LA MENNAIS (from 1834: Lamennais), Félicité-Robert de. - Publicist and French philosopher, b. at St-Malo on 19 June 1782, about two years after his brother Jean-Marie, d. at Paris on 27 Feb. 1854.
I. LIFE AND WORKS
His mother having died in 1787, his aunt des Saudrais took care of the orphan. The deficiencies of his early formation are due to the revolutionary turmoil as well as to his frail health. It also seems that imprudent reading shook the faith of his early years. His life then became uncertain and almost agitated, until, in 1804, he was converted through the work of his brother Jean-Marie.
He then worked for ten years in collaboration with him, both in the Seminary of St-Malo, as a teacher of mathematics, and at the estate of La Chesnoie on the translation of the Guide spirituel, and on the works Réflexions sur l'état de l'Eglise en France pendant le XVIIIe siècle (1808) and Tradition de l'Eglise sur l'institution des évêques (1814).
To avoid the reprisals of Napoleon, whom he had opposed in the Tradition, L. M. took refuge in England during the "Hundred Days," placing himself under the guidance of the exiled abbé Carron. The latter exercised a notable ascendancy over him, and persuaded him, shortly after his return home (1815), to have himself ordained subdeacon. With a hesitant spirit he received, in 1816, the diaconate and the priesthood. Then, yielding to the impulse of his genius, he undertook the Essai sur l'indifférence en matière de religion, whose first volume (1817), written in gloomy hours of anguish, but powerfully inspired and pervaded with a conquering faith, deeply moved the literary and philosophical class.
In the second volume of the Essai (1820), he opposed to the philosophy of private sense his doctrine of common sense. The book and its apologetics aroused a lively opposition, led by the Sulpicians and the Jesuits. Having failed to overcome criticism by means of the Défense de l'Essai (1821), desirous of protecting himself against a possible censure, he referred the work to Rome. The favorable judgment of three examiners and the imprimatur granted by the master of the Sacred Apostolic Palace deluded L. M. regarding the soundness of the work and the orthodoxy of the ideas. Trusting in such approvals, he developed his thesis in the III and IV vol. of the Essai (1823 and 1825). He attacked the "reform," the Revolution, liberal institutions, the Université. Then, passing to action with the intent to "propagate his doctrine and work for the advent of a new Christendom" (Fonck), he employed the most varied means: pamphlets, books, reviews, school, religious congregation. Removed from the Drapeau blanc, he collaborated with the Mémorial catholique (1824), circulated in the seminaries the little volume: In quattuor articulos declarationis anno 1682 editate aphorismata ad iuniores theologos (1826); he published in two parts (1825 and 1826) De la religion considérée dans ses rapports avec l'ordre politique et civil, the book defined by Frayssinous as "terrible in talent," soon followed by the other entitled: Des progrès de la Révolution et de la lutte contre l'Église. The government and the Gallican episcopate joined together to check his audacity. He was condemned to pay a fine, and the work De la religion was confiscated and destroyed; the apologist was then censured in the declaration of 3 Apr. 1826, signed, at the instigation of Msgr. Frayssinous, by fourteen prelates assembled in Paris.
