The Catholic World Volume Ii Part 91

The only pretence I have ever heard advanced is because the Church has fallen into error, interpreting the Scripture after a forced manner and contrary to its true sense, and that it has imposed on us articles of faith which are not authorized by the word of G.o.d. I would like to know who is to be the judge of all this, whether it is the whole Church whose succession has continued up to to-day without any interruption, or is it to be the individuals who have excited schisms for their own interest?

This is the true copy of a paper which I have found in the private chest of the deceased king, my brother, written by his own hand.

JAMES R.

SECOND WRITING.

It is a most sad thing to see the infinite number of heresies which have spread themselves over this nation. Each one believes himself as competent a judge of the Scripture as the apostles themselves.

And no wonder, for that part of the nation which has most resemblance to a church does not dare employ the true arguments against the other sects, through fear lest they should be turned against themselves, and they should thus find themselves confounded by their own proper arguments. Those of the Anglican Church, as it is called, are willing enough to be regarded as judges in matters spiritual. They dare not, however, positively a.s.sert that their judgment is without appeal. For it would be necessary for them to a.s.sert that they are infallible, which they dare not pretend, or to avow that while they decide upon in matters of conscience ought not to be followed further than as it accords with the judgment which each one may make in his own mind.

If Jesus Christ has left a church here on earth, and if we were all at one time in this church, how, and by what authority, are we separated from it? If the power of interpreting Scripture resides in the brain of each individual, what need have you of a church or of churchmen? Why did Jesus Christ--having given to his apostles power to bind and to unbind on earth and in heaven--_add that he would be with them till the end of the world?_ These words were not spoken figuratively nor in the manner of a parable. Jesus Christ was ascending into glory, and he left his power to his church, until the end of the world.

For one hundred years we have known the sad effects of this doctrine, which takes away from the church the power of judging without appeal in matters spiritual. What country could remain at peace if there were not a supreme judge from whom there {599} could be no appeal? Can any justice be done where the culprits are their own judges and interpreters of the law, equally with those who are set on high to render justice?

It is to this condition that we are reduced in England in spiritual affairs. For the protestants are not of the Anglican Church because it is the true church from which there can be no appeal; but because the discipline of this church is conformable to their present imaginations. And as soon as it shall run counter or swerve from it, they will embrace almost the first congregation of those whose discipline and religion accord at that time with their opinions.

Thus, accepting this doctrine, there is no other church nor any other interpretation of Scripture than that which each extravagant individual shall hit upon in his brain. I would then like exceedingly to know of all those who have seriously reflected on these things, if the great work of our salvation ought to rest on such a sandy foundation as this? Has Jesus Christ ever said to secular magistrates, still less to the people--_that he will be with them till the end of the world?_--or has he given them power of pardoning sins? St. Paul has said in Corinthians--_We are G.o.d's husbandry, we are G.o.d's building, we are laborers in the house of G.o.d together with G.o.d._ This shows us who they are who labor--which is the field, which the edifice. In the whole of this and in one of the preceding chapters, St. Paul takes great pains to establish the doctrine that they (that is to say, the clergy) _have the spirit of G.o.d, without which no one can penetrate the profound mysteries of G.o.d;_ and he concludes the chapter with this verse, _"For who hath known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ."_ If then we consider merely in the light of probability and human reason the power that Jesus Christ left to his church in the gospel, and which St. Paul explains afterward so distinctly, we cannot believe that our Saviour has said all these things for nothing.

I entreat you to consider, on the other hand, that those who resist the truth, and who do not wish to submit to his church, draw their arguments from so-called contradictions and far-fetched interpretations, while at the same time they deny verities expressed in clear and positive words, a thing so contrary to good faith that it is difficult to think that they believe what they say.

Is there any other foundation of the Protestant Church if it be not this, that should the civil magistrate judge it fit, he can summon together such persons of the clergy, according as he believes it to be for his interest, for the time being; and can change the form of the church to Presbyterianism or to Independency, and finally make it just what he pleases? Such has been the method which they have pursued here in our so-called English Reformation, and by the same rule and by the same authority it can be still further diversified and changed into as many forms and figures as there are different imaginations in the heads of men.

This is a true copy of a paper written by the hand of the late king, my brother, which I found in his cabinet.

JAMES R.

