The Earlier Crises.
The history of Christ's Church on earth has ever been a story of storm and stress. The faithful heart of today mourns in discouragement over the evils that afflict the Church in the opening decade of the twentieth century; yet it needs but a glance at the past to convince us that the severest trials of the Spouse of Christ have happened in times long gone by. She has seen the tempest arise out of the clear sky; the clouds of persecution have hung low, at times even enveloping her in their gloomy shadows; she has seen the lightning's flash and heard the loud roar of the thunders of human wrath, while the hurricane swept over the face of the earth overturning the fondest memorials of her progress, and levelling to the dust the proudest monuments of her civilization. She has prostrated herself to the ground and with buried face has called upon the mercy of God to comfort her sorrow and heal her wounds. And when the storm has passed, she has lifted up her eyes to behold the glory of a newer day, the rainbow of hope, telling of that ancient promise: "For, behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world."
The story of the past has been told too often to need repetition in this place. Our interest lies entirely with modern days, with the struggle of the Church against the spirit of anti-Christ incarnate in all the movements of error from the sixteenth century until our own times. And thus, while we are seeking the causes of that anti-Christian spirit, we cannot help regarding with interest the influence exerted by the Protestant Reformation upon the intellectual and moral life of Europe. The abandonment of the old faith led, by a natural sequence, to estrangement from Christianity itself. This is so palpable that it is surprising how the innovators could have overlooked the fact that to abuse and ruin the one meant the wounding and destruction of the other. Indeed, had not organized Catholicity existed at the time, and in its then form, there would have been no concrete Christianity to reform, but only some archaeological remnants out of which it would have been difficult to construct even an imperfect idea of the religion of Christ.
Coincident with the great revolt against the Church was the impetus given to the study of the natural sciences. This coincidence, unhappily, assumed to the unthinking the appearance of cause and effect, as if the intellectual powers of man had been stunted and repressed under the regime of ecclesiastical authority, to be freed and exercised in a time of revolt against the Church. This unfortunate conviction was gradually instilled into the minds of the masses by men brilliant of intellect, but unscrupulous in their hatred of the Church and of her teachings. The people accepted the premise and followed it out to its conclusion; that Catholicity should be regarded as an enemy, and as such should be persecuted and destroyed. They were unable to measure the force of circumstances surrounding the new unfolding of the physical sciences, to recognize the evil character of many champions of the new order, or the glamor which the awakening of new studies cast upon minds hitherto engrossed with the sober logic of the schools. The fact, moreover, that many of the old theories with regard to natural phenomena must eventually have yielded to the processes of scientific evolution had not occurred to them. All these were forgotten or missed in the enthusiasm for the novelties of nature, and under the influence of a gaudy literature they permitted themselves to believe that the Church was responsible for the tardiness of the awakening, and hence that she should be discarded, that Christianity as a consequence should be uprooted, and that the intellect should acknowledge no other deity than the impersonal God of nature.
Moreover, the Church had ever been recognized as the supreme authority in the matter of Christian morality. To attack, therefore, her existence could mean nothing less than to open wide the floodgates of iniquity, to cast down the barriers that had hitherto restrained the evil passions, and to proclaim the reign of license and anarchy. These fatal conditions, taking their rise in the sixteenth century, grew into palpable being and gave place later to that monster of iniquity which today holds half of the world in its grasp.
JANSENISM.
The influences of the Protestant revolt were more far-reaching than the limits of any provincial or national territory, for although the Council of Trent, in 1545, had met the challenge of European discontent with a rigid investigation into every disputed point of ecclesiastical discipline, nevertheless the roots of the new heresy penetrated by secret channels into those very countries which had repudiated the advances of Luther, and taken their stand upon the basis of Roman Catholic unity. It was but natural that a people nurtured upon the living bread of Apostolic doctrine as delivered to them through the ministry of the Holy See should look with distrust upon the excessive and destructive theories of the German Protestantism. They found, however, in the morbid doctrines of Calvin a certain weird and uncanny attraction, which like an hypnotic obsession led them on until they mistook empty and high-sounding formulas for the clear light of truth. It was not that they did not see much that was repugnant and absolutely untenable in Calvinism; nor would they openly espouse the outward organization which the heretic called his church; but they hoped to find a middle path as far removed from the rigid fatality of the Genevan heresiarch as it would be from what they would call, the laxity of the Roman Church. Out of the resulting confusion was born the spirit of Jansenism, which proved to be little else than the Calvinistic heresy disguised under the external forms of Catholic unity. It was a heresy all the more dangerous that its assaults were not directed in the open and from the outside, but were nurtured within the very household of the faith, where it spent its arrows of discontent upon the children of the Sanctuary kneeling in devotion under the shadow of the altar.
Midway between the strongholds of Luther and Calvin lay the country of the Netherlands, rendered important at the time through the influence of its celebrated University of Louvain. Out of its curious people came that Cornelius Jansen whose name was to acquire a questionable celebrity through his championship of the new idea. A quondam conspirator in the interests of Philip II., he had been raised, for his services in that direction, to the See of Ypres. For twenty years he studied in his own way the great tomes of St. Augustine, reading his whole works ten times over, and his refutation of the Pelagians as many as thirty times. It was a period when theologians were much interested in grace, free will, predestination, and kindred questions. The Church had already condemned the theories of Baius in that regard, and Calvin's errors, which he claimed to have found in St. Augustine, had been refuted time and again. It was the work of Jansen to revive in a more classical form all these condemned doctrines and to seal them by an appeal to St. Augustine. To this end he finished before his death, in 1638, an immense work entitled Augustinus, which, however, was not published until 1640, two years after his death.
Its heretical character was immediately recognized. The University of Paris censured five leading propositions extracted from the work, which were in turn formally condemned by Pope Urban VIII., in 1642. The Jansenists, however, endeavored to meet the Papal condemnation with casuistic subtlety. They resorted to a distinction between the orthodox sense of the propositions and the heretical sense in which they might be read; they thus claimed that Jansen understood them only in their orthodox sense, while they agreed that the propositions were rightly condemned in a heretical sense. Hence they declared that the five propositions were either not at all contained in the work of Jansen, or at least that they were not there in the sense condemned by the Bull of Urban VIII. To these observations Pope Alexander VII. replied by the Bull of 1656, wherein he condemned such distinctions, declaring that the five propositions were taken from the work of Jansen, and that they were condemned in the sense of that author. The Jansenists retorted by asserting that the Papal Bull was only a simple regulation of discipline, and that it could exact nothing more than a respectful silence. Practically the whole action of the new sectaries amounted to an effort to restrict the scope of Papal infallibility, in as much as they declared the Pope might rightly adjudicate in regard to dogmatic doctrines, but not in regard to dogmatic facts. Thus, he was right in condemning the five propositions, as they held, but wrong in declaring that Jansen taught them in a heretical sense. This distinction was formally condemned by Clement XI. in 1705, and the bishops and prelates of France were obliged to subscribe to a formula declaring that they condemned the propositions with heart as well as with lips, according to the mind of the Holy Father.
