CHAPTER VI RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE (Continued) "I WOULD a thousand times rather believe in and pursue an ideal, even though too high, than miss or betray it," said Montalembert. Many persons in the 16th century were of a different opinion. They deemed aesthetic religion too frivolous or too worldly a thing, above all, too chimerical. The adversaries of the religion of beauty split up into two categories: some opposed it from reasoned conviction, others from social jealousy and incompatibility of temper. The first, of whom Alberto Pio1 and Budé, 2 eminent and estimable men, may serve as specimens, scouted the very idea of any connection between philosophy and religion, between aesthetics and morals; in their opinion religion did not tend to satisfy the reason, nor beauty to purify the conduct. The suggested reconciliation was to them an illdisguised reversion to paganism, and in practice led to "Who then has supported these men?" cries Alberto Pio: "the dignitaries of the church, and the highest of them! They have maintained at their voluptuous court these men with their half pagan leanings, who pour contempt on all that is dear to the people, and strive only to overturn existing things." [Pio was prince da Čarpi, and a nephew of Pico della Mirandola.] 2" We," he says, "nourished and moulded by Christianity, no longer approach the thought of divine and eternal things except with a heart full of vanity, a mind deadened and filled with the love of material things. To the instruction of Scripture, to the responses and prophecies of the Son of God, it is necessary to find (I am ashamed to say it) an academic counterpart. We have gone back to the old state of polytheism or atheism, to the maxims of antiquity. . . . In this paradise of study it is necessary for every lover of letters that his philosophic mind, leaving behind the pastures of philology (very pleasant, but in themselves futile and of no account for what concerns the present object), should strive to fill itself with the nutriment of sacred philosophy, the feast of heavenly wisdom descended among mortals." scandals like the representation of Machiavelli's Mandragora1 at the Vatican. As we have seen, persons of this same opinion had already demonstrated the irrationality and inadequacy of reasoning; they had thereby relieved the world of a serious embarrassment; sensibility was henceforth to be the sole guide of life. But now we find others wishing to destroy this sensibility also, and to strip us of everything. At the idea that love is born of beauty such people veil their faces, and beg us to take away this thing they cannot bear to look upon, that is neither moral nor religious! Assuredly it is impossible to commend everything in the Roman movement. Far from it! Far from it! There is only too large a scope for criticism. Aestheticism was carried too far: it was, for example, a singularly wild notion to consider the building of St. Peter's at Rome a social necessity of the first importance, and to sacrifice a part of the Catholic world to the desire of completing the Vatican. Antiquity, to be sure, evoked a quite exclusive enthusiasm, and it was singular to see the headquarters of Christianity going crazy about Pomponius Laetus, calling him "the glory of the age," "Caesar," because he was unearthing pagan catacombs. Not that mythology, as then cultivated, aimed at bringing back a real, lively faith in the Olympian deities! Isis, Apollo, Venus, on the walls of the Vatican or the churches, stood only for symbols and types of philosophy: Jean Bouchet very happily styled them "the aristocracy of the world." Men thought, with Plato, that the beauty of things can only be gauged by comparing them with an eternal type; as Margaret of France said: "The Beautiful is seen in all forms of beauty." Further, morality, without divorcing itself officially from Christianity, sometimes was pretty completely disjoined from it; to many people virtue consisted in wearing a good coat and keeping up a good style. Montaigne, Aretino, and Benvenuto Cellini, for example, passed for virtuous men. To protest against this paganism was a right and proper thing. But was it necessary to forbid Christianity to secure a rational appreciation, and even to win our love by working upon our emotions? An ineradicable instinct prompted the Latin races to believe through love; "Italy will be un 1[A brief criticism of this excellent comedy is given in Macaulay's essay on Machiavelli.] christianised, not Calvinised," as Azeglio admirably said. To invest worship with mundane pomp and circumstance is as profoundly human an idea as it is to keep the clock at a railway station a few minutes behind time. The Middle Ages, however, kept strict time: materialistic as they were, they erected cathedrals, the baser instincts avenging themselves by affixing to the cornices, or even to the porches, in full view, ornamental details cynically human. The Renaissance, for all its mysticism, was not partial to the dim religious light, or the mysteries shadowed in lofty arches far out of eyeshot; it loved clearness, daylight, illumination. It built only châteaux, even to the glory of God. St. Peter's at Rome is a château; the eye detects nothing abnormal in it; and there man feels himself at home. It was thus with the religion of prelates and women. It was lofty, sometimes loftier than Gothic arches, but so broad, so clear, so full of unity, of so human a hospitality that no one felt he had to do with the unknown, the unfathomable. It was a reflection of life itself, but with added brilliance and decoration; it aimed at attracting man, when he had performed his material functions in eating, drinking, loving his wife, to