Priests, Women, and Families Part 3

CHAPTER III.

Confession--The Confessor and the Husband--How they Detach the Wife--The Director--Directors in Concert--Ecclesiastical Policy

CHAPTER IV.

Habit--Power of Habit--Its Insensible Beginning; its Progress--Second Nature; often fatal--A Man taking Advantage of his Power--Can we get clear of it?

CHAPTER V.

On Convents--Omnipotence of the Director--Condition of the Nuns, Forlorn and Wretched--Convents made Bridewells and Bedlams--Captation--Barbarous Discipline; Struggle between the Superior Nun and the Director; Change of Directors--The Magistrate

CHAPTER VI.

Absorption of the Will--Government of Acts, Thoughts, and Wills--_a.s.similation_ of the Soul--_Transhumanation_--To become the G.o.d of another--Pride and Desire

CHAPTER VII.

Desire. Terrors of the other World--The Physician and his Patient--Alternatives; Postponements--Effects of Fear in Love--To be All-powerful and Abstain--Struggles between the Spirit and the Flesh--Moral Death more Potent than Physical Life--It will not revive

PART III.

CHAPTER I.

Schism in Families--The Daughter; by whom Educated--Importance of Education--The Advantage of the First Instructor--Influence of Priests upon Marriage--Which they Retain after that Ceremony

CHAPTER II.

Woman--The Husband does not a.s.sociate with the Wife--He seldom knows how to Initiate her into his Thoughts--What Mutual Initiation would be--The Wife Consoles Herself with her Son--He is taken from her; her Loneliness and _Ennui_--A pious young Man--The _Spiritual_ and the _Worldly_ Man--Who is now the Mortified Man

CHAPTER III.

The Mother--Alone for a Long Time, she can bring up her Child--Intellectual Nourishment--Gestation, Incubation, Education--The Child Guarantees the Mother, and she the Child--She protects his Originality, which Public Education must Limit--The Father even Limits it, the Mother Defends it--Her Weakness; she wishes her Son to be a Hero--Her Heroic Disinterestedness

CHAPTER IV.

Love--Love wishes to _raise_ and not absorb--False Theory of our Adversaries; Dangerous Practice--Love wishes to form an Equal who may love freely--Love in the World, in the Civil World--And in Families, not understood by the Middle Ages--Family Religion

ONE WORD TO THE PRIESTS:--We do not Attack Priests, but their Unhappy and Dangerous Position--Not Rome but France is the Pope--Our Sympathy for Priests, Victims of the Laws--Priests and Soldiers--_Priest_ means _Old Man_

PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.

PART I.

ON DIRECTION IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

CHAPTER I.

RELIGIOUS REACTION IN 1600.--INFLUENCE OF THE JESUITS OVER WOMEN AND CHILDREN.--SAVOY; THE VAUDOIS; VIOLENCE AND MILDNESS.--ST. FRANCOIS DE SALES.

Everybody has seen in the Louvre Guide's graceful picture representing the Annunciation. The drawing is incorrect, the colouring false, and yet the effect is seducing. Do not expect to find in it the conscientiousness and austerity of the old schools; you would look also in vain for the vigorous and bold touch of the masters of the _Renaissance_. The sixteenth century has pa.s.sed away, and everything a.s.sumes a softer character. The figure with which the painter has evidently taken the most pleasure is the angel, who, according to the refinement of that surfeited period, is a pretty-looking singing boy--a cherub of the Sacristy. He appears to be sixteen, and the Virgin from eighteen to twenty years of age. This Virgin--by no means ideal, but real, and the reality slightly adulterated--is no other than a young Italian maiden whom Guido copied at her own house, in her snug oratory, and at her convenient praying-desk (prie-Dieu), such as were then used by ladies.

If the painter was inspired by anything else, it was not by the Gospel, but rather by the devout novels of that period, or the fas.h.i.+onable sermons uttered by the Jesuits in their coquettish-looking churches.

The Angelic Salutation, the Visitation, the Annunciation, were the darling subjects upon which they had, for a long time past, exhausted every imagination of seraphic gallantry. On beholding this picture by Guide, we fancy we are reading the Bernardino. The angel speaks Latin like a young learned clerk; the Virgin, like a boarding-school young lady, responds in soft Italian, "O alto signore," &c.

This pretty picture is important as a work characteristic of an already corrupt age; being an agreeable and delicate work, we are the more easily led to perceive its suspicious graces and equivocal charms.

Let us call to mind the softened forms which the devout reaction of this age--that of Henry IV.--then a.s.sumed. We are lost in astonishment when we hear, as it were on the morrow of the sixteenth century, after wars and ma.s.sacres, the lisping of this still small voice. The terrible preachers of the Sixteen,--the monks who went armed with muskets in the processions of the League--are suddenly humanised, and become gentle. The reason is, they must lull to sleep those whom they have not been able to kill. The task, however, was not very difficult.

