come, the Holy See was satisfied, and on the 26th of January, 1765, the Sacred Congregation of Rites promulgated a decree, not only commending the devotion, but acceding to the petition presented, that is, granting a proper Mass and Office of the Sacred Heart for the kingdom of Poland and the archconfraternity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Rome. This decree was explicitly approved and confirmed by Pope Clement XIII. on the 6th of the following February. In this decree the Sacred Congregation declare that "they were well aware that the devotion of the Sacred Heart of Jesus had been diffused through most parts of the Christian world, with the sanction and through the influence of the bishops; and that it was enriched by the Holy See with many thousand briefs of indulgences given to almost innumerable confraternities erected under the title of the Sacred Heart of Jesus; that they further understood, by the petition for the Mass and Office, nothing more was intended than an extension of the devotion; and under the symbolic figure of the Heart, to increase the renewal of the memory of that Divine love with which Jesus' Christ assumed our nature, and, in becoming obedient to death, exhibited himself as a model of meekness and humility of heart," &c.

Catholic Poland therefore has the signal honour and blessing of being the first country favoured by the Apostolic See with the above singular and holy privilege. The Sacred Heart blessed her faith and her zeal for God's glory. Poor Poland! the twin sister of dear Ireland, always in tears, always suffering for faith and fatherland-suffering, but heroic in her fortitude, in her struggles for the faith of Jesus Christ. In the darkest hour of persecution the Sacred Heart of Jesus gave her courage to fight the battles of the Lord, and kept burning in her heart the lamps of divine faith. Poor Poland! To-day she is in sorrow-after the long fight her tears yet flow; to-day, as before, she is under the heels of the tyrant; to-day her churches in faithful Posen are shut up because they were consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus; but God's arm will protect her to-day as He did before; and in our inmost soul we pray to the Sacred Heart of Jesus to give her new courage to fight, courage to persevere, to humble her enemies, and to preserve for ever, pure and immaculate, the faith of her forefathers.

This favour-that of a proper Mass and Office of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was granted by a decree of July 10th, 1765, to the whole Order of the Nuns of the Visitation, at their urgent petition, with the right of a duplex majus, on the Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi.

God has had His enemies, the Church has had her enemies.

everything holy has had enemies; so, too, the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus has had, and has to-day, bitter foes. The concession of the Feast by Clement XIII. was the signal for the powers of darkness to attempt to extinguish the holy devotion. The patience of God allows little mortals to attempt to wage war against heaven. But how unequal are the forcesthe arms of flesh-against the hands of the Almighty.

Scipio de Ricci, the unhappy bishop of Pistoia, convened a synod in that city on the 18th of September, 1786. This notorious synod, which was supported by Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and many other wicked princes, condemned the devotion to the Sacred Heart of our Blessed Lord. In Naples and Genoa all works on the Sacred Heart were proscribed by the civil authorities, and at Verona the confraternities of the Sacred Heart were abolished. In the Austrian empire, by a decree of the Emperor, all the pictures of the Sacred Heart were removed from the churches, and the feast of the Sacred Heart was expunged from the Calendar; in Vienna many pious persons were fined and imprisoned for promoting the sweet devotion of the Sacred Heart. History repeats itself: to-day we see a German Emperor shutting up the churches because they have been consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus! But the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus will survive the Emperor and flourish over the ruins of his empire. “I have seen," says the Psalmist, "the wicked highly exalted, and lifted up like the cedars of Libanus. And I passed by, and lo he was not and I sought him, and his place was not found.” -Psalm xxxvi. 35, 36.

The Feast of the Sacred Heart was abolished in the churches, but Jesus had his shrine in the hearts of the faithful. Every effort made by the civil power to extinguish the holy devotion only imported fresh vigour and impetus to fervent Catholics to extend it, and intensified in their breasts love of, and reparation to, the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Seeing the attack made to-day by the wicked on the sweet devotion to the Sacred Heart, and seeing the insults offered to it, and reading of similar blasphemies uttered against our Blessed Lord about a hundred years ago, and knowing, as we do, that each attack on the Church results in wreathing a new laurel of victory round her brow, we exclaim with the Royal Psalmist : "Why have the Gentiles raged, and the people devised vain things? The kings of the earth stood up, and the people met together, against the Lord, and against his Christ (against devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus). He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh at them: and the Lord shall deride them."-Psalm ii. I-4.

The Holy See, so cautious, so vigilant, so sensitive to the

purity of faith and morals, protected the devotion of her children. The voice of the Supreme Pontiff-that voice which is the voice of Peter, that voice which knows no error and fears no foes-condemned the false doctrine and confirmed the lawfulness of the devotion to the Sacred Heart. On the 28th of August, 1794, Pius VI. published his celebrated Bull, Auctorem Fidei, in which he reprobated and condemned the attacks made on the devotion to the Sacred Heart in the wicked Synod of Pistoia, as "false, rash, captious, offensive to pious ears, injurious to the Apostolic See, and injurious to the faithful worshippers of the Heart of Jesus."

