2. CHAPTER II
RELIGIOUS REVOLUTIONS
1. The importance of the study of Religious Revolutions
in respect of the comprehension of the great Political
Revolutions.
A PORTION of this work will be devoted to the French
Revolution. It was full of acts of violence which naturally had
their psychological causes.
These exceptional events will always fill us with
astonishment, and we even feel them to be inexplicable. They
become comprehensible, however, if we consider that the French
Revolution, constituting a new religion, was bound to obey the
laws which condition the propagation of all beliefs. Its fury
and its hecatombs will then become intelligible.
In studying the history of a great religious revolution,
that of the Reformation, we shall see that a number of
psychological elements which figured therein were equally active
during the French Revolution. In both we observe the
insignificant bearing of the rational value of a belief upon its
propagation, the inefficacy of persecution, the impossibility of
tolerance between contrary beliefs, and the violence and the
desperate struggles resulting from the conflict of different
faiths. We also observe the exploitation of a belief by
interests quite independent
of that belief. Finally we see that it is impossible to modify
the convictions of men without also modifying their existence.
These phenomena verified, we shall see plainly why the
gospel of the Revolution was propagated by the same methods as
all the religious gospels, notably that of Calvin. It could not
have been propagated otherwise.
But although there are close analogies between the genesis
of a religious revolution, such as the Reformation, and that of a
great political revolution like our own, their remote
consequences are very different, which explains the difference of
duration which they display. In religious revolutions no
experience can reveal to the faithful that they are deceived,
since they would have to go to heaven to make the discovery. In
political revolutions experience quickly demonstrates the error
of a false doctrine and forces men to abandon it.
Thus at the end of the Directory the application of
Jacobin beliefs had led France to such a degree of ruin, poverty,
and despair that the wildest Jacobins themselves had to renounce
their system. Nothing survived of their theories except a few
principles which cannot be verified by experience, such as the
universal happiness which equality should bestow upon humanity.
2. The beginnings of the Reformation and its first
disciples.
The Reformation was finally to exercise a profound influence
upon the sentiments and moral ideas of a great proportion of
mankind. Modest in its beginnings,
it was at first a simple struggle against the abuses of the
clergy, and, from a practical point of view, a return to the
prescriptions of the Gospel. It never constituted, as has been
claimed, an aspiration towards freedom of thought. Calvin was as
intolerant as Robespierre, and all the theorists of the age
considered that the religion of subjects must be that of the
prince who governed them. Indeed in every country where the
Reformation was established the sovereign replaced the Pope of
Rome, with the same rights and the same powers.
In France, in default of publicity and means of
communication, the new faith spread slowly enough at first. It
was about 1520 that Luther recruited a few adepts, and only
towards 1535 was the new belief sufficiently widespread for men
to consider it necessary to burn its disciples.
In conformity with a well-known psychological law, these
executions merely favoured the propagation of the Reformation.
Its first followers included priests and magistrates, but were
principally obscure artisans. Their conversion was effected
almost exclusively by mental contagion and suggestion.
As soon as a new belief extends itself, we see grouped
round it many persons who are indifferent to the belief, but who
find in it a pretext or opportunity for gratifying their passions
or their greed. This phenomenon was observed at the time of the
Reformation in many countries, notably in Germany and in England.
Luther having taught that the clergy had no need of wealth, the
German lords found many merits in a faith which enabled them to
seize upon the goods of the Church. Henry VIII. enriched himself
by a similar operation. Sovereigns who were often molested by
the Pope could as a rule only look favourably upon a doctrine
which added religious powers to their political powers and made
each of them a Pope. Far from diminishing the absolutism of
rulers, the Reformation only exaggerated it.
3. Rational value of the doctrines of the
Reformation.
The Reformation overturned all Europe, and came near to
ruining France, of which it made a battle-field for a period of
fifty years. Never did a cause so insignificant from the
rational point of view produce such great results.
Here is one of the innumerable proofs of the fact that
beliefs are propagated independently of all reason. The
theological doctrines which aroused men's passions so violently,
and notably those of Calvin, are not even worthy of examination
in the light of rational logic.
Greatly concerned about his salvation, having an excessive
fear of the devil, which his confessor was unable to allay,
Luther sought the surest means of pleasing God that he might
avoid Hell. Having commenced by denying the Pope the right to
sell indulgences, he presently entirely denied his authority, and
that of the Church, condemned religious ceremonies, confession,
and the worship of the saints, and declared that Christians
should have no rules of conduct other than the Bible. He also
considered that no one could be saved without the grace of God.
