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Passage associated with the Illustration

We had strolled into the church one afternoon, and were looking down its long vista of gloomy pillars (for all these ancient churches built upon the ruins of old temples, are dark and sad), when the Brave came running in, with a grin upon his face that stretched it from ear to ear, and implored us to follow him, without a moment’s delay, as they were going to show the Bambíno to a select party. We accordingly hurried off to a sort of chapel, or sacristy, hard by the chief altar, but not in the church itself, where the select party, consisting of two or three Catholic gentlemen and ladies (not Italians), were already assembled: and where one hollow-cheeked young monk was lighting up divers candles, while another was putting on some clerical robes over his coarse brown habit. The candles were on a kind of altar, and above it were two delectable figures, such as you would see at any English fair, representing the Holy Virgin, and Saint Joseph, as I suppose, bending in devotion over a wooden box, or coffer; which was shut.

The hollow-cheeked monk, number One, having finished lighting the candles, went down on his knees, in a corner, before this set-piece; and the monk number Two, having put on a pair of highly ornamented and gold-bespattered gloves, lifted down the coffer, with great reverence, and set it on the altar. Then, with many genuflexions, and muttering certain prayers, he opened it, and let down the front, and took off sundry coverings of satin and lace from the inside. [Chapter XI, "Rome," page 127]

Commentary: An Illustration without a Textual Referent

Although Dickens ridicules Roman Catholicism throughout the book, no single passage corresponds to Thomson's studies of priests in their outlandish hats and monks in their hoods. The illustrator in emphasizing the headgear implies that members of all Catholic orders covet the ultimate head-covering that in the Church hierarchy represents absolute power and indisputable authority, the Papal Tiara (centre). Thomson has depicted the Papal crown as the familiar, three-tiered design that developed in the fourteenth century, as the Popes began to enjoy more and more secular power: the triregnum, triple tiara, or triple crown. Nothing in the text adjacent to the illustration, Dickens's description of Naples, connects the image to the text.

Elsewhere in the book, especially at the Papal Palace at Avignon, Dickens associates the darkness of dungeons (of superstition, repression, and the Inquisition) with the Papacy as a political and the Catholic Church as a corporate entity, whereas he uses light imagery to suggest modernity and the light of civilisation. As Valerie Kennedy points out, Dickens finds the Catholic Church's justification for the violence and torture as the means of preserving Christianity specious. In this illustration, Thomson has utilised the negative association of darkness in the vestments and ridiculous hats of the priests in what amounts to an editorial cartoon rather than an illustration. Both Sally Ledger and Valerie Kennedy in their essays on Dickens and Italy examine the relationship between Dickens's secularism and progressive liberalism. "Dickens repeatedly figures the dead weight and enervating effect of the priesthood on Italian culture and society" (Ledger, 84). The priests in the Thomson wood-engraving constitute an ensemble of the religious past that hinders Italy's entering the present, for they embody the forces of inertia and decay as they prey upon the gullible and the superstitious. In their less than contemporary garb the figures in the plate also embody Italy's temporal stagnation. "For Dickens the Inquisition and the present-day Roman Catholic Church symbolise past savagery and present obscurantism" (Kennedy, 95)." With churches and priests Dickens consistently associates torpor and drowsiness, as if institutionalised religion dulls the senses and stupifies thought.

In another side-swipe at the regressive influence of the Roman Catholic Priesthood, he laconically comments that "There must have been a slight sensation, as of earthquake, surely, in the Vatican, when the first Italian railroad was thrown open" (PL 110). [Ledger, 90]

Related Material

• Samuel Palmer — The Colosseum
• Marcus Stone — Italian peasants
• Marcus Stone — In the Catacombs
• Henry Towneley Green — A Sketch at Carnival
• Charles Dickens, the traveler — places he visited
• Charles Dickens, 1843 daguerrotype by Unbek in America; the earliest known photographic portrait of the author

References

Dickens, Charles. Pictures from Italy and American Notes. Illustrated by A. B. Frost and Gordon Thomson. London: Chapman and Hall, 1880. Pp. 1-381.

Dickens, Charles. Pictures from Italy and American Notes. Illustrated by A. B. Frost and Gordon Thomson. London: Chapman and Hall, 1880. Pp. 1-381.

Kennedy, Valerie. Chapter Eight, "'Dream or Reality? Past Savagery versus Present Civilisation in Pictures From Italy and Little Dorrit." Dickens and Italy: Pictures From Italy and Little Dorrit, ed. Michael Hollington and Francesca Orestano. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2009. Pp. 93-113.

Ledger, Sally. Chapter Seven, "'God Be Thanked: A Ruin!' The Embrace of Italian Modernity in Pictures From Italy and The Daily News." Dickens and Italy: Pictures From Italy and Little Dorrit, ed. Michael Hollington and Francesca Orestano. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2009. Pp. 82-92.

Thomson, Gordon (illustrator). "Priests and Monks." Pictures from Italy: Eight Illustrations. Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens; being eight hundred and sixty-six drawings, by Fred Barnard, Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz); J. Mahoney; Charles Green; A. B. Frost; Gordon Thomson; J. McL. Ralston; H. French; E. G. Dalziel; F. A. Fraser, and Sir Luke Fildes; printed from the original woodblocks engraved for "The Household Edition." London: Chapman and Hall, 1908. Page 250.

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Last modified 13 May 2019