XXXVIII. RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS IN THEMSELVES…

XXXVIII. RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS IN THEMSELVES

Religious institutions are another of those points whereon Protestantism and Catholicity are in complete opposition to each other: the first abhors, the second loves them; the one destroys them, the other establishes and encourages them. One of the first acts of Protestantism, whenever it is introduced, is to attack religious institutions by its doctrines and its acts; it labors to destroy them immediately; one would say that the pretended Reformation cannot behold without irritation those holy abodes, which continually remind it of the ignominious apostacy of its founder. Religious vows, especially that of chastity, have been the subject of the most cruel invectives on the part of Protestants; but it must be observed, that what is said now, and what has been repeated for three centuries, is only the echo of the first voice which was raised in Germany; and what was that voice? It was the voice of a monk without modesty, who penetrated into the sanctuary and carried away a victim. All the pomp of learning employed to combat a sacred dogma is insufficient to hide so impure an origin. Through the excitement of the false prophet we perceive the impure flames which devour his heart.

Let us observe in passing, that the same thing took place with respect to the celibacy of the clergy. Protestants, from the beginning, could not endure this; they threw off the mask, and condemned it without disguise; they attempted to combat it with a certain ostentation of learning; but, at the bottom of all their declamation, what do we find? The clamor of a priest who has forgotten his duty; who strives against the remorse of his conscience, and endeavors to hide his shame by diminishing the horror of the scandal by the allegations of falsehood. If such conduct had been pursued by the Catholics, all the arms of ridicule would have been employed to cover them with contempt, to stamp it, as it deserves, with the brand of infamy; but it was a man who declared deadly war against Catholicity: that was enough to turn away the contempt of philosophers, and find indulgence for the declamation of a monk whose first argument against celibacy was, to profane his vows and consummate a sacrilege.

The rest of the disturbers of that age imitated the example of so worthy a master. All demanded and required from Scripture and philosophy a veil to cover their weakness and baseness. Just punishment! blindness of the mind was the result of corruption of the heart; impudence sought and obtained the companionship of error. Never is the mind more vile than when, to excuse a fault, it becomes the accomplice of it; then it is not deceived, but prostituted.

This hatred of religious institutions has been inherited by philosophy from Protestantism. This is the reason why all revolutions, excited and guided by Protestants or philosophers, have been signalized by their intolerance towards the institutions themselves, and by their cruelty towards those who belonged to them. What the law could not do was completed by the dagger and the torch of the incendiary. What escaped the catastrophe was left to the slow punishment of misery and famine. On this point, as well as on many others, it is manifest that the infidel philosophy is the daughter of the Reformation. It is useless to seek for a more convincing proof of this than the parallel of the histories of both, in all that relates to the destruction of religious institutions; the same flattery of kings, the same exaggeration of the civil power, the same declamation against the pretended evil inflicted on society, the same calumnies; we have only to change the names and the dates. And we must also remark this peculiarity, that, in this matter, the difference which, apparently, ought to have resulted from the progress of toleration and the softening of manners in recent times, has scarcely been felt.

But is it true that religious institutions are as contemptible as they have been represented? is it true that they do not even deserve attention, and that all the questions relating to them can be solved by merely pronouncing the word fanaticism? Does not the man of observation, the real philosopher, find in them any thing worthy of attracting his attention? It is difficult to believe that such was the nullity of these institutions, whose history is so grand, and which still preserve in their existence the promise of a great future. It is difficult to believe that such institutions are not worthy of attention in the highest degree, and that their study is wholly devoid of lively interest and solid profit. We see them appear at every epoch of Church history; their memorials and monuments are found every moment under our feet; they are preserved in the regions of Asia, in the sands of Africa, in the cities and solitudes of America; in fine, when, after so much adversity, we see them more or less prosperous in the various countries of Europe, sending forth again fresh shoots in those lands where their roots had been the most deeply torn up, there naturally arises in the mind a spirit of curiosity to examine this phenomenon, to inquire what is the origin, the genius, and the character of these institutions. Those who love to descend into the heart of philosophical questions discover, at first sight, that there must be there an abundant mine of the most precious information for the science of religion, of society, and of man. He who has read the lives of the ancient fathers of the desert without being touched, without feeling profound admiration, and being filled with grave and lofty thoughts; he who, treading under his feet with indifference the ruins of an ancient abbey, has not called up in fancy the shades of the cenobites who lived and died there; he who passes coldly through the corridors and cells of convents half-demolished, and feels no recollections, and not even the curiosity to examine,--he may close the annals of history, and may cease to study the beautiful and the sublime. There exist for him no historical phenomena, no beauty, no sublimity; his mind is in darkness, his heart is in the dust.

With the intention of hiding the intimate connection which subsists between religious institutions and religion herself, it has been said that she can exist without them. This is an incontrovertible truth, but abstract and wholly useless--a barren and isolated assertion, which can throw no light upon science, nor serve as any practical guide--an insidious truth, which only tends entirely to change the whole state of the question, and persuade men that when religious institutions are concerned, religion has nothing to do with the matter. There is here a gross sophism, which is too much employed, not only on this question, but on many others. This consists in replying to all difficulties by a proposition perfectly true in itself, but which has nothing to do with the question. By this means, attention is turned another way; the palpable truth which is presented to the mind makes men wander from the principal object, and induces them to take that for a solution which is only a distraction. With respect, for example, to the support of the clergy and divine worship, it is said, "Temporals are altogether different from spirituals." When the ministers of religion are systematically calumniated, "Religion," they say, "is one thing, and her ministers are another." If it is wished to represent the conduct of Rome for many centuries as an uninterrupted chain of injustice, of corruption, and of invasion of right, all reply is anticipated by saying, "The supremacy of the Sovereign Pontiff has nothing to do with the vices of Popes or their ambition." Reflections perfectly just, and truths palpable, no doubt, which are very useful in certain cases, but which writers of bad faith cunningly employ to conceal from the reader the real object they have in view. Such are the jugglers who attract the attention of the simple multitude on one side, while their companions perform their criminal operations on the other.

Because a thing is not necessary to the existence of another, it does not follow that the first does not originate in the second,--does not find in the spirit of the latter its peculiar and permanent existence, and that a system of intimate and delicate relation does not subsist between them. The tree can subsist without flowers and fruits; these can certainly fall without destroying the trunk; but as long as the tree shall exist, will it ever cease to give proofs of its vigor and its beauty, and to offer its flowers to the eye, and its fruits to the taste? The stream may constantly flow in its crystal bed without the green margin which embellishes its sides; but while its source is not dried up--as long as the fertilizing water penetrates the ground, can its favored banks remain dry, barren, without color and ornament? Let us apply these images to our subject. It is certain that religion can exist without religious communities, and that their ruin does not necessarily entail that of religion herself. More than once it has been seen that in countries where religious institutions have been destroyed, the Catholic faith has been long preserved. But it is not less certain, that there is a necessary dependence between them and religion; that is, that she has given being to them, that she animates them with her spirit, and nourishes them with her substance: this is the reason why they immediately germinate wherever the Catholic faith takes root; and if they have been driven from a country where she continues to exist, they will reappear. Without alluding to the examples of other countries, do we not see this phenomenon take place in France in a remarkable manner? The number of convents of men and women which are again established on the French soil is already very considerable. Who would have told the men of the Constituent Assembly, the Legislative Assembly, the Convention, that half a century should not elapse without seeing religious institutions reappear and flourish in France, in spite of all their efforts to destroy even their memory? "If that happen," they would have said, "it will be because the revolution which we are making will not be allowed to triumph--because Europe will have again imposed despotism upon us; then, and then only, will be witnessed in France--in Paris--in this capital of the Christian world--the re-establishment of religious institutions, that legacy of fanaticism and superstition, transmitted to us by the ideas and manners of an age which has passed away, never to return."

Senseless men! your revolution has triumphed; you have conquered Europe; the old principles of the French monarchy have been erased from legislation, institutions, and manners; the genius of war has led your doctrines in triumph over Europe, and they were gilded by the rays of your glory. Your principles, all your recollections have again triumphed at a recent period; they still live in all their force and pride, personified in some men who glory in being the heirs of what they call the glorious Revolution of '89; and yet, in spite of so many triumphs, although your revolution has only receded as much as was necessary the better to secure its conquests, religious institutions have again arisen--they extend, they are propagated everywhere, and they regain an important place in the annals of our times. To prevent this revival, it would have been necessary to extirpate religion; it was not enough to persecute her; faith remained like a precious germ covered by stones and thorns; Providence sends down a ray of that divine star which softens stones, and gives life and fertility; the tree rises again in all its beauty, in spite of the ruins which hindered its growth and development, and its leaves are immediately covered with charming blossoms:--behold the religious institutions which you thought were for ever annihilated!

The example which we have just mentioned clearly shows the truth of what we wish to establish, with respect to the intimate connection which exists between religion and religious institutions. Church history furnishes proofs in support of this truth. Besides, the mere knowledge of religion, and of the nature of the institutions of which we speak, would suffice to prove it to us, even if we had not history and experience in our favor.

The force of general prejudice on this subject is such, that it is necessary to descend to the root of things, to show the complete mistake of our adversaries. What are religious institutions considered generally? Putting aside the differences, the changes, the alterations necessarily produced by variety of times, countries, and other circumstances, we will say that a religious institute is a society of Christians living together, under certain rules, for the purpose of practising the Gospel precepts. We include, in this definition, even the orders which are not bound by a vow. It will be seen that we have considered the religious institution in its most general sense, laying aside all that theologians and canonists say with respect to the conditions indispensable to constitute or complete its essence. We must, moreover, observe that we ought not to exclude from the honorable denomination of religious institutes, those associations which possess all the conditions except the vows. The Catholic religion is fertile enough to produce good by means and forms widely different. In the generality of religious institutions, she has shown us what man can do by binding himself by a vow, for his whole life, to a holy abnegation of his own will; but she has also wished to show us that, while leaving him at liberty, she could attach him by a variety of ties, and make him persevere until death, as if he had been obliged by a perpetual vow. The congregation of the oratory of St. Philip Neri, which is found in this latter category, is certainly worthy of figuring among religious institutions as one of the finest monuments of the Catholic Church. I am aware that the vow is comprised in the essence of religious institutes, as they are commonly understood; but my only object now is, to vindicate this kind of association against Protestants. Now we know that they condemn indiscriminately, associations bound by vows and those which only consist of the permanent and free adhesion of the persons who compose them. All that has the form of a religious community is regarded by them with a look of anger. When they proscribed the religious orders, they included in the same fate those which had vows and those which had not. Consequently, when defending them, we must class them together. Moreover, this will not prevent our considering the vow in itself, and justifying it before the tribunal of philosophy.

I do not imagine that it is necessary to say more to show that the object of religious institutions--that is, as we have just said, the putting in practice of the Gospel counsels--is in perfect uniformity with the Gospel itself. And let us well observe that, whatever may be the name, whatever may be the form of the institutions, they have always for their object something more than the simple observance of the precepts; the idea of perfection is always included, then, either in the active or the contemplative life. To keep the Divine commandments is indispensable to all Christians who wish to possess eternal life; the religious orders attempt a more difficult path; they aim at perfection. This is the object of the men who, after having heard these words from the mouth of their Divine Master: "If you wish to be perfect, go sell all you have, and give it to the poor," have not departed sorrowful, like the young man in the Gospel, but have embraced with courage the enterprise of quitting all and following Jesus Christ.

We have now inquired whether association is the best means to carry into execution so holy an object. It would be easy for me to show this by adducing various texts of Scripture, where the true spirit of the Christian religion, and the will of our Divine Master, are clearly shown on this point; but the taste of our age, and the self-evidence even of the truths in question, warn us to avoid, as much as possible, all that savors of theological discussion. I will remove the question, then, from this level, to consider it in a light purely historical and philosophical; that is to say, without accumulating citations and texts, I will prove that religious institutes are perfectly conformable to the spirit of the Christian religion; and that consequently that spirit has been deplorably mistaken by Protestants, when they have condemned or destroyed them. If philosophers, while they do not admit the truth of religion, still avow that it is useful and beautiful, I will prove to them that they cannot condemn those institutions which are the necessary result of it. In the cradle of Christianity, when men preserved, in all their energy and purity, the sparks from the tongues of the Holy Spirit; in those times, when the words and examples of its Divine Founder were still fresh, when the number of the faithful who had had the happiness of seeing and hearing Him was still very great in the Church, we see the Christians, under the direction of the Apostles themselves, unite, have all their property in common; thus forming only one family, the Father of which was in heaven, and which had only one heart and one soul.

I will not dispute as to the extent of this primitive proceeding; I will abstain from analyzing the various circumstances which accompanied it, and from examining how far it resembled the religious institutions of latter times; it is enough to state its existence, and show therefrom what is the true spirit of religion with respect to the most proper means to realize evangelical perfection. I will only allude to the fact, that Cassian, in the description which he gives of the commencement of religious institutions, assigns as their cradle the proceeding we have just mentioned, and which is reported in the Acts of the Apostles. According to the same author, this kind of life was never wholly interrupted; so that there were always some fervent Christians who continued it; thus attaching, by a continued chain, the existence of the monks to the primitive associations of the apostolical times. After having described the kind of life of the first Christians, and traced the alterations of the times that followed, Cassian continues thus: "Those who preserved the apostolical fervor in this way, recalling primitive perfection, quitted towns, and the society of those who believed that they were allowed to live with less severity; they began to choose secret and retired places, where they could follow in private the rules which they remembered to have been appointed by the Apostles for the whole body of the Church in general. Thus commenced the formation of the discipline of those who had quitted that contagion, as they lived separate from the rest of the faithful; abstaining from marriage, and having no communication with the world, even with their own families. In the progress of time, the name of monks was given to them, in consideration of their singular and solitary life." (Collat. 18, cap. 5.)

Times of persecution immediately followed, which, with some interruptions, that may be called moments of repose, lasted till the conversion of Constantine. There were, then, during this time, some Christians who attempted to continue the mode of life of the apostolical years. Cassian clearly indicates this in the passage which we have just read. He omits to say that this primitive life was necessarily modified, in its exterior form, by the calamities with which the Church was afflicted at that period. In all that time we ought not to look for Christians living in community; we shall find them confessing Jesus Christ, with imperturbable calmness, on the rack, amid all torments, in the circus, where they were torn to pieces by wild beasts, on the scaffold, where they quietly gave up their heads to the axe of the executioner. But observe what happened even during the time of persecution; the Christians, of whom the world was not worthy, pursued in the towns like wild beasts, wandered about in solitude, seeking refuge in the deserts. The solitudes of the East, the sand and rocks of Arabia, the most inaccessible places of the Thebaïd, receive those troops of fugitives, who dwell in the abodes of wild beasts, in abandoned graves, in dried-up cisterns, in the deepest caverns, only asking for an asylum for meditation and prayer. And do you know the result of this? These deserts, in which the Christians wandered, like a few grains of sand driven by the wind, became peopled, as it were by magic, with innumerable religious communities. There they meditated, prayed, and read the Gospel; hardly had the fruitful seed touched the earth, when the precious plant arose in a moment.

Admirable are the designs of Providence! Christianity, persecuted in the towns, fertilizes and embellishes the deserts; the precious grain requires for its development neither the moisture of the earth nor the breeze of a mild atmosphere; when carried through the air on the wings of the storm, the seed loses nothing of its vitality; when thrown on a rock, it does not perish. The fury of the elements avails nothing against the work of God, who has made the north wind His courser: the rock ceases to be barren when He pleases to fertilize it. Did He not make pure water spring forth at the mysterious touch of His Prophet's rod?

When peace was given to the Church by the conqueror of Maxentius, the germs contained in the bosom of Christianity were able to develop themselves everywhere; from that moment the Church was never without religious communities. With history in our hands, we may defy the enemies of religious institutions to point out any period, however short, when these institutions had entirely disappeared. Under some form or in some country, they have always perpetuated the existence which they had received in the early ages of Christianity. The fact is certain and constant, and is found in every page of ecclesiastical history; it plays an important part in all the great events in the annals of the Church. It is found in the west and in the east, in modern and in ancient times, in the prosperity and in the adversity of the Church; when the pursuit of religious perfection was an honor in the eyes of the world, as well as when it was an object of persecution, raillery, and calumny. What clearer proof can there be that there is an intimate connection between religious institutions and religion herself? What more is required to show us that they are her spontaneous fruit? In the moral and in the physical order of things, the constant appearance of the one following the other, is regarded as a proof of the reciprocal dependence of two phenomena. If these phenomena have towards each other the relations of cause and effect--if we find in the essence of the one all the principles that are required in the production of the other, the first is called the cause and the other the effect. Wherever the religion of Jesus Christ is established, religious communities are found under some form or other; they are, therefore, its spontaneous effect. I do not know what reply can be made to so conclusive an argument.

By viewing the question in this way, the favor and protection which religious institutions always found with the Pontiff is naturally explained. It was his duty to act in conformity with the spirit which animates the Church, of which he is the chief ruler upon earth; it is certainly not the Pope who has made the regulation, that one of the means most apt to lead men to perfection is to unite themselves in associations under certain rules, in conformity with the instructions of their Divine Master. The Eternal Lord thus ruled in the secrets of His infinite wisdom, and the conduct of the Popes could not be contrary to the designs of the Most High. It has been said that interested views interposed; it has been said that the policy of the Popes found in these institutions a powerful means of sustaining and aggrandizing itself. But can you not see any thing but the sordid instruments of cunning policy in the societies of the primitive faithful, in the monasteries of the solitudes of the East, in that crowd of institutions which have had for their object only the sanctification of their own members and the amelioration of some of the great evils of humanity? A fact so general, so great, so beneficent, cannot be explained by views of interest and narrow designs; its origin is higher and nobler; and he who will not seek for it in heaven ought at least to seek for it in something greater than the projects of a man or the policy of a court; he ought to seek for lofty ideas, sublime feelings, capable, if they do not mount to heaven, at least of embracing a large part of the earth; nothing less is here required than one of those thoughts which preside over the destinies of the human race.

Some persons may be inclined to imagine private designs on the part of the Popes, because they see their authority interfere in all the foundations of later ages, and their approbation constitute the validity of the rules of religious institutions; but the course pursued in this respect by ecclesiastical discipline shows us that the most active intervention of the Popes, far from emanating from private views, has been called for by a necessity of preventing an excessive multiplication of the religious orders in consequence of an indiscreet zeal. This vigilance in preventing abuses was the origin of this supreme intervention. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the tendency to new foundations was so strong that the most serious inconveniences would have resulted from it, without a continual watchfulness on the part of the ecclesiastical authority. Thus we see the Sovereign Pontiff Innocent III. ordain, in the Council of Lateran, that whoever wished to found a new religious house shall be bound to adopt one of the approved rules and institutions.

But let us pursue our design. I can understand how those who deny the truth of the Christian religion, and turn into ridicule the counsels of the Gospel, bring themselves to deny all that is celestial and divine in the spirit of the religious communities; but the truth of religion once established, I cannot conceive how men who boast of following its laws can declare themselves the enemies of these institutions considered in themselves. How can he who admits the principle refuse the consequence? How can he who loves the cause reject the effect? They must either affect a religion hypocritically, or they profess without comprehending it.

In default of any other proof of the anti-evangelical spirit which guided the leaders of the pretended Reformation, their hatred to an institution so evidently founded on the Gospel itself should suffice. Did not these enthusiasts for reading the Bible without note or comment--they who pretend to find all its passages so clear--did they not remark the plain and easy sense of that multitude of passages which recommend self-abnegation, the renunciation of all possessions, and the privation of all pleasures? These words are plain--they cannot be taken in any other signification--they do not require for their comprehension a profound study of the sacred sciences, or that of languages; and yet they have not been heard: we should rather say, they have not been listened to. The intellect has understood, but the passions have rejected them.

As to those philosophers who have regarded religious institutions as vain and contemptible, if not dangerous, it is clear that they have meditated but little on the human mind, and on the deep feelings of our hearts, full as they are of mystery. As their hearts have felt nothing at the sight of those numbers of men and women assembled for the purpose of sanctifying themselves or others, or of relieving wants, and consoling the unfortunate, it is but too clear that their souls have been dried up by the breath of skepticism. To renounce for ever all the pleasures of life; to live in solitude, there to offer one's self, in austerity and penance, as a holocaust to the Most High: this, certainly is a matter of horror to those philosophers who have only viewed the world through their own prejudices. But humanity has other thoughts; it feels itself attracted by those objects which philosophers find so vain, so devoid of interest, so worthy of horror.

