It is not, however, a fable that the emperor Valentinian, calling himself a Christian, married Justinian during the life of Severa, his first wife, mother of the emperor Gratian; but he was rich enough to support many wives.
Among the first race of the kings of the Franks, Gontran, Cherebert, Sigebert, and Chilperic, had several wives at a time. Gontran had within his palace Venerande, Mercatrude, and Ostregilda, acknowledged for legitimate wives; Cherebert had Merflida, Marcovesa, and Theodogilda.
It is difficult to conceive how the ex-Jesuit Nonnotte has been able, in his ignorance, to push his boldness so far as to deny these facts, and to say that the kings of the first race were not polygamists, and thereby, in a libel in two volumes, throw discredit on more than a hundred historical truths, with the confidence of a pedant who dictates lessons in a college. Books of this kind still continue to be sold in the provinces, where the Jesuits have yet a party, and seduce and mislead uneducated people.
Father Daniel, more learned and judicious, confesses the polygamy of the French kings without difficulty. He denies not the three wives of Dagobert I., and asserts expressly that Theodoret espoused Deutery, although she had a husband, and himself another wife called Visigalde. He adds, that in this he imitated his uncle Clothaire, who espoused the widow of Cleodomir, his brother, although he had three wives already.
All historians admit the same thing; why, therefore, after so many testimonies, allow an ignorant writer to speak like a dictator, and say, while uttering a thousand follies, that it is in defence of religion? as if our sacred and venerable religion had anything to do with an historical point, although made serviceable by miserable calumniators to their stupid impostures.
Of the Polygamy Allowed by Certain Popes and Reformers.
The Abbé Fleury, author of the "Ecclesiastical History," pays more respect to truth in all which concerns the laws and usages of the Church. He avows that Boniface, confessor of Lower Germany, having consulted Pope Gregory, in the year 726, in order to know in what cases a husband might be allowed to have two wives, Gregory replied to him, on the 22nd of November, of the same year, in these words: "If a wife be attacked by a malady which renders her unfit for conjugal intercourse, the husband may marry another; but in that case he must allow his sick wife all necessary support and assistance." This decision appears conformable to reason and policy; and favors population, which is the object of marriage.
But that which appears opposed at once to reason, policy, and nature, is the law which ordains that a woman, separated from her husband both in person and estate, cannot take another husband, nor the husband another wife. It is evident that a race is thereby lost; and if the separated parties are both of a certain temperament, they are necessarily exposed and rendered liable to sins for which the legislators ought to be responsible to God, if—
The decretals of the popes have not always had in view what was suitable to the good of estates, and of individuals. This same decretal of Pope Gregory II., which permits bigamy in certain cases, denies conjugal rights forever to the boys and girls, whom their parents have devoted to the Church in their infancy. This law seems as barbarous as it is unjust; at once annihilating posterity, and forcing the will of men before they even possess a will. It is rendering the children the slaves of a vow which they never made; it is to destroy natural liberty, and to offend God and mankind.
The polygamy of Philip, landgrave of Hesse, in the Lutheran community, in 1539, is well known. I knew a sovereign in Germany, who, after having married a Lutheran, had permission from the pope to marry a Catholic, and retained both his wives.
It is well known in England, that the chancellor Cowper married two wives, who lived together in the same house in a state of concord which did honor to all three. Many of the curious still possess the little book which he composed in favor of polygamy.
We must distrust authors who relate, that in certain countries women are allowed several husbands. Those who make laws everywhere are born with too much self-love, are too jealous of their authority, and generally possess a temperament too ardent in comparison with that of women, to have instituted a jurisprudence of this nature. That which is opposed to the general course of nature is very rarely true; but it is very common for the more early travellers to mistake an abuse for a law.
The author of the "Spirit of Laws" asserts, that in the caste of Nairs, on the coast of Malabar, a man can have only one wife, while a woman may have several husbands. He cites doubtful authors, and above all Picard; but it is impossible to speak of strange customs without having long witnessed them; and if they are mentioned, it ought to be doubtingly; but what lively spirit knows how to doubt?
"The lubricity of women," he observes, "is so great at Patan, the men are constrained to adopt certain garniture, in order to be safe against their amorous enterprises."
The president Montesquieu was never at Patan. Is not the remark of M. Linguet judicious, who observes, that this story has been told by travellers who were either deceived themselves, or who wished to laugh at their readers? Let us be just, love truth, and judge by facts, not by names.
End of the Reflections on Polygamy.
It appears that power, rather than agreement, makes laws everywhere, but especially in the East. We there beheld the first slaves, the first eunuchs, and the treasury of the prince directly composed of that which is taken from the people.
He who can clothe, support, and amuse a number of women, shuts them up in a menagerie, and commands them despotically. Ben Aboul Kiba, in his "Mirror of the Faithful," relates that one of the viziers of the great Solyman addressed the following discourse to an agent of Charles V.:
"Dog of a Christian!—for whom, however, I have a particular esteem—canst thou reproach me with possessing four wives, according to our holy laws, whilst thou emptiest a dozen barrels a year, and I drink not a single glass of wine? What good dost thou effect by passing more hours at table than I do in bed? I may get four children a year for the service of my august master, whilst thou canst scarcely produce one, and that only the child of a drunkard, whose brain will be obscured by the vapors of the wine which has been drunk by his father. What, moreover, wouldst thou have me do, when two of my wives are in child-bed? Must I not attend to the other two, as my law commands me? What becomes of them? what part dost thou perform, in the latter months of the pregnancy of thy only wife, and during her lyings-in and sexual maladies? Thou either remainest idle, or thou repairest to another woman. Behold thyself between two mortal sins, which will infallibly cause thee to fall headlong from the narrow bridge into the pit of hell.
"I will suppose, that in our wars against the dogs of Christians we lose a hundred thousand soldiers; behold a hundred thousand girls to provide for. Is it not for the wealthy to take care of them? Evil betide every Mussulman so cold-hearted as not to give shelter to four pretty girls, in the character of legitimate wives, or to treat them according to their merits!