This last theory, known as that of predestination, was in
Luther rather uncertain, but was stated precisely by Calvin, who
made it the very foundation of a doctrine to which the majority
of Protestants are
still subservient. According to him: “From all eternity God
has predestined certain men to be burned and others to be
saved.” Why this monstrous iniquity? Simply because “it
is the will of God.”
Thus according to Calvin, who for that matter merely
developed certain assertions of St. Augustine, an all-powerful
God would amuse Himself by creating living beings simply in order
to burn them during all eternity, without paying any heed to
their acts or merits. It is marvellous that such revolting
insanity could for such a length of time subjugate so many
minds—marvellous that it does so still.1
The psychology of Calvin is not without affinity with that
of Robespierre. Like the latter, the master of the pure truth,
he sent to death those who would not accept his doctrines. God,
he stated, wishes “that one should put aside all humanity
when it is a question of striving for his glory.”
The case of Calvin and his disciples shows that matters
which rationally are the most contradictory become perfectly
reconciled in minds which are hypnotised by a belief. In the
eyes of rational logic, it seems impossible to base a morality
upon the theory of predestination, since whatever they do men are
sure of being either saved or damned. However, Calvin had no
difficulty in erecting a most severe morality upon this totally
illogical basis. Considering themselves the elect of God, his
disciples were so swollen by pride and the sense of their own
dignity that they felt obliged to serve as models in their
conduct.
4. Propagation of the Reformation.
The new faith was propagated not by speech, still less by
process of reasoning, but by the mechanism described in our
preceding work: that is, by the influence of affirmation,
repetition, mental contagion, and prestige. At a much later date
revolutionary ideas were spread over France in the same fashion.
Persecution, as we have already remarked, only favoured
this propagation. Each execution led to fresh conversions, as
was seen in the early years of the Christian Church. Anne
Dubourg, Parliamentary councillor, condemned to be burned alive,
marched to the stake exhorting the crowd to be converted.
“His
constancy,” says a witness, “made more Protestants among
the young men of the colleges than the books of Calvin.”
To prevent the condemned from speaking to the people their
tongues were cut out before they were burned. The horror of
their sufferings was increased by attaching the victims to an
iron chain, which enabled the executioners to plunge them into
the fire and withdraw them several times in succession.
But nothing induced the Protestants to retract, even the
offer of an amnesty after they had felt the fire.
In 1535 Francis I., forsaking his previous tolerance,
ordered six fires to be lighted simultaneously in Paris. The
Convention, as we know, limited itself to a single guillotine in
the same city. It is probable that the sufferings of the victims
were not very excruciating; the insensibility of the Christian
martyrs had already been remarked. Believers are hypnotised by
their faith, and we know to-day that certain forms of hypnotism
engender complete insensibility.
The new faith progressed rapidly. In 1560 there were two
thousand reformed churches in France, and many great lords, at
first indifferent enough, adhered to the new doctrine.
5. Conflict between different religious beliefs—
Impossibility of Tolerance.
I have already stated that intolerance is always an
accompaniment of powerful religious beliefs. Political and
religious revolutions furnish us with numerous proofs of this
fact, and show us also that the mutual intolerance of sectaries
of the same religion is
always much greater than that of the defenders of remote and
alien faiths, such as Islamism and Christianity. In fact, if we
consider the faiths for whose sake France was so long rent
asunder, we shall find that they did not differ on any but
accessory points. Catholics and Protestants adored exactly the
same God, and only differed in their manner of adoring Him. If
reason had played the smallest part in the elaboration of their
belief, it could easily have proved to them that it must be quite
indifferent to God whether He sees men adore Him in this fashion
or in that.
Reason being powerless to affect the brain of the
convinced, Protestants and Catholics continued their ferocious
conflicts. All the efforts of their sovereigns to reconcile them
were in vain. Catherine de Medicis, seeing the party of the
Reformed Church increasing day by day in spite of persecution,
and attracting a considerable number of nobles and magistrates,
thought to disarm them by convoking at Poissy, in 1561, an
assembly of bishops and pastors with the object of fusing the two
doctrines. Such an enterprise indicated that the queen, despite
her subtlety, knew nothing of the laws of mystic logic. Not in
all history can one cite an example of a belief destroyed or
reduced by means of refutation. Catherine did not even know that
although toleration is with difficulty possible between
individuals, it is impossible between collectivities. Her
attempt failed completely. The assembled theologians hurled
texts and insults at one another's heads, but no one was moved.