But why, it may be asked, do we arbitrarily date from the epoch of Father James Stuart's, appearance in London these papers, otherwise without date, and which were not publicly known till seventeen years later, in 1685? Let us set forth, as briefly as possible, the arguments by which we support our position.

In the first place, we agree with the English historians that these two fragments of controversy are not from the pen of Charles II. A comparison of the rugged and often inaccurate French of his majesty with that of the present text, settles this question at once. To whom, then, must we look for the authorship? {600} They proceed from an ecclesiastic, from a theologian consulted by the King of England. The very for which they a.s.sume argues the teaching of a master. But are not these two papers the offspring of two authors, of two teachers? By no means. There is a perfect resemblance between them, a perfect consanguinity of thought and of argument. There is the same turn of mind, the same style, often the same expressions. Still further. The tenor of the two pieces, which present in an abridged and condensed form many points of doctrine, presupposes in our opinion a whole series of lessons given to the royal disciple. Observe that, at the beginning of the first resume, we have the phrase "the princ.i.p.al point;" there were then secondary points. The peaceful and at the same time simple, almost familiar tone of the master on entering upon the subject, is exactly the tone of a man who is conversing neither for the first nor for the last time. "The conversation" of which he speaks had not been, you would say, the only conversation. Everything, in fact, shows that these two fragments made part of a very considerable series of religious conferences.

But could these conferences, which, as we have seen, Charles might have held in all secresy at the end of the year 1668 and at the commencement of the year 1669, have taken place at any other period of his reign? By no means. For the first eight years, the king himself is our witness, since we have only to study the terms in which he complains to Father Oliva of his lamentable state of spiritual dest.i.tution. After the departure of the two Jesuits and the conversion of the Duke of York, the Anglican hatred and bitterness did not cease to rage about the throne of the Catholic Stuarts. During this second period, the only name which stands in our way is that of Father Claude de la Colombiere, who sojourned in England a little more than two years, from 1676 to 1679. Now in this unhappy time, so great was the terror which ruled Charles II. that, despite his sincere esteem for the preacher of the d.u.c.h.ess of York, he dared not accord him, by the very confession of Father de la Colombiere, more than two or three audiences, and not one of them secret. Whence it follows that these two famous doc.u.ments are very probably, we had almost said certainly, the work of Father James Stuart and of his learned companion. Beside, does not such an origin explain the almost religious care with which these arid pages of theology were guarded for nearly twenty years by a prince to whom history points as the perfect type of carelessness?

They called back to him the day when, in the presence of his mother, who was no more, and who now prayed for him in heaven, under the direction of a saint whose father he was, he had made his most powerful effort to abjure odious errors; they remained in his hand as a consolation for the past, a light in the future, a pledge of pardon and of hope in the hour when, cited before him who judges kings, he should at last render a severe account for the scandals of his life and the deficiencies of his faith.

Had the difficulties which these two devout ecclesiastics were forced to encounter been merely spiritual, had it been a question of logic, history, and truth, their mission would have been a fruitful one. But in actual life events are seldom simple, and history becomes a problem of complex forces. The heart of Charles II. led him toward his G.o.d.

The pleasures of court life, and a natural unwillingness to sacrifice his throne, made him hesitate, falter, invent subtleties. It happened, at this time, that a wide-spread opinion prevailed in England, which had not been without its influence on the king. A Catholic, it was claimed, could procure a dispensation from Rome, could disguise his faith without scruple, and conform himself externally, at least, to the rites of the Anglican Church. Nor was the British monarch dest.i.tute of a plausible {601} precedent. When sojourning at Paris, in the days of the Protectorate, he had promised the venerable Father Oiler to renounce Protestantism, and Alexander VII., at the urgent instance of the crownless prince, had authorized him to conceal his abjuration until his affairs took a more favorable turn. This concession was made in no absolute sense. It stopped at the limits which the divine law has fixed for kings as well as for the humblest of Christians. Unquestionably, a convert whose abrupt publication of a change of faith would subject him to grave perils ought to use prudence. But in no respect would this permission extend so far as that the disciple should be "ashamed of" his Master. In this latter case dissimulation would be a crime.

