gloriam ejus, benedicere et sanctificare digneris cingulá istá; ut quicumque ipsa circa renes reverenter portaverint ac tenuerint, ab omni immunditia mentis et corporis purificentur, atque in exitu suo per manus sanctorum Angelorum tibi præsentari mereantur. F. Deurwerders also composed a prayer, which was frequently to be said by those who were in his militia, pro obtinendá in hoc bello victoria:... Omnipotens et misericors Deus, qui nos in durissima castitatis certamine constitutos, almo S. Thomæ Aquinatis cingulo munire dignatus es; largire supplicibus tuis, ut calesti ejus subsidio lascivum corporis et animæ hostem in hác militiá feliciter superare: et perpetuæ puritatis lilio coronati, inter castas Angelorum acies beatitudinis palmam a te accipere valeamus. Per Dominum, &c.-Acta SS. ut supra. * Echard. Script. Ord. Præd. t. ii. p. 618. was not for want of exertion on the part of the vendors.* According to the Bollandists, this extraordinary militia was instituted with a particular view to the benefit of the female sex. Men * Even Echard says that experience had proved the utility of these girdles, and that this species of piety! was propagated not without effect in Louvain (where the Association began) and in other cities of the Low Countries, when he wrote. work was published in 1721. t. ii. p. 618. His The Bollandists, notwithstanding the enmity between their order and the Dominicans, gave it a good put in the true style of Romish quackery. It is not necessary to transcribe it after the samples which have been given of this... superstition shall I call it... or knavery? But the reader, who may at once be idle and industrious enough to trace me to my authorities, will find it in the first volume of the Acta for March, p. 747, at the end of the section De Cingulo S. Thoma Vercellis culto, et Militia Angelica sub hoc titulo apud Belgas instituté. Had the Militia been instituted a little earlier, we should have had some glorious conceits upon it in the prize poems written for the Certamen Angelico at the dedication of the Angelical Doctor's Church at Madrid, 1656. As it is, the collection is truly characteristic. † Acta SS. ut supra. Though the Girdle of St. Thomas was a Dominican and an Italian invention, it appears, from the Memoirs of Scipio de Ricci, that the cherubic sons of St. Dominic did not introduce it into the Italian Nunneries which were under their spiritual direction! The Friars of that worthy order have been detected in old times in such practices as have recently been brought to light in those memoirs. An attempt was made by some Nuns, might visit the shrine of the Angelical Thomas, but as it was placed in one of those churches where no woman was allowed to enter, this means was devised whereby the weaker sex might obtain the same virtue which the real presence of his holy remains would have infused. It followed, as one of the demoralizing consequences, when holiness was imputed to celibacy, that women were disparaged as much as they were dreaded. The remark has been gravely made* that wicked Angels have frequently appeared in the form of women, but good ones never. F. Bernardus Baptizatus, in a sermon before the Council of at the instigation of a Dominican, to murder Vitrarius, (of whom Erasmus has left so beautiful an account,) for interfering to reform a Nunnery at St. Omers. "Erat illic monasterium sororcularum, in quo sic erat prolapsa omnis religiosæ vitæ disciplina, ut lupanar verius esset, quàm monasterium. Et tamen inter has erant quæ sanari possent et cuperent. Has dum crebris concionibus hortatibusque revocaret ad Christum, octo deploratæ ex eo numero conspirárant, et hominem observatum in locum semotum pertrahunt, atque ibi fasciis injectis præfocant. Nec finem faciunt donec casu nescio qui intervenientes, impium facinus dirimunt. Atque ille jam exanimatus erat, vixque revocatus est ut spiraret: nec tamen usquam hác de re questus est, ne his quidem quos habebat intimos, nec ullum officium prætermisit, quo solet illarum saluti subvenire; imò ne cultus quidem unquam visus est in illas solito tristior. Noverat autorem hujus conspirationis, is erat Theologus Dominicanus, Episcopi Moriensis à suffragiis Episcopus, vir palam impia vita."-Epist. 1. xv. Ep. 14. 699. * P. Le Heurt. Philosophie des Espritz, p. 589. Constance, exhorted the Council, in allusion to the then received story of Pope Joan, not to elect a woman for Pope; and he enforced the strange exhortation by saying, that woman was the head of sin, the weapon of the Devil, and the mother of guilt.* There was a Bishop who doubted, upon theological principles, whether the word homo could properly be applied to a woman, †..as if she were rather an imperfection in nature than a perfect human being: not however being obstinate enough to found a heresy, he yielded to the arguments and opinions of his brethren in synod assembled. proof, stronger than the decision of a synod, has been afforded that, whether woman be or be not an inferior animal, there is desecration in her touch for any thing that has been sanctified. One of the miracles which Pope St. Gregory the Great relates, as making no doubt of their truth, is of a horse which a Grecian nobleman lent to Pope St. John, when that Pontiff was on his way to confer with the Em * Lenfant, C. of Constance, vol. ii. 103. But + Greg. Tur. Hist. 1. viii. § 20. p. 453. Gregory gives the scriptural arguments by which the Bishop was convinced; and, as if to show how entirely he was of the same opinion as the Council, when he speaks of Queen Ingoberga, he calls her hominem timentem Deum.-Ib. 1. ix. § 26. p. 525. Ed. 1561. Ꮓ |