ALTHOUGH Lamennais was an outstanding figure in the politics, literature, and religion of the nineteenth century, he is not now well known in England. By turns a monarchist, an ultramontane, a liberal Catholic, a religious democrat, and a messianic revolutionary, he was a restless visionary who contributed something to many quite different streams of nineteenth-century thought, but who never remained content with any one of them.

These remarkable changes of outlook have made his influence difficult to assess: no sooner had he sown the seeds of that ultramontanism which was later to triumph in the decrees of the first Vatican Council, than he was advocating that independence of the spiritual from the secular power which in many countries is only now coming to be accepted as desirable; and no sooner had those ideas in their turn obtained powerful support, than he was addressing himself in vague and apocalyptic terms to the general mass of the people. No one followed him through all the phases of his turbulent life. His course changed so frequently and so unmistakably that it would have been difficult to do so with sincerity. Yet there was no lack of sincerity in him. Some have attributed his development to pride and self-seeking1 (others said the same of Newman a few years later). But the underlying consistency of his life, his care for the welfare of society and his willingness to suffer loneliness, hatred, and imprisonment, give the lie to that judgement.

This combination of politics, poetry, and religion, and of different approaches to religion, within one personality, makes him more representative of the many conflicting forces of his century than any other single person. ‘In him’, wrote W. S. ILilly, ‘we see more fully and clearly than in anyone else, the working of the spiritual forces of his times: more fully and clearly than in De Maistre, or Bonald, or Chateaubriand, or Comte—all true representatives and exponents of the Zeitgeist.’1

As a representative of the spirit of his times Lamennais was known, both personally and by his work, to a great variety of people in England in the last century. To study the extent of this contact not only throws some light on the value and appeal of Lamennais’s own thought; it also shows that widely differing and apparently unconnected ideas associated with the Oxford movement, the growth of English Roman Catholicism, and popular radicalism were not totally isolated phenomena. At bottom they were all concerned with the nature of authority, the nature of belief, and the destiny of man. And of all the influential figures in nineteenth-century France, it was Lamennais who pursued these questions the most relentlessly.

Felicite Robert de la Mennais was born in 1782.2 Since his mother died when he was five and his father (who survived until 1828) was preoccupied with business affairs, his education was largely undertaken by his uncle, M. des Saudrais, who taught him by the simple method of letting him read what he liked. This combination of a lack of parental love and an undisciplined education had a great effect on his emotional and intellectual outlook in later years. He was not pressed to take a job. He had no need to earn money. He spent the years of his youth in reading, in co-operating in his uncle’s literary projects, and in groping his individual way towards the faith of a Christian. In this he was helped by his elder brother, Jean, who was destined for the priesthood. Gradually, after extensive study, it became clear to the two brothers that their vocation was to invigorate the Church, which had recently concluded a concordat with the State, and to stiffen its theological backbone by passing on some of their laboriously acquired learning.

This they did in two books, Reflexions sur l’etat de l’eglise en France pendant le xviiie dick, et sur la situation actuelle (1809) and Tradition de l’eglise sur l’institution des Oveques (1814). Lamennais did not include Tradition in his Eeuvres completes, which is probably an indication that he regarded it as quite as much his brother’s work as his own. In any case, it dealt with a domestic problem of little interest in the England of the time.1 Reflexions on the other hand clearly bore the stamp of his style and was of sufficient general interest to be sold in England.2 Not that it could have been comfortable reading. England, ‘cette eternelle ennemie de la France’,3 was denounced for its Protestantism; the Reformation was condemned for giving the people the idea that sovereignty was in their hands, and for making the individual judge of his own faith.4 But these comments were incidental to an attempt to jerk a Church, persecuted by the revolution and manipulated by Napoleon, back to life, and to arouse the country from its materialism and apathy about religion. To this end Lamennais emphasized the need for more efficient ecclesiastical organization and greater freedom for the Church in the running of her affairs.5 He made many practical suggestions for retreats and Church conferences, for measures to combat the ignorance of the clergy, for parish communities, and for means of stimulating the flow of recruits for the priesthood. He pleaded for a more thorough training of priests. He stressed the importance of missions and the need for more outward expression of religion.6

Not only did the Reflexions sound the authentic note of a prophet calling the Church to renewal (much of it might have been written today), but it contained the germ of many of the ideas which later appeared in the Essai sur l’indifference: the emphasis on the glory and continuity of the Church, the reasoned hatred of Protestantism, a, hatred which lasted all Lamennais’s life, even when he himself was outside the Roman communion, and the opposition to all forms of religious liberalism and democracy.

 _[4] These works, Reflexions and the Tradition, achieved some fame for the brothers in France, although they did not sell sufficiently well to provide a living. So Felicite, having discovered his talent for writing, turned to journalism. This not only paid but also provided a means of broadcasting his ideas. He remained an indefatigable journalist to the end of his life. Throughout all the stages of his career he was never for very long without a newspaper or magazine as a forum for his ideas. He started by writing in the moderate Gallican L’ Ami de la religion et du roi articles which were translated and published in England. In 1819 he collaborated with Chateaubriand in the Conservateur, the mouthpiece of the Ultras. The next year he was concerned with the Defenseur of Genoude and Bonald. For some time the Ultra Drapeau blanc had contributions from his pen. These were followed by the Memorial catholique, the organ of ultramontane opinions, and then by the Avenir, one of the most influential Catholic papers of nineteenth-century France. Of the many papers he used during the latter part of his life we need only mention Le Monde, of which he was the editor for a time, Le Peuple constituant, which brought him great fame in 1848, and La Reforme, which he edited in 1849. Much of Lamennais’s reputation was based upon his ability as a journalist, and the degree of publicity which he received from those media has perhaps not been taken sufficiently into account when his influence has been analysed.

