Juan Fort was a boy of energy, very decided, although not very
intelligent. His uncle, Fray José de Calasanz, when he knew him, grew
fond of him. Fray José enjoyed great esteem in the Order that is
called,--nobody knows whether it is in irony,--the Seraphic Order. Fray
José consulted several competent persons and they advised him to send
his nephew to study outside of Spain. It is known that among her
ministers the Church prefers men without a country. Catholicism means
universality, and the real Catholic has no other country than his
religion, no other capital but Rome.
Juan Fort, snatched from among his comrades and from the bosom of his
family, went weeping in his uncle’s company to France, and entered the
convent of Mont-de-Marson to pursue his studies.
In this convent he made his monastic novitiate, and like all the
individuals of that Order, changed his name, being called from then on,
Father Vicente de Valencia.
From Mont-de-Marson he passed to Toulouse, and when two years were up,
he made a short stay in the monastery where his uncle was prior, and
went to Rome.
When the Tender-hearted went to embrace her son, on his passage through
Valencia, she could see that his affection for her had vanished. As
happens with nearly all the young men that enter a religious Order, Juan
Fort felt a deep antipathy for his family and for his native town.
The young Father Vicente de Valencia entered the convent of Aracceli at
Rome, and continued his studies there.
This was at the beginning of Leo XIII’s pontificate. At that epoch
certain naïve elements in the Eternal City tried to initiate anti-Jesuit
politics inside the Church. Liberals and Ultramontanists struggled in
the darkness, in the periodicals, and in the universities.
It was a phenomenon of this struggle,--which seems paradoxical,--that
the partisans of tradition were the most liberal, and the partisans of
Modernism the Ultramontanists. The lesser clergy and certain Cardinals
felt vaguely liberal, and were searching for that something Christian,
which, as people say, still remains in Catholicism. On the other hand,
the Congregations, and above all the Jesuits, gave the note of radical
Ultramontanism.
The sons of Loyola had solved the culinary problem of making a
meat-stew without meat; the Jesuits were making their Company the most
anti-Christian of the Societies in the silent partnership.
In Rome the prime defender of Ultramontanism had been the Abbé Perrone,
an eloquent professor, whom the pressure of the traditional theologians
obliged to read, before giving a lecture, a chapter of Saint Thomas on
the point in question. Perrone, after offering, with gnashing of teeth,
this tribute to tradition, used to say proudly: “And now, let us forget
these old saws and get along.”
Father Vicente de Valencia enrolled himself among the supporters of the
Perronean Ultramontanism, and became, as was natural, considering his
character, a furious authoritarian. This sombre man, whose vocation was
repugnant to him, who had not the least religious feeling, who could
perhaps have been a good soldier, took a long time to make himself
perfectly at home in monastic life, struggled against the chains that
chafed him, rebelled inwardly, and at last, not only did not succeed in
breaking his fetters, but even considered them his one happiness.
Little by little he dominated his rebelliousness, and he made himself a
great worker and a tireless intriguer.
The fruits of his will were great, greater than those of his intellect.
Father Vicente wrote a theological treatise in Latin, rather uncouth,
so the intellectual said, and which had the sole distinction of
representing the most rabid of reactionary tendencies.
_The Theological Commentaries of Father Vicente de Valencia_ did not
attract the attention of the men who follow the sport of occupying
themselves with such things, whether or no; the presses did not groan
printing criticisms of the book; but the Society of Jesus took note of
the author and assisted Fort with all its power.
A fanatic and a man of mediocre intelligence, that monk might perhaps be
a considerable force in the hands of the Society.
A short while after the publication of his _Commentaries_, Father
Vicente accompanied the general of his Order on a canonical visit to
the monasteries in Spain, France, and Italy; later he was appointed
successively Visitor General for Spain, Consultor of the monastic
province of Valencia, Definer of the Order, and a voting councillor in
the government of the Order.
The news of these honours reached the Fort family in vague form; the
haughty monk gave no account of his successes. He considered himself to
be without a country and without a family.