Yet, in the delicate situation in which Charles was placed, what was he to do? The French alliance remained at this moment a state secret, and was thus far without result. Much was antic.i.p.ated from the war which Louis XIV. was about to wage with Holland. Amid the triumph of the confederate arms, and the glory which would redound to his own person, the English monarch hoped to discover some means of strengthening the royal power and of breaking at last the Anglican tyranny. Not one of these things, however, had reached the vantage point of a _fait accompli_; not a domestic difficulty which did not subsist in all its force. In his extremity, the unfortunate prince naturally returned to his dreams of an accommodation with the Pope, of a compromise with the law of G.o.d: and one might say that circ.u.mstances invited it. Had he not now, in the general of the Jesuits, a powerful advocate with the sovereign pontiff? His son, a novice of the fraternity of Jesus, his son, called from the bosom of Italy and so tenderly received--would he not serve in the Vatican as a guarantee for the integrity of the father? Recourse to the Holy See, so far as to ascertain the precautions which would be permitted to the King of Great Britain in order to avoid exposing himself, his family, all the Catholics of England, to the extremest dangers--such was, we think the final determination of Charles II. This conjecture, authorized by the well-known sentiments of the prince and the whole sequence of facts, is specially based on a letter which Father James Stuart will shortly bear to Rome, and which appears to us scarcely susceptible of any other interpretation. Beside, one very authentic feature in the conversion of the Duke of York, to which we shall presently allude, falls in so perfectly with our theory, that it will be exceedingly difficult, in our opinion, to find any other satisfactory explanation for the ambiguous denouement which the end of this recital affords.

There are no historical indications to guide us in ascertaining the att.i.tude a.s.sumed by the two pious queens when the monarch arrived at this resolution. Probably the princesses partook of the illusion of the Duke of York and of most of the Catholics of the court: they placed an exaggerated hope on the powerful intervention of the King of France. Relying upon this, and on the probable complaisance of the Pope, they supported in his unhappy course the son, the husband, whose safety lay so closely to their heart.

It would do our two missionaries a cruel injustice to suppose that they saw no deeper or clearer. In so elementary a question of theology, these vigorous controversialists, whose learning and keen reasonings we have appreciated, could have had but one opinion--that of their confrere Father Symons, of whom we shall shortly speak. James Stuart, we may fearlessly affirm, fulfilled respectfully but firmly the duty of his ministry. He strove to convince his father that no pontifical letter would authorize either king or emperor to reconcile in his person what the Son of G.o.d by his divine lips had declared eternally irreconcilable, to be ashamed of him before men, and yet to find favor in his sight. Two things are certain. On {602} the one hand, the holy novice failed to convince the king; on the other, filial love, happily combined with apostolic prudence, preserved his zeal from all bitterness.

Charles persisted in seeking, through the intervention of Father Oliva, to draw from Clement IX. impossible concessions. Despite the recent fatigues of his late voyage, the young enthusiast offered to be himself the bearer of his father's despatches. The proposition was accepted, and Charles wrote these lines, upon which we have already commented, and which are unfortunately the only source from which the historian can draw a correct judgment upon the results of the secret mission completed in 1668 in the palace of the kings of England by Father J. Stuart.

TO THE REVEREND FATHER-GENERAL OF THE JESUIT FATHERS AT ROME (intrusted to the hand of Mons. de la Cloche, Jesuit at Rome):

REVEREND FATHER,--You are too necessary for us in the position where your merit has raised you, not to be frequently troubled by us, in that condition where the misfortune of our birth obliges us to be.

Our very dear and honored son will tell you, on our part, all our proceedings, and as we were perplexed in deciding upon some one who should be our messenger once again to your reverence touching our affairs, he represented to us the urgent desire he had of returning himself to Rome on a secret emba.s.sy from us to you, reverend father--which desire we have granted him, under the condition that he come back to London as soon as he shall have had an interview with your reverence, and obtained those things which we entreat of you, and which our aforesaid very dear and honored son will explain from us personally, bringing us, on his return through France, the reverend father whom he left there.

At the request of our very dear and honored son afore-mentioned, who has represented to us that the place where he has been received into your fellowship is burdened heavily with debts, and that there is need of some buildings and other things, we have arranged that your house, in which he has been received, shall obtain from us, as soon as possible, a notable sum for the expiation of our offences.