Wonderful are the secrets of our hearts! Although enervated by pleasure, and involved in the whirlwind of amusement and mirth, we cannot avoid being seized with deep emotion at the sight of austerity and recollection of soul. Solitude, and even sadness itself, exert an inexpressible influence over us. Whence comes that enthusiasm which moves a whole nation, excites and makes it follow, as if by enchantment, the steps of a man whose brow is marked by recollection, whose features display austerity of life, whose clothes and manners show freedom from all that is earthly, and forgetfulness of the world? Now, it is a fact, proved by the history both of true and of false religions; so powerful a means of attracting respect and esteem has not remained unknown to imposture: licentiousness and corruption, desirous of making their fortunes in the world, have more than once felt the imperious necessity of disguising themselves under the mantle of austerity and purity. What at first sight might appear the most opposed to our feelings, the most repugnant to our tastes--this shade of sadness diffused over the recollection and solitude of the religious life--is precisely what enchants and attracts us the most. The religious life is solitary and pensive; therefore it is beautiful, and its beauty is sublime. Nothing is more apt than this sublimity to move our hearts deeply, and make indelible impressions on them. In reality, our soul has the character of an exile; it is affected by melancholy objects only; it has not attained to that noisy joy which requires to borrow a tint of melancholy only for the sake of a happy contrast. In order to clothe beauty with its most seductive charms, it is necessary that a tear of anguish should flow from her eyes, that her forehead should assume an air of sadness, and her cheeks grow pale with a melancholy remembrance. In order that the life of a hero excite a lively interest in us, it is requisite that misfortune be his companion, lamentation his consolation--that disaster and ingratitude be the reward of his virtues. If you wish that a picture of nature or art should strongly attract our attention, take possession of and absorb the powers of our soul, it is necessary that a memorial of the nothingness of man, and an image of death, should be presented to our minds; our hearts should be appealed to by the feelings of a tranquil sadness; we desire to see sombre tints on a monument in ruins--the cross reminding us of the abode of the dead, the massive walls covered with moss, and pointing out the ancient dwelling of some powerful man, who, after having lived on earth for a short time, has disappeared.

Joy does not satisfy us, it does not fill our hearts; it intoxicates and dissipates them for a few moments; but man does not find there his happiness, because the joys of earth are frivolous, and frivolity cannot attach a traveller who, far from his country, walks painfully through the valley of tears. Thence it comes that, while sorrow and tears are accepted--we should rather say, are carefully sought for by art--whenever a deep impression is to be made upon the soul, joy and smiles are inexorably banished. Oratory, poetry, sculpture, painting, music, have all constantly followed the same rule; or, rather, have always been governed by the same instinct. It certainly required a lofty spirit and a heart of fire to declare that the soul is naturally Christian. In these few words an illustrious thinker has known how to express all the relations which unite the faith, morality, and counsels of this divine religion, with all that is most intimate, delicate, and noble in our hearts. Do you know Christian pensiveness; that grave and elevated feeling which is painted on the forehead of the Christian, like a memorial of sorrow on that of an illustrious proscribed one; this feeling which moderates the enjoyments of life by the image of the tomb, and lights up the depths of the grave with the rays of hope; that pensiveness so natural and consoling, so grave and noble, which causes diadems and sceptres to be trodden under foot like dust, and the greatness and splendor of the world to be despised as a passing illusion? This melancholy, carried to its perfection, vivified and fertilized by grace, and subjected to a holy rule, is what presides over the foundation of religious institutions, and accompanies them as long as they preserve their primitive fervor, which they received from men who were guided by divine light, and animated by the Spirit of God. This holy melancholy, which carries with it freedom from all earthly things, is the feeling which the Church wishes to instil into and preserve in, the religious orders, when she surrounds their silent abodes with a shade of retirement and meditation.

That amid the fury and the convulsions of parties, a mad and sacrilegious hand, secretly excited by malice, should plunge a fratricidal dagger into an innocent heart, or set fire to a peaceful dwelling, may be conceived; for, unhappily, the history of man abounds in crimes and frenzies; but that the essence of religious institutions should be attacked, that their spirit should be considered narrow and imbecile, that they should be deprived of the noble titles which give honor to their origin, and the beauties which adorn their history, can be allowed neither by the intellect nor by the heart. A false philosophy, which dries up and withers all that it touches, has undertaken so mad a task. But, setting aside religion and reason, literature and the fine arts have rebelled against this attempt; literature and the fine arts, which have need of old recollections, and which are indebted for their wonders to lofty thoughts, to grave and noble scenes, and deep and melancholy feelings; literature and the arts, which delight in transporting the mind of man into regions of light, in guiding the imagination through new and unknown paths, and in ruling the heart by mysterious charms.

No; a thousand times no! As long as the religion of that God made man, who had not where to repose his head, and who sat down by a well on the wayside to rest, like an humble traveller, shall last; of that God-man, whose appearance was announced to the nations by a mysterious voice coming from the desert--by the voice of a man clothed in a goat-skin, whose reins were bound with a leathern girdle, and who lived on nothing but locusts and wild honey: as long as this divine religion shall last, nothing will be more holy or more worthy of our respect than those institutions, the true and original object of which is to realize what Heaven intended to teach man by such eloquent and sublime lessons. Times, vicissitudes, and revolutions, succeed each other; the institution will change its form, will undergo alterations, will be affected more or less by the weakness of men, by the corrosive action of time, and the destructive power of events; but it will live--it will never perish. If one society rejects it, it will seek an asylum in another; driven from towns, it will take refuge in forests; if there pursued, it will flee to the horrors of the desert. There will always be, in some privileged hearts, an echo for the voice of that sublime religion, which, holding in her hand a standard of sorrow and love--the sacred standard of the sufferings and death of the Son of God--the Cross, will proclaim to men: "Watch and pray, that you enter not into temptation; if you assemble to pray, the Lord will be in the midst of you; all flesh is but grass; life is a dream; above your heads is an ocean of light and happiness; under your feet an abyss; your life on earth is a pilgrimage, an exile." Then she marks his forehead with the mysterious ashes, telling him, "Thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return."

We shall perhaps be asked why the faithful cannot practise evangelical perfection while living in the bosom of their families, without assembling in communities? We shall reply, that we have no intention of denying the possibility of that practice, even in the midst of the world; and we willingly acknowledge that a great number of Christians have done so at all times, and do so now; but this does not prove that the surest and easiest means is not that of the life in community with others who have the same object in view, and in retirement from all the things of this world. Laying aside for a moment all consideration of religion, are you not aware of the ascendency which the spirit of repeated examples exerts on those with whom we live? Do you not know how easily our spirit fails when we find ourselves alone in a difficult enterprise? Do you not know that, in the greatest misfortunes, it is a consolation to behold others participate in our sorrows? On this point, as well as on all others, religion accords with sound philosophy, and both unite in explaining to us the profound meaning contained in those words of Scripture: "Væ soli! Wo to him who is alone!"

Before concluding this chapter, I wish to say a few words on the vows which commonly accompany religious institutes. Perhaps they are one of the principal causes of the violent antipathy of Protestantism against these institutions. Vows render things fixed and stable; and the fundamental principle of Protestantism does not admit of fixity or stability. Essentially separating and anarchical, this principle rejects unity and destroys the hierarchy; dissolving in its nature, it allows the mind neither to remain in a permanent faith nor to be subject to rule. For if virtue itself is only a vague entity, which has no fixed foundation--a being which is fed on illusions, and which cannot endure the application of any certain and constant rule, this holy necessity of doing well, of constantly walking in the path of perfection, must be incomprehensible to it, and in the highest degree repugnant; this necessity must appear to it inconsistent with liberty; as if man, by binding himself by a vow, lost his free will; as if the sanction which a promise given to God imparts to a design, at all diminished the merit of him who has the firmness necessary to accomplish what he had the courage to promise.

Those who, to condemn this necessity which man imposes on himself, invoke the rights of liberty against it, seem to forget that this effort of man to make himself the slave of good, and secure his own future, besides the sublime disinterestedness which it supposes, is the vastest exercise which man can make of his liberty. By one act alone, he disposes of his whole life, and by fulfilling the duties resulting from that act, he continually fulfils his own will. But we shall be told that man is so inconstant: this is the reason why, in order to prevent the effects of this inconstancy, he finds himself penetrating into the vicissitudes of the future, renders himself superior to them, and governs them in advance. But, it will be said, in that case, good is done from necessity: this is true; but do you not know that the necessity of doing good is a happy one, and in some measure assimilates man with God? Do you not know that Infinite Goodness is incapable of doing evil, and Infinite Holiness can do nothing that is not holy? Theologians explain why a created being is capable of sinning by pointing out this profound reason. "It is," they say, "because the creature is made out of nothing." When man forces himself, as far as he can, to do well, when he thus fetters his will, he ennobles it, he renders himself more like to God, he assimilates himself to the state of the blessed, who have no longer the melancholy liberty of doing evil, and who are under the happy necessity of loving God.

The name of liberty, from the time when Protestants and false philosophers took possession of it, seems condemned to be ill understood in all its applications. In the religious, moral, social, and political order, it is enveloped in such obscurity, that we can perceive the many efforts which have been made to darken and misrepresent it. Cicero gives an admirable definition of liberty when he says, that it consists in being the slave of law. In the same way it may be said, that the liberty of the intellect consists in being the slave of truth; and the liberty of the will in being the slave of virtue; if you change this, you destroy liberty. If you take away the law, you admit force; if you take away the truth, you admit error; if you take away virtue, you admit vice. If you venture to exempt the world from the external law, from that law which embraces man and society, which extends to all orders, which is the divine wisdom applied to reasonable creatures; if you venture to seek for an imaginary liberty out of that immense circle, you destroy all; there remains in society nothing but the empire of brute force, and in man that of the passions; with tyranny, and consequently slavery.

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XXXIX. OF RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS IN HISTORY.--THE FIRST SOLITARIES

I have just examined religious institutions in a general point of view, by considering them in their relations with religion and the human mind. I am now going to take a glance at the principal points of their history. This examination, I think, will show us an important truth: viz. that the appearance of these institutions under different forms has been the expression and the fulfilment of great moral necessities, and a powerful means, in the hands of Providence, of promoting not only the spiritual good of the Church, but also the salvation and regeneration of society. It will be understood that it is not possible for me to enter into details, or pass in review the numerous religious institutions which have existed; besides, this is not necessary for my object. I shall limit myself, therefore, to running over the principal phases of religious institutes, and making a few remarks on each of them; I shall act like the traveller who, being unable to make a stay in the country through which he passes, looks at it for a short time from the highest points. I will begin with the solitaries of the East.

The Colossus of the Roman Empire threatened an approaching and stunning fall: the spirit of life was rapidly becoming extinguished, and there was no longer any hope of a breath to reanimate it. The blood circulated slowly in its veins; the evil was incurable: the symptoms of corruption everywhere manifested themselves, and this agony was exactly coincident with the critical and formidable hour when it was necessary to collect all its forces to resist the violent shock which was about to destroy it. The barbarians appeared on the frontiers of the empire, like the carnivorous animals attracted by the exhalations of a dead body; and at this crisis society found itself on the eve of a fearful catastrophe. All the world was about to undergo an alarming change; the next day was not likely to resemble the last; the tree was about to be torn up; but its roots were too deep for it to be extirpated without changing the whole face of the soil where it was planted. The greatest refinement had to contend with barbarian ferocity,--the effeminate luxury of southern nations with the energy of the robust sons of the forest; the result of the struggle could not be doubtful. Laws, customs, manners, monuments, arts and sciences,--all the civilization and refinement acquired during the course of many ages was all in peril, all foreboded approaching ruin, all understood that God had appointed an end to the power, and even the existence of the rulers of the globe. The barbarians were only the instrument of Providence; the hand which had given a mortal blow to the mistress of the world, the queen of nations, was that formidable hand which touches mountains with fire, and reduces them to ashes, which touches the rocks and melts them like metal; it was the hand of Him who sends forth His fiery breath upon the nations, and burns them up like straw.

The world must be the prey of chaos for a short time; but was not light again to come upon it? Was mankind to be melted, like gold in the furnace, in order to come out more brilliant and more pure? Were ideas respecting God and man to be corrected? Were more delicate and exalted notions of morality to be diffused? Was it reserved for the heart of man to receive more grave and sublime inspirations, to emerge from its corrupt state, and live in an atmosphere higher and more worthy of an immortal being? Yes! Providence thus decreed, and His infinite wisdom has brought about this end by ways which man could not understand.

Christianity was already spread over the face of the world; her holy doctrines, rendered fruitful by grace, prepared the complete regeneration of the world; but it was necessary that mankind should again receive a new impulse from her divine hands, that the mind of man should be moved by a new shock, that it might take its proper flight, and raise itself at once to the exalted position which was intended for it, and from which it was never to descend. History tells us of the obstacles which opposed the establishment and development of Christianity. According to the warlike expression of the Prophet, God was compelled to assume His sword and buckler; by the strength of wonderful prodigies, He broke the resistance of the passions, destroyed every knowledge which raised itself against the knowledge of God, scattered all the powers which rebelled against Him, and extinguished the pride and obstinacy of hell. When, after three centuries of persecution, victory declared itself throughout the world in favor of the true religion; when the temples of the false gods were deserted, and those idols which were not yet overthrown trembled on their pedestals; when the sign of Calvary was inscribed on the Labarum of the Cæsars, and the legions of the empire bowed religiously before the Cross, then had the moment arrived for Christianity to realize, in a permanent manner, in those sublime institutions conceived and established by herself alone, the lofty counsels given three centuries before in Palestine. The wisdom of philosophers had been vain; the time was come to realize the wisdom of the Carpenter of Nazareth, of Him who, without having consulted human learning, had proclaimed and taught truths unknown to the most privileged of mortals.

The virtues of the Christians had already emerged from the obscurity of the catacombs; they were to be resplendent in the light of heaven and amid peace, as they had formerly shone in the depths of dungeons and amid the flames. Christianity had obtained possession of the sceptre of command, as of the domestic hearth; her disciples, who now were multitudinous, no longer lived in a community of goods; it is clear that entire continence, and complete freedom from all earthly things, could no longer be the mode of life of the regenerated families. The world was to continue; the duration of the human race was not to cease at this point of its career; therefore, all Christians were not to observe the lofty counsels which convert the life of man on earth into the angelic. A great number of them were to belong to those who, in order to obtain eternal life, were satisfied with keeping the precepts, without aspiring to the sublime perfection which results from the renouncement of all that is earthly, and the complete abnegation of self. Yet the Founder of the Christian religion was unwilling that the counsels which He had given to men should be for a moment without some disciples amid the coldness and dissipation of the world. He had not given them in vain; and, besides, the practice of them, although confined to a limited number of the faithful, exerted on all sides a beneficent influence which facilitated and secured the observance of the precepts. The force of example exerts so powerful an ascendency over the human heart, that it is often sufficient of itself to triumph over the strongest and most obstinate resistance; there is something in our hearts which inclines them to sympathize with all that approaches them, whether good or evil; and there seems to be a secret stimulus urging us to follow others, whatever direction they may take. Therefore it is that there are so many advantages in the establishment of religious institutions, in which the virtues and austerity of life are given as an example to the generality of men, and make an eloquent reproach to the errors of passion.

Providence desired to attain this great end by singular and extraordinary means; the Spirit of God breathed on the earth, and immediately the men and power to commence this great work appeared. The frightful deserts of Thebaïd, the burning solitudes of Arabia, Palestine, and Syria, show us men rudely clad, with a mantle of goat-skin on their shoulders, and a plain cowl on their heads: behold all the luxury with which they confound the vanity and pride of worldlings! Their bodies, exposed to the rays of the most burning sun and the most severe cold, besides being attenuated by long fasts, resemble walking spectres who have arisen from the dust of their sepulchres. The herbs of the earth are their only food, water their only drink; the labor of their hands procures for them the scanty resources they require. Under the direction of a venerable old man, whose claims to rule are a long life passed in the desert, and hairs grown white amid privations and austerities, they constantly keep the profoundest silence; their lips are opened only to pronounce the words of prayer; their voice is only heard to intone a hymn of praise to God. For them the world has ceased to exist; the relations of friendship, the sweet ties of family and relationship, are all broken by a spirit of perfection, carried to an extent which surpasses all earthly considerations. The cares of property do not disturb them; before retiring to the desert, they have abandoned all to him who was to succeed them; or they have sold all they had, and given the price to the poor. The Holy Scriptures are the nourishment of their minds; they learn by heart the words of that divine book; they meditate on them unceasingly, beseeching the Lord to grant that they may understand them aright. In their retired meetings, nothing is heard but the voice of some venerable cenobite, explaining with naïve simplicity and touching unction the sense of the sacred text; but always in such a way as to draw profit for the purification of souls.

The number of these solitaries was so great that we could not credit it, if it were not vouched for by eye-witnesses worthy of the highest respect. As to their sanctity, spirit of penance, and purity of life, we cannot doubt them after the testimonies of Rufinus, Palladius, St. Jerome, St. John Chrysostom, St. Augustine, and all the other illustrious men who distinguished themselves at that time. The fact is singular, extraordinary, prodigious; but no one can question its historical truth; it is attested by all who came to the desert from all parts to seek for light in their doubts, cures for their evils, and pardon for their sins. I could quote a thousand authorities to prove what I have said; but I will content myself with one, which shall suffice for all--that of St. Augustine. Hear how this holy doctor describes the life of these extraordinary men: "These fathers, not only very holy in their manners, but very learned in the Christian doctrine, excellent men in all respects, do not govern with pride those whom they justly call their sons, on account of the high authority of those who command, and the ready will of those who obey. At the decline of day, one of them, still fasting, quits his habitation, and all assemble to hear their master. Each of these fathers has at least three thousand under his direction; for the number is sometimes much greater. They listen with incredible attention, in profound silence, manifesting by their groans, or tears, or by their modest and tranquil joy, the various feelings which the discourse excites in their souls." (St. Augustin. lib. 1, De Moribus Ecclesiæ, cap. 31.)

But it will be said, Of what use were these men, except for their own sanctification? what good did they do to society? what influence did they exert on ideas? what change did they make in manners? If we admit that this plant of the desert was beautiful and fragrant, yet what did it avail? it remained sterile. It certainly would be an error to think that so many thousands of solitaries did not exercise great influence. In the first place, and to speak only of what relates to ideas, we must observe, that the monasteries of the East arose within reach, and under the eyes of, the schools of philosophy. Egypt was the country where the cenobitic life flourished the most. Now every one is aware of the high renown which the schools of Alexandria enjoyed a short time before. On all sides of the Mediterranean--on that border of land which, beginning in Libya, terminates in the Black Sea--men's minds were at that time in a state of extraordinary motion. Christianity and Judaism, the doctrines of the East and those of the West--all was collected and accumulated in this part of the world; the remains of the ancient schools of Greece were formed of the treasures, which the course of ages and the passage of the most famous nations of the earth had brought to those countries. New and gigantic events were come to throw floods of light upon the character and the value of ideas; minds had felt shocks which did not allow them any longer to be contented with the quiet lessons contained in the dialogues of the ancient masters. From these famous countries came the most eminent men of the early ages of Christianity; and we know from their works the extent and elevation of mind which man had attained at that time. Was it possible that a phenomenon so extraordinary--a girdle of monasteries and hermitages, embracing this zone of the world, and showing themselves in the face of the schools of philosophy--should not exert great influence on men's minds? The ideas of the solitaries passed incessantly from the desert into the towns; since, in spite of all the care which they took to avoid the contact of the world, the world sought and approached them, and continually came to receive their inspirations.

When we see the nations crowd to the solitaries the most eminent for their sanctity, to implore from their wisdom a remedy for suffering and a consolation in misfortunes; when we see these venerable men impart, together with the unction of the Gospel, the sublime lessons which they had learned during long years of meditation and prayer in the silence of solitude, it is impossible not to understand how much these communications must have contributed to correct and elevate ideas relating to religion and morality, and to amend and purify morals. Let us not forget that the human mind was, as it were, materialized by the corruption and grossness of the pagan religion. The worship of nature, of sensible forms, was so deeply rooted that, in order to raise minds to the conception of superior things, a strong and extraordinary reaction was required; it was necessary in some measure to annihilate matter in order to present to man only the mind. The life of the solitaries was the best adapted to produce this effect. In reading the history of these times, we seem to find ourselves transported out of this world; the flesh has disappeared, and there remains nothing but the spirit; and the force which has been employed in order to subdue the flesh is such--they have insisted so much on the vanity of earthly things--that reality itself is changed into illusion, and the physical world vanishes to make way for the moral and intellectual; all the ties of earth have been broken; man puts himself in intimate communication with Heaven. Miracles multiply exceedingly in these lives; apparitions continually appear; the abodes of the solitaries are arenas where earthly means are nothing; good angels struggle against demons, heaven against hell, God against Satan: the earth is there only to serve as a field of battle; the body exists no longer except to be consumed as a holocaust on the altars of virtue, in the presence of the demon who struggles furiously to render it the slave of vice.

