Celebrated Sanctuaries of the Madonna

Eighth in a Series

In this series, condensed from a book written by Fr. Northcote prior to 1868 on various famous Sanctuaries of Our Lady, the author succeeds in defending the honor of Our Blessed Mother and the truth of the Catholic Faith against the wily criticism of many Protestants.

Madonna del Carmine, Naples

It would be unpardonable in anyone who had undertaken to give an account, however brief, of the Italian sanctuaries of the Madonna, not to make a special mention of the people of the former kingdom of Naples. Even though none of their sanctuaries, when taken alone, were of sufficient celebrity to demand distinct notice in a calendar so short as ours, still there is something so striking, not only in the degree, but yet more in the character, of their devotion towards our Blessed Lady, that it ought not on any account to be omitted. Bring back with you some of the Neapolitan faith, said the late Pope (Gregory XVI, †1846), on taking leave of an ecclesiastic in Rome, who was going to pay a visit to that kingdom. And certainly it is—or at least it was during that Pontiff's lifetime—quite impossible to reside there for any length of time, and to study the character of the people at all carefully, without acknowledging the justice of the comparison which such a speech implied. What the Apostle testified concerning the Romans, might then have been applied literally to the Neapolitans also, that their faith is spoken of in the whole world.

This is so, not only because a few outward circumstances of devotion—common in the early Church, but now generally abandoned—still lingered among the faithful of these parts, though even these cannot fail to arrest the attention of the student of Christian antiquity; but much more, because the remarkable manner in which this faith seemed present to their minds at all times, and even in the most trifling matters, as an inseparable part of themselves. Thus, you could not visit any of the churches frequented by the poor of Naples, without witnessing again and again the hands outstretched in the form of a cross, according to the ancient attitude of Christian prayer, as they knelt in silent adoration before the Blessed Sacrament; and still more commonly, the people bowing their heads to the ground and kissing the pavement of the church as they enter it, or touching the pavement with their hands and then kissing them, exactly according to the double method described by St. Chrysostom as being in common use amongst the Christians of his own days (Hom. xxx in Ep. 2 ad Cor.) But outward details like these, interesting as they are in themselves, sink into insignificance when compared with such tokens of lively faith as are exhibited in the following anecdotes, whose accuracy may be relied upon.

A French priest, after regaling himself with fresh figs in the garden of some Neapolitan peasant, asked for a bit of water and a towel to wash his hands; but when he proceeded for this purpose to make use of the first cloth he could meet with, the good woman of the house prevented him, saying that it was not worthy of hands which handled day after day the Sacred Body and Blood of Christ, and insisted upon bringing him the finest linen which her stores could supply. A Maltese priest of our acquaintance, having some disagreement with a vetturino (coachman) whom he had been employing as to the value of his services, the vetturino grew angry, and at length seemed disposed to strike him. Upon this the porter of the hotel called out to him to take care what he was about, for that the gentleman was a priest (our friend was traveling in secular dress). Immediately the poor man was upon his knees, begging pardon for all he had said, and refusing to receive even what had been previously offered him.

But to come closer to our immediate subject—devotion to the Madonna; here, too, we will not dwell upon merely outward circumstances, such as abstaining from wine on all Saturdays in Her honor—an act of devotion which we read of as long ago as the beginning of the eleventh century, and which was publicly confirmed by a law in one of the numerous Councils held in Rome during the pontificate of St. Gregory VII; or again, the practice so common in Neapolitan families of the middle or even the lower class, of adopting a foundling in the place of any child of their own who may have died, who is henceforth treated in all respects as one of the family, and is called figlio della Madonna (child of the Madonna). We pass over these and other similar features of Neapolitan devotion, sufficiently curious and attractive to the eye of a stranger, that we may speak of their habitual feelings and tone of thought with reference to the Blessed Virgin, as exhibited in their mode of addressing Her. These we can only liken to the feelings of children towards the most affectionate and indulgent of mothers; any other comparison would be infinitely too feeble to express the simplicity, the freedom, the familiarity, and the confidence which characterize their whole language towards Her; and even this falls short of the reality, as much as the power and the love of an earthly parent must needs be inferior to that of this heavenly One.

