figured
silk from one to two hundred years old, which, if I could have got
it, for half its value, I should much like to have bought. I sat in
the cool of the church while he sat in the doorway, which was still
in shadow, snipping and snipping, and then sewing, I am sure with
admirable neatness. He made a charming picture, with the arched
portico over his head, the green grass and low church wall behind
him, and then a lovely landscape of wood and pasture and valleys and
hillside. Every now and then he would come and chirrup about
Joachim, for he was pained and shocked at my having said that his
Joachim was someone else and not Joachim at all. I said I was very
sorry, but I was afraid the figure was a woman. He asked me what he
was to do. He had known it, man and boy, this sixty years, and had
always shown it as St. Joachim; he had never heard anyone but myself
question his ascription, and could not suddenly change his mind
about it at the bidding of a stranger. At the same time he felt it
was a very serious thing to continue showing it as the Virgin's
father if it was really her grandmother. I told him I thought this
was a case for his spiritual director, and that if he felt
uncomfortable about it he should consult his parish priest and do as
he was told.

On leaving Montrigone, with a pleasant sense of having made
acquaintance with a new and, in many respects, interesting work, I
could not get the sacristan and our difference of opinion out of my
head. What, I asked myself, are the differences that unhappily
divide Christendom, and what are those that divide Christendom from
modern schools of thought, but a seeing of Joachims as the Virgin's
grandmothers on a larger scale? True, we cannot call figures
Joachim when we know perfectly well that they are nothing of the
kind; but I registered a vow that henceforward when I called
Joachims the Virgin's grandmothers I would bear more in mind than I
have perhaps always hitherto done, how hard it is for those who have
been taught to see them as Joachims to think of them as something
different. I trust that I have not been unfaithful to this vow in
the preceding article. If the reader differs from me, let me ask
him to remember how hard it is for one who has got a figure well
into his head as the Virgin's grandmother to see it as Joachim.

A Medieval Girl School {166}

This last summer I revisited Oropa, near Biella, to see what
connection I could fin