"What is done in thy country by the trumpeter of day, which thou callest the cock; the honest ram, the leader of the flock; the bull, sovereign of the heifers; has not every one of them his seraglio? It becomes thee, truly, to reproach me with my four wives, whilst our great prophet had eighteen, the Jew David, as many, and the Jew Solomon, seven hundred, all told, with three hundred concubines! Thou perceivest that I am modest. Cease, then, to reproach a sage with luxury, who is content with so moderate a repast. I permit thee to drink; allow me to love. Thou changest thy wines; permit me to change my females. Let every one suffer others to live according to the customs of their country. Thy hat was not made to give laws to my turban; thy ruff and thy curtailed doublets are not to command my doliman. Make an end of thy coffee, and go and caress thy German spouse, since thou art allowed to have no other."
Reply of the German.
"Dog of a Mussulman! for whom I retain a profound veneration; before I finish my coffee I will confute all thy arguments. He who possesses four wives, possesses four harpies, always ready to calumniate, to annoy, and to fight one another. Thy house is the den of discord, and none of them can love thee. Each has only a quarter of thy person, and in return can bestow only a quarter of her heart. None of them can serve to render thy life agreeable; they are prisoners who, never having seen anything, have nothing to say; and, knowing only thee, are in consequence thy enemies. Thou art their absolute master; they therefore hate thee. Thou art obliged to guard them with eunuchs, who whip them when they are too happy. Thou pretendest to compare thyself to a cock, but a cock never has his pullets whipped by a capon. Take animals for thy examples, and copy them as much as thou pleasest; for my part, I love like a man; I would give all my heart, and receive an entire heart in return. I will give an account of this conversation to my wife to-night, and I hope she will be satisfied. As to the wine with which thou reproachest me, if it is an evil to drink it in Arabia, it is a very praiseworthy habit in Germany.—Adieu!"
Bayle has made the article "Xenophanes" a pretext for making a panegyric on the devil; as Simonides, formerly, seized the occasion of a wrestler winning the prize of boxing in the Olympic games, to form a fine ode in praise of Castor and Pollux. But, at the bottom, of what consequence to us are the reveries of Xenophanes? What do we gain by knowing that he regarded nature as an infinite being, immovable, composed of an infinite number of small corpuscles, soft little mounds, and small organic molecules? That he, moreover, thought pretty nearly as Spinoza has since thought? or rather endeavored to think, for he contradicts himself frequently—a thing very common to ancient philosophers.
If Anaximenes taught that the atmosphere was God; if Thales attributed to water the foundation of all things, because Egypt was rendered fertile by inundation; if Pherecides and Heraclitus give to fire all which Thales attributes to water—to what purpose return to these chimerical reveries?
I wish that Pythagoras had expressed, by numbers, certain relations, very insufficiently understood, by which he infers, that the world was built by the rules of arithmetic. I allow, that Ocellus Lucanus and Empedocles have arranged everything by moving antagonist forces, but what shall I gather from it? What clear notion will it convey to my feeble mind?
Come, divine Plato! with your archetypal ideas, your androgynes, and your word; establish all these fine things in poetical prose, in your new republic, in which I no more aspire to have a house, than in the Salentum of Telemachus; but in lieu of becoming one of your citizens, I will send you an order to build your town with all the subtle manner of Descartes, all his globular and diffusive matter; and they shall be brought to you by Cyrano de Bergerac.
Bayle, however, has exercised all the sagacity of his logic on these ancient fancies; but it is always by rendering them ridiculous that he instructs and entertains.
O philosophers! Physical experiments, ably conducted, arts and handicraft—these are the true philosophy. My sage is the conductor of my windmill, which dexterously catches the wind, and receives my corn, deposits it in the hopper, and grinds it equally, for the nourishment of myself and family. My sage is he who, with his shuttle, covers my walls with pictures of linen or of silk, brilliant with the finest colors; or he who puts into my pocket a chronometer of silver or of gold. My sage is the investigator of natural history. We learn more from the single experiments of the Abbé Nollet than from all the philosophical works of antiquity.
If Xenophon had no other merit than that of being the friend of the martyr Socrates, he would be interesting; but he was a warrior, philosopher, poet, historian, agriculturist, and amiable in society. There were many Greeks who united these qualities.
But why had this free man a Greek company in the pay of the young Chosroes, named Cyrus by the Greeks? This Cyrus was the younger brother and subject of the emperor of Persia, Artaxerxes Mnemon, of whom it was said that he never forgot anything but injuries. Cyrus had already attempted to assassinate his brother, even in the temple in which the ceremony of his consecration took place—for the kings of Persia were the first who were consecrated. Artaxerxes had not only the clemency to pardon this villain, but he had the weakness to allow him the absolute government of a great part of Asia Minor, which he held from their father, and of which he at least deserved to be despoiled.
As a return for such surprising mercy, as soon as he could excite his satrapy to revolt against his brother, Cyrus added this second crime to the first. He declared by a manifesto, "that he was more worthy of the throne of Persia than his brother, because he was a better magus, and drank more wine." I do not believe that these were the reasons which gained him the Greeks as allies. He took thirteen thousand into his pay, among whom was the young Xenophon, who was then only an adventurer. Each soldier had a daric a month for pay. The daric is equal to about a guinea or a louis d'or of our time, as the Chevalier de Jaucourt very well observes, and not ten francs, as Rollin says.
When Cyrus proposed to march them with his other troops to fight his brother towards the Euphrates, they demanded a daric and a half, which he was obliged to grant them. This was thirty-six livres a month, and consequently the highest pay which was ever given. The soldiers of Cæsar and Pompey had but twenty sous per day in the civil wars. Besides this exorbitant pay, of which they obliged him to pay four months in advance, Cyrus furnished them four hundred chariots, laden with wine and meal.
The Greeks were then precisely what the Swiss are at present, who hire their service and courage to neighboring princes, but for a pay three times less than was that of the Greeks. It is evident, though they say the contrary, that they did not inform themselves whether the cause for which they fought was just; it was sufficient that Cyrus paid well.
The greatest part of these troops was composed of Lacedæmonians, by which they violated their solemn treaties with the king of Persia. What was become of the ancient aversion of the Spartans for gold and silver? Where was their sincerity in treaties? Where was their high and incorruptible virtue? Clearchus, a Spartan, commanded the principal body of these brave mercenaries.
