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The Modern Regime, Volume 2

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Title: The Modern Regime, Volume 2

Author: Hippolyte Taine

Annotator: Svend Rom

Translator: John Durand


        
Release date: June 22, 2008 [eBook #2582]
                Most recently updated: July 14, 2008

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2582

Credits: Produced by Svend Rom and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MODERN REGIME, VOLUME 2 ***




Produced by Svend Rom





THE ORIGINS OF CONTEMPORARY FRANCE, VOLUME 6

THE MODERN REGIME, VOLUME 2

by Hippolyte A. Taine


Contents:

BOOK FIFTH. The Church.

     Chapter I. Moral Institutions

     Chapter Ii.

     Chapter Iii

Book Sixth. Public Instruction.

     Chapter I.

     Chapter Ii.

     Chapter Iii. Evolution Between 1814 And 1890.


*****

     After Taine's death in March 1893, his nephew André
     Chevrillon arranged his last manuscripts on the Church
     and Education for publication and wrote the following
     introduction which also tells us much about Taine and
     his works

*****




PREFACE By André Chevrillon.

"To treat of the Church, the School, and the Family, describe the modern
milieu and note the facilities and obstacles which a society like our
own encounters in this milieu, such was the program of the last[5101]
section of the "Origins of Contemporary France." The preceding volume is
a continuation of the first part of this program; after the commune and
the department, after local societies, the author was to study moral
and intellectual bodies in France as organized by Napoleon. This study
completed, this last step taken, he was about to reach the summit. He
was about to view France as a whole, to comprehend it no longer
through a detail of its organs, in a state of formation, but its actual
existence; no longer isolated, but plunged, along with other occidental
nations, into the modern milieu, experiencing with them the effects of
one general cause which changed the physical and intellectual condition
of men; which dissolved sentiments formerly grouping them together, more
or less capable at length of adapting themselves to new circumstances
and of organizing according to a new type suited to the coming age that
now opens before us.

Only a part of this last volume was written, that which relates to the
Church and to public instruction. Death intervened and suddenly arrested
the pen. M. Taine, at this moment, was about completing his analysis of
subordinate societies in France.--For those who have followed him thus
far it is already clear that the great defect of the French community
is the fragmentation of the individuals, who isolated, dwindling, and
prostrate at the feet of the all-powerful State, who, due to remote
historical causes, and yet more so by modern legislation, have been made
incapable of "spontaneously grouping around a common interest."
Very probably--and of this we may judge by two sketches of a plan,
undoubtedly provisional, but the ideas of which were long settled in his
mind--M. Taine would have first described this legislation and defined
its principles and general characteristics. He meant to show it more
and more systematic, deliberately hostile to collective enterprise,
considering secondary bodies not as "distinct, special organs,"
endowed with a life of their own, "maintained and stimulated by private
initiation," but as agents of the State "which fashions them after
a common pattern, imposes on them their form and prescribes their
work."--This done, this defect pointed out, the author was to enumerate
the consequences flowing from it, the social body entirely changed, "not
only in its proportions but in its innermost texture," every tendency
weakened by which individuals form groups that are to last longer than
themselves, each man reduced to his own self, the egoistic instinct
enhanced while the social instinct wastes away for want of nourishment,
his daily imagination solely concerned with life-long aims,
incapacitated for politics as he is "lacking spheres of action in which
he may train himself according to his experiences and faculties", his
mind weakening in idleness and boredom or in a thirst for pleasure and
personal success,--in short, an organic impoverishment of all faculties
of cohesion, leading to the destruction of the natural centers of
grouping and, consequently, to political instability.[5102]

One association of special import remains, the most spontaneous, the
deepest rooted, so old that all others derive from it, so essential
that in any attack upon it we see even the substance of the social body
decaying and diminishing. On the nature of the Family; on its profound
physiological origins; on its necessary role in the prolongation and
"perpetuation of the individual" by affording him "the sole remedy for
death"; on its primitive constitution among men of our own race; on its
historic organization and development "around the family home"; on the
necessity of its subsistence and continuance in order to insure the
duration of this home; on its other needs, M. Taine, with his knowledge
of man and of his history, had given a good deal of thought to
fundamental ideas analogous to those which he has consecrated to the
classic spirit, to the origin of honor and conscience, to the essence
of local society, so many stones, as it were, shaped by him from time
to time and deeply implanted as the foundations of his criticism of
institutions. Having set forth the proper character and permanent wants
of the Family he was able to study the legislation affecting it, and,
first, "the Jacobin laws on marriage, divorce, paternal authority and on
the compulsory public education of children; next, the Napoleonic laws,
those which still govern us, the Civil Code" with that portion of it
in which the equality and leveling spirit is preserved, along with "its
tendency to regard property as a means of enjoyment" instead of the
starting-point and support of "an enduring institution."--Having exposed
the system, M. Taine meant to consider its effects, those of surrounding
institutions, and to describe the French family as it now exists. He had
first studied the "tendency to marriage"; he had considered the motives
which, in general, weaken or fortify it, and appreciated those now
absent and now active in France. According to him, "the healthy ideal of
every young man is to found a family, a house of infinite duration, to
create and to rule." Why in modern France does he give his thoughts to
"pleasure and of excelling in his career"? Why does he regard marriage
"without enthusiasm, as a last measure, as a 'settling-down,' and not as
a beginning, the commencement of a veritable career, subordinating
all others to it and regarding these, pecuniary and professional, as
auxiliary and as means?"--After the tendency to marriage, "the tendency
to paternity." How does the shrunken family come to live only for
itself? In what way, in default of other interests,--homestead, domain,
workshop, lasting local undertakings,--how does the heart, now deprived
of its food by the lack of invisible posterity, fall back on affection
for visible progeny?[5103] In a country where there are few
openings, where careers are overcrowded, what are the effects of this
paid idolatry[5104], and, to sum up in one phrase, in what way does the
French system of to-day tend to develop the most fatal of results, the
decline in the birth rate?

Here the study of institutions on a grand scale terminated. Formerly,
M. Taine had contemplated a completion of his labors by a description
of contemporary France, the product of origins scrutinized by him and
of which he had traced the formation. Having disengaged his factors he
meant to combine them, to show them united and acting in concert, all
centering on the great actual facts which dominate the rest and which
determine the order and structure of modern society. As he had given a
picture of old France he aimed to portray France as it now is, with
its various groups,--village, small town and large city,--with its
categories of men, peasants, workmen, bourgeois, functionaries and
capitalists; with the forces that impel each class along, their
passions, their ideas, their desires. Besides the numerical statistics
of person he meant to have set forth the moral statistics of souls.
According to him, psychological conditions exist which render the social
activity of men possible or impossible. And, especially, "in a given
society, there is always a psychological state which provokes the state
of that society." It was his aim to seek out in the novel, in poetry, in
the arts since 1820, that is to say in all works that throw light on the
various and successive kinds of the reigning ideal--in philosophy, in
religion, in industry, in all branches of French action and thought--the
signs of the psychological tendencies of modern Frenchman in this or
that social condition. What would this book have been? M. Taine had
sketched it out so far back, he had abandoned it for so long a time and
never alluded to it, that nothing remains by which we can form any
idea of it. But, in this undertaking demanding so much science, so much
intuition, so much experience of accurate observation, of general views
and precise generalization--in this vast study requiring such profound
knowledge, not alone of France but of societies offering points of
comparison with her, we may be certain that the author of Notes
sur Paris, Notes sur l'Angleterre, of the Ancien Régime, the critic
accustomed to interpret civilizations, literature and works of art,
the thinker, in fine, who, to prepare himself for the greatest tasks he
undertook, traveled five times over France, studying its life with
the eyes of an artist, in the light of history and of psychology, ever
preceding his philosophic study with visual investigation, would have
been equal to the task.[5105]

Already for several years, M. Taine, aware that his time was short, had
narrowed the limits of the work he was engaged upon. But what his work
lost in breadth and in richness of detail it would have gained in
depth and in power. All his master ideas would have been found in it,
foreshortened and concentrated. Always seeking in this or that group of
them what he called his generators, intellectual and moral as well as
political, he would have described all those which explain the French
group. Unfortunately, here again the elements are wanting which allow
one to foreshadow what this final analysis and last construction might
have been. M. Taine did not write in anticipation. Long before taking
the pen in hand he had derived his most significant facts and formed
his plan. He carried them in his brain where they fell into order of
themselves. Ten lines of notes, a few memoranda of conversations--faint
reflections, to us around him, of the great inward light--are all that
enable one to attempt an indication of the few leading conceptions were
to complete "Les Origines de la France Contemporaine."

"Le Milieu Moderne", was to have been the title of the last book. The
question here is how to discover the great characteristics of the period
into which European societies entered and about were to live. Rising
to a higher point of view than that to which he had confined himself
in studying France, M. Taine regarded its metamorphosis as a case of
transformation as general as the passage of the Cité antique over to
the Roman Empire over to the feudal State. Now, as formerly, this
transformation is the effect of a "change in the intellectual and
physical condition of men"; that is to say, in other words, in the
environment that surrounds them. Such is the advent of a new geological
period, of a glacial period, for example, or, more precisely, "the very
slow and then accelerated upheaval of a continent, forcing the submarine
species which breathe by gills to transform themselves into species
which breathe by lungs." It is impossible to divine in what sense this
adaptation takes place if we do not comprehend the event, that is to
say if we do not perceive its starting-point and the innate force which
produces it. According to Taine, this force, in the present case, is the
progress the increasing authority of positive, verifiable science. What
a definition he would have given of science and its essence! What a
tableau of its progress, the man whose thought was matured at the moment
when the scientific spirit entered into history and literature; who
breathed it in his youth with the fervid and sacred enthusiasm of a poet
seeing the world grow brighter and intelligible to him, and who, at the
age of twenty-five, demanded of it a method and introduced this into
criticism and psychology in order to give these new life--the mechanical
equivalent of heat, natural selection, spectroscopic analysis,
the theory of the microbes, recent discoveries in physics and the
constitution of matter, research into historic origins, psychological
explanation of texts, extension of oriental researches, discoveries of
prehistoric conditions, comparative study of barbaric communities--every
grand idea of the century to which he has himself contributed, all those
by which science embraces a larger and larger portion of the universe,
he saw them containing the same essence; all combining to change the
conception of the world and substitute another, coherent and logical in
the best minds, but then confused and disfigured as it slowly descends
to the level of the crowd.--He would have described this decent, the
gradual diffusion, the growing power of the new Idea, the active ferment
which it contains after the manner of a dogma, beneficent or pernicious
according to the minds in which it lodges, capable of arming men and
of driving them on to pure destruction when not fully comprehended, and
capable of reorganizing them if they can grasp its veritable meaning.

Its first effects are simply destructive, for, through Darwinism,
through experimental psychology, through the physiology of the brain,
through biblical exegesis, through the comparative study of savage
communities and their moral systems, the new concepts at first shocks
the religious idea which it tends to replace; even, with the half-
cultivated and in the minds of novices, it tends to pure negation, to
hostility against existing religions. To every social gathering around
the religious idea that explains and sustains it, what a disturbance in
the secular system formed by the co-ordination and mutual adaptation of
laws, customs, morality, and institutions! What a rupture of the inward
equilibrium which maintains man passive and tranquil! The consequent
mental agitation will lead to agitation, impulsion, ambitions,
lassitude, despondency, and disorder in all the sentiments which had
thus far maintained every species of society, the family, the commune,
the Church, free association and the State!--Now, along with the
immediate effects of science on the intellectual habits of men consider
the effects of its application to their material condition; at first,
their increased well-being, their power increased, then the rupture of
the ties that bind them to their birthplace, the concentration of masses
of workmen in the towns to which they are attracted by great and rapid
industrial development, the influx of new ideas, of every species of
information, the gradual decline of the old hereditary prejudices of
caste and parish which act automatically as instincts, and are useful
as instincts to the small groups in which the individual is born and
in which he lives. How could such a profound change in the condition of
humanity fail to undermine everywhere the order of things which group
men together? Why should not the new milieu at once attack all ancient
forms of society? For, at the moment of its establishment, there exists
in Europe a general form of society manifest through features in common;
a monarchy--hereditary royalty, dynastic but frequently limited, at
least in fact,--a privileged nobility performing military service as a
special function, a clergy organized as a Church, proprietary and
more or less privileged, local or special bodies also proprietary--
provinces, communes, universities, brotherhoods, corporations--laws and
customs which base the family on paternal authority, perpetuating it on
the natal soil and by social rank; in brief, institutions which modern
ideas disturb in every direction, the first effect of which is,
while developing the spirit of doubt and investigation, to break down
subordination to the king, to the gentleman, to the noble, and, in
general, to dissolve society founded on heredity. Such phenomena are
already observable everywhere, the ruin of feeble corporations by the
state, its constant tendency to interference, to the absorption of every
special service and the descent of power into the hands of a numerical
majority.--What plan, then, governs these societies in the way of
reorganization, and, since they all belong to a common type, what are
the common resources and difficulties of adaptation? On what lines must
the metamorphosis be effected in order to arrive at a viable creations?
And, abandoning the general problem in order to return to contemporary
France, grown up and organized under our own eyes, how does the great
modern event affect it? How does "this common factor combine with
special factors, permanent and temporary," belong to our system? With
the French, whose hereditary spirit and character are easily defined,
in this society founded on Napoleonic institutions moved by our
"administrative mechanism," what are the peculiar tendencies of a
leveling democracy which seeks immediate establishment? Among the
maladies which are special with us--feeble birth-rate, political
instability, absence of local life, slow industrial and commercial
development, despondency and pessimism--can an aptitude for
transformation which we do not possess be distinguished in the sense
demanded by the new milieu? The knowledge we have of our origins, of
our psychology, of our present constitution, of our circumstances, what
hopes are warranted?

M. Taine could not have replied to all these questions. If, twenty years
ago, on the morrow after our disasters, just as we once more set about
a new organization, putting aside literature, art, and philosophy, noble
contemplation and pure speculation, abandoning works already projected,
he gave himself up to the technical study of law, political economy and
administrative history; if, for twenty years, he secluded himself and
devoted himself to his task--at what a cost of prolonged effort, with
what a strain his mental faculties, with what weariness and often with
what dissatisfaction!--if he shortened his life, it was to discharge
what he deemed a duty to that suffering France which he loved
with tender and silent passion, the duty of aiding in her cure by
establishing the general diagnosis which a philosopher-historian
was warranted in presenting after a profound study of its vital
constitution. The examination finished, he felt that he had a right to
offer the diagnosis. Not that his modesty permitted him to foretell the
future or to dictate reforms. When his opinion was asked in relation to
any reform he generally declined giving it. "I am merely a consulting
physician," he would reply; "I do not possess sufficient details on that
particular question--I am not sufficiently familiar with circumstances
which vary from day to day." In effect, according to him, there is no
general principle from which one can deduce a series of reforms. On the
contrary, his first recommendation would have been not to try to find
simple solutions in political and social matters, but to proceed by
experiments, according to temperaments, and accepting the irregular
and the incomplete.--One becomes resigned to this course by a study
of history and by acquiring "the sense of surrounding facts and
developments." Here do we find the general remedy for the destructive
effects produced by the brusque progress of science, and she herself
furnishes this remedy, when, from the hasty and the theoretical, she
becomes experimental and builds on the observation of facts and their
relations. "Through psychological narration, through the analysis of
psychological conditions which have produced, maintained, or modified
this or that institution, we may find a partial solution to each
question of reform," gradually discovering laws and establishing the
general conditions that render possible or impossible any given project.
When constituted and then developed, reorganized, respected and applied
to human affairs, the sciences of humanity may become a new instrument
of power and civilization, and, just as the natural sciences have taught
us to derive profit from physical forces, they may teach us to benefit
by moral forces. M. Taine believed that the French were very well
qualified for this order of study: if any other people possess
superior mental faculties in respect of memory or a better knowledge
of philology, he thought we had in our favor a superiority of the
psychological sense.

Except for such beneficial generalities which may provide general
hygienic guidelines, could M. Taine have suggested immediate remedies?
It is scarcely probable. In any even, he was not a partisan for
hasty decentralization. When, under the influence of a bad system, an
organization has contracted a vice that reaches its vital organs, the
following treatment nearly becomes mandatory;[5106] in any event, no
sudden modification of it must be thought of; all that can be done is
to lessen its pernicious effect by resorting to make-shift or short
term measures. Taking advantage of unforeseen circumstances, using great
circumspection, noting favorable symptoms that had impressed him--for
example a certain new birth of the spirit of association under the Third
Republic--leaving to political authorities the care "of adjusting means"
to the diversity and mobility of things, we may believe that M. Taine
would have confined himself to indicating in what sense we could, with
prudence, lay our course. To do this, it sufficed for him to sum up his
diagnosis and lay down the conditions of duration and progress. In a
matter of such vital import nobody can speak for him. Accordingly, if
the conclusion is not written, whoever knows how to read his thought may
divine it. The work, such as it is, is finished; it already contains his
ideas in full; the intelligent eye has only to follow them and to note
their consequences and combination.

André Chevrillon

Menthon, St-Bernard, October, 1893.





BOOK FIFTH. THE CHURCH.




CHAPTER I. MORAL INSTITUTIONS




I. Napoleon's Objectives.

     Centralization and moral institutions--Object of the State
     in absorbing Churches.--Their influence on civil society.

After the centralizing and invading State has taken hold of local
societies there is nothing left for it but to cast its net over moral
societies[5107], and this second haul is more important than the first
one; for, if local societies are based on the proximity of physical
bodies and habitations, the latter are formed out of the accord which
exists between minds and souls; in possessing these, the hold is no
longer on the outside but on the inside of man, his thought, his will;
the incentive within is laid hold of, and this directly; then only can
he be fully mastered, and disposed of at discretion. To this end, the
main purpose of the conquering State is the possession of the Churches;
alongside as well as outside of itself, these are the great powers of
the nation; not only does their domain differ from its own but, again it
is vaster and lies deeper. Beyond the temporal patrimony and the small
fragment of human history which the eyes of the flesh perceive, they
embrace and present to mental vision the whole world and its first
cause, the total ordinance of things, the infinite perspective of a past
eternity and that of an eternity to come. Underneath the corporeal and
intermittent actions which civil power prescribes and regulates, they
govern the imagination, the conscience and the affections, the whole
inward being, that mute, persistent effort of which our visible acts are
simply the incomplete expressions and rare outbursts. Indeed, even when
they set limits to these, voluntarily, conscientiously, there is no
limit; in vain do they proclaim, if Christian, that their kingdom is not
of this world; nevertheless, it is, since they belong to it; masters
of dogma and of morals, they teach and command in it. In their
all-embracing conception of divine and human things, the State, like a
chapter in a book, has its place and their teachings in this chapter are
for it of capital importance. For, here do they write out its rights and
duties, the rights and duties of its subjects, a more or less perfect
plan of civil order. This plan, avowed or dissimulated, towards
which they incline the preferences of the faithful, issues at length,
spontaneously and invincible from their doctrine, like a plant from its
seed, to vegetate in temporal society, flower and fructify therein
and send its roots deeper down for the purpose of shattering or of
consolidating civil and political institutions. The influence of a
Church on the family and on education, on the use of wealth or of
authority, on the spirit of obedience or of revolt, on habits of
initiation or of inertia, of enjoyment or of abstention, of charity or
of egoism, on the entire current train of daily practice and of dominant
impulses, in every branch of private or public life, is immense, and
constitutes a distinct and permanent social force of the highest order.
Every political calculation is unsound if it is omitted or treated
as something of no consequence, and the head of a State is bound to
comprehend the nature of it if he would estimate its grandeur.




II. Napoleon's opinions and methods.

     Napoleon's opinions on religion and religious belief.--His
     motives in preferring established and positive religions.
     --Difficulty in defining the limit between spiritual and
     temporal authority.--Except in Catholic countries, both
     united in one hand.--Impossible to effect this union in
     France arbitrarily.--Napoleon's way of attaining this end by
     another process.--His intention of overcoming spiritual
     authority through temporal interests.

This is what Napoleon does. As usual with him, in order to see deeper
into others, he begins by examining himself:

"To say from whence I came, what I am, or where I am going, is above my
comprehension. I am the watch that runs, but unconscious of itself."