He was also a provocative publisher of pamphlets. One which he wrote in 1814 about the University may have been a contributory factor in his decision to flee to England in 1815. The story of his brief stay in Kensington is told in greater detail later.1 Its principal outcome was that, as a result of his contact with the abbe Carron in London, he sought ordination. This was accorded him remarkably swiftly. Having left London in November 1815, he was already a sub-deacon by the end of December. He was ordained priest at Vannes on 9th March 1816, barely four months after his return to France.

The next milestone in his life was the publication of the Essai sur l’indifference en matidre de religion (1817-23), with which ‘Lamennais steps straight into the centre of the stage of French church history’.2 The Essai was written with great clarity and style, and is now a classic in the history of apologetics, lauded but largely unread. In it Lamennais started to come to grips with the philosophy of his time, and his arguments had great repercussions within his own communion.1

The first volume, published in 1817, was written with all the passion of Lamennais’s new-found commitment to the faith. It was intended to be, and in this it succeeded, a frontal attack upon the rationalism of contemporary philosophy and theology. It was a brilliant attempt to reassert the claims of religion, not merely as something which merited the consideration of intelligent men, but as the very mainspring of society. In it Lamennais castigated as indifferentists those who believed that they could stand apart from the faith which they professed: the sceptics who maintained that religion was a political institution necessary for the preservation of good order among the people,2 the Deists, who, while admitting the necessity of religion for all, refused to commit themselves to anything more definite than natural religion3; and the Protestants (among whom he included most Englishmen), who made themselves so far independent of the faith as to be able to choose for themselves which dogmas to accept and which to reject.4 There is only one faith, he proclaimed, and that faith is essential to the life of every individual and even to the life of society; lack of it is injurious even to God himself.5 Such fervent theology had not been written since the seventeenth century. It had the authentic ring of prophecy. No wonder the second volume was eagerly awaited.

When it finally appeared, however, in July 1820, it had a mixed reception. Lamennais was always much better at attack than defence, and now that he had embarked upon an exposition of his positive ideas, he had less success. He started by examining the concept of certitude.’ Committed as he was to the claim that religion was the very principle of society, that it was impossible to stand apart from it or to treat it as an object, he was obliged to find a means by which man could be certain that this was so. This means he found not in the the powers of human reasoning, which he distrusted, not in human feeling, but in the ‘consentement commun’, the ‘sensus communis’ of all peoples at all times.6 With this weapon in his hand he proved the existence of God and of one true religion which was absolutely necessary to salvation. But in order to discern where this one true religion was to be found and what its conditions were, something more than the ‘sensus communis’ was necessary. It was possible for Lamennais to point to the common consent of mankind to the existence of God, and even to the existence of one true religion, but it was not possible for him to press the argument any further upon that line. He then had to show, by elaborate demonstrations of the fallibility of man’s reasoning powers and feelings, that man’s principal function lay not in what he himself could decide or achieve (the Renaissance ideal so abhorrent to Lamennais), but in his ability to obey, to submit to authority. And in submitting to authority, said Lamennais, he would find his true self and discern the true religion: ‘la vie eternelle n’est qu’une eternelle obeissance!’1 The second volume ends by pointing to the Roman Catholic Church as the spiritual society which claimed that very authority, and the teachings of which could be known, by common consent, to be certainly true.

These two themes of the sensus communis’ and authority were elaborated in volumes 3 and 4 (1823), in which it was shown by a superabundance of evidence that the marks of the true religion attested by the consent of all were those very marks which distinguished the Roman Catholic Church. Since this Church claimed to exercise the authority of God, and since obedience to the laws of God was the foundation of all society, earthly and divine, then it was evident that submission to the Church of Rome was the only possible course open to men and societies of good will.

By this time Lamennais’s fame was prodigious. He was held in such esteem by Pope Leo XII that it was later widely believed that the Pope had made him a Cardinal in petto.2 Yet he remained a man of very simple habits, frequently in financial difficulties, and, what is often forgotten, willing to give generously of his time to those who came to him for spiritual counsel, and to the many people with whom he was in correspondence. He translated Thomas a Kempis’s De Imitatione Christi, and derived some income from its proceeds for the rest of his life.

He was not only a religious and philosophical figure, but also a political one. His works reflect an increasing prophetic appreciation of the rise of democratic power and an attempt to harness it _[7]  to the Church. De la religion considerie dans ses rapports avec l’ordre politique et civil was published in 1825 and 1826, when he was still a monarchist because monarchy was stable and orderly. He abhorred democracy because it was changeable and could in time destroy Christianity.1 Society, he wrote, was an organism which could have moral standards. It could be Christian or not, as it chose.2 French society of 1825 was, according to him, atheist, and he was particularly concerned that the malady of atheism was spreading from political and civil life into the life of the family.3

The reason for this state of affairs was the gradual submission of the Church to the tyrannical demands of the State, its steady decline to the status of a government department, and its slow assumption of the character of a State Church, something which Lamennais regarded as a contradiction in terms.4 Against all these dangers Lamennais erected a bulwark, the Pope. This was the logical conclusion of his argument in the Essai. Without the Pope there could be no Church, without the Church no Christianity, without Christianity no religion, and without religion there could be no society.5

De la religion was the watershed between Lamennais’s earliest views and his increasingly uncompromising ultramontanism.