Waiting, if it please you, till your reverence can advise us of the measures which you will take for its reception, which shall be within a year. If you write to us, it will be by our very dear and honored son, who will tell your reverence all our intentions not intrusted to this paper. We are Charles, King of England.

At Whitehall, London, the 18th Nov., 1668.

If it happen that our very dear and honored son be in need of anything, whatever it may be, we beseech you, reverend father, to attend to it, and we will keep an account of all.

The sense of the fourth and last letter of Charles II. to Father Oliva does not appear to us doubtful. If the royal disciple of Father Stuart had shown himself unconditionally and generously disposed to every sacrifice, what could have been this business with the Holy See which he committed to the father-general? Had no difficulty existed, the abjuration ought to have taken place without delay. For the rest, the Duke of York helps us. His illusions, his doubts, avowed by himself in his memoirs, and which very probably he shared with his brother, confirm, point by point, our conjectures upon the nature of the obstacles opposed to the self-sacrifice of the two apostles of Whitehall.

In the closing months of the year 1668, the king renewed his intercourse with his brother, toward whom he had been momentarily estranged by the intrigues of Buckingham. The author of the Life of James II. recalls this fact, and immediately after he adds:

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"It was about this time (toward the commencement of the year 1669) that his royal highness, convinced hitherto that the English was the only true church, experienced lively compunctions of conscience and began to reflect seriously upon his salvation. He therefore sent for a Jesuit named Symons, who was reputed a very wise man, to the end that he might converse with him upon this subject. When the Jesuit made his appearance, the duke set forth his intention of becoming a Catholic, and spoke with reference to his reconciliation with the Church. After a long conversation, the father told him frankly that he could not be received into the Catholic Church unless he entirely abandoned the Anglican communion. The duke replied that, according to the belief he had always held, this could be done by means of a papal dispensation. He alleged the singularity of his position, and the advantage which would inhere to the Catholic religion in general, and especially to the Catholics of England, if by a dispensation he could be permitted to follow externally the rites of the Anglican Church, until an occasion offered for declaring himself with greater safety both for his own person and for the Catholics.

But the good father insisted, saying that even the Pope himself had no right to grant such a dispensation, seeing that it was the unalterable doctrine of the Catholic Church never to do evil that good might come. The duke having written upon this subject to the Pope, received from the Holy Father confirmation of what the good Jesuit had told him. Up to this time his royal highness had always thought, following the opinion or at least the expressed words of the Anglican theologians, that dispensations of this kind were readily accorded by the Pope; but the remarks of Fr. Symons and the letter of His Holiness caused the duke to conclude that it was high time to make every effort to obtain liberty to declare himself, that he might no longer live in the embarra.s.sing and perilous situation in which he then was." [Footnote 92]

[Footnote 92: "The Life of James the Second, etc., vol. i., p.

440-441. London, 1816. Quarto." (After several attempts to find this work, the translator has been compelled to rely on the French version.--ED. C.W.)]

What relation does this historical pa.s.sage bear to the sojourn of Father Stuart in London? Notice, in the first place, that the date, "at the commencement of the year 1669," cannot be taken literally. We shall find mention, a few lines further on, of a secret council held Jan. 25, in reference to "a declaration of their Catholicism;" the Duke of York being already converted, and the king almost decided to take, like his brother, the last step. Now let us suppose that, on the 1st of Jan., the duke, hitherto a staunch Anglican, "experienced lively compunctions of conscience." With his characteristic caution, he studies into the matter, and finally comes at the truth. Then occurs his interview with Fr. Symons; next he writes to the Pope. The Pope sends his decision. The prince is startled, makes an irrevocable resolution, and thus on the twenty-fifth day of the same month we find him deliberating with Charles II. and three of his ministers upon the political measures necessary to empower them both to practise freely the religion of their choice! A promptness certainly very strange and inexplicable even in this day of express trains and telegraph wires!

Evidently the supposition is impossible, and the expressions of the writer must be interpreted very broadly. Glancing back, it will be observed that these events followed closely upon the reconciliation of the two brothers, which occurred, as the English historians inform us, toward the end of 1668, during the autumn when Henrietta of France, the queen-mother, came to England in order to bid her children a final adieu.

