CHAPTER I.
RESEMBLANCES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE SEVENTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES.—CHRISTIAN ART.—IT IS WE WHO HAVE RESTORED THE CHURCH.—WHAT IT ADDS TO THE POWER OF THE PRIEST.—THE CONFESSIONAL.
There are two objections to be made against all that I have said, and I will state them:—
First. "The examples are taken from the seventeenth century, at a time when the direction was influenced by theological questions, which now no longer occupy either the world or the Church; for instance, the question of grace and free-will, and that of Quietism or repose in love." But this I have already answered. Such questions are obsolete, dead, if you will, as theories; but, in the spirit and practical method which emanate from these theories, they are, and ever will be, living. There are no longer to be found speculative people, simple enough to trace out expressly a doctrine of lethargy and moral annihilation; but there will always be found enough quacks to practice quietly this lethargic art. If this be not clear enough, I will, in a moment, make it clearer than some people would desire.
Secondly. "Are the examples you have shown from the books and letters of the great men of the famous age sufficiently conclusive for our own time? Might not those profound and subtle men of genius, who dived so deeply into the science of directing souls, have entered into refinements, of which the common herd of confessors and directors cannot now conceive any idea? Can you fear anything of the sort from the poor simple priests whom we have now? Pray where are our St. François de Sales, our Bossuets, and our Fenelons? Do you not see that not only the clergy no longer possess such men, but that they have degenerated generally, and as a class. The great majority of the priests are of rustic families. The peasant, even when he is not poor, finds it convenient to lighten the expenses of his family, by placing his son in the seminary. To nursery education, that which we receive from our parents before any other, they are total strangers. The seminary by no means repairs this inconvenience of origin and former condition. If we judge by those who come from the hands of the Sulpicians, Lazarists, &c., we shall be inclined to believe that there has been a deep plan laid among the upper leaders, to form none but indifferent priests, who would be so much the more dependent, and blind to the influence exercised over them contrary to their real interests. What then do you fear? Is not this intellectual degradation of the clergy sufficiently comforting? How could such men follow, in the confession and direction, the learned tactics of the priests of former ages? The dangers you point out are imaginary."
To this it is easy to answer:—
Mental distinction and good education are not so necessary, as is generally thought, for enslaving souls that are willing to be ruled. Authority, character, position, and costume fortify the Priest, and make good in him what was wanting in the Man. He gains his ascendency less by his skill than by time and perseverance. If his mind is but little cultivated, it is also less taken up with a variety of new ideas, which incessantly come crowding upon us moderns, amusing and fatiguing us. With fewer ideas, views, and projects, but with an interest, an aim, and ever the same end invariably kept in view—this is the way to succeed.
Must we take it for granted, because you are clownish, you are less cunning on that account? Peasants are circumspect, often full of cunning, and endued with an indefatigable constancy in following up any petty interest. How many long years, what different means, and often indirect ones, will such a one employ, in order to add two feet of land to his field. Do you think that his son, Monsieur le Curé, will be less patient or less ardent in his endeavours to get possession of a soul, to govern this woman, or to enter that family?
These peasant families have often much vigour, a certain sap, belonging to the blood and constitution, which either gives wit, or supplies the place of it. Those in the South especially, where the clergy raise their principal recruits, furnish them with intrepid speakers, who do not need to know anything; and who, by their very ignorance, are, perhaps, only in a more direct communication with the simple persons, to whom they address themselves. They speak out loudly, with energy and assurance; educated persons would be more reserved, and less proper to fascinate the weak; they would not dare to attempt so audaciously a clownish Mesmerism in spiritual things.
In this, I must confess, there is a serious difference between our own century and the seventeenth, when the clergy of all parties were so learned. That culture, those vast studies, that great theological and literary activity were, for the priest of that time, the most powerful diversion in the midst of temptations. Science, or, at the very least, controversy and disputation, created for him, in a position that was often very worldly, a sort of solitude, an alibi, as one may say, that effectually preserved him. But ours, who have nothing of the sort, who, moreover, spring from a hardy and material race, and do not know how to employ this embarrassing vigour, must indeed require a fund of virtue!
The great men from whom we have drawn our examples, had a wonderful defence against spiritual and carnal desires; better than a defence, they had wings that raised them from the earth, at the critical moment, above temptation. By these wings, I mean the love of God, the love of genius for itself, its natural effort to remain on high and ascend, its abhorrence of degradation.
Being chiefs of the clergy of France, the only clergy then flourishing, and responsible to the world for whatever subsisted by their faith, they kept their hearts exalted to the level of the great part they had to perform. One thought was the guardian of their lives—a thought which they repressed, but which did not the less sustain them in delicate trials: it was this, "In them resided the Church."
Their great experience of the world and domestic life, their tact and skilful management of men and things, far from weakening morality, as one might believe, rather defended it in them, enabling them to perceive, and have a presentiment of perils, to see the enemy coming, not to allow him the advantage of unexpected attacks; or, at least, to know how to elude him.