I understand not the military manoeuvres of Artaxerxes and Cyrus; I see not why Artaxerxes, who came to his enemy with twelve hundred thousand soldiers, should begin by causing lines of twelve leagues in extent to be drawn between Cyrus and himself; and I comprehend nothing of the order of battle. I understand still less how Cyrus, followed only by six hundred horse, broke into the midst of six thousand horse-guards of the emperor, followed by an innumerable army. Finally, he was killed by the hand of Artaxerxes, who, having apparently drunk less wine than the rebel, fought with more coolness and address than this drunkard. It is clear that he completely gained the battle, notwithstanding the valor and resistance of thirteen thousand Greeks—since Greek vanity is obliged to confess that Artaxerxes told them to put down their arms. They replied that they would do nothing of the kind; but that if the emperor would pay them they would enter his service. It was very indifferent to them for whom they fought, so long as they were paid; in fact, they were only hired murderers.
Besides the Swiss, there are some provinces of Germany which follow this custom. It signifies not to these good Christians whether they are paid to kill English, French, or Dutch, or to be killed by them. You see them say their prayers, and go to the carnage like laborers to their workshop. As to myself, I confess I would rather observe those who go into Pennsylvania, to cultivate the land with the simple and equitable Quakers, and form colonies in the retreat of peace and industry. There is no great skill in killing and being killed for six sous per day, but there is much in causing the republic of Dunkers to flourish—these new Therapeutæ on the frontier of a country the most savage.
Artaxerxes regarded the Greeks only as accomplices in the revolt of his brother, and indeed they were nothing else. He betrayed himself to be betrayed by them, and he betrayed them, as Xenophon pretends; for after one of his captains had sworn in his name to allow them a free retreat, and to furnish them with food, after Clearchus and five other commanders of the Greeks were put into his hands, to regulate the march, he caused their heads to be cut off, and slew all the Greeks who accompanied them in this interview, if we may trust Xenophon's account.
This royal act shows us that Machiavellism is not new; but is it true that Artaxerxes promised not to make an example of the chief mercenaries who sold themselves to his brother? Was it not permitted him to punish those whom he thought so guilty? It is here that the famous retreat of the ten thousand commences. If I comprehend nothing of the battle, I understand no more of the retreat.
The emperor, before he cut off the heads of six Greek generals and their suite, had sworn to allow the little army, reduced to ten thousand men, to return to Greece. The battle was fought on the road to the Euphrates; he must therefore have caused the Greeks to return by Western Mesopotamia, Syria, Asia Minor, and Ionia. Not at all; they were made to pass by the East; they were obliged to traverse the Tigris in boats which were furnished to them; they returned afterwards by the Armenian roads, while their commanders were punished. If any person comprehends this march, in which they turn their backs on Greece, they will oblige me much by explaining it to me.
One of two things: either the Greeks chose their route themselves—and in this case they neither knew where they went, or what they wished—or Artaxerxes made them march against their will—which is much more probable—and in this case, why did he not exterminate them?
We may extricate ourselves from these difficulties, by supposing that the Persian emperor only half revenged himself; that he contented himself with punishing the principal mercenary chiefs who sold the Greek troops to Cyrus; that having made a treaty with the fugitive troops, he would not descend to the meanness of violating it; that being sure that a third of these wandering Greeks would perish on the road, he abandoned them to their fate. I see no other manner of enlightening the mind of the reader on the obscurities of this march.
We are astonished at the retreat of the ten thousand; but we should be much more so, if Artaxerxes, a conqueror, at the head of a hundred thousand men—at least it is said so—had allowed ten thousand fugitives to travel in the north of his vast states, whom he could crush in every village, every bridge, every defile, or whom he could have made perish with hunger and misery.
However, they were furnished, as we have seen, with twenty-seven great boats, to enable them to pass the Tigris, as if they were conducted to the Indies. Thence they were escorted towards the North for several days, into the desert in which Bagdad is now situated. They further passed the river Zabata, and it was there that the emperor sent his orders to punish the chiefs. It is clear that they could have exterminated the army as easily as they inflicted punishment on the generals. It is therefore very likely that they did not choose to do so. We should, therefore, rather regard the Greek wanderers in these savage countries as wayward travellers, whom the bounty of the emperor allowed to finish their journey as they could.
We may make another observation, which appears not very honorable to the Persian government. It was impossible for the Greeks not to have continual quarrels for food with the people whom they met. Pillages, desolations, and murders, were the inevitable consequence of these disorders; and that is so true, that in a road of six hundred leagues, during which the Greeks always marched irregularly, being neither escorted nor pursued by any great body of Persian troops, they lost four thousand men, either killed by peasants or by sickness. How did it happen, therefore, that Artaxerxes did not cause them to be escorted from their passage of the river Zabata, as he had done from the field of battle to the river?
How could so wise and good a sovereign commit so great a fault? Perhaps he did command the escort; perhaps Xenophon, who exaggerates a little elsewhere, passes it over in silence, not to diminish the wonder of the "retreat of the ten thousand"; perhaps the escort was always obliged to march at a great distance from the Greek troop, on account of the difficulty of procuring provisions. However it might be, it appears certain that Artaxerxes used extreme indulgence, and that the Greeks owed their lives to him, since they were not exterminated.
In the article on "Retreat," in the "Encyclopædical Dictionary," it is said that the retreat of the ten thousand took place under the command of Xenophon. This is a mistake; he never commanded; he was merely at the head of a division of fourteen hundred men, at the end of the march.
I see that these heroes scarcely arrived, after so many fatigues, on the borders of the Pontus Euxinus, before they indifferently pillaged friends and enemies to re-establish themselves. Xenophon embarked his little troop at Heraclea, and went to make a new bargain with a king of Thrace, to whom he was a stranger. This Athenian, instead of succoring his country, then overcome by the Spartans, sold himself once more to a petty foreign despot. He was ill paid, I confess, which is another reason why we may conclude that he would have done better in assisting his country.
The sum of all this, we have already remarked, is that the Athenian Xenophon, being only a young volunteer, enlisted himself under a Lacedæmonian captain, one of the tyrants of Athens, in the service of a rebel and an assassin; and that, becoming chief of fourteen hundred men, he put himself into the pay of a barbarian.
What is worse, necessity did not constrain him to this servitude. He says himself that he deposited a great part of the gold gained in the service of Cyrus in the temple of the famous Diana of Ephesus.
Let us remark, that in receiving the pay of a king, he exposed himself to be condemned to death, if the foreigner was not contented with him, which happened to Major-General Doxat, a man born free. He sold himself to the emperor Charles VI., who commanded his head to be cut off, for having given up to the Turks a place which he could not defend.
Rollin, in speaking of the return of the ten thousand, says, "that this fortunate retreat filled the people of Greece with contempt for Artaxerxes, by showing them that gold, silver, delicacies, luxury, and a numerous seraglio, composed all the merit of a great king."
