CHAPTER II.
O Mensch wiltu geimpffet werdn,
Und sein versetzt in d’himlisch erdn!
So mustu vor dein ästen wilt,
Gantz hawen ab, das früchte milt
Fürkommen nach Gotts ebenbildt.[[334]]
Hymn of the Fourteenth Century.
Part II.—The Quietist Controversy.
I.
In the year 1686, Madame Guyon returned to Paris, and entered the head-quarters of persecution. Rumours reached her, doubtless, from beyond the Alps, of cruel measures taken against opinions similar to her own, which had spread rapidly in Italy. But she knew not that all these severities originated with Louis XIV. and his Jesuit advisers,—that her king, while revoking the Edict of Nantes, and dispatching his dragoons to extirpate Protestantism in France, was sending orders to D’Estrées, his ambassador at Rome, to pursue with the utmost rigour Italian Quietism—and that the monarch, who shone and smiled at Marly and Versailles, was crowding with victims the dungeons of the Roman Inquisition.
The leader of Quietism in Italy was one Michael de Molinos, a Spaniard, a man of blameless life, of eminent and comparatively enlightened piety. His book, entitled The Spiritual Guide, was published in 1675, sanctioned by five famous doctors, four of them Inquisitors, and one a Jesuit, and passed, within six years, through twenty editions in different languages. His real doctrine was probably identical in substance with that of Madame Guyon.[[335]] It was openly favoured by many nobles and ecclesiastics of distinguished rank; by D’Etrees among the rest. Molinos had apartments assigned him in the Vatican, and was held in high esteem by Infallibility itself. But the Inquisition and the Jesuits, supported by all the influence of France, were sure of their game. The audacity of the Inquisitors went so far as to send a deputation to examine the orthodoxy of the man called Innocent XI.; for even the tiara was not to shield the patron of Molinos from suspicions of heresy. The courtier-cardinal D’Etrees found new light in the missives of his master. He stood committed to Quietism. He had not only embraced the opinions of Molinos, but had translated into Italian the book of Malaval, a French Quietist, far more extreme than Molinos himself.[[336]] Yet he became, at a moment’s notice, the accuser of his friend. He produced the letter of Louis rebuking the faithless sloth of the pontiff who could entertain a heretic in his palace, while he, the eldest son of the Church, toiled incessantly to root out heresy from the soil of France. He read before the Inquisitorial Tribunal extracts from the papers of Molinos. He protested that he had seemed to receive, in order at the proper juncture more effectually to expose, these abominable mysteries. If these professions were false, D’Etrees was a heretic; if true, a villain. The Inquisitors, of course, deemed his testimony too valuable to be refused. In the eyes of such men, the enormous crime which he pretended was natural, familiar, praiseworthy. Depths of baseness beyond the reach of ordinary iniquity, are heights of virtue with the followers of Dominic and Loyola. Guilt, which even a bad man would account a blot upon his life, becomes, in the annals of their zeal, a star. The Spanish Inquisitor-General, Valdes, who raised to the highest pitch his repute for sanctity, secured the objects of his ambition, averted the dangers which threatened him, and preserved his ill-gotten wealth from the grasp of the crown, simply by his activity as a persecutor, made a practice of sending spies to mix (under pretence of being converts or inquirers) among the suspected Lutherans of Valladolid and Seville. Desmarets de St. Sorlin denounced, and caused to be burnt, a poor harmless madman, named Morin, who fancied himself the Holy Ghost. Counselled by the Jesuit confessor of Louis, Father Canard, he pretended to become his disciple, and then betrayed him. This Desmarets, be it remembered, had written a book called Les Délices de l’Esprit, happily characterised by a French wit, when he proposed for délices to read délires. Those immoral consequences which the enemies of Madame Guyon professed to discern in her writings are drawn openly in the sensual and blasphemous phraseology of this religious extravaganza. But because Desmarets was a useful man to the Jesuits—because he had drawn away some of the nuns of the Port Royal—because he had given the flames a victim—because he was protected by Canard,—the same Archbishop of Paris who imprisoned Madame Guyon, honoured with his sanction the ravings of the licentious visionary.[[337]] So little had any sincere dread of spiritual extravagance to do with the hostility concentrated on the disciples of Quietism. The greater portion of the priesthood feared only lest men should learn to become religious on their own account. The leaders of the movement against Madame Guyon were animated by an additional motive. They knew they should delight his Most Christian Majesty by affording him another opportunity of manifesting his zeal for orthodoxy; and they wished to strike at the reputation of Fénélon through Madame Guyon. The fate of Molinos decided hers, and hers that of the Archbishop of Cambray.
The only crime brought home to the followers of Molinos was a preference for the religion of the heart to that of the rosary; the substitution of a devout retirement for the observance of certain superstitious forms and seasons. His condemnation was determined. After an imprisonment of two years he was exhibited in the Temple of Minerva, his hands bound, and a lighted taper between them. A plenary indulgence was granted to all who should be present; a vast concourse listened to the sentence; hired voices cried, ‘To the fire! to the fire!’ the mob was stirred to a frenzy of fanaticism. His last gaze upon the world beheld a sea of infuriate faces, the pomp of his triumphant adversaries,—then to the gloom and solitude of the dungeon in which he was to languish till death bestowed release.[[338]]
II.
At Paris, Madame Guyon became the centre of a small but illustrious circle, who listened with delight to her exposition of that Quietism to which the tender earnestness of her language, and her manner lent so indescribable a charm. There were the Duke and Duchess of Beauvilliers, the Duke and Duchess of Chevreuse, the Duchess of Bethune, and the Countess of Guiche. The daughters of Colbert and of Fouquet forgot the long enmity of their fathers in a religious friendship, whose tie was yet more closely drawn by their common admiration for Madame Guyon.[[339]] But letters filled with complaints against La Combe and Madame Guyon poured in upon Harlay, Archbishop of Paris.[[340]] He procured the arrest of La Combe, who spent the remainder of his days in various prisons. A little calumny and a forged letter obtained from the king a lettre de cachet confining Madame Guyon to an apartment in the Convent of St. Marie. The sisters were strongly prejudiced against her, but her gentle patience won all hearts, and her fair jailors soon vied with each other in praises of their fascinating prisoner. An examination elicited nothing decidedly unfavourable. Not a stain could be detected in her character; she offered to submit all her papers and her writings to investigation. The intercession of Madame Miramion and other friends with Madame de Maintenon, procured her release, after a captivity of eight months.
The most dangerous enemy Madame Guyon had as yet was her own half-brother, Père La Mothe. He had calumniated her in secret while in Switzerland; he was still more active now she was in Paris. He wished to become her Director, but La Combe was in the way. The artifices of La Mothe procured his arrest. He advised Madame Guyon, with hypocritical protestations of friendship, to flee to Montargis from the scandalous reports he himself had circulated, and from adversaries he himself had raised up. Then she would have been at his mercy—he would have pointed to her flight as a proof of guilt, and her own property and the guardianship of her children might have been secured for himself. He injured her as a relation only could. People said her cause must be a bad one, since her own brother was constrained, from regard to the credit of religion, to bear witness against her. A woman who had committed sacrilege at Lyons, and had run away from the Convent of Penitents at Dijon, was employed by him to forge letters which should damage the character of Madame Guyon; to personate one of her maids, and to go from confessor to confessor throughout Paris, asserting that after living sixteen or seventeen years with her mistress, she had quitted her at last, in disgust at her abominable life.
III.
