THE JESUITS AND OTHER ROGUES

For this original article gives abundant evidence. The clause I outline disappears in the sacred cause of abridgment and Father Taunton's too candid words become:

"The most remarkable fact in the Society's history is the suspicion and hostility it has incurred within the household of the Roman Catholic faith."

Much of this, he explains, is due to the superior virtues of the Jesuits and the dishonesty of their critics. He even ventures to include the austere and most virtuous Pascal in a group of critics who are described as "not scrupulous in their quotations." He cuts out the serious criticism of Jesuit education (in the old article) in order to protect the fiction, which modern Jesuits have spread, that they were great educators.

But the most deliberate perversion of the truth is seen in the account of what happened in the 18th century. It is a commonplace of history how the Catholic kings of France, Spain, and Portugal, stung by revelations of the greed, hypocrisy, and intrigues of the Jesuits, suppressed the Society in their dominions and appealed to the Pope to suppress it altogether, which he did in 1775. We might allow that in the new edition it was necessary to abridge the account of the crimes of the Jesuits on which the monarch and the Popes acted but these clerical champions of accuracy in the new edition of the Encyclopedia have gone far beyond this. Taunton had said:

"The apologists of the Society allege that no motive influenced the Pope save the love of peace at any price and that he did not believe in the culpability of the Jesuits. The categorical charges made in the document (the Pope's bull) rebut this plea."

Taunton gave enough of the Pope's words -- I give a fuller account in my large "Candid History of the Jesuits" (which is, of course, not mentioned in the bibliography) -- to prove this. It is all cut out, and the reader is just given the modern thumping lie of the Jesuits that the Pope expressed no opinion on the charges against them. And lest any reader or critic should be able to say that that is just the opinion of a Catholic writer, Taunton's initials have been suppressed and in this case X has not given the mark of the crook. I should like to ask the professors of the University of Chicago what they think of that.

The articles "Jesus" and "Jews" I do not propose to desecrate by analysis. They are orthodox and venerable with age. They tell the reader what all theologians but a few rebels thought half a century or more ago. Whether it is for that sort of thing that you consult a modern encyclopedia.... Well, please yourself. It is the same with the notice of Joan of Are. In the old encyclopedia my friend Professor Shotwell, of Columbia, had a fair article on Joan. It was not quite up to date, but it was mildly critical. Now that Joan is turned into a saint, as part of the political deal of the Vatican and the French government, and in spite of the dire need to abridge the old edition, Shotwell's sober one and a half page notice is replaced by a three and a half page sermon by a French Catholic. Not a word about modern military opinion of her -- whether she had any ability at all or was just a superstitious tonic in a jaded military world -- and not a word about the new research of Miss Murray and others into the real nature of witchcraft and their conclusion that Joan was probably a member of the witch cult.

Then come the "John" Popes and prodigious feats of juggling. They had to be brought down to the customary level of grossly untruthful treatment of saints, martyrs, popes, and other sacred things in this "modern" work of reference. Of the character of most of the Johns we know nothing, but three or four of them were so notoriously vicious and otherwise devoid of interest that their portraits had to be touched up considerably. John X was decidedly one of them. Even the old article, admitting discreetly that he "attracted the attention" of a leading lady of the Roman nobility, allowed that "she got him elected Pope" in direct opposition to a decree of council (which X cuts out). But old and new editions introduce John XI as son of Marozia and reputed son of (Pope Sergius III." This is covering up the most infamous period of the depravity of the Papacy (or any other religious authority in the world) not with a veil but with painted boards. The period was what the Father of Catholic History, Cardinal Baronius, following the few clerical writers of the period, calls "The Rule of the Whores"; and I am not here giving a vulgar rendering of the Latin. The period stinks amazingly even in Cardinal Baronius. The two chief whores who ruled the Papacy for 30 or 40 years were Theodore. and her daughter Marozia (as fierce and lustful a cat as you will meet even in the history of the Middle Ages). Two Popes at least were lovers of these women and one was -- not reputed to be but certainly was -- the bastard of Marozia and Pope Sergius and was put on the papal throne by Marozia's orders.

Another son of Marozia's ruled Rome and the papacy for 20 years after the period that is strictly called "The Rule of the Whores" and he put his own son, John XII, on the papal throne. There may have been a few Popes as licentious as this young man was -- I would not be quite of it -- but certainly not one worse. He, says the contemporary Bishop Liutprand, turned the papal palace into "a brothel" and an inn. He seduced his father's mistress and his own sisters and raped pilgrims, he castrated the single cardinal who criticized him. . . . There was nothing he did not do during the 10 years of his pontificate, yet the feeble reference to his scandalous private life in the 11th edition is cut out in the fourteenth, leaving him one of the Holy Fathers.

