Priests, Women, and Families

Priests, Women, and Families.

by J. Michelet.

PREFACE.

The following pages--intended to restore _Domestic Life_ to French Society--formed the Preface to the Third Edition of _Priests, Women, and Families_, by M. Michelet, of which celebrated work, "THE PROTESTANT EVANGELICAL MISSION" have published an Edition in English.

This book has produced upon our adversaries an effect we had not antic.i.p.ated. It has made them lose every sense of propriety and self-respect:--nay, more, even that respect for the sanctuary which it was their duty to teach us. From the pulpits of their crowded churches they preach against a living man, calling him by his name, and invoking upon the author and his book the hatred of those who know not how to read, and who will never read this work. The heads of the clergy must, indeed, have felt themselves touched to the quick, to let loose these furious preachers upon us.

We have hit the mark too fairly, it should seem. Woman!--this was the point on which they were sensitive. Direction, the spiritual guidance of women, is the vital part of ecclesiastical authority; and they will fight for it to the death. Strike, if you will, elsewhere, but not here. Attack the dogma--all well and good; they may, perhaps, make a show of violence, or perpetrate some empty declamation; but if you should happen to meddle with this particular point, the thing becomes serious, and they no longer contain themselves. It is a sad sight to see pontiffs, elders of the people, gesticulating, stamping, foaming at the mouth, and gnashing their teeth.[1] Young men, do not look; epileptic convulsions have occasionally a contagious effect upon the spectators. Let us leave them and depart; we must resume our studies without loss of time: "Art is long, life is short."

I remember having read in the correspondence of Saint Charles Borromeo, that one of his friends, a person of authority and importance, having censured some Jesuit or other who was too fond of confessing nuns, the latter came in a fury to insult him. The Jesuit knew his strength: being a preacher then in vogue, well off at court, and still better at the court of Rome, he thought he need not stand upon ceremony. He went to the greatest extremes, was violent, insolent, as much as he pleased: his grave censor remained cool. The Jesuit could no longer keep within the bounds of decency, and made use of the vilest expressions. The other, calm and firm, answered nothing; he let him continue his declamation, threats, and violent gestures; he only looked at his feet.

"Why were you always looking at his feet?" inquired an eye-witness, as soon as the Jesuit, was gone. "Because," replied the n.o.ble man calmly, "I fancied I saw the cloven hoof peeping out every now and then; and this man, who seemed possessed with a devil, might be the tempter himself, disguised as a Jesuit."

One prelate predicts in sorrow that we are sending the priests to martyrdom.

Alas, this martyrdom is what they themselves demand, either aloud or in secret, namely--marriage.

We think, without enumerating the too well known inconveniences of their present state, that if the priest is to advise the family, it is good for him to know what a family is; that as a married man, of a mature age and experience, one who has loved and suffered, and whom domestic affections have enlightened upon the mysteries of moral life, which are not to be learned by guessing, he would possess at the same time more affection and more wisdom.

It is true the defenders of the clergy have lately drawn such a picture of marriage, that many persons perhaps will henceforth dread the engagement. They have far exceeded the very worst things that novelists and modern socialists have ever said against the _legal union_. Marriage, which lovers imprudently seek as a confirmation of love, is, according to them, but a warfare: we marry in order to fight.

It is impossible to degrade lower the virtue of matrimony. The sacrament of union, according to these doctors, is useless, and can do nothing unless a third party be always present between the partners--_i.e._, the combatants--to separate them.

It had been generally believed that two persons were sufficient for matrimony: but this is all altered; and we have the new system, as set forth by themselves, composed of three elements: 1st, _man_, the strong, the violent; 2ndly, _woman_, a being naturally weak; 3rdly, the _priest_, born a man, and strong, but who is kind enough to become weak and resemble woman; and who, partic.i.p.ating thus in both natures, may interpose between them.

Interpose! interfere between two persons who were to be henceforth but one! This changes wonderfully the idea which, from the beginning of the world, has been entertained of marriage.

