Alexander's Triumph.—India was unknown until after Alexander's conquests.Alexander's Triumph.—India was unknown until after Alexander's conquests.
The Hebrews, who were unknown until so late a period, never name the Brahmins; they knew nothing of India till after Alexander's conquests and their own settling in that Egypt of which they had spoken so ill. The name of India is to be found only in the book of Esther, and in that of Job, who was not a Hebrew. We find a singular contrast between the sacred books of the Hebrews and those of the Indians. The Indian books announce only peace and mildness; they forbid the killing of animals: but the Hebrew books speak of nothing but the slaughter and massacre of men and beasts; all are butchered in the name of the Lord; it is quite another order of things.
We are incontestably indebted to the Brahmins for the idea of the fall of celestial beings revolting against the Sovereign of Nature; and it was probably from them that the Greeks took the fable of the Titans; and lastly, from them it was that the Jews, in the first century of our era, took the idea of Lucifer's revolt.
How could these Indians suppose a rebellion in heaven without having seen one on earth? Such a leap from the human to the divine nature is difficult of comprehension. We usually step from what is known to what is unknown.
A war of giants would not be imagined, until some men more robust than the rest had been seen to tyrannize over their fellow-men. To imagine the like in heaven, the Brahmins must either have experienced violent discords among themselves, or at least have witnessed them among their neighbors.
Be that as it may, it is an astonishing phenomenon that a society of men who had never made war should have invented a sort of war carried on in imaginary space, or in a globe distant from our own, or in what is called the firmament—the empyrean. But let it be carefully observed, that in this revolt of the celestial beings against their Sovereign, there were no blows given, no celestial blood spilled, no mountains thrown at one another's heads, no angels deft in twain, as in Milton's sublime and grotesque poem.
According to the Shastah, it was only a formal disobedience of the orders of the Most High, which God punished by relegating the rebellious angels to a vast place of darkness called Onderah, for the term of a whole mononthour. A mononthour is a hundred and twenty-six millions of our years. But God vouchsafed to pardon the guilty at the end of five thousand years, and their Onderah was nothing more than a purgatory.
He turned them intoMhurd, or men, and placed them on our globe, on condition that they should not eat animals, nor cohabit with the males of their new species, on pain of returning to the Onderah.
These are the principal articles of the Brahmin faith, which has endured without intermission from time immemorial to the present day.
This is but a small part of the ancient cosmogony of the Brahmins. Their rites, their pagods, prove that among them all was allegorical. They still represent Virtue in the form of a woman with ten arms, combating ten mortal sins typified by monsters. Our missionaries were acute enough to take this image of Virtue for that of the devil, and affirm that the devil is worshipped in India. We have never visited that people but to enrich ourselves and calumniate them.
The Metempsychosis of the Brahmins.
The doctrine of the metempsychosis comes from an ancient law of feeding on cow's milk as well as on vegetables, fruits, and rice. It seemed horrible to the Brahmins to kill and eat their feeder; and they had soon the same respect for goats, sheep, and all other animals: they believed them to be animated by the rebellious angels, who were completing their purification in the bodies of beasts as well as in those of men. The nature of the climate seconded, or rather originated this law. A burning atmosphere creates a necessity for refreshing food, and inspires horror for our custom of stowing carcasses in our stomachs.
The opinion that beasts have souls was general throughout the East, and we find vestiges of it in the ancient sacred writings. In the book of Genesis, God forbids men to eat "their flesh with their blood and their soul." Such is the import of the Hebrew text. "I will avenge," says he, "the blood of your souls on the claws of beasts and the hands of men." In Leviticus he says, "The soul of the flesh is in the blood." He does more; he makes a solemn compact with man and with all animals, which supposes an intelligence in the latter.
In much later times, Ecclesiasticus formally says, "God shows that man is like to the beasts; for men die like beasts; their condition is equal; as man dies, so also dies the beast. They breathe alike. There is nothing in man more than in the beast." Jonah, when he went to preach at Nineveh, made both men and beasts fast.
All ancient authors, sacred books as well as profane, attribute knowledge to the beasts; and several make them speak. It is not then to be wondered at that the Brahmins, and after them the Pythagoreans, believed that souls passed successively into the bodies of beasts and of men; consequently they persuaded themselves, or at least they said, that the souls of the guilty angels, in order to finish their purgation, belonged sometimes to beasts, sometimes to men. This is a part of the romance of the Jesuit Bougeant, who imagined that the devils are spirits sent into the bodies of animals. Thus, in our day, and at the extremity of the west, a Jesuit unconsciously revives an article of the faith of the most ancient Oriental priests.
The Self-burning of Men and Women among the Brahmins.
The Brahmins of the present day, who do all that the ancient Brahmins did, have, we know, retained this horrible custom. Whence is it that, among a people who have never shed the blood of men or of animals, the finest act of devotion is a public self-burning? Superstition, the great uniter of contraries, is the only source of these frightful sacrifices, the custom of which is much more ancient than the laws of any known people.
The Brahmins assert that their great prophet Brahma, the son of God, descended among men, and had seyeral wives; and that after his death, the wife who loved him the most burned herself on his funeral pile, that she might join him in heaven. Did this woman really burn herself, as it is said that Portia, the wife of Brutus, swallowed burning coals, in order to be reunited to her husband? or is this a fable invented by the priests? Was there a Brahma, who really gave himself out as a prophet and son of God? It is likely that there was a Brahma, as there afterwards were a Zoroaster and a Bacchus. Fable seized upon their history, as she has everywhere constantly done.
No sooner does the wife of the son of God burn herself, than ladies of meaner condition must burn themselves likewise. But how are they to find their husbands again, who are become horses, elephants, hawks, etc.? How are they to distinguish the precise beast, which the defunct animates? how recognize him and be still his wife? This difficulty does not in the least embarrass the Hindoo theologians; they easily find adistinguo—a solutionin sensu composito—in sensu diviso. The metempsychosis is only for common people; for other souls they have a sublimer doctrine. These souls, being those of the once rebel angels, go about purifying themselves; those of the women who immolate themselves are beatified, and find their husbands ready-purified. In short, the priests are right, and the women burn themselves.