What has become of the idolatrous worship which Greece paid to sensible forms, that adoration which it offered to nature by deifying all that was delicious and beautiful, all that could interest the senses and the heart? What a profound change! the same senses are subjected to the most severe privations; they are most strictly circumcised in heart; and man, who then scarcely attempted to raise his mind above the earth, now keeps it constantly fixed on Heaven. It is impossible to form an idea of what we are attempting to describe, without having read the lives of these solitaries; to understand all the effect of their great prodigies, it is necessary to have spent many hours over these pages, where, so to speak, nothing is found which follows the natural course of things. It is not enough to imagine pure lives, austerities, visions, and miracles; it is necessary to see all this collected together, and carried to the most wonderful extent in the path of perfection.

If you refuse to acknowledge the action of grace in facts so surprising; if you will not see any supernatural effect in this religious movement; I say more, if you go so far as to suppose that the mortification of the flesh and the elevation of the soul are carried to blamable exaggeration, still you cannot help allowing that such a reaction was very likely to spiritualize ideas, to awaken the moral and intellectual forces in man, and to concentrate all within himself, by giving him the sentiment of that interior, intimate, and moral life, with which, until then, he had not been occupied. The forehead which, till then, had been bent towards the earth, was raised towards the Divinity; something nobler than material enjoyments was offered to the mind, and the brutal excesses authorized by the example of the false divinities of paganism, at length appeared an offence against the high dignity of human nature.

In the moral order, the effect must have been immense. Man, until then, had not even imagined that it was possible to resist the impetuosity of his passions. There were found, it is true, in the cold morality of a few philosophers, certain maxims intended to restrain the dangerous passions; but this morality was only in the books, the world did not regard it as practicable, and if some men attempted to realize it, they did so in such a manner that, far from giving it credit, they rendered it contemptible. What did it avail to abandon riches and profess freedom from all earthly things, as some philosophers did, if at the same time they appeared so vain, so full of themselves, that it was evident that they only sacrificed on the altar of pride? It was to overturn all the idols in order to place themselves on the altar, and reign there without rival gods; this was not to direct the passions, to subject them to reason, but to create a monster passion surpassing and devouring all. Humility, the foundation-stone whereon the solitaries raised the edifice of their virtue, placed them immediately in a position infinitely superior to that of the ancient philosophers who were distinguished for a life more or less severe. In fine, men were taught to avoid vice and practise virtue, not for the futile pleasure of being regarded and admired, but for superior motives founded on the relations of man with God, and the destinies of eternity. From that moment man knew that it was not impossible for him to triumph over evil, in the obstinate struggle which he felt continually going on within himself. At the sight of so many thousands of persons of both sexes who followed a rule of life so pure and austere, mankind took fresh courage, and were convinced that the paths of virtue were not impracticable for them.

The generous confidence with which man was inspired by the sight of such sublime examples, lost nothing of its strength in presence of the Christian dogma, which does not allow actions meritorious of eternal life to be attributed to man himself, and teaches him the necessity of divine aid, if he wishes to escape the paths of perdition. This dogma, which, on the other hand, accords so well with the daily lessons of experience as to human frailty, far from destroying the strength of the mind or diminishing its courage, on the contrary, animates it more and more to persevere in spite of all obstacles. When man thinks himself alone, when he does not feel himself supported by the powerful hand of Providence, he walks with the tottering steps of infancy; he wants confidence in himself, in his own strength; the object he has in view seems too distant, the enterprise too arduous, and he is discouraged. The dogma of grace, as it is explained by the Catholic Church, is not that fatalist doctrine, the mother of despair, which has hardened the heart among Protestants, as Grotius laments. It is a doctrine which, leaving man all his free will, teaches him the necessity of superior aid; but that aid will be abundantly furnished him by the infinite goodness of God, who has shed His blood for him in torments and ignominy, and has breathed out for him His last sigh on Mount Calvary.

It seems as if Providence had been pleased to choose a climate where mankind could make a trial of their strength vivified and sustained by grace. It was under a sky apparently the most fatal for the corruption of the soul, in countries where the relaxation of the body naturally leads to relaxation of mind, and where even the air that they breathed inclined to pleasure,--it was there that the greatest energy of mind was displayed, that the greatest austerities were practised, and the pleasures of the senses were proscribed and banished with the greatest severity. The solitaries fixed their abodes in deserts within the influence of the balmy breezes of the neighboring lands; from their mountains and sandy hills their eyes could distinguish the peaceful and smiling countries which invited to pleasure and enjoyment; like the Christian virgin who abandoned her obscure cave to go and place herself in the hollow of a rock, whence she saw the palace of her fathers overflowing with riches, pleasures, and delights, while she herself lamented like a solitary dove in the holes of the rock. From that time all climates were good for virtue; austerity of morals did not at all depend on the proximity of the equatorial line; the morality of man, like man himself, could live in all climates. When the most perfect continence was practised in so wonderful a manner under the sky which we have described, the monogamy of Christianity could well be established and preserved. When, in the secrets of the Eternal, the time had arrived for calling a people to the light of truth, it mattered not whether they lived amid the snows of Scandinavia, or on the burning plains of India. The spirit of the divine laws was not to be confined within the narrow circle which the Esprit des Lois of Montesquieu has attempted to assign it.

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XL. ON RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS IN THE EAST

The influence exercised by the lives of the solitaries of the East over religion and morality is beyond a doubt; in truth it is not easy to appreciate it in all its extent and in all its effects; but it is not the less true and real on that account. It has not marked the doctrines of humanity like those thundering events the effects of which are often inadequate to their promises; but it is like a beneficial rain which, diffusing itself gently over the thirsty earth, fertilizes the meadows and the fields. If it were possible for man to comprehend and distinguish the vast assemblage of causes which have contributed to raise his mind, to give him a lively consciousness of his immortality, and to render a return to his ancient degradation almost impossible, perhaps it would be found that the wonderful phenomenon of the Eastern solitaries had a considerable share in that immense change. Let us not forget that from thence did the great men of the East receive their inspiration; St. Jerome lived in a cave at Bethlehem, and the conversion of St. Augustine was accompanied by a holy emulation excited in his mind by reading the life of St. Anthony the Abbot.

The monasteries which were founded in the East and West in imitation of these early establishments of the solitaries, were a continuation of them, although with many differences, in consequence of times and circumstances. Thence came the Basils, the Gregories, the Chrysostoms, and so many distinguished men, the glory of the Church. If a miserable spirit of dispute, ambition, and pride, sowing the seeds of discord, had not prepared the rupture which was to deprive the East of the vivifying influence of the Roman See, perhaps the ancient monasteries of the East would have served, like those of the West, to prepare a social regeneration, by forming one people out of the conquerors and the conquered.

It is evident that the want of unity was one of the causes of the weakness of the East; I will not deny that their position was very different from ours; the enemy opposed to them did not at all resemble the barbarians of the North; but I am not sure that it was easier to subdue the latter than it was to rule the nations by whom the East was conquered. In the East, the victory remained with the aggressors, as with us; but a conquered nation is not dead; its defeat does not take from it all the great advantages which are able, by giving it a moral ascendency over the conquerors, to prepare, in silence, their transformation, if not their expulsion. The northern barbarians conquered the South of Europe; but the South, in its turn, triumphed over them by the Christian religion; the barbarians were not driven out, but they were transformed. Spain was conquered by the Arabs, and the Arabs could not be transformed; but they were driven out in the end. If the East had preserved unity, if Constantinople and the other episcopal sees had remained subject to Rome like those of the West; in a word, if all the East had been contented to be a member of a great body, instead of having the ambitious pretensions of being a great body itself, I consider it certain that, after the conquest of the Saracens, a struggle, at once intellectual, moral, and physical, would have been engaged in; a profound change would have been worked in the conquered nation, or the struggle would have ended by the conquering barbarians being driven back to their deserts.

It will be said that the transformation of the Arabs was the work of ages. But was not that of the barbarians of the North so likewise? Was this great work finished by their conversion to Christianity? A considerable part of them were Arians; and besides, they understood the Christian ideas so ill, they found the practice of Gospel morality so difficult, that for a long time it was almost as difficult to treat with them as with nations of a different religion. On the other hand, let us not forget that the irruption of the barbarians was not a solitary event; an event which, when once finished, did not recur; it was continued for ages. But the force of the religious principle in the West was such, that all the invading nations were compelled to retire, or were forced to bend to the ideas and manners of the countries they had recently acquired. The defeat of the hordes of Attila, the victories of Charlemagne over the Saxons and the other nations beyond the Rhine, the successive conversion of the various idolatrous nations of the North by means of the missionaries sent from Rome,--in fine, the vicissitudes and the final result of the invasions of the Normans, and the ultimate triumph of the Christians of Spain over the Moors after a war of eight centuries, are so many decisive proofs of what I have just laid down--viz. that the West, vivified and fortified by Catholic unity, had had the secret of assimilating and appropriating to itself all that it was not able to reject, and the force to reject all that it could not make its own.

This is what was wanting in the East: the enterprise was not more difficult there than in the West. If the West alone was able to liberate the Holy Sepulchre, the West and East together would never have lost it; or, at least, after having freed it, they would have kept it for ever. The same cause prevented the monasteries of the East from attaining to the same vitality and energy which distinguished those of the West; therefore, they have always been seen to grow weak with time, without producing any thing great, and capable of preventing social dissolution, of silently preparing and slowly elaborating regeneration for posterity, after the calamities with which it pleased Providence to afflict ancient times. He who has seen in history the brilliant commencement of the Eastern monasteries, cannot behold without pain the decline of their strength and splendor in the course of ages, after the ravages caused by invasion, wars, and finally, the deadly influence of the schism of Constantinople; the ancient abodes of so many men illustrious for science and sanctity gradually disappeared from the page of history like expiring lamps, or the dying fires of an abandoned camp.

Immense injury was done to all the branches of human knowledge by this decline, which, after having rendered the East barren, ended by destroying it. If we pay attention, we shall see that, amid the great shocks and revolutions which disturbed Europe, Africa, and Asia, the natural refuge for the remains of ancient knowledge, was not the West, but the East. It was not in our monasteries that the books, and other intellectual riches, of which quieter and happier generations were one day to enjoy the benefit, should naturally have been preserved; this, it would seem, belonged to the monasteries of the eastern countries; those lands, where the most different civilizations were brought together and commingled as on neutral ground; those regions, where the human mind had displayed the greatest activity, and taken the highest flights; where the most abundant treasures of tradition and sciences, and the beauties of art were accumulated; in a word, it was in this vast mart of all the riches of the civilization and refinement of all nations,--it was in this sanctuary and museum of antiquity, that the intellectual patrimony of future generations ought to have been preserved.

Let it not, however, be supposed that the monasteries of the East were of no service to the human mind; the science and literature of Europe are still mindful of the impulse which was communicated to them, by the arrival of the precious materials thrown upon the coasts of Italy, after the taking of Constantinople: but even these riches, brought to Europe by a few men, driven upon our shores by a tempest, came to us, like the remains of a shipwrecked crew, who, after having with difficulty saved their lives from the fury of the waves, have only preserved in their benumbed hands some gold and a few precious stones.

For this reason, precisely, do we lament, because from the example we have adduced, we are enabled the better to understand the immense riches of the vessel which was lost; this makes us grieve the more bitterly that the early times of the illustrious cenobites of the East have not been brought down to our day by a continued chain. When we see their works overflow with sacred and profane learning, when their labors show us proofs of indefatigable activity, we think with sorrow of the inestimable treasures which their libraries must have contained.

Yet, in spite of the justness of the melancholy reflections we have here made, it must be allowed that the influence of these monasteries never ceased to be extremely useful to the preservation of knowledge. The Arabs, in the times of their success, showed themselves to be intelligent and cultivated; and Europe, in many respects, is indebted to them for much advancement. Bagdad and Grenada, during the middle ages, are two brilliant centres of intellectual movement and art, which serve not a little to diminish the sombre effect of the barbarities of Islamism: they are two tranquil and pleasing features in a frightful picture. If it were possible to follow the history of intellectual development among the Arabs, through the transformations and catastrophes of the East, perhaps we should find in the sciences of the nations which they conquered or destroyed the origin of much of their progress. It is certain that their own civilization did not contain any vital principle favorable to the development of the mind; we have a proof of this in their religious and social organization, and in the small results which they obtained, after having been for so many centuries peacefully established in the conquered countries. Their whole system, with respect to letters and intellectual cultivation, is founded on that stupid maxim, uttered by one of their chiefs, when he condemned an immense library to the flames: "If these books are contrary to the Alcoran, they should be burnt as pernicious; if they are not contrary to it, they should be burnt as useless."

We read in Palladius, that the monks of Egypt did not content themselves with working with rude and simple objects, but that they devoted themselves to labors of all kinds. These thousands of men, who, belonging to all classes and to all countries, embraced the solitary life, must have brought to the desert a large treasure of knowledge. We know how far the human mind can go when left to itself, and applied to a fixed occupation; there is always some reason for thinking that a great part of the valuable ideas on the secrets of nature, the utility and properties of certain ingredients, the principles of some of the arts and sciences, knowledge which formed the rich patrimony of the Arabs at the time when they appeared in Europe, were nothing but the remains of ancient learning, gathered by them in countries which had formerly been inundated by men from all parts. We must remember that at the time of the first invasions of the northern barbarians, when Spain, the south of France, Italy, the north of Africa, and all the islands adjacent to these countries, were ravaged by these terrible men, the East became a refuge, an asylum, for all those who could undertake the voyage. Thus the treasures of Western science accumulated every day in these countries; this emigration from all the Western regions may have contributed, in an extraordinary manner, to convey to the East the remains of ancient knowledge, which afterwards came to us transformed and disfigured by the hands of the Arabs.

Deeply convinced of the nothingness of the world by so long a succession of heavy misfortunes, these unfortunate men felt the religious sentiment strengthened in their hearts; the fugitives assembled in the East listened with lively emotion to the energetic words of the solitary of the cave of Bethlehem. A great many of them retired into the monasteries, where they found relief for their wants, and consolation for their souls; thus did the Eastern monasteries gain a great addition of valuable knowledge and information of all sorts.

If European civilization one day become complete mistress of the countries which now groan under the Mussulman yoke, perhaps it will be given to the history of science to add a noble page to its labors, when, through the obscurities of the times, and by means of manuscripts discovered by curiosity or chance, she shall have found the thread which shall lead to a knowledge of the connection of Arabian science with that of antiquity. The succession of transformations will then be displayed, and we shall understand how the science of the sons of Omar has appeared to have a different origin in our eyes. The archives of Spain contain, in documents relating to the dominion of the Saracens, riches, the examination of which may be said not yet to be commenced; perhaps they will throw some light on this point. There is no doubt that they afford matter for careful investigation, extremely curious for appreciating these two very different civilizations, the Mohammedan and the Christian.

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XLI. OF RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS IN THE HISTORY OF THE WEST

Let us now examine religious institutions, such as they appear in the West, but laying aside those which, although established in various parts of the West, were only a sort of ramification of the Eastern monasteries. We observe that the religious establishments among us added to the Gospel spirit, the principle of their foundation, a new character, that of conservative, restorative, and regenerative associations. The monks of the West were not content with sanctifying themselves; from the first they influenced society. The light and life which their holy abodes contained, labored to enlighten and fertilize the chaos of the world. I do not know in history a nobler or more consoling spectacle than that which is presented to us by the foundation, existence, and development of the religious institutions of Europe. Society had need of strong efforts to preserve its life in the terrible crisis through which it had to pass. The secret of strength is in the union of individual forces, in association; and it is remarkable that this secret has been taught to European society as if by a revelation from heaven. Every thing shakes, falls to pieces, and perishes. Religion, morality, public authority, laws, manners, sciences, and arts--every thing has sustained immense losses, every thing goes to ruin; and judging of the future fate of the world according to human probabilities, the evils are so great and numerous that a remedy appears impossible.

The observer who, fixing his eyes upon those desolate times, finds there St. Bennet giving life to and animating the religious institutions, organizing them, giving them his wise rule and stability, imagines that he sees an angel of light issuing from the bosom of darkness. Nothing can be imagined better calculated to restore to dissolved society a principle of life capable of reorganizing it, than the extraordinary and sublime inspiration which guided this man. Who does not know what at that time was the condition of Italy--I should rather say, of the whole of Europe? What ignorance, what corruption, what elements of social dissolution! What desolation everywhere! and it is amid this deplorable state of things that the holy solitary appears, the child of an illustrious family of Norcia, resolved to combat the evil which threatens to invade the world. His arms are his virtues; the eloquence of his example gives him an irresistible ascendency; elevated above the whole age, burning with zeal, and yet full of prudence and discretion, he founds that institution which is to remain amid the revolution of ages, like the pyramids unmoved by the storms of the desert.

What idea has there been more grand, more beneficent, more full of foresight and wisdom? At a time when knowledge and virtue had no longer an asylum, when ignorance, corruption, and barbarism rapidly extended their conquests, was it not a grand idea to raise a refuge for misfortune, to form a sacred deposit for the precious monuments of antiquity, and to open schools of knowledge and virtue, where men destined one day to figure in the vortex of the world might come for instruction? When the reflecting man fixes his attention on the silent abode of Monte Cassino, where the sons of the most illustrious families of the empire are seen to come from all parts to that monastery; some with the intention of remaining there for ever, others to receive a good education, and soon to carry back to the world a recollection of the serious inspirations which the holy founder had received at Subiaco; when the monasteries of the order are seen to multiply everywhere, to be established as great centres of activity in all places--in the plains, in the forests, in the most uninhabited countries; he cannot help bending, with profound veneration, before the extraordinary man who has conceived such grand designs. If we are unwilling to acknowledge in St. Bennet a man inspired by Heaven, at least we ought to consider him as one of those geniuses who, from time to time, appear on earth to become the tutelary angels of the human race.

Not to acknowledge the powerful effect of such institutions would be to show but little intelligence. When society is dissolved, it requires not words, not projects, not laws, but strong institutions, to resist the shock of the passions, the inconstancy of the human mind, and the destructive power of events; institutions which raise the mind, pacify and ennoble the heart, and establish in society a deep movement of reaction and resistance to the fatal elements which lead it to destruction. If there exists, then, an active mind, a generous heart, a soul animated by a feeling of virtue, they will all hasten to seek a refuge in the sacred asylums; it is not always granted to them to change the course of the world, but at least, as men of solitude and sacrifice, they labour to instruct and calm their own minds, and they shed a tear of compassion over the senseless generations who are agitated by great disasters. From time to time they succeed in making their voices heard amid the tumult, to alarm the hearts of the wicked by accents which resemble the formidable warnings of Heaven; thus they diminish the force of the evil while it is impossible to prevent it entirely; by constantly protesting against iniquity, they prevent its acquiring prescriptive right; in attesting to future generations, by a solemn testimony, that there were always, amid darkness and corruption, men who made efforts to enlighten the world and to restrain the torrent of vice and crime, they preserve faith in truth and virtue, and they reanimate the hopes of those who are afterwards placed in similar circumstances. Such was the action of the monks in the calamitous times of which we speak; such was their noble and sublime mission to promote the interests of humanity.

Perhaps it will be said that the immense properties acquired by the monasteries were an abundant recompense for their labors, and perhaps also a proof that their exertions were little disinterested. No doubt, if we look at things in the light in which certain writers have represented them, the wealth of the monks will appear as the fruit of unbounded cupidity, of cruelty, and perfidious policy; but we have the whole of history to refute the calumnies of the enemies of religion; and impartial philosophy, while acknowledging that all that is human is liable to abuse, takes care to assume a higher position, to regard things en masse, and to consider them in the vast picture where so many centuries have painted their features. It therefore despises the evil, which is only the exception, while it contemplates and admires the good, which is the rule.

Besides the numerous religious motives which brought property into the hands of the monks, there is another very legitimate one, which has always been regarded as one of the justest titles of acquisition. The monks cultivated waste lands, dried up marshes, constructed roads, restrained rivers within their beds, and built bridges over them; that is to say, in countries which had undergone another kind of general deluge, they renewed, in some measure, what the first nations had done to restore the revolutionized globe to its original form. A considerable portion of Europe had never received cultivation from the hands of men; the forests, the rivers, the lakes, the thorny thickets, were as rough as they had been left by the hands of nature. The monasteries which were founded here and there may be regarded as the centres of action, which the civilized nations established in the new countries, the faces of which they proposed to change by their powerful colonies. Did there ever exist a more legitimate title for the possession of large properties? Is not he who reclaims a waste country, cultivates it, and fills it with inhabitants, worthy of preserving large possessions there? Is not this the natural course of things? Who knows how many cities and towns arose and flourished under the shadow of the abbeys?

