ANTI-CATHOLIC MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES.
Like commercial panics, periodical outbursts of irreligious fanaticism seem to have become regular incidents in the history of the United States—occurrences to be looked for with as much certainty as if they were the natural outgrowth of our civilization and the peculiarly-constituted condition of American society. Though springing from widely different causes, these intermittent spasms have a marked resemblance in their deleterious effects on our individual welfare and national reputation. Both are demoralizing and degrading in their tendencies, and each, in its degree, finally results in the temporary gain of a few to the lasting injury and debasement of the multitude. In other respects they differ materially. Great mercantile reverses and isolated acts of peculation, unfortunately, are not limited to one community or to the growth of any particular system of polity, but are as common and as frequent in despotic Asia and monarchical Europe as in republican America. Popular ebullitions of bigotry, on the contrary, are, or, more correctly, ought to be, confined to those countries where ignorance and intolerance usurp the place of enlightened philanthropy and wise government. They are foreign to the spirit of American institutions, hostile to the best interests of society, and a curse to those who tolerate or encourage them. The brightest glory of the fathers of the republic springs, not so much from the fact that they separated the colonies from the mother country and founded a new nation—for that is nothing strange or unheard-of in the world’s history—but that they made its three millions of inhabitants free as well as independent: free not only from unjust taxation and arbitrary laws, but for ever free to worship their Creator according to the dictates of their conscience, unawed by petty authority and unaffected by the shifting counsels of subsequent legislators.
From this point of view the Revolution appears as one of the grandest moral events in the records of human progress; and when we reflect on the numerous pains, penalties, and restrictions prescribed by the charters and by-laws of the colonies from whence our Union has sprung, it challenges our most profound admiration and gratitude. This complete religious equality, guaranteed by our fundamental law, has ever been the boast of every true American citizen, at home and abroad. From the halls of Congress to the far Western stump-meeting we hear it again and again enunciated; it is repeated by a thousand eloquent tongues on each recurring anniversary of our independence, and is daily and weekly trumpeted throughout the length and breadth of the land by the myriad-winged Mercuries of the press. This freedom of worship, freedom of conscience, and legal equality, as declared and confirmed by our forefathers, has become, in fact, not only the written but also the common law of the land—the birthright of every native-born American, the acquired, but no less sacred, privilege of every citizen by adoption. Whoever now attempts to disturb or question it, by word or act, disgraces his country in the eyes of all mankind, and defiles the memory of our greatest and truest heroes and statesmen.
So powerful, indeed, were the example and teachings of those wise men who laid broad and deep the foundations of our happy country that, during the first half-century of our national existence, scarcely a voice was raised in opposition or protest against the principle of religious liberty as emphatically expressed in the first amendment to the Constitution. A whole generation had to pass away ere fanaticism dared to raise its crest, until the solemn guarantees of our federal compact were assailed by incendiary mobs and scouted by so-called courts of justice. The first flagrant instance of this fell spirit of bigotry happened in Massachusetts, and naturally was directed against an institution of Catholic learning.
In 1820 four Ursuline nuns arrived in Boston and established there a house of their order. Six years later they removed to the neighboring village of Charlestown, where they purchased a piece of ground, and, calling it Mt. St. Benedict, erected a suitable building and reduced the hitherto barren hill-side to a state of beautiful cultivation. In 1834 the community had increased to ten, all ladies of thorough education and refinement. From the very beginning their success as teachers was acknowledged and applauded, and their average attendance of pupils was computed at from fifty to sixty. Of these, at least four-fifths were Protestants, the daughters of the best American families, not only of New England, but of the Middle and Southern States. Though it was well known that the nuns had ever been most scrupulously careful not to meddle with the religious opinions of their scholars, and that not one conversion to the church could be ascribed to their influence, the fact that a school conducted by Catholic religious should have acquired so brilliant a reputation, and that its patrons were principally Protestants of high social and political standing, was considered sufficient in the eyes of the Puritan fanatics to condemn it.
Its destruction was therefore resolved on, and an incident, unimportant in itself, occurred in the summer of 1834 which was eagerly seized upon by the clerical adventurers who then, as now, disgraced so many sectarian pulpits. It appears that an inmate of the convent, a Miss Harrison, had, from excessive application to music, become partially demented, and during one of her moments of hallucination left the house and sought refuge with some friends. Her brother, a Protestant, having heard of her flight, accompanied by Bishop Fenwick, brought her back to the nunnery, to her own great satisfaction and the delight of the sisterhood. This trifling domestic affair was eagerly taken up by the leaders of the anti-Catholic faction and magnified into monstrous proportions. The nuns, it was said, had not only driven an American lady to madness, but had immured her in a dungeon, and, upon her attempting to escape, had, with the connivance of the bishop and priests, actually tortured her to death. Falsehoods even more diabolical were invented and circulated throughout Boston. The following Sunday the Methodist and Congregational churches rang again with denunciations against Popery and nunneries, while one self-styled divine, a Dr. Beecher, the father of a numerous progeny of male and female evangelists, some of whom have since become famous in more senses than one, preached no less than three sermons in as many different churches on the abominations of Rome. All the bigotry of Boston and the adjacent towns was aroused to the highest pitch of frenzy, and threats against the convent were heard on every side.
To pacify the public mind the selectmen of Charlestown, on the following day, the memorable 11th of August, appointed a committee to examine into the truth of the charges. They waited on the nuns, and were received by Miss Harrison, who was alleged to have been foully murdered. Under her personal guidance they searched every part of the convent and its appurtenances, till, becoming thoroughly satisfied with the falsity of the reports, they retired to draw up a statement to that effect for publication in the newspapers. This was what the rabble dreaded, and, as soon as the intention of the committee became known, the leaders resolved to forestall public sentiment by acting at once.
Accordingly, about nine o’clock in the evening, a mob began to collect in the neighborhood of Mt. St. Benedict. Bonfires were lit and exciting harangues were made, but still there were many persons reluctant to believe that the rioters were in earnest. They would not admit that any great number of Americans could be found base and brutal enough to attack a house filled with defenceless and delicate women and children. They were mistaken, however; they had yet to learn to what lengths fanaticism can be carried when once the evil passions of corrupt human nature are aroused. Towards midnight a general alarm was rung, calling out the engine companies of Boston, not to quell any fire or disturbance, but, as was proved by their conduct, to reinforce the rioters, if necessary. The first demonstration was made by firing shot and stones against the windows and doors of the main building, to ascertain if there were any defenders inside; but, upon becoming satisfied that there were none, the cowardly mob burst open the gates and doors, and rushed wildly through the passages and rooms, swearing vengeance against the nuns.
Trusting to the protection of the authorities, the gentle sisters were taken by surprise. The shots of their assailants, however, awakened them to a sense of danger. Hastening from their beds, they rushed to the dormitories, aroused the sleeping children, and had barely time to avoid the fury of the mob by escaping through a back entrance in their night-clothes. Everything portable, including money and jewelry belonging to the pupils, was laid hold of by the intruders, the furniture and valuable musical instruments were hacked in pieces, and then the convent was given to the flames amid the frantic cheers of assembled thousands. “Not content with all this,” says the report of Mr. Loring’s committee, “they burst open the tomb of the establishment, rifled it of the sacred vessels there deposited, wrested the plates from the coffins, and exposed to view the mouldering remains of their tenants. Nor is it the least humiliating feature, in this scene of cowardly and audacious violation of all that man ought to hold sacred, that it was perpetrated in the presence of men vested with authority and of multitudes of our fellow-citizens, while not one arm was lifted in the defence of helpless women and children, or in vindication of the violated laws of God and man. The spirit of violence, sacrilege, and plunder reigned triumphant.”