Released from the Convent of St. Marie, Madame Guyon was conducted by her court friends to express her thanks to Madame de Maintenon at St. Cyr. This institution had been founded, ten years previously, for the education of the daughters of noble but impoverished families. The idea originated with Madame de Maintenon: it was executed with royal speed and magnificence by Louis, and St. Cyr became her favourite resort. In fifteen months two thousand six hundred workmen raised the structure, on a marshy soil, about half a league from Paris. The genius of Mansart presided over the architecture. The style of the ordinances was revised by Boileau and Racine. There three hundred young ladies of rank, dressed in gowns of brown crape, with white quilted caps, tied with ribbons whose colour indicated the class to which they belonged in the school, studied geography and drawing, heard mass, sang in the choir, and listened to preachments from the lips of Madame Brinon—who discoursed, so swore some of the courtiers, as eloquently as Bourdaloue himself. Tired out with the formal splendours of Versailles, Madame de Maintenon was never so happy as when playing the part of lady abbess at St. Cyr. Often she would be there by six in the morning, would herself assist at the toilette of the pupils, would take a class throughout the day, would give the novices lessons on spiritual experience; nothing in its routine was dull, nothing in its kitchen was mean. She hated Fontainebleau, for it tore her from her family at St. Cyr. For the private theatricals of St. Cyr, Racine wrote Esther, at the request of Madame de Maintenon. Happy was the courtier who could obtain permission to witness one of these representations, who could tell with triumph to envious groups of the excluded, what an admirable Ahasuerus Madame de Caylus made, what a spirited Mordecai was Mademoiselle de Glapion, how the graceful Mademoiselle de Veillenne charmed the audience in the prayer of Esther—in short, how far the Esther surpassed the Phedra; and the actresses excelled the Raisins and the Chammelés of the Parisian boards. Louis himself drew up the list of admissions, as though it were for a journey to Marly—he was the first to enter—and stood at the door, with the catalogue of names in one hand and his cane held across as a barrier in the other, till all the privileged had entered.[[341]] But the fashion of asceticism which grew with every year of Maintenon’s reign threw its gloom over St. Cyr. The absolute vows were introduced, and much of the monotonous austerity of conventual life. Religious excitement was the only resource left to the inmates if they would not die of ennui. This relief was brought them by Madame Guyon.
Madame de Maintenon was touched with pity for the misfortunes of Madame Guyon, with admiration for such patience, such forgetfulness of self,—she found in the freshness and fervour of her religious conversation, a charm which recalled the warmer feelings of youth; which was welcome, for its elevation, after the fatigue and anxiety of state, for its sweetness, as contrasted with the barren minutiæ of rigid formalism. She invited her constantly to her table—she encouraged her visits to St. Cyr—she met with her, and with Fénélon, at the Hôtels de Chevreuse and Beauvilliers, where a religious coterie assembled three times a week to discuss the mysteries of inward experience. Thus, during three or four years of favour with Madame de Maintenon, Madame Guyon became in effect the spiritual instructress of St. Cyr, and found herself at Paris surrounded by disciples whose numbers daily increased, and whom she withdrew from the licentious gaieties of the capital. At St. Cyr the young ladies studied her books, and listened to her as an oracle—the thoughtless grew serious—the religious strained every faculty to imitate the attainments of one in whom they saw the ideal of devotion. In Paris, mystical terminology became the fashionable language—it was caught up and glibly uttered by wits and roués—it melted from the lips of beauties who shot languishing glances at their admirers, while they affected to be weary of the world, and who coquetted while they talked significantly of holy indifference or pure love. Libertines, like Treville, professed reform, and wrote about mysticism,—atheists turned Christians, like Corbinelli, now became Quietists, and might be seen in the salon of Madame le Maigre, where Corbinelli shone, the brilliant expositor of the new religious romanticism.[[342]]
IV.
During this period, Madame Guyon became acquainted with Fénélon. At their first interview she was all admiration, he all distrust. ‘Her mind,’ she says, ‘had been taken up with him with much force and sweetness;’ it seemed to be revealed to her that he should become one of her spiritual children. Fénélon, on his part, thought she had neglected her duty to her family for an imaginary mission. But he had inquired concerning her life at Montargis, and heard only praise. After a few conversations his doubts vanished: he had proposed objections, requested explanations, pointed out unguarded expressions in her books—she was modest, submissive, irresistible.[[343]] There was a power in her language, her manner, her surviving beauty, which mysteriously dissipated prejudice; which even Nicole, Bossuet, Boileau, Gaillard, could not withstand when they conversed with her,—which was only overcome when they had ceased to behold her face, when her persuasive accents sounded no longer in their ears. She recalled to the thoughts of Fénélon his youthful studies at St. Sulpice;—there he had perused the mystical divines in dusty tomes, clasped and brazen-cornered,—now he beheld their buried doctrine raised to life in the busy present, animating the untaught eloquence of a woman, whom a noble enthusiasm alone had endowed with all the prerogatives of genius, and all the charms of beauty. This friendship, which events rendered afterwards so disastrous for himself, was beneficial to Madame Guyon. Fénélon taught her to moderate some of her spiritual excesses. Her extravagance reached its culminating point at Thonon. At Paris, influenced doubtless by Fénélon, as well as by more frequent intercourse with the world, she no longer enjoys so many picturesque dreams, no more heals the sick and casts out devils with a word, and no longer—as in her solitude there—suffers inward anguish consequent on the particular religious condition of Father La Combe when he is three hundred miles off.[[344]] It is curious to observe how the acquaintance of Fénélon with Madame Guyon began with suspicion and ripened into friendship, while that of Bossuet, commencing with approval, and even admiration, ended in calumny and persecution. Bossuet declared to the Duc de Chevreuse that while examining her writings, for the first time, he was astonished by a light and unction he had never before seen, and, for three days, was made to realize the divine Presence in a manner altogether new. Bossuet had never, like Fénélon, studied the mystics.[[345]]
V.
The two most influential Directors at St. Cyr were Godet des Marais, Bishop of Chartres, and Fénélon. These two men form a striking contrast. Godet was disgusting in person and in manners—a sour ascetic—a spiritual martinet—devoted to all the petty austerities of the most formal discipline. Fénélon was dignified and gentle, graceful as a courtier, and spotless as a saint—the most pure, the most persuasive, the most accomplished of religious guides. No wonder that most of the young inmates of St. Cyr adored Fénélon, and could not endure Godet. Madame de Maintenon wavered between her two confessors; if Fénélon was the more agreeable, Godet seemed the more safe. Godet was miserably jealous of his rival. He was not sorry to find that the new doctrines had produced a little insubordination within the quiet walls of St. Cyr—that Fénélon would be compromised by the indiscretion of some among his youthful admirers. He brought a lamentable tale to Madame de Maintenon. Madame du Peron, the mistress of the novices, had complained that her pupils obeyed her no longer. They neglected regular duties for unseasonable prayers. They had illuminations and ecstasies. One in the midst of sweeping her room would stand, leaning on her broom, lost in contemplation: another, instead of hearing lessons, became inspired, and resigned herself to the operation of the Spirit. The under-mistress of the classes stole away the enlightened from the rest, and they were found in remote corners of the house, feasting in secret on the sweet poison of Madame Guyon’s doctrine. The precise and methodical Madame de Maintenon was horrified. She had hoped to realize in her institute the ideal of her Church, a perfect uniformity of opinion, an unerring mechanism of obedience. We wished, said she, to promote intelligence, we have made orators; devotion, we have made Quietists; modesty, we have made prudes; elevation of sentiment, and we have pride. She commissioned Godet to reclaim the wanderers, to demand that the books of Madame Guyon should be surrendered, setting herself the example by publicly delivering into his hand her own copy of the Short Method. She requested Madame Guyon to refrain from visiting St. Cyr. She began to doubt the prudence or the orthodoxy of Fénélon.[[346]] What would the king say, if he heard of it—he, who had never liked Fénélon—who hated nothing so much as heresy—who had but the other day extinguished the Quietism of Molinos? She had read to him some of Madame Guyon’s exposition of the Canticles; and he called it dreamy stuff. Doctrines really dangerous to purity were insinuated by some designing monks, under the name of Quietism. The odium fell on the innocent Madame Guyon; and her friends would necessarily share it. Malicious voices charged her with corrupting the principles of the Parisian ladies. Madame Guyon replied with justice,—‘When they were patching, and painting, and ruining their families by gambling and by dress, not a word was said against it; now that they have withdrawn from such vanities, the cry is, that I have ruined them.’ Rumour grew more loud and scandalous every day: the most incredible reports were most credited. The schools, too, had taken up the question of mysticism, and argued it with heat. Nicole and Lami had dissolved an ancient friendship to quarrel about it,—as Fénélon and Bossuet were soon to do. No controversy threatened to involve so many interests, to fan so many passions, to kindle so many hatreds, as this variance about disinterestedness, about indifference, about love.
The politic Madame de Maintenon watched the gathering storm, and became all caution. At all costs, she must free herself from the faintest suspicion of fellowship with heresy. She questioned, on the opinions of Madame Guyon, Bossuet and Noailles, Bourdaloue, Joly, Tiberge, Brisacier, and Tronson; and the replies of these esteemed divines, uniformly unfavourable, decided her. It would be necessary to disown Madame Guyon: her condemnation would become inevitable. Fénélon must be induced to disown her too, or his career was at a close; and Madame de Maintenon could smile on him no longer.[[347]]
Madame Guyon, alarmed by the growing numbers and vehemence of her adversaries, had recourse to the man who afterwards became her bitterest enemy. She proposed to Bossuet that he should examine her writings. He complied; held several private interviews with her, and expressed himself, on the whole, more favourably than could have been expected. But these conferences, which did not altogether satisfy Bossuet, could do nothing to allay the excitement of the public.[[348]]
VI.
