of the clergy, we must bear in mind not only the debased material
which required to be reformed, and the prevailing low standard of
sexual morality throughout Europe, but also the prevalence within
the church of the casuistic spirit, which tended to obliterate the
distinctions between right and wrong and to extenuate all offences
against the Decalogue. This spirit received a powerful impulse from
the rising influence of the Company of Jesus, which furnished the most
distinguished casuists and fostered the habit of testing everything by
an artificial standard. If scandal could be averted, if the immediate
temporal interests of the Order or of the church could be subserved, it
mattered little whether morality suffered; and the subtle dialectics of
the schools could always invent a justification for any line of action
which appeared expedient at the moment. We have already seen how the
successive Bulls of reforming pontiffs directed against the abuses of
the confessional were virtually nullified in this manner; and the same
processes were employed to soften the harshness of the canons which
sought to repress the other vices of the clergy.[1542] To one who
examines the works of these skilful dialecticians, the only wonder is
that a church which not only tolerated but exalted them could retain
any respect for virtue or any reverence for law, human or divine.
When these resources failed, recourse could be had to other means to
avert scandal, as in the case of Father Mena, a priest of the Company
of Jesus, at Salamanca, who persuaded one of his female penitents that
God required her to abandon herself to him. He kept her in a hermitage
conveniently near to the College of Jesuits where he officiated, and
several children were the result of the union, when the matter became
so notorious that the Inquisition interfered and threw the culprit
into its prison at Valladolid. The Company of Jesus undertook his
defence, and on the strength of certificates of his illness obtained
his transfer to their college, where he was to be watched by officials
of the Inquisition. His apparent illness increased, until a report was
spread of his death; an image with a mask resembling him was interred
with all the ceremonies of religion, and he was secretly conveyed to
Genoa, where he was intrusted with a mission to convert the Jews.[1543]
More strenuous exertion, however, was required in the struggle over
the case of Father Girard and la Cadière, which, in 1730 and 1731,
convulsed society in Provence. Girard was a Jesuit of high reputation,
who came to Toulon in 1728, where he soon obtained the spiritual
direction of a number of women, among whom he selected seven to
minister to his lusts. One of them, Catharine Cadière, a girl of
19, was especially distinguished for her exaltation of religious
sensibility, which rendered her eminently fitted for the dangerous
extravagances of Quietism. Under his guidance she speedily had ecstatic
visions of heaven and hell, and was marked as the favorite of Divine
Love by the stigmata which appeared on hands, feet, forehead, and
side. While enjoying the popular veneration as a saint, it was not
difficult for her spiritual guide to persuade her that God required her
submission to him. This continued for some months, until, convinced
that Girard had led her into sin, in place of the state of perfection
to which she aspired, she changed her confessor, when the matter
leaked out, and she brought a formal accusation against her seducer.
At once the Company of Jesus took up the quarrel, and, as it suited
the policy of Cardinal Fleury, the all-powerful minister, to gratify
them, the unfortunate girl had no chance. The Episcopal courts, in
which the case was first brought, sided with the guilty, and even the
secular tribunals, to which the matter was transferred, were bitterly
hostile to her. The accuser became the accused. She was persecuted,
imprisoned, and threatened with torture, and in the Parlement of
Aix, before which the case was finally brought, two members actually
proposed that she should be burnt alive, but agreed, in order to secure
the support of others, to accept the milder sentence of strangling
after due infliction of torture, and this verdict was brought before
the Parlement for debate. Despite the social influence of the Jesuits,
this atrocity aroused public opinion throughout Provence and excited
tumults which frightened the friends of Girard, so that when the final
vote was taken only half the members of the Parlement pronounced him
innocent, the other half voting for his condemnation, and he was saved
by the casting vote of the President, Lebret. So strong was the popular
feeling against him that he had to be conveyed away secretly to escape
the vengeance of the mob, and died two years afterwards in the odor
of sanctity, fully upheld by the Company of Jesus. As for la Cadière,
she disappeared from sight, and the fate of the unfortunate girl is
unknown.[1544]
XXX.