On the one hand, he still held by the monarchy, since the monarchy stood for stability and order,6

but at the same time he claimed that if the King ceased to be the representative of the power of God in the State and started to wield power as if it were his own, then the people had a right to overthrow him.7

On the other hand, we see the Pope assuming much more importance in Lamennais’s thoughts.8

In De la religion he had not resolved the difficulty of knowing how far allegiance was due to the Pope and how far to the King. He was aware of a third and menacing force, the people, which he could only push aside for the time being. That it troubled him was evident from the conclusion, where he indulged some of his apocalyptic fancies and envisaged disorders and disasters which could only end either in complete destruction or in the rise of a new society founded on the Church.9

De la religion marked Lamennais’s last attempt to cling to monarchy as a workable system of society. It based the power of the Pope, much more firmly than that of the King, on authority, and did no more than note the rising tide of democracy.

Des progrds de la revolution et de la guerre contre l’e’glise (1829) tipped the balance in favour of the Pope and took the power of the people, which by this time was rising everywhere, much more into account. The doctrine of the sensus communis’ was having its effect upon Lamennais. Everywhere he could see Roman Catholic countries ready to rise in revolt against their kings. Kings, he reluctantly agreed, stood for tyranny and oppression, while the revolutionaries stood for democracy and freedom.

From his position in the Church he could see two, equally disastrous, ways of dealing with the situation.

The first was liberalism, the sovereignty of the individual reason, which excluded all superior authority and led to anarchy and atheism (these two in Lamennais’s mind amounting to the same thing).

The second was Gallicanism, the ecclesiastical version of reaction, submission to the monarch, be he heretic or no, ‘un esclavage profond, inevitable, eternel’ .1

In this there was nothing really new. Lamennais had always hated political liberalism, just as he had always hated Gallicanism. The new formulation of his beliefs was the result of a clearer realization of the implications of both ways of thought in the present situation. The most urgent need was a means of knowing the divine will. An infallible Pope was the only solution to the evils of the day. The discouragement of religion on the one side by political liberals whose principles led them to atheism, and on the other side by Gallicans who were anxious to subject the Church to the State, was creating a situation which was deteriorating and could be put right only be giving the Church its freedom. This was the new development in Lamennais’s politico-ecclesiastical thought. A situation had arisen similar in many ways to that in England, where it was no longer possible to identify the Church with the State.

Some dividing line had to be drawn between the two, and in order to do this more easily Lamennais proposed measures for the strengthening of the Church.

Priests should isolate themselves from an atheistic society2;

there should be a revival of the study and teaching of sound theology3;

there should _[9] be a closer connection between the clergy and the Pope,1 to whom the clergy should look more steadfastly for guidance2;

above all the Church should have liberty of teaching, discipline, and practice.3

This conclusion prepared the way for the complete separation of Church and State to be fought for in the Avenir. But here the emphasis was slightly different. Lamennais was calling on the clergy to rely entirely on their priestly office to combat the evils of the world, and not to try to use the methods of the civil power. Towards the end of 1828 a new religious community, the Congregation de St. Pierre, was founded with these aims in view. Lamennais was its Superior, and for many years it was a powerful means of spreading the ultramontanism of 1829 and 183o. By the time of the Avenir it became clear to him that the only way for the Church to fulfil its mission was for it to be completely free of the State.

Until now very little has been said about democracy. In the Essai Lamennais had been opposed to it because he believed that it enthroned the will and the passions of the individual.4 But now a subtle change had taken place. In Des progres Lamennais observed that those countries which were ready to revolt were all Roman Catholic.5 The Protestant countries were less eager. By his former principles this should have proved that the Protestants alone were true Christians. But the principle of the sensus cornmunis ‘ of the faithful pointed him steadily to the conclusion that the political situation was wrong and that the people were right.6

The 1830 revolution confirmed Lamennais in his belief that the regeneration of society could not be entrusted to monarchies. With the departure of the monarchy went, in his mind, all connection of the Church with the State. He could not ignore the fact that the forces of revolution were in general opposed to the Church.7 He was in sympathy with their desire for liberty, and yet, in accordance with the principles of the Essai, he realized _[10] that the revolution would destroy one form of order without being able to replace it. The only principle of order which he knew was religion, by which he meant Catholicism.

Accordingly he founded the daily newspaper l’Avenir, which had as its subtitle ‘Dieu et la Liberte’. Around him he had gathered a band of young and enthusiastic men with similar, though not identical, aims.1 Among them were Montalembert, Lacordaire, and Maurice de Guerin. The influence of their thought, which in these months of 1830 and 1831 was dominated by their master’s personality, spread throughout Catholic Europe.

Lamennais summarized the doctrines of the Avenir in an article which appeared on 7th December 1830.2

The first doctrine was the unity of the Church. This was Lamennais’s old principle that there was no such thing as a national Church, that the Church was one and indivisible.

 From this it followed that complete submission was owed to the Pope, for without the Pope there could be no Church.

A corollary of this was the infallibility of the Pope, which Lamennais here declared uncompromisingly.

The Avenir recognized the French government of the time, with all the proper reservations, and demanded of it that it should grant to the French people liberty of conscience, religion, teaching, the press, and association.

