READING HALL THE DOORS OF WISDOM

HISTORY OF THE POPES FROM THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES

PAUL V. (1605-1621)

CHAPTER X.

Catholic Reform and Restoration in France—Bérulle and his Oratory—The Ursulines and the Visitation —Francis de Sales and Frances de Chantal—Revival of Catholicism in the Spanish Netherlands.

One of the things which Paul V had most at heart was to further the revival of Catholic life in France which followed Henry IV’s reconciliation with the Church. An immense effort was required to undo the harm of the last thirty troublous years. Rome was well aware of the fact, hence, when Paul V confirmed Maffeo Barberini in his post of nuncio at the French Court to which Clement VIII had appointed him at the close of 1604, he also confirmed the instructions which Barberini had then received. These were lucidly summarized in the instruction which Cardinal Aldobrandini drew up for the guidance of the papal representative and they are a remarkable statement of the aims of the policy for a Catholic restoration which the Holy See pursued in France. The instruction rightly starts from the fundamental principle that the religious unity which France had at one time enjoyed, could only be restored by means of a complete reform of ecclesiastical conditions. This idea should guide the nuncio in his attitude towards the hierarchy as well as towards the Crown. For this reason the instruction enjoins the greatest circumspection and a due regard for the character of Henry IV. Personal experience obviously inspired the writer of the instruction when he warned the nuncio to give no credence to the shrewd Béarnais when he gave himself the air of understanding but little of the art of diplomacy, seeing that he was but a soldier; the exact opposite was the truth; the gifted and vivacious monarch was endowed with far greater knowledge even in those things than he deemed it expedient to display. Barberini was especially exhorted to be very cautious because Henry IV was extremely suspicious as well as very elusive. Sharp measures would be out of place in his case, but this did not preclude frank remonstrances; but on no account must he be offended. In treating with him it was best to alternate the soft with the loud tone.

The task of the nuncio was both comprehensive and arduous. He was to try to induce the frivolous monarch not only to lead a religious and moral life in his own person, but to win him over, as a ruler, to the aims of the policy for a Catholic restoration. In this matter the nuncio must always bear in mind that Henry IV was above all things a soldier and a politician. As a man of arms he had but little understanding of religious matters, hence he must be enlightened on the subject. As a politician, all he thought of was his own advantage, hence he must be made to see that his interests would best be served if he fell in with the plans of the Pope. To this end the nuncio was instructed to point out to the king how greatly it was in his interest, as king of France, to follow even in the religious sphere the tradition of a most Christian king and how greatly his political plans would benefit if he were to restore religious unity in his kingdom. The nuncio should not neglect to point out what the loss of this blessing meant for Germany.

Before all else Henry IV must be prevented from granting further concessions to the Huguenots who had already derived far too many advantages from the Edict of Nantes.1 Out of the many means by which the king could repress the Huguenots, the easiest and the least likely to provoke trouble would be to pursue the policy adopted in Poland, that is, not to give heretics any office in the State but, on the contrary, to favour those who returned to the Church. The Huguenots were the enemies of peace and order; no weapons should be put into their hands.

Besides these more negative means many others, of a positive kind, are also mentioned. In the first place, stress is rightly laid on the importance of episcopal appointments. Only worthy and blameless persons must be put forward as candidates for bishoprics; none other could hope to secure the approval of Rome. The misuse of the privileges conceded by the Concordate had been the real cause of every evil; it had led to soldiers and women obtaining bishoprics and abbeys; the Pope would no longer suffer such abuses. In regard to this matter the king himself had given Cardinal Medici promises for the future. Nor would the Holy See hear of any further extension of the concordatory privileges which the Instruction describes as excessive. Here the writer had chiefly in view the so-called royal prerogative in virtue of which the Crown took it on itself to appoint an administrator of every vacant diocese until the papal confirmation of the nominee to the See, and that official disposed of the revenues and the lower ecclesiastical offices as if he were a real bishop. This pretension the Instruction qualifies as intolerable. The nuncio should be no less careful to prevent any infringement of ecclesiastical jurisdiction on the part of the secular power. In this respect the nuncio Bufalo had already achieved a measure of success; it was necessary to pursue this path, but by means of prudent discussion rather than with threats, otherwise the bishops would be unable to carry out the work of reform, a thing which was also of con­siderable importance. It was rightly thought in Rome that in order to bring about a reform of ecclesiastical conditions in France the best, nay the only means, was the publication of the decrees of the Council of Trent. The Instruction recalls the promises to this effect which Henry IV had made on the occasion of his reconciliation with the Church. Let the nuncio strongly insist on their execution. Barberini was instructed to make strong representation on this point both to the king and to the ministers and the Parliament, and not to desist until he had achieved his purpose. In this respect Henry IV had given the best assurances to Cardinals Medici and Aldobrandini; to the latter the king had promised, on the occasion of his farewell audience, to carry the affair through within two months, and now years had gone by, notwithstanding the fact that the king had himself recognized the utility of the decrees. It was intolerable that France alone should resist the decrees of a General Council. The difficulties that were put forward could not stand inasmuch as the decrees dealt almost exclusively with the reform of the clergy and hardly touched the secular sphere. If the king was so minded he could easily bend Parliament to his will. The nuncio is further instructed to remove the prejudice that the decrees of the Council would injure the privileges enjoyed by France and to show how, on the contrary, the bettering of ecclesiastical conditions was closely linked to the preservation of the political order. The Pope had made up his mind to see this affair finally settled and he would never desist from his demands in this respect. Until the publication, the nuncio was to direct individual bishops to carry out the necessary reforms, to visit their dioceses, to erect seminaries and to hold diocesan and provincial synods. Among the indispensable reforms one was emphasized which was bound to give pleasure to Henry IV, namely a warning to preachers not to let their zeal carry them into the political sphere.

Besides these, the chief demands, the Instruction contained a number of special wishes of the Holy See. These were concerned with the position of the Jesuits, the problem of Calvinism in Chateau-Dauphin, near Monte Viso, the continued support of the Catholic restoration in Bearn, the neglect of the French bishops to come to Rome for the pallium and, lastly, military measures by Henry IV against Geneva.

What was desired for the Jesuits had been happily obtained by Barberini whilst Clement VIII was still alive. The realization of his other plans, such as the execution of his extensive programme of reform, would have required a much longer term of office than that which was granted to Barberini. There was no lack of zeal on his part. He did not find it difficult to persuade Henry IV to forbid the profession of Calvinism in Chateau-Dauphin, seeing that this prohibition had already been enforced by a royal edict of the year 1598. In other ways also Barberini influenced the king against the Calvinists. Among other things he suggested measures against the publication of heretical writings. These proposals were under discussion at the time of his recall by Paul V to Rome. By means of friendly discussions Barberini also endeavoured, though unsuccessfully, to bring back to the Church the influential minister Sully and the learned philologist Isaac Casaubonus. He was instrumental in securing the appointment of the devout Pierre de Bérulle as tutor to the Dauphin. Through Barberini also the see of Apt was given a good bishop to replace one who had been utterly unfit. He took energetic action against an anti-papal pamphlet of Louis Servin, the advocate-general, whose opposition to the Jesuits was well known, as well as against those who spread forged papal indulgences. To the efforts of the nuncio it was likewise due that the Sorbonne passed a censure on the opinions, as strange as they were dogmatically untenable, which Pierre Victor Calvert Palma Cayet, a convert, had propounded in an historical work. Barberini exerted himself on behalf of the reform of the clergy especially in the assembly of the clergy of France which met in Paris towards the end of 1605 and which made the restoration of ecclesiastical discipline one of the chief points of its debates. On this occasion the spokesman of the clergy paid tribute to the improvement in the appointment of bishops but he could not refrain from lamenting, with the utmost freedom, the fact that in this respect abuses were still of frequent occurrence. Henry IV replied that the praise thus bestowed on him would encourage him to do even better in the future, but that as regards the removal of abuses, the higher clergy should make a beginning with their own body. With respect to this Barberini rightly pointed out that if the bishops were to take measures to bring about a reform, they must also possess the necessary authority; moreover it was imperative that the king should himself set a good example. Henry did not resent these frank remarks since they had been made both courteously and discreetly. So great was his regard for Barberini that he took steps for his elevation to the College of Cardinals.

The nuncio’s remark that the bishops must have the necessary authority if they were to reform the clergy, had for its aim the publication, in France, of the decrees of the Council of Trent, and to this end Barberini exerted himself to the utmost. It was he who determined Paul V to press energetically for a solution of this weighty question by means of a series of Briefs. In the summer of 1605, papal Briefs, nicely adapted to the character and position of their respective recipients, were addressed to Henry IV. as well as to Cardinals Joyeuse, Gondi and Sourdis. To these princes of the Church the Pope wrote that he had called upon the French hierarchy to carry through a reform of the clergy; the best means to this end, as was seen in Spain and elsewhere, was the execution of the Tridentine decrees, and for this they should press the king and the bishops with all their power. Through Barberini as his intermediary, the Pope also appealed in this affair to two of the most prominent members of the royal council, viz. Nicolas Brulart de Sillery and Chancellor Pomponne de Bellièvre. Previously to this the Pope had addressed an earnest appeal to all the French bishops urging them to work for the reform of the clergy, as this was one of Paul V’s greatest anxieties. At the same time Paul V begged the king to assist him in this matter. Repeatedly he urged him to take action against the Huguenots of the South of France.

This time also resistance to the reform decrees of Trent proceeded from the cathedral chapters and more particularly from the various Parliaments. Against these Barberini deployed all the resources of his diplomatic skill. Above all he sought to influence the king himself through the Jesuit Pere Coton. Fully aware as he was of the difficulties of the situation the nuncio was of opinion that it was enough, for the time being, to keep alive, before all else, the question of the publication of the Council. But Paul V was anxious for an early decision and for the convocation of the clergy. However, the obstacles to these measures proved too strong. Henry IV protested his good intentions but for the moment there was nothing to be done. Thereupon Barberini drew up a plan according to which a Congregation of the Council was to be erected in Paris itself of which Cardinals de Joyeuse and Du Perron and some of the outstanding bishops were to be members. He was not to see the realization of so original a plan inasmuch as in consequence of his elevation to the cardinalate, on September 11th, 1606, he had to leave France in order to take his place in the Sacred College.

As a successor to Barberini Paul V chose his Maestro di camera, Robert Ubaldini, who was known to be a sincere friend of France. The gifted and energetic Florentine was to hold the French nunciature for the space of nine years. Under Ubaldini the Hotel Cluny, which had been the residence of the papal representative since 1601, became the heart of Catholic life in France: from this central point the nuncio kept up active relations with all convinced Catholics of some importance, thereby rendering the most signal services to the Holy See. His influence over the queen-regent and the French clergy was as important as it was salutary. As regards the role played by him in the internal policy of the realm, we can only regret, in the interests of France, that his intervention could not go further because of the religious questions which absorbed the best part of the nuncio’s energy.

Ubaldini reached Paris towards the end of the autumn of 1607. He lost no time in establishing contact with such persons as stood highest in the consideration of Henry IV. Chief among these were the Chancellor Sillery, the Secretary of State Villeroi, President Jeannin, the Jesuit Coton and Cardinal Du Perron. Ubaldini played a decisive part in the appointment, in 1608, of Coton as confessor to the King and tutor to the Dauphin; on the other hand he failed in his attempt to set up the Inquisition in France; even his efforts to get the reform decrees of the Council of Trent accepted proved in vain. For the moment, so he was compelled to report to Rome in August 19th, 1608, the thing was impossible. On the other hand he was able to announce that Henry IV favoured the return of the Calvinists to the Church. In other respects also the king occasionally took measures favourable to the Catholic restoration though he refused to adopt a definitely Catholic policy which would have arrayed against him the Protestant forces, both domestic and foreign, whose worth he had learned to appreciate at an earlier period, when they were still at his service.

Just as Henry IV kept up his old relations with the foreign Protestant Powers, so was he unwilling to break with the French Huguenots and the Gallicans. When in May, 1608, Ubaldini suggested to the king to deprive the Huguenots of their strongholds the answer he received was very unsatisfactory. Henry took up a similar attitude towards the efforts which the Gallicans were renewing just then to bring about a separation, or at least an estrangement between the Pope and the Church of France. The focus of these endeavours was the Parliament of Paris whose first president, Achille de Harley, in conjunction with the Advocate-General Louis Servin and the Second President, Auguste de Thou, a friend of the Huguenots, formed a clique which together with prominent Calvinists such as Groslot de Lisle and Du Plessis Mornay, was filled with the same hatred for the papacy as that kindred spirit of theirs, Paolo Sarpi. Gallican pamphlets and satirical writings against the Pope and the Jesuits, which originated in these circles, caused Ubaldini much anxiety; his efforts to induce the government to intervene were as good as fruitless. Besides his propagandist literature, the historical work of De Thou, who was as highly gifted as he was hostile to the papacy, was considered no less dangerous by the Roman authorities. When his first volume appeared in 1604, Bufalo, who was nuncio at the time, complained to Henry IV and he did so not without success. A decree of the Index of November, 1609, prohibited the book, as well as some other publications; among the latter was a discourse delivered in 1595, in which the attorney of the Paris university, Antoine Arnauld, bitterly attacked the Jesuits after the attempt by Chastel against Henry IV, as well as the parliamentary resolution then passed by which Chastel was condemned to death and the Jesuits, as his accomplices, to banishment. The censure passed on this resolution was a mistake for, though it contained objectionable clauses which had already met with the disapproval of Clement VIII, it was nevertheless to be foreseen that evil-minded persons would interpret the censure as meaning that either Rome approved Chastel’s attempt or disapproved his condemnation. As a matter of fact capital was made out of the incident in just this sense. Louis Servin moved in Parliament that the decree be burnt by the public executioner. Henry IV, on Ubaldini’s representations, deferred indeed a decision in the matter, but he caused a protest to be lodged in Rome and demanded satisfaction. Paul V at once refrained from further measures. In a fresh decree of January 30th, 1610, drawn up in accordance with Ubaldini’s suggestions, there was no mention of Arnauld’s discourse and the resolution of the Parliament of Paris, but the prohibition of De Thou’s history was maintained. Ubaldini made an unsuccessful attempt to induce Thou himself to revise his work. In Rome any such attempt was considered from the beginning as quite hopeless because, as Cardinal Borghese declared, the whole presentment of the facts was inadmissible. As a matter of fact Thou’s history is characterized by as much prevention and hostility towards the papacy as by consideration for, and sympathy with, the Huguenots. The danger of his work, which is not without many good qualities, was pointed out by the Jesuit Jean Machault in a refutation of Thou, published in 1614, which has for its motto the following quotation from St. Bernard: “A bad Catholic does far more harm than a declared heretic.”

Whilst Ubaldini had to deal with these internal agitations in France, the warlike policy of Henry IV, which was fraught with peril, increasingly claimed his attention. When the violent death of the king abruptly ended all such plans, France was faced with an entirely new situation. Instead of a strong man, a weak and by no means gifted woman found herself at the head of the realm, and though her religion and her devotion to the Holy See were sincere, she was quite unequal to the situation. The parties began to stir at once, the Gallican politicians among them, under the leadership of Harley and Servin. These men hated the Jesuits quite as much as their friends the Huguenots did. They were not going to miss the chance of exploiting against the Society the attempt of Ravaillac; though the trial yielded not a shred of evidence of any conspiracy on the part of the Jesuits, and though Ravaillac himself both before, during and after torture persisted in his assertion that he had no accomplices and that he had not discussed his plan with anyone, not even in confession, the Huguenots and their friends in Parliament, who still called themselves Catholics, would not desist from throwing the responsibility for the crime upon the Jesuits. The accusation was as unlikely as it was absurd since Henry had been a great benefactor to the Order; but the calumny was advanced with such assurance that it ended by obtaining credence. The Parliament based itself upon the work of the Spanish Jesuit Juan Mariana, published at Toledo in 1599, under the title: On the King and the education of a King. In the Middle Ages some theologians of repute had defended the thesis that it was a meritorious act to kill a usurper in order to liberate one’s country, if no higher authority existed that could pass sentence on a tyrant. Mariana extended this doctrine so as to include even a legitimate ruler who grossly abused his position and thus brought ruin upon the State and who defied public law and religion. In the opinion of Mariana it was lawful for a private citizen to remove a sovereign of this kind, provided he was sure of the consent of the bulk of the people. Mariana expressly stated that this opinion on the murder of a tyrant was his own personal one. When in 1599 the Superior of the French Province drew the attention of the General of the Order, Aquaviva, to this opinion of Mariana, which was assuredly worthy of condemnation even though its author had hedged it in with various restricting clauses, he expressed his sorrow that the visitor of the province of Toledo should have allowed such a book to be printed without his permission and he ordered the work to be destroyed. The enemies of the Jesuits, who wielded great power in the Parliament of Paris, completely ignored the Jesuit General’s disapproval of Mariana’s theory. That body, which only two decades earlier had pronounced the deposition of Henry III and had justified and approved the assassination of a tyrant, and in particular the removal of that king, now professed to see a great danger lurking in the theory of Mariana. It therefore instructed the Sorbonne to renew the condemnation it had pronounced in 1413 against the teaching of the Dominican Jean Petit on the subject of tyrannicide. When the Sorbonne had complied with their request, the Parliament included the book of Mariana in the decree of June 8th and ordered it to be burnt. With a view to exciting the French people still further they went so far as to order the parish priests to read the decree from the pulpit!

On the initiative of Ubaldini the prelates then in Paris lodged a protest with the queen-regent, Marie de Medici, against a procedure of this kind. The queen demanded a modification of the decree. To this request the president of the Parliament demurred, alleging that the decree aimed solely at the welfare of the State. They justified their action by pointing to the great peril with which the teaching and practice of the Jesuits were fraught. Marie de Medici replied that the teaching of the Jesuits was none other than that of the Church and that their only aim was the salvation of souls; they could not make the Order pay in France for the writings of the Spaniard Mariana, seeing that it had always been loyal to the Crown and had enjoyed the particular esteem of the late king; if a member of Parliament were to transgress in any way it would not be fair to make the whole body suffer for his misdemeanour.