THE CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION.
If the council of Trent had thus failed utterly in its efforts to
create that which had never existed—purity of morals under the rule
of celibacy—it had at length succeeded in its more important task
of putting an end to the aspirations of the clergy for marriage.
With the anathema for heresy confronting them, few could be found
so bold as openly to dispute the propriety of a law which had been
incorporated into the articles of faith; and the ingenious sophistries
and far-fetched logic of Bellarmine were reverently received and
accepted as incontrovertible. Urbain Grandier might endeavor to quiet
the conscience of his morganatic spouse by writing a treatise to
prove the lawfulness of priestly wedlock, but he took care to keep
the manuscript carefully locked in his desk.[1545] A man of bold and
independent spirit, fortified by unfathomable learning, like Louis
Ellies Du Pin, might secretly favor marriage, and perhaps might
contract matrimony.[1546] Du Pin’s great antagonist, Bossuet, might
incur a similar imputation, and be ready to partially yield the
point if thereby he might secure the reconciliation of the hostile
churches.[1547] All this, however, could have no influence on the
doctrines and practice of Catholicism at large, and the principle
remained unaltered and unalterable.
* * * * *
Yet it was impossible that the critical spirit of inquiry which marked
the eighteenth century, its boldness of unbelief, and its utter want
of faith in God and man, could leave unassailed this monument of
primæval asceticism, while it was so busy in undermining everything
to which the reverence of its predecessors had clung. Accordingly,
the latter half of the century witnessed an active controversy on the
subject. In 1758, a canon of Estampes, named Desforges, who had been
forced to take orders by his family, published a work in two volumes
in which he attempted to prove that marriage was necessary for all
ranks of ecclesiastics. The book attracted attention, and by order
of the Parlement it was burnt, September 30, 1758, by the hangman,
and the unlucky author was thrown into the Bastile. These proceedings
were well calculated to give publicity to the work; it was reprinted
at Douay in 1772; a German translation was published in 1782 at
Göttingen and Munster, and an Italian one, with some omissions, had
already appeared in 1770, without an acknowledged place of publication.
The Abbé Villiers undertook to answer Desforges in a weak little
volume, the “Apologie du Célibat Chretien,” published in 1762, which
consists principally of long extracts from the Fathers in praise
of virginity. Even Italy felt the movement, and an anonymous work,
entitled “Pregiudizi del Celibato,” appeared in Naples in 1765, and was
reprinted in Venice in 1766. Some more competent champion was necessary
to answer these repeated attacks, and the learned Abate Zaccaria
brought his fertile pen and his inexhaustible erudition to the rescue
in his “Storia Polemica del Celibato Sacro,” which saw the light in
1774, and which not long afterwards was translated into German. In 1781
appeared a new aspirant for matrimonial liberty in the Abbé Gaudin,
who issued at Geneva (Lyons) his work entitled “Les inconveniens du
célibat des prêtres,” a treatise of considerable learning and no
little bitterness against the whole structure of sacerdotalism and
Roman supremacy. This was followed, in 1782, by Andreas Forster, in
his “De Cœlibatu Clericorum Dissertatio,” published at Dillingen, and
dedicated to Pius VI., for the purpose of replying to the attacks of
the innovating Catholics.
The latter, indeed, had some hope for the approaching realization of
their demands. The reforms which illustrated the minority of Ferdinand
IV. of Naples excited the priests of Southern Italy to petition him for
the right of marriage, and Serrao, the Jansenist Bishop of Potenza,
does not hesitate to say that the request would have been granted if
the unfriendly relations between the courts of Rome and Naples had
continued much longer.[1548] The Emperor Joseph II., amid his many
fruitless schemes for philosophical reform, inclined seriously to the
notion of permitting marriage to the priesthood of his dominions. In an
edict of 1783 he asserted, incidentally, that the matter was subject to
his control,[1549] and the advocates of clerical marriage confidently
expected that in a very short period they would see the ancient
restrictions swept away by the imperial power. A mass of controversial
essays and dissertations made their appearance throughout Germany, and
the well-known Protestant theologian Henke took the opportunity of
bringing out, in 1783, a new edition of the learned work of Calixtus,
“De Conjugio Clericorum,” as the most efficient aid to the good cause.