It is useless to go into every detail and is enough to say that in the case of the next scandalous John (XXIII) the work of the reviser is as foul as ever. He lived and ruled at the height of the Italian Renaissance (1410-15), and he was a monster of crime in comparison with the notorious Alexander VI. Neither the writer in the 11th edition (a French Catholic) nor the one in the 14th (anonymous) tells the undisputed fact that he was notorious for vice and corruption before he became Pope. In fact neither hints at irregularities before he was condemned by the Council of Constance. The older writer then candidly acknowledged that the Council (300 prelates) endorsed 54 charges against him and that three cardinals he paid to undertake his defense refused to do so. "Enough charges," he said, "of immorality, tyranny, ambition and simony were found proved to justify the severest judgment." As a matter of fact the indictment, which may be read in any Latin History of the Councils, was a complete Inventory of crimes and sins. One sentence includes "murder, sacrilege, adultery, rape, spoliation and theft." And this precious "rectifier" of errors in the new edition cuts out the whole of this. He just states that the Pope was suspended but the sentence was irregular in canon law!

Passing on our way to the Leos we note a point here and there that need not detain us. "Jubilee year" is described as an institution of piety and not a word said about the greed and corruption of the Pope who established it and why. Julius II has had the character-sketch in the old edition, though written by a Catholic, touched up and trimmed until the reader, who may have read something in regular history about the Pope's children, his heavy drinking and swearing, and his unscrupulousness, will be surprised to find how great and virtuous a Pope he was. The greatest nobles of Rome at the time assure us that he was a sodomist. "Juvenile Offenders" is a title that ought to meet many searching and varied queries in our time. It completely fails. Not a word about religion. Not a single statistic. Then we come to the article "Knighthood and Chivalry," to which we were referred in the short note Chivalry."

I have made considerable research on this point in medieval history and have pointed out repeatedly that the belief that there was an Age of Chivalry (about 1100 to 1400) is one of the Crudest and emptiest of all the historical myths with which Catholic writers adorn their Middle Ages. No expert on the period fails to say the opposite. But in the case of this article I gather that the learned writer of it in the 11th edition, Dr. Coulton, who died in 1947, would not tolerate any monkey tricks with his work. He was not a master of the literature of the subject but he does say:

"Such historical evidence as we possess, when carefully scrutinized, is enough to dispel the illusion that there was any period of the Middle Ages in which the unselfish championship of God and the Ladies was anything but a rare exception."

Dr. Coulton has paid too narrow an attention to the faire- tale itself. On the broad question of the character of the princes, lords, knights, and ladies of the period, particularly in regard to sex, cruelty, dishonesty, and injustice, we have mounds. of evidence, and it consistently shows that this was one of the least chivalrous and most immoral periods in history.

In the long list of the Leo Popes I need notice only the important article on Leo X, the man who opposed Luther. Here, however, X had not much to do, The article in the 11th edition was by Carlton Hayes, the Catholic professor at Columbia. It falsely said that modern research has given us a "fairer and more honest opinion of Leo X." He was "dignified": the Pope who enjoyed nothing more than grossly indecent comedies, largely written by his favorite cardinal, in the sacred palace and banquets at which gluttony was a joke and the most vulgar adventurers were richly rewarded. He "fasted" -- at the doctor's orders, for his body was gross. With a show of liberality it admits that he was "worldly," "devoid of moral earnestness or deep religious feeling," "treacherous and deceptive" (which is explained away as the common policy of princes at the time). No, X did not find many "dates" to correct in this Catholic sophistication, but the man who wants truth in his encyclopedia will. Not the least idea is given of the monstrous corruption of the papal court under Leo: not a hint that it was so commonly believed in Rome that he was a sodomist that both his friends and authorized Biographer Bishop Giovio and the great contemporary historian Guiccardini notice it and, contrary to the statement of the Catholic historian Pastor, seem to believe it.

The article "Libraries" is the next on which X employs his subtle art. I have explained, I think, that X is not one encyclopedic Catholic writer who does all this marvelous work. The explanation given of the X in the first volume of the 14th edition is that it is "the initial used for anonymous writers"; just as the lady whose sins are not to be disclosed in the court is called by the police Mlle X. In all earlier encyclopedias anonymous writers, who do the great body of the hack-work of the encyclopedia, did not need any monogram. But, of course, this was a special arrangement with the Catholic body. It assumes that Committees of Catholics on both sides of the Atlantic were appointed to scrutinize all articles bearing upon Catholic myths and to cut out and modify, no matter on what authority it rested, any statement that the Catholic clergy do not like. Whether any other sort of anonymous critics were allowed to do similar work and wear the mask I do not know. I have not noticed an X anywhere except where truth has been slain or mutilated by a Catholic sword.