We have seen how Bossuet stopped the soft confidence of a weak nun at the very first word. The little we have said of Fenelon's direction shows sufficiently how the dangerous director evaded the dangers.
Those eminently spiritual persons could keep up for years between heaven and earth this tender dialectic of the love of God. But is it the same in these days with men who have no wings, who crawl and cannot fly? Incapable of those ingenious turnings and windings by which passion went on sportively, and eluding itself, do they not run the risk of stumbling at the first step?
I know well that this absence of early education, and vulgarity or clownishness, may often put an insurmountable barrier between priests and well-bred women. Many things, however, that would not be tolerated in another man are reckoned in them as merits. Stiffness is austerity, and awkwardness is accounted the simplicity of a saint, who has ever lived in a desert. They are measured by a different and more indulgent rule than the laity. The priest takes advantage of everything that is calculated to make him be considered as a man apart, of his dress, his position, his mysterious church, that invests the most vulgar with a poetical gleam.
Who gave them this last advantage? Ourselves. We, who have reinstated, rebuilt, as one may say, those very churches they had disregarded. The priests were building up their Saint-Sulpices, and other heaps of stones, when the laity retrieved Nôtre-Dame and Saint Ouen. We pointed out to them the Christian spirit of these living stones,[[1]] but they did not see it; we taught it them, but they could not understand. And how long did the misconception last? Not less than forty years, ever since the appearance of the Génie de Christianisme. The priests would not believe us, when we explained to them this sublime edifice; they did not recognise it; but who can wonder? It belongs only to those who understood it.
At length, however, they have changed their opinion. They have found it to be political and clever to speak as we do, and extol Christian architecture. They have decked themselves out with their churches, again invested themselves with this glorious cloak, and assumed in them a triumphant posture. The crowd comes, looks, and admires. Truly, if we are to judge of a well-dressed man by his coat, he who is invested with the splendour of a Nôtre-Dame of Paris, or a Cologne cathedral, is apparently the giant of the spiritual world. Alexander, on his departure from India, wishing to deceive posterity as to the size of his Macedonians, had a camp traced out on the ground in which a space of ten feet was allotted to each of his soldiers. What an immense place is this church, and what an immense host must inhabit this wonderful dwelling! Optical delusion adds still more to the effect. Every proportion changes. The eye is deceived and deceives itself, at the same time, with these sublime lights and deepening shades, all calculated to increase the illusion. The man whom in the street you judged, by his surly look, to be a village schoolmaster, is here a prophet. He is transformed by this majestic framework; his heaviness becomes strength and majesty; his voice has formidable echoes. Women and children tremble and are afraid.
When a woman returns home, she finds everything prosy and paltry. Had she even Pierre Corneille for a husband, she would think him pitiful, if he lived in the dull house they still show us. Intellectual grandeur in a low apartment does not affect her. The comparison makes her sad, bitterly quiet. The husband puts up with it, and smiles, or pretends to do so; "Her director has turned her brain," says he aloud, and adds, aside, "After all, she only sees him at church." But what place, I ask, is more powerful over the imagination, richer in illusions, and more fascinating than the church? It is precisely the church that ennobles, raises, exaggerates, and sheds a poetical ray upon this otherwise vulgar man.
Do you see that solemn figure, adorned with all the gold and purple of his pontifical dress, ascending with the thought, the prayer of a multitude of ten thousand men, the triumphal steps in the choir of St. Denis? Do you see him still, above all that kneeling mass, hovering as high as the vaulted roofs, his head reaching the capitals, and lost among the winged heads of the angels, whence he hurls his thunder? Well, it is the same man, this terrible archangel himself, who presently descends for her, and now, mild and gentle, goes yonder into that dark chapel, to listen to her in the languid hours of the afternoon! Delightful hour of tumultuous, but tender sensations! (Why does the heart palpitate so strongly here?) How dark the church becomes! Yet it is not late. The great rose-window over the portal glitters with the setting sun. But it is quite another thing in the choir; dark shadows envelope it, and beyond is obscurity. One thing astounds and almost frightens us, however far we may be, which is the mysterious old painted glass at the farthest end of the church, on which the design is no longer distinguishable, twinkling in the shade, like an illegible magic scroll of unknown characters. The chapel is not less dark on that account; you can no longer discern the ornaments and delicate moulding entwined in the vaulted roof; the shadow deepening blends and confounds the outlines. But, as if this chapel were not yet dark enough, it contains, in a retired corner, a narrow recess of dark oak, where that man, all emotion, and that trembling woman, so close to each other, are whispering together about the love of God.
[[1]] See my History of France (1833), the last chapter of Vol. II., and particularly the last ten pages. In this same volume I have made a serious mistake which I wish to rectify. In speaking of ecclesiastical celibacy (temp. Gregory VII.), I have said that married men could never have raised those sublime monuments, the spire of Strasbourg, &c. I find, on the contrary, that the architects of the Gothic churches were laymen, and generally married. Erwin de Steinbach, who built Strasbourg, had a celebrated daughter, Sabina, who was herself an artist.