An inventor must begin with painting correctly in his mind the figure,
the machine invented by him, and its properties or effects. We repeat
there was far more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in that of
Homer.
As the imagination of a great mathematician must possess extreme
precision, so must that of a great poet be exceedingly correct and
chaste. He must never present images that are incompatible with each
other, incoherent, highly exaggerated, or unsuitable to the nature of
the subject.
The great fault of some writers who have appeared since the age of Louis
XIV. is attempting a constant display of imagination, and fatiguing the
reader by the profuse abundance of far-fetched images and double rhymes,
one-half of which may be pronounced absolutely useless. It is this which
at length brought into neglect and obscurity a number of small poems,
such as "Ver Vert," "The Chartreuse," and "The Shades," which at one
period possessed considerable celebrity. Mere sounding superfluity soon
finds oblivion.
_Omne supervacuum pleno depectore manat._
--HORACE, _Art of Poetry_, 837.
The active and the passive imagination have been distinguished in the
"Encyclopædia." The active is that of which we have treated. It is the
talent of forming new pictures out of all those contained in our memory.
The passive is scarcely anything beyond memory itself, even in a brain
under strong emotion. A man of an active and fervid imagination, a
preacher of the League in France, or a Puritan in England, harangues the
populace with a voice of thunder, with an eye of fire, and the gesture
of a demoniac, and represents Jesus Christ as demanding justice of the
Eternal Father for the new wounds he has received from the royalists,
for the nails which have been driven for the second time through his
feet and hands by these impious miscreants. Avenge, O God the Father,
avenge the blood of God the Son; march under the banner of the Holy
Spirit; it was formerly a dove, but is now an eagle bearing thunder! The
passive imaginations, roused and stimulated by these images, by the
voice, by the action of those sanguinary empirics, urge the maddened
hearers to rush with fury from the chapel or meeting house, to kill
their opponents and get themselves hanged.
Persons of passive imaginations, for the sake of high and violent
excitement, go sometimes to the sermon and sometimes to the play;
sometimes to the place of execution; and sometimes even to what they
suppose to be the midnight and appalling meetings of presumed sorcerers.
IMPIOUS.
Who is the impious man? It is he who exhibits the Being of Beings, the
great former of the world, the eternal intelligence by whom all nature
is governed, with a long white beard, and having hands and feet.
However, he is pardonable for his impiety--a weak and ignorant creature,
the sight or conduct of whom we ought not to allow to provoke or to vex
us.
If he should even paint that great and incomprehensible Being as carried
on a cloud, which can carry nothing; if he is so stupid as to place God
in a mist, in rain, or on a mountain, and to surround him with little
round, chubby, painted faces, accompanied by two wings, I can smile and
pardon him with all my heart.
The impious man, who ascribes to the Being of Beings absurd predictions
and absolute iniquities, would certainly provoke me, if that Great Being
had not bestowed upon me the gift of reason to control my anger. This
senseless fanatic repeats to me once more what thousands of others have
said before him, that it is not our province to decide what is
reasonable and just in the Great Being; that His reason is not like our
reason, nor His justice like our justice. What then, my rather too
absurd and zealous friend, would you really wish me to judge of justice
and reason by any other notions than I have of them myself? Would you
have me walk otherwise than with my feet, or speak otherwise than with
my mouth?
The impious man, who supposes the Great Being to be jealous, proud,
malignant, and vindictive, is more dangerous. I would not sleep under
the same roof with such a man.
But how will you treat the impious man, the daring blasphemer, who says
to you: "See only with my eyes; do not think for yourself; I proclaim to
you a tyrant God, who ordained me to be your tyrant; I am His
well-beloved; He will torment to all eternity millions of His creatures,
whom He detests, for the sake of gratifying me; I will be your master in
this world and will laugh at your torments in the next!"
Do you not feel a very strong inclination to beat this cruel blasphemer?
And, even if you happen to be born with a meek and forgiving spirit,
would you not fly with the utmost speed to the West, when this barbarian
utters his atrocious reveries in the East?
With respect to another and very different class of the impious--those
who, while washing their elbows, neglect to turn their faces towards
Aleppo and Erivan, or who do not kneel down in the dirt on seeing a
procession of capuchin friars at Perpignan, they are certainly culpable;
but I hardly think they ought to be impaled.
IMPOST.
SECTION I.
So many philosophical works have been written on the nature of impost,
that we need say very little about it here. It is true that nothing is
less philosophical than this subject; but it may enter into moral
philosophy by representing to a superintendent of finances or to a
Turkish teftardar that it accords not with universal morals to take his
neighbor's money; and that all receivers and custom-house officers and
collectors of taxes are cursed in the gospel.
Cursed as they are, it must, however, be agreed that it is impossible
for society to subsist unless each member pays something towards the
expenses of it; and as, since every one ought to pay, it is necessary to
have a receiver, we do not see why this receiver is to be cursed and
regarded as an idolater. There is certainly no idolatry in receiving
money of guests to-day for their supper.
In republics, and states which with the name of kingdoms are really
republics, every individual is taxed according to his means and to the
wants of society.
In despotic kingdoms--or to speak more politely--in monarchical states,
it is not quite the same--the nation is taxed without consulting it. An
agriculturist who has twelve hundred livres of revenue is quite
astonished when four hundred are demanded of him. There are several who
are even obliged to pay more than half of what they receive.
The cultivator demands why the half of his fortune is taken from him to
pay soldiers, when the hundredth part would suffice. He is answered
that, besides the soldiers, he must pay for luxury and the arts; that
nothing is lost; and that in Persia towns and villages are assigned to
the queen to pay for her girdles, slippers, and pins.
He replies that he knows nothing of the history of Persia, and that he
should be very indignant if half his fortune were taken for girdles,
pins, and shoes; that he would furnish them from a better market, and
that he endures a grievous imposition.
He is made to hear reason by being put into a dungeon, and having his
goods put up to sale. If he resists the tax-collectors whom the New
Testament has damned, he is hanged, which renders all his neighbors
infinitely accommodating.
Were this money employed by the sovereign in importing spices from
India, coffee from Mocha, English and Arabian horses, silks from the
Levant, and gew-gaws from China, it is clear that in a few years there
would not remain a single sous in the kingdom. The taxes, therefore,
serve to maintain the manufacturers; and so far what is poured into the
coffers of the prince returns to the cultivators. They suffer, they
complain, and other parts of the state suffer and complain also; but at
the end of the year they find that every one has labored and lived some
way or other.
If by chance a clown goes to the capital, he sees with astonishment a
fine lady dressed in a gown of silk embroidered with gold, drawn in a
magnificent carriage by two valuable horses, and followed by four
lackeys dressed in a cloth of twenty francs an ell. He addresses himself
to one of these lackeys, and says to him: "Sir, where does this lady get
money to make such an expensive appearance?" "My friend," says the
lackey, "the king allows her a pension of forty thousand livres."
"Alas," says the rustic, "it is my village which pays this pension."
"Yes," answers the servant; "but the silk that you have gathered and
sold has made the stuff in which she is dressed; my cloth is a part of
thy sheep's wool; my baker has made my bread of thy corn; thou hast sold
at market the very fowls that we eat; thus thou seest that the pension
of madame returns to thee and thy comrades."
The peasant does not absolutely agree with the axioms of this
philosophical lackey; but one proof that there is something true in his
answer is that the village exists, and produces children who also
complain, and who bring forth children again to complain.
SECTION II.
If we were obliged to read all the edicts of taxation, and all the books
written against them, that would be the greatest tax of all.
We well know that taxes are necessary, and that the malediction
pronounced in the gospel only regards those who abuse their employment
to harass the people. Perhaps the copyist forgot a word, as for instance
the epithet _pravus_. It might have meant _pravus publicanus_; this word
was much more necessary, as the general malediction is a formal
contradiction to the words put into the mouth of Jesus Christ: "Render
unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's." Certainly those who collected
the dues of Cæsar ought not to have been held in horror. It would have
been, at once, insulting the order of Roman Knights and the emperor
himself; nothing could have been more ill-advised.
In all civilized countries the imposts are great, because the charges of
the state are heavy. In Spain the articles of commerce sent to Cadiz,
and thence to America, pay more than thirty per cent. before their
transit is accomplished.
In England all duty upon importation is very considerable; however, it
is paid without murmuring; there is even a pride in paying it. A
merchant boasts of putting four or five thousand guineas a year into the
public treasury. The richer a country is, the heavier are the taxes.
Speculators would have taxes fall on landed productions only. What!
having sown a field of flax, which will bring me two hundred crowns, by
which flax a great manufacturer will gain two hundred thousand crowns by
converting it into lace--must this manufacturer pay nothing, and shall
I pay all, because it is produced by my land? The wife of this
manufacturer will furnish the queen and princesses with fine point of
Alençon, she will be patronized; her son will become intendant of
justice, police, and finance, and will augment my taxes in my miserable
old age. Ah! gentlemen speculators, you calculate badly; you are unjust.
The great point is that an entire people be not despoiled by an army of
alguazils, in order that a score of town or court leeches may feast upon
its blood.
The Duke de Sully relates, in his "Political Economy," that in 1585
there were just twenty lords interested in the leases of farms, to whom
the highest bidders gave three million two hundred and forty-eight
thousand crowns.
It was still worse under Charles IX., and Francis I., and Louis XIII.
There was not less depredation in the minority of Louis XIV. France,
notwithstanding so many wounds, is still in being. Yes; but if it had
not received them it would have been in better health. It was thus with
several other states.
SECTION III.
It is just that those who enjoy the advantages of a government should
support the charges. The ecclesiastics and monks, who possess great
property, for this reason should contribute to the taxes in all
countries, like other citizens. In the times which we call
barbarous, great benefices and abbeys Were taxed in France to the third
of their revenue.
[Illustration: THE DUKE OF SULLY.]
By a statute of the year 1188, Philip Augustus imposed a tenth of the
revenues of all benefices. Philip le Bel caused the fifth, afterwards
the fifteenth, and finally the twentieth part, to be paid, of all the
possessions of the clergy.
King John, by a statute of March 12, 1355, taxed bishops, abbots,
chapters, and all ecclesiastics generally, to the tenth of the revenue
of their benefices and patrimonies. The same prince confirmed this tax
by two other statutes, one of March 3, the other of Dec. 28, 1358.
In the letters-patent of Charles V., of June 22, 1372, it is decreed,
that the churchmen shall pay taxes and other real and personal imposts.
These letters-patent were renewed by Charles VI. in the year 1390.
