Priests, Women, and Families Part 6

Do you perceive all the skill of the Jesuits in this manoeuvre of theirs? On the one hand, the doctrine of liberty and justice, with which the middle ages had reproached the jurisconsults as pagan and irreconcilable with Christianity, is now adopted by the Jesuits, who show themselves to the world as the friends and champions of free will.

On the other hand, as this free will brings on the sinner responsibility and justice according to his works, he finds himself very much embarra.s.sed with it. The Jesuit comes very seasonably to his relief; he takes upon himself the task of _directing_ this inconvenient liberty, and reduces works to the capital one of serving Rome. So that moral liberty, professed in theory, will turn practically to the profit of authority.

A double lie. These people who give themselves the t.i.tle of Jesuits, or men of Jesus, teach that man is saved less by Jesus than by himself, by his free will. Are, then, these men philosophers, and friends of liberty? Quite the contrary; they are at once the most cruel enemies of philosophy and liberty.

That is to say, with the word free will they juggle away Jesus; and only retain the word Jesus to cheat us of the liberty which they set before us.

The thing being thus simplified on both sides, a sort of tacit bargain was made between Rome, the Jesuits, and the world.

Rome gave up _Christianity_, the principle which forms its basis (salvation by Christ). Having been called upon to choose between this doctrine and the contrary one, she durst not decide.

The Jesuits gave up _morality_ after religion; reducing the moral merits by which man may earn his salvation to only one, the _Political_ merit of which we have spoken, that of serving Rome.

What must the world give up in its turn?

The world (by far the most worldly part of the world, woman) will have to give up her best possessions, her family and her domestic hearth.

Eve once more betrays Adam. Woman deceives man in her husband and son.

Thus every one sold his G.o.d. Rome bartered away religion, and woman domestic piety.

The weak minds of women after the great corruption of the sixteenth century, spoiled beyond all remedy, full of pa.s.sion, fear, and wicked desires mingled with remorse, seized greedily the means of sinning conscientiously, of expiating without either amendment, amelioration, or return towards G.o.d. They thought themselves happy to receive at the Confessional, by way of penance, some little political commission, or the management of some intrigue. They transferred to this singular manner of expiating their faults the very violence of the guilty pa.s.sions, for which the atonement was to be made; and in order to remain sinful, they were often obliged to commit crimes.[2]

The pa.s.sion of woman, inconstant in everything else, was in this case sustained by the vigorous obstinacy of the mysterious and invisible hand that urged her forward. Under this impulse, at once gentle and strong, ardent and persevering, firm as iron and as dissolving as fire, characters and even interests at length gave way.

Some examples will help us to understand it the better. In France, old Lesdiguieres was politically, much interested in remaining a Protestant; as such, he was the head man of the party. The king rather than the governor of Dauphine, he a.s.sisted the Swiss, and protected the populations of Vaud and Romand against the house of Savoy. But the old man's daughter was gained over by Father Cotton. She set to work upon her father with patience and address, and succeeded in inducing him to quit his high position for an empty t.i.tle, and change his religion for the t.i.tle of Constable.

In Germany the character of Ferdinand I., his interest, and the part he had to play, would have induced him to remain moderate, and not become the va.s.sal of his nephew, Philip II. With violence and fanaticism he had no choice but to accept a secondary place. The emperor's daughters, however, intrigued so well that the house of Austria became united by marriage to the houses of Lorraine and Bavaria. The children of these families being educated by the Jesuits, the latter repaired in Germany the broken thread of the destinies of the Guises, and had even better fortune than the Guises themselves; for they made for their own use certain blind instruments, agents in diplomacy and tactics--skilful workmen certainly, but still mere workmen. I speak of that hardy and devout generation, of Ferdinand II. of Austria, of Tilly, and Maximilian of Bavaria, those conscientious executors of the great works of Rome, who, under the direction of their teachers, carried on for so long a time, throughout Europe, a warfare which was at once barbarous and skilful, merciless and methodical. The Jesuits launched them into it, and then carefully watched over them; and whenever Tilly on his charger was seen dashing over the smoking ruins of cities, or the battle-field covered with the slain, the Jesuit, trotting on his mule, was not far off.