Rollin should consider that the Greeks ought not to despise a sovereign who had gained a complete battle; who, having pardoned as a brother, conquered as a hero; who, having the power of exterminating ten thousand Greeks, suffered them to live and to return to their country; and who, being able to have them in his pay, disdained to make use of them. Add, that this prince afterwards conquered the Lacedæmonians and their allies, and imposed on them humiliating laws; add also that in a war with the Scythians, called Caducians, towards the Caspian Sea, he supported all fatigues and dangers like the lowest soldier. He lived and died full of glory; it is true that he had a seraglio, but his courage was only the more estimable. We must be careful of college declamations.
If I dared to attack prejudice I would venture to prefer the retreat of Marshal Belle-Isle to that of the ten thousand. He was blocked up in Prague by sixty thousand men, when he had not thirteen thousand. He took his measures with so much ability that he got out of Prague, in the most severe cold, with his army, provisions, baggage, and thirty pieces of cannon, without the besiegers having the least idea of it. He gained two days' march without their perceiving it. An army of thirteen thousand men pursued him for the space of thirty leagues. He faced them everywhere—he was never cast down; but sick as he was, he braved the season, scarcity and his enemies. He only lost those soldiers who could not resist the extreme rigor of the season. What more was wanting? A longer course and Grecian exaggeration.
This is the name of a town in France, six leagues from Rouen, in Normandy, which, according to Robert Gaguin, a historian of the sixteenth century, has long been entitled a kingdom.
This writer relates that Gautier, or Vautier, lord of Yvetot, and grand chamberlain to King Clotaire I., having lost the favor of his master by calumny, in which courtiers deal rather liberally, went into voluntary exile, and visited distant countries, where, for ten years, he fought against the enemies of the faith; that at the expiration of this term, flattering himself that the king's anger would be appeased, he went back to France; that he passed through Rome, where he saw Pope Agapetus, from whom he obtained a letter of recommendation to the king, who was then at Soissons, the capital of his dominions. The lord of Yvetot repaired thither one Good Friday, and chose the time when Clotaire was at church, to fall at his feet, and implore his forgiveness through the merits of Him who, on that day, had shed His blood for the salvation of men; but Clotaire, ferocious and cruel, having recognized him, ran him through the body.
Gaguin adds that Pope Agapetus, being informed of this disgraceful act, threatened the king with the thunders of the Church, if he did not make reparation for his offence; and that Clotaire, justly intimidated, and in satisfaction for the murder of his subject, erected the lordship of Yvetot into a kingdom, in favor of Gautier's heirs and successors; that he despatched letters to that effect signed by himself, and sealed with his seal; that ever since then the lords of Yvetot have borne the title of kings; and—continues Gaguin—I find from established and indisputable authority, that this extraordinary event happened in the year of grace 539.
On this story of Gaguin's we have the same remark to make that we have already made on what he says of the establishment of the Paris university—that not one of the contemporary historians makes any mention of the singular event, which, as he tells us, caused the lordship of Yvetot to be erected into a kingdom; and, as Claude Malingre and the abbé Vertot have well observed, Clotaire I., who is here supposed to have been sovereign of the town of Yvetot, did not reign over that part of the country; fiefs were not then hereditary; acts were not, as Robert Gaguin relates, dated from the year of grace; and lastly, Pope Agapetus was then dead; to this it may be added that the right of erecting a fief into a kingdom belonged exclusively to the emperor.
It is not, however, to be said that the thunders of the Church were not already made use of, in the time of Agapetus. We know that St. Paul excommunicated the incestuous man of Corinth. We also find in the letters of St. Basil, some instances of general censure in the fourth century. One of these letters is against a ravisher. The holy prelate there orders the young woman to be restored to her parents, the ravisher to be excluded from prayers, and declared to be excommunicated, together with his accomplices and all his household, for three years; he also orders that all the people of the village where the ravished person was received, shall be excommunicated.
Auxilius, a young bishop, excommunicated the whole family of Clacitien; although St. Augustine disapproved of this conduct, and Pope St. Leo laid down the same maxims as Augustine, in one of his letters to the bishop of the province of Vienne—yet, confining ourselves here to France—Pretextatus, bishop of Rouen, having been assassinated in the year 586 in his own church, Leudovalde, bishop of Bayeux, did not fail to lay all the churches in Rouen under an interdict, forbidding divine service to be celebrated in them until the author of the crime should be discovered.
In 1141, Louis the Young having refused his consent to the election of Peter de la Châtre, whom the pope caused to be appointed in the room of Alberic, archbishop of Bourges, who had died the year preceding, Innocent II. laid all France under interdict.
In the year 1200, Peter of Capua, commissioned to compel Philip Augustus to put away Agnes, and take back Ingeburga, and not succeeding, published the sentence of interdict on the whole kingdom, which had been pronounced by Pope Innocent III. This interdict was observed with extreme rigor. The English chronicle, quoted by the Benedictine Martenne, says that every Christian act, excepting the baptism of infants, was interdicted in France; the churches were closed, and Christians driven out of them like dogs; there was no more divine office, no more sacrifice of the mass, no ecclesiastical sepulture for the deceased; the dead bodies, left to chance, spread the most frightful infections, and filled the survivors with horror.
The chronicle of Tours gives the same description, adding only one remarkable particular, confirmed by the abbé Fleury and the abbé de Vertot—that the holy viaticum was excepted, like the baptism of infants, from the privation of holy things. The kingdom was in this situation for nine months; it was some time before Innocent III. permitted the preaching of sermons and the sacrament of confirmation. The king was so much enraged that he drove the bishops and all the other ecclesiastics from their abodes, and confiscated their property.
But it is singular that the bishops were sometimes solicited by sovereigns themselves to pronounce an interdict upon lands of their vassals. By letters dated February, 1356, confirming those of Guy, count of Nevers, and his wife Matilda, in favor of the citizens of Nevers, Charles V., regent of the kingdom, prays the archbishops of Lyons, Bourges, and Sens, and the bishops of Autun, Langres, Auxerre, and Nevers, to pronounce an excommunication against the count of Nevers, and an interdict upon his lands, if he does not fulfil the agreement he has made with the inhabitants. We also find in the collection of the ordinances of the third line of kings, many letters like that of King John, authorizing the bishops to put under interdict those places whose privileges their lords would seek to infringe.
