Priests, Women, and Families. Jules Michelet
of the Young Confessor—The Priest in the Middle Ages—1st, believed—2ndly, was mortified—3rdly, knew—4thly, interrogated less—The Dangers of the Young Confessor—How he Strengthens his Tottering Position
CHAPTER III.
Confession—The Confessor and the Husband—How they Detach the Wife—The Director—Directors in Concert—Ecclesiastical Policy
CHAPTER IV.
Habit—Power of Habit—Its Insensible Beginning; its Progress—Second Nature; often fatal—A Man taking Advantage of his Power—Can we get clear of it?
CHAPTER V.
On Convents—Omnipotence of the Director—Condition of the Nuns, Forlorn and Wretched—Convents made Bridewells and Bedlams—Captation—Barbarous Discipline; Struggle between the Superior Nun and the Director; Change of Directors—The Magistrate
CHAPTER VI.
Absorption of the Will—Government of Acts, Thoughts, and Wills—Assimilation of the Soul—Transhumanation—To become the God of another—Pride and Desire
CHAPTER VII.
Desire. Terrors of the other World—The Physician and his Patient—Alternatives; Postponements—Effects of Fear in Love—To be All-powerful and Abstain—Struggles between the Spirit and the Flesh—Moral Death more Potent than Physical Life—It will not revive
PART III.
CHAPTER I.
Schism in Families—The Daughter; by whom Educated—Importance of Education—The Advantage of the First Instructor—Influence of Priests upon Marriage—Which they Retain after that Ceremony
CHAPTER II.
Woman—The Husband does not Associate with the Wife—He seldom knows how to Initiate her into his Thoughts—What Mutual Initiation would be—The Wife Consoles Herself with her Son—He is taken from her; her Loneliness and Ennui—A pious young Man—The Spiritual and the Worldly Man—Who is now the Mortified Man
CHAPTER III.
The Mother—Alone for a Long Time, she can bring up her Child—Intellectual Nourishment—Gestation, Incubation, Education—The Child Guarantees the Mother, and she the Child—She protects his Originality, which Public Education must Limit—The Father even Limits it, the Mother Defends it—Her Weakness; she wishes her Son to be a Hero—Her Heroic Disinterestedness
CHAPTER IV.
Love—Love wishes to raise and not absorb—False Theory of our Adversaries; Dangerous Practice—Love wishes to form an Equal who may love freely—Love in the World, in the Civil World—And in Families, not understood by the Middle Ages—Family Religion
ONE WORD TO THE PRIESTS:—We do not Attack Priests, but their Unhappy and Dangerous Position—Not Rome but France is the Pope—Our Sympathy for Priests, Victims of the Laws—Priests and Soldiers—Priest means Old Man
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
PART I.
ON DIRECTION IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
CHAPTER I.
RELIGIOUS REACTION IN 1600.—INFLUENCE OF THE JESUITS OVER WOMEN AND CHILDREN.—SAVOY; THE VAUDOIS; VIOLENCE AND MILDNESS.—ST. FRANCOIS DE SALES.
Everybody has seen in the Louvre Guide's graceful picture representing the Annunciation. The drawing is incorrect, the colouring false, and yet the effect is seducing. Do not expect to find in it the conscientiousness and austerity of the old schools; you would look also in vain for the vigorous and bold touch of the masters of the Renaissance. The sixteenth century has passed away, and everything assumes a softer character. The figure with which the painter has evidently taken the most pleasure is the angel, who, according to the refinement of that surfeited period, is a pretty-looking singing boy—a cherub of the Sacristy. He appears to be sixteen, and the Virgin from eighteen to twenty years of age. This Virgin—by no means ideal, but real, and the reality slightly adulterated—is no other than a young Italian maiden whom Guido copied at her own house, in her snug oratory, and at her convenient praying-desk (prie-Dieu), such as were then used by ladies.
If the painter was inspired by anything else, it was not by the Gospel, but rather by the devout novels of that period, or the fashionable sermons uttered by the Jesuits in their coquettish-looking churches. The Angelic Salutation, the Visitation, the Annunciation, were the darling subjects upon which they had, for a long time past, exhausted every imagination of seraphic gallantry. On beholding this picture by Guide, we fancy we are reading the Bernardino. The angel speaks Latin like a young learned clerk; the Virgin, like a boarding-school young lady, responds in soft Italian, "O alto signore," &c.
This pretty picture is important as a work characteristic of an already corrupt age; being an agreeable and delicate work, we are the more easily led to perceive its suspicious graces and equivocal charms.
Let us call to mind the softened forms which the devout reaction of this age—that of Henry IV.—then assumed. We are lost in astonishment when we hear, as it were on the morrow of the sixteenth century, after wars and massacres, the lisping of this still small voice. The terrible preachers of the Sixteen—the monks who went armed with muskets in the processions of the League—are suddenly humanised, and become gentle. The reason is, they must lull to sleep those whom they have not been able to kill. The task, however, was not very difficult. Everybody was worn out by the excessive fatigue of religious warfare, and exhausted by a struggle that afforded no result, and from which no one came off victorious. Every one knew too well his party and his friends. In the evening of so long a march there was nobody, however good a walker he might be, who did not desire to rest: the indefatigable Henry of Beam, seeking repose like the rest, or wishing to lull them into tranquillity, afforded them the example, and gave himself up with a good grace into the hands of Father Cotton and Gabrielle.
Henry IV. was the grandfather of Louis XIV., and Cotton the great uncle of Father La Chaise—two royalties, two dynasties; one of kings, the other of Jesuit confessors. The history of the latter would be very interesting. These amiable fathers ruled throughout the whole of the century, by dint of absolving, pardoning, shutting their eyes, and remaining ignorant. They effected great results by the most trifling means, such as little capitulations, secret transactions, back-doors, and hidden staircases.
The Jesuits could plead that, being the constrained restorers of Papal authority, that is to say, physicians to a dead body, the means were not left to their choice. Dead beat in the world of ideas, where could they hope to resume their warfare, save in the field of intrigue, passion, and human weaknesses?
There, nobody could serve them more actively than Women. Even when they did not act with the Jesuits and for them, they were not less useful in an indirect manner, as instruments and means—as objects of business and daily compromise between the penitent and the confessor.
The tactics of the confessor did not differ much from those of the