Part 2 (1/2)
Certain houses had been secularized and turned into n.o.ble chapters. The ladies who inhabited them were freed from the vow of poverty. They wore no religious vestment, but appeared in the fas.h.i.+onable dress of the day.
They received their friends in the convent, and could leave it themselves to reenter the secular life, and to marry if they pleased.
Such a chapter was that of Remiremont in Lorraine, whose abbess was a princess of the Holy Roman Empire, by virtue of her office. Her crook was of gold. Six horses were harnessed to her carriage. Her dominion extended over two hundred villages, whose inhabitants paid her both feudal dues and ecclesiastical t.i.thes. Nor were her duties onerous. She spent a large part of her time in Strasburg, and went to the theatre without scruple. She traveled a good deal in the neighborhood, and was a familiar figure at some of the petty courts on the Rhine. The canonesses followed her good example. Some of them were continually on the road.
Others stayed at home in the convent, and entertained much good company.
They dressed like other people, in the fas.h.i.+on, with nothing to mark their religious calling but a broad ribbon over the right shoulder, blue bordered with red, supporting a cross, with a figure of Saint Romaric.
No lady was received into this chapter who could not show nine generations or two hundred and twenty-five years of chivalric, n.o.ble descent, both on the father's and on the mother's side.
Such requirements as this were extreme, but similar conditions were not unusual. The Benedictines of Saint Claude, transformed into a chapter of canonesses, required sixteen quarterings for admission; that is to say, that every canoness must show by proper heraldic proof, that her sixteen great--grandfathers and great--grandmothers were of n.o.ble blood. The Knights of Malta required but four quarterings. They had two hundred and twenty commanderies in France, with eight hundred Knights. The Grand Priory gave an income of sixty thousand livres to the Prior, who was always a prince. The revenues of the order were 1,750,000 livres.
But very rich monasteries were exceptional after all. Those where life was hard and labor continuous were far more common. In some of them, forty men would be found living on a joint income of six thousand livres a year. They cultivated the soil, they built, they dug. They were not afraid of great undertakings in architecture or engineering, to be accomplished only after long years and generations of labor, for was not their corporation immortal? Then we have the begging orders, infesting the roads and villages, and drawing several million livres a year from the poorer cla.s.ses, which supported and grumbled at them. And against the luxury of the n.o.ble chapters must be set the silence, the vigils, the fasts of La Trappe. This monastery stood in a gloomy valley, sunk among wooded hills. The church and the surrounding buildings were mostly old, and all sombre and uninviting. Each narrow cell was furnished with but a mattress, a blanket and a table, without chair or fire. The monks were clad in a robe and a hood, and wore shoes and stockings, but had neither s.h.i.+rt nor breeches. They shaved three times a year. Their food consisted of boiled vegetables, with salad once a week; never any b.u.t.ter nor eggs. Twice in the night they rose, and hastened s.h.i.+vering to the chapel. Never did they speak, but to their confessor; until, in his last hour, each was privileged to give to the prior his dying messages.
Hither, from the active and gay world of philosophy and frivolity would suddenly retire from time to time some young officer, scholar, or courtier. Here, bound by irrevocable vows, he could weep over his sins, or gnash his teeth at the folly that had brought him, until he found peace at last in life or in the grave.
To enjoy the temporal privileges of the religious life neither any great age nor any extensive learning was required. To hold a cure of souls or the abbacy of a ”regular” convent (whose inmates chose their abbot), a man must be twenty-five years old. But an abbot appointed by the king need only be twenty-two, a canon of a cathedral fourteen, and a chaplain seven. It cannot be doubted that persons of either s.e.x were obliged to make irrevocable vows, without any proof of free vocation, or any reason to expect a fixed resolution. Daughters and younger sons could thus be conveniently disposed of. A larger share was left for the family, for the religious were civilly dead, and did not take part in the inheritance. On the other hand, misfortune and want need not be feared for the inmate of the convent. If a nun were lost to the joys of the world, she was lost to its cares. To make such a choice, to commit temporal suicide, the very young should surely not be admitted. Yet it was not until 1768 that the time for taking final vows was advanced to the very moderate age of twenty-one for young men and eighteen for girls.[Footnote: Rambaud, ii. 45. Mathieu, 43. Cha.s.sin, 25. Boiteau, 176. Bailly, 421. Mme. d'Oberkirch, 127. Mme. de Genlis, _Dict. des etiquettes_, i. Ill _n._, _Le Comte de Fersen et la Cour de France_, I. xxix. Mercier, xi. 358.]
The secular clergy was about as numerous as the regular. It was princ.i.p.ally composed of the _cures_ and _vicaires_ who had charge of parishes.[Footnote: The bishops, of course, belonged to the secular clergy. So, in fact, did the canons; who, on account of the similarity of their mode of life, have been treated with the regulars. In the French hierarchy the _cure_ comes above the _vicaire_. The relation is somewhat that of _parson_ and _curate_ in the church of England.]
