Chapter 5: Chapter Three: Spiritual Death

Humanism was born in the 14^th century at the Pontifical Court. From Italy to France, from Avignon to Rome, promoted by lay literati already speculating on it while exploiting and blackmailing temporal and spiritual princes, the Renaissance ambushed, dazzled, and corrupted the Teaching Church in its highest human representatives: Popes and Cardinals.

Which Renaissance? For there are two: form and substance, flesh and Spirit. It was the Spirit’s—and this spirit is fatal to all synthetic, living religious and social orders. Its name is pagan mental and governmental Reason. At its source, in embryo, it is individual Reason establishing itself exclusively as Principle, Law, and Criterion of human thought—while the latter goes to the devil without the former. It’s the semi-literate, apostate Sûdra who dismembered the Patriarchs’ Church and social order five millennia ago; the modern apostate Sûdra who murdered our nation’s true Bourgeoisie and social Economy over a century past.

It also dismembered Christ’s Church and Estates-General; for in all eras its method remains: overthrow everything to occupy everything; become illegitimate, parasitic intermediary of all public Economy to enslave it

to venal voracity. It has true names: Anarchy, Individualism, Envy and greed unto collective madness for murder and Spoils. Its thought always springs from the belly, even when seeming cerebral. Its ventripetal brand marks all it touches. Cogitating from the gut, acting from the colon, it irreparably sullies whatever it usurps: Teaching, Justice, Economy; Faith, Laws, Morals; Science, Art, Life. A self-made human monster in Satan’s image, it wallows sightless in God’s light.

She is the “Step aside so I may take your place” Madame, the “Off with their heads” Madame when needed; always Madame Pot-Bouille^[*], but solely for herself and her clique.

This mother of all crashes and the seven deadly sins is thus not Eve, but Lilith of the human Spirit. She is also Madame Jourdain infatuated with the Serpent—her Logic professor—killing for him her good-natured husband who would have made her a baroness and tax collector like so many others. After measuring cloth with false yardsticks, she subjects all to the same fraud—all, even Tabors and Calvaries: she calls this Exegesis, her own; and she turns it into prebends at our expense. Today her Clergiate clericalism costs us as many billions annually as the Clergy’s did in ten centuries.

Depending on the era, she is the knitting-woman, then the guillotine-licker. This was her dream: thus she becomes princess of the blood in her own fashion. This mentality begins and ends with two pronouns: her understanding signs “Myself,” and her will “I”—capitalized English-style. A born pickpocket, she forever eyes someone’s purse, and to filch it, she titles herself—as occasion demands—atheist, philosopher, philanthropist, theosophist, theophilanthrope, humanist, concordatarian, anything but Christian. She loathes saints’ relics, consecrated altars, and foams at the mouth when seeing a crucifix, possessed by the worst demons. She recently threw one into Mount Pelée, and the central fire’s response continues.

The Babylonian Revolution that provoked a second deluge of blood and mud had bestowed upon her not only imperial but divine honors under the name Madame Nimrod: might makes right. Without Moses who reconstituted it, she would have annihilated the patriarchs’ testament, for howling against the Creator-Word, she already cried: “Death to the infamous!”

The anti-French Revolution—hers—returning from Rome, also made her a blood-red idol while uttering the same blasphemy, now against the Word in all aspects: Creator, Incarnate, Resurrected, Pontiff and King of eternal Life. In the person of a prostitute, the philosophical Carmagnole enthroned her upon Notre-Dame’s high altar as Goddess Reason, just as in Babylon.

Luther, as a Northern man, showed more restraint. He merely prepared this apotheosis by declaring: “Every reasoning man is Scripture’s born interpreter.” The shrew’s interpretation consisted in sitting upon both Scripture and Luther.