And to conclude, though it appears incredible, the Jesuit Daniel relates that, in the year 998, King Robert was excommunicated by Gregory V., for having married his kinswoman in the fourth degree. All the bishops who had assisted at this marriage were interdicted from the communion, until they had been to Rome, and rendered satisfaction to the holy see. The people, and even the court, separated from the king; he had only two domestics left, who purified by fire whatever he had touched. Cardinal Damien and Romualde also add, that Robert being gone one morning, as was his custom, to say his prayers at the door of St. Bartholomew's church, for he dared not enter it, Abbon, abbot of Fleury, followed by two women of the palace, carrying a large gilt dish covered with a napkin, accosted him, announced that Bertha was just brought to bed; and uncovering the dish, said: "Behold the effects of your disobedience to the decrees of the Church, and the seal of anathema on the fruit of your love!" Robert looked, and saw a monster with the head and neck of a duck! Bertha was repudiated; and the excommunication was at last taken off.
Urban II., on the contrary, excommunicated Robert's grandson, Philip I., for having put away his kinswoman. This pope pronounced the sentence of excommunication in the king's own dominions, at Clermont, in Auvergne, where his holiness was come to seek an asylum, in the same council in which the crusade was preached, and in which, for the first time, the name of pope (papa) was given to the bishop of Rome, to the exclusion of the other bishops, who had formerly taken it.
It will be seen that these canonical pains were medicinal rather than mortal; but Gregory VII. and some of his successors ventured to assert, that an excommunicated sovereign was deprived of his dominions, and that his subjects were not obliged to obey him. However, supposing that a king can be excommunicated in certain serious cases, excommunication, being a penalty purely spiritual, cannot dispense with the obedience which his subjects owe to him, as holding his authority from God Himself. This was constantly acknowledged by the parliaments, and also by the clergy of France, in the excommunications pronounced by Boniface VII., against Philip the Fair; by Julius II., against Louis XII.; by Sixtus V., against Henry III.; by Gregory XIII., against Henry IV.; and it is likewise the doctrine of the celebrated assembly of the clergy in 1682.
This, in religion, is a pure and enlightened attachment to the maintenance and progress of the worship which is due to the Divinity; but when this zeal is persecuting, blind, and false, it becomes the greatest scourge of humanity.
See what the emperor Julian says of the Christians of his time: "The Galileans," he observes, "have suffered exile and imprisonment under my predecessor; those who are by turns called heretics, have been mutually massacred. I have recalled the banished, liberated the prisoners; I have restored their property to the proscribed; I have forced them to live in peace; but such is the restless rage of the Galileans, that they complain of being no longer able to devour each other."
This picture will not appear extravagant if we attend to the atrocious calumnies with which the Christians reciprocally blackened each other. For instance, St. Augustine accuses the Manichæans of forcing their elect to receive the eucharist, after having obscenely polluted it. After him, St. Cyril of Jerusalem has accused them of the same infamy in these terms: "I dare not mention in what these sacrilegious wretches wet their ischas, which they give to their unhappy votaries, and exhibit in the midst of their altar, and with which the Manichæan soils his mouth and tongue. Let the men call to mind what they are accustomed to experience in dreaming, and the women in their periodical affections." Pope St. Leo, in one of his sermons, also calls the sacrifice of the Manichæans the same turpitude. Finally, Suidas and Cedrenus have still further improved on the calumny, in asserting that the Manichæans held nocturnal assemblies, in which, after extinguishing the flambeaux, they committed the most enormous indecencies.
Let us first observe that the primitive Christians were themselves accused of the same horrors which they afterwards imputed to the Manichæans; and that the justification of these equally applies to the others. "In order to have pretexts for persecuting us," said Athenagoras, in his "Apology for the Christians," "they accuse us of making detestable banquets, and of committing incest in our assemblies. It is an old trick, which has been employed from all time to extinguish virtue. Thus was Pythagoras burned, with three hundred of his disciples; Heraclitus expelled by the Ephesians; Democritus by the Abderitans; and Socrates condemned by the Athenians."
Athenagoras subsequently points out that the principles and manners of the Christians were sufficient of themselves to destroy the calumnies spread against them. The same reasons apply in favor of the Manichæans. Why else is St. Augustine, who is positive in his book on heresies, reduced in that on the morals of the Manichæans, when speaking of the horrible ceremony in question, to say simply: "They are suspected of—the world has this opinion of them—if they do not commit what is imputed to them—rumor proclaims much ill of them; but they maintain that it is false?"
Why not sustain openly this accusation in his dispute with Fortunatus, who publicly challenged him in these terms: "We are accused of false crimes, and as Augustine has assisted in our worship, I beg him to declare before the whole people, whether these crimes are true or not." St. Augustine replied: "It is true that I have assisted in your worship; but the question of faith is one thing, the question of morals another; and it is that of faith which I brought forward. However, if the persons present prefer that we should discuss that of your morals, I shall not oppose myself to them."
Fortunatus, addressing the assembly, said: "I wish, above all things, to be justified in the minds of those who believe us guilty; and that Augustine should now testify before you, and one day before the tribunal of Jesus Christ, if he has ever seen, or if he knows, in any way whatever, that the things imputed have been committed by us?" St. Augustine still replies: "You depart from the question; what I have advanced turns upon faith, not upon morals." At length, Fortunatus continuing to press St. Augustine to explain himself, he does so in these terms: "I acknowledge that in the prayer at which I assisted I did not see you commit anything impure."
The same St. Augustine, in his work on the "Utility of Faith," still justifies the Manichæans. "At this time," he says, to his friend Honoratus, "when I was occupied with Manichæism, I was yet full of the desire and the hope of marrying a handsome woman, and of acquiring riches; of attaining honors, and of enjoying the other pernicious pleasures of life. For when I listened with attention to the Manichæan doctors, I had not renounced the desire and hope of all these things. I do not attribute that to their doctrine; for I am bound to render this testimony—that they sedulously exhorted men to preserve themselves from those things. That is, indeed, what hindered me from attaching myself altogether to the sect, and kept me in the rank of those who are called auditors. I did not wish to renounce secular hopes and affairs." And in the last chapter of this book, where he represents the Manichæan doctors as proud men, who had as gross minds as they had meagre and skinny bodies, he does not say a word of their pretended infamies.