The morning of the 12th of August saw what for years had been the quiet retreat of Christian learning and feminine holiness a mass of blackened ruins; but the character of Massachusetts had received even a darker stain, a foul blot not yet wiped from her escutcheon. It was felt by the most respectable portion of the citizens that some step should be taken to vindicate the reputation of the State, and to place the odium of the outrage on those who alone were guilty. Accordingly, a committee of thirty-eight leading Protestant gentlemen, with Charles G. Loring as chairman, was appointed to investigate and report on the origin and results of the disgraceful proceeding. It met in Faneuil Hall from day to day, examined a great number of witnesses, and made the most minute inquiries from all sources. Its final report was long, eloquent, and convincing. After the most thorough examination, it was found, those Protestant gentlemen said, that all the wild and malicious assertions put forth in the sectarian pulpits and repeated in the newspapers, regarding the Ursulines, were without a shadow of truth or probability; they eulogized in the most glowing language the conduct of the nuns, their qualifications as teachers, their Christian piety and meekness, and their careful regard for the morals as well as for the religious scruples of their pupils. They also attributed the wanton attack upon the nunnery to the fell spirit of bigotry evoked by the false reports of the New England press and the unmitigated slanders of the anti-Catholic preachers, and called upon the legislative authorities to indemnify, in the most ample manner, the victims of mob law and official connivance.
But the most significant fact brought to light by this committee was that the fanatics, in their attack on Mt. St. Benedict, were not a mere heterogeneous crowd of ignorant men acting upon momentary impulse, but a regular band of lawless miscreants directed and aided by persons of influence and standing in society. “There is no doubt,” says the report, “that a conspiracy had been formed, extending into many of the neighboring towns; but the committee are of opinion that it embraced very few of respectable character in society, though some such may, perhaps, be actually guilty of an offence no less heinous, morally considered, in having excited the feelings which led to the design, or countenanced and instigated those engaged in its execution.” Here we find laid down, on the most unquestionable authority, the origin and birth-place of all subsequent Native American movements against Catholicity.
But the sequel to the destruction of the Charlestown convent was even more shameful than the crime itself. Thirteen men had been arrested, eight of whom were charged with arson. The first tried was the ringleader, an ex-convict, named Buzzell. The scenes which were enacted on that occasion are without a parallel in the annals of our jurisprudence. The mother-superior, several of the sisters, and Bishop Fenwick, necessary witnesses for the prosecution, were received in court with half-suppressed jibes and sneers, subjected to every species of insult by the lawyers for the defence, and were frowned upon even by the judge who presided. Though the evidence against the prisoner was conclusive, the jury, without shame or hesitation, acquitted him, and he walked out of court amid the wildest cheers of the bystanders. Similar demonstrations of popular sympathy attended the trials of the other rioters, who were all, with the exception of a young boy, permitted to escape the penalty of their gross crimes.
Even the State legislature, though urged to do so by many of the leading public men of the commonwealth, refused to vote anything like an adequate sum to indemnify the nuns and pupils for their losses, amounting to over a hundred thousand dollars. The pitiful sum of ten thousand dollars was offered, and of course rejected; and to this day the ruins of the convent stand as an eloquent monument of Protestant perfidy and puritanical meanness and injustice.
The impunity thus legally and officially guaranteed to mobs and sacrilegious plunderers soon bore fruit in other acts of lawlessness in various parts of Massachusetts. A Catholic graveyard in Lowell was shortly after entered and desecrated by an armed rabble, and a house in Wareham, in which Mass was being celebrated, was set upon by a gang of ruffians known as the “Convent Boys.” A couple of years later the Montgomery Guards, a regular militia company, composed principally of Catholic freeholders of Boston, were openly insulted by their comrades on parade, and actually stoned through the streets by a mob of over three thousand persons.
As there were no more convents to be plundered and burned in the stronghold of Puritanism, the war on those glories of religion was kept up in a different manner, but with no less rancor and audacity. Taking advantage of the excitement created by such men as Lyman Beecher and Buzzell, a mercenary publisher issued a book entitled Six Months in a Convent, which was put together by some contemptible preacher in the name of an illiterate girl named Reed, who, the better to mislead the public, assumed the title of “Sister Mary Agnes.” “We earnestly hope and believe,” said the preface to this embodiment of falsehood, “that this little work, if universally diffused, will do more, by its unaffected simplicity, in deterring Protestant parents from educating their daughters in Catholic nunneries than could the most labored and learned discourses on the dangers of Popery.” Though the book was replete with stupid fabrications and silly blunders, so grossly had the popular taste been perverted that fifty thousand copies were sold within a year after its publication. The demand was still increasing, when another contribution to Protestant literature appeared, before the broad, disgusting, and obscene fabrications of which the mendacity of “Sister Mary Agnes” paled its ineffectual fires. This latter candidate for popular favor, though it bore the name, destined for an immortality of infamy, of Maria Monk—a notoriously dissolute woman—was actually compiled by a few needy and unscrupulous adventurers, reverend and irreverend, who found a distinguished Methodist publishing house, not quite so needy, though still more unscrupulous, to publish the work for them, though very shame compelled even them to withhold their names from the publication. And it was only owing to a legal suit arising from this infamous transaction many years after that the fact was revealed that the publishers of this vilest of assaults on one of the holiest institutions of the Catholic Church was the firm of Harper Brothers. True to their character, they saw that the times were favorable for an assault on Catholicity, even so vile as this one; and true to their nature again, they refused to their wretched accomplice her adequate share in the wages of sin. Though bearing on its face all the evidences of diabolical malice and falsehood, condemned by the better portion of the press and by all reputable Protestants, the work had an unparalleled sale for some time. The demand might have continued to go on increasing indefinitely, but, in an evil hour for the speculators, its authors, under the impression that the prurient taste of the public was not sufficiently satiated with imaginary horrors, issued a continuation under the title of Additional Awful Disclosures. This composition proved an efficient antidote to the malignant poison of the first. Its impurity and falsehoods were so palpable that its originators were glad to slink into obscurity and their patrons into silence, followed by the contempt of all honest men.
Just ten years after the Charlestown outrage the spirit of Protestant persecution began to revive. Premonitory symptoms of political proscription appeared in 1842, in the constitutional conventions of Rhode Island and Louisiana, and in the local legislatures of other States; but it was not till the early part of 1844 that it became evident that secret measures were being taken to arouse the dormant feeling of antipathy to the rights of Catholics, so rife in the hearts of the ignorant Protestant masses. New York, at first, was the principal seat of the disorder. Most of the newspapers of that period teemed with eulogistic reviews of books written against the faith; cheap periodicals, such as the Rev. Mr. Sparry’s American Anti-Papist, were thrust into the hands of all who would read them by the agents of the Bible and proselytizing societies; and a cohort of what were called anti-papal lecturers, of which a reverend individual named Cheever was the leader, was employed to attack the Catholic Church with every conceivable weapon that the arsenal of Protestantism afforded.