Madame Guyon now requested the appointment of commissioners, who should investigate, and pronounce finally concerning her life and doctrine.[[349]] Three were chosen—Bossuet; Noailles, Bishop of Chalons; and Tronson, Superior of St. Sulpice. Noailles was a sensible, kind-hearted man; Tronson, a worthy creature, in poor health, with little opinion of his own; Bossuet, the accredited champion of the Gallican Church, accustomed to move in an atmosphere of flattery—the august dictator of the ecclesiastical world—was absolute in their conferences. They met, from time to time, during some six months, at the little village of Issy, the country residence of the Superior of St. Sulpice. When Madame Guyon appeared before them, Bossuet alone was harsh and rude; he put the worst construction on her words; he interrupted her; now he silenced her replies, now he burlesqued them; now he affected to be unable to comprehend them; now he held up his hands in contemptuous amazement at her ignorance; he would not suffer to be read the justification which had cost her so much pains; he sent away her friend, the Duke of Chevreuse. This ominous severity confused and frightened her.[[350]] She readily consented to retire to a convent in the town of Meaux, there to be under the surveillance of Bossuet. She undertook this journey in the depth of the most frightful winter which had been known for many years; the coach was buried in the snow, and she narrowly escaped with life. The commissioners remained to draw up, by the fireside, certain propositions, which should determine what was, and what was not, true mysticism. These constitute the celebrated Articles of Issy.
Bossuet repeatedly visited Madame Guyon at Meaux. The great man did not disdain to approach the sick-bed of his victim, as she lay in the last stage of exhaustion, and there endeavour to overreach and terrify her. He demanded a submission, and promised a favourable certificate. The submission he received, the certificate he withheld. He sought to force her, by threats, to sign that she did not believe in the Incarnation. The more timid she appeared, the more boisterous and imperative his tone. One day, he would come with words of kindness, on another, with words of fury; yet, at the very time, this Pilate could say to some of his brethren, that he found no serious fault in her. He declared, on one occasion, that he was actuated by no dislike—he was urged to rigorous measures by others; on another, that the submission of Madame Guyon, and the suppression of Quietism, effected by his skill and energy, would be as good as an archbishopric or a cardinal’s hat to him. Justice and ambition contended within him; for a little while the battle wavered, till presently pride and jealousy brought up to the standard of the latter, reinforcements so overwhelming, that justice was beaten for ever from the field. After six months’ residence at Meaux, Madame Guyon received from Bossuet a certificate attesting her filial submissiveness to the Catholic faith, his satisfaction with her conduct, authorizing her still to participate in the sacrament of the Church, and acquitting her of all implication in the heresy of Molinos.[[351]]
Meanwhile, Fénélon had been added to the number of the commissioners at Issy. He and Bossuet were still on intimate terms; but Bossuet, like all vain men, was a dangerous friend. He knew how to inspire confidence which he did not scruple to betray. Madame Guyon, conscious of the purity of her life, of the orthodoxy of her intention, persuaded that such a man must be superior to the meaner motives of her persecutors, had placed in the hands of Bossuet her most private papers, not excluding the Autobiography, which had not been submitted even to the eye of Fénélon. To Bossuet, Fénélon had, in letters, unfolded his most secret thoughts—the conflicts and aspirations of his spiritual history, so unbounded was his reliance on his honour, so exalted his estimate of the judgment of that powerful mind in matters of religion. The disclosures of both were distorted and abused to crush them; both had to rue the day when they trusted one who could sacrifice truth to glory. At Issy, the deference and the candour of Fénélon were met by a haughty reserve on the part of Bossuet. The meekness of Fénélon and the timidity of Madame Guyon only inflamed his arrogance; to bow to him was to be overborne; to confront him was at once to secure respect, if not fairness. The Articles were already drawn up when the signature of Fénélon was requested. He felt that he should have been allowed his fair share in their construction; as they were, he could not sign them; he proposed modifications; they were acceded to; and the thirty-four Articles of Issy appeared in March, 1695, with the name of Fénélon associated with the other three.[[352]]
VII.
To any one who reads these Articles, and the letter written by Fénélon to Madame de la Maisonfort, after signing them, it will be obvious that the Quietism of Fénélon went within a moderate compass. When he comes to explain his meaning, the controversy is very much a dispute about words. He did not, like Madame Guyon, profess to conduct devout minds by a certain method to the attainment of perfect disinterestedness. He only maintained the possibility of realizing a love to God, thus purified from self. He was as fully aware as his opponents, that to evince our love to God by willingness to endure perdition, was the same thing as attesting our devotion to Him by our readiness to hate Him for ever. This is the standing objection against the doctrine of disinterested love. The great Nonconformist divine, John Howe, urges it with force. It is embodied in the thirty-second of the Articles in question. But it does not touch Fénélon’s position. His assertion is, that we should will our own salvation only because God wills it; that, supposing it possible for us to endure hell torments, retaining the grace of God and our consciousness that such suffering was according to His will, and conducive to His glory, the soul, animated by pure love, would embrace even such a doom.[[353]] It is but the supposition of an impossible case,—a supposition, moreover, which involves a very gross and external conception of hell. It could find no place in a mysticism like that of Behmen or Swedenborg, where hell is regarded, much more truly, less as an infliction from without, than as the development of dominant evil from within. The Quietism of Fénélon does not preclude the reflex actions of the mind, or confine the spirit of the adept to the sphere of the immediate. It forbids only the introspection of self-complacency.[[354]] It does not merge distinct acts in a continuous operation, nor discourage effort for self-advancement in holiness, or for the benefit of others—it only teaches us to moderate that impatience which has its origin in self, and declares that our own co-operation becomes, in certain cases, unconscious—is, as it were, lost in a ‘special facility.’[[355]] The indefatigable benevolence of his life abundantly repudiates the slanderous conclusion of his adversaries, that the doctrine of indifference concerning the future, involves indifference likewise to moral good and evil in the present. Bossuet himself is often as mystical as Fénélon, sometimes more so.[[356]] St. Francis de Sales and Madame de Chantal said the very same things,—not to mention the unbridled utterances of the earlier and the mediæval mystics canonized by the Church of Rome. Could the controversy have been confined to the real question, no harm would have been done. It would have resembled the duel, in Ben Jonson’s play, between Fastidious Brisk and Signor Puntarvolo, where the rapiers cut through taffeta and lace, gold embroidery and satin doublets, but nowhere enter the skin. Certain terms and certain syllogisms, a well-starched theory, or an argument trimmed with the pearls of eloquence—might have been transfixed or rent by a dexterous pen, on this side or on that, but the prize of the conqueror would not have been court favour, nor the penalty of the conquered, exile. Theologians might have written, for a few, the learned history of a logical campaign, but the eyes of Europe would never have been turned to a conflict for fame and fortune raging in the Vatican and at Versailles, enlisting every religious party throughout Roman-catholic Christendom, and involving the rise or fall of some of the most illustrious names among the churchmen and nobility of France.
VIII.