These questions, which we are unable to answer,

"drive us onward to religion; we rush forward to welcome her, for
that is our natural tendency. But knowledge comes and we stop short.
Instruction and history, you see, are the great enemies of religion,
disfigured by the imperfections of humanity.... I once had faith. But
when I came to know something, as soon as I began to reason, which
happened early, at the age of thirteen, my faith staggered and became
uncertain."[5108]

This double personal conviction is in the back-ground of his thinking,
when he drafted the Concordat:

"It will be said that I am a papist.[5109] I am nothing. In Egypt I was
a Moslem; here I shall be a Catholic, for the good of the people. I
do not believe in religions. The idea of a God!" (And then, pointing
upward:) "Who made all that?"

Imagination has already decorated this great name with its legends. Let
us content ourselves with those already existing; "the restlessness of
man" is such that he cannot do without them; in default of those already
made he would fashion others, haphazard, and still more strange. The
positive religions keep man from going astray; it is these which render
the supernatural definite and precise;[5110] "he had better catch
it there than pick it up at Mademoiselle Lenormand's, or with some
fortune-teller or a passing charlatan." An established religion

"is a kind of vaccination which, in satisfying our love of the
marvelous, protects us against quacks and sorcerers;[5111] the priests
are far better than the Cagliostros, Kants, and the rest of the German
mystics."

In sum illuminism and metaphysics,[5112] speculative inventions of the
brain or of a contagious overexcitement of the nervous system, all these
illusions of gullible men, are basically unhealthy, and, in general,
anti-social. Nevertheless, since they are part of human nature, let us
accept them like so many streams tumbling down a slope, but on condition
that they remain in their own beds and that they have many but no new
ones and never one bed alone for itself.

"I do not want a dominant religion, nor the establishment of new
ones. The Catholic, Reformed, and Lutheran systems, established by the
Concordat, are sufficient."[5113]

Their direction and force are intelligible, and their irruptions can be
guarded against. Moreover, the present inclinations and configurations
of the human soil favor them; the child follows the road marked out by
the parent, and the man follows the road marked out when a child.

"Listen,[5114] last Sunday, here at Malmaison, while strolling alone in
the solitude enjoying the repose of nature, my ear suddenly caught the
sound of the church-bell at Rueil. I was moved, so strong is the force
of early habits and education! I said to myself, What an impression this
must make on simple, credulous people!"

Let us gratify them; let us give back these bells and the rest to the
Catholics. After all, the general effect of Christianity is beneficial.

"As far as I am concerned,[5115] I do not see in it the mystery of
the incarnation, but the mystery of social order, the association of
religion with paradise, an idea of equality which keeps the rich from
being massacred by the poor."

"Society[5116] could not exist without an inequality of fortunes, and an
inequality of fortunes without religion.[5117] A man dying of starvation
alongside of one who has abundance would not yield to this difference
unless he had some authority which assured him that God so orders it
that there must be both poor and rich in the world, but that in
the future, and throughout eternity, the portion of each will be
changed.[5118]"

Alongside of the repressive police exercised by the State there is a
preventive police exercised by the Church. The clergy, in its cassock,
is an additional spiritual gendarmerie, much more efficient than the
temporal gendarmerie in its stout boots, while the essential thing is to
make both keep step together in concert.

Between the two domains, between that which belongs to civil authority
and that which belongs to religious authority, is there any line of
separation?

"I look in vain[5119] where to place it; its existence is purely
chimerical. I see only clouds, obscurities, difficulties. The civil
government condemns a criminal to death; the priest gives him absolution
and offers him paradise."

In relation to this act, both powers operate publicly in an inverse
sense on the same individual, one with the guillotine and the other with
a pardon. As these authorities may clash with each other, let us
prevent conflicts and leave no undefined frontier; let us trace this out
beforehand; let us indicate what our part is and not allow the Church to
encroach on the State.--The Church rally wants all; it is the accessory
which she concedes to us, while she appropriates the principal to
herself.

"Mark the insolence of the priests[5120] who, in sharing authority with
what they call the temporal power, reserve to themselves all action on
the mind, the noblest part of man, and take it on themselves to reduce
my part merely to physical action. They retain the soul and fling me the
corpse!"

In antiquity, things were much better done, and are still better done
now in Moslem countries.

"In the Roman republic,[5121] the senate was the interpreter of heaven,
and this was the incentive of the force and strength of that government.
In Turkey, and throughout the Orient, the Koran serves as both a civil
and religious bible. Only in Christianity do we find the pontificate
distinct from the civil government."

And even this has occurred only in one branch of Christianity.
Everywhere, except in Catholic countries,

"in England,[5122] in Russia, in the northern monarchies, in one part of
Germany, the legal union of the two powers, the religious control in
the hands of the sovereign, 'is an accomplished fact.' One cannot govern
without it; otherwise, the repose, dignity, and independence of a nation
are disturbed at every moment."

It is a pity that "the difficulty[5123] cannot be overcome as with
Henry VIII. in England. The head of the French government would then, by
legislative statute, be the supreme head of the French Church."

Unfortunately, this is repugnant to France. Napoleon often tries to
bring it about, but is satisfied that in this matter "he would never
obtain national cooperation"; once embarked," fully engaged in the
enterprise, "the nation would have abandoned him." Unable to take this
road, he takes another, which leads to the same result. As he himself
afterwards states, this result "was, for a long time and always, the
object of his wishes and mediations.... It is not his aim[5124] to
change the faith of his people; he respects spiritual objects and wants
to rule them without meddling with them; his aim is to make these square
with his views, with his policy, but only through the influence of
temporal concerns." That spiritual authority should remain intact; that
it should operate on its own speculative domain, that it to say, on
dogmas, and on its practical domain, namely, on the sacraments and on
worship; that is should be sovereign on this limited territory, Napoleon
admits, for such is the fact. We have only to open our eyes to see
it; right or wrong, spiritual authority on this distinct domain is
recognized sovereign, obeyed, effective through the persistent, verified
loyalty of believers. It cannot be done away with by supposing it
non-existent; on the contrary, a competent statesman will maintain it in
order to make use of it and apply it to civil purposes. Like an engineer
who comes across a prolific spring near his factory, he will not try to
dry it up, nor let the water be dispersed and lost; he has no idea
of letting it remain inactive; on the contrary, he collects it, digs
channels for it, directs and economizes the flow, and renders the water
serviceable in his workshops. In the Catholic Church, the authority to
be won and utilized is that of the clergy over believers and that of the
sovereign pontiff over the clergy.

"You will see," exclaimed Bonaparte, while negotiating the Concordat,
"how I will turn the priests to account, and, first of all, the
Pope!"[5125]




III. Dealing with the Pope.

     Services which he obliges the Pope to render.--Resignation
     or dismissal of the old bishops.--End of the constitutional
     Church.--Right of appointing bishops and of sanctioning
     curés given to the First Consul.

"Had no Pope existed," he says again,[5126] "it would have been
necessary to create him for the occasion, in the same way that the Roman
consuls appointed a dictator for difficult circumstances." Only such a
dictator could effect the coup d'état which the First Consul needed,
in order to constitute the head of the new government a patron of
the Catholic Church, to bring independent or refractory priests under
subjection, to sever the canonical cord which bound the French clergy to
its exiled superiors and to the old order of things, "to break the
last thread by which the Bourbons still communicated with the country."
"Fifty émigré[5127] bishops in the pay of England now lead the French
clergy. Their influence must be got rid of, and to do this the authority
of the Pope is essential; he can dismiss or make them resign." Should
any of them prove obstinate and unwilling to descend from their thrones,
their refusal brings them into discredit, and they are "designated[5128]
as rebels who prefer the things of this world, their terrestrial
interests to the interests of heaven and the cause of God." The great
body of the clergy along with their flocks will abandon them; they will
soon be forgotten, like old sprouts transplanted whose roots have been
cut off; they will die abroad, one by one, while the successor, who is
now in office, will find no difficulty in rallying the obedient around
him, for, being Catholic, his parishioners are so many sheep, docile,
taken with externals, impressionable, and ready to follow the pastoral
croisier, provided it bears the ancient trademark, consists of the same
material, is of the same form, conferred from on high and sent from
Rome. The bishops having once been consecrated by the Pope, nobody save
a Gregory or some antiquarian canonist will dispute their jurisdiction.

The ecclesiastical ground is thus cleared through the interposition of
the Pope. The three groups of authorities thereon which contend with
each other for the possession of consciences[5129]--the refugee bishops
in England, the apostolic vicars, and the constitutional clergy--
disappear, and now the cleared ground can be built on. "The Catholic
religion being declared[5130] that of the majority of the French people,
its services must now be regulated. The First Consul nominates fifty
bishops whom the Pope consecrates. These appoint the curés, and the
state pays their salaries. The latter may be sworn, while the priests
who do not submit are sent out of the country. Those who preach against
the government are handed over to their superiors for punishment. The
Pope confirms the sale of clerical possessions; he consecrates the
Republic." The faithful no longer regard it askance. They feel that
they are not only tolerated, but protected by it, and they are
grateful.[5131] The people recover their churches, their curés, the
forms of worship to which they are almost instinctively accustomed, the
ceremonial which, to their imagination, belongs to every important act
of their lives, the solemn rites of marriage, baptism, burial, and
other sacramental offices.--Henceforth mass is said every Sunday in each
village, and the peasants enjoy their processions on Corpus-Christi
day, when their crops are blessed. A great public want is satisfied.
Discontent subsides, ill-will dies out, the government has fewer
enemies; its enemies, again, lose their best weapon, and, at the same
time, it acquires an admirable one, the right of appointing bishops and
of sanctioning the curés. By virtue of the Concordat and by order of the
Pope, not only, in 1801, do all former spiritual authorities cease
to exist, but again, after 1801, all new titularies, with the Pope's
assent, chosen, accepted, managed, disciplined,[5132] and paid by
the First Consul, are, in fact, his creatures, and become his
functionaries.




IV. The Pope, Napoleon's employee.

     Other services expected of the Pope.--Coronation of Napoleon
     at Notre-Dame.--Napoleonic theory of the Empire and the Holy
     See.--The Pope a feudatory and subject of the Emperor.
     --The pope installed as a functionary at Paris, and
     arch-chancellor on spiritual matters.--Effect of this for Italy.

Over and above this positive and real service obtained from the
sovereign pontiff, he awaits others yet more important and undefined,
and principally his future coronation in Notre Dame. Already, during the
negotiations for the Concordat, La Fayette had observed to him with a
smile:[5133] "You want the holy oil dropped on your head"; to which he
made no contradictory answer. On the contrary, he replied, and probably
too with a smile: "We shall see! We shall see!" Thus does he think
ahead, and his ideas extend beyond that which a man belonging to the
ancient régime could imagine or divine, even to the reconstruction of
the empire of the west as this existed in the year 800. "I am not Louis
XIV.'s successor," he soon declares,[5134] "but of Charlemagne.... I am
Charlemagne, because, like Charlemagne, I unite the French crown to
that of the Lombards, and my empire borders on the Orient." In this
conception, which a remote history furnishes to his boundless ambition,
the terrible antiquitarian finds the gigantic and suitable framework,
the potent, specious terms, and all the verbal reasons he requires.
Under Napoleon, the successor of Charlemagne, the Pope can be only a
vassal: "Your Holiness is the sovereign of Rome, but I am its emperor,"
the legitimate suzerain. "Provided with "fiefs and counties" by this
suzerain, the Pope owes him political fealty and military aid; failing
in this, the endowment, which is conditional, lapses and his confiscated
estates return to the imperial domain to which they have never ceased to
belong.[5135] Through this reasoning and this threat, through the rudest
and most adroit moral and physical pressure, the most insidious and most
persevering, through spoliation, begun, continued and completed by the
abduction, captivity and sequestration of the Holy Father himself, he
undertakes the subjection of the spiritual power: not only must the
Pope be like any other individual in the empire,[5136] subject by his
residence to territorial laws, and hence to the government and the
gendarmerie, but again he must come within the administrative lines;
he will no longer enjoy the right of refusing canonical investiture to
bishops appointed by the emperor,[5137] "he will, on his coronation,
swear not to take any measures against the four propositions of the
Gallican Church,"[5138] he will become a grand functionary, a sort of
arch-chancellor like Cambacérès and Lebrun, the arch chancellor of the
Catholic cult.--Undoubtedly, he resists and is obstinate, but he is not
immortal, and if he does not yield, his successor will: it suffices to
choose one that is manageable, and to this end things work in the next
conclave.

"With my influence and our forces in Italy," Napoleon says
afterwards,[5139] "I did not despair, sooner or later, by one means
or another, of obtaining for myself the control of the Pope, and,
thenceforward, what an influence, what a lever on the opinion of the
rest of the world!"

"Had I returned victorious from Moscow, I intended to exalt the Pope
beyond measure, to surround him with pomp and deference. I would have
brought him to no longer regretting his temporality; I would have made
him an idol. He would have lived alongside of me. Paris would have
become the capital of Christendom, and I would have governed the
religious world the same as the political world.... I would have had
my religious as well as legislative sessions; my councils would have
represented Christianity; the Popes would have been merely their
presidents. I would have opened and closed these assemblies,
sanctioned and published their decrees, as was done by Constantine and
Charlemagne." In 1809, the restoration of the great Carlovingian and
Roman edifice had begun; its physical foundations were laid. By virtue
of a decree,[5140] "the expenses of the Sacred College and of the
Propaganda were declared imperial." The Pope, like the new dukes and
marshals, was endowed with a landed income on "property in different
parts of the empire, two millions of rural revenue free of all taxation.
"Necessarily" the Pope must have two palaces, one at Paris and the other
at Rome. He is already nearly fully installed in Paris, his person being
all that was lacking. On arriving from Fontainebleau, two hours off, he
would find everything belonging to his office; "the papers[5141] of the
missions and the archives of Rome were already there." "The Hôtel Dieu
was entirely given up to the departments of the court of Rome. The
district around Notre Dame and the Ile Saint-Louis was to be the
headquarters of Christendom!" Rome, the second center of Christendom,
and the second residence of the Pope, is declared[5142] "an imperial and
free city, the second city of the empire"; a prince of the empire, or
other grand dignitary, is to reside there and "hold the court of the
emperor." "After their coronation in the cathedral of Notre Dame at
Paris, the emperors" will go to Italy before the tenth year of their
reign, and be "crowned in the church of St. Peter at Rome." The heir to
the imperial throne "will bear the title and receive the honors of
the King of Rome." Observe the substantial features of this chimerical
construction. Napoleon, far more Italian than French, Italian by race,
instinct, imagination, and souvenirs, considers in his plan the future
of Italy, and, on casting up the final accounts of his reign, we
find that the net profit is for Italy and the net loss is for France.
"Napoleon wanted to create the Italian kingdom over again,[5143]
combining Piedmont, Tuscany, etc., in one united independent nation,
bounded by the Alps and the sea.... This was to be the immortal trophy
erected in his honor.... He awaited impatiently the birth of a second
son that he might take him to Rome, crown him King of Italy and proclaim
the independence of the great peninsula under the regency of Prince
Eugene." Since Theodoric and the Lombard kings, it is the Pope who,
in preserving his temporal sovereignty and spiritual omnipotence, has
maintained the sub-divisions of Italy; let this obstacle be removed and
Italy will once more become a nation. Napoleon prepares the way,
and constitutes it beforehand by restoring the Pope to his primitive
condition, by withdrawing from him his temporal sovereignty and limiting
his spiritual omnipotence, by reducing him to the position of managing
director of Catholic consciences and head minister of the principal cult
authorized in the empire.




V. State domination of all religion.

     Services which Napoleon desires or expects from the French
     clergy.--His Roman idea of civil power.--Development of this
     conception by the jurists.--Every religious association must
     be authorized.--Legal statutes which fix the doctrine and
     discipline of the four authorized Churches.--Legal
     organization of the Catholic Church.--Its doctrine and
     discipline to be that of the old Gallican Church.--New
     situation of the French Church and new rôle of civil power.
     --It sets aside its ancient obligations.--It retains and
     augments its regalian rights.--The Church of France before
     1789 and after 1802.--Increased preponderance and complete
     dominion of the civil power.

In carrying out this plan, he will use the French clergy in mastering
the Pope, as the Pope has been made use of in mastering the French
clergy. To this end, before completing the Concordat and decreeing the
Organic Articles, he orders for himself a small library, consisting of
books on ecclesiastical law. The Latin works of Bossuet are translated
for him, and he has drawn up an exposition of the Gallican parliamentary
doctrine. The first thing is to go down to the roots of the subject,
which he does with extraordinary facility, and then, recasting and
shaping all theories to suit himself, he arrives at an original,
individual conception, at once coherent, precise, and practical; one
which covers the Cæsar and which he applies alike to all churches,
Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, and even Jewish, to every religious
community now existing and in time to come. His master-idea is that
of the Roman legists and of ancient imperial jurisprudence; here, as
elsewhere, the modern Cæsar goes back beyond his Christian predecessors
to Constantine, and farther still, to Trajan and Augustus.[5144] So long
as belief remains silent and solitary, confined within the limits of
individual conscience, it is free, and the State has nothing to do with
it. But let it transgress these limits, address the public, bring people
together in crowds for a common purpose, manifest itself openly, it is
subject to control; forms of worship, ceremonies, preaching, instruction
and propaganda, the donations it calls forth, the assemblies it
convenes, the organization and maintenance of the bodies it engenders,
all the positive applications of the inward reverie, are temporal works.
In this sense, they form a province of the public domain, and come
within the competency of the government, of the administration and
of the courts. The State has a right to interdict, to tolerate, or
to authorize them, and always to give them proper direction. Sole and
universal proprietor of the outward realm in which single consciences
may communicate with each other, it intervenes, step by step, either to
trace or to bar the way; the road they follow passes over its ground and
belongs to it; its watch, accordingly, over their proceedings is, and
should be, daily; and it maintains this watch for its own advantage,
for the advantage of civil and political interests, in such a way that
concern for the other world may be serviceable and not prejudicial to
matters which belong to this one. In short, and as a summary, the First
Consul says, in a private conversation:

"The people want a religion, and this religion should be in the hands of
the government!"[5145]

On this theme, his jurists, old parliamentarians or conventionalists,
his ministers and counselors, Gallicans or Jacobins, his spokesmen in
the legislative assembly or the tribunate, all imbued with Roman law
or with the Contrat Social are capital megaphones for proclaiming the
omnipotence of the State in polished sentences. "The unity of public
power and its universality," says Portalis,[5146] "are a
necessary consequence of its independence." "Public power must be
self-sufficient; it is nothing if not all..." Public power cannot
tolerate rivals; it cannot allow other powers to establish themselves
alongside of it without its consent, perhaps to sap and weaken it. "The
authority of a State might become precarious if men on its territory
exercise great influence over minds and consciences, unless these men
belong to it, at least in some relation." It is careless "if it remains
unfamiliar or indifferent to the form and the constitution of the
government which proposes to govern souls," if it admits that the limits
within which the faith and obedience of believers "can be made or
altered without its support, if it has not, in its legally recognized
and avowed superiors, guarantees of the fidelity of inferiors." Such was
the rule in France for the Catholic cult previous to 1789, and such is
to be the rule, after 1801, for all authorized cults. If the State
authorizes them, it is "to direct such important institutions with a
view to the greatest public utility." Solely because it is favorable to
"their doctrine and their discipline" it means to maintain these intact
and prevent "their ministers from corrupting the doctrine entrusted to
their teaching, or from arbitrarily throwing off the yoke of discipline,
to the great prejudice of individuals and the State."[5147] Hence, in
the legal statute by which a Church is incorporated and realizes what
she is, it states in precise terms what it exacts or permits her to be;
henceforward she shall be this or that and so remain; her dogmas and her
canons, her hierarchy and her internal regime, her territorial
subdivisions and circumscriptions, her regular or casual sources of
income, her teachings and her liturgy are definite things and fixed
limitations. No ecclesiastical assembly, Protestant, Catholic, or
Israelite, shall formulate or publish any doctrinal or disciplinary
decision without the government's approbation.[5148] No ecclesiastical
assembly, Protestant, Catholic, or Israelite, shall be held without the
approval of the government. All sacerdotal authorities, bishops and
curés, pastors and ministers of both Protestant confessions,
consistorial inspectors and presidents of the Augsbourg Confession,
notables of each Israelite circumscription, members of each Israelite
consistory, members of the central Israelite consistory, rabbis and
grand-rabbis, shall be appointed or accepted by the government and paid
by it through an executory" decision of its prefects. All the professors
of Protestant or Catholic seminaries shall be appointed and paid by the
government. Whatever the seminary, whether Protestant or Catholic, its
establishment, its regulations, its internal management, the object and
spirit of its studies, shall be submitted to the approval of the
government. In each cult, a distinct, formulated, official doctrine
shall govern the teaching, preaching, and public or special instruction
of every kind; this, for the Israelite cult, is" the doctrine expressed
by the decisions of the grand Sanhedrin";[5149] for the two Protestant
cults, the doctrine of the Confession of Augsbourg, taught in the two
seminaries of the East, and the doctrine of the Reformed Church taught
in the Genevan seminary;[5150] for the Catholic cult, the maxims of the
Gallican Church, the declaration, in 1682, of the assembly of the
clergy[5151] and the four famous propositions depriving the Pope of any
authority over sovereigns in temporal matters, subordinating the Pope to
ecumenical councils in ecclesiastical and spiritual concerns, and which,
in the government of the French Church, limit the authority of the Pope
to ancient usages or canons inherited by that Church and accepted by the
State.

