Spokesmen of Eternity
Mallon, Wilfred
September 8, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 421 SPOKESMEN OF...
...They make the mistake of going three-quarters of Massillon, the Oratorian, is similar in many respects the way to meet the traveler instead of making him to both the preachers ranked above him...
...own country these American, English, and German Here again, other lands had preachers...
...His fame spread far and wide, placed Nazianzen above Basil and the Bishop of even beyond the confines of Asia Minor...
...We most luminous stars-those whose names mark the shall be very wrong if we suppose that fine expressions, epochs in the history of this sacred art...
...The air was too charged with the pagan and savage hoards of the North...
...They essayed a upon the Pegasus of His humility, winged by the union task too great for them...
...But is it not too soon to judge...
...forced him back into the world...
...Manuscripts oratory of the East rose to an eminence which fifteen contained such marginal directions as: "Now sit, stand centuries have failed to surpass...
...Critics of the eighteenth century thought him superior to the Bishop of Meaux and the and an instantaneous cup of tea for every Englishman, eloquent Jesuit...
...Ritz or Mr...
...Then, filled with divine frenzy, Historians say that he was "listened to as another aflame with the concentrated emotions of those myriad Paul, and penitents flocked to confession like ants...
...affectation before the learned, and burlesque before the A son of Loyola, Louis Bourdaloue, "the preacher September 8, 1926 T H I? C O M M O N W E A L 423 of kings and the king of preachers," frequently surpassed the eloquence of his intimate friend and ad- A PENSION IN ITALY mirer, Bossuet...
...His exposition of apostolic days, which could not engage unrivaled charm . . . lies in his singleness of purpose, his the higher artistic faculties, gave way to the free ora- fixed grasp of his aim, his noble earnestness...
...She had no Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Massillon, and Fenelon, were need of such...
...These latter would of the Jesuit orators who preached during the Reforhave evoked only ridicule from the unschooled bar- mation and post-Reformation periods...
...it must he her standard of comfort and not yours...
...and hence more often she, is equally anxious to make you comthey did not reach the sublimity of eloquence that fortable...
...As in every art's gallery of fame we has had no equal...
...As soon, however, ings, the living ideas, the earnest practical lessons which as the doctrine of the Nazarene was accepted as the he had to communicate to his hearers...
...his brother Gregory eloquence were not valued rightly by those about him...
...Wiseman is held in high and dependents, but in a pension they are suddenly esteem...
...but he is ranked second to the great By- ARNOLD WHITRIDGE French divine...
...They can provide an instantaneous glass of iced water for every American...
...Ill health may be called the pioneers of Christian eloquence...
...If A final important period finds its master in the elo- you are willing to play the game her way, and not inquent French Dominican, Pere Lacordaire...
...a thorn in the flesh of his est English-speaking orator of the nineteenth century...
...recognizes him as her foremost preacher...
...tion on the one hand...
...Apparently, they placed him beneath them...
...The mediaeval Church, teeming with saints The next great epoch centers around the sevenand learned doctors, has given us no preacher com- teenth-century classic revival in France...
...of Bourdaloue...
...The masters, parable with those of the classic period...
...and of Cappadocia's he was the "justus et tenax vir," whose sanctity and "triumvirate of genius," Basil...
...Gregory stands out most the pinnacle of eloquence-but paid for it with as the most influential preacher of the West-particu- his blood...
...The simple when its distinctive praise was that it was natural...
...but the sounder judgment of time has at any hour of the day or night...
...In his funeral orations, Ambrose reached thy, by his eloquent boldness in rebuking the luxuriant the highest perfection in the West...
...God's newest combatants, the Comdous social upheaval that displaced the order of the pany of Jesus, stemmed the uprising by means of its empire...
...Vieyra in ly supplanted the florid homilies and elaborate mas- Portugal and Segneri in Italy were the most famous terpieces of patristic eloquence...
...but one and all, effort to excite the emotions...
...but we really age will be less prejudiced and more just...
...Almost every religious that loquacious American who has the knack of makorder has given to the pulpit preachers of merit...
...The sim- controversy, however, to favor elegant preaching...
...Out of this side of preaching, produced four noteworthy orators struggle between pseudo culture and hollow declama-Ambrose, Augustine, Leo, and Gregory the Great...
...and later ing perhaps a quarter of a century before Saint John, with the saintly solitaries of the desert...
...ing the most reluctant people his intimate friendsThough our sacred oratory of the past half-century is he an impecunious professor, or is he the head of is conceded to have been good, it is not judged as elo- the biggest biscuit-tin factory in the world...
...The preachers outside of heart...
...and, on the other, overdone simThe latter's position among the orators is merited plicity and gracelessness, there arose a mighty but rather by his influence on succeeding preachers, than pitiful figure in Savonarola...
...None of the western orators, how- Florence, by his passionate recklessness in denouncing ever, can be compared to advantage with the preachers an age with which he was so completely out of sympaof the East...
...We bear no ill will to Mr...
...But to give him a niche in the temple be ardent patriots...
...the great Jesuit was essentially a SOONER or later everyone who travels stays at preacher...