But on what proofs were these imputations founded? The first which Augustine alleges is, that these indecencies were a consequence of the Manichæan system, regarding the means which God makes use of to wrest from the prince of darkness the portion of his substance. We have spoken of this in the article on "Genealogy," and these are horrors which one may dispense with repeating. It is enough to say here, that the passage from the seventh book of the "Treasure of Manes," which Augustine cites in many places, is evidently falsified. The arch heretic says, if we can believe it, that these celestial virtues, which are transformed sometimes into beautiful boys, and sometimes into beautiful girls, are God the Father Himself. This is false; Manes has never confounded the celestial virtues with God the Father. St. Augustine, not having understood the Syriac phrase of a "virgin of light" to mean a virgin light, supposes that God shows a beautiful maiden to the princes of darkness, in order to excite their brutal lust; there is nothing of all this talked of in ancient authors; the question concerns the cause of rain.
"The great prince," says Tirbon, cited by St. Epiphanius, "sends out for himself, in his passion, black clouds, which darken all the world; he chafes, worries himself, throws himself into a perspiration, and that it is which makes the rain, which is no other than the sweat of the great prince." St. Augustine must have been deceived by a mistranslation, or rather by a garbled, unfaithful extract from the "Treasure of Manes," from which he only cites two or three passages. The Manichæan Secundums also reproaches him with comprehending nothing of the mysteries of Manichæism, and with attacking them only by mere paralogisms. "How, otherwise," says the learned M. de Beausobre—whom we here abridge—"would St. Augustine have been able to live so many years among a sect in which such abominations were publicly taught? And how would he have had the face to defend it against the Catholics?"
From this proof by reasoning, let us pass to the proofs of fact and evidence alleged by St. Augustine and see if they are more substantial. "It is said," proceeds this father, "that some of them have confessed this fact in public pleadings, not only in Paphlagonia, but also in the Gauls, as I have heard said at Rome by a certain Catholic."
Such hearsay deserves so little attention that St. Augustine dared not make use of it in his conference with Fortunatus, although it was seven or eight years after he had quitted Rome; he seems even to have forgotten the name of the Catholic from whom he learned them. It is true, that in his book of "Heresies," he speaks of the confessions of two girls, the one named Margaret, the other Eusebia, and of some Manichæans who, having been discovered at Carthage, and taken to the church, avowed, it is said, the horrible fact in question.
He adds that a certain Viator declared that they who committed these scandals were called Catharistes, or purgators; and that, when interrogated on what scripture they founded this frightful practice, they produced the passage from the "Treasure of Manes," the falsehood of which has been demonstrated. But our heretics, far from availing themselves of it, have openly disavowed it, as the work of some impostor who wished to ruin them. That alone casts suspicion on all these acts of Carthage, which "Quod-vult-Deus" had sent to St. Augustine; and these wretches who were discovered and taken to the church, have very much the air of persons suborned to confess all they were wanted to confess.
In the 47th chapter on the "Nature of Good," St. Augustine admits that when our heretics were reproached with the crimes in question, they replied that one of their elect, a seceder from the sect, and become their enemy, had introduced this enormity. Without inquiring whether this was a real sect whom Viator calls Catharistes, it is sufficient to observe here, that the first Christians likewise imputed to the Gnostics the horrible mysteries of which they were themselves accused by the Jews and Pagans; and if this defence is good on their behalf, why should it not be so on that of the Manichæans?
It is, however, these vulgar rumors which M. de Tillemont, who piques himself on his exactness and fidelity, ventures to convert into positive facts. He asserts that the Manichæans had been made to confess these disgraceful doings in public judgments, in Paphlagonia, in the Gauls, and several times at Carthage.
Let us also weigh the testimony of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, whose narrative is altogether different from that of St. Augustine; and let us consider that the fact is so incredible and so absurd that it could scarcely be credited, even if attested by five or six witnesses who had seen and would affirm it on oath. St. Cyril stands alone; he had never seen it; he advances it in a popular declamation, wherein he gives himself a licence to put into the mouth of Manes, in the conference of Cascar, a discourse, not one word of which is in the "Acts of Archælaus," as M. Zaccagni is obliged to allow; and it cannot be alleged in defence of St. Cyril that he has taken only the sense of Archælaus, and not the words; for neither the sense nor the words can be found there. Besides, the style which this father adopts is that of a historian who cites the actual words of his author.
Nevertheless, to save the honor and good faith of St. Cyril, M. Zaccagni, and after him M. de Tillemont, suppose, without any proof, that the translator or copyist has omitted the passage in the "Acts" quoted by this father; and the journalists of Trévoux have imagined two sorts of "Acts of Archælaus"—the authentic ones which Cyril has copied, and others invented in the fifth century by some historian. When they shall have proved this conjecture, we will examine their reasons.
Finally, let us come to the testimony of Pope Leo touching these Manichæan abominations. He says, in his sermons, that the sudden troubles in other countries had brought into Italy some Manichæans, whose mysteries were so abominable that he could not expose them to the public view without sacrificing modesty. That, in order to ascertain them, he had introduced male and female elect into an assembly composed of bishops, priests, and some lay noblemen. That these heretics had disclosed many things respecting their dogmas and the ceremonies of their feast, and had confessed a crime which could not be named, but in regard to which there could be no doubt, after the confession of the guilty parties—that is to say, of a young girl of only ten years of age; of two women who had prepared her for the horrible ceremony of the sect; of a young man who had been an accomplice; of the bishop who had ordered and presided over it. He refers those among his auditors who desire to know more, to the informations which had been taken, and which he communicated to the bishops of Italy, in his second letter.
This testimony appears more precise and more decisive than that of St. Augustine; but it is anything but conclusive in regard to a fact belied by the protestations of the accused, and by the ascertained principles of their morality. In effect, what proofs have we that the infamous persons interrogated by Leo were not bribed to depose against their sect?
It will be replied that the piety and sincerity of this pope will not permit us to believe that he has contrived such a fraud. But if—as we have said in the article on "Relics"—the same St. Leo was capable of supposing that pieces of linen and ribbons, which were put in a box, and made to descend into the tombs of some saints, shed blood when they were cut—ought this pope to make any scruple in bribing, or causing to be bribed, some abandoned women, and I know not what Manichæan bishop, who, being assured of pardon, would make confessions of crimes which might be true as regarded themselves, but not as regarded their sect, from whose seduction St. Leo wished to protect his people? At all times, bishops have considered themselves authorized to employ those pious frauds which tend to the salvation of souls. The conjectural and apocryphal scriptures are a proof of this; and the readiness with which the fathers have put faith in those bad works, shows that, if they were not accomplices in the fraud, they were not scrupulous in taking advantage of it.
