He went through France and was edified by town after town. From thence

he passed into Italy. In the papal territories he met a bishop with an

income of only a thousand crowns, who went on foot. Ornik, being

naturally kind, offered him a place in his cambiatura. "Signor, you are

no doubt going to comfort the sick?" "Sir, I am going to my master."

"Your master? He, no doubt, is Jesus Christ." "Sir, he is Cardinal

Azolino; I am his almoner. He gives me a very poor salary, but he has

promised to place me with Donna Olimpia, the favorite sister-in-law of

_nostro signore_." "What! are you in the pay of a cardinal? But do you

not know that there were no cardinals in the time of Jesus Christ and

St. John?" "Is it possible!" exclaimed the Italian prelate. "Nothing is

more true; you have read it in the Gospel." "I have never read it,"

replied the bishop; "I know only the office of Our Lady." "I tell you

there were neither cardinals nor bishops, and when there were bishops

the priests were almost their equals, as St. Jerome, in several places,

assures us." "Holy Virgin" said the Italian, "I knew nothing about it;

and what of the popes?" "There were no popes either." The good bishop

crossed himself, thinking he was with the evil one, and leaped from the

side of his companion.

BLASPHEMY.

This is a Greek word signifying _an attack on reputation_. We find

blasphemia in Demosthenes. In the Greek Church it was used only to

express an injury done to God. The Romans never made use of this

expression, apparently not thinking that God's honor could be offended

like that of men.

There scarcely exists one synonym. Blasphemy does not altogether convey

the idea of sacrilege. We say of a man who has taken God's name in

vain, who, in the violence of anger, has sworn--as it is expressed--by

the name of God, that he has _blasphemed_; but we do not say that he has

committed sacrilege. The sacrilegious man is he who perjures himself on

the gospel, who extends his rapacity to sacred things, who imbrues his

hands in the blood of priests.

Great sacrileges have always been punished with death in all nations,

especially those accompanied by bloodshed. The author of the

_"Institutes au Droit Criminel"_ reckons among divine high treasons in

the second degree, the non-observance of Sundays and holidays. He should

have said the non-observance attended with marked contempt, for simple

negligence is a sin, but not, as he calls it, a sacrilege. It is absurd

to class together, as this author does, simony, the carrying off of a

nun, and the forgetting to go to vespers on a holiday. It is one great

instance of the errors committed by writers on jurisprudence, who, not

having been called upon to make laws, take upon themselves to interpret

those of the state.

Blasphemies uttered in intoxication, in anger, in the excess of

debauchery, or in the heat of unguarded conversation have been subjected

by legislators to much lighter penalties. For instance, the advocate

whom we have already cited says that the laws of France condemn simple

blasphemers to a fine for the first offence, which is doubled for the

second, tripled for the third, and quadrupled for the fourth offence;

for the fifth relapse the culprit is set in the pillory, for the sixth

relapse he is pilloried, and has his upper lip burned off with a hot

iron, and for the seventh he loses his tongue. He should have added that

this was an ordinance of the year 1666.

Punishments are almost always arbitrary, which is a great defect in

jurisprudence. But this defect opens the way for clemency and

compassion, and this compassion is no other than the strictest justice,

for it would be horrible to punish a youthful indiscretion as poisoners

and parricides are punished. A sentence of death for an offence which

deserves nothing more than correction is no other than an assassination

committed with the sword of justice.

Is it not to the purpose here to remark that what has been blasphemy in

one country has often been piety in another?

Suppose a Tyrian merchant landed at the port of Canope: he might be

scandalized on seeing an onion, a cat, or a goat carried in procession;

he might speak indecorously of Isheth, Oshireth, and Horeth, or might

turn aside his head and not fall on his knees at the sight of a

procession with the parts of human generation larger than life; he might

express his opinion at supper, or even sing some song in which the

Tyrian sailors made a jest of the Egyptian absurdities. He might be

overheard by the maid of the inn, whose conscience would not suffer her

to conceal so enormous a crime; she would run and denounce the offender

to the nearest shoen that bore the image of the truth on his breast, and

it is known how this image of truth was made. The tribunal of the

shoens, or shotim, would condemn the Tyrian blasphemer to a dreadful

death, and confiscate his vessel. Yet this merchant might be considered

at Tyre as one of the most pious persons in Phœnicia.

Numa sees that his little horde of Romans is a Collection of Latin

freebooters who steal right and left all they can find--oxen, sheep,

fowls, and girls. He tells them that he has spoken with the nymph Egeria

in a cavern, and that the nymph has been employed by Jupiter to give him

laws. The senators treat him at first as a blasphemer and threaten to

throw him headlong from the Tarpeian rock. Numa makes himself a powerful

party; he gains over some seniors who go with him into Egeria's grotto.

She talks to them and converts them; they convert the senate and the

people. In a little time Numa is no longer a blasphemer, the name is

given only to such as doubt the existence of the nymph.

In our own times it is unfortunate that what is blasphemy at Rome, at

our Lady of Loretto, and within the walls of San Gennaro, is piety in

London, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Berlin, Copenhagen, Berne, Basel, and

Hamburg. It is yet more unfortunate that even in the same country, in

the same town, in the same street, people treat one another as

blasphemers.

Nay, of the ten thousand Jews living at Rome there is not one who does

not regard the pope as the chief of the blasphemers, while the hundred

thousand Christians who inhabit Rome, in place of two millions of

Jovians who filled it in Trajan's time, firmly believe that the Jews

meet in their synagogues on Saturday for the purpose of blaspheming.

A Cordelier has no hesitation in applying the epithet of blasphemer to a

Dominican who says that the Holy Virgin was born in original sin,

notwithstanding that the Dominicans have a bull from the pope which

permits them to teach the maculate conception in their convents, and

that, besides this bull, they have in their forum the express

declaration of St. Thomas Aquinas.

The first origin of the schism of three-fourths of Switzerland and a

part of Lower Germany was a quarrel in the cathedral church of Frankfort

between a Cordelier, whose name I forget, and a Dominican named Vigand.

Both were drunk, according to the custom of that day. The drunken

Cordelier, who was preaching, thanked God that he was not a Jacobin,

swearing that it was necessary to exterminate the blaspheming Jacobins

who believed that the Holy Virgin had been born in mortal sin, and

delivered from sin only by the merits of her son. The drunken Jacobin

cried out: "Thou hast lied; thou thyself art a blasphemer." The

Cordelier descended from the pulpit with a great iron crucifix in his

hand, laid it about his adversary, and left him almost dead on the spot.

To revenge this outrage the Dominicans worked many miracles in Germany

and Switzerland; these miracles were designed to prove their faith.

They at length found means to imprint the marks of our Lord Jesus Christ

on one of their lay brethren named Jetzer. This operation was performed

at Berne by the Holy Virgin herself, but she borrowed the hand of the

sub-prior, who dressed himself in female attire and put a glory round

his head. The poor little lay brother, exposed all bloody to the

veneration of the people on the altar of the Dominicans at Berne, at

last cried out murder! sacrilege! The monks, in order to quiet him as

quickly as possible administered to him a host sprinkled with corrosive

sublimate, but the excess of the dose made him discharge the host from

his stomach.

The monks then accused him to the bishop of Lausanne of horrible

sacrilege. The indignant people of Berne in their turn accused the

monks, and four of them were burned at Berne on the 13th of May, 1509,

at the Marsilly gate. Such was the termination of this abominable

affair, which determined the people of Berne to choose a religion, bad

indeed in Catholic eyes, but which delivered them from the Cordeliers

and the Jacobins. The number of similar sacrileges is incredible. Such

are the effects of party spirit.

The Jesuits maintained for a hundred years that the Jansenists were

blasphemers, and proved it by a thousand _lettres-de-cachet_; the

Jansenists by upwards of four thousand volumes demonstrated that it was

the Jesuits who blasphemed. The writer of the _"Gazettes

Ecclésiastiques"_ pretends that all honest men blaspheme against him,

while he himself blasphemes from his garret on high against every honest

man in the kingdom. The gazette-writer's publisher blasphemes in return

and complains that he is starving. He would find it better to be honest

and polite.

One thing equally remarkable and consoling is that never in any country

of the earth, among the wildest idolaters, has any man been considered

as a blasphemer for acknowledging one supreme, eternal, and all-powerful

God. It certainly was not for having acknowledged this truth that

Socrates was condemned to the hemlock, for the doctrine of a Supreme God

was announced in all the Grecian mysteries. It was a faction that

destroyed Socrates; he was accused, at a venture, of not recognizing the

_secondary_ gods, and on this point it was that he was accused as a

blasphemer.

The first Christians were accused of blasphemy for the same reason, but

the partisans of the ancient religion of the empire, the Jovians, who

reproached the primitive Christians with blasphemy, were at length

condemned as blasphemers themselves, under Theodosius II. Dryden says:

This side to-day, to-morrow t'other burns,

And they're all Gods Almighty in their turns.

BODY.

Body and matter are here the same thing although there is hardly any

such thing as synonym in the most rigorous sense of the word. There have

been persons who by this word "body" have understood "spirit" also.

They have said spirit originally signifies breath; only a body can

breathe, therefore body and spirit may, after all, be the same thing. In

this sense La Fontaine said to the celebrated Duke de la Rochefoucauld:

_"J'entens les esprits corps et pétris de matière."_ In the same sense

he says to Madame Sablière:

_Je subtiliserais un morceau de matière,_

_Quintessence d'atome, extrait de la lumière,_

_je ne sais quoiplus vif et plus subtil encor...._

No one thought of harassing good Monsieur La Fontaine, or bringing him

to trial for his expressions. Were a poor philosopher, or even a poet,

to say as much nowadays, how many would there be to fall on him! How

many scribblers to sell their extracts for sixpence! How many knaves,

for the sole purpose of making mischief, to cry philosopher!

peripatetic! disciple of Gassendi! pupil of Locke, and the primitive

fathers! damnable!