Thus this reason’s final word is: Sit pro ratione voluntas! Mea, naturally! She is the thug of classical studies. Hence her oyster shells banishing every pearl, her odious ostracisms, this infernal resurgence of damned chauvinist necropolitans—fanatics, pagans, mediocre haters in espadrilles or buskins, rastas (rastaquouère)^[*] of Rome and Athens, agora sophists, forum rhetoricians paying their electoral clientele with new circenses at her expense, while taking their bread in the form of taxes. Hence all these violated empty monasteries, these gutted widowed schools, these desecrated deserted sanctuaries. Hence this lamentable countless crowd of exiled women and men—celestial sisters of the poor, Angels of true Democracy, Religious of all Orders—who breathed upon this West the militant Spirit of Christian Life, the great’s responsibility toward the small, discipline ever ready for devotion and self-sacrifice. They precede abroad the French Episcopal Church and its last faithful in this execrable expatriation that once more drives the Soul from this national body. Soon only Satan’s Legion will remain to guide it—the Legion that already possessed it. Vainly does it hope to escape the terrible punishment awaiting it; but Social War, as in pagan Rome’s time, shall devour it, for its politics unleash it just as they open the door to foreign invasion.

Bad reason is indeed, at once, bad will—the will that shall never have peace, neither within nor without. Never shall it have peace because it leaves none to anyone, from Cain to Babel’s Tower, from the philosophical and political Sabbath of Greek and Roman slavers to modern Teachings’ encyclopedia and Anarchy.

How then did Popes and Cardinals let themselves be drawn into the Abyss’s vertigo whose depths we now touch? Their holiness saw no evil; their faith deemed the laity’s as solid as theirs; many other equally noble motives animated them.

One must acknowledge, moreover, that pagan studies posed far less danger for the Clergy than for the Clergiate, owing to the intellectual Concordat signed in 313 under Scholastic Theology’s name. This bilateral treaty was certainly imperfect. It preserved paganism alongside Christianity—Christian Teaching on one side, pagan philosophy on the other. It lowered the Theologal; it instituted inevitable racial confusion, hence we perpetually see the Concordatarian leaning toward the Pagan; but such as it was, it maintained and still maintains a mental discipline fixed by primary catechization and secondary theology. Hence—we repeat—all our respect still goes to this Concordatarian race, despite its failings.

These studies might even have been harmless for the Clergy, provided the Secular recruited all Teaching Church—the Episcopal—from the Regular, periodically steeping it in an intellectual, moral and spiritual bath

utterly pure of worldly mixture. Under these conditions, Christ’s priesthood had all Gospel weapons—direct and indirect—to defend its mastery: robust Christian education securing heart and life’s invulnerability; powerful instruction not merely theological but theologal and scientific, tempering intelligence into synthetic mastery of all analysis; cenobitic charity’s mutual hierarchical control; discipline not of constraint but voluntary Obedience—the Fiat voluntas tua in all things; economic independence—real and movable—from all political and civil power; livelihood assurance shielding individuals from belly’s suggestions; World-renouncement repelling senses’ enticements, all solicitations of appearance and advancement.

Greek and Latin Orders—nurseries of secular Clergy—met most conditions; but all had twin weaknesses: academic and social. The first stemmed from Theology—mental Concordat of Interpretation between the objective Theologal and the Gentiles’ subjective Philosophy: individual reason and its metaphysical and dialectical subjectivity. Such was the first vulnerable aspect, inclining the sacerdotal intellect to conform to pagan mentality rather than subjugating it in all things to invincible Christian intellectuality—armed, as we shall show elsewhere, with sacred Tradition’s two objective criteria: Life and Science. All this was remediable, and the remedies now are: Science stripped of all philosophical interpretation, and theologal texts taken under the same conditions.

From the social viewpoint—that is, in applying Tradition to collective goodwill—certainty was lacking regarding the organic conditions of the political State and the social State; hence the tendency to adopt ready-made notions from enslaving pagans on this subject.

These two deficiencies derive from one another, and correcting the first necessarily entails correcting the second. Apart from this, Greek and Latin Orders, as episcopal nurseries of regular Clergy, achieved far more than Pythagoras had vainly attempted for paganism’s reform after consulting the entire patriarchal Tradition.

Thus we see, from the 14^th century onward, Regulars whose leaders hold episcopal rank and belong to the Teaching Church—along with the Hierarchy of this Church’s secular princes—welcoming the pagan Renaissance without fear, and encouraging it with unparalleled intellectual liberality and munificent hospitality.