In conclusion, St. Leo pretends to confirm the secret crimes of the Manichæans by an argument which destroys them. "These execrable mysteries," he says, "which the more impure they are, the more carefully they are hid, are common to the Manichæans and to the Priscillianists. There is in all respects the same sacrilege, the same obscenity, the same turpitude. These crimes, these infamies, are the same which were formerly discovered among the Priscillianists, and of which the whole world is informed."
The Priscillianists were never guilty of the crimes for which they were put to death. In the works of St. Augustine is contained the instructional remarks which were transmitted to that father by Orosius, and in which this Spanish priest protests that he has plucked out all the plants of perdition which sprang up in the sect of the Priscillianists; that he had not forgotten the smallest branch or root; that he exposed to the surgeon all the diseases of the sect, in order that he might labor in their cure. Orosius does not say a word of the abominable mysteries of which Leo speaks; an unanswerable proof that he had no doubt they were pure calumnies. St. Jerome also says that Priscillian was oppressed by faction, and by the intrigues of the bishops Ithacus and Idacus. Would a man be thus spoken of who was guilty of profaning religion by the most infamous ceremonies? Nevertheless, Orosius and St. Jerome could not be ignorant of crimes of which all the world had been informed.
St. Martin of Tours, and St. Ambrosius, who were at Trier when Priscillian was sentenced, would have been equally informed of them. They, however, instantly solicited a pardon for him; and, not being able to obtain it, they refused to hold intercourse with his accusers and their faction. Sulpicius Severus relates the history of the misfortunes of Priscillian. Latronian, Euphrosyne, widow of the poet Delphidius, his daughter, and some other persons, were executed with him at Trier, by order of the tyrant Maximus, and at the instigation of Ithacus and Idacus, two wicked bishops, who, in reward for their injustice, died in excommunication, loaded with the hatred of God and man.
The Priscillianists were accused, like the Manichæans, of obscene doctrines, of religious nakedness and immodesty. How were they convicted? Priscillian and his accomplices confessed, as is said, under the torture. Three degraded persons, Tertullus, Potamius, and John, confessed without awaiting the question. But the suit instituted against the Priscillianists would have been founded on other depositions, which had been made against them in Spain. Nevertheless, these latter informations were rejected by a great number of bishops and esteemed ecclesiastics; and the good old man Higimis, bishop of Cordova, who had been the denouncer of the Priscillianists, afterwards believed them so innocent of the crimes imputed to them that he received them into his communion, and found himself involved thereby in the persecution which they endured.
These horrible calumnies, dictated by a blind zeal, would seem to justify the reflection which Ammianus Marcellinus reports of the emperor Julian. "The savage beasts," he said, "are not more formidable to men than the Christians are to each other, when they are divided by creed and opinion."
It is still more deplorable when zeal is false and hypocritical, examples of which are not rare. It is told of a doctor of the Sorbonne, that in departing from a sitting of the faculty, Tournély, with whom he was strictly connected, said to him: "You see that for two hours I have maintained a certain opinion with warmth; well, I assure you, there is not one word of truth in all I have said!"
The answer of a Jesuit is also known, who was employed for twenty years in the Canada missions, and who himself not believing in a God, as he confessed in the ear of a friend, had faced death twenty times for the sake of a religion which he preached to the savages. This friend representing to him the inconsistency of his zeal: "Ah!" replied the Jesuit missionary, "you have no idea of the pleasure a man enjoys in making himself heard by twenty thousand men, and in persuading them of what he does not himself believe."
It is frightful to observe how many abuses and disorders arise from the profound ignorance in which Europe has been so long plunged. Those monarchs who are at last sensible of the importance of enlightenment, become the benefactors of mankind in favoring the progress of knowledge, which is the foundation of the tranquillity and happiness of nations, and the finest bulwark against the inroads of fanaticism.
If it is Zoroaster who first announced to mankind that fine maxim: "In the doubt whether an action be good or bad, abstain from it," Zoroaster was the first of men after Confucius.
If this beautiful lesson of morality is found only in the hundred gates of the "Sadder," let us bless the author of the "Sadder." There may be very ridiculous dogmas and rites united with an excellent morality.
Who was this Zoroaster? The name has something of Greek in it, and it is said he was a Mede. The Parsees of the present day call him Zerdust, or Zerdast, or Zaradast, or Zarathrust. He is not reckoned to have been the first of the name. We are told of two other Zoroasters, the former of whom has an antiquity of nine thousand years—which is much for us, but may be very little for the world. We are acquainted with only the latest Zoroaster.
The French travellers, Chardin and Tavernier, have given us some information respecting this great prophet, by means of the Guebers or Parsees, who are still scattered through India and Persia, and who are excessively ignorant. Dr. Hyde, Arabic professor of Oxford, has given us a hundred times more without leaving home. Living in the west of England, he must have conjectured the language which the Persians spoke in the time of Cyrus, and must have compared it with the modern language of the worshippers of fire. It is to him, moreover, that we owe those hundred gates of the "Sadder," which contain all the principal precepts of the pious fire-worshippers.
For my own part, I confess I have found nothing in their ancient rites more curious than the two Persian verses of Sadi, as given by Hyde; signifying that, although a person may preserve the sacred fire for a hundred years, he is burned when he falls into it.
The learned researches of Hyde kindled, a few years ago in the breast of a young Frenchman, the desire to learn for himself the dogmas of the Guebers. He traversed the Great Indies, in order to learn at Surat, among the poor modern Parsees, the language of the ancient Persians, and to read in that language the books of the so-much celebrated Zoroaster, supposing that he has in fact written any.
The Pythagorases, the Platos, the Appolloniuses of Thyana, went in former times to seek in the East wisdom that was not there; but no one has run after this hidden divinity through so many sufferings and perils as this new French translator of the books attributed to Zoroaster. Neither disease nor war, nor obstacles renewed at every step, nor poverty itself, the first and greatest of obstacles, could repel his courage.
It is glorious for Zoroaster that an Englishman wrote his life, at the end of so many centuries, and that afterwards a Frenchman wrote it in an entirely different manner. But it is still finer, that among the ancient biographers of the poet we have two principal Arabian authors, each of whom had previously written his history; and all these four histories contradict one another marvellously. This is not done by concert; and nothing is more conducive to the knowledge of the truth.