It also demanded that Church and State should be separated absolutely.3

In all this could be seen the one constant element in all Lamennais’s thought: the desire for order in society and the belief that order could be obtained only by the realization of man’s dependence on God. In the revolutionary State he saw a danger to the principles of religion, and although his concern was for society as a whole, a fact which had made him cling to the connection between Church and State until only a short time before, he realized that religion in France would drown in the revolutionary flood if it were not severed from the State. Vatholiques, comprenons-le Bien, nous avons a sauver notre foi, et nous la sauverons par la liberte.’4

 _[11] In coming to this conclusion Lamennais had to abandon many of his former ideas. Liberty of conscience had to be permitted if the true religion was to be preserved. This meant that those dissenters against whom Lamennais had directed so much of his energy had also to be allowed freedom of conscience—although the Avenir did not stress this aspect of the problem.1

Freedom of education was a demand which sprang naturally from the separation of Church and State.2 This, too, had wide implications. It meant acquiescing in the atheism of public educational institutions, so much attacked in the past, while obtaining for Catholics the liberty to educate their children as they wished.

To carry out this revolutionary policy Lamennais took several practical steps.

He called upon the priests to give up their State salaries in order to assert their independence.3

He was one of the founder members and the chairman of the ‘Agence Generale pour la defense de la liberte religieuse’, an organization which fought against any infringements of the rights of the Church.4 The Agence published details of all such cases in the Avenir and provided funds for legal action where necessary.

The principle of liberty of education was emphasized by an attempt to open a private school with Montalembert and Lacordaire as its teachers. The ensuing prosecution gave the Agence unprecedented publicity.5

Such doctrines were inflammatory. They had to be expressed in the form of repeated calls for liberty. They also necessitated detailed reporting of the condition of Catholics in other countries. The Avenir supported the cause of the Belgian and Polish Catholics and raised a fund for the relief of Roman Catholics in Ireland.6

 _[12] There was only one way of reconciling Lamennais’s newly-defined sympathy with the people and their desire for political liberty with his old conviction that only in religion could men find that fixity and order necessary to society. That way was the union of all Catholics under the Pope. It was in the Avenir that Lamennais’s ultramontanism reached its peak:

La civilisation chretienne, a l’etroit dans ses anciennes limites, presse sur tous les points la barbarie qui cede et recule devant elle. Bientot une parole puissante et calme prononcee par un vieillard, dans la Cite-Reine, au pied de la croix, donnera le signal, que le monde attend, de la derniere regeneration. Penetres d’un esprit nouveau, conduits a la science par la foi, a la liberte par l’ordre, les peuples ouvriront les yeux et se reconnaitront pour freres, parce qu’ils auront un Pere commun, et fatigues de leurs longues discordes, ils se reposeront aux pieds de ce Pere, qui n’etend la main que pour proteger, et n’ouvre la bouche que pour benir.1

The Christian civilization has outgrown its old limits, pressed on all points by the barbarism that surges back and forth before her. Soon powerful speech and peace proclaimed by an old man in the Ruling City, at the foot of the cross, will signal that the world expects the final regeneration. Imbued with a new spirit, science led by faith, liberty by order, the people will open their eyes and recognize themselves as brothers because they have a common Father, and tired of their long strife, they will sit at the feet of the Father, who extends his hand to protect, and opens his mouth to bless.

Opposition to these views was so great that Lamennais and his companions decided to appeal to Rome. The story of that journey of the ‘pelerins de Dieu et de la liberte’ has often been told and bears upon it the stamp of all the great crises of religious history.2 Their journey was surrounded by intrigue: Metternich was kept fully informed of their movements, and the ambassadors of the principal European countries reported home to their governments. But the pilgrims were received coldly. Gregory XVI was on the edge of a volcano. If he approved of their programme he would be accused by all the established rulers of reactionary Europe of fomenting rebellion. If he openly condemned them he would be undermining his own power.

Gregory’s first step was, in 1832, by the publication of his encyclical Mirari vos, to condemn the doctrines of the Avenir without actually naming their author, but at the same time to approve that general aim for which Lamennais had striven earlier in his life, the elimination of indifferentism in religion.

This condemnation produced a tense period in Lamennais’s life, which has been sensitively studied by M. Harispe1 and which was brought to an end by the sensational publication of Paroles d’un croyant in 1834.

Unlike its predecessors, this work did not rely simply upon its grace of style and cogency of argument to convey its ideas. It was a poem couched in biblical language and arranged in chapters and verses suggestive of the Bible. It began with the invocation of the Holy Trinity and continued:

2. Gloire a Dieu dans les hauteurs des cieux, et paix sur la terre aux hommes de bonne volonte.

3. Que celui qui a des oreilles entende; que celui qui a des yeux les ouvre et regarde: car les temps approchent.

4. Le Pere a engendre son Fils, sa Parole, son Verbe, et le Verbe s’est fait chair, et il a habite parmi nous; il est venu dans le monde, et le monde ne l’a point connu.

5. Le Fils a promis d’envoyer l’Esprit consolateur, l’Esprit qui procede du Pere et de lui, et qui est leur amour mutuel; it viendra, et renouvellera la face de la terre, et ce sera comme une seconde creation.2

[IN the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.]
Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good-will towards men.

Let him who hath ears, hear ; let him who hath eyes, open them and, observe, for the times approach.

The Father hath begotten his Son, his Word, and the Word was made flesh, and he hath dwelt among us ; he came into the world, and the world knew him not.

The Son hath promised to send the Spirit, the Comforter, the Spirit who proceedeth from the Father and from him, .mil who is their mutual love ; he shall come and renew the face of the earth, and it will be as a second creation.