It was Benedict XII who in 1335 appointed Petrarch—the true godfather of the Renaissance and Humanism—as canon of Lombez; Clement VI who entrusted the same Petrarch with the Naples embassy in 1343, made him protonotary and apostolic secretary in 1346, then archdeacon of Parma in 1348, finally canon of Padua in 1349. Innocent VI, though more austere than his predecessor Clement VI, appointed Zanobi as apostolic secretary. Urban V continued these traditions, and under his reign we find among the secretaries the humanists Coluccio Salutati and

Francesco Bruni, whose nephew Leonardo, called Aretino, himself became apostolic secretary—effectively head of the pontifical Chancery—at the 15^th century’s dawn.

Under Martin V, who returned from Avignon to Rome, Poggio headed the College of Secretaries—a sort of Academy composed solely of humanists. In this College, Christians like Ambrose Traversari the Camaldolese and Maffeo Vegio rubbed shoulders with vice-rotted pagans like Poggio and Aretino, Beccadelli the Panormite and Filelfo.

Finally, with Nicholas V, the Renaissance essentially takes possession of the pontifical throne. Pious and devout, he indiscriminately bestowed favors on all humanists—pagans and Christians alike. He granted Theodore Gaza the chair of Greek language and philosophy at Rome University. Under his reign, Marsilio Ficino became the oracle of Florence’s Academy, and inspired Gianozzo Manetti to undertake the scholarly trilingual edition of the Bible from direct texts.

Without indefinitely prolonging this study, we cannot enumerate all Cardinals who, following the Popes’ example, engaged with the Renaissance movement. Among the most notable: Louis Aleman, Archbishop of Arles; Nicholas Albergati, Bishop of Bologna; Hugh of Lusignan; Prospero Colonna; Domenico Capranica; Giuliano Cesarini.

It was Cesarini who discovered and protected the humanist destined to become a glory of Church and Letters: the German Nicholas of Cusa. Cardinal of Sant’Angelo, discerning the moral worth and intellectual culture of Bessarion—the illustrious Metropolitan of Nicaea—anchored Hellenism in Italy through him, and it was to Cesarini that this learned humanist owed his Cardinal’s hat.

Made Cardinal alongside Cesarini, Domenico Capranica was likewise a providence for students, artists and literati. He built a Roman palace for poor youths, endowing thirty scholarships for theology and literature students. From this College emerged Æneas Silvius Piccolomini—poor but intelligent and energetic, noticed by Capranica who made him his secretary—later becoming Pope Pius II. This same center also produced Jacopo Ammannati (future Cardinal-Bishop of Pavia), Agnili and Blondus.

Among these patrons and promoters of Humanism, we must not forget Cardinal Pietro Barbo—artist, collector, archaeologist—who built a splendid palace for his rich collections; nor Gerard d’Estouteville, related to French kings, who rivaled Barbo in luxury and liberality.

These few examples illustrate with what liberality, ardor and fearless confidence—untroubled by dangers to Clerical intellect and faith—the Church embraced the Renaissance of pagan studies.

Yet these same pagan studies, while posing no real danger to regular or secular Clergy, immediately erupted as an unprecedented social peril for the entire Clergiate—beginning with its masters: philosopher-literati or jurists of similar ilk.

A weak Christian education (though far stronger than today’s); limited religious instruction confined to primary catechization (yet more extensive than now); relaxed discipline still upheld by familial and social organisms already crumbling a century ago; hierarchical mutual control still Christian in spirit but corrupted above by courtly influence and at mid-level by courtly fashion and opinion; less livelihood anxiety than our era (thanks to guilds’ guarantees); belly-driven suggestions among lay literati breaking from their Order and sliding inevitably from dilettantism to parasitism; sensual solicitations through naturalism and worldly spirit (both pagan); thirst for appearances to advance; instinctive hatred of all social constraints hindering individual Anarchy’s release—such were the conditions where paganism was bound to reawaken at home, in all possible forms, yet infinitely worse than their models, for imitation exaggerates defects while ignoring virtues.

Hence what infernal blossoming among all literati of that era, especially the foul Apostolic Secretaries!

