at the École des Hautes Études; and he obtained appointments in the public libraries at the Mazarine (1878), at Fontainebleau (1884), and at St Genevieve, of which he was nominated librarian in 1885. He was a good palaeographer and had a thorough knowledge of archives and manuscripts; and he soon won a first place among scholars of the history of medieval France. His thesis on leaving the École des Chartes was his Catalogue des actes de Simon et d’Amauri de Montfort (inserted in vol. xxxiv. of the Bibliothèque de l’école, an important contribution to the history of the Albigenses. This marked him out as a capable editor for the new edition of L’histoire générale de Languedoc by Dom Vaissète: he superintended the reprinting of the text, adding notes on the feudal administration of this province from 900 to 1250, on the government of Alphonso of Poitiers, brother of St Louis from 1226 to 1271, and on the historical geography of the province of Languedoc in the middle ages. He also wrote a Bibliographie du Languedoc, which was awarded a prize by the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, but remained in manuscript. He also published several documents for the Société de l’Orient Latin (Itinera hierosolymitana, in collaboration with Ch. Kohler, 1885); for the Société de l’Histoire de France (Chronique normande du xivᵉ siècle, assisted by his brother Emile, 1885); for the Collection de textes relatifs à l’enseignement de l’histoire (Vie de Louis le Gros, by Suger, 1887); for the Collection des documents inedits (Correspondance administrative d’Alfonse de Poitiers, 1894–1900); for the Recueil des historiens de la France (Obituaires de la province de Sens 1904, 1906), &c., and several volumes in the Recueil des catalogues des bibliothèques publiques de France. Applying to the French classics the rigorous method used with regard to the texts of the middle ages, he published the Pensées of Pascal, revised with the original manuscript (1887–1889), and the Provinciales (1891), edited with notes. In 1893 he was nominated professor at the École des Chartes, and gave a successful series of lectures which he published (Manuel des sources de l’histoire de France au moyen âge, 1902–1906). He also taught at the École des Hautes Études. He died on the 19th of May 1904, after a short illness, leaving in manuscript a criticism on the sources of the Speculum historiale of Vincent de Beauvais.
His elder brother, Charles (b. 1843), is also of some importance as an historian, particularly on the history of art and on the heresies of the middle ages. He was appointed professor of history at the university of Toulouse in 1886.
A younger brother, Émile (1857–1906), became an assistant in the print-room at the Bibliothèque Nationale, and afterwards joined the staff at the Musée du Louvre, of which he eventually became keeper, retiring in 1902. He was a well-known connoisseur of art. He organized the famous Exposition Rétrospective held at the Petit Palais in 1900, and published a number of expert volumes on enamels, ceramics and furniture.
MOLINOS, MIGUEL DE (c. 1640–1697), Spanish divine, the
chief apostle of the religious revival known as Quietism, was
born about 1640 near Saragossa. He entered the priesthood
and settled in Rome about 1670. There he became well known
as a director of consciences, being on specially friendly terms
with Cardinal Odescalchi, who in 1676 became Pope Innocent XI.
In the previous year Molinos had published a volume, Guida
spirituale, che disinvolge l’anima e la conduce per l’interior
camino all’ acquisito della perfetta contemplazione e del ricco
tesoro della pace interiore. This was shortly followed by a brief
Trattato della cotidiana communione. No breath of suspicion
arose against Molinos until 1681, when the Jesuit preacher,
Segneri, attacked his views, though without mentioning his
name, in his Concordia tra la fatica e la quiete nell’ orazione. The
matter was referred to the Inquisition. It pronounced that
the Guida spirituale was perfectly orthodox, and censured the
intemperate zeal of Segneri. But the Jesuits set Father La
Chaise to work on his royal penitent, Louis XIV., who prided
himself on being a pillar of orthodoxy; but he was on very bad
terms with Innocent XI., and soon yielded to the pleasure of
discovering heresy in an intimate friend of the pope. Following
on official representations by the French ambassador in Rome,
who happened to be a cardinal, Molinos was arrested in May
1685. At first his friends were confident of an acquittal, but
in the beginning of 1687 a number of his penitents of both sexes
were examined by the Inquisition, and several were arrested.
