I have distinguished between demagogues and religionists, on the ground that the latter may sometimes do some good, whereas the former can scarcely, in the very nature of things, do anything but harm. But it must not be imagined that the religious exploiters of herd-intoxication are wholly guiltless. On the contrary, they have been responsible in the past for mischiefs almost as enormous as those brought upon their victims (along with the victims of those victims) by the revolutionary demagogues of our own time. In the course of the last six or seven generations, the power of religious organizations to do evil has, throughout the Western world, considerably declined. Primarily this is due to the astounding progress of applied science and the consequent demand by the masses for compensatory illusions that have an air of being positivistic rather than metaphysical. The demagogues offer such pseudo-positivistic illusions and the churches do not. As the attractiveness of the churches declines, so also does their influence, so do their wealth, their political power and, along with these, their capacity for doing evil on a large scale. Circumstances have now delivered the churchmen from certain of the temptations to which, in earlier centuries, their predecessors almost invariably succumbed. They would be well advised voluntarily to deliver themselves from such temptations as still remain. Conspicuous among these is the temptation to acquire power by pandering to men’s insatiable craving for downward self-transcendence. Deliberately to induce herd-intoxication—even if it is done in the name of religion, even if it is all supposedly “for the good” of the intoxicated—cannot be morally justified.
On the subject of horizontal self-transcendence very little need be said—not because the phenomenon is unimportant (far from it), but because it is too obvious to require analysis and of occurrence too frequent to be readily classifiable.
In order to escape from the horrors of insulated selfhood most men and women choose, most of the time, to go neither up nor down, but sideways. They identify themselves with some cause wider than their own immediate interests, but not degradingly lower and, if higher, higher only within the range of current social values. This horizontal, or nearly horizontal, self-transcendence may be into something as trivial as a hobby, or as precious as married love. It can be brought about through self-identification with any human activity, from running a business to research in nuclear physics, from composing music to collecting stamps, from campaigning for political office to educating children or studying the mating habits of birds. Horizontal self-transcendence is of the utmost importance. Without it, there would be no art, no science, no law, no philosophy, indeed no civilization. And there would also be no war, no odium theologicum or ideologicum, no systematic intolerance, no persecution. These great goods and these enormous evils are the fruits of man’s capacity for total and continuous self-identification with an idea, a feeling, a cause. How can we have the good without the evil, a high civilization without saturation bombing or the extermination of religious and political heretics? The answer is that we cannot have it so long as our self-transcendence remains merely horizontal. When we identify ourselves with an idea or a cause we are in fact worshipping something homemade, something partial and parochial, something that, however noble, is yet all too human. “Patriotism,” as a great patriot concluded on the eve of her execution by her country’s enemies, “is not enough.” Neither is socialism, nor communism, nor capitalism; neither is art, nor science, nor public order, nor any given religion or church. All these are indispensable, but none of them is enough. Civilization demands from the individual devoted self-identification with the highest of human causes. But if this self-identification with what is human is not accompanied by a conscious and consistent effort to achieve upward self-transcendence into the universal life of the Spirit, the goods achieved will always be mingled with counterbalancing evils. “We make,” wrote Pascal, “an idol of truth itself; for truth without charity is not God, but His image and idol, which we must neither love nor worship.” And it is not merely wrong to worship an idol; it is also exceedingly inexpedient. The worship of truth apart from charity—self-identification with science unaccompanied by self-identification with the Ground of all being—results in the kind of situation which now confronts us. Every idol, however exalted, turns out, in the long run, to be a Moloch, hungry for human sacrifice.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
In writing this history of Grandier, Surin, Sœur Jeanne and the devils I have made use of the following sources:
Histoire des Diables le Loudun (Amsterdam, 1693). This work, by the Protestant Pastor Aubin, is a very well-documented account of Grandier’s trial and the subsequent possession. The author was an inhabitant of Loudun and acquainted with many of the actors in the diabolic drama.
Urbain Grandier in La Sorcière. By Jules Michelet. The great historian’s essay is brief and inaccurate, but extremely lively.
Urbain Grandier et les Possédées de Loudun. By Dr. Gabriel Legué (Paris, 1880). A very thorough book. The same author’s earlier work, Documents pour servir à l’histoire médicale des possédées de Loudun (Paris, 1876) is also valuable.
Relation. By Fr. Tranquille. First published in 1634. Reprinted in Vol. II of Archives Curieuses de l’ Histoire de France (1838).
The History of the Devils of Loudun. By de Nion. Published at Poitiers in 1634, and printed in translation at Edinburgh, 1887–88. Lauderdale’s account of his visit to Loudun appears as a supplement to this narrative.
Letter. By Thomas Killigrew. Published in the European Magazine (February, 1803).
Bayle’s Historical Dictionary (English edition, 1736). Article on Urbain Grandier.