Notwithstanding the reasonableness of such representations, Harley and his associates pursued their intrigues. The scandal which they had provoked was further intensified when some priests were found, such as the extravagant and restless Jean Dubois, who desecrated the pulpit by defamation of the Jesuits. In order to cut short all further agitations, the General of the Jesuits, Aquaviva, in a circular of July 6th, 1610, forbade under pain of excommunication to all the members of the Order to maintain either in public or in private, either as teachers or as advisers, or in writing, that a private person, of whatsoever condition, could, on any plea whatsoever of tyranny, either kill kings and princes or make an attempt on their life. In a second circular of August 14th, 1610, Aquaviva strictly forbade all discussions, whether favourable or unfavourable, of Mariana’s book. Paul V also expressly pronounced against the book in a conversation with de Breves, the French ambassador, though the Pope at the same time insisted that it belonged to the ecclesiastical authorities to take steps against it and that the parish priests could not be compelled to read the decree of Parliament from the pulpit.

The real purpose of these efforts of the enemies of the Jesuits was betrayed by the spiritual head of the Huguenots, Du Plessis Mornay, in a memorial he addressed at that time to the Parliament : the Order must be put into a condition of complete helplessness as regards any form of activity in France; in fact it must be banished once more. The first step was to bring about the fall of Pere Coton who was highly esteemed at court. This was the purpose of numerous pamphlets, especially an anonymous compilation entitled: “Anti-Coton, a book whose author endeavours to demonstrate that the Jesuits were guilty and were the instigators of the execrable murder which was perpetrated on the person of the most Christian King Henry IV of blessed memory.” Every imaginable infamy, even the vilest, are here ascribed to the Jesuits without a shadow of proof.

Ubaldini was well aware that the agitation of the Huguenots and their friends, who still styled themselves Catholics, was ultimately directed against the Holy See : hence he did all in his power to protect the Jesuits. The nuncio could only be strengthened in his conviction that the attack was directed against the Holy See when, notwithstanding all his efforts to the contrary, the Parliament accepted, on November 26th, a motion of Servin to forbid under pain of high treason a treatise of Cardinal Bellarmine on the Pope’s power in temporal matters. In this work the Cardinal defended the opinions laid down by him in his Controversies as against the attacks of the Scottish jurist William Barclay, whose book was put on the Index as soon as it appeared in November, 1609. Whilst this work was allowed to circulate freely in France, the Parliament sought to prohibit the defence by a Cardinal who was famous throughout the world, for the reason—so it was boldly asserted—that the views propounded in its pages advocated the overthrow of the divinely appointed authority of the State and the revolt of the people against their Sovereign! In reality Bellarmine, basing himself on theologians of renown, had made a temperate statement of the relation between Church and State and, in opposition to many theologians, he claimed for the Pope not a direct, but only an indirect authority over the princes and peoples in regard to temporal affairs. The blow which the Parliament dealt to one of the most deserving and most learned among the Cardinals, who on two occasions had very nearly obtained the tiara, was directly aimed at the Holy See. Hence Ubaldini did not fail to protest with all his energy and even to threaten to leave France. On the nuncio’s representations the regent, Marie de Medici, suspended the publication of the ordinance of the Parliament of Paris. For this she received the thanks of Paul V in a letter of December 22nd, 1610, though the Pope remarked that he had expected an even fuller satisfaction, namely the complete repeal of the decree and the suppression of Servin’s speech. Bellarmine himself wrote a dignified letter to the regent in which he pointed out that in his dissertation against Barclay he taught nothing that was not found in his Controversies which freely circulated everywhere, even in France, and that the Parliament attributed to him views which he had never maintained. “If the French government”, Cardinal Borghese wrote to Ubaldini on February 2nd, “does not soon put a stop to the licence of writers, as it has often promised, new difficulties will arise every day.” The Cardinal then referred to two recently published books, one of which was directed against Cardinal Bellarmine and the other against the Jesuits. The Pope, the letter went on to say, would speak to the French ambassador, whilst the nuncio was to go on making representations to the queen-regent. In a letter under the same date Cardinal Borghese demanded that steps should be taken against several priests who had abused the occasion of the Advent sermons in order to attack papal authority and to calumniate the Jesuits. The lines had scarcely been written when Ubaldini saw himself obliged to protest against a new libellous pamphlet from the pen of the Huguenot Vigner, the title of which,—“Theatre of Antichrist”,—was a clear sign of what the writer felt he could offer to the Catholics of France. The nuncio represented to the regent that just as the Pope would not tolerate in his States any attack on the king of France, so was he entitled to expect that the French Government would protect him from calumny. However, Marie de Medici was so intimidated by the Huguenots, who threatened to revolt, that for the time being she did not dare to do anything.1 Paul V. complained to the French ambassador and instructed Ubaldini not to slacken in his remonstrances.2 An attempt was made to pacify the Pope by proceeding against the Advent preachers. The “Theatre of Antichrist” was not prohibited till May, and then only by word of mouth, and its author was not molested. Such weakness and indecision made it possible for Du Plessis Mornay to publish in that same year a book entitled The Mystery of Wickedness, or, A History of the Papacy, in Latin and French, in which he attacked the Holy See in unprecedented fashion and practically described Paul V as the beast of the Apocalypse. This work Du Plessis dedicated to the youthful Louis XIII! Only when Ubaldini pointed out to the queen that if the Pope was antichrist, the legitimacy of her marriage might also be called in question, was the pamphlet submitted to the Sorbonne and condemned by it in the severest terms, on August 22nd, 1611.

In March, 1611, Ubaldini had been able to report to Rome an occurrence which he considered as an important achievement; he had at last succeeded in bringing about the appointment of the president of the Parliament of Toulouse, Nicolas de Verdun, on whose Catholic attitude he thought he could rely, as first president of the Parliament of Paris instead of the Gallican Harley. Thereupon Harley’s sympathizer, Thou, resigned in high dudgeon. Ubaldini hoped that Servin would take a similar course. “The determination which the Pope showed on the occasion of the decree against Bellarmine,” the nuncio reported to Rome, “has now yielded valuable results and we may look to the future with confidence.”  However, Ubaldini was destined to be disappointed in his trust in Servin. But even this disappointment did not discourage the indefatigable nuncio’s ardour in the defence of Catholic interest. After the disappointment which he suffered in February, 1612, through the weak and unwise attitude of the Jesuits who trembled for their existence before the Parliament, he achieved an important success in the autumn of the same year when he brought about the removal of Edmund Richer from the post of syndic of the Sorbonne, a position he had held since 1608, and of which he took advantage to spread anti-papal theories.

The son of poor country-people in Champagne, Richer had gone through a course of studies in Paris under conditions of extreme difficulty. Grim determination and a strong constitution which had made it possible for him to do with only three hours’ sleep, at last led him to his goal—in 1592 he became a doctor of the Sorbonne. He began as an ardent adherent of the League, but his attitude soon underwent a serious change and he ended by becoming a passionate advocate of Gallicanism. Already Barberini, when nuncio, found himself in conflict with him, and Ubaldini watched with ever-growing disquiet the ardour which Richer put into spreading his views and in combating the Jesuits.

During the civil wars and the wars of religion, the Gallican theories had increasingly fallen into abeyance at the theological faculty of Paris and at the opening of the new century, thanks to the influence of Bellarmine and Maldonatus, the famous university seemed in a fair way towards a return to a sound, sincerely ecclesiastical teaching. With a view to preventing such an evolution and in order to breathe fresh life into the Gallicanism of the faculty, Richer put forth all his energy and outstanding ability as well as the influence he had acquired as syndic of the Sorbonne.

What risky paths Richer was prepared to tread is shown by a dissertation, small in bulk but of grave import, which was published anonymously in Paris in 1611, though the author’s name was soon detected. In this pamphlet Richer maintained exceedingly dangerous propositions. According to him the Church’s government has only the outward appearance of a monarchy; in reality it is aristocratic. Legislative power as well as infallibility are not the attributes of the Pope but belong to the hierarchy composed of the bishops and the priests, which functions in its totality at a general council. The Pope is absolutely subject to the council. The episcopate is an essential element of the constitution of the Church, the papacy only an accessory. Christ gave to His Church only spiritual means for the attainment of her object, Richer further taught, hence the Pope may only make use of spiritual means, but never of material force. Forcible means are the exclusive prerogative of the secular power. As the natural guardian of his domains the prince has both the right and the duty to decide whether the executive ministers of the Church proceed according to the Canons, and for such judgments he is responsible to God alone.

Though Richer’s dissertation had but slender scientific value, for it neither contained anything new nor produced any fresh arguments in support of the theories it asserted, the daring with which the rights of the Pope were challenged did not fail to create a good deal of stir. The joy of the Church’s deadly enemies knew no bounds. Of this we have a proof in the correspondence of Sarpi with his French sympathizers. But on the Catholic side a gratifying and determined resistance became apparent. Among the first to oppose Richer were his colleagues Durand and Duval. The latter’s dissertation on “The Pope’s supreme authority in the Church” was remarkable both for its learning and its moderation. Burning indignation characterized Pelletier’s treatise on “The Monarchy of the Church”. To these writings must be added refutations by the Jesuits Eudaemon Joannes, Gautier and Sirmond. Moreover, in the Sorbonne itself, in addition to Durand, Jean Filesac and Harley’s own son pressed for the condemnation of Richer’s theories since they were bound to provoke a schism in the Church. The Parliament, however, defended these opinions and forbade all further discussion of them by the Sorbonne.

The indignation with which these proceedings filled Paul V appears from the reports of Breves, the French ambassador, and from those of Cardinals Joyeuse and Rochefoucauld. The latter pointed out to Marie de Medici that Richer’s attack on the monarchical power of the Pope was likewise a threat to that of the State.

Ubaldini was particularly gratified by the prudence and determination with which Cardinal Du Perron dealt with Richer’s treatise. To this prince of the Church, a splendid man in every respect, it was chiefly due that the French episcopate also took the field, although the Parliament of Paris did its utmost to prevent such a manifestation. In March, 1612, Cardinal Du Perron, as archbishop of Sens, convened a provincial council of his suffragans, the bishops of Paris, Auxerre, Meaux, Orleans, Troyes, Nevers and Chartres. This assembly condemned the opinions of Richer, without mentioning his name, since his book had appeared anonymously, declaring them to be erroneous, “schismatical and heretical, without prejudice to the rights of the King, the French crown and the immunities and liberties of the Gallican Church.” The bishop had these condemnations read from the pulpits of all the churches. In May the archbishop of Aix, Hurault de L’Hopital held a provincial council of his suffragans, viz. the bishops of Frejus, Sisteron and Riez, in which the condemnation was repeated but without the clause which Sens had added to its decree out of consideration for the Parliament of Paris. The Pope also would have been glad of the omission of so ambiguous an adjunct; nevertheless in a Brief of May 2nd, 1612, he praised the suffragans of Sens for their condemnation of a book which was full of dangerous doctrines and erroneous assertions. To this was added, in May, 1613, a condemnatory decree of the Congregation of the Index.

Richer had appealed to the Paris Parliament against his condemnation by the bishops, urging that they had exceeded their authority, but Marie de Medici did not allow the appeal and forbade all proceedings against the bishops. She likewise stopped other measures contemplated by the Parliament, such as, for instance, the publication of the Acts of the schismatical council of Pisa. Both the queen-regent and Ubaldini were convinced that Parliament was heading for a schism. For that reason Parliament tried to uphold Richer for as long as possible, though its efforts proved in vain. In September, 1612, Richer found himself compelled to lay aside his office of Syndic of the Sorbonne, a post he had so shamefully misused in order to lead the faculty into the path of schism and heresy. All his attempts to regain that important dignity were foiled by the counter-measures of the nuncio.

After such a defeat, the enemies of the Holy See deemed it more prudent to concentrate their attacks once more on the Jesuits. In this resolve they were guided by the principle which their friend Sarpi had formulated with his wonted exaggeration: “The most important thing is to destroy the Jesuits; if they are defeated, Rome is lost and if they are out of the way, religion ‘will reform’ itself of its own accord.”

In the Paris Parliament Servin showed himself now as before both adroit and indefatigable in every kind of agitation and intrigue against the Jesuits. Thanks to the weakness of President Verdun he secured, in June, 1614, a decree in virtue of which the “Defence of the Catholic Faith against the errors of the Anglican Sect” written by the Jesuit, Francis Suarez, was to be burnt by the public executioner. The judgment of the Parliament was a crying injustice, as Bellarmine pointed out in a special report. Doctrines antagonistic to the State could only be discovered in Suarez’s book by taking out isolated sentences, as Servin had done, sentences that could only be rightly appraised when seen in their context. Surely Suarez should have been the last man whom anyone would suspect of attempting to interfere with the sovereignty of monarchs and statesmen, for in that case a ruler so absolute and so extraordinarily jealous of his rights as Philip II would certainly not have suffered him to occupy the chair of Coimbra. Philip III also had given his full approval to Suarez’s work. How far that divine was from any whittling down of the autonomy of the State is shown by the fact that in his classical work on Law published in 1612, he expressly states that “the Pope has not received from Christ any secular ruling power by right divine, neither over the whole world, nor over the whole of Christendom or any part of it”.

Paul V had himself encouraged the publication of the Defence of the Catholic Faith of Suarez, the most noted theologian of the time, which the Paris Parliament now took upon itself to condemn, and on September 10th, 1613, the Pope praised the book in a special laudatory brief. The decree of that secular body was a twofold provocation of the Pope. To this must be added that the resolution of the Parliament also implied a rejection of the indirect power of the Holy See in temporal matters. Small wonder, then, if Paul V put up a strong resistance. Through Ubaldini he lodged a protest, insisting that whereas in France nothing was allowed to be published in defence of the Holy See, the grossest calumnies, such as those of Du Plessis Mornay, who had called the Pope antichrist, went unpunished. However, the French government seemed at first more afraid of the anger of Parliament than of that of the Pope. Tension became so acute that at one time there was reason to fear an open breach between Paris and Rome. But Paul V precipitated nothing. In the wearisome discussions that ensued, for all his insistence on his authority and his solicitude for the unjustly attacked Suarez, he showed, as even the French ambassador, the Marquis de Tresnel, had to admit, the utmost goodwill towards France. It was due to the Pope’s moderation that the painful incident was at last got out of the way, for he declared himself satisfied with a simple suspension of the parliamentary decree.

In the meantime the three Estates of the realm had assembled in Paris at the end of October, 1614. In this assembly the Church was splendidly represented; with absolute unanimity the French clergy pronounced for the acceptance of the decrees of Trent. This decision was all the more important inasmuch as a majority of the Third Estate, which included the wealthy burghers and the State officials, favoured the schismatical tendencies of the Parliament of Paris and put forward questions the discussion of which could only be disastrous. This was clearly shown by the almost unanimous agreement with the proposal of the deputies of Paris, that in imitation of schismatical England, the assembly should lay it down as a fundamental law of the State that the king holds his crown from God alone and that for no reason whatsoever could any power of any kind, be it temporal or spiritual, have competence to depose him or to release his subjects from their oath of allegiance. All the Estates, and thereafter all officials and priests, were to swear, without reservation, that this proposition was a holy, inviolable law and one in accordance with the word of God. If anyone advanced a contrary opinion, especially the theory that the king may be murdered or deposed, he was to be punished as one guilty of high treason against the State and the king. An additional clause declared that all religious Orders in France were bound to combat, without regard to persons, and without equivocation, any opinion directly or indirectly opposed to this teaching, by whomsoever propounded; otherwise they rendered themselves liable to punishment as favouring the enemies of the State.

Claude Le Prêtre, councillor to the Paris Parliament, was the author of this resolution of the Third Estate, the aim of which was disguised under the thin veil of seeming concern for the rights and the person of the king. Those who saw more clearly could be in no doubt as to what was intended, viz. approval of the schismatical ends which the Parliament of Paris had pursued for years, and proscription of all those who defended the rights of the Holy See, whether or no they belonged to the Society of Jesus. This was made perfectly plain by Cardinal Du Perron when, on January 2nd, 1615, accompanied by a number of bishops and sixty representatives of the nobility, he presented himself in the assembly of the Third Estate. His brilliant speech of three hours duration was calculated to open the eyes of those deputies who had failed to realize the import of the proposed measure and who imagined that by assenting to it they were proving their loyalty to the king. The Cardinal began by questioning the competence of a lay assembly to pronounce on such purely ecclesiastical questions. Clearly, and with strict logic, he then examined each separate paragraph of the resolution. With regard to the independence of kings in temporal matters and any attempt on their lives, there could be no controversy at all; everybody would agree with the statements on the subject made by the Third Estate. But it was otherwise in a case thus stated by Du Perron : if it should happen that rulers, who themselves, or whose forbears, had promised on oath, to God or to their peoples, that they would live and die in the Catholic faith, break their oath, openly fall into apostasy, do violence to the consciences of their subjects and endeavour to introduce either Arianism or Mohamedanism in their States, may not their subjects in such circumstances be released from their oath of allegiance? And if so, who is qualified to declare them thus freed? The Cardinal emphasized the fact that the answer was not beyond dispute. It could not be made an article of faith; in things of this kind the Church alone had authority to decide, nor could the people be compelled to take an oath in the matter. Hence the clergy would undergo martyrdom rather than attack the Pope's authority or provoke a schism by giving their adhesion to the resolution put forward by the Third Estate. Robert Miron, who acted as spokesman of the Third Estate and as representative of Paris, sought to weaken the Cardinal’s speech by denying the aims of the resolution which the latter had so clearly exposed. In his reply Du Perron once again emphatically declared that laymen had no right to decide ecclesiastical questions of this kind.