This vile war, the most loathsome in history, appears the more horrible, by the almost total absence of free inspiration and spontaneous impulse. It was, from its very beginning, both artificial and mechanical[3]--like a war of machines or phantoms. These strange beings, created only to fight, march with a look as void of martial ardour, as their heart is of affection. How could they be reasoned with? What language could be used towards them? What pity could be expected from them? In our wars of religion, in those of the Revolution they were men who fought; each died for the sake of his idea, and, when he fell on the battle-field, he shrouded himself in his faith. Whereas the partisans of the Thirty Years' War have no individual life--no idea of their own; their very breath is but the inspiration of the evil genius who urges them on. These automatons, who grow blinder every day, are not the less obstinate and b.l.o.o.d.y. No history would lead us to understand this abominable phenomenon, if there did not remain some delineation of them in the h.e.l.lish pictures of that diabolical, _d.a.m.ned_ Salvator Rosa.[4]

Behold, then, this fruit of mildness, benignity, and paternity; see how, after having by indulgence and connivance exterminated morality, seized on the family by surprise, fascinated the mother and conquered the child, and by the devil's own art raised the _man-machine_, they are found to have created a monster, whose whole idea, life, and action was _murder_, nothing more.

Wise politicians, amiable men, good fathers, who with so much mildness have skilfully arranged from afar the Thirty Years' War, seducing Aquaviva, you learned Canisius, and you good Possevino, the friend of St. Francois de Sales, who will not admire the flexibility of your genius? At the very time you were organising the terrible intrigue of this second and prolonged St. Bartholomew, you were mildly discussing with the good saint the difference that ought to be observed between "those who died in love, and those who died for love."

What by-path led from these mild theories to such atrocious results?

How did it happen that souls enervated by gallant devotion and devout gallantry, and spoiled by the daily facilities of an obliging and accommodating casuistry, allowed themselves to be taken asleep in the meshes of political intrigue? It would be a long story. In order to set about it one must wade through their nauseous literature; but one sickens at the sight of their filthy trash.

One word, however, for it is important. Prepared as the world was, both by bad morals and bad taste, for the miserable productions with which the Jesuits inundated it, all this insipid flood would have subsided without leaving any traces behind, had they not mingled with it a part of the pure original stream, which had already delighted the human heart. The charm of St. Francois de Sales, his sublime spiritual union with Madame de Chantal, the holy and mild seducing influence which he had exercised over women and children, served indirectly, but very efficaciously, the purpose of this great religious intrigue.

With small morality and cheap absolution, the Jesuits could very easily corrupt consciences, but not tranquillise them. They could play, with more or less skill, upon that rich instrument Falsehood, which their inst.i.tution gave them, airs of science, art, literature, and theology.

But could they, with all this false fingering, produce one true note?--Not one!

But this true and gentle note was precisely that which was sounded for them by St. Francois. They had only to play after his method to make the false appear a little less discordant. The amiable qualities of his writings, nay, their pleasing errors, were skilfully made the most of. His taste for the minute and humble, which made him bestow a partial regard upon the lesser beings of the creation, such as little children, lambs, birds, and bees, became a precedent among the Jesuits for whatever is finical and narrow-minded, for a meanness of style and littleness of heart. The bold but innocent language of an angel, pure as light itself, who incessantly points out G.o.d in his sweetest revelation, woman suckling, and the divine mysteries of love, emboldened his imitators to make the most perilous equivocations, and was the occasion of their carrying their ambiguous terms to such a pitch, that the line of demarcation between gallantry and devotion, the lover and the spiritual father, became at length invisible.

The friend of St. Francois de Sales, good bishop Camus, with all his little romances, contributed much to this. There was nothing now but pious sheep-folds, devout Astreas, and ecclesiastical Amyntases.

Conversion sanctifies everything in these novels; I am aware of it.

The lovers at the end of the story enter a convent or seminary, but they arrive there by a long roundabout road, which enables them to dream by the way.

A taste for the romantic and insipid, the benignant and paternal style, thus gained ground rapidly. The event showed that the innocent had worked for the benefit of the cunning. A St. Francois and a Camus prepared the way for Father Douillet.