This dreadful fanaticism has existed for more than four thousand years, amongst a mild people, who would fear to kill a grasshopper. The priests cannot force a widow to burn herself; for the invariable law is, that the self-devotion must be absolutely voluntary. The longest married of the wives of the deceased has the first refusal of the honor of mounting the funeral-pile; if she is not inclined, the second presents herself; and so of the rest. It is said, that on one occasion seventeen burned themselves at once on the pile of a rajah: but these sacrifices are now very rare; the faith has become weaker since the Mahometans have governed a great part of the country, and the Europeans traded with the rest.
Still, there is scarcely a governor of Madras or Pondicherry who has not seen some Indian woman voluntarily perish in the flames. Mr. Holwell relates that a young widow of nineteen, of singular beauty, and the mother of three children, burned herself in the presence of Mrs. Russell, wife of the admiral then in the Madras roads. She resisted the tears and the prayers of all present; Mrs. Russell conjured her, in the name of her children, not to leave them orphans. The Indian woman answered, "God, who has given them birth, will take care of them." She then arranged everything herself, set fire to the pile with her own hand, and consummated her sacrifice with as much serenity as one of our nuns lights the tapers.
Mr. Charnock, an English merchant, one day seeing one of these astonishing victims, young and lovely, on her way to the funeral-pile, dragged her away by force when she was about to set fire to it, and, with the assistance of some of his countrymen, carried her of! and married her. The people regarded this act as the most horrible sacrilege.
Why do husbands never burn themselves, that they may join their wives? Why has a sex, naturally weak and timid, always had this frantic resolution? Is it because tradition does not say that a man ever married a daughter of Brahma, while it does affirm that an Indian woman was married to a son of that divinity? Is it because women are more superstitious than men? Or is it because their imaginations are weaker, more tender, and more easily governed?
The ancient Brahmins sometimes burned themselves to prevent the pains and the languor of old age; but, above all, to make themselves admired. Calanus would not, perhaps, have placed himself on the pile, but for the purpose of being gazed at by Alexander. The Christian renegade Peregrinus burned himself in public, for the same reason that a madman goes about the streets dressed like an Armenian, to attract the notice of the populace.
Is there not also an unfortunate mixture of vanity in this terrible sacrifice of the Indian women? Perhaps, if a law were passed that the burning should take place in the presence of one waiting woman only, this abominable custom would be forever destroyed.
One word more: A few hundreds of Indian women, at most, have furnished this horrid spectacle; but our inquisitions, our atrocious madmen calling themselves judges, have put to death in the flames more than a hundred thousand of our brethren—men, women, and children—for things which no one has understood. Let us pity and condemn the Brahmins; but let us not forget our miserable selves!
Truly, we have forgotten one very essential point in this short article on the Brahmins, which is, that their sacred books are full of contradictions; but the people know nothing of them, and the doctors have solutions ready—senses figured and figurative, allegories, types, express declarations of Birma, Brahma, and Vishnu, sufficient to shut the mouth of any reasoner.
The bread-tree grows in the Philippine islands, and principally in those of Guam and Tinian, as the cocoa-tree grows in the Indies. These two trees, alone, if they could be multiplied in our climate, would furnish food and drink sufficient for all mankind.
The bread-tree is taller and more bulky than our common apple-trees; its leaves are black, its fruit is yellow, and equal in dimensions to the largest apple. The rind is hard; and the cuticle is a sort of soft, white paste, which has the taste of the best French rolls; but it must be eaten fresh, as it keeps only twenty-four hours, after which it becomes dry, sour and disagreeable; but, as a compensation, the trees are loaded with them eight months of the year. The natives of the islands have no other food; they are all tall, stout, well made, sufficiently fleshy, and in the vigorous health which is necessarily produced by the use of one wholesome aliment alone: and it is to negroes that nature has made this present.
Corn is assuredly not the food of the greater part of the world. Maize and cassava are the food of all America. We have whole provinces in which the peasants eat none but chestnut bread, which is more nourishing and of better flavor than the rye or barley bread on which so many feed, and is much better than the rations given to the soldiers. Bread is unknown in all southern Africa. The immense Indian Archipelago, Siam, Laos, Pegu, Cochin-China, Tonquin, part of China, the Malabar and Coromandel coasts, and the banks of the Ganges, produce rice, which is easier of cultivation, and for which wheat is neglected. Corn is absolutely unknown for the space of five hundred leagues on the coast of the Icy Sea.
The missionaries have sometimes been in great tribulation, in countries where neither bread nor wine is to be found. The inhabitants told them by interpreters: "You would baptize us with a few drops of water, in a burning climate, where we are obliged to plunge every day into the rivers; you would confess us, yet you understand not our language; you would have us communicate, yet you want the two necessary ingredients, bread and wine. It is therefore evident that your universal religion cannot have been made for us." The missionaries replied, very justly, that good will is the one thing needful; that they should be plunged into the water without any scruple; that bread and wine should be brought from Goa; and that, as for the language, the missionaries would learn it in a few years.
He was a very subtle schoolman, who first said that we owe the origin of the word "buffoon" to a little Athenian sacrificer calledBupho, who, being tired of his employment, absconded, and never returned. The Areopagus, as they could not punish the priest, proceeded against his hatchet. This farce, which was played every year in the temple of Jupiter, is said to have been called"buffoonery."This story is not entitled to much credit Buffoon was not a proper name;bouphonossignifies an immolator of oxen. The Greeks never called any jestbouphonia. This ceremony, frivolous as it appears, might have an origin wise and humane, worthy of true Athenians.
