Books of Mary of Scots
Tourneur, Nigel
268 THE COMMONWEAL January I2, 1927 God goes on. The number and importance of the Moscow libraries strikes one with wonder. At every great street corner, the government has set up books of natural...
...Some half-dozen books are all which are left of the library of Scotland's tragic queen...
...The Orthodox Church, the former organ of culture in Russia, is today splitting up into a pandemonium of rival sects and bishops...
...Arrangements have been made for binding volume IV in leather or cloth.9 Information on binding will be given upon application to the offices o/ The Commonweal.9...
...but Rome has never cut off the Slavs or Roumanians, or the Eastern Orthodox Church as such...
...I told him right to his face the way it was...
...Without a doubt, although no blue stocking, she was deeply read...
...STEPHEN P. MlZWA...
...Then, her missal was all the library she had...
...January 12, 1927 THE COMMONWEAL 269 How John Knox and his followers must have held their hands up in horror at sight of the Marguerites of Margaret of Navarre...
...The bishops of the patri- archates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem were excommunicated for taking the side of Cerularius...
...A time was to come when she had to be content with one book--her book of devotions...
...Perhaps nowhere else, outside the hierarchy of the Church, are a steadfast adherence to the Faith and anxiety and thought- fulness for all professing itmnay, for all who would win heavenly grace---more nobly set forth than by Mary of Scots in her correspondence...
...and, too, Lucian, Herodotus, and Cornelius Nepos...
...Again she had the divine Ariosto...
...all religious teaching is quite forbidden--even in church--to persons under eighteen years of age...
...together with an expression of moods, which in many instances are not only startlingly modern, but can only he acquired through familiarity with literature...
...JEssmA POWERS...
...Whom of them did the Queen recollect in her last days at Fotheringay...
...They, in turn, were catalogued in I573 as they lay in the castle after its surrender to the English and the collapse of the Marian cause in Scotland...
...Uncertain minds always make uncertain governments...
...The Only Door "I am seeking a door to this House of Yesterday," The dreamer said, "For Yesterday's sins are eating at my board, And Yesterday's ghosts are sleeping in my bed...
...Lithuania at that time was a province of Poland, and in accordance with the custom, all those born in that province spoke of themselves as Lithuanians...
...This frank endeavor is ineffective with Russian grown-ups, but it does influence the young people...
...Czecho-Slovakia, after Russia, has the greatest number of Communist deputies in the Parliament...
...Yet, perhaps, their anathemas were lessened and lightened at sight of the many volumes in the Queen's library dealing with the polemics of her day...
...and, too, Ronsard's Nues ou Nouvelles...
...Erasmus, most human of humans, is among them, and Plato--Plato in the Greek, and Sophocles, Euripides, Demosthenes, and others...
...COMMUNICATIONS KOSCIUSZKO : A LITHUANIAN New York, N. Y. T O the Editor :--My attention has just been drawn to the artide, Kosciusko: A Lithuanian, by Joseph B. Konce- vicius , which appeared in The Commonweal of December 29...
...Since their excommunication, the Eastern Orthodox churches have never been able to summon an ecumeni-cal council, which, according to their own theologians, would be the only tribunal competent to settle the dif- ferences with Rome...
...I said: "You can end this bitterness and strife, But the only door you can shut on Yesterday Is the door that you shut on Life...
...But her unfortunate sister- sovereign, Mary, Queen of Scots, had she been as consonantly situated, would have gained the laurels rather than she who is generally associated with The Heptameron...
...Classical scholar though Mary Stuart was, she had her story- books, as the list reveals...
...She that was, as the lists of her books indicate, far ahead of her compeers in intellectual attainment...
...BOOKS OF MARY OF SCOTS By NIGEL TOURNEUR M ARGARET OF NAVARRE is usually looked upon as the most brilliant feminine-exponent of sixteenth-century culture and intellectual attainment...
...Flea realizes as well as some of us do, that the Communists, in any country, are not a sign of brightness...
