Our Lady of the Rosary and Edgar Allan Poe

In the Catholic Church today is the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, a feast originally dedicated in thanksgiving for Mary's intercession in the Battle of Lepanto, the naval battle won by the Holy League against the Ottoman Empire on October 7, 1571. 

It is also the anniversary of the death of Edgar Allan Poe under mysterious circumstances on a Sunday in 1849. This article from the Smithsonian Magazine describes how Poe was found wearing strange clothing and incoherent outside a polling station on October 3, 1849 in Baltimore when he was supposed to be in Philadelphia conducting some business, and then died four days later in the Washington College Hospital:

Poe never made it to Philadelphia to attend to his editing business. Nor did he ever make it back to New York, where he had been living, to escort his aunt back to Richmond for his impending wedding. Poe was never to leave Baltimore, where he launched his career in the early 19th- century, again—and in the four days between Walker finding Poe outside the public house and Poe's death on October 7, he never regained enough consciousness to explain how he had come to be found, in soiled clothes not his own, incoherent on the streets. Instead, Poe spent his final days wavering between fits of delirium, gripped by visual hallucinations. The night before his death, according to his attending physician Dr. John J. Moran, Poe repeatedly called out for "Reynolds"—a figure who, to this day, remains a mystery.

Poe's death—shrouded in mystery—seems ripped directly from the pages of one of his own works. He had spent years crafting a careful image of a man inspired by adventure and fascinated with enigmas—a poet, a detective, an author, a world traveler who fought in the Greek War of Independence and was held prisoner in Russia. But though his death certificate listed the cause of death as phrenitis, or swelling of the brain, the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death have led many to speculate about the true cause of Poe's demise. "Maybe it’s fitting that since he invented the detective story," says Chris Semtner, curator of the Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, "he left us with a real-life mystery."

The rest of the article proposes different causes of death.

What connects these two events is a poem to Our Lady, written by Poe in the manuscript of one of his strange tales, but not included in the published version of Morella:

Sancta Maria! turn thine eyes - 

Upon the sinner's sacrifice, 

Of fervent prayer and humble love, 

From thy holy throne above. 

At morn - at noon - at twilight dim -* 

Maria! thou hast heard my hymn! 

In joy and wo# - in good and ill - 

Mother of God, be with me still! 

When the Hours flew brightly by, 

And not a cloud obscured the sky, 

My soul, lest it should truant be, 

Thy grace did guide to thine and thee; 

Now, when storms of Fate o'ercast 

Darkly my Present and my Past, 

Let my Future radiant shine 

With sweet hopes of thee and thine!

*Suggesting the recitation of the Angelus at 6:00 a.m., Noon, and 6:00 p.m.

#as spelled in the manuscript

The story is a strange tale like Ligeia or Berenice and has nothing to do with Catholic teaching about death, the resurrection of the body or eternal life. In the context of the story, it's almost eerie that the title character Morella, who predicts her death and her strange reincarnation as her own daughter, sings this "Catholic hymn" with fervor. Nevertheless, Poe knew something about Catholic teaching about and devotion to the Mother of God, using that title, referencing the thrice daily prayers, and Mary as Queen of Heaven and Earth on a throne in heaven.

The Edgar Allen Poe Society of Baltimore provides this essay exploring Poe's knowledge of Catholicism, suggesting that he had many Catholic literary contacts (in Baltimore that makes lots of sense!). Michael L. Burdick comments on this hymn to Mary in the context of this story trying to fit it in to the pattern of the three traditional mysteries of the Rosary (Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious):

“Morella,” in effect, sets the stage as the first tale in Poe’s woman-oriented trilogy of the transmigration of souls. Perhaps the work might best be understood in terms of Poe’s familiarity with the Joyful Mysteries. Yes, there are elements of terror present in the story, but we must recall that unlike “Ligeia,” “Morella” presents the transmigratory act in relation to a most natural process — childbirth.(25) The beautiful young woman in the tale manages to cheat death by giving birth to a daughter, through whom she manages, in a sense, to remain alive. Morella’s name derives from that of the famous Venerable Mother Juliana Morell, a sixteenth-century Catholic nun known for her intelligence and purity. She resembles the Virgin Mary in the sense that she too realizes that the pangs of childbirth and the attendant necessities of raising a child become necessary to ensure the physical and spiritual survival of life.