The popular mind being thus prepared for a change, the various elements of political and social life opposed to Catholicity were crystallized into the “American Republican” party, better known as the Native Americans. On the 19th of March, 1844, the new faction nominated James Harper for mayor of the city of New York, and about the same time William Rockwell was named for a similar office in Brooklyn. The platform upon which these gentlemen stood was simple but comprehensive: the retention of the Protestant Bible and Protestant books in the public schools; the exclusion of Catholics of all nationalities from office; and the amendment of the naturalization laws so as to extend the probationary term of citizenship to twenty-one years. The canvass in New York was conducted with some regard to decency; but in the sister city, the Nativists threw off all respect for law, their processions invaded the districts inhabited mainly by adopted citizens, assailed all who did not sympathize with them, and riot and bloodshed were the consequence. In Brooklyn the Nativist candidate was defeated, but Harper was elected triumphantly by about twenty-four thousand votes. The ballots that placed such a man at the head of the municipality of the American metropolis were deposited by both Whigs and Democrats, though each party had a candidate in the field. The former contributed upwards of fourteen thousand, or three-fourths of their strength; their opponents somewhat less than ten thousand.
But the action of the city politicians was quickly repudiated and condemned throughout the State. On the 13th of April the Whigs assembled in Albany and passed a series of resolutions denouncing in unequivocal terms the tenets of the Native Americans; and in two days after, at the same place, and in, if possible, a more forcible manner, the Democracy entered their protest against the heresies and evil tendencies of the persecuting faction. Still, the “American Republicans” showed such signs of popular strength in various municipal elections that year that the lower classes of politicians, of all shades of opinion, who dared not openly support them, were suspected of secretly courting their friendship. The nomination of Frelinghuysen with Henry Clay at the Whig presidential convention of May 1, 1844, was well understood at the time to be a bid for Nativist support, and eventually defeated the distinguished Kentucky orator.
It is difficult to imagine how far the madness of the hour might have carried ambitious political leaders and timid conventions, had not the scenes of sacrilege and murder which soon after disgraced the city of Philadelphia, and stained its streets with innocent blood, sent a thrill of horror throughout the entire country.
Philadelphia had followed, if not anticipated, the example of New York in sowing broadcast the seeds of civil strife. Early in the year secret Nativist societies were formed; sensational preachers like Tyng, in and out of place, harangued congregations and meetings; cheap newspapers were started for the sole purpose of vilifying Catholics and working upon the baser passions of the sectarian population of the country. The motives of those engineers of discord were the same as those of their New York brethren, and their method of attack equally treacherous and cowardly. One of the principal charges against their Catholic fellow-citizens was that they were hostile to free schools and education generally. To this unjust aspersion Bishop Kenrick, on the 12th of March, publicly replied in a short but lucid letter, in which he said:
“Catholics have not asked that the Bible be excluded from the public schools. They have merely desired for their children the liberty of using the Catholic version, in case the reading of the Bible be prescribed by the controllers or directors of the schools. They only desire to enjoy the benefit of the constitution of the State of Pennsylvania, which guarantees the rights of conscience and precludes any preference of sectarian modes of worship. They ask that the school laws be faithfully executed, and that the religious predilections of the parents be respected.… They desire that the public schools be preserved from all sectarian influence, and that education be conducted in a way that may enable all citizens equally to share its benefits, without any violence being offered to their conscientious convictions.”
So deliberate and emphatic a denial had no effect on the wretched men who tyrannized over the second city in the Union, except that it was resolved to substitute brute force for reason, and to precipitate a collision with their comparatively weak victims. Accordingly, on the 5th of May, a Nativist meeting was held in Kensington. The design of the managers of the meeting was evidently to provoke an attack; for, finding the place first selected for the gathering unmolested, they deliberately moved to the market-house, in the actual presence of several adopted citizens. This trick and the insulting speeches that followed had the desired effect. A riot took place, several shots were fired on both sides, and four or five persons were more or less seriously wounded. The Nativists retreated, and made an unsuccessful attempt to burn a nunnery.
The most exaggerated reports of this affair were immediately circulated through Philadelphia. The next day the Nativists, fully armed, assembled and passed a series of resolutions of the most violent character. Preceded by an American flag, which bore an inscription as malicious as it was untrue, they attacked the Hibernian Hose Company, destroyed the apparatus, and broke the fire-bell in pieces. Twenty-nine dwellings were burned to the ground, their hapless occupants, mostly women and children, fleeing in all directions amid the insults and shots of their savage assailants. The citizens were now thoroughly aroused, the military, under Gen. Cadwalader, was called out, and Bishop Kenrick addressed a public admonition to his flock to preserve peace, and, notwithstanding the provocation, to exercise forbearance. But the demon of fanaticism, once let loose, could not be easily laid. Rioting continued throughout the day and far into the night. Early on Wednesday morning S. Michael’s Church, the female seminary attached to it, and a number of private houses in the neighborhood were ruthlessly plundered and destroyed. “During the burning of the church,” said one of the Philadelphia papers, “the mob continued to shout; and when the cross at the peak of the roof fell, they gave three cheers and a drum and fife played the ‘Boyne Water.’”
The burning of S. Augustine’s Church took place on the evening of the same day. This building, one of the finest in the city, was peculiarly endeared to the Catholic inhabitants as having been one of their oldest churches in Philadelphia. Many of the contributors to its building fund were men of historic fame, such as Washington, Montgomery, Barry, Meade, Carey, and Girard. It had adjoining it extensive school-houses and a commodious parsonage, and the clock in its tower was the one which had struck the first tones of new-born American liberty. But the sacred character of the building itself, and the patriotic memories which surrounded it, could not save it from the torch of the Philadelphia mob.
“The clock struck ten,” wrote an eye-witness, “while the fire was raging with the greatest fury. At twenty minutes past ten the cross which surmounted the steeple, and which remained unhurt, fell with a loud crash, amid the plaudits of a large portion of the spectators.” A very valuable library and several splendid paintings shared the fate of the church.
But bad as was the conduct of the rioters, that of the authorities was even worse. The militia, when ordered out, did not muster for several hours after the time appointed, and when they did arrive they were only passive, if not gratified, spectators of the lawless scenes before them. When S. Michael’s was threatened, the pastor, Rev. Mr. Donohue, placed it under the charge of Capt. Fairlamb, giving him the keys; yet the mob was allowed to wreak its vengeance on it undisturbed. The basement of S. Augustine’s was occupied by some armed men who had resolved to defend it at all hazards; but on the assurance of Mayor Scott and the sheriff that they had troops and police enough to protect it, it was agreed, in the interests of peace, to evacuate it. This had scarcely been done when the militia and civic guard fell back before a thousand or more armed ruffians and left the church to its fate. For nearly sixty hours the rioters were left in undisputed possession of the city; everything the Catholics held sacred was violated; men were dragged out of their homes, half-hanged and brutally maltreated, when not murdered outright; the houses of adopted citizens were everywhere plundered, an immense amount of property was destroyed, and over two hundred families left desolate and homeless, without the slightest attempt being made to enforce the law. How many fell victims to Nativist hate and rage on this occasion has never been known, but the killed and wounded were counted by scores.
An attempt to outrival Philadelphia in atrocity was made in New York a few days after, but the precautionary steps of the authorities, the firm attitude assumed by the late Archbishop Hughes, and the resolute stand taken by the Catholic population, headed by Eugene Casserly—who was at that time editor of the Freeman’s Journal—together with some young Irish-American Catholic gentlemen, so impressed the leaders of the Nativists that all attempts of an incendiary nature, and all public efforts to sympathize with the Philadelphia mob, were abandoned. Nativism staggered under the blow given it by its adherents in Philadelphia, and soon sank into utter insignificance as a political power.