Catherine thought to succeed better in 1562 by promulgating an
edict according Protestants the
right to unite in the public celebration of their cult.
This tolerance, very admirable from a philosophical point
of view, but not at all wise from the political standpoint, had
no other result beyond exasperating both parties. In the Midi,
where the Protestants were strongest, they persecuted the
Catholics, sought to convert them by violence, cut their throats
if they did not succeed, and sacked their cathedrals. In the
regions where the Catholics were more numerous the Reformers
suffered like persecutions.
Such hostilities as these inevitably engendered civil war.
Thus arose the so-called religious wars, which so long spilled
the blood of France. The cities were ravaged, the inhabitants
massacred, and the struggle rapidly assumed that special quality
of ferocity peculiar to religious or political conflicts, which,
at a later date, was to reappear in the wars of La Vendée.
Old men, women, and children, all were exterminated. A
certain Baron d'Oppede, first president of the Parliament of Aix,
had already set an example by killing 3,000 persons in the space
of ten days, with refinements of cruelty, and destroying three
cities and twenty-two villages. Montluc, a worthy forerunner of
Carrier, had the Calvinists thrown living into the wells until
these were full. The Protestants were no more humane. They did
not spare even the Catholic churches, and treated the tombs and
statues just as the delegates of the Convention were to treat the
royal tombs of Saint Denis.
Under the influence of these conflicts France was
progressively disintegrated, and at the end of the reign of Henri
III. was parcelled out into veritable
little confederated municipal republics, forming so many
sovereign states. The royal power was vanishing. The States of
Blois claimed to dictate their wishes to Henri III., who had fled
from his capital. In 1577 the traveller Lippomano, who traversed
France, saw important cities—Orleans, Tours, Blois, Poitiers—
entirely devastated, the cathedrals and churches in ruins, and
the tombs shattered. This was almost the state of France at the
end of the Directory.
Among the events of this epoch, that which has left the
darkest memory, although it was not perhaps the most murderous,
was the massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572, ordered, according
to the historians, by Catherine de Medicis and Charles IX.
One does not require a very profound knowledge of
psychology to realise that no sovereign could have ordered such
an event. St. Bartholomew's Day was not a royal but a popular
crime. Catherine de Medicis, believing her existence and that of
the king threatened by a plot directed by four or five Protestant
leaders then in Paris, sent men to kill them in their houses,
according to the summary fashion of the time. The massacre which
followed is very well explained by M. Battifol in the following
terms:—
“At the report of what was afoot the rumour
immediately ran through Paris that the Huguenots were being
massacred; Catholic gentlemen, soldiers of the guard, archers,
men of the people, in short all Paris, rushed into the streets,
arms in hand, in order to participate in the execution, and the
general massacre commenced, to the sound of ferocious
cries of `The Huguenots! Kill, kill!' They were struck down,
they were drowned, they were hanged. All that were known as
heretics were so served. Two thousand persons were killed in
Paris.”
By contagion, the people of the provinces imitated those
of Paris, and six to eight thousand Protestants were slain.
When time had somewhat cooled religious passions, all the
historians, even the Catholics, spoke of St. Bartholomew's Day
with indignation. They thus showed how difficult it is for the
mentality of one epoch to understand that of another.
Far from being criticised, St. Bartholomew's Day provoked
an indescribable enthusiasm throughout the whole of Catholic
Europe. Philip II. was delirious with joy when he heard the
news, and the King of France received more congratulations than
if he had won a great battle.
But it was Pope Gregory XIII. above all who manifested the
keenest satisfaction. He had a medal struck to commemorate the
happy event,2 ordered joy-fires to be lit and
cannon fired, celebrated several masses, and sent for the
painter Vasari to depict on the walls of the Vatican the
principal
scenes of carnage. Further, he sent to the King of France an
ambassador instructed to felicitate that monarch upon his fine
action. It is historical details of this kind that enable us to
comprehend the mind of the believer. The Jacobins of the Terror
had a mentality very like that of Gregory XIII.
