BROWNING'S ITALY (33 page)

Browning has developed each one of the im-portant characters, Guido, Pompilia, Capon-sacchi, the two lawyers, the Pope, in separate monologues, as well as giving three views of public opinion in "Half-Rome," "The Other Half-Rome" and "Tertium Quid."

The panorama of human life centering axound

1 It is difficult to reconcile this explicit denial of Pompilia's Statements with the belief in her implied in her merely nominal punishment: unless we look on it as a part of the formal condem-nation which circumstances seemed to exact

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a few strong personalities that results is, of course, far more than a portrayal of social con-ditions and individual life as it existed in Rome at that time; it becomes a sort of phantasy of universal human nature ranging from the saint-like yet wholly human beauty of Pompilia to the inhuman monster Guido, with all gradations of weakness and of strength, of wisdom and of intellect lying between.

Although typical human nature is everywhere depicted in this poem, opinions and actions are deeply colored by the environment as reflected in the pari; played by the church, by law, and by the social usage of the time. Very decided "local" color is also given by the constant ref-erences to the doctrines of Miguel Molinos, a Spanish priest who was the f ounder of a theology called " Quietism." His principles divided the Rome of the day as positively as the rights and wrongs of the Guido trial divide it in Browning's poem.

In 1675 he published his "Spiritual Guide," which appealed so strongly to many of the religious minds of the time that the Church feit it necessaiy to take measures against Molinos and his followers. Quotations from this re-markable book wül give the best idea of his ideals, which, though lofty in conception seem to have been open to misinterpretations that led

some of his followers into rather devious paths and brought accusations upon Molinos himself which were probably entirely unfounded.

" The Divine Majesty knows very well that it is not by the means of one's own ratiocination or industry that a soul draws near to Hirn and Widerstands the divine truths, but rather by silent and hnmble resignation. The patriarch Noah gave a great instance of this, who, after he had been by all meri reckoned a fool, floating in the middle of a raging sea wherewith the whole world was overflowed, without sails or oars, and environed by wild beasts that were shut up in the ark, walked by faith alone, not knowing nor understanding what God had a nrindtodo withhim» ^

Virtues, according to Molinos, were not to be acquired by much abstinence, maceration of the body, mortification of the senses, rigorous pen-ances, wearing sadccloth, chastising the flesh by discipline, going in quest of sensible affections and fervent sentiments, thinking to find God in them. Molinos regarded such practises as the way of beginners. He called it the external way and declared it could never conduct them to perfection, "nor so much as one step toward it, as experience shows in many, who, after fifty years of this external exercise, are void of G

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having nothing of a spiritual man but the

name."

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The truly spiritual men, on the other hand, are those whom the Lord, in his infinite mercy, has called from the outward way in which they had been wont to exercise themselves; who had retired into the interior part of their souls; who had resigned themselves into the hand of God, totaJly putting off and forgetting themselves, and always going with an elevated spirit to the presence of the Lord, by means of pure faith, without image, form, or figure, but with great assurance founded in tranquilhty and rest internal. These blessed and sublimated souls take no pleasure in anything of the world, but in contempt of it, in being alone, forsaken and foigotten by everybody, keeping always in their hearts a great lowliness and contempt of themselves; always humbled in the depths of their own unworünness and vileness. In the same manner they are always quiet, serene and even-minded, whether under extraordinary graces and favor, or under the most jrigorous and bitter torments. No news makes them afraid. No success makes them glad. Tribulations never disturb them, nor the interior, continual Divine Communications make them vain and conceited; they always remain füll of holy and filial fear, in a wonderful peace, constancy, and serenity."

Again "The Lord has repose nowhere but in quiet souls, and in those in which the fire of tribulation and temptation hath burned up the dregs of passions, and with the bitter water of afflictions hath washed off the filthy spots of inordinate appetites; in a word, this Lord reposes only where quiet reigns and self-love is bau-ished."

"By the way of nothing thou must come to lose thyself in God (which is the last degree of perfection), and happy wilt thou be if thou canst so lose thyself. In this same shop of nothing, simplicity is made, interior and inf used recollec-tion is possessed, quiet is obtained, and the heart is cleansed from all imperfection."

Molinos had been in Rome some Kttle time when he published this book (1675), which im-mediately gained him great popularily. It be-sides received the formal approbation of five famous doctors, four of them Inquisitors and one a Jesuit, and within six years passed through twenty editions, in most European tongues. Bigelow in his book on Molinos describes how "Its author's acquaintance and friendship was sought by people in the greatest credit, not only at Rome, but in other parts of Europe by cor-respondence. Among his followers were three followers of the Oratoire, who soon after received cardinal's hats, and even the popes who

successively occupied the pontifical chair during his residence in Rome took particnlar notice of him. The Cardinal Odescalchi was no sooner raised to the pontificate as Innocent XI, than he provided Molinos with lodgings at the Vatican, and such was his esteem for him that he is said to have fonned the purpose of making him a cardinal, and to have actually selected him for a time as his spiritual director."