Sœur Jeanne des Anges, Autobiographie d’une hystérique possédée. Edited, with introduction and notes, by Drs. Gabriel Legué and Gilles de la Tourette (Paris, 1886). This is the only edition of the narrative composed by the Prioress in 1644. The autobiography is followed by numerous letters addressed by Sœur Jeanne to Fr. Saint-Jure, S.J.
Science Expérimentale. By Jean-Joseph Surin (1828). This is a somewhat garbled edition of Surin’s account of his stay at Loudun.
Lettres Spirituelles du P. Jean-Joseph Surin. Edited by L. Michel and F. Cavalléra (Toulouse, 1926). Vol. II contains a reliable text of what the editors call the Autobiography of Surin.
Dialogues Spirituels. By Jean-Joseph Surin (Lyon, 1831).
Le Catéchisme Spirituel. By Jean-Joseph Surin (Lyon, 1856).
Fondements de la Vie Spirituelle. By Jean-Joseph Surin (Paris, 1879).
Questions sur l’Amour de Dieu. By Jean-Joseph Surin. Edited, with valuable introduction, notes and appendices, by A. Pottier and L. Maries (Paris, 1930).
Le Père Louis Lallemant et les grands spirituels de son temps. By Aloys Pottier, S.J. (Paris, 1930. 2 vols.)
La Doctrine Spirituelle du P. Louis Lallemant. By Pierre Champion. First published in 1694. The best modern edition is that of 1924.
Histoire Littéraire du Sentiment Religieux en France. By Henri Brémond (Paris, 1916 and subsequent years). Contains excellent chapters on Lallemant and Surin.
Footnotes
CHAPTER I
1 The following extracts are taken from H. C. Lea’s summary of conditions in the French Church after the Council of Trent. In the earlier part of our period “the influence of the Tridentine canons had been unsatisfactory. In a royal council held in 1560 . . . Charles de Marillac, Bishop of Vienne, declared that ecclesiastical discipline was almost obsolete, and that no previous time had seen scandals so frequent, or the life of the clergy so reprehensible. . . . The French prelates, like the Germans, were in the habit of collecting the ‘cullagium’ from all their priests, and informing those who did not keep concubines that they might do so if they liked, but must pay the licence-money whether or no.” “It is evident from all this that the standard of ecclesiastical morals had not been raised by the efforts of the Tridentine fathers, and yet a study of the records of church discipline shows that with the increasing decency and refinement of society during the seventeenth and eighteenth ce
nturies the open and cynical manifestations of licence among the clergy became gradually rarer.” The avoidance of scandal became a matter of paramount importance. If concubines were kept, they were kept “under the guise of sisters and nieces.” By a code of regulations issued in 1668 it was decreed that friars of the Order of Minims should not be excommunicated if, “when about to yield to the temptations of the flesh, or to commit theft, they prudently laid aside the monastic habit.” (Henry C. Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy, Chapter xxix, “The Post-Tridentine Church.”)
All this time spasmodic efforts were being made to enforce respectability. In 1624, for example, the Reverend René Sophier was found guilty of committing adultery in a church with the wife of a magistrate. The Lieutenant Criminel of le Mans condemned him to the gallows. The case was appealed to the Parlement of Paris, which sentenced him, instead, to be burnt alive.
1 When we are in the temple, kneeling, we shall act the part of the devout, in the manner of those who, to praise God, humbly bow themselves in the most secret corner of the Church. But when we are in bed, intertwined, we shall act the part of wantons, in the manner of those lovers who, free and frolicsome, practise a hundred fondling arts.
1 Thus every race on earth of men and beasts, the creatures of the sea, the herds, the birds of brilliant hue, are swept with fiery passions; love is the same for all.
2 In mutual bond the palm trees sway, the poplars sigh in harmony together, together sigh the plane trees, the alder whispers to the other alder.
1An old man’s soldiering is foulness, and foulness an old man’s love.
1How broad, how fine a flank, what a youthful thigh!
CHAPTER II
1“From the proceedings of the Huguenot synod of Poitiers in 1560, it is evident that priests not infrequently secretly married their concubines, and, when the woman was a Calvinist, her equivocal position became a matter of grave consideration with her Church.” (Henry C. Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy. From Chapter xxix, “The Post-Tridentine Church.”)
1 The legal truth is great, and shall prevail.
1 Tallemant des Raux, Historiettes (Paris, 1854), Vol. II, p. 337.
2 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 189.
CHAPTER III
1 See Appendix, p. 361.
1 “The consolations and pleasures of prayer,” Surin writes in one of his letters, “go hand in hand with bodily mortification.” Unpunished bodies, we read elsewhere, “are hardly capable of receiving the visits of angels. To be loved and caressed by God, one must either suffer much inwardly, or else maltreat one’s body.”
1 “The Jesuits have tried to combine God and the world, and have gained only the contempt of both.” (Pascal.)
1See Le Gouvello. Armelle Nicolas (1913): H. Brémond, Historie Littéraire du Sentiment Religieux en France (Paris, 1916).