This is not the merely political work which he claimed it was,3 but a new expression of his religion. It is dominated by his apocalyptic visions of the reign of peace and goodness which will follow the return of the Messiah. It is an attempt to translate the atmosphere of the early years of the Church into the political situation existing eighteen centuries later. Not only is its style totally different from all Lamennais’s previous work but the thoughts in it burst the limits which had hitherto confined them.

With the Paroles Lamennais gave up the position he had formerly held. He no longer viewed humanity from the standpoint of formal religion, but showed his concern for humanity itself and for the sufferings of the people.4

From the theological point of view this had the result that, whereas in his earlier _[14] writing he had been preoccupied with the doctrine of the Church, in the Paroles and in the books which follow he turns to the doctrines of the trinity, the atonement, and the incarnation.

It is significant that Christ takes a more prominent place in his theology than before. The Essai contained very little Christology—a grave defect in a work of apologetic for Christianity.1 The Paroles, however, would be incomprehensible without Him.2 The Avenir was the last of Lamennais’s many attempts to reform society by strengthening the unifying influence of institutional religion. The Paroles is a new departure.

Lamennais’s new view was that society was to reform itself, not by submitting to the influence of a liberated Church, but by rooting out sin in mankind.

The emphasis moved from discipline to conscience. The restraints imposed by the papal obedience were now swept away, and the absolute freedom of conscience claimed originally for Catholics was now extended to all men.

In the same way, Lamennais’s sympathy for the oppressed stretched out beyond those who had been fighting mainly for religious liberty, the Irish, Belgians, and Poles, to all oppressed peoples, including the English. William IV took his place among the European tyrants. The misery which Lamennais described was not now the misery of those who could not worship God as they wished, but the misery of those who were starving.3

It would, however, be quite wrong to say that at this critical point in his development Lamennais had abandoned the firm outlines of Catholic doctrine in favour of the vague visions of a sentimentalist. On the contrary, the Paroles, at which many pious hands were raised in horror, contained much Catholic teaching, and the point of view from which it saw the world was still recognizably Catholic. The hope which Lamennais advocated was still the Christian hope. The happiness he promised was neither material prosperity nor vague visions of spiritual perfection: it was the vision of Christ exalted at the right hand of God.4

 _[15] He still had a profoundly trinitarian view of the Godhead1 (and he continued to express himself in trinitarian terms to the end of his life, despite his changed beliefs about the nature of God). The doctrines of creation,2 of evil,3 and of the atonement4 are all explicitly stated. There are even moving examples of devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.5 His most significant departures from Catholic teaching occur in his treatment of the Church. Of the doctrine of the Church or of the priesthood he makes no mention, but individual Popes and priests are bitterly depicted as weapons of Satan.6

Whether the Paroles was ‘orthodox’ or not is difficult to say. It was certainly more apocalyptic than contemporary theology was wont to be, a characteristic which it shared with many parts of the New Testament. It might easily have been written by a zealous visionary sympathetic with the sufferings of the people. Equally it might have been written by a Deist clothing his imaginings in Christian terms. The most that can be said is that there was little in it which was contrary to orthodox belief, and much which would have given hope to the ordinary Christian of the day.

Although at the time the Paroles was found to be inflammatory in the extreme, the ‘practical’ religion advocated in it was in striking contrast to the passions which it actually aroused. Lamennais exhorted his readers to patience, courage, confidence in God, prayer, and love.7 He proclaimed peace and tolerance and hatred of sin.8 Although he allowed resistance when it was necessary to overcome evil9⁹ he never claimed rights without reminding his _[16] readers of the corresponding duties.1 It is quite understandable that opinions about the Paroles, in both England and France, should have been so much divided.

From this religious view of life flow certain social principles, which from this time onwards become more clearly defined in Lamennais’s mind, although they never achieved the tidiness of a ‘system’.

Lamennais preferred to rearrange the slogan of the Revolution to read: 1galite, Liberte, Fraternite.’2 For him, equality was a fact to be recognized, not a goal to be achieved: ‘In the city of God all are equal; none has the pre-eminence, for there justice alone reigns with love.’3 By taking a theological view of equality and refusing to exhort his readers to fight for it Lamennais differed from most of the socialists of his day. From this principle of equality proceeds the practical realization of liberty. Liberty is the theme of the Paroles as it was of the Avenir.4 Fraternity, the third abstraction of the revolutionary trinity, is the necessary corollary of liberty. There can be no rights without duties. Liberty is a right and love is a duty; fraternity is the love of man for his neighbour.

It is not necessary to trace this theme throughout the Paroles because it appears in nearly every chapter. It needs only to be pointed out that Lamennais did not regard the principle of love as a vague sentimental idea floating in a utopian system, as some of his contemporaries probably did; for him it was the action of the third person in the Christian Trinity in the universe.5 Love unites. Hatred divides.6 Society is sacred. Once we are divided we are lost. This is the same principle (although differently applied) which he had employed in the Essai, and which he preserved to the end of his life. It is more extensively analysed in the lectures which he gave to his pupils and disciples at Malestroit, Juilly, and La Chenaie, which were extracts from his Essai d’un systbne de philosophie catholique, which itself eventually became the Esquisse d’une philosophie.7