It is of interest to note that the Pope in the "Bing and the Book" is certainly touched with the enlightened views of Molinos, though it was really Innocent XII who passed sentence upon Guido. Browning seems to have combined in his good old pope characteristics belonging to both of these pontiffs.

Among his distinguished followers there was none more conspicuous than Queen Christina of Sweden, who at this time was a great Koness at Rome, because of her abdication. She had given up her crown in order that she might be free to enter the Roman church, and upon doing so she took Molinos for her especial guide, and is de-scribed as making his gif ts and his piety a favor-ite theme of her extensive correspondence. Cardinal d'Estrees, even, the representative of Louis XTV, thought it worth while to be in the fashion and identify himself with the movement, and went so far as to put Molinos in corre-

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spondence with important people in France. Later, Louis XIV and d'Estr&s were chiefly responsible, upon the instigation of the Jesuits, for bringing him under the ban of the Inquisition. Another important follower was Father Petruci, who wrote many letters, and one or more treatises in favor of the con-templative life as taught by Molinos for the edification of nuns.

We get a breath of the uprising against Moli-nos and his doctrines which waiV come, in a letter of Bishop Gilbert Burnet, who being in Italy in 1685 wrote home, "The new method of Molinos doth so much prevail at Naples that it is beheved he hath above twenty thousand fol-lowers in the city. He hath writ a book which is entitled II Guido, Spirituals, which is a short abstract of the Mystical Divinity, the substance of the whole is reduced to this, that, in our prayers and other devotions, the best methods are to retire the mind from all gross images, and so to form an act of Faith, and thereby to present ourselves before God, and then to sink into a silence and cessation of new acts and to let God act upon us and so to follow his con-duct. This way he prefers to the multiplication of many new acts and different forms of devo-tion, and he makes small account of corporal austerities, and reduces all the exercises of relig-

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ion to this simplicily of mind. He thinks this is not only to be proposed to such as live in religious houses, but even to secular persons, and by this he hath proposed a great ref ormation of men's minds and manners. He hath many priests in Italy, but chiefly in Naples that dis-pose those who confess themselves to tkem to follow his methods. The Jesuits have set themselves much against this conduct as foreseeing it may weaken the empire that superstition hath over the minds of the people; that it may make religion become a morTplain and simple thing, and may also open the door to enthusiasms. They also pretend that his conduct is factious and seditious, that this may breed a schism in the Church. And because he saith in some places of his book that the mind may rise up to such simplicity in its acts that it may rise in some of its devotions to God immediately, without contemplating the humanity of Christ, they have accused him as intending to lay aside the doctrine of Christ's humanity, though it is piain that he speaks only of the purity of some single acts. Upon all those heads they have set themselves much against Molinos, and they have also pretended that some of his disciples have infused it into their penitents that they may go and communicate as they find themselves disposed without going first to conf ession, which

they thought weakened much the yoke by which the priests subdue the consciences of the people to their conduct. Yet he was much supported, both in the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily. He hath also many friends and followers at Rome. So the Jesuits, as a provinciaJ of the Order assured me, finding they could not ruin him by their own force, got a great King, that is now extremely in the interests of their Order, to interpose and to represent to the Pope the danger of such innovations. It is certain the Pope understands the matter very httle, and that he is possessed of a great opinion of Molinos' sanctity; yet, upon the complaints of some car-dinals that seconded the zeal of the King, he and some of his followers were clapt into the Inquisition, where they have been now some months, but still they are well used, which is believed to flow from the good opinion that the Pope hath of him, who saith still that 'he may err, yet he is still a good man!"'

It is needless to say that once the Jesuits were aroused against Molinos they did not rest until they had him convicted of heresies and impris-oned for life. He was finally brought to trial af ter twenty-two months' close imprisonment, on the third of September, 1687. Among the accu-sations against him were that he taught divers doctrines which treated as lawf ul the commission

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of various unseemly acts, also with having taught the lawfulness of detraction, resentment toward one's neighbor, anger, blasphemy, with cursing God and the saints, and with execrating the consecrated robes. He is said to have assigned f or his excuse that these acts were the works of the devil, who operated as God's instrument, and that such violence should be regarded as necessary. '' Moreover, that they were not called to do penance for acts thus provoked, neither ought they to praise them nor to confess them, but to leave them unpunished, and if scruples on account of such acts came, to make no account of them because they were done without the consent of the higher nature, but solely by the force of the devil."