It is a striking illustration of the temper of the times to observe
that this work, so bitterly opposed to the orthodox doctrines and
practice, is dedicated by Henke to Archdeacon Anthony Ganoczy, canon
of the cathedral church of Gross-Wardein and apostolic prothonotary.
The hope of success brought out other writers, and the movement
made sufficient progress to cause some hesitation in Rome as to the
propriety of yielding to the pressure.[1550]
Zaccaria again entered the lists, and produced, in 1785, his “Nuova
Giustificazione del Celibato Sacro,” in answer to the Abbé Gaudin and
to an anonymous German writer whose work had produced considerable
sensation. To this he was principally moved by a report that he had
himself been converted by the facts and arguments advanced by the
German, an imputation which he indignantly refuted in three hundred
quarto pages.
The half-formed resolutions of Joseph II. led to no result, and the
subject slumbered for a few years until the outbreak of the French
Revolution. At an early period in that great movement, the adversaries
of sacerdotal asceticism bestirred themselves in bringing to public
attention the evils and cruelty of the system. Already, in 1789, a mass
of pamphlets appeared urging the abrogation of celibacy. In 1790 the
work of the Abbé Gaudin was reprinted, and was promptly answered by the
prolific Maultrot. Even in Germany the same spirit again awoke, and an
Hungarian priest named Katz published at Vienna, in 1791, a “Tractatus
de conjugio et cœlibatu clericorum,” in which he argued strongly for
a change. In Poland these doctrines made considerable progress, for
in 1801 we find a little tract issued at Warsaw vehemently arguing
against those who imperil their souls by violating their vows and the
laws of the church.[1551] In England, a Catholic priest distinguished
for talents and learning, Dr. Geddes, published, in 1800, a work in
which he denied the Apostolic origin of celibacy and urged that, at
most, it should only be punished by degradation from the priesthood,
without entailing disgrace. Indeed, he argued that the rule caused more
proselytes to Protestantism than any other cause.[1552]
* * * * *
During this period it can hardly be supposed that the defiant
immorality which characterized the eighteenth century had been
favorable to the purity of a celibate priesthood. That the church,
indeed, had made but scanty improvement in the character of its
ministers is visible throughout the literature of the age, and I need
only allude to a few instances where efforts at reform revealed the
prevailing corruption.
In France the attacks upon the vow of celibacy, to which allusion has
already been made, seem to have given rise to a spasmodic attempt
to regulate the church. In 1760 an arrêt of the Parlement of Paris
prohibited the organization of religious congregations without express
royal permission, verified by that body. The assembly of the clergy in
Paris in 1766 produced no notable improvement, nor was greater success
obtained when the temporal power intervened in the Edicts of 1766 and
1767. Further effort apparently was requisite, and in the Edict of
March, 1768, Louis XV. undertook to diminish in some degree the causes
of the more flagrant disorders among the regular clergy. Men were not
to be allowed to take the vows under the age of 22, nor women under
19; and as the smaller religious houses were especially notorious for
laxness of discipline, all were suppressed which could not number
at least fifteen professed monks or nuns, except those attached to
larger congregations. The ecclesiastical authorities, moreover, were
emphatically commanded to make a thorough visitation, and to compel
the observance of the rules of discipline of the several orders.[1553]
The enforcement of this edict created no little excitement, and
several of the smaller orders narrowly escaped destruction in their
endeavors to evade its provisions. That these efforts did not succeed
in accomplishing their object we may well believe, even without the
testimony of an eye-witness.[1554] As for the secular clergy, when
Louis XV. amused himself by ordering the arrest of all ecclesiastics
caught frequenting brothels, the number of victims in a short time
amounted to 296, of whom no less than 100 were priests actively engaged
in the service of the altar.[1555]
When the Grand-Duke Leopold of Tuscany undertook to reform the
monasteries of his dominions and to put an end, if possible, to the
abuse of the confessional, it led to a long diplomatic correspondence
with the papal curia as to the jurisdiction over such cases. A public
document of the year 1763 had already stated that the special crime in
question had become less frequent, and attributed this improvement to
the exceeding laxity of morals everywhere prevalent, for few confessors
could be so foolish as to attempt seduction in the confessional when
there was so little risk in doing the same thing elsewhere.[1556]
Specious as this reasoning might seem, the facts on which it was based
were hardly borne out by the investigations of Leopold shortly after
into the morals of the monastic establishments. Nothing more scandalous
is to be found in the visitations of the religious houses of England