One of the key elements in justifying this view rests upon the poem Poe included in most of the published versions of “Morella.” The “Catholic Hymn” in the tale makes clear Poe’s knowledge of the Church’s tradition concerning Mary. Its presence suggests to me that Poe might have spent time examining the various doctrines focusing on the Virgin Mary. Poe’s interest seems all the more likely when we realize that many of the official pronouncements issued by the American Catholic Church during the 1820s, 30s, and 40s deal with the increasingly important position of Mary in Catholic belief and ritual. Morella pleads: “Mother of God! Be with me still . . . / My soul — lest it should truant be — / Thy love did guide to shine and thee” (M2:228), thereby acknowledging Mary’s pivotal role in salvation. As Mabbott illustrates, the poem echoes the Catholic prayer the “Hail Mary.”(26) Many a Catholic has asked the Virgin to intercede on his or her behalf, and Morella seems to be following the same path. Almost immediately following this poem/prayer, Morella informs her husband: “I am dying yet shall I live. Therefore for me, Morella, thy wife, hath the charnel-house no terror — mark me not even the terrors of the worm” (M2:228). Again, we need to wonder if Poe (in terms of one of the central concepts expressed in the Glorious Mysteries) is trying to remind his readers of the Blessed Virgin, who through her Assumption into Heaven was spared the decay of the grave. 

The poem on its own expresses some beauty and piety, but I'm not convinced by Burdick's analysis. Gothic literature, from Alcott to Poe in the USA displayed some fascination with Catholicism--it's part of the genre.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!

Edgar Allen Poe, rest in peace.

Image Credit: The Battle of Lepanto by Paolo Veronese (public domain)

Image Credit: 1845 portrait of Poe by Samuel Stillman Osgood (public domain)

Cardinal Newman on the Rosary

Since today is the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary we thought it appropriate to discuss Newman and the Rosary on the Son Rise Morning Show in our Santo Subito series. Matt Swaim and I will be on the air about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central.

We know that Newman thought devotion to the Holy Rosary was essential to Catholic daily life. He includes it in his "A Short Road to Perfection":

If you ask me what you are to do in order to be perfect, I say, first—Do not lie in bed beyond the due time of rising; give your first thoughts to God; make a good visit to the Blessed Sacrament; say the Angelus devoutly; eat and drink to God’s glory; say the Rosary well; be recollected; keep out bad thoughts; make your evening meditation well; examine yourself daily; go to bed in good time, and you are already perfect.

So one may ask, what does it mean to "say the Rosary well"? Newman provided some answers at a Sunday Mass on October 5, 1879.

Blessed John Henry Newman had received the Cardinal's Hat and vestments at the Consistory in Rome on May 12, 1879. He had left snowy England in April and had stayed in Rome until June because he had become very ill: first a cold, then pneumonia, then some malaria. Newman was 78 years old and he had been apprehensive about getting ill on such a journey. He recovered, however, after a huge dose of quinine, and made his way back to Birmingham.

Once home, Newman began to receive congratulatory letters and to observe several celebratory events at the Oratory in Birmingham, including a Mass in which he wore the cappa magna, a long cope (he was in choir as another priest celebrated Mass). He visited the missionary schools of the Oratory in September, and in October, he went to St. Mary's College in Oscott on the Sunday before the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary at a Mass celebrating that feast in anticipation. As Father Neville of the Oratory described the event for a book containing all these congratulations and honors, it was festive and solemn:

Cardinal Newman paid his long intended visit to St. Mary's College, Oscott, on Sunday, October 5, and by his presence added unusual solemnity and rejoicing to the celebration of the Feast of the Most Holy Rosary.

His Eminence was received by the President [Dr. Hawksford] and the Professors; in the hall the boys were assembled to welcome him. Dr. Ullathorne (the Bishop), Bishop Amherst, Bishop Knight and Dr. Ilsley were also there to greet him.

At eleven o'clock High Mass coram Cardinali was sung; Bishop Amherst, Bishop Knight and Dr. Ilsley being in the stalls. The Cardinal was assisted by the Very Rev. the President of Oscott and Fr. John Norris of the Oratory, the Rev. W. Greaney being master of ceremonies.

After the Gospel, his Eminence preached on the devotion of the Holy Rosary, taking for his text St. Luke, ii. 26: "And they found Mary and Joseph, and the Infant lying in the manger".

So here are Newman's instructions to to the boys of the College on why we pray the Rosary and how to pray it well by meditating on the great events of Jesus's life by thinking of them in the context of the Holy Family and our own families:

You know that today we keep the Feast of the Holy Rosary, and I propose to say to you what occurs to me on this great subject. You know how that devotion came about; how, at a time when heresy was very widespread, and had called in the aid of sophistry, that can so powerfully aid infidelity against religion, God inspired St. Dominic to institute and spread this devotion. It seems so simple and easy, but you know God chooses the small things of the world to humble the great. Of course it was first of all for the poor and simple, but not for them only, for everyone who has practised the devotion knows that there is in it a soothing sweetness that there is in nothing else. It is difficult to know God by our own power, because He is incomprehensible. He is invisible to begin with, and therefore incomprehensible. We can in some way know him, for even among the heathens there were some who had learned many truths about Him; but even they found it hard to conform their lives to their knowledge of Him. And so in His mercy He has given us a revelation of Himself by coming amongst us, to be one of ourselves, with all the relations and qualities of humanity, to gain us over. He came down from Heaven and dwelt amongst us, and died for us. All these things are in the Creed, which contains the chief things that He has revealed to us about Himself. Now the great power of the Rosary lies in this, that it makes the Creed into a prayer; of course, the Creed is in some sense a prayer and a great act of homage to God; but the Rosary gives us the great truths of His life and death to meditate upon, and brings them nearer to our hearts.