The novelty of the Jansenistic ideas raised up, especially in France, a coterie of supporters, brilliant of intellect, but entirely dominated by pride and egotism. Foremost of these was the Abbe St. Cyran, who became the sponsor of the Jansenistic doctrine after the death of its inventor. A Calvinist in sentiment, however orthodox by profession, his career was hardly such as might be expected of an apostle of truth. His treasonable life had awakened the hostility of the great Richelieu long before the advent of Jansenism, and he had spent years of weary confinement in the prison of Vincennes. His character was one of duplicity as is evident from his general tone of teaching. It was he who, one day, informed St. Vincent de Paul, that he would speak the truth in one place if he thought the truth would be appreciated there, and its opposite where ever he should find the people unable to apprehend the truth. It is significant of his pride that he declared that the Holy Scriptures were clearer in his own mind than they were in themselves. This strange individual upon his liberation from prison, at the death of Richelieu, set himself up as a martyr and contrived to chant his woes into the ears of the courtly set that hovered about the French throne. He succeeded in casting the glamor of fashion over his Jansenistic theories. He was welcomed especially by the members of a family destined to hold the destinies of Jansenism in their grasp, the Arnaulds of Port Royal. There were two brothers of especial prominence, and two sisters, Angelique and Agnes, who had received their initiation into Jansenism in all good faith, but who became later on most bitter in their advocacy of principles which no true Catholic could hold. The Abbey of Port Royal, near Paris, thus became the very stronghold of the new sect and drew to its doors some of the brightest men of the day. Among these was that celebrated Pascal whose "Provincial Letters" exerted such an influence in stirring up a national hatred of the Jesuits. The Abbey of Port Royal, however, proved itself too great a factor in the seditious movements of the day. It was suppressed by a royal order in 1709, and its buildings demolished in the year following.
Just at the moment when the followers of Jansen seemed most ready to yield to the claims of saner thought, when the instructions of the Holy See were already bearing salutary fruit, the heresy took on a new lease of life, and opened up an avenue to greater dissension and error. In the year 1693 appeared a work entitled: Moral Reflections Upon the New Testament by Pasquier Quesnel, an ex-priest of the Oratory of Jesus. He was a man who had already incurred suspicion and censure. The book, although conceived in a tone of lofty piety and deep meditation, was found nevertheless to be a very storehouse of Jansenistic ideas. It was received with enthusiasm even by many pious souls whose mental acumen could not perceive the poisonous spirit that it harbored. Cardinal Noailles, Archbishop of Paris, was at first one of its strongest supporters until the book, after a critical examination by a Papal commission, was condemned by Pope Clement XI. in 1713. The Bull by which this condemnation was proclaimed was the celebrated "Unigenitus," a factor not alone in the religious, but in the political history of the eighteenth century.
After the appearance of the Bull, Cardinal Noailles forbade his people to read the "Moral Reflections," but at the same time he refused to receive the Papal Bull without some qualification. Other prelates proceeded to greater extremes than this, four of them having the hardihood to appeal from the Bull to a further Ecumenical Council. This attitude was a declaration of open rebellion; it was a call to many who had hitherto hidden behind the screen of prudent silence. A new religious faction was formed and rapidly grew in numbers. They termed themselves the Appellants from their appeal to a future council. To meet the disastrous effects of this growing schism Pope Clement XI. in 1718 put forth the severe Bull, "Pastoralis officii," wherein it was declared that anyone, though he be cardinal or bishop, refusing to accept the Bull "Unigenitus" should thereby cease to be a member of the Church. The contest went on ten years longer before Cardinal Noailles and the French episcopate with but few exceptions yielded entirely to the demands of the Holy See. The affair, however, though quieted to a great extent in the ranks of the clergy, was nevertheless secretly supported by a number of contumacious persons, and openly by the Parliament of Paris and other governmental bodies, who brought persecution to bear upon the issue. In 1746 de Beaumont, Archbishop of Paris, forbade his clergy to administer the Sacraments to any sick person who should be unable to produce a certificate from the parish priest stating that he had been to confession. He was cited before the Parliament in 1752, and was later banished from Paris. The controversy was finally settled by Clement XIV. who permitted that the Sacraments might be given to a person whose opposition to the Bull, "Unigenitus" was not notorious.
Such are the barest outlines of the rise and progress of Jansenism during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Beneath its surface lay strong and lasting issues, the effect of which is often perceptible even in our own day. One of these was its determined opposition to the Society of Jesus. Ever loyal to the Holy See and to the sound doctrine of the Church, the Jesuits could not but be an obstacle in the path of the sectaries, who in turn strove by every means for their annihilation. Both in the circles of religious life and among the courtiers and ever restless against the restraints of morality, the Jansenists pursued their foe with relentless energy. Through Pascal and his followers the resources of polite literature were brought to bear against the defenders of the faith, until, just as Jansenism was losing its last hold upon European society, their great purpose was accomplished, and the Society of Jesus was suppressed.
Into the private life of the ordinary Catholic the principles of Jansenism injected a gloom and sadness similar to the extravagant sullenness of Puritanism or its sister, Calvinism. Rigor and haughty reserve were accompanied by a false humility which caused its votaries to shun the Sacraments, to despair of God's mercy, to abandon all hope after the commission of one sin, or on the other hand a presumption without grounds upon an election which God had denied to others less fortunate. It threatened for a moment a total overturning of belief in the salutary life of grace and an utter misconception of the free will of man which must lead eventually to a wandering away from God and ultimate atheism.
That the spirit of Jansenism is not altogether dead our Holy Father, Pope Pius X. assures us in recommending the daily reception of Holy Communion: "The poison of Jansenism," he says "did not entirely disappear. The controversy as to the dispositions requisite for the lawful and laudable frequentation of the Holy Eucharist survived the declarations of the Holy See; so much so, indeed, that certain theologians of good repute judged that daily Communion should be allowed to the faithful only in rare cases and under many conditions." Our present Holy Father disposes of Jansenistic doctrines by opening up freely the graces of the Holy Sacrament even as far as its daily reception.
QUIETISM.
A movement which rivaled Jansenism in its peculiar fanaticism was that Quietism which owes its public notoriety to a Spanish priest, Michael Molinos, who in 1675 published a work entitled: Spiritual Guide Leading the Soul, by Means of Interior Progress, to Attain Perfect Contemplation, and to the Rich Treasure of Interior Peace. Therein was developed a religious system that was apparently in harmony with the most orthodox asceticism, but which upon examination proved to be fundamentally false and seducing towards the most rampant error. The writings of Molinos were condemned by Pope Innocent XI. and their author compelled to do severe penance for the harm they had caused. In substance Quietism taught that the interior life or spiritual perfection is reached when the soul, by union with God, holds itself in a thoroughly passive state with regard to everything else. In all things whether of this life or of the next, in questions of virtue as in questions of sin, the perfect soul wishes for nothing and fears nothing, not even hell; it is simply in a state of inactivity. Hence good works are not only unnecessary for salvation, but are even a hindrance to perfection, since the soul must act to perform them. Farther still went this theory in insinuating that when a person is attacked by even the grossest temptations he should never offer any positive resistance, such resistance being in itself action. Hence that the tempted person was never responsible for his actions, be they ever so infamous, since the criminality affects only the sensitive part of the soul, not the higher part which is united with God.
It is quite evident that a theory such as this could only lead to grave excesses not only in the matter of doctrine, but especially in that of morality. Examples were not wanting to show the practical workings of the new movement, which, however, rapidly disappeared under the watchful eye of the Holy See. It is worthy of note that a discussion over the orthodoxy of the writings of one of this class, a certain Madame Guyon, residing at the time in France, effected an estrangement between those two brilliant lights of the French Church, Bossuet and Fenelon. The latter, in his too great sympathy for one whom he believed too harshly judged, published a sort of defence of her. The defence was at once condemned by the Pope, and Fenelon out of the humility and true loyalty of his great heart submitted immediately and without reserve to the decision of the Holy See.
GALLICANISM.
LOUIS XIV.
