“The people are only fit to be directed, not instructed; they are not worth the trouble.”[103]
“It appears to me absolutely essential that there should be ignorant beggars. It is the towns-people (bourgeoisie) only, not the working-classes, who ought to be taught.”[104]
“The common people are like oxen: the goad, the yoke, and fodder are enough for them.”[105] Thus contemptuously were the people regarded by anti-Christian philosophy, which, while it paid court to any form of earthly power, perpetuated, and even outdid, the traditions of pagan antiquity in its hardness and disdain towards the lower orders.
On the retirement of Brother Claude, Brother Florentius accepted, in 1777, the direction of the house at Avignon, where the storm of Revolution burst upon him. After undergoing imprisonment and every kind of insulting and cruel treatment he died a holy death, in 1800, when order was beginning to be restored to France.
Brother Agathon, who next ruled the congregation, was a man of high culture in special lines of study, of wise discernment regarding the interests and requirements of the religious life, and of rare capacity as an administrator. The circular-addresses he issued from time to time have never lost their authority with the Brothers, and furnish a supplement as well as a commentary to the rule of their institute. He did much to increase the extent and efficiency of the latter, but was interrupted in the midst of his work by the political disturbances that were agitating his country. The decree of the 13th of February, 1790, by which “all orders and congregations, whether of men or women,” were suppressed, did not immediately overthrow the institute; but, although it suffered the provisional existence of such associations as were charged with public instruction or attendance on the sick, the respite was to be of short duration. The Brothers, however, notwithstanding the anxiety into which they were thrown by the decree of the Constitutional Assembly, ventured to hope that their society would be spared on account of its known devotedness to the interests of the people. Brother Agathon, moreover, was not a man who would silently submit to unjust measures, and several petitions were addressed by him to the Assembly, in which he fearlessly pleaded the cause of his institute, on the ground of its acknowledged utility among the very classes whose benefit the Assembly professed to have so greatly at heart. The simple and conclusive reasoning of these petitions must have gained their cause with reason and justice; but reason and justice were alike dethroned in France. One member alone of the Assembly did himself honor by representing the excellence of their teaching and the reality of their patriotism, but he spoke in vain; and on the universal refusal of the Brothers to take the oath imposed by the civil constitution on the members of any religious society, as well as on those of the priesthood, the houses to which they belonged were summarily suppressed. They were abused for not sending their pupils to attend the religious ceremonies presided over by schismatic ministers; they were accused of storing arms in their houses to be used against the country; they were charged with monopolizing and concealing victuals; but after a visit of inspection at Melun the municipal officers were compelled to bear testimony to the disinterested probity of these pious teachers, and similar perquisitions invariably resulted in the confusion of their calumniators.
But the Revolution continued its course. A decree passed on the 18th of August, 1792, suppressed all “secular ecclesiastical corporations” and lay associations, “such as that of the Christian Schools,” it being alleged that “a state truly free ought not to suffer the existence in its bosom of any corporation whatsoever, not even those which, being devoted to public instruction, have deserved well of the country.”
The Reign of Terror had begun; the dungeons were filling, and the prison was but the threshold to the scaffold. The children of the venerable De la Salle were not spared. Brother Solomon, secretary to the superior-general, was martyred on the 2d of September for refusing to take the schismatic oath. Brother Abraham was on the very point of being guillotined when he was rescued by one of the National Guard. The Brothers of the house in the Rue de Notre Dame des Champs continued to keep the schools of S. Sulpice until the massacre of the Carmelite monks. Several of the Brothers were put to death. The courageous words of Brother Martin before the revolutionary tribunal at Avignon have been preserved. “I am a teacher devoted to the education of the children of the poor,” he said to his judges; “and if your protestations of attachment to the people are sincere; if your principles of fraternity are anything better than mere forms of speech, my functions not only justify me, but claim your thanks.” Language like this ensured sentence of death. Besides, at that time they condemned; they did not judge.
After eighteen months of imprisonment Brother Agathon was restored to liberty, and died in 1797, at Tours, leaving his institute dispersed; but consoled by the last sacraments, which he received in secret.
Among the scattered members of a congregation too Christian not to be persecuted in those days we do not find one who did not remain faithful. Many of them, in the name and dress of civilians, continued to occupy themselves in teaching, and filled the post of schoolmasters at Noyon, Chartres, Laon, Fontainebleau, etc. From the municipal authorities of Laon they received a public testimonial of esteem; and in 1797, being imprisoned on the denunciation of a schismatic priest, the Brothers were set at liberty by a grateful and avenging ebullition on the part of the mothers of families. Their exit from prison was a triumph, the population crowding to meet them and throwing flowers in their way until they reached the school-house, in the court of which a banquet had been prepared, at which masters and scholars found themselves happily reunited.
In spite of the decree which had smitten their institute, the Brothers were still sought after as teachers in purely civil conditions. Nothing had replaced the orders and establishments which had been destroyed; no instruction was provided for the young; and as the churches were still closed and the pulpits silent, a night of ignorance was beginning to spread itself over the rising generation. On the 25th of August, 1792, a boy demanded of the National Assembly, for himself and his comrades, that they should be “instructed in the principles of equality and the rights of man, instead of being preached to in the name of a so-called God.”