Monastic properties, besides their substantial utility, had another, which perhaps has not been sufficiently noticed. The situation of a great part of the nations of Europe, at the time we speak of, much resembled the state of fluctuation and inconstancy in which nations are found, who have not yet made any progress in the career of civilization and refinement. The idea of property, one of the most fundamental in all social organization, was but little rooted. Attacks on property at that time were very frequent, as well as attacks on persons. The man who is constantly compelled to defend his own, is also constantly led to usurp the property of others; the first thing to do to remedy so great an evil, was to locate and fix the population by means of the agricultural life, and to accustom them to respect for property, not only by reasons drawn from morality and private interest, but also by the sight of large domains belonging to establishments regarded as inviolable, and against which a hand could not be raised without sacrilege. Thus religious ideas were connected with social ones, and they slowly prepared an organization which was to be completed in more peaceable times.

Add to this a new necessity, the result of the change which took place at that time in the habits of the people. Among the ancients, scarcely any other life than that of cities was known; life in the country, that dispersion of an immense population, which in modern times forms a new nation in the fields, was not known among the ancients; and it is remarkable that this change in the mode of life was realized exactly when the most calamitous circumstances seemed to render it the most dangerous and difficult. It is to the existence of the monasteries in fields and in retired places that we owe the establishment and consolidation of this new kind of life, which, no doubt, would have been impossible without the ascendency and the beneficial influence of the powerful abbeys. These religious foundations joined all the riches and the power of feudal lords with the mild and beneficent influence of religious authority.

How much does not Germany owe to the monks! Did they not bring her lands into cultivation, make her agriculture flourish, and cover her with a numerous population? How much are not France, Spain, and England indebted to them! It is certain that this latter country would never have reached the high degree of civilization of which she now boasts, if the apostolic labors of the missionaries who penetrated thither in the sixth century had not drawn her out of the darkness of gross idolatry. And who were these missionaries? Was not the chief of them Augustine, a monk full of zeal, sent by a Pope who had also been a monk, St. Gregory the Great? Where do you find, amid the confusion of the middle ages, the great writers of knowledge and virtue, except in those solitary abodes whence issue St. Isidore, the Archbishop of Seville; the holy abbot St. Columbanus; St. Aurelian, Bishop of Arles; St. Augustine, the Apostle of England; that of Germany, St. Boniface; Bede, Cuthbert, Auperth, Paul, monks of Monte Cassino; Hincmar of Rheims, brought up at the monastery of St. Denis; St. Peter Damiens, St. Ives, Lanfranc, and so many others, who form a generation of distinguished men, resembling in no respect the other men of their time.

Besides the service rendered to society by the monks in religion and morals, they conferred inestimable benefits on letters and science. It has already been observed more than once, that letters took refuge in the cloisters, and that the monks, by preserving and copying the ancient manuscripts, prepared the materials which were one day to assist in the restoration of human learning. But we must not limit their merit to that of mere copyists. Many of them advanced far in science, many ages in advance of the times in which they lived. Not content with the laborious task of preserving and putting into order the ancient manuscripts, they rendered the most eminent service to history by compiling chronicles. Thereby, while continuing the tradition of the most important branches of study, they collected the contemporary history, which, perhaps, without their labor would have been lost. Adon, Archbishop of Vienne, brought up in the Abbey of Ferrière, writes a universal history, from the beginning of the world to his own time; Abbon, monk of St. Germain-des-Prés, composes a Latin poem, in which he relates the siege of Paris by the Normans; Aymon of Aquitaine writes the history of the French in four books; St. Ives publishes a chronicle of their kings; the German monk Witmar leaves us the chronicle of Henry I., of the Kings Otho and Henry II., which is much esteemed for its candor, and has been published many times; Leibnitz has used it to throw light on the history of Brunswick. Adhemar is the author of a chronicle, which embraces the whole time from 829 to 1029. Glaber, monk of Cluny, has composed a much-esteemed history of the events which happened in France from 980 to his own time; Herman, a chronicle which embraces the six ages of the world down to the year 1054. In fine, we should never finish if we were to mention the historical labors of Sigebert, Guibert, Hugh, Prior of St. Victor, and so many other illustrious men, who, rising above their times, applied themselves to labors of this kind; of which we cannot easily appreciate the difficulty and the high degree of merit, we who live in an age when the means of knowledge are become so easy, when the accumulated riches of so many ages are inherited, and when we find on all sides wide and well-beaten paths. Without the existence of religious institutions, without the asylum of the cloisters, these eminent men would never have been formed. Not only had the sciences and letters been lost sight of, but ignorance was so great, that seculars who knew how to read and write were very rare. Surely such circumstances were not well adapted to form men of merit enough to do honor to advanced ages. Who has not often paused to contemplate the distinguished triumvirate, Peter the Venerable, St. Bernard, and the Abbot Suger? May it not be said that the twelfth century is elevated above its rank in history, by producing a writer like Peter the Venerable, an orator like St. Bernard, and a statesman like Suger?

These ages show us another celebrated monk, whose influence on the progress of knowledge has not been rated at its just value by many critics who love only to point out defects: I mean Gratian. Those who have declaimed against him, eager to look for his mistakes, should have placed themselves in the position of a compiler in the thirteenth century, at a time when all resources were wanting, when the lights of criticism were yet to be created; they would then have seen whether the bold enterprise of the monk was not attended with more success than there was reason to hope for. The profit which was drawn from the collection of Gratian is incalculable. By giving in a small compass a great part of what was most precious in antiquity with respect to civil and canon law; by making an abundant collection of texts from the holy fathers, applied to all kinds of subjects, he awakened a taste for that species of research; he created the study of them; he made an immense step towards satisfying one of the first necessities of modern nations, the formation of civil and ecclesiastical codes. It will be said that the errors of Gratian were contagious, and that it would have been better to have recourse directly to the originals; but to read the originals it was necessary to know them; it was necessary to be informed of their existence, to be excited by the desire of explaining a proposed difficulty, to have acquired a taste for researches of that kind; all this was wanting before Gratian; all this was brought out by his enterprise. The general favor with which his labors were received is the most convincing proof of their merit; and if it be objected that this favor was owing to the ignorance of the time, I will reply, that we owe a tribute of gratitude to any one who throws a ray of light on the darkness, however feeble and wavering this ray may be.

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Chapter XLII

OF RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS DURING THE SECOND HALF OF THE MIDDLE AGES.--THE MILITARY ORDERS.

The rapid view which we have just taken of religious institutions from the irruption of the barbarians to the twelfth century, has shown us that the monastic foundations, during that time, were a powerful support for that remaining portion of society which was ready to fall to pieces in the universal ruin; an asylum for misfortune, for virtue, and for knowledge; a storehouse for the precious monuments of antiquity, and in some measure an assemblage of civilizing associations, which labored in silence at the reconstruction of the social edifice, by neutralizing the force of the dissolving principles which had ruined its basis; they were, besides, a nursery for forming the men who were required for the elevated posts in Church and State. In the twelfth and the following centuries, these institutions take a new form, and assume a character very different from that which we have just pointed out. Their aim remains not less highly religious and social; but the times are changed, and we must remember the words of the Apostle, omnia omnibus. Let us examine the causes and the results of these novelties.

Before going further, I will say a few words on the religious military orders, the name of which sufficiently indicates their double character of monk and soldier. The union of the monastic state with war: what a monstrous mixture! will be the cry. In spite of the supposed monstrosity, this union was in conformity with the natural and regular order of things; it was a strong remedy applied to very great evils; a rampart against imminent dangers; in a word, the expression of a great European necessity. This is not the place to relate the annals of the military orders, annals which, like the most illustrious history, afford wonderful and interesting pictures, with that mixture of heroism and religious inspiration which assimilates history with poetry. It is enough to pronounce the names of the knights of the Temple, of St. John of Jerusalem, of the Teutonic order, of St. Raymond, of the Abbot of Fitero, of Calatrava, instantly to remind the reader of a long series of marvellous events, forming one of the noblest pages in the history of that time. Let us omit these narrations, which do not regard us; but let us pause for a moment to examine the origin and spirit of these famous institutions.

The Cross and the Crescent were enemies irreconcilable by nature, and urged to the greatest fury by a long and bloody struggle. Both had great power and vast designs; both were supported by brave nations, full of enthusiasm and ready to throw themselves on each other; both had great hopes of success founded on former achievements; on which side will the victory remain? What course ought the Christians to pursue in order to avoid the dangers which threaten them? Is it better quietly to await the attack of the Mussulmen in Europe, or make a levy en masse to invade Asia and seek the enemy in his own country, where he believes himself to be invincible? The problem was solved in the latter way; the Crusades took place, and centuries have given their suffrage as to the wisdom of that resolution. What avails a little declamation affecting to favor the cause of justice and humanity? Let no one allow himself to be dazzled; the philosophy of history taught by the lessons of experience, enriched with a more abundant treasure of knowledge, the fruit of a more attentive study of the facts, has given a decisive judgment in this case; in this, as in other cases, religion has retired in triumph from the tribunal of philosophy. The Crusades, far from being considered as an act of barbarism and rashness, are justly regarded as a chef-d'œuvre of policy, which, after having secured the independence of Europe, gave to the Christian nations a decided preponderance over the Mussulmen. The military spirit was thereby increased and strengthened among European nations; they all received a feeling of fraternity, which transformed them into one people; the human mind was developed in many ways; the state of feudal vassals was improved, and feudality was urged towards its entire ruin; navies were created, commerce and manufactures were encouraged; thus society received from the Crusades a most powerful impulse in the career of civilization. We do not mean to say, that the men who conceived them, the Popes who excited, the nations who undertook, the princes and lords who promoted them with their power, were aware of the whole extent of their own works, or even had a glimpse of the immensity of their results; it is enough that they settled the existing question in the way the most favorable to the independence and prosperity of Europe; this, I repeat, is enough. I would observe, moreover, that we should attribute so much the more importance to things as human foresight has had little share in the events; now these things are nothing less than the principles and feelings of religion in connection with the preservation and happiness of society, Catholicity covering with her ægis and animating with her breath the civilization of Europe.

Such were the Crusades. Now, remember that this idea, so great and generous, was conceived with a degree of vagueness, and executed with that precipitation which is the fruit of the impatience of ardent zeal; remember that this idea--the offspring of Catholicity, which always converts its ideas into institutions--was to be realized in an institution, which faithfully represented it, and served, as it were, as its organ, in order that it might render itself felt, and gain strength and fruitfulness for its support. After this, you will look for some means of uniting religion and arms; and you will be filled with joy when, under a cuirass of steel, you shall find hearts zealous for the religion of Jesus Christ--when you shall see this new kind of men, who devote themselves without reserve to the defence of religion, while they renounce all that the world can offer--gentler than lambs, bolder than lions, in the words of St. Bernard. Sometimes they assembled in community, to raise their voices to Heaven in fervent prayer; sometimes they boldly marched to battle, brandishing their formidable lances, the terror of the Saracens. No; there does not exist in the annals of history an event so colossal as the Crusades, and you might search there in vain for an institution more generous than the military orders. In the Crusades we see numberless nations arise, march across deserts, bury themselves in countries with which they are unacquainted, and expose themselves to all the rigors of climates and seasons; and for what purpose? To deliver a tomb! Grand and immortal movement, where hundreds of nations advance to certain death--not in pursuit of a miserable self-interest--not to find an abode in milder and more fertile countries--not from an ardent desire to obtain for themselves earthly advantages--but inspired only by a religious idea, by a jealous desire to possess the tomb of Him who expired on the cross for the salvation of the human race! When compared with this, what becomes of the lofty deeds of the Greeks, chanted by Homer? Greece arises to avenge an injured husband; Europe to redeem the sepulchre of a God.

When, after the disasters and the triumphs of the Crusades, we see the military orders appear, sometimes fighting in the oriental regions, sometimes in the islands of the Mediterranean, sustaining and repelling the rude assaults of Islamism, which, emboldened by its victories, again longs to throw itself on Europe, we imagine that we behold those brave men, who, on the day of a great battle, remain alone upon the field, one against a hundred, securing by their heroism, and at the hazard of their lives, the safety of their companions in arms who retire behind them. Honor and glory to the religion which has been capable of inspiring such lofty thoughts, and has been able to realize such great and generous enterprises!

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Chapter XLIII

CONTINUATION OF THE SAME SUBJECT--EUROPE IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.

Perhaps they who are the most opposed to religious communities may be reconciled to the solitaries of the East, when they perceive in them a class of men who, by practising the most sublime and austere counsels of religion, have communicated a generous impulse to humanity, have raised it from the dust where Paganism had held it, and made it wing its flight towards purer regions. To accustom man to grave and strict morality; to bring back the soul within itself; to give a lively feeling of the dignity of his nature, of the loftiness of his origin and his destiny; to inspire him, by means of extraordinary examples, with confidence that the mind, aided by divine grace, can triumph over the animal passions, and make man lead an angelic life upon earth: these are benefits so signal, that a noble heart must show itself grateful and full of lively interest for the men who have given them to the world. As to the monasteries of the West, the benefits of their civilizing influence are so visible, that no man who loves humanity can regard them with animadversion; in fine, the military orders present us with an idea so noble, so poetical, and realize in so admirable a manner one of those golden dreams which cross the human mind in moments of enthusiasm, that they must certainly find respectful homage in every heart which beats at a noble and sublime spectacle.

There yet remains a more difficult task, that of presenting at the tribunal of philosophy--that philosophy so indifferent in religious matters--the other religious communities which are not comprised in the sketch which I have just made. Judgments of great severity have been passed upon those institutions which I have now to speak of; but in such things justice cannot be prescriptive. Neither the applause of irreligious men, nor the revolutions which upset all that stand in their way, can prevent the truth being placed in its true light, and folly and crime being stigmatized with disgrace.

The thirteenth century has just commenced; there appears a new kind of men, who, under different titles, denominations, and forms, profess a singular and extraordinary way of life. Some put on clothing of coarse cloth; they renounce all wealth and property; they condemn themselves to perpetual mendicity, spreading themselves over the country and the towns for the sake of gaining souls for Jesus Christ. Others bear on their dress the distinctive mark of the redemption of man, and undertake the mission of releasing from servitude the numberless captives who, from the misfortune of the times, have fallen into the hands of the Mussulmen. Some erect the cross in the midst of a people who eagerly follow them, and they institute a new devotion--a constant hymn of praise to Jesus and to Mary; at the same time they indefatigably preach the faith of the Crucified. Others go in search of all the miseries of man, bury themselves in hospitals, in all the asylums of misfortune, to succour and console. They all bear new standards; all show equal contempt for the world; they all form a portion separate from the rest of mankind; but they resemble neither the solitaries of the East, nor the sons of St. Bennet. The new monks arise not in the desert, but in the midst of society: their object is not to live shut up in monasteries, but to spread themselves over the fields and hamlets, to penetrate to the heart of the great masses of the population, and to make their voices heard both in the cottage of the shepherd and in the palace of the monarch. They increase on all sides in a prodigious manner. Italy, Germany, France, Spain, England, receive them; numerous convents arise as if by enchantment in the villages and towns; the Popes protect them and enrich them with many privileges; kings grant them the highest favors, and support them in their enterprises; the people regard them with veneration, and listen to them with respectful docility. A religious movement appears on all sides; religious institutions, more or less resembling each other, arise like the branches from the same trunk. The observer, when he sees this immense and astonishing picture, asks himself, What are the causes of so extraordinary a phenomenon? whence this singular movement? what is its tendency? what will be its effects on society?

When a fact of such high importance is realized all at once in many different countries, and lasts for centuries, it is a proof that there existed very powerful means to produce it. It is vain to be entirely forgetful of the views of Providence: no one can deny that such a fact must have had its root in the essence of things; consequently it is useless to declaim against the men and the institutions. Acknowledging this, the true philosopher will not lose his time in anathematizing the fact, but he will examine and analyze it. No declamation or invectives against the monks can efface their history; they have existed for many centuries, and centuries do not retrace their steps.

We will not inquire if there was here some extraordinary design of Providence, and we will lay aside the reflections which religion suggests to every true Catholic; we will confine ourselves to considering the religious institutions of modern times in a purely philosophical point of view; we can show that they were not only very conformable to the well-being of society, but also perfectly adapted to the situation in which it was placed; we can show that they displayed neither cunning, malice, nor vile self-interest; that their object was highly advantageous, and that they were at the same time the expression and the fulfilment of great social necessities.

The question of its own accord assumes the position in which we have just regarded it; and it is strange that men have not acknowledged all the importance of the magnificent points of view which here present themselves.

In order the better to clear up this important matter, I will enter upon an examination of the social condition of Europe at the time of which we speak. As soon as we take the first glance at this epoch, we observe that, in spite of the intellectual rudeness which one would imagine must have kept nations in abject silence, there was at the bottom of men's minds an anxiety which deeply moved and agitated them. These times are ignorant; but it is an ignorance which is conscious of itself and which longs for knowledge. There is felt a want of harmony in the relations and institutions of society; but that want is everywhere felt and acknowledged, and a continual agitation indicates that this harmony is anxiously desired and ardently sought for. I know not what singular character is stamped upon the nations of Europe, but we do not find there the symptoms of death; they are barbarous, ignorant, corrupt, any thing you please; but, as if they constantly heard a voice calling them to light, to civilization, to a new life, they incessantly labor to leave the fatal condition into which unhappy circumstances have plunged them. They never sleep in tranquillity amid the darkness; they never live without remorse amid the corruption of manners. The echo of virtue continually resounds in their ears; flashes of light appear in the darkness; a thousand efforts are made to advance a step in the career of civilization; a thousand times they are vain; but they are renewed as often as they are repulsed; the generous attempt is never abandoned; they fail a thousand times; but they never lose courage. Courage and ardour are never wanting. There is this remarkable difference between the nations of Europe, and those nations among whom the Christian religion has not yet penetrated, or from whose bosom it has been banished. Ancient Greece falls, never to rise again; the Republics of the shore of Asia disappear, and do not rise out of their ruins. The ancient civilization of Egypt is broken to pieces by the conquerors, and posterity has scarcely preserved a remembrance of them. Certainly none of the nations on the coast of Africa can show us signs which reveal the ancient country of St. Cyprian, of Tertullian and St. Augustine. Still more; a considerable portion of Asia has preserved Christianity, but a Christianity separated from Rome; and this has been unable to establish or regenerate any thing. Political power has aided and protected it, but the nation remains feeble; it cannot stand erect; it is a dead body, incapable of advancing; it is not like Lazarus, who has just heard the all-powerful voice: "Lazarus, come forth; Lazare veni foras."

This anxiety, this agitation, this extreme eagerness towards a greater and happier future, this desire for reformation in manners, for enlargement and correction in ideas, for amelioration in institutions--the distinctive characteristics of modern nations--made themselves felt in a fearful manner at the time to which we allude. I will say nothing of the military history of those times, which would furnish us with abundant proofs of our assertion; I will confine myself to facts which, owing to their religious and social character, have the greatest analogy with the subject which now occupies us. A formidable energy of mind, a great fund of activity, a simultaneous development of the most ardent passions, an enterprising spirit, a lively desire of independence, a decided inclination to employ violent means, an extraordinary zeal for proselytism, ignorance combined with a thirst for knowledge, even combined with enthusiasm and fanaticism for all that bears the name of science; a high esteem for the titles of nobility, and of illustrious blood, united with the spirit of democracy, and a profound respect for merit, wherever it may be found; a childlike candor, an excessive credulity, and, at the same time, the most obstinate indocility; a tenacious spirit of resistance, fearful stubbornness, corruption, and licentiousness of manners, allied with admiration for virtue; a taste for the most austere practices, combined with an inclination for the most extravagant habits and manners; such are the traits which history exhibits among these nations.

So singular a mixture appears strange at first sight; and yet nothing was more natural. Things could not be otherwise: societies are formed under the influence of certain principles, and of certain particular circumstances, which impart to them their genius, character, and countenance. It is the same with society as with individuals; education, instruction, temperament, and a thousand other physical and moral circumstances, concur in forming a collection of influences which produce qualities the most different, and sometimes the most contradictory. This concurrence of different causes was shown in a singular and extraordinary manner among the nations of Europe; it is on this account that we observe there the most extravagant and discordant effects. Let us recollect the history of those nations since the fall of the Roman empire to the end of the Crusades; never did an assemblage of nations present a combination of more varied elements, and a spectacle of greater events. The moral principles which preside over the development of these nations were in direct opposition to their genius and situation. These principles were essentially pure, unchangeable as the God who had established them; radiant with light, because they emanated from the source of all light and life: the nations, on the contrary, were ignorant, rude, fluctuating, like the waves of the sea, and corrupted, as was to be expected of every thing which was the result of an impure mixture. Wherefore a terrible struggle took place between principles and facts; wherefore there were witnessed the most extraordinary contradictions, according as good and evil alternately preponderated. Never was the struggle between elements which could not remain at peace, more clearly seen; the genii of good and of evil seemed to descend into the arena, and to fight hand to hand.