The surest proof that Du Perron had clearly discerned the true purpose of the resolution was provided by the Parliament of Paris when, on that same day, and on a motion of Servin’s, it sanctioned once more all the measures which had been previously passed against the Jesuits and other defenders of the Holy See, and expressly declared that the Pope could neither excommunicate nor depose a king, even if he became a heretic. The next day the clergy protested against the pressure which it was sought to apply by these measures. Du Perron spoke once more: he roundly declared that the Pope had full and direct power in things spiritual and indirect power in things temporal; whosoever thought otherwise was a schismatic and a heretic. This applied also to the Parliament of Paris. Unless the king rejected its resolution, it would become necessary to excommunicate that body.

In order to avoid giving their adversaries the slightest pretext for accusing the clergy or the Jesuits of condoning murderous attempts against kings, the representatives of the clergy confirmed anew the decree of the Council of Constance against the Dominican Petit; on the other hand it insisted on the repeal of the Parliamentary resolution. The government sought to smooth down difficulties by forbidding the continuation of the controversy and by reserving any decision to itself. This was all the more unacceptable to the clergy as the printed text of the resolution in dispute was already being circulated, as if there were no question of its legality. By their firmness—they threatened to suspend their delibera­tions—the clergy, who had the support of the majority of the nobility, succeeded in inducing the crown to punish the printer of the parliamentary decree, to repeal the decree itself and to order the resolution of the Third Estate to be expunged from the Cahier. In this way a most important victory was won. The Pope, who had been exceedingly anxious about the issue, expressed his thanks to all who had contributed to this triumph and exhorted them to display a like constancy in the time to come.

On the other hand all efforts of the French clergy proved fruitless in another matter, one to which Paul V attached the greatest importance. This was the solemn publication of the reform decrees of the Council of Trent. This time opposition seemed all the more out of place as in the memorial to the king it had been said, in as many words, that the act would take place as soon as the Pope should have given an assurance that such a publication would not curtail the rights of the crown, compromise the peace of the State, or infringe the liberties of the Gallican Church, and the privileges of the cathedral and collegiate churches and the clergy of France.

Indefatigable, as always, Ubaldini gave of his best in this affair. He asked the Jesuit Coton to write a refutation of the various objections which had been raised against the publication of the decrees and to dedicate his work to the three Estates. The hostility of the Huguenots, Coton explained, was nothing to be wondered at, but surely in a matter of this kind, Catholics should not allow themselves to be led astray either by heretics or by false brethren whose schismatical dispositions and hostility to the Holy See were such that they refused to have anything to do with the Pope or with Rome. Men of this type formed the majority in the assembly of the Third Estate. René Potier, bishop of Beauvais, preached to deaf ears when he earnestly represented to the assembly that even if the decrees were published they need have no fear that the Inquisition would be set up, or that the privileges of the king and those of the Gallican Church would be in any way curtailed.

Although the Third Estate had strongly insisted on the necessity of removing abuses in the Church, it nevertheless definitely rejected the only means to that end. It was ready to accept the dogmatic decrees, Robert Miron explained, but not the disciplinary ones; no General Council had ever been published in France and no exception could be made for that of Trent. With biting sarcasm he added that the clergy might quite well carry out the decrees of the Council of their own accord by suppressing the pluralism of benefices and other abuses which had been condemned at Trent!

Though the nobility sided with the clergy, the obstruction of the Third Estate proved insurmountable. In his famous speech of February 23rd, 1615, the bishop of Luçon, Richelieu, renewed the demand for publication and pointed in eloquent words to the example of the other Catholic States and to Henry IV’s own promise. However, for fear of internal disturbances, the government did not dare to do anything. For the rest the French clergy took Miron at his word. Regardless of the agitation of the Gallicans and the Huguenots, they decreed in the assembly of July 7th, 1615, without prejudice to the liberties of the Gallican Church, the observance of the reform decrees of Trent and their publication by provincial synods which were to be held in every diocese within the next six months. Forty-seven archbishops and bishops swore to obey this decision. The nuncio was jubilant; in Rome also joy was great. True, the royal assent was still wanting, but the leaders of the Church had spoken and all true Catholics in France now knew their duty. It goes without saying that bitter attacks on the part of the Gallicans were not wanting. Soon, however, universal attention was drawn elsewhere, for Conde’s rising had taken place.1 A section of the Huguenots also took to arms: but they could prevent neither the king’s journey to the Spanish frontier nor his marriage. On November 25th, at Bordeaux, Louis XIII led the Spanish princess, Anne of Austria, to the altar. A month later peace negotiations with Conde were initiated. The peace congress opened on February 10th, 1616. Among other stipulations arrived at was the confirmation of the decrees previously passed in favour of the Huguenots as well as some further concessions. The Third Estate also achieved a notable success when the government promised not to give effect to the demand of the clergy for the publication of the Tridentine decrees. At one moment there was real danger lest the proposal for a new constitution of the French State which, thanks to Du Perron’s efforts, had been defeated in the General Assembly of the Estates, should be accepted. Ubaldini displayed as much ability as zeal in frustrating these designs. It was due to him that Marie de Medici pledged her royal word to the Pope that the question would never again come up for discussion. By that time the indefatigable nuncio had been raised to the purple; the presentation by the king of the red biretta had taken place at the beginning of February, 1616, but Ubaldini remained in France until the arrival of his successor. The prelate appointed by Paul V was Guido Bentivoglio, of Ferrara, who had been nuncio at Brussels from 1607 until 1615. The choice was arrived at about the middle of July, 1616, but the Brief of nomination was not published until September 8th, 1616. Repeated bouts of illness still further delayed the nuncio’s departure and not until the end of November did Bentivoglio reach Lyons. On December 15th, 1616, he arrived in Paris. Eight days later Ubaldini left the capital.

The task that awaited the new nuncio at the French court is thus summed up in his Instruction, viz. the consolidation of a good understanding between France and Spain; watchfulness with regard to the nomination of suitable bishops; the furthering of the Catholic reform by the convocation of provincial and diocesan synods and other similar measures; the abolition of the appeal to secular judges under pretext of abuse of the spiritual power; lastly the termination of the paper war against the Catholic faith and the papal authority. The Instruction exhorts Bentivoglio to adopt an attitude of the greatest friendliness towards the Sorbonne and, to this end, to give only private support to the plan of the Jesuits for the opening of courses at their College de Clermont, in Paris, and to advise the Fathers to put off the settlement of this question which, at present, would only create fresh enemies for them, until the king should have attained his majority.

In view of the prudence and moderation of Bentivoglio such admonitions fell on good soil. In this respect the new nuncio was the exact opposite of Ubaldini who was by nature a fighter. And since Rome too was anxious to avoid all conflicts as much as possible, Bentivoglio did not find it difficult to settle, by means of a compromise, the conflict provoked at the very beginning of his nunciature by the conduct of the unworthy bishop of Boulogne, Claude Dormy, who had got mixed up in the conspiracy of the Prince of Condé. As for Louis Servin, who remained obstinate in his Gallican opinions, Bentivoglio sought to win him over by kindness1 and he also encouraged the efforts of Cardinal Retz to bring Richer to better sentiments.

Differences of character and other circumstances resulted in the relations of Bentivoglio with the Jesuit Coton, the king’s confessor and the trusted collaborator of Ubaldini, becoming somewhat strained. This also led to the termination of the close relations which under Ubaldini had obtained between the nunciature and the Jesuits. Happily the awkward situation developed no further. With the Jesuit, Jean Arnoux, who became confessor to Louis XIII in the summer of 1617, in succession to Coton, Bentivoglio stood on excellent terms. When the Huguenots published a violent pamphlet in answer to the sharply anti-Calvinistic sermons of Jean Arnoux, and dedicated it to Louis XIII with a prayer that God would open the king’s eyes, Bentivoglio lodged so strong a protest with the government, that he obtained the sup­pression of the publication. How highly the nuncio valued the work of the Jesuits in France was shown when at last, after immense difficulties had been surmounted, a royal decree of February, 1618, authorized the Jesuits to inaugurate courses of study in their College de Clermont, in Paris. Bentivoglio at once sought an audience with Louis XIII in order to express his thanks; in its course he spoke of the Jesuits in the highest terms. To Cardinal Borghese he suggested that a laudatory Brief be sent to the king, for, he added, our enemies themselves confess that the only reason why they oppose the Jesuits is that they are such keen supporters of the authority of the Holy See. The duke of Luynes also should receive a laudatory Brief, the nuncio thought, for the powerful support he had given to the Jesuits on this occasion.

It is characteristic of Paul V’s caution that he did not fall in with these suggestions. Bentivoglio received a formal command to observe the greatest caution in this affair and not to rouse the Sorbonne.

A triumph was in store for Bentivoglio at the assembly of notables which opened at Rouen on December 4th, 1617. He shared Pere Arnoux’ fear lest the notables should allow themselves to be influenced by the ideas of the Paris Parliament and take up once more the dangerous motion concerning a new constitution which the Third Estate had introduced in 1614. However, nothing happened, but another danger arose instead. In view, without any doubt, of the understanding of the Huguenots with foreign Protestant princes, the government had proposed that all Frenchmen should be forbidden, under pain of severe punishment, to hold any intercourse whatsoever with the representatives of foreign powers. One section of the Assembly was for inserting the clause: “even with the nuncio of the Pope.” But this was opposed by the clergy and a majority of the nobles who insisted that the Pope, as the Head of the Church and the Father of all the faithful, could not be regarded as a foreign prince. In consequence of the energetic protests of Bentivoglio, who threatened to take his departure, the attempt failed.

A critical moment in Bentivoglio’s nunciature arose when in August, 1619, the French ambassador in Rome, the Marquis de Coeuvres, came in conflict with the Roman police. The quarrel became so acute that at one time a rupture between Rome and Paris seemed imminent. When the satisfaction which Coeuvres demanded was denied him, he ceased to put in an appearance at the office of the Cardinal Secretary of State. Bentivoglio’s position became all the more precarious as he took the Pope’s part with the greatest determination. The nuncio had made up his mind to leave the court of Paris when Pore Coton, who happened to be in Rome at the time (December, 1619) succeeded in finding a peaceful solution of the dispute.

An event of importance, especially from the ecclesiastical point of view, was the union of Navarre and Bearn with the French crown which was effected in October, 1620, by Louis XIII who had gone to Pau at the head of an army. By this act the Edict of Nantes became operative in those provinces also. The resistance of the Huguenots, who wished to be sole masters of Bearn, was broken by force and the re-establishment of Catholic worship and the restoration of property of which the Catholics had been robbed, were similarly enforced. Henry IV had already pledged himself to do this on the occasion of his reconciliation with Clement VIII, but he had failed to keep his word to the full. The measure taken by Louis XIII, with which Bentivoglio and Paul V fully concurred, could not be called unfair, for the king merely restored to the Catholics that of which Jeanne d’Albret had unjustly deprived them. For the rest Louis XIII. indemnified the Huguenots by assigning to them, out of his own purse, the same revenues which until then they had derived from the Catholic Church property. However, it soon became apparent that the followers of Calvin had no mind to cease from oppressing the Catholics and they were resolved to carry matters to the last extremity. In the face of the king’s prohibition they met at La Rochelle, in October, for the purpose of organizing armed resistance. Bentivoglio gave it as his opinion that France would have no peace as long as the Huguenot party remained in existence.

As a reward for his labours, the nuncio was raised to the purple on January 11th, 1621. The letter of thanks which he addressed to Paul V on January 31st, no longer found the Pope among the living. The Cardinal set out at once for Rome, to attend the conclave, but by the time he got as far as the neighbourhood of Lyons news reached him of the election of Gregory XV.

(2.)

Bentivoglio’s French nunciature had coincided with a period of grave upheaval. It did not take him long to under­stand the great difference that existed between France and the Spanish Netherlands: “The first month of my stay in Brussels,” he wrote at the time to a friend, “taught me all that I was to learn by experience during the next nine years of my nunciature. Here every day yields something fresh. In the Netherlands there is uniformity, in France constant change. If there they fail through slowness, they do so here by excessive ardour.”

However, though conditions in France, on which Bentivoglio’s reports tell us so much that is of interest, were extremely unstable, the renewal of Catholic life was nevertheless steadily on the increase, both in extent and in depth, throughout the realm.

It was a matter of the greatest importance that the government favoured the Catholic effort. In this respect Catherine de Medici and Louis XIII showed far more zeal than Henry IV; they also allowed the papal nuncio to exercise a far wider influence. The rise of the duke of Luynes led to no change in this respect.

Paul V and his nuncio sought to stir the Catholic zeal of the queen regent by every possible means, even though they met with the opposition of counsellors who, from considerations of statecraft, deemed it necessary to show the greatest possible leniency to the Huguenots. But however important a factor the favourable disposition of the government may have been, it would have availed nothing had it not been accompanied by the internal regeneration of the Church in France. Paul V kept in very close touch with the protagonists of this movement. The following incident is characteristic of this attitude  in the summer of 1607, Cardinal Joyeuse had reported to the Pope on the condition of religion in France, on its needs, and on the keenness with which the regent supported every effort for reform. Thereupon Ubaldini was instructed to thank the queen and to beg her and her advisers, Villeroi and Jeannin, to persevere in their efforts on behalf of ecclesiastical discipline, but at the same time to take counsel with the leading spirits of the Catholic restoration. As such the following were singled out: the archbishops of Embrun and Aix, Honore du Laurens and Paul Hurault; the bishops of Paris, Angers and Nantes, Henri de Gondi, Charles Miron and Charles de Bourgneuf, and lastly, Cardinal Du Perron. Like Cardinals Joyeuse and La Rochefoucauld, Du Perron, who had become archbishop of Sens in 1606, laboured unceasingly on behalf of the Catholic restoration and reform. The death of this splendid Prince of the Church, which took place on September 5th, 1618, was a grievous loss to the movement for a Catholic revival. Bentivoglio styled the dead Cardinal the Augustine of France.

In addition to the energetic action of Du Perron and Ubaldini, a strong contributory cause to the defeat of the anti-papal efforts of the Third Estate was the fact that the section of the nobility which had kept its Catholic faith had been steeled and refined by the fight it had been compelled to wage for its preservation. Not a few among the bourgeoisie who toyed with heretical tendencies, did so simply because they failed to recognize their danger and not for a moment did they entertain the idea of a schism or of apostacy from the Church’s teaching. At that time instances of apostacy were extremely rare in France. The great mass of the people, above all the peasantry, were resolved to remain true to the ancient Church. The immense majority of the French people clung firmly to the Catholic faith. In his report of 1605, the Venetian ambassador, Angelo Badoer, states that for a hundred Catholics there was one Calvinist and that since the restoration of peace the proportion was constantly growing in favour of the Catholics, and it would be even more favourable if during the civil wars the people’s instruction by sermon and catechism had not been grievously neglected. However, in this respect also, a sensible improvement was gradually taking place.

With a view to a thorough religious training of the lower classes, Jean Baptiste Romillion (died 1622) and Cesar de Bus (died 1607) had founded the Congregation of the secular clerics of Christian Doctrine. Between 1599 and 1600, the female teaching Order of the Ursulines had also taken root in France. The Jesuits, on their part, displayed a widespread and comprehensive activity on behalf of the education of the children of the nobility and the bourgeoisie, as well as for the religious needs of the upper classes. The war which the Parliament of Paris waged against the Order, only helped to strengthen its position. So happy a result the church in France owed to one man more than to any other, the same who prevailed on Henry IV to recall the Jesuits to France—Pierre Coton. A scion of a royalist family, this noble youth entered the Society of Jesus at Arona, in 1583, notwithstanding the opposition of his father. He pursued his studies at Milan, where he assisted at the last Mass of the dying Carlo Borromeo, and at the Roman College in the Eternal City, where he was ordained priest in 1591. On his return to France, Coton displayed, at a difficult time, a fruitful activity as a preacher of mark, an able controversialist, a popular confessor and a wise administrator of a college. He succeeded in gaining the confidence of Henry IV to such an extent as to be appointed confessor to the king and tutor to the Dauphin. In these difficult posts he remained what he had always been—a model religious who combined in wonderful fashion meekness with severity. He never failed to stand up manfully for the interests of the Church and his Order. The enemies of the Holy See knew why they made him the chief butt of their slanderous attacks. “If the efforts to secure the removal of Coton from Court succeed,” wrote Ubaldini to Aquaviva a few months after the death of Henry IV, “the Society of Jesus will succumb in France.” By good fortune Coton acted as confessor to Louis XIII until 1617, and he was succeeded by another Jesuit, Pere Amoux. To this circumstance France chiefly owes it that the conduct of Henry IV’s son was far more blameless than that of any ruler of France since the days of St. Louis.

The spread of the Society of Jesus on French soil is shown by the fact that in 1616 it counted five Provinces with 1,676 members. In the Province of France, the Jesuits had in Paris, besides the College de Clermont, a professed and a noviciate house, a residence at Pontoisc and colleges at La Fleche, Bourges, Nevers, Eu, Moulin, Amiens, Caen and Rouen; in the latter town they also had a noviciate house. In the Province of Aquitania they had a college and a house of probation at Bordeaux, and colleges at Agen, Perigueux, Limoges, Poitiers, Saintes and Rennes, and a residence at Saint-Macaire. The Province of Lyons possessed a college and noviciate both at Lyons and at Avignon; there were likewise colleges at Toumon, Chambery, Dole, Besançon, Vienne, Embrun, Carpentras, Roanne, Vesoul and Sisteron. In the Province of Toulouse there was a college and a house of probation in the episcopal city: furthermore, there were colleges at Billom, Mauriac, Rodez, Auch, Le Puy, Veziers, Cahors, Aubenas, and Carcassone. In the Province of Champagne, the chief residence was at Nancy, with a college and a house of probation; there were colleges at Reims, Verdun, Pont-a-Mousson, Dijon, Charleville, Autun, Châlons- sur-Mame and Bar-le-Duc.