But this is not all; they avow that they do not pretend to make an impartial interference that might favour each of the parties, according to reason. No, they address themselves exclusively to the wife: she it is whom they undertake to protect against her natural protector. They offer to league with her in order to transform the husband. If it were once firmly established that marriage, instead of being unity in two persons, is a league of one of them with a stranger, it would become exceedingly scarce. Two to one! the game would seem too desperate; few people would be bold enough to face the peril. There would be no marriages but for money; and these are already too numerous. People in difficulties would doubtless not fail to marry; for instance, a merchant placed by his pitiless creditor between marriage and a warrant.

To be transformed, re-made, remodelled, and changed in nature! A grand and difficult change! But there would be no merit in it, if it was not of one"s free will, and only brought about by a sort of domestic persecution, or household warfare.

First of all, we must know whether transformation means amelioration, whether it be intended by transformation to ascend higher and higher in moral life, and become more virtuous and wise. To ascend would be well and good; but if it should be to fall lower?

And first of all, the wisdom they offer us does not imply knowledge.

"What is the use of knowledge and literature? They are mere toys of luxury, vain and dangerous ornaments of the mind, both strangers to the soul." Let us not contest the matter, but pa.s.s over this empty distinction that opposes the mind to the soul, as if ignorance was innocence, and as if they could have the gifts of the soul and heart with a poor, insipid, idiotic literature!

But where is their heart? Let us catch a glimpse of it. How is it that those who undertake to develope it in others dispense with giving any proof of it in themselves? But this living fountain of the heart is impossible to be hidden, if we really have it within us. It springs out in spite of everything; if you were to stop it on one side, it would run out by the other. It is more difficult to be confined than the flowing of great rivers:--try to shut up the sources of the Rhone or Rhine! These are vain metaphors, and very ill-placed, I allow: to what deserts of Arabia must I not resort to find more suitable ones?

We are in a church: see the crowd, the dense ma.s.s of people who after having wandered far, enter here weary and athirst, hoping to find some refreshment; they wait with open mouths. Will there even be one small drop of dew?

No; a decent, proper, blunt-looking man ascends the pulpit: he will not affect them; he confines himself to proofs. He makes a grand display of reasoning, with high logical pretensions and much solemnity in his premises. Then come sudden, sharp conclusions; but for middle term there is none: "These things require no proof." Why, then, miserable reasoner, did you make so much noise about your proofs?

Well! do not prove! only love! and we will let you off everything else.

Say only one word from the heart to comfort this crowd. All that variegated ma.s.s of living heads, that you see so closely a.s.sembled around your pulpit are not blocks of stone, but so many living souls.

Those yonder are young men, the rising generation, our future society.

They are of happy dispositions, full of spirit, fresh and entire, such as G.o.d made them, and untamed; they rush forward incautiously even to the very brink of precipices. What! youth, danger, futurity, and hopes clouded with fear--does not all this move you? Will nothing open your fatherly heart?

Mark, too, that brilliant crowd of women and flowers: in all that splendour so delightful to the eye there is much suffering. I pray you to speak one word of comfort to them. You know they are your daughters, who come every evening so forlorn to weep at your feet.

They confide in you, and tell you everything; you know their wounds.

Try to find some consoling word--surely that cannot be so difficult.

What man is there who, in seeing the heart of a woman bleeding before him, would not feel his own heart inspired with words to heal it? A dumb man, for want of words, would find what is worth more, a flood of tears!

What shall we say of those who, in presence of so many desponding, sickly, and confiding persons, give them, as their only remedy, the spirit of an academy, glittering commonplaces, old paradoxes, Bonaparteism, socialism, and what not? There is in all this, we must confess, a sad dryness and a great want of feeling.

Ah! you _are_ dry and harsh! I felt this the other day (it was in December last), when I read on the walls, as I was pa.s.sing by, an order from the archbishop. It was a case of suicide; a poor wretch had killed himself in the church of Saint-Gervais. Was it misery, pa.s.sion, madness, spleen, or moral weakness in this melancholy season? No cause was mentioned; the body alone was there with the blood on the marble slabs; but no explanation. By what gradation of griefs, disappointments, and anguish had he been induced to commit this unnatural act? What steps of moral purgatory had he descended before he reached the bottom of the abyss? Who could say? No one. But any man with a gleam of imagination in his heart, sees in this solemn mystery something to make him weep and pray. That man is not Mr.

