WHA

RELIGIOUS LIFE IN POLAND

HAT strikes the casual observer, at first sight, is the relatively great number of churches, which are yet too few for the vast multitudes of church-goers. For instance, in Cracow alone, with a population of about eighty thousand souls, of whom at least twenty-five thousand are Jews, there are nearly fifty churches and chapels, some of them very large. All, or pretty nearly all, are open every day of the week; and, go when you will, you never find them empty. On Sundays and solemn festivals they are full all the morning, streams of worshippers continually flowing in and out at the doors; for low masses, and solemn services, and sermons, and other offices are going on within at all hours after six A.M., and every one satisfies his devotion as he needs, or cares, or is able. On the greater festivals— Christmas, Easter, Pentecost-the churches are full to overflowing, and at certain times there is hardly any possibility of getting in or out but by means of vigorous pushing and elbowing, as at a popular theatre.

The amount of real fervour - for going to church here is not dreamed of as a thing that looks well; it is too common, too universal, too vulgar (if I may say so) to be in the slightest degree respectableis, of course, a quantity known to God alone. Yet, if we may judge by certain exterior signs, lukewarmness is by no means the shortcoming of Polish Catholics. Look at that old woman, hobbling into church. She bears on her arm, I am sorry to say, her purchases from the market; sometimes a couple of fowls are heard cackling in her basket; sometimes a heavy thump on the pavement breaks a bottle of vinegar, or of sour beetroot juice for the barszcz at dinner. But she comes in, kneels down, and lifts up both hands in prayer, in the attitude of a priest saying the Collects. Presently sighs are heard; tears trickle down her cheeks, she is so absorbed that she does not hear the crowd passing to and fro, and jostling her; for she has knelt right in the middle of the passage up the nave. And now she bends down, touching the pavement with her forehead, in an ecstasy of devotion, and remains in that posture till the end of Mass. Her

action is not at all extraordinary; you may count hundreds in the very same attitude. Sometimes a peasant or a working man will stretch himself prostrate on the pavement, with his arms extended and his hands open, as if crucified. I have a painful remembrance of one

such case. The church was crammed, and those who wanted to get to the communion table had to push and struggle, so dense was the press. One of them, not noticing the man lying on the ground, accidentally set his foot upon the penitent's fingers. I saw the lifted heel from a distance, and, unable to prevent it from coming down, could hardly keep from calling out in church. But the man who lay there did not even stir.

At the moment of the Elevation, and often at any very striking passage in a sermon, people will be heard to utter a long "Ah-h-h!" of astonishment and devotion. These simple, childish outbursts (which, in truth, are the reverse of extraordinary, if we remember that all Catholics believe that Christ becomes really present on the altar at that solemn moment) are rarer in towns, but very frequent in the country. I once was present at the opening sermon of a mission preached by four Jesuit Fathers, at the rate of six sermons a day, for a couple of weeks, to a congregation of about twelve thousand peasants, come from all the neighbouring villages: the sermons were, of course, delivered in the open air, outside the church. The Father spoke in vigorous, homely language, and waxed louder and louder, more and more vehemently earnest, as he went on. After some time, I became aware of a strange, thrilling, tremulous sound, somewhat like the many noises of a running brook, that filled the pauses between each sentence. It was the suppressed weeping of the whole assembly, unable to repress their emotion, and I saw not only the women but the men with big tears running down their rough cheeks. It made a peculiar and quite unexpected impression upon me; for the stolid, heavy faces had seemed to denote anything but an impressionable race.

Pilgrimages are very frequent, especially in summer, a little before the harvest begins, or when it is over. Not sitting at their ease in comfortable railway carriages, like the French pilgrims to Lourdes, La Salette, and Paray-le-Monial, do those of Poland perform this devotional exercise: they would deem it a profanation. Marching barefoot, their parish priests trudging along in their midst, bands of peasants come from distances of many leagues, weary with the way, and bronzed by the sun; they pass through the streets of Cracow,

to visit Our Lady's Church, or the silver shrine of St. Stanislaus the Martyr, or the Chapel of St. Barbara, famous for good confessors. The banner of the parish is borne aloft by a fugleman, who is generally the organist; he reads aloud each verse of the hymn which they sing on the road, and then strikes up, the rest joining in the chant; when tired of singing, they recite the Rosary aloud as they go through the streets. Cracow, however, is mostly a mere resting-place on the way to some more celebrated sanctuary. The most famous of all are Czenstochowa, in Russian Poland, with its black picture of Our Lady, said to have been painted by St. Luke, and its fortress, miraculously defended by the Virgin against Swedes and Russians, dear both to the patriot and to the devotionist; also Ostrobrama, in Lithuania, immortalised by the verses of Adam Mickiewicz, the bard of Poland. To those towns, at stated festivals, pilgrims are said to flock by hundreds of thousands; and though I was never present at such a scene I can readily believe it, having witnessed a much less celebrated pilgrimage to Kalwarya, a town not far from Cracow. At least fifty thousand men and women had gathered there. All were filled with the most intense fervour, which I could not help observing as I passed by the numberless groups that had been formed: some praying aloud, others singing hymns, others absorbed in silent prayer; here a man who could read, surrounded by others who could not, was going through the "Preparation for Confession," or the "Way of the Cross," or the devotions before and after Communion. It was a curious sight, and a spirit but little known to our nineteenth century seemed to breathe here. In this primitive population, under this mediæval form, revivals and camp-meetings go on and do their work, not by fits and starts, but regularly year by year.

