Loe raamatut: «Protestantism and Catholicity», lehekülg 29

Do you know what Carranza himself, who suffered so much from the Inquisition, thought of this matter? Every time that he has occasion to touch on this point in the work which I have quoted, he expresses the ideas of his time, without even staying to prove them; he gives them as undoubted principles. In England, with Queen Mary, he did not fear to express his opinions as to the rigor with which heretics ought to be treated; and he was certainly far from suspecting that his name would one day be made use of to attack this intolerance. Kings and peoples, ecclesiastics and seculars, were all agreed on this point. What would be said now-a-days of a king who would carry with his own hands the wood to burn heretics, and would condemn blasphemers to have their tongues pierced with a hot iron? Now, the first of these things is related of St. Ferdinand, and we know that the second was done by St. Louis. We now exclaim in seeing Philip II. assisting at an auto-da-fé; but, if we consider that the court, the great men, all that was most select in society, surrounded the king on these occasions, we shall understand that, if this spectacle is horrible and intolerable to us, it was not so in the eyes of those men, widely different from us in ideas and feelings. And let it not be said that they were forced there by the will of the monarch, – that they were compelled to obey: this was not the effect of the monarch's will; it was only a consequence of the spirit of the age. No monarch would have been sufficiently powerful to perform such a ceremony, if the spirit of the age had been opposed to it; besides, no monarch is so hard and insensible as not to feel the influence of the times in which he lives. Suppose the most absolute despot of our time, Napoleon, at the height of his power, or the present Emperor of Russia, and see whether they could thus violate the manners of the age.

An anecdote is related which is little adapted to confirm the opinion of those who assert that the Inquisition was a political instrument in the hands of Philip. As it paints in a curious and interesting manner the customs and ideas of the age, I will insert it here. Philip II. held his court at Madrid; a certain preacher, in a sermon delivered in presence of the king, advanced, that sovereigns had an absolute power over the persons as well as over the property of their subjects. The proposition was not of a nature to displease a king; the preacher at one blow relieved kings from all control over the exercise of their power. Now, it seems that at that time all men were not in such abject subjection to despotic control as we have been led to believe; some one was found to denounce to the Inquisition the words in which the preacher had not been ashamed to flatter the absolute power of kings. Surely the orator had chosen a secure asylum; and our readers may well suppose that this denunciation coming into collision with the power of Philip, the Inquisition would have maintained a prudent silence. Yet it was not so: the Inquisition made an inquiry, found the proposition contrary to sound doctrine, and the preacher, who was perhaps far from expecting such a reward, had divers penances imposed on him, and was condemned to retract publicly his proposition in the same place where he had made it. The retractation took place with all the ceremonies of a juridical proceeding; the preacher declared that he retracted his proposition as erroneous; he explained the reasons by reading, as he had been directed, the following words, well worthy of remark: "Indeed, messieurs, kings have no other power over their subjects than that which is given to them by the divine and human law; they have none proceeding from their own free and absolute will." This is related by D. Antonio Perez, as may be seen at length in the note which corresponds to the present chapter. We know, moreover, that he was not a fanatical partisan of the Inquisition.

This took place at the time which some persons never mention without stigmatizing it with the words obscurantism, tyranny, and superstition. Yet I doubt whether, at a time nearer to us – that, for example, when it is asserted that light and liberty dawned on Spain under the reign of Charles III. – a public and solemn condemnation of despotism would have been carried so far. This condemnation, at the time of Philip II., did as much honor to the tribunal which ordered it as to the monarch who consented to it.

With respect to knowledge, it is a calumny to say that a design was formed to maintain and perpetuate ignorance. Certainly the conduct of Philip does not indicate such a design, when we see this prince, not content with favoring the great enterprise of the Polyglot of Antwerp, recommending to Arias Montanus to devote to the purchase of chosen works, printed or manuscript, the money which would revert to the printer Plantinus, to whom the king had advanced a large sum to aid in the enterprise. This chosen collection was to be placed in the library of the monastery of the Escurial, which was then built. The king had also charged Don Francis de Alaba, his ambassador in France, to collect in that kingdom the best books which it was possible for him to procure, as he himself says in his letter to Arias Montanus. No; the history of Spain, with respect to intolerance in religious matters, is not so black as it has been represented. When foreigners reproach us with cruelty, we will reply that, when Europe was stained with blood by civil wars, Spain was at peace. As to the number of persons who perished on the scaffold or died in exile, we challenge the two nations who claim to be at the head of civilization, France and England, to show us their statistics on that subject at the same time, and to compare them with ours: we do not fear the comparison.

