Omniana/Volume 2/The Stigmata
219. The Stigmata.
I know not who was the author of the Telemacomanie: he speaks in the Preface of his profound respect and high esteem for Fenelon, and denies that he had composed a brutal and seditious criticism upon the Telemaque, which his enemies imputed to him, and which infamous and scandalous libel, they said, was the cause of his banishment to Auvergne. Certainly there is nothing either seditious or scandalous in the present work, but it is a most extraordinary compound of heathen learning and Catholic bigotry. In intolerant and barbarous bigotry indeed the writer is only surpassed by the Eclectic reviewer, who affirms that "thousands of unhappy spirits and thousands yet to increase their number, will everlastingly look back with unutterable anguish on the nights and days in which Shakespere ministered to their guilty delights."
"What, (says this Catholic-Methodist,) would our ancient Bishops, the Saints and Doctors of the Gallican Church, have said if they had seen one of their brethren amuse himself with writing Romances! What would St. Loup the Bishop of Troyes have said, he who could not suffer that the Bishop of Auvergne, St. Sidonius Appollinaris, should amuse himself with making verses and speaking in them of Jupiter and Venus and Mars? What would St. Sidonius have said himself, he who so positively assures us, that from the day when he embraced the religious profession he renounced that amusement, 'ab exordío religiosæ professionis huic principaliter exercitio renunciavi.' The profound respect which I feel for the character and for the personal merits of M. de Cambray makes me blush with shame for him at learning that such a work should have proceeded from his pen! That with the same hand with which he offers every day upon the altar of the living God that adorable chalice which contains the blood of Jesus Christ, the price of the redemption of the Universe, he has presented to those very souls which were then redeemed, the cup with the poisoned wine of the Whore of Babylon,..for thus it is that the Fathers have called all those detestable books, which under ingenious fictions and elegant language, contain nothing but tales of gallantry and amours, descriptions of the temple and the statue of Venus, and of the enchanted island of Love, and the empire of little Cupid with his bow and arrows,..as the greatest of the Gods!"
This writer resembles the Eclectic Critic also in the mixture of sound sense and just feeling, which makes his bigotry at once more disgraceful and more mischievous. But he mingles with it a baseness of adulation from which the Englishman is free. "Oh, (says he,) how much more natural and more efficacious for the instruction of Messeigneurs les Enfans de France, would it have been, to have done for them what the late Archbishop of Paris, Perefixe, did for the King, to whom he had the honour of being preceptor. Instead of making a romance and writing a fabulous history full of false events tragical or comical, he wrote the true history of the reign of Henry IV. his grandfather, and instructed him thoroughly by a family example which he set before his eyes, of the great art which he has since so well put in practice, of conquering his enemies, and making himself beloved by his subjects. How is it to be wished that the Archbishop of Cambray had imitated in this the Archbishop of Paris, and that with the same polish, the same elegance of stile, the same grace, and the same grandeur and nobleness of sentiment with which he has written the Romance of the Adventures of Telemaque, he had written the life of Louis the Great! and instead of proposing to his illustrious pupils, children of the greatest and most powerful monarchs of the world, the sons and grandsons of two princes who are the love and the delight of the human race, the romantic adventures of a little Kingling of Ithaca, whose dominion was not of such extent as the least of the provinces of the Kingdom of France, and who was not so powerful as our Kings of Ivetot and our Sires de Pons, he had proposed to them their incomparable grandfather as a model! What funds of genius, of wisdom, of moderation, of greatness, of goodness, of prudence, valour, glory, and probity might he not have made the grandsons observe in their grandsire! What instructions might he not have taught them to draw from his examples! What reflexions might he not have led them to make upon so many miraculous events as those of his reign, so many battles won, and towns and provinces conquered in spite of the irregularity of the seasons, and the universal opposition of all Europe, that is to say, pour ainsi parler, in spite of the conspiration of Heaven and Earth!" "M. de Cambray, (says this prime flatterer) has committed the same fault as the Czar of Muscovy did last year, who left his kingdom 'contre la bienséance ordinaire des Rois, qui ne doivent jamais en sortir que comme les Rois de France, pour en conquerir d'autres, and having committed this breach of bienséance, contented himself with visiting a few petty princes in Italy and Germany, and the States of Holland, . . ce qu'il y avoit de plus foible, & de moins considérable parmi les têtes couronnées, . . par un aveuglement qu'on a peine à comprendre, . . & n'a pas en l'esprit de voir la Cour de France, qui est sans contredit la plus fleurissante de toutes les Cours, ni d'y venir étudier la vie, la conduite, & la sagesse de Louis le Grand."