As everywhere else so in France, the Jesuits devoted themselves with particular ardour to the education of youth. Their teaching method proved itself in brilliant fashion, their success being due to the Ratio Studiorum of the year 1599, which Aquaviva had drawn up for general use, as well as to the efficiency of the teachers who devoted themselves whole­heartedly to their task.

The religious life was fostered by means of sodalities of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Coton, who had learnt the value of these associations during his stay in Rome, took particular care to spread them in France. The members, who were carefully selected from among the best students, did not limit their zeal to their own sanctification but worked for the moral uplifting of others also, by example, word and deed. Coton describes the fruits that came to maturity by this means in a book which he entitled: A Spiritual Nosegay gathered in the Garden of the heavenly Qtteen of the Sodalists.

Out of the student sodalities, which were divided into greater and smaller ones according to school classes, grew the men’s sodalities of the Blessed Virgin. The action of these associations proved a not inconsiderable factor in the Catholic restoration. Nor was the zeal of the Jesuits confined to the young. They were no less keen on the reform of relaxed Convents and on the holding of spiritual exercises for the secular clergy, than on the practice of the works of mercy on behalf of the sick, the needy and those in prison. Above all they were active as confessors and preachers. This side of their work was no less decisive than their enterprise in the educational field. At Court and in monasteries, in big towns and in small ones, everywhere they displayed a spirit of self-sacrifice without parallel.

When we consider the incredible energy which the Jesuits put into their pastoral work on behalf of Catholics, we cannot but wonder how they still found time to combat the Calvinists. This work was all the more imperative as the followers of the religious innovation were once more making a very active propaganda at the beginning of the seventeenth century, more particularly in the South of France. However, their efforts met with the most determined opposition on the part of the Jesuits who, heedless of the fact that by so doing they were drawing on themselves the full weight of the hatred of the Protestant party, showed themselves in France also the staunchest champions of the Church and the papacy. They were also the most successful. The writings of such men as Jean Gontery, Frangois Veron, Jean de Bordes, Fronton du Duc, and Louis Richeome are among the best productions which French controversial literature of the period has to show. Coton and Arnoux also distinguished themselves in this field. Like Du Perron at the celebrated conference of Fontainebleau, Coton and Gontery met outstanding Calvinist preachers in victorious disputations. Coton’s chief work, published in 1610, contains an exhaustive defence of Catholic doctrine and of every individual dogma against the attacks of the Huguenots. He subsequently published, in 1617, a larger work on the falsifications of Holy Writ in the Geneva Bible.

These controversial publications and more particularly the public disputations led many souls to return to the Catholic faith. The movement had begun in the last years of the reign of Clement VIII; under Paul V it gathered further strength. Among the numerous personages who, fully convinced by reflection and instruction, came back to the bosom of the one, indivisible Church, from the Calvinistic heresy, besides savants such as Henri Sponde, to whom Paul V assigned a post in Rome, and the orientalist Jean Morin, there were also statesmen such as Nicolas de Harley and Philippe de Fresne de Canaye, Henry IV’s ambassador at Venice. Calvinist preachers also returned to the Church in great numbers. In order to follow their convictions many of these sacrificed their means of livelihood. For the purpose of providing for them the clergy of France started a fund which received the support of Paul V, Henry IV, and Marie de Medici. The annual sum set aside for this end was eventually raised to 30,000 livres.

Several Capuchins likewise applied themselves to the defence of Catholic truth by means of controversial writings. Of their number mention may be made of Andeolus, Angelicus Tresulensis and Daniel of St. Severus. Others sought to convert the Calvinists by their preaching, for instance, Edonard Mole, brother to the famous attorney general and known by his religious name of Athanasius. He did much to combat public immorality and founded a house where loose women could find a refuge on their conversion. Both Henry IV and Marie de Medici showed much favour to the Capuchins and several bishops, Richelieu among them, introduced them in their dioceses.

The chief strongholds of Calvinism, apart from the very extensive district of Languedoc, were Poitou, Saintonge and Aunis. The Catholic restoration boldly penetrated even into this territory which their opponents claimed for their very own. The Jesuits had made a foundation at Poitiers as early as 1604. At a later date the Capuchin Joseph du Tremblay, who was destined for so much fame, by means of popular missions, did all he could to bring back to the Church the Calvinists of Poitou; his efforts were crowned with considerable success: In 1611 he laid the first stone of a monastery of his Order at Saumur where the Calvinist Academy founded by Du Plessis Mornay constituted a focus of Protestantism. In the following year the Capuchins made foundations at Niort, north of La Rochelle, the chief Calvinist citadel, and at Saint-Maixent, and in 1620 at Thonars. In the South they established themselves at Montpellier in 1609, at Oranges in 1610, at Gap in 1613, at Aigues-Mortes in 1623. Everywhere they preached not only in the churches but in the open as well. Their processions of the Blessed Sacrament, which in most places were something quite unheard of, were soon attended by crowds of worshippers. Numerous conversions rewarded these labours. Everybody admired the devotion to the sick which the Fathers displayed in times of epidemic. It is characteristic of the zeal which animated the Capuchins and Jesuits of France that, notwithstanding that they were overburdened with labours of every kind, they still undertook missionary work in pagan countries.

The general revival which the Church experienced in France, affected the old orders also. True, the reform of these institutions, which had for the most part sunk to a very low level, was a slow process and at times a most difficult one. Thus the reform of the Dominicans, which Sebastian Michaelis had begun at Toulouse, in 1580, and which Paul V had confirmed, took indeed root in Paris, but all the efforts of the excellent General of the Order, Agostino Galamina, failed to win over the other French convents to this new orientation. The reform of the famous abbey of Montmartre, in Paris, undertaken by Marie de Beauvilliers, met with incredible resistance on the part of the utterly degenerate nuns so that progress was exceedingly slow. The distinguished Marquise de Belle-Isle, Antoinette d’Orleans, who on the death of her husband had entered the convent of the Feuillantes, at Toulouse, and who, through pressure on the part of Paul V, had become Abbess of the Benedictine Convent of Fontevrault, met with so many obstacles in her attempts to reform her community, that together with the better-disposed nuns, she withdrew to the Priory of Lencloitre from whence she spread her new institute, the strict Congregation of our Lady of Calvary. With the help of the Capuchin, Joseph du Tremblay, she founded, in 1617, a new monastery at Poitiers, in which the rule of St. Benedict was observed in all its primitive rigour. After the premature death of the foundress (1618), Pere Joseph completed the work she had begun by effecting a reform in Paris and Angers and by obtaining for it the papal confirmation.

The decree of the Council of Trent, by the terms of which all monasteries directly subject to the Holy See were compelled to form Congregations and to hold General Chapters at regular intervals, proved very advantageous to the Benedictine Order on French soil. The Congregation of St. Vannes, in Lorraine, founded by Didier de la Cour and confirmed by Clement VIII has already been mentioned. On July 23rd, 1605, Paul V granted to it all the privileges and faculties enjoyed by the Abbot of Monte Cassino; at the same time he gave orders for the reform of all the monasteries within the legation of Cardinal Charles of Lorraine. For this purpose the Superior General of the Cassinese Congregation, Lorenzo Lucalberti, was dispatched to Lorraine. Noel Mars, a Benedictine of the ancient abbey of Marmoutier, in Lower Alsace, founded the Congregation of Brittany which was approved by Paul V in 1606. In the following year the abbey of Saint Denis, once famous throughout Europe, put itself at the head of a new Congregation of nine other monasteries. It was approved by Paul V in 1614. Adverse circumstances, however, chief of which was the abuse of the commenda, impeded the work of these Congregations. The difficulties which stood in the way of a reform in the Benedictine Order had been described as early as 1607 in an impressive report of the Visitor of the Province of Aquitania to Cardinal Givry, the protector of the Order, in Rome. The efficiency of the Congregation of Lorraine to which an ever growing number of French monasteries affiliated themselves (St. Augustine, at Limoges, in 1613, St. Faron, near Meaux, St. Junian, at Noailles, St. Pierre of Jumièges in 1615) ; was impeded by one outstanding obstacle—viz. the fact that the French government greatly disliked to see foreign Superiors at the head of French monasteries. In consequence of this the General Chapter of the Congregation of Lorraine, held at Toul in 1618, decreed that the French monasteries should form a Congregation of their own, with its own statutes, Superiors and visitors. The prompt execution of this resolution was mainly due to the influence of the excellent Prior of the Cluniac priory of Paris, Laurent Benard, who won the support of Louis XIII and other influential persons for the plan. In this way it became possible to give effect to the decision of the General Chapter of Toul before the end of 1618 in the monastery of Blancsmanteaux, in Paris, which until then had belonged to the Guillaumites.

In order not to offend any of the greater monasteries of France, the new Congregation called itself by the name of St. Maurus, the first disciple of St. Benedict. Didier de la Cour, who died in 1623, lived long enough to see the Maurist Congregation approved by the successor of Paul V. Already at that time it counted among its members Dom Hugh Menard. That venerable man directed the Maurists to the study of the Christian past, a field in which the Congregation was destined to render imperishable service to scholarship

.Any survey of the renewal of the French Church would be incomplete if it did not include its hierarchy. The episcopate was debarred from taking a leading role in that movement inasmuch as in consequence of the abuse of the Concordat on the part of the government, it still counted too many unworthy elements in its ranks, though some improvement had taken place since the reign of Henry IV. During the last years of that prince the French hierarchy had been given several splendid members, among them two friends of Francis de Sales, viz. Pierre Fenouillet, bishop of Montpellier, and Pierre Camus, bishop of Belley. Men of a similiar type were Philippe Cospeau, who was named to the See of Aire in 1607; the Carthusian Bruno Ruade, bishop of Conserans since 1624; and Simon de Marquemont, who became bishop of Lyons in 1612. Jean Bertaut, poet and courtier, who obtained the bishopric of Seez from Henry IV in 1606, took his duties seriously and became a good bishop. His successor, Jacques Suarez, inherited his spirit. In 1607, the excellent bishop of Narbonne, Louis de Vervins, held a provincial synod in that city, the canons of which proved most beneficial. An extraordinarily fruitful activity had been displayed, since 1607, by the barely twenty-two year old Richelieu in his diocese of Luçon, which he visited in all its parts and whose religious condition he greatly improved by means of missions and sermons and an excellent catechism composed by himself. Like François de la Rochefoucauld, bishop of Senlis since 1610, the bishops of Metz, Cardinal Charles of Lorraine and Cardinal Givry, gave ample proof of their zeal for the reform of the clergy and the religious Orders; Givry was strongly supported by Paul V in all his efforts. In 1617 the Dominican, Nicolas Coeffeteau, famous for his literary work, was appointed to the See of Marseilles. Henri and Raimond de la Marthonie were also excellent bishops.

After the death of Henry IV, Rome took every precaution to ensure that only deserving men were appointed to bishoprics. In 1611, the Pope exhorted Marie de Medici to propose for bishoprics such men as conformed to the prescriptions of Canon Law. He pointed out that this was in the interest also of the State. That in this respect there was ground for serious complaint appears from the laments of Ubaldini and from the fact that, in 1614, the clergy demanded the creation of a supreme council to assist the king in the execution of “the most dangerous of all his prerogatives.”  In a report of 1617, Bentivoglio expressly states that better nominations to episcopal sees were a crying need. These circumstances sufficiently account for the decadence of discipline among the clergy in a number of dioceses. Splendid priests could indeed be found, such as Vincent de Paul, whose labours were crowned with astonishing success first at Clichy, near Paris (in 1612), and subsequently (1617) at Châtillon-les-Dombes, in the diocese of Lyons; Michel le Nobletz, the apostle of Brittany; Bernard Bardon de Brun, at Limoges; the magnificent parish priest of Mattaincourt, Pierre Fourier and lastly, the saintly Adrien Bourdoise. If in many dioceses there was a dearth of men of this calibre, the reason was that the formation of the clergy was grievously neglected.

Notwithstanding that provincial synods had repeatedly decreed the erection of seminaries for priests of the kind prescribed by the Council of Trent, France as yet possessed but a small number of such institutions. This was the result not only of the troubles of the religious and civil wars and other causes, but of the negligence also of many bishops, though in this connection it must be borne in mind that the bishops had the disposal of only about one-half of the benefices in their diocese. This pitiful condition was about to be substantially relieved by the work of a man who could be counted among the most zealous priests of whom France was able to boast at that time.

Pierre de Bérulle was sprung from an ancient noble family. He was born in the chateau of Serilly, in Champagne, in 1575. The plan of his family and that of his father, whom he lost in his early years and who had been counsellor of the Parliament of Paris, was that he should enter the service of the State. However, Bérulle’s precocious maturity and deep piety found but little satisfaction in the study of the law. On the other hand he felt wholly in his element when, at the age of twenty, he was able to give himself whole­heartedly to the study of theology at the Sorbonne. Previous to his ordination, which he received in 1599, Bérulle spontaneously withdrew into a convent of Capuchins, for the space of forty days, in order to prepare himself for the reception of the priesthood. The exemplary priest who always wore the soutane—a rare thing in those days—soon found himself in great request as a spiritual guide and ever wider circles took an increasing interest in him. Astonishment was general when he steadfastly refused every post that was offered him, as, for instance, several abbeys and bishoprics to which Henry IV wished to nominate him, and, finally even the post of tutor to the Dauphin. Bérulle was resolved to labour in obscurity, as a simple priest. That which was nearest his heart was the conversion of the Huguenots. He played a prominent part in the establishment in France of the Carmelite Nuns who devoted their lives to prayer, contemplation and penance. He was to have the happiness of admitting his own mother, a woman of uncommon piety, into the Order.

During a stay in Paris in 1602, Francis de Sales made Bérulle’s acquaintance. Ever after the two men remained close friends. Francis frequently sent those who sought his advice to Bérulle; for instance the newly-appointed Bishop of Doi, to whom he wrote : “Bérulle is wholly what I should like to be myself. I have not often found his like”. At that time Bérulle already busied himself with the plan of founding a Congregation of secular priests, on the model of that of Philip Neri, with a view to the revival of discipline and learning among the French clergy. Only a delicate consideration for the Jesuits, who had been banned since 1595, restrained him for a time. He feared lest their recall should be deemed superfluous since there was a possibility that it might seem that his own foundation sufficiently provided for the needs of the Church in France. But when, in 1603, the sentence of banishment of the Jesuits was repealed, he judged that he need no longer delay the execution of his plan. His humility, however, made him desirous that someone else should be the head of the new Institute, so he undertook a journey to Annecy, in 1606, to visit Francis de Sales. But the holy bishop could not and would not forsake his flock. On the return journey Bérulle called on Cesar de Bus, at Avignon, but he too, in view of his own foundation, saw himself compelled to decline the offer. Both men, however, urged Bérulle to proceed with his plan and promised their support. On his return to Paris, Bérulle saw himself pressed by the most diverse people to put himself at the head of the undertaking he had conceived and of which there was so great a need. Marie de Medici promised her support and the Marquise de Maignelay besought Bérulle on her knees to make no further difficulties but to undertake the government of the Congregation. When all seemed unavailing, the Marquise had recourse to her brother, Henri de Gondi, bishop of Paris, beseeching him to use his authority. Thereupon Gondi commanded Bérulle, under obedience, to comply with the wishes of so many people. There could be no question of further resistance. Bérulle rented a house in the Faubourg Saint- Jacques and on December 10th, 1611, he took possession with five companions. On the following day they said Mass, in the presence of a few devout women, among them the above-mentioned Marquise and Marie Acarie. Thus was inaugurated, very quietly, the French Oratory whose foundation was hailed with joy by Cardinal Joyeuse, the Jesuit Coton and other outstanding personalities. Authorization by the secular power was promptly obtained. It proved much more difficult to secure the papal approval, for the Cardinals charged with the examination of the plan submitted by Bérulle, raised objections to some points, such as, for instance, the clause that the members of the Oratory were to be subject to the bishops in all things, for in that case any bishop might change the statutes of the Congregation as he pleased. In like manner the stipulation that the Oratorians should not conduct colleges in which the liberal arts were taught was not favourably viewed in Rome. Bérulle was far removed from obstinate insistence on his original plan and submitted in everything to the decision of the Pope. The Constitution by which Paul V approved the “Congregation of the Oratory of our Lord Jesus Christ” bears the date of May 10th, 1613. It restricts episcopal authority to the pastoral activities of the Oratorians and leaves the prohibition of the conducting of colleges untouched. Bérulle was named Superior of the new Society of secular priests living in community.

The opportuneness of the French Oratory, which Paul V and Marie de Medici were most anxious to promote3 is shown by its rapid spread. As early as 1614, there were foundations at Dieppe and La Rochelle, in 1615 at Orleans and Tours, in 1616 at Langres, in 1617 at Rouen, Montmorency and Clermont, in 1618 at Riom, Nancy, Troyes and Nevers, in 1619 at Limoges, Saumur, Toulouse and Angers, in 1620 at Joyeuse and Amiens. In 1619 the community of priests of the famous sanctuary of Notre-Dame-des-Graces, in the diocese of Frejus, which had received the approval of Clement VIII, as well as a section of the Doctrinaires, founded by Cesar de Bus, joined forces with the Oratory. In 1616, Bérulle concluded an agreement with the bishop of Langres, Sebastien Zamet, in consequence of which the Oratorians undertook the direction of his diocesan seminary. Here the beginnings were as humble as at the seminary of St. Magloire, in Paris, which the bishop of the capital, Henri de Gondi, entrusted to Bérulle’s Society in 1620. These attempts were of the same kind as the foundation of Adrien Bourdoise, at St. Nicolas du Chardonnet, in Paris. These forerunners of the real Tridentine Seminaries must not be undervalued because of their restricted field; they prepared the ground for the eminently successful work of Bérulle, Eudes, Bourdoise, Vincent de Paul and Olier for the training of good priests.