Naturally the Protestants were not indifferent to such a
hecatomb, and they made such progress that in 1576 Henri III. was
reduced to granting them, by the Edict of Beaulieu, entire
liberty of worship, eight strong places, and, in the Parliaments,
Chambers composed half of Catholics and half of Huguenots.
These forced concessions did not lead to peace. A
Catholic League was created, having the Duke of Guise at its
head, and the conflict continued. But it could not last for
ever. We know how Henri IV. put an end to it, at least for a
time, by his abjuration in 1593, and by the Edict of Nantes.
The struggle was quieted but not terminated. Under Louis
XIII. the Protestants were still restless, and in 1627 Richelieu
was obliged to besiege La Rochelle, where 15,000 Protestants
perished. Afterwards, possessing more political than religious
feeling, the famous Cardinal proved extremely tolerant toward the
Reformers.
This tolerance could not last. Contrary beliefs cannot
come into contact without seeking to annihilate each other, as
soon as one feels capable of dominating the other. Under Louis
XIV. the Protestants had become by far the weaker, and were
forced to renounce the struggle and live at peace. Their number
was then about 1,200,000, and they possessed more than 600
churches, served by about 700 pastors.
The presence of these heretics on French soil was intolerable to
the Catholic clergy, who endeavoured to persecute them in various
ways. As these persecutions had little result, Louis XIV.
resorted to dragonnading them in 1685, when many individuals
perished, but without further result. Under the pressure of the
clergy, notably of Bossuett, the Edict of Nantes was revoked, and
the Protestants were forced to accept conversion or to leave
France. This disastrous emigration lasted a long time, and is
said to have cost France 400,000 inhabitants, men of notable
energy, since they had the courage to listen to their conscience
rather than their interests.
6. The results of Religious Revolutions.
If religious revolutions were judged only by the gloomy story
of the Reformation, we should be forced to regard them as highly
disastrous. But all have not played a like part, the civilising
influence of certain among them being considerable.
By giving a people moral unity they greatly increase its
material power. We see this notably when a new faith, brought by
Mohammed, transforms the petty and impotent tribes of Arabia into
a formidable nation.
Such a new religious belief does not merely render a
people homogeneous. It attains a result that no philosophy, no
code ever attained: it sensibly transforms what is almost
unchangeable, the sentiments of a race.
We see this at the period when the most powerful religious
revolution recorded by history overthrew paganism to substitute a
God who came from the plains of Galilee. The new ideal demanded
the
renunciation of all the joys of existence in order to acquire the
eternal happiness of heaven. No doubt such an ideal was readily
accepted by the poor, the enslaved, the disinherited who were
deprived of all the joys of life here below, to whom an
enchanting future was offered in exchange for a life without
hope. But the austere existence so easily embraced by the poor
was also embraced by the rich. In this above all was the power
of the new faith manifested.
Not only did the Christian revolution transform manners:
it also exercised, for a space of two thousand years, a
preponderating influence over civilisation. Directly a religious
faith triumphs all the elements of civilisation naturally adapt
themselves to it, so that civilisation is rapidly transformed.
Writers, artists and philosophers merely symbolise, in their
works, the ideas of the new faith.
When any religious or political faith whatsoever has
triumphed, not only is reason powerless to affect it, but it even
finds motives which impel it to interpret and so justify the
faith in question, and to strive to impose it upon others. There
were probably as many theologians and orators in the time of
Moloch, to prove the utility of human sacrifices, as there were
at other periods to glorify the Inquisition, the massacre of St.
Bartholomew, and the hecatombs of the Terror.
We must not hope to see peoples possessed by strong
beliefs readily achieve tolerance. The only people who attained
to toleration in the ancient world were the polytheists. The
nations which practise toleration at the present time are those
that might well be termed polytheistical, since, as in England
and America, they are divided into innumerable sects.
Under identical names they really adore very different deities.
The multiplicity of beliefs which results in such
toleration finally results also in weakness. We therefore come
to a psychological problem not hitherto resolved: how to possess
a faith at once powerful and tolerant.
The foregoing brief explanation reveals the large part
played by religious revolutions and the power of beliefs.
Despite their slight rational value they shape history, and
prevent the peoples from remaining a mass of individuals without
cohesion or strength. Man has needed them at all times to
orientate his thought and guide his conduct. No philosophy has
as yet succeeded in replacing them.
