La Verna of the Stigmata

...The Faith in itself can withstand the fiercest attacks of modern infidels, just as it has withstood the shock of persecution throughout the centuries...

...But the work for the child is still more important than that for the adult...

...That hallowed spot had its time of intensest devotion two years ago, the seven hundredth anniversary of the date, September I4, I224, when the Saint, in the oft-quoted words of Dante, "on the harsh rock between Tiber and Arno, from Christ did receive that final seal which his limbs two years bore...

...It draws out the unknown from the known...

...Our Archbishop has decided that the only possible way is to have lay volunteer teachers supplement the work of the public schools outside of school hours in our own buildings...

...To make the faith of Catholics intelligent...

...M O N W E A L December 29, 1926 LA VERNA OF THE STIGMATA By JOHN STAPLETON O F THE many thousands who, from all parts of the world, have been visiting Assisi in this Franciscan year, comparatively few, probably, at least among the foreign pil- grims, have gone on to La Verna, the Sanctuary of the Stig- mata...

...And so may it always be...

...Father J. Elliot Ross, speak- ing on this subject at the Archdiocesan Council meet- ing, said : "There was ~t time when nearly the whole of life was Catholic...

...Here is the cavern whose roof is an enormous rock, detached from the main mountain and looking as if suspended in air--another of Saint Francis's places of retreat...

...Every circumstance makes it easy for the visitor to recon-struct the part played by La Verna in the spiritual biography of the Saint...

...The mind of exceptional concentration or spiritual receptiveDecember 29, I926 THE COMMONWEAL 2Ii ness may, no doubt, recapture something of the spirit of Saint Francis amid the buzz of limousines...

...Sometimes a prayer, a holy name (Emmanuel or Veronica being popular) a psalm, or a text was written on the paten or housel dish--then the writing was carefully washed off with water which was added to the herbs...

...The actual entrance to the monastery enclosure reminds us of the stigmata, and claims that in all the world there is no more sacred height...

...It is a method that really educates...

...That means we must use some other and extraordinary way of preparing them to meet the religious environment of today...

...Only slow, heavy oxen, dragging timber on sleds, or donkeys with panniers of bricks, or firewood, or food, were to be seen on this side of the rock...

...But naturally, it is to Assisi that the world has looked in the past months of remembrance--and certainly to that vast host of those whom we may, without offense, call the non-Catholic philo-Francis- cans, the Poverello connotes Assisi and nowhere else...

...Being usually a fundamentalist and a puri-tan with an inherited distrust of the Church, he is a hostile challenge to the rural Catholic, who is all the more in need of the information which would enable him to answer Protestant charges, questions or ob-jections...

...In New York, the gulf between the Catholic and the Protestant is just as wide, and their essential diverg- ence remains unchanged...

...Then, if any elf-tempting occur to a man, or night goblins, smear his forehead with salve, and sign him with the sign of the Cross...

...Sing over thy cattle every evening to be a help to them, the Tersane- tus...

...It is true that the king of Italy, prominently associated with every important stage of the Franciscan celebrations, went to La Verna last September, and that many thousands, chiefly Italians, visited the place during that month...

...She has a method which is as different from the old memory method we studied catechism under, as the teaching of geography today is different from that of fifty years ago...

...The traveler, before a journey, must pull artemesia at sunrise, sign it with the sign of the Cross, and call on the four evangelists and on the "Seraphim, guardian of the ways, to pray to the good God for a good departure...

...To keep the body in health...

...Below, the wonderful panorama of the Casentino stretches out---once a battlefield for Guelps and Ghibellines, and associated with Dante's service as a soldier and other episodes in his life...

...But in a municipality so dominated by the common effort to overcome the physi- cal conditions peculiar to that city, there is not much time left for the religious suspicion of the neighbor...

...There are thousands of non-Catholic and even anti-Catholic educative forces beating upon our people...

...For this reason, a training class is necessary for those who can teach, and we have been fortunate in securing Mother Bolton of the Cenacle to take charge of this...

...Today it is a remarkably fertile plain, with a ring of picturesque mountains enclosing it--on another one of which there is another famous sanctuary, the hermitage of Camaldoli...

...But the pilgrim soon turns away from this prospect of nature to contemplate the miracle of sanctity...

...Prayer and psalm were interwoven with simple remedies...

...Cattle, horses, and land were not forgotten...

...Holy water, holy oil, and holy salt were required in many herbal decoctions...

...must sing Masses over the fennel, feverfew, menyanthes, and waybroad (plan-tain) first...

...The patient was to drink cupfuls, hot, saying the names of the four evangelists and a prayer...

...the weaker spirit will find it easier to attune himself by a few hundred yards of exceedingly difficult passage through sheer thirteenth-century primitiveness...

...but among the remedies for healing ague and fevers, we find unfamiliar ones, intended to ward off the attacks of elves or malicious sprites...

...afterward they were to be boiled in butter and fat, holy salt added, and strained through running water...

...and the rural Protestant does not as a rule share the indifferentism of some of his city brethren...

...remembrance and association do their work unaided, and exalt the spirit as few other sanc- tuaries in the world can do...

...Until recently there was no accommodation near the sanctuary---only a small unpretentious inn in the village half a mile below...

...MEDIAEVAL HEALING By F. M. VERRALL p RACTICALLY all drugs and medicines in Anglo-Saxon days were prepared from native herbs, for of the 400 plants mentioned in an early vernacular manuscript, most are well-known wild plants, which were transplanted, as required, into the physic plots of monasteries...

...Nothing on wheels, one would think, can ever traverse that last half-kilometre stretch of rough, half-perpen- dicular road which, from the village of La Beccia, where the carriage from Bibbiena halts, leads up to the entrance to the sanctuary...

