Priests, Women, and Families. Jules Michelet

this free will brings on the sinner responsibility and justice according to his works, he finds himself very much embarrassed with it. The Jesuit comes very seasonably to his relief; he takes upon himself the task of directing this inconvenient liberty, and reduces works to the capital one of serving Rome. So that moral liberty, professed in theory, will turn practically to the profit of authority.

      A double lie. These people who give themselves the title of Jesuits, or men of Jesus, teach that man is saved less by Jesus than by himself, by his free will. Are, then, these men philosophers, and friends of liberty? Quite the contrary; they are at once the most cruel enemies of philosophy and liberty.

      That is to say, with the word free will they juggle away Jesus; and only retain the word Jesus to cheat us of the liberty which they set before us.

      The thing being thus simplified on both sides, a sort of tacit bargain was made between Rome, the Jesuits, and the world.

      Rome gave up Christianity, the principle which forms its basis (salvation by Christ). Having been called upon to choose between this doctrine and the contrary one, she durst not decide.

      The Jesuits gave up morality after religion; reducing the moral merits by which man may earn his salvation to only one, the Political merit of which we have spoken, that of serving Rome.

      What must the world give up in its turn?

      The world (by far the most worldly part of the world, woman) will have to give up her best possessions, her family and her domestic hearth. Eve once more betrays Adam. Woman deceives man in her husband and son.

      Thus every one sold his God. Rome bartered away religion, and woman domestic piety.

The weak minds of women after the great corruption of the sixteenth century, spoiled beyond all remedy, full of passion, fear, and wicked desires mingled with remorse, seized greedily the means of sinning conscientiously, of expiating without either amendment, amelioration, or return towards God. They thought themselves happy to receive at the Confessional, by way of penance, some little political commission, or the management of some intrigue. They transferred to this singular manner of expiating their faults the very violence of the guilty passions, for which the atonement was to be made; and in order to remain sinful, they were often obliged to commit crimes.[2]

      The passion of woman, inconstant in everything else, was in this case sustained by the vigorous obstinacy of the mysterious and invisible hand that urged her forward. Under this impulse, at once gentle and strong, ardent and persevering, firm as iron and as dissolving as fire, characters and even interests at length gave way.

      Some examples will help us to understand it the better. In France, old Lesdiguières was politically, much interested in remaining a Protestant; as such, he was the head man of the party. The king rather than the governor of Dauphiné, he assisted the Swiss, and protected the populations of Vaud and Romand against the house of Savoy. But the old man's daughter was gained over by Father Cotton. She set to work upon her father with patience and address, and succeeded in inducing him to quit his high position for an empty title, and change his religion for the title of Constable.

      In Germany the character of Ferdinand I., his interest, and the part he had to play, would have induced him to remain moderate, and not become the vassal of his nephew, Philip II. With violence and fanaticism he had no choice but to accept a secondary place. The emperor's daughters, however, intrigued so well that the house of Austria became united by marriage to the houses of Lorraine and Bavaria. The children of these families being educated by the Jesuits, the latter repaired in Germany the broken thread of the destinies of the Guises, and had even better fortune than the Guises themselves; for they made for their own use certain blind instruments, agents in diplomacy and tactics—skilful workmen certainly, but still mere workmen. I speak of that hardy and devout generation, of Ferdinand II. of Austria, of Tilly, and Maximilian of Bavaria, those conscientious executors of the great works of Rome, who, under the direction of their teachers, carried on for so long a time, throughout Europe, a warfare which was at once barbarous and skilful, merciless and methodical. The Jesuits launched them into it, and then carefully watched over them; and whenever Tilly on his charger was seen dashing over the smoking ruins of cities, or the battle-field covered with the slain, the Jesuit, trotting on his mule, was not far off.

This vile war, the most loathsome in history, appears the more horrible, by the almost total absence of free inspiration and spontaneous impulse. It was, from its very beginning, both artificial and mechanical[3]—like a war of machines or phantoms. These strange beings, created only to fight, march with a look as void of martial ardour, as their heart is of affection. How could they be reasoned with? What language could be used towards them? What pity could be expected from them? In our wars of religion, in those of the Revolution they were men who fought; each died for the sake of his idea, and, when he fell on the battle-field, he shrouded himself in his faith. Whereas the partisans of the Thirty Years' War have no individual life—no idea of their own; their very breath is but the inspiration of the evil genius who urges them on. These automatons, who grow blinder every day, are not the less obstinate and bloody. No history would lead us to understand this abominable phenomenon, if there did not remain some delineation of them in the hellish pictures of that diabolical, damned Salvator Rosa.[4]

      Behold, then, this fruit of mildness, benignity, and paternity; see how, after having by indulgence and connivance exterminated morality, seized on the family by surprise, fascinated the mother and conquered the child, and by the devil's own art raised the man-machine, they are found to have created a monster, whose whole idea, life, and action was murder, nothing more.

      Wise politicians, amiable men, good fathers, who with so much mildness have skilfully arranged from afar the Thirty Years' War, seducing Aquaviva, you learned Canisius, and you good Possevino, the friend of St. François de Sales, who will not admire the flexibility of your genius? At the very time you were organising the terrible intrigue of this second and prolonged St. Bartholomew, you were mildly discussing with the good saint the difference that ought to be observed between "those who died in love, and those who died for love."

      What by-path led from these mild theories to such atrocious results? How did it happen that souls enervated by gallant devotion and devout gallantry, and spoiled by the daily facilities of an obliging and accommodating casuistry, allowed themselves to be taken asleep in the meshes of political intrigue? It would be a long story. In order to set about it one must wade through their nauseous literature; but one sickens at the sight of their filthy trash.

      One word, however, for it is important. Prepared as the world was, both by bad morals and bad taste, for the miserable productions with which the Jesuits inundated it, all this insipid flood would have subsided without leaving any traces behind, had they not mingled with it a part of the pure original stream, which had already delighted the human heart. The charm of St. François de Sales, his sublime spiritual union with Madame de Chantal, the holy and mild seducing influence which he had exercised over women and children, served indirectly, but very efficaciously, the purpose of this great religious intrigue.

      With small morality and cheap absolution, the Jesuits could very easily corrupt consciences, but not tranquillise them. They could play, with more or less skill, upon that rich instrument Falsehood, which their institution gave them, airs of science, art, literature, and theology. But could they, with all this false fingering, produce one true note?—Not one!

      But this true and gentle note was precisely that which was sounded for them by St. François. They had only to play after his method to make the false appear a little less discordant. The amiable qualities of his writings, nay, their pleasing errors, were skilfully made the most of. His taste for the minute and humble, which made him bestow a partial regard upon the lesser beings of the creation, such as little children, lambs, birds, and bees, became a precedent among the Jesuits for whatever is finical and narrow-minded, for a meanness of style and littleness of heart. The bold but innocent language of an angel, pure as light