Work in the educational field has been undertaken by many theocentric organizations other than the Benedictine order all too often, unhappily, under the restrictive influence of the political, state-supported and state-supporting church. More recently the state has everywhere assumed the role of universal educator -a position that exposes government to peculiar temptations, to which sooner or later they all succumb, as we see at the present time, when the school system is used in almost every country as an instrument of regimentation, militarization and nationalistic propaganda.
In any state that pursued goodness politics rather than power politics, education would remain a public charge, paid for out of the truces, but would be returned, subject to the fulfilment of certain conditions, to private hands. Under such an arrangement, most schools would probably be little or no better than they are at present; but at least their badness would be variegated, while educators of exceptional originality or possessed of the gift of seership would be given opportunities for teaching at present denied them.
Philanthropy is a field in which many men and women of the margin have laboured to the great advantage of their fellows. We may mention the truly astounding work accomplished by Father Joseph’s contemporary, St. Vincent de Paul, a great theocentric, and a great benefactor to the people of seventeenth-century France. Small and insignificant in its beginnings, and carried on, as it expanded, under spiritual authority alone and upon the margin of society, Vincent’s work among the poor did something to mitigate the sufferings imposed by the war and by the ruinous fiscal policy which the war made necessary. Having at their disposal all the powers and resources of the state, Richelieu and Father Joseph were able, of course, to do much more harm than St. Vincent and his little band of theocentrics could do good. The antidote was sufficient to offset only a part of the poison.
It was the same with another great seventeenth-century figure, George Fox. Born at the very moment when Richelieu was made president of the council and Father Joseph finally committed himself to the political life, Fox began his ministry the year before the Peace of Westphalia was signed. In the course of the next twenty years the Society of Friends gradually crystallized into its definitive form. Fanatically marginal-for when invited, he refused even to dine at Cromwell’s table, for fear of being compromised -Fox was never corrupted by success, but remained to the end the apostle of the inner light.
The society he founded has had its ups and downs, its long seasons of spiritual torpor and stagnation, as well as its times of spiritual life; but always the Quakers have clung to Fox’s intransigent theocentrism, and along with it, to his conviction that, if it is to remain at all pure and unmixed, good must be worked for upon the margin of society, by individuals and by organizations small enough to be capable of moral, rational and spiritual life. That is why, in the two hundred and seventy-five years of its existence, the Society of Friends has been able to accomplish a sum of useful and beneficent work entirely out of proportion to its numbers.
Here again the antidote has always been insufficient to offset more than a part of the poison injected into the body politic by the statesmen, financiers, industrialists, ecclesiastics and all the undistinguished millions who fill the lower ranks of the social hierarchy. But though not enough to counteract more than some of the effects of ‘the poison, the leaven of theocentrism is the thing which, hitherto, has saved the civilized world from total self-destruction. Father Joseph’s hope of leading a whole national community along a political short-cut into the kingdom of heaven on earth is illusory, so long as the human instruments and material of political action remain untransformed. His place was with the antidote-makers, not with those who brew the poisons.
CHAPTER XI The Final Scene
In May 1638, Father Joseph had a stroke, and for a time he lay partly paralysed and unable to speak. Rest, however, soon restored him to health -the somewhat precarious health of an ageing man, incessantly under strain, burdened with responsibilities and enormously overworked. During the summer, he returned to his ministerial duties; but, knowing that the end could not be very far away, he arranged to delegate a good deal of his work to others, so that he might have more time to ‘keep good company.’ During these last months of his life he was much with his spiritual daughters, the Calvarians, at their convent in the Marais. Here he worked incessantly, preaching, giving lectures on religious and philosophical subjects, instructing in the art of mental prayer, offering spiritual direction to those who needed it. At this period he was often heard to say that ‘he thought more of contributing to the perfection of the humblest Calvarian nun than of all the kingdoms of the world.’ One can only wish that he had always been of this opinion. In this last year of Father Joseph’s life things had not gone too well for the French armies.
Condé had failed ignominiously in northern Spain. In Italy, the forces of France and Savoy had had to retreat before the Spaniards. An offensive in the Low Countries had been halted by the imperialists. The only good news came from Alsace. Here, in a starving and half-depopulated country, Bernard of Saxe-Weimar had defeated successively the armies of De Weert, Goetz and Charles of Lorraine, and was now, in the autumn of 1638, besieging Breisach, the fortress which dominated the Spanish lines of communication between Italy and the Netherlands. Moving between the convent in the Marais and Rueil or the Palais Cardinal, Father Joseph followed the fluctuations of the distant campaign with an interest that, for all his words about the kingdom of the earth, was at least as eager and anxious as his concern for the perfection of his nuns. In spite of his stroke and the imminence of death, he was still the foreign minister of France, the designated successor of Richelieu, and co-author with the Cardinal of the policy for which Bernard and his savage adventurers were fighting at Breisach.
On Saturday, December 8th, Father Joseph left the cell that was his office and moved into the cell reserved for him, as spiritual director of the Calvarians, in the Marais. Over the week-end he intended to deliver three long lectures on the proper use of that modified version of Benet Fitch’s spiritual exercises, in which the nuns were being trained. The Saturday and Sunday lectures were given without mishap or undue fatigue. But in the middle of the third lecture, which began at six o’clock on the morning of Monday, December 13th, he was interrupted by a sudden paroxysm of retching and vomiting. He retired for a little, but would not allow the nuns to be dismissed, and when the attack was over, went on with his discourse, which lasted in all for two hours and a half. His sense of physical weakness was extreme, and he kept imagining that his voice would not carry to the back of the hall. When this happened, he would interrupt himself to ask if all could hear him. The nuns replied that they could, and replied quite truthfully; for Father Joseph was making such prodigious effort of will to overcome his weakness that his voice was actually louder than usual.
When the lecture was over, Father Joseph retired to his quarters and, spent the rest of the day in prayer, which he interrupted only to receive the priest who acted as confessor to the convent. Feeling his end to be near, he made a general confession.
In the evening he emerged from his cell and had an interview with the Abbess and the senior nuns, who acted as her assistants. The conversation turned on what had once been Father Joseph’s favourite subject -crusades. One of the nuns remarked that it was certain that the Holy Places would be recovered very soon; for Father Joseph had had revelations to that effect. To this the friar answered that she was mistaken. It had never been revealed to him that the Holy Places would soon be recovered. All he had received in his visions and raptures was a divine command ‘to do all I could to rescue Jesus from captivity.’ The next morning Father Joseph said mass at seven in the convent chapel, and afterwards had his final interview with the Abbess and her assistants. He spoke to them of their duties and of that spiritual perfection, that condition of continual union with God, to the attainment of which they had dedicated their lives. When he finally took his leave, the words of farewell were pronounced on either side with a special solemnity, a more than ordinary emotion.
From the Marais Father Joseph travelled in a horse litter to Rueil, where he had an appointment with the Cardinal. He talked with Richelieu that night, and again on the following day. On Thursday, December 16th, he rose, as usual, before dawn, and after making his devotions, addressed himself to the day’s business. A long letter had just come in from the Capuchin missionaries in Abyssinia. Father Joseph listened to the reading of it with the keenest interest and at once dictated a reply. At ten he left his room, said mass and, after giving a few interviews, sat down to dinner.