 _[17] One final point is important for an understanding of Lamannais’s political position. Much of his notoriety sprang from a popular belief that he was a socialist or even a communist in priest’s clothing, a belief which seems to be justified by the words from the Paroles: ‘Dans la cite de Dieu, chacun possede sans crainte ce qui est a lui et ne desire rien de plus, parce que ce qui est a chacun est a tous, et que tous possedent Dieu qui renferme toils les biens.’1 Since this verse was capable of an interpretation which Lamennais probably never intended, in the fourth edition he added a chapter which made his position clear.2 In this he wrote that the poor were those without property. The solution to their problem was not to deprive those who had in order to give to those who had not, but to give to those who were without an opportunity to acquire it. In order to achieve this, either men had to be enabled to acquire property by their labour, or the rich, influenced by the spirit of love, had of their abundance to give to he poor.3 Poverty and evil were inevitable and only charity would overcome them.4

Moderate and commonplace though many of these ideas now mem, they were expressed not in the form of a manifesto, but as a Biblical poem. It was this fusion of religion and sympathy for the sufferings of the people, of art and ideas, within the context of the Europe of 1834, which gave the Paroles its influence and its electrifying effect.

It was no wonder that from this point onwards Lamennais was closely identified with the people in their struggle for freedom. It is connection with the Church was virtually severed. He was never formally excommunicated, and, like Saul of Tarsus, whom lie resembled in many ways_; he never completely left his past. The rupture with organized Christianity, however, was complete. Ile was condemned in exceptionally violent terms in the encyclical Singulari nos of 25th June 1834. It is almost certain that by that time he had ceased to say Mass.5 He may, however, have continued to go to Mass until as late as October 1836.6

_[18] By this time he had great popularity with the people, in spite of his association with the Church in an anti-clerical age. He was called upon, with Carnot, Pierre Leroux, and others, to act as one of the counsel for the defence of the survivors of the Lyons massacre of 1834, who were accused of republicanism. He accepted the invitation (although, not being a lawyer, he was allowed to play little part in the trial) and later wrote an account of the whole affair under the title Du proces d’avril et de la republique (1836) which was published by E. D. Forgues in 1856.1

Lamennais’s next published work was Affaires de Rome (1836-7). Much of this is not relevant to a consideration of his religious ideas, since it is mainly an account of the fateful journey to Rome, written soberly and with many passages of great beauty, but it has a peculiar importance for England because it was the means of introducing Lamennais to much of the English thinking public. Through the narrative of the journey shine many comments indicative of Lamennais’s current beliefs, which gave rise to Newman’s complaint of a certain ‘ill flavour’2 about his doctrine.

In the first place the hook, which is not the product of one phase of his thought, gives the uniform impression of impending disaster. In the section entitled ‘Des maux de l’eglise et de la societe et des moyens d’y remedier’,3 which was composed from observations made on the journey, he declared that the world was ready to pass from one condition to another; all were agreed that there should be a change, and it was the duty of the Church to be prepared for it.4 After examining the condition of the Church in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and France, he concluded that the world’s disorder could be cured only by the reformation of the Church.5

Secondly, and linked with this premonition of disaster, was his repeated demand for progress by the Church and for development in religious ideas. This was vaguely hinted at in those parts of the book which were written the earliest: he demanded that religion should be more closely associated with the people; that the priest should be first Thomme de Dieu’, and then Thomme _[19] du peuple’1; and he warned the Church that if she failed in this task, she would be guilty of providing no counterbalance to a power which would overturn the world.

In the part of Affaires de Rome, however, which was written after the Paroles,2 he broke all restraint. He saw only three possible ways of bringing order into the existing state of chaos. The first was unity under the Pope, once proposed but now rejected. The second was unity under kings, similarly rejected. The third was the triumph of the people, which now seemed to him the only workable solution.3 This decision was typical of Lamennais’s all-or-nothing mentality. He remained an authoritarian, for he combined his break with the Papacy with a vigorous condemnation of Protestantism as a ‘systeme batard’.4 The people, and not popes and kings, were now regarded by him as instruments of God’s power.

In the Affaires he gave the outline of what was virtually a new religion. Christianity, he believed, was a religion of the past. His new religion developed from it. Its first law was the law of progress, and its first precept incessant activity.5 This alone was true religion because it was based upon the only valid authority, ‘la race humaine’.6 These seeds were later to grow into the astonishing religion which formed the background for all his later works, and which was fully described in the Esquisse. These later works, although superficially similar to the Paroles, which was still intelligible to Christians, were really quite different. His thoughts were no longer moulded by Catholic dogma but by beliefs which he imagined to be imposed by the authority of the people.

For the next few years Lamennais lived in a succession of ill-heated and obscure rooms, emerging only occasionally to associate with George Sand and other literary and political celebrities. Most of his energy was spent in writing letters and publishing newspaper articles and small aphoristic works within the range of the more intelligent members of the proletariat.

Among these was Le Livre du peuple (I837),7 the first full statement of the new religion, based upon an elevated interpretation of _[20] the formula ‘Equality, Liberty, Fraternity’. In it Lamennais taught that the aim of mankind was to construct, by uninterrupted labour, the city of God. Man was perfectible, and union with

God would be achieved as a result of man’s own striving.1 But, as before, no right could be claimed without its corresponding duty.2 Love and forgiveness are the primary virtues in the new society. The sanctity of marriage must be observed. Children must honour father and mother. The liberty and property of all must be held sacred. All thoughts of revenge must be put away.3 In this connection Lamennais could still write of Christianity as the religion of love, fraternity and equality, of mildness, equity, and humanity.4

This state of perfection would be hastened by the application of certain practical measures: excessive dependence upon the rich would be overcome by association5; property would be created for those who were without it, not by redistribution, but by the abolition of monopoly and by the future diffusion of capital6; punishment would be restorative, not vindictive, for when the law kills it commits murder.7

Gone are the firm statements of the Christian hope which characterized the Paroles. No longer are the people encouraged to seek the vision of God; now they look forward merely to a ‘more perfect existence’.8 This life is still transitory and miserable, but after it comes rest, true joy, and the certain reward of duty thoroughly finished.

