5i6 



The Review ot Reviews. 



Xovember 1, 1900. 



Xor/k American Review. Mr. Thayer is lost in ad- 

 miration of '■ The Saint." He contrasts the extra- 

 ordinary purity and faith of Fogazzaro with the 

 brilliant but obscene and degenerate books of 

 D'Annunzio, who, speaking the universal language 

 Sin, has been accepted as the t\-pical Italian by 

 foreigners who have never heard of Fogazzaro. 



THE AUTHOR. 



Antonio Fogazzaro, now a man of sixty-four years 

 of age, is declared bv Mr. Thayer to be the most 

 eminent Italian novelist since Manzoni. He was 

 born in Vicenza, studied for the law in Padua and 

 in Turin, but soon abandoned the Bar for litera- 

 ture. He made his debut as a poet, and did not 

 publish his first novel till 1881, when he was thirty- 

 nine years of age. His greatest works are " Mal- 

 ombra," " Dame'.e Cortis," " II Mistero del Poeta,'' 

 " Piccolo Mondo Antico," and " II Santo." Mr. 

 Thayer says, ■' Now, at a little more than threescore 

 years, the publication of ' The Saint ' entitles him 

 to rank among the few literary masters of the 

 time." 



THE STORY OF ■ IL SANTO." 



■' II Santo " has been put on the Index, while the 

 Catholic Christian Democrats have accepted it as 

 their gospel. Mr. Thayer thus summarises the 

 story of the book : — 



On the face of it what does the book say? This is what 

 It says; That Piero Itaironi. a man of the world, cultivated 

 far ijeyond his kind, after having had a vehement love- 

 affair, is stricken with remoise, "experiences religion," 

 becomes penitent, is filled with a strange zeal — an ineffable 

 comforts and devotes himself, body, heart and soul, to the 

 worship of God and the succour of his fellow-men. As 

 Benedetto, the lay brother, he serves the peasant popula- 

 tions among the Sabine hills, or moves on his errands cif 

 hope and merc.v among the poor of Rome. Everybody re- 

 cognises him as a holy man—" a saint." Perhaps, if he 

 had restricted liimself to taking only soup or simple 

 medicines to the hungry and sick, he would have been 

 unmolested in his philanthripy ; but. after his conversion, 

 he has devoured the Scriptures and studied the books of 

 the Fathers, until the spirit of the early, simple, un- 

 theological Cliurch had poured into him. It brought a 

 message the truth of which so stirred him that he could 

 not rest until lie imparted it to his fellows. He preached 

 righteousness — the supremacy of conduct over ritual; love 

 as the test and goal of life; but always with full acknow- 

 ledgment of Mother Church as the way of salvation. In- 

 deed, he seems to doubt neither the impregnability of the 

 foundations of Christianity, nor the validity of the Petrine 

 corner-stone; taking these for granted, he aims to live the 

 Cliristian life in every act, in every thought. 



Yet these utterances, so nattiral to Benedetto, awaken 

 the suspicions of his superiors, who — we cannot say with- 

 out cause — scent heresy in them. Good works righteous 

 conduct — what are these in comparison with blind sub- 

 scription to orthodox formulas? Benedetto is persecuted, 

 not by an obviously brutal or sanguinary persecution— 

 although it might have come to that except for a cata- 

 strophe of another sore — but by the verj- fineness of persecu- 

 tion. The sagacious politicians of the Vatican, inheritors 

 of the acctmiulated craft of a tliousand years, know too 

 much to break a butterfly on a wheel, to make a inartvr 

 of an inconvenient person whom they can be rid of 

 Quietly. Therein lies the tragedy of Benedetto's experience, 

 so far as we regard him or as he thought himself, an 

 instrument for the regeneration of the Church. 



On the face of it. therefore. ' The Saint " is the story of 

 a man with a passion for doing good, in the most direct 

 and human way. who found the Church in which he be- 

 lieved the Church which existed ostensibly to do good 

 according to the direct and human ways of Jesus Christ, 

 thwarting him at every step. 



THE NOVEL AS A CAMPAIGN DOCUMENT. 



" II Santo," says Mr. Thayer, has been accepted 



as the platform or even the gospel of the Christian 

 Democrats, men who are Catholics of humani- 

 tarian tendencies. They are men who have dis- 

 covered that only through legislation and adminis- 

 tration can anything effective be done to fulfil the 

 prayer '' Thy will be done in earth as it is in 

 heaven." Therefore, they insist upon being al- 

 lowed to take part in politics and to vote at elec- 

 tions. The late Pope forbad them to vote lest 

 thev should thereby re\'eal the weakness of the 

 Catholic vote. They insisted all the more strenu- 

 ously that " it was time to abandon ' the prisoner of 

 the Vatican ' humbug, time to permit zealous Catho- 

 lics to serve God and their fellow-men, according 

 to the needs and methods of the present age," In 

 the autumn of last year the present Pope gave the 

 faithful tacit permission to vote. On the top of 

 this change of front appeared ''11 Santo": — 



In thii respect, "The Saint,' like "Uncle Tom's Cabin" 

 and similar books which crystallise an entire series of 

 ideals or sum up a crisis, leaped immediately into im- 

 portance, and seems certain to enioj' for a long time to 

 come, the prestiee that crowns sucn works. Putting it on 

 the Index can only add to its power. 



THE FAITH OF FOGAZZARO. 



The Saint of Fogazzaro is a man who respects 

 the Higher Criticism and believes in evolution, but 

 who also believes that Catholicism contains a final 

 deposit of truth which can neither be superseded, 

 wasted nor destroyed. The Saint frankly declares 

 that: — 



The Catholic Church, which proclaims itself the minister 

 of Life, to-day shackles and stifles whatever lives youth- 

 fully within it, and to-day it props itself on all its deca- 

 dent and antiqtiated usages. 



Yet a little farther on he exclaims: — 



But what sort of faith is yours, if you talk of leaving 

 the Church because certain antiquated doctrines of its 

 heads, ce tain decrees of the Roman coneregations. cer- 

 tain ways in a pontiff's government, offend you? What 

 sort of sons are you who talk of renouncing your mother 

 because she wears a garment which does not please you? 

 Is the mother's heart changed by a garment? \VheB bowed 

 over her, weeping, you tell your infirmities to Christ and 

 Christ heals .vou. do you think about the authenticity of 

 a passage in St. John," about the real author of the Fourth 

 Gosiiel. or abuut the two Isaiahs? When you commune 

 with Christ in the sacrament do tlie decrees of the Index 

 or the Holy Office disturb you=* When giving yourself up 

 t-) Mother Church you enter the shadow of death, is the 

 peace she breathes in you less sweet because a Pope is 

 opposed to Christian democracy? 



THE INEVITABLE LOVE STORY. 



" II Santo," says Mr. Thayer, may be compared 

 with " Robert Elsmere " and '' John Inglesant," but 

 it easily surpasses them both. '' The Saint " is a 

 new type in fiction — a mixture of St. Francis and 

 Dr. Dollinger. It is a study in religious morbid 

 psychology without rival in fiction. Here also, even 

 more than in " The Guarded Flame," Love is de- 

 throned and compelled to submit to his austere 

 master. Mr. Thayer says: — 



And then there is the love-story. Where shall one turn 

 to find another like it? Jeanne seldom appears in the 

 foreground, but we feel from first to last the magnetism 

 of her presence. 'There is always the possibility that, at 

 sight or thought of her. Benedetto may be swept back 

 from his ascetic vows to the life of passion. Their first 

 meeting in the monastery chapel is a masterpiece of 