As we know not what a spirit is, so also we are ignorant of what a body

is; we see various properties, but what is the subject in which those

properties reside? "There is nothing but body," said Democritus and

Epicurus; "there is no such thing as body," said the disciples of Zeno,

of Elia.

Berkeley, bishop of Cloyne, is the last who, by a hundred captious

sophisms, has pretended to prove that bodies do not exist. They have,

says he, neither color, nor smell, nor heat; all these modalities are

in your sensations, not in the objects. He might have spared himself

the trouble of proving this truth for it was already sufficiently known.

But thence he passed to extent and solidity, which are essential to

body, and thinks he proves that there is no extent in a piece of green

cloth because the cloth is not in reality green, the sensation of green

being in ourselves only, therefore the sensation of extent is likewise

in ourselves only. Having thus destroyed extent he concludes that

solidity, which is attached to it, falls of itself, and therefore that

there is nothing in the world but our ideas. So that, according to this

doctor, ten thousand men killed by ten thousand cannon shots are in

reality nothing more than ten thousand apprehensions of our

understanding, and when a female becomes pregnant it is only one idea

lodged in another idea from which a third idea will be produced.

Surely, the bishop of Cloyne might have saved himself from falling into

this excessive absurdity. He thinks he shows that there is no extent

because a body has appeared to him four times as large through a glass

as to his naked eye, and four times as small through another glass.

Hence he concludes, that, since a body cannot be at the same time four

feet, sixteen feet, and but one foot in extent, there is no extent,

therefore there is nothing. He had only to take any measure and say: of

whatever extent this body may appear to me to be, it extends to so many

of these measures.

We might very easily see that extent and solidity were quite different

from sound, color, taste, smell. It is quite clear that these are

sensations excited in us by the configuration of parts, but extent is

not a sensation. When this lighted coal goes out, I am no longer warm;

when the air is no longer struck, I cease to hear; when this rose

withers, I no longer smell it: but the coal, the air, and the rose have

extent without me. Berkeley's paradox is not worth refuting.

Thus argued Zeno and Parmenides of old, and very clever they were; they

would prove to you that a tortoise went along as swiftly as Achilles,

for there was no such thing as motion; they discussed a hundred other

questions equally important. Most of the Greeks made philosophy a

juggle, and they transmitted their art to our schoolmen. Bayle himself

was occasionally one of the set and embroidered cobwebs like the rest.

In his article, "Zeno," against the divisible extent of matter and the

contiguity of bodies he ventures to say what would not be tolerated in

any six-months geometrician.

It is worth knowing how Berkeley was drawn into this paradox. A long

while ago I had some conversation with him, and he told me that his

opinion originated in our being unable to conceive what the subject of

this extension is, and certainly, in his book, he triumphs when he asks

Hylas what this subject, this substratum, this substance is? It is the

extended body, answers Hylas. Then the bishop, under the name of

Philonous, laughs at him, and poor Hylas, finding that he has said that

extension is the subject of extension, and has therefore talked

nonsense, remains quite confused, acknowledges that he understands

nothing at all of the matter; that there is no such thing as body; that

the natural world does not exist, and that there is none but an

intellectual world.

Hylas should only have said to Philonous: We know nothing of the subject

of this extension, solidity, divisibility, mobility, figure, etc.; I

know no more of it than I do of the subject of thought, feeling, and

will, but the subject does not the less exist for it has essential

properties of which it cannot be deprived.

We all resemble the greater part of the Parisian ladies who live well

without knowing what is put in their ragouts; just so do we enjoy bodies

without knowing of what they are composed. Of what does a body consist?

Of parts, and these parts resolve themselves into other parts. What are

these last parts? They, too, are bodies; you divide incessantly without

making any progress.

In short, a subtle philosopher, observing that a picture was made of

ingredients of which no single ingredient was a picture, and a house of

materials of which no one material was a house, imagined that bodies are

composed of an infinity of small things which are not bodies, and these

are called monads. This system is not without its merits, and, were it

revealed, I should think it very possible. These little beings would be

so many mathematical points, a sort of souls, waiting only for a

tenement: here would be a continual metempsychosis. This system is as

good as another; I like it quite as well as the declination of atoms,

the substantial forms, the versatile grace, or the vampires.

BOOKS.

SECTION I.

You despise books; you, whose lives are absorbed in the vanities of

ambition, the pursuit of pleasure, or in indolence, but remember that

all the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by

books. All Africa, to the limits of Ethiopia and Nigritia obeys the book

of the Koran after bowing to the book of the Gospel. China is ruled by

the moral book of Confucius, and a great part of India by the Veda.

Persia was governed for ages by the books of one of the Zoroasters.

In a lawsuit or criminal process, your property, your honor, perhaps

your life, depends on the interpretation of a book which you never read.

It is, however, with books as with men, a very small number play a great

part, the rest are confounded with the multitude.

By whom are mankind led in all civilized countries? By those who can

read and write. You are acquainted with neither Hippocrates, nor

Boerhaave, nor Sydenham, but you place your body in the hands of those

who can read them. You leave your soul entirely to the care of those

who are paid for reading the Bible, although there are not fifty of them

who have read it through with attention.

The world is now so entirely governed by books that they who command in

the city of the Scipios and the Catos have resolved that the books of

their law shall be for themselves alone; they are their sceptre, which

they have made it high treason in their subjects to touch without an

express permission. In other countries it has been forbidden to think in

print without letters-patent.

There are nations in which thought is considered merely as an article of

commerce, the operations of the human understanding being valued only at

so much per sheet. If the bookseller happens to desire a privilege for

his merchandise whether he is selling "Rabelais," or the "Fathers of the

Church," the magistrate grants the privilege without answering for the

contents of the book.

In another country the liberty of explaining yourself by books is one of

the most inviolable prerogatives. There you may print whatever you

please, on pain of being tiresome, and of being punished if you have too

much abused your natural right.

Before the admirable invention of printing, books were scarcer and

dearer than jewels. There were scarcely any books in our barbarous

nations, either before Charlemagne or after him, until the time of

Charles V., king of France, called the Wise, and from this time to

Francis I. the scarcity was extreme. The Arabs alone had them from the

eighth to the thirteenth century of our era. China was full of them when

we could neither read nor write.

Copyists were much employed in the Roman Empire from the time of the

Scipios until the irruption of the barbarians. This was a very

ungrateful employment. The dealers always paid authors and copyists very

ill. It required two years of assiduous labor for a copyist to

transcribe the whole Bible well on vellum, and what time and trouble to

copy correctly in Greek and Latin the works of Origen, Clement of

Alexandria and all the others writers called Fathers!

St. Hieronymos, or Hieronymus, whom we call Jerome, says, in one of his

satirical letters against Rufinus that he has ruined himself with buying

the works of Origen, against whom he wrote with so much bitterness and

violence. "Yes," says he, "I have read Origen, if it be a crime I

confess that I am guilty and that I exhausted my purse in buying his

works at Alexandria."

The Christian societies of the three first centuries had fifty-four

gospels, of which, until Diocletian's time scarcely two or three copies

found their way among the Romans of the old religion.

Among the Christians it was an unpardonable crime to show the gospels to

the Gentiles; they did not even lend them to the catechumens.

When Lucian (insulting our religion of which he knew very little)

relates that "a troop of beggars took him up into a fourth story where

they were invoking the Father through the Son, and foretelling

misfortunes to the emperor and the empire," he does not say that they

showed him a single book. No Roman historian, no Roman author whomsoever

makes mention of the gospels.

When a Christian, who was unfortunately rash and unworthy of his holy

religion had publicly torn in pieces and trampled under foot an edict of

the Emperor Diocletian, and had thus drawn down upon Christianity that

persecution which succeeded the greatest toleration, the Christians were

then obliged to give up their gospels and written authors to the

magistrates, which before then had never been done. Those who gave up

their books through fear of imprisonment, or even of death, were held by

the rest of the Christians to be sacrilegious apostates, they received

the surname of _traditores_, whence we have the word "traitor," and

several bishops asserted that they should be rebaptized, which

occasioned a dreadful schism.

The poems of Homer were long so little known that Pisistratus was the

first who put them in order and had them transcribed at Athens about

five hundred years before the Christian era.

Perhaps there was not at this time in all the East a dozen copies of the

Veda and the Zend-Avesta.

In 1700 you would not have found a single book in all Rome, excepting

the missals and a few Bibles in the hands of papas drunk with brandy.

The complaint now is of their too great abundance. But it is not for

readers to complain, the remedy is in their own hands; nothing forces

them to read. Nor for authors, they who make the multitude of books have

not to complain of being pressed. Notwithstanding this enormous quantity

how few people read! But if they read, and read with advantage, should

we have to witness the deplorable infatuations to which the vulgar are

still every day a prey?

The reason that books are multiplied in spite of the general law that

beings shall not be multiplied without necessity, is that books are made

from books. A new history of France or Spain is manufactured from

several volumes already printed, without adding anything new. All

dictionaries are made from dictionaries; almost all new geographical

books are made from other books of geography; St. Thomas's Dream has

brought forth two thousand large volumes of divinity, and the same race

of little worms that have devoured the parent are now gnawing the

children.

_Écrive qui voudra, chacun a son métier_

_Peut perdre impunément de l'encre et du papier._

Write, write away; each writer at his pleasure

May squander ink and paper without measure.

SECTION II.

It is sometimes very dangerous to make a book. Silhouète, before he

could suspect that he should one day be comptroller-general of the

finances, published a translation of Warburton's "Alliance of Church

and State," and his father-in-law, Astuce the physician, gave to the

public the "Memoirs," in which the author of the Pentateuch might have

found all the astonishing things which happened so long before his time.