The Livre du peuple fixes the connection between Lamennais’s new social philosophy, already foreshadowed in the Paroles, and the new religion. The remaining popular works are only variations on this theme. A volume of essays reprinted from the Revue des deux mondes, Le Monde and the Revue du progr& under the title of Politique a l’usage du peuple (1839) added little except that it showed that Lamennais was still an apocalyptist. He believed that the rise of the people would be violent and awe-inspiring: ‘un grand tremblement, comme si la face de Dieu leur apparaissoit’.9

_[21] His next pamphlet, the greatly admired De l’esclavage moderne (1839), argued that present inequality was in effect slavery; since the end of all religion was simply to do the will of God, and since the improvement of society was undoubtedly the will of God, then, he claimed, social duties and religious duties were the same.

In the following year (1840) he published his revolutionary little brochure, Le Pays et le gouvernement, in which he inveighed against the government and the police. For the people, he wrote, the only escape from slavery was by fighting and by reconstituting society with justice, duty, and right. He demanded immediate reform while it could still be peaceful, in order to avert possible violence.1 In the last few lines he gave himself over to the familiar apocalyptic vision of the triumph of the people.2 This pamphlet earned him a year in the prison of Sainte-Pelagie, during which he wrote feverishly and produced Du passé et de l’avenir du peuple, Line Voix de prison, Discussions critiques, and the section, De la religion of the Esquisse d’une philosophie.

Du passe gives the fullest account yet of Lamennais’s new religious position. In it he tries to set Christianity in its historical perspective and to explain his own relationship to it. He sketches the origins of society according to his, by now, familiar principles, illustrating from biblical history the sources of the desire for love, marriage, property, and union with God. He shows how the conception of liberty progresses in Greek and Roman culture, hut that it could not develop fully without the aid of Christianity. I n his religious scheme Christianity represents a synthesis of all previous religions: the monotheism of the Jews and the polytheism of the pagans are combined in the Christian doctrine of the ‘l’rinity. But in making this synthesis Lamennais claims that Christianity made its fatal mistake—and it is here that we see that lie has not only broken completely from his former religion, but fabricates false charges against it in the interest of his own later beliefs—Christianity erred in setting itself in opposition to nature and in encouraging excessive spirituality. Christianity, he writes, excludes the religion of nature and therefore is powerless to organize society.3 Its aim is the restoration of man to a supernatural state. Christianity is separate from the world. This has _[22] led to a dualism of Church and State, for the Christian has always been forced to live in two societies.1

At the Renaissance this cleavage between Christianity and humanity was deepened. Science developed along its own lines, independent of religion. This led Lamennais to believe that the time had come for a synthesis of the two streams of thought, for a complete dogma or ‘science’ of God. In spite of his scorn for the faculty of reason, the idea of intelligence always played an important part in his thought: in earlier days the curriculum of the Congregation de St. Pierre had been based upon the belief that human reason was a reflection of the Intelligence of the Son in the Trinity.2 In Du passe he weaves this old thread into his new pattern by exhorting the human race to seek liberty through the simultaneous development of intelligence and love, the principles he takes to be fundamental to both science and Christianity.3

His new relationship with Christianity thus stands clearly revealed. He claims to be the prophet who is helping to bring this synthesis about, and who is enabling society to see that once his principles are recognized, the new religion is inevitable. He concludes that the only possible way for the individual to obtain complete emancipation is by faith,4 but by a faith made active by the removal of all legal, intellectual, and material hindrances. This faith is not easy to define precisely5; but its very imprecision is an indication of the state of Lamennais’s religious thought. For him, now, faith is trust in the power of the people to bring about their own emancipation and to be more closely united with God, through the God-manifesting principles of power, intelligence, and love.

Another product of his time in Sainte-Pelagie was Une Voix de prison, originally published separately as the last part of Amschaspands et Darvands 6 but later issued by itself. It has been _[23] justly pointed out1 that Lamennais here recovers a little of the biblical inspiration which made the Paroles such a success. As in the Paroles, visions, allegories, exhortations and lyrical scenes are mingled together, but the note is less strident. There is less talk of equality, liberty, and fraternity and more awareness of the power of God and of the people’s duty to Him.

Lamennais’s gaze rests not so much on the plight of the poor as on the forces of evil which afflict them. This little book shows what happens to a naturally religious mind when it is released from the discipline of intellectual obedience. It paints a more vivid picture of Christ than any of his previous works: Lamennais imagines the Son of Man, who had nowhere to lay his head, looking down in holy anger on those hypocrites who despise the poor,2 and later he describes Christ upon the cross and his resurrection from the dead.3 But Christ is now, for Lamennais, only a picture in the mind, a device intended to direct the people’s earthly endeavours towards a heavenly end.

Lamennais’s religious development reaches its logical conclusion with Discussions critiques,4 also written in prison. The preface to this collection of articles explains that they were intended to demonstrate the change in his views. The familiar themes of liberty, intelligence, and love reappear in such a way as to be in contradiction to all forms of contemporary organized belief. He demolishes communism because, he says, it produces not collective liberty but individual slavery; Catholicism because it produces not only collective certainty but also individual intellectual slavery; and Protestantism because it produces not only individual liberty but also collective anarchy. He speaks of the ‘flux divin’ which unites men with God in a way which no conventional religion has yet discovered.5 And he proposes his own solution to the problem: the denial of a supernatural order altogether.6 Religion, he claims, has returned to the realm of _[24] purely natural laws and consists in the proper development of the divine element inherent in all men.