Once a year, the subaltern sacrificer, or more properly the holy butcher, when on the point of immolating an ox, fled as if struck with horror, to put men in mind that in wiser and happier times only flowers and fruits were offered to the gods, and that the barbarity of immolating innocent and useful animals was not introduced until there were priests desirous of fattening on their blood and living at the expense of the people. In this idea there is no buffoonery.
This word "buffoon" has long been received among the Italians and the Spaniards, signifyingmimus, scurra, joculator—a mimic, a jester, a player of tricks. Ménage, after Salmasius, derives it frombocca infiata—a bloated face; and it is true that a round face and swollen cheeks are requisite in a buffoon. The Italians saybufo magro—a meagre buffoon, to express a poor jester who cannot make you laugh.
Buffoon and buffoonery appertain to low comedy, to mountebanking, to all that can amuse the populace. In this it was—to the shame of the human mind be it spoken—that tragedy had its beginning: Thespis was a buffoon before Sophocles was a great man.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Spanish and English tragedies were all degraded by disgusting buffooneries. The courts were still more disgraced by buffoons than the stage. So strong was the rust of barbarism, that men had no taste for more refined pleasures. Boileau says of Molière:
C'est par-là que Molière, illustrant ses écrits,Peut-être de son art eût emporté le prix,Si, moins ami du peuple en ses doctes peintures,Il n'eût fait quelquefois, grimacer ses figures,Quitté pour le bouffon l'agréable et fin,Et sans honte à Terence allié Tabarin.Dans ce sac ridicule où Scapin s'enveloppe,Je ne reconnais plus l'auteur du Misanthrope.Molière in comic genius had excelled,And might, perhaps, have stood unparalleled,Had he his faithful portraits ne'er allowedTo gape and grin to gratify the crowd;Deserting wit for low grimace and jest,And showing Terence in a motley vest.Who in the sack, where Scapin plays the fool,Will find the genius of the comic school?
But it must be considered that Raphael condescended to paint grotesque figures. Molière would not have descended so low, if all his spectators had been such men as Louis XIV., Condé, Turenne, La Rochefoucauld, Montausier, Beauvilliers, and such women as Montespan and Thianges; but he had also to please the whole people of Paris, who were yet quite unpolished. The citizen liked broad farce, and he paid for it. Scarron's "Jodelets" were all the rage. We are obliged to place ourselves on the level of our age, before we can rise above it; and, after all, we like to laugh now and then. What is Homer's "Battle of the Frogs and Mice," but a piece of buffoonery—a burlesque poem?
Works of this kind give no reputation, but they may take from that which we already enjoy.
Buffoonery is not always in the burlesque style, "The Physician in Spite of Himself," and the "Rogueries of Scapin," are not in the style of Scarron's "Jodelets." Molière does not, like Scarron, go in search of slang terms; his lowest characters do not play the mountebank. Buffoonery is in the thing, not in the expression.
Boileau's "Lutrin" was at first called a burlesque poem, but it was the subject that was burlesque; the style was pleasing and refined, and sometimes even heroic.
The Italians had another kind of burlesque, much superior to ours—that of Aretin, of Archbishop La Caza, of Berni, Mauro, and Dolce. It often sacrifices decorum to pleasantry, but obscene words are wholly banished from it. The subject of Archbishop La Caza's"Capitolo del Forno"is, indeed, that which sends the Desfontaines to the Bicêtre, and the Deschaufours to the Place de Grève: but there is not one word offensive to the ear of chastity; you have to divine the meaning.
Three or four Englishmen have excelled in this way: Butler, in his "Hudibras," which was the civil war excited by the Puritans turned into ridicule; Dr. Garth, in his "Dispensary"; Prior, in his "Alma," in which he very pleasantly makes a jest of his subject and Phillips, in his "Splendid Shilling."
Butler is as much above Scarron as a man accustomed to good company is above a singer at a pot-house. The hero of "Hudibras" was a real personage, one Sir Samuel Luke, who had been a captain in the armies of Fairfax and Cromwell. See the commencement of the poem, in the article "Prior," "Butler," and "Swift."
Garth's poem on the physicians and apothecaries is not so much in the burlesque style as Boileau's "Lutrin": it has more imagination, variety, and naivete than the "Lutrin"; and, which is rather astonishing, it displays profound erudition, embellished with all the graces of refinement. It begins thus:
Speak, Goddess, since 'tis thou that best canst tellHow ancient leagues to modern discord fell;And why physicians were so cautious grownOf others' lives, and lavish of their own.
Prior, whom we have seen a plenipotentiary in France before the Peace of Utrecht, assumed the office of mediator between the philosophers who dispute about the soul. This poem is in the style of "Hudibras," called doggerel rhyme, which is thestilo Berniescoof the Italians.
The great first question is, whether the soul is all in all, or is lodged behind the nose and eyes in a corner which it never quits. According to the latter system, Prior compares it to the pope, who constantly remains at Rome, whence he sends his nuncios and spies to learn all that is doing in Christendom.
Prior, after making a jest of several systems, proposes his own. He remarks that the two-legged animal, new-born, throws its feet about as much as possible, when its nurse is so stupid as to swaddle it: thence he judges that the soul enters it by the feet; that about fifteen it reaches the middle; then it ascends to the heart; then to the head, which it quits altogether when the animal ceases to live.
At the end of this singular poem, full of ingenious versification, and of ideas alike subtle and pleasing, we find this charming line of Fontenelle:"Il est des hochets pour tout âge."Prior begs of fortune to "Give us play-things for old age."
Yet it is quite certain that Fontenelle did not take this line from Prior, nor Prior from Fontenelle. Prior's work is twenty years anterior, and Fontenelle did not understand English. The poem terminates with this conclusion:
For Plato's fancies what care I?I hope you would not have me dieLike simple Cato in the play,For anything that he can say:E'en let him of ideas speakTo heathens, in his native Greek.If to be sad is to be wise,I do most heartily despiseWhatever Socrates has said,Or Tully writ, or Wanley read.Dear Drift, to set our matters right,Remove these papers from my sight;Burn Mat's Descartes and Aristotle—Here, Jonathan,—your master's bottle.