How is it that these laws have been abolished, while so many monstrous
customs and sanguinary decrees have been preserved? The clergy, indeed,
pay a tax under the name of a free gift, and, as it is known, it is
principally the poorest and most useful part of the church--the curates
(rectors)--who pay this tax. But, why this difference and inequality of
contributions between the citizens of the same state? Why do those who
enjoy the greatest prerogatives, and who are sometimes useless to the
public, pay less than the laborer, who is so necessary? The Republic of
Venice supplies rules on this subject, which should serve as examples
to all Europe.
SECTION IV.
Churchmen have not only pretended to be exempt from taxes, they have
found the means in several provinces to tax the people, and make them
pay as a legitimate right.
In several countries, monks having seized the tithes to the prejudice of
the rectors, the peasants are obliged to tax themselves, to furnish
their pastors with subsistence; and thus in several villages, and above
all, in Franche-Comté, besides the tithes which the parishioners pay to
the monks or to chapters, they further pay three or four measures of
corn to their curates or rectors. This tax was called the right of
harvest in some provinces, and boisselage in others.
It is no doubt right that curates should be well paid, but it would be
much better to give them a part of the tithes which the monks have taken
from them, than to overcharge the poor cultivator.
Since the king of France fixed the competent allowances for the curates,
by his edict of the month of May, 1768, and charged the tithe-collectors
with paying them, the peasants should no longer be held to pay a second
tithe, a tax to which they only voluntarily submitted at a time when the
influence and violence of the monks had taken from their pastors all
means of subsistence.
The king has abolished this second tithe in Poitou, by letters-patent,
registered by the Parliament of Paris July 11, 1769. It would be well
worthy of the justice and beneficence of his majesty to make a similar
law for other provinces, which are in the same situation as those of
Poitou, Franche-Comté, etc.
By M. CHR., Advocate of Besançon.
IMPOTENCE.
I commence by this question, in favor of the impotent--"_frigidi et
maleficiati_," as they are denominated in the decretals: Is there a
physician, or experienced person of any description, who can be certain
that a well-formed young man, who has had no children by his wife, may
not have them some day or other? Nature may know, but men can tell
nothing about it. Since, then, it is impossible to decide that the
marriage may not be consummated some time or other, why dissolve it?
Among the Romans, on the suspicion of impotence, a delay of two years
was allowed, and in the Novels of Justinian three are required; but if
in three years nature may bestow capability, she may equally do so in
seven, ten, or twenty.
Those called "_maleficiati_" by the ancients were often considered
bewitched. These charms were very ancient, and as there were some to
take away virility, so there were others to restore it; both of which
are alluded to in Petronius.
This illusion lasted a long time among us, who exorcised instead of
disenchanting; and when exorcism succeeded not, the marriage was
dissolved.
The canon law made a great question of impotence. Might a man who was
prevented by sorcery from consummating his marriage, after being
divorced and having children by a second wife--might such man, on the
death of the latter wife, reject the first, should she lay claim to him?
All the great canonists decided in the negative--Alexander de Nevo,
Andrew Alberic, Turrecremata, Soto, and fifty more.
It is impossible to help admiring the sagacity displayed by the
canonists, and above all by the religious of irreproachable manners in
their development of the mysteries of sexual intercourse. There is no
singularity, however strange, on which they have not treated. They have
discussed at length all the cases in which capability may exist at one
time or situation, and impotence in another. They have inquired into all
the imaginary inventions to assist nature; and with the avowed object of
distinguishing that which is allowable from that which is not, have
exposed all which ought to remain veiled. It might be said of them:
"_Nox nocti indicat scientiam_."
Above all, Sanchez has distinguished himself in collecting cases of
conscience which the boldest wife would hesitate to submit to the most
prudent of matrons. One query leads to another in almost endless
succession, until at length a question of the most direct and
extraordinary nature is put, as to the manner of the communication of
the Holy Ghost with the Virgin Mary.
These extraordinary researches were never made by anybody in the world
except theologians; and suits in relation to impotency were unknown
until the days of Theodosius.
In the Gospel, divorce is spoken of as allowable for adultery alone. The
Jewish law permitted a husband to repudiate a wife who displeased him,
without specifying the cause. "If she found no favor in his eyes, that
was sufficient." It is the law of the strongest, and exhibits human
nature in its most barbarous garb. The Jewish laws treat not of
impotence; it would appear, says a casuist, that God would not permit
impotency to exist among a people who were to multiply like the sands on
the seashore, and to whom he had sworn to bestow the immense country
which lies between the Nile and Euphrates, and, by his prophets, to make
lords of the whole earth. To fulfil these divine promises, it was
necessary that every honest Jew should be occupied without ceasing in
the great work of propagation. There was certainly a curse upon
impotency; the time not having then arrived for the devout to make
themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven.
Marriage in the course of time having arrived at the dignity of a
sacrament and a mystery, the ecclesiastics insensibly became judges of
all which took place between husband and wife, and not only so, but of
all which did _not_ take place.
Wives possessed the liberty of presenting a request to be
_embesognées_--such being our Gallic term, although the causes were
carried on in Latin. Clerks pleaded and priests pronounced judgment, and
the process was uniformly to decide two points--whether the man was
bewitched, or the woman wanted another husband.
What appears most extraordinary is that all the canonists agree that a
husband whom a spell or charm has rendered impotent, cannot in
conscience apply to other charms or magicians to destroy it. This
resembles the reasoning of the regularly admitted surgeons, who having
the exclusive privilege of spreading a plaster, assure us that we shall
certainly die if we allow ourselves to be cured by the hand which has
hurt us. It might have been as well in the first place to inquire
whether a sorcerer can really operate upon the virility of another man.
It may be added that many weak-minded persons feared the sorcerer more
than they confided in the exorcist. The sorcerer having deranged nature,
holy water alone would not restore it.
In the cases of impotency in which the devil took no part, the presiding
ecclesiastics were not less embarrassed. We have, in the Decretals, the
famous head "_De frigidis et maleficiatis_," which is very curious, but
altogether uninforming. The political use made of it is exemplified in
the case of Henry IV. of Castile, who was declared impotent, while
surrounded by mistresses, and possessed of a wife by whom he had an
heiress to the throne; but it was an archbishop of Toledo who pronounced
this sentence, not the pope.
Alfonso, king of Portugal, was treated in the same manner, in the middle
of the seventeenth century. This prince was known chiefly by his
ferocity, debauchery, and prodigious strength of body. His brutal
excesses disgusted the nation; and the queen, his wife, a princess of
Nemours, being desirous of dethroning him, and marrying the infant Don
Pedro his brother, was aware of the difficulty of wedding two brothers
in succession, after the known circumstance of consummation with the
elder. The example of Henry VIII. of England intimidated her, and she
embraced the resolution of causing her husband to be declared impotent
by the chapter of the cathedral of Lisbon; after which she hastened to
marry his brother, without even waiting for the dispensation of the
pope.
The most important proof of capability required from persons accused of
impotency, is that called "the congress." The President Bouhier says,
that this combat in an enclosed field was adopted in France in the
fourteenth century. And he asserts that it is known in France only.
This proof, about which so much noise has been made, was not conducted
precisely as people have imagined. It has been supposed that a conjugal
consummation took place under the inspection of physicians, surgeons,
and midwives, but such was not the fact. The parties went to bed in the
usual manner, and at a proper time the inspectors, who were assembled in
the next room, were called on to pronounce upon the case.
In the famous process of the Marquis de Langeais, decided in 1659, he
demanded "the congress"; and owing to the management of his lady (Marie
de St. Simon) did not succeed. He demanded a second trial, but the
judges, fatigued with the clamors of the superstitious, the plaints of
the prudes, and the raillery of the wits, refused it. They declared the
marquis impotent, his marriage void, forbade him to marry again, and
allowed his wife to take another husband. The marquis, however,
disregarded this sentence, and married Diana de Navailles, by whom he
had seven children!
His first wife being dead, the marquis appealed to the grand chamberlain
against the sentence which had declared him impotent, and charged him
with the costs. The grand chamberlain, sensible of the ridicule
applicable to the whole affair, confirmed his marriage with Diana de
Navailles, declared him most potent, refused him the costs, but
abolished the ceremony of the congress altogether.
The President Bouhier published a defence of the proof by congress, when
it' was no longer in use. He maintained, that the judges would not have
committed the error of abolishing it, had they not been guilty of the
previous error of refusing the marquis a second trial.
But if the congress may prove indecisive, how much more uncertain are
the various other examinations had recourse to in cases of alleged
impotency? Ought not the whole of them to be adjourned, as in Athens,
for a hundred years? These causes are shameful to wives, ridiculous for
husbands, and unworthy of the tribunals, and it would be better not to
allow them at all. Yes, it may be said, but, in that case, marriage
would not insure issue. A great misfortune, truly, while Europe contains
three hundred thousand monks and eighty thousand nuns, who voluntarily
abstain from propagating their kind.
INALIENATION--INALIENABLE.
The domains of the Roman emperors were anciently inalienable--it was the
sacred domain. The barbarians came and rendered it altogether
inalienable. The same thing happened to the imperial Greek domain.
After the re-establishment of the Roman Empire in Germany, the sacred
domain was declared inalienable by the priests, although there remains
not at present a crown's worth of territory to alienate.
All the kings of Europe, who affect to imitate the emperors, have had
their inalienable domain. Francis I., having effected his liberty by the
cession of Burgundy, could find no other expedient to preserve it, than
a state declaration, that Burgundy was inalienable; and was so
fortunate as to violate both his honor and the treaty with impunity.
According to this jurisprudence, every king may acquire the dominions of
another, while incapable of losing any of his own. So that, in the end,
each would be possessed of the property of somebody else. The kings of
France and England possess very little special domain: their genuine and
more effective domain is the purses of their subjects.
INCEST.
"The Tartars," says the "Spirit of Laws," "who may legally wed their
daughters, never espouse their mothers."
It is not known of what Tartars our author speaks, who cites too much at
random: we know not at present of any people, from the Crimea to the
frontiers of China, who are in the habit of espousing their daughters.
Moreover, if it be allowed for the father to marry his daughter, why may
not a son wed his mother?
Montesquieu cites an author named Priscus Panetes, a sophist who lived
in the time of Attila. This author says that Attila married with his
daughter Esca, according to the manner of the Scythians. This Priscus
has never been printed, but remains in manuscript in the library of the
Vatican; and Jornandes alone makes mention of it. It is not allowable to
quote the legislation of a people on such authority. No one knows this
Esca, or ever heard of her marriage with her father Attila.
I confess I have never believed that the Persians espoused their
daughters, although in the time of the Cæsars the Romans accused them of
it, to render them odious. It might be that some Persian prince
committed incest, and the turpitude of an individual was imputed to the
whole nation.
_Quidquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi._
--HORACE, i, epistle ii, 14.
....When doting monarchs urge
Unsound resolves, their subjects feel the scourge.
--FRANCIS.
I believe that the ancient Persians were permitted to marry with their
sisters, just as much as I believe it of the Athenians, the Egyptians,
and even of the Jews. From the above it might be concluded, that it was
common for children to marry with their fathers or mothers; whereas even
the marriage of cousins is forbidden among the Guebers at this day, who
are held to maintain the doctrines of their forefathers as scrupulously
as the Jews.
You will tell me that everything is contradictory in this world; that it
was forbidden by the Jewish law to marry two sisters, which was deemed a
very indecent act, and yet Jacob married Rachel during the life of her
elder sister Leah; and that this Rachel is evidently a type of the Roman
Catholic and apostolic church. You are doubtless right, but that
prevents not an individual who sleeps with two sisters in Europe from
being grievously censured. As to powerful and dignified princes, they
may take the sisters of their wives for the good of their states, and
even their own sisters by the same father and mother, if they think
proper.
It is a far worse affair to have a commerce with a gossip or godmother,
which was deemed an unpardonable offence by the capitularies of
Charlemagne, being called a spiritual incest.
One Andovere, who is called queen of France, because she was the wife of
a certain Chilperic, who reigned over Soissons, was stigmatized by
ecclesiastical justice, censured, degraded, and divorced, for having
borne her own child to the baptismal font. It was a mortal sin, a
sacrilege, a spiritual incest; and she thereby forfeited her
marriage-bed and crown. This apparently contradicts what I have just
observed, that everything in the way of love is permitted to the great,
but then I spoke of present times, and not of those of Andovere.
As to carnal incest, read the advocate Voglan, who would absolutely have
any two cousins burned who fall into a weakness of this kind. The
advocate Voglan is rigorous--the unmerciful Celt.
INCUBUS.
Have there ever been incubi and succubi? Our learned juriconsults and
demonologists admit both the one and the other.
It is pretended that Satan, always on the alert, inspires young ladies
and gentlemen with heated dreams, and by a sort of double process
produces extraordinary consequences, which in point of fact led to the
birth of so many heroes and demigods in ancient times.
The devil took a great deal of superfluous trouble: he had only to leave
the young people alone, and the world will be sufficiently supplied with
heroes without any assistance from him.
An idea may be formed of incubi by the explanation of the great Delrio,
of Boguets, and other writers learned in sorcery; but they fail in their
account of succubi. A female might pretend to believe that she had
communicated with and was pregnant by a god, the explication of Delrio
being very favorable to the assumption. The devil in this case acts the
part of an incubus, but his performances as a succubus are more
inconceivable. The gods and goddesses of antiquity acted much more nobly
and decorously; Jupiter in person, was the incubus of Alcmena and
Semele; Thetis in person, the succubus of Peleus, and Venus of Anchises,
without having recourse to the various contrivances of our extraordinary
demonism.
Let us simply observe, that the gods frequently disguised themselves, in
their pursuit of our girls, sometimes as an eagle, sometimes as a
pigeon, a swan, a horse, a shower of gold; but the goddesses assumed no
disguise: they had only to show themselves, to please. It must however
be presumed, that whatever shapes the gods assumed to steal a march,
they consummated their loves in the form of men.
As to the new manner of rendering girls pregnant by the ministry of the
devil, it is not to be doubted, for the Sorbonne decided the point in
the year 1318.
"_Per tales artes et ritus impios et invocationes et demonum, nullus
unquam sequatur effectus ministerio demonum, error._"--"It is an error
to believe, that these magic arts and invocations of the devils are
without effect."
This decision has never been revoked. Thus we are bound to believe in
succubi and incubi, because our teachers have always believed in them.
There have been many other sages in this science, as well as the
Sorbonne. Bodin, in his book concerning sorcerers, dedicated to
Christopher de Thou, first president of the Parliament of Paris, relates
that John Hervilier, a native of Verberie, was condemned by that
parliament to be burned alive for having prostituted his daughter to the
devil, a great black man, whose caresses were attended with a sensation
of cold which appears to be very uncongenial to his nature; but our
jurisprudence has always admitted the fact, and the prodigious number of
sorcerers which it has burned in consequence will always remain a proof
of its accuracy.
The celebrated Picus of Mirandola--a prince never lies--says he knew an
old man of the age of eighty years who had slept half his life with a
female devil, and another of seventy who enjoyed a similar felicity.
Both were buried at Rome, but nothing is said of the fate of their
children. Thus is the existence of incubi and succubi demonstrated.
It is impossible, at least, to prove to the contrary; for if we are
called on to believe that devils can enter our bodies, who can prevent
them from taking kindred liberties with our wives and our daughters? And
if there be demons, there are probably demonesses; for to be consistent,
if the demons beget children on our females, it must follow that we
effect the same thing on the demonesses. Never has there been a more
universal empire than that of the devil. What has dethroned him? Reason.
INFINITY.
Who will give me a clear idea of infinity? I have never had an idea of
it which was not excessively confused--possibly because I am a finite
being.
What is that which is eternally going on without advancing--always
reckoning without a sum total--dividing eternally without arriving at an
indivisible particle?
It might seem as if the notion of infinity formed the bottom of the
bucket of the Danaïdes. Nevertheless, it is impossible that infinity
should not exist. An infinite duration is demonstrable.
The commencement of existence is absurd; for nothing cannot originate
something. When an atom exists we must necessarily conclude that it has
existed from all eternity; and hence an infinite duration rigorously
demonstrated. But what is an infinite past?--an infinitude which I
arrest in imagination whenever I please. Behold! I exclaim, an infinity
passed away; let us proceed to another. I distinguish between two
eternities, the one before, the other behind me.
When, however, I reflect upon my words, I perceive that I have absurdly
pronounced the words: "one eternity has passed away, and I am entering
into another." For at the moment that I thus talk, eternity endures, and
the tide of time flows. Duration is not separable; and as something has
ever been, something must ever be.
The infinite in duration, then, is linked to an uninterrupted chain.
This infinite perpetuates itself, even at the instant that I say it has
passed. Time begins and ends with me, but duration is infinite. The
infinite is here quickly formed without, however, our possession of the
ability to form a clear notion of it.
We are told of infinite space--what is space? Is it a being, or nothing
at all? If it is a being, what is its nature? You cannot tell me. If it
is nothing, nothing can have no quality; yet you tell me that it is
penetrable and immense. I am so embarrassed, I cannot correctly call it
either something or nothing.
In the meantime, I know not of anything which possesses more properties
than a void. For if passing the confines of this globe, we are able to
walk amidst this void, and thatch and build there when we possess
materials for the purpose, this void or nothing is not opposed to
whatever we might choose to do; for having no property it cannot hinder
any; moreover, since it cannot hinder, neither can it serve us.
It is pretended that God created the world amidst nothing, and from
nothing. That is abstruse; it is preferable to think that there is an
infinite space; but we are curious--and if there be infinite space, our
faculties cannot fathom the nature of it. We call it immense, because we
cannot measure it; but what then? We have only pronounced words.
_Of the Infinite in Number._
We have adroitly defined the infinite in arithmetic by a love-knot, in
this manner ∞; but we possess not therefore a clearer
notion of it. This infinity is not like the others, a powerlessness of
reaching a termination. We call the infinite in quantity any number
soever, which surpasses the utmost number we are able to imagine.
When we seek the infinitely small, we divide, and call that infinitely
small which is less than the least assignable quantity. It is only
another name for incapacity.
_Is Matter Infinitely Divisible?_
This question brings us back again precisely to our inability of finding
the remotest number. In thought we are able to divide a grain of sand,
but in imagination only; and the incapacity of eternally dividing this
grain is called infinity.
It is true, that matter is not always practically divisible, and if the
last atom could be divided into two, it would no longer be the least; or
if the least, it would not be divisible; or if divisible, what is the
germ or origin of things? These are all abstruse queries.
_Of the Universe._
Is the universe bounded--is its extent immense--are the suns and planets
without number? What advantage has the space which contains suns and
planets, over the space which is void of them? Whether space be an
existence or not, what is the space which we occupy, preferable to other
space?
If our material heaven be not infinite, it is but a point in general
extent. If it is infinite, it is an infinity to which something can
always be added by the imagination.
_Of the Infinite in Geometry._
We admit, in geometry, not only infinite magnitudes, that is to say,
magnitudes greater than any assignable magnitude, but infinite
magnitudes infinitely greater, the one than the other. This astonishes
our dimension of brains, which is only about six inches long, five
broad, and six in depth, in the largest heads. It means, however,
nothing more than that a square larger than any assignable square,
surpasses a line larger than any assignable line, and bears no
proportion to it.
It is a mode of operating, a mode of working geometrically, and the
word infinite is a mere symbol.
_Of Infinite Power, Wisdom, Goodness._
In the same manner, as we cannot form any positive idea of the infinite
in duration, number, and extension, are we unable to form one in respect
to physical and moral power.
We can easily conceive, that a powerful being has modified matter,
caused worlds to circulate in space, and formed animals, vegetables, and
metals. We are led to this idea by the perception of the want of power
on the part of these beings to form themselves. We are also forced to
allow, that the Great Being exists eternally by His own power, since He
cannot have sprung from nothing; but we discover not so easily His
infinity in magnitude, power, and moral attributes.
How are we to conceive infinite extent in a being called simple? and if
he be uncompounded, what notions can we form of a simple being? We know
God by His works, but we cannot understand Him by His Nature. If it is
evident that we cannot understand His nature, is it not equally so, that
we must remain ignorant of His attributes?
When we say that His power is infinite, do we mean anything more than
that it is very great? Aware of the existence of pyramids of the height
of six hundred feet, we can conceive them of the altitude of 600,000
feet.
Nothing can limit the power of the Eternal Being existing necessarily
of Himself. Agreed: no antagonists circumscribe Him; but how convince me
that He is not circumscribed by His own nature? Has all that has been
said on this great subject been demonstrated?
We speak of His moral attributes, but we only judge of them by our own;
and it is impossible to do otherwise. We attribute to Him justice,
goodness, etc., only from the ideas we collect from the small degree of
justice and goodness existing among ourselves. But, in fact, what
connection is there between our qualities so uncertain and variable, and
those of the Supreme Being?
Our idea of justice is only that of not allowing our own interest to
usurp over the interest of another. The bread which a wife has kneaded
out of the flour produced from the wheat which her husband has sown,
belongs to her. A hungry savage snatches away her bread, and the woman
exclaims against such enormous injustice. The savage quietly answers
that nothing is more just, and that it was not for him and his family to
expire of famine for the sake of an old woman.
