RELIGION AND EDUCATION
[Sidenote: Anti-clericalism.]
“To persecute is to propagate,” said one of the greatest modern
Portuguese, Alexandre Herculano, and a Lisbon newspaper, _O Diario
de Noticias_ (22nd March, 1901), could declare that “toleration in
matters of religion has with us been almost unbroken.” The anti-clerical
agitation in Portugal in the year 1901 was for the most part an
artificial echo of the agitation in Spain (the year of Pérez Galdós’
_Electra_), encouraged for political purposes. Popular demonstrations
were organised and cheers raised for Liberty, Democracy, and Snr. Manoel
da Arriaga (subsequently the first President of the Republic). On the
10th of March the Civil Governors were ordered to inquire whether any
religious houses existed under illegal conditions, that is, contrary to
the _Concordat_ between Portugal and the Vatican. Properly, in view of
the law of May, 1834, only the religious orders concerned with education,
charity, nursing, and foreign missions had the right to exist. On the
11th of March fresh disturbances occurred, and on the 13th a decree was
published ordering the inspection of those religious houses which could
show their title to exist and the closure of all others. But there was
in reality no “religious question” in Portugal, no comparison with the
situation in France and Spain.
[Sidenote: The Religious Orders.]
The religious congregations took no part in industry nor did they evade
the taxes (these are the two chief popular charges against them in
Spain). On the other hand, they did much good work among the poor, and
performed useful service in education. To many their sudden expulsion
may seem a foolish and brutal measure. But France had banished the
congregations, and those Portuguese politicians who model their actions
on those of France must follow suit without inquiring whether the action
of France in this respect had been wise or its results beneficial, or
whether the conditions in France and Portugal were identical. Henry
VIII of England abolished the monasteries because they were rich, and
the fabulous wealth attributed to the religious houses no doubt largely
inspired the modern cry of anti-clericalism. What must have been the
disappointment when the wealth of some of the Portuguese congregations
was found to consist of nothing but a few musty and worm-eaten volumes.
Had the same arbitrary measures been adopted against a literary or
industrial association, there would have been an outcry throughout the
world at the tyranny or injustice: but these were only poor religious,
men and women who had deliberately chosen to lead that kind of life, in
many ways an ideal life in Portugal. Why happiness thus attained by a few
should be so obnoxious to the modern politician is one of the mysteries
of progress.
Soll ich vielleicht in tausend Büchern lesen
Dass überall die Menschen sich gequält
Dass hie und da ein Glücklicher gewesen?
But the religious orders will return to Portugal, and those beautifully
situated and beautifully built convents once more fulfil their proper
purpose. Or, if they do not return, almost certainly in the course of
time groups of men and women will separate themselves from society and
live a philosophical life apart—religious orders under another name.
If they can combine philosophy, literature, and art with manual labour
the expulsion of the original orders will not have been in vain. We
shall have the Order of Carpenters and Musicians at Belem, of Cobblers
and Sculptors at Alcobaça, of Philosophers and Tailors at Batalha, of
Painters and Ploughmen at Thomar, of Poets and Foresters at Bussaco, and
so on. It was easy for demagogues to persuade the people, in whose eyes
_omne ignotum pro—malefico_, that dreadful crimes were committed behind
convent walls, just as the uneducated Russian believes that the Jews
sacrifice Christian children, and the expulsion of the religious orders
figured as the most prominent item on the programme of the Republicans,
and was put into practice immediately after the Revolution of 1910.
[Sidenote: The Jesuits.]
Considering the great services of monks and nuns in education, in
nursing, and in the Portuguese possessions overseas, the only fair
course in Portugal would have been at the most to banish the Jesuits,
if their action was thought to be political, and any congregations that
had emigrated to Portugal after their expulsion from France. For the
rest, they could be undermined slowly by education: obviously if no new
members were found willing to profess they would come to an end of their
own accord. The Jesuits, whom half-educated Republicans, knowing very
little about them, believe to be peculiarly maleficent and satanic, were
not very numerous in Portugal. In the beginning of 1909 there were only
355 as compared with 3,002 in Spain. In the beginning of 1910 there were
in Portugal 387 (161 priests, 123 coadjutors, and 103 students). It may
or may not have been expedient to expel them, but in any case they stood
upon a different footing from that of the other religious houses, whose
sudden expulsion brought consternation and misery to many a village. But
the action of the reformers did not stop here: it was extended to the
secular clergy, and seemed to be directed against the very existence of
religion. The precept of _O Seculo_ a few years earlier (11th March,
1901) was forgotten: “It is necessary not to confuse the religion of the
State with Jesuitism, our regular clergy with the Jesuits.”