And so we contemplate all the great mysteries of His life and His birth in the manger; and so too the mysteries of His suffering and His glorified life. But even Christians, with all their knowledge of God, have usually more awe than love of Him, and the special virtue of the Rosary lies in the special way in which it looks at these mysteries; for with all our thoughts of Him are mingled thoughts of His Mother, and in the relations between Mother and Son we have set before us the Holy Family, the home in which God lived. Now the family is, even humanly considered, a sacred thing; how much more the family bound together by supernatural ties, and, above all, that in which God dwelt with His Blessed Mother. This is what I should most wish you to remember in future years.

He talks to the boys about the successes and failures they may encounter once they're finished with school and making their way in the world and offers the Rosary, prayed in their future family's home, as a means of solace and grounding:

I ask you when you go out into the world, as you soon must, to make the Holy Family your home, to which you may turn from all the sorrow and care of the world and find a solace, a compensation, and a refuge. And this I say to you, not as if I should speak to you again, not as if I had of myself any claim upon you, but with the claims of the Holy Father, whose representative I am, and in the hope that in the days to come you will remember that I came amongst you and said it to you. And when I speak of the Holy Family I do not mean Our Lord and Our Lady only, but St. Joseph too; for as we cannot separate Our Lord from His Mother, so we cannot separate St. Joseph from them both; for who but he was their protector in all the scenes of Our Lord’s early life? And with Joseph must be included St. Elizabeth and St. John, whom we naturally think of as part of the Holy Family; we read of them together and see them in pictures together. May you, my dear boys, throughout your life find a home in the Holy Family; the home of Our Lord and His Blessed Mother, St. Joseph, St. Elizabeth, and St. John.

At the International Centre of Newman Friends website, you'll find the text of this sermon and a picture of Newman's Rosary kept at the College in Littlemore, Oxford, where Newman lived after he left St. Mary's and Oriel College in Oxford, and where he was received into the Catholic Church on October 9, 1845 by Blessed Dominic Barberi. 

Those words about home and family could be rather poignant: Newman had sacrificed the domestic home and family first by his vow of celibacy and then by his conversion. Even as an Anglican minister he had not married because of that vow, made when he was 15; by becoming Catholic he was estranged from his sisters and brothers, nieces and nephews. 

As I mentioned on Friday, when Cardinal Newman's sight failed, he could not read either the Roman Missal to celebrate Mass nor the Breviary to pray the Daily Office. Father Neville of the Oratory explains in chapter 35 of Wilfrid Ward's biography that Newman memorized two Masses (of the Blessed Virgin Mary and For the Dead) and turned to the Rosary in place of the Breviary:

'Other religious privations had already come upon him. First that of the daily Office in the Breviary. He had always been greatly attached to the recital of the Office, and he rejoiced especially in the recurrence of the Sunday and other longer offices; his favourite parts of which never palled upon him as subjects for conversation. But the time came when he could no longer use the Breviary, and then, by the advice of Bishop Ullathorne, he substituted the Rosary in its stead. What the Rosary became to him under these new circumstances, those can imagine who know what his attachment to the daily Office had been; his ready reply to a condolence on his loss of the power to say it being, that the Rosary more than made up for it; that the Rosary was to him the most beautiful of all devotions and that it contained all in itself. In time, however, the Rosary had to be abandoned, a want of sensitiveness in his finger-ends disabling him from its use. From far back, in the long distance of time, memory brings him forward, when not engaged in writing or reading, as most frequently having the Rosary in his hand.'

BTW: you may order the CD pictured above from the Aid to the Church in Need UK shop here:

Let Blessed John Henry Newman and Aid to the Church in need founder Fr Werenfried van Straaten (RIP), inspire you in prayer. This unique recording of spoken word and music leads the listener in Our Lady’s devotional prayer, the Rosary. Each of the traditional mysteries of joy, sorrow and glory are introduced with readings from the writings of Cardinal Newman and Fr Werenfried, while the organ music and plainsong interludes, reverentially sung by the Oxford Oratory Schola, reflect the appropriate moods of the mysteries and give a musical uplift to the prayer.