At all events, the infinite justice we attribute to God can but little
resemble the contradictory notions of justice of this woman and this
savage; and yet, when we say that God is just, we only pronounce these
words agreeably to our own ideas of justice.
We know of nothing belonging to virtue more agreeable than frankness
and cordiality, but to attribute infinite frankness and cordiality to
God would amount to an absurdity.
We have such confused notions of the attributes of the Supreme Being,
that some schools endow Him with prescience, an infinite foresight which
excludes all contingent event, while other schools contend for
prescience without contingency.
Lastly, since the Sorbonne has declared that God can make a stick
divested of two ends, and that the same thing can at once be and not be,
we know not what to say, being in eternal fear of advancing a heresy.
One thing _may_, however, be asserted without danger--that God is
infinite, and man exceedingly bounded.
The mind of man is so extremely narrow, that Pascal has said: "Do you
believe it impossible for God to be infinite and without parts? I wish
to convince you of an existence infinite and indivisible--it is a
mathematical point--moving everywhere with infinite swiftness, for it is
in all places, and entire in every place."
Nothing more absurd was ever asserted, and yet it has been said by the
author of the "Provincial Letters." It is sufficient to give men of
sense the ague.
INFLUENCE.
Everything around exercises some influence upon us, either physically or
morally. With this truth we are well acquainted. Influence may be
exerted upon a being without touching, without moving that being.
In short, matter has been demonstrated to possess the astonishing power
of gravitating without contact, of acting at immense distances. One idea
influences another; a fact not less incomprehensible.
I have not with me at Mount Krapak the book entitled, "On the Influence
of the Sun and Moon," composed by the celebrated physician Mead; but I
well know that those two bodies are the cause of the tides; and it is
not in consequence of touching the waters of the ocean that they produce
that flux and reflux: it is demonstrated that they produce them by the
laws of gravitation.
But when we are in a fever, have the sun and moon any influence upon the
accesses of it, in its days of crisis? Is your wife constitutionally
disordered only during the first quarter of the moon? Will the trees,
cut at the time of full moon, rot sooner than if cut down in its wane?
Not that I know. But timber cut down while the sap is circulating in it,
undergoes putrefaction sooner than other timber; and if by chance it is
cut down at the full moon, men will certainly say it was the full moon
that caused all the evil. Your wife may have been disordered during the
moon's growing; but your neighbor's was so in its decline.
The fitful periods of the fever which you brought upon yourself by
indulging too much in the pleasures of the table occur about the first
quarter of the moon; your neighbor experiences his in its decline.
Everything that can possibly influence animals and vegetables must of
course necessarily exercise that influence while the moon is making her
circuit.
Were a woman of Lyons to remark that the periodical affections of her
constitution had occurred in three or four successive instances on the
day of the arrival of the diligence from Paris, would her medical
attendant, however devoted he might be to system, think himself
authorized in concluding that the Paris diligence had some peculiar and
marvellous influence on the lady's constitution?
There was a time when the inhabitants of every seaport were persuaded,
that no one would die while the tide was rising, and that death always
waited for its ebb.
Many physicians possessed a store of strong reasons to explain this
constant phenomenon. The sea when rising communicates to human bodies
the force or strength by which itself is raised. It brings with it
vivifying particles which reanimate all patients. It is salt, and salt
preserves from the putrefaction attendant on death. But when the sea
sinks and retires, everything sinks or retires with it; nature
languishes; the patient is no longer vivified; he departs with the tide.
The whole, it must be admitted, is most beautifully explained, but the
presumed fact, unfortunately, is after all untrue.
The various elements, food, watching, sleep, and the passions, are
constantly exerting on our frame their respective influences. While
these influences are thus severally operating on us, the planets
traverse their appropriate orbits, and the stars shine with their usual
brillancy. But shall we really be so weak as to say that the progress
and light of those heavenly bodies are the cause of our rheums and
indigestion, and sleeplessness; of the ridiculous wrath we are in with
some silly reasoner; or of the passion with which we are enamored of
some interesting woman?
But the gravitation of the sun and moon has made the earth in some
degree flat at the pole, and raises the sea twice between the tropics in
four-and-twenty hours. It may, therefore, regulate our fits of fever,
and govern our whole machine. Before, however, we assert this to be the
case, we should wait until we can prove it.
The sun acts strongly upon us by its rays, which touch us, and enter
through our pores. Here is unquestionably a very decided and a very
benignant influence. We ought not, I conceive, in physics, to admit of
any action taking place without contact, until we have discovered some
well-recognized and ascertained power which acts at a distance, like
that of gravitation, for example, or like that of your thoughts over
mine, when you furnish me with ideas. Beyond these cases, I at present
perceive no influences but from matter in contact with matter.
The fish of my pond and myself exist each of us in our natural element.
The water which touches them from head to tail is continually acting
upon them. The atmosphere which surrounds and closes upon me acts upon
me. I ought not to attribute to the moon, which is ninety thousand miles
distant, what I might naturally ascribe to something incessantly in
contact with my skin. This would be more unphilosophical than my
considering the court of China responsible for a lawsuit that I was
carrying on in France. We should never seek at a distance for what is
absolutely within our immediate reach.
I perceive that the learned and ingenious M. Menuret is of a different
opinion in the "Encyclopædia" under the article on "Influence." This
certainly excites in my mind considerable diffidence with respect to
what I have just advanced. The Abbé de St. Pierre used to say, we should
never maintain that we are absolutely in the right, but should rather
say, "such is my opinion for the present."
_Influence of the Passions of Mothers upon their Fœtus._
I think, for the present, that violent affections of pregnant women
produce often a prodigious effect upon the embryo within them; and I
think that I shall always think so: my reason is that I have actually
seen this effect. If I had no voucher of my opinion but the testimony of
historians who relate the instance of Mary Stuart and her son James I.,
I should suspend my judgment; because between that event and myself, a
series of two hundred years has intervened, a circumstance naturally
tending to weaken belief; and because I can ascribe the impression made
upon the brain of James to other causes than the imagination of Mary.
The royal assassins, headed by her husband, rush with drawn swords into
the cabinet where she is supping in company with her favorite, and kill
him before her eyes; the sudden convulsion experienced by her in the
interior of her frame extends to her offspring; and James I., although
not deficient in courage, felt during his whole life an involuntary
shuddering at the sight of a sword drawn from a scabbard. It is,
however, possible that this striking and peculiar agitation might be
owing to a different cause.
There was once introduced, in my presence, into the court of a woman
with child, a showman who exhibited a little dancing dog with a kind of
red bonnet on its head: the woman called out to have the figure removed;
she declared that her child would be marked like it; she wept; and
nothing could restore her confidence and peace. "This is the second
time," she said, "that such a misfortune has befallen me. My first child
bears the impression of a similar terror that I was exposed to; I feel
extremely weak. I know that some misfortune will reach me." She was but
too correct in her prediction. She was delivered of a child similar to
the figure which had so terrified her. The bonnet was particularly
distinguishable. The little creature lived two days.
In the time of Malebranche no one entertained the slightest doubt of
the adventure which he relates, of the woman who, after seeing a
criminal racked, was delivered of a son, all whose limbs were broken in
the same places in which the malefactor had received the blows of the
executioner. All the physicians at the time were agreed, that the
imagination had produced this fatal effect upon her offspring.
Since that period, mankind is believed to have refined and improved; and
the influence under consideration has been denied. It has been asked, in
what way do you suppose that the affections of a mother should operate
to derange the members of the fœtus? Of that I know nothing; but I
have witnessed the fact. You new-fangled philosophers inquire and study
in vain how an infant is _formed_, and yet require me to know how it
becomes _deformed_.
INITIATION.
_Ancient Mysteries._
The origin of the ancient mysteries may, with the greatest probability,
be ascribed to the same weakness which forms associations of brotherhood
among ourselves, and which established congregations under the direction
of the Jesuits. It was probably this want of society which raised so
many secret assemblies of artisans, of which scarcely any now remain
besides that of the Freemasons. Even down to the very beggars
themselves, all had their societies, their confraternities, their
mysteries, and their particular jargon, of which I have met with a small
dictionary, printed in the sixteenth century.
This natural inclination in men to associate, to secure themselves, to
become distinguished above others, and to acquire confidence in
themselves, may be considered as the generating cause of all those
particular bonds or unions, of all those mysterious initiations which
afterwards excited so much attention and produced such striking effects,
and which at length sank into that oblivion in which everything is
involved by time.
Begging pardon, while I say it, of the gods Cabri, of the hierophants of
Samothrace, of Isis, Orpheus, and the Eleusinian Ceres, I must
nevertheless acknowledge my suspicions that their sacred secrets were
not in reality more deserving of curiosity than the interior of the
convents of Carmelites or Capuchins.
These mysteries being sacred, the participators in them soon became so.
And while the number of these was small, the mystery was respected; but
at length, having grown too numerous, they retained no more consequence
and consideration than we perceive to attach to German barons, since the
world became full of barons.
Initiation was paid for, as every candidate pays his admission fees or
welcome, but no member was allowed to talk for his money. In all ages it
was considered a great crime to reveal the secrets of these religious
farces. This secret was undoubtedly not worth knowing, as the assembly
was not a society of philosophers, but of ignorant persons, directed by
a hierophant. An oath of secrecy was administered, and an oath was
always regarded as a sacred bond. Even at the present day, our
comparatively pitiful society of Freemasons swear never to speak of
their mysteries. These mysteries are stale and flat enough; but men
scarcely ever perjure themselves.
Diagoras was proscribed by the Athenians for having made the secret hymn
of Orpheus a subject for conversation. Aristotle informs us, that
Æschylus was in danger of being torn to pieces by the people, or at
least of being severely beaten by them, for having, in one of his
dramas, given some idea of those Orphean mysteries in which nearly
everybody was then initiated.
It appears that Alexander did not pay the highest respect possible to
these reverend fooleries; they are indeed very apt to be despised by
heroes. He revealed the secret to his mother Olympias, but he advised
her to say nothing about it--so much are even heroes themselves bound in
the chains of superstition.
"It is customary," says Herodotus, "in the city of Rusiris, to strike
both men and women after the sacrifice, but I am not permitted to say
where they are struck." He leaves it, however, to be very easily
inferred.