In proportion as the danger of the introduction of Protestantism into Spain diminished, so did the rigor of the Inquisition. We may observe, moreover, that the procedure of that tribunal always became milder, in accordance with the spirit of criminal legislation in the other countries of Europe. Thus we see the auto-da-fé becoming more rare as we approach our own times, so that, at the end of the last century, the Inquisition was only a shadow of what it had been. It is useless to insist on this point, which nobody denies, and on which we are in unison with the most ardent enemies of that tribunal; and this it is which, in our eyes, proves, in the most convincing manner, that we must seek in the ideas and manners of the time, what people have attempted to find in the cruelty, in the wickedness, or in the ambition of men. If the doctrines of those who plead for the abolition of the punishment of death are carried into effect, posterity, when reading the executions of our time, will be seized with the same horror with which we view the punishment of times past, and the gibbet and the guillotine will figure in the same rank as the ancient Quemaderos.26

CHAPTER XXXVIII.
RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS IN THEMSELVES

Religious institutions are another of those points whereon Protestantism and Catholicity are in complete opposition to each other: the first abhors, the second loves them; the one destroys them, the other establishes and encourages them. One of the first acts of Protestantism, whenever it is introduced, is to attack religious institutions by its doctrines and its acts; it labors to destroy them immediately; one would say that the pretended Reformation cannot behold without irritation those holy abodes, which continually remind it of the ignominious apostacy of its founder. Religious vows, especially that of chastity, have been the subject of the most cruel invectives on the part of Protestants; but it must be observed, that what is said now, and what has been repeated for three centuries, is only the echo of the first voice which was raised in Germany; and what was that voice? It was the voice of a monk without modesty, who penetrated into the sanctuary and carried away a victim. All the pomp of learning employed to combat a sacred dogma is insufficient to hide so impure an origin. Through the excitement of the false prophet we perceive the impure flames which devour his heart.

Let us observe in passing, that the same thing took place with respect to the celibacy of the clergy. Protestants, from the beginning, could not endure this; they threw off the mask, and condemned it without disguise; they attempted to combat it with a certain ostentation of learning; but, at the bottom of all their declamation, what do we find? The clamor of a priest who has forgotten his duty; who strives against the remorse of his conscience, and endeavors to hide his shame by diminishing the horror of the scandal by the allegations of falsehood. If such conduct had been pursued by the Catholics, all the arms of ridicule would have been employed to cover them with contempt, to stamp it, as it deserves, with the brand of infamy; but it was a man who declared deadly war against Catholicity: that was enough to turn away the contempt of philosophers, and find indulgence for the declamation of a monk whose first argument against celibacy was, to profane his vows and consummate a sacrilege.

The rest of the disturbers of that age imitated the example of so worthy a master. All demanded and required from Scripture and philosophy a veil to cover their weakness and baseness. Just punishment! blindness of the mind was the result of corruption of the heart; impudence sought and obtained the companionship of error. Never is the mind more vile than when, to excuse a fault, it becomes the accomplice of it; then it is not deceived, but prostituted.

This hatred of religious institutions has been inherited by philosophy from Protestantism. This is the reason why all revolutions, excited and guided by Protestants or philosophers, have been signalized by their intolerance towards the institutions themselves, and by their cruelty towards those who belonged to them. What the law could not do was completed by the dagger and the torch of the incendiary. What escaped the catastrophe was left to the slow punishment of misery and famine. On this point, as well as on many others, it is manifest that the infidel philosophy is the daughter of the Reformation. It is useless to seek for a more convincing proof of this than the parallel of the histories of both, in all that relates to the destruction of religious institutions; the same flattery of kings, the same exaggeration of the civil power, the same declamation against the pretended evil inflicted on society, the same calumnies; we have only to change the names and the dates. And we must also remark this peculiarity, that, in this matter, the difference which, apparently, ought to have resulted from the progress of toleration and the softening of manners in recent times, has scarcely been felt.