...Lacordairc, like Bossuet, That is the great charm about life in a pension...
...thusiasm seized them...
...while Nazianzen's style resembled closely eventually surpassed...
...His extremely simple and inele- greatest preacher...
...lute sightseer who attacks the Italian language with There have been Archbishops Ryan and Ireland, our a placid determination that confounds the waiter...
...In the ten-hence we have no means of forming a true judg- bosom of the family, these super hotelkeepers may ment of him...
...or rounded periods, or figures of speech, were the creIn the hands of unlearned men, Christ left the des- dentials by which he claimed to be the first doctor of tinies of His Church...
...Fortunately, the period was of gant sermons were models of the allegorical method short duration...
...by no means the only preachers of merit...
...Monks, in an fastened by Daedalean wax, were destined to give effort to counteract this tendency which had infected their names to the crystal sea...
...He, or monarch who craved religious discourse...
...high imaginative powers, fiery zeal, and the Statues, that his extraordinary power as an orator a transparent sincerity of intention...
...While Bossuet is without an equal in a pension...
...and both became distinguished scholars...
...Anybody who wants to know what the most attractive, brilliant, and versatile churchmen the world will be like when national boundaries are of the seventeenth century, he is worthy of a place effaced, need only stay at a big hotel in London, Paris, among the great preachers of so glorious a period in or New York...
...They atTo understand the popularity of preaching in the tained perfection in an art that had many proficients...
...His sermons were always given from manu- of the salle-a-manger with his plump wife and his script...
...Drawn to a knowledge of God that of Constantinople's golden trumpet of God...
...He was ordained Both were trained in the finest rhetorical schools of priest, and for twelve consecutive years, from 386 to the age...
...The Society of Jesus they are guilty of excessive humility...
...tion and the elaborate homily of the third century...
...He is well styled the forerunner of mediaeval gave men something else to think about...
...They sublime, but never attained the sublimity of Bossuet...
...422 THE COMMONWEAL September 8, 1926 At the hands of these four scholars and saints, the ignorant, in place of simple sincerity...
...For long years he wielded of those before him until the contagion of his ensway over the turbulent and luxuriant cities of Italy...
...Not for a moment must Unfortunately, Fenelon's sermons were never writhe suspect that he is in a foreign country...
...The great Dominican of by his excellence...
...Newman, indeed, deserves the greatest praise...
...The beginning was a tom, by his very power, caused his own destruction...
...deprived of their background...
...Today, in the field of demonstrative oratory, he is In the first of these, John of Antioch, surnamed called by many the master of the Christian era, and Chrysostom, "Mouth of Gold," because of his elo- even sometimes he is thought to have surpassed the quence, the Church had its greatest preacher...
...but Newman the scholar, rather than Newman the Take that English clergyman who sits in the corner orator...
...Though perhaps they did not attain great French prelate, in his funeral orations, reached the highest perfection of oratory, nevertheless all were the most exalted heights of panegyrical eloquence...
...In 407, the great of the fourth century patristic eloquence reached its doctor and preacher of the eastern Church died unzenith at the hands of Constantinople's "Mouth of attended, on the very confines of the empire...
...find the Church has placed its masters...
...and second only to the great doctor of Conthere came an unexpected call to the important bishop- stantinople, Saint John Chrysostom...
...Again, there was the eloquent Irish Domini- two rosy-cheeked daughters...
...you after having made himself thoroughly conversant with see your fellow-men in only two dimensions...
...Ire was go three-quarters of the way to meet them...
...Enraged at his fearless and eloquent denunciations of The development of the art during the next cen- the sinfulness and luxury of the court, the Empress tury was phenomenal...
...but none tourists may be substantial people with hosts of friends so honored by posterity...
...Born immortal Demosthenes...
...Basil and Gregory of Nazianzen were schoolfellows Of the great orator's contemporaries, Basil attained at Athens of Julian, the future apostate, the youth- his success in simple, unemotional elegance...
...His oratorical power was but the instrument, of classes that scarcely knew the schools...
...It orations, we are told, displayed a command of the was here, in 387, during his series of sermons, On purest Greek...
...in the field of sacred oratory about the middle of the fourth century, at a time when he stands supreme...
...sway over those before him, sweeping them with him Renaissance preaching, with its too sudden and to the rapt contemplation of the Trinity, or casting hence ill-digested Greek culture, frequently substituted them with streaming eyes at the foot of the cross...
...Basil and a consequent love of Him, the youthful scholar and Nazianzen, having begun their work of preachcast his lot with the anchorites of Antioch...
...so in the field Cardinal Newman, in his beautiful appreciation of of oratory we discover a glorious galaxy of preachers Saint John Chrysostom, says of him worthy of the golden era of Grecian eloquence...
...The saner ecclesiastics rebelled against of interpretation which was to prevail in the middle- it, and the distant mutterings of the coming storm ages...
...Their 398, he occupied the cathedral pulpit of Antioch...
...simplicity...
...unless he be so crippled with riches grandeur and magnificence, Bourdaloue is master in that he falls a helpless victim into the maw of solid, rigorous, irresistible logic...
...after which surfeit of efficiency and the history of sacred oratory...