The writings of Madame Guyon had now been condemned, though without mention of her name; Bossuet had intimated that he required nothing further from her; she began to hope that the worst might be over, and returned with her friends from Meaux to Paris, to live there as much retired as possible. This flight, which he chose to call dishonourable, irritated Bossuet. She had suffered him to see that she could trust him no longer. He endeavoured to recover the certificate he had given. An order was procured for her arrest. The police observed that a house in the Faubourg St. Antoine was always entered by a pass-key. They made their way in, and found Madame Guyon. They brought away their prisoner, ill as she was, and the king was induced, with much difficulty, to sign an order for her incarceration at Vincennes. The despot thought a convent might suffice,—not so the persecutors.[[357]]
Bossuet had been for some time occupied in writing a work which should demolish with a blow the doctrine of Madame Guyon, and hold her up to general odium. It consisted of ten books, and was entitled Instructions on the States of Prayer. He showed the manuscript to Fénélon, desiring him to append a statement, approving all it contained, which should accompany the volume when published. Fénélon refused. Six months ago he had declared that he could be no party to a personal attack on Madame Guyon: the Instructions contained little else. That tremendous attack was no mere exposure of unguarded expressions—no mere deduction of dangerous consequences, possibly unforeseen by a half-educated writer; it charged Madame Guyon with having for her sole design the inculcation of a false spirituality, which abandoned, as an imperfection, faith in the divine Persons and the humanity of Christ; which disowned the authority of Scripture, of tradition, of morality; which dispensed with vocal prayer and acts of worship; which established an impious and brutal indifference between vice and virtue, between everlasting hate of God and everlasting love; which forbade resistance to temptation as an interruption to repose; which taught an imaginary perfection extinguishing the nobler desires only to inflame the lower, and clothing the waywardness of self-will and passion with the authority of inspiration and of prophecy. Fénélon knew that this accusation was one mass of falsehood. If Bossuet himself believed it, why had he suffered such a monster still to commune; why had he been so faithless to his high office in the Church, as to give his testimonials declaring the purity of her purpose and the soundness of her faith, when he had not secured the formal retraction of a single error? To sign his approval of that book, would be not merely a cowardly condemnation of a woman whom he knew to be innocent—it would be the condemnation of himself. His acquaintance with Madame Guyon was matter of notoriety. It would be to say that he—a student of theology, a priest, an archbishop, the preceptor of princes—had not only refrained from denouncing, but had honoured with his friendship, the teacher of an abominable spiritualism which abolished the first principles of right and wrong. It would be to declare, in fact, such a prelate far more guilty than such a heretic. And Bossuet pretended to be his friend—Bossuet, who had laid the snare which might have been the triumph of the most malignant enemy. It was not a mere question of persons—Madame Guyon might die in prison—he himself might be defamed and disgraced—he did not mean to become her champion—surely that was enough, knowing what he knew,—let her enemies be satisfied with his silence—he could not suffer another man to take his pen out of his hand to denounce as an emissary of Satan one whom he believed to be a child of God.[[358]]
Such was Fénélon’s position. He wished to be silent concerning Madame Guyon. To assent to the charges brought against her would not have been even a serviceable lie, if such a man could have desired to escape the wrath of Bossuet at so scandalous a price. Every one would have said that the Archbishop of Cambray had denounced his accomplice out of fear. Neither was he prepared to embrace the opposite extreme and to defend the personal cause of the accused, many of whose expressions he thought questionable, orthodox as might be her explanation, and many of whose extravagances he disapproved. His enemies wished to force him to speak, and were prepared to damage his reputation whether he appeared for or against the prisoner at Vincennes. At length it became necessary that he should break silence; and when he did, it was not to pronounce judgment concerning the oppressed or her oppressors, it was to investigate the abstract question,—the teaching of the Church on the doctrine of pure love. He wrote the Maxims of the Saints.
IX.
This celebrated book appeared in January, 1697, while Fénélon was at Cambray, amazing the Flemings of his diocese by affording them, in their new archbishop, the spectacle of a church dignitary who really cared for his flock, who consigned the easier duties to his vicars, and reserved the hardest for himself; who entered their cottages like a father, listened with interest to the story of their hardships or their griefs; who consoled, counselled, and relieved them; who partook of their black bread as though he had never shared the banquets of Versailles, and as though Paris were to him, as to themselves, a wonderful place far away, whose streets were paved with gold. Madame Guyon was in confinement at the village of Vaugirard, whither the compassion of Noailles had transferred her from Vincennes, resigned and peaceful, writing poetry and singing hymns with her pious servant-girl, the faithful companion of her misfortunes. Bossuet was visiting St. Cyr—very busy in endeavouring to purify the theology of the young ladies from all taint of Quietism—but quite unsuccessful in reconciling Madame de la Maisonfort to the loss of her beloved Fénélon.
The Maxims of the Saints was an exposition and vindication of the doctrines of pure love, of mystical union, and of perfection, as handed down by some of the most illustrious and authoritative names in the Roman-catholic Church, from Dionysius, Clement, and Augustine, to John of the Cross and Francis de Sales;—it explained their terminology;—it placed in juxtaposition with every article of legitimate mysticism its false correlative—the use and the abuse;—and was, in fact, though not expressly, a complete justification (on the principles of his Church) of that moderate Quietism held by himself, and in substance by Madame Guyon.[[359]] The book was approved by Tronson, by Fleury, by Hébert, by Pirot, a doctor of the Sorbonne, by Père La Chaise, the King’s Confessor, by the Jesuits of Clermont,—but it was denounced by Bossuet; it was nicknamed the Bible of the Little Church; Pontchartrain, the comptroller-general, and Maurice Le Tellier, Archbishop of Reims, told the King that it was fit only for knaves or fools. Louis sent for Bossuet. The Bishop of Meaux cast himself theatrically at the feet of majesty, and, with pretended tears, implored forgiveness for not earlier revealing the heresy of his unhappy brother. A compromise was yet possible; for Fénélon was ready to explain his explanations, and to suppress whatever might be pronounced dangerous in his pages. But the eagle of Meaux had seen the meek and dove-like Fénélon—once almost more his disciple than his friend—erect the standard of independence, and assume the port of a rival. His pride was roused. He was resolved to reign alone on the ecclesiastical Olympus of the Court, and he would not hear of a peace that might rob him of a triumph. Did Fénélon pretend to shelter himself by great names,—he, Bossuet, would intrench himself within the awful sanctuary of the Church; he represented religion in France; he would resent every attack upon his own opinions as an assault on the Catholic faith; he had the ear of the King, with whom heresy and treason were identical; success was all but assured, and, if so, war was glory. Such tactics are not peculiar to the seventeenth century. In our own day, every one implicated in religious abuses identifies himself with religion,—brands every exposure of his misconduct as hostility to the cause of God,—invests his miserable personality with the benign grandeur of the Gospel,—and stigmatizes as troublers in Israel all who dare to inquire into his procedure,—while innumerable dupes or cowards sleepily believe, or cautiously pretend to do so, that those who have management in a good object must themselves be good.
X.
Fénélon now requested the royal permission to appeal to Rome; he obtained it, but was forbidden to repair thither to plead in person the cause of his book, and ordered to quit the Court and confine himself to his diocese. The King went to St. Cyr, and expelled thence three young ladies, for an offence he could not in reality comprehend,—the sin of Quietism.[[360]] Intrigue was active, and the Duke de Beauvilliers was nearly losing his place in the royal household because of his attachment to Fénélon. The Duke—noble in spirit as in name, and worthy of such a friendship,—boldly told Le Grand Monarque that he was ready to leave the palace rather than to forsake his friend. Six days before the banishment of Fénélon, Louis had sent to Innocent XII. a letter, drawn up by Bossuet, saying in effect that the Maxims had been condemned at Paris, that everything urged in its defence was futile, and that the royal authority would be exerted to the utmost to execute the decision of the pontifical chair. Bossuet naturally calculated that a missive, thus intimating the sentence Infallibility was expected by a great monarch to pronounce,—arriving almost at the same time with the news of a disgrace reserved only for the most grave offences,—would secure the speedy condemnation of Fénélon’s book.
At Rome commenced a series of deliberations destined to extend over a space of nearly two years. Two successive bodies of adjudicators were impanelled and dissolved, unable to arrive at a decision. A new congregation of cardinals was selected, who held scores of long and wearisome debates, while rumour and intrigue alternately heightened or depressed the hopes of either party.[[361]] To write the Maxims of the Saints was a delicate task. It was not easy to repudiate the mysticism of Molinos without impugning the mysticism of St. Theresa. But the position of these judges was more delicate yet. It was still less easy to censure Fénélon without rendering suspicious, at the least, the orthodoxy of the most shining saints in the Calendar. On the one hand, there might be risk of a schism; on the other pressed the urgency and the influence of a powerful party, the impatience, almost the menaces of a great king.
The real question was simply this,—Is disinterested love possible? Can man love God for His own sake alone, with a love, not excluding, but subordinating all other persons and objects, so that they shall be regarded only in God who is All in All? If so, is it dangerous to assert the possibility, to commend this divine ambition, as Fénélon has done? But the discussion was complicated and inflamed by daily slander and recrimination, by treachery and insinuation, and by the honest anger they provoke; by the schemes of personal ambition, by the rivalry of religious parties, by the political intrigues of the State, by the political intrigues of the Church; by the interests of a crew of subaltern agents, who loved to fish in muddy waters; and by the long cherished animosity between Gallican and Ultramontanist. Couriers pass and repass continually between Rome and Cambray, between Rome and Paris. The Abbé Bossuet writes constantly from Rome to the Bishop of Meaux; the Abbé de Chanterac from the same city to the Archbishop of Cambray. Chanterac writes like a faithful friend and a good man; he labours day and night in the cause of Fénélon; he bids him be of good cheer and put his trust in God. The letters of the Abbé Bossuet to his uncle are worthy a familiar of the Inquisition. After circulating calumnies against the character of Madame Guyon, after hinting that Fénélon was a partaker of her immoralities as well as of her heresy, and promising, with each coming post, to produce fresh confessions and new discoveries of the most revolting licentiousness, he sits down to urge Bossuet to second his efforts by procuring the banishment of every friend whom Fénélon yet has at Court; and to secure, by a decisive blow in Paris, the ruin of that ‘wild beast,’ Fénélon, at Rome. Bossuet lost no time in acting on the suggestion of so base an instrument.[[362]]
XI.