Such doctrines as these, of course, led to accusations of wilful sinning on the one hand, and on the other hand later to the doctrine of predestination as held by Johannes Agricola and Calvin. Molinos, like many other fathers of the Church, was seeking for a spiritual truth. He was trying to reconcile the omnipotence of God with the facts of sin and the human will, and the only way he could see out was in the utter passivity of man. The more passive a man was the more holy he would finally become, though God might take him through sin on the way to everlasting redemption. Practically it

is equivalent to abandoning one's seif to every impulse whether good or bad and having f aith that the good will finally predominate and that even the bad impulses cannot touch the integrity of the soul. He emphasized a truth that was needed, namely, that sin may be a means of development, and in so doing he took religious conceptions several steps forwards, but he did not see the complementary truth that sin can only be a means of development if it is struggled against by the active human will. Although he was accused of various sins he absolutely denied most of the accusations, and his followers refused to beheve the reports against him.

It was not, however, a war on the pari: of the Jesuits against evil doing or even heretical doc-trines, it was a war against an influence which was usurping their own, and which they fore-saw would break the power of the Church with its machineiy of intercession and confession, and penitential vows.

A vivid picture of the scene when the judg-ment against Molinos was given is drawn by Bigelow:

"On the morning of the third of September, 1687, the church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, at Rome, was thronged at an early hour. The stalls, or palchi, of which a large number had been erected f or the occasion, were filled by the

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nobility and with prelates of distinction. The College of cardinals, the General of Üie Inquisition and all his ofBcers, were there, too, seated opposite each other upon a platform reserved for them. Every remaining place to sit or stand upon in that vast temple was occupied, for had it not been posted upon all the churches in Rome that on that day and in that church the ofBcers of the Inquisition were to proclaim the result of their inquiries into the alleged heresies of Molinos ? To insure a large attendance and to give to the impending ceremonies as much as possible the air of a populär manifestation against the accused and his followers, the public had been also notified, several days before, that an indulgence would be accorded of fifteen years to all, and of forty years to some, who should assist at the ceremonies of this avio da fe.

"It was a gala day for Rome and all its population, from the highest to the lowest, seemed to have been Condensed within the walls of this f amous church which resounded with the murmur of conversation, with the flutter of dresses and of fans, and which within the mem-ory of men then Uving had witnessed the humili-ation of Galileo. In the curiosity excited by every new or conspicuous arrival, in the gayety of the scene, in the pleasure of unexpected meetings and joyous greetings, in the quickened

wit and lively repartee, which are the familiär incidents of an unoccupied crowd, the occasion which had brought the assembly was almost forgotten. Suddenly the noise is hushed, the motion of fans is suspended and all eyes are directed towards a side door nearest the plat-form occupied by the Inquisitors. An aged monk, attended by an officer, was approadüng with a slow and solemn pace. His hands in manacles were held in front of him. In one of them he bore a candle. With a self-possessed, though somewhat severe expression, he waJked slowly towards the place assigned him by his attendant, fronting at once the cardinaJs and the Grand Inquisitors.

"Molinos, the man upon whom now every eye in the vast and breathless assembly was fixed, was about sixty years of age. His frame was robust, his movement dignified and majestic. A settied expression of melancholy sat upon his face; his complexion was quite dark and his nose was both long and sharp. He wore the frock of his Order, descending to his heels and having the soiled and shabby look which daily use during nearly two years' confinement in prison sufficiently explained. The scene in which he bore so conspicuous a part seemed to find no reflection in his face. It expressed no emotion, but said in language more eloquent

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than words, 'This is your hour and the power of darkness.'"

A letter written in Rome on the very day by Estiennot gives another lifelike glimpse of this remarkable man:

"Molinos was conducted to the platform facing the cardinals and the tribunal of the Holy Office, consisting of Consulting prelates, of the General of the Dominican Order, of the Commissioner, of some of the Qualifiers who qualified the propositions, and other agents of the Holy Office. Molinos stood with a police-man by his side, who from time to time wiped his face. In his hands which were manacled he held a burning candle. From the pulpit near the criminal, one of the fathers of St. Dominick read in a loud voice an abstract of the trial. It was observed that his face while this lasted, about three hours, as when he entered and left, was fnll of contempt and defiance, especially at the commotion of the people who as they heard the a^count of some of his graver vülainies shouted boisterously, 'To the stake! to the stake!' During all this Molinos did not even change color, but made his f eeling of contempt only the more conspicuous.