In a line with Jansenism as a force destructive of the influence of Catholic grace upon modern life was the movement of Gallicanism. It differed, however, from Jansenism inasmuch as the latter affected the interior life of the Church while the former touched upon her external regimen. Its genesis can be traced far backward in history, though it never attained to proportions capable of inspiring fear until the middle of the seventeenth century. A feeling of restless annoyance at the restraints exercised by the Court of Rome upon his absolute dominion in France caused the young King Louis XIV. to regard the Holy See with something of hostility even from the beginning of his reign. In fact, were he disposed in his youth to act with fairness towards his ecclesiastical neighbor there were not wanting courtiers who instilled into his ear the notion that the Holy See was seeking his utter abasement and ought therefore to be reminded strongly of its true position. An unfortunate event in the year 1662 brought this hidden fire to a flame. At that time the Duc de Crequy was acting as ambassador of France in the Eternal City. This ambitious and testy nobleman signalized his residence in Rome by permitting and even encouraging his retainers and friends to defy the city's laws, to insult the Roman authorities and to abuse in every way possible the hospitality extended them by the Papal government. Their acts of rowdyism at length inflamed the police and the soldiery to such an extent that a body of Corsican troops in the service of the Holy Father threw off all restraint and attacked the French retainers, killing three or four of them. The ambassador abandoned Rome in an excess of fury and brought a garbled version of the affair to the ears of Louis XIV. The King in his anger retaliated by dismissing the Papal Nuncio, and demanding from the Pope the most absurd and extravagant conditions as the price of reconciliation and peace. The Holy Father, Pope Alexander VII. had been guiltless in the whole affair, he had suffered patiently the impositions of de Crequy and his lawless band, and he displayed an extreme anxiety to repair any evil committed by his own soldiery; he could not, however, yield to the exactions of the French King. Thinking to meet the warlike threats of Louis by the aid of the Catholic sovereigns, he found himself abandoned by all of them, and thus left at the mercy of the infuriated monarch. Louis XIV. had already proceeded to take possession of the Papal city of Avignon, and his armies were already on the march towards Rome for the purpose of intimidating the Holy See. The Pope perceiving that the crisis demanded immediate and radical action, agreed to many of the humiliating conditions, and thus secured an exterior appearance of peace. This was in the year 1663.
The passions of Louis XIV. were not, however, composed, and were awaiting only a favorable occasion for breaking forth into open heat. This occasion was offered in connection with a dispute concerning certain royal privileges in the ecclesiastical order, termed the Regalia. This was the right of the kings to enjoy the revenues of a vacant bishopric, and to confer, during the vacancy of a See, benefices without care of souls. The Parliament of Paris, by a sentence of 1668, had extended the regalia to all benefices which might be included in countries where the regalia had not previously obtained. King Louis XIV., by his edicts of 1673 and 1675, had confirmed that sentence, and the French clergy for fear of greater evils had approved. Two bishops, however, stood out against the edicts, and were deprived of their revenues in consequence; they were at the same time supported in their opposition by Pope Innocent XI. The Holy Father, when the question was brought before him, appealed to a decision of the Second Council of Lyons, held in 1474, which opposed the extension of the regalia. In two briefs of March and September 1677, he exhorted the French monarch to respect the rights of the vacant Sees; but when his exhortations were only disregarded, he issued two other briefs in 1678 and 1680, adding ecclesiastical menaces to his exhortations.
THE GALLICAN LIBERTIES.
It was at this juncture that Louis XIV. had recourse to his influence over the clergy in France, and perceiving that his encroachments were meeting with firmness upon the part of the Pope, he determined to effect a legal enactment whereby the powers of the Sovereign Pontiff should be made forever subservient to the will of the French king. Already in 1662 the University of the Sorbonne had signed six articles denying not only the divinely constituted primacy of the Pope, but asserting an undue independence in the powers of the king himself. To revive these articles as well as to strengthen his position in regard to the Holy See, the French Monarch convoked at Paris in 1682 an assemblage of the clergy which was attended by thirty-four archbishops and bishops, besides as many minor prelates. The members of this assemblage were invited individually by the king's order, and only such were called as were known to be in harmony with the pretensions of Louis XIV. Fenelon was not there, nor Mabillon, nor Bourdalone, nor many another brilliant light of the French Church, for the simple reason that they could not support the king in his unjust usurpations. The Convocation possessed at least one strong mind, that of Bossuet, the celebrated Bishop of Meaux, whose presence and action in such an assembly it is difficult to reconcile with his usual manly loyalty to Catholic principles. His excuse, that he hoped thereby to ward off greater evils and even schism from the Church is hardly of any value against the depressing influence of the act itself. The result of this assembly was the formal framing of the notorious Gallican Liberties which in a few words meant:
"1. That the Pope could not interfere with the temporal concerns of Princes either directly or indirectly.
"2. That in spiritual matters he was subject to a general council.
"3. That the rules and usages of the Gallican Church were inviolable.
"4. That the Pope's decision in points of faith was not infallible, unless attended by the consent of the Church."
Four days after the signing of these articles the king put forth an edict imposing their observance strictly upon all the country. His commands were as follows:
"1. We forbid all our subjects, and all foreigners resident in our kingdom, secular or regular, of whatever order, to teach in their houses, colleges, or seminaries, or to write anything contrary to the doctrine herein stated.
"2. We order that all those hereafter to be chosen to teach theology in all the colleges of each university, whether seculars or regulars, shall subscribe to the said declaration before being permitted to act; that they shall submit to teach said doctrine, and that the syndics of the faculty of theology shall present to the local ordinaries and to our attorneys-general, copies of the said submission, signed by the secretaries of the said faculties.
"3. That in all the colleges and houses of the said universities, in which there are several professors, secular or regular, one of them shall be annually appointed to teach the doctrine contained in the said declaration; and in those colleges in which there is but one professor, he shall be bound to teach that in one of every three consecutive years.
"4. We enjoin upon the syndics of the faculties of theology annually to present, before the commencement of the lectures, to the archbishops and bishops of the cities in which they shall be, and to send to our attorneys-general, the names of the professors appointed to teach said doctrine; and we enjoin the said professors to present to the said prelates the writings which they will dictate to their scholars when they shall order them.
"5. It is our will that hereafter no bachelor shall be licensed either in theology, or in canon law, or received as doctor, until he shall have maintained that doctrine in one of his theses, and having shown proof of such support in such theses to those having power to confer the degrees.
"6. We exhort and enjoin all archbishops and bishops to exert their authority to cause the doctrine maintained in the said declaration to be taught within their dioceses."
Artaud de Montor, in his Lives of the Popes writes in this connection: "Assuredly, if the archbishops and bishops made no resistance to the signing of the four articles; if they thought that such a notification might become useful to the Church; if they recognized that the authority of the Pope was to be thus boldly limited; if they thought it requisite to curb what Bruno called the Tiberine tyranny, they must now at length have discovered that they were subject to a perfectly insatiable authority, which would employ not even the language of the country to exhort and enjoin them to exert their authority in diffusing a doctrine more administrative than Christian, and more military than religious, with a view to substitute for the words of peace, concord, and mildness, new words of command, injunction, unbridled will, to which Catholicity was no longer accustomed. From the Attorney-General who thus lectures the bishops, to the Attorney-General who has immediately under his hand the secular power, there is, in such times, but a step. The same hand countersigned a document, and ordered the sword to leap from the scabbard."
In the meantime the Roman court was not idle. On the 11th of April, 1682, Pope Innocent XI. annulled the propositions by a brief, and refused to grant canonical bulls to the bishops named by King Louis XIV. The hostile attitude of France continued openly for ten years, and it was only in 1693 that the King agreed that the provisions of his edict were not to be enforced. The spirit of Gallicanism, however, after being thus fostered for a decade in the schools and colleges of France was not to be eradicated by a mere permission of tolerance. A generation had grown up imbued with its false principles and ready to cast broadside through the country the seeds of a lasting hostility towards the Papal prerogatives. In fact, all through the whole course of the eighteenth century the creed of Gallicanism governed in a large measure the whole action and liturgy of the French Church. Its attitude of independence in regard to the Holy See very naturally encouraged that rising anti-Christianism which found its most potent foe in the successor of St. Peter. Even in the nineteenth century it possessed a certain life. Napoleon, in his Organic Articles, imposed it upon the seminaries of France even more strictly than did Louis XIV., at an earlier day. It has ever been the great obstacle to Catholic unity in France, the source of persecution against the Church; and if it virtually died in that country about the time of the Vatican Council, in 1870, its absence was never more noteworthy and consoling than at the present day when the whole French episcopacy stands united to a man in its loyalty and devotion to the Holy See.