One very notable characteristic of public worship in Poland is the use of the national language in the liturgy, to the very extremest limits allowed in any branch of the Latin Church; so that, whilst the Polish tongue is proscribed by Russian tyranny, and viewed with disfavour by the Germans, it has found a refuge in the Church, and attained almost to the dignity of a consecrated language. At High Mass, for instance (setting aside the responses to the priest, which must be made in Latin), hardly anything but Polish is sung by the choir. The plain chant of the Introït and other anthems gives place to hymns sung in Polish. The celebrant from the altar intones in Latin the first words of the Gloria in Excelsis or of the Credo; but the choir

continues in the national language. Of course, the priest says his Mass in Latin, and therefore the Epistle and Gospel (to be afterwards read aloud in Polish) are sung in the language of the Church; but the use of an "unknown tongue" is rather the exception than the rule. In most churches, particularly in the country, the psalms of Vespers are sung from the metrical translation of Kochanowski, a contemporary of Shakespeare, Even in towns, Benediction, or the Evening Service, is almost always in Polish. The antiphon Swiety Bose-a curious relic of an old superseded liturgy, being the translation of a prayer composed when the influence of the Greek language was yet great in the young Latin Church; when the words Kyrie Eleison and Agios o Theos were generally understood by the people-is sung, with a short litany afterwards; the officiating priest, holding the Monstrance in both hands and turned towards the kneeling congregation, intones the Przed tak wielkiem (the Tantum Ergo), which the whole assembly takes up; the acolytes, in surplices with blue or red capes trimmed with gold braid, violently agitate their threefold bells, and the smoke of incense fills the air. I do not remember to have heard anything sung in Latin by the people, except the Te Deum; in a word, the language used by the Church is, so far as concerns public worship, as nearly national as it can be. This peculiarity is said to be of comparatively recent origin, dating no further back than to the times of Luther. It was resorted to by a National Council of Bishops, who adopted it as a means of stemming the advancing tide of Protestantism; certainly not without success.

As to the musical expression of this national liturgy, it is also peculiar. If I except a few choirs which, in some of the larger churches, or on solemn occasions, execute pieces of music in several parts, everything is chanted in absolute unison, and by the whole people, with the accompaniment of the organ; for even the smallest wood-built country church must have its organ, and the harmonium, so much in favour with French curés, would not satisfy them here. It must be allowed that so multitudinous a unity of voices, filling the entire church, resounding far beyond, rising and falling with much more ensemble than might be expected of untrained singers, often produces a great, even a sublime, effect; but, notwithstanding the pealing symphonies and sweet thunders of the organ-pipes, it is too artless and somewhat monotonous. Now the Sclavonic Eastern Churchwhether schismatic like the Russian, or Catholic as with the Uniates'

of Ruthenia-proceeds on quite a contrary principle. Organs, and indeed all musical instruments, are absolutely prohibited in their religious services. Everything, without exception, is chanted in several parts; and as, generally speaking, both Russians and Ruthenians have a good ear for music, these chants in the Old Sclavonian language have a splendid and artistic effect. But the never-changing, though noble and austere, harmony of men's voices is also apt to become tiresome at length. Perhaps one who for many years listened with intense pleasure to the alternate counterpoint and unison, so beautifully mingled and contrasted in the chants of French Catholic churches, is not in a position to speak impartially; but the taste of that nation is, I believe, as conspicuous in the divine services as in everything else.

Partly on account of this nationalisation of Catholicism in Poland, and partly owing to the devotional temperament of the Slav race, there is no class of people in which piety is not to be found, and does not show itself simply, without either hypocritical ostentation or false shame. The mediæval proverb ran: Ubi unus medicus, duo athei; and physicians have hardly improved their reputation at the present day. Yet in Poland, pious, believing physicians are very frequently to be met with. If you enter a church any morning in the week a few minutes before eight o'clock, you will see numbers of boys of all sizes who, on their way to school, step in of their own accord to ask God to bless their studies; and not only they, but numerous University students also, prior to taking up the scalpel, or the text-book of law, or the volumes of Kant and Hegel, often enter there to pray. And it is by no means the best of students—the goody-goodies who alone do this; I have often seen young men kneeling there who were fond of a spree, and rather too fond.

This custom is so universal that it extends even far beyond the borders of respectability; too far, some might say. I have occasionally stared with astonishment at perceiving people in church whose lives, to put the case very gently indeed, were highly inconsistent with the doctrines they professed to believe; thus satisfying, so far as was possible, considering the life they led, the natural craving which all human beings have for religion. "It matters not a whit," some will think, "whether such creatures do or do not go to church." Well, no. It cannot do them harm, and it may do them good. To break the bruised reed, to turn publicans and sinners away from their Saviour, is against the spirit of Christianity. What if the fallen one should