A full exposition of this theory appeared in the Esquisse d’une philosophie. The theme of the Esquisse is that society is the finite expression of God. Progress consists in movement towards unity with God, the finite with the infinite. This principle is carried into physical science, aesthetics, and many other branches of learning. But it finds its most famous expression in De Part et du beau (1841).

In this section of the Esquisse Lamennais starts from the idea that the True is the equivalent of the infinite Being, who is God. The Beautiful is also equivalent to God but only inasmuch as it is the means whereby the True manifests itself. The Beautiful is therefore infinite. Art is the finite manifestation of the Beautiful. The True is the source from which finite beings are derived. The Beautiful is the source from which finite forms are derived.1

Art for art’s sake is therefore an absurdity, Lamennais says.2 He divides man’s activity into three phases: industry, when man seeks what is useful; art, when he seeks what is beautiful; and science, when he seeks what is true.3 Art is therefore not the supreme form of man’s activity. It is only one stage in his quest—a quest which culminates in the attainment of truth by means of science. Through science man feeds on truth, the supreme intelligence, God Himself. . . . ‘D’oit l’on voit que, pour lui, se develop-per c’est s’unir a Dieu, et que le terme de son developpement, s’il etoit possible qu’il cut jamais un terme, seroit l’union parfaite avec Dieu.’4

The religious consequences of this are considered in the section characteristically entitled De la societe premiere et de ses lois, ou De la religion (1848). In religion nothing is fixed. As society progresses, dogma and science converge: man achieves greater unity with God.5 This means that it is not necessary to believe that God was made man or other ‘fables surannees’,6 because religion is only the finite expression of the divine law. According to Lamennais, all formal religions are an expression of egoism, a means of separating self from the rest of mankind. True religion, _[25] on the other hand, is the link not only between God and man, but between man and man also.1 Religion is the law of life itself.

Despite foreshadowings of the debate about ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ religion, which still continues, this theory is outwardly an attempt to cloak in religious terms moralization about the duties of men to each other and to abstract principles. Most of Lamennais’s later religion amounts to this. But there are hints that his personal beliefs went further. In spite of his denial of what he calls the supernatural order and his attempt to synthesize the spiritual and the scientific, he admits that there must be some sort of future life where all beings will enter into a closer relationship with each other and with God.2 Death is a transformation which allows love, the principle of unity, to work in the individual unfettered.3 This Lamennais believed when he refused the ministrations of the Church on his deathbed. His faith in some sort of God never wavered, but the development of his philosophy of the universe made him deny the reality of any supernatural existence.

He had a passion for unity. From believing that it could be achieved by the submission of the earthly power to the heavenly, lie passed, when he saw that the tide had turned against this idea, to demanding that the Church should equate her struggle with that of the people. When the Church steadfastly refused, he drifted away from her, devoting himself more and more to the cause of the people, and finally convincing himself that true religion was to be found, not in the teachings of the Church, but in this cause alone.

After the 1848 revolution, for which he had been steadily working and of which he was one of the principal architects,4 Lamennais was elected to sit as a deputy for the departement de In Seine. A measure of his popularity is that he polled 104,871 votes, while Lacordaire, Hugo, Leroux, Eugene Sue, and Michelet were all rejected with much smaller totals.5 Shortly after this he was also elected to a small committee of the Assembly which was _[26] convened to draw up a new constitution. This resulted in the Projet de ‘onstitution de la republique francaise (1848). The committee’ proposals were, however, rejected in favour of something more moderate, a ‘preposterous constitution, organized for deadlock and manacled against change,’1 a constitution which made it possible for Louis Bonaparte, once elected President, to seize fuller powers. In the Paris elections to the new Constituent Assembly on 12th and 13th May 1849, Lamennais was once more elected, this time with 113,331 votes.2 He was, however, ineffective in the Chamber because of the weakness of his voice, and he viewed with increasing disquiet the activities of Louis Bonaparte. With the coup d’etat of 2nd December 1851, he withdrew from politics and devoted the rest of his time to a translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. After a short illness during January and February 1854, he died on 27th February. He refused the ministrations of a priest, and stipulated that his body should be carried to the cemetery without any church ceremony. He was buried in a common grave at Pere Lachaise. The spot where he lay was marked simply by a stick and a scrap of paper bearing the words ‘La Mennais’.

It was a dramatic end to a life which had been in the centre of the European stage for nearly forty years. Lamennais was not a great leader. He was not even a great original thinker (although his style and eloquence enabled him to launch ideas which more profound philosophers had been unable to bring to the light of day). But he saw penetratingly into the needs of his time and followed his vision with no regard to himself. He who was always poor was consistently generous to those who needed him,3 and he who was so often accused of public violence and intolerance was tender and attentive to his friends.4 _[p.27]

It was (and probably still is) impossible for anyone to comprehend all the diverse elements in his life and to see how they could I w contained within one personality; but we come nearest to understanding the mystery when we realize that he saw everything in terms of religious faith. It was this viewpoint which gave him his important position in nineteenth-century history, and his insight into the problems of belief and society which made him a figure of unique interest to the men of his time, and for many years after his death.’1

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