At Paris a hot war of letters, pamphlets, and treatises, was maintained by the leaders, whose quarrel everywhere divided the city and the court into two hostile encampments. Fénélon offered a resistance Bossuet had never anticipated, and the veteran polemic was deeply mortified to see public opinion doubtful, whether he or a younger rival had won the laurels in argument and eloquence. In an evil hour for his fame he resolved to crush his antagonist at all costs; he determined that the laws of honourable warfare should be regarded no more, that no confidence should be any longer sacred. In the summer of 1698 the storm burst upon the head of the exile at Cambray. Early in June, Fénélon heard that the Abbé de Beaumont, his nephew, and the Abbé de Langeron, his friend, had been dismissed in disgrace from the office of sub-preceptors to the young Duke of Burgundy; that Dupuy and De Leschelles, had been banished the Court because of their attachment to him; that his brother had been expelled from the marine, and a son of Madame Guyon from the guards; that the retiring and pacific Fleury had narrowly escaped ignominy for a similar cause: that the Dukes of Beauvilliers, Chevreuse, and Guiche, were themselves menaced, and the prospect of their downfall openly discussed; and that to correspond with him was hereafter a crime against the State. Within a month, another Job’s messenger brought him tidings that Bossuet had produced a book entitled An Account of Quietism—an attack so terrible that the dismay of his remaining friends had almost become despair. Bossuet possessed three formidable weapons—his influence as a courtier, his authority as a priest, his powers as an author. He wielded them all at once, and all of them dishonourably. If he was unfair in the first capacity, when he invoked the thunders of royalty to ruin the cause of a theological opponent—if he was unfair in the second, when he denounced forbearance and silenced intercession as sins against God,—he was yet more so in the third, when he employed all his gifts, to weave into a malignant tissue of falsehood and exaggeration the memoirs of Madame Guyon, the correspondence of Fénélon with Madame de Maintenon, and his former confidential letters to himself—letters on spiritual matters to a spiritual guide—letters which should have been sacred as the secresy of the Confessional. The sensation created by the Account of Quietism was prodigious. Bossuet presented his book to the King, whose approval was for every parasite the authentication of all its slanders. Madame de Maintenon, with her own hand, distributed copies among the courtiers; in the salon of Marly nothing else was talked of; in the beautiful gardens groups of lords and ladies, such as Watteau would have loved to paint, were gathered on the grass, beside the fountains, beneath the trees, to hear it read; it was begged, borrowed, stolen, greedily snatched, and delightedly devoured; its anecdotes were so piquant, its style so sparkling, its bursts of indignant eloquence so grand; gay ladies, young and old, dandies, wits, and libertines, found its scandal so delicious,—Madame Guyon was so exquisitely ridiculous,—La Combe, so odious a Tartuffe,—Fénélon, so pitiably displumed of all his shining virtues; and, what was best of all, the insinuations were worse than the charges,—the book gave much and promised more,—it hinted at disclosures more disgraceful yet, and gave free scope to every malicious invention and every prurient conjecture.[[363]]
XII.
The generous Fénélon, more thoughtful for others than for himself, at first hesitated to reply even to such a provocation, lest he should injure the friends who yet remained to him at Versailles. But he was soon convinced that their position, as much as his, rendered an answer imperative. He received Bossuet’s book on the 8th of July, and by the 13th of August his defence had been written, printed, and arrived at Rome, to gladden the heart of poor Chanterac, to stop the mouth of the enemy, and to turn the tide once more in behalf of his failing party. This refutation, written with such rapidity, and under such disadvantages, was a masterpiece,—it redeemed his character from every calumny,—it raised his reputation to its height,—it would have decided a fair contest completely in his favour. It was composed when his spirit was oppressed by sorrow for the ruin of his friends, and darkened by the apprehension of new injuries which his justification might provoke,—by a proscribed man at Cambray, remote from the assistance and appliances most needful,—without a friend to guide or to relieve the labour of arranging and transcribing documents and of verifying dates, where scrupulous accuracy was of vital importance,—when it was difficult to procure correct intelligence from Paris, and hazardous to write thither lest he should compromise his correspondents,—when even his letters to Chanterac were not safe from inspection,—when it would be difficult to find a printer for such a book, and yet more so to secure its circulation in the metropolis. As it was, D’Argenson, the lieutenant of police,—a functionary pourtrayed by his contemporaries as at once the ugliest and most unprincipled of men,—seized a package of seven hundred copies at the gates of Paris. The Reply appeared, however, and was eagerly read. Even the few who were neutral, the many who were envious, the host who were prejudiced, could not withhold their admiration from that lucid and elegant style—that dignified and unaffected eloquence; numbers yielded, in secret, at least, to the force of such facts and such arguments; while all were astonished at the skill and self-command with which the author had justified his whole career without implicating a single friend; and leaving untouched the shield of every other adversary, had concentrated all his force on exposing the contradictions, the treachery, and the falsehood of Bossuet’s accusation.[[364]]
The controversy now draws to a close. Bossuet published Remarks on the Reply of Fénélon, and Fénélon rejoined with Remarks on the Remarks of Bossuet. Sixty loyal doctors of the Sorbonne censured twelve propositions, in the Maxims, while Rome was yet undecided. Towards the close of the same year (1698) Louis wrote a letter to the Pope, yet more indecently urgent than his former one, demanding a thorough condemnation of so dangerous a book; and this epistle he seconded by depriving Fénélon, a few weeks afterwards, of the title and pension of preceptor—that pension which Fénélon had once nobly offered to return to a treasury exhausted by ambitious wars.[[365]]
Innocent XII. had heard, with indignant sorrow, of the arbitrary measures adopted against Fénélon and his friends. He was mortified by the arrogance of Louis, by the attempts so openly made to forestall his judgment. He was accustomed to say that Cambray had erred through excess of love to God; Meaux, by want of love to his neighbour. But Louis was evidently roused, and it was not safe to provoke him too far. After a last effort at a compromise, the Pope yielded; and the cardinals pronounced a condemnation, far less complete, however, than the vehemence of the accusers had hoped to secure. Twenty-three propositions extracted from the Maxims, were censured, but the Pontiff openly declared that such censure did not extend to the explanations which the Archbishop of Cambray had given of his book. This sentence was delivered on the 12th of March, 1699. The submission of Fénélon is famous in history. He received the intelligence as he was about to ascend the pulpit; he changed his subject, and preached a sermon on the duty of submission to superiors.[[366]] Bossuet endeavoured, in vain, to represent the obedience which was the first to pronounce the sentence of self-condemnation, as a profound hypocrisy.
XIII.
Madame Guyon lingered for four years a solitary prisoner in the dungeons of the Bastille. In the same tower was confined the Man of the Iron Mask, and she may have heard, in her cell, the melancholy notes of the guitar with which her fellow-prisoner beguiled a captivity whose horrors had then lasted seven-and-thirty years. There, a constitution never strong, was broken down by the stony chill of rigorous winters, and by the noxious vapours which steamed from the stagnant moat in summer.[[367]] She was liberated in 1702, and sent to Blois,—a picturesque old city, whose steep and narrow streets, cut into innumerable steps, overlook the Loire,—crowned on the one side by its fine church, and on the other by the royal chateau, memorable for the murder of the Guises; its massive proportions adorned by the varying tastes of successive generations, then newly beautified after the designs of Mansart, and now a ruin, the delight of every artist. There she lived in quiet, sought out from time to time by visitors from distant provinces and other lands,—as patient under the infirmity of declining age as beneath the persecutions of her earlier years,—finding, as she had always done, some sweet in every bitter cup, and a theme for praise in every trial, purified by her long afflictions, elevated by her hope of glory, full of charity and full of peace, resigned and happy to the last. Her latest letter is dated in 1717,—Bossuet had departed, and Fénélon,—and before the close of that year, she also, the subject of such long and bitter strife, had been removed beyond all the tempests of this lower world.