The very day that Silhouète came into office, some good friend of his

sought out a copy of each of these books by the father-in-law and

son-in-law, in order to denounce them to the parliament and have them

condemned to the flames, according to custom. They immediately bought up

all the copies in the kingdom, whence it is that they are now extremely

rare.

There is hardly a single philosophical or theological book in which

heresies and impieties may not be found by misinterpreting, or adding

to, or subtracting from, the sense.

Theodore of Mopsuestes ventured to call the "Canticle of Canticles," "a

collection of impurities." Grotius pulls it in pieces and represents it

as horrid, and Chatillon speaks of it as "a scandalous production."

Perhaps it will hardly be believed that Dr. Tamponet one day said to

several others: "I would engage to find a multitude of heresies in the

Lord's Prayer if this prayer, which we know to have come from the Divine

mouth, were now for the first time published by a Jesuit."

I would proceed thus: "Our Father, who art in heaven--" a proposition

inclining to heresy, since God is everywhere. Nay, we find in this

expression the leaven of Socinianism, for here is nothing at all said of

the Trinity.

"Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven--"

another proposition tainted with heresy, for it said again and again in

the Scriptures that God reigns eternally. Moreover it is very rash to

ask that His will may be done, since nothing is or can be done but by

the will of God.

"Give us this day our daily bread"--a proposition directly contrary to

what Jesus Christ uttered on another occasion: "Take no thought, saying

what shall we eat? or what shall we drink?... for after all these things

do the Gentiles seek.... But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His

righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you."

"And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors--" a rash

proposition, which compares man to God, destroys gratuitous

predestination, and teaches that God is bound to do to us as we do to

others. Besides, how can the author say that we forgive our debtors? We

have never forgiven them a single crown. No convent in Europe ever

remitted to its farmers the payment of a sou. To dare to say the

contrary is a formal heresy.

"Lead us not into temptation--" a proposition scandalous and manifestly

heretical, for there is no tempter but the devil, and it is expressly

said in St. James' Epistle: "God is no tempter of the wicked; He tempts

no man."--_"Deus enim intentator malorum est; ipse autem neminem

tentat."_

You see, then, said Doctor Tamponet, that there is nothing, though ever

so venerable, to which a bad sense may not be given. What book, then,

shall not be liable to human censure when even the Lord's Prayer may be

attacked, by giving a diabolical interpretation to all the divine words

that compose it?

As for me, I tremble at the thought of making a book. Thank God, I have

never published anything; I have not even--like brothers La Rue, Du

Ceveau, and Folard--had any of my theatrical pieces played, it would be

too dangerous.

If you publish, a parish curate accuses you of heresy; a stupid

collegian denounces you; a fellow that cannot read condemns you; the

public laugh at you; your bookseller abandons you, and your wine

merchant gives you no more credit. I always add to my paternoster,

"Deliver me, O God, from the itch of bookmaking."

O ye who, like myself, lay black on white and make clean paper dirty!

call to mind the following verses which I remember to have read, and by

which we should have been corrected:

_Tout ce fatras fat du chauvre en son temps,_

_Linge il devint par l'art des tisserands;_

_Puis en lambeaux des pilons le pressèrent_

_Il fut papier. Cent cerveaux à l'envers_

_De visions à l'envi le chargèrent;_

_Puis on le brûle; il vole dans les airs,_

_Il est fumée aussi bien que la gloire._

_De nos travaux voilà quelle est l'histoire,_

_Tout est fumée, et tout nous fait sentir_

_Ce grand néant qui doit nous engloutir._

This miscellaneous rubbish once was flax,

Till made soft linen by the honest weaver;

But when at length it dropped from people's backs,

'Twas turned to paper, and became receiver

Of all that fifty motley brains could fashion;

So now 'tis burned without the least compassion;

It now, like glory, terminates in smoke;

Thus all our toils are nothing but a joke--

All ends in smoke; each nothing that we follow

Tells of the nothing that must all things swallow.

SECTION III.

Books are now multiplied to such a degree that it is impossible not only

to read them all but even to know their number and their titles.

Happily, one is not obliged to read all that is published, and

Caramuel's plan for writing a hundred folio volumes and employing the

spiritual and temporal power of princes to compel their subjects to read

them, has not been put in execution. Ringelburg, too, had formed the

design of composing about a thousand different volumes, but, even had he

lived long enough to publish them he would have fallen far short of

Hermes Trismegistus, who, according to Jamblicus, composed thirty-six

thousand five hundred and twenty-five books. Supposing the truth of this

fact, the ancients had no less reason than the moderns to complain of

the multitude of books.

It is, indeed, generally agreed that a small number of choice books is

sufficient. Some propose that we should confine ourselves to the Bible

or Holy Scriptures, as the Turks limit themselves to the Koran. But

there is a great difference between the feelings of reverence

entertained by the Mahometans for their Koran and those of the

Christians for the Scriptures. The veneration testified by the former

when speaking of the Koran cannot be exceeded. It is, say they, the

greatest of all miracles; nor are all the men in existence put together

capable of anything at all approaching it; it is still more wonderful

that the author had never studied, nor read any book. The Koran alone is

worth sixty thousand miracles (the number of its verses, or

thereabouts); one rising from the dead would not be a stronger proof of

the truth of a religion than the composition of the Koran. It is so

perfect that it ought not to be regarded as a work of creation.

The Christians do indeed say that their Scriptures were inspired by the

Holy Ghost, yet not only is it acknowledged by Cardinal Cajetan and

Bellarmine that errors have found their way into them through the

negligence and ignorance of the book-sellers and the rabbis, who added

the points, but they are considered as a book too dangerous for the

hands of the majority of the faithful. This is expressed by the fifth

rule of the Index, a congregation at Rome, whose office it is to examine

what books are to be forbidden. It is as follows:

"Since it is evident that if the reading of the Bible, translated into

the vulgar tongue, were permitted to every one indiscriminately the

temerity of mankind would cause more evil than good to arise

therefrom--we will that it be referred to the judgment of the bishop or

inquisitor, who, with the advice of the curate or confessor, shall have

power to grant permission to read the Bible rendered in the vulgar

tongue by Catholic writers, to those to whom they shall judge that such

reading will do no harm; they must have this permission in writing and

shall not be absolved until they have returned their Bible into the

hands of the ordinary. As for such book-sellers as shall sell Bibles in

the vulgar tongue to those who have not this written permission, or in

any other way put them into their hands, they shall lose the price of

the books (which the bishop shall employ for pious purposes), and shall

moreover be punished by arbitrary penalties. Nor shall regulars read or

buy these books without the permission of their superiors."

Cardinal Duperron also asserted that the Scriptures, in the hands of the

unlearned, were a two-edged knife which might wound them, to avoid which

it was better that they should hear them from the mouth of the Church,

with the solutions and interpretations of such passages as appear to the

senses to be full of absurdity and contradiction, than that they should

read them by themselves without any solution or interpretation. He

afterwards made a long enumeration of these absurdities in terms so

unqualified that Jurieu was not afraid to declare that he did not

remember to have read anything so frightful or so scandalous in any

Christian author.

Jurieu, who was so violent t in his invectives against Cardinal

Duperron, had himself to sustain similar reproaches from the Catholics.

"I heard that minister," says Pap, in speaking of him, "teaching the

public that all the characteristics of the Holy Scriptures on which

those pretended reformers had founded their persuasion of their

divinity, did not appear to him to be sufficient. 'Let it not be

inferred,' said Jurieu, 'that I wish to take from the light and strength

of the characteristics of Scripture, but I will venture to affirm that

there is not one of them which may not be eluded by the profane. There

is not one of them that amounts to a proof; not one to which something

may not be said in answer, and, considered altogether, although they

have greater power than separately to work a moral conviction--that is,

a proof on which to found a certainty excluding every doubt--I own that

nothing seems to me to be more opposed to reason than to say that these

characteristics are of themselves capable of producing such a

certainty."

It is not then astonishing that the Jews and the first Christians, who,

we find in the Acts of the Apostles, confined themselves in their

meetings to the reading of the Bible, were, as will be seen in the

article "Heresy," divided into different sects. For this reading was

afterwards substituted that of various apocryphal works, or at least of

extracts from them. The author of the "Synopsis of Scripture," which we

find among the works of St. Athanasius, expressly avows that there are

in the apocryphal books things most true and inspired by God which have

been selected and extracted for the perusal of the faithful.

BOURGES.

Our questions have but little to do with geography, but we shall,

perhaps, be permitted to express in a few words our astonishment

respecting the town of Bourges. The Trévoux Dictionary asserts that "it

is one of the most ancient in Europe; that it was the seat of empire of

the Gauls, and gave laws to the Celts."

I will not combat the antiquity of any town or of any family. But was

there ever an empire of Gaul? had the Celts kings? This rage for

antiquity is a malady which is not easily cured. In Gaul, in Germany,

and in the North there is nothing ancient but the soil, the trees, and

the animals. If you will have antiquities go to Asia, and even there

they are hardly to be found. Man is ancient, but monuments are new; this

has already been said in more articles than one.

If to be born within a certain stone or wooden limit more ancient than

another were a real good it would be no more than reasonable to date the

foundation of the town from the giants' war, but since this vanity is in

no wise advantageous let it be renounced. This is all I have to say

about Bourges.

BRACHMANS--BRAHMINS.

Courteous reader, observe, in the first place, that Father Thomassin,

one of the most learned men of modern Europe, derives the Brachmans

from the Jewish word _barac_, by a _c_--supposing, of course, that the

Jews had a _c_. This _barac_, says he, signified _to fly_; and the

Brachmans fled from the towns--supposing that there were any towns.