If now we confront the whole series of Father Stuart's proceedings in London with the circ.u.mstances attending the Duke of York's conversion, these {604} two categories of facts, separate in appearance, unite and coalesce so naturally that it will be almost impossible not to recognize their intimate correlation, or, so to speak, their perfect ident.i.ty.

Setting out from Leghorn Oct 14, the son of Charles II. after a voyage of twenty-fire or twenty-six days, arrives in the Thames about Nov. 1, O.S. Henrietta of Bourbon, not less jealous for the salvation of her second son than for that of the king, hastens to put the Duke of York in communication with Father James Stuart and the eminent ecclesiastic who accompanied him. Our two apostles divide their days between Charles and his brother. It is in their school that the prince received those strong lessons which in the short s.p.a.ce of twenty days overturned and created anew the entire structure of his belief. It was from them that he heard with surprise that the pretended papal permissions were only a ridiculous fable, and that the profession of the Catholic faith obliged him to sacrifice everything, to suffer everything, for the eternal life. Situated as James then was, this declaration was of startling import. It affected his hopes of the crown, his family, his entire future. At this juncture he consults with Fr. Symons; and, still dissatisfied, he resolves to appeal to the Pope. Our argument now takes form; it speaks to the eye. Suppose that the courier of the Duke of York spent twenty-six days each way in his journey to Rome, and remained only eight in that city; to have returned to London six or seven days before the council of Jan. 25, he would have had to quit England the 19th or 20th of Nov. And these are the very dates for the departure of the novice of St. Andrew, upon the close of the conferences, and for his return to the capital of Great Britain after his journey to Italy!

Consider the subject in another light. According to every English historian, the facts relative to the conversion of the Duke of York have their extreme limits in Nov. 1, 1668, and Jan. 25, 1669. They cannot be fixed earlier, nor later. But these are the precise points at which the apostolic mission of Father Stuart at the court of Whitehall commences and ends. Examine this in detail, measure the time necessary to instruct and convert a heretic, to carry a message to Rome, to confer with the Pope, to return to London--there is not a feature which does not present a coincidence almost mathematical.

The novice of St. Andrew left behind him in France the priest whose co-operation had been so useful, and on his return to Rome he made known to the father-general the results of his apostolic labors at the court of the Stuarts. What impression did the royal letter produce upon Father Oliva? It would not be surprising if he thought that he discovered, what many readers will perhaps have felt, in these brief lines, a reserve, a constraint, in perfect contrast with the joy of a soul that has found, after long and sad errors, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Charles II. also wrote on a matter completely apart from the religious question. In a former postscript, the king had engaged to recompense the Roman fraternity for all the extraordinary expenses to which they had been subjected on account of his son. Unfortunately, when the year expired, the funds of the civil list were found empty. It was one of those financial crises not unusual under a prince who never knew the worth of money until it was gone. Charles was therefore forced to subscribe to an obligation payable in six months for the sum of 800 sterling. This note will close the series of inedited pieces that Father J. Stuart has left for two centuries in the hands of Father Paul Oliva:

"We Charles, by the grace of G.o.d King of England, France, Scotland, and Ireland, acknowledge ourselves debtors to the reverend father-general {605} of the Jesuit Fathers to the amount of 800 sterling, viz., 800 pistoles for the maintenance and journeyings of our very dear and honored son the Prince James Stuart, a Jesuit living under the name of La Cloche, the which 800 pistoles the said reverend father-general, Jean Paul Oliva, has furnished him with, and which sum we acknowledge ourselves indebted for, and promise to pay him at his pleasure after six months have pa.s.sed from the day and date, of the said obligation.

In witness whereof, we have given both our sign-manual and our ordinary seal.

CHARLES, King of England, L.S. France, Scotland, and Ireland.

Clement IX. was now, for the first time, informed of the secret movement which was drawing into the bosom of the Church the posterity of Mary Stuart. The pontiff received a letter from the Duke of York, and it does not appear improbable that the young traveller had also some words to communicate from the king himself: such at least was the intention of Charles three months previous. But whatever was the monarch's desire, there was only one course open to the Pope. The Master had said to the highest ecclesiastic as to the humblest disciple, "Till heaven and earth pa.s.s, one jot or t.i.ttle shall not pa.s.s from the law, till all be fulfilled." There was then no response to be made but a _non possumus_, tempered by all those considerations of a charity the most tender which were fitting upon so important an issue. And such, as we know from history, was the nature of the reply of Clement IX. to the Duke of York.