In this way, the ascendancy of the State, in ecclesiastical matters,
increases beyond all measure and remains without any counterpoise.
Instead of one Church, it maintains four, while the principal one, the
Catholic, comprising 33 million followers, and more dependent than under
the old monarchy, loses the privileges which once limited or compensated
it for its subjection.--Formerly the prince was its temporal head, on
condition that he should be its exterior arm, that it should have the
monopoly of education and the censorship of books, that he should use
his strong arm against heretics, schismatics and free-thinkers. Of all
these obligations which kings accepted, the new sovereign frees himself,
and yet, with the Holy See, he holds on to the same prerogatives and,
with the Church, the same rights as his predecessors. He is just as
minutely dictatorial as formerly with regard to the details of
worship. Sometimes he fixes the fees and perquisites of the priests
for administering the sacraments: "This charge is a purely civil and
temporal operation, since it resolves itself into a levy of so many
pence on the citizen. Bishops and priests should not be allowed to
decide here.[5152] The government alone must remain the arbiter
between the priest who receives and the person who pays." Sometimes,
he intervenes in the publication of plenary indulgence: "It is
essential[5153] that indulgences should not be awarded for causes which
might be contrary to public order or to the welfare of the country; the
political magistrate is equally interested in knowing what the authority
is that grants indulgences; if its title to act is legal, to what
persons indulgences are granted, what persons are entrusted with their
distribution, and what persons are to fix the term and duration of
extraordinary prayers."--Thus bound and held by the State, the Church is
simply one of its appendices, for its own free roots by which, in this
close embrace, it still vegetates and keeps erect have all been cut off
short; torn from the soil and grafted on the State, they derive their
sap and their roots from the civil powers. Before 1789, the clergy
formed a distinct order in temporal society and, above all others, a
body possessing property and exempt from taxes, a tax-payer apart which,
represented in periodical assemblies, negotiated every five years
with the King himself, granted him subsidies and, in exchange for this
"disinterested gift," secured for itself concessions or confirmations of
immunities, prerogatives and favors. Today, it is merely a collection
of ordinary individuals and subjects, even less than that--an
administrative staff similar to that of the university, of the
magistrature, of the treasury, and of the woods and forests, even more
closely watched and bridled, with more detailed precautions and stricter
interdictions. Before 1789, the curés and other second-class officials
were, for the most part, selected and installed without the prince's
intervention, sometimes by the bishop of the diocese or a neighboring
abbé, sometimes by independent collators, by the titular himself,[5154]
by a lay patron or a chapter, by a commune, by an indultaire, by the
pope, while the salary of each titular, large or small, was his private
property, the annual product of a piece of land or of some indebtedness
attached to his office and which he administered. Nowadays, every
incumbent, from the cardinal-archbishop down to a canon, cantonal curé,
and director or teacher in a seminary, is appointed or accepted by the
civil power to which he swears fidelity. His salary, set down in the
budget, is simply that of a public employee, so many francs and centimes
for which he comes monthly to the office of the treasury paymaster,
along with others of his colleagues who are employed by the State in
non-Catholic cults, together with others, his quasi-colleagues,
whom the State employs in the university, in the magistrature, in the
gendarmerie, and in the police.[5155] Such, in all branches of social
life, is the universal and final effect of the Revolution. In the
Church, as elsewhere, it has extended the interference and preponderance
of the State, not inadvertently but intentionally, not accidentally
but on principle.[5156] "The Constituent" (Assembly), says Siméon,
"had rightly recognized that, religion being one of the oldest and most
powerful means of government, it was necessary to bring it more than
it had been under the control of the government." Hence, the civil
constitution of the clergy; "its only mistake was not to reconcile
itself with the Pope." At present, thanks to the agreement between Pope
and government (Napoleon, First Consul), the new régime completes
the work of the ancient régime and, in the Church as elsewhere, the
domination of the centralizing State is complete.




VI. Napoleon Executes the Concordat.

     Reasons for suppressing the regular clergy.--Authorized
     religious associations.--The authorization revocable.

These are the grand lines of the new ecclesiastical establishment, and
the general connections by which the Catholic Church, like an apartment
in a building, finds itself included in and incorporated with the State.
It need not disconnect itself under the pretext of making itself more
complete; there it is, built and finished; it cannot add to or go beyond
this; no collateral and supplementary constructions are requisite which,
through their independence, would derange the architectural whole, no
monastic congregations, no body of regular clergy; the secular clergy
suffices. "Never[5157] has it been contested that the public power had
the right to dissolve arbitrary institutions which do not insist on the
essence of religion and which are judged suspicious or troublesome to
the State." As a principle, all religious communities should be judged
in this way; for they are spontaneous bodies; they form their own
organization, and without the aid of the State, through the free will
of their members; they live apart, according to the proper and peculiar
statute which they adopt, outside of lay society, alongside of the
established Church, under distinct chiefs chosen by themselves,
sometimes under foreign ones, all more or less independent, all, through
interest and by instinct, gathered around the Holy See, which, against
diocesan authority and episcopal jurisdiction, serves them as protector.
Formerly, the monks[5158] formed the Pope's militia; they recognized
no other sovereign, and thus were they more to be feared by governments
than the secular clergy. The latter, without them, "would never have
caused embarrassment;" henceforth there will be no other body.[5159] "I
want bishops, curés, vicars, and that's all! Religious communities have
been allowed to re-establish themselves against my instructions;--I am
informed that, at Beauvais, the Jesuits have formed establishments under
the name of the Fathers of Faith. It should not be allowed"--and he
prohibits it by decree.[5160] He dissolves "all associations formed
under the pretext of religion and unauthorized." He decides that, in
future, "no aggregation or association of men or of women shall be
formed under pretext of religion unless formally authorized;" he enjoins
the prosecuting attorneys of his courts "to prosecute even by extra
proceedings all persons of both sexes who directly or indirectly
violate this decree." He reserves to himself, however, the faculty
of authorizing communities by which he can profit, and, in fact, he
authorizes several of these as instruments which society needs, or
which are useful to the State, especially nursing or teaching sisters
of charity,[5161] the brethren of Christian schools,[5162] and, first
in rank, the Lazarists and the Fathers of foreign missions.[5163] "These
monks," he says,[5164] will be of great service in Asia, in Africa, and
in America. I will send them to procure information on the state of the
country. Their robe protects them, while it is a cover to political
and commercial designs.... I will allow them a capital to start with
of 15,000 francs rental.... They cost little, are respected by savages,
and, having no official character, can not compromise the government."
Moreover, "religious zeal leads them to undertake work and to face
perils which are beyond the strength of a civil agent."--Of course, as
they are "secret diplomatic agents," the government must keep them
in hand and direct them. Consequently, "their superior must no longer
reside in Rome, but at Paris." The same precaution is taken with
reference to other congregations, which, in teaching or in charity,
become regular auxiliaries of the lay power. "The general-superior of
the Sisters of Charity will live in Paris[5165]; the entire body will
then be in the hands of the government." As to the brethren of the
Christian schools, Napoleon absorbs these in his university.[5166] "They
must be licensed by the grand-master,[5167] who will certify to their
internal regulations, accept their oaths, prescribe a special costume,
and superintend their schools." Observe the exigencies of the government
at this point, its measures for controlling the religious orders
authorized by it. Abbé Hanon,[5168] the common superior of the Sisters
of Saint-Vincent de Paul, having refused to place Madame Lætitia
(Napoleon's mother) at the head of the council of the order, is carried
off at night and shut up at Fenestrelles,[5169] while the Sisters,
who, following the instructions of their founder, refuse to recognize a
superior appointed by the civil power, are treated in the same manner as
formerly the nuns of Port-Royal.[5170]

"It is time to put an end to this scandal of the Sisters of Charity in
rebellion against their superiors. It is my intention to suppress all
the houses which, in twenty-four hours after the notice you give them,
do not return to subordination. You will replace the houses suppressed,
not by Sisters of the same order, but by those of another order of
charity. The Sisters at Paris will lose their influence, which will be a
good thing."

Whatever the communities may be, the authorization by which they
organize is merely a favor, and every favor granted may be withdrawn.

"I will have no more missions of any kind.[5171] I established
missionaries in Paris and gave them a house: I cancel it all. I am
content with religion at home; I do not care to spread it abroad... . I
make you responsible if (in a month from this) on the first of October
there are any missions or congregations still existing in France."--

Thus does the regular clergy live, under a revocable title, by
toleration, despotically, suspended by a thread which, perhaps to-
morrow, may be cut at the masters pleasure.




VII. System to which the regular clergy is subject.

     System to which the regular clergy is subject.--Restoration
     and application of Gallican doctrines.--Gallicanism and
     submission of the new ecclesiastical staff.--Measures taken
     to insure the obedience of the existing clergy and that of
     the clergy in the future.--Seminaries.--Small number of
     these allowed.--Conditions granted to them.--Proceedings
     against suspicious teachers and undisciplined pupils.

The secular clergy remains, better protected, it seems, and by a less
precarious statute, for this statute is an international and diplomatic
act, a solemn and bilateral treaty which binds the French government,
not only to itself but to another government, to an independent
sovereign and the recognized head of the whole Catholic
Church.--Consequently, it is of prime importance to rebuild and raise
higher the barriers which, in ancient France, separated the secular
clergy from the Pope, the customs and regulations which constituted
the Gallican Church a province apart in the Church universal, the
ecclesiastic franchises and servitudes which restricted the Pope's
jurisdiction in order that the jurisdiction of the king might be
extended. All these servitudes to the advantage of the lay sovereign,
and all these franchises to the prejudice of the ecclesiastic sovereign,
are maintained and increased by the new statute. By virtue of the
Concordat and by consent of the Pope, the First Consul acquires the
same rights and privileges in relation to the Holy See as the old
government,"[5172] that is to say the same exclusive right to nominate
future French cardinals and to have as many as before in the sacred
college, the same right to exclude in the sacred conclave, the same
faculty of being the unique dispenser in France of high ecclesiastical
places and the prerogative of appointing all the bishops and archbishops
on French territory. And better still, by virtue of the Organic Articles
and in spite of the Pope's remonstrances, he interposes, as with the
former kings, his authority, his Council of State and his tribunals
between the Holy See and the faithful. "No bull, brief, rescript,
decree... of the court of Rome, even when bearing only on individuals,
shall be received, published, printed or otherwise executed without
permission of the government. No person, bearing the title of apostolic
nuncio, legate, vicar or commissioner, ... shall, without the same
authorization, exercise on the French soil or elsewhere any function
in relation to the interests of the Gallican Church.... All cases of
complaint by ecclesiastical superiors and other persons shall be brought
before the Council of State."[5173] Every minister of a cult[5174] who
shall have carried on a correspondence with a foreign court on religious
matters or questions without having previously informed the Minister of
Worship and obtained his sanction shall, for this act alone, be subject
to a penalty of from one hundred to five hundred francs and imprisonment
during a term of from one month to two years. Every communication from
high to low and from low to high between the French Church and its Roman
head, cut off at will, intervention by a veto or by approval of all
acts of pontifical authority, to be the legal and recognized head of
the national clergy,[5175] to become for this clergy an assistant,
collateral, and lay Pope--such was the pretension of the old government,
and such, in effect, is the sense, the juridical bearing, of the
Gallican maxims.[5176] Napoleon pro-claims them anew, while the edict
of 1682, by which Louis XIV. applied them with precision, rigor and
minuteness, "is declared the general law of the empire."[5177]

There are no opponents to this doctrine, or this use of it, in France.
Napoleon counts on not encountering any, and especially among his
prelates. Gallican before 1789, the whole clergy were more or less so
through education and tradition, through interest and through pride;
now, the survivors of this clergy are those who provide the new
ecclesiastical staff, and, of the two distinct groups from which it
is recruited, neither is predisposed by its antecedents to become
ultramontane. Some among these, who have emigrated, partisans of the
ancient régime, find no difficulty in thus returning to old habits and
doctrines, the authoritative protectorate of the State over the Church,
the interference of the Emperor substituted for that of the King, and
Napoleon, in this as in other respects, the legitimate, or legitimated,
successor of the Bourbons. The others, who have sworn to the civil
constitution of the clergy, the schismatics, the impenitent and, in
spite of the Pope, reintegrated by the First Consul in the Church,[5178]
are ill-disposed towards the Pope, their principal adversary, and
well-disposed towards the First Consul, their unique patron. Hence,
"the heads[5179] of the Catholic clergy, that is to say, the bishops and
grand-vicars,... are attached to the government;" they are "enlightened"
people, and can be made to listen to reason.

"But we have three or four thousand curés or vicars, the progeny of
ignorance and dangerous through their fanaticism and their passions."

If these and their superiors show any undisciplined tendencies, the
curb must be tightly drawn. Fournier, a priest, having reflected on the
government from his pulpit in Saint-Roch, is arrested by the police,
put in Bicêtre as mad,[5180] and the First Consul replies to the Paris
clergy who claim his release "in a well-drawn-up petition,":

"I wanted[5181] to prove to you, when I put my cap on the wrong side
out, that priests must obey the civil power."

Now and then, a rude stroke of this sort sets an example and keeps the
intractable on the right path who would otherwise be tempted to leave
it. At Bayonne, concerning a clerical epistle in which an ill-sounding
phrase occurs, "the grand-vicar who drew it up is sent to Pignerol for
ten years, and I think that the bishop is exiled."[5182]

At Séez, when constitutional priests are in disfavor, the bishop is
compelled to resign on the instant, while Abbé Langlois, his principal
counsellor, taken by the gendarmes, led to Paris from police station
to police station, is shut up in La Force, in secret confinement, with
straw for a bed, during fourteen days, then imprisoned in Vincennes for
nine months, so that, finally, seized with paralysis, he is transferred
to an insane retreat, where he remains a prisoner up to the end of the
reign.

Let us provide for the future as well as for the present, and, beyond
the present clergy, let us train the future clergy. The seminaries will
answer this purpose: "Public ones must be organized[5183] so that
there may be no clandestine seminaries, such as formerly existed in the
departments of Calvados, Morbihan and many others;... the formation of
young priests must not be left to ignorance and fanaticism."--"Catholic
schools need the surveillance of the government."--There is to be one of
these in each metropolitan district, and "this special school must be
in the hands of the authorities."--"The directors and teachers shall
be appointed by the First Consul"; men will be placed there who are
"cultivated, devoted to the government and friendly to toleration; they
will not confine themselves to teaching theology, but will add to this
a sort of philosophy and correct worldliness."--A future curé, a priest
who controls laymen and belongs to his century, must not be a monk
belonging to the other world, but a man of this world, able to adapt
himself to it, do his duty in it with propriety and discretion, accept
the legal establishment of which he is a part, not damn his Protestant
neighbors, Jews or freethinkers too openly, be a useful member of
temporal society and a loyal subject of the civil power; let him be
a Catholic and pious, but within just limits; he shall not be an
ultramontanist or a bigot.--Precautions are taken to this effect. No
seminarist may become subdeacon without the consent of the government,
and the list of ordinations each year, sent to him at Paris by the
bishop, is returned, cut down to the strictly necessary.[5184] From the
very beginning, and in express terms,[5185] Napoleon has reserved all
curacies and vicarages for "ecclesiastics pensioned by virtue of the
laws of the Constituent Assembly." Not only, through this confusion
between pension and salary, does he lighten a pecuniary burden, but
he greatly prefers old priests to young ones; many of them have been
constitutionnels, and all are imbued with Gallicanism; it is he who has
brought them back from exile or saved them from oppression, and they
are grateful for it; having suffered long and patiently, they are weary,
they must have grown wiser, and they will be manageable. Moreover,
he has precise information about each one; their past conduct is a
guarantee of their future conduct; he never chooses one of them with his
eyes shut. On the contrary, the candidates for ordination are strangers,
the government which accepts them knows nothing about them except that,
at the age when the fever of growth or of the imagination takes a fixed
form, they have been subject for five years to a theological education
and to a cloistral life. The chances are that, with them, the
feverishness of youth will end in the heat of conviction and in the
prejudices of inexperience; in this event, the government which exempts
them from the conscription to admit them in the Church exchanges a good
military recruit for a bad ecclesiastical recruit; in place of a servant
it creates an opponent. Hence, during the fifteen years of his reign,
Napoleon authorizes only six thousand new ordinations,[5186] in all
four hundred per annum, one hundred for each diocese or six or seven per
annum. Meanwhile, by his university decrees, he lets lay daylight into
clerical enclosures[5187] and shuts the door of all ecclesiastical
dignities to suspicious priests.[5188] For more security, in every
diocese in which "the principles of the bishop" do not give him full
satisfaction, he prohibits all ordination, nomination, promotion, or
favor whatever. "I have stricken off[5189] all demands relating to the
bishoprics of Saint-Brieuc, Bordeaux, Ghent, Tournay, Troyes and the
Maritime Alps.... My intention is that you do not, for these dioceses,
propose to me any exemption of service for conscripts, no nominations
for scholarships, for curacies, or for canonries. You will send in a
report on the dioceses which it would be well to strike with this ban."
Towards the end, the Gallicism of Bossuet no longer suffices for him; he
allowed it to be taught at Saint-Sulpice, and M. Emery, director of this
institution, was the priest in France whom he esteemed the most and
most willingly consulted; but a pupil's imprudent letter had been just
intercepted, and, accordingly, the spirit of that association is a
bad one. An order of expulsion of the director is issued and the
installation in his place of a new one "day after to-morrow," as well as
new administrators of whom none shall be Sulpician.[5190] "Take measures
to have this congregation dissolved. I will have no Sulpicians in the
seminary of Paris.[5191] Let me know the seminaries that are served
by Sulpicians in order that they too may be sent away from these
seminaries."[5192]--And let the seminarists who have been badly taught
by their masters take heed not to practice in their own behalf the
false doctrines which the State proscribes; especially, let them
never undertake, as they do in Belgium, to disobey the civil power in
deference to the Pope and their bishop. At Tournay,[5193] all those over
eighteen years of age are sent to Magdebourg; at Ghent, the very young
or those not fit for military service are put in Saint-Pelagie; the
rest, two hundred and thirty-six in number, including forty deacons or
sub-deacons, incorporated in an artillery brigade, set out for Wesel, a
country of marshes and fevers, where fifty of them soon die of epidemics
and contagion.--There is ever the same terminal procedure; to Abbé
d'Astros, suspected of having received and kept a letter of the Pope,
Napoleon, with threats, gave him this ecclesiastical watchword:

"I have heard that the liberties of the Gallican Church are being
taught: but for all that, I wear the sword, so watch out!"

So behind all his institutions one discovers the military sanction, the
arbitrary punishment, physical constraint, the sword ready to strike;
involuntarily, the eyes anticipates the flash of the blade, and the
flesh is feels in advance the rigid incision of the steel.




VIII. Administrative Control.

     Changes in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.--Motives for
     subordinating the lesser clergy.--The displacement of
     assistant priests.--Increase of episcopal authority.--Hold
     of Napoleon over the bishops.

Thus is a conquered country treated. He is, in relation to the Church,
as in a conquered country.[5194] Like Westphalia or Holland, she is a
naturally independent country which he has annexed by treaty, which he
has been able to include but not absorb in his empire, and which remains
invincibly distinct. The temporal sovereign, in a spiritual society,
especially such a sovereign as he is,--nominally Catholic, scarcely
Christian, at best a deist and from time to time as it suits,--will
never be other than an external suzerain and a foreign prince. To become
and remain master in such an annexed country it is always advisable
to exhibit the sword. Nevertheless, it would not be wise to strike
incessantly; the blade, used too often, would wear out; it is better to
utilize the constitution of the annex, rule over it indirectly, not by
an administrative bureau (régie), but by a protectorate, in which all
indigenous authorities can be employed and be made responsible for the
necessary rigors. Now, by virtue of the indigenous constitution, the
governors of the Catholic annex--all designated beforehand by their
suitable and indelible character, all tonsured, robed in black,
celibates and speaking Latin--form two orders, unequal in dignity and
in number; one inferior, comprising myriads of curés and vicars, and the
other superior, comprising some dozens of prelates.