VAN ESPEN.
Scarce had the battles of Jansenism and Gallicanism been ended, than a new campaign of destruction was inaugurated against the peace and unity of the Church. Born of the confusion of Jansenism, it found a sponsor in Bernard Van Espen, the Flemish canonist, it was introduced to the world by Febronius, and it reached its development under the Austrian Emperor, Joseph II.
Until the eighteenth century the student of canon law believed his task fulfilled if he had read diligently the great Code of ecclesiastical law, if he had commented upon the Decretals, and had drawn therefrom conclusions entirely in harmony with the mind of the Church. This mode of procedure seemed altogether too slow and antiquated to Van Espen, Professor in the University of Louvain, who accordingly put forth, between the years 1693 and 1728 a new work upon the laws of the Church, the method of which was startling as its purpose was revolutionary. It was styled the Universal Ecclesiastical Law. It was no attempt to study or tabulate the old laws; it was rather an investigation, conducted in a spirit of prejudice, into the origin and authority of the laws by which the Church was governed, and an endeavor to minimize thereby the rights and prerogatives of the Roman See in favor of lesser and more recent human institutions.
The new system of Van Espen was taken up with avidity by every student who imagined he had a grievance against the Holy See. It became the order of the day to wander back piously to the primitive days of Christianity, to explore its history for evidences of modern institutions, to seek therein for the organization of the Vatican and the Roman Curia, and not finding them in days of Clement and Cletus, to raise the voice in loud protestation against the novelties introduced by the Popes. They scoured the ages of history to gather up every expression of hostility against the Temporal Power or the institution of the Cardinalate; they recorded scrupulously every complaint against the revenues of the Holy See; they revived the epithets concerning the "superstition, the fanaticism, and the darkness" of the Middle Ages. In a word they framed a system whose watchword was the destruction of the Papal supremacy, the exaltation of episcopal pretensions, and the ultimate domination of the State in the affairs of the Church.
FEBRONIANISM.
The theories of these pseudo-canonists nowhere found greater favor than among a certain class of prelates in Germany, who besides their jurisdiction as bishops of the Roman Catholic Church enjoyed the further dignity and revenues of prince-electors in the German Empire. These combinations of politician and churchman could hardly regard with favor the pre-eminence of a Bishop in Rome who claimed however justly the rights of jurisdiction in any manner over them. They thus welcomed with open arms any daring spirit who would minimize or destroy the value of the Papal supremacy, and thus leave them in undisturbed possession of their pretended rights, carrying as these did with them a broad license to all the worldly luxuries and distractions of a political court.
The prince Bishop of Treves in Germany was one of this kind, and it is not surprising that when a canonist or theologian of the new order suddenly appeared at his court that the latter should receive all the honor and encouragement such a bishop could bestow. The court of the Bishop of Treves produced in the middle of the eighteenth century such a spirit in Johannes von Hontheim, a suffragan of the electoral diocese, and better known under his pseudonym of Febronius. In 1763 appeared in Germany some copies of a mysterious quarto entitled: The State of the Church and of the Legitimate Power of the Roman Pontiff, bearing the name of Justinus Febronius, and the place of publication Bouillon, though the author was in reality Johannes von Hontheim, and the place of its publication, Frankfort-on-the-Main. The book, finally increased to five volumes, was rapidly spread throughout Europe. In Venice it appeared in two editions, Latin and Italian. In France it was translated twice. In Spain the Council of Castile defrayed in part the expenses of a new translation, and that edition according to Cardinal Capara became the law for the Court and the Nation. Portugal provided both a Latin and a Portuguese text which latter was distributed gratuitously. Germany also produced both a Latin and German edition.
The book was condemned by Clement XIII., in 1764, and anathematized by the greater number of the German bishops upon its appearance, yet it made so much noise in the world, was so highly eulogized by the ignorant, and so greedily welcomed by the enemies of the Church, besides the fact that it has served to sanction so many desolating assaults upon the faith, the hierarchy and the discipline of the Catholic Church, that it is necessary to discuss it in detail, in order to undeceive many who even today hold some of the views espoused by Febronius.
And first as to the theme around which the author has woven his network of sophisms. George Goyau, in his Catholicism, thus synopsises the whole teaching of Febronius: "Febronius recognized the Pope as the Vicar of Jesus Christ; he professes that the Church has need of a chief to direct it, and that the bonds which unite the members to the chief ought to be sacred and inviolable; he desires that the primacy be conserved in the Church with care, and that it be piously honored; and Photius who strove to sap its foundations appears to him a fool. But this primacy is to Febronius only a simple pre-eminence; all that it imports is a right of inspection and direction over the different dioceses, similar to that which an archbishop possesses with regard to his suffragans; but it does not signify that the Pope has any jurisdiction." He holds, moreover, that "The power of the keys was conferred by Christ to the whole body of the faithful; it belongs to them all radicaliter et principaliter; the bishops exercise it under the title of usufruct, usualiter et usufructualiter; while as to the Pope, he is superior to each bishop in particular in virtue of what Hontheim terms the majoritas; but that majoritas does not extend over the whole episcopal body in its entirety; the episcopal body is thus the real sovereign of the Church."
It was a consequence of such ideas that Febronius should utter the usual outcry against the "abuses" of the Roman Church, and recommend a general council of all Christians to the decisions of which all must bow. In all this he pretended to seek the furtherance of unity in the great Christian body.
The false doctrines of Febronius were met with denunciation and refutation from all reliable sources. Clement XIII. in 1764, Clement XIV. in 1769, and Pius VI. in 1775, raised their voices solemnly in condemnation of the book. The ablest theologians of the Church gave their services to combat its errors. Among these were especially Zaccaria, Amort, Kleiner and St. Alphonsus Liguori. It is noteworthy that the first refutation of Febronius came from the pen of a Lutheran, Frederick Bahrdt, in Leipzig.
Among the many able discussions upon the work of Hontheim that of the Abbe Bernier deserves to be reproduced in part, not only because it reflects the sentiment of the time, but especially for its keen exposure of the falsehoods and inconsistencies which abound in the work of the heretic. It is found in a letter to the Duke Louis Eugene of Wurtemburg dated 1775.
"It is astonishing how the Treatise on the Government of the Church and the Authority of the Pope, by Febronius has made so much noise in some of the states of Germany; neither in its depth nor in its form was this book ever capable of impressing men of intellect or such as pretend to the faculty of reasoning. Whatever of truth the author produces is taken from French theologians, particularly from Bossuet, in his Defense of the Declaration of the Clergy of France of 1682; his falsehoods and errors are extracted from Protestants and Jansenists, or from those canonists who seek to humiliate the Court of Rome in her time of trouble. Various materials, which were never intended to be taken together, have been maladroitly compiled by Febronius; he has lighted torches which destroy each other; as he never takes his stand upon principles universally admitted, he is continually falling into contradictions; he denies in one place what he affirms in another; he sustains one theory at the very time that he professes to reject it; it would be sufficient to compare the titles of the sections and chapters of his work, to perceive that he either does not understand what he writes, or that he is not in accord with himself."
The Abbe thereupon goes on to point out the most glaring contradictions in the work, and to show that to any person not yet blinded by prejudice, the very contention of the author is destroyed by his evident lack of truthfulness.