[Sidenote: Clergy and People.]
Portugal had been fortunate in possessing an enlightened clergy. Many
priests were liberal in politics, and only a few of them—in some
remote parts of the country—were fanatics. The mass of the people is
equally unfanatic. But only a section of the population of a single
city—Lisbon—is non-Catholic. Indeed, according to one computation,
there are only six thousand non-Catholics in Portugal, or one in every
thousand inhabitants. To the mass of the people religion is a pleasant
show, and a refuge from the grinding reality of their lives, the Church
ceremonies, the processions and pilgrimages are the notes of holiday
and gaiety in the villages.[29] To the educated it was part of the
glorious traditions of Portugal’s past, ever intimately connected with
religion (_fé e imperio._ Camões, _Lusiads_, I, 2), so that the extreme
anti-clerical who carries his creed to the length of striking at the
root and existence of religion will, if he is logical, look askance at
those Portuguese heroes who fought in Portugal and in India in the name
of Santiago, and at the most magnificent old buildings in Portugal. The
cry of anti-clericalism in Portugal has proved itself in the Spanish
phrase a _necedad de siete capas_—seven times foolishness. It is not in
any sense national, but has been imported bodily from abroad. Senhor
Teixeira de Sousa, the last Premier of the Monarchy, said in an interview
to a correspondent of _Le Matin_: “La question cléricale ne se pose pas
ici comme en Espagne, car le peuple portugais n’est pas clérical.” So
the Republican _Intransigente_ could say later (31st December, 1911):
“There was no religious question in the country, and now the religious
question, provoked by certain measures of a secondary character and by
the so-called Law of Separation between Church and State, rises over the
country like a menace of civil war.” And the anti-clerical _Mundo_ itself
admitted (9th March, 1914) that the religious question in Portugal “has
never had the serious aspect which it has had in other nations.... If
recently the religious question has begun to make itself felt that is
due to the deference of certain persons who call themselves Republicans
to clerical pretensions.” Thus the religious question, having been
provoked by anti-clericalism, was to receive a homoeopathic remedy—more
anti-clericalism. Gambetta had exclaimed, “_Le Cléricalisme, voilà
l’ennemi_,” and Portuguese politicians had adopted this cry from Paris.
In the public schools religion has been forbidden by law, in the private
it has only been given at the expense of denunciation and persecution.
When it is remembered that in many parishes the priests have been
deprived of all authority, it will be seen how little chance there is of
the children receiving any religious instruction. Portuguese Democrats
if they have ever heard of Cecil Rhodes probably know that he was no
reactionary. It is worth quoting his words: “Their school years are the
years in which to tell the children that there is one thing better than
material instruction, and that is religious belief.” But in Portugal
now thousands of children are being brought up to regard material
prosperity as the only good. There is no God but Gold, and the Republic
is its prophet. The new narrow system of education may turn out shrewd,
materialistic, tram-and-asphalt citizens, but in a larger sense and in
the long run Portugal is likely to suffer. It may be found when it is too
late that the _cera branda_ has been moulded to ill purpose.
[Sidenote: The Law of Separation (1911).]
The Law of Separation between Church and State was drawn up by Dr.
Affonso Costa as Minister of Justice (20th April, 1911). It is a long
document of 196 clauses, closely following French models or modifying
them in a still more anti-clerical direction. Yet there were many
considerations which should have given extreme anti-clericalism pause
in Portugal. With a clergy not in principle opposed to the Republic, it
might have been possible to come to an excellent working compromise. Many
of the priests even acquiesce in the principle of separation between
Church and State, but Dr. Costa’s law, they complain, while pretending
to separate Church from State, in reality subjugates the Church to a
hostile State. And it is not the priests only who say it. “The decree of
20th April, 1911,” says _A Republica_ (13th March, 1914), “affected to
separate the Churches from the State, but did nothing but subject the
Catholic Church to the intervention of the Republic.” These are the words
of an extremely Republican paper. The priests by this Law must either
receive State pensions or starve; their authority has been replaced by
that of the public worship associations, often organised by persons
hostile to religion. They are deprived of the possession of the churches,
and even of the bishops’ and priests’ houses, even of the libraries
carefully added to by successive bishops. They are not allowed to wear
clerical dress. The authority of the higher ecclesiastics is carefully
undermined, and the bishops are not permitted even to issue a pastoral
letter without previous censorship of the Government.