under Morton and Cromwell. The spiritual directors of the nunneries
had converted them virtually into harems, and such of the sisters as
were proof against seduction armed with the powers of confession and
absolution suffered every species of persecution. It was rare for
them to venture on complaint, but when they did so they received no
attention from their ecclesiastical superiors, and only the protection
of the grand-ducal authority at length emboldened them to reveal the
truth. The prioress of S. Caterina di Pistoia declared that, with
three or four exceptions, all the monks and confessors with whom she
had met in her long career were alike; that they treated the nuns
as wives, and taught them that God had made man for woman and woman
for man; and that the visitations of the bishops amounted to naught,
even though they were aware of what occurred, for the mouths of the
victims were sealed by the dread of excommunication threatened by their
spiritual directors.[1557] When it is considered that the convents
thus converted into dens of prostitution were the favorite schools
to which the girls of the higher classes were sent for training and
education, it can readily be imagined what were the moral influences
thence radiating throughout society at large, and we can appreciate
the argument above referred to, as to the ease with which the clergy
could procure sexual indulgence without recourse to the confessional.
Leopold’s chief assistant in this struggle was Scipione de’ Ricci,
Bishop of Pistoia and Prato, whose experiences in the investigation
caused him to induce the council of Pistoia, in 1786, to declare the
duties of the confessional wholly incompatible with the monastic
state, and, in view of the improbability of any permanent reform, to
propose the abolition of the monastic orders by restricting vows to the
duration of a twelvemonth[1558]—propositions which were not approved
by the congregation of Tuscan prelates held at Florence in 1787, and
which were scornfully condemned by Rome.[1559] Leopold, however, sought
to palliate the evil by raising to the age of 24 the minimum limit for
taking the vows, which the council of Trent had fixed at 16, but the
benefit of this salutary measure was neutralized by the ease with which
parents desiring to get rid of their children could place them in the
institutions of the neighboring states, such as Lucca and Modena.[1560]
Rome itself was no better than its dependent provinces, despite the
high personal character of some of the pontiffs. When the too early
death of Clement XIV., in 1774, cut short the hopes which had been
excited by his enlightened rule, St. Alphonso Liguori addressed to the
conclave assembled for the election of his successor a letter urging
them to make such a choice as would afford reasonable prospect of
accomplishing the much-needed reform. The saint did not hesitate to
characterize the discipline of the secular clergy as most grievously
lax, and to proclaim that a general reform of the ecclesiastical
body was the only way to remove the fearful corruption of the morals
of the laity.[1561] When we hear, about this time, of two Carmelite
convents at Rome, one male and the other female, which had to be
pulled down because underground passages had been established between
them, by means of which the monks and nuns lived in indiscriminate
licentiousness, and when we read the scandalous stories which were
current in Roman society about prelates high in the church, we can
readily appreciate the denunciations of St. Alphonso.[1562] A curious
glimpse at the interior of conventual life is furnished by a manual
for Inquisitors, written about this period by an official of the Holy
Office of Rome. In a chapter on nuns he describes the scandals which
often cause them to fall within the jurisdiction of the Inquisition,
and prescribes the course to be pursued with regard to the several
offences. Among those who were forced to take the veil, despair
frequently led to the denial of God, of heaven, and of hell; feminine
enmity caused accusations of sorcery and witchcraft, which threw not
only the nunneries, but whole cities, into confusion; vain-glory
of sanctity suggested pretended revelations and visions; and these
latter were also not infrequently caused by licentiousness, for in
these utterances were sometimes taught doctrines utterly subversive of
morality, of which Godless confessors took advantage to teach their
spiritual daughters that there was no sin in sexual intercourse. As
in Spain, it was the practice of the Roman Inquisition to treat the
offenders mildly, partly in consideration of the temptations to which
they were exposed, and partly to avoid scandal.[1563] The contaminating
influence on society at large, emanating from a church so incurably
corrupted, was vastly heightened by the overgrown numbers of the
clerical body. In 1775, for example, a census of the _terra-firma_
provinces of Venice showed in that narrow territory no less than 45,773
priests, or one to every fifty inhabitants, while in the kingdom
of Naples, exclusive of Sicily, there were, in 1769, one to every
seventy-six.[1564] Such overcrowding as this was not only in itself an
efficient cause of disorder, but intensified incalculably the power of
infection.