The nations of Europe were not in their infancy, for they were surrounded by old institutions. Full of the recollections of ancient civilization, they preserved various remains of it. They were themselves produced by the mixture of a hundred nations, differing in laws, customs, and manners. They were not yet adult nations; as this denomination cannot be applied either to individuals or to society before they have reached a certain development, from which the nations of Europe were still far removed. It is very difficult to find a word to express this social state; it was neither a state of civilization, nor that of barbarism; for a number of laws and institutions existed there, which certainly did not deserve the epithet of barbarous. If we call these nations semi-barbarous, perhaps we shall approach the truth. Words are of little importance, if we have a clear idea of the things.

It cannot be denied that the European nations, owing to a long series of revolutions, and the extraordinary mixture of races, of ideas, and manners, of the conquerors with each other, and of the conquerors with the nations conquered, had a large portion of barbarism, and a fruitful germ of agitation and disorder. But the malignant influence of these elements was combated by the action of Christianity, which had obtained a decided preponderance over minds, and which, besides, was supported by powerful institutions. Christianity, to accomplish this difficult work, had the assistance of great material force. The Christian doctrines, which penetrated on all sides, tended, like a sweetening liquid, to soften and improve every thing; but, at every step, the mind comes into collision with the senses, morality with the passions, order with anarchy, charity with ferocity, and law with fact. Thence a struggle, which, although general to a certain extent in all times and countries, since it is founded on the nature of man, was then more rude, violent, and clamorous. The two most opposite principles, barbarism and Christianity, were then face to face in the same arena, with no one between them. Observe these nations with attention, read their history with reflection, and you will see that those two principles are constantly struggling, and constantly contending for influence and preponderance; thence the most strange situations, and the most singular contrasts. Study the character of the wars of that time, and you will hear the holiest maxims constantly proclaimed; legitimacy, law, reason, and justice are invoked; the tribunal of God is incessantly appealed to: this is the influence of Christianity. But, at the same time, you will be afflicted at the sight of numberless acts of violence, of cruelties, atrocities, pillages, rapines, murders, fires, and disasters without end: this is barbarism. If you look at the Crusades, you will observe that grand ideas, vast plans, noble inspirations, social and political views of the highest importance, fermented in men's heads; that all hearts overflowed with noble and generous feelings, and that a holy enthusiasm, transporting men out of themselves, rendered them capable of heroic actions: this is the influence of Christianity. But, if you examine the execution, you will see disorder, improvidence, want of discipline in the armies, injuries, and acts of violence; you will seek in vain for concert and harmony among those who take part in the gigantic and perilous enterprise: there is barbarism. Youths, thirsting for knowledge, crowd to the lectures of the famous masters, from the most distant countries; Italians, Germans, English, Spanish, and French are mingled and confounded around the chairs of Abelard, Peter Lombard, Albertus Magnus, and St. Thomas of Aquin; a powerful voice resounds in their ears, calling them to leave the shades of ignorance and raise themselves to the regions of science; the love of knowledge animates them; the longest journeys cannot stop them; the enthusiasm for illustrious masters is carried to an indescribable extent: behold the influence of Christianity; behold her constantly stirring and illuminating the mind of man, never allowing him to repose tranquilly in obscurity, and continually exciting him to new intellectual labors and researches after truth! But behold these same youths, who exhibit such noble dispositions, and inspire such legitimate and consoling hopes; are they not also those licentious, restless, and turbulent young men, giving way to the most deplorable acts of violence, continually fighting in the streets, and forming in the midst of great cities a small republic, an unruly democracy, where there is much difficulty in maintaining law and good order? Behold here barbarism!

It is good, it is perfectly conformable to the spirit of religion, that the guilty man who raises a repentant and humiliated heart to God, should manifest his feeling and the affliction of his soul by external acts; that he should labor to fortify his mind, and restrain his evil inclinations, by employing the rigors of gospel austerity against his flesh: all this is sovereignly reasonable, just, holy, and conformable to the maxims of the Christian religion, which thus ordains for the justification and sanctification of the sinner, to repair the injury done to the souls of others by the scandal of a bad life. But that penitents, half naked, should wander about loaded with chains, carrying horror and alarm everywhere, as happened at this time, when we see ecclesiastical authority compelled to repress the abuse: this marks the spirit of rudeness and ferocity which always accompany the state of barbarism. Nothing is more true, noble, and salutary for society, than to imagine God always ready to defend innocence, to protect it against injustice and calumny, and to raise it above humiliation and disgrace, by restoring to it, sooner or later, the purity and lustre of which they have attempted to deprive it. This supposition is an effect of faith in Providence--that faith emanating from Christian ideas, which represent to us God as embracing the whole world in his view, reaching with his penetrating eye the deepest recesses of the heart, and not even excluding the meanest of his creatures from his paternal love. But who does not perceive the infinite distance which separates this pure faith from the trials by fire, water, and single combat? Who does not here discover rudeness confounding all things--the spirit of violence laboring to subject every thing to a rigorous law--attempting, in some measure, to oblige God himself to comply with our wants and caprices, in order to interpose the testimony of his solemn miracles, whenever it suits our pleasure or convenience to find out the truth?

I introduce these contrasts here in order to awaken the recollections of those who have read history, and to enable me to establish, in a few words, the simple and general formula which sums up all those periods: "Barbarism tempered by religion; religion disfigured by barbarism."

In the study of history we constantly encounter a serious obstacle, which renders it always difficult, and sometimes impossible, to understand it perfectly. We make the mistake of referring every thing to ourselves, and to the objects which surround us--a mistake which is excusable, no doubt, since it has its root in our own nature, but against which we must be carefully on our guard, if we wish to avoid deplorable errors. We imagine the men of other times to be like ourselves; without thinking of it, we communicate to them our own ideas, manners, inclinations, and even temperaments; and, after having fashioned men who exist only in our own imaginations, we desire and demand that the real men should act in the same manner as these imaginary men; and at the slightest discord between the historical facts and our unreasonable suppositions, we cry out that it is strange and monstrous, taxing with being strange and monstrous what was perfectly regular and ordinary according to the epoch.

It is the same with respect to laws and institutions: when we do not find them according to the types which we have under our eyes, we declaim against the ignorance, iniquity, and cruelty of the men who have conceived and established them. If we wish to form an exact idea of an epoch, it is necessary to transport ourselves there--to make an effort of imagination, in order, as it were, to live and converse with its men; it is not enough to hear the recital of the events, it is necessary to witness them, to become one of the spectators, one of the actors, if possible; it is necessary to call forth generations from the tomb, and make them act under our eyes. I shall be told that this is very difficult. I grant it; but it is necessary, if we wish that our knowledge of history should be something more than a mere notion of names and dates. It is quite sure that we do not know an individual well, unless acquainted with his ideas, character, and conduct. It is the same with a society: if we are ignorant by what doctrines it was guided, what was its manner of considering and feeling things, we shall see the events only superficially--we shall know the words of the law, but we shall not penetrate its spirit or genius; when contemplating an institution, we shall see only the external frame-work, without reaching the mechanism, or guessing the moving machinery. If we attempt to avoid these defects, it is certain that the study of history becomes the most difficult of all; but this knowledge has been wanting for a long time. The secrets of man and the mysteries of society are, at the same time, the most important subject which can be proposed to the human mind, and the most arduous, the most difficult, and the least accessible to the generality of intellects.

The individual in the times to which we allude was not the individual of to-day; his ideas were very different, his manner of seeing and feeling was not ours, his soul was of quite another temper from our own; what is inconceivable to us, was perfectly natural to men of those times; they took pleasure in what is now repugnant to us.

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, Europe had already experienced the powerful shock of the Crusades; the sciences began to germinate; the spirit of commerce was in some degree developed; the taste for industry made itself felt; and the inclination of men to enter into communication with other men, and of nations to mingle with other nations, was every day extended and increased. The feudal system, already shaken, was about to fall to pieces; the power of the commonalty rapidly increased; the spirit of enfranchisement showed itself everywhere; in fine, owing to the almost complete abolition of slavery, and to the change effected by the Crusades in the condition of vassals and serfs, Europe was covered with a numerous population who knew not slavery, and who bore with difficulty the feudal yoke. Yet this population was still far from possessing all that is necessary to rise to the rank of free citizens. Modern democracy already offered itself to the view, with its great advantages, its numerous difficulties, its immense problems, which still embarrass and disconcert us, after so many centuries of trial and experience. The lords preserved in great measure their habits of barbarism and ferocity, by which they had been unfortunately distinguished at former periods; the royal power was far from having acquired that force and prestige necessary for ruling such opposite elements, and to raise itself in the midst of society as a symbol of respect for all interests--a centre of reunion for all forces, and a sublime personification of reason and justice.

In the same century, wars began to assume a character more popular, and consequently more vast and important; the agitations of the people began to wear the aspect of political commotions. Already we discover something more than the ambition of emperors attempting to impose their yoke on Italy; we have no longer petty kings who contend for a crown or a province, or counts or barons who, followed by their serfs, fight with each other or with the neighboring municipalities, covering the land with blood and rapine. We observe in the movements of that period something more important and alarming. Numerous nations arise and crowd around a banner on which, instead of the ensigns of a baron or of a monarch, appears the name of a system of doctrines. No doubt, the lords take part in the struggle, and their power raises them still far above the crowd which surrounds and follows them; but the cause in question is not that of these men; they are accounted something in the problems of the times; but mankind looks beyond the horizon of castles. This agitation and movement, produced by the appearance of new religious and social doctrines, is the announcement and the beginning of that chain of revolutions which Europe has to undergo.

The evil did not consist in the disposition of nations to carry out their ideas, and refuse to take as their only guide the interests and doctrines of a few tyrants. On the contrary, this was a great step gained in the path of civilization; men thus showed that they felt and understood their own dignity better, that they took a more extended view, and had a better understanding of their own situation and interests. This progress was the natural result of the higher flight which was every day taken by the faculties of the mind. The Crusades had greatly contributed to this new movement; from that great epoch the different nations of Europe were accustomed no longer to fight for the possession of a small territory, or to gratify private ambition or revenge. The nations fought in support of a principle by laboring to avenge the outrage offered to the true religion; in a word, they became accustomed to be moved, to contend, to die, for an idea which, far from being limited to a small territory, embraced heaven and earth. Thus, we will observe in passing, that the popular movement, the movement in ideas, began in Spain much sooner than in the rest of Europe, because the war against the Moors had advanced the period of the Crusades for that country. The evil, I repeat it, was not in the interest which the people took in ideas, but in the imminent danger of seeing those nations, on account of their rudeness and ignorance, allow themselves to be abused and deceived by the first fanatic who came. At a moment when the movement was so vast, the fate of Europe depended on the direction which was about to be given to the universal activity: unless I am deceived, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were the critical epochs, when, in the face of great probabilities on both sides, there was decided the great question of knowing whether Europe, in its twofold social and political relations, was to take advantage of the benefits of Christianity, or permit all the promise of a better future to be lost and annihilated.

When we fix our eyes on this period, we find, in different parts of Europe, a certain germ and index of the greatest disasters; the most horrible doctrines arise among the masses who begin to be agitated; the most fearful disorders signalize the first step of these nations in the career of life. Before this, we have discovered only kings and lords, but now the people appear on the scene. Thus we see that some rays of light and heat have penetrated this shapeless mass. At this sight the heart is dilated and encouraged, presaging the new future which is reserved for humanity. But, at the same time, the observer is alarmed, for he is aware that this heat may produce excessive fermentation, engender corruption, and multiply impure insects in the field which promises soon to become an enchanting garden.

The extravagances of the human mind at this time appear under so alarming an aspect, and with a turbulence of character so fearful, that apprehensions apparently the most exaggerated are supported by facts, and become terrible probabilities. Let me recall some of those facts which so vividly paint the condition of minds at that time; facts which besides are connected with the principal point which we are examining. At the beginning of the twelfth century, we find the famous Tanchème, or Tanquelin, teaching the maddest theories and committing the greatest crimes; yet at Antwerp, in Zealand, in the country of Utrecht, and in many other towns in the same countries, he draws after him a numerous crowd. This wretched man advanced that he was more worthy of supreme worship than Jesus Christ himself, "for," said he, "if Jesus Christ had received the Holy Spirit, he (Tanchème) had received the plenitude of that Holy Spirit." He added that the whole Church was comprised in his own person and in his disciples. The pontificate, episcopate, and priesthood were, according to him, mere chimeras. His instructions and discourses were particularly addressed to women; the result of his doctrines and proceedings was the most revolting corruption. Yet the fanaticism which was excited by this abominable man went so far that the sick eagerly drank the water in which he had bathed, believing it to be the most salutary remedy for body and soul. Women thought themselves happy to have obtained the favors of the monster; mothers considered it an honor for their daughters to be selected as the victims of his profligacy, and husbands were offended when their wives were not stained with this disgrace. Tanchème, knowing all the ascendency which he was able to exert over minds, was not backward in making use of the fanaticism of his followers; one of the principal virtues with which he labored to inspire them was liberality in favor of his own interest.

One day when he was surrounded with a large concourse of people, he had a picture of the Virgin brought to him; touching it with his sacrilegious hand, he said that he took the Virgin as his wife. Then, turning toward the spectators, he added, that as he had contracted marriage with the Queen of Heaven, as they had just seen, it was their duty to make the wedding presents. He immediately placed two boxes, one on the right and the other on the left of the picture, to receive on one side the offerings of the men, and on the other those of the women; for the purpose of learning, as he said, which of the two sexes had the greater affection for him. This artifice, as low and gross as it was sacrilegious, seemed only calculated to excite the indignation of those who were present; yet the results corresponded with the expectations of the artful impostor. The women, always jealous of the affection of Tanchème, surpassed in liberality; in a perfect frenzy, they stripped themselves of their necklaces, golden rings, and most precious jewels.

When he felt himself strong enough, Tanchème did not content himself with preaching; he was desirous of surrounding himself with an armed troop, in order to give him in the eyes of the world a far different appearance from that of an apostle. Three thousand men accompanied him everywhere. Surrounded by this respectable escort, clothed in magnificent apparel, and preceded by his standard, he moved with all the pomp of a king. When he stopped to preach, the three thousand satellites stood armed around him with drawn swords. It is evident, the aggressive character of the heretical sects of succeeding ages was already traced out.

Every one knows how numerous were the partisans of Eon. This unhappy man was excited by hearing the frequent repetition of the words: "Per eum qui judicaturus est vivos et mortuos:" and he became persuaded and he asserted, that he himself was the judge who was to judge the living and the dead. We are also aware of the troubles excited by the seditious speeches of Arnauld of Brescia, the iconoclastic fanaticism of Pierre de Bruis and Henri. If I did not fear to fatigue the attention of my readers, it would be easy for me to relate here the most revolting scenes which represent to the life the spirit of the sects of those times, and the unfortunate predisposition which led men's minds to novelty, to extravagant spectacles, and I know not what fatal giddiness, whereby they were precipitated into the most strange errors and the most deplorable excesses. At all events, I must say a few words of the Cathari, Vaudois, Paterins of Arras, Albigenses, and poor men of Lyons. These sects, besides the influence which they had on the times of which we speak and on the later events of European history, will be of great use in making us fathom more deeply the question now before us. From the first ages of the Church, the sect of the Manichees was remarkable for errors and extravagances. Under different names, with more or less of followers, and with doctrines more or less various, it continued from age to age until the eleventh century, when it excited disturbances in France. From that time, Heribert and Lisoy acquired an unhappy celebrity by their obstinacy and fanaticism. In the time of St. Bernard, the sects called apostolical were distinguished by their dislike to marriage; while, on the other hand, they gave themselves up to the basest and most unbridled licentiousness. Nevertheless, all these irregularities were favorably received by the ignorance or the corruption of the people. This is proved by the rapidity with which they gained the masses and spread like a pestilence wherever they appeared. Besides the hypocrisy, which is common to all the sects, that of the Manichees imagined an artifice the most apt to seduce rude and ignorant people: they appeared with the most rigid austerity and the most miserable clothes. Before the year 1181, we see the Manichees bold enough to venture out of their conventicles and openly teach their doctrines in the light of day. They associated with the celebrated bandits called Cottereaux, and feared not to commit all sorts of excesses, as they had seduced some knights and had secured the protection of some seigneurs of the country of Toulouse; they succeeded in exciting a formidable insurrection, which could be repressed only by force of arms. An eye-witness, Stephen, Abbot of St. Genevieve, at that time sent to Toulouse by the king, describes to us in a few words the acts of violence committed by these sectaries: "I have seen on all sides," he says, "churches burnt and ruined to their foundations: I have seen the dwellings of men changed into the dens of beasts."

About the same time, the Vaudois, or poor men of Lyons, became famous. This last name was given to them on account of their extreme poverty, their contempt for all riches, and the rags with which they were covered. Their shoes also gave them the name of Sabatathes. They were perverse imitators of another kind of poor, celebrated at that time, and who were distinguished by their virtues, and particularly by their spirit of humility and disinterestedness. These latter, who formed a kind of association, comprising priests and laymen, attracted the respect and esteem of real Christians, and obtained the Pope's permission to teach publicly. The disciples showed a profound contempt for Church authority; they afterwards entertained monstrous errors, and in the end became a sect in opposition to religion, injurious to good morals, and incompatible with public tranquillity.

These errors, which were the germs of so many calamities and troubles, could not be extirpated; with time they became more and more rooted in various countries, and the progress of things was so fatal, that at the beginning of the thirteenth century the period of short-lived seditions and isolated troubles was already long gone by, the errors had already spread on a large scale, and appeared with formidable resources for the contest. Already the south of France, agitated by civil discord, and precipitated into a fearful war, was in a state of terrible conflict. In the political organization of that time, the throne had not strength enough to exercise a controlling power, the lords had still the means of resisting kings and doing violence to the people. When a spirit of disobedience, agitation, and movement is spread throughout the masses, there is only one means of restraining them, that of religion; and this very ascendency of religious ideas was taken advantage of by the wicked and the fanatical; and to mislead the multitude they availed themselves of violent declamation, where religion and politics formed a confused mixture, and where the spirit of austerity and disinterestedness was the subject of hypocritical affectation. The new errors were no longer confined to subtile attacks on particular dogmas, they assailed the fundamental ideas of religion, penetrated to the sanctuary of the family, on the one side condemning marriage, and on the other promoting infamous abominations: in fine, the evil was not limited to countries which by a tardy and incomplete initiation into the doctrines of Christianity, or for any other reason, had not fully participated in the European movement. The arena principally chosen was the south; that is, the country where the human mind was developed in the most prompt and lively manner.

In the midst of such a concourse of unfortunate circumstances, all attested and placed beyond a doubt by history, was not the future of Europe very dark and tempestuous? Ideas and manners were in imminent danger of taking a wrong direction; the bands of authority, the ties of family, seemed ready to break asunder; the nations might be led away by fanaticism or superstition; Europe was in danger of being replunged into the chaos whence it had emerged with so much difficulty. At that time the Crescent shone in Spain, it reigned in Africa, it triumphed in Asia. Was Europe at such a moment to lose her religious unity, and see new errors penetrate everywhere, sowing schism in all countries, and with it discord and war? Were all the elements of civilization and refinement created by Christianity to be dispersed and stricken with sterility for ever? Were the great nations formed under the influence of Catholicity, the laws and institutions impregnated with that divine religion, to be corrupted, falsified, and destroyed by changes in the ancient faith? In fine, was the course of European civilization to be violently diverted, and were the nations who were already advancing towards a peaceful, prosperous, and glorious future, to be condemned to see their most flattering hopes dissipated in a moment, and miserably to retrograde towards barbarism? Such was then the vast problem placed before society; and I fear not to assert that the religious movement which at that time displayed itself in so extraordinary a manner, and the new religious institutions, so inconsiderately accused of folly and extravagance, were a powerful means employed by Providence to save religion and society. If the illustrious Spaniard, St. Dominic de Guzman, and the wonderful man of Assisi, did not occupy a place on our altars, there to receive the veneration of the faithful for their eminent sanctity, they would deserve to have statues raised to them by the gratitude of society and humanity. But what! are our words an object of scandal to you, who have only read and considered history through the deceitful medium of Protestant and philosophical prejudices? Tell us, then, what you find reprehensible in these men, whose establishments have been the subject of your endless diatribes, as if they had been the greatest calamities of the human race? Their doctrines are those of the Gospel; they are the same doctrines, to the loftiness and sanctity whereof you have been compelled to render solemn homage, and their lives are pure, holy, heroic, and conformable in every thing to their teachings. Ask them what is the object they have in view; that of preaching the Catholic truth to all men, they will tell you; of making every effort, of exerting every energy to destroy error and reform morals; of inspiring nations with the respect which is due to all legitimate authorities, civil and ecclesiastical. That is to say, you will find among them a firm resolution to devote their lives to remedy the evils of Church and State.