I think I see a description of the mysteries of the Eleusinian Ceres,
in Claudian's poem on the "Rape of Proserpine," much clearer than I can
see any in the sixth book of the "Æneid." Virgil lived under a prince
who joined to all his other bad qualities that of wishing to pass for a
religious character; who was probably initiated in these mysteries
himself, the better to impose thereby upon the people; and who would not
have tolerated such a profanation. You see his favorite Horace regards
such a revelation as sacrilege:--
_.... Vetabo qui Cereris sacrum_
_Fulgarit arcanæ sub iisdem_
_Sit trabibus, vel fragilem que mecum_
_Solvat phaselum_.--HORACE, book iii, ode 2.
To silence due rewards we give;
And they who mysteries reveal
Beneath my roof shall never live,
Shall never hoist with me the doubtful sail.
--FRANCIS.
Besides, the Cumæan sibyl and the descent into hell, imitated from Homer
much less than it is embellished by Virgil, with the beautiful
prediction of the destinies of the Cæsars and the Roman Empire, have no
relation to the fables of Ceres, Proserpine, and Triptolemus.
Accordingly, it is highly probable that the sixth book of the "Æneid" is
not a description of those mysteries. If I ever said the contrary, I
here unsay it; but I conceive that Claudian revealed them fully. He
flourished at a time when it was permitted to divulge the mysteries of
Eleusis, and indeed all the mysteries of the world. He lived under
Honorius, in the total decline of the ancient Greek and Roman religion,
to which Theodosius I. had already given the mortal blow.
Horace, at that period, would not have been at all afraid of living
under the same roof with a revealer of mysteries. Claudian, as a poet,
was of the ancient religion, which was more adapted to poetry than the
new. He describes the droll absurdities of the mysteries of Ceres, as
they were still performed with all becoming reverence in Greece, down to
the time of Theodosius II. They formed a species of operatic pantomime,
of the same description as we have seen many very amusing ones, in which
were represented all the devilish tricks and conjurations of Doctor
Faustus, the birth of the world and of Harlequin who both came from a
large egg by the heat of the sun's rays. Just in the same manner, the
whole history of Ceres and Proserpine was represented by the
mystagogues. The spectacle was fine; the cost must have been great; and
it is no matter of astonishment that the initiated should pay the
performers. All live by their respective occupations.
Every mystery had its peculiar ceremonies; but all admitted of wakes or
vigils of which the youthful votaries fully availed themselves; but it
was this abuse in part which finally brought discredit upon those
nocturnal ceremonies instituted for sanctification. The ceremonies thus
perverted to assignation and licentiousness were abolished in Greece in
the time of the Peloponnesian war; they were abolished at Rome in the
time of Cicero's youth, eighteen years before his consulship. From the
"_Aulularia_" of Plautus, we are led to consider them as exhibiting
scenes of gross debauchery, and as highly injurious to public morals.
Our religion, which, while it adopted, greatly purified various pagan
institutions, sanctified the name of the initiated, nocturnal feasts,
and vigils, which were a long time in use, but which at length it became
necessary to prohibit when an administration of police was introduced
into the government of the Church, so long entrusted to the piety and
zeal that precluded the necessity of police.
The principal formula of all the mysteries, in every place of their
celebration, was, "Come out, ye who are profane;" that is, uninitiated.
Accordingly, in the first centuries, the Christians adopted a similar
formula. The deacon said, "Come out, all ye catechumens, all ye who are
possessed, and who are uninitiated."
It is in speaking of the baptism of the dead that St. Chrysostom says,
"I should be glad to explain myself clearly, but I can do so only to the
initiated. We are in great embarrassment. We must either speak
unintelligibly, or disclose secrets which we are bound to conceal."
It is impossible to describe more clearly the obligation of secrecy and
the privilege of initiation. All is now so completely changed, that were
you at present to talk about initiation to the greater part of your
priests and parish officers, there would not be one of them that would
understand you, unless by great chance he had read the chapter of
Chrysostom above noticed.
You will see in Minutius Felix the abominable imputations with which the
pagans attacked the Christian mysteries. The initiated were reproached
with treating each other as brethren and sisters, solely with a view to
profane that sacred name. They kissed, it was said, particular parts of
the persons of the priests, as is still practised in respect to the
santons of Africa; they stained themselves with all those pollutions
which have since disgraced and stigmatized the templars. Both were
accused of worshipping a kind of ass's head.
We have seen that the early Christian societies ascribed to each other,
reciprocally, the most inconceivable infamies. The pretext for these
calumnies was the inviolable secret which every society made of its
mysteries. It is upon this ground that in Minutius Felix, Cecilius, the
accuser of the Christians, exclaims:
"Why do they so carefully endeavor to conceal what they worship, since
what is decent and honorable always courts the light, and crimes alone
seek secrecy?"
"_Cur occultare et abscondere quidquid colunt magnopere nituntur? Quum
honesta semper publico gaudeant, scelera secreta sint."_
It cannot be doubted that these accusations, universally spread, drew
upon the Christians more than one persecution. Whenever a society of
men, whatever they may be, are accused by the public voice, the
falsehood of the charge is urged in vain, and it is deemed meritorious
to persecute them.
How could it easily be otherwise than that the first Christians should
be even held in horror, when St. Epiphanius himself urges against them
the most execrable imputations? He asserts that the Christian
Phibionites committed indecencies, which he specifies, of the grossest
character; and, after passing through various scenes of pollution,
exclaimed each of them: "I am the Christ."
According to the same writer, the Gnostics and the Stratiotics equalled
the Phibionites in exhibitions of licentiousness, and all three sects
mingled horrid pollutions with their mysteries, men and women displaying
equal dissoluteness.
The Carpocratians, according to the same father of the Church, even
exceeded the horrors and abominations of the three sects just mentioned.
The Cerinthians did not abandon themselves to abominations such as
these; but they were persuaded that Jesus Christ was the son of Joseph.
The Ebionites, in their gospel, maintain that St. Paul, being desirous
of marrying the daughter of Gamaliel, and not able to obtain her, became
a Christian, and established Christianity out of revenge.
All these accusations did not for some time reach the ear of the
government. The Romans paid but little attention to the quarrels and
mutual reproaches which occurred between these little societies of
Jews, Greeks, and Egyptians, who were, as it were, hidden in the vast
and general population; just as in London, in the present day, the
parliament does not embarrass or concern itself with the peculiar forms
or transactions of Mennonites, Pietists, Anabaptists, Millennarians,
Moravians, or Methodists. It is occupied with matters of urgency and
importance, and pays no attention to their mutual charges and
recriminations till they become of importance from their publicity.
The charges above mentioned, at length, however, came to the ears of the
senate; either from the Jews, who were implacable enemies of the
Christians, or from Christians themselves; and hence it resulted that
the crimes charged against some Christian societies were imputed to all;
hence it resulted that their initiations were so long calumniated; hence
resulted the persecutions which they endured. These persecutions,
however, obliged them to greater circumspection; they strengthened
themselves, they combined, they disclosed their books only to the
initiated. No Roman magistrate, no emperor, ever had the slightest
knowledge of them, as we have already shown. Providence increased,
during the course of three centuries, both their number and their
riches, until at length, Constantius Chlorus openly protected them, and
Constantine, his son, embraced their religion.
In the meantime the names of initiated and mysteries still subsisted,
and they were concealed from the Gentiles as much as was possible. As to
the mysteries of the Gentiles, they continued down to the time of
Theodosius.
INNOCENTS.
_Of the Massacre of the Innocents._
When people speak of the massacre of the innocents, they do not refer to
the Sicilian Vespers, nor to the matins of Paris, known under the name
of St. Bartholomew; nor to the inhabitants of the new world, who were
murdered because they were not Christians, nor to the _auto-da-fés_ of
Spain and Portugal, etc. They usually refer to the young children who
were killed within the precincts of Bethlehem, by order of Herod the
Great, and who were afterwards carried to Cologne, where they are still
to be found.
Their number was maintained by the whole Greek Church to be fourteen
thousand.
The difficulties raised by critics upon this point of history have been
all solved by shrewd and learned commentators.
Objections have been started in relation to the star which conducted the
Magi from the recesses of the East to Jerusalem. It has been said that
the journey, being a long one, the star must have appeared for a long
time above the horizon; and yet that no historian besides St. Matthew
ever took notice of this extraordinary star; that if it had shone so
long in the heavens, Herod and his whole court, and all Jerusalem, must
have seen it as well as these three Magi, or kings; that Herod
consequently could not, without absurdity, have inquired diligently, as
Matthew expresses it, of these kings, at what time they had seen the
star; that, if these three kings had made presents of gold and myrrh and
incense to the new-born infant, his parents must have been very rich;
that Herod could certainly never believe that this infant, born in a
stable at Bethlehem, would be king of the Jews, as the kingdom of Judæa
belonged to the Romans, and was a gift from Cæsar; that if three kings
of the Indies were, at the present day, to come to France under the
guidance of a star, and stop at the house of a woman of Vaugirard, no
one could ever make the reigning monarch believe that the child of that
poor woman would become king of France.
A satisfactory answer has been given to these difficulties, which may be
considered preliminary ones, attending the subject of the massacre of
the innocents; and it has been shown that what is impossible with man is
not impossible with God.
With respect to the slaughter of the little children, whether the number
was fourteen thousand, or greater, or less, it has been shown that this
horrible and unprecedented cruelty was not absolutely incompatible with
the character of Herod; that, after being established as king of Judæa
by Augustus, he could not indeed fear anything from the child of
obscure and poor parents, residing in a petty village; but that
laboring at that time under the disorder of which he at length died, his
blood might have become so corrupt that he might in consequence have
lost both reason and humanity; that, in short, all these
incomprehensible events, which prepared the way for mysteries still more
incomprehensible, were directed by an inscrutable Providence.
It is objected that the historian Josephus, who was nearly contemporary,
and who has related all the cruelties of Herod, has made no more mention
of the massacre of the young children than of the star of the three
kings; that neither the Jew Philo, nor any other Jew, nor any Roman
takes any notice of it; and even that three of the evangelists have
observed a profound silence upon these important subjects. It is replied
that they are nevertheless announced by St. Matthew, and that the
testimony of one inspired man is of more weight than the silence of all
the world.
The critics, however, have not surrendered; they have dared to censure
St. Matthew himself for saying that these children were massacred, "that
the words of Jeremiah might be fulfilled. A voice is heard in Ramah, a
voice of groaning and lamentation. Rachel weeping for her children, and
refusing to be comforted, because they are no more."
These historical words, they observe, were literally fulfilled in the
tribe of Benjamin, which descended from Rachel, when Nabuzaradan
destroyed a part of that tribe near the city of Ramah. It was no longer
a prediction, they say, any more than were the words "He shall be called
a Nazarene. And He came to dwell in a city called Nazareth, that it
might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets. He shall be called
a Nazarene." They triumph in the circumstance that these words are not
to be found in any one of the prophets; just as they do in the idea that
Rachel weeping for the Benjamites at Ramah has no reference whatever to
the massacre of the innocents by Herod.