In all these poems, let us distinguish the pleasant, the lively, the natural, the familiar—from the grotesque, the farcical, the low, and, above all, the stiff and forced. These various shades are discriminated by the connoisseurs, who alone, in the end, decide the fate of every work.
La Fontaine would sometimes descend to the burlesque style—Phædrus never; but the latter has not the grace and unaffected softness of La Fontaine, though he has greater precision and purity.
These people were originally Huns, who settled near the Volga; and Volgarians was easily changed into Bulgarians.
About the end of the seventh century, they, like all the other nations inhabiting Sarmatia, made irruptions towards the Danube, and inundated the Roman Empire. They passed through Moldavia and Wallachia, whither their old fellow-countrymen, the Russians, carried their victorious arms in 1769, under the Empress Catherine II.
Having crossed the Danube, they settled in part of Dacia and Moesia, giving their name to the countries which are still called Bulgaria. Their dominion extended to Mount Hæmus and the Euxine Sea.
In Charlemagne's time, the Emperor Nicephorus, successor to Irene, was so imprudent as to march against them after being vanquished by the Saracens; and he was in like manner defeated by the Bulgarians. Their king, named Krom, cut off his head, and made use of his skull as a drinking-cup at his table, according to the custom of that people in common with all the northern nations.
It is related that, in the ninth century, one Bogoris, who was making war upon the Princess Theodora, mother and guardian to the Emperor Michael, was so charmed with that empress's noble answer to his declaration of war, that he turned Christian.
The Bulgarians, who were less complaisant, revolted against him; but Bogoris, having shown them a crucifix, they all immediately received baptism. So say the Greek writers of the lower empire, and so say our compilers after them:"Et voilà justement comme on écrit l'histoire."
Theodora, say they, was a very religious princess, even passing her latter years in a convent. Such was her love for the Greek Catholic religion that she put to death in various ways a hundred thousand men accused of Manichæism—"this being," says the modest continuator of Echard, "the most impious, the most detestable, the most dangerous, the most abominable of all heresies, for ecclesiastical censures were weapons of no avail against men who acknowledged not the church."
It is said that the Bulgarians, seeing that all the Manichæans suffered death, immediately conceived an inclination for their religion, and thought it the best, since it was the most persecuted one: but this, for Bulgarians, would be extraordinarily acute.
At that time, the great schism broke out more violently than ever between the Greek church, under the Patriarch Photius, and the Latin church, under Pope Nicholas I. The Bulgarians took part with the Greek church; and from that time, probably, it was that they were treated in the west as heretics, with the addition of that fine epithet, which has clung to them to the present day.
In 871, the Emperor Basil sent them a preacher, named Peter of Sicily, to save them from the heresy of Manichæism; and it is added, that they no sooner heard him than they turned Manichæans. It is not very surprising that the Bulgarians, who drank out of the skulls of their enemies, were not extraordinary theologians any more than Peter of Sicily.
It is singular that these barbarians, who could neither write nor read, should have been regarded as very knowing heretics, with whom it was dangerous to dispute. They certainly had other things to think of than controversy, since they carried on a sanguinary war against the emperors of Constantinople for four successive centuries, and even besieged the capital of the empire.
At the commencement of the thirteenth century, the Emperor Alexis, wishing to make himself recognized by the Bulgarians, their king, Joannic, replied, that he would never be his vassal. Pope Innocent III. was careful to seize this opportunity of attaching the kingdom of Bulgaria to himself: he sent a legate to Joannic, to anoint him king; and pretended that he had conferred the kingdom upon him, and that he could never more hold it but from the holy see.
This was the most violent period of the crusades. The indignant Bulgarians entered into an alliance with the Turks, declared war against the pope and his crusaders, took the pretended Emperor Baldwin prisoner, had his head cut off, and made a bowl of his skull, after the manner of Krom. This was quite enough to make the Bulgarians abhorred by all Europe. It was no longer necessary to call them Manichæans, a name which was at that time given to every class of heretics: for Manichæan, Patarin, and Vaudois were the same thing. These terms were lavished upon whosoever would not submit to the Roman church.
A quadruped, armed with horns, having cloven feet, strong legs, a slow pace, a thick body, a hard skin, a tail not quite so long as that of the horse, with some long hairs at the end. Its blood has been looked upon as a poison, but it is no more so than that of other animals; and the ancients, who wrote that Themistocles and others poisoned themselves with bull's blood, were false both to nature and to history. Lucian, who reproaches Jupiter with having placed the bull's horns above his eyes, reproaches him unjustly; for the eye of a bull being large, round, and open, he sees very well where he strikes; and if his eyes had been placed higher than his horns, he could not have seen the grass which he crops.
Phalaris's bull, or the Brazen Bull, was a bull of cast metal, found in Sicily, and supposed to have been used by Phalaris to enclose and burn such as he chose to punish—a very unlikely species of cruelty. The bulls of Medea guarded the Golden Fleece. The bull of Marathon was tamed by Hercules.
Then there were the bull which carried off Europa, the bull of Mithras, and the bull of Osiris; there are the Bull, a sign of the zodiac, and the Bull's Eye, a star of the first magnitude, and lastly, there are bull-fights, common in Spain.
This word designates the bull, or seal of gold, silver, wax, or lead, attached to any instrument or charter. The lead hanging to the rescripts despatched in the Roman court bears on one side the head of St. Peter on the right, and that of St. Paul on the left; and, on the reverse, the name of the reigning pope, with the year of his pontificate. The bull is written on parchment. In the greeting, the pope takes no title but that of "Servant of the Servants of God," according to the holy words of Jesus to His Disciples—"Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant."
Some heretics assert that, by this formula, humble in appearance, the popes mean to express a sort of feudal system, of which God is chief; whose high vassals, Peter and Paul, are represented by their servant the pontiff; while the lesser vassals are all secular princes, whether emperors, kings, or dukes.