Or, if you like it better, Brachmans comes from _barak_ by a _k_,

meaning to _bless_ or to _pray_. But why might not the Biscayans name

the Brahmins from the word _bran_? which expresses--I will not say what.

They had as good a right as the Hebrews. Really, this is a strange sort

of erudition. By rejecting it entirely, we should know less, but we

should know it better.

Is it not likely that the Brahmins were the first legislators, the first

philosophers, the first divines, of the earth? Do not the few remaining

monuments of ancient history form a great presumption in their favor?

since the first Greek philosophers went to them to learn mathematics;

and the most ancient curiosities, those collected by the emperors of

China, are all Indian, as is attested by the relations in Du Halde's

collection.

Of the Shastah, we shall speak elsewhere. It is the first theological

book of the Brahmins, written about fifteen hundred years before the

Vedah, and anterior to all other books.

Their annals make no mention of any war undertaken by them at any time.

The words "arms," "killing," "maiming," are to be found neither in the

fragments of the Shastah that have reached us, nor in the Yajurvedah,

nor in the Kormovedah. At least, I can affirm that I have not seen them

in either of these two latter collections; and it is most singular that

the Shastah, which speaks of a conspiracy in heaven, makes no mention of

any war in the great peninsula between the Indus and Ganges.

[Illustration: India was unknown until after Alexander's conquests.]

The Hebrews, who were unknown until so late a period, never name the

Brahmins; they knew nothing of India till after Alexander's conquests

and their own settling in that Egypt of which they had spoken so ill.

The name of India is to be found only in the book of Esther, and in that

of Job, who was not a Hebrew. We find a singular contrast between the

sacred books of the Hebrews and those of the Indians. The Indian books

announce only peace and mildness; they forbid the killing of animals:

but the Hebrew books speak of nothing but the slaughter and massacre of

men and beasts; all are butchered in the name of the Lord; it is quite

another order of things.

We are incontestably indebted to the Brahmins for the idea of the fall

of celestial beings revolting against the Sovereign of Nature; and it

was probably from them that the Greeks took the fable of the Titans; and

lastly, from them it was that the Jews, in the first century of our era,

took the idea of Lucifer's revolt.

How could these Indians suppose a rebellion in heaven without having

seen one on earth? Such a leap from the human to the divine nature is

difficult of comprehension. We usually step from what is known to what

is unknown.

A war of giants would not be imagined, until some men more robust than

the rest had been seen to tyrannize over their fellow-men. To imagine

the like in heaven, the Brahmins must either have experienced violent

discords among themselves, or at least have witnessed them among their

neighbors.

Be that as it may, it is an astonishing phenomenon that a society of men

who had never made war should have invented a sort of war carried on in

imaginary space, or in a globe distant from our own, or in what is

called the firmament--the empyrean. But let it be carefully observed,

that in this revolt of the celestial beings against their Sovereign,

there were no blows given, no celestial blood spilled, no mountains

thrown at one another's heads, no angels deft in twain, as in Milton's

sublime and grotesque poem.

According to the Shastah, it was only a formal disobedience of the

orders of the Most High, which God punished by relegating the rebellious

angels to a vast place of darkness called Onderah, for the term of a

whole mononthour. A mononthour is a hundred and twenty-six millions of

our years. But God vouchsafed to pardon the guilty at the end of five

thousand years, and their Onderah was nothing more than a purgatory.

He turned them into _Mhurd_, or men, and placed them on our globe, on

condition that they should not eat animals, nor cohabit with the males

of their new species, on pain of returning to the Onderah.

These are the principal articles of the Brahmin faith, which has endured

without intermission from time immemorial to the present day.

This is but a small part of the ancient cosmogony of the Brahmins. Their

rites, their pagods, prove that among them all was allegorical. They

still represent Virtue in the form of a woman with ten arms, combating

ten mortal sins typified by monsters. Our missionaries were acute enough

to take this image of Virtue for that of the devil, and affirm that the

devil is worshipped in India. We have never visited that people but to

enrich ourselves and calumniate them.

_The Metempsychosis of the Brahmins._

The doctrine of the metempsychosis comes from an ancient law of feeding

on cow's milk as well as on vegetables, fruits, and rice. It seemed

horrible to the Brahmins to kill and eat their feeder; and they had soon

the same respect for goats, sheep, and all other animals: they believed

them to be animated by the rebellious angels, who were completing their

purification in the bodies of beasts as well as in those of men. The

nature of the climate seconded, or rather originated this law. A burning

atmosphere creates a necessity for refreshing food, and inspires horror

for our custom of stowing carcasses in our stomachs.

The opinion that beasts have souls was general throughout the East, and

we find vestiges of it in the ancient sacred writings. In the book of

Genesis, God forbids men to eat "their flesh with their blood and their

soul." Such is the import of the Hebrew text. "I will avenge," says he,

"the blood of your souls on the claws of beasts and the hands of men."

In Leviticus he says, "The soul of the flesh is in the blood." He does

more; he makes a solemn compact with man and with all animals, which

supposes an intelligence in the latter.

In much later times, Ecclesiasticus formally says, "God shows that man

is like to the beasts; for men die like beasts; their condition is

equal; as man dies, so also dies the beast. They breathe alike. There is

nothing in man more than in the beast." Jonah, when he went to preach at

Nineveh, made both men and beasts fast.

All ancient authors, sacred books as well as profane, attribute

knowledge to the beasts; and several make them speak. It is not then to

be wondered at that the Brahmins, and after them the Pythagoreans,

believed that souls passed successively into the bodies of beasts and of

men; consequently they persuaded themselves, or at least they said, that

the souls of the guilty angels, in order to finish their purgation,

belonged sometimes to beasts, sometimes to men. This is a part of the

romance of the Jesuit Bougeant, who imagined that the devils are spirits

sent into the bodies of animals. Thus, in our day, and at the extremity

of the west, a Jesuit unconsciously revives an article of the faith of

the most ancient Oriental priests.

_The Self-burning of Men and Women among the Brahmins._

The Brahmins of the present day, who do all that the ancient Brahmins

did, have, we know, retained this horrible custom. Whence is it that,

among a people who have never shed the blood of men or of animals, the

finest act of devotion is a public self-burning? Superstition, the great

uniter of contraries, is the only source of these frightful sacrifices,

the custom of which is much more ancient than the laws of any known

people.

The Brahmins assert that their great prophet Brahma, the son of God,

descended among men, and had seyeral wives; and that after his death,

the wife who loved him the most burned herself on his funeral pile, that

she might join him in heaven. Did this woman really burn herself, as it

is said that Portia, the wife of Brutus, swallowed burning coals, in

order to be reunited to her husband? or is this a fable invented by the

priests? Was there a Brahma, who really gave himself out as a prophet

and son of God? It is likely that there was a Brahma, as there

afterwards were a Zoroaster and a Bacchus. Fable seized upon their

history, as she has everywhere constantly done.

No sooner does the wife of the son of God burn herself, than ladies of

meaner condition must burn themselves likewise. But how are they to

find their husbands again, who are become horses, elephants, hawks,

etc.? How are they to distinguish the precise beast, which the defunct

animates? how recognize him and be still his wife? This difficulty does

not in the least embarrass the Hindoo theologians; they easily find a

_distinguo_--a solution _in sensu composito_--_in sensu diviso_. The

metempsychosis is only for common people; for other souls they have a

sublimer doctrine. These souls, being those of the once rebel angels, go

about purifying themselves; those of the women who immolate themselves

are beatified, and find their husbands ready-purified. In short, the

priests are right, and the women burn themselves.

This dreadful fanaticism has existed for more than four thousand years,

amongst a mild people, who would fear to kill a grasshopper. The priests

cannot force a widow to burn herself; for the invariable law is, that

the self-devotion must be absolutely voluntary. The longest married of

the wives of the deceased has the first refusal of the honor of mounting

the funeral-pile; if she is not inclined, the second presents herself;

and so of the rest. It is said, that on one occasion seventeen burned

themselves at once on the pile of a rajah: but these sacrifices are now

very rare; the faith has become weaker since the Mahometans have

governed a great part of the country, and the Europeans traded with the

rest.

Still, there is scarcely a governor of Madras or Pondicherry who has

not seen some Indian woman voluntarily perish in the flames. Mr. Holwell

relates that a young widow of nineteen, of singular beauty, and the

mother of three children, burned herself in the presence of Mrs.

Russell, wife of the admiral then in the Madras roads. She resisted the

tears and the prayers of all present; Mrs. Russell conjured her, in the

name of her children, not to leave them orphans. The Indian woman

answered, "God, who has given them birth, will take care of them." She

then arranged everything herself, set fire to the pile with her own

hand, and consummated her sacrifice with as much serenity as one of our

nuns lights the tapers.

Mr. Charnock, an English merchant, one day seeing one of these

astonishing victims, young and lovely, on her way to the funeral-pile,

dragged her away by force when she was about to set fire to it, and,

with the assistance of some of his countrymen, carried her of! and

married her. The people regarded this act as the most horrible

sacrilege.

Why do husbands never burn themselves, that they may join their wives?

Why has a sex, naturally weak and timid, always had this frantic

resolution? Is it because tradition does not say that a man ever married

a daughter of Brahma, while it does affirm that an Indian woman was

married to a son of that divinity? Is it because women are more

superstitious than men? Or is it because their imaginations are weaker,

more tender, and more easily governed?

The ancient Brahmins sometimes burned themselves to prevent the pains

and the languor of old age; but, above all, to make themselves admired.

Calanus would not, perhaps, have placed himself on the pile, but for the

purpose of being gazed at by Alexander. The Christian renegade

Peregrinus burned himself in public, for the same reason that a madman

goes about the streets dressed like an Armenian, to attract the notice

of the populace.