In 1778, through the influence brought to bear upon the Archbishop Elector of Treves by the Papal nuncios, Caprara and Bellisomi, Febronius was led to reconsider his action, and signed a retractation of his errors in a letter sent to Pope Pius VI. Three years later, however, in 1781, he published a Commentary on his Retraction, which served to show the spirit of insincerity which dominated him throughout his whole career. He died in 1790.
Febronianism was not so disastrous in itself as (it proved to be) in its consequences. Its immediate result was a weakening of that loyalty which Catholic peoples owe to the centre of unity in the Holy See; but through all that, it affected, in a certain way, the very foundations of the social and political life of Europe. Although its immediate effects were almost simultaneous in their action, yet for the sake of brevity we shall notice them in order. 1. The revolt of the Elector archbishops of Germany. 2. The schism of Scipio de Ricci. 3. The final development into Josepheism.
THE CONGRESS OF EMS.
For two centuries, there were three nuncios sent by the Holy See to Germany: to Vienna, to Cologne, and to Lucerne. In 1777, the new Elector of Bavaria petitioned Pius VI. for a fourth nunciature, to Munich. This measure, so just and useful in itself, irritated the German archbishops, already too jealous of the jurisdiction of the nuncios in the Empire. The three Electors, Clement Wenceslas of Saxony, Archbishop of Treves; Maximilian of Austria, Archbishop of Cologne, and Baron d'Erthal, Archbishop of Mayence, were the soul of the resistance to the will of the Sovereign Pastor. Jerome Collerodo, Archbishop of Salzburg, and Legate of the Holy See, joined forces with them, and when Cardinal Pacca, the papal nuncio, arrived at Cologne, the Archbishop forbade any official reception, pretending that henceforth he would recognize no external jurisdiction. A like treatment was accorded to Zogno, the new nuncio to Munich.
In August, 1786, the delegates of the above-mentioned four prelates, assembled in a congress at Ems, near Coblenz, and agreed upon measures to be taken in order to restrict the authority of the Pope in his relations with Germany, a restriction that, in their anticipations, was to mean nothing less than complete annihilation. The Congress of Ems formulated twenty-three decisions, which have become known as the Punctuations of Ems. Their purport was to suppress the immunities which were enjoyed by convents in regard to episcopal jurisdiction, to forbid all intercourse between the religious orders of Germany and their superiors in Rome, to suppress the nunciatures to Germany; they would also abolish the custom by which the Holy Father granted to German bishops the faculty, to be renewed every five years, of granting matrimonial dispensations. Moreover the Pontifical documents might not be circulated without the formal acceptance of each bishop; they changed the formula of the oath of fidelity to the Pope as fixed by Pope Gregory VII. The Electors, in fine, made themselves thenceforth the legislators for the Church of Germany, and as such addressed their "Punctuations" to the Emperor for his approval.
It is significant that Joseph II. much as he had encouraged the Electors, one of whom, Maximilian, was his brother, in their hostility to the Holy See, nevertheless he received the acts of the Congress coldly; it was not his policy to permit so much power to the German bishops when he had already decided that all ecclesiastical authority in his dominions was to reside in his own hands. Nor was the King of Prussia, Protestant as he was, any more enthusiastic in support of the rebellious Electors. On the contrary he accorded to the Papal nuncio, Mgr. Pacca, every reasonable service, even receiving the latter, with all the formalities due to his ambassadorial character, at Wesel, in 1788. In fact the advent of this great representative of the Holy See proved a God-sent blessing to the Catholic people of the German States; for the spirit of revolt so obstinately settled in the minds of the ecclesiastical princes, found no echo in the hearts of their subjects, always as loyal to the Holy Father as they were disgusted and humiliated by the time-serving attitude of those to whom they had the right to look for guidance and example.
The anger of the four archbishops against Mgr. Pacca increased despite all reverses. In 1788 they petitioned the Diet of Ratisbonne to cause the framing of a law suppressing altogether the nunciatures. The German princes, however, had no intention of issuing thus a formal insult to the Court of Rome, and the law was not passed. Moreover, the archbishops had by this time discovered that their suffragans had taken umbrage at the fact that they were not officially notified as to the proceedings of the Congress of Ems, thus weakening the effect of that assembly in its most vital point, the adhesion of the episcopate to the repudiation of Papal authority. Finally, after various vain attempts to gain the aid of the secular princes, three of the archbishops, those of Salzburg, Treves, and Cologne, yielded a tardy obedience to the authority of the Pope; the Archbishop of Mayence, von Erthal, held obstinately to his position until after seeing himself abandoned by his quondam friends, he was at length driven from his See by the advent of the French revolutionary troops in 1793. By this event Febronianism lost, for a time at least, the influence it had exerted for thirty years over the Church in Germany.
THE SYNOD OF PISTOIA.
While these events were taking place in Germany a like movement was observable in Northern Italy. The Diocese of Pistoia, presided over from 1780 by Scipione di Ricci, was the scene of the trouble. This bishop, fanatically addicted to the reforms introduced into the Austrian States by Joseph II. held himself in constant opposition to the Holy See, especially because of the Pope's rejection of his errors. As counsellor to the Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany, he permitted the government to meddle with ecclesiastical affairs, to regulate all matters of worship and ceremony, and to assume full control of ecclesiastical teaching. Catechisms were composed without consulting the bishops, and schools were established by professors imbued with doctrines accredited by the government.
In 1786, at the instance of the Grand Duke, Ricci assembled at Pistoia a synod which was to formulate regularly the reforms he had in view. The schismatical bishop placed as moderator in this gathering that Tamburini who had been deprived of his professional office by Cardinal Molino, and who had not the right even to be present at an ecclesiastical assembly. The synod adopted all the doctrines of the French Appellants, and reconsecrated the old errors of Baius, Jansen, and Quesnel. The year following, the people of Prato, in the Diocese of Pistoia, arose in arms against the tyrannical bishop. They overthrew his episcopal throne and burned his coat-of-arms, after having despoiled his palace and seminary of the books and manuscripts found therein.
Despite these reverses Ricci, still sustained by the Grand Duke, held firmly to his position. He caused new edicts hostile to legitimate religion to be put forth, which might have had disastrous effects but for the death of Joseph II., which caused Leopold to abandon Tuscany for the Imperial throne. The errors of Ricci were formally condemned by Pope Pius VI., in the Constitution Auctorem Fidei of 1794. Ricci, however, held his See in opposition to the will of the Sovereign Pontiff until 1799, when at length he sent his resignation to the Emperor. He was finally reconciled with the Church through the good offices of Pope Pius VII. in 1805, and died in 1810.
JOSEPHINISM.
Joseph II. of Austria, son of the celebrated Maria Theresa, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, was the incarnation of that spirit which, beginning its active life in Jansenism, was formulated in the doctrines of Febronius. More anti-Roman than all his predecessors, except perhaps Frederic II. of Hohenstaufen, he was destined through his practical alliance with the anti-Christian spirit of his day, to sound the knell of that same Holy Roman Empire, which was dissolved fifteen years after his death.
JOSEPH II. OF AUSTRIA.
It was not, indeed, that Joseph II. desired to be, or to be considered un-Christian or un-Catholic. He had his own ideas of the Church of Christ, which were not the ideas of the rest of Christendom. His principle of rendering to God what belongs to God, and to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, he interpreted with a large margin in favor of Caesar, to such an extent, indeed, that the tribute to God besides being determined wholly by himself, was to be so meagre as almost to be non-existent. Following the lead of his too liberal counsellor Heinke, he distinguished, much in the manner of the Modernists of today, between what he considered essential and immutable in the Church, and what was only accessory and changeable. The former he would accept as coming from Christ, and as manifested in the primitive Church; under the latter category he classed all that might not suit his caprices, especially all that was bound up in the authority and functions of the Holy See, its supremacy, for instance, its infallibility, its temporal power, its court of Cardinals, its Curia, and all else that, according to him, were but abuses arising from the mutations of history. Hence he looked upon himself as one whose duty it was to reform the Church, at least within the extent of his own dominions, and he entered upon that work with a vigor worthy of a nobler cause.