Everybody was worn out by the excessive fatigue of religious warfare, and exhausted by a struggle that afforded no result, and from which no one came off victorious. Every one knew too well his party and his friends. In the evening of so long a march there was n.o.body, however good a walker he might be, who did not desire to rest: the indefatigable Henry of Beam, seeking repose like the rest, or wis.h.i.+ng to lull them into tranquillity, afforded them the example, and gave himself up with a good grace into the hands of Father Cotton and Gabrielle.

Henry IV. was the grandfather of Louis XIV., and Cotton the great uncle of Father La Chaise--two royalties, two dynasties; one of kings, the other of Jesuit confessors. The history of the latter would be very interesting. These amiable fathers ruled throughout the whole of the century, by dint of absolving, pardoning, shutting their eyes, and remaining ignorant. They effected great results by the most trifling means, such as little capitulations, secret transactions, back-doors, and hidden staircases.

The Jesuits could plead that, being the constrained restorers of Papal authority, that is to say, physicians to a dead body, the means were not left to their choice. Dead beat in the world of ideas, where could they hope to resume their warfare, save in the field of intrigue, pa.s.sion, and human weaknesses?

There, n.o.body could serve them more actively than Women. Even when they did not act with the Jesuits and for them, they were not less useful in an indirect manner, as instruments and means,--as objects of business and daily compromise between the penitent and the confessor.

The tactics of the confessor did not differ much from those of the mistress. His address, like hers, was to refuse sometimes, to put off, to cause to languish, to be severe, but with moderation, then at length to be overcome by pure goodness of heart. These little manoeuvres, infallible in their effects upon a gallant and devout king, who was moreover obliged to receive the sacrament on appointed days, often put the whole State into the Confessional. The king being caught and held fast, was obliged to give satisfaction in some way or other. He paid for his human weaknesses with political ones; such an amour cost him a state-secret, such a b.a.s.t.a.r.d a royal ordinance. Occasionally, they did not let him off without bail. In order to preserve a certain mistress, for instance, he was forced to give up his son. How much did Father Cotton forgive Henry IV. to obtain from him the education of the dauphin.[1]

In this great enterprise of kidnapping man everywhere, by using woman as a decoy, and by woman getting possession of the child, the Jesuits met with more than one obstacle, but one particularly serious--their reputation of Jesuits. They were already by far too well known. We may read in the letters of St. Charles Borromeo, who had established them at Milan and {36} singularly favoured them, what sort of character he gives them--intriguing, quarrelsome, and insolent under a cringing exterior. Even their penitents, who found them very convenient, were nevertheless at times disgusted with them. The most simple saw plainly enough that these people, who found every opinion probable, had none themselves. These famous champions of the faith were sceptics in morals: even less than sceptics, for speculative scepticism might leave some sentiment of honour; but a doubter in practice, who says Yes on such and such an act, and Yes on the contrary one, must sink lower and lower in morality, and lose not only every principle, but in time every affection of the heart!

Their very appearance was a satire against them. These people, so cunning in disguising themselves, were made up of lying; it was everywhere around them, palpable and visible. Like bra.s.s badly gilt, like the holy toys in their gaudy churches, they appeared false at the distance of a hundred paces: false in expression, accent, gesture, and att.i.tude; affected, exaggerated, and often excessively fickle. This inconstancy was amusing, but it also put people on their guard. They could well learn an att.i.tude or a deportment; but studied graces, and a bending, undulating, and serpentine gait are anything but satisfactory.

They worked hard to appear a simple, humble, insignificant, good sort of people. Their grimace betrayed them.

These equivocal-looking individuals had, however, in the eyes of the women a redeeming quality: they were pa.s.sionately fond of children. No mother, grandmother, or nurse could caress them more, or could find better some endearing word to make them smile. In the churches of the Jesuits the good saints of the order, St. Xavier or St. Ignatius, are often painted as grotesque nurses, holding the divine darling (poupon) in their arms, fondling and kissing it. They began also to make on their altars and in their fantastically-ornamented chapels those little paradises in gla.s.s cases, where women are delighted to see the wax child among flowers. The Jesuits loved children so much, that they would have liked to educate them all.

Not one of them, however learned he might be, disdained to be a tutor, to give the principles of grammar, and teach the declensions.

There were, however, many people among their own friends and penitents, even those who trusted their souls to their keeping, who, nevertheless, hesitated to confide their sons to them. They would have succeeded far less with women and children, if their good fortune had not given them for ally a tall lad, shrewd and discreet, who possessed precisely what they had lacked to inspire confidence,--a charming simplicity.

This friend of the Jesuits, who served them so much the better as he did not become one of them, invented, in an artless manner, for the profit of these intriguers, the manner, tone, and true style of easy devotion, which they would have ever sought for in vain. Falsehood would never a.s.sume the shadow of reality as it can do, if it was always and entirely unconnected with truth.

Before speaking of Francois de Sales, I must say one word about the stage on which he performs his part.

The great effort of the Ultramontane reaction about the year 1600 was at the Alps, in Switzerland and Savoy. The work was going on bravely on each side of the mountains, only the means were far from being the same: they showed on either side a totally different countenance--here the face of an angel, there the look of a wild beast; the latter physiognomy was against the poor Vaudois in Piedmont.