The essential point for the Jesuits was to reduce and to lessen, to make minds weak and false, to make the little very little, and turn the simple into idiots: a mind nourished with trifles and amused with toys must be easy to govern. Emblems, rebuses, and puns, the delight of the Jesuits, were very fit for that purpose. Among the cla.s.s of silly emblems, few books can vie with the _Imago primi Soeculi Societatis Jesu_.

All this paltry nonsense succeeded admirably with women who had no sort of occupation, and whose minds had been for a long time corrupted by an unintellectual gallantry. It has been proved by experience, in every age, that to please the s.e.x only two things are requisite; first, to amuse them, to partic.i.p.ate in their taste for everything that is trifling, romantic, and false; secondly, to flatter them, and spoil them in their weaknesses, by making one's self weaker, more effeminate, and womanish than they.

This was the line of conduct laid down for all.--How is it that the lover gets an advantage over the husband? Generally speaking, it is less by his pa.s.sion, than by his a.s.siduity and complaisance, and by flattering woman's fancy. The director will make use of the very same means; he will flatter, and so much the more successfully, as some degree of austerity at least was expected from his character and profession. But what is to prevent another from flattering still more?

We have just now seen an instance (a respectable one, it is true) of these spiritual infidelities.

In changing continually one confessor for another, merely on account of his being more gentle and indulgent than the former, we run the risk of falling very low in morality. To get the upper hand over so many accommodating directors, an entirely new standard of effeminacy and baseness is required. The new comer must entirely change the characters; and instead of being the judge, as formerly, at the bar of penitence, he must be a suppliant; justice will be obliged to plead before the sinner, and the divine man becomes the penitent!

The Jesuits, who by these means supplanted so many directors, bear witness, that in this sort of opposition they had no one to fear. They knew well enough, that no other would be found better qualified than a Jesuit for easy indulgence, disguised connivance, and subtilty to overreach the Deity. Father Cotton was so little afraid of his penitents leaving him, that, on the contrary, he used occasionally to advise them to go to the other confessors: "Go," said he, "go and try them; you will return to me!"

Only imagine this general emulation among confessors, directors, and consulting casuists, to justify everything, to find every day some adroit means of carrying indulgence still further, of declaring innocent some new case, that had hitherto been supposed guilty. The result of this manner of waging war against sin, emulously carried by so many learned men, was its gradual and universal disappearance from the common life of man; sin could no longer find a haven of refuge, and one might reasonably suppose that in a few years it would cease to exist in the world.

The great book of "Provinciales," with all the artifice of method, omits one thing, which we regret. In showing us the unanimity of the casuists, the author presents them, as it were, on the same line, and as contemporaries. It would have been more instructive to have dated them, and given to each his appointed period; and thus, according to his merits in the progressive development of casuistry, to show how they severally advanced towards perfection, outbidding, surpa.s.sing, and eclipsing one another.

In so great a rivalry, it was necessary to make every effort, and set all their wits to work. The penitent having the option, might become difficult. He wanted his absolution at a cheaper rate every day; and they who would not lower their price lost their customers. It was business that required a clever man to find out, in so great a relaxation, by what means further indulgence might be given. A fine, elastic, and indulgent science, that, instead of imposing rules, adapted itself to proportions, narrowing or widening, and taking measurement, as the case might be. Every progress of this kind, being carefully noted down served as a starting-post to go further. In countries that have once become aguish, fever produces fever; the sick inhabitant neglecting the precaution for preserving health, filth acc.u.mulates on filth, the waters form marshes, and the miasma grows stronger; a close, heavy, and noxious atmosphere oppresses the country.

The people crawl or lie down. Do not speak to them of attempting any remedy; they are accustomed to the fever; they have had it on and off ever since their birth, and their forefathers had it. Why try remedies? The country has been in the same state from time immemorial; it would be almost a pity, according to these authorities, to make a change.

[1] The Apostle puts the matter thus:--Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of G.o.d without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of G.o.d which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of G.o.d: being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom G.o.d hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of G.o.d; to declare, I say, at this time His righteousness: that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.--Rom. iii. 20-26.

[2] See in Leger, the vast system of espionage, intrigue, and secret persecution, that the first ladies of Piedmont and France had organised, under the direction of the Jesuits.

[3] Excepting the electrical moment of Gustavus-Adolphus.