Is there not also an unfortunate mixture of vanity in this terrible

sacrifice of the Indian women? Perhaps, if a law were passed that the

burning should take place in the presence of one waiting woman only,

this abominable custom would be forever destroyed.

One word more: A few hundreds of Indian women, at most, have furnished

this horrid spectacle; but our inquisitions, our atrocious madmen

calling themselves judges, have put to death in the flames more than a

hundred thousand of our brethren--men, women, and children--for things

which no one has understood. Let us pity and condemn the Brahmins; but

let us not forget our miserable selves!

Truly, we have forgotten one very essential point in this short article

on the Brahmins, which is, that their sacred books are full of

contradictions; but the people know nothing of them, and the doctors

have solutions ready--senses figured and figurative, allegories, types,

express declarations of Birma, Brahma, and Vishnu, sufficient to shut

the mouth of any reasoner.

BREAD-TREE.

The bread-tree grows in the Philippine islands, and principally in those

of Guam and Tinian, as the cocoa-tree grows in the Indies. These two

trees, alone, if they could be multiplied in our climate, would furnish

food and drink sufficient for all mankind.

The bread-tree is taller and more bulky than our common apple-trees; its

leaves are black, its fruit is yellow, and equal in dimensions to the

largest apple. The rind is hard; and the cuticle is a sort of soft,

white paste, which has the taste of the best French rolls; but it must

be eaten fresh, as it keeps only twenty-four hours, after which it

becomes dry, sour and disagreeable; but, as a compensation, the trees

are loaded with them eight months of the year. The natives of the

islands have no other food; they are all tall, stout, well made,

sufficiently fleshy, and in the vigorous health which is necessarily

produced by the use of one wholesome aliment alone: and it is to negroes

that nature has made this present.

Corn is assuredly not the food of the greater part of the world. Maize

and cassava are the food of all America. We have whole provinces in

which the peasants eat none but chestnut bread, which is more nourishing

and of better flavor than the rye or barley bread on which so many feed,

and is much better than the rations given to the soldiers. Bread is

unknown in all southern Africa. The immense Indian Archipelago, Siam,

Laos, Pegu, Cochin-China, Tonquin, part of China, the Malabar and

Coromandel coasts, and the banks of the Ganges, produce rice, which is

easier of cultivation, and for which wheat is neglected. Corn is

absolutely unknown for the space of five hundred leagues on the coast of

the Icy Sea.

The missionaries have sometimes been in great tribulation, in countries

where neither bread nor wine is to be found. The inhabitants told them

by interpreters: "You would baptize us with a few drops of water, in a

burning climate, where we are obliged to plunge every day into the

rivers; you would confess us, yet you understand not our language; you

would have us communicate, yet you want the two necessary ingredients,

bread and wine. It is therefore evident that your universal religion

cannot have been made for us." The missionaries replied, very justly,

that good will is the one thing needful; that they should be plunged

into the water without any scruple; that bread and wine should be

brought from Goa; and that, as for the language, the missionaries would

learn it in a few years.

BUFFOONERY--BURLESQUE--LOW COMEDY.

He was a very subtle schoolman, who first said that we owe the origin of

the word "buffoon" to a little Athenian sacrificer called _Bupho_, who,

being tired of his employment, absconded, and never returned. The

Areopagus, as they could not punish the priest, proceeded against his

hatchet. This farce, which was played every year in the temple of

Jupiter, is said to have been called _"buffoonery."_ This story is not

entitled to much credit Buffoon was not a proper name; _bouphonos_

signifies an immolator of oxen. The Greeks never called any jest

_bouphonia_. This ceremony, frivolous as it appears, might have an

origin wise and humane, worthy of true Athenians.

Once a year, the subaltern sacrificer, or more properly the holy

butcher, when on the point of immolating an ox, fled as if struck with

horror, to put men in mind that in wiser and happier times only flowers

and fruits were offered to the gods, and that the barbarity of

immolating innocent and useful animals was not introduced until there

were priests desirous of fattening on their blood and living at the

expense of the people. In this idea there is no buffoonery.

This word "buffoon" has long been received among the Italians and the

Spaniards, signifying _mimus, scurra, joculator_--a mimic, a jester, a

player of tricks. Ménage, after Salmasius, derives it from _bocca

infiata_--a bloated face; and it is true that a round face and swollen

cheeks are requisite in a buffoon. The Italians say _bufo magro_--a

meagre buffoon, to express a poor jester who cannot make you laugh.

Buffoon and buffoonery appertain to low comedy, to mountebanking, to all

that can amuse the populace. In this it was--to the shame of the human

mind be it spoken--that tragedy had its beginning: Thespis was a

buffoon before Sophocles was a great man.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Spanish and English

tragedies were all degraded by disgusting buffooneries. The courts were

still more disgraced by buffoons than the stage. So strong was the rust

of barbarism, that men had no taste for more refined pleasures. Boileau

says of Molière:

_C'est par-là que Molière, illustrant ses écrits,_

_Peut-être de son art eût emporté le prix,_

_Si, moins ami du peuple en ses doctes peintures,_

_Il n'eût fait quelquefois, grimacer ses figures,_

_Quitté pour le bouffon l'agréable et fin,_

_Et sans honte à Terence allié Tabarin._

_Dans ce sac ridicule où Scapin s'enveloppe,_

_Je ne reconnais plus l'auteur du Misanthrope._

Molière in comic genius had excelled,

And might, perhaps, have stood unparalleled,

Had he his faithful portraits ne'er allowed

To gape and grin to gratify the crowd;

Deserting wit for low grimace and jest,

And showing Terence in a motley vest.

Who in the sack, where Scapin plays the fool,

Will find the genius of the comic school?

But it must be considered that Raphael condescended to paint grotesque

figures. Molière would not have descended so low, if all his spectators

had been such men as Louis XIV., Condé, Turenne, La Rochefoucauld,

Montausier, Beauvilliers, and such women as Montespan and Thianges; but

he had also to please the whole people of Paris, who were yet quite

unpolished. The citizen liked broad farce, and he paid for it. Scarron's

"Jodelets" were all the rage. We are obliged to place ourselves on the

level of our age, before we can rise above it; and, after all, we like

to laugh now and then. What is Homer's "Battle of the Frogs and Mice,"

but a piece of buffoonery--a burlesque poem?

Works of this kind give no reputation, but they may take from that which

we already enjoy.

Buffoonery is not always in the burlesque style, "The Physician in Spite

of Himself," and the "Rogueries of Scapin," are not in the style of

Scarron's "Jodelets." Molière does not, like Scarron, go in search of

slang terms; his lowest characters do not play the mountebank.

Buffoonery is in the thing, not in the expression.

Boileau's "Lutrin" was at first called a burlesque poem, but it was the

subject that was burlesque; the style was pleasing and refined, and

sometimes even heroic.

The Italians had another kind of burlesque, much superior to ours--that

of Aretin, of Archbishop La Caza, of Berni, Mauro, and Dolce. It often

sacrifices decorum to pleasantry, but obscene words are wholly banished

from it. The subject of Archbishop La Caza's _"Capitolo del Forno"_ is,

indeed, that which sends the Desfontaines to the Bicêtre, and the

Deschaufours to the Place de Grève: but there is not one word offensive

to the ear of chastity; you have to divine the meaning.

Three or four Englishmen have excelled in this way: Butler, in his

"Hudibras," which was the civil war excited by the Puritans turned into

ridicule; Dr. Garth, in his "Dispensary"; Prior, in his "Alma," in

which he very pleasantly makes a jest of his subject and Phillips, in

his "Splendid Shilling."

Butler is as much above Scarron as a man accustomed to good company is

above a singer at a pot-house. The hero of "Hudibras" was a real

personage, one Sir Samuel Luke, who had been a captain in the armies of

Fairfax and Cromwell. See the commencement of the poem, in the article

"Prior," "Butler," and "Swift."

Garth's poem on the physicians and apothecaries is not so much in the

burlesque style as Boileau's "Lutrin": it has more imagination, variety,

and naivete than the "Lutrin"; and, which is rather astonishing, it

displays profound erudition, embellished with all the graces of

refinement. It begins thus:

Speak, Goddess, since 'tis thou that best canst tell

How ancient leagues to modern discord fell;

And why physicians were so cautious grown

Of others' lives, and lavish of their own.

Prior, whom we have seen a plenipotentiary in France before the Peace of

Utrecht, assumed the office of mediator between the philosophers who

dispute about the soul. This poem is in the style of "Hudibras," called

doggerel rhyme, which is the _stilo Berniesco_ of the Italians.

The great first question is, whether the soul is all in all, or is

lodged behind the nose and eyes in a corner which it never quits.

According to the latter system, Prior compares it to the pope, who

constantly remains at Rome, whence he sends his nuncios and spies to

learn all that is doing in Christendom.

Prior, after making a jest of several systems, proposes his own. He

remarks that the two-legged animal, new-born, throws its feet about as

much as possible, when its nurse is so stupid as to swaddle it: thence

he judges that the soul enters it by the feet; that about fifteen it

reaches the middle; then it ascends to the heart; then to the head,

which it quits altogether when the animal ceases to live.

At the end of this singular poem, full of ingenious versification, and

of ideas alike subtle and pleasing, we find this charming line of

Fontenelle: _"Il est des hochets pour tout âge."_ Prior begs of fortune

to "Give us play-things for old age."

Yet it is quite certain that Fontenelle did not take this line from

Prior, nor Prior from Fontenelle. Prior's work is twenty years anterior,

and Fontenelle did not understand English. The poem terminates with this

conclusion:

For Plato's fancies what care I?

I hope you would not have me die

Like simple Cato in the play,

For anything that he can say:

E'en let him of ideas speak

To heathens, in his native Greek.

If to be sad is to be wise,

I do most heartily despise

Whatever Socrates has said,

Or Tully writ, or Wanley read.