These men were mostly drawn from the lower cla.s.ses of society, or at any rate not from the n.o.bility. They had therefore very little chance of promotion. Some of them in the country districts were very poor; for the great t.i.thes, levied on the princ.i.p.al crops, generally belonged to the bishops, to the convents of regulars, or to laymen; and only the lesser t.i.thes, the occasional fees,[Footnote: _Casuel._]
and the product of a small glebe were reserved for the parish priest, and the latter was liable to continual squabbles with the peasants concerning his dues. But the parish priest, with all other churchmen, was exempt from the state taxes, although obliged to pay a proportion of the _decimes_,[Footnote: _Decime_, in the singular, was an extraordinary tax levied on ecclesiastical revenue for some object deemed important. _Decimes_, in the plural, was the tax paid annually by benefices. _Dme_, t.i.the (see Littre, _Decime_). It seems a question whether the proportion of the _decimes_ paid by the parish priests was too large. See _Revue des questions historiques_, 1st July 1890, 102. Necker, _De l'Administration_, ii. 313.] or special tax laid by the clergy on their own order. Moreover, the government set a minimum;[Footnote: _Portion congrue._] and if the income of the parish priest fell below it, the owner of the great t.i.thes was bound to make up the difference. This minimum was set at five hundred livres a year for a _cure_ in 1768, and raised to seven hundred in 1785. A _vicaire_ received two hundred and three hundred and fifty. These amounts do not seem large, but they must have secured to the country priest a tolerable condition, for we do not find that the clerical profession was neglected.
Apart from considerations of material well being, the condition of the parish priest was not undesirable. He was fairly independent, and could not be deprived of his living without due process of law. His house was larger or smaller according to his means, but his authority and influence might in any case be considerable. He had more education and more dealings with the outer world than most of his paris.h.i.+oners. To him the intendant of the province might apply for information concerning the state of his village, and the losses of the peasants by fire, or by epidemics among their cattle. His sympathy with his fellow-villagers was the warmer, that like them he had a piece of ground to till, were it only a garden, an orchard, or a bit of vineyard. Round his door, as round theirs, a few hens were scratching; perhaps a cow lowed from her shed, or followed the village herd to the common. The priest's servant, a stout la.s.s, did the milking and the weeding. In 1788, a provincial synod was much disturbed by a motion, made by some fanatic in the interest of morals, that no priest should keep a serving-maid less than forty-five years of age. The rule was rejected on the ground that it would make it impossible to cultivate the glebes. Undoubtedly, the priests themselves often tucked up the skirts of their ca.s.socks, and lent a hand in the work. They were treated by their flocks with a certain amount of respectful familiarity. They were addressed as _messire_. With the joys and sorrows of their paris.h.i.+oners, their connection was at once intimate and professional. Their ministrations were sought by the sick and the sad, their congratulations by the happy.
No wedding party nor funeral feast was complete without them.[Footnote: Turgot, v. 364. This letter is very interesting, as showing the importance of the _cures_ and their possible dealings with the intendant. Mathieu, 152. Babeau, _La vie rurale_, 157. A good study of the clergy before the Revolution is found in an article by Marius Sepet (_La societe francaise a la veille de la revolution_), in the _Revue des questions historiques_, 1st April and 1st July, 1889.]
The privileges and immunities which the Church of France enjoyed had given to her clergy a tone of independence both to the Pope and to the king. We have seen them accompanying their ”free gifts” to the latter by requests and conditions. Toward the Holy See their att.i.tude had once been quite as bold. In 1682 an a.s.sembly of the Church of France had promulgated four propositions which were considered the bulwarks of the Gallican liberties.
(1.) G.o.d has given to Saint Peter and his successors no power, direct or indirect, over temporal affairs.
(2.) Ec.u.menical councils are superior to the Pope in spiritual matters.
(3.) The rules, usages and statutes admitted by the kingdom and the Church of France must remain inviolate.
(4.) In matters of faith, decisions of the Sovereign Pontiff are irrevocable only after having received the consent of the church.
These propositions were undoubtedly a part of the law of France, and were fully accepted by a portion of the French clergy. But the spirit that dictated them had in a measure died out during the corrupt reign of Louis XV. The long quarrel between the Jesuits and the Jansenists, which agitated the Galilean church during the latter part of the seventeenth and the earlier half of the eighteenth century, had tended neither to strengthen nor to purify that body. A large number of the most serious, intelligent and devout Catholics in France had been put into opposition to the most powerful section of the clergy and to the Pope himself. Thus the Church of France was in a bad position to repel the violent attacks made upon her from without.[Footnote: Rambaud, ii. 40. For a Catholic account of the Jansenist quarrel, see Carne, _La monarchie francaise au 18me siecle_, 407.]
For a time of trial had come to the Catholic Church, and the Church of France, although hardly aware of its danger, was placed in the forefront of battle. It was against her that the most persistent and violent a.s.sault of the Philosophers was directed. Before considering the doctrines of those men, who differed among themselves very widely on many points, it is well to ask what was the cause of the great excitement which their doctrines created. Men as great have existed in other centuries, and have exercised an enormous influence on the human mind.
