A vow of perpetual silence was assumed by several religious orders; but
it was observed with different degrees of austerity. Some monks passed
their whole lives in profound silence; others spoke on certain days of
the week; and others at particular hours of specified days. The modern
penitentiary regulations respecting the conversation of prisoners seem
to have been derived from the singular customs of the dumb brotherhood.
The members of the mute orders, perpetually concealing their features
with their cowls, and their thoughts by their silence, appear to have
concluded that secrecy was the substance of religion. He who could
conceal the best, and preserve silence the longest, obtained among the
devout the useful credit of possessing the most grace. The effusion of
the Holy Ghost, which, by a prodigal distribution of tongues, and their
clashing jargon, had set the primitive ecclesiastical council in an
uproar, and which, by its powerfully stimulating qualities had turned
so many cities upside down, had a very different effect on the silent
orders of the Catholic Church. While to the former it communicated
intuitive knowledge of all languages, to the latter it interdicted as
profane the use of any. To pass an entire life without uttering a word,
was considered by the dumb friars, as an unquestionable evidence of
their having received the unutterable fulness of the Holy Ghost.
Whether the primitive church and the Catholic orders were blest with the
influence of the same Holy Ghost, or whether the divine spirit politely
accommodates the nature of his unction to the demands of particular
ecclesiastical exigencies, seems to require some proof, before it can
be rationally admitted that profound silence and distracting discord are
effects of the same cause.
But the question of truth and error is of a less intricate nature. Truth
is candid, open and fearless; error is hidden, intolerant and cowardly.
The one challenges investigation; the other denounces it; the one opens
its breast to the scrutinizing gaze of the world; the other conceals its
features from the most intimate associate. If such is the fearlessness
of truth, and such the cowardice of error, the secrecy of the silent
orders commends them less to the confidence which candor inspires, than
to the suspicion which secrecy begets.
Secrecy is most generally adopted to cover objectionable designs; and,
the profounder the former is, the more objectionable are the latter. I
speak not of the secret signs by which benevolent societies recognize
their members, but of those associations which, while they are
professedly designed for religious purposes, conceal their principles
and projects from public view. Although in some other respects secrecy
may sometimes be suggested by discretion, yet it is often suggested
by guilt. All that offend against the natural sentiments of propriety,
shrink from the public gaze. Robbery, murder, and every other infraction
of civil ordinations seek to shroud their intentions and machinations
in the greatest secrecy. The traitor and the highwayman, afar from
the searching scrutiny of the inquisitive, retire to solitary forests,
inaccessible retreats, and dismal caverns, to hold their conclaves
and plot schemes of blood and depredation. Evasion, prevarication and
disguise are the inseparable concomitants of guilt. So secret is
crime that its perpetration can generally only be established by
circumstantial evidence. Secrecy is, therefore, naturally calculated
to excite suspicion; it seldom means good; it generally means evil;
sometimes robbery, frequently murder, often treason, always some plot so
antagonistical to reason and the welfare of society that its projectors
are conscious that publicity would endanger, and perhaps defeat its
execution.
The shocking crimes which the pious monasteries concealed have
frequently been divulged by those who have escaped from their cloisters,
but what unutterable deeds the taciturnity of the mute monks sanctioned
may not be so clearly proved as naturally imagined. That it was
exceedingly profitable will appear evident upon a moment's reflection.
These dumb friars were confessors, and as they never uttered a word,
they acquired the confidence of the most desperate criminals. The
Jesuits, who could not disclose the startling secrets of their order
without alarming the fears of temporal princes, confessed to none but to
the silent monks. All the devout who contemplated the commission of
the crimes of murder, sedition, or treason, preferred to unbosom their
designs to the taciturn fraternity, and receive through their agency
the absolution and indulgence of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. But the
connivance of the church at criminal deeds could be commanded only by
the power of gold; and the amount requisite for expiation was always in
proportion to the atrociousness of the crime. Now, as the commission of
the highest misdemeanors most imminently endangered the life and liberty
of the perpetrators; it is as easy to see the munificent pecuniary
advantages which perpetual silence obtained for the monks, as it is to
see that the most flagitious criminals would prefer disclosing their
intentions to the most silent lips.
It may here be remarked, by way of explanation, that confessors are not
bound, as is generally supposed, to inviolate secrecy. The secrets of
the confessional may be communicated from one priest to another; and,
when a confessor desires to make public use of any information which has
been confessed to him, he adopts the artifice of requesting the informer
to communicate the matter to him out of the confessional.
The dumb friars, not less artful than secret, elaborated a system of
sacred gesticulations, by which they managed to express their wants and
desires with as much force as they could have done with their tongues.