Affre: read the mandate. There is compa.s.sion for the blood-stained church, and pity for the polluted stones; but for the dead only a malediction. But, whether a Christian or not, guilty or not, is he not still a man, my lord bishop? Could you not, whilst you were condemning suicide, let fall one word of pity by the way? No, no sentiment of humanity, nothing for the poor soul, which, besides its misfortune (which must have been terrible, indeed, since it could not support it), departs all alone and accursed, to attempt that perilous flight of the other life and judgment.

Another very different fact had given me some time before a similar impression. I had gone on business to the house of the venerable Sister * * *.

She was absent; and two persons, a lady and an aged priest, were waiting, like myself, in the small parlour. The lady seemed actuated by some motive of beneficence: the priest, as they are lords and masters in every Religious house, seemed to be quite at home, and, to beguile the time, was writing letters at the sister"s bureau. At the conclusion of every note, he listened to the lady for a moment. The latter, whose gentle face bore traces of grief, impressed one at once with the goodness of her disposition: perhaps she would not have attracted my attention, but there was something in her that interested me. Was it pa.s.sion or grief? I overheard without listening--she had lost her son.

An only son, full of affection, spirits, and courage; a young hero, who, leaving the Polytechnic school, had abandoned everything, riches, high life, pleasure, happiness, and such a mother! And regardless alike of safety and danger, had rushed to Ma.r.s.eilles, thence to Algiers, to the enemy, and to death.

The poor woman, wholly occupied with this idea, s.n.a.t.c.hed, from time to time, a little moment to put in a word; she wanted to speak to him, and appeal to his compa.s.sion. The scene was infinitely touching and natural, without any theatrical effect. Her moderate grief and sighs, without tears, affected me the more.

She was evidently wasting her breath. The thoughts of the priest were elsewhere. It was not possible for him not to listen; he was forced to say something or other (the lady was rich, and her carriage was waiting at the door); but he got off as cheap as he could: "Yes, Madam, Providence tries us. It strikes us for our good. These are very painful trials," &c., &c. Such vague and cold words did not discourage the lady; she drew her chair nearer, thinking he would hear her better: "Ah! Sir, how shall I tell you? Ah! how can you understand so heavy a calamity?" She would have made a dead man weep.

Did you ever see the heart-rending sight of the poor pointer, that has been wounded by a shot, writhing at his master"s feet, and licking his hands, as if praying to him to help him? The comparison will appear, perhaps, strange to those who have not seen the reality. However, at that moment, I felt it in my heart. That woman, mortally wounded, yet so gentle in her grief, seemed to be writhing at the feet of the priest, and to entreat his compa.s.sion.

I looked at that priest: he was vulgar and unfeeling, such as we see so often, neither wicked nor good; there was nothing to indicate a heart of iron, but he was as if made of wood. I saw plainly that no one word of all which his ear had received had entered his soul. One sense was wanting. But why torment a blind man by speaking to him of colours?

He answers vaguely; occasionally he may guess pretty nearly; but how can it be helped? he cannot see.

And do not think that the feelings of the heart can be guessed at more easily. A man without wife or child might study the mysterious working of a family in books and the world for ten thousand years, without ever knowing one word about them. Look at these men; it is neither time, opportunity, nor facility that they lack to acquire knowledge; they pa.s.s their lives with women who tell them more than they tell their husbands; they know and yet they are ignorant: they know all a woman"s acts and thoughts, but they are ignorant precisely of what is the best and most intimate part of her character, and the very essence of her being. They hardly understand her as a lover (of G.o.d or man), still less as a wife, and not at all as a mother. Nothing is more painful than to see them sitting down awkwardly by the side of a woman to caress her child: their manner towards it is that of flatterers or courtiers--anything but that of a father.