They doubtless found this assertion on the famous bullIn cœna Domini,which is publicly read at Rome by a cardinal-deacon every year, on Holy Thursday, in the presence of the pope, attended by the rest of the cardinals and bishops. After the ceremony, his holiness casts a lighted torch into the public square in token of anathema.
This bull is, to be found in Tome i., p. 714 of theBullaire, published at Lyons in 1673, and at page 118 of the edition of 1727. The oldest is dated 1536. Paul III., without noticing the origin of the ceremony, here says that it is an ancient custom of the sovereign pontiffs to publish this excommunication on Holy Thursday, in order to preserve the purity of the Christian religion, and maintain union among the faithful. It contains twenty-four paragraphs, in which the pope excommunicates:
1. Heretics, all who favor them, and all who read their books.
2. Pirates, especially such as dare to cruise on the seas belonging to the sovereign pontiff.
3. Those who impose fresh tolls on their lands.
10. Those who, in any way whatsoever, prevent the execution of the apostolical letters, whether they grant pardons or inflict penalties.
11. All lay judges who judge ecclesiastics, and bring them before their tribunal, whether that tribunal is called an audience, a chancery, a council, or a parliament.
12. All chancellors, counsellors, ordinary or extraordinary, of any king or prince whatsoever, all presidents of chanceries, councils, or parliaments, as also all attorneys-general, who call ecclesiastical causes before them, or prevent the execution of the apostolical letters, even though it be on pretext of preventing some violence.
In the same paragraph, the pope reserves to himself alone the power of absolving the said chancellors, counsellors, attorneys-general, and the rest of the excommunicated; who cannot receive absolution until they have publicly revoked their acts, and have erased them from the records.
20. Lastly, the pope excommunicates all such as shall presume to give absolution to the excommunicated as aforesaid: and, in order that no one may plead ignorance, he orders:
21. That this bull be published, and posted on the gate of the basilic of the Prince of the Apostles, and on that of St. John of Lateran.
22. That all patriarchs, primates, archbishops, and bishops, by virtue of their holy obedience, shall have this bull solemnly published at least once a year.
24. He declares that whosoever dares to go against the provisions of this bull, must know that he is incurring the displeasure of Almighty God and of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul.
The other subsequent bulls, called alsoIn cœna Domini, are only duplicates of the first. For instance, the article 21 of that of Pius V., dated 1567, adds to the paragraph 3 of the one that we have quoted, that all princes who lay new impositions on their states, of what nature soever, or increase the old ones, without obtaining permission from the Holy See, are excommunicatedipso facto. The third bullIn cœna Dominiof 1610, contains thirty paragraphs, in which Paul V. renews the provisions of the two preceding.
The fourth and last bullIn cœna Dominiwhich we find in theBullaire, is dated April 1, 1672. In it Urban VIII. announces that, after the example of his predecessors, in order inviolably to maintain the integrity of the faith, and public justice and tranquillity, he wields the spiritual sword of ecclesiastical discipline to excommunicate, on the day which is the anniversary of the Supper of our Lord:
1. Heretics.
2. Such as appeal from the pope to a future council; and the rest as in the three former.
It is said that the one which is read now, is of a more recent date, and contains some additions.
The History of Naples, by Giannone, shows us what disorders the ecclesiastics stirred up in that kingdom, and what vexations they exercised against the king's subjects, even refusing them absolution and the sacraments, in order to effect the reception of this bull, which has at last been solemnly proscribed there, as well as in Austrian Lombardy, in the states of the empress-queen, in those of the Duke of Parma, and elsewhere.
In 1580, the French clergy chose the time between the sessions of the parliament of Paris, to have the same bullIn cœna Dominipublished. But it was opposed by the procureur-general; and theChambre des Vacations, under the presidency of the celebrated and unfortunate Brisson, on October 4, passed a decree, enjoining all governors to inform themselves, if possible, what archbishops, bishops, or grand-vicars, had received either this bull or a copy of it entitledLitteræ processus, and who had sent it to them to be published; to prevent the publication, if it had not yet taken place; to obtain the copies and send them to the chamber; or, if they had been published, to summon the archbishops, the bishops, or their grand-vicars, to appear on a certain day before the chamber, to answer to the suit of the procureur-general; and, in the meantime, to seize their temporal possessions and place them in the hands of the king; to forbid all persons obstructing the execution of this decree, on pain of punishment as traitors and enemies to the state; with orders that the decree be printed and that the copies, collated by notaries, have the full force of the original.
In doing this, the parliament did but feebly imitate Philip the Fair. The bullAusculta Fili, of Dec. 5, 1301, was addressed to him by Boniface VIII., who, after exhorting the king to listen with docility, says to him: "God has established us over all kings and all kingdoms, to root up, and destroy, and throw down, to build, and to plant, in His name and by His doctrine. Do not, then, suffer yourself to be persuaded that you have no superior, and that you are not subject to the head of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Whosoever thinks this, is a madman; and whosoever obstinately maintains it, is an infidel, separated from the flock of the Good Shepherd." The pope then enters into long details respecting the government of France, even reproaching the king for having altered the coin.
Philip the Fair had this bull burned at Paris, and its execution published on sound of trumpet throughout the city, by Sunday, Feb. 11, 1302. The pope, in a council which he held at Rome the same year, made a great noise, and broke out into threats against Philip the Fair; but he did no more than threaten. The famous decretal,Unam Sanctamis, however, considered as the work of his council; it is, in substance, as follows:
"We believe and confess a holy, catholic, and apostolic church, out of which there is no salvation; we also acknowledge its unity, that it is one only body, with one only head, and not with two, like a monster. This only head is Jesus Christ, and St. Peter his vicar, and the successor of St. Peter. Therefore, the Greeks, or others, who say that they are not subject to that successor, must acknowledge that they are not of the flock of Christ, since He himself has said (John, x, 16) 'that there is but one fold and one shepherd.'