Another decade, however, passed, and we find it again rejuvenated. This time it assumed the name of the Know-nothing party, and extended its ramifications through every State in the Union. Its declaration of principles contained sixteen clauses, as laid down by its organs, of which the following were regarded as the most vital: 1st. The repeal of all naturalization laws. 2d. None but native Americans for office. 3d. A Protestant common-school system. 4th. Perpetual war on “Romanism.” 5th. Opposition to the formation of military companies composed of “foreigners.” 6th. Stringent laws against immigration. 7th. Ample protection to Protestant interests. Though partly directed, apparently, against all persons of foreign birth, this new secret society was actually only opposed to Catholics; for many of the prominent members in its lodges were Irish Orangemen and Welsh, Scotch, and English unnaturalized adventurers who professed no form of belief.
Like their predecessors of 1844, the Know-nothings employed a host of mendacious ministers and subsidized a number of obscure newspapers to circulate their slanders against Catholics, native as well as adopted citizens; but they also added a new feature to the crusade against morality and civil rights. This was street-preaching—a device for creating riots and bloodshed, for provoking quarrels and setting neighbor against neighbor, worthy the fiend of darkness himself. Wretched creatures, drawn from the very dregs of society, were hired to travel from town to town, to post themselves at conspicuous street-corners, if possible before Catholic churches, and to pour forth, in ribald and blasphemous language, the most unheard-of slanders against the church. As those outcasts generally attracted a crowd of idle persons, and were usually sustained by the presence of the members of the local lodge, the merest interruption of their foul diatribes was the signal for a riot, ending not unfrequently in loss of life or limb.
The first outrage that marked the career of the Know-nothings of 1854 was the attack on the Convent of Mercy, Providence, R. L., in April of that year. Instigated by the newspaper attacks of a notorious criminal, who then figured as a Nativist leader, the rowdy elements of that usually quiet city surrounded the convent, pelted the doors and windows with stones, to the great alarm of the ladies and pupils within, and would doubtless have proceeded to extremities were it not that the Catholics, fearing a repetition of the Charlestown affair, rallied for its protection and repeatedly drove them off. In June Brooklyn was the scene of some street-preaching riots, but in the following August St. Louis, founded by Catholics and up to that time enjoying an enviable reputation for refinement and love of order, acquired a pre-eminence in the Southwest for ferocious bigotry. For two days, August 7 and 8, riot reigned supreme in that city; ten persons were shot down in the streets, many more were seriously wounded, and a number of the houses of Catholics were wrecked.
On the 3d of September of the same year the American Protestant Association of New York, an auxiliary of the Know-nothings, composed of Orangemen, went to Newark, N. J., to join with similar lodges of New Jersey in some celebration. In marching through the streets of that city they happened to pass the German Catholic church, and, being in a sportive mood, they did not hesitate to attack it. A mêlée occurred, during which one man, a Catholic, was killed and several were seriously injured. The evidence taken by the coroner’s jury showed that the admirers of King William were well armed, generally intoxicated, and that the assault and partial destruction of the church were altogether wanton and unprovoked. Early in the same month news was received of a succession of riots in New Orleans, the victims, as usual, being Catholics.
But the spirit of terrorism was not confined to one section or particular State. The virus of bigotry had inoculated the whole body politic. In October people of all shades of religious opinion were astounded to hear from Maine that the Rev. John Bapst, S. J., a clergyman of exemplary piety and mildness, had actually been dragged forcibly from the house of a friend by a drunken Ellsworth mob, ridden on a rail, stripped naked, tarred and feathered, and left for dead. His money and watch were likewise stolen by the miscreants. Father Bapst’s crime was that, when a resident of Ellsworth some time previously, he had entered into a controversy about public schools.
Yet, in the face of all these lawless proceedings, the Know-nothing party increased with amazing rapidity. “Without presses, without electioneering,” said the New York Times, “with no prestige or power, it has completely overthrown and swamped the two old historic parties of the country.” This was certainly true of New England, and notably so of Massachusetts, where, in the autumn of 1854, the Know-nothings elected their candidate for governor and nearly every member of the legislature. In the State of New York Ullman, the standard-bearer of the new army of persecution, received over 122,000 votes, and, though defeated in the city, it was more than suspected that the Democrat who was chosen as mayor had been a member of the organization. In many other States and cities the power of the sworn secret combination was felt and acknowledged.
Its influence and unseen grasp on the passions and prejudices of the lower classes of Protestants were plainly perceptible in the halls of Congress and in the executive cabinet. In the Senate William H. Seward was the first and foremost to denounce the so-called American party. As early as July, 1854, in a speech on the Homestead Bill, he took occasion to remark:
“It is sufficient for me to say that, in my judgment, everything is un-American which makes a distinction, of whatever kind, in this country between the native-born American and him whose lot is directed to be cast here by an over-ruling Providence, and who renounces his allegiance to a foreign land and swears fealty to the country which adopts him.”
The example of the great statesman was followed by such men as Douglas, Cass, Keitt, Chandler, and Seymour, while Senators Dayton and Houston, Wilson, the late Vice-President, N. P. Banks, and a number of other politicians championed the cause of intolerance as has since been confessed, for their own selfish aggrandizement as much as from inherent littleness of soul.
Meanwhile, Massachusetts was completely controlled by the Know-nothings. Their governor, Gardiner, had not been well in the chair of state when he disbanded all the Irish military companies within his jurisdiction. These were the Columbian, Webster, Shields, and Sarsfield Guards of Boston, the Jackson Musketeers of Lowell, the Union Guard of Lawrence, and the Jackson Guard of Worcester. The General Court, too, not to be outdone in bigotry by the executive, passed a law for the inspection of nunneries, convents, and schools, and appointed a committee to carry out its provisions. The first—and last—domiciliary visit of this body was made to the school of the Sisters of Notre Dame in Roxbury. It is thus graphically described by the Boston Advertiser, an eminently Protestant authority: “The gentlemen—we presume we must call members of the legislature by this name—roamed over the whole house from attic to cellar. No chamber, no passage, no closet, no cupboard, escaped their vigilant search. No part of the house was enough protected by respect for the common courtesies of civilized life to be spared in the examination. The ladies’ dresses hanging in their wardrobes were tossed over. The party invaded the chapel, and showed their respect—as Protestants, we presume—for the One God whom all Christians worship by talking loudly with their hats on; while the ladies shrank in terror at the desecration of a spot which they believed hallowed.”
Still, the work of proscription and outrage went on in other directions. Fifteen school-teachers had been dismissed in Philadelphia because they were Catholics; the Rev. F. Nachon, of Mobile, was assaulted and nearly killed while pursuing his sacred avocations; a military company in Cincinnati, and another in Milwaukee, composed of adopted citizens, were disbanded, and on the 6th and 7th of August, 1855, the streets of Louisville ran red with the blood of adopted citizens. In this last and culminating Know-nothing outrage eleven hundred voters were driven from the polls, numbers of men, and even women, were shot down in the public thoroughfares, houses were sacked and burned, and at least five persons are known to have been literally roasted alive.
A reaction, however, had already set in. Men of moderate views and unbiassed judgments began to tire of the scenes of strife, murder, and rapine that accompanied the victories of the Know-nothings. The first to deal it a deadly blow, as a political body, was Henry A. Wise, of Virginia, in his noble canvass of that State against the combined Whig and Nativist elements in 1855; and to the late Archbishop of New York, in his utter discomfiture of State Senator Brooks, is justly due the merit of having first convinced the American people that the so-called American party was actually the most dangerous enemy of American laws and institutions, the advocate of spoliation and persecution under the guise of patriotism and reform.