Let us turn this ready-made hierarchy to account; and, the better to use
it, let us tighten the strings. In agreement with the upper clergy and
the Pope, we will increase the subjection of the lower clergy; we will
govern the inferiors through the superiors; whoever has the head has
the body; it is much easier to handle sixty bishops and archbishops
than forty thousand vicars and curés; in this particular we need
not undertake to restore primitive discipline; we must not be either
antiquaries or Gallicans. Let us be careful not to give back to the
second-class clergy the independence and stability they enjoyed before
1789, the canonical guarantees which protected them against episcopal
despotism, the institution of competition, the rights conferred by
theological grades, the bestowal of the best places on the wisest, the
appeal to the diocesan court in case of disgrace, the opposing plea
before the officialité, the permanent tie by which the titular curé,
once planted in his parish, took root there for life, and believed
himself bound to his local community like Jesus Christ to the universal
Church, indissolubly, through a sort of mystic marriage. "The number of
curés," says Napoleon,[5195] "must be reduced as much as possible, and
the number of assistants (desservans) multiplied who can be changed at
will," not only transferable to another parish, but revocable from day
to day, without formalities or delay, without appeal or pleading in any
court whatsoever. Henceforth, the sole irremovable curés are the four
thousand; the rest, under the name of succursalists, numbering
thirty thousand,[5196] are ecclesiastical clerks, surrendered to the
discretionary power of the bishop. The bishop alone appoints, places and
displaces all belonging to his diocese at his pleasure, and with a nod,
he transfers the most competent from the best to the worst post, from
the large borough or small town, where he was born and has lived at ease
near his family, to some wretched parish in this or that village buried
in the woods or lost on a mountain, without income or presbytery; and
still better, he cuts down his wages, he withdraws the State salary of
five hundred francs, he turns him out of the lodgings allowed him by
the commune, on foot on the highway, with no viaticum, even temporary,
excluded from ecclesiastical ministries, without respect, demeaned, a
vagabond in the great lay world whose ways are unknown to him and whose
careers are closed to him. Henceforth, and forever, bread is taken out
of his mouth; if he has it to-day, it is lacking on the morrow. Now,
every three months, the list of succursalists at five hundred francs
drawn up by the bishop, must be countersigned by the prefect. In his
upper cabinet, near the mantelpiece on which the visiting-cards of
every considerable personage in the department are displayed, facing the
emperor's bust, the two delegates of the emperor, his two responsible
and judicial managers, the two superintended overseers of the
conscription, confer together on the ecclesiastical staff of the
department. In this as in other matters, they are and feel themselves
kept in check from on high, curbed and forced, willingly or not, to
come to some agreement. Compulsory collaborators by institution, each
an auxiliary of the other in the maintenance of public order, they
read over article by article the list of appointments of their common
subordinates; should any name have bad notes, should any succursalist
be marked as noisy, undesirable, or suspect, should there be any
unfavorable report by the mayor, gendarmerie or upper police, the
prefect, about to sign, lays down his pen, quotes his instructions and
demands of the bishop against the delinquent some repressive measure,
either destitution, suspension or displacement, removal to an inferior
parish, or, at least, a comminatory reprimand, while the bishop, whom
the prefect may denounce to the minister, does not refuse to the prefect
this act of complacency.

Some months after the publication of the Concordat,[5197] Mademoiselle
Chameron, an opera-dancer, dies, and her friends bear her remains to the
church of Saint-Roch for internment. They are refused admittance, and
the curé, very rigid, "in a fit of ill-humor," orders the doors of the
church to be shut; a crowd gathers around, shouts and launches threats
at the curé; an actor makes a speech to appease the tumult, and finally
the coffin is borne off to the church of Les Filles-Saint-Thomas, where
the assistant priest, "familiar with the moral of the gospel," performs
the funeral service. Incidents of this kind disturb the tranquility
of the streets and denote a relaxation of administrative discipline.
Consequently the government, doctor in theology and canon law,
intervenes and calls the ecclesiastical superior to account. The first
Consul, in an article in the Moniteur, haughtily gives the clergy their
instructions and explains the course that will be pursued against them
by his prelates. "The Archbishop of Paris orders the curé of Saint-Roch
into retirement for three months, in order that he may bear in mind the
injunction of Jesus Christ to pray for one's enemies, and, made sensible
of his duties by meditation, may become aware that these superstitious
customs..., which degrade religion by their absurdities, have been done
away with by the Concordat and the law of Germinal 18." From now on
all priests and curés are prudent, circumspect, obedient, and
reserved,[5198] because their spiritual superiors are so as well,
and could not be otherwise. Each prelate, posted in his diocese, is
maintained there in isolation; a watch is kept on his correspondence; he
may communicate with the Pope only through the Minister of Worship;
he has no right to act in concert with his colleagues; all the general
assemblies of the clergy, all metropolitan councils, all annual synods
are suppressed. The Church of France has ceased to exist as one corps,
while its members, carefully detached from each other and from their
Roman head, are no longer united, but juxtaposed. Confined to a
circumscription, like the prefect, the bishop himself is simply an
ecclesiastical prefect, a little less uncertain of his tenure of office;
undoubtedly, his removal will not be effected by order, but he can be
forced to send in his resignation. Thus, in his case, as well as for the
prefect, his first care will be not to excite displeasure, and the next
one, to please. To stand well at court, with the minister and with the
sovereign, is a positive command, not only on personal grounds, but for
the sake of Catholic interests. To obtain scholarships for the pupils of
his seminary,[5199] to appoint the teachers and the director that
suits him, to insure the acceptance of his canons, cantonal curés, and
candidates for the priesthood, to exempt his sub-deacons from military
service, to establish and to defray the expenses of the chapels of his
diocese, to provide parishes with the indispensable priest, with regular
services and the sacraments, requires favors, which favors cannot be
enjoyed without an affectation of obedience and zeal and, more important
still, devotion. Moreover, he is only a human being. If Napoleon has
selected him, it is on account of his intelligence, knowing what he is
about, open to human motives, not too rigid and of too easy conscience;
in the eyes of the master, the first quality is an obedient personality
attached to his system and person.[51100] Moreover, with his candidates,
he has always taken into consideration the hold they give him through
their weaknesses, vanity and needs, their ostentatious ways and
expenditure, their love of money, titles and precedence, their ambition,
desire for promotion, enjoyment of credit, and right of obtaining places
for protégés and relations. He avails himself of all these advantages
and finds that they answer his purpose. With the exception of three or
four saints, like Monsignor d'Aviau[51101] or Monsignor Dessolles, who
he has inadvertently put into the episcopate, the bishops are content to
be barons, and the archbishops counts. They are glad to rank higher and
higher in the Legion of Honor; they loudly assert, in praise of the new
order of things, the honors and dignities it confers on these or those
prelates who have become members of the legislative corps or been made
senators.[51102] Many of them receive secret pay for secret services,
pecuniary incentives in the shape of this or that amount in ready money.
In sum, Napoleon has judged accurately; with hesitation and remorse,
nearly the whole of his episcopal staff, Italian and French, 66 prelates
out of 80, are open to "temporal influences". They yield to seductions
and threats; they accept or submit, even in spiritual matters, to his
positive ascendancy.[51103]

Moreover, among these dignitaries, nearly all of whom are blameless, or,
at least, who behave well and are generally honorable, Napoleon[51104]
finds a few whose servility is perfect, unscrupulous individuals ready
for anything that an absolute prince could desire, like Bishops Bernier
and De Pancemont, one accepting a reward of 30,000 francs and the other
the sum of 50,000 francs[51105] for the vile part they have played in
the negotiations for the Concordat; a miserly, brutal cynic like Maury,
archbishop of Paris, or an intriguing, mercenary skeptic like De Pradt,
archbishop of Malines; or an old imbecile, falling on his knees before
the civil power, like Rousseau, bishop of Orleans, who writes a pastoral
letter declaring that the Pope is as free in his Savona prison as on his
throne at Rome. After 1806,[51106] Napoleon, that he may control men
of greater suppleness, prefers to take his prelates from old noble
families--the frequenters of Versailles, who regard the episcopate as
a gift bestowed by the prince and not by the Pope, a lay favor reserved
for younger sons, a present made by the sovereign to those around his
person, on the understood condition that the partisan courtier who is
promoted shall remain a courtier of the master. Henceforth nearly
all his episcopal recruits are derived from "members of the old noble
stock." "Only these," says Napoleon, "know how to serve well."




IX. The Imperial Catechism

     Political use of the episcopacy.--The imperial catechism.
     --Pastoral letters.

From the first year the effect arrived at is better than could be
expected. "Look at the clergy,"[51107] said the First Consul to
Roederer; "every day shows that in spite of themselves their devotion to
the government is increasing, and much beyond their anticipation. Have
you seen the pastoral declaration of Boisgelin, archbishop of Tours?...
He says that the actual government is the legitimate government, that
God disposes of thrones and kings as he pleases and that he adopts the
chiefs whom the people prefer. Your yourself could not have said that
better." But notwithstanding that this is said in the pastoral letter,
it is again said in the catechism. No ecclesiastical publication is more
important: all Catholic children are to learn this by heart, for the
phrases they recite will be firmly fixed in their memories. Bossuet's
catechism is good enough, but it may be improved,--there is nothing
that time, reflection, emulation, and administrative zeal cannot render
perfect! Bossuet teaches children "to respect all superiors, pastors,
kings, magistrates, and the rest." "But these generalities," says
Portalis,[51108] "no longer suffice. They do not give the proper
tendency to the subject's submission. The object is to center the
popular conscience on the person of Your Majesty." Accordingly, let us
be precise, make appointments and secure support.

The imperial catechism, a great deal more explicit than the royal
catechism, adds significant development to the old one, along with extra
motives:

"We specially owe to our Emperor, Napoleon the First, love, respect,
obedience, fidelity, military service, and tributes ordained for the
preservation of the empire and his throne... For God has raised him up
for us in times of peril that he might restore public worship and the
holy religion of our fathers and be its protector."

Every boy and girl in each parish recite this to the vicar or curé after
vespers in their tiny voices as a commandment of God and of the Church,
as a supplementary article of the creed. Meanwhile the officiating
priest in the pulpit gravely comments on this article, already clear
enough, at every morning or evening service;[51109] by order, he
preaches in behalf of the conscription and declares that it is a sin to
try to escape from it, to be refractory; by order, again, he reads the
army bulletins giving accounts of the latest victories; always by order,
he reads the last pastoral letter of his bishop, a document authorized,
inspired and corrected by the police. Not only are the bishops obliged
to submit their pastoral letters and public instructions to the
censorship; not only by way of precaution, are they forbidden to print
anything except on the prefecture presses, but again, for still greater
security, the bureau of public worship is constantly advising them what
they must say. First and foremost, they must laud the Emperor. But in
what terms, and with what epithets, without indiscretion or mistake, in
order not to meddle with politics, not to appear as a party managed from
above, not to pass for megaphones, is not explained, and is therefore
a difficult matter. "You must praise the Emperor more in your pastoral
letters," said Réal, prefect of police, to a new bishop. "Tell me in
what measure." "I do not know," was the reply. Since the measure cannot
be prescribed, it must be ample enough. There is no difficulty as
regards other articles.--On every occasion the Paris offices take
care to furnish each bishop with a ready-made draft of his forthcoming
pastoral letter--the canvas on which the customary flowers of
ecclesiastical amplification are to be embroidered. It differs according
to time and place. In La Vendée and in the west, the prelates are to
stigmatize "the odious machinations of perfidious Albion," and explain
to the faithful the persecutions to which the English subject the Irish
Catholics. When Russia is the enemy, the pastoral letter must dwell
on her being schismatic; also on the Russian misunderstanding of the
supremacy of the Pope. Inasmuch as bishops are functionaries of
the empire, their utterances and their acts belong to the Emperor.
Consequently he makes use of them against all enemies, against each
rival, rebel or adversary, against the Bourbons, against the English and
the Russians, and, finally, against the Pope.




X. The Council of 1811.--The Concordat of 1813.

Similar to the Russian expedition, this is the great and last throw
of the dice, the decisive and most important of his ecclesiastical
undertakings, as the other is in political and military affairs. Just
as, under his leadership, he forces by constraint and, under his lead, a
coalition of the political and military powers of his Europe against
the Czar,--Austria, Prussia, the Confederation of the Rhine, Holland,
Switzerland, the kingdom of Italy, Naples, and even Spain,--so does he
by constraint and under his lead coalesce all the spiritual authorities
of his empire against the Pope. He summons a council, consisting of
eighty-four bishops that are available in Italy and in France. He takes
it upon himself to drill them, and he makes them march. To state what
influences he uses would require a volume[51110]--theological and
canonical arguments, appeals to Gallican souvenirs and Jansenist
rancors, eloquence and sophisms, preparatory maneuvers, secret
intrigues, public acting, private solicitations, steady intimidation,
successful pressures, thirteen cardinals exiled and deprived of their
insignia, two other cardinals confined in Vincennes, nineteen Italian
bishops conveyed to France under escort, without bread or clothes. Fifty
priests of Parma, fifty of Plaisance, besides one hundred other Italian
priests, sent away or confined in Corsica. All congregations
of men in France--Saint-Lazare, Mission, Christian Doctrine,
Saint-Sulpice--dissolved and suppressed. Three bishops of the
council seized in bed at daylight, put into a cell and kept in close
confinement, forced to resign and to promise in writing not to carry on
correspondence with their dioceses; arrest of their adherents in their
dioceses; the Ghent seminarists turned into soldiers, and, with knapsack
on their backs, leaving for the army; professors at Ghent, the canons of
Tournay, and other Belgian priests shut up in the citadels of Bouillon,
Ham and Pierre-Chatel.[51111] Near the end, the council suddenly
dissolved because scruples arise, because it does not yield at once to
the pressure brought to bear on it, because its mass constitutes its
firmness, because men standing close together, side by side, stand all
the longer. "Our wine in the cask is not good," said Cardinal Maury;
"you will find that it will be better in bottles." Accordingly, to make
it ready for bottling, it must be filtered and clarified, so as to get
rid of the bad elements which disturb it and cause fermentation. Many
Opponents are in prison, many have retired from their dioceses, while
the rest are brought to Paris and cunningly worked upon, each member
in turn, apart and confined, téte-à-téte with the Minister of Worship,
until all, one by one, are brought to sign the formula of adhesion.
On the strength of this, the council, purged and prepared, is summoned
afresh to give its vote sitting or standing, in one unique session;
through a remnant of virtue it inserts a suspensive clause in the
decree, apparently a reservation,[51112] but the decree is passed as
ordered. Like the foreign regiment in an army corps which, enlisted,
forced into line, and goaded on with a sharp sword, serves, in spite of
itself, against its legitimate prince, unwilling to march forward to
the attack, meaning at the last moment to fire in the air, so does it
finally march and fire its volley notwithstanding.

Napoleon, on the other hand, treats the Pope in the same fashion, and
with like skill and brutality. As with the Russian campaign, he has
prepared himself for it long beforehand. At the outset there is an
alliance, and he concedes great advantages to the Pope as to the Czar,
which will remain to them after his fall; but these concessions are
made only with a mental reservation, with the instinctive feeling
and predetermination to profit by the alliance, even to making an
independent sovereign whom he recognizes as his equal, his subordinate
and a tool; hence, quarrels and war. This time also, in the expedition
against the Pope, his strategy is admirable,--the entire ecclesiastical
territory studied beforehand, the objective point selected,[51113] all
disposable forces employed and directed by fixed marches to where the
victory is to be decisive, the conquest extended and the seat of the
final dominion established; the successive and simultaneous use of every
kind of means--cunning, violence, seduction and terror. Calculation of
the weariness, anxiety and despair of the adversary; at first menaces
and constant disputes, and then flashes of lightning and multiplied
claps of thunder, every species of brutality that force can command;
the States of the Church invaded in times of peace, Rome surprised and
occupied by soldiers, the Pope besieged in the Quirinal, in a year the
Quirinal taken by a nocturnal assault, the Pope seized and carried off
by post to Savona and there confined as a prisoner of state almost in
cellular seclusion,[51114] subject to the entreaties and manoeuvres of
an adroit prefect who works upon him, of the physician who is a paid
spy, of the servile bishops who are sent thither, alone with his
con-science, contending with inquisitors relieving each other, subject
to moral tortures as subtile and as keen as old-time physical tortures,
to tortures so steady and persistent that he sinks, loses his head, "no
longer sleeps and scarcely speaks," falling into a senile condition and
even more than senile condition, "a state of mental alienation."[51115]
Then, on issuing from this, the poor old man is again beset; finally,
after waiting patiently for three years, he is once more brusquely
conducted at night, secretly and incognito, over the entire road, with
no repose or pity though ill, except stopping once in a snow-storm at
the hospice on Mount Cenis, where he comes near dying; put back after
twenty-four hours in his carriage, bent double by suffering and in
constant pain; jolting over the pavement of the grand highway until
almost dead and landed at Fontainebleau, where Napoleon wishes to have
him ready at hand to work upon. "Indeed," he himself says, "he is
a lamb, an excellent, worthy man whom I esteem and am very fond
of."[51116]

An improvised tête-a-tête may probably prove effective with this gentle,
candid and tender spirit. Pius VII., who had never known ill-will,
might be won by kindly treatment, by an air of filial respect, by
caresses; he may feel the personal ascendency of Napoleon, the
prestige of his presence and conversation, the invasion of his genius.
Inexhaustible in arguments, matchless in the adaptation of ideas to
circumstances, the most amiable and most imperious of interlocutors,
stentorian and mild, tragic and comic by turns, the most eloquent of
sophists and the most irresistible of fascinators, as soon as he meets
a man face to face, he wins him, conquers him, and obtains the
mastery.[51117] In effect, after seeing the Pope for six days, Napoleon
obtains by persuasion what he could not obtain afar by constraint. Pius
VII. signs the new Concordat in good faith, himself unaware that, on
regaining his freedom and surrounded by his cardinals, who inform him
on the political situation, he will emerge from his bewilderment, be
attacked by his conscience, and, through his office, publicly accuse
himself, humbly repent, and in two months withdraw his signature.

Such, after 1812 and 1813, is the duration of Napoleon's triumphs
and the ephemeral result of his greatest military and ecclesiastical
achievements--Moskow, Lutzen, Bautzen and Dresden, the Council of 1811
and the Concordat of 1813. Whatever the vastness of his genius may be,
however strong his will, however successful his attacks, his success
against nations and churches never is, and never can be, other than
temporary. Great historical and moral forces elude his grasp. In vain
does he strike, for their downfall gives them new life, and they rise
beneath the blow. With Catholic institutions,[51118] as with other
powers, not only do his efforts remain sterile, but what he accomplishes
remains inverse to the end he has in view. He aims to subjugate the
Pope, and he led the Pope on to omnipotence He aims at the maintenance
and strength of the Gallican spirit among the French clergy, and yet
brings them under the rule of the ultramontane spirit.[51119] With
extraordinary energy and tenacity, with all his power, which was
enormous, through the systematic and constant application of diverse and
extreme measures, he labored for fifteen years to rend the ties of the
Catholic hierarchy, take it to pieces, and, in sum, the final result of
all is to tie them faster and hasten its completion.


*****


[Footnote 5101: Se preface to "The Modern Régime," Vol. I.]

[Footnote 5102: On some of the ideas above indicated see "The Modern
Régime," Vol. I. p.120.]

[Footnote 5103: An allusion to Malthusianism, practiced by many heads
of families in France. M. Taine would probably have shown this practice
contrary to national welfare.--Tr.]

[Footnote 5104: Idolizing of children. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5105: Cf. "Les carnets de voyage."]

[Footnote 5106: On this idea see Volume I of "The Modern Régime," page
332, to the end of the chapter. (Ed. Laff. II. pp. 592 to 605).]

[Footnote 5107: Today this would probably be the media especially
television.]

[Footnote 5108: Memorial, IV.,259 (June 7 and 8, 1816); V., 323 (Aug.
17, 1816).]

[Footnote 5109: Thibaudeau, p. 152 (Prairial 21, year X.]

[Footnote 5110: Idem, IV.,259, (June 7 and 8, 1816).--Pelet de la
Lozere, "Opinions de Napoléon au conseil d'état," p 223, (March 4,
1806).]