A report got abroad that Molinos had been convicted of moral
enormities, as well as of heretical doctrines; and it was seen that
he was doomed. On the 3rd of September 1687 he made public
profession of his errors, and was sentenced to imprisonment for
life. In the following November, Innocent signed a bull condemning
sixty-eight propositions from the Guida spirituale and
other unpublished writings of its author. At some date unknown
in 1696 or 1697 Molinos died in prison.
Contemporary Protestants saw in the fate of Molinos nothing more than a persecution by the Jesuits of a wise and enlightened man, who had dared to withstand the petty ceremonialism of the Italian piety of the day. But Molinos was much more than the enlightened semi-Protestant that his English admirers took him to be; and his Quietism, had it been suffered to run its course would have swept aside beliefs and practices more important than the rosaries of nuns, though it is most unlikely that he realized the consequence of his own theories. Segneri and La Chaise were not so easily deceived. They were Jesuits; and Jesuitism is built up on the double assumption that God reveals Himself wholly and only through Jesus, and that Jesus reveals Himself wholly and only through the Church of Rome. Luther had already broken through one link in this chain, when he taught the Protestant world to come directly to Jesus, without troubling about the Church; but Luther still assumed that God could only be reached through the intermediacy of Jesus. Molinos wished to find a royal road to God without any intermediaries at all. The Reformation maintained that the Church, so far from being a help, was a hindrance, to union with Jesus; whereas Molinos welcomed both Church and Jesus as helps to union with God, always provided that the believer treated both as means to an end beyond themselves. In other words, he held that there was a triple stage in piety. Beginners gave themselves wholly to the Church. At the second step came devotion to Jesus. At the third and highest stage both Church and Jesus were left behind as deiformes, sed non Deus, and God remained alone.
But how could a finite being bring himself into direct relation with Infinity? Following very ancient precedents, Molinos fell back. on those phenomena of our consciousness which seem least within our own power. The less sense of proprietorship we had in a thought or action—the less it was the fruit of our deliberate will—the more certain might we be that it was divinely inspired. But what state of mind is most likely to be visited by these spontaneous illuminations? Plainly the state that Molinos calls the “soft and savoury sleep of nothingness,” where the soul is content to fold its hands, and wait in dreamy musing till the message comes; meanwhile it will think, do, will as little as it can. For this reason disinterested love became the great hall-mark of Quietist sanctity. Why it is unfitted to be a test of sanctity in general has been explained at length by Bossuet in a remarkable Instruction sur les états d’oraison, published while the Quietist controversy was at its height. But, although Molinos's system did not long survive him, he had at least the double merit of courage and tenacity. Few writers have struggled so long and so hard to disengage the essence of religion from its transitionary embodiment in an historical creed.
The Guida spirituale was published in Italian in 1675, and has been reprinted. An English translation appeared in 1688; it has been re-edited by Mrs Arthur Lyttelton. French, Spanish and Latin translations have also appeared. For the history of its author see C. E. Scharling, Michael de Molinos (Ger. trans. from Danish; Gotha, 1855). H. Heppe, Geschichte der quietistischen Mystik (Berlin, 1875). On the whole subject of Quietism see H. Delacroix, Études d’histoire et de psychologie du mysticisme (Paris, 1908). There is a brilliant, but very fanciful, account of Molinos and his doctrines in J. H. Shorthouse’s romance, John Inglesant. (St C.)
MOLIQUE, WILHELM BERNHARDT (1802–1869), German
violinist and composer, was born at Nuremberg on the 7th of
October, 1802, and learnt the violin at Munich under Pietro