They dare even to urge that these two allusions, being clearly false,
are a manifest proof of the falsehood of this narrative; and conclude
that the massacre of the children, and the new star, and the journey of
the three kings, never had the slightest foundation in fact.
They even go much further yet; they think they find as palpable a
contradiction between the narrative of St. Matthew and that of St. Luke,
as between the two genealogies adduced by them. St. Matthew says that
Joseph and Mary carried Jesus into Egypt, fearing that he would be
involved in the massacre. St. Luke, on the contrary, says, "After having
fulfilled all the ceremonies of the law, Joseph and Mary returned to
Nazareth, their city, and went every year to Jerusalem, to keep the
Passover."
But thirty days must have expired before a woman could have completed
her purification from childbirth and fulfilled all the ceremonies of the
law. During these thirty days, therefore, the child must have been
exposed to destruction by the general proscription. And if his parents
went to Jerusalem to accomplish the ordinance of the law, they certainly
did not go to Egypt.
These are the principal objections of unbelievers. They are effectually
refuted by the faith both of the Greek and Latin churches. If it were
necessary always to be clearing up the doubts of persons who read the
Scriptures, we must inevitably pass our whole lives in disputing about
all the articles contained in them. Let us rather refer ourselves to our
worthy superiors and masters; to the university of Salamanca when in
Spain, to the Sorbonne in France, and to the holy congregation at Rome.
Let us submit both in heart and in understanding to that which is
required of us for our good.
INQUISITION.
SECTION I.
The Inquisition is an ecclesiastical jurisdiction, established by the
see of Rome in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and even in the Indies, for the
purpose of searching out and extirpating infidels, Jews, and heretics.
That we may not be suspected of resorting to falsehood in order to
render this tribunal odious, we shall in this present article give the
abstract of a Latin work on the "Origin and Progress of the Office of
the Holy Inquisition," printed by the royal press at Madrid in 1589, by
order of Louis de Paramo, inquisitor in the kingdom of Sicily.
Without going back to the origin of the Inquisition, which Paramo thinks
he discovers in the manner in which God is related to have proceeded
against Adam and Eve, let us abide by the new law of which Jesus Christ,
according to him, was the chief inquisitor. He exercised the functions
of that office on the thirteenth day after his birth, by announcing to
the city of Jerusalem, through the three kings or Magi, his appearance
in the world, and afterwards by causing Herod to be devoured alive by
worms; by driving the buyers and sellers out of the temple; and finally,
by delivering Judæa into the hands of tyrants, who pillaged it in
punishment of its unbelief.
After Jesus Christ, St. Peter, St. Paul, and the rest of the apostles
exercised the office of inquisitor, which they transmitted to the popes
and bishops, and their successors. St. Dominic having arrived in France
with the bishop of Osma, of which he was archdeacon, became animated
with zeal against the Albigenses, and obtained the regard and favor of
Simon, Count de Montfort. Having been appointed by the pope inquisitor
in Languedoc, he there founded his order, which was approved of and
ratified, in 1216, by Honorius III. Under the auspices of St. Madelaine,
Count Montfort took the city of Gezer by assault, and put all the
inhabitants to the sword; and at Laval, four hundred Albigenses were
burned at once. "In all the histories of the Inquisition that I ever
read," says Paramo, "I never met with an act of faith so eminent, or a
spectacle so solemn. At the village of Cazera, sixty were burned; and in
another place a hundred and eighty."
The Inquisition was adopted by the count of Toulouse in 1229, and
confided to the Dominicans by Pope Gregory IX. in 1233; Innocent IV. in
1251 established it in the whole of Italy, with the exception of Naples.
At the commencement, indeed, heretics were not subjected in the Milanese
to the punishment of death, which they nevertheless so richly deserved,
because the popes were not sufficiently respected by the emperor
Frederick, to whom that state belonged; but a short time afterwards
heretics were burned at Milan, as well as in the other parts of Italy;
and our author remarks, that in 1315 some thousands of heretics having
spread themselves through Cremasco, a small territory included in the
jurisdiction of the Milanese, the Dominican brothers burned the greater
part of them; and thus checked the ravages of the theological pestilence
by the flames.
As the first canon of the Council of Toulouse enjoined the bishops to
appoint in every parish a priest and two or three laymen of reputation,
who should be bound by oath to search carefully and frequently for
heretics, in houses, caves, and all places wherever they might be able
to hide themselves, and to give the speediest information to the
bishop, the seigneur of the place, or his bailiff, after having taken
all necessary precautions against the escape of any heretics discovered,
the inquisitors must have acted at this time in concert with the
bishops. The prisons of the bishop and of the Inquisition were
frequently the same; and, although in the course of the procedure the
inquisitor might act in his own name, he could not, without the
intervention of the bishop, apply the torture, pronounce any definitive
sentence, or condemn to perpetual imprisonment, etc. The frequent
disputes that occurred between the bishops and the inquisitors, on the
limits of their authority, on the spoils of the condemned, etc.,
compelled Pope Sixtus IV., in 1473, to make the Inquisitions independent
and separate from the tribunals of the bishops. He created for Spain an
Inquisitor-general, with full powers to nominate particular inquisitors;
and Ferdinand V., in 1478, founded and endowed the Inquisition.
At the solicitation of Turrecremata (or Torquemada), a brother of the
Dominican order, and grand inquisitor of Spain, the same Ferdinand,
surnamed the Catholic, banished from his kingdom all the Jews, allowing
them three months from the publication of his edict, after the
expiration of which period they were not to be found in any of the
Spanish dominions under pain of death. They were permitted, on quitting
the kingdom, to take with them the goods and merchandise which they had
purchased, but forbidden to take out of it any description of gold or
silver.
The brother Turrecremata followed up and strengthened this edict, in the
diocese of Toledo, by prohibiting all Christians, under pain of
excommunication, from giving anything whatever to the Jews, even that
which might be necessary to preserve life itself.
In consequence of these decrees about a million Jews departed from
Catalonia, the kingdom of Aragon, that of Valencia, and other countries
subject to the dominion of Ferdinand; the greater part of whom perished
miserably; so that they compare the calamities that they suffered during
this period to those they experienced under Titus and Vespasian. This
expulsion of the Jews gave incredible joy to all Catholic sovereigns.
Some divines blamed these edicts of the king of Spain; their principal
reasons are that unbelievers ought not to be constrained to embrace the
faith of Jesus Christ, and that these violences are a disgrace to our
religion.
But these arguments are very weak, and I contend, says Paramo, that the
edict is pious, just, and praiseworthy, as the violence with which the
Jews are required to be converted is not an absolute but a conditional
violence, since they might avoid it by quitting their country. Besides,
they might corrupt those of the Jews who were newly converted, and even
Christians themselves; but, as St. Paul says, what communion is there
between justice and iniquity, light and darkness, Jesus Christ and
Belial?
With respect to the confiscation of their goods, nothing could be more
equitable, as they had acquired them only by usury towards Christians,
who only received back, therefore, what was in fact their own.
In short, by the death of our Lord, the Jews became slaves, and
everything that a slave possesses belongs to his master. We could not
but suspend our narrative for a moment to make these remarks, in
opposition to persons who have thus calumniated the piety, the spotless
justice, and the sanctity of the Catholic king.
At Seville, where an example of severity to the Jews was ardently
desired, it was the holy will of God, who knows how to draw good out of
evil, that a young man who was in waiting in consequence of an
assignation, should see through the chinks of a partition an assembly of
Jews, and in consequence inform against them. A great number of the
unhappy wretches were apprehended, and punished as they deserved. By
virtue of different edicts of the kings of Spain, and of the
inquisitors, general and particular, established in that kingdom, there
were, in a very short time, about two thousand heretics burned at
Seville, and more than four thousand from 1482 to 1520. A vast number of
others were condemned to perpetual imprisonment, or exposed to
inflictions of different descriptions. The emigration from it was so
great that five hundred houses were supposed to be left in consequence
quite empty, and in the whole diocese, three thousand; and altogether
more than a hundred thousand heretics were put to death, or punished in
some other manner, or went into banishment to avoid severer suffering.
Such was the destruction of heretics accomplished by these pious
brethren.
The establishment of the Inquisition at Toledo was a fruitful source of
revenue to the Catholic Church. In the short space of two years it
actually burned at the stake fifty-two obstinate heretics, and two
hundred and twenty more were outlawed; whence we may easily conjecture
of what utility the Inquisition has been from its original
establishment, since in so short a period it performed such wonders.
From the beginning of the fifteenth century, Pope Boniface IX. attempted
in vain to establish the Inquisition in Portugal, where he created the
provincial of the Dominicans, Vincent de Lisbon, inquisitor-general.
Innocent VII., some years after, having named as inquisitor the Minim
Didacus de Sylva, King John I. wrote to that pope that the establishment
of the Inquisition in his kingdom was contrary to the good of his
subjects, to his own interests, and perhaps also to the interests of
religion.
The pope, affected by the representations of a too mild and easy
monarch, revoked all the powers granted to the inquisitors newly
established, and authorized Mark, bishop of Senigaglia, to absolve the
persons accused; which he accordingly did. Those who had been deprived
of their dignities and offices were re-established in them, and many
were delivered from the fear of the confiscation of their property.
But how admirable, continues Paramo, is the Lord in all his ways! That
which the sovereign pontiffs had been unable effectually to obtain with
all their urgency, King John granted spontaneously to a dexterous
impostor, whom God made use of as an instrument for accomplishing the
good work. In fact, the wicked are frequently useful instruments in
God's hands, and he does not reject the good they bring about. Thus,
when John remarks to our Lord Jesus Christ, "Lord, we saw one who was
not Thy disciple casting out demons in Thy name, and we prevented him
from doing so," Jesus answered him, "Prevent him not; for he who works
miracles in My name will not speak ill of Me; and he who is not against
Me is for Me."
Paramo relates afterwards that he saw in the library of St. Laurence, at
the Escorial, a manuscript in the handwriting of Saavedra, in which that
knave details his fabrication of a false bull, and obtaining thereby his
_entrée_ into Seville as legate, with a train of a hundred and twenty
domestics; his defrauding of thirteen thousand ducats the heirs of a
rich nobleman in that neighborhood, during his twenty days' residence in
the palace of the archbishop, by producing a counterfeit bond for the
same sum, which the nobleman acknowledged, in that instrument, to have
borrowed of the legate when he visited Rome; and finally, after his
arrival at Badajoz, the permission granted him by King John III., to
whom he was presented by means of forged letters of the pope, to
establish tribunals of the Inquisition in the principal cities of the
kingdom.
