Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/279

 SQUILIv&CE

239

STABAT MATER

bishop Favier; during the siege of the Legations, 1900, he was chief of staff under Sir Claude Macdon- ald, the British Minister to China, who with de Giers, the Russian Minister, pronounced "Mr. Squiers's services invaluable in keeping people and things together in the midst of exaggerated racial feelings"; for his "bravery and distinguished services" he was formally thanked by the British (iovernment and by President McKinley. In 1902 he was ap- pointed Minister to Cuba; he resigned in 1905 but was the next year appointed Minister to Panama, in both of which offices his tact and firmness and his Cathohc faith were of immense service to all iri solv- ing many complicated questions of these early days. He was devoted to his Church, and was very chari- table but unostentatiously so. He helped many deserving students to a Catholic education. One of his last acts was to establish at the Catholic Uni- versity two burses of S250 each for ten years. Broken in health by eight years in the tropics, ho s]ient the last two years of his life cruising in European waters. His last words after receiving the last rites were: "I am alone with God". His wonderful collection of antique Chinese porcelain was purchased for him by Mr. Pethick, the famous connoisseur. Many were bought to assist Chinese friends. His first wife, Helen L. Fargo (m. 1881, d. 1886), left him four children, Gladys (Mrs. Rousseau), Georgia (Mrs. H. Whitman), Fargo (d. 1906), and Helen. In 1889 he married Harriette Bard Woodcock, who survives him, with their sons Herbert G., Bard, and John Astor Squiers.

Hooker, Behind the Scenes in Peking (New York) ; M.iRTix, Siege o/ Peking (1900); Smith, China in Conmhions (1901).

John Scully.

Squillace, Diocese of (Squillacensis), suffragan of Reggio, in Calabria, Southern Italy. The city of Squillace, in the civil Province of Catanzaro, stands near the Ionian Sea at the base of a hill between the two branches of the River Alessi, and is a centre of the wine, olive, and silk industries; it also possesses lead and iron mines, and earthenware works. The ancient Scyllaceum, or Scylletium, had a harbour, which is now a marsh. According to Cassiodorus, who was boni there and died in a monasterj- founded there by him, the city was established by an Athenian colony. Invasions of Saracens in the ninth and tenth centuries, a landing of the Turks in 1595, and the earthquake of 1783 caused its ruin. The diocese possesses the bodies of many saints, including: St. Achatius, martjT, in the cathedral; St. John Terrestre, abbot, a contemporary of St. Nilus in the (then Basihan) monasterj- of Stilo; and the holy monks Bartolomew, Nicholas, and Basil. St. Bruno established two Carthusian monasteries within the Umits of the diocese, S. Maria dell' Eremo and S. Stefano in Nemore, the latter ha^^ng the less rigorous discipline.

The first known Bishop of Squillace is Gaudentius (465); Zachscus accompanied Pope Vigilius to Con- stantinople (551) ; John, previously Bishop of Lissa, in Dalmatia, ha\-ing been driven out by the barbarians, was transferred hither by St. Gregory the Great. After Bishop Demetrius (870), no bishops are mentioned until the Norman conquest, after which Count Roger erected the cathedral, into which the Latin Rite was introduced, while the Greek Rite continued much longer in the diocese. The series of bishops com- mences again with Theodore Mismer (1094). Other bishops were: Francesco degli Arcesi (1418-76); Car- dinal Enrigo Borgia (1539); Cardinal Guglielmo Sir- leto (1568), who resigned in favour of his nephew, Marcello (1573), the founder of a monastery for peni- tent women, and famous for his erudition ; Tommaso (1594) and Fabrizio Sirleto (1693); Nioold Micheli, who enlarged the seminan.-. The territory of Squil- lace contains Stilo, the ancient Consilinum, three bishops of which are known, Sabinus (495) being the

earliest. The diocese contains 59 parishes, with 198 secular and 24 regular priests, 130,000 inhabitants, 5 convents of men and 1 of nuns. Cappelletti, Ls chiese d' (tocia, XXI.

U. Benigni.

Stabat Mater, the opening words of two compan- ion hymns, one of which (Stabat Mater Dolorosa) is in liturgical use, while the other (Stabat Mater Speciosa) is not. They celebrate the emotions of Our Lady at the Cross and at the Manger — Calvary and Bethlehem — respectively, and may conve- niently be differentiated here by the third word {Do- lorosa, Speciosa). The Speciosa contains thirteen (double) stanzas of six lines; the Dolorosa, ten. In other respects the two hymns are in quite perfect parallelism of phrase throughout, as the first stanza may serve to illustrate:

Stabat mater ] ^^^'^Fo^^ ( speciosa

J .. ( crucem lacrimosa

^^ ' ( foenum gaudiosa

D-tfi't^M^l'- The question, which is the original, which the imita- tion, will be discussed under II. The Speciosa.

I. The Doloros.\. — The hymn was well known to all classes by the end of the fourteenth century. Georgius Stella, Chancellor of Genoa (d. 1420), in his "Annales Genuenses", speaks of it as in use by the Flagellants in 1388, and other historians note its use later in the same century. In Provence, about 1399, the "Albati", or "Bianchi", sang it during their nine days' processions. "The Church did not re- ceive the hymn from the heretics, but the heretics despoiled the Church of the Sequence" (Daniel, "Thesaurus Hymnologicus", II, 140). If the very questionable ascription to Jacopone da Todi be cor- rect, the hymn probably found its way from Francis- can houses into those of other rehgious bodies and into popular use. It is found in several European (but not English) Missals of the fifteenth century, but was not introduced into the Roman Breviary and Missal until 1727 (Feast of the Seven Dolours B. V. M., assigned to Friday after Passion Sunday. The September feast of the same name employs other hymns in the Breviary Office). In the Breviary it is divided into three parts: at Vespers, "Stabat Mater dolorosa"; at Matins, "Sancta Mater, istud agas"; at Lauds, "Virgo virginum pra?clara".

The authorship of the hymn has been ascribed to St. Gregory the Great (d. 604), St. Bernard of Clair- vaux (d. 1153), Innocent III (d. 1216), St. Bonaven- ture (d. 1274), Jacopone (d. 1306), Pope John XXII (d. 1334), Gregory XI (d. 1378). Of these ascrip- tions, the only probable ones are those to Innocent III and Jacopone. Benedict XIV gives it without question to Innocent, and quotes three authorities; Mone, in his notes, and Hurter, in his "Life", give it to the same great pontiff. Dufheld, in his "Latin Hymn Writers and their Hymns", rejects with much positiveness, and Meams, in Juhan, " Dictionary of Hymnology", questions, the ascription. Gregoro- vius also denies it to the pope of "the great and cold intellect"; but for a similar reason he might question the ascription of the Corpus Christi hymns, redolent of devotional warmth and sweetness, to the rigorously scholastic mind of St. Thomas Aquinas; he adds, however, a reference to a fourteenth-century manu- script containing poems by Jacopone with an ascrip- tion to him of the Stabat. The argument for Jaco- pone is not satisfactorj'. While his hymns wTitten in the LTmbrian dialect commanded popularity and deser\'ed respect, some of the Latin hymns ascribed to him are certainly not his, and it is doubtful if he ever wrote any — or at all events anything better thaji imitations of — Latin hymns.