"We learn that in this church, and under its power, are two swords, the spiritual and the temporal: of these, one is to be used by the church and by the hand of the pontiff; the other, by the church and by the hand of kings and warriors, in pursuance of the orders or with the permission of the pontiff. Now, one of these swords must be subject to the other, temporal to spiritual power; otherwise, they would not be ordinate, and the apostles say they must be so. (Rom. xiii, 1.) According to the testimony of truth, spiritual power must institute and judge temporal power; and thus is verified with regard to the church, the prophecy of Jeremiah (i. 10): 'I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms.'"
On the other hand, Philip the Fair assembled the states-general; and the commons, in the petition which they presented to that monarch, said, in so many words: "It is a great abomination for us to hear that this Boniface stoutly interprets like aBoulgare(dropping theland thea) these words of spirituality (Matt., xvi. 19): 'Whatever thou shalt bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven;' if this signified that if a man be put into a temporal prison, God will imprison him in heaven."
Clement V., successor to Boniface VIII., revoked and annulled the odious decision of the bullUnam Sanctam, which extends the power of the popes to the temporalities of kings, and condemns as heretics all who do not acknowledge this chimerical power. Boniface's pretension, indeed, ought to be condemned as heresy, according to this maxim of theologians: "Not only is it a sin against the rules of the faith, and a heresy, to deny what the faith teaches us, but also to set up as part of the faith that which is no part of it." (Joan. Maj. m. 3 sent. dist. 37. q. 26.)
Other popes, before Boniface VIII., had arrogated to themselves the right of property over different kingdoms. The bull is well known, in which Gregory VII. says to the King of Spain: "I would have you to know, that the kingdom of Spain, by ancient ecclesiastical ordinances, was given in property to St. Peter and the holy Roman church."
Henry II. of England asked permission of Pope Adrian IV. to invade Ireland. The pontiff gave him leave, on condition that he imposed on every Irish family a tax of onecarolusfor the Holy See, and held that kingdom as a fief of the Roman church. "For," wrote Adrian, "it cannot be doubted that every island upon which Jesus Christ, the sun of justice, has arisen, and which has received the lessons of the Christian faith, belongs of right to St. Peter and to the holy and sacred Roman church."
Bulls of the Crusade and of Composition.
If an African or an Asiatic of sense were told that in that part of Europe where some men have forbidden others to eat flesh on Saturdays, the pope gives them leave to eat it, by a bull, for the sum of two rials, and that another bull grants permission to keep stolen money, what would this African or Asiatic say? He would, at least, agree with us, that every country has its customs; and that in this world, by whatever names things may be called, or however they may be disguised, all is done for money.
There are two bulls under the name ofLa Cruzada—the Crusade; one of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, the other of that of Philip V. The first of these sells permission to eat what is called thegrossura, viz., tripes, livers, kidneys, gizzards, sweet-breads, lights, plucks, cauls, heads, necks, and feet.
The second bull, granted by Pope Urban VIII., gives leave to eat meat throughout Lent, and absolves from every crime except heresy.
Not only are these bulls sold, but people are ordered to buy them; and, as is but right, they cost more in Peru and Mexico than in Spain; they are there sold for a piastre. It is reasonable that the countries which produce gold and silver should pay more than others.
The pretext for these bulls is, making war upon the Moors. There are persons, difficult of conviction, who cannot see what livers and kidneys have to do with a war against the Africans; and they add, that Jesus Christ never ordered war to be made on the Mahometans on pain of excommunication.
The bull giving permission to keep another's goods is galled the bull ofComposition. It is farmed; and has long brought considerable sums throughout Spain, the Milanese, Naples, and Sicily. The highest bidders employ the most eloquent of the monks to preach this bull. Sinners who have robbed the king, the state, or private individuals, go to these preachers, confess to them, and show them what a sad thing it would be to make restitution of the whole. They offer the monks five, six, and sometimes seven per cent., in order to keep the rest with a safe conscience; and, as soon as the composition is made, they receive absolution.
The preaching brother who wrote the "Travels through Spain and Italy" (Voyage d'Espagne et d'Italie), published at Paris,avec privilègeby Jean-Baptiste de l'Épime, speaking of this bull, thus expresses himself: "Is it not very gracious to come off at so little cost, and be at liberty to steal more, when one has occasion for a larger sum?"
Bull Unigenitus.
The bullIn cœna Dominiwas an indignity offered to all Catholic sovereigns, and they at length proscribed it in their states; but the bullUnigenituswas a trouble to France alone. The former attacked the rights of the princes and magistrates of Europe, and they maintained those rights; the latter proscribed only some maxims of piety and morals, which gave no concern to any except the parties interested in the transient affair; but these interested parties soon filled all France. It was at first a quarrel between the all-powerful Jesuits and the remains of the crushed Port-Royal.
Quesnel, a preacher of the Oratory, refugee in Holland, had dedicated a commentary on the New Testament to Cardinal de Noailles, then bishop of Châlons-sur-Marne. It met the bishop's approbation and was well received by all readers of that sort of books.
One Letellier, a Jesuit, a confessor to Louis XIV. and an enemy to Cardinal de Noailles, resolved to mortify him by having the book, which was dedicated to him, and of which he had a very high opinion, condemned at Rome.
This Jesuit, the son of an attorney at Vire in Lower Normandy, had all that fertility of expedient for which his father's profession is remarkable. Not content with embroiling Cardinal de Noailles with the pope, he determined to have him disgraced by the king his master. To ensure the success of this design, he had mandaments composed against him by his emissaries, and got them signed by four bishops; he also indited letters to the king, which he made them sign.
These manœuvres, which would have been punished in any of the tribunals, succeeded at court: the king was soured against the cardinal, and Madame de Maintenon abandoned him.