1 See J. P. F. Deleuze, Practical Instruction in Animal Magnetism. Translated by T. C. Hartshorn (New York, 1890).
2 See William James, Varieties of Religious Experience.
CHAPTER IV
1 “I exorcize thee, most unclean spirit, every onslaught of the Adversary, every spectre, every legion, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; be thou uprooted and put to flight from this creature of God.”
2 “I conjure thee, ancient serpent, by the Judge of the living and the dead, by thy maker, by the maker of the world, by him who has the power to cast thee into gehenna, that from this servant of God, who hastens back to the bosom of the Church, thou with the fears and afflictions of thy fury speedily depart.”
1 Barré was not the inventor of this adjunct to exorcism. Tallemant records that a French nobleman, M. de Fervaque, had used it successfully on a possessed nun of his acquaintance. Today, in South Africa, there are Negro sects which practise baptism by colonic lavage.
1 In the medical practice of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the clyster was employed as freely and frequently as is the hypodermic syringe today. “Clysters,” writes Robert Burton, “are in good request. Trincavellius esteems of them in the first place, and Hercules of Saxonia is a greater approver of them. I have found (saith he) by experience that many hypochondriacal melancholy men have been cured by the sole use of clysters. For without question,” Burton adds in another passage, “a clyster, opportunely used, cannot choose in this, as in most other maladies, but to do very much good.” From earliest infancy all members of the classes that could afford to call in the physician or the apothecary were familiar with the giant syringe and the suppository—with copious rectal doses of “Castilian soap, honey boiled to a consistence or, stronger, of Scammony, Hellebore, etc.” It is, therefore, not surprising to find that, when he describes his childish diversions with the petites demoiselles who used to come and play with his sisters, Jean-Jacques Bouchard (the Prioress’s exact contemporary) speaks, as of a thing known to everyone, of the petits bastons, with which small boys and girls were in the habit of pretending to give one another clysters. But the child is father of the man and mother of the woman, and for generations the apothecary’s monstrous syringe continued to haunt the sexual imagination, not merely of the small fry, but also of their elders. More than a hundred and fifty years after M. Barré’s exploit, the heroes and heroines of the Marquis de Sade, in their laborious efforts to extend the range of sexual enjoyment, were making frequent use of the exorcist’s secret weapon. A generation earlier than the Marquis, François Boucher had produced, in L’Attente du Clystère, the most terrific pin-up girl of the century, perhaps of all time. From the savagely obscene and the gracefully pornographic there is an easy modulation to Rabelaisian fun and the smoking-room joke. One remembers the Old Woman in Candide with her little witticisms about cannulas and nous autres femmes. One thinks of the amorous Sganarelle, in Le Médecin malgré Lui, tenderly begging Jacqueline for leave to give her, not a kiss, but un petit clystère dulcifiant. M. Barré’s, with its quart of holy water, was a petit clystère sanctifiant. But, sanctifying or dulcifying, the thing remained what it was intrinsically and what, by convention and at that particular moment of history, it had become—an all but erotic experience, an outrage to modesty, and a symbol enriched by a whole gamut of pornographic overtones and harmonics, which had entered into the folkways and become a part of the circumambient culture.
1In the letter which he wrote after a visit to Loudun in 1635, Thomas Killigrew describes the treatment meted out to that ravishing Sister Agnes, whose good looks and startlingly immodest behaviour had earned her, among the habitués of the exorcism, the affectionate nickname of le beau petit diable. “She was very young and handsome, of a more tender look and slender shape than any of the rest. . . . The loveliness of her face was clothed in a sad sable look which, upon my coming into the chapel, she hid, but presently unveiled again.” (Killigrew was only twenty at the time, and uncommonly handsome.) “And though she stood now, bound like a slave in the friar’s hand, you might see through all her misfortunes, in her black eyes, the unruined arches of many triumphs.” Like a slave in the friar’s hand—the words are painfully apt. A little later, as Killigrew records, the wretched girl was a slave under the friar’s feet. For after having thrown her into convulsions and made her roll on the floor, the good father triumphantly stood on his recumbent victim. “I confess it was so sad a sight,” says Killigrew, “I had no power to see the miracle wrought of her recovery, but went from thence to the inn.”
1 “. . . Urbain. . . . Tell his rank. . . . Priest. . . . Of what church? . . . Saint Peter’s.”
CHAPTER V
1Kramer and Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum, translated by the Rev. Montague Summers (London, 1948), pp. 5–6.
2Op. cit., p. 122.
1So great the evil religion has aroused.
1 Kramer and Sprenger, op. cit., p. 228.
1 Op. cit., p. 147.
2 Op. cit., p. 134.
3 Op. cit., p. 137.
1George Gifford, A Discourse of the Subtill Practices of Devils by Witches, as quoted in W. Notestein, A History of
Witchcraft in England, p. 71.
2Notestein, op. cit., p. 91.