Translated from Etudes Religieuses, Historiques et Littéraires, par des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus.
CHARLES II. AND HIS SON, FATHER JAMES STUART.
Of all the Stuarts who reigned over Great Britain only one, if historians can be trusted, abandoned Anglicanism and became a child of the Catholic Church. It is true that to the name of James II. that of his elder brother, Charles II., has sometimes been added; but the general opinion is that Charles had no religion whatever, and scoffed at all creeds alike. Documents, however, which have lately been brought to light, enable us to prove that both the sons of Charles I. abandoned Protestantism, and that in their persons Catholicism occupied for more than an twenty years the throne of Henry VIII.
To understand how the religion of Charles II. could remain so long an historical enigma, we must recall to mind the peculiar circumstances in which he was placed. Surrounded by fanatical sectaries, who yielded him a kind of insubordinate obedience, and kept him in continual fear of the axe by which his unfortunate father had suffered, he felt constrained to observe in public the forms of worship which he had solemnly renounced before the altar. And to this we must add another reason. Far from reforming the disorders of a licentious youth, he prolonged his excesses to the very eve of death, and his unbridled passions tended to extinguish in his naturally weak and timid soul all the energy alike of the man and of the Christian. So, though a Catholic at heart, Charles never had the courage during his whole reign to avow his sentiments. Some thought him a zealous Presbyterian; others, a devoted Anglican. Those who knew him better declared he was nothing but a bad Protestant, and for that declaration they had more reason than they supposed.
There is no question that he died in the bosom of the Church; but that he had returned to it long before he died is a fact which has only lately [{578}] been established. After lying for two hundred years among the dusty archives of a religious order in Rome, a remarkable correspondence has been brought to light between the sixth successor of Henry VIII. and Father Paul Oliva, the general of the Jesuits. The occasion of this singular interchange of letters between Whitehall and Rome was the presence in the Jesuit house, in the last named city, of a young novice whom all the fathers, even the general himself, believed to be a French gentleman. Charles informed Father Oliva who this young man was. By the right of paternal authority he demanded that James Stuart, the eldest of his natural sons, should be sent back to him. He wished to keep him for some time about his person, and by his assistance to instruct himself more thoroughly in the Catholic faith, and so finish the work which he had long ago commenced. After reading these letters, and penetrating the hidden thoughts and mental tortures of the conscience-stricken king, who knows his duty, and fears, yet wishes, to fulfil it; a crowned slave, bearing beneath his royal robes a yoke of iron, and sighing in vain for liberty to believe and worship after the dictates of his heart, we cannot resist the conclusion that Charles II. was neither a deist nor a waverer; he was a Catholic—a timid and a bad one, if you will but firm in his convictions.
But, you may say, a conversion such as this is not much for the Church to brag of. Here you have a prince born a heretic, and becoming a Catholic so quietly that his people know nothing about it. The Church declares that faith without works is dead. Well, it is true that Charles's life was in perpetual discord with his faith. We certainly do not propose our neophyte as a model penitent; it is enough if the reasons which led to his conversion afford his countrymen another proof of the divine origin of Catholicism. It is surely a startling circumstance that this slave to voluptuousness should turn his back upon the easy-going Anglican Church, so complacent even to the monstrous passions of Henry VIII., and choose the most inflexible of all Christian communions, the one which preferred losing her hold upon the glorious and powerful Island of Saints to conniving at adultery; which defended the innocent Catharine of Aragon against her ferocious spouse, and might, one hundred and forty years later, have protected Catharine of Portugal also had a royal caprice again attempted to displace a virtuous queen in order to raise a vicious favorite to the throne of England. This monarch, timid by nature, and surrounded by sanguinary fanatics, knew that the bare accusation of "popery" would be enough to stir up his whole kingdom against him; yet he did not hesitate to become a "papist"—he upon whom the laws conferred the title, so much coveted by his predecessors, of supreme head of the Established Church. Do we not see in this a signal triumph of God over man, of truth over falsehood?
Should it be asked why this correspondence has remained so long unpublished, we answer that it was by its nature strictly confidential. So long, too, as the Stuarts maintained their pretensions to the English crown the publication of such letters would have seriously compromised them. Then came the suppression of the society, after which it would appear that all trace of the correspondence was lost, until it was recently brought to light by the learned Father Boero. [Footnote 87] The original letters form part of a collection of autograph manuscripts of Charles II., Father Paul Oliva, Christina of Sweden, James II., the queen-mother, Henrietta of France, Catharine of Braganza, and other celebrated persons of the time. The letters of Charles are impressed with the Royal seal.
[Footnote 87: Istoria della conversione alla Chi?? Cattolica di Carlo II., Re d'Inghilterra, caveta da ???trure autentiche ed originali. ]
II.
It is easy enough to mention circumstances which would naturally have prepossessed Charles in favor of the Church. In the first place, he was indebted for his life, after the defeat of Worcester, almost entirely to Catholics, who at great risk to themselves concealed him from the soldiers of Cromwell and enabled him to escape to France. In Paris he must have seen many things to influence his religious sentiments. The most profound impression, however, was made upon him by the venerable M. Olier, the founder of St. Sulpice. "God opened to him," says his biographer, the Abbé Faillon, "the English monarch's heart. In the new conferences which he had with this prince, he showed him the beauty and truth of the Catholic religion with so much grace, force, and energy that Charles II. was constrained to acknowledge afterward to one of his friends that although many distinguished persons had spoken to him about these matters, there was none of them who had enlightened him so much as M. Olier; that in his words he recognized and felt an extraordinary virtue; in fine, that he had fully satisfied him. There can be little doubt that M. Olier had persuaded the king to abjure his errors and to take the first step toward a return into the bosom of the Church; that is to say, by sending a secret abjuration to the Pope, who, as has been said above, required nothing more. For, in the first place, it was rumored all through France and England that Charles had sent to the Pope a secret abjuration; and beside, M. de Bretonvilliers, after mentioning that his majesty recognized and felt an extraordinary virtue in his conversations with M. Olier on the truth of the Catholic religion, adds these significant words: 'At present, I can say no more.' This reticence naturally leads us to infer that Charles had taken some step toward becoming a Catholic which it was not then prudent to make known."