...Comparing one diocese with another, New York has approximately a third as many children in Catholic schools in proportion to the Catholic population, as the diocese having the highest proportion...

...Then they were soused in ale, holy water added, and the infusion boiled thoroughly...

...This was deemed a reliable safeguard...

...The new road which the king of Italy opened at the time of hi~ visit, will make the journey easier, and there was, indeed, some anxiety among the friars (it is the Friars Minor who have sole charge here) that this would attract the mere tourist...

...It is not only that, obvi- ously, Assisi is far more closely associated with the biography of the Saint...

...The range soon disappears from view as one continues the journey along the plain, and is not seen again until good progress has been made with the ascent...

...For the country as a whole, we have about half our children in our own schools...

...Thus, before the salve for flying venom (epidemics) is made, "one Mass must be sung over the worts...

...Little by little, the vineyards and olive-orchards give place to cereals--then these yield to pasture, from which gaunt masses of bare rock emerge more and more frequently...

...It has been said that La Vema is difficult of access...

...When one pays a visit to La Verna, the reasons for this comparative obscurity become dear...

...Many of the diseases given in the Anglo-Saxon manuscript are familiar to us now...

...Hitherto, he has been severely discouraged...

...That is due principally, I think, to the lack of Catholic schools rather than to the preference of Catholic parents for other schools...

...21o T H E C O M tlon is not a shining characteristic of the inhabitants...

...Blessing oneself was often recommended...

...But the faith of individual Catholics may easily fall, because they have really misunderstood their faith, have not grasped it intelligently...

...Franciscus alter Chrisms...

...But today conditions are very different...

...If a man hath sudden ailments, make three Crosses on his head, three on his breast, and he will soon be well...

...A good drink against the devil" was to put bishopsroot, agrimony, and alexanders into holy water, and drink it with ale...

...The frescoes here of episodes in the Saint's life are of the seventeenth century, far inferior in historical interest or artistic value to any work at Assisi...

...In those un-sophisticated days, there was no clear line between physical maladies and those that were supposed to be caused by magic agencies...

...it is also partly due to the fact that ba V~ema is much more difficult of access and has figured far less in art than the Umbrian city...

...of artistic treasures La Verna can only boast two or three Della Robbias ~admirable examples of his work, but not alone worth a journey for the general student of art...

...And he has laid this heavy responsibility upon the Council of Catholic Women...

...That is the great need of today...

...There has been no Giotto to carry the image of La Vema into millions of minds...

...Or for the "lent-addle," (graphic name for typhus) a man (priest...

...it looks as if only birds could find their home in that friendless height...

...Finally, the simple but infinitely moving Chapel of the Stigmata is reached, marking the spot where the Saint, during his last visit to La Verna, on the morning of September I4, vigil of the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, standing on the rock with his face turned to the East, felt the mountain enveloped with an angelic presence which descended and left on his body the marks of his Lord Whom thus he was able to imitate down to the last...

...One or two guide-book remarks may not be out of place...

...It is no reflection on the spiritual glories of the main sanctuary to say that while many motives might drive the visitor to Asslsi, La Verna is comparatively rarely visited by any except those who, without preoccupation of art-study or historical scholarship, wish to understand more of the Saint, and pierce the secret of his spirituality...

...This year there is a hotel, admittedly a facility for the excursionist, but also an assistance for those pilgrims who cannot make the journey in those few weeks of dement weather which, in all the year, are vouchsafed to this lofty, bleak spot...

...Here is the bed where he used to lie--a bare rock in a dark, damp cave underground...

...with prayer to the Lord, take mynt and rub it into wine---let a man take it at night, fasting...

...the carriage halts, and you end the journey on foot, coming first to the outer portal, which briefly tells the story of Count Orlando's gift of this remote spot, so well suited to prayer and meditation in solitude, to the Saint in the year I213...

...Or in other cases, the Creed, Paternoster, or certain psalms were ordered to be recited at the time that the patient took his appointed draught...

...One comes upon but very few of the customary "aids to devotion" at La Verna...

...Even with both motor-road and hotel, however, the final stage of the pilgrim's journey is steep and difficult enough to impress the mind with that sense of devotion that comes from remoteness...

...Here, example of that mingling of the childlike and gracious with the grim and ascetic which made up the whole Saint Francis, is the Chapel of the Birds--scene of one Mass a year in honor of a familiar episode repeated more than once in the Saint's life...

...From Florence or Rome, you go by train or car to Arezzo, also associated with the Saint and containing, in his church, some of Hero della Franresca's finest frescoes...

...The countryman from time immemorial has been a conservative...

...From Arezzo, another train, or the road, takes you on to Bibbiena, and on issuing from the gate of that city the range of hills on which the sanctuary is situated comes into view...

...A salve against the elfin rare and goblin visitors" called for wormwood, bishopsweed, lupin, henbane, and viper's bug- loss---all wild plants--to be put into a vessel, placed under the altar, so that nine Masses could be said over them...

...At length the little village of La Beccia is reached...

...There were prayer formulae to recover stolen or strayed animals--there were amazing remedies to heal them when sick...

...It is clear that our Saxon forefathers valued the Mass so highly that they required even medicinal herbs to be hallowed by it, before they could be worked into salve or drink...

...Many recipes required Masses to be said over the herbs...

...The monastery and its buildings can hardly be distinguished from the solid wall of rock...

...here is the precipitous path round the mountain, with sides dropping sheer away a hundred feet below, where the devil met Saint Francis who east him down, and pressing back into the rock, left the mark of his body...

...An "elfshot" horse could have Christ's mark written on forehead and limbs...

...Great numbers of our children in New York, then, are not getting the Catholic training that they should, either in the home or in the school...