Dear Drift, to set our matters right,

Remove these papers from my sight;

Burn Mat's Descartes and Aristotle--

Here, Jonathan,--your master's bottle.

In all these poems, let us distinguish the pleasant, the lively, the

natural, the familiar--from the grotesque, the farcical, the low, and,

above all, the stiff and forced. These various shades are discriminated

by the connoisseurs, who alone, in the end, decide the fate of every

work.

La Fontaine would sometimes descend to the burlesque style--Phædrus

never; but the latter has not the grace and unaffected softness of La

Fontaine, though he has greater precision and purity.

BULGARIANS.

These people were originally Huns, who settled near the Volga; and

Volgarians was easily changed into Bulgarians.

About the end of the seventh century, they, like all the other nations

inhabiting Sarmatia, made irruptions towards the Danube, and inundated

the Roman Empire. They passed through Moldavia and Wallachia, whither

their old fellow-countrymen, the Russians, carried their victorious arms

in 1769, under the Empress Catherine II.

Having crossed the Danube, they settled in part of Dacia and Moesia,

giving their name to the countries which are still called Bulgaria.

Their dominion extended to Mount Hæmus and the Euxine Sea.

In Charlemagne's time, the Emperor Nicephorus, successor to Irene, was

so imprudent as to march against them after being vanquished by the

Saracens; and he was in like manner defeated by the Bulgarians. Their

king, named Krom, cut off his head, and made use of his skull as a

drinking-cup at his table, according to the custom of that people in

common with all the northern nations.

It is related that, in the ninth century, one Bogoris, who was making

war upon the Princess Theodora, mother and guardian to the Emperor

Michael, was so charmed with that empress's noble answer to his

declaration of war, that he turned Christian.

The Bulgarians, who were less complaisant, revolted against him; but

Bogoris, having shown them a crucifix, they all immediately received

baptism. So say the Greek writers of the lower empire, and so say our

compilers after them: _"Et voilà justement comme on écrit l'histoire."_

Theodora, say they, was a very religious princess, even passing her

latter years in a convent. Such was her love for the Greek Catholic

religion that she put to death in various ways a hundred thousand men

accused of Manichæism--"this being," says the modest continuator of

Echard, "the most impious, the most detestable, the most dangerous, the

most abominable of all heresies, for ecclesiastical censures were

weapons of no avail against men who acknowledged not the church."

It is said that the Bulgarians, seeing that all the Manichæans suffered

death, immediately conceived an inclination for their religion, and

thought it the best, since it was the most persecuted one: but this, for

Bulgarians, would be extraordinarily acute.

At that time, the great schism broke out more violently than ever

between the Greek church, under the Patriarch Photius, and the Latin

church, under Pope Nicholas I. The Bulgarians took part with the Greek

church; and from that time, probably, it was that they were treated in

the west as heretics, with the addition of that fine epithet, which has

clung to them to the present day.

In 871, the Emperor Basil sent them a preacher, named Peter of Sicily,

to save them from the heresy of Manichæism; and it is added, that they

no sooner heard him than they turned Manichæans. It is not very

surprising that the Bulgarians, who drank out of the skulls of their

enemies, were not extraordinary theologians any more than Peter of

Sicily.

It is singular that these barbarians, who could neither write nor read,

should have been regarded as very knowing heretics, with whom it was

dangerous to dispute. They certainly had other things to think of than

controversy, since they carried on a sanguinary war against the emperors

of Constantinople for four successive centuries, and even besieged the

capital of the empire.

At the commencement of the thirteenth century, the Emperor Alexis,

wishing to make himself recognized by the Bulgarians, their king,

Joannic, replied, that he would never be his vassal. Pope Innocent III.

was careful to seize this opportunity of attaching the kingdom of

Bulgaria to himself: he sent a legate to Joannic, to anoint him king;

and pretended that he had conferred the kingdom upon him, and that he

could never more hold it but from the holy see.

This was the most violent period of the crusades. The indignant

Bulgarians entered into an alliance with the Turks, declared war against

the pope and his crusaders, took the pretended Emperor Baldwin prisoner,

had his head cut off, and made a bowl of his skull, after the manner of

Krom. This was quite enough to make the Bulgarians abhorred by all

Europe. It was no longer necessary to call them Manichæans, a name which

was at that time given to every class of heretics: for Manichæan,

Patarin, and Vaudois were the same thing. These terms were lavished upon

whosoever would not submit to the Roman church.

BULL.

A quadruped, armed with horns, having cloven feet, strong legs, a slow

pace, a thick body, a hard skin, a tail not quite so long as that of the

horse, with some long hairs at the end. Its blood has been looked upon

as a poison, but it is no more so than that of other animals; and the

ancients, who wrote that Themistocles and others poisoned themselves

with bull's blood, were false both to nature and to history. Lucian, who

reproaches Jupiter with having placed the bull's horns above his eyes,

reproaches him unjustly; for the eye of a bull being large, round, and

open, he sees very well where he strikes; and if his eyes had been

placed higher than his horns, he could not have seen the grass which he

crops.

Phalaris's bull, or the Brazen Bull, was a bull of cast metal, found in

Sicily, and supposed to have been used by Phalaris to enclose and burn

such as he chose to punish--a very unlikely species of cruelty. The

bulls of Medea guarded the Golden Fleece. The bull of Marathon was tamed

by Hercules.

Then there were the bull which carried off Europa, the bull of Mithras,

and the bull of Osiris; there are the Bull, a sign of the zodiac, and

the Bull's Eye, a star of the first magnitude, and lastly, there are

bull-fights, common in Spain.

BULL (PAPAL).

This word designates the bull, or seal of gold, silver, wax, or lead,

attached to any instrument or charter. The lead hanging to the rescripts

despatched in the Roman court bears on one side the head of St. Peter on

the right, and that of St. Paul on the left; and, on the reverse, the

name of the reigning pope, with the year of his pontificate. The bull is

written on parchment. In the greeting, the pope takes no title but that

of "Servant of the Servants of God," according to the holy words of

Jesus to His Disciples--"Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be

your servant."

Some heretics assert that, by this formula, humble in appearance, the

popes mean to express a sort of feudal system, of which God is chief;

whose high vassals, Peter and Paul, are represented by their servant

the pontiff; while the lesser vassals are all secular princes, whether

emperors, kings, or dukes.

They doubtless found this assertion on the famous bull _In cœna

Domini,_ which is publicly read at Rome by a cardinal-deacon every year,

on Holy Thursday, in the presence of the pope, attended by the rest of

the cardinals and bishops. After the ceremony, his holiness casts a

lighted torch into the public square in token of anathema.

This bull is, to be found in Tome i., p. 714 of the _Bullaire_,

published at Lyons in 1673, and at page 118 of the edition of 1727. The

oldest is dated 1536. Paul III., without noticing the origin of the

ceremony, here says that it is an ancient custom of the sovereign

pontiffs to publish this excommunication on Holy Thursday, in order to

preserve the purity of the Christian religion, and maintain union among

the faithful. It contains twenty-four paragraphs, in which the pope

excommunicates:

1. Heretics, all who favor them, and all who read their books.

2. Pirates, especially such as dare to cruise on the seas belonging to

the sovereign pontiff.

3. Those who impose fresh tolls on their lands.

10. Those who, in any way whatsoever, prevent the execution of the

apostolical letters, whether they grant pardons or inflict penalties.

11. All lay judges who judge ecclesiastics, and bring them before their

tribunal, whether that tribunal is called an audience, a chancery, a

council, or a parliament.

12. All chancellors, counsellors, ordinary or extraordinary, of any king

or prince whatsoever, all presidents of chanceries, councils, or

parliaments, as also all attorneys-general, who call ecclesiastical

causes before them, or prevent the execution of the apostolical letters,

even though it be on pretext of preventing some violence.

In the same paragraph, the pope reserves to himself alone the power of

absolving the said chancellors, counsellors, attorneys-general, and the

rest of the excommunicated; who cannot receive absolution until they

have publicly revoked their acts, and have erased them from the records.

20. Lastly, the pope excommunicates all such as shall presume to give

absolution to the excommunicated as aforesaid: and, in order that no one

may plead ignorance, he orders:

21. That this bull be published, and posted on the gate of the basilic

of the Prince of the Apostles, and on that of St. John of Lateran.

22. That all patriarchs, primates, archbishops, and bishops, by virtue

of their holy obedience, shall have this bull solemnly published at

least once a year.

24. He declares that whosoever dares to go against the provisions of

this bull, must know that he is incurring the displeasure of Almighty

God and of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul.

The other subsequent bulls, called also _In cœna Domini_, are only

duplicates of the first. For instance, the article 21 of that of Pius

V., dated 1567, adds to the paragraph 3 of the one that we have quoted,

that all princes who lay new impositions on their states, of what nature

soever, or increase the old ones, without obtaining permission from the

Holy See, are excommunicated _ipso facto_. The third bull _In cœna

Domini_ of 1610, contains thirty paragraphs, in which Paul V. renews the

provisions of the two preceding.

The fourth and last bull _In cœna Domini_ which we find in the

_Bullaire_, is dated April 1, 1672. In it Urban VIII. announces that,

after the example of his predecessors, in order inviolably to maintain

the integrity of the faith, and public justice and tranquillity, he

wields the spiritual sword of ecclesiastical discipline to

excommunicate, on the day which is the anniversary of the Supper of our

Lord:

1. Heretics.

2. Such as appeal from the pope to a future council; and the rest as in

the three former.

It is said that the one which is read now, is of a more recent date, and

contains some additions.

The History of Naples, by Giannone, shows us what disorders the

ecclesiastics stirred up in that kingdom, and what vexations they

exercised against the king's subjects, even refusing them absolution and

the sacraments, in order to effect the reception of this bull, which has

at last been solemnly proscribed there, as well as in Austrian

Lombardy, in the states of the empress-queen, in those of the Duke of

Parma, and elsewhere.