The Oratory did not cause Bérulle to forget the reformed Spanish Carmelites who came to France in 1604. They spread very rapidly. In 1611, seven years after the foundation of the first Convent in Paris, they had houses at Pontoise, Dijon, Amiens, Tours, Rouen, Bordeaux, and Châlons-sur-Marne. In 1614 they settled at Besançon. By 1620 the number of their convents had risen to thirty-four. The Spanish nuns who had introduced the reform, either died or returned to their own country, hence the new branch assumed a wholly French character. Its members were recruited from the most diverse social strata. By the side of Madame Acarie’s maid, and the daughters of the bourgeoisie, the Order counted a Marquise of Bréauté and the daughter of Marshal Charles de Cossé, duc of Brissac, the same who had opened the gates of Paris to Henry IV. Whereas in former times the convents of nuns had been degraded into being no more than places of refuge for girls without fortune, now only those sought admission who strove for the heights of perfection. Nothing bears more eloquent testimony to the religious fervour of the period than the fact that the strictest of all female Orders was also the most popular. In 1616 the Duchess of Longueville founded another Carmelite convent in Paris to which a third was soon added. The first French Prioress was Madeleine de Fontaines-Marans who, as Mère Madeleine de St. Joseph, exercised a very powerful influence. In 1G14, Paul V. appointed Berulle perpetual Visitor of all the French Cannels. The office occasioned him many annoyances, for some convents demanded to be governed by the discalced reformed Carmelite Fathers. With the encouragement of Paul V, the latter had come to Paris in 1611 and two years later Marie de Medici laid the foundation stone of their new church.

Just as the Church in France received the Carmelites from Spain so did Italy give her the Ursulines, in addition to the Brothers Hospitallers whom Marie de Medici had introduced in the first years of the seventeenth century. It is an inspiring spectacle to see how God had secretly prepared a number of generous souls for a Society whose scope, viz. the instruction and education of young girls—was of supreme importance. The simultaneous rise of these Societies was to shed extraordinary lustre upon the Catholic restoration of France.

The foundation of the first Ursuline convent in France had been laid at l’Isle de Venise, in the comte of Venaissin, during the pontificate of Clement VIII by a spiritual daughter of the founder of the Doctrinaires, Cesar de Bus, namely the devout and gifted Françoise de Bermond. The opening years of the seventeenth century witnessed the establishment of a house at Aix and at Marseilles. Reports of the excellent training which girls were given in these establishments soon spread beyond the boundaries of southern France. In Paris there was much talk of summoning the “provençal nuns”, as they were called, to the capital, especially in the circle of which Madame Acarie was the heart and centre. Her cousin undertook to carry the plan into effect. Madeleine Lhuillier had been married to Claude de Sainte-Beuve at the age of nineteen. Soon after, in the presence of the coffin of her husband, she realized the instability of human happiness and from that moment she devoted herself exclusively to her own sanctification and to the welfare of others. Madame de Sainte-Beuve, as may be seen from her portrait, possessed a truly virile character which commanded the respect of no less a man than Henry IV himself. When the noble woman manifested to the Jesuit, Lancelot Marin, her desire to undertake some work appropriate to the needs of the times, for the renewal of the religious spirit, the latter mentioned the education of female youth which would be the most effective means of the regeneration of the family and of society. Madame Acarie also was of opinion that the best use her rich cousin could make of her wealth was to found an educational establishment for the management of which none were more suitable than the provençal Ursulines. Madame de Sainte-Beuve, having taken counsel with her confessor, the Jesuit Gontery, agreed with the suggestion and supplied the material means for a foundation in the faubourg Saint-Jacques. The establishment was inaugurated in the spring of 1608, by Françoise de Bermond and one companion who had been called to Paris. The personnel was recruited from those among the young women under Madame Acarie’s guidance who had not felt a call to Carmel.

It was also Gontery who suggested that, besides papal approval, they should also pray for the establishment of strict enclosure and the privilege of solemn vows. Madame Acarie did not agree with this suggestion for she had some misgivings about departing from the lines laid down by the foundress of the Ursulines, Angela Merici, whom she held in the highest veneration. However, Madame de Sainte-Beuve stuck to the plan of her experienced confessor, a plan which, if properly carried into effect, would put the finishing touches to the original form of the Society. That which clinched the matter was the fact that the Ursulines of Paris, whom the Jesuits Gontery and Coton consulted, decided in favour of the enclosure, though they made a few reservations, by means of which the spirit of the foundress and the particular purpose of the Society were to be secured, especially as regards the education of youth.

The handling of the question at the Curia was undertaken by De Soulfour, a nobleman who subsequently joined the French Oratory. He accompanied Cardinal La Roche­foucauld when the latter journeyed to Rome, to do homage in the name of Louis XIII, in 1610, when he also pressed for the approval of Bérulle’s foundation. His task proved by no means a light one for not a few people at the Curia were of opinion that, in view of the troubles and quarrels within the Orders, it would be better to suppress some of them altogether rather than to approve new ones. Another difficulty arose in France itself. The Ursulines of Provence opposed the new plan because they could not see how it could be made to fit in with the intentions of Angela de Merici. In consequence of these objections Françoise de Bermond had to leave Paris and return to Provence without having accomplished anything.

Meanwhile Rome had given its decision. Paul V’s enthusiasm for the object of the new Institute had silenced every objection. On June 13th, 1612, the Pope had a letter issued from Frascati to Henri de Gondi, bishop of Paris, by which he approved the house founded by Madame Acarie in Paris. The convent was to be subject to the bishop of Paris and governed in his name by three doctors of divinity. The inmates were authorized to establish strict enclosure and to take solemn vows according to the Rule of St. Augustin. A fourth vow was to be added to the usual three, viz. to devote themselves to the education of young girls as their chief work. To the Ursuline convent founded at Toulouse in 1604, Paul V likewise granted the privilege of solemn vows. A similiar permission was granted by the Pope, in 1618, to the house founded twelve years earlier at Bordeaux, by Françoise de Cazères with the support of Cardinal Sourdis; to the foundation of Dijon in 1619, and to the six communities which had been established in the archdiocese of Lyons, then governed by De Marquemont, viz. Lyons, Saint-Bonnet, Chaumont, Montbrison-en-Forest, Roanne and Bourg. The papal constitutions for the convents of Bordeaux and Lyons laid down very detailed rules for their internal administration. Especially remarkable are the wise ordinances by which the enclosure is made to harmonize with the chief object of the Institute. The pupils were forbidden to live in the same house as the nuns; in consequence, a special building had to be erected beside the church but connected with the convent whose inmates, though strictly enclosed, would nevertheless be allowed to enter this school building. In view of their duties as teachers, the Ursulines were relieved from the burden of the Canonical Office; in its place they were to recite daily the Little Office of our Lady and the entire rosary of fifteen decades.

Like the convent of Paris, the establishments of Toulouse, Bordeaux and Lyons became mother-houses of extensive Congregations in the course of 1615, 1618 and 1619, for various towns competed with each other in their eagerness to secure such excellent teachers. The Ursulines spread with extraordinary rapidity over the whole of France; thus convents arose in 1615 at Abbeville: in 1616 at Pontoise and Amiens: in 1617 at Rennes; in 1618 at Eu, Laval, Libourne, Poitiers and Saint-Macaire; in 1619 at Angers, Rouen, Châtillon-sur-Mer, Chaumont, Saumur and Langres; in 1620 at Ambert, Autun, Brive, Limoges, Macon, Moulins-en-Bourbonnais; in 1621 at Clermont in Auvergne, at Dinant in Brittany and at Gisors.

Nor did the Ursulines suffer any loss from the fact that yet another teaching Society for young girls was formed at this time, namely the Congregation of Benedictine Nuns of our Lady, founded at Bordeaux by Jeanne de Lestonnac, a niece of Montaigne. The Congregation was approved by Paul V in 1617.

The Ursulines of Spanish Burgundy differed from their French sisters chiefly in that they only took simple vows and did not accept the enclosure. The first foundation in that province was made at Dole, by Anne de Xaintonge, in 1606, after almost insuperable difficulties. Filiations were founded in 1615 at Vesoul, in 1617 at Arbois, in 1618 at Saint- Hippolyte-sur-le-Doubs, in 1619 at Besançon and at Pruntrut.

The Burgundian Ursulines were under the special care of the Jesuits. This direction and the measures of prudence prescribed by the Constitutions, especially the ordinance that they were only to go out in twos, were calculated to forestall any abuse of the liberty the Sisters enjoyed. This twofold guidance proved wholly successful. The Burgundian Ursulines devoted themselves to the religious reform of female youth with no less zeal and success than their French sisters. Thus they too helped towards that efflorescence of Christian life which distinguishes the first half of the seventeenth century. Their successes are to be attributed to the fact that the daughters of Angela Merici, in France and Burgundy, were deeply penetrated by the spirit of the foundress. This spirit was enshrined in the celebrated testament and the moving exhortation of the dying Saint. Therein Angela bequeathed to her Institute a precious inheritance of enlightened experience and motherly love. “In your striving after perfection,” she said in her last exhortation, “keep to the ordinary path which the Church points out and which has been smoothed by the feet of so many Saints who have trodden it under the guidance of the Holy Ghost. As for the new opinions in matters of religion which arise at this time, or may yet arise, leave them alone, you have nothing to do with them. But pray and get others to pray that God may not abandon His Church but may reform her according to His good pleasure and as He deems best for us and most conducive to His own glory. In these dangerous times, when so many run to their destruction, you will find no safety except at the foot of the cross. If Jesus is your guide and your teacher, you will be well taught, according to the words of the royal prophet: ‘Blessed is the man whom thou shalt instruct, 0 Lord’.”

In 1618, Paul V erected into an Order another religious body whose importance was destined to rival that of the Ursulines. This was the Salesian Sisters, or the Sisters of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. They owe their origin to the famous bishop of Geneva, Francis de Sales and to the baroness Frances de Chantal. The spirit of the Catholic restoration in the seventeenth century finds so characteristic an expression in the life and work of these two divinely enlightened souls, especially in that of the bishop of Geneva, that a fuller study is in order.

(3.)

Both as a bishop, and as a founder of an Order, Francis de Sales belongs wholly to the new age. His creation, the Order of the Sisters of the Visitation, bears the imprint, both in its purpose and its peculiar spirituality, of the Catholic restoration: it is wholly devoted to that movement in the seventeenth century, and greatly forwards the new development in the Orders of women in the spirit which the age demands.

The first beginnings of the new Order are connected with the Lenten sermons which Francis preached at Dijon in 1604. On that occasion the Saint became acquainted with the magnificent woman who was destined to become, under his direction, one of the most significant personalities of the period of the Catholic restoration. Jeanne Françoise, daughter of Bénigne Fremyot, president of the tribunal of Dijon, widow of Christophe Rabutin, baron de Chantal, was distinguished not only by the nobility of her mind and the maturity of her judgment, hers was also a nature of truly virile strength, full of determination, decision, endurance and capable of the highest aspirations as well as the tenderest emotions. Her mother died too soon to influence her formation, so she became all the more the image of her father, a nobleman in the fullest sense of the word. During the troubles of the League, when his sense of duty and justice caused him to take the part of the king, he saw his house plundered and he had to listen to the threat that unless he yielded, the head of his son, then a prisoner, would be sent to him. “It is better that the son die innocent than that the father should live in guilt,” was his answer. Moreover, he was a convinced Catholic; if Henry IV had not come back to the Church, so he told the king to his face, he would never have raised the cry: “Long live Henry IV.”  The father’s attachment to the Church grew into a passionate love in the daughter. This burning love was no doubt fanned by the troubles of the Huguenot wars which had raged even around her cradle (she was born in 1572) and the consequences of which she could observe in the ruined churches and monasteries which she saw on her journey through the heart of France, on her way to Poitou where she was to rejoin an elder sister for the purpose of completing her education. Not long after, when only sixteen, she cut short the wooing of a Huguenot with the words: “I would rather spend all my life in prison than in the house of a heretic.”

In her twentieth year, Frances gave her hand to the twenty­seven year old baron de Chantal. She was now given the opportunity to display, and still further to develop, her considerable administrative talent. The ancestral home of her husband was the manor of Bourbilly, near Semur. The estate had become utterly dilapidated, but she worked it up to such a degree of prosperity that it not only provided for the needs of her household, but also for the large-scale charities of the chatelaine. Her concern for the poor and the sick went to the extent of personal service, so that even then she earned for herself the title of “the holy baroness”.

However, her married happiness was short-lived. Baron de Chantal died in 1601, in consequence of a shooting accident. Frances felt the loss most deeply, for she was exceedingly sensitive where family affections were concerned. At a later period, when universally revered as a Saint, she would be so moved on hearing the news of the death of one of her children, as to fall into a swoon. Such was her grief at the death of her husband that she wasted away. She made a vow not to marry again, cut down her wardrobe, reduced her style of living and resolved to give herself wholly to God.

The brilliant days when the chatelaine, beloved by her husband and her servants and worshipped by the poor, issued orders and instructions, were now to be followed by seven long years which, no doubt, were of the greatest value as a preparation for her future vocation, but which in the meantime, condemned her to a state of deepest humiliation and abasement. The father of her husband summoned her to his chateau of Monthlong. She needs must obey for unless she did so, her four children would be disinherited by their grandfather. Now the old baron lived with one of the maids who, in consequence, deemed herself the mistress of the house and took special delight in making the noble lady feel her power by every manner of means. Frances might have freed herself from so humiliating a situation by just informing her father, but in the hope of being able to do something for the soul of her father-in-law, as well as by reason of a desire to daunt her own nature which was of a domineering kind, she resolved to suffer in silence.

In 1604, the bishop of Geneva preached the Lenten sermons at Dijon. President Fremyot invited his daughter to assist at them and by this means these two souls, which were predestined to carry out a joint task, first came in contact with each other. Whilst striving after perfection, Madame de Chantal had become painfully aware of the indispensable need of an experienced and learned guide; so she entrusted herself unhesitatingly to the direction of the bishop of Geneva who, she felt, had been sent to her by heaven itself. On his part Francis soon perceived that he had to deal with no ordinary woman; his esteem for her grew steadily and he realized that in her he had found the corner stone of the new Order, the foundation of which he had been studying for some years already.

The era of the Catholic revival had a problem to solve in respect also to the Orders of women. The medieval Orders of women were contemplative and their rules laid great stress on bodily austerities. Now there were many persons whose health was unequal to severe fasts and night watches, whilst others were indeed able to appreciate a life consecrated to God and spent in nursing the sick or teaching the young, but a purely contemplative life did not satisfy their need of activity. The traditional forms of the religious life catered for none of these. The great obstacle to any change in this state of affairs lay in the enclosure which seemed practically incompatible with teaching or nursing, but which the Council of Trent had re-imposed, with renewed strictness, on the Orders of women properly so called and which, as a matter of fact, public opinion demanded from all religious communities of women. The expansion of the religious life in the sixteenth century soon led to the formation of communities of women which, whilst leaning, as it were, on Orders of men still in process of development, sought to secure for themselves a share in their external activities. The first results were doubtful. St. Ignatius expressly rejected, from the first, any connection of this kind; with a community of women, which aimed at helping the Barnabites in their pastoral work, bitter experiences had been made—the community saw itself compelled to accept enclosure and thus their external activities were at an end; the Capuchin nuns, like the Theatine nuns whom we first meet in 1618, devoted themselves to contemplation from the beginning. Angela of Merici alone attempted to attract women to the service of the Church without linking them to an Order of men, but her Institute, the Ursulines, was destined to remain in an unfinished state through the whole of the sixteenth century.

A decisive turn came only in the reign of Paul V. French­speaking countries then witnessed the rise of a whole series of female Institutes of an entirely new type. The Carmelites of St. Teresa had come to France in 1604, not without the help of Francis de Sales, the then coadjutor of Geneva, and had been received with enthusiasm: but they were exclusively given to contemplation. In 1607, Paul V gave his approval to a community devoted to the education of girls, which had been founded in the previous year at Bordeaux by Jeanne Lestonnac. In 1615, Nancy got its Sisters of Christian Doctrine. After 1612, several communities of French Ursulines gradually transformed themselves from isolated associations into Orders properly so-called; in this they were followed, in 1617, by the teaching Sisters whom Pierre Fourier, in 1598, had gathered around him in Lorraine.

The activity of religious Institutes of women, which today is so wide spread and so beneficial, has its source in these new foundations. The new Order which honours Saint Francis de Sales as its founder, is an important milestone in the story of their rise and growth.

In the opening paragraphs of the Constitutions of the Order, Francis speaks with exceeding modesty of his creation. He was anxious, he declares, to create a haven of refuge for the many who, though they felt a call to the religious life, did not possess the bodily strength demanded by the exterior austerities of the existing reformed Orders. It should be possible to receive even widows and women of weak health, without, however, excluding those who are strong and in robust health. Now it is precisely this modest aim which constitutes the peculiar character of the new Order and which was to be of paramount importance in time to come. Since it was necessary greatly to restrict physical austerity, Francis insisted all the more on the training of the heart in humility, obedience, uprightness, meekness and in that which he considered the basis and stay of everything else, viz. the practice of meditation and contemplation, in favour of which he greatly curtailed the Office said in common. Francis allowed for the spirit of the time which was all for active works of charity; but unlike the majority of the Congregations of the period, his nuns were not to devote themselves to the education of youth, but to the care of the sick and the poor. And since they were to be followers of our Lady, who went into the mountains in order to render service to her cousin Elizabeth, the new Institute was given the name of “The Visitation of St. Mary For the sake of nursing the sick”. Francis was prepared to forego the enclosure which had formed part of his first plan, though this meant that there could be no longer question of an Order strictly so called, but only of a Congregation. The Sisters were to exercise their influence on the outside world by giving private retreats to ladies within their convents. For all that, the Order of the Visitation was from the first mainly contemplative and only two Sisters at a time were to devote themselves to visiting the sick. It may be that the idea of his peculiar creation first came to him when, in 1602, he witnessed in Paris the popularity of the purely contemplative Order of the Spanish Carmelites, but he saw the obstacles which would prevent the general spread of a Rule of such extraordinary strictness.