The decline of Nativism, though not so rapid as its growth, was equally significant, and its history as instructive. In 1856 a national convention was called by the wreck of the party to nominate Fillmore for the presidency, after overtures had been made in vain to the Republicans and Democrats. Fillmore was so badly defeated that he retired into private life and lost whatever little fame he had acquired in national affairs as Taylor’s successor. Four years later Bell and Everett appeared on the Know-nothing ticket, but so far behind were they in the race with their presidential competitors that very few persons cared to remember the paucity of their votes. Gradually, silently, but steadily, like vermin from a sinking ship, the leaders slunk away from the already doomed faction, and, by a hypocritical display of zeal, endeavored to obtain recognition in one or other of the great parties, but generally without success. Disappointed ambition, impotent rage, and, let us hope, remorse of conscience occasionally seized upon them, and the charity of silence became to them the most desired of blessings. Perhaps if the late civil war had not occurred, to swallow in the immensity of its operations all minor interests, we might have beheld in 1864 the spectre of Nativism arising from its uneasy slumber, to be again subjected to its periodical blights and curses.
From present appearances many far-seeing persons apprehend the recurrence in this year of the wild exhibitions of anti-Catholic and anti-American fanaticism which have so often blotted and blurred the otherwise stainless pages of our short history; that the centennial year of American independence and republican liberty is to be signalized by a more concerted, better organized, and more ramified attack on the great principles of civil and religious freedom which underlie and sustain the fabric of our government. We trust, sincerely hope, that these men are mistaken. But if such is to be the case; if we Catholics are doomed once more to be subjected to the abuse of the vile, the slander of the hireling, and the violence of an armed mob, the sooner we are prepared for the contingency the better. If the scenes which have indelibly disgraced Boston and Philadelphia, Ellsworth and Louisville, are to be again rehearsed by the half-dozen sworn secret societies whose cabalistic letters disfigure the columns of so many of our newspapers, we must be prepared to meet the danger with firmness and composure. As Catholics, demanding nothing but what is justly our due under the laws, our position will ever be one of forbearance, charity, and conciliation; but as American citizens, proud of our country and zealous for the maintenance of her institutions, our place shall be beside the executors of those grand enactments which have made this republic the paragon and exemplar of all civil and natural virtues, no matter how imminent the danger or how great the sacrifice. In lands less favored Catholic rights may be violated by prince or mob with impunity, but we would be unworthy of our country and of its founders were we to shrink for a moment from the performance of our trust as the custodians of the fundamental ordinance which guarantees full and absolute religious liberty to all citizens of the republic.
LOUISE LATEAU BEFORE THE BELGIAN ROYAL ACADEMY OF MEDICINE.[260]
I.
How is the name of Louise Lateau to be mentioned without immediately calling up all the tumulta which that name has provoked? Books of science and philosophy, official reports, academic discourses, reports of visits, feuilletons, conferences, pamphlets, articles in journals, every kind of literary production has been placed under contribution to keep the public informed about the stigmatisée of Bois d’Haine. For a year, however, these studies have betaken themselves to a region that might be called exclusively scientific, and have even received a kind of official consecration from the recent vote of the Royal Academy of Medicine.
It may be of service to the reader who cannot occupy himself with special studies to give a brief exposition of the affair of Bois d’Haine in itself, to show the different interpretations of it that have been attempted, and to indicate clearly the actual phase of the question from a scientific point of view.
As early as about the middle of 1868 vague rumors were heard of strange events which were taking place in a little village of Hainault. Every Friday a young girl showed on the different portions of her body corresponding to the wounds of our Saviour Jesus Christ red stains from which blood flowed in greater or less abundance. It was also said that on every Friday this young girl, ravished in ecstasy, remained for several hours completely unconscious of all that was passing around her. Such were the principal facts. Over and above these rumor spread the story of certain accessory incidents, some of which, though true, were distorted, while others were pure fancy. Thanks to the daily press, the young girl soon became known to the general public, and the name of Louise Lateau passed from mouth to mouth. Here and there one read among “current events” that large crowds rushed from all sides, from Belgium and from without, to assist every Friday at the scenes which were being enacted in the chamber at Bois d’Haine. Some journals profited by the occasion to deliver themselves anew of declamations against “Catholic superstitions, the stupidity of the masses, and the intriguing character of the clergy”; while even many men of good faith were of opinion that the story told of Louise Lateau might indeed be true, but ought to be attributed to some trickery or another of which either the girl or her family was culpable.
Happily for the public, a light came to clear up this chaos of versions, suppositions, and diverse and contradictory opinions. The Revue Catholique of Louvain reproduced by instalments, beginning in 1869, a study by Prof. Lefebvre on these extraordinary events. Some time after, this study appeared in the form of a volume. Here is how the eminent physician expresses himself on the origin of his study:
“The story told by the first witnesses of these extraordinary events produced a lively emotion in the public mind, and soon crowds assembled every week around the humble house which was their theatre. The ecclesiastical authorities took up the facts. This was their right and duty. From the very beginning they recognized that the different elements of the question ought to pass through the crucible of science. The periodic hemorrhage and the suspension of the exercise of the senses were within the competence of physicians. I was asked to study them, the desire being expressed that the examination of these facts should be of the most thorough description, and that they should not be allowed to escape any one of the exigencies and severities of modern science.… I deemed it right, therefore, to accept the mission which was offered me. As a physician, I was only asked for what I could give—that is to say, a purely medical study of the facts.”[261]
After having examined the events of Bois d’Haine in all their phases; after having put to the proof the sincerity of the young girl in a thousand different ways and by means of a variety of tests, the eminent Louvain professor pronounced the facts of the stigmatization and ecstasy to be real and free from deception. Passing, then, to the interpretation of the events themselves, the author thus concludes:
“Studying first the question of hemorrhage, I have demonstrated that the periodic bleedings of Louise Lateau belong to no species of hemorrhage admitted in the regular range of science; that they cannot be assimilated to any of the extraordinary cases recorded in the annals of medicine; that, in fine, the laws of physiology do not afford an explanation of their genesis. Coming next to the question of ecstasy, I have carefully gone over the characters of the standard nervous affections which could offer certain traits of a resemblance, however remote, to the ecstasy of Louise Lateau, and I believe I have demonstrated that it is impossible to connect it with any of the nervous affections known to-day. I have penetrated the domain of occult sciences; those dark doctrines have furnished us with no more data for an interpretation of the events of Bois d’Haine than the free sciences which expand in the full light of day.”
I do not hesitate to say that the appearance of this book was a veritable event, and that it marked an important halting-place in the study of the question of Louise Lateau. By those who knew the calm and reflective spirit of M. Lefebvre, and the independence of his character and convictions, the fact of the real existence of the extraordinary events taking place at Bois d’Haine was no longer called in question; and if some doubt still remained, it regarded only the sense in which those events were to be interpreted. Was it, then, true that the union of stigmata and ecstasies belonged to no known malady? Was it true that they could find no place in the classification of diseases, under a new title, with physiological proofs to accompany them?
