Читать книгу Priests, Women, and Families - Jules Michelet - Страница 7

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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 passed away, and everything assumes 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 fashionable 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 assumed. We are lost in astonishment when we hear, as it were on the morrow of the sixteenth century, after wars and massacres, 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 nobody, however good a walker he might be, who did not desire to rest: the indefatigable Henry of Beam, seeking repose like the rest, or wishing 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, passion, and human weaknesses?

There, nobody 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 bastard 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 brass 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 attitude; affected, exaggerated, and often excessively fickle. This inconstancy was amusing, but it also put people on their guard. They could well learn an attitude 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 passionately 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 glass 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 assume the shadow of reality as it can do, if it was always and entirely unconnected with truth.

Before speaking of François 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.

In Savoy, and towards Geneva, they put on the angelic expression, not being able to employ any other than gentle means against populations sheltered by treaties, and who would have been protected against violence by the lances of Switzerland.

The agent of Rome in this quarter was the celebrated Jesuit, Antonio Possevino[2], a professor, scholar, and diplomatist, as {38} well as the confessor of the kings of the North. He himself organised the persecutions against the Vaudois of Piedmont; and he formed and directed his pupil, François de Sales, to gain by his address the Protestants of Savoy.

Ought I to speak of this terrible history of the Vaudois, or pass it over in silence? Speak of it! It is far too cruel—no one will relate it without his pen hesitating, and his words being blotted by his tears.[3] If, however, I did not speak of it, we should never behold the most odious part of the system, that artful policy which employed the very opposite means in precisely the same cases; here ferocity, there an unnatural mildness. One word, and I leave the sad story. The most implacable butchers were women, the penitents of the Jesuits of Turin. The victims were children! They destroyed them in the sixteenth century: there were four hundred children burnt at one time in a cavern. In the seventeenth century they kidnapped them. The edict of pacification, granted to the Vaudois in 1655, promises, as a singular favour, that their children under twelve years of age shall no longer be stolen from them; above that age it is still lawful to seize them.

This new sort of persecution, more cruel than massacres, characterises the period when the Jesuits undertook to make themselves universally masters of the education of children. These pitiless plagiarists[4], who dragged them away from their mothers, wanted only to bring them up in their fashion, make them abjure their faith, hate their family, and arm them against their brethren.

It was, as I have said, a Jesuit professor, Possevino, who renewed the persecution about the time at which we are now arrived. The same, while teaching at Padua, had for his pupil young François de Sales, who had already passed a year in Paris, at the college of Clermont. He belonged to one of those families of Savoy, as much distinguished by their devotion as by their valour, who carried on wars long against Geneva. He was endowed with all the qualities requisite for the war of seduction, which they then desired to commence—a gentle and sincere devotion, a lively and earnest speech, and a singular charm of goodness, beauty, and gentleness. Who has not remarked this charm in the smile of the children of Savoy, who are so natural, yet so circumspect?

Every favour of Heaven must, we certainly believe, have been showered upon him, since in this bad age, bad taste, and bad party, among the cunning and false people who made him their tool, he remained, however, St. François de Sales. Everything he has said or written, without being free from blemishes, is charming, full of affection, of an original gentleness and genius, which, though it may excite a smile, is nevertheless very affecting. Everywhere we find, as it were, living fountains springing up, flowers after flowers, and rivulets meandering as in a lovely spring morning after a shower. It might be said, perhaps, that he amuses himself so much with flowerets, that his nosegay is no longer such as shepherdesses gather, but such as would suit a flower-girl, as his Philothea would say: he takes them all, and takes too many; there are some colours among them badly matched, and have a strange effect. It is the taste of that age, we must confess; the Savoyard taste in particular does not fear ugliness; and a Jesuit education does not lead to the detestation of falsehood.

But even if he had not been so charming a writer, his bewitching personal qualities would still have had the same effect. His fair mild countenance, with rather a childish expression, pleased at first sight. Little children, in their nurses' arms, as soon as they saw him, could not take their eyes off him. He was equally delighted with them, and would exclaim, as he fondly caressed them, "Here is my little family." The children ran after him, and the mothers followed their children.

Little family? or little intrigue? The words (ménage manège) are somewhat similar; and though a child in appearance, the good man was at bottom very deep. If he permitted the nuns a few trifling falsehoods[5], ought we to believe he never granted the same indulgence to himself? However it may be, actual falsehood appeared less in his words than in his position; he was made a bishop in order to give the example of sacrificing the rights of the bishops to the Pope. For the love of peace, and to hide the division of the Catholics by an appearance of union, he did the Jesuits the important service of saving their Molina accused at Rome; and he managed to induce the Pope to impose silence on the friends, as well as the enemies, of Grace.

This sweet-tempered man did not, however, confine himself to the means of mildness and persuasion. In his zeal as a converter, he invoked the assistance of less honourable means—interest, money, places; lastly, authority and terror. He made the Duke of Savoy travel from village to village, and advised him at last to drive away the remaining few who still refused to abjure their faith.[6] Money, very powerful in this poor country, seemed to him a means at once so natural and irresistible, that he went even into Geneva, to buy up old Theodore de Bèze, and offered him, on the part of the Pope, a pension of four thousand crowns.

It was an odd sight to behold this man, the bishop and titular prince of Geneva, beating about the bush to circumvent his native city, and organising a war of seduction against it by France and Savoy. Money and intrigue did not suffice; it was necessary to employ a softer charm to thaw and liquify the inattackable iceberg of logic and criticism. Convents for females were founded, to attract and receive the newly-converted, and to offer them a powerful bait composed of love and mysticism. These convents have been made famous by the names of Madame de Chantal and Madame Guyon. The former established in them the mild devotion of the Visitation; and it was there that the latter wrote her little book of Torrents, which seems inspired, like Rousseau's Julie (by the bye, a far less dangerous composition), by the Charmettes, Meillerie, and Clarens.

[1] The masterpiece of the Jesuit was to get the shepherd-poet Des Yveteaux, the most empty-headed man in France, named tutor, reserving to himself the moral and religious part of education.

[2] See his Life, by Dorigny, p. 505.; Bonneville, Life of St. François, p. 19, &c.

[3] Read the three great Vaudois historians, Gilles, Léger, and Arnaud.

[4] Plagiarius, in its proper sense, means, as is well known, a man-stealer.

[5] Little lies, little deceits, little prevarications. See, for instance, OEuvres, vol. viii. pp. 196, 223, 342.

[6] Nouvelles Lettres Inédites, published by Mr. Datta, 1835, vol. i. p. 247. See also, for the intolerance of St. François, pp. 130, 131, 136, 141, and vol. ix. of the OEuvres, p. 335, the bounden duty of kings to put to the sword all the enemies of the Pope.