They do not content themselves with barren wishes; they are not satisfied with a few discourses and transitory efforts; they do not confine their plans to their mere personal sphere, but, extending their views to all countries and future times, they found institutions whereof the members may spread themselves over the whole surface of the world, and transmit to future generations the apostolical spirit which has inspired them with their grand ideas. The poverty to which they condemn themselves is extreme; the dress they wear is rude and miserable; but do you not see the profound reasons for this conduct? Remember that they propose to renew the gospel spirit, so much forgotten in their time; that they frequently happen to meet face to face the emissaries of the corrupt sects, who, endeavoring to imitate Christian humility, and affecting an absolute disinterestedness, make a parade of presenting themselves in public in the garb of beggars; remember, in fine, that they go to preach to semi-barbarous nations, and that to preserve them from the giddiness of error which has begun to take possession of their heads, words are not enough, even accompanied by a regular and uniform conduct; extraordinary examples, a mode of life which bears with it the most powerful edification, and sanctity clothed with an exterior adapted to make a lively impression on the imagination, are required.

The number of the new religious is very considerable; they increase without measure in all the countries where they are established; they are found, not only in the country and in the hamlets, but they penetrate into the midst of the most populous cities. Observe, that Europe is no longer composed of a collection of small towns and wretched cottages erected round feudal castles, and humbly obedient to the authority or the influence of a proud baron; Europe no longer consists of villages grouped round rich abbeys, listening with docility to the instructions of the monks, and receiving with gratitude the benefits conferred on them. A great number of vassals have already thrown off the yoke of their lords; powerful municipalities arise on all sides, and in their presence the feudal system is frequently compelled to humble itself in alarm. Towns become every day more populous--every day, from the effects of the emancipation which takes place in the country, they receive new families. Reviving industry and commerce display new means of subsistence, and excite an increase of population. It results from all this that religion and morality must act upon the nations of Europe on a larger scale; more general means, issuing from a common centre, and freed from ordinary fetters, are necessary to satisfy the new necessities of the time. Such are the religious institutions of the time of which we speak; this is the explanation of their astonishing number, of their numerous privileges, and of that remarkable regulation which places them under the immediate control of the Pope.

Even the character which marked these institutions--a character in some degree democratic, not only because men of all classes are there united, but also because of the special organization of their government--was eminently calculated to give efficacy to their influence over a democracy, fierce, turbulent, and proud of its recent liberty, and consequently little disposed to sympathize with any thing which might have been presented to it under aristocratic or exclusive forms. This democracy found in these new religious institutions a certain analogy with its own existence and origin. These men come from the people, they live in constant communication with them, and, like them, they are poor and meanly clad; and as the people have their assemblies where they choose their municipal officers and bailiffs, so do the religious hold their chapters, where they name their priors and provincials. They are not anchorites living in remote deserts, nor monks sheltered in rich abbeys, nor clergy whose functions and duties are confined to any particular country. They are men without fixed abodes, and who are found sometimes in populous cities and sometimes in miserable hamlets--to-day in the midst of the old continent, to-morrow on a vessel which bears them to perilous missions in the remotest countries of the globe; sometimes they are seen in the palaces of kings, enlightening their councils, and taking part in the highest affairs of state; sometimes in the dwellings of obscure families, consoling them in misfortune, making up their quarrels, and giving them advice on their domestic affairs. These same men, who are covered with glory in the chairs of the universities, teach catechism to children in the humblest boroughs; illustrious orators who have preached in courts, before kings and great men, go to explain the Gospel in obscure villages. The people find them everywhere, meet them at every step, in joy and in sorrow; these men are constantly ready to take part in the happy festivities of a baptism which fills the house with joy, or to lament a misfortune which has just covered it with mourning.

We can imagine without difficulty the force and ascendency of such institutions. This influence on the minds of nations must have been incalculable; the new sects which tended to mislead the multitude by their pestilential doctrines, found themselves face to face with an adversary who completely conquered them. They wished to seduce the simple by the ostentation of great austerity and wonderful disinterestedness; they desired to deceive the imagination, by striking it with the sight of exterior mortification, of poor and mean clothing. The new institutions united these qualities in an extraordinary manner. Thus the true doctrine had the same attributes which error had assumed. From among the classes of the people there come forth violent declaimers, who captivate the attention and take possession of the minds of the multitude by fiery eloquence. In all parts of Europe we meet with burning orators, pleading the cause of truth, who, well versed in the passions, ideas, and tastes of the multitude, know how to interest, move, and direct them, making use, in defence of religion, of what others attempt to avail themselves of in attacking her. They are found wheresoever they are wanted to combat the efforts of sects. Free from all worldly ties, and belonging to no particular church, province, or kingdom, they have all the means of passing rapidly from one place to another, and are found at the proper time wherever their presence is urgently required.

The strength of association, known to the sectaries, and used by them with so much success, is found in a remarkable degree in these new religious institutions. The individual has no will of his own: a vow of perpetual obedience has placed him at the disposal of another's will; and this latter is in his turn subject to a third; thus there is formed a chain, whereof the first link is in the hands of the Pope; the strength of association, and that of unity, are thus united in authority. There is all the motion, all the warmth of a democracy; all the vigor, all the promptitude of monarchy.

It has been said that these institutions were a powerful support to the authority of the Popes; this is certain: we may even add, that if these institutions had not existed, the fatal schism of Luther would perhaps have taken place centuries earlier. But, on the other hand, we must allow that the establishment of them was not due to projects of the papacy; the Sovereign Pontiffs did not conceive the idea of them; isolated individuals, guided by superior inspiration, formed the design, traced out the plan, and submitting that plan to the judgment of the Holy See, asked for authority to realize their enterprise. Civil institutions, intended to consolidate and aggrandize the power of kings, emanate sometimes from monarchs themselves, sometimes from some of their ministers, who, identifying themselves with their views and interests, have formed and executed the idea of the throne. It is not thus with the power of the Popes; the support of new institutions contributes to sustain that power against the attacks of dissenting sects; but the idea of founding the institutions themselves comes neither from the Popes nor their ministers. Unknown men suddenly arise among the people; nothing which has taken place affords reason to suspect them of having any previous understanding with Rome; their entire lives attest that they have acted by virtue of inspiration, communicated to themselves, an inspiration which does not allow them any repose, until they have executed what was prescribed to them. There are not, there cannot be, any private designs of Rome; ambition has no share. From this, all sensible men should draw one of these two consequences: either the appearance of these new institutions was the work of God, who was desirous of saving His Church by sustaining her against new attacks, and protecting the authority of the Roman Pontiff; or, Catholicity herself contained within her breast a saving instinct which led her to create these institutions, which were required to enable her to come triumphant out of the fearful crisis in which she was engaged. To Catholics, these two propositions are identical: in both we see only the fulfilment of the promise, "On this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall never prevail against her." Philosophers who do not regard things by the light of faith, in order to explain this phenomenon, may make use of what terms they please; but they will be compelled to acknowledge that wonderful wisdom and the highest degree of foresight appear at the bottom of these facts. If they persist in not acknowledging the finger of God, and in seeing in the course of events only the fruit of well-concerted plans, or the result of organization combined with art, at least they cannot refuse a sort of homage to these plans and that organization. Indeed, as they confess that the power of the Roman Pontiff, considered in relations merely philosophical, is the most wonderful of all the powers which have appeared on earth, is it not evident that the society called the Catholic Church shows in her conduct, in the spirit of life which animates her, and in the instinct which makes her resist her greatest enemies, the most incomprehensible combination of phenomena which have ever been witnessed in society? It is of little importance to the truth, whether you call this instinct, mystery, spirit, or whatever name you please. Catholicity defies all societies, all sects, and all schools, to realize what she has realized, to triumph over what she has triumphed over, and to pass through, without perishing, the crises through which she has passed. A few examples, where the work of God was more or less imitated, may be alleged against us; but the magicians of Egypt, placed in the presence of Moses, came to an end of their artifices; the envoy of God performed wonders which they could not; and they were compelled to exclaim, "The finger of God is here--the finger of God is here!"

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XLIV. THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS FOR THE REDEMPTION OF CAPTIVES

When viewing the religious institutions produced by the Church during the thirteenth century, we did not pause to consider one among them, which, to the merit of participating in the glory of the others, adds a peculiar character of beauty and sublimity, and which is inexpressibly worthy of our attention: I speak of that institution, the object of which was to redeem captives from the hands of the Infidels. If I make use of this general designation, it is because I do not intend to enter into a particular examination of the various branches which compose it. I consider the unity of the object, and, on account of that unity, I attribute unity to the institution itself. Thanks to the happy change which has taken place in the circumstances which occasioned its foundation, we can now scarcely estimate the institution at its just value, and appreciate in a proper manner the beneficent influence and the holy enthusiasm which it must have produced in all Christian countries.

In consequence of the long wars with the Infidels, a very great number of the faithful groaned in fetters, deprived of their liberty and country, and often in danger of apostatizing from the faith of their fathers. The Moors still occupied a considerable part of Spain; they reigned exclusively on the coasts of Africa, and proudly triumphed in the East, where the Crusaders had been vanquished. The Infidels thus held the south of Europe closely confined, and were constantly able to seize favorable moments, and procure multitudes of Christian slaves. The revolutions and disorders of those times continually offered favorable opportunities; both hatred and cupidity urged them to gratify their revenge on the Christians taken unawares. We may be sure that this was one of the severest scourges which the human race had to endure at that time in Europe. If the word charity was to be any thing more than a mere name, if the nations of Europe were not to allow their bonds of fraternity and the ties which connected their common interests to be destroyed, there was an urgent necessity for them to come to an understanding, in order to remedy this evil. The veteran who, instead of a reward for his long services to religion and his country, had found slavery in the depths of a dungeon; the merchant who, ploughing the seas to carry provisions to the Christian armies, had fallen into the power of an implacable enemy, and paid by heavy chains for the boldness of his enterprise; the timid virgin who, playing upon the sea-shore, had been perfidiously carried away by the merciless pirates, like a dove borne away by a hawk:--all these unfortunate beings had undoubtedly some right to be looked at with compassion by their brethren in Europe, and to have an effort made to restore them to liberty.

How shall this charitable end be attained? Can means be employed to accomplish an enterprise which cannot be confided either to force or stratagem? Nothing is more fertile in resources than Catholicity. Whatever may be the necessity which presents itself, she immediately finds proper means of succor and remedy, if allowed to act with freedom. The remonstrances and negotiations of Christian princes could obtain nothing in favor of the captives; new wars undertaken for this purpose only served to increase the public calamities--they deteriorated the lot of those who groaned in slavery, and perhaps increased their number, by sending them fresh companions in misfortune; pecuniary means, without a central point of action and direction, produced but little fruit, and were lost in the hands of agents. What resource, then, does there remain? The powerful resource which is always found in the hands of the Catholic religion--the secret whereby she accomplishes her greatest enterprises, viz. charity.

But how ought this charity to act? In the same way as all the virtues of Catholicity. This divine religion, which has come down from the loftiest regions, and constantly raises the human mind to sublime meditations, presents at the same time a singular characteristic, whereby she is distinguished from all the schools and sects who have attempted to imitate her. In spite of the spirit of abstraction, if I may so speak, which holds her continually detached from earthly things, she has nothing vague, unsubstantial, or merely theoretical. With her, all is speculative and practical, sublime and simple; she adapts and accommodates herself to all that is compatible with the truth of her dogmas and the severity of her maxims. While her eyes are fixed on heaven, she forgets not that she is on earth, and that she has to deal with mortal men, subject to miseries and calamities. With one hand she shows them eternity, with the other she succors their misfortunes, solaces their pains, and dries up their tears. She does not content herself with barren words; the love of our neighbor is to her nothing, if that love does not manifest itself in giving bread to him who is hungry, drink to him who is thirsty; in clothing the naked, consoling the afflicted, visiting the sick, solacing the prisoner, and redeeming the captive. To make use of an expression of this age, I will say that religion is eminently positive. Wherefore she labors to realize her ideas by means of beneficent and fruitful institutions, thereby distinguishing herself from human philosophy, the pompous language and gigantic projects of which form so miserable a contrast with the littleness and nothingness of its works. Religion speaks little, but she meditates and executes as the worthy daughter of that infinite Being who, although absorbed in the contemplation of an ocean of light, His own essence and His impenetrable nature, has not the less created the universe the object of our admiration, and ceases not to preserve it with ineffable goodness, while governing it with incomprehensible wisdom.

It was necessary to go to the succor of the unhappy captives; assuredly, therefore, we should applaud the idea of a vast association, which, extending over all the countries of Europe, and placing itself in connection with all the Christians who would give alms in favor of so holy a work, would have in its service a certain number of individuals always ready to traverse the seas, and resolved to brave slavery and death for the redemption of their brethren. Numerous means would be thus combined, and the good employment of the funds would be secured. There was a certainty that the negotiations for the redemption of captives would be conducted by men of zeal and experience; in a word, such an association would completely fulfil its object; and when it was established, the Christians might hope for the most prompt and efficacious succor. Now, this was precisely the idea realized in the foundation of the religious orders for the redemption of captives.

The religious who embraced these orders bound themselves by vow to the accomplishment of this work of charity. Free from the embarrassments of family relations and worldly interests, they could devote themselves to their task with all the ardor of their zeal. Long voyages, the perils of the sea, the danger of unhealthy climates, or the ferocity of the Infidels--nothing stopped them. In their dress, in the prayers of their institution, they found a constant remembrance of the vow which they had taken in the Divine presence. Neither repose, comfort, nor even their very lives, any longer belong to them; all are become the property of the unhappy captives, who groan in the dungeons or wear heavy chains in presence of their masters, on the other side of the Mediterranean. The families of the unhappy victims, fixing their eyes on the religious, required of him the accomplishment of his promise; their groans and lamentations continually urge him to find means, and to expose his life, if necessary, to restore the father to the son, the son to the father, the husband to the wife, the innocent young girl to her desolate mother.

From the earliest ages of Christianity we see great zeal displayed for the redemption of captives, which has always been preserved, and the inspiration of which from that time has called forth the greatest sacrifices. The seventeenth chapter of this work, and the notes attached to it, have incontestably proved this truth; and it is not necessary that I should stay to confirm it here. Yet I will not lose the opportunity of observing that the Church, in the present case, as in all circumstances, has adopted her constant rule, viz. to realize her ideas by means of institutions. If you observe her conduct attentively, you will find that she begins by teaching and highly extolling a virtue; then she mildly persuades men to put it in practice; the practice extends and gains strength, and what was merely a good work becomes for some a work of obligation; what was a simple wise act is converted into a strict duty for some select men. At all times has the Church been engaged in the redemption of captives; at all times some Christians of heroic charity have stripped themselves of their property, of their liberty, to accomplish this work of mercy; but this care was still left to the discretion of the faithful, and no bodies of men existed to represent this charitable idea. New necessities arise; the ordinary means do not suffice; it is necessary that aid should be collected with promptitude, and employed with discernment; charity, as it were, requires an arm always ready to execute her orders; a permanent institution becomes necessary; the institution appears, and the want is satisfied.

We are so accustomed to see the beautiful and the sublime in the work of religion, that we scarcely observe the greatest prodigies there, in the same way as, while profiting by the benefits of nature, we look upon her most wonderful works and productions with an eye of indifference. The different religious institutions which, under various forms, have appeared since the beginning of Christianity, are worthy of exciting in the highest degree the astonishment of the philosopher and the Christian; but I doubt whether it be possible to find in the whole history of these institutions any thing more beautiful, interesting, and touching, than the picture of the orders for the redemption of captives. Does there exist a more admirable symbol of religion protecting the unfortunate? Which is the most sublime emblem of the redemption consummated on Calvary and extending itself to earthly captivity? Is it not the celebrated vision which preceded the establishment of the holy institutes of Mercy and the Trinity? Some will say that these apparitions were only chimeras and mere illusions! Happy are those illusions, we will reply, which produce the consolation of the human race! However this may be, we will here recall these visions, braving, if necessary, the smiles of the incredulous. If they have preserved in their hearts any generous feelings, they will be compelled to allow that if these visions appear to them devoid of all historical truth, there is at least in the sublime sacrifice which is made by the man who devotes himself to slavery for the ransom of his brethren, a lofty poetry, a sincere love of the human race, an ardent desire to succor them, and an heroic disinterestedness.

A doctor of the University of Paris, known by his virtues and his wisdom, had just been raised to the priesthood, and celebrated for the first time the holy sacrifice of the altar. In consideration of these exalted favors of the Most High, he redoubles his ardor, he excites his faith, and endeavors to offer to the Lamb without spot, with all the recollection, purity, and fervor of which he is capable, his heart inundated with favors and inflamed by charity. He knows not how to manifest to God his profound gratitude for so great a benefit; his lively desire is to be able to prove to Him in some way his gratitude and his love. He who had said, "What you have done to one of my little children you have done to myself," immediately showed him a way to exhibit the fire of his charity. The vision begins: the priest sees an angel whose dress is white as snow and as brilliant as light; the angel wears on his breast a red and blue cross; at his sides are two captives, the one a Christian, the other a Moor; he places his hands over the heads of each. At this sight, the priest, ravished into ecstasy, understands that God calls him to the holy work of the redemption of captives; but before going any further, he retires into solitude, and devotes himself for three years to prayer and penance, humbly begging of the Lord that He would make known to him His sovereign will. In the desert he met with a pious hermit; the two solitaries aid each other by their prayers and examples. One day, when they were absorbed in pious communication by the side of a fountain, a stag suddenly appears to them bearing on his horns the mysterious cross of two colors. The priest relates to his astonished companion the first vision which he has had; both redouble their prayers and penances; both receive the celestial admonition for the third time. Then, unwilling any longer to defer the accomplishment of the Divine pleasure, they hasten to Rome, and ask of the Sovereign Pontiff his counsels and permission. The Pope, who at the same time had had a similar vision, joyfully accedes to the request of the two pious solitaries; the order of the Most Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives is thus established. The priest was called John of Matha; the hermit, Felix of Valois. They apply with ardent zeal to their work of charity; after having dried up the tears of numbers of unhappy beings, they now receive in heaven the reward of their labors. The Church, wishing to celebrate their memories, has placed them on her altars.

The foundation of the order of Mercy had a similar origin. St. Peter Nolasco, having spent all he possessed in the redemption of captives, had sought in vain for new resources to continue his pious undertaking. He had set himself to pray, in order to strengthen himself in his holy resolution of selling his own liberty, or remaining himself a captive in the place of some of his brethren. During his prayer the Blessed Virgin appeared to him; she gave him to understand how pleasing the foundation of an order for the redemption of captives would be to herself and her Divine Son. The saint, after consulting the King of Aragon and St. Raymond of Penafort, proceeded to the establishment of the order. He converted into a vow, not only for himself but for all those who embraced the institute, the holy desire which he had previously had to devote himself to slavery for the ransom of his brethren.

I repeat what I have already said: in whatever manner you judge of these apparitions, and if even you attempt to lay them aside altogether as mere illusions, it is not the less proved that the Catholic religion has labored with immense power to relieve a great misfortune, and that no one can call in question the utility of the holy institution in which the heroism of charity is so wonderfully personified. Indeed, supposing that the founder, the dupe of illusions, took for a revelation from heaven what was only the inspiration of ardent zeal, do not the benefits lavished on the unhappy captives remain the same? We hear much of illusions; but certain it is that these illusions produced a reality. When St. Peter Armengol, wanting all resources to deliver some unfortunates, remained as a hostage in their place, and when the day of ransom had expired, resigned himself to be hung because the money had not arrived from Europe, the illusions certainly did not remain sterile. What reality could produce greater prodigies of zeal and heroism? Long ago have the things of religion been condemned as illusions and madness; from the earliest times of Christianity the mystery of the cross was treated as folly; but we do not see that this prevented the pretended folly from changing the face of the world.

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Chapter XLV

THE UNIVERSAL PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION IMPEDED BY PROTESTANTISM.

In the rapid sketch which I have just given, my intention has not been to write the history of the religious orders; this did not form part of my design. I am satisfied with having offered a series of remarks which, by showing the importance of these institutions, were calculated to vindicate Catholicity from the accusations made against her on account of the protection which she has at all times afforded them. How could a comparison be made between Catholicity and Protestantism in their relations with the civilization of Europe, without devoting a few pages to the examination of the influence which these institutions have exercised on civilization? Now, if it is once shown that this influence was salutary, Protestantism, which has persecuted and calumniated these religious institutions with so much hatred and rancor, remains convicted of having done violence to the history of our civilization, of having mistaken its spirit, and still more of having aimed a blow at the legitimate development of that civilization itself.