You may wonder why an innocent article on Libraries should excite the suspicions of the Catholic Knights Errant, but the history of libraries, like the history of literature or education generally, is even more dangerous from the Catholic viewpoint than an amorous story or picture. It tells how the Greeks and Romans had splendid libraries (and literature and schools); how during the Christian Middle Ages libraries (and schools and books of interest) were few and paltry to the 12th century; how in the meantime the Arabs and Persians again had magnificent libraries (and schools and literature) and in the course of two or three centuries succeeded in stimulating sluggish Christian countries to have a few decent libraries. This is real history and of deep sociological significance. But it is the kind of history Catholics hate as they hate science. So the historical part of the article is mercilessly but selectively cut.

A point, for instance, on which an inquirer is still apt to consult an encyclopedia is as to the fate of the greatest library of the ancient world, that of Alexandria. Said the article in the 1911 edition:

"In 389 or 391 an edict of Theodosius ordered the destruction of the Serapeum, and the books were pillaged by the Christians."

This is cut out, and we have to be content with a vague admission that the stupid story that "the Library survived to be destroyed by the Arabs can hardly be supported." The older writer said that the transfer of imperial powers from Rome to Constantinople was "a serious blow to literature." This truth also is cut out. He said that "during the Middle Ages knowledge was no longer pursued for its own value, but became subsidiary to religious and theological teaching." Monstrous. Out it goes.

Loisy, the great French scholar, had a couple of pages in the 11th edition. He was then still a Catholic. He is cut to a paragraph in the 14th edition. The fame of his scholarship had grown but he had openly quit the Church. When you see 20 pages devoted to logic, in which few folk take any interest today, you wonder whether the need of abridgement was really so drastic, but the pruning shears (and the signature X) appear again in the article "Lollards," who were deadly enemies of the church. It is the same with the Lombards. Instead of the short account of their great importance in the restoration of civilization in Europe being expanded, as modern interest requires, it is cut down, as the interest of the papacy demands.

"Lourdes" would seem to give X a great opportunity but the old article had only a few lines on the shrine of Lourdes. They are neatly strengthened. The older writer generously noted that it was "believed by the Roman Catholic world" that the Virgin revealed herself here. This becomes stronger. Lourdes has become famous since the visions of Bernadette Soubirons and their authentication by a commission of inquiry appointed by the bishop of Tarbes. As if no serious person doubted them. But you are referred to Catholic literature for details of the epic story of the growth and the miracles: a tissue of fabrications.

The article "Martyrs" was in the old edition an edifying Christian, sermonette, and it remains. Here in a modern and candid encyclopedia, we should have had a useful Recount of the mass of historical work that has been done on the martyrs, even by Catholic scholars like the Jesuit Delehaye and Professor Ehrhard, in the last 50 years. More ancient martyrs have been martyred with the axe of historical truth than the early Christians manufactured in 200 years.

In the article "Materialism" you know what to expect. In this and most other encyclopedias Romanists write on Catholic matters, Methodists on Methodists matters and so on, but, of course, on such subjects as Agnosticism, Atheism, Materialism, Naturalism, etc., we must entrust the work to ignorant and bigoted critics. So we still read how "naive materialism" is due to "the natural difficulty which persons who have had no philosophical training experience in observing and appreciating the importance of the immaterial facts of consciousness." Some reverend gentleman has been drawing upon his sermons for copy. Not a single word about the evidence provided by Professor Leuba and others that, on their own profession, more than 70 percent of the scientific men of America are "naive materialists." With a fatuousness that makes us groan the clerical reviser adds to the short article:

"Largely through the influence of Bergson, Alexander, and Lloyd Morgan contemporary science is turning away from materialism and reaching toward the recognition of other than mechanical factors in the phenomena, even the physical phenomena, of Nature."

The encyclopedia Might just as well say that under the influence of Gandhi, the Grand Lama, and the Mufti of Jerusalem, military men are now turning away from thoughts of war.