[Footnote 5111: "Discours, rapports et travaux sur le Concordat de
1801," by Portalis (published by Fréderick Portalis), p.10.--In his
speech on the organization of cults (Germinal 15, year X), Portalis,
although a good Catholic, adopts the same idea, because he is a legist
and one of the ancient Régime. "Religions, even false, have this
advantage, that they are an obstacle to the introduction of arbitrary
doctrines. Individuals have a center of faith; governments have no fear
of dogmas once known and which do not change. Superstition, so to say,
is regulated, circumscribed and kept within bounds which it cannot, or
dare not, go outside of."]

[Footnote 5112: Thibaudeau, p. 151 (Prairial 21, year X). "The First
Consul combated at length the different systems of the philosophy on
cults, natural religions, deism, etc. All that according to him, was
mere ideology."]

[Footnote 5113: Pelet de la Lozère, p. 208 (May 22, 1804).]

[Footnote 5114: Thibaudeau, p. 152 (Prairial 21, year X).]

[Footnote 5115: Pelet de la Lozère, p, 223 (March 4, 1806).]

[Footnote 5116: Roederer, "Oevres complètes," III., 334 (Aug. 18,
1800).]

[Footnote 5117: What impression could this have made on Lenin? Could he
not have felt: "Perhaps Napoleon's logic was good at that time but now
with electricity, the steam engine and modern industrialism it will be
possible to do without the efficiency of capitalism and hence with its
inequalities and egoism? If so then we can recreate the equality
dreamt of by Babeuf, Robespierre, Saint Just and the other ancient
revolutionaries!!"]

[Footnote 5118: Ref.: "Where some people are very wealthy and others
have nothing, the result will either be extreme democracy or absolute
oligarchy, and despotism will come from either of these excesses."
Aristotle. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5119: Pelet de la Lozère, p. 205 (February 11, 1804).]

[Footnote 5120: Ibid., p. 201.]

[Footnote 5121: Pelet de la Lozère, p. 206, (Feb. 11, 1804).]

[Footnote 5122: Mémorial, V., 323 (Aug. 17, 1816).]

[Footnote 5123: Pelet de la Lozère, p 201.]

[Footnote 5124: Mémorial, V., 353 (Aug. 17, 1816). Notes on "Les Quatre
Concordants," by M. de Pradt (Correspondence of Napoleon I., xxx.,
p.557).]

[Footnote 5125: Bourrienne, "Mémoires," V., 232.]

[Footnote 5126: Notes on "Les Quatre Concordats," by M. de Pradt
(Correspondence of Napoleon I., XXX., 638 and 639).]

[Footnote 5127: Thibaudeau, p. 152 (Prairial 21, year X).]

[Footnote 5128: Notes on "Les Quatre Concordats," by M. de Pradt
(correspondence, XXX., 638).]

[Footnote 5129: Count Boulay de La Meurthe, "Négotiations du concordat."
(Extract from the correspondant, "1882, on the religious state of
France in November, 1800, and particularly on, the condition of the
constitutional church, the latter being very poor, disunited, with no
credit and no future.) The writer estimates the number of active priests
at 8000, of which 2000 are constitutionnels and 6000 orthodox."]

[Footnote 5130: Thibaudeau, p.152.]

[Footnote 5131: Thibaudeau, p. 154 (words of the First consul) "What
makes the government liked is its respect for worship.... The priests
must be connected with the government."]

[Footnote 5132: Ibid., p.154: "Is it not better to organize worship and
discipline the priests rather than let things go on as they are?"]

[Footnote 5133: La Fayette, "Mémoires, II.", 200. ("Mes rapports avec le
Premier consul.")]

[Footnote 5134: D'Haussonville, "l'Église romaine et la Premier Empire,"
II.. 78 and 101. Napoleon's letters to Cardinal Fesch, Jan. 7, 1806;
to the Pope, Feb.22, 1806 and to cardinal Fesch, of the same date. "His
Holiness will have the same consideration for me in temporal matters
as I have for him in spiritual matters.... My enemies will be his
enemies."--"Tell people (in Rome) that I am Charlemagne, the sword of
the church, their emperor; that I must be treated the same; that they
should not know that there was a Russian empire.... If the Pope does
not accept my conditions, I shall reduce him to the condition he was in
before Charlemagne."]

[Footnote 5135: Decree, May 17, 1809. "Whereas, when Charlemagne,
emperor of the French, and out august predecessor, donated several
counties to the bishops of Rome, he gave them only under the title of
fiefs and for the welfare of his own states, and as by the said donation
Rome did not thereby cease to form part of his empire,... the states of
the Pope are now reunited to the French empire."]

[Footnote 5136: Sénatus-consulte, Feb. 17, 1810, title II., article
XII. "Any foreign sovereignty is incompatible with the exercise of any
spiritual sovereignty within the empire."]

[Footnote 5137: D'Haussonville, ibid., IV.,344. (Decree of the National
Council, Aug. 5, 1811.--Concordat of Fontainebleau, Jan. 25, 1813,
article 14.--Decree on the execution of this Concordat, March 23, 1813,
art. 4.)]

[Footnote 5138: Sénatus-consulte, Feb.17, 1810, articles 13 and 14.]

[Footnote 5139: Mémorial, Aug.17, 1816.]

[Footnote 5140: Sénatus-consulte, Feb.17, 1810.]

[Footnote 5141: Notes by Napoleon on the "Les Quatre Concordats de M. de
Pradt" (correspondence, XXX., 550). Lanfrey, "Histoire de Napoléon," V.,
214. (Along with the Vatican archives, there were brought to Paris the
tiara and other insignia or ornaments of Pontifical dignity.)]

[Footnote 5142: Sénatus-consulte, Feb. 17, 1810.]

[Footnote 5143: Notes by Napoleon on "Les Quatre Concordats"
(Correspondence, XXX., 548).]

[Footnote 5144: Cf. Roman laws on the Collegia illicita, the first
source of which is the Roman conception of religion, the political and
practical use of augurs, auspices and sacred fowls.--It is interesting
to trace the long life and survivorship of this important idea from
antiquity down to the present day; it reappears in the Concordat and
in the Organic Articles of 1801, and still later in the late decrees
dissolving unauthorized communities and closing the convents of men.--
French jurists, and in particular Napoleon's jurists, are profoundly
imbued with the Roman idea. Portalis, in his exposition of the motives
for establishing metropolitan seminaries (March 14, 1804), supports the
decree with Roman law. "The Roman laws," he says, "place every thing
concerning the cult in the class of matters which belong essentially to
public rights."]

[Footnote 5145: Thibaudeau, p.152.]

[Footnote 5146: "Discours, rapports et travaux sur le Concordat de
1801," by Portalis, p.87 (on the Organic Articles), p.29 (on the
organization of cults). "The ministers of religion must not pretend to
share in or limit public power.... Religious affairs have always been
classed by the different national codes among matters belonging to the
upper police department of the State... The political magistrate may and
should intervene in everything which concerns the outward administration
of sacred matters.... In France, the government has always presided,
in a more or less direct way, over the direction of ecclesiastical
affairs."]

[Footnote 5147: "Discours, rapports, etc.," by Portalis, p. 31.--Ibid.,
p.143: "To sum up: The Church possesses only a purely spiritual
authority; the sovereigns, in their capacity of political magistrates,
regulate temporal and mixed questions with entire independence, and, as
protectors, they have even the right to see to the execution of
canons and to repress, even in spiritual matters, the infractions of
pontiffs."]

[Footnote 5148: Articles Organiques. 1st. Catholic cult, articles 3, 4,
23, 24, 35, 39, 44, 62. 2nd. Protestant cults, articles 4, 5, 11, 14,
22, 26, 30, 31, 32, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43.--Israelite cult, decree of
March 17, 1808, articles 4, 8, 9, 16, 23. Decree of execution, samedate,
articles 2 to 7.]

[Footnote 5149: Decree of March 17, 1808, articles 12, 21.]

[Footnote 5150: Articles Organiques (Protestant cults), 12 and 13.]

[Footnote 5151: Articles Organiques (Catholic cult), 24. Teachers
selected for the seminaries "will subscribe the declaration made by
the clergy of France in 1682; they will submit to teaching the doctrine
therein set forth."]

[Footnote 5152: "Dsicours, rapports, etc," by Portalis, p. 101.]

[Footnote 5153: Ibid, p. 378.]

[Footnote 5154: Abbé Sicard, "Les Dispensateurs des bénéfices
ecclésiastiques" (in the "Correspondant," Sep.10, 1889, p.883). A
benefice was then a sort of patrimony which the titulary, old or ill,
often handed over to one of his relatives. "A canonist of the eighteenth
century says that the resignation carried with it one third of the
income."]

[Footnote 5155: "Souvenirs", by Pasquier (Etienne-Dennis, duc), Librarie
Plon, Paris 1893. Vol. I. p. 415.: "The nomination of Cardinal Maury
as arch-bishop of Paris was published on the same day that I had been
appointed prefect of police. The new arch-bishop had made too much noise
in the past for him not to have become known to me. He was as happy with
his appointment as I was unhappy with mine. I met him in the chateau
Fontainebleau and I have ever since been haunted by the noisy expression
of his happiness. He constantly repeated this sentence: "The Emperor has
just satisfied the two greatest requirements of his capital. With a good
police and a good clergy he can always be sure of public order, since an
arch-bishop is also a prefect of the police."]

[Footnote 5156: Report of Siméon to the tribunat on presenting to it the
Concordat and Organic Articles, Germinal 17, year X.--Henceforth
"the ministers of all cults will be subject to the influence of the
government which appoints or confirms them, to which they are bound
by the most sacred promises, and which holds them in its dependence by
their salaries."]

[Footnote 5157: "Discours, rapports, etc.," by Portalis, p. 40.--Emile
Ollivier, "Nouveau manuel de droit ecclésiastique," P.193. (Reply by
Portalis to the protests of the Holy See, Sep. 22, 1803.) Before 1789
Portalis writes: "The spectacle presented by the monks was not very
edifying.. .. The legislature having decided that religious vows could
not be taken up to twenty-one years of age,... this measure keeps
novices away; the monastic orders, sapped by the state of morals and by
time, could obtain no recruits; they languished in a state of inertia
and of disfavor which was worse than annihilation.... The era for
monastic institutions had passed."]

[Footnote 5158: Pelet de la Lozère, p.146. (Words of Napoleon, March 11,
1806.)]

[Footnote 5159: Pelet de la Lozère, p.207 (May 22, 1804).]

[Footnote 5160: Decree of Messidor 3, year XII (June 22, 1804).--Letter
of Napoleon to the King of Naples, April 14, 1807, on the suppression
of convents at Naples: "You know that I don't like monks, as I have
uprooted them everywhere." To his sister Elisa, May 17, 1806: "Keep on
and suppress the convents."]

[Footnote 5161: "État des congrégations, communantés et associations
religieuses," drawn up in execution of article 12 of the law of Dec. 12,
1876 (Imprimerie nationale, 1878): 1st. congregations of women with a
general superior, nurses and teachers, authorized from Prairial 28, year
XI, to January 13, 1813, total, 42; 2nd. communities of women without a
general superior, nurses and teachers, authorized from April 9, 1806, to
Sept. 28, 1813, total, 205.]

[Footnote 5162: Ibid., Brethren of the Christian Schools, namely, of
Saint Yon, authorized March 17, 1808.]

[Footnote 5163: Ibid., congregation of the Mission of Saint-Lazare,
authorized Prairial 17, year XI.--Congregation of the Seminary of
Foreign Missions, authorized Germinal 2, year XIII.]

[Footnote 5164: Pelet de la Lozère, p.208 (May 22, 1804).]

[Footnote 5165: Pelet de la Lozère, P.209]

[Footnote 5166: Decree of March 17, 1808, article 109.]

[Footnote 5167: Alexis Chevalier, "Les Frères des écoles chrétiennes
après la Révolution," p. 93. (Report by Portalis approved by the First
consul, Frimaire to, year XII.) "Henceforth," says Portalis, "the
superior-general at Rome abandons all inspection of the Christian
Brothers. In France, it is understood that the Brothers will have a
superior general resident at Lyons."]

[Footnote 5168: D'Haussonville, V., p. 148.]

[Footnote 5169: Fortress in the Italian Alps. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5170: D'Haussonville, V., p. 148. Letter of Napoleon to
the Minister of Worship, March 3, 1811 (omitted in the published
correspondence).]

[Footnote 5171: Ibid., IV.,p.133. (Letter by Napoleon, Sep. 2, 1809,
omitted in the "Correspondence.")]

[Footnote 5172: Concordat, articles 4, 5, 16.]

[Footnote 5173: Articles Organiques, I., pp. 2, 6.]

[Footnote 5174: Code pénal, decree of Feb. 16-20, 1810, article 207.]

[Footnote 5175: Napoleon's own expressions: "I may regard myself as the
head of the Catholic ministry, since the Pope has crowned me." (Pelet
de la Lozère, p. 210, July 17, 1806.)--Note the word crowned (sacré).
Napoleon, as well as former kings, considers himself as clothed with
ecclesiastical dignity.]

[Footnote 5176: On the sense and bearing of Gallican maxims cf. the
whole of the answer by Portalis to Cardinal Caprara. (Émile Ollivier,
"Nouveau manuel de droit ecclésiastique," p.150.)]

[Footnote 5177: Decree of Feb.25, 1810. (The edict of Louis XIV. is
attached to it.) Prohibition to teach or write "anything opposed to
the doctrine contained" in the declaration of the French clergy. "Every
professor of theology must sign and submit to teaching the doctrine
therein set forth."--In establishments where there are several
professors "one of them will be annually directed to teach the said
doctrine."--In colleges where there is but one professor "he will be
obliged to teach it one of three consecutive years."--The professors are
required to hand in to the competent authority "their minutes dictated
to the pupils."--None of them can be "licensed, whether in theology or
in canon law, nor graduated as doctor, without having maintained the
said doctrine in one of his theses."]

[Footnote 5178: Cf., for details, d'Haussonville, I., p.200 et seq.]

[Footnote 5179: Pelet de la Lozère, p. 205. (Words of Napoleon, Feb. 4,
1804.)]

[Footnote 5180: A procedure used by Stalin and copied by all his
satellite states. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5181: Thibaudeau, p.157 (Messidor 2, year X).]

[Footnote 5182: Roederer, III., pp. 535, 567.]

[Footnote 5183: Pelet de la Lozère, p.203. (Napoleon's words, Feb. 4,
1804.)--Law of March 14, 1804.]

[Footnote 5184: Cf. "Letters of Mgr. Claude Simon, bishop of Grenoble,
April 18, 1809, and October 6, 1811."]

[Footnote 5185: Articles Organiques, p.68.]

[Footnote 5186: Bercastel and Henrion, "Histoire générale de l'Église,"
XIII., p.32. (Speech by M. Roux-Laborie, deputy in 1816.)--At the
present day, the ordinations oscillate between 1200 and 1700 per annum.]

[Footnote 5187: Decree of November 15, 1811, articles 28, 29, 32. "On
and after July 1, 1812, all secondary ecclesiastical schools (small
seminaries) which may not be situated in towns possessing a lycée or
college shall be closed. No secondary ecclesiastical school shall be
placed in the country. In all places where there are ecclesiastical
schools the pupils of these schools shall pursue their studies in the
lycée or college classes."]

[Footnote 5188: "Correspondence of Napoleon (notes for the Minister
of Worship), July 30, 1806." In order to be curé of the first class,
chanoin, vicar-general or bishop one must henceforth be bachelor,
licencié, doctor in the university grades, "which the university may
refuse in case the candidate shall be known to entertain ultramontane
ideas or ideas dangerous to authority."]

[Footnote 5189: D'Haussonville, V., p.144 et seq. (Letter of Napoleon to
the Minister of Worship, Oct.22, 1811, omitted in the "correspondence.")
The letter ends with these words: "This mode of working must be kept
secret."]

[Footnote 5190: "Histoire de M. Emery," by Abbé Elie Méric, II., p. 374.
The order of expulsion (June 13, 1810) ends with these words: "Immediate
possession is to be taken of the house which might belong to some
domain and which, at least in this case, could be considered as public
property, since it might belong to a congregation. If it is found to be
private property belonging to M. Emery or to any other person, the
rents might first be paid and then afterwards it might be required, save
indemnity, as useful for the public service." This shows in full the
administrative and fiscal spirit of the French State, its heavy hand
being always ready to fall imperiously on every private individual and
on all private property.]

[Footnote 5191: Letter of Napoleon, Oct. 8, 1811.]

[Footnote 5192: Ibid. Nov. 22, 1811.]

[Footnote 5193: D'Haussonville, V., p.282. (Letter of Napoleon, Aug.
14, 1813, omitted in the correspondence.)--"Mémoires" du Chancelier
Pasquier, II." pp. 88-91.]

[Footnote 5194: Roederer, III., p.430 (Germinal 19, year X): "The legate
was received today in the consular palace; in making his speech, he
trembled like a leaf."]

[Footnote 5195: Pelet de la Lozère, p.206 (May 22, 1804).]

[Footnote 5196: Decrees of May 31, 1804, Dec.26, 1804, and Sep.30. 1807,
with the list of succursals by departments.--Besides the succursalists
paid by the State, there were vicars not less dependent on the bishop
and maintained by allowances from the communes or by private donations.
(Bercastel et Henrion, XIII., p.32, speech by M. Roux-Laborie in the
chamber of Deputies, 1816.) "In his re-composition of the Church of
France the usurper established 12,000 vicars dependent on alms, and it
will not surprise you that, instead of 12,000, there were only 5000
who were courageous enough to die of starvation or implore public
charity.... Thus are 4000 country churches without worship or
minister."]

[Footnote 5197: Thibaudeau, p. 166, and article of Brumaire 30, in the
Moniteur.]

[Footnote 5198: Roederer, III., p. 479 et seq. (Report on the
Senatorerie of Caen.) The priests everywhere feel that they are watched
and set aside. "Most of those I encounter exclaim, Poor curé, an
unfortunate curé. The functionaries are devoted to the Emperor as
their sole support against the nobles, whom they dread, and against the
priests, whom they slightly esteem.... The military, the judges, the
administrators when alluding to the priests or to religion merely smile;
the priests, on the other hand, express very little confidence in the
functionaries."]

[Footnote 5199: Decree of Sept. 30, 1804 (with allotment of 800
scholarships and 1600 demi-scholarships to each diocesan seminary).
These will be allowed us on being presented by the bishops.]

[Footnote 51100: D'Haussonville, II., p. 227.]

[Footnote 51101: Idem. IV. Order of arrest of M. d'Avian, archbishop of
Bordeaux, as one of the opponents of the Council (July 11, 1811). Savary
himself, Minister of Justice, raises objections. "Sire, do nothing with
M. d'Avian. He is a saint and we shall have everybody against us."]

[Footnote 51102: Idem., IV. p. 58. Address of the ecclesiastical
commission enumerating the favors granted to religion, "the legion
of Honor, conferred on many prelates, the titles of baron and count
assigned to bishops and archbishops of the Empire, the admission of
several of these to the legislative assembly and senate."]

[Footnote 51103: D'Haussonville, IV.,p. 366. (Last session of the
national council, August 5, 1811.)]

[Footnote 51104: Reading this, as Lenin must have done, could he help
but dream of the day, when he could become head of a state, head of a
foreign service, of a secret police force and hence be able to subvert
the entire world including the religious organizations, the political
parties, diplomatic services not to speak of international organizations
in New York or Brussels. (SR.)]

[Footnote 51105: Idem., I., pp. 203-205.]

[Footnote 51106: Idem., p. 228. Cf. the "Almanach impérial de
1806-1814."--Lanfrey, "Histoire de Napoléon,"V., p. 208. The Prince de
Rohan, head chaplain, writes in a request he makes, The great Napoleon
is my tutelary divinity. On the margin of this request Napoleon attaches
the following decision: "The Duc de Frioul will pay to the head chaplain
12,000 francs,--tax on receipts of the theatres." (Feb. 15, 1810.)
Another example of the same type is M. Roquelaure, archbishop of
Malines, who addresses Josephine with a little ancient-régime speech,
at once episcopal and gallant. The First Consul, therefore, makes him
Member of the Institute. (Bourrienne, V., p. 130.) This archbishop, in
the administration of his diocese, zealously applies the policy of the
First Consul. "We have seen him suspend from his functions a priest who
had exhorted a dying man to restore ecclesiastical property which he had
taken." ("Dictionnaire biographique," published at Leipsic by Eymery,
1806, 1808.)]

