The life of French sects has always been of short duration, though there have existed among them many that in other countries would certainly have won for their founders the laurel-wreath of fame. Such was, for instance, the Church of France, inaugurated by the Abbé Chatel, whose idea was to entrust sacerdotal functions to the most worthy among his followers, by means of a public vote. The sect prospered for a time, but soon disappeared amid general indifference, and the Abbé ended his days as a grocer.
The doctrine of Fabre Palaprat had more success, being drawn from the esoteric teachings of the Gospel of St. John. He either suppressed or modified many of the Catholic dogmas, abandoned the use of Latin and inaugurated prayers in French.
The Fusionists were founded by Jean-Baptiste de Tourreil. After a divine revelation which came to him in the forest of Meudon, near Paris, he broke with Catholicism and preached the intimate union of man and nature. He anticipated to some extent the naturalist beliefs which spread through both France and England at the beginning of the present century, and his posthumous work entitled The Fusionist Religion or the Doctrine of Universalism gives an idea of his tendencies. There was an element of consolation in his doctrine, for the harmony between man and the universe, as taught by him, renders death only a prolongation of life itself, and makes it both attractive and desirable.
The Neo-Gnostic Church of Fabre des Essarts was condemned by Leo XIII with some severity as a revival of the old Albigensian heresy, with the addition of new false and impious doctrines, but it still has many followers. The Neo-Gnostics believe that this world is a work of wickedness, and was created not by God but by some inferior power, which shall ultimately disappear—and its creation also. While the Manichaeans teach that the world is ruled by the powers of both good and evil, God and Satan, the Neo-Gnostics declare that it is Satan who reigns exclusively upon earth, and that it is man's duty to help to free God from His powerful rival. They also preach the brotherhood of man and of nations, and it is probably this altruistic doctrine which has rendered them irresistible to many who are wearied and disheartened by the enmities and hatreds that separate human beings.
In 1900, after a letter from Jean Bricaut, the patriarch of universal Gnosticism in Lyons, the Neo-Gnostics united with the Valentinians, and their union was consecrated by the Council of Toulouse in 1903. But some years afterwards, Dr. Fugairon of Lyons (who took the name of Sophronius) amalgamated all the branches, with the exception of the Valentinians, under the name of the Gnostic Church of Lyons. These latter, although excluded, continued to follow their own way of salvation, and addressed a legal declaration to the Republican Government in 1906 in defence of their religious rights of association.
In the Gnostic teaching, the Eons, corresponding to the archetypal ideas of Plato, are never single; each god has his feminine counterpart; and the Gnostic assemblies are composed of "perfected ones," male and female. The Valentinians give the mystic bride the name of Helen.
The Gnostic rites and sacraments are complicated. There is the Consolamentum, or laying on of hands; the breaking of bread, or means of communication with the Astral Body of Jesus; and the Appareillamentum, or means of receiving divine grace.
In peculiarities of faith and of its expression some of our French sects certainly have little to learn from those of America and Russia.
The Religion of Satanism—or, as it was sometimes called, the Religion of Mercy—founded by Vintras and Boullan, deserves special mention. Vintras was arrested—unjustly, it seems certain—for swindling, and in the visions which he experienced as a result of his undeserved sufferings he believed himself to be in communication with the Archangel Michael and with Christ Himself. Having spent about twelve years in London, he returned to Lyons to preach his doctrine, and succeeded in making a number of proselytes. He died in 1875. Some years afterwards a doctor of divinity named Boullan installed himself at Lyons as his successor. He taught that women should be common property, and preached the union with inferior beings (in order to raise them), the "union of charity," and the "union of wisdom." He healed the sick, exorcised demons, and treated domestic animals with great success, so that the peasants soon looked upon him as superior to the curé who was incapable of curing their sick horses and cattle.
Vintras had proclaimed himself to be Elijah come to life; Boullan adopted the title of John the Baptist resurrected. He died at the beginning of the twentieth century, complaining of having been cruelly slandered, especially by Stanislas de Guaita, who in his Temple of Satan had accused Boullan of being a priest of Lucifer, of making use of spells and charms, and—worst of all—of celebrating the Black Mass.