CHAPTER II. CONFESSION. -PRESENT EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG CONFESSOR. THE CONFESSOR IN THE MIDDLE AGES:FIRST, BELIEVED; SECONDLY, MORTIFIED HIMSELF; THIRDLY, WAS SUPERIOR BY CULTURE; FOURTHLY, USED TO INTERROGATE LESS. THE CASUISTS WROTE TIME. THE DANGERS OF THE YOUNG HOW HE STRENGTHENS HIS TOTTERING FOR THEIR CONFESSOR. A WORTHY parish priest has often told me that the sore part of his profession, that which filled him with despair, and his life with torment, was the confession. The studies, with which they prepare for it in the seminaries, are such as entirely ruin the disposition, weaken the body, and enervate and defile the soul. Lay education, without making any pretension to an extraordinary degree of purity, and though the pupils it forms will, one day, enjoy public life, takes, however, especial care to keep from the eyes of youth the glowing descriptions that excite the passions. Ecclesiastical education, on the contrary, which pretends to form men superior to man, pure virgin minds, angels, fixes precisely the attention of its pupils upon things that are to be for ever forbidden them, and gives them for subjects of study terrible temptations, such as would make all the saints run the risk of damnation. Their printed books have been quoted, but not so their copy-books, by which they complete the two last years of seminary education: these copy-books contain things that the most audacious have never dared to publish. I could here enumerate what has been revealed to me about this idiotic education by those who have been its martyrs, and narrowly escaped destruction from it. No one can imagine the condition of a poor young man, still a believer, and very sincere, struggling between the terrors and temptations with which they surround him, at pleasure, with two unknown subjects, either one of which might drive him mad, Woman! Hell!-and yet obliged to look incessantly at the abyss, blinded, through these impure books, with his sanguine youthful constitution. This surprising imprudence proceeded originally from the very scholastic supposition, that the body and soul could be perfectly well kept apart. They had imagined they could lead them like two coursers, by different enticements, the one to the right and the other to the left. They did not reflect that, in this case, man would be in the predicament of the chariot sculptured upon the tablet of the Louvre, which, pulled both ways, must inevitably be dashed to pieces. However different these two substances may be in nature, it is but too manifest that they are mingled in action. Not a motion of the soul but acts upon the body, which re-acts in the same manner. The most cruel discipline inflicted upon the body will destroy it rather than prevent its action upon the soul. To believe that a vow, a few prayers, and a black robe, will deliver you from the flesh, and make you a pure spirit is not this perfect childishness? - They will answer me by the middle ages, and by the multitudes, who have lived mortified lives. For this I have not one answer, but twenty, which admit of no reply. It is too easy to show that priests in general, and especially the confessor, were not then totally different from what they have been for the two last centuries. But I. The first answer will seem, perhaps, harsh-Then the priest believed. "What! the priest no longer believes? Do you mean to say that in speaking of his faith with so much energy, he is a hypocrite and a liar?" No, I will allow him to be sincere. there are two manners of believing, there are many degrees in faith. We are told that Lope de Vega (who, as it is known, was a priest) could not officiate: at the moment of the sacrifice, his fancy pictured the Passion too strongly, he would burst into tears and faint. Compare this with the coquettish pantomime of the Jesuit, who acts mass at Fribourg, or with the prelate whom I have seen at the altar showing to advantage his delicate small hand. The priest believed, and his penitent believed. Unheard of terrors, miracles, devils, and hell, filled the church. The motto, "God hears you," was engraven not only in the wood, but in the heart. It was not a plank that partitioned off the confessional, but the sword of the archangel, the thought of the last judgment. II. If the priest spoke in the name of the spirit, he was partly justified in doing so, having purchased spiritual power by the suicide of the body. His long prayers at night would have sufficed to wear him out; but they found more direct means in excessive fasts. Fasting was the diet of those poor schools of Beggars and Cappets, whose scanty meal was composed of arguments. Half dead before the age of manhood, they cooled their blood with herbs producing a deadly chill, and exhausted it by frequent bleedings. The number of bleedings, to which the monks had to submit, was provided in their rules. Their stomachs were soon destroyed, and their strength impaired. Bernard and Theresa were weakened by continual vomitings, even the sense of taste was lost: the Saint, says his biographer, took blood for butter. Mortification was not then an idle word, it was not a separation of the body and soul, but a genuine and honest suppression of the body. III. The priest believed himself to be, in this sense, the man of the spirit, and he really was so, by the superiority of culture. He knew every thing, the layman nothing. Even when the priest was young, he was truly the father, the other the child. In our days it is just the contrary; the layman, in cities at least, is generally more learned than the priest; even the peasant, if he be a father of a family, with business and interests, or has served in the army, has more experience than his curé, and more real knowledge; his speaking ungrammatically is of no consequence. But the contrast is still more striking, when this inexperienced priest, who has known nothing but his own seminary, sees at his knees a fashionable, intriguing, impassioned woman, who now, perhaps, at the close of her seventh lustrum, has passed through every thing sentimental and ideal. What! she ask his advice? she call him father? Why, every word she utters is a revelation for him -astonishment and fear take possession of his soul. If he is not wise enough to hold his tongue, he will be ridiculous. His penitent, who came to him all trembling, will depart laughing. IV. There is another difference which will strike only those who are acquainted with the middle agesthe language was not developed as it now is. No one being then acquainted with our habits of analysing and developing, confession was naturally reduced to a simple declaration of sin, without any detail of circumstances. Still less could they deduce the phenomena which accompany passion-the desires, doubts, and fears which give it the power of illusion, and make it contagious. There was, if you will, confession; but the woman could not express herself, I |