In the Church as conceived by Joseph II. everything was to be subordinate to the needs of the State. It was to be his Church, and its bishops and priests were to be his bishops, his clergy. Persuaded that he was the absolute and sole source of authority he employed all his energies in isolating his bishops, clergy and people from the centre of Catholic unity. The system of vexatious persecutions which he introduced to uphold his ideas gave to his system the name of Josephinism, a system which, but for the intervention of the French invasions, might even today have become the ruling force of Germany.
On April 2nd, 1781, he issued his edict against the religious orders; it was at this point, in accordance with the ideas of Frederic II. and the Encyclopaedists, that his subversive work ought to begin, a process indeed, which has been imitated in our own days by Jules Ferry, and by Combes. Eight days later, another edict exacted the imperial placet for all bulls or other documents emanating from Rome. The canonical oath of the Austrian bishops at their consecration, was modified to restrict all loyalty to the Holy See; the Papal nuncio, Mgr. Varampi, was made the object of vexatious measures, and all recourse to Rome, even for marriage dispensations was interdicted. Still more, the Emperor suppressed all sodalities and confraternities, abolished processions, restricted the number of the holy days, and even went so far in his meddlesome measures as to regulate the number of candles to be lighted at the various devotions, and forbade the use of coffins for burial, making it obligatory to bury the dead in shrouds of cloth. At the same time, however, while interfering with and persecuting his Catholic subjects, his mind assumed a spasm of broadness to such an extent as to induce him to offer freely to Jews and Protestants, what he denied to his co-religionists.
At the same time it must be acknowledged that the headstrong attitude of the Emperor owed much of its obstinacy to the influence of counsellors in whom the spirit of flattery was more pronounced than any care for the welfare either of the Church or the people. Foremost among these was that Prince Kaunitz, who after serving through many successive reigns had acquired an ascendancy in the imperial household which would require strength of character in the sovereign to destroy. The mind and policy of Joseph II. were almost entirely in the hands of this politician, who had imbibed every rampant theory that the times could offer. Influenced by Voltaire and the encyclopaedists his reverence for religion was dictated only by the demands of expediency. Throughout his whole reign the Emperor listened to the counsels of this statesman in every matter of State or religion. Nevertheless, in order that his reforms might appear to have the sanction of ecclesiastical law, the Emperor gathered around him canonists and professors only too willing to prostitute their casuistry to the imperial will. Riegger, a disciple of the Jesuits in his youth, and later a Freemason, compiled in his Outlines of Ecclesiastical Law a new digest out of all sympathy with the laws that bore the Papal approval. Eybel published an Introduction to the Ecclesiastical Law of the Catholics, and by his teachings in regard to the laws of marriage, created such scandal as to require his resignation from the professor's chair which he held; this fact, however, in no way diminished his credit at court. Pehem, another professor of the same kindred, diffused his untenable theories among the priests of the Empire. Chief among these destructive canonists was the Benedictine Rautenstrauch, whose influence extended throughout the dominions of the Emperor. It was through the instrumentality of this cleric that Joseph II. brought about the unification of the Universities and Seminaries of the Empire, building them up upon a plan of utter independence of all Papal control, and making their programme of ecclesiastical studies emanate from the powers of the State. Naturally the guidance of teachers such as the above could lead a selfish and ambitious mind like that of Joseph II. to any extreme of absurdity; nor was the Emperor slow in following their counsels.
In the meantime Pope Pius VI. regarded with grave anxiety the eccentric tactics of the Emperor. At first he made use of all his paternal condescension in the hope of leading Joseph to better sentiments. Perceiving, however, that he was gaining nothing by his representations, the Pope resolved upon a decision which surprised the world. Breaking with all traditions of the Holy See, he declared his intention of proceeding in person to Vienna. With this end in view he accordingly wrote to the Emperor stating his desire for an interview close at hand, with the hope of thus reconciling the rights of the Emperor with those of the Church. To this letter full of touching kindness, and announcing so unusual an action on the part of the Holy See, he answered in his pride:
"As the object of your journey touches upon matters which Your Holiness regards as doubtful, but which I have settled, permit me to believe that you are giving yourself needless trouble. I ought to warn you that, in my resolutions, I act only in conformity with my reason, equity, and religion. Before coming to a decision, I weigh the matter long and well, and I consult my council; but once having decided, I remain firm."
POPE PIUS VI.
Pope Pius VI. was not discouraged by the discourteous reply of the Emperor; nor did he give heed to the remonstrances of the cardinals and of his own family. On February 27, 1782, he set out for Vienna, reaching his destination on March 22 following. The Emperor and his brother Maximilian, that Archbishop of Cologne who had already so deeply wounded the heart of the Pontiff, came to meet him some leagues from the capital. As soon as the Papal carriage was seen, the two royalties descended and walked forward to meet it. The greeting on both sides was most affectionate. The visit of the Holy Father, however, did not prove in every way a consoling event. An imperial ordinance had forbidden the Austrian bishops from appearing in the presence of the Pope. The latter, nevertheless, could officiate pontifically on Easter Day, and a few days later were opened the negotiations which had determined this journey of the Sovereign Pontiff. Unfortunately these conferences produced no result at all commensurate with the sacrifices entailed. Joseph showed himself inflexible in every main contention, and his concessions affected only points of the slightest importance, namely the promised cessation of new encroachments, and the renewal of the official relations between the nuncio Varampi on the part of the Holy See and Cardinal Herzan, representing the Emperor. The departure of the Holy Father from Vienna called forth the same official courtesies as marked his arrival.
On his return to Rome, Pius VI. was pained to see that his journey, which had met with disapprobation at its start, was more loudly censured now on his arrival in the Eternal City. These criticisms, indeed, seemed somewhat justified in the events which happened almost immediately, for the news was brought that the Emperor still continued to abolish convents and to confiscate their property. Moreover, the See of Milan being then vacant, Joseph appointed its new incumbent, although he knew very well that such right belonged to the Holy See. Prince Kaunitz, the Austrian Premier, who had added brutality to hostility during the Pope's sojourn at Vienna, continued his insults, and threatened the Bishop of Rome officially that he would bring about a startling rupture of relations. The feeble and too confiding Emperor encouraged these audacious menaces. Indeed, writings of the most venomous character were being circulated throughout the Empire, their object being to throw discredit upon the Papal authority to the exaltation of that of the Emperor.
A visit of Joseph II. to Rome in December of the following year, 1783, effected little towards softening his sentiments in regard to the rights of religion in his dominions. A change of heart, however, came to him at length, but only when the evil seeds he had sown had sprung up into a harvest of destruction for that Empire which he valued more than God. In his mania for regulating everything, he decided to consolidate all the Seminaries of his States into four principal establishments at Vienna, Pesth, Pavia, and Louvain; and in these institutions the tribunes were to be given only to enlightened professors, that is, to professors in harmony with Josephist ideas. At Louvain this measure met with a particularly hostile reception: Cardinal de Frankenberg, Archbishop of Malines, refused absolutely to send his young men to Louvain, until he had obtained the promise that he should have control of the professors. When the University opened, in 1786, the Emperor's professors, Stagger and Leplat, were driven away by the students, who themselves soon abandoned the establishment. Cardinal Frankenberg and the nuncio Oppizzoni, were accused of inciting this movement and were punished, the one by being recalled to Vienna, and the other by an order to leave the Netherlands. At length, in 1789, the Netherlands, disgusted with the conduct of the Emperor, declared their independence, and signalized the last day of that year by signing their own Constitution. Movements of unrest and rebellion began to manifest themselves at the same time in Hungary, and in the Tyrol, and although Pope Pius VI., forgetful of the injuries he had received at the hands of the Austrian monarch, interceded with the angry people in his behalf, the harm was too great to be remedied. Joseph II., who had brought these evils upon himself by his disregard of the duties he owed to God and His Church, died of a broken heart on February 20, 1790, begging that his monument should bear the inscription: Here lies Joseph, who was unfortunate in all his undertakings.