These reflections naturally lead me to point out another fault which Protestantism has committed. When breaking the unity of European civilization, it introduced discord into the bosom of that civilization, and weakened the physical and moral action which it exercised on the rest of the world. Europe was apparently destined to civilize the whole world. The superiority of her intelligence, the preponderance of her strength, the superabundance of her population, her enterprising and valiant character, her transports of generosity and heroism, her communicating and propagating spirit, seemed to call her to diffuse her ideas, feelings, laws, manners, and institutions to the four quarters of the universe. How does it happen that she has not realized this destiny? How does it happen that barbarism is still found at her gates, and that Islamism still maintains itself in one of the finest climates and countries of Europe? Asia, with her want of moving power, weakness, despotism, and degradation of women; Asia, with all the disgraces of humanity, lies under our eyes; and scarcely have we done any thing which gives reason to hope that she will emerge from her degraded state. Asia Minor, the coasts of Palestine, Egypt, and the whole of Africa, are before us in a deplorable condition--a degradation which excites pity, and forms a melancholy contrast with the great recollections of history. America, after four centuries of incessant communication with us, is still so much behindhand that a great part of her intellectual powers and the resources with which nature has furnished her, remain until this day to be improved. How does it happen that Europe, full of life, rich in means of all kinds, overflowing with vigor and energy, has remained within the narrow limits in which she still is? If we pay deep attention to this melancholy phenomenon, a phenomenon with which it is very strange that the philosophy of history has not occupied itself, we shall find the cause. The entire cause thereof is the want of unity; her external action has been without concert, and consequently without efficacy. Men constantly vaunt the utility of association; they point out how necessary it is to obtain grand results, and they do not dream that because this principle applies to nations as well as to individuals, nations, like individuals, cannot accomplish great works, without conforming to this general law. When an assemblage of nations of the same origin, and subject for many ages to the same influence, have reached the development of their civilization under the guidance and control of a common idea, among them association becomes a real necessity; they form a family of brothers; now, among brothers, division and discord have worse results than among strangers.

I do not pretend to say that the nations of Europe could have attained to so perfect a concord, that perpetual peace would have been established among them, and that perfect harmony would have eventually presided over all their undertakings with respect to the other countries of the globe; but without giving way to beautiful illusions, the reality whereof is beyond the bounds of possibility, we may nevertheless, and without hazard of contradiction, say, that, in spite of particular differences between nation and nation, in spite of the greater or less degree of opposition between external and internal interests, Europe could have kept and perpetuated in her own breast a civilizing idea which, raising itself above all the misery and littleness of human passions, would have placed her in a condition to acquire a greater ascendency and a stronger and more useful influence over the other nations of the world. Amid the interminable series of wars and calamities which afflicted Europe during the fluctuations of the barbarous nations, this unity of thought existed; and it was owing to it that order in the end came out of confusion, and that light conquered darkness. In the long struggle of Christianity against Islamism, whether in Europe, Asia, or Africa, this same unity of thought enabled Christian civilization to triumph, in spite of the rivalries of kings and the excesses of the people. While this unity existed, Europe preserved a transforming power which made all that it touched become European sooner or later.

The heart is grieved at the sight of the disastrous event which broke this precious unity, by diverting the course of our civilization and destroying its fertilizing power. One can hardly observe without pain, not to say without anger, that the appearance of Protestantism was exactly coincident with the critical moment when the nations of Europe, about at length to reap the fruits of long ages of continued labor and unheard-of efforts, appeared to the world full of vigor, energy, and splendor. Putting forth gigantic strength, they discovered new worlds, and placed one hand on the East and the other on the West. Vasco de Gama had doubled the Cape of Good Hope, he had showed the way to the East Indies, and opened communication with unknown nations. Christopher Columbus, with the fleet of Isabella, ploughed the Western seas, discovered a new world, and planted the standard of Castile in unheard-of lands. Ferdinand Cortez, at the head of a handful of brave men, penetrated to the heart of the new continent, and took possession of its capital; his arms, which the natives had not yet seen, made him appear like a God launching his lightnings. Europe everywhere displayed extreme activity; a spirit of enterprise was developed in all hearts; the hour had come when the nations of Europe were about to see open before them a new horizon of power and grandeur, the limits whereof were invisible to the eye. Magellan discovered the strait which united the east and west; and Sebastian d'Elcano, returning to the Spanish coasts, after having made the tour of the world, seemed to be the sublime personification of European civilization taking possession of the universe. At one extremity of Europe, the crescent still shows itself powerful and threatening, like a dark figure appearing in the corner of a splendid picture: but fear nothing; its armies have been driven from Granada, the Christian host is encamped on the coast of Africa, the standard of Castile floats on the walls of Oran, and in the heart of Spain grows up in silence the wonderful child, who, when he has but just laid aside the playthings of his age, will frustrate the last efforts of the Moors of that country by the triumphs of Alpujarres, and shortly after will break the Mussulman power for ever on the waves of Lepanto.

The development of mind kept pace with the increase of power. Erasmus examined all the sources of knowledge, astonished the world by his talents and his learning, and spread his fame in triumph from one end of Europe to the other. The distinguished Spaniard, Louis Vives, rivalled the savant of Rotterdam, and undertook nothing less than to regenerate the sciences, and give a new direction to the human mind. In Italy, the schools of philosophy were in a state of fermentation, and they seized with avidity the new lights brought from Constantinople. In the same country, the genius of Dante and Petrarch was continued in their illustrious successors; the land of Tasso resounded with his accents like the nightingale announcing the coming of the dawn; while Spain, intoxicated with her triumphs, and transported with pride at the sight of her conquests, sang like a soldier who, after victory, reposes on a heap of trophies. What could resist such superiority, such brilliant display, such great power? Europe, already secure against all her enemies, enjoying a prosperity which must every day increase, put in possession of laws and institutions better than any which had before been seen, and whereof the completion and perfection could not fail to come with the slow progress of time: Europe, we say, in a condition so prosperous, replete with noble hopes, was about to commence the work of civilizing the world. Even the discoveries which were every day made, indicated that the happy moment had arrived. Fleets transported, together with warriors, apostolic missionaries, whose hands were about to scatter in the new countries the precious seed, whence, in the progress of time, was to grow up the tree under whose shadow new nations were to find shelter. Thus was the noble work begun, which, favored by Providence, was about to civilize America, Africa, and Asia.

But the voice of the apostate who was about to cast discord into the bosoms of fraternal nations already resounded in the heart of Germany. The dispute begins, minds are excited, the irritation reaches its height, an appeal is made to arms, blood flows in torrents, and the man who had been commissioned by hell to scatter this cloud of calamities over the earth, contemplating before his death the dreadful fruit of his labors, can insult the sorrows of the human race with a cruel and impudent smile. Such do we figure to ourselves the genius of evil leaving his dark abode and his throne in the midst of horrors. He suddenly appears on the face of the globe, his hand sheds desolation and tears on all sides; he casts a look over the devastation which he has made, and then buries himself in eternal darkness.

By extending itself over Europe, the schism of Luther weakened in a deplorable manner the action of Europeans on the other nations of the world; the flattering hopes which had been conceived were dissipated in a moment, and became no more than a golden dream. Henceforth, the largest part of our intellectual, moral, and physical powers was condemned to be employed and sadly wasted in a struggle which armed brethren against brethren. The nations which had preserved Catholicity were compelled to concentrate all their resources, power, and energy, in order to make head against the impious attacks which the new sectaries made upon them by the press or by force of arms. The nations among whom the contagion of the new errors had been propagated were thrown into a sort of giddiness; they had no other enemies but the Catholics, and they considered only one enterprise worthy of their efforts--the degradation and destruction of the Roman See. Their thoughts no longer tended towards the invention of means for improving the lot of the human race; the immense field which had been thrown open to noble ambition by the recent discoveries, no longer merited attention; for them there was only one holy work--that of destroying the authority of the Roman Pontiff.

This condition of men's minds struck with sterility the ascendency over nations recently discovered or conquered, which naturally belonged to Europeans. When the nations of Europe simultaneously approached new regions, they no longer met as brothers or generous rivals, stimulated by noble ambition; they were exasperated and implacable enemies, men who differed in religion, and who fought battles against each other as bloody as those which had formerly been witnessed between the Christians and the Moors. The name of the Christian religion, which had been the symbol of peace for so many ages--a name which on the eve of battle was able to compel adversaries to lay aside their hatred, and embrace like brothers, instead of tearing each other in pieces like lions; a name which had served as an ensign to secure their triumph over Mohammedan legions: this name, now disfigured by sacrilegious hands, became a type of discord; and after Europe had been covered with blood and mourning, the scandal was transported to the nations of the New World. These simple and confiding nations were stricken with stupefaction on seeing the miseries, the spirit of division, hatred, and revenge which reigned among the same men upon whom they had just looked as demigods.

From that time forward, the forces of Europe were not united in any of those great enterprises which had shed so much glory on previous ages. The Catholic missionary, watering the Indian or American forests with his sweat and blood, could reckon on the assistance of the nation to which he belonged, if that nation remained Catholic; but he could not hope that all Europe, uniting in the work of God, would come to sustain the distant missions with her resources; he knew, on the contrary, that a great many Europeans would calumniate and insult him, and use all imaginable means to prevent the seed of the gospel from taking root on the new soil, and increasing the power of the Popes, by adding to the renown of the Catholic Church.

There was a time when the profanations of the Mussulmen in Jerusalem, and the injuries inflicted on the pilgrims who visited the Holy Sepulchre, were sufficient to arouse the indignation of all Christian nations. They all uttered the cry, To arms! and in crowds they followed the monk who led them to avenge the outrages against religion and the pious pilgrims. After the heresy of Luther, all was changed: the death of a missionary sacrificed in a foreign land, his torments and martyrdom, sublime scenes in which the zeal and charity of the first ages of the Church reappeared with all their energy: all this was devoted to contempt and ridicule by men who called themselves Christians--the unworthy posterity of the heroes whose blood had flowed under the walls of Jerusalem.

In order to conceive in its full extent the evil caused by Protestantism in this respect, let us imagine for a moment that Protestantism had not appeared; and in this hypothesis, let us make a few reflections on the probable course of events. In the first place, all the strength, genius, and resources which Spain employed to make head in the religious wars excited on the continent, would have been able to exert themselves in the New World. The same would have been the case with France, the Low Countries, and England. These nations, although divided, have been able to furnish brilliant and glorious pages in history; if their action on the new countries had been united and concentrated, would they not have exerted a vigor and energy which would have been irresistible? Imagine all the ports from the Baltic to the Adriatic sending their missionaries to the East and to the West, as did France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy; imagine all the great cities of Europe as so many centres where means for this great object are collected; imagine all the missionaries guided by the same views, under the influence of the same thought, and burning with the same zeal for the propagation of the same faith; wherever they meet, they meet as brothers, and co-operate in the common cause; all are under the same authority: do you not imagine that you see the Christian religion exerting herself on an immense scale, and everywhere gaining the most signal triumphs? The vessel which bears the apostolic men to distant regions may fearlessly unfurl her sails; when she discovers the flag of another country on the horizon, she is under no apprehension of meeting with enemies; she is sure of finding friends and brothers wherever there are Europeans.

The Catholic missions, in spite of the obstacles which have been opposed to them by the turbulent spirit of Protestantism, have accomplished the most difficult enterprises, and realized prodigies which form a brilliant page in modern history; but how much nobler would have been their results, if Italy, Spain, Portugal, and France had been supported by the whole of Germany, the United Provinces, England, and other northern nations? This association was natural, and must have been realized, had not the schism of Luther destroyed it. It may be observed, moreover, that this fatal event not only placed an obstacle in the way of universal association, but hindered the Catholic nations themselves from devoting the greatest part of their resources to the great work of converting and regenerating the world: they were compelled to remain continually under arms, on account of religious wars and civil discords. At this epoch the religious orders were apparently called to be the arm of religion; by their means religion, consolidated in Europe and satisfied with the social regeneration which she had just worked, would have extended her action to the infidel nations.

When we glance over the course of events during the earliest ages of the Church, and compare them with those of modern times, we clearly see that some powerful cause must have interfered in modern times to oppose the propagation of the faith. Christianity appears, and she extends herself immediately with rapidity, without any aid on the part of men, and in spite of all the efforts of princes, sages, priests, the passions, and of all the stratagems of hell. She is but of yesterday, and already she is powerful, and prevails in all parts of the empire; nations differing in language and manners, nations of various degrees of civilization, abandon the worship of their false gods, and embrace the religion of Jesus Christ. The barbarians themselves, as intractable and indomitable as wild horses, listen to the missionaries who are sent to them, and bow their heads; in the midst of conquest and victory, they are seen to embrace the religion of those whom they have just conquered. Christianity in modern times has been in possession of the exclusive empire of Europe; and yet she has not been able to succeed in introducing herself again on the coasts of Africa and Asia, which lie under her eye. It is true, that the greatest part of America is become Christian; but observe, that the nations of those countries have been conquered; there the conquering nations have established those governments which have lasted for ages; the European nations have inundated the New World with their soldiers and colonies, so that a considerable portion of America is a kind of importation from Europe; consequently, the religious transformation of that country does not resemble that which took place in the early ages of the Church. Turn towards the West, where European arms have not obtained a decided preponderance; see what takes place there: the nations are still under the yoke of false religions. Christianity has not been able to enlighten them; although the Catholic missions have obtained the means of founding a few establishments more or less considerable, the precious seed has not been able to take sufficient root in the soil, in order to bear the fruits which ardent charity hoped for, and heroic zeal labored to produce. From time to time, the rays of divine light have penetrated to the heart of the great empires of Japan and China; at certain moments flattering hopes might be conceived; but these hopes have been dissipated, these rays of light have disappeared like a brilliant meteor amidst the darkness of midnight.

What is the cause of this impotence? whence comes it that the fertilizing power, after having been so great in the first ages, had proved so vain in the last? Let us not examine the profound secrets of Providence, or seek to inquire into the incomprehensible mysteries of the Divine ways; but as far as it is given to a feeble spirit to learn the truth by the evidences contained in the history of the Church, as far as it is allowed us to carry our conjectures on the designs of the Most High, according to the indications which the Lord himself has been pleased to communicate to us, let us hazard an opinion on the facts: although dependent on a superior order, they yet have an ordinary course, which is regulated by God himself. The apostle St. Paul says that faith comes from hearing. He asks, how it is possible to hear, if there is no one who preaches, and how can there be preaching, if there is no one who sends? Hence, we must conclude that missions are necessary for the conversion of nations, since God has not thought fit by constant miracles to send legions of angels from heaven to teach the nations who are deprived of the light of the earth.

Having laid down this principle, I will say that what was required for the conversion of infidel nations was the organization of missions on a large scale. There were required missions which, by the abundance of their resources and the number of their laborers, might be in proportion to the greatness of the object. Observe that the distances are immense, that the nations to whom the divine word is to be announced are dispersed in many countries, and live under the influence of laws, prejudices, and climates the most opposite to the spirit of the Gospel. To make head against such vast wants, and surmount such great difficulties, there was required a perfect inundation of missionaries; without whom the result would remain doubtful, the existence of religious establishments very precarious, and the conversion of great nations little probable, unless Providence interfered by one of those prodigies which change the face of the world in an instant. Now Providence does not renew these prodigies every moment; sometimes he does not even accord them to the most ardent supplications of the Saints.

In order to form a complete idea of what took place in the latter ages, let us pay attention to what exists. What is wanting to infidel nations? What is the incessant cry of the zealous men who devote themselves to the propagation of the Gospel? Do we not constantly hear lamentations on the small number of laborers, and on the scanty resources which are devoted to the subsistence of the missionaries? Is not this penury of resources the cause of the associations now formed among the Catholics of Europe?

The organization of missions on a large scale would have been realized if Protestantism had not come to prevent it. The nations of Europe, the privileged children of Providence, had the obligation and showed a decided will to procure for the other nations of the world, by all the means in their power, a participation in the benefits of the faith. Unhappily this faith was weakened in Europe, it was given up to the caprices of human reason, and henceforth what had before been of easy execution became impossible. Providence, which had permitted the deplorable disaster of the schism, permits also to be deferred to a more remote period the happy day when the benighted nations shall enter in great numbers into the fold of the Church.

But perhaps I shall be told that the zeal of modern Catholicity is not that of the early ages of Christianity, and this is one of the reasons which have prevented the conversion of infidel nations. I will not make a long comparison on this point; I will not say all that might be said; I will content myself with making an observation which will remove the difficulty at once. Our Divine Saviour, in order to send His disciples to preach the Gospel, wished that they should abandon all they had and follow Him. The same Saviour, revealing to us the infallible sign of true charity, tells us that there is nothing greater than to give one's life for one's brethren. The Catholic missionaries of the three last centuries have renounced all, have abandoned their country, their families, all the comforts of life, all that can engage the heart of man on earth; they have gone to seek the infidels amid the most imminent dangers, and they have sealed with their blood, in all parts of the world, their ardor for the conversion of their brethren, and for the salvation of souls. I believe that such missionaries are worthy of succeeding to those of the first ages of the Church; all declamations and calumnies are impotent before the triumphant evidence of facts. The Church of the early ages would be honored, like that of our times, by a St. Francis Xavier and the martyrs of Japan.

We have spoken, also, of the abundance of the missionaries. The Church had a wonderful fecundity for the conversion of the ancient and barbarian world. At her first appearance, the fiery tongues of the Cenacle and the multitude of prodigies made up for numbers, and multiplied the servants of God. Nations of different languages, listening to the same discourse, heard it at the same time each one in his own tongue; but after this first impulse, by which the Almighty was pleased to confound the powers of hell, things followed the ordinary course, and a greater number of missionaries was required for a greater number of conversions. The great centres of faith and charity, the numerous churches of the East and West, furnished in abundance the apostolic men necessary for the propagation of the faith; and this sacred army had a powerful reserve at hand ready to make up its deficiencies when sickness, fatigues, and martyrdom had thinned its ranks. Rome was the centre of this great movement; but Rome, in order to give the impulse, had no need either of fleets ready to transport the holy colonies to many thousand places, or of great treasures to support missionaries in desert regions and countries altogether unknown. When the missionary, prostrate at the feet of the Sovereign Pontiff, asked his apostolical benediction, the holy father could send him in peace with his pastoral staff alone; he knew that the Gospel envoy was about to traverse Christian countries, and that even in idolatrous lands he would not be far from princes already converted, from bishops, priests, and faithful nations; none of whom would refuse succor to him who went to sow the divine word in the neighboring countries.

I leave the reflections which I have just made, on the injury done to the influence of Europe by the schism of Protestantism, with confidence to the judgment of thinking men. I am deeply convinced that this influence thereby received a terrible blow. Without the fatal event of the sixteenth century, the condition of the world would now be very different from what it is. I may, no doubt, delude myself in some degree on this point; but I will appeal to simple good sense whether it is not true, that unity of action, of principles, and of views, the combination of resources, and the association of agents, are not in all things the secret of success, and the surest guarantee for a happy result. I will then ask whether Protestantism did not break this unity, render this combination impossible, and this association impracticable? Are not these facts indisputable, as clear as the light of day? These facts are recent--they are of yesterday; what is their consequence? what deduction should be drawn from them? Let impartiality, good sense, and mere common sense, answer me, if they be only accompanied by good faith.

To every thinking man, it is evident that Europe is not what she would have been without the appearance of Protestantism; and certainly it is not less evident, that the results of its civilizing influence on the world have not answered the promises of the early years of the sixteenth century. Let Protestants boast of having given a new direction to European civilization; let them vaunt of having enfeebled the spiritual power of the Popes, by removing millions of souls from the sacred fold; let them glory in having destroyed the religious orders in countries subject to their dominion--of having broken in pieces the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and thrown the Bible in the midst of ignorant crowds, with the assurance that, to understand the sacred volume, private inspiration or the judgment of natural reason was enough; yet it is not the less certain that the unity of the Christian religion has disappeared among them, that they want a centre whence great efforts may proceed, that they are without a guide, wandering like a flock without a shepherd, blown about by every wind of doctrine, and unable to bring forth the least of those great works which Catholicity has produced, and still produces, in such abundance; it is not the less certain that, by their eternal disputes, their calumnies, their attacks upon the dogmas and the discipline of the Church, they have compelled the latter to hold herself in an attitude of defence--to contend for three centuries, depriving her of the precious time and means which she would have used to complete the great projects intended by her, and already so happily begun. Is it a merit to divide men, to provoke discord, to excite wars, to change brother nations into enemies, to convert the great family-party of nations into an arena for rancorous strife? Is it a merit to throw discredit on the missionaries who go to preach the Gospel to infidel nations--to place all imaginable obstacles in their way--to employ every means to render their zeal useless, and their charity without result? If, indeed, all this be a merit, then I acknowledge that this merit belongs to Protestantism; but if all this be disastrous, and injurious to humanity, it is Protestantism which must be responsible for it.

