_Think how willingly the ecclesiastics now accept military service._
I think this willingness is worthy of the historian’s attention.
Obviously, it implies some sincere attachment to their country in those
who display this willingness, although their law is to be dead to all
worldly attachments. Moreover, it appears that in the last war most of
the ministers of Jesus Christ able to bear arms were glad to defend
their country, whatever that country was, and whatever notion they
may have had of the justice of its cause. Here is a most suggestive
fact: Certain Belgian monastic orders (and others as well, I am told)
established abroad at the declaration of war, and authorized by the
government to remain abroad, insisted upon returning to the capital to
perform their military duties. True, the behaviour of these monks may
be explained, not on grounds of patriotism, but from the fear that they
would be severely criticized by their fellow-citizens if they acted
otherwise; for the modern ‘clerks’ have ceased to understand that the
sign of an attitude truly in harmony with their function is that it
should be unpopular with the laymen.
But the most remarkable thing here for the historian, is that the
imposition of military service on ecclesiastics does not appear to
arouse any protest from the Church. Certain Church teachers even assert
(Mgr Battifol, _L’Eglise et le Droit de la guerre_): ‘There is no
further doubt about the legality of military service.’[179] It is also
curious to see in the _Dictionnaire apologétique de la foi catholique_
(Art. ‘Paix et Guerre’) the strenuous efforts of the author (Father de
la Brière) to prove that bearing arms, even by ‘clerks’ in holy orders,
is in no sense contrary to Christian law. However, the opinion of these
theologians does not seem to be shared, at least publicly, by the
higher ecclesiastical authorities; for every ‘clerk’ who bears arms is
laid under an interdict, as he was in the past--only the interdict is
taken off a few minutes after it has been declared.
The modern laymen (Barrès for example) praise this patriotism of the
ecclesiastic and his willingness to fight. The laymen of the past tried
to make him ashamed of it, and liked to exhort him to sentiments which
they considered more in harmony with his sacred ministry. The warlike
ardours of John XII and Julius II were severely condemned by their
contemporaries. Apart from Erasmus--the type of the man of letters
fully aware of the ‘clerk’s’ high function, who was continually saying:
‘Their tonsure does not warn them that they ought to be free from all
the passions of this world and think only of the things of Heaven’--the
Italian Tizio wrote: ‘It is astonishing that the Pontiffs, whose part
is to be pacific and independent, should take part in the shedding of
Christian blood.’ The French poet Jean Bouchet shows the weeping Church
imploring Julius II to end the war (though it is true that Julius II
was fighting France):
‘Your patron is my Lord Saint Peter,
Who never warred for worldly goods.’
In _Le Songe du Verger_, a kind of summary of moral doctrines current
in France in the fourteenth century, there is a dialogue between a
Knight and a Clerk, when the Clerk claims for his caste the right to
make war, and the Knight tells him that ‘the arms of the “clerks” are
prayers and tears’. It is suggestive to see a soldier urging a minister
of the spiritual to perform his true function and seeming to think that
the performance of this function is necessary to the good order of the
world. Here is a feeling for ‘clerkdom’ and its social value which is
very seldom to be found among the modern laymen, even the non-military
ones--I nearly said, especially the non-military ones.[180]