The original plan of the founder underwent a not inconsiderable alteration when the new Institute was preparing to cross the frontier of France. The archbishop of Lyons, Denis de Marquemont, would not hear of an uncloistered community of women and Francis ended by yielding to the archbishop’s pressure. On April 23rd, 1618, Paul V approved the Institute of the Visitation as a true Order. By degrees, nursing was replaced by the education of girls in the numerous schools of the Order.

During the founder’s lifetime, Madame de Chantal was his right hand and by subsequently putting the finishing touches to the internal structure of the Order, she so completed his work as fully to deserve to be called its co-foundress. She was endowed with just the qualities required if an Order of so novel a complexion was to make headway in the face of a hundred obstacles. At the beginning of 1611 Francis wrote that he was of opinion that God would make of her another St. Paula, Angela, or Catherine of Genoa; it was impossible to find such intelligence and good sense allied with greater humility; when there was question of some holy undertaking she gave proof of a courage which is not usually found in her sex. These remarkable qualities were still further enhanced by the prestige she enjoyed as a lady of the great world and by a charm of manner which had made her the centre of every social gathering at her husband’s chateau.

Madame de Chantal, then, would have possessed all the requisite qualities to begin at once a successful apostolic action in the devout circles, say, of Paris. However, for the time being, Francis left her where she was. All he did was to subject her inner life to a rigorous training. As regards the exterior, he did not demand from her, as he did not demand from anyone else, anything out of the ordinary, or anything that might have annoyed those around her; on the contrary, he bade her strive daily to show greater humility and meekness towards her father and her father-in-law. Within her own heart she was to avoid all haste, sadness and timidity, as well as everything forced or violent. But she was to strive with all her strength to give herself wholly to God; for whatever is not of God, is nothing, or worse than nothing. Without allowing herself to be perturbed by trials and temptations and without caring whether or no she experienced any delight in serving God, let her do all things for love of God, and deny herself at all times amid the thousand opportunities which daily life creates. From the very first Francis took this matter of self-denial very seriously. Owing to her great love for her husband, Madame de Chantal could scarcely think of the unfortunate nobleman who had been the innocent cause of his death, without an upheaval of her whole interior, and without the horror she had been through at the time of the accident, crushing her heart afresh. An emotion of this kind could hardly be accounted a fault; assuredly it was no more than a natural revulsion over which the will had no control and which was, accordingly, quite blameless. For all that, Francis never ceased to bring pressure to bear upon her until the time came, five years later, when she felt able to make up her mind not only to take up friendly relations with that gentleman, but even to act as godmother to his child. Francis even took advantage of his last meeting with the greatest of his disciples to demand a heavy sacrifice from her. She had not seen her spiritual father for three years so that she naturally longed to consult him on the state of her soul. Francis forbade her to utter a word on the subject—he would only let her speak of business matters. Never, perhaps, did a soul acquire a more virile character as a result of the guidance of a director, than Madame de Chantal did at the hands of the gentle Saint of Geneva.

In 1617, when he deemed his willing pupil sufficiently schooled, Francis discussed with her the plan of his new Order. After providing for the education of her children, Madame de Chantal, with five companions, took possession, on June 6th, 1610, of the first small convent of the Visitation, at Annecy. The new Institute speedily assumed vast proportions. At the time of the founder’s death, in 1621, the Order counted about thirteen establishments, and about eighty at the time of the death of Madame de Chantal, in 1641. The reputation for holiness which clung to the foundress no less than to Francis de Sales, contributed not a little to this amazing success. Even before Frances’ death, her arrival in a town was hailed as an outstanding event: people cut off pieces from her dress in order to keep them as relics.

In the course of the seventeenth century the new Order recruited a considerable number of members from the ranks of the French nobility and, owing to its relations with the highest circles of society, it found itself in a position to exercise upon it no small influence as regards religion. St. Francis’ original plan, namely, that of establishing an Institute without either enclosure or solemn vows, was taken up, at a later date, by St. Vincent de Paul, except that he made the work of nursing the sick the real scope of his Society, whereas in Francis’ scheme it was only a secondary point. On one occasion Vincent de Paul went so far as to call his foundation “Madame de Chantal’s Heritage”. After the death of the bishop of Geneva, Vincent had some dealings with her. All the more recent nursing and teaching Orders of women found a prototype in the Constitutions and the Rule of the Visitation in which a man of Francis de Sales’ authority lucidly describes the true nature of a perfect Christian life and shows the way that leads to the heights even without extraordinary austerities. If the constitution of his Order show Francis de Sales as a teacher of religious communities, his other writings make of him a master of asceticism, revered as such by the whole Catholic world. True, his ascetical writings are not his only ones, nor his first. He began as a controversialist, though he did not at first intend for publication the loose sheets in which he discussed various controverted points. Subsequently there came a larger work, on the veneration due to the crucifix, which was also aimed at the Protestants. It was only after his visit to Paris, in 1602, that the Saint took the first step in a field in which he was to reap so rich a harvest. Attracted by his preaching, many persons in the devout circles in Paris, sought his advice and put themselves under his guidance. They were all people in the world. Now Francis soon discovered that there existed no books for the guidance of just such people. He began, therefore, to set down in writing explanations of various points of the spiritual life and these were passed from hand to hand. He also replied by letter to the numerous questions that were put to him. By degrees this correspondence assumed unlooked for dimensions; according to his servant Favre there were few days on which he had not from twenty to twenty-five letters to seal, and we even learn that on a single morning as many as forty or even fifty letters would be lying on his table, all ready for dispatch. It goes without saying that in these letters Francis could not attend to mere style; they had to be rapidly jotted down, at odd moments, whilst “a whole world of quite different affairs”, as he himself said, claimed his attention. For all that, there is in these letters, of which many have been preserved, not a trace of haste or carelessness, a fact which proves that the writer is always perfectly master of himself, is always ready, without long deliberation, to draw from the rich store of his knowledge and experience the advice which the situation demands.

When a great mass of counsels and directions had thus accumulated, Francis, at Easter of the year 1607, set himself the task of putting together in a volume all that was more important. This he did, in the first instance, for the benefit of his kinswoman, Madame de Charmoisy. By the summer of 1608, the work was done. The Rector of the Jesuit College of Chambery, Jean Fourier, pressed him to have it printed. Such was the origin of the famous Introduction to a Devout Life which obtained a diffusion and an importance in the field of ascetical literature only equalled by the Imitation of Christ. Francis himself wrote, in 1620, that the little book had been found very helpful in France, Flanders and England and that the French text had been published more than forty times in various places. By 1656, there existed seventeen translations and today there is even a Chinese and an Armenian one. There was not a house of the more cultivated classes, even in Protestant Geneva, in which the little book was not to be found. Marie de Medici sent a copy, encrusted with precious stones, to James I. How widely the Introduction was disseminated in England appears from the fact that, with a view to removing a suspicion that he had leanings towards the Catholic religion, Charles I issued a decree ordering all copies of the book to be seized and burnt. Nevertheless the work retained its popularity with Anglicans.

The ascetical principles of the Introduction are, of course, nothing new. In the course of his exposition Francis frequently appeals to the acknowledged masters of Catholic theology; in particular the link with the Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola—which Francis made on several occasions even as a bishop—appears very clearly. What is new is his teaching that these ideals may be realized in the lives of people in the world, amid the rush and noise of the daily task, and in every condition or calling, whereas the existing ascetical writings were intended, for the most part or even exclusively, for persons in religion.

The principles laid down by Francis in his Introduction as well as in his spiritual letters are the same as those on which he based his guidance of Madame de Chantal. In order to live wholly for God there is no need to do anything extraordinary or singular; holiness of life consists in the love of God under the impulse of which we do that which is good, fervently, frequently, and readily. Now the love of God consists in doing everything for God, not even excepting such things as eating and drinking. Hence Christian perfection is compatible with every state of life. Francis demands that everybody should be made to feel its charm and attractiveness; the poor should feel its power by being given more generous alms, the home because it is better looked after, the husband because he receives more loving attention. Where devotion is concerned, pleasant feelings are of no account, it will be all the more solid the less we live according to our personal likes and tastes; and in general we should go forward on the path traced out for us by God without indulging in trivial subtleties, generously and large-heartedly, though with all humility, meekness and interior recollection.

A second ascetical volume, The Treatise on The Love of God, completes the instruction of Philotea. In this new treatise he addresses the soul by the name of Theotimus, lest people should think that he only wrote for women. The book owes its origin to the conferences he gave to the Sisters of the Visitation; it is, therefore, addressed to more advanced souls; it even touches on mysticism, though only lightly. For the rest, after some introductory discussion of psychological principles, the book explains the origin and growth of the love of God; how it may be hindered, and what are its symptoms, qualities, advantages and prerogatives.

The significance of these ascetical writings10 partly lies in the fact that they were a powerful antidote to the influence which Calvinism might have exercised on Catholics. Basing himself on laws and punishments, Calvin demanded, with appalling rigour, an external moral correctness to which even the lawful aspirations of the heart had to be sacrificed. On the other hand, he had nothing to offer by way of compensation, for in his view these sacrifices have no value in the sight of God, nor have they power to render man intrinsically better since, according to him, grace does not heal man’s essential corruption; all it can do is to cover it up. As against this rigorism, Francis condemns nothing that is naturally good and noble, provided it is sanctified by an interior intention. What he stresses before all else is the discipline of the heart, and as a reward of constant self-denial he promises us a true interior transformation, by which we draw ever nearer to God in this life, only to possess Him in a far superior manner in the next. Calvin crushes man, drives him to despair and ends by stifling in him any desire for ethical improvement. Francis raises him up, gives him courage and opens the road to the heights. The contrast is unconscious, but it is there. In another respect there exists a further unintentional contrast between the two men. Calvin’s chief work is concerned with the doctrine of faith; in the most detailed of all his writings Francis treats of charity. Calvin achieved success, in great part, because he published his principal work in the vernacular. Francis imitated him in this; in his treatise on charity he too discusses a theological subject in a French of such purity and a language of such grace and sweetness that his place in French literature is assured for all time.

Francis was so safe a guide in the ways of the spiritual life because of the width and precision of his own theological knowledge. Cardinal Du Perron who, with Bellarmine and Stapleton, was the most celebrated controversialist of his time, declared that Francis de Sales was the most learned theologian of the century. Bellarmine too entertained the highest esteem for the learning of the bishop of Geneva. For years the controversy about grace between the Dominicans and the Jesuits had dragged on in Rome without leading to any result. Paul V sought Francis’ advice as to the attitude he ought to adopt in the matter. He passed on the reply of the bishop of Geneva to the Congregation concerned and when the Pope finally came to a decision, it was on the lines suggested by him.

In the writings of the great guide of souls, theological knowledge allies itself with the result of experience gained by contact with souls. When we read him we feel that we are face to face with real life. What Francis says is not the laboured result of study; the reader feels that on every page he answers difficulties which were really felt by live men and women and that his solutions have stood the test of experience.

In the teaching of the bishop of Geneva, the Catholic Church recognizes her own teaching. At the Vatican Council 452 authorized spokesmen of the Catholic universe moved that he should be given the highest title that a theologian can receive; that is, that he should be claimed a Doctor of the Church. Pius IV complied with the request.

(4.)

THE NETERLANDS

During the reign of Paul V the Catholic Church experienced in the Spanish Netherlands an efflorescence similar to that which was taking place in France. In those parts the work of restoration and reform, initiated under Sixtus V, had made considerable progress during the pontificate of Clement VIII, thanks to the zeal of the bishops, the regent, archduke Albert, the nuncios and the Jesuits. It was to be Paul V’s good fortune to witness the happy consummation of their combined efforts.

The Holy See was in receipt of regular and accurate information concerning ecclesiastical affairs of the Spanish Catholic Netherlands through the nuncio in Brussels as well as through the legation which the archducal government maintained in Rome from 1600. The nuncio Frangipani, whose arduous labours had been rewarded in September, 1605, with his nomination to the archiepiscopal see of Taranto, was naturally anxious, after so prolonged a sojourn abroad, to devote himself at long last to his diocese. However, archduke Albert, who held Frangipani in high esteem, took steps in Rome with a view to retaining him at Brussels, hence a whole year elapsed before Paul V yielded to the entreaties of Frangipani. He was succeeded by the Neapolitan Decio Carafa, a sincerely devout man. In his Instruction, dated July 2nd, 1605, the preservation of the Catholic religion, the liberty of the Church and the maintenance of friendly relations with the regents, Albert and Isabella, are singled out as the objectives which he was at all times to aim at.

As regards the religious situation in the Spanish Netherlands, the Instruction remarks that, thanks to the watchfulness of the bishops and the Catholic spirit both of the population and the regents, the future looked most hopeful, notwithstanding that the war with the rebellious provinces was not yet at an end. It must be the nuncio’s immediate task to repair the damage inflicted by the war, to restore the destroyed churches, to reform the clergy, more particularly the ancient Orders which were in great need of reform, to establish seminaries and, lastly, to assist the persecuted Catholics of England and Holland.

As early as May, 1607, Carafa was transferred to the Spanish nunciature, but on June 5th, 1607, his successor, Guido Bentivoglio, received similar instructions. Even before his arrival, events showed that Paul V’s reliance on the bishops of the Netherlands was fully justified, for in June, 1607, the splendid archbishop of Malines, Matthias van den Hove, convened a provincial council in his metropolitan city, and this meeting was subsequently followed by a number of diocesan synods. The purpose of all these assemblies was the full and universal execution of the reform decrees of the Council of Trent; their observance was assured by the fact that the government gave to the greater number of them force of law. The synod of Malines passed an excellent resolution with regard to the religious teaching of children. Instead of the catechism of Canisius, which was chiefly intended to meet the situation in Germany and which had been in exclusive use until then, a new catechism was to be introduced and adapted to the conditions prevailing in the Spanish Netherlands. The new catechism, whose author was the Jesuit Louis Makeblyde, was published at Antwerp in 1609. Charles Borremeo had been the first to institute “Sunday schools”, which were to be held in every parish for the benefit of the children who were at work all the week. Similar classes were now extended to the Spanish Netherlands. Archduke Albert and his wife gave their support to this most beneficial work in an edict of 1608, commanding all civil officials to assist the bishops in forwarding the movement. A synod, held at Antwerp in 1610, made it an obligation for all children between six and fifteen years of age to attend these instructions. Though conflicts between the spiritual and secular powers were not wanting, there was nevertheless complete agreement on essentials. Perfect co-operation obtained where there was question of eliminating the effects of Protestantism and the regeneration of the ecclesiastical and moral life.

One of the most important incidents of Bentivoglio’s nunciature was the conclusion, on April 9th, 1609, of a twelve years’ truce between archduke Albert and the seditious provinces. Each side now sought to profit by the re-establishment of communications between North and South. The Dutch Calvinists started a fresh propaganda in Flanders and Brabant. However, this drawback was more than counter­balanced by the possibilities for the restoration of orderly ecclesiastical conditions which the cessation of hostilities now offered. It is no exaggeration to say that the tranquillity which followed the armistice of 1609 was a decisive factor in the revival of Catholicism in the Spanish Netherlands. Year by year the Church made immense progress. The churches and monasteries which had been destroyed were rebuilt, and those that had escaped damage were given fresh artistic beauty, in keeping with the taste of the period; above all, and this was of incomparably greater importance, in every sphere of life an intensive religious renewal was set in motion. A number of diocesan synods were held, as in 1609 at Malines, Ghent and Ypres, in 1610 at Antwerp, in 1612 at Hertogenbosch, in 1617 at Cambrai. These assemblies did much for the reform of the secular and regular clergy and for the religious instruction of the people.

Paul V had a big share in this revival inasmuch as his nuncios concurred energetically with all that was being done. Moreover, thanks to the obligation which Sixtus V had laid on all bishops to send in regular reports, the Holy See was in a position to exercise an effective watchfulness over ecclesiastical affairs. The nuncios, above all the shrewd Bentivoglio, were indefatigable. Before all else, they saw to it that only men worthy of the office were appointed to episcopal Sees. In this respect the Catholic restoration benefited enormously by the excellent way in which the secular power used the right of nomination which had been conceded to it at the time of the erection of the new dioceses. When we look into the history of the various dioceses of the Spanish Netherlands, we meet everywhere with none but devoted and conscientious men who never ceased to labour, with the utmost zeal, for the improvement of ecclesiastical conditions. Besides the archbishop of Malines, Matthias van den Hove, who has already been mentioned, the nuncios single out Jean Richardot who died in 1614 as archbishop of Cambrai, Jean Lemire of Antwerp, Gisbert Mais of Hertogenbosch, and Denis Christophori of Bruges. In the diocese of Liege, whose bishops ranked as princes, Paul V gave strong support to the reforming activity of bishops Ernest and Ferdinand, both scions of the House of Bavaria.