The general of the Jesuits, in his turn, owed thanks for the royal benefactions to the fraternity of Mont Quirinal. This letter, which the commonest dictates of courtesy would have enjoined, is not, however, to be found in the archives of the Jesuits at Rome. One loves to think that it was written, that the son of Charles II. bore it to Whitehall, but that the author, for weighty motives, destroyed it to the last syllable. Fr. Oliva was a man of note. He was the chief of a great apostolic order; he had grown old amid important services rendered to the Church. Italy could justly pride itself for its orators; but in Italy itself his rank for eloquence was high. He had been official "_predicateur_" to four sovereign pontiffs, and the sermons which he has left behind still attest the vigor, the fire, and the opulence of his rhetoric. It was not in such a nature to leave so significant an event as the conversion of a great monarch to the unaided efforts of a novice. Through all the previous conduct of the mission, he bore a vital part; and now when the supreme moment had come, the king hesitating, the eternal life of a nation in the balance, we cannot doubt that he was moved to write with all the energy and persuasiveness of his being. He must have seen that something more than an Anglican Church or a suspicious parliament stood in the way of the monarch's conversion; that, in the scandalous licentiousness of the English court, there was a stumbling-block equally as great. If the father-general had the courage to mingle with the language of grat.i.tude a sincere but gentle reproof for these delinquencies, it is easy to understand why not a trace of his message remains to us.

Father Stuart was in haste to return to England, where at any moment the great interests which Providence had intrusted to him might unexpectedly be compromised. His stay at Rome was therefore brief. As soon as he had received the verbal or written replies of Fr. Oliva, and in addition (according to our opinion) those that the Pope sent to the court at Whitehall, he set out at once on his return. He quitted Rome never to return. Without doubt, in the course of the following years, he communicated by letter with his superior, who {606} did not die till 1681, four years before Charles II.; but the very nature of this correspondence precluded its being deposited in the archives of the society. From this moment, therefore, we must rely upon English history for our details. Fr. Stuart drops into obscurity; but the work for which he labored still gleams above the darkness.

It was on Jan. 18, 1669, if our previous calculation be accepted, that the pretended Prince Henry de Rohan appears again at the court of London, bringing with him his old companion in accordance with the wish expressed by the king in his last letter to Fr. Oliva. The pontifical letters, touching, energetic, full of the wisdom of G.o.d, have then been remitted; the emphatic opinions of the general of the society are known. James Stuart and the French Jesuit have had their interview with Charles; they have aroused anew in his heart those earnest and holy impressions which swayed him two months before; and the venerable Henrietta de Bourbon is waiting anxiously and in tears the moment when she may say, in the language of the gospel, "Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, O Lord, according to thy word, in peace."

Such is the situation of affairs at Whitehall. Recurring to the "Life of James II." we find that the historian, after speaking of the Duke of York, his interview with Fr. Symons, and his letter to the Pope, continues as follows:

"This is why his royal highness, knowing that the king was of the same mind, and had already opened himself to Lord Arundel, to Lord Arlington, and to Sir Thomas Clifford, seized an opportunity to converse with his majesty on this subject. He found him fully decided to become a Catholic, and penetrated with the danger and the constraint of his position. The king added that he desired to have, in the cabinet of the duke, a secret interview with the persons we have just named, in order to consult with them upon the means which it would be necessary to employ in order to extend the Catholic religion in the state. This interview was fixed for Jan. 25, the day on which the Church celebrates the conversion of St Paul:

"When they had come together, the king declared his sentiments upon matters of religion; he repeated what he had said to the duke regarding the embarra.s.sments which he had experienced in being prevented from the profession of the faith to which he was attached, and told them that he had summoned them to consult upon the measures necessary to be employed in the re-establishment of the Catholic religion in his realm, and upon the most favorable measure for declaring himself openly. He remarked that there was no time to lose; that he expected to find great difficulties in the execution of his project; and that for himself he preferred to enter upon it while, like his brother, he was in the prime of life, and capable of supporting the greatest fatigues, rather than put it off later, when he would no longer have the energy to successfully manage so great a design. His majesty spoke with much force; tears filled his eyes, and he besought the gentlemen to do all that was fitting wise men and good Catholics.