X comes on the scene again in the article on the Medici. Any truthful account of this famous Florentine family must show us the greatest paradox -- if you care to call it paradox -- of the Middle Ages; a wonderful art, superficial refinement, and pursuit of culture covering an abyss of corruption. The older writer was honest enough to tell a little of the background, and X generally cuts it out. The great Lorenzo is disinfected, and he strikes out such passages as this, referring to Cosmo III:

"Cosmos hypocritical zeal for religion compelled his subjects to multiply services and processions that greatly infringed upon their working hours. He wasted enormous sums in pensioning converts -- even those from other countries -- and in giving rich endowments to sanctuaries."

Lorenzo's 20 lines of vices are "abridged" into two, and so on.

"Medicine" ought, like "Libraries," "Hospitals" and a score of other articles, to show in its historical part the appalling blank in the civilized record. It did this to some extent in the earlier edition, so the account of Greek-Roman and Arab-Persian progress is abridged so that the blank from 500 to 1500 is not so painful to the eye.

"Mithraism" might seem an innocent and remote subject but the modern inquirer will want to know whether or not it is true that it made more progress than Christianity in the Roman world and whether it had a superior morality. The fine article by Professor Grant Showerman in the 11th edition fairly answered these questions. He said that by the middle of the 3rd century "it looked like becoming the universal religion" (which is cut out). He said that it appealed to the Romans by its strongly democratic note and its high ethic. Here his account is cut to pieces, and we now learn that it made progress by boasting of an esoteric wisdom and compromising with paganism. The substance of Showerman's article is kept but his initials are deleted. Perhaps he demanded that. Of course, nothing is said about the material borrowings of Christianity from Mithraism or how Christianity destroyed its rival by violence.

It appears that X (or one of him) is also an expert on Mohammed. He has reduced an authoritative 12-page article to three and perhaps some will think that he has shorn the prophets glory. Moses on the other hand passes into the new edition as "one of the greatest figures in history." You may have heard that even theologians and liberal Jews are wondering how much historical knowledge we have of such a person "Beyond question," says this more accurate new edition, "Moses must be regarded as the founder alike of Israel's nationality and of Israel's religion." These X's are great at settling disputed points.

The article, "Monasticism," is a grand opportunity for telling a large amount of picturesque truth. But, alas even the editor of the 11th edition had the quaint idea that it ought to be written by a monk. The result is that X did not find a word to alter. We have the old article in all its fragrance -- and mendacity. It tells us as much about the new history of the monastic bodies in Europe as a history of Hitlerism by a Fascist would tell of events in Europe. Whether or no an encyclopedia is a book in which you expect the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.... There are probably simple folk who do.

"Mozart" does not sound of theological interest, but since his Requiem or "mass for the dead" is said to be "one of the finest of religious compositions" and is a prime favorite in Catholic ritual it is important to the church that the public should not learn that he was an apostle and an anti-clerical Freemason who, in the familiar phraseology of the cleric, died and was buried like a dog. The article in the old edition did not toll the whole truth about this, but its misleading of the public was not strong enough for the reviser so it is made a little more misleading. It is well known in what circumstances Mozart began to compose his Requiem. A stranger approached him and offered to pay him to write it, and, as Mozart was ailing, the story runs that he nervously saw in the offer a warning of his death. If he did so at any time he must have soon learned that (as it proved) it was a rich amateur (Count Walsegg) who was really hiring his genius, but the "reviser" of the article has actually changed the text from "Mozart worked at it unremittingly, hoping to make it his greatest work" to "Mozart put his greatest music into it and became more and more convinced that he was writing it for his own death." After this you would expect a lovely death in the arms of his holy mother the church, but the clerical reviser cuts out in the new edition what the expert writer of the article said. It was:

"His funeral was a disgrace to the court, the public, society itself ... his body was buried in a pauper's grave."

But the initials of the writer, Sid D. T. Tovey, are kept at the foot of his mutilated article. This story of a mysterious visitor who gave Mozart the idea that he was being supernaturally warned of his approaching death has recently inspired an eloquent article in the pious Reader's Digest. Naturally readers who turn for verification of it to the great Encyclopedia will be fully encouraged. The fact is, as the "corrector" probably knew well, Mozart refused to send for a priest when he became dangerously ill and when his wife secretly sent for one the man refused to attend so notorious a heretic. It might be instructive to the inquirer into religious inspiration in art to know that one of the most beautiful pieces of church music was composed by a man who emphatically rejected Christianity, but it would be inconsistent with so much that is said in the Britannica, so the fact is suppressed.

Nietzsche you would almost expect to find banished altogether from so pious an encyclopedia, but we have here one of the little mysteries of its compilation. In spite of the grim need for abridgment the one-column article in the 11th edition has been replaced by a two-page appreciation of the great skeptic by his devout follower, Dr. A. Levy. One might quarrel with it here and there but let us not be meticulous.