Page:Petri Privilegium - Manning.djvu/18

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I would; and I leave it to others who have the gifts of observation, and memory, and delineation required for the task. Some have already written of these great solemnities; others will do so hereafter. I shall confine myself entirely to that which did not meet the eye. I mean the moral significance, and, I may say, the moral beauty, majesty, and splendour of the late events in Rome.

The first thought which arose in my mind was the contrast of the spectacle displayed on the Janiculum eighteen hundred years ago, and the solemnity then before me in S. Peter's. On the day of the martyrdom of the Apostle, the people of Rome hurried with rude and cruel curiosity across the Tiber. A multitude of faces, distorted by hate and passion, surrounded the cross of Peter. There, tradition says, he hung head downwards in shame and agony. The other day, pastors and faithful from all the world came up to his tomb on the same Janiculum, and surrounded in loving veneration the throne of his successor. In this victory of the Cross, and in the perpetuity of the victory, there is the hand of God revealed. No human power could so change the will in man.

Although I feel it impossible to describe the events of those days, nevertheless there are five acts so marked in their character that I may at least enumerate them:

First, was the Procession on the Festival of Corpus Christi, in which the Sacrament of our Lord's Pre-