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Catholic churches]. When you came home you used to preach, and tell us all about how God
[der liebe Gott — the loving God] conducted His affairs.” [German from the original letter.]46
That the two- or three-year old Freud was always being taken to church would have been unusual even in most Christian homes at the time, although for a pious woman attendance at Mass several times a week would not have been unusual. For this to have occurred in a Jewish home, however liberal or secular, would have been quite striking. On such church visits, Freud almost certainly received an introduction to Christianity, a sort of elementary catechesis. How else to account for his ability to come home and preach sermons to his family? Young Freud would have frequently experienced the special atmosphere of the Catholic Mass (see Figure 1-3). He would have seen paintings and statues of the Madonna and of the Madonna and Child, images of saints, and the like. He would have heard Latin; he would have watched the distribution of Holy Communion. He would have been taken to Mass during the seasons of Advent and Lent, with their penitential overtones and distinctive violet (or purple) colors in the robes of the priests and in the shroud over the cross in Lent. He would have experienced the Christmas season, and most especially he would have been taken to church for the two major holidays, Easter and Pentecost. These were by far the two greatest feasts of the Christian year in 19th-century Europe. In a small, devout Catholic town, these two celebrations would have involved the entire community.47 It would have been in church that Freud would most probably first have heard music: bells, organ, and instrumental music, as well as choirs and chants. (This was of course long before radio or any other modern technology of sound.) Music would have been an important part of the service. Czechoslovakia was renowned in the 18th and 19th centuries as the most musical country in Europe, and the regions of Moravia and Bohemia were especially known for their folk and church music.48 The main church at Freiberg was famous, in its region, for its chimes. (The church had been renovated just a few years earlier.)49 In church he would have been in a large, dimly lit, and arching space (any church would seem large to a young child). The church would have flickered with the lights of candles, which were (and still are) commonly lit for the souls of the dead, or as prayers. It is very possible that Sigmund or his nanny may have lit a candle for the soul of his recently dead baby brother. It is almost certain that Freud and his nanny would have talked about the religious meaning of death. Zilboorg concurs in this by saying that she “consoled him, that his little brother who died would live again.”50 Certainly Heaven and Hell would have been natural topics. Ernest Jones apparently accepts this understanding of the situation, since |