Here was a series of intrigues, in which, from one end of the kingdom to the other, every one took a part. The more unfortunate France at that time became in a disastrous war, the more the public mind was heated by a theological quarrel.
During these movements, Letellier had the condemnation of Quesnel's book, of which the monarch had never read a page, demanded from Rome by Louis XIV. himself. Letellier and two other Jesuits, named Doucin and Lallemant, extracted one hundred and three propositions, which Pope Clement XI. was to condemn. The court of Rome struck out two of them, that it might, at least, have the honor of appearing to judge for itself.
Cardinal Fabroni, in whose hands the affair was placed, and who was devoted to the Jesuits, had the bull drawn up by a Cordelier named Father Palerno, Elio a Capuchin, Terrovi a Barnabite, and Castelli a Servite, to whom was added a Jesuit named Alfaro.
Clement XI. let them proceed in their own way. His only object was to please the king of France, who had long been displeased with him, on account of his recognizing the Archduke Charles, afterwards emperor, as King of Spain. To make his peace with the king, it cost him only a piece of parchment sealed with lead, concerning a question which he himself despised.
Clement XI. did not wait to be solicited; he sent the bull, and was quite astonished to learn that it was received throughout France with hisses and groans. "What!" said he to Cardinal Carpegno, "a bull is earnestly asked of me; I give it freely, and every one makes a jest of it!"
Every one was indeed surprised to see a pope, in the name of Jesus Christ, condemning as heretical, tainted with heresy, and offensive to pious ears, this proposition: "It is good to read books of piety on Sundays, especially the Holy Scriptures;" and this: "The fear of an unjust excommunication should not prevent us from doing our duty."
The partisans of the Jesuits were themselves alarmed at these censures, but they dared not speak. The wise and disinterested exclaimed against the scandal, and the rest of the nation against the absurdity.
Nevertheless, Letellier still triumphed, until the death of Louis XIV.; he was held in abhorrence, but he governed. This wretch tried every means to procure the suspension of Cardinal de Noailles; but after the death of his penitent, the incendiary was banished. The duke of Orleans, during his regency, extinguished these quarrels by making a jest of them. They have since thrown out a few sparks; but they are at last forgotten, probably forever. Their duration, for more than half a century, was quite long enough. Yet, happy indeed would mankind be, if they were divided only by foolish questions unproductive of bloodshed!
It is not as the husband of so many women and the wife of so many men; as the conqueror of Pompey and the Scipios; as the satirist who turned Cato into ridicule; as the robber of the public treasury, who employed the money of the Romans to reduce the Romans to subjection; as he who, clement in his triumphs, pardoned the vanquished; as the man of learning, who reformed the calendar; as the tyrant and the father of his country, assassinated by his friends and his bastard son; that I shall here speak of Cæsar. I shall consider this extraordinary man only in my quality of descendant from the poor barbarians whom he subjugated.
You will not pass through a town in France, in Spain, on the banks of the Rhine, or on the English coast opposite to Calais, in which you will not find good people who boast of having had Cæsar there. Some of the townspeople of Dover are persuaded that Cæsar built their castle; and there are citizens of Paris who believe that the greatchâteletis one of his fine works. Many a country squire in France shows you an old turret which serves him for a dove-cote, and tells you that Cæsar provided a lodging for his pigeons. Each province disputes with its neighbor the honor of having been the first to which Cæsar applied the lash; it was not by that road, but by this, that he came to cut our throats, embrace our wives and daughters, impose laws upon us by interpreters, and take from us what little money we had.
The Indians are wiser. We have already seen that they have a confused knowledge that a great robber, named Alexander, came among them with other robbers; but they scarcely ever speak of him.
An Italian antiquarian, passing a few years ago through Vannes in Brittany, was quite astonished to hear the learned men of Vannes boast of Cæsar's stay in their town. "No doubt," said he, "you have monuments of that great man?" "Yes," answered the most notable among them, "we will show you the place where that hero had the whole senate of our province hanged, to the number of six hundred."
"Some ignorant fellows, who had found a hundred beams under ground, advanced in the journals in 1755 that they were the remains of a bridge built by Cæsar; but I proved to them in my dissertation of 1756 that they were the gallows on which that hero had our parliament tied up. What other town in Gaul can say as much? We have the testimony of the great Cæsar himself. He says in his Commentaries' that we 'are fickle and prefer liberty to slavery.' He charges us with having been so insolent as to take hostages of the Romans, to whom we had given hostages, and to be unwilling to return them unless our own were given up. He taught us good behavior."
"He did well," replied the virtuoso, "his right was incontestable. It was, however, disputed, for you know that when he vanquished the emigrant Swiss, to the number of three hundred and sixty-eight thousand, and there were not more than a hundred and ten thousand left, he had a conference in Alsace with a German king named Ariovistus, and Ariovistus said to him: 'I come to plunder Gaul, and I will not suffer any one to plunder it but myself;' after which these good Germans, who were come to lay waste the country, put into the hands of their witches two Roman knights, ambassadors from Cæsar; and these witches were on the point of burning them and offering them to their gods, when Cæsar came and delivered them by a victory. We must confess that the right on both sides was equal, and that Tacitus had good reason for bestowing so many praises on the manners of the ancient Germans."
This conversation gave rise to a very warm dispute between the learned men of Vannes and the antiquarian. Several of the Bretons could not conceive what was the virtue of the Romans in deceiving one after another all the nations of Gaul, in making them by turns the instruments of their own ruin, in butchering one-fourth of the people, and reducing the other three-fourths to slavery.
"Oh! nothing can be finer," returned the antiquarian. "I have in my pocket a medal representing Cæsar's triumph at the Capitol; it is in the best preservation." He showed the medal. A Breton, a tittle rude, took it and threw it into the river, exclaiming: "Oh! that I could so serve all who use their power and their skill to oppress their fellow-men! Rome deceived us, disunited us, butchered us, chained us; and at this day Rome still disposes of many of our benefices; and is it possible that we have so long and in so many ways been a country of slaves?"
