PARIS, October, 1805.
MY LORD:--Before Bonaparte set out for the Rhine, the Pope’s Nuncio was
for the first time publicly rebuked by him in Madame Bonaparte’s
drawing-room, and ordered loudly to write to Rome and tell His Holiness
to think himself fortunate in continuing to govern the Ecclesiastical
States, without interfering with the ecclesiastical arrangements that
might be thought necessary or proper by the Government in France.
Bonaparte’s policy is to promote among the first dignitaries of the
Gallican Church the brothers or relatives of his civil or military
supporters; Cambacere’s brother is, therefore, an Archbishop and
Cardinal, and one of Lebrun’s, and two of Berthier’s cousins are Bishops.
As, however, the relatives of these Senators, Ministers, or generals,
have, like themselves, figured in many of the scandalous and blasphemous
scenes of the Revolution, the Pope has sometimes hesitated about
sanctioning their promotions. This was the case last summer, when
General Dessolles’s brother was transferred from the Bishopric of Digne
to that of Chambry, and Bonaparte nominated for his successor the brother
of General Miollis, who was a curate of Brignoles, in the diocese of Aix.
This curate had not only been one of the first to throw up his letters of
priesthood at the Jacobin Club at Aix, but had also sacrilegiously denied
the divinity of the Christian religion, and proposed, in imitation of
Parisian atheists, the worship of a Goddess of Reason in a common
prostitute with whom he lived. The notoriety of these abominations made
even his parishioners at Brignoles unwilling to go to church, and to
regard him as their pastor, though several of them had been imprisoned,
fined, and even transported as fanatics, or as refractory.
During the negotiation with Cardinal Fesch last year, the Pope had been
promised, among other things, that, for the future, his conscience should
not be wounded by having presented to him for the prelacy any persons but
those of the purest morals of the French Empire; and that all his
objections should be attended to, in case of promotions; his scruples
removed, or his refusal submitted to. When Cardinal Fesch demanded His
Holiness’s Bull for the curate Miollis, the Cardinal Secretary of State,
Gonsalvi, showed no less than twenty acts of apostasy and blasphemy,
which made him unworthy of such a dignity. To this was replied that,
having obtained an indulgence in toto for what was past, he was a proper
subject; above all, as he had the protection of the Emperor of the
French. The Pope’s Nuncio here then addressed himself to our Minister of
the Ecclesiastical Department, Portalis, who advised him not to speak to
Bonaparte of a matter upon which his mind had been made up; he,
nevertheless, demanded an audience, and it was in consequence of this
request that he, in his turn, became acquainted with the new Imperial
etiquette and new Imperial jargon towards the representatives of
Sovereigns. On the same evening the Nuncio expedited a courier to Rome,
and I have heard to-day that the nomination of Miollis is confirmed by
the Pope.
From this relatively trifling occurrence, His Holiness might judge of the
intention of our Government to adhere to its other engagements; but at
Rome, as well as in most other Continental capitals, the Sovereign is the
dupe of the perversity of his Counsellors and Ministers, who are the
tools, and not seldom the pensioners, of the Cabinet of St. Cloud.
But in the kingdom of Italy the parishes and dioceses are, if possible,
still worse served than in this country. Some of the Bishops there,
after having done duty in the National Guards, worn the Jacobin cap, and
fought against their lawful Prince, now live in open adultery; and, from
their intrigues, are the terror of all the married part of their flock.
The Bishop of Pavia keeps the wife of a merchant, by whom he has two
children; and, that the public may not be mistaken as to their real
father, the merchant received a sum of money to establish himself at
Brescia, and has not seen his wife for these two years past. General
Gourion, who was last spring in Italy, has assured me that he read the
advertisement of a curate after his concubine, who had eloped with
another curate; and that the Police Minister at Milan openly licensed
women to be the housekeepers of priests.
A grand vicar, Sarini, at Bologna, was, in 1796, a friar, but
relinquished then the convent for the tent, and exchanged the breviary
for the musket. He married a nun of one cloister, from whom he procured
a divorce in a month, to unite himself with an Abbess of another,
deserted by him in her turn for the wife of an innkeeper, who robbed and
eloped from her husband. Last spring he returned to the bosom of the
Church, and, by making our Empress a present of a valuable diamond cross,
of which he had pillaged the statue of a Madonna, he obtained the dignity
of a grand vicar, to the great edification, no doubt, of all those who
had seen him before the altar or in the camp, at the brothel, or in the
hospital.
Another grand vicar of the same Bishop, in the same city, of the name of
Rami, has two of his illegitimate children as singing-boys in the same
cathedral where he officiates as a priest. Their mother is dead, but her
daughter, by another priest, is now their father’s mistress. This
incestuous commerce is so little concealed that the girl does the honours
of the grand vicar’s house, and, with naivete enough, tells the guests
and visitors of her happiness in having succeeded her mother. I have
this anecdote from an officer who heard her make use of that expression.
In France, our priests, I fear, are equally as debauched and
unprincipled; but, in yielding to their vicious propensities, they take
care to save the appearance of virtue, and, though their guilt is the
same, the scandal is less. Bonaparte pretends to be severe against all
those ecclesiastics who are accused of any irregularities after having
made their peace with the Church. A curate of Picardy, suspected of
gallantry, and another of Normandy, accused of inebriety, were last
month, without further trial or ceremony than the report of the Minister
Portalis, delivered over to Fouche, who transported them to Cayenne,
after they had been stripped of their gowns. At the same time, Cardinal
Cambaceres and Cardinal Fesch, equally notorious for their excesses, were
taken no notice of, except that they were laughed at in our Court
circles.
I am, almost every day, more and more convinced that our Government is
totally indifferent about what becomes of our religious establishment
when the present race of priests is extinguished; which, in the course of
nature, must happen in less than thirty years. Our military system and
our military education discourage all young men from entering into
orders; while, at the same time, the army is both more honourable and
more profitable than the Church. Already we want curates, though several
have been imported from Germany and Spain, and, in some departments,
four, and even six parishes have only one curate to serve them all. The
Bishops exhort, and the parents advise their children to study theology;
but then the law of conscription obliges the student of theology, as well
as the student of philosophy, to march together; and, when once in the
ranks, and accustomed to the licentiousness of a military life, they are
either unwilling, unfit, or unworthy to return to anything else. The
Pope, with all his entreaties, and with all his prayers, was unable to
procure an exception from the conscription of young men preparing
themselves for priesthood. Bonaparte always answered: “Holy Father, were
I to consent to your demand, I should soon have an army of priests,
instead of an army of soldiers.” Our Emperor is not unacquainted with
the real character and spirit of his Volunteers. When the Pope
represented the danger of religion expiring in France, for want of
priests to officiate at the altars, he was answered that Bonaparte, at
the beginning of his consulate, found neither altars nor priests in
France; that if his reign survived the latter, the former would always be
standing, and survive his reign. He trusted that the chief of the Church
would prevent them from being deserted. He assured him that when once he
had restored the liberties of the seas, and an uninterrupted tranquillity
on the Continent, he should attend more, and perhaps entirely, to the
affairs of the Church. He consented, however, that the Pope might
institute, in the Ecclesiastical States, a seminary for two hundred young
Frenchmen, whom he would exempt from military conscription. This is the
stock from which our Church establishment is to be supplied!