The purpose of Joseph II., however, like those of his teachers, bore fruit more abundant that they would have desired. Out of their determined efforts to undermine the authority of the Holy See, and the sanctity of Catholic institutions, the forces of revolution and anarchy drew their inspiration. The way was prepared, and the enemy had only to march dry-shod to their sanguinary victories.
SUPPRESSION OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS.
The rapid rise of the Society of Jesus in the various countries of Europe, naturally attracted the attention of all those whose aim was the acquisition of as much personal power as was possible, to the detriment of individual, family, and social rights, and who had reason to fear an influence that stood for human progress and equal rights to all. The Jesuits soon assumed great prominence among the religious orders. Their excellence was admitted both in school and seminary; their learning gained for them the spiritual direction of influential persons; they became the confessors to princes and kings; they displayed extraordinary zeal in the practices of devotion, especially that in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and they had already embraced the whole world in the field of their missions. They became a power that excited the envy of the less active, and the fear of potentates whose greed and inhumanity found a check in the gentle teachings of the followers of St. Ignatius. More than all, they had ever shown themselves energetic in their support of ecclesiastical authority, especially in times when the latter was threatened by the vagaries of Gallicanism, Jansenism, and like movements; in the state itself they showed themselves veritable defenders against the machinations of those secret societies which even in the eighteenth century were very much in evidence.
FATHER RICCI, S. J.
The last General of the Society of Jesus before the suppression in 1773.
It was impossible that an organization such as theirs, blessed by the spirit of religion, going about doing good, defending the principles of true Christianity against any and every assault, should escape the odium and persecution of spirits whose chief claim to existence lay in the desire to pull down the structure of civilization and to erect in its place the temple of anti-Christ. The vials of irreligious wrath were poured out upon them to the last dregs. In the various countries of Europe they met with proscription and expulsion. In 1759 they were driven from Portugal through the efforts of the infamous Pombal; in 1764 they were forbidden to live as a society in France; they were exiled from Spain in 1767, from Naples in 1767, and from Parma in 1768. Finally every effort of anti-Christianism and Masonry was exerted to bring about their complete extinction in the whole world. In 1773 pressure was brought to bear upon Pope Clement XIV., who, while refusing to listen to the invidious complaints brought against them, nevertheless, for the sake of a temporary peace, was compelled to sign the decree of their suppression.
The suppression of the Society of Jesus may be regarded as the first great blow in the modern war of anti-Christianism. It was the annihilation of the vanguard of the army of civilization and Christianity. With the Society of Jesus out of the way, the campaign of social, moral, intellectual and religious subversion found an open road to the excesses of anarchy and revolution. The Jesuits, however, like well-disciplined soldiers of Christ, bowed to the will of the Vicar of Christ, and bore their humiliation in silence for forty years, till the day when the Pope, Pius VII., freed from the chains of persecution, called them back to honor and usefulness.
THE SOPHISTS.
The suppression of the Jesuits met with no greater joy than in the hearts of a certain class of intellectual perverts who may be regarded as the actual founders of modern anti-Christianism; these were the sophists who in that period of the eighteenth century were already flooding France and Europe with a deluge of immoral, irreligious and uncivilized literature.
It is to England that we must go to find the immediate origin of this desolating spirit. There, among the Socinians and Deists, a school arose that taught men to trifle with the sublime truths of revelation and to undermine the foundations of religious belief, men like Shaftesbury, Collins, Tindal, and Bolingbroke, who strove to subject religion to the state, and regarded virtue as a mere human instinct; who declared reason antagonistic to revelation, and saw in the Holy Scriptures nothing more than a collection of pretty fables. It was not until the eighteenth century that the influence of their theories began to ruffle the Catholic atmosphere of France. There were not wanting birds of passage who, while hibernating among the philosophic haunts of London, gathered up the seeds of infidelity to scatter them broadcast upon the soil of France.
ROUSSEAU.
The writings of Montesquieu (1689-1775) display a sneering attitude towards the most sacred teachings and institutions of the Church. Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) in his Social Contract and similar works endeavored to destroy the social order and bring back humanity to primitive barbarism. But more terrible in the rage of his iniquity than all others, in the great war of anti-Christianism, was the arch-infidel, Francois Marie Arouet, later called Voltaire (1694-1778). Of him might have been written the lines which Milton puts into the mouth of Satan:
"To do aught good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight;
As being contrary to his high will,
Whom we resist. If then his providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labor must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still find means of evil."
Par. Lost, Bk. I.
Born in Paris of a mother whose loose morals made her a by-word to all who knew her, he imbibed at her breast that appetite for lawlessness and iniquity which ruled him to the last hour. His mother dying during his infancy, he became the protege of an abbe who had abandoned the duties of his sacred calling for the allurements of the world. In his boyhood he was sent to the Jesuit school of Louis le Grand, where the perversity of his character manifested itself to such an extent that one of his teachers prophesied that he would one day become the coryphee of deism. Thereafter his career was one of unlicensed depravity. More than once he was arrested and cast into prison; he had reason to hate the Bastille, for he himself had experienced the life of a criminal therein.
VOLTAIRE.
That writer was not far wrong who asserted that irreligion is but one form of the insanity which is born of immoral living. It is remarkable in the anti-Christian literature of all times, and of none more than our own, that its heroes and heroines are the abandoned roués and harlots who, having defiled the temples of their own bodies, seek to carry the abomination of desolation into the holy places of God. In this matter Voltaire was no exception. His immoral life was lived ostentatiously and boastingly. We will not, however, enter upon a list of the criminal observances of this man, preferring to leave such details to their proper place. It will be sufficient to point out the purpose that underlay all the actions and words of his life. This purpose is best indicated by citations from his letters and other written works.
His hatred for the Church and for morality is clearly displayed in the works that he gave forth during the later years of his life. In his Age of Louis XIV., a work that has been made an obligatory text book in the educational establishments subject to the University of France, we find passages full of insinuations and falsehoods directed against the Holy See. "The Pope's spiritual authority," he says, "is now destroyed and abhorred in one-half of Christendom; and if in the other half he is regarded as a father, he has children who sometimes properly and successfully resist him." Again he asserts: "To swear fidelity to any other than one's own sovereign is high treason in a layman; in the cloister it is an act of religion." He terms the Pope "the foreign sovereign." His Pucelle is a diabolical attempt to besmirch the pure character of Joan of Arc. It was a work, however, which excited so much disgust in all circles that Voltaire endeavored at first to disclaim it, and it was many years before the whole poem could venture forth with his authorization. The high society that could welcome its foetid pages was already ripe for the horrors of the Revolution.
From 1760 to the end of his life Voltaire assumed as his motto the impious expression: Ecrassez l'infame, "crush the infamous thing," intending thereby to indicate Christ and His Church. Throughout all these years the term appears constantly in his own and his disciples' letters. How he revels in his insane and satanic hatred, hardly finding words that can fitly convey his utter aversion for the things of God! The Christian religion he proclaims "an abominable hydra, a monster which a hundred hands must destroy." He bids the philosophers scour the streets to destroy it "as missionaries journey over land and sea to propagate it." He bids them dare everything even to being burned in order to destroy Christianity. Again he calls upon his fawning admirers to annihilate Christianity, to hunt it down, to vilify it, to ruin it. The perusal of his works leaves one with the impression that Voltaire was constantly troubled with a nightmare, in the effort to free himself from which he emitted his lugubrious wailings.