When Luther said that he was charged with a high mission, he spoke the truth, but a fearful and alarming truth, and one which he did not understand. The sins of nations sometimes fill up the measure of the patience of the Most High. The sound of human offences mounts to heaven, and calls for vengeance; the Eternal, in His fearful anger, sends down a look of fire upon the earth; then strikes the fatal hour in His secret and infinite resolves, and the son of perdition, who is to cover the world with mourning and desolation, appears. As the cataracts of heaven were formerly opened to sweep the human race from the face of the earth, so are the calamities which the God of vengeance holds in reserve for the day of His anger, poured forth from their urn and scattered over the world. The son of perdition raises his voice; that moment is marked by the beginning of the catastrophe. The spirit of evil moves over the whole face of the globe, bearing on his sable pinions the echo of that ominous voice. An incomprehensible giddiness takes possession of men's heads; the nations have eyes, and see not; they have ears, and hear not; in their delirium, the most frightful precipices appear to them smooth, peaceful, and flowery paths; they call good evil, and evil good; they drink with feverish eagerness of the poisoned cup; forgetfulness of all the past, ingratitude for all benefits, seize all minds; the work of the genius of evil is consummated; the prince of the rebellious spirits may again bury himself in his empire of darkness; and the human race has learned, by a terrible lesson, that the indignation of the Most High is not to be provoked with impunity.

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XLVI. THE JESUITS

As I am treating of religious institutions, I must not pass over in silence that celebrated order, which, from the first years of its existence, assumed the stature of a colossus, and employed all a giant's strength; that order which perished without having felt decay; which did not follow the common course of others, either in its foundation, in its development, or even in its fall; that order of which it is truly and correctly said, that it had neither infancy nor old age. It is clear that I speak of the society of Jesus, the Jesuits. The name alone will be enough to alarm a certain class of readers; and, therefore, in order to tranquillize them, I will say that I do not here undertake to write an apology for the Jesuits; this task does not belong to the character of my work; moreover, others have undertaken it, and it is not necessary for me to repeat what is well known. But it is impossible to call to mind the religious institutions, the religious, political, and literary history of Europe, during the last three centuries, without meeting the Jesuits at every step: we cannot travel in the most distant countries, traverse unknown seas, visit the most remote lands, or penetrate the most frightful deserts, without finding everywhere under our feet some memorials of the Jesuits. On the other hand, we cannot look at our libraries without immediately remarking the writings of some Jesuits. Since this is the case, even those among our readers who have the greatest horror of them, ought to pardon us for fixing our attention for a moment on this institute which has filled the world with its name. Even if we were to attach no importance to their modern revival, and to regard their present existence and their probable future as unworthy of examination, it would still be altogether inexcusable not to speak of them, at least as a historical fact. To pass them over in silence, would be to imitate those ignorant and heartless travellers, who, with stupid indifference, tread under foot the most interesting ruins and the most valuable remains.

When we study the history of the Jesuits, this very extraordinary circumstance is apparent: they have existed only for a few years, if compared with the duration of other religious bodies, and yet there is no religious order which has been the object of such keen animosity. From their origin, they have had numerous enemies; never have they been free from them, either in their prosperity and greatness, or in their fall, or even after it; never has their persecution ceased; we should rather say, never has the animosity with which they have been pursued ceased. Since their reappearance, men have constantly fixed their eyes upon them; they tremble lest they should resume their ancient power; the splendor which is reflected on them by the recollections of their brilliant history renders them visible everywhere, and augments the fears of their enemies. How many men among us are more alarmed at the foundation of a Jesuits' college than at an irruption of Cossacks! There is, therefore, something very singular and extraordinary in this institute, since it excites the public attention in so high a degree, and its mere name disconcerts its enemies. Men do not despise the Jesuits, but they fear them; sometimes they attempt to throw ridicule on them; but when that weapon is employed against them, it is felt that he who wields it is not sufficiently calm to use it with success. In vain does he attempt to affect contempt; through the affectation every one can perceive disquietude and anxiety. It is immediately seen that he who attacks does not believe himself opposed to insignificant adversaries. His bile is excited, his sallies become checked, his words, steeped in a fearful bitterness, fall from his mouth like drops from a poisoned cup; it is clear that he takes the affair to heart, and does not look upon it as a mere joke. We fancy we hear him say to himself, "Every thing affecting the Jesuits is extremely grave; there is no playing with these men--no regard, no indulgence, no moderation of any kind; it is necessary always to treat them with rigor, harshness, and detestation; with them, the least negligence may become fatal."

Unless I am much deceived, this is the best demonstration that can be given of the eminent merit of the Jesuits. It must be the same with classes and corporations as with individuals--very extraordinary merit necessarily excites numerous enemies, for the simple reason that such merit is always envied, and very often dreaded. In order to know the real cause of this implacable hatred against them, it is enough to consider who are their principal enemies. We know that Protestants and infidels figure there in the first rank; in the second, we remark the men who, with more or less clearness and resolution, show themselves but little attached to the authority of the Roman Church. Both, in their hatred against the Jesuits, are guided by a very rare instinct, for truly they have never met with a more redoubtable adversary. This reflection is worthy of the attention of sincere Catholics, who, for one cause or another, entertain unjust prejudices. When we have to form a judgment on the merit and conduct of a man, it is very often a sure means of deciding between contrary opinions to inquire who are his enemies.

When we fix our attention on the institute of the Jesuits, on the time of its foundation, on the rapidity and greatness of its progress, we find the important truth which I have before pointed out more and more confirmed, viz., that the Catholic Church, with wonderful fruitfulness, always furnishes an idea worthy of her to meet all the necessities which arise. Protestantism opposed the Catholic doctrines with the pomp and parade of knowledge and learning; the éclat of human literature, the knowledge of languages, the taste for the models of antiquity, were all employed against religion with a constancy and ardour worthy of a better cause. Incredible efforts were made to destroy the pontifical authority; when they could not destroy it, they attempted at least to weaken and discredit it. The evil spread with fearful rapidity; the mortal poison already circulated in the veins of a considerable portion of the European nations: the contagion began to be propagated even in countries which had remained faithful to the truth. To complete the misfortune, schism and heresy, traversing the seas, corrupted the faith of the simple neophytes of the New World. What was to be done in such a crisis? Could such great evils be remedied by ordinary means? Was it possible to make head against such great and imminent perils by employing common arms? Was it not proper to make some on purpose for such a struggle, to temper the cuirass and shield, to fit them for this new kind of warfare, in order that the cause of truth might not appear in the new arena under fatal disadvantages? Who can doubt that the appearance of the Jesuits was the answer to these questions, that their institute was the solution of the problem?

The spirit of the coming ages was essentially one of scientific and literary progress. The Jesuits were aware of this truth; they perfectly understood it.

It was necessary to advance with rapidity and never to remain behind: this the new institute does; it takes the lead in all sciences; it allows none to anticipate it. Men study the oriental languages; they produce great works on the Bible; they search the books of the ancient Fathers, the monuments of tradition and of ecclesiastical decisions: in the midst of this great activity, the Jesuits are at their posts; many supereminent works issue from their colleges. The taste for dogmatical controversy is spread over all Europe: many schools preserve and love the scholastic discussions: immortal works of controversy come from the hands of the Jesuits, at the same time that they yield to none in skill and penetration in the schools. The mathematics, astronomy, all the natural sciences, make great progress; learned societies are formed in the capitals of Europe to cultivate and encourage them: in these societies the Jesuits figure in the first rank. The spirit of time is naturally dissolvent: the institute of the Jesuits is interiorly armed against dissolution; in spite of the rapidity of its course, it advances in a compact order, like the mass of a powerful army. The errors, the eternal disputes, the multitude of the new opinions, even the progress of the sciences, by exciting men's minds, give a fatal inconstancy to the human intellect--an impetuous whirlwind, agitating and stirring up all things, carries them away. The order of the Jesuits appears in the midst of this whirlwind, but it partakes neither of its inconstancy nor of its variability; it pursues its career without losing itself; and while only irregularity and vacillation are seen among its adversaries, it advances with a sure step, tending towards its object, like a planet which performs its orbit according to fixed laws. The authority of the Pope, assailed with animosity by Protestants, was indirectly attacked by others with stratagem and dissimulation; the Jesuits showed themselves faithfully attached to that authority; they defend it wherever it is threatened; like vigilant sentinels, they constantly watch over the preservation of Catholic unity. Their knowledge, influence, and riches never affect their profound submission to the authority of the Popes--a submission which was ever their distinctive characteristic. In consequence of the discovery of the new countries in the east and west, a taste for travelling, for observing distant countries, for the knowledge of the language, manners, and customs of the recently discovered nations, was developed in Europe. The Jesuits, spread over the face of the globe, while preaching the Gospel to the nations, do not forget the study of the thousand things which may interest cultivated Europe; and at their return from their gigantic expeditions, they are seen adding their valuable treasures to the common fund of modern science.

How, then, can we be surprised that Protestants have been so violent against an institute in which they found so terrible an enemy; and, on the other hand, was there any thing more natural than to see all the other enemies of religion, enemies some of whom were wholly unmasked and some partially disguised, make common cause with Protestants on this point? The Jesuits were a wall of brass against the assaults upon the Catholic faith; it was resolved to undermine and overturn this rampart; which in the end was accomplished. Very few years had elapsed since the suppression of the Jesuits, and already the memory of the great crimes which were imputed to them was effaced by the ravages of an unexampled revolution. Men of good faith, whose excessive confidence had believed perfidious calumnies, could convince themselves that the riches, knowledge, influence, and the pretended ambition of the Jesuits, would never have been as fatal as the triumph of their enemies; these religious men would never have upset a throne or cut off the head of a king on the scaffold.

M. Guizot, in glancing at European civilization, necessarily encountered the Jesuits; and it must be acknowledged that he has not done them the justice to which they are entitled. After having lamented the inconsistency of the Protestant Reformation, and the narrow spirit which guided it, after having confessed that Catholics knew very well what they did and what they wished, and that they acted up to the principles of their conduct and avowed all their consequences, M. Guizot declares that there never was a more consistent government than that of Rome, and that the court of Rome, always having a fixed idea, has known how to pursue a consistent and regular line of conduct; he extols the strength which results from a full knowledge of what one does and what one wishes; he shows the advantage of a settled design, and of the complete and absolute adoption of a principle and system; that is to say, he makes a brilliant panegyric on, and a powerful apology for, the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, M. Guizot finds the Jesuits in his way, and unworthy as it is of such a mind as his, which, in order to require just renown, has no need of burning incense before vulgar prejudices or mean passions, he attempts, in passing, to throw a reproach upon them. "Every one knows," says M. Guizot, "that the principal power instituted to contend against the religious revolution, was the order of the Jesuits. Throw a glance over their history; they have failed everywhere; wherever they have interfered to any extent, they have brought misfortune to the cause in which they have engaged. In England they have destroyed kings, in Spain nations." M. Guizot had just told us of the superiority which is obtained over an adversary by regular and consistent conduct, by the complete and absolute adoption of a system, and by a fixed idea; as a proof of all this he showed us the Jesuits, he exhibited to us in them the expression of the system of the Church; and behold, without any explanation, if not without a motive, the writer suddenly changes his course; the advantages of the system which he has just praised disappear from his eyes; for those who follow this system, that is the Jesuits themselves, fail everywhere, and everywhere bring misfortunes on the cause which they embrace. How can such assertions be reconciled? The credit, influence, and sagacity of the Jesuits have passed into a proverb. The reproach against them was, of having extended their views too far, of having conceived ambitious plans, and obtained by their skill a decided ascendency in all the places where they succeeded in gaining entrance; Protestants themselves have openly confessed that the Jesuits were their most redoubtable adversaries; it was always thought that the foundation of the order had an immense result, and now we learn from M. Guizot, that the Jesuits have everywhere failed; that their support, far from being a great succour, always brought fatality and misfortune to the cause of which they declared themselves the advocates. If they were such fatal servants, why were their services sought with so much eagerness? If they always conducted affairs so ill, why have the most important ones in the end fallen into their hands? Adversaries so foolish or so unfortunate certainly ought not to have excited in the enemies' camp so much clamor as was raised at their approach.

"In England the Jesuits have destroyed kings, in Spain nations." Nothing is easier than these bold strokes of the pen; the whole of a great history is traced in a single line, and an infinity of facts, grouped and confounded, are made to pass under the eye of the reader with the rapidity of lightning; the eye has not even time to look at them, still less to analyze them as would be necessary. M. Guizot should have devoted some sentences to prove his assertion; he should have stated the facts and pointed out the reasons on which he builds, when he affirms that the influence of the Jesuits has had so fatal an effect. With respect to the kings of England here so boldly sacrificed, I cannot enter into an examination of the religious and political revolutions which agitated and desolated the three kingdoms for two centuries after the schism of Henry VIII. These revolutions, in their immense circle, have presented very different phases; disfigured and perverted by the Protestants, who have success in their favor, that decisive, if not convincing argument, they have made some men of little reflection believe that the disasters of England were in great part due to the imprudence of the Catholics, and, as an indispensable corollary, to the pretended intrigues of the Jesuits. In spite of this, the Catholic movement which England has witnessed for half a century, and the great works which every day carry on the restoration of Catholicity, will at last disperse the calumnies by which our faith has been stigmatized. Before long, the history of the last three centuries will be restored as it ought, and the truth will appear in its proper light. This observation relieves me from the necessity of entering into details on the subject of the first assertion of M. Guizot; but I must not leave without reply what he so gratuitously affirms on the subject of Spain.

"The Jesuits have destroyed nations in Spain," says M. Guizot; I wish that the publicist had explained to us to what great disaster he alluded. To what period does he refer? I have examined our history, and I do not find this destruction which was caused by the Jesuits; I cannot imagine whereon the historian fixed his eyes when he pronounced these words. Nevertheless, the antithesis between Spain and England, between nations and kings, leads us to suspect that M. Guizot alluded to the shipwreck of political liberty; we are not aware that there is any other better-founded or more legitimate interpretation. But then a new difficulty presents itself: how can we believe that a man so versed in the knowledge of history, composing a course of lectures which is particularly devoted to the general history of European civilization, should fall into a palpable error,--should commit an unpardonable anachronism? Indeed, whatever may be the judgments of publicists on the causes which have produced the loss of liberty in Spain, and on the important events of the days of the Catholic sovereigns, of Philippe le Beau, of Jeanne-la-Folle, and the regency of Cisneros, all are unanimous in saying that the war of the Commons was the critical moment, decisive of the liberty of Spain; all are agreed that the two parties played their last stake at that time, and that the battle of Villalar and the punishment of Padilla, by confirming and increasing the royal power, destroyed the last hopes of the partisans of the ancient liberties. Well, the battle of Villalar was fought in 1521; at that time the Jesuits did not exist, and St. Ignatius, their founder, was still a brilliant knight, battling like a hero under the walls of Pampeluna. To this there is no reply; all philosophy and eloquence are unable to efface these dates.

During the sixteenth century, the Cortes met more or less often, and with more or less influence, above all in the kingdom of Aragon; but it is as clear as daylight that the royal power had every thing under its domination, that nothing could resist it, and the unfortunate attempt of the Aragonese, at the time of the affair of Don Antonio Perez, sufficiently shows that there existed then no remains of ancient liberty which could oppose the will of kings. Some years after the war of the Commons, Charles V. gave the coup de grace to the Cortes of Castile, by excluding from it the clergy and the nobles, to leave only the Estamento de Procuradores, a feeble rampart against the exigencies, against the all-powerful attempts of a monarch on whose dominions the sun never set. This exclusion took place in 1538, at the time when St. Ignatius was still occupied with the foundation of his order; the Jesuits, therefore, could have had no influence therein.

Still more, the Jesuits, after their establishment in Spain, never employed their influence against the liberty of the people. From their pulpits they did not teach doctrines favorable to despotism; if they reminded the people of their duties, they also reminded kings of theirs; if they wished the rights of monarchs to be respected, they would not allow those of the people to be trodden under foot. To prove the truth of this, I appeal to the testimony of those who have read the writings of the Jesuits of that time on questions of public law. "The Jesuits," says M. Guizot, "were called to contend against the general course of events, against the development of modern civilization, against the liberty of the human mind." If the general course of events is nothing but the course of Protestantism, if the development of Protestantism is the development of modern civilization, if the liberty of the human mind consists only in the fatal pride, in the mad independence which the pretended reformers communicated to it, then nothing is more true than the assertion of the publicist; but if the preservation of Catholicity is a fact of any weight in the history of Europe, if her influence during the last three centuries has amounted to any thing, if the reigns of Charles V., Philip II., Louis XIV., do not deserve to be effaced from modern history, and if regard ought to be had to that immense counterpoise to which was owing the equilibrium of the two religions; in fine, if the faith of Descartes, Malebranche, Bossuet, and Fénélon, can make a dignified appearance in the picture of modern civilization, it is impossible to understand how the Jesuits, when intrepidly defending Catholicity, could be struggling against the general course of events, against the development of modern civilization, and against the freedom of human thought.

After having made this first false step, M. Guizot continues to slip in a deplorable manner. I particularly call the attention of my readers to the following evident contradictions: "With the Jesuits, there is no éclat, no grandeur. They have performed no brilliant exploits." The publicist entirely forgets what he has just advanced, or rather he directly retracts it, when he adds, a few lines further, "and yet, nothing is more certain than that they have had grandeur; a grand idea belongs to their names, to their influence, and to their history. It is because they knew what they did, and what they wished; it is because they had a clear and full knowledge of the principles on which they acted, and of the end towards which they tended; that is to say, because they have had grandeur of thought and of will." Is genius in its vastest enterprises, in the realization of its most gigantic projects, any thing more than a grand idea and a grand intention? The mind conceives, the will executes; this fashions the model, that makes the application; if there be grandeur in the model and in the application, how can the whole work fail to be grand?

Pursuing the task of lowering the Jesuits, M. Guizot makes a parallel between them and the Protestants; he confounds ideas in such a way, and so far forgets the nature of things, that one would hardly believe it, if the words themselves did not prove it beyond a doubt. Forgetting that it is necessary for the terms of a comparison not to be of a totally different kind, which renders all comparison impossible, M. Guizot compares a religious institute with whole nations; he goes so far as to reproach the Jesuits with not having raised the people en masse, and with not having changed the form and condition of states. Here is the passage: "They have acted in subterraneous, dark, and inferior ways; in ways which were not at all apt to strike the imagination, or to conciliate for them that public interest which attaches itself to great things, whatever may be their principle and end. The party against which they contended, on the contrary, not only conquered, but conquered with éclat; it has done great things and by great means; it has aroused nations; it has filled Europe with great men; it has changed the form and the lot of nations in the face of day. In a word, all has been against the Jesuits, both fortune and appearances." Without intending to offend M. Guizot, let us avow, that for the honor of his logic, one would desire to efface from his writings such phrases as we have just read. What! ought the Jesuits to have put the nations in motion, made them arise en masse, and changed the form and condition of states? Would they not have been extraordinary religious men, if they had been allowed to do such things? It was said of the Jesuits that they had unbounded ambition, and that they attempted to rule the world; and now they are compared with their adversaries in order to throw it in their faces that the latter have overturned the world; a distinguished merit, which must have been a disgrace to the Jesuits themselves. Indeed, the Jesuits have never attempted to imitate their adversaries on this point; with respect to the spirit of confusion and perturbation, they joyfully yield the palm to those to whom it rightly belongs.

As far as great men are concerned, if the question be with respect to the greatness of the enterprises which are becoming in a minister of the God of peace, then have the Jesuits had this kind of grandeur in an eminent degree. Whether it be in the most arduous affairs, or in the vastest projects in science and literature, whether it be in the most distant missions, or in the most redoubtable perils, the Jesuits have never remained behind; on the contrary, they have been seen to display a spirit so bold and enterprising, that they have thereby obtained the most distinguished renown. If the great men of whom M. Guizot speaks are restless tribunes, who, putting themselves at the head of an ungovernable people, violated the public peace, if they are the Protestant warriors whose names have shone in the wars of Germany, France, and England, the comparison is foolish, and has no meaning; for priests and warriors, religious and tribunes, are so distinct, so different in actions and character, that to compare them is impossible.

Justice required that in such a parallel, where the Jesuits are taken as one of the terms of the comparison, Protestants should not be placed on the other, unless by them the reformed ministers are meant. Even in this later case the comparison would not have been absolutely exact, since, in the midst of the great differences between the two religions, the Jesuits are not found alone in defending Catholicity. The Church, during the last three centuries, has had great prelates, holy priests, eminent savants, and writers of the first order, who did not belong to the company of Jesus; the Jesuits were reckoned among the principal champions, but they were not the only ones. Had it been wished fairly to compare Protestantism with Catholicity, it would have been requisite to oppose Protestant to Catholic nations, to compare priests with priests, savants with savants, politicians with politicians, warriors with warriors; to do otherwise is monstrously to confound names and things, and to reckon too much on the limited understandings and excessive simplicity of hearers and readers. It is certain that if the method we have pointed out were adopted, Protestantism would not appear so brilliant and superior as the publicist has exhibited it to us. Catholics, as M. Guizot well knows, do not yield to Protestants in letters, in war, or in political ability. History is there; let it be consulted.

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