The virtues of the clergy, therefore, could offer but a feeble barrier
to the spirit of innovation when the passions of the French Revolution
were brought to bear upon the immunities and distinctive laws of the
church. The attack commenced on that which had been the strength, but
which was now the weakness, of the ecclesiastical establishment. As
early as the 10th of August, 1789, preliminary steps were taken in the
National Assembly to appropriate the property of the church to meet
the fearful deficit which had been the efficient cause of calling
together the high council of the nation. This property was estimated
as covering one-fifth of the surface of France, yielding with the
tithes an annual revenue of three hundred millions of francs. So vast
an amount of wealth, perverted for the most part from its legitimate
purposes, offered an irresistible temptation to desperate financiers,
and yet it was a prelate who made the first direct attack upon it. On
the 10th of October, 1789, Talleyrand, then Bishop of Autun, introduced
a motion to the effect that it should be devoted to the national wants,
subject to the proper and necessary expenses for public worship; and
on the 2d of November the measure was adopted by a vote of 568 to 346.
This settled the principle, though the details of a transaction of
such magnitude were only perfected by successive acts during the two
following years. One of the earliest results was the secularization of
those ecclesiastics whose labors did not entitle them to support, a
preliminary necessary to the intended appropriation of their princely
revenues. This was accomplished by an act of February 13th, 1790, by
which the religious orders were suppressed, monastic vows were declared
void, and a moderate annuity accorded to the unfortunates thus turned
adrift upon the world.
The great body of the parochial clergy, patriotic in their aspirations,
and suffering from the abuses of power, had hailed the advent of
the Revolution with joy; and their assistance had been invaluable
in rendering the Tiers-État supreme in the National Assembly. These
measures, however, assailing their dearest interests and privileges,
aroused them to a sense of the true tendency of the movement to which
they had contributed so powerfully. A breach was inevitable between
them and the partisans of progress. Every forward step embittered the
quarrel. It was impossible for the one party to stay its course, or
for the other to assent to acts which daily became more menacing and
revolutionary. Forced, therefore, into the position of reactionaries,
the clergy ere long became objects of suspicion and soon after of
persecution. The progressives devised a test-oath, obligatory on
all ecclesiastics, which should divide those who were loyal to
the Revolution from the contumacious, and lists were kept of both
classes.[1565] Harmless as the oath was in appearance, when it was
tendered, in December, 1790, five-sixths of the clergy throughout the
kingdom refused it. Those who yielded to the pressure were termed
_assermentés_, the recusants _insermentés_ or _réfractaires_, and the
latter, of course, at once became the determined opponents of the new
régime, the more dangerous because they were the only influential
partisans of reaction belonging to the people. To their efforts
were attributed the insurrections which in La Vendée and elsewhere
threatened the most fearful dangers. They were accordingly exposed
to severe legislation. A decree of November 29, 1791, deprived them
of their stipends and suspended their functions; another of May 27,
1792, authorized the local authorities to exile them on the simple
denunciation of twenty citizens. Under the Terror their persons were
exposed to flagrant cruelties, and a _prêtre réfractaire_ was generally
regarded, _ipso facto_, as an enemy to the Republic.