The shrewd Guido Bentivoglio, during the eight years (1607-1615) in which he held the Brussels nunciature, became so acclimatized there that when he was recalled he remarked that he had become half a Fleming. He recorded his observations and experiences in a celebrated report in which he also draws an interesting picture of the state of the Church. In compliance with the intentions of Paul V he paid great attention to the diocesan seminaries whose organization had been either impeded or completely destroyed in consequence of the disturbed state of the country. The establishment of an institution of this kind in every diocese, which the Council of Trent demanded, met with peculiar difficulties in Spanish Flanders inasmuch as, with the exception of Cambrai, Tournai and Arras, all the other dioceses had but slender revenues. But here also the impetus given by the Provincial Council of Malines in 1607, and by the diocesan synods, brought about a gratifying change. In the dioceses of Bruges and Ypres, Bentivoglio observes, the unity of faith had been completely restored though there were still some hidden Calvinists. The towns of Hertogenbosch and Roermond were wholly Catholic though not the dioceses of the same name. The city of Malines bore an exclusively Catholic stamp, but the same could not be said of Brussels. The bulk of the population of the dioceses of Cambrai, Arras, St. Omer and Valenciennes remained staunchly loyal to the ancient Church. Traces of Calvinism still lingered at Tournai and Valenciennes, but both the ecclesiastical and the secular authorities took every precaution with a view to preventing the religious innovators from showing themselves in public.

To the secular clergy of the Spanish Netherlands Bentivoglio gives a good character. He complains of a shortage of priests in Brabant, Flanders, and Gelder, a fact in part explained by the circumstance that in those districts only Flemish-speaking priests could be employed. The French language predominated in the other provinces so that the various dioceses were in a position to lend help to one another. Moreover the religious cleavage between the southern and the northern provinces was not along the racial one between the low-German Flemings and the Gallicized Walloons.

The university of Douai constituted the intellectual centre of the Walloon districts, whilst that of Louvain served the Flemish portion of the people. Bentivoglio notes with satisfaction that the spirit of both universities was strictly Catholic and that the decrees of the Council of Trent were scrupulously observed. The trouble stirred up at Louvain by Baius seemed at an end. The new constitution which the government and Paul V had given to the university in 1617, was meant to safeguard it against the infiltration of religious innovations. Great lustre was shed upon the university of Louvain at that time by the famous antiquarian Justus Lipsius who, in 1590, unexpectedly resigned his chair at Leiden in order to return to the bosom of the Catholic Church. The university of Douai, which in 1598, had lost the controversialist Thomas Stapleton whom Clement VIII had deservedly held in high esteem, possessed in the exegetist William Estius (died 1613) and in Francis Sylvius who succeeded him, scholars of the highest repute.

As regards the secular clergy, Bentivoglio finds that, thanks to the zeal of the bishops, the reform decrees of the Council of Trent had been carried into effect throughout Spanish Flanders. The parochial clergy, he writes, carry out their duties so conscientiously that there is little to be desired. It was otherwise with the regular clergy. Bentivoglio complains in particular that the enclosure was not being enforced in abbeys situated in rural districts. If scandals occurred but seldom, the fact was to be ascribed to the high morality of the people; with some races a naturally sound disposition yields better results than the sternest laws.

Bentivoglio was satisfied with the state of discipline among the Dominicans and the Franciscans Observants. Truly exemplary were the newly reformed Orders, such as the Recollects, introduced under Clement VIII, the discalced Carmelites whom the archducal pair had summoned from Italy, the Ursulines, and lastly, the Capuchins and the Jesuits. “These two Orders,” Bentivoglio writes, “have been received in all the larger towns and everywhere they do an immense amount of good.”

 The rapid spread of the Capuchins, as well as racial contrasts, necessitated the partition of the Province of the Netherlands into a Flemish and a Walloon one. The matter had been discussed already in 1612, and on September 15th, 1615, Paul V granted the necessary powers. Père Honoré, of Paris, carried out the measure in 1616. To the Flemish Province were assigned the Convents of Antwerp, Alost, Oudenaarde, Brussels, Bruges, Bergues, Courtrai, Furnes, Ghent, Ypres, Louvain, Malines, Menin, Ostend, Hertogenbosch, Termond, Maastricht, and St. Tron. The Walloon Province consisted of the monasteries at Aires, Armentieres, Ath, Arras, St. Omer, Bethune, Cambrai, Conde, Dinant, Douai, Enghien, Huy, Lille, Liege, Maubeuge, Malmedy, Mons, Namur, Orchies, Soignies, Tournai and Valenciennes. In the Netherlands the Capuchins, who in 1616 admitted into their Order a member of the illustrious house of Arenberg, devoted themselves, in addition to pastoral work, to visiting prisoners, nursing the sick, caring for the insane, nay, in some towns they even undertook works of public utility such as the organization of fire brigades.

The progress which the Society of Jesus had made in the Spanish Netherlands during the pontificate of Clement VIII continued during that of Paul V. In view of the ever-growing number of colleges and new members, the General of the Society, Aquaviva, judged it expedient to divide the Province of the Netherlands into two. Very wisely this partition was based on the language frontier. The Flemish-speaking district of the Netherlands and the principality of Liege constituted the Flandro-Belgian Province, whilst the Franco-Belgian Province included the Walloon country to which were likewise added the German parts of Luxemburg. In 1616, the former Province numbered fourteen houses (viz. Antwerp, Bruges, Brussels, Courtrai, Ghent, Ypres, Louvain, Lier, Malines, Roermond, Hertogenbosch, Maastricht, Bergues and Cassel), and the latter fifteen (viz. Douai, St. Omer, Tournai, Liege, Lille, Mons, Valenciennes, Arras, Cambrai, Luxemburg, Namur, Dinant, Hesdin, Aire and Huy). In 1616 the personnel of the Flandro-Belgian Province consisted of 617 members and that of Franco-Belgian of 653. The principal house of the latter was at Douai where there was likewise a Scottish seminary. The houses of probation were at Tournai and Liege. The Flandro-Belgian Province had a college at Louvain as well as a seminary for English students. The houses of probation were at Malines and Lier. In September, 1616, John Berchmans entered at Malines. Together with Stanislaus Kostka and Aloysius Gonzaga, he constitutes the Society’s trinity of holy youths. In 1607, a professed house was added to the college of Antwerp. Eight years later a beginning was made with the erection of a new church which was destined to become a magnificent and much-admired building. It consists of three aisles of equal height, in the baroque style, though that particular style has not been systematically followed in its construction. The opinion which prevailed at one time, that the Jesuits made baroque popular because it seemed to them the only ecclesiastical style, is as erroneous as the notion that baroque was a product of the reform movement within the Church. The new art would have made headway independently of the movement in question. The Church at no time stood in the way of the changing fashion in the world of arts, hence she would certainly not have impeded the triumphant progress of baroque.1 Although the Jesuits have indeed erected some important buildings in that style, they were very far from considering it the only one suitable for ecclesiastical edifices. Hence in the churches they erected they everywhere kept to the style of the country, viz. late Gothic, both in western Germany (Munster, Coblenz, Cologne, Molsheim) and in the Spanish Netherlands. This is only another proof of the Society’s power of adaptability to, and regard for, national peculiarities and historical tradition in all things in which no fundamental principle of the Order was at stake. The Jesuits had no other aim than to build churches that were both beautiful and devotional. But for all their respect for what was indigenous and long-established, they did not reject the claims of the new; the result frequently was a mixture of styles. An accurate examination of existing monuments of the period shows that the style of the Jesuit churches is the one that prevailed at the time in the particular country. Where people built in the Gothic style, they built in Gothic and where the Renaissance or baroque prevailed, they too used the new style.

If in questions of art the authorities allowed the fullest freedom, there was uniformity of method and purpose in all that concerned the cure of souls, the missions and the education of youth. In Spanish Flanders no less than in other countries, the Jesuits devoted themselves with such zeal to the formation of the rising generation, that they were everywhere looked upon as model teachers. Even Protestants admitted the fact. Almost the whole of the nobility and the well-to-do middle classes sent their sons to the schools of the Jesuits, in the firm conviction that “nowhere were they more likely to acquire the literary equipment necessary to a man moving in polite society and one desirous to practise the liberal arts”. And since schools were gratuitous, talented but destitute youths were also able to get their education there. In every college there existed at least four sodalities of our Lady, one for the pupils, a second for the youths, a third for men, and a fourth for young children. These sodalities, or “Guilds” as they were called in Belgium, included an immense number of members who devoted themselves to the most diverse works of mercy; the poor, the sick, the prisoners and the unlearned—all received innumerable tokens of their charity.

As pastors of souls the Jesuits attached supreme importance to preaching and the frequent reception of the sacraments. It is related that at the beginning of the seventeenth century, in the Flandro-Belgian Province, no less than 15,206 sermons were delivered in the course of a single year. The Jesuits showed particular zeal in the teaching of the catechism throughout the Netherlands. This apostolate, which Paul V did all he could to encourage, was of the simplest kind. They strove to impress the usual prayers and the fundamental truths of the Church as deeply as possible on the children’s minds. Teaching was based on the catechism of Canisius which Francis Coster had translated in 1566. In order to arouse interest there were competitions, prizes, theatrical representations and questions and answers set to music and sung in chorus. This method, which had already received the encomiums of Clement VIII, yielded excellent results and the religious and secular authorities encouraged and supported it, with the result that it spread ever more and more. Some colleges conducted as many as thirty or forty children’s classes. The confraternity of St. Charles Borromeo, founded in Antwerp in 1618, by one of the Fathers, was soon copied in a great number of towns.

The southern districts of the Netherlands were still exposed to the danger of Calvinist propaganda, hence Paul V learnt with the greatest joy of the establishment of Jesuit colleges near the frontier. This undertaking was due to the initiative of the nuncio. For the purpose of stemming the flood of Calvinist writings which attacked the Catholic faith in every possible way, Cardinal Bellarmine created a fund the revenue of which was to be applied to the training and supporting of controversialists. Among the scholars who met the Calvinist attack with counter-attack, the Jesuits were in the foremost rank. It is enough to mention Francis Coster (d. 1619), Leonard Lessius (d. 1623), Thomas Saillius (d. 1623), Martin Becanus (d. 1624), Charles Scribianus (d. 1629), Hermann Hugo (d. 1629), Herbert Rosweidus (d. 1629). Together with them, the Franciscan Matthiew Hauzeur also greatly distinguished himself as a controversialist.

The activities of the new Orders as well as the whole movement of religious reaction found strong supporters in the regents Albert and Isabella. By the strength of their faith and the purity of their lives these princes set their subjects a splendid example. The liberality with which they supported the Church could not have been surpassed. Churches, monasteries, seminaries, charitable institutions were either founded, enlarged, adorned or enriched by them. Innumerable are the works of religious art of which they were the originators. Miräus reckons at 300 the number of the churches which were erected under the auspices and by order of the archducal pair. The numerous yellow and red-tinted baroque churches which are so distinctive a feature of the physiognomy of many Belgian towns, owe their origin to this period. On his return from Rome, 1604, the official architect of the archduke, Wenceslaus Coeberger, built the churches of the Carmelites and the Augustinians in Brussels. In the former, in 1606, the archduke and archduchess had themselves solemnly invested with the scapular. In 1609, Coeberger also built the sanctuary of Montaigu to which Albert and Isabella were wont to withdraw every year for the purpose of making the spiritual exercises for the space of nine days. There they also founded the Rotonda, a place of pilgrimage to this day. In 1609 the office and title of court painter was bestowed on a man of genius, Peter Paul Rubens, who had then just returned from Italy.

One of the archduke Albert’s most anxious cares was to make of the churches of his domains worthy shrines for the relics which had escaped the destruction of the churches by the Protestants of Holland and Germany. When the reliquary of St. Albert arrived, the archduke carried it on his own shoulders through the streets of Mons to the church of the Carmelite nuns. Every year, on Maundy Thursday, the archducal pair washed the feet of the poor in the chapel of the palace.

The example of the regents made a powerful impression on the people. All classes were eager to take part in the public processions and in the exercises prescribed for gaining the Indulgences which Paul V granted repeatedly. Numerous confraternities arose, devotion to the Holy Eucharist grew steadily, as well as devotion to the Mother of God, whose sanctuaries were annually visited by thousands of pilgrims. The most famous among these pilgrimages were those of Hal and Montaigu. Justus Lipsius, a man of immense learning, was so impressed by the sight of the ex-votos in the sanctuary of Hal, which bear witness to the power and the goodness of the Mother of God, that he set himself the task of writing the story of this pilgrimage in classical Latin. This work has been many times reprinted and translated into several languages, German being among them. As the great scholar lay dying in 1606, he asked that the Litany of Loreto be read to him and he declared that his greatest comfort was that he had honoured Mary from the days of his childhood. Like Lipsius, other personages of intellectual or social standing were members of the sodality of our Lady. In the registers of these sodalities, which have come down to us, we find, besides the names of bishops, abbots and nuncios, those of the leading figures of the nobility and the highest authorities, as well as those of artists such as David Teniers, Van Dyck and Rubens. How powerfully the religious revival had got hold of all classes is shown by the fact that a number of devout young women of the burgher families banded themselves together for the purpose of attending to the tidiness and decoration of the churches, teaching the catechism, nursing the sick and burying the dead. The life of people in the world became increasingly impregnated with “that active yet tender piety”, the accomplished expression of which is seen in the classical book of St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to a Devout Life.

It must have been a great comfort to Paul V. to see how in Spain and Italy and now across the Alps also, in the southern and eastern provinces of the Netherlands, the ancient faith was striking ever deeper roots in the life and thought of the people. If at a later period it was possible to say that “to be a Catholic is part of the Belgian character”, the foundations of such a state of things were being laid during those years. Paul V’s keenness for the furthering and strengthening of the religious restoration in the Spanish Netherlands is clearly seen in the Instructions issued to Bentivoglio’s successors. All were instructed to co-operate with the bishops for the elimination of certain abuses which still lingered, such as, especially, the non-observance of the enclosure in monasteries; to prevent the infiltration of Protestant elements, to defend the rights of the Church, to enforce the Tridentine decrees, in a word, to consolidate the work of the reform by every means in their power. The reports of the nuncios as well as other sources bear witness both to the zeal and to the success with which the representatives of the Holy See everywhere promoted the work of the Catholic restoration. In this respect both Bentivoglio and his successor, Gesualdo, deserved well of the Church.

The religious revival in those parts of the Netherlands which had remained Catholic found expression in the arts also. Architecture, painting and sculpture experienced a new efflorescence, in fact their splendour throws lustre upon the whole epoch. The magnificent churches which arose at that time at Antwerp, Bruges, Brussels, Namur, Ghent and Malines call forth admiration even today; they display especially a marvellous wealth of decoration, consisting chiefly in marble altars, choir stalls, pulpits, but above all in paintings, for then, as in the fifteenth century, the most eminent artists devoted themselves to painting. To the renewed vigour of ecclesiastical life is due the abundance of commissions given to artists; the wealthy corporations, the ever-growing religious confraternities, the Orders, the Jesuits above all others, but likewise the Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians and Carmelites, deemed it a point of honour as well as an indispensable means by which to fan the piety of the people, to provide the house of God with as rich a decoration as possible. Thus the old cathedrals, which had been ravaged by the iconoclasts, as well as the enormous number of new churches built in the peculiar Belgian baroque style, were restored and furnished in most splendid fashion.

However, the greatest as well as the most influential among the artists who put their talent at the service of the Church, Peter Paul Rubens, was not an exclusively religious painter. With astonishing versatility he frequently took his subjects from classical mythology, from history, or himself created allegorico-historical compositions, portraits, genre-paintings, pictures of animals and landscapes. Nevertheless, the number of his religious paintings is extremely great. Rubens was a convinced and practising Catholic. Every morning he heard Mass, before starting work, and his private life was blameless. For all that, from an exaggerated passion for realism, and out of excessive consideration for the wishes of many clients who demanded grossly sensuous representations, in many of his pictures Rubens overstepped those laws of morality which apply also to profane art. Though we pay full homage to his wonderful achievement, it is beyond dispute that in a number of his pictures, the theme of which is taken from the religious sphere, the spiritual or supernatural character is not sufficiently stressed. However frequently he may have painted the Madonna, he never succeeded in doing justice to the deep religious significance of the Mother of God. In like manner many of his figures of Saints fail to come up to what we are entitled to expect from a church painting: they lack all higher inspiration.

In the same way in his many representations of the Last Judgment, the religious conception and tone are very much in the background. Like Michelangelo, he conceives the subject exclusively as a penal judgment. He feels himself wholly in his element when he can depict the divine vengeance in the most terrible and awe-inspiring colours. In his picture Cast into Hell, which, technically, is of the highest order, the reprobate are, as it were, caught in a whirlwind; they are cast into the dark furnace of the bottomless pit, tumbling head over heels as they fall, screaming, vainly clutching at the empty air. The same theme receives a less violent, or more orderly and academic treatment, in the so-called Great Last Judgment for which a German admirer of the master, the Count Palatine of Neuburg, Wolfgang Wilhelm, gave Rubens a commission in the year 1615. Here also there is a mass movement of naked bodies: on the left the ponderous bodies eddy upwards, towards heaven; on the right they fall in tangled knots into hell, where the devil is seen dragging two women into the pit. As in all Rubens’ representations of the Last Judgment, here also the unclothed bodies of gross, massive men and women, on which a strong light throws a hard glare, appear for the most part in the foreground and in unseemly attitudes. The impression made by the gigantic canvas commissioned by the Count Palatine of Neuburg, is all the more unpleasant as the figures are above life size. How greatly the views of that period differed from our own, as regards the boundaries of what is objectionable on moral grounds, may be gathered from the fact that the painting was intended for the high altar of the Jesuit church at Neuburg, on the Danube. Only in 1653 was it replaced, “as somewhat unsuitable for the house of God”, by another painting, and in 1691 it was taken to Dusseldorf from whence it subsequently went to Munich.

The taste of the period may excuse the transgressions of the boundaries of seemliness in Rubens’ scenes of martyrdom in which his passion for realism indulges in an orgy of violence. The maximum of horror of this kind is reached in a picture destined for the high altar of the Jesuit church at Ghent—The Martyrdom of St. Lievin, whose excised tongue is held out to a dog which snaps at it. The Crucifixion of St. Peter in St. Peter’s church, at Cologne, also displays the most horrible realism. In the scene of the martyrdom of St. Lievin the realism is softened by the vision of angels proclaiming from on high the Saint’s triumph in heaven.