...of Nyssa...
...His appeal is always the Ritz...
...prefer to have it left an open question...
...The dine of Sienna...
...But the popularity up, mop your brow, shriek...
...modest one, but it was a beginning...
...pride themselves quite justly on their perfect food he was logical, but fell far short of the invincible logic and their faultless service...
...the Jesuit, de Ravignan...
...France, however, lacked the stimulus of an admiring The proprietor of a pension is different...
...Civilized Europe was trying to assimilate learned polemists...
...At home he may be a can, Father Burke, whom many have called the great- militant Anglo-Catholic...
...The Bishop of hleaux was preeminently the orator...
...the Bishop ful Chrysostom attended the lectures of the far-famed of Nyssa, in enthusiastic and almost grandiloquent Libanius of Antioch, whose learning and eloquence he panegyrics...
...September 8, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 421 SPOKESMEN OF ETERNITY By WILFRED MALLON T HE cycle of history has brought round once ric of Constantinople, where for twenty years the more a distinct renaissance of interest in sacred "Mouth of Gold" preached with an eloquence that oratory...
...but we know him only as a resoIn our own land, we also have had great preachers...
...A future tell us, if we give him half a chance...
...Origen, the learned scholar of Alexandria, was the Finally, like his illustrious predecessors in the first to make the art of the Athenian orator the in- Assembly of Athens and the Senate of Rome, Chrysosstrument of the law of love...
...and Gregory of Nazianzen...
...made to the intellect, with never a diversion merely Carlton, or to any of the numerous proprietors of to dazzle or delight the imagination, and rarely an Grand Hotels scattered over Europe...
...The primitive Christians were the East...
...and "relying on wings of the Deity, has overcome the world...
...The colossal religious revolution of the fifteenth The early years of the sixth century saw the remain- century, when finally it broke, caused a quick reform ing traces of ancient culture disappear in the tremen- in the pulpit...
...and already in the latter part Eudoxia forced him into exile...
...but professionally, they are blatant of fame, it is enough to say that, besides being one of internationalists...
...It would be a great mistake, in speaking of his style, to learned men, frequently recruited from the most talask whether it was Attic or Asiatic, terse or flowing, ented scholars and orators of the day...
...Augustine and and pompous court of Rome, by his daring defiance Leo followed closely the methods of Chrysostom and of the commands of a renaissance Pope, attained althe Bishop of Nyssa respectively...
...vibrating hearts, he abandoned himself to the inspiraThe chivalry of these centuries was inspired largely tion of the moment and poured forth his noble soul by the eloquent preachers of the Crusades, among in a stream of eloquence-exercising a magisterial whom the outstanding figure was Jacques de Vitry...
...Low-Church bishop...
...strive to safeguard the poor tourist from the slightest suggestion of nostalgia...
...Church of the mis-named "dark ages," we must read In Jacques Benigne Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, the the lives of such men as Anselm, Bernard of Clairvaux, Church had a preacher comparable to the unequaled Vincent Ferrer, Saint Anthony of Padua, and Bernar- orator of ancient days, Saint John Chrysostom...
...In their his subject, spoke on the inspiration of the moment...
...And best known prelate-preachers...
...The following quotaof florid masterpieces led less talented and less saintly tion from a bishop's Christmas sermon is an evidence men to artificiality, theatrical mannerisms, and an of the ridiculous overloading with classical references effusiveness in panegyrics which soon brought about "The Infant Jesus is our Bellerophon, who, mounted the downfall of this precious art...
...Hence, by which he readily, gracefully, adequately expressedoratory, as we know the term, found no place in the expressed without effort and with felicity-the keen feelChurch of the first two centuries...
...In Paris sist on eggs for breakfast and hot water in the middle he introduced the new conference method in the pul- of the night, you will save a vast amount of money, pit of Notre Dame which he occupied intermittently, and what is even more important, the shackles of your from 1835 to 1852, together with his intimate friend, own identity will mysteriously drop away from you...
...ple scriptural exposition, precluding the artistic, quick- hence the period can boast of no masters...
...and in 398 Nyssa...
...Truly Gold," Saint John Chrysostom...
...but naturally enough, as she is the hostess, marked the revival there...
...eminent scholars and saints whose eloquence gave them Like the director of a mighty orchestra, this Demosinternational influence...
...Indeed, the catalogue of those who have won distinc- Great as was his gift of oratory, it was not by the fertility of his imagination, or the splendor of his diction tion is so great that a short study can include but the that he gained the surname, "Mouth of Gold...
...He spoke because religion of the cultured classes, its teachers became his heart, his head, were brimful of things to speak about...
...even the court of Rome, aimed directly at coarseness, The western Church, slower to develop the artistic and this brought simplicity into disfavor...
...barian...
...He will quent...
...Of these, Bernardine of Sienna thenes of the French pulpit played upon the hearts deserves especial mention...
...convenience he will return to the more limited perfecA like revival of oratory took place in Italy, Ger- tion of his own home or his own country with a light many, Spain, and England...
...Critics have first became manifest...
...In him, the renaissance put to death its larly as a homilist...
Vol. 4 • September 1926 • No. 18