[Footnote 51107: Roederer, III., p. 459 (December 30, 1802).]

[Footnote 51108: D'Haussonville, II., 257. (Report by Portalis to the
Emperor, Feb. 13, 1806.)--Idem., II., 226.]

[Footnote 51109: D'Haussonville, II., 237, 239, 272.--Pelet de la
Lozère, 201: "At other times Napoleon praised the priests, wanted
their services, largely attributing the departure of conscripts and the
submission of the people to their influence."--Idem, 173 (May 20, 1806,
words of Napoleon): "The Catholic priests behave very well and are of
great service. It is owing to them that the conscription this year has
been better than in former years... No branch of the State speaks so
well of the government."]

[Footnote 51110: D'Haussonville, III, IV.,and V., passim.]

[Footnote 51111: "Mémoires," by the Chancelier Pasquier, IV.,358.]

[Footnote 51112: D'Haussonville, IV.,366 (last phrase of the text): "A
deputation of six bishops will go and beg His Holiness to confirm this
decree."]

[Footnote 51113: To an ordinary reader, even Catholic, if not versed!in
canon law, Napoleon's exactions seem mediocre and even acceptable;
they reduce themselves down to fixing a delay and seeming to add to the
competency of councils and the authority of bishops. (D'Haussonville,
IV.,366, session of the council, Aug. 5, 1811, propositions adopted and
decree. Cf. the Concordat of Fontainebleau, Jan. 25, 1813, article 4.)]

[Footnote 51114: Comte D'Haussonville, IV.,121 and following pages.
(Letters of the prefect, M. de Chabrol, letters of Napoleon not inserted
in the "Correspondence," narration of Dr. Claraz.) 6000 francs, a
present to the bishop of Savona, 12,000 francs salary to Dr. Porta, the
Pope's physician. "Dr. Porta," writes the prefect, "seems disposed to
serve us indirectly with all his power.... Efforts are made to affect
the Pope either by all who approach him or by all the means in our
power."]

[Footnote 51115: Ibid. (Letters of M. de Chabrol, May 14 and 30, 1811.)
"The Pope has fallen into a state of stupor.... The physician fears a
case of hypochondria;... his health and reason are affected." Then, in a
few days: "The state of mental alienation has passed."]

[Footnote 51116: Mémorial (Aug.17, 1816).]

[Footnote 51117: D'Haussonville, V., 244. Later, the Pope keeps silent
about his interviews with Napoleon. "He simply lets it be understood
that the emperor spoke to him haughtily and contemptuously, even
treating him as an ignoramus in ecclesiastical matters."--Napoleon met
him with open arms and embraced him, calling him his father. (Thiers,
XV., 295.)--It is probable that the best literary portrayal of these
tête-à-tête conversations is the imaginary scene in "Grandeurs et
Servitudes Militaires," by Alfred de Vigny.]

[Footnote 51118: Comte Chaptal, "Notes": "No, in the course of
sixteen years of a stormy government, Bonaparte never met with so much
resistance and never suffered so many disappointments as were caused
by his quarrel with the Pope. There is no event in his life which more
alienated the people as his proceedings and conduct towards the Pope."]

[Footnote 51119: Ultramontanism; a set of doctrines establishing the
pope's absolute authority.]




CHAPTER II. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.




I. The Catholic System.

     The effects of the system.--Completion of the ecclesiastical
     hierarchy.--Omnipotence of the Pope in the Church.
     --Influence of the French Concordat and other precedents from
     1801 to 1870.--Why the clergy becomes ultramontane.--The
     dogma of Infallibility.

In 1801, at Rome, pending the negotiations for the Concordat, when Pius
VII. still hesitated about the deposition in mass of the survivors of
the ancient French episcopacy, clear-sighted observers already remarked,
"Let this Concordat which the First Consul desires be completed,[5201]
and you will see, on its ratification, its immense importance and
the power it will give to Rome over the episcopacy throughout the
universe."--In effect, through this "extraordinary, nearly unexampled"
act of authority, and certainly unequaled "in the history of the
Church,"[5202] the ultramontane theory, contested up to this time,
maintained in the speculative region of abstract formulae, comes down
to solid ground, into practical and lasting use. Willingly or not, "the
Pope acts as if universal bishop;" urged and constrained by the lay
power, attached to a dictatorship,[5203] he entered upon it and so
installed himself, and, ten years later, Napoleon, who had impelled him
on, regretted that he had done so. Warned by his Gallican jurists,
he saw the ecclesiastical import of his work; but it was too late to
retreat--the decisive step had been taken.--For, in fact, the Pope had
deprived all the chieftains of a great church of their thrones, "his
colleagues and co-bishops,"[5204] successors of the apostles under the
same title as himself, members "of the same order and stamped "with the
same "character," eighty-five legitimate incumbents[5205] and, still
better, as admitted by himself, blameless, worthy, persecuted
because they had obeyed him, banished from France on account of their
unwillingness to quit the Roman Church. He had ordered them to resign;
he had withdrawn apostolic powers from the thirteen who had refused to
tender their resignations; to all, even to those who refused, he had
appointed their successors. He assigned to the new titularies dioceses
of a new pattern and, to justify novelties of such gravity,[5206] he
could allege no other reasons than circumstances, the exigencies of
lay power, and the welfare of the Church. After that the Gallicans
themselves, unless accepting the risk of a schism and of separating
forever from the Holy See, were obliged to allow the Pope above and
beyond the ordinary powers exercised by him within the old limits of
canons and of custom, an extraordinary power unlimited by any canon or
by any custom,[5207] a plenary and absolute authority, a right above
all other rights, by virtue of which, in cases determined by himself, he
provided in a discretionary way for all Catholic interests, of which he
thus becomes the supreme judge, the sole interpreter and the court of
last appeal. An indestructible precedent was set up; it was the great
corner-stone in the support of the modern Church edifice; on this
definitive foundation all other stones were to be superposed, one by
one. In 1801, Pius VII., under the pressure of the reigning Napoleon,
had obliged the prelates of the old régime, sullied by a monarchical
origin and suspected of zeal for the dethroned Bourbons, to abandon
their seats. In 1816, under the pressure of the re-established Bourbons,
the same Pius VII. obliged Fesch, cardinal-archbishop of Lyons, and
uncle of the fallen Napoleon, to abandon his seat. Bercastel et Henrion,
XIII, 192. Cardinal Fesch having been banished from France by the law
of January 12, 1816, "the Pope no longer regarded the person of the
cardinal, but the diocese that had to be saved at any cost, by virtue of
the principle salus populi suprema lex. Consequently, he prohibited the
cardinal from "exercising episcopal jurisdiction in his metropolitan
church, and constituted M. de Bernis administrator of that church,
spiritually as well as temporally, notwithstanding all constitutions
decreed even by the general councils, the apostolic ordinances,
privileges, etc." In both cases the situation was similar, and, in the
latter as in the former case, motives of the same order warranted the
same use of the same power.

But the situation, in being prolonged, multiplied, for the Church, the
number of urgent cases, and, for the sovereign pontiff the number of
cases of intervention. Since 1789, the entire civil order of things,
constitutional, political, social and territorial, had become singularly
unstable, not only in France but in Europe, not only on the old
continent but likewise on the new one. Sovereign states by hundreds
sunk under the strokes and counter-strokes, indefinitely propagated and
enforced by the philosophy of the eighteenth century and of the French
Revolution; others, by dozens, arose in their place, and, in these,
different dynasties succeeded each other; here, Catholic populations
falling under the rule of a schismatic or Protestant prince; there, this
or that Catholic country, for fifteen years included in a mixed state,
detached from it and constituted apart. In Protestant America, the
Catholics, increased to millions, formed new communities in Catholic
America, the colonies had become independent; almost everywhere in
America and in Europe the maxims of government and of public opinion
had changed. Now, after each of these changes, some initiative,
some direction, some authority was necessary, in order to reconcile
ecclesiastical with lay institutions; the Pope was on hand, and on each
occasion he establishes this concord.[5208] At one time, by a diplomatic
act analogous to the French Concordat of 1801, he negotiates with the
sovereign of the country--Bavaria, Wurtemburg, Prussia, Austria, Spain,
Portugal, the two Sicilies, the Netherlands, Belgium and Russia. Again,
owing to the tolerant liberalism, or to the Constitutional indifference
of the lay government, he alone prescribes, notably in Holland, in
Ireland, in England, in Canada, and in the United States, a division
of the country into ecclesiastical districts, the erection of new
bishoprics, and the lasting regulation of the hierarchy, the discipline,
the means of support and the recruiting of the clergy. Again, when
sovereignty is in dispute, as after the emancipation of the Spanish
colonies, he does without it, in spite of the opposition of the
mother-country, and, "without putting himself in relation with the new
governments,[5209] he, acting for himself, "that he may put an end
to the widowhood of the Churches," appoints bishops, assigns them a
provisional régime in anticipation of the epoch when, in concert with
better founded governments, he will decree their definitive régime. In
this way, all the great existing churches of the Catholic universe are
the work of the Pope, his latest work, his own creation attested by a
positive act of contiguous date, and of which the souvenir is vivid:
he has not recognized them--he has made them; he has given them their
external form and their internal structure; no one of them can look
within itself without finding in its laws the fresh imprint of the
sovereign hand which has fashioned it; none of them can assert or even
believe itself legitimate without declaring the superior authority to be
legitimate which has just endowed it with life and being. The last
step, the greatest of all, above the terrestrial and practical order of
things, in speculative theology, in the revelation of the supernatural,
in the definition of things that are divine: the Pope, the better to
prove his autocracy, in 1854, decrees, solely, of his own accord, a new
dogma, the immaculate conception of the Virgin, and he is careful to
note that he does it without the concurrence of the bishops; they were
on hand, but they neither deliberated nor decided.[5210]

Thus arise durable powers, spiritual or temporal, little by little,
through the uninterrupted and uncontested series of their acts; from
1791 to 1870 all ecclesiastical precedents, one added to another, became
consolidated, one through the other and through their mass; story after
story, steadily ascending and converging to raise the Pope higher still,
until at last, on the summit of the edifice, the Holy See becomes
the keystone of the arch, the omnipotence of fact being completed by
omnipotence of right.

Meanwhile Catholic opinion came to the aid of pontifical opinion, and,
in France, the clergy spontaneously became ultramontane because there
was no longer any motive for remaining Gallican. Since the Revolution,
the Concordat and the Organic Articles, all the sources which maintained
in it a national as well as particularist spirit, had dried up; in
ceased being a distinct, proprietary and favored body; its members are
no longer leagued together by the community of a temporal interest,
by the need of defending their privileges, by the faculty of acting
in concert, by the right of holding periodical assemblies; they are no
longer, as formerly, attached to the civil power by great social and
legal advantages, by their honorable priority in lay society, by their
immunities from taxation, by the presence and influence of their bishops
in the provincial parliaments, by the noble origin and magnificent
endowments of nearly all their prelates, by the repressive support which
the secular arm lent to the church against dissenters and free-thinkers,
by the immemorial legislation and customs which, erecting Catholicism
into a State religion, imposed the Catholic faith on the monarch, not
alone in his quality of a private individual and to fix his personal
belief, but again in his quality of public magistrate, to influence his
policy and to share in his government. This last article is capital,
and out of its abrogation the rest follows: at this turn of the road
the French clergy is thrown off the Gallican track, every step it
takes after this being on the way to Rome. For, according to Catholic
doctrine, outside of the Roman Church there is no salvation; to enter
it, to rest in it, to be led by it is the highest interest and first
duty of man; it is the unique and infallible guide; all acts that it
condemns are culpable, and not only private acts, but likewise all
public acts; the sovereign who commits them may, as an individual, be
Catholic by profession and even loyal at heart; but, as a ruler, he is
disloyal, he has lost his semi-ecclesiastic character, he has ceased to
be "the exterior bishop," he is not worthy to command a clerical body.
Henceforth, the Christian conscience no longer bows down before him
with love and respect; nothing remains to him for support but social
prudence; and again is it with resignation, because the Church commands
obedience to the authorities, and the same Church commands disobedience
to these authorities when, abusing their power, they encroach on its
rights.

Now, ten years ago, the State had done nothing else, and, to the old
Concordat which was not good, it had just substituted a Concordat that
was worse. This new alliance, concluded by it with the Church in 1802,
is not a religious marriage, the solemn sacrament by which, at Rheims,
she and the King promised to live together and in harmony in the same
faith, but a simple civil contract, more precisely the legal regulation
of a lasting and deliberate divorce.--In a paroxysm of despotism the
State has stripped the Church of its possessions and turned it out of
doors, without clothes or bread, to beg on the highways; next, in a fit
of rage, its aim was to kill it outright, and it did partially strangle
it. Recovering its reason, but having ceased to be Catholic, it has
forced the signature of a pact which is repugnant, and which reduces
their moral union to physical cohabitation. Willingly or not, the
two contracting parties are to continue living together in the same
domicile, since that is the only one they possess; but, as there is
incompatibility of humor, they will do well to live apart. To this end,
the State assigns a small, distinct lodging to the Church and allows her
a meager supply of food; this done, it fancies that it may cry quits;
and, worse still, it imagines that she is always its subject, and still
pretends to the same authority over her; the State is determined to
retain all rights conferred upon it by the old marriage, and these
rights it exercises and adds to. Meanwhile, it admits into the same
lodging three other Churches which it subjects to the same régime: that
makes four mess-rooms to be maintained and which it watches, supports
and utilizes the best it can for the temporal advantage of the
household. There is nothing more odious to the Catholic Church than this
advertised, practical polygamy, this subvention granted indifferently
to all cults, this patronage in common, more insulting than abandonment,
this equal treatment[5211] which places the pulpit of truth and the
pulpits of falsehood, the ministry of salvation and the ministries
of perdition, on the same footing. Nothing is more serviceable for
alienating a Catholic clergy, for making it consider civil power as
foreign, usurping, or even inimical, for detaching the Gallican Church
from its French center, for driving it back towards its Roman center and
for handing it over to the Pope.

Henceforth, the latter is the unique center, the sole surviving head
of the Church, inseparable from it because he is naturally its head and
because it is naturally his body; and all the more because this mutual
tie has been strengthened by trials. Head and body have been struck
together, by the same hands, and each on the other's account. The Pope
has suffered like the Church, along with and for it. Pius VI., dethroned
and borne off by the Directory, died in prison at Valence; Pius VII.,
dethroned and carried off by Napoleon, is confined, sequestered and
outraged for four years in France, while all generous hearts take sides
with the oppressed against his oppressors. Moreover, his dispossession
adds to his prestige: it can no longer be claimed that territorial
interests prevail with him over Catholic interests; therefore, according
as his temporal power diminishes his spiritual power expands, to such an
extent that, in the end, after three-quarters of a century, just at the
moment when the former is to fall to the ground the latter is to rise
above the clouds; through the effacement of his human character his
superhuman character becomes declared; the more the sovereign prince
disappears, the more does the sovereign pontiff assert himself. The
clergy, despoiled like him of its hereditary patrimony and confined like
him to its sacerdotal office, exposed to the same dangers, menaced by
the same enemies, rallies around him the same as an army around its
general; inferiors and superiors, they are all priests alike and are
nothing else, with a clearer and clearer conscience of the solidarity
which binds them together and subordinates the inferiors to the
superiors. From one ecclesiastical generation to another,[5212] the
number of the refractory, of the intractable and of independents,
rigorists or the lax, goes on decreasing, some, conscientious
Jansenists, hardened and sectarians of the "Little Church," others,
semi-philosophers, tolerant and liberal, both inheriting too narrow
convictions or too broad opinions for maintaining themselves and
spreading in the newly founded society (milieu).[5213] They die out,
one by one, while their doctrines fall into discredit and then into
oblivion. A new spirit animates the new clergy, and, after 1808,
Napoleon remarks of it, "It does not complain of the old one, and is
even satisfied with it; but, he says, they are bringing up new priests
in a sombre fanatical doctrine: there is nothing Gallican in the
youthful clergy,"[5214] no sympathy for the civil power. After Napoleon,
and on getting out of his terrible hands, the Catholics have good
reasons for their repugnance to his theology; it has put too many
Catholics in jail, the most eminent in rank, in holiness, bishops and
cardinals, including the Pope. Gallican maxims are dishonored by the use
Napoleon has made of them. Canon law, in public instruction and in
the seminaries (of the Catholics), ends insensibly in unlooked-for
conclusions; texts and arguments opposed to the Pope's authority seem
weaker and weaker; texts and arguments favorable to the Pope's authority
seem stronger and stronger;[5215] the doctors most deferred to are
no longer Gerson and Bossuet, but Bellarmin and Suarez; flaws are
discovered in the decrees of the council of Constance; the Declaration
of the clergy of France in 1682 is found to contain errors condemned
and open to condemnation.[5216] After 1819, M. de Maistre, a powerful
logician, matchless herald and superb champion, in his book on "The
Pope," justifies, prepares and announces the coming constitution of
the Church.--Step by step, the assent of Catholic community is won or
mastered;[5217] on approaching 1870, it is nearly universal; after 1870,
it is wholly so and could not be otherwise; whoever refuses to submit is
excluded from the community and excludes himself from it, for he denies
a dogma which it professes, a revealed dogma, an article of faith which
the Pope and the council have just decreed. Thenceforward, the Pope,
in his magisterial pulpit, in the eyes of every man who is and wants to
remain Catholic, is infallible; when he gives his decision on faith or
on morals, Jesus Christ himself speaks by his mouth, and his definitions
of doctrine are "irrefutable," "they are so of themselves, they
alone, through their own virtue, and not by virtue of the Church's
consent."[5218] For the same reason, his authority is absolute, not only
in matters which concern faith and morals, but again in matters which
concern the discipline and government of the Church."[5219] His judgment
may be resorted to in every ecclesiastical case; nobody is allowed
to question his verdict; "nobody is allowed to appeal to the future
oecumenical council;"[5220] He has not only "a priority by right,
an office of inspection and of direction; he holds again priority
of jurisdiction, a full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the
universal Church,... ", "the total plenitude of this supreme power," not
indirectly and extraordinarily, but "directly and ordinarily, over all
churches and over each one of them, over all pastors and all believers,
over each believer and each of the pastors."--Read this in the Latin:
each word, through its ancient root and through its historic vegetation,
contributes to strengthening the despotic and Roman sense of the text;
the language of the people which invented and practiced dictatorship had
to be employed for the affirmation of dictatorship with that precision
and that copiousness, with that excess of energy and of conviction.




II. The Bishops and their new Situation.

     The bishop in his diocese.--Change of situation and rôle.
     --Depreciation of other local authorities.--Diminution of
     other ecclesiastical authorities.--Decline of the chapter
     and the jurisdiction.--The bishop alone dispenses rigors and
     favors.--Use of displacement.--Second-class clergy subject
     to military discipline.--Why it submits to this.

The change brought about in the condition and role of the bishop was
not less grave. Along with the court noblesse and great ecclesiastical
property, we see the prelate of the old régime disappearing by degrees,
the younger son of a noble family, promoted by favor and very young,
endowed with a large income and much more a man of the world than of
the Church. In 1789, out of 134 bishops or archbishops, only 5 were of
plebeian origin; in 1889, out of 90 bishops or archbishops there are
only 4 of them nobles;[5221] previous to the Revolution, the titular of
an Episcopal see enjoyed, on the average, a revenue of 100,000 francs;
at the present day, he receives only a salary of from 10,000 to 15,000
francs.[5222] In place of the grand seignior, an amiable and magnificent
host, given to display and to entertaining the best company, keeping
an open table in his diocese when he happens to be there, but generally
absent, an habitué of Paris or a courtier at Versailles, we see another
stepping forward to take his seat He is bearing the same title, is
a personage whose habits and origins are different, a resident
administrator, much less ornamental but much more active and governing,
provided with a more ample jurisdiction, with more absolute authority
and wielding more effective influence. The final effect of the
Revolution in relation to the bishop is the same as in relation to the
Pope, and in the French diocese, as in the universal Church, the modern
régime sets up a central, extraordinary, enormous power of which the
ancient regime knew nothing.