[Sidenote: Processions.]
These and other real grievances as well as many petty restrictions, such
as the prohibition of processions, of services and ringing of bells
between sunrise and sunset, mark a narrow spirit which has made it
impossible for the whole of the North of Portugal to sympathise with the
Republic. Dr. Costa has been the Royalists’ great asset. “Oh, but there
is no such prohibition,” say the Democrats; “the law does not forbid
processions.” It contents itself with rendering them impossible. Clause
57 runs: “Ceremonies, processions, and other external manifestations
of religion will only be permitted where and in so far as they are an
inveterate custom of the majority of the citizens of a district, and must
be immediately and definitely forbidden in places where the faithful or
other persons without a protest on their part make the processions an
occasion for provoking tumults and disturbances of public order.” Thus
the procedure is simple. You have only to throw a stone at a priest or
other person in a procession. If the faithful protest there is a tumult,
if they fail to protest there has been a disturbance of public order.
The procession is henceforth forbidden. Yet to deprive the people of
these simple pleasures is a kind of sacrilege. In the remote villages
they have few others. Those who know to what an extent in Latin countries
these ceremonies partake of a secular as well as a religious character
realise the sadness which descends upon a village when docked of its
processions. They are the villager’s theatre as well as his prayer book.
The men, it is true, can substitute the tavern, and the women do not
count. Let them stay in their black kitchens, often as dirty and airless
as the taverns, and mind their pots and their pans.
[Sidenote: A Religious Revival.]
That the Republic could be so blind to its own interests as to adopt
these Jacobin courses would be strange indeed, were it not that evidently
the interests of a party had been preferred to those of the Republic.
Recently (_i.e._, before 14th May, 1915) a far more moderate attitude
and methods more conciliatory have been adopted, but in the question of
religion fresh legislation, as well as a new spirit, will be required.
All men of sense, from the President, Dr. Arriaga, downwards, recognise
that the Law of Separation will have to be altered in a more moderate
direction. In this connection _A Republica_ (6th March, 1914) used the
following words, in connection with the Amnesty of 1914: “To grant an
amnesty to priests who have acted illegally because their religious
conscience bade them oppose certain clauses in the Law of Separation is
merely to say to these priests, ‘You leave prison to-day in order to come
back to it to-morrow.’” When Dr. Affonso Costa became Prime Minister in
1913 revision of this law was promised, but during his year of office it
was not revised. Under his successor, Dr. Bernardino Machado, discussion
of the Law began, but still it was not revised. Its revision would,
however, be assured, were it realised that the Republic by violent
anti-clericalism is defeating its own objects. For—not to mention the
wholesome discipline of the Roman Catholic Church and its democratic
tendency—such anti-clericalism is in danger of driving moderate Roman
Catholics into something like fanaticism and of creating a religious
revival.
[Sidenote: Illiterates.]
The census of 1911 gives the number of illiterates in Portugal as 75·1
per cent. of the entire population (men, 68·4 per cent.; women, 81·2),
and this at least is not the fault of the priests, since religion was
taken out of their hands in 1834. This extraordinary figure of 75·1
includes small children; excluding children under seven the figures are
69·7 (men, 60·8; women, 77·4). The progress has been slow in the last
twenty years. In 1890 the total percentage of illiterates was 79·2 per
cent. (1,762,842 men and 2,238,115 women). In 1900 it was 78·6 (1,855,091
men and 2,406,245 women). In 1911 the number of men who cannot read or
write was 1,936,131, and of women 2,541,947; or, excluding children under
seven, 1,370,571 men, 1,989,906 women. The Republic was ushered in with
pompous phrases concerning education. In a few years there were to be no
more illiterates, in a few years there was to be a school to every two
_kilomètres_ throughout the country. But there has been danger of more
attention being given to the show than to the substance of reform, and
of education becoming more and more a whited sepulchre. Yet apart from
mistakes made and hollow promises put forward for foreign consumption,
but quite meaningless in Portugal, one must admit that the Republicans
realise the importance of education and have a sincere desire to diminish
the number of illiterates (as though that in itself were a great gain!),
and may hope that their efforts in the matter of education will be more
successful in future than they have been in the past. The institution
of night schools and itinerant masters is no doubt a step in the right
direction.