But is it true that religious institutions are as contemptible as they have been represented? is it true that they do not even deserve attention, and that all the questions relating to them can be solved by merely pronouncing the word fanaticism? Does not the man of observation, the real philosopher, find in them any thing worthy of attracting his attention? It is difficult to believe that such was the nullity of these institutions, whose history is so grand, and which still preserve in their existence the promise of a great future. It is difficult to believe that such institutions are not worthy of attention in the highest degree, and that their study is wholly devoid of lively interest and solid profit. We see them appear at every epoch of Church history; their memorials and monuments are found every moment under our feet; they are preserved in the regions of Asia, in the sands of Africa, in the cities and solitudes of America; in fine, when, after so much adversity, we see them more or less prosperous in the various countries of Europe, sending forth again fresh shoots in those lands where their roots had been the most deeply torn up, there naturally arises in the mind a spirit of curiosity to examine this phenomenon, to inquire what is the origin, the genius, and the character of these institutions. Those who love to descend into the heart of philosophical questions discover, at first sight, that there must be there an abundant mine of the most precious information for the science of religion, of society, and of man. He who has read the lives of the ancient fathers of the desert without being touched, without feeling profound admiration, and being filled with grave and lofty thoughts; he who, treading under his feet with indifference the ruins of an ancient abbey, has not called up in fancy the shades of the cenobites who lived and died there; he who passes coldly through the corridors and cells of convents half-demolished, and feels no recollections, and not even the curiosity to examine, – he may close the annals of history, and may cease to study the beautiful and the sublime. There exist for him no historical phenomena, no beauty, no sublimity; his mind is in darkness, his heart is in the dust.

With the intention of hiding the intimate connection which subsists between religious institutions and religion herself, it has been said that she can exist without them. This is an incontrovertible truth, but abstract and wholly useless – a barren and isolated assertion, which can throw no light upon science, nor serve as any practical guide – an insidious truth, which only tends entirely to change the whole state of the question, and persuade men that when religious institutions are concerned, religion has nothing to do with the matter. There is here a gross sophism, which is too much employed, not only on this question, but on many others. This consists in replying to all difficulties by a proposition perfectly true in itself, but which has nothing to do with the question. By this means, attention is turned another way; the palpable truth which is presented to the mind makes men wander from the principal object, and induces them to take that for a solution which is only a distraction. With respect, for example, to the support of the clergy and divine worship, it is said, "Temporals are altogether different from spirituals." When the ministers of religion are systematically calumniated, "Religion," they say, "is one thing, and her ministers are another." If it is wished to represent the conduct of Rome for many centuries as an uninterrupted chain of injustice, of corruption, and of invasion of right, all reply is anticipated by saying, "The supremacy of the Sovereign Pontiff has nothing to do with the vices of Popes or their ambition." Reflections perfectly just, and truths palpable, no doubt, which are very useful in certain cases, but which writers of bad faith cunningly employ to conceal from the reader the real object they have in view. Such are the jugglers who attract the attention of the simple multitude on one side, while their companions perform their criminal operations on the other.

Because a thing is not necessary to the existence of another, it does not follow that the first does not originate in the second, – does not find in the spirit of the latter its peculiar and permanent existence, and that a system of intimate and delicate relation does not subsist between them. The tree can subsist without flowers and fruits; these can certainly fall without destroying the trunk; but as long as the tree shall exist, will it ever cease to give proofs of its vigor and its beauty, and to offer its flowers to the eye, and its fruits to the taste? The stream may constantly flow in its crystal bed without the green margin which embellishes its sides; but while its source is not dried up – as long as the fertilizing water penetrates the ground, can its favored banks remain dry, barren, without color and ornament? Let us apply these images to our subject. It is certain that religion can exist without religious communities, and that their ruin does not necessarily entail that of religion herself. More than once it has been seen that in countries where religious institutions have been destroyed, the Catholic faith has been long preserved. But it is not less certain, that there is a necessary dependence between them and religion; that is, that she has given being to them, that she animates them with her spirit, and nourishes them with her substance: this is the reason why they immediately germinate wherever the Catholic faith takes root; and if they have been driven from a country where she continues to exist, they will reappear. Without alluding to the examples of other countries, do we not see this phenomenon take place in France in a remarkable manner? The number of convents of men and women which are again established on the French soil is already very considerable. Who would have told the men of the Constituent Assembly, the Legislative Assembly, the Convention, that half a century should not elapse without seeing religious institutions reappear and flourish in France, in spite of all their efforts to destroy even their memory? "If that happen," they would have said, "it will be because the revolution which we are making will not be allowed to triumph – because Europe will have again imposed despotism upon us; then, and then only, will be witnessed in France – in Paris – in this capital of the Christian world – the re-establishment of religious institutions, that legacy of fanaticism and superstition, transmitted to us by the ideas and manners of an age which has passed away, never to return."