In 1778 the mob of Paris united to crown him at the Theatre Francais. Referring to these manifestations the impious one wrote: "My entry into Paris was more triumphant than that of Jesus into Jerusalem." The further work of Voltaire was in accordance with expressions like these. His intimacy with Frederic II., of Prussia afforded the blasphemer many opportunities of indulging his satanic impulses. Among the anti-Christian sophists who made the Palace of Berlin their rendezvous was a school of Freemasons who had already begun to celebrate the final downfall of the Papacy. For the more rapid realization of this hope various expedients were advocated, among them being the pet resort of irreligious tyrants,—the abolition of the monastic orders, a project which found its foremost exponent in Voltaire.
Such was the man to whom anti-Christianism looks up, as to its great and original patriarch, a man utterly devoid of the human moral sense, a man to whom all that savored of the good or virtuous was an abomination and a thing of infamy, a man whose methods of deceit are expressed in his own words: "Lying is a vice only when it harms. You ought to lie like the devil, not timidly or once only, but boldly, and all the time. Lie, lie! my friends, and some of it will be sure to stick." From his works anti-Christianism took the chief formulas of its creed, and following in the footsteps of its master, it has performed deeds worthy of his approbation.
Close in line with the irreligion of Voltaire was the work of Denis Diderot, the founder of the infamous Encyclopaedia, a huge mass of calumny against the religion of Christ, abounding in falsification of history, in doctrines inviting to immorality of life and subversion of all lawfully constituted authority. The poison of the Encyclopaedia was quickly assimilated by the aristocratic element of Paris. At first the salons, those rendezvous of the higher classes, took up the work, and by their discussions gave it a tone. It was highly acceptable to a social order, at that time immoral and impious to a degree; but its venom gradually overflowed to the masses, ever eager to imitate the excesses of the great.
The efforts of the leaders of irreligion were ably seconded by the various systems that arose towards the close of the eighteenth century, as so many developments of Deism and the worship of nature. The Sensationalists, under the tutelage of La Metrie, Condillac, Helvetius, and Holback, would make of man a mere machine, more ingeniously organized than the brutes; thought was reduced to a mere physical operation of the human body; hence the negation of the spiritual world, the spiritual soul, and the hope of immortality. The Rationalists in Germany led to disbelief in the inspiration and authenticity of the Holy Scriptures. Pantheism, Agnosticism, Idealism, and a thousand and one like branches of error, sprang forth from the revolt of the earlier sophists, all contributing their part to inflame and destroy the souls of men, and leading them on by sure steps to final anarchy. The very multiplicity of such sophistic theories, arising amidst the darkness of anti-Christian night, like the constantly changing figures in a kaleidoscope, were but the ghosts of a hideous phantasmagoria, that, scarcely seen, resolved themselves into something more strange and more appalling. It was the gathering of the spirits of iniquity for the grand assault upon the City of God.
FREEMASONRY.
Prominent among the subversive forces of the eighteenth century was that of Freemasonry and its kindred associations. As to its real origin but little is known. The modern order seems to have taken its rise in England in the year 1717, its first constitution appearing in 1723. The new association spread with remarkable rapidity over the Continent, founding its lodges in Berlin, Leipzig, Brunswick, Naples, Paris, and other places, before the middle of the century. On its first appearance it was denounced as subversive of government, and as a peril to the social order. The members of which it was composed were men of evil omen, Voltaire, Condorcet, Volney, Laland, Mirabeau, Frederic II., and the like. Pope Clement XII., in his Constitution, In Eminenti, of 1738, condemned the order. Thereby all who should join a Masonic lodge, assist at any Masonic assembly, or have any connection with the sect, were ipso facto excommunicated. Benedict XIV., in 1751, issued the Bull, Provides, renewing the decrees of his predecessor, and giving many cogent reasons for his act.
The deep secrecy which involved all the operations of regular Freemasonry in the eighteenth century was not so closely guarded in one of the independent forms of its spirit, known as the Society of the Illuminati. The founder of this order was Adam Weishaupt, a professor of ecclesiastical law at Ingolstadt. The end of this secret society, and the purpose which was to dominate it, was clearly the overthrow of all existing social and religious institutions. The statutes exacted from the members a blind obedience. Instead of works of devotion, prayer-books and the lives of the saints, it prescribed for its devotees the works of the ancient pagan authors or modern books of a similar description; its books of religion comprised such titles as: The System of Nature and the works of Rousseau.
The new order gained many disciples even among the crowned heads, who were slow to perceive that the very spirit of the organization was centred in hatred of the throne as well as of religion. As soon as the real nature and purposes of the Illuminati became known, efforts were at once made by the civil authorities for their suppression. In this they were aided greatly by the inevitable dissensions introduced into the order in the course of time. In 1784 all secret societies, communities, and confraternities, were prohibited in Bavaria. In 1785 Weishaupt was expelled from Ingolstadt, and after many wanderings finally found refuge with the Duke of Saxe-Gotha. Before his death he had the good fortune to repent and was reconciled with the Church. The order, everywhere fallen into disfavor, was gradually either disbanded, or incorporated into the other forms of the Masonry of the times. Its influence, however, like that of Freemasonry, remained, and was exerted with great vigor in the unhappy events that began in the year 1789.
NEO-PAGANISM.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the youth of Europe, and especially of France, educated to admire merely natural virtue, enamored of the ideal beauty and of the political and civil institutions of other times, found in their schools a spirit of paganism. Little in touch with the true spirit of Christianity, it was easily led by the glamor of resounding phrases and classical figures. These classical studies, in which the excellent and virtuous teachers of the time found only literary and philological exercises, became through the evil influence of outside doctrinaires a subtle poison to the young mind, and brought to a point that rage for pagan antiquity which formed one of the most dangerous and misleading features of anti-Christianism.
From the time of the Reformation heterodoxy had sought its weapons in antiquity, whose uncertainty and obscurity could easily provide material for the desolating revolt against Christian authority. Machiavelli had already denounced modern Christianity as the cause of popular and national decadence; politicians lost themselves in adoration of the Greeks and Romans; to the sophists everything was grand and noble, in as far as it was pagan, everything was barbarous in as far as it receded from the ancient type. It was one of the methods of the war of impiety: anti-Christianism had need of antiquity as a mantle to cover its emptiness: it felt it must needs seek aid in the names of celebrated pagans, and thus strengthened, it might dare to abandon the Christian era, and take refuge around a Roman or Greek civilization resurrected and placed in a position of honor. Classical education unconsciously aided in this mode of warfare, and while the school teacher, with the best of intentions in the world, taught his pupils to admire the great beauties of the classical authors, without attending to the false principles and doctrines, intended for a social order entirely different from the Christian, there were not wanting those who profited by these studies to lead the pupil to a love of the pagan philosophy therein contained. By their efforts the Roman and Greek world was held up as the only condition that could provide true happiness, the only political society worthy of man.
LOUIS XV.
Throughout the whole reign of Louis XV. this mania for paganism invaded every part of society, so that when Louis XVI. ascended the throne, he found it dominant not only in literature, but in art and in life itself. It was reflected in the corruption of the Court, in the sensual epicurism of the people, in the very manners of those whose ecclesiastical dignity ought to lead to more modern types of excellence. The hope of a return to the conditions of pagan Rome and Greece was one of the saddest hallucinations of the new anti-Christianism.