[Sidenote: Primary Schools.]
The method adopted has been to draw up ideally excellent decrees, and the
hope is presumably that they will gradually work down into touch with
the facts of Portuguese life. Meanwhile they tend to remain mere pieces
of paper. The decree of 29th March, 1911, reforming primary education
is little more. Primary education was transferred from the control of
the State to that of the local authorities, which tend to neglect it
altogether. The failure of the _municipios_ to pay the schoolmasters had
been already manifest when primary instruction was entrusted to them in
1881, and they were empowered to levy a special tax for the purpose.
The law of 1911 made education compulsory and neutral in the matter of
religion. It had been compulsory since 1878, with the results already
described. The Republicans boast that they have created a large number of
schools, over 900 primary schools in three years, but in reality it would
have been better to see to an improvement in the condition of the 6,000
existing schools, and to the payment of the schoolmasters’ salaries.
The foundation of a school in Portugal is a very simple affair, almost
as simple as the issuing of a decree. It consists in fixing on a room
or a house in a village which might be used for that purpose and—there
the matter generally ends. Neither books nor furniture nor masters are
provided, and that not from any carelessness or indifference but because
there is no money to pay for them. Thus, Snr. Antonio Macieira, Minister
for Foreign Affairs in Dr. Costa’s Government, declared in a speech made
on 28th March, 1913, that to replace the 115 schools of the expelled
religious congregations the Republic had created 991 new schools. Of
these 991, he continued blandly to state, 556 were non-existent. The
Monarchy had not neglected education, even though it cannot claim to have
founded schools at the rate of half-a-dozen a week. In 1772 the number
of primary schools was 526, and rose to 720 fifty years later. Between
1839 and 1868 new schools were created to the number of 1,422, and in the
next thirteen years 965, so that in 1881 the total stood at 4,472, with
some 200,000 school-children.[30] In 1900 the schools were 4,520; at the
end of 1906 there were 5,226, or about one per thousand inhabitants. The
pity was that they were for the most part in hired unhealthy buildings,
and that the ill-paid or unpaid schoolmasters taught as badly as they
were paid. Other decrees concerning education were more practical, as
that of 1905 insisting on physical drill in the schools, or that of 1907
assigning a hundred _contos_ a year to send students abroad. As to the
condition of the school-buildings, even in Lisbon, says a Republican
paper (_A Republica_, 17th April, 1914), “there are State schools in
small flats in the midst of the deafening noise of the street, without
light, without air, without hygiene, without anything to attract the
miserable children who attend them.”
[Sidenote: Minister of Education.]
The Republic has founded a Department of Public Instruction with a new
Minister and all the subordinate officials. Dr. Theophilo Braga at the
time gave it as his opinion that it would only serve to provide posts
for half-a-dozen political friends of the Government—_anichar meia duzia
de amigos politicos_. The department existed in 1870 and again in 1890.
In both cases it proved expensive and unsatisfactory, and was chiefly
notable for giving further scope to _empregomania_ and bureaucracy, more
than 600 candidates applying for posts in 1890.[31] Snr. Machado notes
the _despesas de installação_ of the new department and its _esperança a
toda a gente_, _i.e._, it spread hope far and wide not of an improvement
in education but of a new chance of becoming a Government official.[32]
It is true that in the past sums contributed by local administrative
bodies to the State for the purpose of education, sent by them to the
Department of the Interior which embraced that of Education, were not
infrequently diverted to the more pressing needs of the Government and
spent on something quite unconnected with education. In future, at least,
they will be spent on maintaining the new Department of Education.
[Sidenote: Attitude of the People.]