Senseless men! your revolution has triumphed; you have conquered Europe; the old principles of the French monarchy have been erased from legislation, institutions, and manners; the genius of war has led your doctrines in triumph over Europe, and they were gilded by the rays of your glory. Your principles, all your recollections have again triumphed at a recent period; they still live in all their force and pride, personified in some men who glory in being the heirs of what they call the glorious Revolution of '89; and yet, in spite of so many triumphs, although your revolution has only receded as much as was necessary the better to secure its conquests, religious institutions have again arisen – they extend, they are propagated everywhere, and they regain an important place in the annals of our times. To prevent this revival, it would have been necessary to extirpate religion; it was not enough to persecute her; faith remained like a precious germ covered by stones and thorns; Providence sends down a ray of that divine star which softens stones, and gives life and fertility; the tree rises again in all its beauty, in spite of the ruins which hindered its growth and development, and its leaves are immediately covered with charming blossoms: – behold the religious institutions which you thought were for ever annihilated!

The example which we have just mentioned clearly shows the truth of what we wish to establish, with respect to the intimate connection which exists between religion and religious institutions. Church history furnishes proofs in support of this truth. Besides, the mere knowledge of religion, and of the nature of the institutions of which we speak, would suffice to prove it to us, even if we had not history and experience in our favor.

The force of general prejudice on this subject is such, that it is necessary to descend to the root of things, to show the complete mistake of our adversaries. What are religious institutions considered generally? Putting aside the differences, the changes, the alterations necessarily produced by variety of times, countries, and other circumstances, we will say that a religious institute is a society of Christians living together, under certain rules, for the purpose of practising the Gospel precepts. We include, in this definition, even the orders which are not bound by a vow. It will be seen that we have considered the religious institution in its most general sense, laying aside all that theologians and canonists say with respect to the conditions indispensable to constitute or complete its essence. We must, moreover, observe that we ought not to exclude from the honorable denomination of religious institutes, those associations which possess all the conditions except the vows. The Catholic religion is fertile enough to produce good by means and forms widely different. In the generality of religious institutions, she has shown us what man can do by binding himself by a vow, for his whole life, to a holy abnegation of his own will; but she has also wished to show us that, while leaving him at liberty, she could attach him by a variety of ties, and make him persevere until death, as if he had been obliged by a perpetual vow. The congregation of the oratory of St. Philip Neri, which is found in this latter category, is certainly worthy of figuring among religious institutions as one of the finest monuments of the Catholic Church. I am aware that the vow is comprised in the essence of religious institutes, as they are commonly understood; but my only object now is, to vindicate this kind of association against Protestants. Now we know that they condemn indiscriminately, associations bound by vows and those which only consist of the permanent and free adhesion of the persons who compose them. All that has the form of a religious community is regarded by them with a look of anger. When they proscribed the religious orders, they included in the same fate those which had vows and those which had not. Consequently, when defending them, we must class them together. Moreover, this will not prevent our considering the vow in itself, and justifying it before the tribunal of philosophy.

I do not imagine that it is necessary to say more to show that the object of religious institutions – that is, as we have just said, the putting in practice of the Gospel counsels – is in perfect uniformity with the Gospel itself. And let us well observe that, whatever may be the name, whatever may be the form of the institutions, they have always for their object something more than the simple observance of the precepts; the idea of perfection is always included, then, either in the active or the contemplative life. To keep the Divine commandments is indispensable to all Christians who wish to possess eternal life; the religious orders attempt a more difficult path; they aim at perfection. This is the object of the men who, after having heard these words from the mouth of their Divine Master: "If you wish to be perfect, go sell all you have, and give it to the poor," have not departed sorrowful, like the young man in the Gospel, but have embraced with courage the enterprise of quitting all and following Jesus Christ.

We have now inquired whether association is the best means to carry into execution so holy an object. It would be easy for me to show this by adducing various texts of Scripture, where the true spirit of the Christian religion, and the will of our Divine Master, are clearly shown on this point; but the taste of our age, and the self-evidence even of the truths in question, warn us to avoid, as much as possible, all that savors of theological discussion. I will remove the question, then, from this level, to consider it in a light purely historical and philosophical; that is to say, without accumulating citations and texts, I will prove that religious institutes are perfectly conformable to the spirit of the Christian religion; and that consequently that spirit has been deplorably mistaken by Protestants, when they have condemned or destroyed them. If philosophers, while they do not admit the truth of religion, still avow that it is useful and beautiful, I will prove to them that they cannot condemn those institutions which are the necessary result of it. In the cradle of Christianity, when men preserved, in all their energy and purity, the sparks from the tongues of the Holy Spirit; in those times, when the words and examples of its Divine Founder were still fresh, when the number of the faithful who had had the happiness of seeing and hearing Him was still very great in the Church, we see the Christians, under the direction of the Apostles themselves, unite, have all their property in common; thus forming only one family, the Father of which was in heaven, and which had only one heart and one soul.