Notwithstanding the immense credit allowed to the science of M. Lefebvre, doubt still hovered around this question, and I make bold to say, in the honor of the progress of science, that such doubt was legitimate. A loyal appeal was made to the savants of the country and of foreign countries, urging them to go and study the facts at Bois d’Haine and publish their opinion. Soon a study on Louise Lateau, made by a French physician,[262] came to confirm still further the medical study of M. Lefebvre. Then a German savant, M. Virchow, seemed to accept as true the conclusions of the Belgian doctor by that famous phrase that the events of Bois d’Haine must be considered either as a trick or as a miracle.
Meanwhile, certain persons seemed still reluctant to accept facts which a hundred different witnesses affirmed in the face of the world. Among the reluctant are to be ranked, first of all, those who are of bad faith—with whom there is no reason to trouble; others who, for philosophic motives, seemed to accuse the witnesses of those scenes of sacrificing the interest of science to that of their religious convictions. Nevertheless, M. Lefebvre’s book continued to make headway. I do not say that it did not meet with some attacks here and there, and certain objections in detail; but throughout the country no publication of any pretension to seriousness affected either to deny the facts or to give a natural explanation of them. This state of things continued up to July, 1874. At this epoch Dr. Charbonnier, a physician of Brussels, presented to the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine a work entitled Maladies et facultés diverses des mystiques. Louise Lateau.
M. Boëns, on his part, submitted to the same learned body, in the session of October 3, 1874, a new production, entitled Louise Lateau, ou les mystères de Bois d’Haine dévoilés.
II.
The events of Bois d’Haine continued to occupy public attention. The scenes of the stigmatic flows of blood and of the ecstasies were presented every Friday. It was even stated that from the middle of 1871 Louise Lateau had taken no sort of nourishment. The Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine, whether because it dreaded to enter upon a question which involved, beyond the scientific side, a side purely philosophic, or whether also because a fitting and favorable opportunity of taking up the question of Louise Lateau was not presented, remained mute as to the events of Bois d’Haine.
The almost simultaneous presentation of two works treating on the very subject indicated clearly that the question was ripe. Moreover, in the session of October 3, 1874, the chief medical body of the country, conformably with usage, appointed a special committee to make a report on the works read in its sessions. This committee consisted of MM. Fossion, president; Mascart and Warlomont, colleagues.
The important report of the committee was read in the session of the 13th of February by M. Warlomont. That gentleman to show how the study of M. Charbonnier’s work necessitated an examination into the affair at Bois d’Haine, said:
“Ought the committee to confine itself to examining the memorial placed before it from the simple point of view of its absolute scientific value, without occupying itself with the fact which gives occasion for the memorial? It would be easier to do so, perhaps, but an opportunity would thus be neglected of putting the Academy in possession of an actual medical observation, as complete as possible, relative to a fact of which, whether we like it or not, the discussion can no longer be eluded. It assumed, therefore the task of inquiring into the affair forthwith; resolved, however arduous might be the mission thus undertaken, to accept it without regret, to pursue it without weakness as without bias, and to set before the society such elements as its investigation—one altogether official—should have procured. This is the trust which, in its name, I this day fulfil.”[263]
MM. Charbonnier and Boëns were the first in our country who undertook to find fault with the conclusions of M. Lefebvre’s book, and to explain by scientific data the events of Bois d’Haine. M. Boëns, almost immediately after the reading of a portion of his work, withdrew it, and was able by this means to escape the report of the committee. Was this disdain for the judgment of his confrères on the part of the distinguished physician of Charleroi, or was it want of confidence in the solidity of his own arguments? I know not. I state a fact and continue.
There remained, then, for the committee to examine the work of M. Charbonnier. This memoir is voluminous. The theory of the author is substantially as follows: The absence of aliment and the concentration of the faculties of the soul towards one object have been the primary and indispensable conditions of ecstasies and stigmata. As far as abstinence is concerned, it is perfectly compatible, if not with a state of health, at least with the maintenance of life. “The question of abstinence,” says the author, “is the most important, because without it nothing happens. It being well explained, there is no longer anything supernatural in any of the physiological and pathological phenomena of the mystics.”[264]
But how is this abstinence compatible with life? By the law of the substitution of functions and organs.
“The organs,” says the author, “are conjointly associated (solidaires) one with another, working for the common health; so that when an organ, for one cause or another, cannot adequately fulfil its functions, another immediately supplies its place.”
Supposing all this admitted, here is what the author says of stigmatization:
“Abstinence and contemplation are the causes of stigmatization: i. Abstinence, in suppressing the vegetative functions, frees both the nervous influx and the blood which were distributed among the digestive organs. 2. Contemplation gathers together the contingent of pain dispersed through all the body, to fix and concentrate it on certain points which it sees, admires, loves, in Jesus Christ. It suppresses all the functions of the life of relation to devote itself exclusively to the object of its passion. The bloody flux, which has been drawn to the surface of the skin by the great functional activity, follows to the end the nervous influx which is constantly directed towards certain points, and the stigmatization is effected.”[265]
Of the ecstasy, according to M. Charbonnier, “abstinence is the principal, contemplation the secondary, cause.” We cannot, indeed, enter into all the details furnished by the author of this strange theory. In order to arrive at a judgment regarding it, we know of nothing better than to cite the conclusions of the reader of the report on the work itself:
“All this,” says M. Warlomont, “forms a whole which must have cost the author long and laborious research. As far as the inquiries of physiology are concerned, the source, respectable though it may be, on which he has relied, must be a cause for regret. His principal, almost his only, authority is that of Longet, who is now many years dead. But the questions relative to nutrition—those precisely which are at stake—have, since Longet, been placed in an absolutely new light. The work which we have just analyzed is altogether a work of the imagination. The demonstration of the à priori thesis which the author has set up he has pursued by every means, clearing out of his road the obstacles of nature which embarrass it, and creating at will new functions whereon to apply his organs; all this written in a lively, imaginative style, and bearing the impress of conviction. There is only one thing which is sadly wanting—experimental proof. A few simple experiments on animals, logically carried out, would have informed him how they withstand a progressive abstinence, and what changes this abstinence effects in their organs and functions. It is to be regretted that he has not instituted these experiments.”[266]
If the theory advanced by M. Charbonnier, based on such doubtful physiological facts, finds no weight with the learned representative of the Academy of Medicine, it is not because he himself admits the conclusions arrived at in the study of M. Lefebvre on Louise Lateau. For him, indeed, the events taking place at Bois d’Haine, apart from the question of fasting, which has not been positively established, and which, on that account, rightly passes beyond scientific discussion,[267] are exempt from all fraud and deception. But let M. Warlomont himself speak:
“After having analyzed,” he says, “the memoir which the Academy has confided to our examination, and having refuted it principally in the portions which concern Louise Lateau, it remains for us in our turn to give our own ideas relative to a fact of such interest which has formed the subject of the memoir.
“And first of all, are the facts cited real? According to our thinking, the simulation of the ecstasies is simply impossible, accompanied as they are by functional troubles the provocation for which would pass quite beyond the empire of the will. As for the actual spontaneity of the stigmata, we have demonstrated this experimentally.”
And now for the chief part of the report. It is that in which the learned academician attempts to give a physiological explanation of the facts. For him ecstasies are a species of double life, of a second condition, such as may be presented in ordinary and extraordinary nervous states, as well as in others: (a) in consequence of material injury to the brain; (b) during the existence of well-determined neurotic disorders; (c) under the influence of certain special appliances (magnetism, hypnotism); (d) spontaneously, without the intervention of any external provocation (as somnambulism or extraordinary neurotic affections).