What I pity most in the man condemned to celibacy is not only the privation of the sweetest joys of the heart, but that a thousand objects of the natural and moral world are, and ever will be, a dead letter to him. Many have thought, by living apart, to dedicate their lives to science; but the reverse is the case: in such a morose and crippled life science is never fathomed; it may be varied and superficially immense; but it escapes, for it will not reside there.

Celibacy gives a restless activity to researches, intrigues, and business, a sort of huntsman"s eagerness, a sharpness in the subtleties of school-divinity and disputation; this is at least the effect it had in its prime. If it makes the senses keen and liable to temptation, certainly it does not soften the heart. Our terrorists in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were monks.[2] Monastic prisons were always the most cruel.[3] A life systematically negative, a life without its functions, developes in man instincts that are hostile to life; he who suffers, is willing to make others suffer. The harmonious and fertile parts of our nature, which on the one hand incline to goodness, and on the other to genius and high invention, can hardly ever withstand this partial suicide.

Two cla.s.ses of persons necessarily contract much insensibility--surgeons and priests. By constantly witnessing sufferings and death, we become by degrees dead in our sympathetic faculties. Let us, however, remark this difference, that the insensibility of the surgeon is not without its utility: if he was affected by his operation he might tremble. The business of the priest, on the contrary, requires that he should be affected; sympathy would be generally the most efficacious remedy to cure the soul. But independently of what we have just said about the natural harshness of this profitless life, we must observe that the priest, in contradiction with a society, the whole of whose progress he condemns, becomes less and less benevolent for the sinner and the rebel. The physician who does not like his patient is less likely than another to cure him.

It is a sad reflection to think that these men, who have so little sympathy, and who are, moreover, soured by contention, should happen to have in their hands the most gentle portion of mankind; that which has preserved the most affection, and ever remained the most faithful to nature, and which, in the very corruption of morals, is still the least corrupted by interest and hateful pa.s.sions.

That is to say, that the least loving govern those who love the most.

In order to know well what use they make of this empire over women, which they claim as their own privilege, we must not confine ourselves to their flattering and wheedling ways with fashionable ladies, but inquire of the poor women whom they are able to treat unceremoniously, those especially, who, being in convents, are at the mercy of the ecclesiastical superiors, and whom they keep under lock and key, and undertake to protect alone.

We are not quite satisfied with this protection. For a long time we thought all was right; we were even simple enough to say to ourselves that the law could see nothing amiss in this kingdom of grace. But hark! from those gentle asylums, those images of paradise, we hear sobs and sighs.

I shall not speak here of the convents that have become real houses of correction, nor of the events at Sens, Avignon, and Poictiers, nor of the suicides that have taken place, alas! much nearer home.

No, I shall speak only of the most honourable houses and the most holy nuns. How are they protected by ecclesiastical authority?

First, _as to the Soul_, or conscience, that dearest possession, on account of which they sacrifice all the pleasures of this world; is it true that the sisters of the hospitals who pa.s.sed for Jansenists have been latterly persecuted, to make them denounce their supposed secret directors; and that they have obtained a truce only through the threatening mediation of a magistrate, who is a celebrated orator and a firm Gallican?

Again, _as to the Body_, or personal liberty, which the slave gains as soon as ever he does but touch the sacred soil of France--does ecclesiastical authority secure this to the nuns? Is it true that a Carmelite nun, within sixty leagues of Paris, was kept _chained_ for several months in her convent, and afterwards shut up for _nine years in a madhouse_?

Is it true that a Benedictine nun was put into a sort of _in pace_, and afterwards into a room full of mad women, where nothing was heard but the horrible cries, howlings, and impure language of ruined women, who, from one excess to another, have become raving mad?[4]

This woman, whose only crime was good sense and a taste for writing and drawing flowers, served her establishment a long time as housekeeper and governess: she had taught most of the sisters to read. What does she ask for? The punishment of her enemies? No: only the consolation of confessing, and taking the sacrament; spiritual food for her old age.