[4] The term is a harsh one, and I am sorry for it. If this great artist paints war so cruelly, it is doubtless because he had more feeling than any of his contemporaries, and appreciates more keenly the horror of this terrible epoch.

CHAPTER IV.

CONVENTS.--NEIGHBOURHOOD OF CONVENTS.--CONVENTS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.--CONTRAST WITH THE MIDDLE AGE.--THE DIRECTOR.--DISPUTE ABOUT THE DIRECTION OF THE NUNS.--THE JESUITS TRIUMPH THROUGH CALUMNY.

An ingenuous and intellectual German lady told me one day that, when she came with her husband to Paris for the first time, they had wandered about in a grand but very dull quarter of the town, where they made an infinite number of turns and windings without being able to find their way. They had entered by a public garden, and found at last another public garden that brought them out again at the quay. I saw that she meant the learned and pious neighbourhood which contains so many convents and colleges, and reaches from the Luxembourg to the "Jardin des Plantes."

"I saw," said this lady, "whole streets with gardens, surrounded with high walls, that reminded me of the deserted districts of Rome, where the _malaria_ prevails, with this difference, that these were not deserted, but, as it were, mysteriously inhabited, shut up, mistrustful, and inhospitable. Other streets, exceedingly dark, were in a manner buried between two rows of lofty grey houses with no front aspect, and which showed, as it were in derision, their walled-up windows, or their rivetted lattices, turned upside down, by which one may see--nothing. We asked our way several times, and it was often pointed out to us; but somehow or other, after having gone up and down and up again, we ever found ourselves at the same point. Our _ennui_ and fatigue increased. We invincibly and fatally met with the same dull streets, and the same dismal houses sullenly shut, which seemed to look at us with an evil eye. Exhausted at last, and seeing no end to the puzzle, oppressed more and more by a certain dispiriting influence that seemed to ooze from these walls, I sat down upon a stone and began to weep."

A dispiriting la.s.situde does indeed seize and oppress our hearts at the very sight of these disagreeable-looking houses; the most cheerful are the hospitals. Having been for the most part built or rebuilt in those times of solemn dulness, the reigns of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV., there is nothing about them to remind us of the lovely art of the _renaissance_. The latest memento of that art is the Florentine front of the Luxembourg Palace. All those houses that were built at a later period, even those which affect a certain severe luxury (the Sorbonne, for example), are occasionally great, but never grand. With their lofty pointed roofs, and stiff straight lines, they have always a dry, dull, and monotonous appearance, a _priestly_ or _old-maidenish_ look.

In this they scarcely belie themselves, the greater part of them having been built to accommodate the numberless females belonging to the n.o.bility and upper cla.s.s of citizens, who, in order to enrich a son, condemned their unfortunate daughters to a sad, but decent death.

The monuments of the middle ages have a melancholy, but not a dispiriting look; we feel, on looking at them, the vigour and sincerity of the sentiment that inspired their builders. They are not, generally speaking, official monuments, but living works of the people, the offspring of their faith. But these, on the contrary, are nothing else than the creation of a cla.s.s,--that cla.s.s of newly-created n.o.bles that swarmed into life in the seventeenth century by subserviency, the ante-chamber, and ministerial offices. They are hospitals opened for the daughters of these families. Their great number might almost deceive us as to the strength and extent of the religious re-action of that time. Look at them well, and tell me, I pray you, whether you can discern the least trace about them of the ascetic character--are they religious houses, hospitals, barracks, or colleges? There is nothing to prove what they are. They would be perfectly fit for any civil purpose. They have but one character, but it is a very decided one: serious uniformity, decent mediocrity, and _ennui_.--It is _ennui_ itself, personified in an architectural form--a palpable, tangible, and visible _ennui_.

The reason of these houses being indefinitely multiplied is, that the austerity of the ancient rules having been then much modified, parents had less hesitation in making their daughters take the veil; for it was no longer burying them alive. The parlours were saloons frequented by crowds, under the pretext of being edified. Fine ladies came there to confide their secrets, filling the minds of the nuns with intrigues and vexations, and troubling them with useless regrets.

These worldly cares caused the interior of the convents to appear to them still more dismal; for there they had nothing but trifling insipid ceremonies, a sort of modified austerity, and an idle and empty routine of monotonous life.