In the judicial combats of ancient Germany, it was the custom to place in the centre of the lists a bier, beside which stood the accuser and the accused, at the head and at the foot, leaning there for some time in solemn silence before they laid lance in rest and encountered in the deadly shock. Would that religious controversialists had oftener entered and maintained their combat as alike in view of that final appeal in the unseen world of truth—with a deeper and more abiding sense of that supreme tribunal before which so many differences vanish, and where none but he who has striven lawfully can receive a crown. Bossuet was regarded as the champion of Hope, and drew his sword, it was said, lest sacrilegious hands should remove her anchor. Fénélon girded on his arms to defend the cause of Charity. Alas! said the Pope—heart-sick of the protracted conflict—they forget that it is Faith who is in danger. Among the many witty sayings which the dispute suggested to the lookers-on, perhaps one of the most significant is that attributed to the daughter of Madame de Sévigné. ‘M. de Cambray,’ said she, ‘pleads well the cause of God, but M. de Meaux yet better that of religion, and cannot fail to win the day at Rome.’ Fénélon undertook to show that his semi-Quietism was supported by the authority of ecclesiastical tradition, and he was unquestionably in the right. He might have sustained, on Romanist principles, a doctrine much less moderate, by the same argument. But it was his wish to render mysticism as rational and as attractive as possible; and no other advocate has exhibited it so purified from extravagance, or secured for it so general a sympathy. The principle of ‘holy indifference,’ however, must be weighed, not by the virtues of Fénélon, but according to the standard of Scripture,—and such an estimate must, we believe, pronounce it mistaken.
XIV.
The attempt to make mysticism definite and intelligible must always involve more or less of inconsistency. Nevertheless, the enterprise has been repeatedly undertaken; and it is a remarkable fact, that such efforts have almost invariably originated in France. Mysticism and scholasticism—the spirit of the cloud and the spirit of the snow—reign as rivals throughout the stormy region of the Middle Age. The reaction against the extreme of each nourished its antagonist. Hugo and Richard of St. Victor endeavoured to effect a union, and to reconcile these contending products of the heart and brain. In that ascetic abstraction, which hides in darkness all the objects of sense, they sought to develop, from the dull and arid stem of school divinity, the most precious blossoms of the feeling; and their mysticism resembles those plants of the cactus-tribe which unfold, from their lustreless and horny leaves, gorgeous flowers, that illumine, with phosphoric radiance, the darkness of the tropical night. The Victorines were succeeded in the same path by Bonaventura, a Frenchman by education, if not by birth, more a schoolman than a mystic; and, in the fifteenth century, by Gerson. These are mystics who have no tales to tell of inspiration and of vision—their aim is to legitimize rapture, to define ecstasy, to explain the higher phenomena of the spirit on the basis of an elaborate psychology, to separate the delusive from the real in mysticism, and to ascertain the laws of that mystical experience, of which they acknowledged themselves to be but very partially the subjects. With this view, Gerson introduced into mysticism, strange to say, the principle of induction; and proposed, by a collection and comparison of recorded examples, to determine its theory, and decide its practice. In the Maxims of the Saints, Fénélon carries out the idea of Gerson, as far as was requisite for his immediate purpose. Both are involved in the same difficulty, and fall into the same contradiction. What Molinos was to Fénélon, Ruysbroek was to Gerson. Fénélon wished to stop short of the spiritualism condemned as heretical in Molinos; Gerson, to avoid the pantheism he thought he saw in Ruysbroek. Both impose checks, which, if inefficacious, amount to nothing; if effective, are fatal to the very life of mysticism,—both hold doctrines, to which they dare not give scope; and both are, to some extent, implicated in the consequences they repudiate by the principles they admit.
Mysticism in France contrasts strikingly, in this respect, with mysticism in Germany. Speaking generally, it may be said that France exhibits the mysticism of sentiment, Germany the mysticism of thought. The French love to generalize and to classify. An arrangement which can be expressed by a word, a principle which can be crystallized into a sparkling maxim, they will applaud. But with them conventionalism reigns paramount—society is ever present to the mind of the individual—their sense of the ludicrous is exquisitely keen. The German loves abstractions for their own sake. To secure popularity for a visionary error in France, it must be lucid and elegant as the language—it must be at least an ingenious and intelligible falsehood; but in Germany, the most grotesque inversions of thought and of expression will be found no hindrance to its acceptability, and the most hopeless obscurity may be pronounced its highest merit. In this respect, German philosophy sometimes resembles Lycophron, who was so convinced that unintelligibility was grandeur, as to swear he would hang himself if a man were found capable of understanding his play of Cassandra. Almost every later German mystic has been a secluded student—almost every mystic of modern France has been a brilliant conversationalist. The genius of mysticism rises, in Germany, in the clouds of the solitary pipe; in France, it is a fashionable Ariel, who hovers in the drawing-room, and hangs to the pendants of the glittering chandelier. If Jacob Behmen had appeared in France, he must have counted disciples by units, where in Germany he reckoned them by hundreds. If Madame Guyon had been born in Germany, rigid Lutheranism might have given her some annoyance; but her earnestness would have redeemed her enthusiasm from ridicule, and she would have lived and died the honoured precursor of modern German Pietism. The simplicity and strength of purpose which characterize so many of the German mystics, appear to much advantage beside the vanity and affectation which have so frequently attended the manifestations of mysticism in France. In Germany, theosophy arose with the Reformation, and was as much a theology as a science. In France, where the Reformation had been suppressed, and where superstition had been ridiculed with such success, the same love of the marvellous was most powerful with the most irreligious—it filled the antechamber of Cagliostro with impatient dandies and grandees, trembling, and yet eager to pry into the future—too enlightened to believe in Christ, yet too credulous to doubt the powers of a man before whose door fashion drew, night after night, a line of carriages which filled the street.
Note to page 245.
A full account of the proceedings against the Quietists will be found in the narrative above referred to and in Arnold’s Kirchen-und-Ketzer Geschichte, th. III. cap. xvii.
The motive of Père La Chaise in urging this prosecution appears to have been twofold: partly, to start heretics whom his Most Christian Majesty might magnificently hunt, and still more to weaken the Spanish party and embarrass the Pope, who was suspected of leaning toward the house of Austria. The audacity of the Jesuits—so formidable always, from their numbers, their union, their unscrupulousness, and now emboldened by support so powerful, struck all Rome with terror. A man widely reputed for sanctity, throughout a period of twenty years—an honoured guest within the walls of the Vatican—who had long enjoyed, and not yet forfeited, the warm friendship of the Head of the Church—was suddenly declared the most dangerous enemy to the faith of Christendom. To accomplish the ruin of this victim, a venerable pontiff was threatened with the most grievous insult which infallibility could suffer. Within a month, two hundred persons were thrown into the dungeons of the Inquisition,—and many of these were eminent for rank, for learning, or for piety. Only the grossly stupid or the scandalously dissolute could feel themselves secure. To hint a question concerning the justice of a single step in prosecutions remarkable, even at Rome, for the baseness and illegality of their agents and their acts—to live a quiet and retiring life—to appear infrequently at confession or at mass,—these were circumstances sufficient to render any man suspected of Quietism; and if the informer were hungry, or a private enemy alert, from suspicion to conviction was but a step.
But the persecutors were destined to meet with many mortifications in their course. Molinos and his friend Petrucci—a bishop, and afterwards a cardinal—defended themselves, on their first summons, with such skill and intrepidity, that the writings which had been circulated against them were condemned as libellous. The case of Petrucci represents that of the great majority against whom the charge of Quietism was brought. Not an accusation could be substantiated, save this,—that blameless as his life might be, he had grown remiss in some of those outward observances which are the pride of Pharisaic sanctity. Thus defeated at the outset, the Jesuits were reinforced and rendered victorious by the falsehoods of D’Etrees, who refused to hear a word Molinos had to say in defence of his own writings. The Count and Countess Vespiniani were arrested, with other persons, to the number of seventy. They were accused of omitting the exterior practices of religion, and of giving themselves to solitude and prayer. The Countess bravely answered, that she had discovered her manner of devotion only to her confessor; he must have betrayed her; who but idiots would confess, if confession was made the engine of the persecutor—if no secret was sacred—if to confess might be to lie at the mercy of a villain? Henceforward she would confess to God alone. A rank so high must be respected. Words so bold were dangerous. So the Vespiniani were set free. The circular letter sent out against the Quietists was treated with indifference by most of the Italian bishops—not unleavened, many of them, by this obnoxious kind of piety. Nay, worse! for once, an epistle from the Inquisition was published. The unfortunate letter escaped somehow—was translated into Italian—all Rome was reading it. The world looked in on the procedure of the Holy Office, to the shame and bitter vexation of its holy men. It was said that the Inquisition collected some twenty thousand letters, or copies of letters, sent and received by Molinos, and that when he was arrested, twenty crowns’ worth of letters addressed to him were seized at the post-office. So extended was the influence of the heretic—so little likely, therefore, to perish with him. Some ecclesiastics had the candour to admit that most of the Quietists showed themselves better instructed than their accusers, and confronted their judges so ably, with passages, authorities, and arguments, that they could only be silenced by authority and force.
