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Updated: June 8, 2025
As we stood before the silver gates our guide told us his little story: "When the French captured Malta in 1798 they carried away as booty the most valuable possessions of the church in the form of precious jewels, silver statues, golden vessels, valuable vestments, and works of art.
The twelfth of August was a day evermore marked with white in the friar's calendar. Arrayed in priestly vestments, he stood before his simple altar; behind him his little band of Christians, the twelve Frenchmen who had attended him, and the two who had followed Champlain. Here stood their devout and valiant chief, and, at his side, that pioneer of pioneers, Etienne Brule the interpreter.
'During the troubles of the times of the Huguenots in the sixteenth century, it suffered greatly, especially in 1562, when the fanatics lighted bonfires inside, and burnt the organ, stalls, pulpit, and vestments. Again at the end of the eighteenth century, 'the building was exposed to the fury of the Revolutionists, when it was used as a manufactory of arms; a forge being erected within it and the painted windows so blackened as to become indecipherable; and later still, 'in the time of Napoleon I., a project was laid before him, by the municipality of Rouen, for destroying the church altogether!
"This will add fuel to the fire of her hatred. If she only does not allow her anger to carry her away, and to show it in a manner that she will afterward regret! But my time is short. I have to walk before the sacred images in full ceremonial vestments, and accompanied by the priest of Alexander. You, unfortunately, take no pleasure in such spectacles.
But the figure which most attracted the public eye, and stirred up the deepest feeling, was the Episcopal clergyman of King's Chapel, riding haughtily among the magistrates in his priestly vestments, the fitting representative of prelacy and persecution, the union of church and state, and all those abominations which had driven the Puritans to the wilderness.
Ralph sat two places beyond her, with Sir James between; and she was again vividly conscious of his presence, of his movements as he knelt and sat; and again she wondered what all the solemn ceremonies meant to him, the yellow candles, the black vestments, the mysterious hallowing of the body with incense and water counteracting, as it were, with fragrance and brightness, the corruption and darkness of the grave.
Then, glancing through the same lapse of time, in the condition of the individuals we see the first day marked with the fullness and vigor of youth, in the pledge of their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the cause of freedom and of man-kind; and on the last, extended on the bed of death, with but sense and sensibility left to breathe a last aspiration to Heaven of blessing upon their country, may we not humbly hope that to them too it was a pledge of transition from gloom to glory, and that while their mortal vestments were sinking into the clod of the valley their emancipated spirits were ascending to the bosom of their God!
Then Art seemed for all men, and life only for architecture, painting, carving, and engraving long rapiers; and length of time for monks to illuminate great missals in the happy solitude of their cells, and for nuns to weave embroideries and to stitch jewelled vestments. The Florentines loved their children as dearly as we do ours; but in their pictures there is but the Divine Child.
Was God so insignificant in comparison with his family that after all with a good conscience he might preach him every Sunday in Lady Sunderbund's church, wearing Lady Sunderbund's vestments? Before him he saw an empty seat.
The altars and images were all destroyed, the rich furniture and gorgeous vestments appropriated to private use. Adam van Hare appeared on his vessel's deck attired in a magnificent high mass chasuble. Treslong thenceforth used no drinking cups in his cabin save the golden chalices of the sacrament. Unfortunately, their hatred to popery was not confined to such demonstrations.
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