...I wonder, if this is not true of the Czecho-Slovakian government...
...The title page and index /or volume IV o/ The Common-weal are now ready...
...Many of the letters have, too, phrases and other touches, reminiscent of her acquaintance with her library...
...the universal internationalism centered in idealist, papal Rome, and founded on God...
...Who were the authors that helped Mary Stuart in her hours of mental anguish and bodily pain...
...JOSEF A. SKODA-SCRIBNI~R...
...Fi~a would have us believe...
...Details concern-ing Queen Mary's intellectual range are all too few, though we know that she could sharpen the edge of polemics with that very acerb controversialist, John Knox--mighty disputant that he was...
...The article is very well written, and all that the author says is true...
...Her let- ters stand out in testification--as anyone may realize on care-fully perusing the collection so laboriously brought together and edited by Prince Labanoff...
...His seven volumes---most of the Queen's letters are written in French...
...The Eastern Orthodox Christians accept the "Filioque," but they deny any eternal procession...
...Nothing has taken its place except homelessness, disease, and the sins of paganism...
...There are three rival internationalisms in the world today: the materialist, communist, Asiatic empire centered in Moscow, and served in every country by skilled propagandists...
...One refers to her library in Holyrood Palace, and it was compiled by the Reformers, or rather the Lords of the Congregation, on the Queen's departure to imprisonment in Lochmaben Castle, June, I567...
...Ignorance might have been safety...
...The separation of 14o,ooo,ooo Byzantine Christians from Catholicism was, and is, due rather to circumstances of worldly political hatred and racial jealousy, than to dogmatic differences...
...The last details in the inventory of the Holyrood collection-- the books to which Queen Mary was undoubtedly most attached --are exceedingly significant...
...The northern Rus-sians are naturally socialistic...
...This mixture of fact and fiction is the only book on which we have the Queen's opinion, and she treats it trenchantly in one of her letters to Monsieur de La Mone Fenelon, French ambassador to England...
...In the country as in the town, among factory-workers' children as well as among peasant children, one simple axiom is taken for truth: "Religion is a fraud that has had its day...
...The very titles of the volumes going to form a library will always give clues to the taste and character of their owner...
...Every Russian school must be atheistic in name and in deed...
...There has always been some misunderstanding on that point, in view of the fact that Kosciuszko always referred to Lithuania as a province of Poland, and in that sense he was a Lithuanian --just as Washington was a Virginian and A1 Smith is a New Yorker...
...Metropolitan Philaret of Mos-cow believes that it is impossible for the Orthodox churches to hold an ecumenical council as long as they remain separated from the West...
...In romance, history, philosophy, religion, and politics, her library was a comprehensive one...
...Very human is the interest still attaching itself to this castle list...
...O the Editor :--If Mr...
...Mary Stuart was the living impersonation of Catholicism, and with Catholicism, therefore, she fell when the Church waned nigh to death in Britain...
...In his The World Unbalanced, Gustave le Bon says: "No people can have a government better than itself...
...some in Latin...
...and a few in Italian-- reveal that her correspondence has a vigor, a directness of thought and utterance, and an elegance (to use a much misused word) of style...
...The other inventory deals with the volumes which, in the spring of the previous year, had been shifted up to Edinburgh Castle for the Queen's solace as she abode there for safety during her travail of James VI...
...Peregrin Fi~a had said that two .9 .9 .9 .9 , ' J-mamstnes were offered to Hhnka s Slovak People s party, during Hlinka's visit here, and that some, in Hlinka's party, were ready to acept the offer, we could not disagree with him...
...To such a master in creative criticism as $ainte-Beuve or Walter Pater, they lend indications which may be developed into a synthesis, vivid and deeply comprehensive, and setting forth evidence as sure, if not surer, than documents and tradition...