a banquet of spiritual fare and spiritual love. We look to women to quicken our perception. In spiritual concerns the parts are reversed. Now, men spent their lives in an atmosphere of materialism and unbridled sensuality. Melin de Saint-Gelais declared nudities "heavenly objects, worthy of altars."1 Coyness was unknown. Happy the people who have only God to deal with," cries a young lady: " with men it is enough to save appearances." In the view of many, morality found only an insufficient sanction in religion; the third Margaret of France wrote, with a modesty unhappily too well justified: "Some consider that God holds the great in his special protection." And on the other hand, the laws of society did not always oppose a very solid barrier: it was easy to a noble lady to override them. Renée of France La foy sans amour est morte et endormye, 2 Heptameron, Tale 42. took a manifest pleasure in running atilt against popular conventions; Marot had only to set the mob against him as a lascivious pagan," to merit her indulgence. Apparently she was even tempted to believe a daughter of France so superior to humanity at large that she could have only lovers. However, it was sincerely believed that, for people of refinement and distinction, good style and good taste rendered many artistic things inoffensive. So (to select one example among a thousand) no one was shocked when the Abbé de Maupas gave his approval to some neat verses in which Gilles d'Aurigny boasted his conquest of a "sweet pale Margaret." The gentle spotless Vergerio very gaily accepted the title of "bishop of Aretino." Margaret compliments her brother on retaining his faith through all his sin. Does she praise the sin? Not at all: but she praises the king for what is praiseworthy, the remaining a Christian. Vergerio would have shrunk with horror from certain of Aretino's books, but he considered the man as a force, of as much importance as any diocese, while many of the episcopal boroughs contained as many vices with less wit. And he tries to coax some good thing out of this diocese. same principle Margaret set Vauzelles to translate some of Aretino's devotional works. Indulgence thus shown in practice had no modifying effect on principles, and besides, men were particularly careful not to extend it to the masses. Among them, as everybody knows, there is no such thing as sentiment, but only sensations, and with them, consequently, the fetters of a material morality were still found serviceable. The same Caterina Cibo who highly approved Firenzuola's book on love, severely reproached the bishop of Camerino for his slackness in reforming the morals of his clergy, and succeeded in obtaining from the pope a rigorous brief on the subject. On the In society it happened that pagan sensation and Christian sentiment all but touched; it seemed prudent, advantageous, and politic not to accentuate the difference between them. Many people, like true gourmets, let themselves swing gently between mysticism and materialism; perhaps it was just as well not to compel them to decide one way or the other. It has been well said that "faith has this peculiarity, that when it has vanished, it influences still grace survives by force of habit from a once living sentiment."1 The logical Germans proceeded to deduce from this spiritual condition the system of "faith without works." But folk remained satisfied with "confidence without works." It was in these practical considerations that an answer was found to Bude's objections. However, Budé was a friend, and sought only to point out abuses. The real and invincible adversaries of the religion of beauty, those who hoped to destroy it, came from below. They were such as society scouted-the vulgar, the superstitious, the material-minded, the street as against the salon : in short, the men. When Vergerio went to Germany to discourse of love, he was answered in a strain that disconcerted him the Germans talked politics to him. "I am tortured," he cries, "to see the cause of Jesus Christ treated with so much indignity; it appears to me that to-day this is not the real explanation of the immense trouble taken with so many people: it is assuredly only a pretext. The main thing considered under the cloak of zeal for Christ is, I believe, nothing but the private interests of a few individuals." The clergy did not follow the religious lead of the prelates. The whole of the middle or lower orders among them, the country parsons, the monks, made common cause, some in a materialist direction,2 others as visionaries, against the philosophic group, the higher prelacy, and the priesthood of women. The monk was a man of different stamp. Margaret petting Rabelais resembles, if we may be allowed the expression, a hen mothering a duck. Look at the man of 1 Renan. The art of evoking the spirits which hover about us, and of entering by their aid into relations with the absent or the dead—an art largely practised in France and Germany-was quite as pagan as the Italian mythology. Trithemius, the famous abbot of Spanheim, laid down dogmatic rules for it. Many spirits came without being summoned. There were amiable spirits among them, simple domestic goblins who made themselves useful. At the moment of death Agrippa was thus attended. There were also troublesome fiends, like those tricksy sprites who visited women in the darkness of the night. Jean Mansel relates the story of an unhappy woman tormented every night by a sort of unconscionable husband, who was no other than a jovial demon. At last, worn out, she consults a hermit, who directs her to raise her arms at the critical moment towards a sacred picture; with the result that the demon takes flight, not without cursing the hermit. |