The opposition exacerbated the ultramontanism of L. M. His tribune, after the Mémorial catholique, became the Avenir (v.), banner of French Catholic liberalism matured with the July Revolution, and inspired by the motto "God and liberty"; but, during the thirteen months of the newspaper's life, L. M. learned more than once that he would incur the censures of Rome, if the Avenir did not modify its ideas, especially concerning the sovereignty of the people and insurrection against sovereigns. He then consented, but without enthusiasm, to go to Rome "to consult the Lord in Shiloh" (1831). Gregory XVI, in response to the memorial presented to him by L. M., Lacordaire and Montalembert, announced that he would have their doctrines examined and at the same time advised them to return to France. A little later he received them benevolently, but wished that during the audience any allusion to the reason for the journey be avoided. L. M. remained still in expectation, not suspecting that what was awaited, before speaking, was his departure from Rome. On the way back, at Munich, the encyclical Mirari vos was communicated to him with an enclosed letter from Card. Pacca, in which were enumerated the principal charges concerning the Avenir, namely: 1) the editors had arrogated to themselves the right to treat and decide publicly most delicate questions relating to the government of the Church, of exclusive pontifical competence; 2) their ideas concerning civil and political liberty, disapproved by the Pope, were such as to foment the spirit of revolt and sedition; 3) on freedom of worship and of the press the editors professed opinions not only blameworthy, but opposed to the teaching and practice of the Church; 4) they had filled the measure of the Holy Father's sorrow by proposing the "Act of union" to all those who hoped for the liberty of the world and wished to bring it about. The pontifical document had not, out of deference, named either L. M. or the Avenir. But one is not for this reason authorized to diminish the scope of the encyclical, which, more than simple imprudences committed, struck and censured heterodox doctrines.
L. M., having returned to France, hastened to announce that the editors of the Avenir "respectfully submissive to the supreme authority of the Vicar of Christ, were leaving the lists and insistently invited their friends to give an identical example of Christian obedience" (10 Sept. 1832). Then began the period of crisis that lasted two years. The act of submission was followed by hesitations, distinctions inducing a false interpretation of the encyclical, the first religious doubts, the publication of the Paroles d'un croyant, the shipwreck of the faith and, fatal epilogue, apostasy.
Is it legitimate to doubt the seriousness of the declaration of 10 Sept. 1832? In fact, many adversaries of L. M. insinuated suspicions, for which in Affaires de Rome he wrote: "Our declaration had scarcely been divulged, when words of diffidence and discontent were already being murmured under one's breath. It was not complete enough, explicit enough; it too much recalled the respectful silence of the Jansenists. Intrigues were ordered, calumnies were spread, timorous souls were alarmed by charitable impostures uttered in a tone of sorrow. Then came direct provocations, insults, public outrages. Gregory XVI himself, ill informed by well-meaning reporters, declared in his brief of 5 Oct. 1833 to the bishop of Rennes: "A letter of the same L. M. has reached us, published by the newspapers (Journal de la Haye, 22 Febr. 1833, no. 16) which has necessarily filled the measure of our affliction, since it is evident proof that he still retains and supports the ideas he championed, which we hoped he would abjure forever. Yet the letter here alluded to, recently discovered in the manuscripts office of the Royal Library of Brussels (ms. II, 5488, vol. V, no. 117), was written from Rome, on 1 July 1832, that is to say six weeks before the encyclical Mirari vos, seventy-two days before the adherence of the editors of the Avenir to it: impossible therefore to declare it contradictory with the act of submission of 10 Sept., and to adduce it to reproach L. M. for his obstinacy in error.
After the censure of Toulouse and the brief to Monsignor d'Astros (8 May 1833), L. M. notified the Pope that he would henceforth remain entirely aloof from ecclesiastical affairs
(4 Aug. 1833). Following the brief of 5 Oct. to the Bishop of Rennes, he delimited the sphere within which he intended to restrict his own obedience. Finally, on 11 Dec. 1833 he signed a fourth and last declaration, the text of which had been proposed on 5 Oct. At the same time he decided to suspend all priestly activity.
The following year, and precisely on 30 Apr. 1834, when the faith, long wavering in his soul, was giving its last flickers, he published a book "of small bulk but of immense perversity" (Gregory XVI) entitled Paroles d'un croyant.
The encyclical Singulari nos of 15 July 1834 condemned the libel, the system of common sense and, once again, the liberal doctrines of L. M. Refusing to submit, he abandoned the Church and took his place in the ranks of her adversaries. From then on he also altered his surname, adopting the plebeian form Lamennais. He thus began a new life, above all political, dominated by concerns of a sociological order, and with certain literary and philosophical manifestations.
During the summer of 1834, L. M. replied to the censures aroused by the Paroles d'un croyant with the article De l'absolutisme et de la liberté, inserted in the Revue des deux mondes. In 1835 he published Troisièmes mélanges, preceded by an elaborate preface which, reprinted in the Complete Works (1844) under the title Du catholicisme dans ses rapports avec la société politique, was regarded as the public and definitive act of his severance not only from the Church but also from Catholicism. In 1836-37 he sent to press Affaires de Rome, a self-defence of high literary merit and in certain pages of a naturalness and grace rarely attained by the writer in his other works. There he narrates his conflicts with the Holy See regarding the Avenir and the Paroles d'un croyant; he wishes "that this brief writing be considered as destined to close the series of those published in the last twenty-five years."
From now on L. M. will be nothing other than the moralist, the philosopher and the polemicist of democracy. He will publish, in 1838, the Livre du peuple, a treatise of morals or of catechism taught by a priest who in the meantime has preserved, according to Mazzini, only the faith in Christian morality; and the Politique à l'usage du peuple, in which are gathered together articles written for the newspaper Le monde; in 1839, the Esclavage moderne, an impetuous Catilinarian against the subjection of the proletarian to an unjust society; in 1840, Le pays et le gouvernement, a harsh and violent satire of the regime and of the July monarchy, which will earn him a sentence of two thousand francs' fine and twelve months' imprisonment. During his imprisonment he gathered together and published Discussions critiques, inspired by resentment at his condemnation and directed above all against the Church. Having left prison, he sent to press two pamphlets, De la religion, a collection of brief formulas destined, it seems, in the author's mind, to become the catechism of the future, and Du passé et de l'avenir du peuple, which contains the spiritualist theory of "progress" as L. M. imagines it, constant, indefinite, and of which Christianity is but a simple phase.
The Esquisse d'une philosophie, a work of primary importance in the intentions of L. M. (it was to consist of six volumes; four appeared: three in 1840 and the fourth in 1846). Abbot Bourdard sees in it the impotent effort of a great intellect at the mercy of the waves, after (to cite a scriptural expression) "his faith has been shipwrecked" (Oeuvres complètes, III, p. 317), and Jules Simon
"the effort of a great spirit to unite in a complete and regular system doctrines whose radical impotence no stylistic ornament is capable of masking" (ibid., p. 316).
L. M. occupied himself with social questions until the end; he was haunted by them throughout the book Amschapands et Darvands (1843) and even in the notes and reflections added to his translation of the Gospels (1846).
The Revolution of 1848, which he had announced as inevitable, brought him bitter disappointments. Although elected deputy of the capital and member of the council charged with drafting a new charter, his counsels were rejected, the projects of social organization set aside. L. M. expressed his complaints in the newspaper he edited, and, following the coup d'état of 2 Dec. 1851, he withdrew definitively from active life, to dedicate his last energies to the translation of the Divina Commedia. The work is preceded by a vast introduction that may be considered as the spiritual and intellectual testament of the writer. It is a long indictment against the Roman Church, which leaves no doubt regarding the total or near-total ruin of his former beliefs.
L. M. fell ill on 16 Jan. 1854. His circle, dominated by a certain Auguste Barbet, kept assiduous watch to prevent any contact of the sick man with one or another of the priests who attempted to approach him. He passed away without having manifested the slightest sign of repentance. The body was interred in the common grave of the Père-Lachaise cemetery. To the gravedigger, who asked whether a cross should be placed, Barbet replied: "No!"
II. PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL DOCTRINES
In the life of L. M., 1834 is the year of the secession, which cleanly separates the works and doctrines of the Catholic priest from the later ones of the unfaithful priest. Before 1834 we have L. M. as 1) apologist, 2) forerunner of the doctrine of common sense, 3) ultramontane, 4) liberal, 5) head of social Catholicism; after 1834, L. M. as 6) spiritualist then socialist democrat, 7) rationalist and pantheist.
1. - L. M. reproaches ancient theology for limiting itself to the traditional proofs of Christianity, incapable, in his view, "of impressing minds," and establishes the principle: "Since reason has declared itself sovereign, it is necessary to invest it directly even upon its throne and compel it to bow, on pain of death, before the reason of God." He thus overturns the foundations of apologetics: for it is no longer a matter of arriving at faith by means of reason, but at reason by means of faith. Having laid down these premises, L. M. attempts to rest Christianity on the foundation of the universal beliefs of humanity. Meanwhile he attacks systematic indifference, which he considers responsible for social unrest; discerning in it a negation rather than a doctrinal affirmation, he groups dogmatic indifferents into three categories: those who do not believe religion necessary for the people; those who admit the necessity of a religion for all men but reject Revelation; those who, while recognizing the necessity of a revealed religion, accept only certain fundamental articles while permitting the denial of the others. L. M. admonishes all these indifferents who, to justify their attitude, proclaim truth inaccessible: "There is no peace for the intellect except when it is sure of possessing the truth; no peace reigns among peoples except when they are conscious of obeying order." He meant in this way that for him the religious and the social problem depend at one and the same time on the problem of certainty. But on what bases is the foundation of certainty to be established?
2. — On common sense, that is, the unanimous testimony of the human race. L. M. first "decomposes" individual reason, finding in it three principal elements: the senses, the feelings, and reasoning; he then describes, in his own way, their functioning and their value, observing that they are imperfect instruments, but since their imperfections vary according to individuals, their agreement on a point constitutes a proof of truth more or less significant according to the number of testimonies. Isolated, testimony offers only a simple probability; innumerable, it determines instead an absolute certainty. It cannot in any way deceive when it is expressed by the voice of the human race, assuming a universal character. Therefore, considered individually, man cannot know with certainty; but considered collectively, he can know something; that is, individual reason is powerless, but not common, general, universal reason. Hence the name of doctrine of common sense or of universal consent given to the singular system, in which two terms as distinct as sensus and consensus are confused. L. M. has taken the effect for the cause and inversely: "There exist truths on which all are agreed; therefore the consent of all is for each one the sole criterion of certainty." Here lies the error in its entirety, notes Balmès. Had he examined the matter more deeply, L. M. would not have fallen into the grave error. The certainty of the individual does not derive from general consent; rather, consent is general because every individual succeeds in expressing it.
3. — In the Tradition de l'Eglise sur l'institution des évêques, L. M. outlines his ultramontane thesis on the prerogatives of the Holy See, the indefectibility of the Roman Church, and the infallibility of the Pope; but although basing the foundation of pontifical jurisdiction on authority, he traces a limit for it, since he does not yet believe in the indirect power of the pontiffs over kings in temporal questions. He therefore engages and sustains against Gallicanism, of which he would be the "grave-digger" (P. Lasserre), an ardent, passionate struggle, accelerating, within the Church of France, the return to Roman doctrines. He boldly combats the Declaration of the Four Articles of 1682, rejects in 1824 the limitation to the indirect power of the popes previously formulated; then he defends, with an inflexibility of principles at times excessive, the doctrinal thesis that upholds the convenience and necessity of the union of Church and State: "Without pope no Church; without Church no Christianity; without Christianity no religion for all the people that was Christian, and therefore no society; so that the very life of nations derives from the pontifical power."
4. — L. M.'s slide toward liberalism was manifest in 1829. In the work Des progrès de la Révolution, he advocates "the union of order and liberty"; with spiritual unity cracked and the unity of faith broken, tolerance of opinions appears an evident social necessity. It would be "madness" to claim to be able to "bind the spirit in chains" and gag thought. Only a regime of liberty can assure Catholics the hoped-for security. And since L. M. is convinced that the Revolution will consummate the split between State and Church, he hopes that the latter, separated from the State, may draw near and go to the people. "The true support of the Church is the trust of the weak whom it protects; its power, their love." This was to annul, if not to invoke, the disappearance of institutions which, "once the breath that animated them at their origin was extinguished, now diverge from the true interests of peoples."
5. — After the days of July 1830, L. M. founds the Avenir with the motto "God and liberty," becoming the first exponent of liberal Catholicism in France. He holds that the Church, like civil society, undergoes transformations which, while not altering the divine element inherent in it, induce it to adapt to the genius of peoples as well as to the necessities of the times. Indeed, every decisive turning point of humanity is determined by an evolution of the Church. The hour has come for it to free itself; but it cannot be free before having separated itself from the State: a separation, moreover, already begun by the State itself. It is therefore urgent to claim religious liberty, liberty of education, that of persons and of property, that is, the enjoyment of the rights without which not even society can be conceived: claims that presuppose freedom of the press. Then, within the chaos established by the overthrow of the old order, Christianity "will raise up another society, which again and always will be nothing other than the expression of the stage to which humanity has arrived through progressive evolution under its influence; an intellectual and moral development this, which brings about and necessitates an adequate progress of liberty" (Avenir, 20 Dec. 1830). Within these lines, in embryo, lies the whole theory of liberal Catholicism.
6. - The condemnation of the Avenir brings about the crisis that was to overwhelm the faith of L. M. "I believe that the Church cannot remain as it is, that there has never been a clear distinction between what is human and what is divine within it, and that everything is being prepared for its transformation" (letter to Montalembert, 1 January 1834). He therefore abandons it, with the claim of reconstituting on new foundations, but always by means of Christianity, the spiritual unity of the human race; then, having withdrawn from the Roman Church, although still a member of that "imperishable Church whose earthly life is not bound to a single form," he devotes himself to the education of "spiritualist democracy," sustained by the thought that the complete sacrifice of self will not be useless to the progress of humanity. And at first he stirs the people to revolt. Whoever might object that such was not the intent of L. M. when he wrote Paroles d'un croyant should reflect, with Bellessort, on how dangerous it is to divide humanity into two classes: "those who possess everything and have the vices; those who possess nothing and have all the virtues." Finally the thought of L. M. flows into socialism, the endpoint of his politico-religious evolution, which is logical, since he had always admitted that a certain popular sovereignty emanates from that essential sovereignty of God.
7. - When the encyclical Singulari denounced as rash and dangerous the philosophy of "common sense," L. M., wounded to the quick, re-examined his traditionalist ideas and passed over to rationalism. Previously he denied all value to individual reason; now he loudly professes that it alone has the right to judge; nor is it any longer possible to defend the faith. He will discover in it, in fact, by analyzing it, two fundamental prejudices: "the idea instilled early on that one could not, without offending conscience, doubt the teaching imparted by an authority reputed to be infallible; the opinion, accepted by ignorance and developed by priestly culture, of a truly existing supernatural order. Neither of the two prejudices withstands the examination of reason, since the authority questioned 'dies if it answers'; and the very notion of the supernatural is erased and disappears as soon as man, having deeply investigated the laws of nature, has recognized that such a notion does not correspond and cannot correspond to any reality." (G. Boutard [v. bibl.], III, p. 141). He declares illusory, indeed useless, the hypothesis of a supernatural Revelation: is reason not sufficient unto itself for all it needs to know? He does not even trouble himself to examine the fact on which, in the final analysis, the Catholic faith rests; and nevertheless he declares that he believes in God, in the immortality of the soul, in future sanctions: nothing else, or almost nothing. Must L. M.'s belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ be excluded? His Esquisse d'une philosophie, a work left unfinished, is pervaded by the Trinitarian idea and by that of evolution. One notes in it the continual preoccupation with harmonizing theological conceptions and personal observations. The author denies the existence of evil and rejects the thesis of original sin, the Incarnation, the Redemption, Grace. If, in antithesis to pantheism, he draws inspiration from the theological dogma of creation, he interprets it in such a way as to fall himself into the error that he presumes to refute. Two attractions then contend for the author's soul: logic drives him to absolute rationalism; feeling holds him back in a pious pantheism.
Bibliography16 works
Ippolito Vittorio