The first Arabian historian, Abu-Mohammed Mustapha, allows that the father of Zoroaster was called Espintaman; but he also says that Espintaman was not his father, but his great-great-grandfather. In regard to his mother, there are not two opinions; she was named Dogdu, or Dodo, or Dodu—that is, a very fine turkey hen; she is very well portrayed in Doctor Hyde.
Bundari, the second historian, relates that Zoroaster was a Jew, and that he had been valet to Jeremiah; that he told lies to his master; that, in order to punish him, Jeremiah gave him the leprosy; that the valet, to purify himself, went to preach a new religion in Persia, and caused the sun to be adored instead of the stars.
Attend now to what the third historian relates, and what the Englishman, Hyde, has recorded somewhat at length: The prophet Zoroaster having come from Paradise to preach his religion to the king of Persia, Gustaph, the king said to the prophet: "Give me a sign." Upon this, the prophet caused a cedar to grow up before the gate of the palace, so large and so tall, that no cord could either go round it or reach its top. Upon the cedar he placed a fine cabinet, to which no man could ascend. Struck with this miracle, Gustaph believed in Zoroaster.
Four magi, or four sages—it is the same thing—envious and wicked persons, borrowed from the royal porter the key of the prophet's chamber during his absence, and threw among his books the bones of dogs and cats, the nails and hair of dead bodies—such being, as is well known, the drugs with which magicians at all times have operated. Afterwards, they went and accused the prophet of being a sorcerer and a poisoner; and the king, causing the chamber to be opened by his porter, the instruments of witchcraft were found there—and behold the envoy from heaven condemned to be hanged!
Just as they are going to hang Zoroaster, the king's finest horse falls ill; his four legs enter his body, so as to be no longer visible. Zoroaster hears of it; he promises to cure the horse, provided they will not hang him. The bargain being made, he causes one leg to issue out of the belly, and says: "Sire, I will not restore you the second leg unless you embrace my religion." "Let it be so," says the monarch. The prophet, after having made the second leg appear, wished the king's children to become Zoroastrians, and they became so. The other legs made proselytes of the whole court. The four envious sages were hanged in place of the prophet, and all Persia received the faith.
The French traveller relates nearly the same miracles, supported and embellished, however, by many others. For instance, the infancy of Zoroaster could not fail to be miraculous; Zoroaster fell to laughing as soon as he was born, at least according to Pliny and Solinus. There were, in those days, as all the world knows, a great number of very powerful magicians; they were well aware that one day Zoroaster would be greater than themselves, and that he would triumph over their magic. The prince of magicians caused the infant to be brought to him, and tried to cut him in two; but his hand instantly withered. They threw him into the fire, which was turned for him into a bath of rose water. They wished to have him trampled on by the feet of wild bulls; but a still more powerful bull protected him. He was cast among the wolves; these wolves went incontinently and sought two ewes, who gave him suck all night. At last, he was restored to his mother Dogdu, or Dodo, or Dodu, a wife excellent above all wives, or a daughter above all daughters.
Such, throughout the world, have been all the histories of ancient times. It proves what we have often remarked, that Fable is the elder sister of History. I could wish that, for our amusement and instruction, all these great prophets of antiquity, the Zoroasters, the Mercurys Trismegistus, the Abarises, and even the Numas, and others, should now return to the earth, and converse with Locke, Newton, Bacon, Shaftesbury, Pascal, Arnaud, Bayle—what do I say?—even with those philosophers of our day who are the least learned, provided they are not the less rational. I ask pardon of antiquity, but I think they would cut a sorry figure.
Alas, poor charlatans! they could not sell their drugs on the Pont-neuf. In the meantime, however, their morality is still good, because morality is not a drug. How could it be that Zoroaster joined so many egregious fooleries to the fine precept of "abstaining when it is doubtful whether one is about to do right or wrong?" It is because men are always compounded of contradictions.
It is added that Zoroaster, having established his religion, became a persecutor. Alas! there is not a sexton, or a sweeper of a church, who would not persecute, if he had the power.
One cannot read two pages of the abominable trash attributed to Zoroaster, without pitying human nature. Nostradamus and the urine doctor are reasonable compared with this inspired personage; and yet he still is and will continue to be talked of.
What appears singular is, that there existed, in the time of the Zoroaster with whom we are acquainted, and probably before, prescribed formulas of public and private prayer. We are indebted to the French traveller for a translation of them. There were such formulas in India; we know of none such in the Pentateuch.
What is still stranger, the magi, as well as the Brahmins, admitted a paradise, a hell, a resurrection, and a devil. It is demonstrated that the law of the Jews knew nothing of all this; they were behindhand with everything—a truth of which we are convinced, however little the progress we have made in Oriental knowledge.
We declare to the learned that being, like themselves, prodigiously ignorant of the first principles of all things, and of the natural, typical, mystical, allegorical sense of many things, we acquiesce, in regard to them, in the infallible decision of the holy Inquisition of Rome, Milan, Florence, Madrid, Lisbon, and in the decrees of the Sorbonne, the perpetual council of the French.
Our errors not proceeding from malice, but being the natural consequence of human weakness, we hope we shall be pardoned for them both in this world and the next.
We entreat the small number of celestial spirits who are still shut up in the mortal bodies in France, and who thence enlighten the universe at thirty sous per sheet, to communicate their gifts to us for the next volume, which we calculate on publishing at the end of the Lent of 1772, or in the Advent of 1773; and we will payfortysous per sheet for their lucubrations.
We entreat the few great men who still remain to us, such as the author of the "Ecclesiastical Gazette"; the Abbé Guyon; with the Abbé Caveirac, author of the "Apology for St. Bartholomew"; 0and he who took the name of Chiniac; and the agreeable Larcher; and the virtuous, wise, and learned Langleviel, called La Beaumelle; the profound and exact Nonnotte; and the moderate, the compassionate, the tender Patouillet—to assist us in our undertaking. We shall profit by their instructive criticisms, and we shall experience a real pleasure in rendering to all these gentlemen the justice which is their due.
The next volume will contain very curious articles, which, under the favor of God, will be likely to give new piquancy to the wit which we shall endeavor to infuse into the thanks we return to all these gentlemen.
Given at Mount Krapak, the 30th of the month of Janus, in the year of the world, according to