They would come and pour forth their whole souls before some picture or image of the Madonna, entering into all their hopes and fears, doubts and anxieties, every detail of their domestic circumstances, quite as naturally as a child confides its little troubles or desires to a parent whose sympathy and assistance it has reason to be assured of. At one time you might have seen a poor woman who is going on a journey, or moving from her usual place of residence, come to take leave of her favorite Madonna, and talk to Her, and lament over the separation, and in every respect converse with Her as though She were Her nearest and dearest friend whom she was about to part with: or you might have seen another rush hastily into a church, evidently under the pressure of some sudden trial, throw herself at the feet of the Madonna, and cover them with kisses; then, amid the most convulsive sobs, and with anything but the silent prayer of Anna, in which only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard at all, tell Her the whole history of what has happened, and implore Her interference; gradually her agitation subsides; she has communicated her troubles to One who will be sure to help her, and, strengthened by this consolation, she rises from her knees with a calm and cheerful countenance, to go forth and bear them patiently. Yet she can scarcely make up her mind to leave the sanctuary of her peace. As she withdraws with slow and unwilling steps, ever and anon she turns her head to waft another kiss to the Madonna; and you might have heard such parting exclamations as these bursting from her lips: Addio, mamma mia; I have told You everything; I am going away now, and I reckon upon Your help: You understand me: I know You will not disappoint me; addio, mamma mia, addio.

And lest any of my readers should think that this childlike simplicity is confined to the lower and more uneducated classes, I cannot resist the temptation of presenting them with one or two extracts from a little book of devotions, published by a distinguished advocate, at that time one of the judges in Naples. This is a specimen of the kind of address which he uses towards the Madonna. Listen to me, my Mother; You must grant me what I have asked; for if You refuse, what will people say of You? Either that You could not, or that You would not, help me. That You could not, nobody will believe, for they know You too well for that; and then, that You would not— I protest I would rather be told that You had not the power than that You had not the will; for what! shall it be said that my own Mother, the Mother of mercy, grace, and kindness, had not the will to relieve the necessity of one of Her children? Think of this, my Mother, and extricate Yourself from the dilemma if You can! And again: You think, perhaps, my Mother, that You have given me a great deal already. I do not deny it; but you owe me still more than You have given me. Everyone knows that Your riches are inexhaustible; that You are the Queen of Heaven and earth, the dispenser of grace and the gifts of God. But then consider, I pray of You, that those riches were given You, not for Yourself alone but for Your children: for me, the last and most unworthy of all! Was it not to redeem us that the Son of God became Man, and chose You for His Mother? Behold, then, all that You have is ours; it was given to You for us; it belongs to us. Now You cannot deny that all that You have yet given me is as nothing compared with what You possess. You are therefore my debtor, and You owe me much. Is it not so? What answer have You to make to this?

Such being the character of the Neapolitan devotion to the Queen of Heaven, it is not to be wondered at that Her shrines and sanctuaries should be specially abundant throughout the whole kingdom; still this does not render our task the easier, when we are called upon to select the history of one or two in particular, as most worthy of publication. It is not merely, or even principally, the embarras de richesses (more options or resources than one knows what to do with) which constitutes our difficulty, but much more the general want of that critical accuracy, which is so desirable a feature in histories of this kind intended for the perusal of Englishmen, and so entirely foreign from most Neapolitan authors. This defect may, perhaps, in some measure, be owing to that insigne ac perenne miraculum (signal and continual miracle), as Baronius speaks, whereof their city has been for so many centuries the privileged witness, and which still continues for everyone who will to come and see, the periodical liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius. The fact that in this particular instance the facility of ocular demonstration may be supposed to supersede, in some sort, the necessity of such critical exactness in this matter; or it may be that they write only for their own countrymen, with whose disposition they are acquainted, and have no desire to accommodate themselves to, or really have no idea of the existence of, the cold and cautious temper which characterizes the inhabitants of more northern climes. However, be the cause what it may, the fact, I think, cannot be doubted, that very few histories of the kind we are at present concerned with, written by Neapolitan authors, would bear translation and publication in our own language. I am not saying that they have mistaken for miracles events which might easily be accounted for by the ordinary laws of nature (though this, again, is a danger to which they may be exposed, and from the same causes), but I am only speaking of the way in which they have recorded history, whose supernatural character there is not the slightest reason to call in question; they have not been careful to collect and arrange the evidence, or they have neglected to quote the authorities for what they say, or they have not distinguished between what is certain and what is doubtful—they have confounded history with tradition, and tradition with conjecture, and so on.

I have selected, however, the histories of two sanctuaries, which, upon examination, appear to offend least in these particulars, or which have other more certain authority to rest upon, and which have a special claim upon the interest either of the writer or his readers. (At the time this work was written, the sanctuary of Our Lady of Pompeii, pictured below, had not yet been established.)