After having examined each of these points in detail, the author thus continues:
“This point established, what of ecstasies? Well, whatever we may do, it is impossible for us not to class them in the same order of facts, not to see in them the influence of a neurotic perturbation analogous to that which controls neurotic diseases. It is in both cases the passage of a human being into a state of second condition, characterized by the suspension, more or less complete, of the exercise of the senses, with a special concentration of all the cerebral powers towards a limited object. Among the ecstatics, as among the hypnotics, there prevails a perturbation, diminution, or abolition of external sensibility. All is concentrated in a new cerebral functional department.”
So far for the ecstasies. Passing next to the production of stigmata, the report admits in principle the theory of Alfred Maury. That is to say, the imagination plays the principal rôle in the production of these phenomena. But to meet the brilliant member of the Institute, he calls to his aid the physiological laws and most recent discoveries, in order to show how the imagination can, by the irritation of certain given parts, provoke a veritable congestion of those parts, and then a hemorrhage.
“In virtue of what mechanism,” he asks, “are blisters first produced, and bleeding afterwards? We have established the genesis of stigmatic angiomata.[268] The attention has given place to pain, and pain to repeated touchings; from this proceeds the congestion which has brought on the arrest of the blood in the capillaries, and, as a consequence, their enlargement. Then comes the rush of blood, giving place to congestive motions, determined by a hemorrhagic diathesis, and the phenomena disclose themselves in all their simplicity; the leucocytes[269] will pass across the capillaries, will discharge themselves under the skin, and the blister is the result. The accumulation of blood continuing in proportion to the enlargement of the capillaries, the fleshly tegument will end by bursting; then the blood itself, whether by traversing the channels created by the previous passage of the leucocytes, or by the rupture of the vessels, the likelihood of which can be sustained, ends by an external eruption, and the hemorrhage follows.”
But M. Warlomont goes still farther. He says that not only are stigmata and ecstasies capable of explanation when taken apart from one another, but that by their union they constitute what in pathology is called aggregate of symptoms. According to this, stigmata and ecstasies would constitute an altogether unique morbid state, to which the professor gives the following name and definition: “Stigmatic neuropathy is a nervous disease, having its seat in the base of the medulla oblongata, the first stage of which consists in the paralysis of the vaso-motor centre, and the second in its excitation.” Presented in this way, the report of the distinguished member of the Academy was not only a report, but a veritable original work. Thus this book, wherein the author had joined loyalty of procedure to elegance of style and deep erudition, produced a profound sensation. The theory which he advances might well leave certain doubts with the reader relative to the solidity of the bases on which it leans, but by its method it exercised a real fascination on the mind. M. Warlomont’s conclusions were, as far as the interpretation of the facts went, diametrically opposed to those of the book which M. Lefebvre had published several years before, and it was not without a very great curiosity that the public awaited the reply of the latter.
The reply was not long in coming. M. Lefebvre’s discourse occupied, so to say, exclusively the sessions of May 29 and June 26. After having rendered due homage to the courtesy and science of the distinguished reader of the report, the Louvain professor hesitated not to sustain the first conclusions advanced in his book, and to demonstrate the small foundation of the theory of his adversary on this question. It is to be regretted that the limits at my disposal do not allow me to enter into all the physiological details and pathological considerations on which M. Lefebvre builds his conclusions. I regret it the more because the brilliant words of the orator exercise a very special impression by the clearness of their exposition, the logic of their reasoning, and the exquisite charm which they give to even the driest questions.
First, as to the stigmatic hemorrhages, we cannot be astonished, after having followed the proofs which the learned orator gives us, to find him lay down the following conclusions:
“1. M. Warlomont is driven to admit a single vaso-motor centre; the most recent researches are against this localization: the vaso-motor centres are several and disseminated.
“2. The distinguished reader of the report constructs his doctrine of the action of the imagination on a series of hypotheses.
“The two chief ones are: that the imagination has the power, every Friday morning, of completely paralyzing the vaso-motor centre and the vaso-constrictor nerves; and after midday, by a contradictory action, to excite violently this centre, and consequently to close up the vaso-constrictors—pure suppositions which have not only not been demonstrated by the author, but which seem to me absolutely anti-physiological.
“3. Even admitting these hypotheses as well founded, it is an established fact that the complete paralysis of the vaso-motor centres and of the vaso-constrictor nerves is never followed by bleeding on the surface of the skin; the experience of all physiologists agrees on this point.
“4. This experience proves, on the contrary, that in such cases there are sometimes produced suffusions of blood in the mucous membranes; such suffusions never show themselves in Louise Lateau.
“5. A series of hypotheses still more complicated than those laid down as premises by the distinguished reader of the report might be conceded—to wit, the paralysis of the arteries and the simultaneous constriction of the veins. Experiment again proves that even under these conditions bleeding on the surface of the skin is not produced.
“6. M. Warlomont, in parting from the hypotheses which I have just combated, admits that the bleeding produced by the influence of the imagination is a bleeding by transudation. But the characteristics of transudation, studied in the light of modern physiology, are completely opposed to those of the stigmatic bleeding of Louise Lateau.
“7. Finally—and this argument alone will suffice to overthrow the thesis of the distinguished reader of the report—clinical observation, in accordance with physiological induction, proves that in circumstances where the imagination exercises its greatest violence it never produces bleeding on the surface of the skin.”
Regarding ecstasies, the orator, after having examined the different states with which the reader of the report to the Academy compared the ecstasies of Louise Lateau, concludes by saying:
“I believe I have demonstrated that the analysis of second conditions, brought out with so much skill by the distinguished gentleman, does not give the key to the ecstasy of Louise Lateau. But, setting aside these states of nervous disease, should not the imagination be made to bear all the burden of the ecstasy, as it does of the stigmatization?”
After examining this question, the orator concludes in the negative. In finishing his beautiful discourse he says:
“Our honorable colleague, in studying the causes of the stigmatization and ecstasy, has given to them a physiological interpretation. On this ground I have separated from him, and I believe I have demonstrated that that interpretation is not only insufficient, but also erroneous. I believed for a moment that M. Warlomont was about to offer an acceptable scientific theory. I do not say a theory complete and adequate—I am not so exacting; I know too well that we do not know the all of anything. If our eminent colleague had proposed to us a physiological interpretation, satisfying the most moderate demands of science, I should have accepted it, not with resignation, but with joy and eagerness; and believe me, gentlemen, my religious convictions would have suffered no shock thereby.
“Our learned colleague, whom you have charged with examining the events of Bois d’Haine, has not, then, in my opinion, given to them their physiological interpretation. Other physicians have attempted the same task; I name two of them, because their works have been produced within these walls.
“First of all, Dr. Boëns. In withdrawing his memoir from the order of the day of the Academy, he has withdrawn it from our discussion. Nevertheless, I believe I am not severe in affirming that the considerations which claimed his attention, and the irony of which he has been so prodigal in my own regard, have thrown but little light on the events of Bois d’Haine. Dr. Charbonnier has submitted to your appreciation a work of a more scientific character. M. Warlomont has examined it with the attention which it deserves, and has refuted it. I am thus dispensed from returning to it.
“I maintain, then, purely and simply, the conclusions of my study: The stigmatization and the ecstasies of Louise Lateau are real and true facts, and science has not furnished their physiological interpretation.”