But that influence has generally been gradual; percolating slowly, through the minds of scholars and thinkers, to men of action and the people. The intellectual movement of the eighteenth century in France was rapid. It was the nature of the opposition which they encountered which drew popular attention to the attacks of the Philosophers.
CHAPTER IV.
THE CHURCH AND HER ADVERSARIES.
The new birth of learning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had been followed by the strengthening and centralization of government, both in church and state. France had its full share of this change. Its civil government became the strongest in Europe, putting down every breath of opposition. Against the political conduct of Louis XIV neither magistrate nor citizen dared to raise his voice. The Church of France, on the other hand, in close alliance with the civil power, became almost irresistible in her own sphere. The Catholic Church throughout Europe had been the great schoolmaster of civilization. It had fallen into the common fault of schoolmasters, the a.s.sumption of infallibility. It was, moreover, a state within all states. Its sovereign, the Pope, the most powerful monarch in Christendom, is chosen in accordance with a curious and elaborate set of regulations, by electors appointed by his predecessors. His rule, nominally despotic, is limited by powers and influences understood by few persons outside of his palace. His government, although highly centralized, is yet able to work efficiently in all the countries of the earth. It is served by a great body of officials, probably less corrupt on the whole than those of any other state. They are kept in order, not only by moral and spiritual sanctions, but by a system of worldly promotion. They wield over their subjects a tremendous weapon, sometimes borrowed, but seldom long or very skillfully used by laymen, and called, in clerical language, excommunication. This, when it is confined to the denial of religious privileges, may be considered a spiritual weapon. But in the eighteenth century the temporal power of Catholic Europe was still in great measure at the service of the ecclesiastical authorities. Obedience to the church was a law of the state. Although Frenchmen were no longer executed for heresy in the reign of Louis XVI., they still were persecuted. The property of Protestants was unsafe, their marriages invalid. Their children might be taken from them. Such toleration as existed was precarious, and the Church of France was constantly urging the temporal government to take stronger measures for the extirpation of heresy.
The church had succeeded in implanting in the minds of its votaries one opinion of enormous value in its struggle for power. Originally and properly an a.s.sociation for the practice and spreading of religion, the corporation had succeeded in making itself an object of wors.h.i.+p. One great reason why atheism took root in France was the impossibility, induced by long habit, of distinguis.h.i.+ng between religion and Catholicism, and of conceiving that the one may exist without the other.
The by-laws of the church had become as sacred as the primary duties of piety; and the injunction to refrain from meat on Fridays was indistinguishable by most Catholics, in point of obligation, from the injunction to love the Lord their G.o.d.
The Protestant churches which separated themselves from the Church of Rome in the sixteenth century carried with them much of the intolerant spirit of the original body. It is one of the commonplace sneers of the unreflecting to say that religious toleration has always been the dogma of the weaker party. The saying, if it were true, which it is not, yet would not be especially sagacious. Toleration, like other things, has been most sought by those whose need of it was greatest. But they have not always recognized its value. It was no small step in the progress of the human mind that was taken when men came to look on religious toleration as desirable or possible. That the state might treat with equal favor all forms of wors.h.i.+p was an opinion hardly accepted by wise and liberal-minded men in the eighteenth century. It may be that the fiery contests of the Reformation were still too near in those days to let perfect peace be safe or profitable.
Yet religious toleration was making its way in men's minds. Cautiously, and with limitations, the doctrine is stated, first by Locke, Bayle, and Fenelon in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, then by almost all the great writers of the eighteenth. The Protestants, with their experience of persecution, a.s.sert that those persons should not be tolerated who teach that faith should not be kept with heretics, or that kings excommunicated forfeit their crowns and kingdoms; or who attribute to themselves any peculiar privilege or power above other mortals in civil affairs; in short, they exclude the Catholics. Atheists also may be excluded, as being under no possible conscientious obligation to dogmatize concerning their negative creed. The Catholics maintain the right of the sovereign to forbid the use of ceremonies, or the profession of opinions, which would disturb the public peace.
Montesquieu, a nominal Catholic only, declares that it is the fundamental principle of political laws concerning religion, not to allow the establishment of a new form if it can be prevented; but when one is once established, to tolerate it. He refuses to say that heresy should not be punished, but he says that it should be punished only with great circ.u.mspection. This left the case of the French Protestants to all appearances as bad as before; for the laws denied that they had been established in the kingdom, and the church always a.s.serted that it was mild and circ.u.mspect in its dealings with heretics. Voltaire will not say that those who are not of the same religion as the prince should share in the honors of the state, or hold public office. Such limitations as these would seem to have deprived toleration of the greater part of its value, by excluding from its benefits those persons who were most likely to be persecuted. But the statement of a great principle is far more effectual than the enumeration of its limitations.
Toleration, eloquently announced as an ideal, made its way in men's minds. ”Absolute liberty, just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty, is the thing we stand in need of,” cries Locke, and the saying is retained when his exceptions concerning the Catholics are forgotten.