Formerly, the bishop encountered around him, on the spot, equals and
rivals, bodies of men or individuals, as independent and powerful as
himself, irremovable, owners of estates, dispensers of offices and of
favors, local authorities by legal sanction, permanent patrons of a
permanent class of dependents. In his own cathedral, his metropolitan
chapter was, like himself, a collator of benefice; elsewhere, other
chapters were so likewise and knew how to maintain their rights against
his supremacy. In each body of regular clergy, every grand abbot or
prior, every noble abbess was, like himself, a sort of sovereign prince.
The territorial seignior and justiciary on his own domain, was through
the partial survival of the old wholly secular feudal order equally
sovereign. Likewise sovereign, was, for its part, the parliament of
the province, with its rights of registry and of remonstrance, with
its administrative attributes and interference, with its train of loyal
auxiliaries and subordinates, from the judges of the presidencies and
bailiwicks down to the corporations of advocates, prosecutors and other
members of the bar.[5223] The parliamentarians of the district capital
(chef-lieu), purchasers and owners of their offices, magistrates from
father to son, much wealthier and much prouder than nowadays, were,
in their old hereditary mansions, the real chiefs of the province, its
constant representatives on the spot, its popular defenders against
ministerial and royal absolutism. All these powers, which once
counterbalanced episcopal power, have disappeared. Restricted to their
judicial office, the tribunals have ceased to be political authorities
and moderators of the central government: in the town and department,
the mayor and general councilors, appointed or elected for a certain
time, enjoy only temporary credit; the prefect, the military commandant,
the rector, the treasurer-general are merely passing strangers.
The local circumscription, for a century, is an exterior post where
individuals live together in contact but not associated; no longer
does any intimate, lasting and strong bond exist between them; nothing
remains of the old province but a population of inhabitants, a given
number of private persons under unstable functionaries. The bishop
alone has maintained himself intact and erect, a dignitary for life, the
conductor, by title and in fact, of a good many persons, the stationary
and patient undertaker of a great service, the unique general and
undisputed commander of a special militia which, through conscience and
professions, gathers close around him and, every morning, awaits his
orders. Because in his essence, he is a governor of souls. Revolution
and centralization have not encroached on his ecclesiastical
prerogative. Thanks to this indelible quality he has been able to endure
the suppression of the others; these have come back to him of themselves
and with others added, comprising local superiority, real importance and
local ascendancy; including the various honorable appellations which,
under the ancient régime, denoted his rank and preeminence; at the
present day, under the modern régime, they are no longer in use for a
layman and even for a minister of state; after 1802, one of the articles
of the Organic Laws,[5224] interdicts them to bishops and archbishops;
they are "allowed to add to their name only the title of citizen and
monsieur." But practically, except in the official almanac, everybody
addresses a prelate as "my lord," and in the clergy, among believers,
in writing or in speaking to him, he is called "your Grace," under the
republic as under the monarchy.

Thus, in this provincial soil where other powers have lost their roots,
not only has he kept his, but he has extended them and much farther; he
has grown beyond all measure and now the whole ecclesiastical territory
belongs to him. Formerly, on this territory, many portions of it, and
quite large ones, were enclosures set apart, reserves that an immemorial
wall prevented him from entering. It was not he who, in a great majority
of cases, conferred livings and offices; it was not he who, in more than
one-half of them, appointed to vacant curacies. At Besançon,[5225] among
1500 benefices and livings, he once conferred less than 100 of them,
while his metropolitan chapter appointed as many curés as himself; at
Arras, he appointed only 47 curés and his chapter 66; at Saint-Omer,
among the collators of curacies he ranked only third, after the abbey
of Saint-Martin and after the chapter of the cathedral. At Troyes, he
could dispose only of 197 curacies out of 372; at Boulogne, out of 180,
he had only 80, and this again because the chapter voluntarily abandoned
to him 16. Naturally, the eyes of all candidates turned towards the
collator; and, among the highest and most lucrative places, those
which gave the least trouble and afforded the most satisfaction,
all sinecures, ranks, simple benefices and large urban curacies,
probendaries and canonicates, most of the offices, titles, and incomes
that might tempt human ambition, were in the hands, not of the bishop,
but of the king or of the Pope, of an abbot or prior, of an abbess,
or of a certain university,[5226] of this or that cathedral or
college-body, of a lay seignior, of a patentee, or of an indultaire,
and often of the titulary himself. Thus, the hold of the bishop on his
clercs was feeble; he did not hold them through the hope of a favor.
And, on the other hand, he had still less hold on them, no hold at
all, through fear of losing favor. They might displease him almost with
impunity; his faculty for punishment was much more restricted than his
means of recompense. His subordinates could find shelter and refuge
against his displeasure, and even against his hostility. In the first
place, and as a principle, a titulary, whether ecclesiastic or secular,
owned his office and hence was irremovable; they themselves, plain
vicar-curates, the humble desservans[5227] of a rural parish, had
acquired this privilege through the declarations of 1726 and 1731.[5228]
Moreover, in case of interdiction, suspension or of censure, a titulary
could always recur to the courts against episcopal judgment and any
other, against all encroachment on spiritual or temporal prerogatives,
or on those which were useful or honorary belonging to his charge.

These courts were of two kinds, one ecclesiastical and the other
secular, and in each an appeal could be made from a lower to a higher
court, from the diocesan official to the metropolitan official, and from
the présidial to the parliament, with a complete judicial staff,
judge, assessors, public ministry, prosecutors, advocates and clerks,
restricted to the observing of all judicial formalities, authentic
papers, citations of witnesses and challenges of testimony,
interrogatories and pleadings, allegation of canons, laws and
precedents, presence of the defendant, opposing arguments, delays
in procedure, publicity and scandal. Before the slow march and
inconveniences of such a trial, the bishop often avoided giving
judgment, and all the more because his verdicts, even when confirmed by
the ecclesiastical court, might be warded off or rendered ineffective
by the lay tribunal; for, from the former to the latter, there was
an appeal under writ of error, and the latter, a jealous rival of the
former, was ill-disposed towards the sacerdotal authorities;[5229]
besides, in the latter case, far more than in the former, the bishop
found confronting him not merely the more or less legal right of his own
party, but again the allies and patrons of his party, corporations and
individuals who, according to an accepted usage, interfered through
their solicitations with the judges and openly placed their credit at
the service of their protégé. With so many spokes in the wheels, the
working of an administrative machine was difficult; to give it effective
motion, it required the steady pressure, the constant starting, the
watchful and persistent efforts of a laborious, energetic, and callous
hand, while, under the ancient régime, the delicate white hands of a
gentleman-prelate were ill-adapted to this rude business; they were
too nicely washed, too soft. To manage personally and on the spot a
provincial, complicated and rusty machine, always creaking and groaning,
to give one's self up to it, to urge and adjust twenty local wheels, to
put up with knocks and splashes, to become a business man, that is to
say a hard worker--nothing was less desirable for a grand seignior of
that epoch. In the Church as in the State, he made the most of his rank;
he collected and enjoyed its fruits, that is to say money, honors and
gratifications, and, among these gratifications, the principal one,
leisure; hence, he abandoned every special duty, the daily manipulation
of men and things, the practical direction, all effective government, to
his ecclesiastical or lay intendants, to subordinates whom he scarcely
looked after and who, at his own house, on his own domain, replaced
him as fixed residents. The bishop, in his own diocese, left the
administration in the hands of his canons and grand-vicars; "the
official decided without his meddling."[5230] The machine thus worked
alone and by itself, with very few shocks, in the old rut established by
routine; he helped it along only by the influence he exercised at Paris
and Versailles, by recommendations to the ministers in reality, he
was merely the remote and worldly representative of his ecclesiastical
principality at court and in the drawing-room.[5231] When, from time
to time, he made his appearance there, the bells were rung; deputations
from all bodies hurried to his antechambers; each authority in turn, and
according to the order of precedence, paid him its little compliment,
which compliment he graciously returned and then, the homage being over,
he distributed among them benedictions and smiles. After this, with
equal dignity and still more graciously throughout his sojourn, he
invited the most eligible to his table and, in his episcopal palace
or in his country-house, he treated them as guests. This done, he had
performed his duty; the rest was left to his secretaries, ecclesiastical
officials and clerks, men of the bureaux, specialists and "plodders."
"Did you read my pastoral letter?" said a bishop to Piron. And Piron,
who was very outspoken, dared reply, "Yes, my lord. And yourself?"

Under the modern régime, this suzerain for show, negligent and
intermittent, is succeeded by an active sovereign whose reign is
personal and constant; the limited and easy monarchy of the diocese is
converted into an universal and absolute monarchy. When the bishop,
once invested and consecrated, enters the choir of his cathedral to the
reverberations of the organ, lighted with wax candles amidst clouds of
incense, and seats himself in solemn pomp[5232] "on his throne," he is
a prince who takes possession of his government, which possession is
not nominal or partial, but real and complete. He holds in his hand "the
splendid cross which the priests of his diocese have presented to him,"
in witness of and symbolizing their voluntary, eager and full
obedience; and this pastoral baton is larger than the old one. In the
ecclesiastical herd, no head browses at a distance or under cover; high
or low, all are within reach, all eyes are turned towards the episcopal
crook; at a sign made by the crook, and according to the signal, each
head forthwith stands, advances or recedes: it knows too well that the
shepherd's hands are free and that it is subject to its will. Napoleon,
in his reconstruction of the diocese, made additions to only one of the
diocesan powers, that of the bishop; he suffered the others to remain
low down, on the ground. The delays, complications and frictions of a
divided government were repugnant to him; he had no taste for and
no comprehension of any but a concentrated government; he found it
convenient to deal with but one man, a prefect of the spiritual order,
as pliable as his colleague of the temporal order, a mitered grand
functionary--such was the bishop in his eyes. This is the reason why
he did not oblige him to surround himself with constitutional and
moderating authorities; he did not restore the ancient bishop's court
and the ancient chapter; he allowed his prelates themselves to pen the
new diocesan statute.--Naturally, in the division of powers, the bishop
reserved the best part to himself, the entire substance, and, to limit
his local omnipotence, there remained simply lay authority. But, in
practice, the shackles by which the civil government kept him in its
dependence, broke or became relaxed one by one. Among the Organic
Articles, almost all of them which subjected or repressed the bishop
fell into discredit or into desuetude. Meanwhile, those which authorized
and exalted the bishop remained in vigor and maintained their effect.
Consequently, Napoleon's calculation, in relation to the bishop or in
relation to the Pope, proved erroneous. He wanted to unite in one person
two incompatible characters, to convert the dignitaries of the Church
into dignitaries of the State, to make functionaries out of potentates.
The functionary insensibly disappeared; the potentate alone subsisted
and still subsists.

At the present day, conformably to the statute of 1802, the cathedral
chapter,[5233] except in case of one interim, is a lifeless and
still-born body, a vain simulachre; it is always, by title or on paper,
the Catholic "senate," the bishop's obligatory "council";[5234] but he
takes his councillors where he pleases, outside of the chapter, if that
suits him, and he is free not to take any of them, "to govern alone, to
do all himself." It is he who appoints to all offices, to the five or
six hundred offices of his diocese; he is the universal collator of
these and, nine times out of ten, the sole collator; excepting eight or
nine canonships and the thirty or forty cantonal curacies, which the
government must approve, he alone makes appointments and without any
person's concurrence. Thus, in the way of favors, his clerical body has
nothing to expect from anybody but himself.--And, on the other hand,
they no longer enjoy any protection against his harshness; the hand
which punishes is still less restrained than that which rewards; like
the cathedral chapter, the ecclesiastical tribunal has lost its
consistency and independence, its efficiency; nothing remains of the
ancient bishop's court but an appearance and a name.[5235]

At one time, the bishop in person is himself the whole court; he
deliberates only with himself and decides ex informata conscientia
without a trial, without advice, and, if he chooses, in his own cabinet
with closed doors, in private according to facts, the value of which
he alone estimates, and through motives of which he is the sole
appreciator. At another time, the presiding magistrate is one of
his grand-vicars, his revocable delegate, his confidential man, his
megaphone, in short, another self, and this official acts without the
restraint of ancient regulations, of a fixed and understood procedure
beforehand, of a series of judicial formalities, of verifications and
the presence of witnesses, of the delays and all other legal precautions
which guard the judge against prejudice, haste, error, and ignorance and
without which justice always risks becoming injustice. In both cases,
the head over which the sentence is suspended lacks guarantees, and,
once pronounced, this sentence is definitive. For, on appeal to the
court of the metropolitan bishop, it is always confirmed;[5236] the
bishops support each other, and, let the appellant be right or wrong,
the appeal is in itself a bad mark against him: he did not submit at
once, he stood out against reproof, he was lacking in humility, he has
set an example of insubordination, and this alone is a grave fault.
There remains the recourse to Rome; but Rome is far off,[5237] and,
while maintaining her superior jurisdiction, she does not willingly
cancel an episcopal verdict; she treats prelates with respect, she is
careful of her lieutenant-generals, her collectors of Saint Peter's
pence. As to the lay tribunals, these have declared themselves
incompetent,[5238] and the new canon law teaches that never, "under the
pretext of a writ of error, may a priest make an appeal to the secular
magistrate";[5239] through this appeal, "he derogates from the authority
and liberty of the Church and is liable to the gravest censures;" he
betrays his order.

Such is now, for the lower clergy, ecclesiastical law, and likewise
secular law, both agreeing together in not affording him protection;
add to this change in the jurisprudence which concerns him a no less
divisive change in the jurisprudence which concerns him a no less
decisive change in the titles which place and qualify him. Before 1789,
there were in France 36,000 curés entitled irremovable; at the present
day, there are only 3,425; before 1789, there were only 2500 curés
entirely removable, while to-day there are 34,042;[5240] all of the
latter, appointed by the bishop without the approbation of the civil
powers, are removable at his discretion; their parochial ministry is
simply a provisional commission; they may be placed elsewhere,
passing from one precarious curacy to another no less precarious. "At
Valence,[5241] Mgr. Chartrousse, in one month transferred 150 priests
from one parish to another. In 1835, in the diocese of Valence, 35
transfers were sent out by the same mail." No assistant-priest, however
long in his parish, feels that he is at home there, on his own domain,
for the rest of his life; he is merely there in garrison, about the same
as lay functionaries and with less security, even when irreproachable.
For he may be transplanted, not alone for spiritual reasons, but
likewise for political reasons. He has not grown less worthy, but the
municipal council or the mayor have taken a dislike to his person;
consequently to tranquilize things, he is displaced. Far better, he had
become worthy and is on good terms with the municipal council and the
mayor; wherever he has lived he has known how to mollify these,
and consequently "he is removed from parish to parish,[5242] chosen
expressly to be put into those where there are troublesome, wrangling,
malevolent, and impious mayors." It is for the good of the service and
in the interest of the Church. The bishop subordinates persons to this
superior interest. The legislation of 1801 and 1802 has conferred full
powers upon him and he exercises them; among the many grips by which he
holds his clergy the strongest is the power of removal, and he uses it.
Into all civil or ecclesiastical institutions Napoleon, directly or by
counterstrokes, has injected his spirit, the military spirit; hence the
authoritative régime, still more firmly established in the Church than
in the State, because that is the essence of the Catholic institution;
far from being relaxed in this, it has become stricter; at present it is
avowed, proclaimed, and even made canonical; the bishop, in our days,
in fact as in law, is a general of division, and, in law as in fact,
his curés are simply sergeants or corporals.[5243] Command, from such
a lofty grade falls direct, with extraordinary force, on grades so low,
and, at the first stroke, is followed by passive obedience. Discipline
in a diocese is as perfect as in an army corps, and the prelates
publicly take pride in it. "It is an insult," said Cardinal de
Bonnechose to the Senate,[5244] "to suppose that we are not masters
in our own house, that we cannot direct our clergy, and that it is the
clergy which directs us... There is no general within its walls who
would accept the reproach that could not compel the obedience of
his soldiers. Each of us has command of a regiment, and the regiment
marches."




III. The new Bishop.

     Change in the habits and ways of the bishop.--His origin,
     age, capability, mode of living, labor, initiative,
     undertakings, and moral and social ascendancy. [5245]

In order to make troops march, a staff, even a croisier, is not enough;
to compulsory subordination voluntary subordination must be added;
therefore, legal authority in the chief should be accompanied with moral
authority; otherwise he will not be loyally supported and to the end.
In 1789, this was not the case with the bishop; on two occasions, and at
two critical moments, the clergy of the inferior order formed a separate
band, at first at the elections, by selecting for deputies curés and not
prelates, and next in the national assembly, by abandoning the prelates
to unite with the Third Estate. The intimate hold of the chief on
his men was relaxed or broken. His ascendency over them was no
longer sufficiently great; they no longer had confidence in him. His
subordinates had come to regard him as he was, a privileged individual,
sprung from a another stock and furnished by a class apart, bishop by
right of birth, without a prolonged apprenticeship, having rendered no
services, without tests of merit, almost an interloper in the body of
his clergy, a Church parasite accustomed to spending the revenues of his
diocese away from his diocese, idle and ostentatious, often a
shameless gallant or obnoxious hunter, disposed to be a philosopher
and free-thinker, and who lacked two qualifications for a leader of
Christian priests: first, ecclesiastical deportment, and next, and very
often, Christian faith.[5246]

All these gaps in and discrepancies of episcopal character, all these
differences and distances (which existed before 1789), between the
origins, interests, habits, and manners of the lower and the upper
clergy, all these inequalities and irregularities which alienated
inferiors from the superior, have disappeared; the modern régime has
leveled the wall of separation established by the ancient régime between
the bishop and his priests. At the present day he is, like them, a
plebeian, of common extraction, and sometimes very low, one being the
son of a village shoemaker, another the natural son of a poor workwoman,
both being men of feeling and never blushing at their humble origin,
openly tender and respectful to their mothers,--a certain bishop lodging
his mother, formerly a servant, in his episcopal palace and giving her
the first seat at his table among the most honored and noblest of his
guests.[5247] He is "one of fortune's officers," that is to say, a
meritorious and old officer.[5248] According the "Almanac" of 1889, the
three youngest are from forty-seven to forty-nine years of age; all the
others are fifty and over; among the latter, three fourths of them are
over sixty. As a general rule, a priest cannot become a bishop short of
twenty or twenty-five years' service in lower or average grades; he must
have remained in each grade a longer or shorter period, in turn vicar,
curé, vicar-general, canon, head of a seminary, sometimes coadjutor,
and almost always have distinguished himself in some office, either
as preacher or catechist, professor or administrator, canonist or
theologian. His full competence cannot be contested, and he enjoys a
right to exact full obedience; he has himself rendered it up to his
consecration; "he boasts of it," and the example he proposes to his
priests is the one he has himself given.[5249] On the other hand, his
moderate way of living excites but little envy; it is about like that of
a general of division, or of a prefect, or of a high civil functionary
who, lacking personal fortune, has nothing but his salary to live on. He
does not display, as formerly, confessionals lined with satin, kitchen
utensil of massive silver, hunting accoutrements, a hierarchical staff
of major-domos, ushers, valets, and liveried lackeys, stables and
carriages, lay grand-seigniors, vassals of his suzerainty and figuring
at his consecration, a princely ceremonial of parade and homage, a
pompous show of receptions and of hospitalities. There is nothing but
what is necessary, the indispensable instruments of his office: an
ordinary carriage for his episcopal journeys and town visits, three
or four domestics for manual service, three or four secretaries for
official writings, some old mansion or other, cheaply repaired and
refurnished without ostentation, its rooms and bureaus being those of an
administrator, business man, and responsible head of a numerous staff;
in effect, he is responsible for a good many subordinates, he has a
good deal to attend to; he works himself, looking after the whole and
in detail, keeping classified files by means of a chronological and
systematic collection,[5250] like the general director of a vast
company; if he enjoys greater honors, he is subject to greater
exigencies; assuredly, his predecessors under the ancient régime,
delicate Epicureans, would not have wished for such a life; they would
not have considered the benefit worth the effort.

Even when old, he draws on his energies; he officiates, he preaches,
he presides at long ceremonies, he ordains seminarians, he confirms
thousands of children,[5251] he visits one after another the parishes
in his diocese; often, at the end of his administration, he has visited
them all and many times. Meanwhile, shut up in his episcopal cabinet, he
is constantly inspecting these four or five hundred parishes; he reads
or listens to reports, informs himself on the number of communicants, on
what is required in worship, on the financial state of the fabrique,
on the attitude of the inhabitants, on the good or bad dispositions of
municipal counselors and mayors, on the local cause of dissension
and conflict, on the conduct and character of the curé or vicar; each
resident ecclesiastic needs guidance or maintenance between intemperate
zeal and inert lukewarmness, evenly balanced according as parishes and
circumstances vary, but always in a way to prevent false steps, to turn
aside mistakes, to humor opinion, to stop scandals. For the entire
life of the clergyman, not only his public life but again his personal,
domestic, private life, belongs to and concerns the Church:[5252] there
must be no evil reports, even without foundation, on his account;
if these occur, the bishop summons him to headquarters, warns him,
admonishes him, and, without unburdening himself by handing the
matter over to a responsible tribunal, he alone passes judgment after
personally conducting the investigations, suffering the worries, and
carrying out the painful, painstaking labor always attendant on direct
absolute power. Likewise, in relation to his upper and his lower
seminary: here are two indispensable nurseries of which he is the head
gardener, attentive to filling annual vacancies and seeking proper
subjects for these throughout his diocese, ever verifying and
cultivating their vocations; he confers scholarships; he dictates rules
and regulations; appoints and dismisses, displaces and procures as he
pleases, the director and professors; he takes them, if he chooses, out
of his diocese or out of the body of regular clergy; he prescribes a
doctrine to them, methods, ways of thinking and teaching, and he keeps
his eye, beyond his present or future priests, on three or four hundred
monks and on fourteen hundred nuns.