The first place of importance, if not antiquity also, must be given to the Madonna del Carmine, or (as it is more commonly called by the Neapolitans, in allusion to its dark color), Santa Maria della Bruna. This picture, whose darkness, though it may have been increased by age, was probably designed by the artist himself, was brought to Naples somewhere about the middle of the twelfth century by some of the religious of Mt. Carmel, whose Order began about that time gradually to forsake the East, preparatory to its complete migration and settlement in Europe, which took place about a hundred years later. It is this picture which has furnished the original for all those likenesses of the Madonna which are impressed upon the medals, scapulars, and other religious objects belonging to the Carmelite Order. I do not mean, of course, that they have retained a faithful copy of all the features of the original, but this is their proper standard, their prototype: the relative position of the Mother and Child is the same in all— the same idea pervades them—they are all intended to be copies of this Santa Maria della Bruna. The Carmelites then, about the middle of the twelfth century, had a small church and convent assigned to them without the walls of Naples, and over their high altar the placed this picture of the Madonna, where it seems from the very first to have attracted, in a singular degree, the devotion of the people, especially during the three weeks which intervene between the Feasts of the Assumption and of the Nativity of our Blessed Lady.

In the year 1269 the people of Naples witnessed the tragic execution of their young King Conradin, and the bitter grief and disappointment of his mother, the Empress Margaret, who arrived in the harbor just too late to save his life, by paying the ransom which had been already agreed upon with Charles of Anjou. The disconsolate mother, thus frustrated in the purpose for which she had designated the large treasures which she brought with her, was still anxious to spend them in some way or another on her son. She obtained leave to remove his body from the place in which it had been interred (a small chapel raised on the spot where he had been beheaded), and to place it in this church of the Carmelites, which she determined to rebuild on a scale of magnificence worthy of a royal mausoleum. When this had been done, the picture of the Madonna, which had hitherto adorned the high altar, was considered to be too small for so prominent a position, and was made to give way, therefore, to a much larger picture of the Assumption, being itself removed to one of the side chapels belonging to a Neapolitan family of the name of Grignetti. Here it fell into comparative neglect, the more modern picture having succeeded to its place, not only in the church, but also, in some sort, in the affections of the people. Still some lingering devotion must have been entertained towards it, or it would scarcely have been asked for on the occasion which we have now to relate, and which soon restored it to more than its pristine celebrity.

In the year of Jubilee, A.D. 1500 (that is, in the eighth Jubilee, reckoning from that of Pope Boniface VIII in 1300, from which period alone their history is accurately known), many devout Neapolitans determined to make the pilgrimage to Rome, that they too might share in all the spiritual treasures which are at such seasons so liberally dispensed in the Holy City. A confraternity of tanners attached to the Church of St. Catherine seem to have been those who took the lead in this good work; nevertheless, any others who chose were at liberty to avail themselves of the opportunity, and to accompany them. A large crucifix, fit to be borne at the head of such a procession, was obtained from their own church; but they were anxious to put themselves also under the special guardianship of our Blessed Lady, and for this purpose they sought some image or picture of Her which they might carry with them. At length they succeeded in persuading the Carmelite Fathers to lend them this picture of Santa Maria della Bruna; and thus provided, the pilgrims set forth on their journey early on the morning of the 5th of April, chanting the litanies and psalms, and other devout hymns and prayers appropriate to the occasion.

At a short distance from the church from which they started, there lay by the roadside a poor cripple, by name Thomas Saccone, whose whole body was deformed and his legs perfectly useless—just such a one as we may imagine him to have been who sat begging alms at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple, when St. Peter and St. John went up at the ninth hour of prayer; like him, too, he was known to all the people; so that the miracle which was presently wrought in him was manifest, and could not be denied. This man, as he saw the procession advancing, was seized with an earnest desire to accompany it, and the burden of his infirmities seemed more sad and oppressive to him than ever before, because he was thereby rendered incapable of fulfilling his desire. As his thoughts dwelt upon the subject, the intensity of his desire increased, and presently there mingled with it a ray of hope, suggesting the possibility that he might obtain from the Queen of Heaven the grace of deliverance from all his evils, if he would promise to consecrate the first use of his recovered limbs to undertaking this pilgrimage to Rome. The picture of the Madonna was already passing him, when the poor beggar poured forth one earnest cry for help, and vowed to join the procession if only he were healed. Immediately he felt a sudden glow of heat penetrating his whole frame; new vigor seemed to infuse itself into all his limbs; forthwith his feet and soles received strength, and leaping up, he stood and walked, and went with them.