The letter of Cardinal Caraccioli to Innocent, about the Quietists, represents them as persons who attempt passive mental prayer and ‘contemplatio,’ without the previous preparation of the ‘via purgativa.’ Dreadful to relate, some of them had been known to leave their rosaries unfingered, to refuse to make the sign of the cross, to declare crucifixes rather in their way than otherwise! They trusted rather to their inward attraction than to directors. Some, though laymen, and though married, communed daily—an ominous sign—for it betokened the lowering (in their minds, at least) of that high partition wall, which Rome had made so strong, between clergy and laity—between the religious par excellence and the vulgar herd of Christians, who were to be saved only through the former. See Bausset’s Histoire de Fénélon, liv. ii.; Pièces Justificatives, No. II.
Note to page 259.
Fénélon could with ease bring from the arsenal of tradition even more proofs than he needed for the establishment of his doctrine. No prevarication or sophistry could conceal the fact that Bernard, Albertus Magnus, Francis de Sales, Theresa, Catharine of Genoa, and other saints, had used language concerning pure love, authenticating more than all that Fénélon was solicitous to defend. Thus much was proven,—even subtracting those passages which Fénélon unwittingly cited from an edition of De Sales’ Entretiens, said to be full of interpolations. The spiritual history of Friar Laurent and of Francis de Sales furnished actual examples of the most extreme case Fénélon was willing to put. Bossuet’s true answer was the reply he gave on the question to Madame de la Maisonfort,—such rare and extraordinary cases should be left out of our consideration, they should not be drawn within the range of possible experience, even for Christians considerably advanced. (Phelipeaux, liv. i. pp. 165-176.) In dispute with Fénélon, instead of admitting the fact, as with La Maisonfort, the polemic gets uppermost, and he tries very dishonestly to explain away the language of De Sales, while he misrepresents and garbles that of Fénélon. See Cinquième Lettre en Réponse à divers Ecrits; Première Lettre en Réponse à celle de M. L’Evêque de Meaux; Maximes des Saints, art. v.
Fénélon draws a subtile distinction between the object of love and the motive of love. That love in God which renders him our eternal blessedness, is among the objects of our love—for God has so revealed himself, but is not the motive of it. (Max. des Saints, art. iv.) Do we desire happiness less, he asks, because we desire it from a worthy motive,—i.e., as desired by God? Do we extinguish hope by exalting and regulating it? (Entretiens sur la Religion; Œuvres, tom. i. p. 35.) If any one of us knew that he should be annihilated at death, ought he less to love the infinitely Good? Is not eternal life a gift which God is free to grant or to withhold? Shall the love of the Christian who is to have eternal life be less than that of him who anticipates annihilation, just because the love of God to him is so much more? Shall such a gift serve only to make love interested? (Sur le Pur Amour, xix. Compare also Max. des Saints, art. 10, 11, 12; Correspondance, let. 43.)
Fénélon is very careful to state that disinterested love is put to its most painful proof only in rare and extreme cases,—that the love which is interested is not a sin, only a lower religious stage, and that he who requires that staff is to beware how he throws it aside prematurely, ambitious of a spiritual perfection which may be beyond his reach. Bossuet endeavoured to show that if Fénélon’s doctrine were true, any love except the disinterested was a crime. (Instructions et Avis, &c., xx.; Sur le Pur Amour, p. 329; Max. des Saints, art. iii., and sundry qualifications of importance, concerning self-abandonment in the ‘épreuves extrêmes,’ art. ix.)
Note to page 259.
Such is the explanation in the letter to La Maisonfort. But Fénélon is not always—perhaps, could not possibly be—quite consistent with himself on this most delicate of questions. Beyond a doubt, the attempt practically to apply this doctrine concerning reflex acts constitutes the morbid element in his system—is the one refinement above all others fatally unnatural. There is great truth in Fénélon’s warnings against nervous, impatient introspection. Against an evil so prevalent, and so constantly fostered by the confessional and the directors, it was high time that some one should protest. But, alas! not only does Fénélon himself uphold, most zealously, that very directorship, but this strain after a love perfectly disinterested tempts the aspirant to be continually hunting inwardly after traces of the hated self, which will never quite vanish. Happy, according to Fénélon, is that religionist who can sacrifice, not only himself, but the sacrifice of himself—who burns the burnt offering—who gives up the consciousness of having given himself up—and who has reached, without knowing it, the pinnacle of Christian perfection. The reader will find specimens of his more guarded language in the letter referred to in the Instructions et Avis, &c. xx.; Max. des Saints, art. xiii.; Lettres Spirituelles, xiii. This last, a letter to Sœur Charlotte de St. Cyprien, is of importance, as containing definitions of mystical terms, similar in substance to those given in the Maximes, and moreover, highly approved by Bossuet, a year after the conferences at Issy. The strongest expressions are found in the Instructions et Avis, xxii. xxiii. He says,—Pour consommer le sacrifice de purification en nous des dons de Dieu, il faut donc achever de détruire l’holocauste; il faut tout perdre, même l’abandon aperçu par lequel on se voit livré à sa perte.—P. 342. Compare the allusion to the unconscious prayer of St. Anthony, Max. des Saints, art. xxi.
Note to page 259.
L’activité que les mystiques blâment n’est pas l’action réelle et la co-opération de l’âme à la grâce; c’est seulement une crainte inquiète, ou une ferveur empressée qui recherche les dons de Dieu pour sa propre consolation.—Lettres Spirituelles, xiii. So also, in the letter to La Maisonfort, he shows that the state of passivity does not preclude a great number of distinct acts. This is what the mystics call co-operating with God without activity of our own—a subtlety which those may seek to understand who care. Fénélon means to forbid a selfish isolation, which, on pretence of quietude, neglects daily duty. True repose in God calmly discharges such obligations as they come. We have seen an example of this in St. Theresa. Fénélon is not prepared to go the length of John of the Cross, who denies our co-operation altogether.—Maximes des Saints, art. xxx. and xxix. Ils ne font plus d’actes empressés et marqués par une secousse inquiète: ils font des actes si paisibles et si uniformes, que ces actes, quoique très-réels, très-successifs, et même interrompus, leur paraissent ou un seul acte sans interruption, ou un repos continuel.
Fénélon is at any time ready to endorse all the counsels of John of the Cross, as to the duty of leaving behind (outre-passer) all apparitions, sounds, tastes, everything visionary, sensuous, or theurgic. With the grosser forms of mysticism he has no sympathy. He even endeavours to represent St. Theresa as an advocate of the purer and more refined mysticism, adducing the scarce-attainable seventh Morada, and overlooking the sensuous character of the preceding six. Theresa might, in the abstract, rate the visionless altitude above the valley of vision; but she preferred, for herself, unquestionably, the valley to the mountain. (Max. des Saints, xix.; Lettres Spirituelles, xiv. xvi. xvii.) In a letter on extraordinary gifts, he repeats the precept of John—‘Aller toujours par le non-voir;’ and ‘outre-passer les grands dons, et marcher dans la pure foi comme si on ne les avait pas reçus.’ He consigns the soul, in like manner, to a blank abstraction—to what Luther would have called ‘a void tedium.’ Tout ce qui est goût et ferveur sensible, image créée, lumière distincte et aperçue, donne une fausse confiance, et fait une impression trop vive; on les reçoit avec joie, et on les quitte avec peine. Au contraire, dans la nudité de la pure foi, on ne doit rien voir; on n’a plus en soi ni pensée ni volonté; on trouve tout dans cette simplicité générale, sans s’arrêter à rien de distinct; on ne possède rien, mais on est possédé.—Lettre xxiii. The very acts of which Contemplation is made up, are, says Fénélon—‘Si simples, si directs, si paisibles, si uniformes, qu’ils n’ont rien de marqué par où l’âme puisse les distinguer.’—Max. des Saints, art. xxi. What such acts can be, must remain for ever a mystery unfathomable. It is for these inexplicable ‘actes distincts’ that the convenient ‘facilité spéciale’ is provided. (Correspondance, lettre 43; comp. Lettres Spirituelles, xiii. 448.)