As to the monks, so long as they remain inside their dwellings, in
company together and at home, he has nothing to say to them; but,
when they come to preach, confess, officiate or teach in public on his
ground, they fall under his jurisdiction; in concert with their superior
and with the Pope, he has rights over them and he uses them. They are
now his auxiliaries assigned to or summoned by him, available troops and
a reinforcement, so many chosen companies expressly ready, each with
its own discipline, its particular uniform, its special weapon, and
who bring to him in following a campaign under his orders, distinct
aptitudes and a livelier zeal. He needs them[5253] in order to make
up for the insufficiency of his local clergy in arousing the spirit
of devotion in his parishes and in enforcing sound doctrine in his
seminaries. Now, between these two forces a common understanding is
difficult; the former, adjuncts and flying about, march in front; the
latter, holding the ground and stationary, look upon the new-comers as
usurpers who lessen both their popularity and their fees; a bishop must
possess great tact as well as energy to impose on both bodies of
this clergy, if not an intimate union, at least mutual aid and a
collaboration without conflict.--As to the nuns,[5254] he is their
ordinary, the sole arbiter, overseer and ruler over all these cloistered
lives; he receives their vows, and renders them free of them; it is he
who, after due inquiry and examination, authorizes each entrance
into the community or a return to society, at first each admission or
novitiate, and next each profession of faith or assumption of the veil,
every dismissal or departure of a nun, every claim that one makes,
every grave act of severity or decision on the part of the superior.
He approves of, or appoints, the confessor of the establishment; he
maintains seclusion in it, he draws tighter or relaxes the observances;
he himself enters its doors by privilege of his office, and, with his
own eyes, he inspects its régime, spiritual and temporal, through
a right of control which extends from the direction of souls to the
administration of property.

To so many obligatory matters he adds others which are voluntary, not
alone works of piety, those relating to worship, propaganda, diocesan
missions, catechizing adults, brotherhoods for perpetual adoration,
meetings for the uninterrupted recital of the rosary, Peter's pence,
seminary funds, Catholic journals and reviews-but, again, institutions
for charity and education.[5255] In the way of charity, he founds or
supports twenty different kinds, sixty in one diocese alone, general
and special services, infant nurseries, clubs, asylums, lodging-houses,
patronages, societies for helping and placing the poor, for the sick at
home and in the hospitals, for suckling infants, for the deaf and dumb,
for the blind, for old men, for orphans, for repentant prostitutes, for
prisoners, for soldiers in garrison, for workmen, apprentices, youths,
and quantities of others. In the way of education, there are yet more of
them--works which the Catholic chiefs have most at heart; without these,
it is impossible in modern society to preserve the faith in each new
generation. Hence, at each turning-point of political history, we see
the bishops benefiting by the toleration or warding off the intolerance
of the teaching State, competing with it, erecting alongside of its
public schools free schools of its own, directed or served by priests
or religious brotherhoods;--after the suppression of the university
monopoly in 1850, more than one hundred colleges[5256] for secondary
education; after the favorable law of 1875, four or five provincial
faculties or universities for superior instruction after the hostile
laws of 1882, many thousands of parochial schools for primary
instruction.

Foundation and support, all this is expensive. The bishop requires a
great deal of money, especially since the State, become ill-disposed,
cuts off clerical resources as much as possible, no longer maintains
scholarships in the seminaries, deprives suspicious desservans of their
small stipends, eats into the salaries of the prelates, throws
obstacles in the way of communal liberalities, taxes and over taxes
the congregations, so that, not merely through the diminution of its
allowances it relieves itself at the expense of the Church, but again,
through the increase of its imposts, it burdens the Church for its
own advantage. The episcopacy obtains all necessary funds through
collections in the churches and at domiciles, through the gifts and
subscriptions of the faithful; and, every year, it needs millions, apart
from the budget appropriation, for its faculties and universities
in which it installs largely paid professors, for the construction,
location and arrangement of its countless buildings, for the expenses of
its minor schools, for the support of its ten thousand seminarists, for
the general out-lay on so many charitable institutions; and it is the
bishop who, their principal promoter, must provide for this, all the
more because he has often taken it upon himself in advance, and made
himself responsible for it by either a written or verbal promise. He
responds to all these engagements; he has funds on hand at the maturity
of each contract. In 1883, the bishop of Nancy, in need of one hundred
thousand francs to build a school-house with a work-room attached to it,
mentions this to a number of persons assembled in his drawing-room; one
of these puts his hand in his pocket and gives him ten thousand francs,
and others subscribe on the spot to the amount of seventy-four thousand
francs.[5257] Cardinal Mathieu, during his administration, archbishop
of Besançon, thus collects and expends four millions. Lately, Cardinal
Lavigerie, to whom the budget allows fifteen thousand francs per
annum, wrote that he had spent eighteen hundred thousand francs and had
incurred no debt.[5258]--Through this initiative and this ascendancy the
bishop becomes a central social rallying-point; there is no other in
the provinces, nothing but so many disjointed lives, juxtaposed and kept
together in an artificial circle prescribed from above; so that a
good many of these, and of most consideration, gravitate to and group
themselves, especially since 1830, around this last permanent center and
form a part of its body; he is the sole germinating, vivifying, intact
center that still agglutinates scattered wills and suitably organizes
them. Naturally, class and party interests incorporate themselves
additionally along with the Catholic interest which he represents, and
his ecclesiastical authority becomes a political influence; besides
his secular and regular clergy, over and beyond the two thousand five
hundred exemplary or directorial lives which he controls, we see
behind him an indefinite multitude of lay adhesions and devotedness.
Consequently, every government must take him into their calculations,
and all the more because his colleagues stand by him; the episcopacy,
banded together, remains erect in face of the omnipotent State, under
the July monarchy as claimants of free instruction and under the second
empire in support of the temporal power of the Pope.--In this militant
attitude, the figure of the bishop is fully unveiled; the titular
champion of an infallible Church, himself a believer and submissive; his
voice is extraordinarily proud and defiant;[5259] in his own eyes, he
is the unique depository of truth and morality; in the eyes of his
followers, he becomes a superhuman personage, a prophet of salvation or
of destruction, the annunciator of divine judgments, the dispenser of
celestial anger or of celestial pardon; he rises to the clouds in an
apotheosis of glory; with women especially, this veneration grows into
enthusiasm and degenerates into idolatry. Towards the end of the second
empire an eminent French bishop, on a steamboat on Lake Leman, taking
a roll of bread from his pocket, seated himself alongside of two ladies
and ate it, handing each of them a piece of it. One of them, bowing
reverently, replied to him, "At your hands, my lord, this is almost the
holy communion!"[5260]




IV. The subordinate clergy.

     The subordinates.--The secular clergy.--Its derivation and
     how recruited.--How prepared and led.--The lower seminary.--
     The higher seminary.--Monthly lectures and annual retreat.--
     The Exercitia.--The Manreze du Prêtre.--The curé in his
     parish.--His rôle a difficult one.--His patience and correct
     conduct.

A clergy submissive in mind and feeling, long prepared by its condition
and education for faith and obedience, acts under the sway of this
sovereign and consecrated hand.[5261] Among the 40,000 curés and
desservans "more than 35,000 belong to the laboring class of workmen and
peasants,"[5262] not the first class of peasants, but the second class,
the poorer families earning their daily bread and often with a good many
children. Under the pressure of the ambient atmosphere and of the modern
régime, the others keep back their sons, retaining them for the world
and denying them to the Church; ambition, even low down on the scale,
has developed itself and changed its object. No longer do they aspire
for their sons to become a curé but a school master, a railroad
employee, or a commercial clerk.[5263] It was necessary to go descend
further, a lower stratum has to be attained, in order to extract from it
the priests that are lacking.

Undoubtedly, at this depth, the extraction was more expensive; the
family cannot afford to pay for the child's ecclesiastic cal education;
the State, moreover, after 1830, no longer gives anything to the lower
seminary, nor to the large one after 1885.[5264] The expenses of these
schools must be borne by the faithful in the shape of donations and
legacies; to this end, the bishop orders collections in the churches in
Lent and encourages his diocesans to found scholarships. The outlay for
the support and education, nearly gratis, of a future priest between
the ages of twelve and twenty-four is very great; in the lower seminary
alone it costs from forty to fifty thousand francs over and above the
net receipts;[5265] facing such an annual deficit, the bishop, who is
responsible for the undertaking, is greatly concerned and sometimes
extremely anxious. To make amends, and as compensation, the extraction
is surer; the long process by which a child is withdrawn and instructed
for the priesthood goes on and is finished with less uncertainty.
Neither the light nor the murmur of the century finds its way to these
low depths; nobody ever reads the newspaper, even the penny paper;
vocations can here shape themselves and become fixed like crystals,
intact and rigid, and all of a piece; they are better protected than in
the upper layers, less exposed to mundane infiltrations; they run less
risk of being disturbed or thwarted by curiosity, reason and skepticism,
by modern ideas; the outside world and family surroundings do not, as
elsewhere, interfere with their silent internal workings.[5266] When the
choir-boy comes home after the service, when the seminarian returns
to his parents in his vacations, he does not here en-counter so many
disintegrating influences, various kinds of information, free and easy
talk, comparisons between careers, concern about advancement, habits
of comfort, maternal solicitude, the shrugs of the shoulder and the
half-smile of the strong-minded neighbor. Stone upon stone and each
stone in its place, his faith builds up and becomes complete without
any incoherency in its structure, with no incongruity in the materials,
without any hidden imbalance. He has been taken in hand before his
twelfth year, when very young; his curé, who has been instructed from
above to secure suitable subjects, has singled him out in the catechism
class and again at the ceremony of confirmation;[5267] he is found to
have a pious tendency and a taste for sacred ceremonies, a suitable
demeanor, a mild disposition, complacency, and is inclined to study; he
is a docile and well-behaved child; whether an acolyte at the altar
or in the sacristy, he tries to fold the chasuble properly; all his
genuflexions are correct, they do not worry him, he has no trouble in
standing still, he is not excited and diverted, like the others, by the
eruptions of animal spirits and rustic coarseness. If his rude brain is
open to cultivation, if grammar and Latin can take root in it, the curé
or the vicar at once take charge of him; he studies under them, gratis
or nearly so, until he has completed the sixth or the seventh grade, and
then he enters the lower seminary.[5268]

This is a school apart, a boarding-house of picked youths, an enclosed
hot-house intended for the preservation and development of special
vocations. None of these schools existed previous to 1789; at the
present day(in 1885), they number 86 in France, and all the pupils
are to become future priests. No foreign plants, no future laymen, are
admitted into this preparatory nursery;[5269] for experience has
shown that if the lower seminary is mixed it no longer attains its
ecclesiastical purpose; "it habitually turns over to the upper
seminary only the bottom of the classes; those at the top seek fortune
elsewhere". But if, on the contrary, "the lower seminaries are kept
pure, the entire rhetoric[5270] class continues on into the upper
seminary; not only do they obtain the bottom of the classes but the
top."--The culture, in this second nursery, which is prolonged during
five years, becomes extreme, wholly special; it was less so under the
ancient régime, even at Saint-Sulpice; there were cracks in the glass
letting in currents of air; the archbishop's nephews and the younger
sons of nobles predestined for Church dignities had introduced into
it the laxity and liberties which were then the privileges of the
episcopacy. During the vacations,[5271] fairy scenes and pastorals were
performed there with costumes and dances, "The Enthronement of the Great
Mogul," and the "Shepherds in Chains"; the seminarians took great care
of their hair; a first-class hair-dresser came and waited on them; the
doors were not regularly shut: the youthful Talleyrand knew how to get
out into the city and begin or continue his gallantries.[5272] From
and after the Concordat, stricter discipline in the new seminaries had
become monastic; these are practical schools, not for knowledge, but for
training, the object being much less to make learned men than believing
priests; education takes precedence of instruction and intellectual
exercises are made subordinate to spiritual exercises[5273]--mass every
day and five visits to the Saint-Sacrament, with one minute to half-hour
prayer stations; rosaries of sixty-three paters and aves, litanies,
the angelus, loud and whispered prayers, special self-examinations,
meditation on the knees, edifying readings in common, silence until
one o'clock in the afternoon, silence at meals and the listening to an
edifying discourse, frequent communions, weekly confessions, general
confession at New-year's, one day of retreat at the end of every month
after the vacations and before the collation of each of the four orders,
eight days of retirement during which a suspension of all study, morning
and evening sermons, spiritual readings, meditations, orisons and other
services from hour to hour;[5274] in short, the daily and systematic
application of a wise and steadily perfected method, the most
serviceable for fortifying faith, exalting the imagination, giving
direction and impulse to the will, analogous to that of a military
school, Saint-Cyr or Saumur, to such an extent that its corporeal and
mental imprint is indelible, and that by the way in which he thinks,
talks, smiles, bows and stands in your presence we at once recognize a
former pupil of Saint-Sulpice as we do a former pupil of Saumur and of
Saint-Cyr. Thus graduated, an ordained and consecrated priest, first
a vicar and then a curé desservant, the discipline which has bound and
fashioned him still keeps him erect and presenting arms. Besides his
duties in church and his ministrations in the homes of his parishioners,
besides masses, vespers, sermons, catechisings, confessions, communions,
baptisms, marriages, extreme unctions, funerals, visiting the sick and
suffering, he has his personal and private exercises: at first, his
breviary, the reading of which demands each day an hour and a half, no
practical duty being so necessary. Lamennais obtained a dispensation
from it, and hence his lapses and fall.[5275] Let no one object that
such a recitation soon becomes mechanical[5276]; the prayers, phrases
and words which it buries deep in the mind, even wandering, necessarily
become fixed inhabitants in it, and hence occult and stirring powers
banded together which encompass the intellect and lay siege to the will,
which, in the subterranean regions of the soul, gradually extend or
fortify their silent occupation of the place, which insensibly operate
on the man without his being aware of it, and which, at critical
moments, unexpectedly rise up to steady his footsteps or to save him
from temptation. Add to this antique custom two modern institutions
which contribute to the same end. The first one is the monthly
conference, which brings together the desservans curés at the residence
of the oldest curé in the canton; each has prepared a study on some
theme furnished by the bishopric, some question of dogma, morality or
religious history, which he reads aloud and discusses with his brethren
under the presidency and direction of the oldest curé, who gives his
final decision; this keeps theoretical knowledge and ecclesiastical
erudition fresh in the minds of both reader and hearers. The other
institution, almost universal nowadays, is the annual retreat which the
priests in the diocese pass in the large seminary of the principal town.
The plan of it was traced by Saint Ignatius; his Exercitia is still
to-day the manual in use, the text of which is literally,[5277] or very
nearly, followed.[5278] The object is to reconstitute the supernatural
world in the soul, for, in general, it evaporates, becomes effaced, and
ceases to be palpable under the pressure of the natural world. Even the
faithful pay very little attention to it, while their vague conception
of it ends in becoming a mere verbal belief; it is essential to give
them back the positive sensation, the contact and feeling. To this
end, a man retires to a suitable place, where what he does actively or
passively is hourly determined for him in advance--attendance at chapel
or at preaching, telling his beads, litanies, orisons aloud, orisons in
his own breast, repeated self-examination, confession and the rest--in
short, an uninterrupted series of diversified and convergent ceremonies
which, by calculated degrees, drive out terrestrial preoccupations
and overcome him with spiritual impressions; immediately around him,
impressions of the same kind followed by the contagion of example,
mutual fervor, common expectation, involuntary emulation, and that
overstrained eagerness which creates its object; with all the more
certainty that the individual himself works on himself, in silence, five
hours a day, according to the prescriptions of a profound psychology, in
order that his bare conception may take upon itself body and substance.
What-ever may be the subject of his meditations, he repeats it twice the
same day, and each time he begins by "creating the scene," the Nativity
or the Passion, the Day of Judgment or Hell; he converts the remote and
undefined story, the dry, abstract dogma, into a detailed and figured
representation; he dwells on it, he evokes in turn the images furnished
by the five senses, visual, audible, tactile, olfactory, and even
gustatory; he groups them together, and in the evening he animates them
afresh in order that he may find them more intense when he awakes the
next morning. He thus obtains the complete, precise, almost physical
spectacle of his aspirations; he reaches the alibi, that mental
transposition, that reversal of the points of view in which the order
of certainties becomes inverted, in which substantial objects seem to
be vain phantoms and the mystic world a world of substantial
reality.[5279]--According to persons and circumstances, the theme for
meditation differs, and the retreat is prolonged for a shorter or longer
period. For laymen, it generally lasts for three days only; for the
Brethren of the Christian Schools it is eight days annually, and when,
at the age of twenty-eight, they take their vows in perpetuity, it lasts
thirty days: for the secular priests, it lasts a little less than a
week, while the theme on which their meditations are concentrated is the
supernatural character of the priest. The priest who is confessor and
ministrant of the Eucharist, the priest who is the savior and restorer,
the priest who is pastor, preacher and administrator--such are the
subjects on which their imagination, assisted and directed, must work
in order to compose the cordial which has to support them for the entire
year. None is more potent; that which the Puritans drank at an American
camp-meeting or at a Scotch revival was stronger but of less enduring
effect.[5280]

Two different cordials, one reinforcing the other, are mixed together in
this drink, both being of high flavor and so rank as to burn an ordinary
mouth. On the one hand, with the freedom of language and the boldness
of deduction characteristic of the method, the sentiment of the priest's
dignity is exalted. What is the priest?"He is, between God who is in
heaven and the man who tries to find him on earth, a being, God and
man, who brings these nearer by his symbolizing both.[5281].. I do not
flatter you with pious hyperboles in calling you gods; this is not
a rhetorical falsehood.... You are creators similar to Mary in her
cooperation in the Incarnation.... You are creators like God in time....
You are creators like God in eternity. Our creation on our part, our
daily creation, is nothing less than the Word made flesh itself.... God
may create other worlds, he cannot so order it that any act under the
sun can be greater than your sacrifice; for, at this moment, he reposes
in your hands all that he has and all that he is.... I am not a little
lower than the cherubim and seraphim in the government of the world,
I am far above them; they are only the Servants of God, we are his
coadjutors.... The angels, who behold the vast riches passing through
our hands daily, are amazed at our prerogative.... I fulfill three
sublime functions in relation to the god of our altars--I cause him
to descend, I administer his body, I am his custodian... . Jesus dwells
under your lock and key; his hours of reception begin and end through
you, he does not move without your permission, he gives no benediction
without your assistance, he bestows nothing except at your hands, and
his dependence is so dear to him that, for eighteen hundred years, he
has not left the Church for one moment to lose himself on the glory of
his Father."--On the other hand, they are made to drink in full
draughts the sentiment of subordination, which they imbibe to their very
marrow.[5282] "Ecclesiastical obedience is... a love of dependence, a
violation of judgment.... Would you know what it is as to the extent
of sacrifice? A voluntary death, the sepulcher of the will, says Saint
Climaque.... There is a sort of real presence infused into those
who command us...." Let us be careful not to fall "into the crafty
opposition of liberal Catholicism.... Liberalism, in its consequences,
is social atheism.... Unity, in Roman faith, is not sufficient; let us
labor together in the unity of the Roman spirit; for that, let us
always judge Rome with the optimism of affection.... Each new dogmatic
definition produces its own advantages: that of the Immaculate
Conception has given us Lourdes and its truly oecumenical wonders."

Nothing of all this is too much, and, in the face of the exigencies
of modern times, it scarcely suffices. Now that society has become
incredulous, indifferent or, at the least, secular, the priest must
possess the two intense and master ideas which support a soldier abroad
among insurgents or barbarians, one being the conviction that he is of
a species and essence apart, infinitely superior to the common herd;
and the other is the thought that he belongs to his flag, t

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