Numerous as are the works of the greatest master of northern baroque painting which fail to comply with the requirements of an altar-piece, many more are the creations of his brush to which even the most exacting criticism cannot deny a religious character. His Christ and the Four Penitent Sinners is a deeply felt piece of work, and his Apostles in the Prado Museum of Madrid and his Ambrose forbidding the blood-stained emperor Theodosius to enter the door of the basilica, are imposing figures; and who can behold without emotion his St. Francis all aflame with love as he worships Christ crucified? A genuinely religious atmosphere likewise breathes in the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Carrying of the Cross, and in a picture destined for the church of the Carmelite nuns of Antwerp, representing St. Teresa prostrate at the feet of Christ and pleading for the release of the Souls in Purgatory which angels are already in the act of assisting out of the flames.

Among the three paintings which Rubens executed for the church of the Franciscans at Antwerp, The Last Communion of St. Francis of Assissi is distinguished not only by the glow of its colouring but likewise by a deeply religious conception. In this picture the Flemish master rivals his Italian contemporaries Agostino Caracci and Domenichino who also treated the same theme. The feeling of unbounded faith has rarely been expressed so perfectly, so movingly and so intimately as it is here depicted by Rubens in the attitude of the Saint bowing before the Most Holy Sacrament and in that of his brethren eagerly crowding round him.

Rubens took a prominent part in the decoration of the new church of the Jesuit professed house at Antwerp. On March 29th, 1620, he signed a contract by the terms of which he bound himself to provide the sketches for thirty-nine subjects for the vaults of the lateral aisles and the tribunes. These were to be executed by Antony van Dyck and others of his pupils. In 1718 these paintings were destroyed by fire, but three large altar-pieces painted by Rubens previous to 1620 were saved; they are The Assumption of our Lady, and the Miracles of St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier. Rubens took particular delight in labouring for the glorification of these heroes of the Catholic restoration on whom Paul V had bestowed the honours of our altars. The two paintings are among the most splendid of the master’s works. The figure of the great founder and that of his no less glorious disciple stand out powerfully and dominate the whole scene by their impressive dignity and majesty. The feeling of confidence with which the sick and others in need press round and, as it were, mob the Saints, is most happily rendered. In Ignatius the great Flemish master extols the share of the Society of Jesus in the Catholic restoration and in Xavier the powerful impulse which the new Order gave to the spread of the gospel even as far as the extreme Far East. Both pictures were intended for the high altar which they adorned in turns; by reason of the painted architectural features and the colour effects, they constitute a harmonious climax for the interior of the church.

Utterly different in character is the majestic votive picture commissioned in 1630 by the widow of archduke Albert, the Infanta Isabella, for the high altar of the church of St. James on the Coudenberg, at Brussels, a church belonging to the confraternity of the Saint of that name. Though artistically dazzling by reason of the compactness of the composition and the strong, warm tone of the colouring, this canvas does not bear comparison with the infinite charm and strength of the great altar-pieces of the Jesuit church. The dazzling splendour of form and colour destroys the religious atmosphere; religious emotion is indeed movingly depicted in the features of St. Ildephonsus who kisses, with deep emotion, the chasuble which the Mother of God presents to him, but the Madonna lacks the maidenly grace of the Queen of heaven, and as for the female figures around her, they recall far too realistically the court of the regent to create the impression of figures of Saints.

On the other hand another work executed by Rubens to a commission of the archduchess Isabella, namely his sketches for carpets destined for the adornment of the church of the Poor Clares of Madrid, is distinguished by its deeply religious character. Since St. Clare is known for her special devotion to the sacrament of the altar, the theme chosen was the glorification of this mystery. Four sketches deal with the prototypes of the Eucharist; viz. Melchisedech handing bread and wine to Abraham, the manna in the desert, the sacrifice of the Old Law and Elias fed by an angel. Four other sketches exhibit the witnesses and protagonists of the Catholic teaching on the Eucharist: viz. the Evangelists, the four Doctors of the Latin Church together with Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure and St. Clare, certain Popes, finally some great men both clerical and lay, especially members of the house of Habsburg. There follow four scenes of triumph which gave the picture its name. In rich and profound allegories Rubens depicts the triumph of the Eucharistic mystery over paganism, ignorance and wilful blindness and the errors of Luther and Calvin, and, lastly, the triumph of divine love in the Sacrament of the Altar. The first two allegories, which are widely known through excellent engravings, are rightly ranked among the sublimest creations of the master. The victory of the Eucharist over idolatry is symbolized by the interruption of a pagan sacrifice : a luminous angel holding a chalice and host is seen descending from heaven and his apparition troubles and terrifies the priest and his assistant as they prepare to offer sacrifice. A comparison with Raphael’s sacrifice of Lystra points to immensely heightened feeling as well as far greater technical resources.

A mighty Tantum ergo seems to resound through the Triumph of the Eucharist over Ignorance and Blindness. Led by figures symbolizing faith, hope and charity, four horses, the foremost being ridden by a genius with the insignia of the papacy, draw a magnificent triumphal chariot whose wheels crush a writhing devil whilst a pagan in fetters is being driven by the side of it. The Church sits majestically enthroned on the chariot whilst genii hover around her. The wonderful figure, over whose head an angel holds a tiara, has in both hands a monstrance from which flash dazzling rays of light. An eminent connoisseur rightly judges that, as regards artistic effect, none of the numerous allegorical representations of the Church’s glory, inspired by the period of Catholic restoration, can stand beside this triumphal picture.

These representations, in which Rubens makes a most eloquent profession of faith in the power and greatness of the mystery of mysteries, bear witness to his truly Catholic sentiments as well as to the deep piety with which he plunges into the contemplation of the Saviour’s Passion. His Pietas are most moving. The palm probably belongs to a picture destined to adorn the tomb of a merchant of Antwerp, the central panel of which shows the dead body of Christ lying on a stone bench strewn with straw. Mary looks sorrowfully towards heaven as she prepares to cover the pale countenance of her Son with a veil. John supports the body whilst Mary Magdalen looks on, trembling with emotion—“a silent, solemn lament full of tender melancholy”. The two wings show St. John the Evangelist looking upwards, towards his eagle, and Mary with her Child whose eyes, expressive of terror, are directed towards the central scene—a hint as ingenious as it is effective that even as a child the God-man foresaw His Passion.

Very characteristic of Rubens are two other pictures of his representing the lament over the dead Christ: -in one, now in Vienna, the sorrowful Mother draws a thorn from the head of her dead Son; in the other, now preserved at Antwerp, she closes His eyes dimmed by death.

Very often Rubens represents the dead Christ upon the cross, either alone or as surrounded by His lieges. He is seen alone in the much copied picture of the Antwerp Gallery. The half-open lips utter the words: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” whilst the half-closed eyes, which, by a supreme effort the dying Man has raised on high, seem to ask a similar question of heaven. The figure of the crucified of the Pinakothek of Munich also shows Him alone and forsaken on the gibbet: the pale, white body looks ghostly against the gloom of the evening sky.

The last scenes of the drama of Calvary are depicted in the famous altar pieces of Antwerp. The highly dramatic Raising of the Cross, which was subsequently transferred to the cathedral, had been painted in 1610 for the church of St. Walburge, at Antwerp. By the enormous display of energy on the part of the herculean executioners who plant their feet against the rock in order to raise the cross, the master sought to give a symbolic expression to the idea that He who was nailed to the cross bore the burden of the sins of all mankind. The meek resignation of the Saviour appears in vivid contrast with the roughness and the grim hatred of His tormentors. This incomparably forceful work of art, in which one detects the influence of the manner of Caravaggio, makes an overwhelming impression. Whilst brute force is given full play in this picture, the silent grief of our Lord’s friends finds a moving expression in another altar piece also of colossal proportions which now adorns the cathedral of Antwerp: the Descent from the Cross, completed in 1612. Two men standing on ladders lean over the cross-beam of the gibbet and so allow the dead body to slip down on a linen sheet. Below, the body is received by John, Joseph of Arimathaea, Nicodemus and the holy women. A dazzling stream of unearthly light falls on the body of the Saviour, which is the centre of the looks, feelings, thoughts and activity of those present. By the admirable compactness of his composition as well as by the happy arrangement of his groups, Rubens surpasses all his predecessors. It is easy to understand that this representation, which glows with the liveliest faith, should have set a fashion for years to come.

These stupendous works, in which Rubens created for the Netherlands the definitive form of the painted baroque altar were followed by another masterpiece of religious art, Christ on the cross between the two thieves, destined for the high altar of the church of the Recollects at Antwerp. The divine Sufferer’s head has sunk on His breast, and He has expired. The thief on His right hand is at his last gasp but looks with confidence towards heaven, whilst the legs of the other robber are being broken and he himself writhes in an agony of despair. Longinus approaches from the right in order to pierce the side of our Lord with his lance. Mary and John turn aside with a shudder whilst the Magdalen, the embodiment of deepest grief, instinctively spreads out her arms as if to ward off the stroke of the lance.

Rubens’ productiveness in the field of religious painting was emulated by his numerous pupils whom the master himself had extensively employed in his own creations. An outstanding figure in this crowd is Anton Van Dyck. Van Dyck’s artistic temperament differed widely from that of Rubens and he gives proof of a more tender, sensitive, idyllic, and at times, an almost sentimental disposition which reveals itself even in his colouring. Even more than his colouring, the conception of his subjects comes close to that of his Italian contemporaries, such as Domenichino and Reni. His art, like that of his teachers, is the fruit of the Catholic restoration. Anton Van Dyck painted religious subjects for choice, even when he worked without any special purpose and for the sheer love of painting.4 His numerous Madonnas betray deeper feeling and tenderness than those of Rubens. Like the most famous of these pictures, The Repose of the Holy Family on the Flight to Egypt, now in the picture gallery of Petrograd, his other works bear too many characteristics of genre painting to be ranked as religious pictures. Many of Van Dyck’s themes are taken from the lives of the Saints. When only twenty-two he produced a St. Martin sharing his cloak with a beggar—a perfectly mature masterpiece. Later on he repeatedly painted St. Jerome, Mary Magdalen, St. Sebastian and above all St. Francis of Assisi. However, not a few among these paintings, as for instance the St. Sebastian, of the Pinakothek of Munich, betray a certain shallowness in the conception of the theme. For the “Confraternity of the unmarried”, which the Jesuits directed at Antwerp, he painted the Blessed Hermann Joseph absorbed in prayer at the feet of the Blessed Virgin. The same gravity and the same sincerity of feeling are shown by the picture representing St. Antony contemplating the Child Jesus. As a religious painter Van Dyck is at his best in the works which have for their theme the sufferings of our Lord. His Lament for Christ in the Munich Gallery, The Arrest of Christ, in the Prado Museum at Madrid, and The Carrying of the Cross, in the church of St. Paul at Antwerp, make a profound impression on the beholder. Our Lord shedding His blood upon the cross for the salvation of mankind has been so often and so impressively painted by the master, that it is precisely the mastery of this theme which sums up his creative work in the field of religious art. Van Dyck’s representations of the crucifixion show no trace of the stormy violence of his master Rubens. He brings home to the beholder the sufferings of Christ by a different method, namely by depicting the heart­felt grief of Mary and other personages. Here, as in all his religious works, Van Dyck gives proof of great warmth and tenderness of feeling.

The most beautiful and most moving of Van Dyck’s justly famous large-scale representations of the crucifixion is that in the church of our Lady at Dendermonde. In addition to the Mother of Jesus, who looks up to the cross with unspeakable grief, Mary Magdalen and John are seen on one side, and on the other Longinus and the magnificent figure of St. Francis of Assisi holding the foot of the cross in a loving embrace. The Crucifixion in the Museum of Antwerp has been called “a miracle of feeling in colours of utmost impressiveness”. All the usual gospel personages are absent, their place being taken by St. Dominic and St. Catherine of Siena. St. Catherine is on her knees and embraces the cross and the feet of the superbly drawn Christ—“one of the most moving representations of a nun in all art.” The stone in front of the cross bears the inscription: “That the earth may be light for his father Anton Van Dyck has rolled this stone towards the cross and made a gift of it.”  The Crucifixion in the church of St. Michael, at Ghent, is another admirable composition: it represents the moment when the sponge full of vinegar and myrrh was offered to our Lord.

Van Dyck shows extraordinary skill in the expression of the soul’s anguish when, after Christ’s body has been taken down from the cross, he depicts the grief of His friends lamenting Him. Some of these scenes are remarkable works of religious art, for instance the two paintings in Paris and Munich which represent the sorrowful Mother alone with the dead body of her Son whilst two splendid angels worship Him. In the Pieta of the Antwerp Museum, painted for the church of the Beguines in which the artist desired to be buried, the varying intensity of grief of the bystanders is superbly expressed: Mary Magdalen, in tears, kisses the hand of her Lord; John turns a fixed, frightened gaze towards the dead Christ, whereas Mary, in an eloquent gesture, hints at the sea of bitterness which fills her soul at sight of her cruelly misused Child. As art, another Lament of Christ ranks even higher. From the Franciscan church at Antwerp the picture came into the museum of the town: it shows Mary leaning against the wall of the Sepulchre and holding on her lap the idealized form of her lifeless Son. In an agony of grief she spreads out both arms whilst St. John, with the forefinger of his left hand, points out to two weeping angels the wound in the left hand of Jesus.

Van Dyck is probably most inspiring when he depicts the Crucified by Himself, alone and forsaken and bleeding to death, suspended between heaven and earth. According to Bellori, Van Dyck painted a picture of this kind for his patron, Cardinal Bentivoglio. The original has been lost but the artist repeated the composition more than once. Imitators and copyists appropriated it so that it is frequently met with. Whilst one representation, now in the museum in Antwerp, depicts the moment when Jesus said, “Father, into thy hands I commend my Spirit!” another fixes the moment described in the Gospel: “There was darkness.” The whiteness of the sacred body shines with wonderful luminousness in the gloom which envelops the surrounding country. A crescent moon is seen in the sky; the parchment on which the sentence is written and the loin cloth of our Lord flutter in the wind; the countenance of the divine Sufferer, whose eyelids are stained with blood, inspires tender sympathy and reverence. “In all these pictures,” says one of the foremost students of the history of art, “religious pathos and a noble expression of grief attain astonishing heights. We have excellent things of this kind from the school of the Caracci and powerful ones from the Spanish school, but the former leave something to be desired in the colouring and the latter in the purity and finish of form, whereas Van Dyck combines all these qualities. He is, and remains, one of the princes of religious painting.” As popular and greatly admired creators of altar-pieces, Rubens and Van Dyck left their mark on the art of the Catholic Netherlands in the seventeenth century, whilst at the same time they rendered valuable service to the cause of the Catholic restoration. No one could escape the enormous impressiveness of their works. Added to preaching and catechizing, their paintings were a powerful help towards the understanding of the dogmas of the Catholic faith. The monumental creations of Rubens had power to enthral every section of the people, even those whose artistic feelings were of a more elementary kind; on the other hand, Van Dyck worked more especially for those circles which would be influenced without the same forcible appeal.

The influence which Rubens chiefly exercised by means of his altar-pieces, which sparkle with light and colour, was not confined to the Netherlands and it was soon felt by the whole of Catholic South Germany. The pupils and successors of the great Master vied with one another in their eagerness to adorn churches with rich altar-pieces, as was done in Italy and Spain. The most recent biographer of Rubens aptly remarks that this great genius was the Catholic painter par excellence not only in his own century but in the next also and well into the nineteenth century.

The sacred edifices embellished by copies or reproductions of his works must be reckoned by hundreds. And since he himself had most of his creations multiplied by excellent engravers, whom he trained himself, his influence spread even into the Romance countries. Rubens may well be called the greatest of all the painters who put their talent at the service of the Catholic restoration. With his glowing colours and the dramatic power of his compositions, he glorified the Saints of the period, Ignatius, Francis Xavier, Teresa, and proved an effective advocate of the dogmas of the ancient faith which were most fiercely attacked by the religious innovators, viz. Purgatory, the intercession of the Blessed Virgin and the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.

The enormous contrast between the Catholic and the Protestant philosophy of life and culture is strikingly brought home to the traveller in the northern parts of the Netherlands, geographically so near, and so much more richly endowed with material wealth, when he visits the sacred edifices which the Gueux stripped bare of their ancient religious ornaments. The effect of these empty churches, with their bare, whitewashed walls, is as depressing as the Calvinist doctrine of predestina­tion. Here one looks in vain for the symphonies in colour of a Rubens or the moving crucifixion scenes of a Van Dyck, which adorn the lavishly furnished, resplendent yet harmoniously coloured churches of the southern Netherlands. Protestantism drove art from the house of God; the Catholic Church lovingly protected it and gave so many commissions for works of monumental size to the great masters, that even their incredible capacity for work could hardly cope with them. How different, in consequence, was the fate of a Rubens and a Van Dyck from that of Rembrandt and Ruysdels who died in misery! The difference between Calvinist and Catholic culture is perhaps nowhere more drastically illustrated than it is by the contrast of these churches.

Though Luther did not go as far as Calvin, his teaching was nevertheless disastrous for the arts. When he rejected all material forms of worship, the veneration of the Saints and the meritoriousness of good works, “he choked the springs of ecclesiastical art in the ideal as well as in the material sense; he pronounced the death sentence of the religious picture or work of art as far as the churches are concerned, and changed the house of God into a bare, chill assembly­room. Together with alleged abuses he uprooted the whole tree on which, for many centuries, the fairest and sweetest fruits had matured, for the refreshment of millions of way­farers towards their everlasting goal, mankind’s fairest achievement rich in infinite revelations.”

CHAPTER XI.

The Gunpowder Plot and the Oath of Allegiance.—Paul V. and James I’s Plans for a Spanish Marriage.

HISTORY OF THE POPES FROM THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES