Book I. Dialogue I: General exposition of the errors of the false mystics on prayer; how these errors penetrated into France

I

Q. Is it true that many have fallen into fanaticism, and others into abominable errors ?

A. Both facts are only too true, and it would seem as if God allowed this so that the world might see more clearly the nature of a doctrine which could produce such enormities. It is this that contributed so largely to the general outcry against Quietism almost from the moment of its birth; Heaven grant that we may profit equally from the recent examples of fanaticism and the recent abominable errors which the Bossuet of our age¹ has so carefully revealed to the public eye. 2

Q. Can you not tell me a few of these signs of fanaticism of which you speak ?

A. The most obvious and marked examples may be found in the first letter inserted by Bossuet at the end of his Instruction, under the title of Documents concerning the Condemnation of the Qidetists; it should be noted that all the pages are numbered in Roman figures to distinguish them from the main body of the Instruction. This letter is from a Cardinal to Pope Innocent XI and dated from Naples January 30, 1682. The following is a summary of it:

‘ Most Holy Father, there has arisen at Naples, and

*3

I believe in other parts of this kingdom, a frequent habit of passive prayer which some call the prayer of quiet from which they take the name of Quietists. They enter into this prayer without any rule or method, without preparing themselves by any reading or consideration of a point, although the masters of the spiritual life usually propose this, especially to beginners; they do nothing, neither meditating nor using vocal prayers, but in the actual exercise of this prayer, keeping themselves at complete rest, as if they were dumb or dead they claim to make a passive prayer, for they believe that without going through the exercises of the purgative way they can open the way to contemplation at the very start, by their own strength, although both ancient and modern writers who treat of this subject are unanimous in declaring the contrary.... A woman brought up in this practice says repeatedly: “ I am nothing, God is all; I am in the condition in which you see me because it so pleases God ”; she will never make her confession, yet wishes to go to Communion all the same; she will obey nobody... when one presents pious images to their minds, even of Jesus Christ, they force themselves to drive them away by shaking their heads, saying that such images separate them from God.... One day one of them decided to turn a crucifix upside down because he said it estranged him from God and caused him to lose God’s presence. They commit the error of thinking that every thought that comes to them in the repose and silence of prayer is a light and an inspiration from God; and that therefore they are not subject to any law; and they think that every idea that passes through their mind is justified.’

This is the substance of Cardinal Garaccioli’s letter, and its last words will answer your second question. There is no need to expatiate further on this subject, for everyone knows the errors of Molinos, the practice of which was accompanied by shameful enormities, as the Bull

*4 tells us by which he was condemned to abjure his errors, clothed as a penitent, in the presence of the Cardinals, the whole Roman Court and the assembled people; it was only in consideration of his repentance that he was sentenced merely to perpetual imprisonment with certain particular penances; to which Bossuet adds, after quoting the documents: ‘ While these lines were being printed, we learned of the death of Molinos in prison on December 29, 1697, after having received the sacraments with many signs of repentance. 5

II

Q. How did such errors reach France?

A. You will understand that it was not under the guise of these gross, extravagant and abominable ideas that they did so: for we must first distinguish between two sorts of Quietists, the one gross, fanatical and horrible; the other refined, spiritual, delicate. We may justifiably separate the other errors of Quietism from these extravagant and execrable practices, and many do so separate them, as Bossuet tells us i² ‘I wished, 5 he continues, ‘ to attack Quietism in its most plausible form, that is in its spiritual enormities rather than in its grossness. I decided on this so that those who felt infinitely removed from these abominations and extravagances should not thereby imagine that they were innocent when they were following the finer and more spiritual errors. 5 It is this class of people who are called false mystics, for the reasons given.

Q. How then could the errors of spiritual Quietism and false mysticism have reached France?

A. Like all other heresies, the errors of which spread by means of tainted books: they spread wherever they go the poison with which they are filled. We have too many unfortunate examples of this in other matters no less important, that we have not been able to remedy in the sixty or more years we have groaned under them.

Q. What were the books and the writers who represented spiritual Quietism in France ?³

A. I hardly dare say: how terribly, alas, can a small spark start a great fire. Let us see what Bossuet has to say r⁴

• I am undertaking here for the love of God and his Church the thankless task of searching out in small books of little merit an infinity of errors, which it would seem wiser to allow of themselves to fall than to take the trouble to refute, or to give a reputation of sorts by our censure of them. Many people will think that these books deserve only scorn, above all that one which has a layman without knowledge of theology for author, 2 and those two which are written by a woman: the Moyen court et facile, etc., and the Interpretation du Cantique des Cantiques. 3 It might be said that it would be sufficient in each case to note them and merely publish those documents where she has signed her own condemnation; that the rest is not worthy of the attention of doctors, let alone Bishops. But I am not of this opinion. 5

Q. How did such books and such authors succeed in creating such a sensation in France for five or six years ?

A. By an unhappy combination of fatal circumstances, of which it would be useless to tell those who know of them, and even more those who do not know.⁵

Q. How did these dissensions and errors end?

A. By a manifest and unexpected act of God. For it is known that soon after Bossuet’s Instruction Pastorale had appeared the minds of all were so calmed that even until to-day no writer has dared to take up his pen in justification or excuse of these false mystics, or of the least of their errors. Even less have they dared to attack the Instruction which condemned and proscribed them all; an event which perhaps was unique among thousands of like cases, although we can still see with regret a number of examples quite contrary which even seem to aspire to immortality.⁶

Footnotes

1. The Archbishop of Sens, Mgr. Languet, formerly Bishop of Soissons. a The author speaks of the disturbances at the cemetery of S. Medard, the absurdity and imposture of which Mgr. Languet, Archbishop of Sens, demonstrates in many of his writings. ↩

2. Book X, § 3. ↩

3. These two works are by Mme. Guy on. ↩

4. Book I, § 10. ■ Francois Malaval, author of the Pratique facile your dlevcr VArne d la Contemplation. ↩

5. The author alludes here to the relations of Fen&on and Mme. Guyon, and the esteem in which the illustrious prelate and his good friends held this lady. (V. Histoire de Fdnelon, by Cardinal de Bausset.) ↩

6. The author refers to the Jansonists ancl to their presumptuous resistance to the Holy See. ↩