Apocalypse (verse)
Jones, Ruth Lambert
August 2I, I929 THE COMMONWEAL 4oi The Protestants were continually reproaching the Catholic clergy with their ignorance. The king wanted his monks to be able to fight scientific as well as...
...The other fact which must arrest the attention of all the students of this man's life and of his times, is the horror and the majesty of his death...
...But in Philip II, it is not monstrosity alone which frightens one...
...e.~l]D o c a ]yp s e I had forgot The garden was so fair...
...Even in the presence of this doubt, one cannot entirely condemn this man who for so long has been an object of execration...
...Is one not rather entitled to ask whether the animosities which pursued Philip II all through his life have not been powerful enough to create out of him an imaginary being, thirsty for human blood, without pity and without remorse, a being almost unearthly in his savage cruelty...
...When one takes into consideration the many good sides, the hitherto unknown qualities and virtues of a sovereign for whom no one has had anything pleasant to say until now, one feels inclined to reach the perhaps far-fetched theory that he is, and has always been, one of the most calumniated figures in history...
...In the college there will be taught, besides theology, grammar and rhetoric...
...There are two points that have been established beyond the power of contradiction...
...Remorse did not assail him...
...It was a terrible death, but it was the death of a brave man and a Christian...
...I had forgot That such a bitter lack Could sow such loveliness...
...The king was charitable in all his actions, and never refused to help the poor, the sorrowing and the disinherited of the world...
...Or are we to believe tha" he was in a certain sense the victim of circumstances and of his times, times when a man was cursed or blessed according to the personal opinions of those who praised or condemned him...
...What must be the amount of the unknown, of those he distributed with his right hand, unnoticed by the left...
...Placed in a situation in which every vestige of human dignity ought to have disappeared, he remained the king to the last, and died grandly, quietly, majestically, with the firm conviction he was going to stand face to face with his Creator, and that he was ready to give Him a true account of every thought, every word and every deed he had performed throughout his life...
...He never knew how to refuse or to deny an appeal for help...
...Until you went away I had forgot That larkspur pierced the air, Blue as the day...
...He wrote: They must be not only theologians, but men in possession of ancient and modern languages, men who have studied deeply archaeology, history, geography, astronomy and even astrology, as well as chemistry...
...RUTH LAMBlZRTJONES...
...Can it be possible that the moment he came out of the Escorial and its quiet, holy atmosphere, he became this monstrosity...
...and that little children who had been used to receive alms from his hands when he was at the Escorial, wept in the streets of the small village adjoining the monastery when they were told he was no more...
...If so we have to do with such a moral monstrosity that it constitutes a case unique in the annals of history...
...The king wanted his monks to be able to fight scientific as well as religious errors...
...August 2I, I929 THE COMMONWEAL 4oi The Protestants were continually reproaching the Catholic clergy with their ignorance...
...There will be a college and a seminary in the monastery, the seminary organized according to the prescriptions of the Council of Trent...
...that Saint Teresa, who was neither kind-hearted nor indulgent in the presence of sin, called Philip II in her letters a "holy king...
...There were things absolutely inexplicable in his life in the way of criminal acts condoned, if not actually committed ; but on the other hand he knew how to display his strength and keep intact a conception of what a sovereign should do or be, such as no other monarch has possessed...
...There is an old saying, that "everybody can become a monster, because good and bad is constantly intermingled in human nature...
...Is it possible that the man who had such noble and humanitarian ideas and thoughts, was the same one who so ruthlessly exterminated the Protestants in Flanders, who poisoned his wife, Elizabeth of Valois, and his half-demented son, Don Carlos, as well as his stepbrother, Don Juan of Austria, who strangled the Baron de Montigny, representing at his court the nobility of the Netherlands...
...A few minutes before he breathed his last, he kissed the crucifix which had soothed his father's agony, as it was now helping him to undergo his own, and then, with a lighted candle grasped between his fingers, he passed away to the great beyond where Christ his Saviour was awaiting him...
...The king wi~shes to have the best medical men in Spain for his hospital, the best paleographers to catalogue the numerous books and manuscripts which will in time compose the library of the Escorial...
...Come back, come back...
...Do these facts agree with the notions we all have entertained about the personality of Philip II...
...There must be annexed to the monastery a laboratory...
...It is better to let time solve the difficulty and assume the task of giving him the place which he really deserves in the annals of history, and to remember only that the monks of San Lorenzo, who assisted him in his last moments, did not doubt that he had died in odor of sanctity...
...The lise of his known benefactions is enormous...
...it is rather the feeling that monstrosity can be turned into sanctity, and sanctity into monstrosity...
...It was the thirteenth day of September of the year I598, the vigil of the Exaltation of the Cross...
...Now, what are we to make of all this...
...He honored and respected them as the privileged children of Christ...
...Is it possible to cling still to the old judgments passed on Philip II...
Vol. 10 • August 1929 • No. 16