Education in Portugal is of three kinds: primary, secondary (in _lycées_,
in the capital of each district, with two at Oporto and three at Lisbon),
and the University education of Coimbra. Primary education has been
compulsory for the last generation, yet four and a half million out of
six million inhabitants cannot write or read. There is indeed little
inducement for the peasants to send their children to school, and
considerable inducement to keep them at home where they can be useful
in the fields. In a land of few industries, where a large majority of
the inhabitants live by agriculture and fishing, there is but little
need of book-learning, nor is there any universal book to be found
in peasants’ houses, as the Bible in England. Moreover, the peasants
distrust education, and distrust it the more the more it is mixed
up with politics and questions of religion. And if illiterates are
disfranchised they look upon that rather as a blessing than a penalty,
being desirous to have as little to do with politics as may be. Some of
the children are quite keen to learn, and after being kept at work all
day willingly attend night classes; but there is many a family in which
the parents not only do not encourage their children to learn to write
and read, but deliberately forbid it, considering that the drawbacks
of education exceed its advantages. The Republic is credited with the
project of providing all the children at the primary schools with food
and clothes. It may be wondered what the ill-paid schoolmasters would say
to this—probably they would go on strike until they were given clothes
and food too—but the children would certainly flock to school, as indeed
they often do now, without therefore necessarily learning to write or
read. _Para que serve saber ler?_ What use is it? That is the question
which the peasant children learn from their parents, who, it is to be
feared, do not pay all the respect that were to be desired to Lisbon’s
crowding politicians. Perhaps, too, in their native good sense, they
consider the pale and sickly Lisbon school children who on the shortest
provocation will rattle you off a fable of La Fontaine in French or talk
of the eclipses or the equinox, or the scientific reason for the colour
of sunsets, or other high matters of which you know nothing and which to
them are mere abstractions, while they do not know the difference between
an ash and an oak. Of Portuguese as it should be spoken, of Portuguese
literature, history and geography they are more ignorant. Yet before
learning French or English they should surely be taught Portuguese—the
direct and forcible Portuguese of the early prose-writers.
[Sidenote: Aged Children.]
In Portugal, and especially in the towns, the children are for the most
part too serious and precocious and sad. This seems to be encouraged;
they are willingly taken to funerals or marshalled in thousands to attend
political demonstrations. It was even proposed recently, on the occasion
of the death-sentence in the English law-courts of a Portuguese who had
murdered his wife, that all the school-children, pompously lectured on
the duties of humanity, should sign a petition to the King of England
on his behalf. Thus they are doctors at ten—_docteurs à dix [ans]_—in
Montaigne’s phrase and die of old age before they are twenty.
[Sidenote: The Lycées.]
The theoretical character of the education provided is especially
noticeable in the _lycées_. This _ensino secundario_ is described by a
master in July, 1913, as consisting of “immense disconnected programmes.”
It overloads the pupil’s mind, and stuffs him with abstractions. Far
from diminishing, it increases his natural vagueness and teaches him
to approach Portugal by way of China or Japan and mankind through that
wicked abstraction, Humanity. Freedom and Happiness, too, fade away into
abstract ideals to be intrigued and fought for, perhaps, but scarcely to
be enjoyed in common life. Yet it is as true now as when Blake wrote the
words that “Those who want Happiness must stoop [not soar] to find it: it
is a flower that grows in every vale.” It is as true now, in spite of all
the changed conditions, as when Goethe said it, that “If a man has enough
Freedom to live a healthy life and carry on his work, it should suffice
him, and so much freedom anyone can easily attain.” The number of those
who matriculated at the _lycées_ throughout the country is given for
1907-8 as 6,947, including 1,845 at the three Lisbon _lycées_, 802 at
the two Oporto _lycées_, 630 at Coimbra, 343 at Braga, 310 at Vizeu, 181
at Evora.[33]
[Sidenote: University Degrees.]
The University of Coimbra has the advantage of attracting scholars from
all Portugal and of thus being Portugal’s factory of ideas and future
politicians. The practical object of the undergraduates is to become
lawyers, journalists, politicians, Government officials. To be addressed
for the rest of their lives as _Senhor Doutor_ (_bacharel_, _licenciado_,
_doutor_) appeals to their vanity.
[Sidenote: The Liberal Profession.]
