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 MORALES

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MORALITIES

X a decision condemning the methods of the Jesuits. The latter also appealed to Rome, and obtained from Alexander VII a contradictory decree. In 1661 Mo- rales again called the attention of the Holy See to the matter, and in 1669, five years after the death of Morales, Clement IX issued a new decree deciding against the Jesuits. .A.bout the same time the Domini- cans discovered an enemy in their own ranks in the person of the Chinese friar, Gregory Lopez, Bishop of Basilea, who sent to the Holy See a memorandum favourable to the Jesuits. Among the works of Morales the following are the most important: (1) "Quajsta xvii a Fr. J. B. de Moralez, missionum sina- rum procuratore, proposita Roma; 1643 S. Congreg. de Prop. Fide" (Rome, 164.5); (2) "Tractatus ad explicandas et elucidandas opiniones et controversias inter Patres Societatis Jesu et religiosos S. Ord. Pr^d."; (3) "Comraentarium super Litanias B. Vir- ginis lingua sinica": (i) "Tractatus ad Dei amorem in voluntate exritaniluin, lingua sinica."

Qu^TlF-EcHARD. ,s r,,,/. Or /. Prxd.. II. 611; TouRON, Hommes iltusl. de I'oTdre .S. Dominiqiu:, V. 627, 628. 630; Hcc, Le Chris- tianisme en Chine, III (Paris, 1S37), 11-19.

Joseph Schroeder.

Morales, Luis de, Spanish painter, b. at Badajoz in Estremadura about 1509; d. at Badajoz, 1586. His life was spent in painting devotional subjects for churches and oratories. Painting was for him not merely a means of charming the sense of \'ision: he strove by his brush to express the religious enthusiasm which characterized his age. Critics have detected two styles in the long artistic career of Morales. In his earlier style, the influence of the Florentine school is more marked: he executed various studies and exercises after works of Michelangelo; notably, he copied at Evora a picture representing Christ on the Cross, with the Blessed \'irgin and St. John. To thi.s, not easily definable, period is referred a "Circumci- sion", now in the Prado Museum at Madrid, and six panels for the high altar of the church of La Higuera of Fregenal. In his second style Morales lessens the number of figures in his compositions, which seldom contain more than two or three, often in bust or in half-length. His favourite themes, frequently re- produced without any change, are "Ecce Homo", "Christ at the Column", and "The Blessed Virgin holding the Dead Christ ". The drawing is clean and firm, tlie anatomy correct, the figures, which recall primitive German and Flemish work by their slender- ness, are not wanting in grace, and at times are char- acterized by a certain air of melancholy. The colour- ing is delicate and as brilliant as enamel. Morales excels in the faculty of making his modelling stand out by the skilfully graduated employment of half-tones; like the early Northern painters, he exercises minute care in the reproduction of the beard and hair, and makes a point of rendering faithfully the drops of blood falling from the thorn-crowned brow of Christ, and the tears flowing from the eyes of the afflicted Mother.

No artist of his time knew better than he how to appeal to the ardent faith of his countrymen, because no one else in that day knew so well how to impart to his sacred characters so intense and infectious emotion. As an example of this we may take the "Christ at the Column" in the Church of San Isidro el Real at Madrid; here the painter pathetically places the disciple who has denied Him face to face with the Divine Master at the flagellation. The resignation of Jesus, His loving look directed towards Peter and fraught with forgiveness, the deep penitence of the Apostle, are so vividly rendered that one shares the enthusiasm of Morales's countrymen, and can under- stand why they called him El Divino. Naturally, his reputation spread rapidly through Spain; Philip II, however, whose preference was for the Italian painters, does not seem to have shared the general

enthusiasm: he gave Morales but one commission, for the "Christ going up to Calvary", which he i)re- sented to the Jeronymite church at Sladrid. The king afterwards, in 1581, granted a pension to the artist, who had become destitute in his old age. Many imitators of Morales exaggerated his style into man- nerism and caricature. His son Crist6bal accom- plished httle beyond mediocre reproductions of his works, but one of his pupils, Juan Labrador, became distinguished as a painter of still life. To the works of Morales already mentioned we may add: at Bada- joz (Church of the Conception), "Virgin and Child plaj-ing with a bird", "Christ carrying the Cross", "St. Joachim and St. Anne"; at Madrid, "Ecce Homo", "Our Lady of Sorrows", "Mary caressing the Divine Child "," The Presentation in the Temple", a "Head of Christ" (Prado Museum), "Ecce Homo" (Church of San Felipe), "Virgin with the Dead Christ" (Academy of San Fernando); at Seville (in the chalice-room of the cathedral), "Ecce Homo", with the "Blessed Virgin and St. John" on the panels; at Toledo (in the Pro\dncial Museum), a "Head of Christ", "Our Lady of Solitude"; at Basle (in the Museum), "Christ carrying the Cross", "Our Lady and St. John"; at Dresden (in the Museum), "Christ carrjing the Cross", "Ecce Homo"; at Dublin (in the National Gallery), "St. Jerome in the Desert", at New York (in the Historical Society), "Ecce Homo"; at Paris (in the Lou^Te), "Christ carrying the Cross"; at St. Petersburg (in the Hermitage), "Our Lady of Sorrows"; at Stuttgart (in the Museum), "Ecce Homo".

Stirling. Annals of the Artists of Spain, (London, 1868), 224; Bl.\n'c. Hist, des peintres de toutes les Ecoles (Paris. 1865) : Ecole es- pagnole; Lefort, La peinture espagnole, (Paris, 1893), 74-6.

Gaston Sohtais.

Moralities (or Moral Plays) are a development or an offshoot of the Miracle Plays and together with these form the greater part of Medieval drama. They were popular in the fifteenth and early sixteenth cen- turies and existed side by side with the Miracle Plays of that date. A Morality has been defined by Dr. Ward as "a play enforcing a moral truth or lesson by means of the speech and action of characters which are personified abstraction.s — figures representing vices and virtues, qualities of the human mind, or abstract conceptions in general", and, on the whole, that defi- nition comprehends the main features of the Morality proper in its most characteristic form. Miracle Plays and Moralities existed throughout Europe, especially in France, and had various features in common while the manner of their presentation, at least in the early stages of the Morality, differed hardly at all — the per- formance being out of doors upon movable scaffolds with all the usual "properties". The aim of both was religious. In the Miracle Play the subject-rnatter is concerned with Bible narrative. Lives of Saints, the Apocryphal Gospels, and pious legends, a certain his- torical or traditional foundation underlies the plot, and the object was to teach and enforce truths of the Cath- olic faith. In the Morality the matter was allegorical rather than historical, and its object was ethical; the cultivation of Christian character. The intention of both Miracle Plays and Moralities, as we have said, was religious; in the one it aimed at faith, the teach- ing of dogma, in the other morals, the application of Christian doctrine to conduct. In the one medieval morality at all well known to the general public, that of "Everyman", this is clearly illustrated — a human life is brought fac(! to face with the imperative facts of the Christian faith. It is not difTicult, therefore, to see that the Moralit v is not only ;i development from the Miracle ],lay l.ui, :dso its coniplcmcnt.

It is the custom with many dramatic and liter.ary historians to decry the Monilitics, especially in com- parison with the Miracle plays, as unutterably dull, and to place them in the lowest rank of dramatic art;