The fact is, of course, that human beings find no difficulty at all in entertaining, successively or even at the same moment, convictions which are totally incompatible one with another. Indeed, such self-contradiction is the normal and natural condition of man. It suits our book to have different notions at different moments; therefore we have such notions, even though there is no means of reconciling them. Complete consistency comes only with complete-pointedness, complete absorption in ultimate reality.
In the intervals of working for the crusade, Father Joseph devoted his enormous energies to the organization of missions among the Protestants of Poitou. Nor was it the Protestants only who stood in need of evangelization; for though Catholicism survived in the West, it had been reduced by war, indifference and worldliness to a most abject and unedifying condition. Almost all the abbeys and most of the parishes had passed into the control of the local gentry, who spent the church revenues on themselves and were represented by half-starved and generally illiterate vicars, acting as their bailiffs. ‘Benefices and even curacies are given to girls as marriage portions, are counted as private property, as well by Catholics as Huguenots, and are sold for cash under contracts drawn up by the notary.’
This Augean stable of simony and heresy was calculated to rejoice the heart of Ezechiely.’ Here indeed was a labour proportionate to his zeal! Starting at first with only seven picked helpers, Father Joseph flung himself into the task of reformation and conversion. His success was spectacular. Hungry for just such a revival of religion, the Catholics responded with enthusiasm. Hardly less eager were the Huguenots who flocked in thousands to see the unfamiliar rites, to hear the liturgical chanting and the sermons. Impressed as much by the austerity of the missionaries’ lives as by the eloquence of their preaching, many returned, and considerable numbers were finally converted.
Father Joseph was in his element again, doing the work he loved best. But he was now too completely committed to the life of high politics to be able even to imagine that he could become again what he had been-the popular evangelist, the itinerant teacher of the art of mental prayer.
His missionary campaigns in the West were periodically interrupted by visits to Paris-visits, in the course of which he was in contact with people of the highest importance, great noblemen, great ecclesiastics, the papal nuncio, Luynes himself and even the King. Louis XIII respected the Capuchin’s political judgment and was impressed by his burning eloquence, his mysterious accounts of visions and revelations vouchsafed either to himself or to his Calvarians.
Five years before Richelieu became prime minister, Father Joseph was on sufficiently intimate terms with the monarch to be made the confidant of what had happened when, protesting, and with the most intense reluctance, the eighteen year-old boy had been pushed by Luynes into his consort’s bed. No less than Louis himself, his brother, Gaston of Orleans, fell under the same prophetic spell and, in spite of Father Joseph’s position as coadjutor of the detested cardinal, remained attached to him to the end.
It was during one of Father Joseph’s visits to Paris, in February 1619, that a courier brought disquieting news from Blois. The Queen Mother had escaped from the castle, by night, and fled to Angouleme, where she had placed herself under the protection of the Duke of Epernon. A new and more dangerous rebellion seemed to threaten. What was to be done? In his perplexity, Luynes sent for Father Joseph and Berulle. They advised the immediate despatch to the Queen Mother of some disinterested person whom she could trust. For example, Father Joseph suggested her almoner, Bouthillier. Now Bouthillier was dean of Luçon and one of Richelieu’s most faithful supporters. The dean was the thin end of a wedge, whose other extremity was the bishop. Bouthillier was sent, and the result was that Marie demanded, as a first condition of peace, that her trusted counsellor should be permitted to come back to her from his exile. Luynes’ reluctance to recall a potentially dangerous rival was outweighed by his fear of an immediate civil war.
Knowing that Richelieu could be trusted to advise moderation, he accepted the Queen Mother’s terms. At the beginning of March, Father Joseph’s brother, Charles du Tremblay, was sent posting south, to Avignon, bearing a letter from the king to the bishop of Luçon. Breaking the seal, Richelieu read the command to proceed immediately to Angouleme, to rejoin the Queen Mother. He obeyed with an alacrity which, owing to the wintry weather and the appalling state of the roads, exposed him to considerable dangers.