The fame of so signal a miracle, happening too under circumstances of such extreme publicity, could not fail to spread far and wide; so that as the procession advanced from one village to another on its journey to the Eternal City, they found the inhabitants already apprised of what had taken place, and bringing forth the sick into the streets, and laying them on beds and couches, that when this picture of the most powerful and at the same time most compassionate of mothers should come, Her shadow at least might overshadow any of them, and they might be delivered from their infirmities. This importunity of the people necessarily impeded their progress, so that they did not arrive in Rome until the ninth day, that is, the 13th of April. Here, too, the fame of the miraculous cure of the cripple in Naples, and of many others which had happened subsequently upon the road, had preceded the arrival of the pilgrims; the report had even reached the ears of the Pope, so that he ordered inquiries to be made as to its trustworthiness and authenticity. The result was such as to induce him to go himself on the following day, accompanied by all the Cardinals, to pay his devotions to the picture in the Basilica of St. Peter; there, having knelt and prayed before it, and incensed it, he gave benediction with it to the crowds of people, who, like himself, had come together to visit it. At the same time also, he granted certain indulgences to those who should recite their prayers before it. The picture was then borne about by the pilgrims to all the other basilicas and holy places which they visited; and it was everywhere received with the warmest devotion. After five days, on the morning of the 18th of April, they set out to return to their home. The same crowds came forth everywhere to greet them; and here and there the same wonderful blessings were dispensed; but the greatest wonder of all, and that to which I do not remember anywhere to have met with an exact parallel, awaited their return to Naples itself.

The Carmelites and others went out to Aversa, a distance of eight or nine miles, to meet and welcome home this precious treasure, of whose value they had been so little conscious before they parted with it; and its entrance into the city was celebrated by the people with every demonstration of public rejoicing, like that of a king returning in triumph after some famous victory. The picture was restored to its original position over the high altar, and the people flocked thither in multitudes to seek for help under all their various necessities.

Frederic II of Aragon, however, at that time King of Naples, not content with these evidences of the public faith and devotion towards this Madonna, conceived an idea so bold as almost to savor of presumption, had not the result seemed to prove that it sprang out of a simple undoubting faith, and certainly that it was accepted and rewarded by God. He ordered all the sick and infirm, the blind and the deaf, the lame and the withered, everybody, in a word, throughout the whole of his kingdom, who was laboring under any bodily infirmity, yet was not incapable of removal, should be brought together to the metropolis, and there placed in a hospital which he had prepared for the purpose near to this church. Each person was to bring with him a properly attested certificate of his name and age, the place of his birth and residence, the exact nature of his malady, the length of time during which he had been afflicted by it, and every other detail which could be required for settling beyond dispute the authenticity of each particular case. When all these persons had been collected (and a most sad spectacle of suffering humanity they must have formed), he caused them to be arranged on an appointed day on benches in that part of the church which was nearest to the altar; to the rest of the church the public were freely admitted, excepting only certain reserved seats or galleries, where the king himself and all the royal family, together with the principle grandees of the kingdom, were assembled to be witnesses of what might happen.

One of the royal secretaries first read aloud the names of all the infirm who were present, and a brief statement of their infirmities. When this was over, High Mass was begun, the choir of the royal chapel assisting; and during the celebration of Mass (probably, if we may judge from the modern practice in these matters, just at the Gloria) the picture was unveiled. Those who have been in the habit of frequenting any church in Naples or its neighborhood, where some statue or picture, the object of special devotion, is thus uncovered only during some portion of the Mass can easily imagine what fervent cries of supplication burst forth from the lips of these unhappy sufferers just at the moment when the curtain was withdrawn; but who can paint the extravagance of their shouts and gestures, their wild exclamations of joy and gratitude, when at the same moment a ray of light was seen to descend from Heaven, to shine brightly upon the face of the Madonna, and thence to reflect its brilliance upon the assembled people, who were all immediately healed? (Image at right: Illumination of the Basilica on the night of the Feast.)

The sacred historian, when he records the healing of the sick and the casting out of evil spirits by handkerchiefs and aprons brought from the body of St. Paul, prefaces the narration with these words, God wrought by the hand of Paul more than common miracles (Acts 19: 11-12). And certainly the present miracle deserves to be classed among those which are more than common, its peculiarity consisting, of course, in the extraordinary number of persons who were made the subject of it. We have already said that it is not part of our purposes to anticipate and to answer all the objections which may be raised against any of these narratives; nevertheless, it may be worth while to observe, with reference to this particular circumstance, that in more than one Scripture narrative there is the same indefinite statement of the numbers, who, having manifested their faith by some outward act of their own, or done for them by their friends, were similarly rewarded by the instantaneous cure of their maladies. When Our Lord was in the country of Genesar, and the men of that place had knowledge of Him, they sent into all that country, and brought to Him all that were diseased, and then besought Him that they might touch but the hem of His garment. And as many as touched were made whole (Matt. 14: 36). And again, when St. Peter was in Jerusalem, after the miraculous healing of the lame man which has already been spoken of, there came together a multitude out of the neighboring cities, bringing sick persons and such as were troubled with unclean spirits, who were all healed (Acts 5: 16).

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