These tribunals began immediately to exercise their jurisdiction; and a
vast number of condemnations and executions of relapsed heretics took
place, as also of absolutions of recanting and penitent heretics. Six
months had passed in this manner, when the truth was made apparent of
that expression in the Gospel, "There is nothing hid which shall not be
made known." The Marquis de Villeneuve de Barcarotta, a Spanish
nobleman, assisted by the governor of Mora, had the impostor apprehended
and conducted to Madrid. He was there carried before John de Tavera,
archbishop of Toledo. That prelate, perfectly astonished at all that now
transpired of the knavery and address of the false legate, despatched
all the depositions and documents relative to the case to Pope Paul
III.; as he did also the acts of the inquisitions which Saavedra had
established, and by which it appeared that a great number of heretics
had already been judged and condemned, and that the impostor had
extorted from his victims more than three hundred thousand ducats.
The pope could not help acknowledging in this the finger of God and a
miracle of His providence; he accordingly formed the congregation of the
tribunal of the Inquisition, under the denomination of "The Holy
Office," in 1545, and Sixtus V. confirmed it in 1588.
All writers but one agree with Paramo on the subject of the
establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal. Antoine de Sousa alone, in
his "Aphorisms of Inquisitors," calls the history of Saavedra in
question, under the pretence that he may very easily be conceived to
have accused himself without being in fact guilty, in consideration of
the glory which would redound to him from the event, and in the hope of
living in the memory of mankind. But Sousa, in the very narrative which
he substitutes for that of Paramo, exposes himself to the suspicion of
bad faith, in citing two bulls of Paul III., and two others from the
same pope to Cardinal Henry, the king's brother; bulls which Sousa has
not introduced into his printed work, and which are not to be found in
any collection of apostolical bulls extant; two decisive reasons for
rejecting his opinion, and adhering to that of Paramo, Hiescas, Salasar,
Mendoça, Fernandez, and Placentinus.
When the Spaniards passed over to America they carried the Inquisition
with them; the Portuguese introduced it in the Indies, immediately upon
its being established at Lisbon, which led to the observation which
Louis de Paramo makes in his preface, that this flourishing and verdant
tree had extended its branches and its roots throughout the world, and
produced the most pleasant fruits.
In order to form some correct idea of the jurisprudence of the
Inquisition, and the forms of its proceedings, unknown to civil
tribunals, let us take a cursory view of the "Directory of Inquisitors,"
which Nicolas Eymeric, grand inquisitor of the kingdom of Aragon about
the middle of the fourteenth century, composed in Latin, and addressed
to his brother inquisitors, in virtue of the authority of his office.
A short time after the invention of printing, an edition of this work
was printed at Barcelona, and soon conveyed to all the inquisitions in
the Christian world. A second edition appeared at Rome in 1578, in
folio, with scholia and commentaries by Francois Pegna, doctor in
theology and canonist.
The following eulogium on the work is given by the editor in an epistle
dedicatory to Gregory XIII.: "While Christian princes are everywhere
engaged in combating with arms the enemies of the Catholic religion, and
pouring out the blood of their soldiers to support the unity of the
Church and the authority of the apostolic see, there are also zealous
and devoted writers, who toil in obscurity, either to refute the
opinions of innovators or to arm and direct the power of the laws
against their persons, in order that the severity of punishments, and
the solemnity and torture attending executions, keeping them within the
bounds of duty, may produce that effect upon them which cannot be
produced in them by the love of virtue.
"Although I fill only the lowest place among these defenders of
religion, I am nevertheless animated with the same zeal for repressing
the impious audacity and horrible depravity of the broachers of
innovation. The labor which I here present to you on the 'Directory of
Inquisitions,' will be a proof of my assertion. This work of Nicolas
Eymeric, respectable for its antiquity, contains a summary of the
principal articles of faith, and an elaborate and methodical code of
instruction for the tribunals of the Holy Inquisition, on the means
which they ought to employ for the repression and extirpation of
heretics; on which account I felt it my duty to offer it in homage to
your holiness, as the chief of the Christian republic."
He declares, elsewhere, that he had it reprinted for the instruction of
inquisitors; that the work is as much to be admired as respected, and
teaches with equal piety and learning the proper means of repressing and
exterminating heretics. He acknowledges, however, that he is in
possession of other useful and judicious methods, for which he refers to
practice, which will instruct much more effectually than any lessons,
and that he more readily thus silently refers to practice, as there are
certain matters relating to the subject which it is of importance not to
divulge, and which, at the same time, are generally well known to
inquisitors. He cites a vast number of writers, all of whom have
followed the doctrine of the "Directory"; and he even complains that
many have availed themselves of it without ascribing any honor to
Eymeric for the good things they have in fact stolen from him.
We will secure ourselves from any reproach of this description, by
pointing out exactly what we mean to borrow both from the author and the
editor. Eymeric says, in the fifty-eighth page, "Commiseration for the
children of the criminal, who by the severity used towards him are
reduced to beggary, should never be permitted to mitigate that severity,
since both by divine and human laws children are punished for the faults
of their fathers."
Page 123. "If a charge entered for prosecution were destitute of every
appearance of truth, the inquisitor should not on that account expunge
it from his register, because what at one period has not been
discovered, may be so at another."
Page 291. "It is necessary for the inquisitor to oppose cunning and
stratagem to those employed by heretics, that he may thus pay the
offenders in their own coin, and be enabled to adopt the language of the
apostle, 'Being crafty, I caught you with guile.'"
Page 296. "The information and depositions (_procès-verbal_) may be read
over to the accused, completely suppressing the names of the accusers;
and then it is for him to conjecture who the persons are that have
brought against him any particular charges, to challenge them as
incompetent witnesses, or to weaken their testimony by contrary
evidence. This is the method generally used. The accused must not be
permitted to imagine that challenges of witnesses will be easily allowed
in cases of heresy, for it is of no consequence whether witnesses are
respectable or infamous, accomplices in the prisoner's offence,
excommunicated, heretical, or in any manner whatever guilty, or
perjured, etc. This has been so ruled in favor of the faith."
Page 202. "The appeal which a prisoner makes from the Inquisition does
not preclude that tribunal from trial and sentence of him upon other
heads of accusation."
Page 313. "Although the form of the order for applying the torture may
suppose variation in the answers of the accused, and also in addition
sufficient presumptive evidence against him for putting him to the
question; both these circumstances are not necessary, and either will be
sufficient for the purpose without the other."
Pegna informs us, in the hundred and eighteenth scholium on the third
book, that inquisitors generally employ only five kinds of torture when
putting to the question, although Marsilius mentions fifteen kinds, and
adds, that he has imagined others still--such, for example, as
precluding the possibility of sleep, in which he is approved by
Grillandus and Locatus.
Eymeric continues, page 319: "Care should be taken never to state in the
form of absolution, that the prisoner is innocent, but merely that there
was not sufficient evidence against him; a precaution necessary to
prevent the prisoner, absolved in one case, from pleading that
absolution in defence against any future charge that may be brought
against him."
Page 324. "Sometimes abjuration and canonical purgation are prescribed
together. This is done, when, to a bad reputation of an individual in
point of doctrine are joined inconsiderable presumptions, which, were
they a little stronger, would tend to convict him of having really said
or done something injurious to the faith. The prisoner who stands in
these circumstances is compelled to abjure all heresy in general; and
after that, if he falls into any heresy of any description whatever,
however different from those which may have constituted the matter of
the present charge or suspicion against him, he is punished as a
relapsed person, and delivered over to the secular arm."
Page 331. "Relapsed persons, when the relapse is clearly proved, must be
delivered up to secular justice, whatever protestation they may make as
to their future conduct, and whatever contrition they may express. The
inquisitor will, in such circumstances, inform the secular authorities,
that on such a particular day and hour, and in such a particular place,
a heretic will be delivered up to them and should provide that notice be
given to the public that they will be expected to be present at the
ceremony, as the inquisitor will deliver a sermon on the occasion in
defence of the true faith, and those who attend will obtain the usual
indulgences."
These indulgences are accordingly detailed: after the form of sentence
given against the penitent heretic, the inquisitor will grant forty
days' indulgence to all persons present; three years to those who
contributed to the apprehension, abjuration, condemnation, etc., of the
said heretic; and finally, three years also will be granted by our holy
father, the pope, to all who will denounce any other heretic.
Page 332. "When the culprit has been delivered over to the secular
authority, it shall pronounce its sentence, and the criminal shall be
conveyed to the place of punishment; some pious persons shall accompany
him, and associate him in their prayers, and even pray with him; and not
leave him till he has rendered up his soul to his Creator. But it is
their duty to take particular care neither to say or to do anything
which may hasten the moment of his death, for fear of falling into some
irregularity. Accordingly, they should not exhort the criminal to mount
the scaffold, or present himself to the executioner, or advise the
executioner to get ready and arrange his instruments of punishment, so
that the death may take place more quickly, and the prisoner be
prevented from lingering; all for the sake of avoiding irregularity."
Page 335. "Should it happen that the heretic, when just about to be
fixed to the stake to be burned, were to give signs of conversion, he
might, perhaps, out of singular lenity and favor, be allowed to be
received and shut up, like penitent heretics, within four walls,
although it would be weak to place much reliance on a confession of this
nature, and the indulgence is not authorized by any express law; such
lenity, however, is very dangerous. I was witness of an example in point
at Barcelona: A priest who was condemned, with two other impenitent
heretics, to be burned, and who was actually in the midst of the flames,
called on the bystanders to pull him out instantly, for he was willing
to be converted; he was accordingly extricated, dreadfully scorched on
one side. I do not mean to decide whether this was well or ill done; but
I know that, fourteen years afterwards, he was still dogmatizing, and
had corrupted a considerable number of persons; he was therefore once
more given up to justice, and was burned to death."
"No person doubts," says Pegna, scholium 47, "that heretics ought to be
put to death; but the particular method of execution may well be a topic
of discussion." Alphonso de Castro, in the second book of his work, "On
the Just Punishment of Heretics," considers it a matter of great
indifference whether they are destroyed by the sword, by fire, or any
other method; but Hostiensis Godofredus, Covarruvias, Simancas, Roxas,
etc., maintain that they ought decidedly to be burned. In fact, as
Hostiensis very well expressed it, execution by fire is the punishment
appropriate to heresy. We read in St. John, "If any one remain not in
me, he shall be cast forth, as a branch, and wither, and men shall
gather it and cast it into the fire and burn it." "It may be added,"
continued 'Pegna, "that the universal custom of the Christian republic
is in support of this opinion. Simancas and Roxas decide that heretics
ought to be burned alive; but one precaution should always be taken in
burning them, which is tearing out the tongue and keeping the mouth
perfectly closed, in order to prevent their scandalizing the spectators
by their impieties."