At Angouleme he was joined by Father Joseph and, together, they patched up a precarious agreement between the Queen Mother’s party and the king. The peace was not of long duration. A year later, in 1620, the nobles were using Marie’s grievances as an excuse for yet another uprising. In the engagement at Pont-de-Cé, royal forces won a decisive victory.
At a kind of consolation prize and to reinforce their loyalty, Marie de Medicis gave orders that her infantry should be permitted to sack the town of Angers before retiring further south. Father Joseph, who was in the neighbourhood, heard of this and immediately demanded an audience of the Queen. This time the friar’s ‘infinite dexterity with the nobility’ gave place to prophetic eloquence. Standing before the Queen, he told her unequivocally that, if she suffered Angers to be sacked, the blood of its people would be upon her head, and that God would damn her everlastingly.
The doctrine of hell fire was not entirely mischievous in its effects. On occasions like the present, for example, it could do excellent service. A stupid, obstinate, heartless creature, like Marie de Medicis, would have been deaf to any appeal to the higher feelings she did not possess, or possessed only in a condition so latent that it would have taken the greatest saint a very long time to bring them into actuality. But the Queen cared intensely for herself, and she believed without doubt or question in the physical reality of hell. Thunderously harping on that portentous theme, Ezechiely was able to put the fear of God into her. She recalled the order she had given; Angers was saved.
Thanks to a certain kind of intellectual ‘progress,’ the rulers of the modern world no longer believe that they will be tortured everlastingly, if they are wicked. The eschatological sanction, which was one of the principal weapons in the hands of the prophets of past times, has disappeared. This would not matter, if moral had kept pace with intellectual ‘progress.’ But it has not. Twentieth-century rulers behave just as vilely and ruthlessly as did rulers in the seventeenth or any other century. But unlike their predecessors, they do not lie awake at nights wondering whether they are damned. If Marie de Medicis had enjoyed the advantages of a modern education, Father Joseph would have thundered in vain, and Angers would have been sacked.
After the battle of Pont-de-Cé, fighting gave place to negotiations, which finally bore fruit in the Peace of Angers. As a reward for the part he had played in averting further civil strife, in moderating the nobles’ demands and in reconciling the king and his mother, Richelieu demanded a cardinal’s hat. Luynes made a show of agreeing, sent in a request to Rome that the Bishop of Luçon should be promoted at the earliest opportunity, and accompanied his official letter with a private hint that he was in no hurry to see his rival made a prince of the Church. Richelieu did not actually receive his hat till 1622, some months after Luynes’ death.
Meanwhile the bishop had become too important to be trifled with. As the price of his friendship, or at any rate of his benevolent neutrality, Richelieu demanded and obtained the hand of Luynes’ nephew, de Combalet, for his niece, Mlle de Pont-Courlay. It was an excellent match; for, in his brief tenure of office, Luynes had amassed vast fortunes, not only for himself, but for all the members of his needy and undistinguished family. The go-between who actually arranged the marriage was Father Joseph. We cannot doubt that he believed himself to be doing what his master had called the Exterior Will of God.
The abrupt conclusion of the war left the king with a considerable army, fully equipped, but with nothing to do. Luynes was all for disbanding it at once. Not so Father Joseph. Here, he perceived, was an opportunity which it would be a sin to miss-an opportunity to begin that great work of national unification, of which he and Richelieu had talked so often on the road between Loudun and Tours. The presence of the army was providential; the king must use it to strengthen the royal authority and advance the true faith. Specifically, he should lead it into Béarn, at the Western end of the Pyrenees. This native province of Henri IV still enjoyed a kind of autonomy; what was worse, it was so virulently Protestant that for upwards of fifty years, Catholicism had been all but outlawed within its borders. Let the king march at once, resume his father’s patrimony and re-establish the true faith.
Louis XIII listened and was inclined to take the friar’s advice, which was echoed by Richelieu and the whole Catholic party. But Luynes, who was the most unmilitary of men, objected. The fate of the domestic crusade hung in the balance. Finally, Father Joseph was called to express his