Although grimace and gesticulation were more clumsy and less varied in
their signs than is vocal articulation, yet by this means the dumb monks
contrived, as occasion suggested, to describe, command, supplicate,
scorn, imprecate, curse or bless. This odd device was well adapted to
the non-committal policy of the religious orders, as it enabled them to
affirm, deny, impugn, slander; to threaten any dignity, anathematize
any power, and commit any crime of which language is capable, without
incurring responsibility, violating any legal enactment, rendering
themselves amenable to any tribunal, or answerable for the breach of any
code of honor.
The adoption of this ingenious device to avoid compliance with unnatural
obligations, affords an instance of the singular duplicity into which
the subtilty of pious craft may betray human nature. The misfortune of
being born a mute is justly classed among the most deplorable calamities
that can afflict a human being. The natural privations of such a person
elicit in his favor the condoling sympathies of all considerate persons.
Yet in order to accomplish secret purposes of ambition or cupidity, the
dumb monks resigned the most important advantages with which Nature had
enriched them, and gratuitously assumed all the disadvantages that the
greatest calamity could have imposed. If there was nothing reprehensible
in the taciturn fraternity but this curious departure from the natural
use of the human faculties, it alone would be sufficient to subject them
to the suspicion of the candid, and the aversion of the prudent.
The tongue, it must be confessed, is sometimes an unruly member, but it
is also the noblest blessing of the human organism. It is among the
most prominent characteristics that distinguish the human from the
brute creation. It is mostly by the means of the judicious employment of
speech that the ignorant are instructed, the afflicted consoled, and the
cause of truth and freedom defended. It is by it that error is detected,
vice intimidated, and superstition and despotism are exposed. The
interchange of opinion, the animating power of debate, the searching
inquisition of truth, the spontaneous sallies of wit, the exhilarating
effusions of humor, the burst of eloquence, the lore of philosophy, art,
science, all the natural overflowing of the soul, find in the varied
and expressive functions of speech their most available avenues for the
outlet of their respective treasures. Speech is a reflective blessing;
it blesses him who exercises it, and him upon whom it is exercised. None
can use with propriety their vocal powers without improving them; none
can instruct without being instructed; none can advocate truth without
being enlightened by its beams. It is a means which all possess
of imparting consolation; which enriches the more prodigally it is
dispensed; which the poorest may bestow on the richest; which is always
the cheapest, often the most valuable, and sometimes the only one
that can avail. When speech is free and un-trammeled by the fetters of
intolerance, it is the most efficacious mode of improving the moral and
intellectual tone of society. It is more powerful than legal enactments,
and has been more successful than dungeons, racks, and all the
prescriptions of tyranny combined. Laws may interdict and gibbets
terrify, but neither can convince the understanding, nor purify the
sources of action. But freedom of speech enters the soul, converses with
the intellect, sifts opinions, and moulds the nature of man into order
and justice. She enters the halls of legislation and erects right into
law. She enters the court and gives equity to judicial proceedings. She
enters a community and breaks the iron of slavery, bestows equality
on all, and enthrones in power public opinion. She enters a nation of
slaves and makes them a nation of sovereigns. She is the great redeemer
of the moral world. Her touch has healed its disorders; her voice has
calmed its storms; her spirit has reanimated its dead. Such being her
mission, none but impostors need fear her scrutiny; none but bigots need
dread her vengeance; none but tyrants need tremble at her approach.
Yet, notwithstanding the immense advantages the power of speech confers
on its possessors, the silent monks have resigned all right to its use
and sought an equality with dumb brutes. Whatever motives of religion
may have mingled with the consummation of this atrocious folly, it
atones not for the good it has prohibited the monks from doing, nor the
luxurious pleasure it has obliged them to forego. If it is consistent
with the secret designs of any religious order to iron the faculties
of speech in eternal silence, it is not consistent with the designs
of Nature, the dictate of reason, nor the progress of man. If it
is consistent with the obligations of any religious organization to
prohibit the exercise of those powers by which error is checked,
truth promoted, virtue fortified, and the world enlightened, it is not
consistent with the obligations of man, the purest instincts of his
being, and the noblest virtues of his nature. If it is consistent with
the principles of any version of religion to view with dumb indifference
the errors it might correct, or the sorrows it might heal, it is not
consistent with the instinctive prompting of knowledge or of natural
sympathy. And if such designs, obligations and principles are consistent
with the faith and practice of the Catholic Church, she is a curse to
the world, at variance with the general interests of society, opposed
to the most sacred rights of man, an enemy to human knowledge, to human
progress, and to human sympathy. A slavery so abject, an absurdity so
gross, and a despotism so monstrous, as that which she sanctions, should
consign her reverence to contempt, and her holiness to the scorn and
ridicule of all enlightened nations and ages.