But the most remarkable thing in this book is a comment upon two verses of the Psalms. "Foderunt pedes meos et manus meas," .. . they pierced my hands and my feet. xxii. 17. and "confige clavis carnes meas." For thus it is that the Apostle St. Barnabas pretends that the 120th verse of the 119th Psalm ought to be read, and that instead of the version in the vulgate "confige timore tuo carnes meas, a judiciis enim tuis timui," the true translation is, "confige clavis carnes meas, quia nequissimorum conventus insurrexerunt in me." Or, "confige clavis de metu tuo carnes meas," ,. . Καθήλωσόν ἐκ του φόζου σου τὰς σαρκας μου, . . according to the edition of P. Menard. "En effet," this writer pursues, and the passage is too curious to be given in any but the original language, the ipsissima verba of this strange critic, "en effet, David devant être la figure la plus parfaite, et la plus ressemblante qui fut jamais de J. C. il falloit qu'il le representa dans les principales circonstances de sa passion. Or il n'y en a point de plus essentielle que celle de son crucifiement, lorsqu'il eut les pieds & les mains percées; car, comme dit tres bien Tertulien, c'est précisement dans ce percement des pieds & des mains, que consiste le crucifiement, hæc est propria atrocitas crucis; et ce fut par la que S. Thomas fut persuadé que le Jesus qu'il vit ressuscité étoit le même que celui qu'il avoit vû crucifié, mittam digitam meum in locum clavorum. Ains. il falloit que David pour être une parfaite image et copie de J. C. eut comme lui les pieds et les mains percées, & qu'il porte dans son corps les Stigmates du Sauveur, & qu'il pût dire, comme dit S. Paul, Ego stigmata Domini Jesu in corpore meo porto. On ne peut douter que cela ne soit arrivé à ce saint Roi, d'une maniere tresréelle, en quelque façon que la chose lui soit arrivée, soit que Saul, ou les soldats d'Absalom, ou quelqu'autre de ses ennemis lui ayant effectivement fait souffrir cet outrage, soit que comme un autre S. François, il ait eu les mains, et les pieds percez d'une maniere surnaturelle, mais neanmoins tres-réelle; car ce saint Roi n'est point menteur, et il a dit tres-positivement qu'on lui avoit percé les pieds et les mains, foderunt pedes meos et manus meas. . . confige clavis, in timore tuo, carnes meas."
"It is useless," he says, "to remark upon this subject, that the first of these texts is not to be found in the Hebrew, and the second not in any copy of the scriptures, for nothing can be more natural than to suppose that the Jews have had the address to erase them."
Such a specimen of biblical criticism would not be expected in a comment upon Telemaque. It is brought in in the course of the author's remarks upon Fenelon's explanation of the name of Œdipus.
Manoel Valle de Moura wrote a treatise towards the middle of the seventeenth century to show that the wounds of St. Francis were inflicted upon him by an angel, not by Christ himself. De Stigmatibus S. Francisco impressis ab Angelo, non ab ipso Jesu Domino nostro crucifixo. A Franciscan of Moura assured Nicolas Antonio that the writer had been stricken blind as a punishment for this opinion!