This judicial definitive utterance of the Vicars of Jesus Christ resounded to the utmost limits of Christendom, and gladdened the hearts of millions of fervent Catholics, who in the excess of their holy joy exclaimed (and we to-day repeat it with them): Adoration, love, praise, and thanks from every creature at every moment, and for all eternity, be to the most Adorable and Sacred Heart of Jesus. Pope Pius VI. and Pius VII. extended the proper Mass and Office of the Sacred Heart to several religious communities, to numerous dioceses, and even to whole kingdoms. In three briefs, which are contained in the Bullarium Romanum, Pope Pius VI. declared that he wished, in extending the Feast, that "the remembrance and veneration of the Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ, endured with so great love for the redemption of mankind, might be daily increased, and that the faithful might entertain greater devotion and love for the Passion of our Lord." In the reign of Louis XV., the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus was extended to every diocese in France. His pious Queen, the Princess Mary, daughter of Stanislaus, king of Poland, had an extraordinary devotion, in common with the whole Polish nation, to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and desired to have it extended in her adopted country. At the request of this pious lady the French prelates assembled in Paris in July, 1765, the Archbishop of Rheims presiding, and unanimously resolved to establish in their respective dioceses the holy devotion to the Sacred Heart. Most countries in Europe

1 Prop. lxii. Doctrina, quae devotionem erga Sacratissimum Cor Jesu rejecit inter devotiones quas notat velut novas, erroneas, aut saltem periculosas Intellecta de hac devotione qualis est ab Apostolica Sede probata. Falsa, temeraria, perniciosa, piarum aurium offensiva, in Apostolicam Sedem injuriosas.

Prop. lxiii. Item in eo quod cultores Cordis Jesu hoc etiam nomine arguit, quod non advertant Sanctissimam Carnem Christi, aut ejus partem aliquam, aut etiam humanitatem totam cum separatione, aut praecisione a Divinitate adorari non posse cultu latriae. Quasi fideles Cor Jesu adorarent cum separatione vel praecisione a Divinitate, dum illud adorant ut Cor Jesu Cor nempe Personae Verbi, cui inseparabiliter unitum est ad eum modum, quo exangue Corpus Christi in triduo mortis sine separatione aut praecisione a Divinitate adorabile fuit in sepulchro. Captiosa, in fideles Cordis Christi cultores injuriosa.

had now obtained from time to time from the Holy See the privilege of the proper Mass and Office of the Sacred Heart, but the extension of this favour to the whole world was reserved by the Almighty God to the great and illustrious Pontiff of our day-Pius IX.-as well to console his afflicted heart in his trials and sufferings, as also to rekindle the fire of Divine love in hearts grown cold. In the year 1856, the Sacred Congregation of Rites was able to say that the "faithful everywhere had felt so ardently urged to recall the memory of the boundless charity of this Divine Heart, that, at that time, there was hardly a single church which did not rejoice in having obtained from the Apostolic See the privilege of celebrating the Feast." Pope Pius IX., at the petition of the bishops of France, by a decree dated August 23, 1856, extended to the whole Christian world the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, with the Mass Miserebitur as a duplex majus on the Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi. In this Decree His Holiness declares that "he extended the Feast to the whole Church, because he wished to give fresh incitement to the faithful to love, to make return of love, to His wounded Heart, who loved us and washed us from our sins in His Blood." This decree was received with unbounded joy by all good Catholics; not only by millions of individuals, but whole populous cities, and entire kingdoms were consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus; and many before consecrated, renewed with increased fervour and love their consecration to the Sacred Heart of our Blessed Lord. If the finger of God was seen in the origin of the devotion, the same Divine finger is seen more clearly still in its history and wonderful diffusion throughout the world. The praises of the Sacred Heart of Jesus are now "in every land and tongue." Thus are verified the prophesies of Blessed Margaret Mary, that "the devotion would prevail despite all opposition ;" and thus the grain of mustard seed sown in Paray-le-Monial grew into a mighty tree, whose branches now extend over all Christendom.

Only a few weeks ago a petition, with several thousand signatures, was presented to the Pope, humbly but urgently beseeching His Holiness to consecrate the whole Christian world, the entire Catholic Church to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The glad news of the present month is the adoption of a plan for the erection of an expiatory Church to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in behalf of the whole French nation, on the heights of Montmartre, which witnessed the sins and horrors of the Commune, at the expense of £280,000.

In our next paper we shall give the history of the devotion in Ireland.

T. H. K.

IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL COLLEGES SINCE THE

REFORMATION.

SALAMANCA.-VI.

THE following letter of Father J. White to Father John O'Brien gives some slight particulars of two former students of the College of St. Patrick, Salamanca, and refers to a curious oath to be taken by those who should receive Holy Orders

:

"Dear Sir-I am again troublesome, for after I had finished the letter for you, and almost sealed it, I enquired if Mr. Quin's picture was yet published, for the engraver has been. promising it ever since last January, and finished it only last week. I send it along with Father Murphy's. What Mr. Murphy has been you know already, Sir, and Mr. Quin has been a very eminent missioner, though after a method different from Mr. Murphy, as not being so popular, yet was always conspicuous for his ardent zeal and innocence of life. He was indebted to your College, of which he was a collegian, for his learning, which he employed to the greater glory of God, and the good of innumerable souls in the mission. Mr. Quin is drawn to life, and belonged to St. Mark's (vulgarly Lazer's Hill), which parish took in also St. Andrew's and St. Anne's. Mr. Murphy took care of all this great and populous city: his diligence and zeal brought him. everywhere, though he particularly minded his own parish of St. Catherine's (commonly Dirty Lane), where he more frequently attended. One Mr. Austin of ours is now famous for his preaching and indefatigable zeal.

"I received also a copy of the young priest's oath from one of the vicars. It was obtained by the bishops of Cork and Kerry, in the name also of all the bishops of Ireland, as the grant expressly states, though not one of them knew a word of it, and this has displeased several of the other bishops as I am informed. The following is the formula of the oath :

"Ego N. Filius N. Dioecesis N. spondeo et juro quod postquam ad sacros ordines promotus fuero, nullam Religionem, Societatem aut Congregationem secularem sine speciali licentia Sedis Apostolicae vel Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide, ingrediar, neque in earum aliqua professionem emittam. Voveo pariter et juro quod in hac Diaecisi N. perpetuo in divinis administrandis laborem meum et operam sub omnimoda directione et jurisdictione Reverendi P. D. pro tempore Ordinarii pro salute animarum impendam, quod etiam praestabo