...Do you suppose that if Kosciuszko were a Lithuanian racially and culturally, he would have become the national hero of Poland and have been regarded as Poland's greatest patriot ? Even if he could, the Poles, being rather touchy on the point of nationalism, would not have had the affectionate admiration and reverence for him that they possess...
...We have, however, undoubted proof in her books that her education and mental calibre were far in advance of her age...
...For example, your author quotes the second will of Kosciuszko, made in Paris, in which Kosciuszko refers to himself as "a native of Lithuania in Poland...
...This is a fact known to the government and to Hlinka's party...
...The Russian language comes next to English in linguistic popularity...
...Marshal Pilsudski in this sense is also a Lithuanian, as he was born in that province...
...It is not the Czechs whom Hlinka fears, but the Communists in Slovakia...
...Item, tayne by my Lordis Grace and birnt [burned]: VI Mess Buiks...
...I am at a loss, however, to understand what the author means when he says that Kosciuszko was a Lithuanian...
...with $allust and Livy in French translations...
...At every great street corner, the government has set up books of natural science, history, political economy, sports, physical culture, atheism, blasphemy, fanaticism...
...but he is still very much alive and the Lithuanians somehow or other are afraid to claim him as their own, racially...
...There are two lists of Queen Mary's collection, which are in safe keeping in the Register House at Edinburgh...
...the materialist, capitalist, American empire centered in London, and founded on the international ring of banks...
...When Svehla offered the two ministries, he made it known that no priest could have the ministry, and the offer was re-fused...
...a large number in the English or Scots dialect...
...But, luckily, there is proof in another direction that her collection was not only a large one for the sixteenth century, but had been well chosen...
...CONDITIONS IN CZECHO-SLOVAKIA Bridgeport, Conn...
...From the list of them it is easily seen that she took all pains to acquaint herself with both the Protestant and the Catholic sides of affairs and religion in order the better to govem her very turbulent kingdom...
...Conditions in Czecho-Slovakia are not so bright as Mr...
...and above all, Pontus de Tyard's extraordinary farrago, Erreurs Amoureuses...
...268 THE COMMONWEAL January I2, 1927 God goes on...
...The overthrow of the home, the family, and many moral duties seems to have been attained in Russian cities...
...after, unluckily for us, many of her books had been de- stroyed by over-zealous iconoclasts...
...There is no need to go upon tradition and any details which her contemporaries have left, to buttress the statement that Queen Mary outvied Elizabeth and other sixteenth-century women in the width and depth of her riaental calibre...
...Rus-sian blood is a fusion of the Aryan and the Asiaticp of the Slav-Teuton with the Mongolian...
...The First Buik of Froisart ; and Amyot's Plutarch...
...I am sure that Mr...
...Knowing she was no mean l.,atinist, they presented her with Buchanan's now historic libel on her and her alleged relations with Bothwell, written in Latin, and but newly published anonymously in LondonJDe Maria Scotorum Regina...
...These will be sent upon request...
...In Moscow, in October, I925, a Soviet official said to the president of the Oriental Institute of Rome: Humanity is headed for a centralized internationalism...
...In a letter written from Bolton, November 30, I568, to Phillip II of Spain, condoling with him on the death of his queen, she says: "I am an obedient, submissive, and devoted daughter of the holy Roman Catholic Church, in the faith of which I wish to live and die, without having ever had any other desire than that--a desire which, with God's assistance, I shall never alter in any manner...
...It behooves us to ponder the following truths: The future men and women of Russia are today growing up in anti-religious, pagan culture...
...Verard's Jardin de Plaisance...
...It was the Mass, or, rather, the hostile intolerance of re-ligious zealots, which was the undoing of Mary Stuart...
...Plena, et Tragica Plane Historia...
...Hilarion, the fifth Russian metropolitan (lO51-1o72) and his successors, George, John I, John II, Ephraem I, and Nicholas I (lO96-11o6) did not support the schism of Cerularius, but were in union with Rome...
...Not that her jailors were remiss in supplying reading matter...
Vol. 5 • January 1927 • No. 10