M. Crocq spoke after M. Lefebvre. Like M. Warlomont, the learned Brussels professor believes that the interpretation of the facts positively established about Louise Lateau belongs to pathological physiology. The theory of M. Crocq differs but little from that of M. Warlomont. He attaches more importance to abstinence than the learned reader of the report, and thus comes nearer to M. Charbonnier; he believes, also, that the bleeding is altogether caused by a rupture of the capillaries. Apart from these small distinctions, it may be said of him, as of M. Warlomont, that he is of opinion that the imagination, by its influence on the nervous system, is the principal cause of the ecstasies and stigmata. Here are the rest of his conclusions:
“I. The state of Louise Lateau is a complex pathological state, characterized by the following facts:
“1. Anæmia and weakness of constitution, arising from privations endured since childhood.
“2. Nervous exaltation produced by anæmia and directed in a determined sense by the education and religious tendencies of Louise.
“3. Ecstasies constituting the supreme degree of this exaltation.
“4. Bleeding, having for its starting point anæmia and exaltation of the vaso-motor nervous system.
“5. Relative abstinence, considerably exaggerated by the sick girl, conformably to what is observed among many persons who suffer from nervous disorders.
“II. This state offers nothing contrary to the laws of pathological physiology; it is consequently useless to go outside of that in search of explanation.
“III. It has the same characteristics as all the analogous cases related by physicians and historians; mysticism altogether, save cases of jugglery and mystification, ought to enter into the province of pathology, which is vast enough to contain it; and all the phenomena explain themselves perfectly by taking as starting point the principles which I have laid down.”
If we had to advance our own opinion on this important question, we should say that, after the report in which M. Warlomont had treated his subject with so much method and science, there remained few new arguments which could be applied to the physiological theory of the phenomena of mystics. It should be considered, however, no small advantage for the latter physician to feel himself supported by M. Crocq, who had brought to the debates the weight of his profound erudition and vast experience.
III.
By all impartial judges the case might be regarded as understood. It was so in effect. The different orators who succeeded each other in the tribune of the Academy had brought to their respective discourses the strongest possible array of facts and of arguments. I shall astonish no one, then, by saying that M. Warlomont could not allow the victorious discourse of his colleague of Louvain to pass without some observations. It is impossible for us here to give a résumé of his discourse. In the main it added no new proof to the substance of the debate, and confined itself to the criticism of certain details.
It is enough for us to say that in this discourse the learned reader of the report to the Academy gave new proof of the brilliancy of his mind and the adroitness of his gifts.
M. Lefebvre, on his side, felt himself to be too much master of the situation to need emphasizing his triumph any further. This is what he did in the session of October 9, 1875. Without precisely entering into the heart of the debate, he brought out more strongly certain of the arguments which he had already used; he employed them to refute some of the assertions made in the discourses of his adversaries, held up certain inaccuracies, and concluded, as he had the right to do, by the following words, which give an exact idea of the state of the question:
“Let us resume. M. Warlomont has studied with earnestness and candor the events of Bois d’Haine. He has stated, as I have done, the reality of the stigmatization and ecstasy; he has demonstrated, as I have, that these phenomena are free from any deception. M. Crocq, after having examined the facts on the spot, has arrived at the same conclusions. The learned reader of the committee’s report has built up a scientific theory of the stigmatization and ecstasy; the eminent Brussels professor has, in his turn, formulated an interpretation very nearly approaching to that of M. Warlomont, but which differs from it, nevertheless, on certain points. I have sought, on my side, a physiological explanation of these extraordinary facts, and I have arrived at the conclusion that science could furnish no satisfactory interpretation of them. I have expounded at length before the Academy the reasons which prevent me from accepting the theories of my two honorable opponents; but my position is perfectly correct. I confine myself to recognizing my powerlessness to interpret the facts of Bois d’Haine. M. Warlomont takes another attitude. He pretends that we have a scientific explanation of these phenomena. We have not one—we have had three or four; which is the true one? Is it that of M. Boëns? Is it that of M. Charbonnier, to which, beyond doubt, you attach some importance, since you have voted that it be printed? Is it that of the learned reader of your report? Begin by choosing. As for me, I hold fast to my first conclusions: The facts of Bois d’Haine have not received a scientific interpretation.”
After certain remarks made at the same session by MM. Vleminckx, Crocq, Lefebvre, Masoin, Boëns, the general discussion closed. The printing of M. Charbonnier’s memoir was decided on and a vote of thanks to the author passed. With this should have ended the task of the Academy; and those who had hoped for a physiological interpretation of the facts of Bois d’Haine, as the outcome of these discussions, were in a position to felicitate themselves on the result; for by its absolute silence the Academy allowed a certain freedom of choice.
But during the session of July 10, 1875, which a family affliction prevented M. Lefebvre from assisting at, two members proposed orders of the day on the discussion of Bois d’Haine. Nevertheless, by a very proper sentiment, which the distinguished president, M. Vleminckx, was the first to advance, those orders of the day were not carried at that date.
That of M. Kuborn was thus conceived:
“The Academy, considering—
“That the phenomena really established about the young girl of Bois d’Haine are not new and are explicable by the laws of pathological physiology;
“That the prolonged abstinence which has been argued about has not been observed by the committee;
“That no supervision, therefore, having been established, and there having been no chance of establishing it, the proper thing was not to pause on the consideration of this fact, but to consider it as not having come up—
“The Academy follows its order of the day as far as concerns the question of the stigmatization and exstasy.”
Here is the order of the day proposed by M. Crocq:
“The Academy, considering—
“That the phenomena established about Louise Lateau are not beyond a physiological explanation;
“That those which are not established ought no longer to occupy our attention—
“Declares the discussion closed, and passes to the order of the day.”
The same resolutions, the small foundation for which, after the discourses which had been made, every impartial mind ought to recognize, were again brought up in the session of October 9.
M. Vleminckx, having induced the authors of the orders of the day to modify their wording in such a manner as to render them acceptable, M. Fossion proposed the following form, more soothing than its predecessors:
“The Royal Academy of Medicine declares that the case of Louise Lateau has not been completely scrutinized and cannot serve as a base for serious discussion; consequently, it closes the discussion.”
M. Laussedat, after some preliminary remarks, finally proposed the order of the day pure and simple, which was adopted.
The bearing of this vote will escape the mind of no one. In setting aside the orders of the day which pretended that what had been positively established in the question of Bois d’Haine might be solved by science, the Academy has fully confirmed the conclusions of M. Lefebvre’s book.
Meanwhile, in ending, let us return to Bois d’Haine, to that young girl who has become more than ever the object of the veneration of some, the study of others, and the wonder of all.
Since 1868 Louise Lateau presents the phenomena weekly of the bloody stigmata and the ecstasies, to which later on was added abstinence from food.
Her first and chief historian, M. Lefebvre, after having watched the young girl, affirms since 1869: She, whom a certain portion of the public considers as a cheat or an invalid, really presents the phenomena which are reported of her. These phenomena are exempt from trickery, and it is impossible to explain them by the laws of physiology and pathology. We omit the question of fasting, which remains to be studied.
Seven years after the appearance of the first phenomena, at the time when the commotion which they produced had, so to say, reached its height, the leading learned body in Belgium examined the mysterious scenes in the humble house of Bois d’Haine, and, through MM. Crocq and Warlomont, made an inquiry into the reality and sincerity of the facts, and brings in a verdict that the facts are real and free from all fraud.
Finally, this same Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine, by its vote, avows in the face of the world that, if it ought not to recognize a supernatural cause in the facts about Louise Lateau, as little can it demonstrate their natural origin and physiological genesis.
Such is the actual state of this extraordinary question.