Cardinal Fleury

“ On the 6th of August, 1761, the Parliament of Paris delivered a decree ordering the Jesuits to appear at the end of a year for the definite judgment upon their constitutions; pending the judicial decision, all their colleges were closed. King Louis XV. still hesitated, from natural indolence and from remembrance of Cardinal Fleury’s maxims. “The Jesuits,” the old minister would often say, “are bad masters, but you can make them useful tools.” ”

“ The eighteenth century was a century of striking contrasts. The prime minister after Cardinal de Fleury was Madame de Pompadour. With the cardinal a blind religion protected the throne against the parliament; with the rise of the marchioness's power we perceive the first dawnings of philosophy, tormenting in turns both the clergy and the parliament. Under Madame de Pompadour's direction the king, had he been only as bold and determined as his mistress, would have become a greater king than ever. The cardinal was miserly and avaricious, the marchioness liberal to prodigality ”

“ Peter embraced this life with hearty earnestness, and outstripped his companions alike in his austerities and in his application to sacred learning. But his light could not be hid; abbots entreated that he might be sent to instruct their religious; his own brethren elected him their superior; seven successive popes employed him in the service of the Church; and, in 1057, Stephen IX. created him cardinal bishop of Ostia. His life was spent in struggles to stem the corruption of his age and to reform the clergy. Fleury observes that we must not look in his writings for acuteness of reasoning ”

“ The retractation imposed upon Cardinal de Noailles, and his replacement in the archbishopric of Paris by Vintimille, an unequivocal Molinist, excited among the populace a very violent agitation against the court of Rome and the Jesuits, the prelude to a united Fronde of the Sorbonne and the parlement. Fleury found no other remedy for this agitation—in which appeal was made even to miracles—than lits de justice and lettres de cachet; Jansenism remained a potent source of trouble within the heart of Catholicism. ”

“ André Hercule Cardinal de Fleury, Bishop of Fréjus (1653-1743) , was seventy-three years old, when he became Prime Minister, and remained in power till his death, at the age of ninety.—T.
[408] The War of the Polish Succession.—B.
[409] 29 May 1734 (Cf. Vol. I., p. 13) .—T.
[410] Charles Louis Auguste Fouquet, Maréchal Duc de Belle-Isle (1684-1761) , father of the Comte de Gisors and grandson of Fouquet (vide infra) , created a marshal of France, after meritorious services, in 1700. His finest feat of arms was his masterly retreat from Prague in 1742. ”

“ Cardinal Peter Robert de Courçon, who was then in France, as legate of the pope, received great powers from the Holy See; and travelled through the kingdom, exhorting Christians to take up the cross and arms.
The cardinal de Courçon had been in his youth the disciple of Foulke of Neuilly, and had gained great celebrity by his eloquence. The multitude flocked from all parts to hear so distinguished a preacher of the Word, clothed in all the splendour of Romish power. “The legate,” says Fleury, “had the power of regulating everything that was connected with tournaments ”

“ Bishop Power Trench had, when quite a young man, been admitted to the See of Waterford, and at first the clergy were disposed to animadvert on so many military men being guests at his palace. Archdeacon Fleury, “who would do and say what no other man would attempt,” being present at the bishop’s grand reception of his clergy, walked up to him and said, “I am most happy, my lord, to see that your lordship has recovered from your scarlet fever.” ”

“ In 1696 he was elected to fill the place of La Bruyère in the French Academy; and on the completion of the education of the young princes the king bestowed upon him the rich priory of Argenteuil, in the diocese of Paris (1706) . On assuming this benefice he resigned, with rare disinterestedness, that of the abbey of Loc-Dieu. About this time he began his great work, the first of the kind in France, and one for which he had been collecting materials for thirty years—the Histoire ecclésiastique. Fleury’s evident intention was to write a history of the church for all classes of society ”