In 1580, the French clergy chose the time between the sessions of the

parliament of Paris, to have the same bull _In cœna Domini_

published. But it was opposed by the procureur-general; and the _Chambre

des Vacations_, under the presidency of the celebrated and unfortunate

Brisson, on October 4, passed a decree, enjoining all governors to

inform themselves, if possible, what archbishops, bishops, or

grand-vicars, had received either this bull or a copy of it entitled

_Litteræ processus_, and who had sent it to them to be published; to

prevent the publication, if it had not yet taken place; to obtain the

copies and send them to the chamber; or, if they had been published, to

summon the archbishops, the bishops, or their grand-vicars, to appear on

a certain day before the chamber, to answer to the suit of the

procureur-general; and, in the meantime, to seize their temporal

possessions and place them in the hands of the king; to forbid all

persons obstructing the execution of this decree, on pain of punishment

as traitors and enemies to the state; with orders that the decree be

printed and that the copies, collated by notaries, have the full force

of the original.

In doing this, the parliament did but feebly imitate Philip the Fair.

The bull _Ausculta Fili_, of Dec. 5, 1301, was addressed to him by

Boniface VIII., who, after exhorting the king to listen with docility,

says to him: "God has established us over all kings and all kingdoms, to

root up, and destroy, and throw down, to build, and to plant, in His

name and by His doctrine. Do not, then, suffer yourself to be persuaded

that you have no superior, and that you are not subject to the head of

the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Whosoever thinks this, is a madman; and

whosoever obstinately maintains it, is an infidel, separated from the

flock of the Good Shepherd." The pope then enters into long details

respecting the government of France, even reproaching the king for

having altered the coin.

Philip the Fair had this bull burned at Paris, and its execution

published on sound of trumpet throughout the city, by Sunday, Feb. 11,

1302. The pope, in a council which he held at Rome the same year, made a

great noise, and broke out into threats against Philip the Fair; but he

did no more than threaten. The famous decretal, _Unam Sanctam_ is,

however, considered as the work of his council; it is, in substance, as

follows:

"We believe and confess a holy, catholic, and apostolic church, out of

which there is no salvation; we also acknowledge its unity, that it is

one only body, with one only head, and not with two, like a monster.

This only head is Jesus Christ, and St. Peter his vicar, and the

successor of St. Peter. Therefore, the Greeks, or others, who say that

they are not subject to that successor, must acknowledge that they are

not of the flock of Christ, since He himself has said (John, x, 16)

'that there is but one fold and one shepherd.'

"We learn that in this church, and under its power, are two swords, the

spiritual and the temporal: of these, one is to be used by the church

and by the hand of the pontiff; the other, by the church and by the hand

of kings and warriors, in pursuance of the orders or with the permission

of the pontiff. Now, one of these swords must be subject to the other,

temporal to spiritual power; otherwise, they would not be ordinate, and

the apostles say they must be so. (Rom. xiii, 1.) According to the

testimony of truth, spiritual power must institute and judge temporal

power; and thus is verified with regard to the church, the prophecy of

Jeremiah (i. 10): 'I have this day set thee over the nations and over

the kingdoms.'"

On the other hand, Philip the Fair assembled the states-general; and the

commons, in the petition which they presented to that monarch, said, in

so many words: "It is a great abomination for us to hear that this

Boniface stoutly interprets like a _Boulgare_ (dropping the _l_ and the

_a_) these words of spirituality (Matt., xvi. 19): 'Whatever thou shalt

bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven;' if this signified that if a

man be put into a temporal prison, God will imprison him in heaven."

Clement V., successor to Boniface VIII., revoked and annulled the odious

decision of the bull _Unam Sanctam_, which extends the power of the

popes to the temporalities of kings, and condemns as heretics all who do

not acknowledge this chimerical power. Boniface's pretension, indeed,

ought to be condemned as heresy, according to this maxim of theologians:

"Not only is it a sin against the rules of the faith, and a heresy, to

deny what the faith teaches us, but also to set up as part of the faith

that which is no part of it." (Joan. Maj. m. 3 sent. dist. 37. q. 26.)

Other popes, before Boniface VIII., had arrogated to themselves the

right of property over different kingdoms. The bull is well known, in

which Gregory VII. says to the King of Spain: "I would have you to know,

that the kingdom of Spain, by ancient ecclesiastical ordinances, was

given in property to St. Peter and the holy Roman church."

Henry II. of England asked permission of Pope Adrian IV. to invade

Ireland. The pontiff gave him leave, on condition that he imposed on

every Irish family a tax of one _carolus_ for the Holy See, and held

that kingdom as a fief of the Roman church. "For," wrote Adrian, "it

cannot be doubted that every island upon which Jesus Christ, the sun of

justice, has arisen, and which has received the lessons of the Christian

faith, belongs of right to St. Peter and to the holy and sacred Roman

church."

_Bulls of the Crusade and of Composition._

If an African or an Asiatic of sense were told that in that part of

Europe where some men have forbidden others to eat flesh on Saturdays,

the pope gives them leave to eat it, by a bull, for the sum of two

rials, and that another bull grants permission to keep stolen money,

what would this African or Asiatic say? He would, at least, agree with

us, that every country has its customs; and that in this world, by

whatever names things may be called, or however they may be disguised,

all is done for money.

There are two bulls under the name of _La Cruzada_--the Crusade; one of

the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, the other of that of Philip V. The

first of these sells permission to eat what is called the _grossura_,

viz., tripes, livers, kidneys, gizzards, sweet-breads, lights, plucks,

cauls, heads, necks, and feet.

The second bull, granted by Pope Urban VIII., gives leave to eat meat

throughout Lent, and absolves from every crime except heresy.

Not only are these bulls sold, but people are ordered to buy them; and,

as is but right, they cost more in Peru and Mexico than in Spain; they

are there sold for a piastre. It is reasonable that the countries which

produce gold and silver should pay more than others.

The pretext for these bulls is, making war upon the Moors. There are

persons, difficult of conviction, who cannot see what livers and kidneys

have to do with a war against the Africans; and they add, that Jesus

Christ never ordered war to be made on the Mahometans on pain of

excommunication.

The bull giving permission to keep another's goods is galled the bull of

_Composition_. It is farmed; and has long brought considerable sums

throughout Spain, the Milanese, Naples, and Sicily. The highest bidders

employ the most eloquent of the monks to preach this bull. Sinners who

have robbed the king, the state, or private individuals, go to these

preachers, confess to them, and show them what a sad thing it would be

to make restitution of the whole. They offer the monks five, six, and

sometimes seven per cent., in order to keep the rest with a safe

conscience; and, as soon as the composition is made, they receive

absolution.

The preaching brother who wrote the "Travels through Spain and Italy"

(_Voyage d'Espagne et d'Italie_), published at Paris, _avec privilège_

by Jean-Baptiste de l'Épime, speaking of this bull, thus expresses

himself: "Is it not very gracious to come off at so little cost, and be

at liberty to steal more, when one has occasion for a larger sum?"

_Bull Unigenitus._

The bull _In cœna Domini_ was an indignity offered to all Catholic

sovereigns, and they at length proscribed it in their states; but the

bull _Unigenitus_ was a trouble to France alone. The former attacked the

rights of the princes and magistrates of Europe, and they maintained

those rights; the latter proscribed only some maxims of piety and

morals, which gave no concern to any except the parties interested in

the transient affair; but these interested parties soon filled all

France. It was at first a quarrel between the all-powerful Jesuits and

the remains of the crushed Port-Royal.

Quesnel, a preacher of the Oratory, refugee in Holland, had dedicated a

commentary on the New Testament to Cardinal de Noailles, then bishop of

Châlons-sur-Marne. It met the bishop's approbation and was well received

by all readers of that sort of books.

One Letellier, a Jesuit, a confessor to Louis XIV. and an enemy to

Cardinal de Noailles, resolved to mortify him by having the book, which

was dedicated to him, and of which he had a very high opinion, condemned

at Rome.

This Jesuit, the son of an attorney at Vire in Lower Normandy, had all

that fertility of expedient for which his father's profession is

remarkable. Not content with embroiling Cardinal de Noailles with the

pope, he determined to have him disgraced by the king his master. To

ensure the success of this design, he had mandaments composed against

him by his emissaries, and got them signed by four bishops; he also

indited letters to the king, which he made them sign.

These manœuvres, which would have been punished in any of the

tribunals, succeeded at court: the king was soured against the

cardinal, and Madame de Maintenon abandoned him.

Here was a series of intrigues, in which, from one end of the kingdom to

the other, every one took a part. The more unfortunate France at that

time became in a disastrous war, the more the public mind was heated by

a theological quarrel.

During these movements, Letellier had the condemnation of Quesnel's

book, of which the monarch had never read a page, demanded from Rome by

Louis XIV. himself. Letellier and two other Jesuits, named Doucin and

Lallemant, extracted one hundred and three propositions, which Pope

Clement XI. was to condemn. The court of Rome struck out two of them,

that it might, at least, have the honor of appearing to judge for

itself.

Cardinal Fabroni, in whose hands the affair was placed, and who was

devoted to the Jesuits, had the bull drawn up by a Cordelier named

Father Palerno, Elio a Capuchin, Terrovi a Barnabite, and Castelli a

Servite, to whom was added a Jesuit named Alfaro.

Clement XI. let them proceed in their own way. His only object was to

please the king of France, who had long been displeased with him, on

account of his recognizing the Archduke Charles, afterwards emperor, as

King of Spain. To make his peace with the king, it cost him only a piece

of parchment sealed with lead, concerning a question which he himself

despised.