The result is that all these liberal professions are overcrowded and so
unremunerative that it is necessary for one person to combine two or
three professions; to be for instance, journalist, advocate, and leader
of a party, or journalist, doctor, and Minister of Finance. The number of
applicants for every post makes it possible, moreover, for the Government
to leave the officials unpaid: others will be only too willing to succeed
them should they rebel. Every Government department, and indeed every
liberal profession, is overstaffed. “In nearly every service there is an
army of supernumeraries, many of whom merely receive a salary without
doing any work, the public department to which they belong not even
knowing their address. Yet when a post becomes vacant a new official is
appointed, the supernumeraries continuing as before” (_O Seculo_, 7th
December, 1912). The first years after a revolution were unlikely to
bring any change: “Republican Ministers seem to have considered matters
of administration too insignificant to notice.... New expenses have been
created, the action of the public departments extended with lamentable
rapidity, and no check has been set, as was urgently required, on the
system of promotions and the growth of the bureaucracy” (_O Seculo_, 3rd
December, 1912).
The Department of Public Works has an army of architects and other
officials, but when some public work crops up a foreign engineer is
usually called in. The Department resembles a river which dries up before
reaching the region that required irrigation or that army sent by Philip
XII of France against Spain, which had dwindled away before crossing
the Bidasoa. In the same way it was complained in Portugal a few years
ago that there were “too many canons” (_O Diario de Noticias_, January,
1902). In the same way it is complained to-day that there are too many
officers. The sum of 1,535 contos, over a sixth of the whole military
estimates, was devoted to the retired list in the Budget of 1913-4. The
average of officers is, roughly, one to nine men. “Our officers would
suffice for an army as large as that of Germany” (_O Diario de Noticias_,
11th February, 1902). (In the Engineers there are 145 officers to 1,075
men, in the Artillery 368 to 2,610 men, in the Cavalry 263 to 1,837, in
the Infantry 1,291 to 12,289 men.) (_A Republica_, 26th March, 1913). It
has been suggested that a thousand officers would be sufficient, and that
the other thousand should be employed as mayors, a course also proposed
in 1893. And in the same way there are too many journalists, too many
politicians. Some attempts have been made to get back to reality, and
several technical schools, for instance, are in existence.
[Sidenote: “Francezismo.”]
The same lack of funds which fetters the schools prevents the libraries
of Lisbon, Oporto, Coimbra, Evora, and Braga from being kept up to
date. But for these difficulties, the material to the teacher’s hand is
promising enough, for the people, if it can be persuaded that it is to
its advantage, is quick and eager to learn. The attempts, however, to
dissociate the teaching from all the traditions of Portugal is bound to
be a failure. The trouble already is that the Portuguese are too much
inclined to be cosmopolitan, and what is required is a development of
that part of the Portuguese people still untainted with _francezismo_
along strictly national lines. The lament of the novelist Eça de
Queiroz is well known. Accused of Gallicism in his work, he retorted:
“Scarcely was I born when I began to breathe a French atmosphere.
France was all around me.” The atmosphere of his home was continued in
French text-books, at Coimbra. At Lisbon, “in theatres and shops and
cookery there was nothing left of Portugal: there was nothing but cheap
imitations of France.” And especially was this true in politics: a small
group of Frenchified persons ruled Portugal.[34] In the last half-century
this Frenchification has only increased in Portugal. “Portugal is a
country translated from the French into slang,” said Eça de Queiroz on
the same occasion, in an essay published after his death. Fortunately
this is an exaggeration, and a symptom of the disease that a Portuguese
should thus mistake Coimbra and Lisbon for Portugal. “Outside Lisbon,”
he declared, “there is neither intellectual nor social life,” and this
may be deplorable but it is of good augury for the future. Not Portugal
but Lisbon is “translated from the French.” The _francezismo_ has not yet
extended to the mass of the people, and it is therefore of the utmost
importance that it should not be denationalized by French text-books,
French laws, French customs. At the root of this _francezismo_ lies the
love of progress which has always characterised the Portuguese, but
the truest progress at present will surely consist in going back to
Portugal’s past, to the study of the land of Portugal, of her history, as
rich as that of any other country in striking episodes and personalities,
and of her literature, in which the glories of that history are
reflected.