“ Archdeacon Fleury’s great-grandfather was Louis Fleury, Pasteur of Tours, who, with Esther his wife, one son, and two daughters, Esther and Mary, fled to England in 1683. The pasteur and his family were naturalized in England, 27th April 1687. (See List xiii.) The son, Philip Amauret Fleury (born 1671) , a graduate of Leydcn, was ordained to preach the Gospel to the French in Ireland. Antoine Fleury, grandson of the old refugee, was also a graduate of Leydcn, where he was ordained 4th September 1728, but eventually settled in Ireland, and married one of the noble family of Rochebrune ”

“ Fleury’s testimony receives a remarkable corroboration in the circumstance that, in the last century, whoever derided the traditional belief in God and in the Christian revelation acquired credit with the multitude as an “esprit fort.” In short, the idea of there being so much as the possibility of an “esprit fort” who believed in God and who ex animo professed the faith of the church, appeared to be unknown, and the universal notion in France was that the choice consisted in being feeble and pious or strong-minded and atheistical. ”

“ At the time of the death of Philippe d’Orléans, Fleury was in his seventy-first year, an age at which most men have renounced ambition and are thinking only of repose. The Bishop of Fréjus, however, felt that he had some years of activity yet before him, and he was resolved to climb to the very pinnacle of fortune. He might easily have persuaded Louis XV. to make him Prime Minister, but he counselled the young King to entrust the direction of affairs to the Duc de Bourbon ”

“ Fleury speaks of this custom as universal throughout the Church in the Middle Ages; and says that each bishop took special care of the instruction of his clergy, particularly of those young clerics who were continually about his person, serving him in the capacity of [404] lectors or secretaries, carrying his letters and transmitting his orders. These episcopal households, however, could not do the work of a seminary, still less could they undo the work of a university in the souls of those who had been subjected for a course of years to its social and intellectual training. ”

“ All one—all one—our separateness is our suffering, our evil. To return to the House of Our Father—that is the end of estrangement.”
... And Fleury was the one who had ceased to talk. But he had acted, too.... They saw that he was held by some power of his giving to them. He was like light. He had given the whole material force of his body to hold off that destruction which had come with the dying of Stackhouse. He had not eaten, even as they had eaten. They feared for him, because he was the centre and mainspring of their pilgrimage. ”

“ Amidst this general disorder, Gregory died, cursing his implacable adversary, and was succeeded by Celestine IV., who only wore the tiara sixteen days. The war was continued with renewed fury, the Church remained without a head, and Christ without a vicar upon earth; the cardinals wandered about dispersed; Frederick holding several of them in chains. “The court of Rome,” says Fleury, “was desolate, and fallen into great contempt.” ”

“ When I had to provide a curate for my new church at Littlemore, I engaged a friend, by no fault of his, who, before he had entered into his charge, preached a sermon, either in depreciation of baptismal regeneration, or of Dr. Pusey's view of it. I showed a similar easiness as to the Editors who helped me in the separate volumes of Fleury's Church History; they were able, learned, and excellent men, but their after-history has shown, how little my choice of them was influenced by any notion I could have had of any intimate agreement of opinion between them and myself. ”

“ In some cases they certainly set themselves to overcome the difficulties which then beset the path of learning with a perseverance and success that merit all praise; and one example of this sort occurs among the monks of that very abbey of Fleury, the reformation of which was effected by St. Odo in the teeth of an armed rabble. Abbo of Fleury, as he is commonly called, a contemporary of St. Maieul, did not enter the monastery until some years after it had begun to flourish under the Cluniac rule, and the good discipline of Abbot Wulfhad. ”

“ His influence contributed largely to calm the excitement about the fear of the end of the world which is said to have been general in Europe in 1000. His glorious life had a sad ending. In 1004 he attemped to restore discipline in the monastery of La Reole, in Gascony, by transferring some of the monks of Fleury into that community. ”