To the conversation between the Italian antiquarian and the Breton I shall only add that Perrot d'Ablancourt, the translator of Cæsar's "Commentaries," in his dedication to the great Condé, makes use of these words: "Does it not seem to you, sir, as if you were reading the life of some Christian philosopher?" Cæsar a Christian philosopher! I wonder he has not been made a saint. Writers of dedications are remarkable for saying fine things and much to the purpose.
The feast of the Circumcision, which the church celebrates on the first of January, has taken the place of another called the Feast of the Calends, of Asses, of Fools, or of Innocents, according to the different places where, and the different days on which, it was held. It was most commonly at Christmas, the Circumcision, or the Epiphany.
In the cathedral of Rouen there was on Christmas day a procession, in which ecclesiastics, chosen for the purpose, represented the prophets of the Old Testament, who foretold the birth of the Messiah, and—which may have given the feast its name—Balaam appeared, mounted on a she-ass; but as Lactantius' poem, and the "Book of Promises," under the name of St. Prosper, say that Jesus in the manger was recognized by the ox and the ass, according to the passage Isaiah: "The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib" (a circumstance, however, which neither the gospel nor the ancient fathers have remarked), it is more likely that, from this opinion, the Feast of the Ass took its name.
Indeed, the Jesuit, Theophilus Raynaud, testifies that on St. Stephen's day there was sung a hymn of the ass, which was also called the Prose of Fools; and that on St. John's day another was sung, called the Prose of the Ox. In the library of the chapter of Sens there is preserved a manuscript of vellum with miniature figures representing the ceremonies of the Feast of Fools. The text contains a description of it, including this Prose of the Ass; it was sung by two choirs, who imitated at intervals and as the burden of the song, the braying of that animal.
There was elected in the cathedral churches a bishop or archbishop of the Fools, which election was confirmed by all sorts of buffooneries, played off by way of consecration. This bishop officiated pontifically and gave his blessing to the people, before whom he appeared bearing the mitre, the crosier, and even the archiepiscopal cross. In those churches which held immediately from the Holy See, a pope of the Fools was elected, who officiated in all the decorations of papacy. All the clergy assisted in the mass, some dressed in women's apparel, others as buffoons, or masked in a grotesque and ridiculous manner. Not content with singing licentious songs in the choir, they sat and played at dice on the altar, at the side of the officiator. When the mass was over they ran, leaped, and danced about the church, uttering obscene words, singing immodest songs, and putting themselves in a thousand indecent postures, sometimes exposing themselves almost naked. They then had themselves drawn about the streets in tumbrels full of filth, that they might throw it at the mob which gathered round them. The looser part of the seculars would mix among the clergy, that they might play some fool's part in the ecclesiastical habit.
This feast was held in the same manner in the convents of monks and nuns, as Naudé testifies in his complaint to Gassendi, in 1645, in which he relates that at Antibes, in the Franciscan monastery, neither the officiating monks nor the guardian went to the choir on the day of the Innocents. The lay brethren occupied their places on that day, and, clothed in sacerdotal decorations, torn and turned inside out, made a sort of office. They held books turned upside down, which they seemed to be reading through spectacles, the glasses of which were made of orange peel; and muttered confused words, or uttered strange cries, accompanied by extravagant contortions.
The second register of the church of Autun, by the secretary Rotarii, which ends with 1416, says, without specifying the day, that at the Feast of Fools an ass was led along with a clergyman's cape on his back, the attendants singing: "He haw! Mr. Ass, he haw!"
Ducange relates a sentence of the officialty of Viviers, upon one William, who, having been elected fool-bishop in 1400, had refused to perform the solemnities and to defray the expenses customary on such occasions.
And, to conclude, the registers of St. Stephen, at Dijon, in 1521, without mentioning the day, that the vicars ran about the streets with drums, fifes, and other instruments, and carried lamps before thepré-chantreof the Fools, to whom the honor of the feast principally belonged. But the parliament of that city, by a decree of January 19, 1552, forbade the celebration of this feast, which had already been condemned by several councils, and especially by a circular of March 11, 1444, sent to all the clergy in the kingdom by the Paris university. This letter, which we find at the end of the works of Peter of Blois, says that this feast was, in the eyes of the clergy, so well imagined and so Christian, that those who sought to suppress it were looked on as excommunicated; and the Sorbonne doctor, John des Lyons, in his discourse against the paganism of the Roiboit, informs us that a doctor of divinity publicly maintained at Auxerre, about the close of the fifteenth century, that "the feast of Fools was no less pleasing to God than the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin; besides, that it was of much higher antiquity in the church."
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF PLATES—VOL. IIAPPEARANCE.APROPOS.ARABS;ARARAT.ARIANISM.ARISTEAS.ARISTOTLE.ARMS—ARMIES.AROT AND MAROT.ART OF POETRY.ARTS—FINE ARTS.ASMODEUS.ASPHALTUS.ASS.ASSASSIN—ASSASSINATION.ASTROLOGY.ASTRONOMY,ATHEISM.ATHEIST.ATOMS.AVARICE.AUGURY.AUGUSTINE.AUGUSTUS (OCTAVIUS).AVIGNON.AUSTERITIES.AUTHORS.AUTHORITY.AXIS.BABEL.BACCHUS.BACON (ROGER).BANISHMENT.BAPTISM.BARUCH, OR BARAK, AND DEBORAH;BATTALION.BAYLE.BDELLIUM.BEARD.BEASTS.BEAUTIFUL (THE).BEES.BEGGAR—MENDICANTBEKKER,BELIEF.BETHSHEMESH.BILHAH—BASTARDSBISHOP.BLASPHEMY.BODY.BOOKS.BOURGES.BRACHMANS—BRAHMINS.BREAD-TREE.BUFFOONERY—BURLESQUE—LOW COMEDY.BULGARIANS.BULL.BULL (PAPAL).CÆSAR.CALENDS.