Finally, page 369, Eymeric enjoins those whom he addresses to proceed in
matters of heresy straight forward, without any wranglings of advocates,
and without so many forms and solemnities as are generally employed in
criminal cases; that is, to make the process as short as possible, by
cutting off useless delays, by going on with the hearing and trial of
such causes, even on days when the labors of the other judges are
suspended; by disallowing every appeal which has for its apparent object
merely a postponement of final judgment; and by not admitting an
unnecessary multitude of witnesses, etc.
This revolting system of jurisprudence has simply been put under some
restriction in Spain and Portugal; while at Milan the Inquisition itself
has at length been entirely suppressed.
SECTION II.
The Inquisition is well known to be an admirable and truly Christian
invention for increasing the power of the pope and monks, and rendering
the population of a whole kingdom hypocrites.
St. Dominic is usually considered as the person to whom the world is
principally indebted for this institution. In fact, we have still extant
a patent granted by that great saint, expressed precisely in the
following words: "I, brother Dominic, reconcile to the Church Roger, the
bearer of these presents, on condition of his being scourged by a priest
on three successive Sundays from the entrance of the city to the church
doors; of his abstaining from meat all his life; of his fasting for the
space of three Lents in a year; of his never drinking wine; of his
carrying about him the '_san benito_' with crosses; of his reciting the
breviary every day, and ten paternosters in the course of the day, and
twenty at midnight; of his preserving perfect chastity, and of his
presenting himself every month before the parish priest, etc.; the whole
under pain of being treated as heretical, perjured, and impenitent."
Although Dominic was the real founder of the Inquisition, yet Louis de
Paramo, one of the most respectable writers and most brilliant
luminaries of the Holy Office, relates, in the second chapter of his
second book, that God was the first institutor of the Holy Office, and
that he exercised the power of the preaching brethren, that is of the
Dominican Order, against Adam. In the first place Adam is cited before
the tribunal: "_Adam ubi es?_"--Adam, where art thou? "And in fact,"
adds Paramo, "the want of this citation would have rendered the whole
procedure of God null."
The dresses formed of skins, which God made for Adam and Eve, were the
model of the "_san benito_," which the Holy Office requires to be worn
by heretics. It is true that, according to this argument, God was the
first tailor; it is not, however, the less evident, on account of that
ludicrous and profane inference, that he was the first inquisitor.
Adam was deprived of the immovable property he possessed in the
terrestrial paradise, and hence the Holy Office confiscates the property
of all whom it condemns.
Louis de Paramo remarks, that the inhabitants of Sodom were burned as
heretics because their crime is a formal heresy. He thence passes to the
history of the Jews: and in every part of it discovers the Holy Office.
Jesus Christ is the first inquisitor of the new law; the popes were
inquisitors by divine right; and they afterwards communicated their
power to St. Dominic.
He afterwards estimates the number of all those whom the Inquisition has
put to death; he states it to be considerably above a hundred thousand.
His book was printed in 1589, at Madrid, with the approbation of
doctors, the eulogiums of bishops, and the privilege of the king. We
can, at the present day, scarcely form any idea of horrors at once so
extravagant and abominable; but at that period nothing appeared more
natural and edifying. All men resemble Louis de Paramo when they are
fanatics.
Paramo was a plain, direct man, very exact in dates, omitting no
interesting fact, and calculating with precision the number of human
victims immolated by the Holy Office throughout the world.
He relates, with great naïveté, the establishment of the Inquisition in
Portugal, and coincides perfectly with four other historians who have
treated of that subject. The following account they unanimously agree
in:
_Singular. Establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal._
Pope Boniface had long before, at the beginning of the fifteenth
century, delegated some Dominican friars to go to Portugal, from one
city to another, to burn heretics, Mussulmans, and Jews; but these were
itinerant and not stationary; and even the kings sometimes complained of
the vexations caused by them. Pope Clement VII. was desirous of giving
them a fixed residence in Portugal, as they had in Aragon and Castile.
Difficulties, however, arose between the court of Rome and that of
Lisbon; tempers became irritated, the Inquisition suffered by it, and
was far from being perfectly established.
In 1539, there appeared at Lisbon a legate of the pope, who came, he
said, to establish the holy Inquisition on immovable foundations. He
delivered his letters to King John III. from Pope Paul III. He had other
letters from Rome for the chief officers of the court; his patents as
legate were duly sealed and signed; and he exhibited the most ample
powers for creating a grand inquisitor and all the judges of the Holy
Office. He was, however, in fact an impostor of the name of Saavedra,
who had the talent of counterfeiting hand-writings, seals, and
coats-of-arms. He had acquired the art at Rome, and was perfected in it
at Seville, at which place he arrived in company with two other
sharpers. His train was magnificent, consisting of more than a hundred
and twenty domestics. To defray, at least in part, the enormous expense
with which all this splendor was attended, he and his associates
borrowed at Seville large sums in the name of the apostolic chamber of
Rome; everything was concerted with the most consummate art.
[Illustration: THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE INQUISITION IN PORTUGAL]
The king of Portugal was at first perfectly astonished at the pope's
despatching a legate to him without any previous announcement to him of
his intention. The legate hastily observed that in a concern so urgent
as that of establishing the Inquisition on a firm foundation, his
holiness could admit of no delays, and that the king might consider
himself honored by the holy father's having appointed a legate to be the
first person to announce his intention. The king did not venture to
reply. The legate on the same day constituted a grand inquisitor, and
sent about collectors to receive the tenths; and before the court could
obtain answers from Rome to its representations on the subject, the
legate had brought two hundred victims to the stake, and collected more
than two hundred thousand crowns.
However, the marquis of Villanova, a Spanish nobleman, of whom the
legate had borrowed at Seville a very considerable sum upon forged
bills, determined, if possible, to repay himself the money with his own
hands, instead of going to Lisbon and exposing himself to the intrigues
and influence of the swindler there. The legate was at this time making
his circuit through the country, and happened very conveniently to be on
the borders of Spain. The marquis unexpectedly advanced upon him with
fifty men well armed, carried him off prisoner, and conducted him to
Madrid.
The whole imposture was speedily discovered at Lisbon; the Council of
Madrid condemned the legate Saavedra to be flogged and sent to the
galleys for ten years; but the most admirable circumstance was, that
Pope Paul IV. confirmed subsequently all that the impostor had
established; out of the plenitude of his divine power he rectified all
the little irregularities of the various procedures, and rendered sacred
what before was merely human. Of what importance the arm which God
employs in His sacred service?--"_Qu'importe de quel bras Dieu daigne se
servir?_"
Such was the manner in which the Inquisition became established at
Lisbon; and the whole kingdom extolled the wisdom and providence of God
on the occasion.
To conclude, the methods of procedure adopted by this tribunal are
generally known; it is well known how strongly they are opposed to the
false equity and blind reason of all other tribunals in the world. Men
are imprisoned on the mere accusation of persons the most infamous; a
son may denounce his father, and the wife her husband; the accused is
never confronted with the accusers; and the property of the person
convicted is confiscated for the benefit of the judges: such at least
was the manner of its proceeding down to our own times. Surely in this
we must perceive something decidedly divine; for it is absolutely
incomprehensible that men should have patiently submitted to this yoke.
At length Count Aranda has obtained the blessings of all Europe by
paring the nails and filing the teeth of the monster in Spain; it
breathes, however, still.
INSTINCT.
"Instinctus, _impulsus_," impulse; but what power impels us?
All feeling is instinct. A secret conformity of our organs to their
respective objects forms our instinct. It is solely by instinct that we
perform numberless involuntary movements, just as it is by instinct that
we possess curiosity, that we run after novelty, that menaces terrify
us, that contempt irritates us, that an air of submission appeases us,
and that tears soften us.
We are governed by instinct, as well as cats and goats; this is one
further circumstance in which we resemble the mere animal tribes--a
resemblance as incontestable as that of our blood, our necessities, and
the various functions of our bodies.
Our instinct is never so shrewd and skilful as theirs, and does not even
approach it; a calf and a lamb, as soon as they are born, rush to the
fountain of their mother's milk; but unless the mother of the infant
clasped it in her arms, and folded it to her bosom, it would inevitably
perish.
No woman in a state of pregnancy was ever invincibly impelled to prepare
for her infant a convenient wicker cradle, as the wren with its bill and
claws prepares a nest for her offspring. But the power of reflection
which we possess, in conjunction with two industrious hands presented to
us by nature, raises us to an equality with the instinct of animals, and
in the course of time places us infinitely above them, both in respect
to good and evil--a proposition condemned by the members of the ancient
parliament and by the Sorbonne, natural philosophers of distinguished
eminence, and who, it is well known, have admirably promoted the
perfection of the arts.
Our instinct, in the first place, impels us to beat our brother when he
vexes us, if we are roused into a passion with him and feel that we are
stronger than he is. Afterwards, our sublime reason leads us on to the
invention of arrows, swords, pikes, and at length muskets, to kill our
neighbors with.
Instinct alone urges us all to _make_ love--"_Amor omnibus idem_;" but
Virgil, Tibullus, and Ovid _sing_ it. It is from instinct alone that a
young artisan stands gazing with respect and admiration before the
superfine gilt coach of a commissioner of taxes. Reason comes to the
assistance of the young artisan; he is made a collector; he becomes
polished; he embezzles; he rises to be a great man in his turn, and
dazzles the eyes of his former comrades as he lolls at ease in his own
carriage, more profusely gilded than that which originally excited his
admiration and ambition.
What is this instinct which governs the whole animal kingdom, and which
in us is strengthened by reason or repressed by habit? Is it "_divinæ
particula auræ_?" Yes, undoubtedly it is something divine; for
everything is so. Everything is the incomprehensible effect of an
incomprehensible cause. Everything is swayed, is impelled by nature. We
reason about everything, and originate nothing.
INTEREST.
We shall teach men nothing, when we tell them that everything we do is
done from interest. What! it will be said, is it from motives of
interest that the wretched fakir remains stark naked under the burning
sun, loaded with chains, dying with hunger, half devoured by vermin, and
devouring them in his turn? Yes, most undoubtedly it is; as we have
stated elsewhere, he depends upon ascending to the eighteenth heaven,
and looks with an eye of pity on the man who will be admitted only into
the ninth.