“ Fleury said:
“He is having his adventures. He will be a great man. He will have the world at his finger-tips, when he is as old as we are—and then his real work will begin. For when we know enough of the world, we turn to God.”
The note of the preacher in this did not embarrass [Pg 109] Bellair, as it would have done before the Jade’s sinking.
“He will be a great power,” Fleury went on, for the heart of the mother. “These things which for him pass unconsciously, will form him nevertheless. They will do their work within; and when he is grown he will know what to do and say.” ”

“ He has just left his bishopric; you know how he hated it. Nothing could be pleasanter than his signing himself, in a letter to Cardinal Quirini, 'Fleuri, Eveque de Frejus par l'indignation divine.' The King does not like him much; but he is a good man on the whole, though jesuitical; he shall introduce you."
I expressed my gratitude for the favour, and hinted that possibly the relations of my father's first wife, the haughty and ancient house of La Tremouille, might save the Bishop of Frejus from the pain of exerting himself on my behalf. ”

“ The Bishop of Frejus carried me with him (on the morning we had appointed) to Versailles. What a magnificent work of royal imagination is that palace! I know not in any epic a grander idea than terming the avenues which lead to it the roads "to Spain, to Holland," etc. In London, they would have been the roads to Chelsea and Pentonville!
As we were driving slowly along in the Bishop's carriage, I had ample time for conversation with that personage, who has since, as the Cardinal de Fleuri, risen to so high a pitch of power. He certainly has in him very little of the great man ”

“ Stackhouse himself would not have faltered before that voice of Fleury’s, but there was a force in it that prevailed for a moment upon the obsession. The air was full of strain.... They heard the heart in the poor body. The blue-tipped hands were upraised from the bottom of the boat—the face was toward them. Bellair and the Faraway Woman could see only the back of Fleury’s head. The strain was like a vice in the open boat. ”

“ In spite of the place, the hour, the awful solemnity of the moment, the young Catholic girl started at hearing these words; her large eyes opened with an expression of the keenest surprise, and turned towards Clement with a mute glance of anxiety. He understood her, and, while the infirmarian was interpreting his words which had been heard but not understood, he replied: “This is a priest, Gabrielle, invested with all the authority of Holy Orders. In the presence of death, we can avail ourselves of it, without regard to anything else.”
He knelt down. Fleurange did the same. ”

“ Mere youths were sometimes seen promoted to the professor’s chair, and seeking to win a passing popularity by the promulgation of some new extravagance, an abuse which led to the passing of an ordinance forbidding any one to teach Theology before he had attained the age of twenty-five. But the teaching of the professors was influenced by other peculiarities in their position. “The university doctors,” says Fleury, “were doctors, and they were nothing more. Exclusively engaged with theoretic views, they had [370] leisure to write at great length on the most frivolous questions ”

“ But there are other tenets, as those of Predestination and of Grace, which border on practical religion, and which, preached in all their rigour to minds that are unprepared, would be little adapted to make proselytes. We must take great care, said the wise and pious Fleury, not to propose at once to infidels, those articles of our belief, which might shock them too much. ”

“ It was [376] supposed that before beginning his theological studies the doctor must have passed through his course of arts, the various stages in which were distinguished by the names of grammar, poetry, philosophy, &c., in each of which, according to the theory of the ancient schools, a student had to study successively for an appointed time. The plan was excellent, says Fleury, had its execution been possible; but life was too short to allow of a man’s perfecting himself in every known branch of learning before entering on his theological studies. ”

“ It seemed very natural now to ask Fleury what gave the woman such strength.
“It’s the sense that all is well, in spite of this physical estrangement from the world,” the preacher said. “Bellair, it’s the sense that nothing matters but the soul. It’s not belief; it’s knowing. She has lost the sense of self. She is through talking. It is finished with her. We talk, because it is not finished in us—but it is being accomplished. We talk because we want that peace; when it comes we will not talk, but live it. It is exactly opposite to desire ”