I will not dispute as to the extent of this primitive proceeding; I will abstain from analyzing the various circumstances which accompanied it, and from examining how far it resembled the religious institutions of latter times; it is enough to state its existence, and show therefrom what is the true spirit of religion with respect to the most proper means to realize evangelical perfection. I will only allude to the fact, that Cassian, in the description which he gives of the commencement of religious institutions, assigns as their cradle the proceeding we have just mentioned, and which is reported in the Acts of the Apostles. According to the same author, this kind of life was never wholly interrupted; so that there were always some fervent Christians who continued it; thus attaching, by a continued chain, the existence of the monks to the primitive associations of the apostolical times. After having described the kind of life of the first Christians, and traced the alterations of the times that followed, Cassian continues thus: "Those who preserved the apostolical fervor in this way, recalling primitive perfection, quitted towns, and the society of those who believed that they were allowed to live with less severity; they began to choose secret and retired places, where they could follow in private the rules which they remembered to have been appointed by the Apostles for the whole body of the Church in general. Thus commenced the formation of the discipline of those who had quitted that contagion, as they lived separate from the rest of the faithful; abstaining from marriage, and having no communication with the world, even with their own families. In the progress of time, the name of monks was given to them, in consideration of their singular and solitary life." (Collat. 18, cap. 5.)

Times of persecution immediately followed, which, with some interruptions, that may be called moments of repose, lasted till the conversion of Constantine. There were, then, during this time, some Christians who attempted to continue the mode of life of the apostolical years. Cassian clearly indicates this in the passage which we have just read. He omits to say that this primitive life was necessarily modified, in its exterior form, by the calamities with which the Church was afflicted at that period. In all that time we ought not to look for Christians living in community; we shall find them confessing Jesus Christ, with imperturbable calmness, on the rack, amid all torments, in the circus, where they were torn to pieces by wild beasts, on the scaffold, where they quietly gave up their heads to the axe of the executioner. But observe what happened even during the time of persecution; the Christians, of whom the world was not worthy, pursued in the towns like wild beasts, wandered about in solitude, seeking refuge in the deserts. The solitudes of the East, the sand and rocks of Arabia, the most inaccessible places of the Thebaïd, receive those troops of fugitives, who dwell in the abodes of wild beasts, in abandoned graves, in dried-up cisterns, in the deepest caverns, only asking for an asylum for meditation and prayer. And do you know the result of this? These deserts, in which the Christians wandered, like a few grains of sand driven by the wind, became peopled, as it were by magic, with innumerable religious communities. There they meditated, prayed, and read the Gospel; hardly had the fruitful seed touched the earth, when the precious plant arose in a moment.

Admirable are the designs of Providence! Christianity, persecuted in the towns, fertilizes and embellishes the deserts; the precious grain requires for its development neither the moisture of the earth nor the breeze of a mild atmosphere; when carried through the air on the wings of the storm, the seed loses nothing of its vitality; when thrown on a rock, it does not perish. The fury of the elements avails nothing against the work of God, who has made the north wind His courser: the rock ceases to be barren when He pleases to fertilize it. Did He not make pure water spring forth at the mysterious touch of His Prophet's rod?

When peace was given to the Church by the conqueror of Maxentius, the germs contained in the bosom of Christianity were able to develop themselves everywhere; from that moment the Church was never without religious communities. With history in our hands, we may defy the enemies of religious institutions to point out any period, however short, when these institutions had entirely disappeared. Under some form or in some country, they have always perpetuated the existence which they had received in the early ages of Christianity. The fact is certain and constant, and is found in every page of ecclesiastical history; it plays an important part in all the great events in the annals of the Church. It is found in the west and in the east, in modern and in ancient times, in the prosperity and in the adversity of the Church; when the pursuit of religious perfection was an honor in the eyes of the world, as well as when it was an object of persecution, raillery, and calumny. What clearer proof can there be that there is an intimate connection between religious institutions and religion herself? What more is required to show us that they are her spontaneous fruit? In the moral and in the physical order of things, the constant appearance of the one following the other, is regarded as a proof of the reciprocal dependence of two phenomena. If these phenomena have towards each other the relations of cause and effect – if we find in the essence of the one all the principles that are required in the production of the other, the first is called the cause and the other the effect. Wherever the religion of Jesus Christ is established, religious communities are found under some form or other; they are, therefore, its spontaneous effect. I do not know what reply can be made to so conclusive an argument.