Clement XI. did not wait to be solicited; he sent the bull, and was

quite astonished to learn that it was received throughout France with

hisses and groans. "What!" said he to Cardinal Carpegno, "a bull is

earnestly asked of me; I give it freely, and every one makes a jest of

it!"

Every one was indeed surprised to see a pope, in the name of Jesus

Christ, condemning as heretical, tainted with heresy, and offensive to

pious ears, this proposition: "It is good to read books of piety on

Sundays, especially the Holy Scriptures;" and this: "The fear of an

unjust excommunication should not prevent us from doing our duty."

The partisans of the Jesuits were themselves alarmed at these censures,

but they dared not speak. The wise and disinterested exclaimed against

the scandal, and the rest of the nation against the absurdity.

Nevertheless, Letellier still triumphed, until the death of Louis XIV.;

he was held in abhorrence, but he governed. This wretch tried every

means to procure the suspension of Cardinal de Noailles; but after the

death of his penitent, the incendiary was banished. The duke of Orleans,

during his regency, extinguished these quarrels by making a jest of

them. They have since thrown out a few sparks; but they are at last

forgotten, probably forever. Their duration, for more than half a

century, was quite long enough. Yet, happy indeed would mankind be, if

they were divided only by foolish questions unproductive of bloodshed!

CÆSAR.

It is not as the husband of so many women and the wife of so many men;

as the conqueror of Pompey and the Scipios; as the satirist who turned

Cato into ridicule; as the robber of the public treasury, who employed

the money of the Romans to reduce the Romans to subjection; as he who,

clement in his triumphs, pardoned the vanquished; as the man of

learning, who reformed the calendar; as the tyrant and the father of his

country, assassinated by his friends and his bastard son; that I shall

here speak of Cæsar. I shall consider this extraordinary man only in my

quality of descendant from the poor barbarians whom he subjugated.

You will not pass through a town in France, in Spain, on the banks of

the Rhine, or on the English coast opposite to Calais, in which you will

not find good people who boast of having had Cæsar there. Some of the

townspeople of Dover are persuaded that Cæsar built their castle; and

there are citizens of Paris who believe that the great _châtelet_ is one

of his fine works. Many a country squire in France shows you an old

turret which serves him for a dove-cote, and tells you that Cæsar

provided a lodging for his pigeons. Each province disputes with its

neighbor the honor of having been the first to which Cæsar applied the

lash; it was not by that road, but by this, that he came to cut our

throats, embrace our wives and daughters, impose laws upon us by

interpreters, and take from us what little money we had.

The Indians are wiser. We have already seen that they have a confused

knowledge that a great robber, named Alexander, came among them with

other robbers; but they scarcely ever speak of him.

An Italian antiquarian, passing a few years ago through Vannes in

Brittany, was quite astonished to hear the learned men of Vannes boast

of Cæsar's stay in their town. "No doubt," said he, "you have monuments

of that great man?" "Yes," answered the most notable among them, "we

will show you the place where that hero had the whole senate of our

province hanged, to the number of six hundred."

"Some ignorant fellows, who had found a hundred beams under ground,

advanced in the journals in 1755 that they were the remains of a bridge

built by Cæsar; but I proved to them in my dissertation of 1756 that

they were the gallows on which that hero had our parliament tied up.

What other town in Gaul can say as much? We have the testimony of the

great Cæsar himself. He says in his Commentaries' that we 'are fickle

and prefer liberty to slavery.' He charges us with having been so

insolent as to take hostages of the Romans, to whom we had given

hostages, and to be unwilling to return them unless our own were given

up. He taught us good behavior."

"He did well," replied the virtuoso, "his right was incontestable. It

was, however, disputed, for you know that when he vanquished the

emigrant Swiss, to the number of three hundred and sixty-eight thousand,

and there were not more than a hundred and ten thousand left, he had a

conference in Alsace with a German king named Ariovistus, and Ariovistus

said to him: 'I come to plunder Gaul, and I will not suffer any one to

plunder it but myself;' after which these good Germans, who were come to

lay waste the country, put into the hands of their witches two Roman

knights, ambassadors from Cæsar; and these witches were on the point of

burning them and offering them to their gods, when Cæsar came and

delivered them by a victory. We must confess that the right on both

sides was equal, and that Tacitus had good reason for bestowing so many

praises on the manners of the ancient Germans."

This conversation gave rise to a very warm dispute between the learned

men of Vannes and the antiquarian. Several of the Bretons could not

conceive what was the virtue of the Romans in deceiving one after

another all the nations of Gaul, in making them by turns the instruments

of their own ruin, in butchering one-fourth of the people, and reducing

the other three-fourths to slavery.

"Oh! nothing can be finer," returned the antiquarian. "I have in my

pocket a medal representing Cæsar's triumph at the Capitol; it is in the

best preservation." He showed the medal. A Breton, a tittle rude, took

it and threw it into the river, exclaiming: "Oh! that I could so serve

all who use their power and their skill to oppress their fellow-men!

Rome deceived us, disunited us, butchered us, chained us; and at this

day Rome still disposes of many of our benefices; and is it possible

that we have so long and in so many ways been a country of slaves?"

To the conversation between the Italian antiquarian and the Breton I

shall only add that Perrot d'Ablancourt, the translator of Cæsar's

"Commentaries," in his dedication to the great Condé, makes use of these

words: "Does it not seem to you, sir, as if you were reading the life of

some Christian philosopher?" Cæsar a Christian philosopher! I wonder he

has not been made a saint. Writers of dedications are remarkable for

saying fine things and much to the purpose.

CALENDS.

The feast of the Circumcision, which the church celebrates on the first

of January, has taken the place of another called the Feast of the

Calends, of Asses, of Fools, or of Innocents, according to the different

places where, and the different days on which, it was held. It was most

commonly at Christmas, the Circumcision, or the Epiphany.

In the cathedral of Rouen there was on Christmas day a procession, in

which ecclesiastics, chosen for the purpose, represented the prophets of

the Old Testament, who foretold the birth of the Messiah, and--which

may have given the feast its name--Balaam appeared, mounted on a

she-ass; but as Lactantius' poem, and the "Book of Promises," under the

name of St. Prosper, say that Jesus in the manger was recognized by the

ox and the ass, according to the passage Isaiah: "The ox knoweth his

owner, and the ass his master's crib" (a circumstance, however, which

neither the gospel nor the ancient fathers have remarked), it is more

likely that, from this opinion, the Feast of the Ass took its name.

Indeed, the Jesuit, Theophilus Raynaud, testifies that on St. Stephen's

day there was sung a hymn of the ass, which was also called the Prose of

Fools; and that on St. John's day another was sung, called the Prose of

the Ox. In the library of the chapter of Sens there is preserved a

manuscript of vellum with miniature figures representing the ceremonies

of the Feast of Fools. The text contains a description of it, including

this Prose of the Ass; it was sung by two choirs, who imitated at

intervals and as the burden of the song, the braying of that animal.

There was elected in the cathedral churches a bishop or archbishop of

the Fools, which election was confirmed by all sorts of buffooneries,

played off by way of consecration. This bishop officiated pontifically

and gave his blessing to the people, before whom he appeared bearing the

mitre, the crosier, and even the archiepiscopal cross. In those

churches which held immediately from the Holy See, a pope of the Fools

was elected, who officiated in all the decorations of papacy. All the

clergy assisted in the mass, some dressed in women's apparel, others as

buffoons, or masked in a grotesque and ridiculous manner. Not content

with singing licentious songs in the choir, they sat and played at dice

on the altar, at the side of the officiator. When the mass was over they

ran, leaped, and danced about the church, uttering obscene words,

singing immodest songs, and putting themselves in a thousand indecent

postures, sometimes exposing themselves almost naked. They then had

themselves drawn about the streets in tumbrels full of filth, that they

might throw it at the mob which gathered round them. The looser part of

the seculars would mix among the clergy, that they might play some

fool's part in the ecclesiastical habit.

This feast was held in the same manner in the convents of monks and

nuns, as Naudé testifies in his complaint to Gassendi, in 1645, in which

he relates that at Antibes, in the Franciscan monastery, neither the

officiating monks nor the guardian went to the choir on the day of the

Innocents. The lay brethren occupied their places on that day, and,

clothed in sacerdotal decorations, torn and turned inside out, made a

sort of office. They held books turned upside down, which they seemed to

be reading through spectacles, the glasses of which were made of orange

peel; and muttered confused words, or uttered strange cries,

accompanied by extravagant contortions.

The second register of the church of Autun, by the secretary Rotarii,

which ends with 1416, says, without specifying the day, that at the

Feast of Fools an ass was led along with a clergyman's cape on his back,

the attendants singing: "He haw! Mr. Ass, he haw!"

Ducange relates a sentence of the officialty of Viviers, upon one

William, who, having been elected fool-bishop in 1400, had refused to

perform the solemnities and to defray the expenses customary on such

occasions.

And, to conclude, the registers of St. Stephen, at Dijon, in 1521,

without mentioning the day, that the vicars ran about the streets with

drums, fifes, and other instruments, and carried lamps before the

_pré-chantre_ of the Fools, to whom the honor of the feast principally

belonged. But the parliament of that city, by a decree of January 19,

1552, forbade the celebration of this feast, which had already been

condemned by several councils, and especially by a circular of March 11,

1444, sent to all the clergy in the kingdom by the Paris university.

This letter, which we find at the end of the works of Peter of Blois,

says that this feast was, in the eyes of the clergy, so well imagined

and so Christian, that those who sought to suppress it were looked on as

excommunicated; and the Sorbonne doctor, John des Lyons, in his

discourse against the paganism of the Roiboit, informs us that a doctor

of divinity publicly maintained at Auxerre, about the close of the

fifteenth century, that "the feast of Fools was no less pleasing to God

than the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin;

besides, that it was of much higher antiquity in the church."