Fénélon is also careful to guard his mysticism against the pretences of special revelation and any troublesome insubordination on the part of the ‘inner light,’ or l’attrait intérieur. The said ‘attrait,’ he justly observes, ‘n’est point une inspiration miraculeuse et prophétique, qui rende l’âme infaillible, ni impeccable, ni indépendante, de la direction des pasteurs; ce n’est que la grâce, qui est sans cesse prévenante dans tous les justes, et qui est plus spéciale dans les âmes élevées par l’amour désintéressé,’ &c.—Loc. cit. p. 450; Max. des Saints, art. xxix. and vii.
Note to page 262.
Fénélon gives his reasons for refusing to affix his approval to Bossuet’s book, in letters to Tronson and Madame de Maintenon, and in the Réponse. (Correspondance, lettres 52, 53, 57; Réponse à la Relation, chap, v.) It was a strong point for Fénélon against Bossuet that the latter had administered to Madame Guyon the sacraments, and granted her a favourable certificate, after reading the very books in which he professed afterwards to discover the most flagitious designs. In thinking better, therefore, of her intentions than of her language, Fénélon was no more her partisan or defender than Bossuet himself had been, up to that point. The act of submission Bossuet made her sign was not a retractation of error, but simply a declaration that she had never held any of the errors condemned in the pastoral letter,—that she always meant to write in a sense altogether orthodox, and had no conception that any dangerous interpretation could be put upon the terms which, in her ignorance, she had employed. (Réponse à la Relation, chap. i.) Phelipeaux sees in everything Fénélon wrote—the notes for the Maxims—the memoranda he sent to Bossuet, only one purpose—an insane resolve to defend Madame Guyon at all costs. He chooses to imagine that every step taken by her was secretly dictated by Fénélon. In fact, however, from the time the first suspicions arose, Fénélon began to withdraw from Madame Guyon his former intimacy. Nothing could exceed his caution in the avoidance of all implication with one whose language was susceptible of such fatal misconstruction. He could probably have taken no better course. He endeavoured to retain the controversy about the real question, that she might be forgotten. But it soon became evident that he himself was the party attacked, and with a virulence for which the scandals attributed to Madame Guyon furnished an instrument too tempting to be neglected. The charges against Madame Guyon increased in magnitude—not with her resistance, for she made none—but with that of Fénélon. (Réponse, xxiii. lxxxiv. lx.)
Note to page 264.
The motives with which Fénélon wrote and published the Maxims are fully stated by himself. It was not to defend Madame Guyon, but to rescue the doctrine of pure love, threatened with destruction by the growing prejudice against the religion of the ‘inward way.’ It was not to excuse the Quietists, but to preserve, by due distinctions, souls attached to the true mysticism, from the illusions of the false. It was to give their full and legitimate scope to those venerable principles which a heretical Quietism was said to have abused. Mysticism was not to be extinguished by denying the truth it contained. Let, then, the true be separated from the false. The Maxims were believed by Fénélon to contain no position contrary to the articles of Issy. The passages which cannot be reconciled with the limitations imposed by those articles are not his own, but quotations from De Sales and others. The Andalusian Illuminati had rendered the greatest saints suspected. Theresa, Alvarez, John of the Cross, stood in need of defenders. Ruysbroek, whom Bellarmine called the great contemplatist; Tauler, the Apostle of Germany, had required and had found champions, the one in Dionysius the Carthusian, the other in Blosius. The Cardinal Berulle felt compelled to enter the lists on behalf of St. Francis de Sales, for suspicions had been cast upon the wisdom of that eminent saint. Such examples might well alarm all those whose religion was embued with mysticism,—all those to whom a faith of that type was a necessity. Let it be openly declared where the path of safety lies, and where the dangers commence. The Maxims were to furnish a via media between the extreme of those who repudiated mystical theology altogether, and the excesses of the false mystics. The doctrines stigmatized as false throughout the Maxims, are what Fénélon supposed to be the tenets of Molinos, judging from the sixty-eight propositions condemned at Rome. The Faux, therefore, which opposes to the Vrai is, for the most part, a mere chimera—made up of doctrines really believed by scarcely any one,—only taught, perhaps, now and then, by designing priests to women, for the purposes of seduction. See the ‘Avertissement’ to the Maxims; Première Lettre en Réponse, &c. p. 111; Correspondance, lettre 59; and the letter on the Maxims, to the Pope, Phelipeaux, p. 239.
Note to page 265.
Among the expelled was the brilliant, unmanageable Madame de la Maisonfort—the last woman in the world to have been shut up in the small monotony of St. Cyr. The history of mysticism at St. Cyr is a miniature of its history at large. The question by which it is tried is simply practical. Will it subordinate itself? If so, let it flourish. If not, root it out. Jean d’Avila, in his Audi, Filia, et Vide, has a section entitled Des Fausses Révélations. The whole question turns on this point. Is the visionary obedient to director, superior, &c.? If so, the visions are of God. If not, the visions are of the Devil. (Œuvres du B. Jean D’Avila, Audi, Filia, et Vide, chapp. 50-55.)
Madame Guyon, in becoming a religious instructress, as she did, only followed examples honoured by the Romish Church. Angela de Foligni, the two Catharines of Siena and of Genoa, St. Theresa, and others, had become the spiritual guides of numbers, both men and women, lay and ecclesiastic. At another juncture the kind of revival introduced by Madame Guyon might have met with encouragement. But her tendency was precisely that of which the times were least tolerant, and her disposition to follow her inward attraction rather than the counsels of prelates was magnified to proportions so portentous as to exclude all hope. The mysticism of Fénélon, judged by the test of obedience, should certainly have been spared. With an anxiety almost nervous, he inculcates wherever he can, those precepts of abject servility towards the director which are so agreeable to his Church. Wherever the director is in question, we lose sight of Fénélon, we see only the priest. But neither his own sincere professions of submission, nor his constant effort to place every one else under the feet of some ecclesiastic or other, could save him from a condemnation pronounced, not on religious, but political grounds.
In this respect Fénélon was anything but the esprit fort which the scepticism of a later age so fervently admired. His letters on religious subjects abound in directions for absolute obedience, and in warnings against the exercise of thought and judgment on our own account. Though Madame de la Maisonfort knew herself utterly unfit for the religious vocation which Madame de Maintenon wished her to embrace, Fénélon could tell her that her repugnance, her anguish, her tears, were nothing, opposed to the decision of five courtly ecclesiastics, affirming that she had the vocation. He writes to say, La vocation ne se manifeste pas moins par la décision d’autrui que par notre propre attrait.—Correspondance, lettre 19. See also Lettres Spirituelles, 18, 19, 169. The inward attraction presents some perplexity. In one instance it is only another word for taste (Ibid. 35), and in another place the attraction of grace is equivalent to an act of observation and judgment (Ibid. 176). Here, with so many mystics, Fénélon can only follow the ‘moi,’ from which he fancies he escapes (441). The knot of these interior difficulties is cut by the directorship.
If Fénélon speaks uncertainly as to what is the inward attraction, and what is not, much more would the majority of mystics be sorely perplexed in their own case. The mystic, bewildered and wearied with intense self-scrutiny, sees all swim before his eyes. He can be sure of nothing. Whatever alternative he chooses, he has no sooner acted on the choice than he finds self in the act, and fancies the other road the right one. He is distressed by finding inclination and inward attraction changing, while he gazes, into each other, and back again, times without number. He is afraid to do what he likes—this may be self-pleasing. He is afraid to do what he does not like—for this may be perverseness—some culpable self-will, at least. The life of a devotee, so conscientious and so unfortunate, is rendered tolerable only by the director. The man who can put an end to this inward strife about trifles—which are anything but trifles to the sufferer—is welcomed as an angel from heaven. Casuistry, the creature of the confessional, renders its parent a necessity. Fénélon laments the abuses of the system, but he will rather believe that miracles will be continually wrought, to rescue the faithful from such mischiefs, than question (as bolder mystics, like Harphius had done) the institution itself. Even the mistakes and bad passions of superiors will be wrought into blessings for the obedient. (Sur la Direction, pp. 677, 678.)