XXXII. CHAP. Later, this licence was extended to children of seven years old! The loose fish of Protestantism were soon caught in these nets. They were frightened, tortured, or purchased into the Catholic fold; and, at one time, it was hoped that all would come over. Those who frequented the court were, indeed, unable to resist, total disgrace being evidently reserved for their obstinacy. Even Turenne recanted. Bossuet, the chief instrument in these conversions, drew up a statement of the Catholic Faith, certainly the least extreme and least offensive that could be devised. He insisted on the Real Presence, but was far less rigid on other disputed points, defending Purgatory and Satisfactions more as " innocent" than proven, and admitting the laity to participation in the cup. A celebrated disputation took place between him and Claude, the Protestant pastor, in the presence and at the requirement of Mademoiselle De Duras.* It turned upon the authority of the Church, which Bossuet asserted always to have existed, and to exist as an infallible guide. "No doubt," replied Claude, "as the Synagogue in the days of Christ. That was the visible Church of the time. Which was most right, the Synagogue and Church which condemned Christ, or the one or two individuals present who, from their private judgment, believed on him?" Bossuet admitted that he was posed by the question. Claude, too, objected that the Greek Church was as visible and had as good a tradition as the Roman. But Bossuet based his arguments more on the necessity and expediency of having a Church which might sanction the Scriptures and their interpretation, than upon any direct or absolute proof of its authority. It is evident, that if Mademoiselle De Duras embraced Catholicism in consequence of such a dispute, she was well determined beforehand. The peculiarity of Bossuet was to consider politics * There are accounts of it both by Claude and Bossuet. and religion as one, and to fall into the same error as the English fanatics, in considering Jewish law and history as the great source of both. Never was so uncompromising a holder of Divine Right. The king was appointed by Heaven and inspired by God; to resist him was impious, whilst for him to spare heretics and schismatics was a crime. In these sentiments and tenets, Bossuet, despite his eloquence, was hundreds of years behind his age, whilst Claude and Jurieu were far in advance of theirs. They maintained the liberty of man, his right of free judgment, and the sovereignty of the people. The latter anticipated much of what has turned up as new in our day; that the Christian religion did not come into the world ready made and fully developed, but was framed piecemeal, and fresh truths discovered as the world became sufficiently enlightened to receive them. But the gentler modes and hopes of conversion were in time abandoned, and the king determined to employ violence, that is, recur to the sword and the executioner to root out the religionists. It forms a traditional state maxim amongst the Turks, to watch and guard against that period of a sultan's life in which the pleasures of the senses begin to pall, when the seraglio becomes irksome to him, and when his highness is obliged to look out for fresh excitement and new passions. It has been observed that, at this critical period, the mighty potentate is apt to fall into excess of devotion, and at the same time to substitute the indulgence of bigotry and cruelty for that of sensual habits. This requires the spilling of blood. The ordaining of torture offers, it seems, the only pastime which can replace the love of women; and the change in the monarch's life and habits is there generally from the sensual to the sanguinary. The period which we have reached in this history was precisely that which announced in Louis the Fourteenth's life his disgust of womanhood. To the disinterested love CHAP. XXXII. XXXII. CHAP. of La Vallière had succeeded the ambitious attachment of Montespan. Without stopping to enumerate several more ephemeral connexions, the young and beautiful Mademoiselle De Fontanges had fascinated Louis in 1679. Her death (in 1681), in consequence of their connexion, filled Louis with compunction and remorse, whilst his years made him begin to view such multiplied sins with disgust. The bishops who filled the monarch's court, and even the confessor, who had the entrance of his closet, never dared to offer any obstruction to the current of the king's passions whilst it rolled impetuous. But when Louis himself showed misgivings, they were adroit enough to take advantage of them. When he wearied of La Vallière, they gratified him by inducing her to abandon the court for the cloister. When Montespan's attractions began to fade, and Louis showed symptoms of weariness, Bossuet was ready to improve the occasion. At one time he was too hasty, and his interference produced a relapse and a renewal of connexion. Bossuet looked on in silence. He had no wish to incur disgrace, or draw upon himself court malevolence. At last Louis himself became weary of beauty and voluptuousness, and sought in a woman the pastime of rational conversation. The grand-daughter of the historian D'Aubigné, and widow of the comic writer Scarron, brought to court, and entrusted with the care and bringing-up of the king's illegitimate children by Montespan, pleased the monarch not only by her entertaining converse, but by the adroit devotion she knew how to mingle with it. Louis found pleasure in the company of Madame de Maintenon, and he subsequently made the courtly and scrupulous dame his wife by a private marriage. This conversion or change in the life of Louis not only rendered him more harsh and cruel, according to the theory of Turkish statesmen, but also opened his ear to the suggestions of wily churchmen and confes XXXII. sors, who declared that the best expiation for the early CHAP. sins of the voluptuary would be the eradication, at any cost, of heresy and heretics. But whilst it cannot be denied that the king was thus goaded to harshness, an Englishman must not overlook the great provocation to cruelty and intolerance that came from his own country. Its history, unfortunately, shows that intolerance is not the exclusive crime of despots, and that a people may be quite as unjust, as frenzied, and as sanguinary as a tyrant. The year 1678 was marked by the plot and depositions of Titus Oates. Catholic peers were soon excluded from the English parliament, and a Catholic successor from the throne. Catholic priests were sent to the scaffold. An archbishop was murdered, another executed, and a venerable peer of parliament was beheaded on Tower Hill. However mingled this cruel fanaticism was with political motives and troubles-stirred too by the French envoy Barillon and his active corruption-still, Catholicism was mainly the crime that drew down vengeance and persecution in England. The clergy in France but too naturally called for reprisals;* and Louis, alarmed by a course of events which was likely to place England in hostility to him, as well as indignant at the proscription of his religion, was too prone to give full licence to a spirit of vindictiveness so fiercely provoked. In 1679 a severe edict was issued against relaps. The Protestant churches which received them were to be destroyed, and their pastors visited with exile and confiscation. As it was impossible to prevent relaps, as they were called, from at times re-entering the Protestant temples, these soon fell under the arbitrary sentence.† The mixed tribunals established by the Nantes Edict CHAP. XXXII. were abrogated about this time. This, indeed, was a necessary prelude to such acts of spoliation as the confiscation of the funds for Protestant hospitals and poor, or the permission to debtors to defy their creditors by declaring themselves converted. At the same time, the Catholic mob of several towns, particularly those of the Loire, were incited to repeat their old barbarities. They broke open the temples, burnt seats and books, and, under pretext of putting a stop to these disorders, the Protestant pastors were banished by the authorities. But if the churchmen exulted, Colbert deplored the expatriation of the educated and industrious class. The complaints which escaped him were construed as sympathy for heresy, and he was obliged to dismiss the Protestants from all employ in the finances and in seaports, much as he esteemed their probity and talent.* Colbert made a vain struggle against bigotry; yet, if he failed to stop the persecution of the Protestants, he at least succeeded in dealing a blow to the ultramontane clergy and their pretensions. As the king had nullified the estates and tax-voting independence of the southern provinces, so he also subjected them to the régale, from which they had hitherto been exempt. This was the enjoyment by the crown of the revenues and patronage of a see in the interval of its vacancy. The Pope claimed what his predecessors had enjoyed, and he found two French prelates, the Bishops of Pamiers and Aleth, to uphold his right. The king sequestrated their revenues, and the Pope menaced to launch once more the thunders of Rome against the King of France. The dispute was embittered by another quarrel, the king's appointing an abbess of Charonne, where that superior had hitherto been elected. appeared in their temple. Of course, the pretext for destroying the temple. |