Ex Voto: An Account of the Sacro Monte or New Jerusalem at Varallo-Sesia: With Some Notice of Tabachetti's Remaining Work at the Sanctuary of CreaButler, Samuel
Religion
Ex Voto: An Account of the Sacro Monte or New Jerusalem at Varallo-Sesia: With Some Notice of Tabachetti's Remaining Work at the Sanctuary of Crea
Butler, Samuel
Art -- Italy -- Varallo-Sesia; Sacro Monte di Varallo (Sanctuary); Tabaguet, Jean Baptiste, 1568 -1615
And now to conclude. A friend once said to me on the Sacro Monte, “How
is it that they have no chapel of the Descent of the Holy Spirit?” I
answered that the work of Gaudenzio Ferrari, Tabachetti, D’Enrico, and
Paracca was a more potent witness to, and fitter temple for, the Holy
Spirit, than any that the hands even of these men could have made for it
expressly. For that there is a Holy Spirit, and that it does descend on
those that diligently seek it, who can for a moment question? A man may
speak lightly of the Father and it shall be forgiven him; he may speak
lightly of the Son and it shall be forgiven him; but woe to him if he
speak lightly of that Divine Spirit, inspiration of which alone it is
that makes a work of art either true or permanently desirable.
Of the letter in which the Sacro Monte is written, I have at times in the
preceding pages spoken lightly enough. Who in these days but the
advocates whose paid profession it is to maintain the existing order, and
those whom custom and vested interests hold enthralled, accepts the
letter of Christianity more than he accepts the letter of Oriental
exaggerated phraseology? If three days and three nights means in reality
only thirty-six hours, so should full fifty per cent. be deducted
wherever else seems necessary, and “dead” be read as “very nearly dead,”
and “the Son of God” as “rarely perfect man.” Who, on the other hand,
that need be reckoned with, denies the eternal underlying verity that
there is an omnipresent unknown something for which Mind, Spirit, or God,
is, as Professor Mivart has well said, “the least misleading” expression?
Who doubts that this Mind or God is immanent throughout the whole
universe, sustaining it, guiding it, living in it, he in it and it in
him? I heard of one not long since who said he had been an atheist this
ten years—and added, “thank God.” Who, again, doubts that the spirit of
self-sacrifice for a noble end is lovelier and brings more peace at the
last than one of self-seeking and self-indulgence? And who doubts that
of the two great enemies both to religion and science referred to in the
passage I have taken for my motto, “the too much” is even more dangerous
than “the too little”?
I, and those who think as I do, would see the letter whether of science
or of Christianity made less of, and the spirit more. Slowly, but very
slowly—far, as it seems to our impatience, too slowly—things move in this
direction. See how even the Church of Rome, and indeed all churches, are
dropping miracles that they once held proper objects of faith and
adoration. The Sacro Monte is now singularly free from all that we
Protestants are apt to call superstition.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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