The first of these humanists, Petrarch, remained Christian and strove to reconcile pagan Instruction with Christian Education. He respected the Church and its dogmas, visited the Apostles’ and Martyrs’ shrines and tombs—yet was friends with Boccaccio and Leontius Pilatus. If Saint Augustine inspired his conscience, Cicero and Virgil were his literary masters. Though profoundly devout, he harbors an unbridled passion for glory bordering on monomania—a boundless vanity that drives him to envy and hate his rivals, while lamenting this pagan love of fame he cannot overcome. Already in the 14^th century, he epitomizes Poggio and Machiavelli. His antiquarian patriotism leads him to hail Rienzi’s triumph while pouring forth bitter critiques against the Papacy; for imbued with the political ideas prevalent among Renaissance humanists, he dreams of a Rome ruling nations not as the pontifical city but as pagan archetype: Roman Republic or universal Empire. Later, Valla and Machiavelli would similarly denounce the Papacy as Rome’s and Italy’s enemy.

The paganism that only timidly emerges in Petrarch—the Concordatarian Race’s archetype—would soon assert itself as Humanism’s undisputed master. By the early 15^th century, Coluccio Salutati, Poggio’s teacher, wrote in his Labors of Hercules that “Heaven belongs to strong men.” This proclaimed that man draws his ultimate end and perfection solely from himself and his efforts. Here already was pagan Humanism—the fourth mental Race—Christianity’s radical negation. The College of Apostolic Secretaries followed suit, developing this thesis: “Human nature is good in itself,” and the next century, sharing this optimism, Rabelais would write of his Thelemites: “In their rules was but this clause: Do as thou wilt, for those well-born, well-educated, and keeping honest company have by nature an instinct and spur that

ever drives them to virtuous deeds.” Thus was morality reduced to indulging every instinct.

Growing ever more pagan, the Renaissance—under pretext of following Nature—prized pleasure in all forms. Nicholas V’s future favorite, Lorenzo Valla, was an Epicurean. In 1431 he published his treatise On Pleasure, affirming pleasure as the true good, and dedicated to Eugene IV his On the True Good expounding the same doctrine: unfettered gratification.

Little wonder such theories spawned that obscene literature flaunted at papal courts by illustrious humanists. Notable examples: Leonardo Bruni (Aretino)‘s dialogue where Elagabalus debates Roman courtesans on varieties of voluptuousness—works cherished by Apostolic Secretaries. Alongside him, Panormite penned the infamous Hermaphroditus; Poggio published a collection of scatological jests. Under Nicholas V, Pietro Niceto and Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini (future Pius II) exchanged letters extolling free love over marriage.

The Secretaries’ morals matched their writings: Poggio, though in minor orders, acknowledged fourteen bastards. “As a layman I have children,” he quipped, “as deacon, I need no wife.” Filelfo, Porcellio, Valla and Poggio were sodomites, and when reproached for vile vices, Pomponius cited Socrates’ example.

But why linger in this mire? These men of letters—jack-of-all-trades—were humanity’s intellectual dregs: pornographers, libelists, blackmailers; greedy, vain, morally rotten; venal as prostitutes, shameless defilers of all worth respecting. Such were the Apostolic Secretaries—the Renaissance’s pagan humanists—fourth mental Race’s representatives. Through them and their successors—from this Renaissance to Protestantism, thence to the Clergiate’s complete apostasy in the Encyclopédie—the chasm deepened until Hell’s fire erupted with all its demons. Elsewhere we describe this mental possession and its antisocial influence on the French Revolution⁽¹⁾.

Such is pagan reason: Agrippina, Nero’s mother, or Phryne, the Areopagus’ mistress. Hence why since the Renaissance, the sacerdotal Church—Gospel’s mother hen—has hatched as many pagan ducklings as bachelors graduated by the State, the usurper of Public Instruction. The brooding is Christian, the Instruction pagan—worse than its Ionian model. From Church to anti-Church, from Sea to Swamp^[*], the University’s Concordatarian Humanism leads all ducklings from baptismal purity to the Flood’s filthy waters.

Alma mater!.. Alma overstates, Mater more so since the political

(1) See Appendix II. ↩

State—new Cain—destroyed the social State (Abel), its Estates-General, even the living People-body, enslaving public Teaching, Justice and Economy.

This pagan inhumanity—whose Judgment unfolds—is Humanism’s fruit. Is this inevitable? To think so would be pagan. It would ignore the Gospel and its keys—its veiled Wisdom, divine-human Synthesis, one universal Religion. Here alone lies mastery over all Humanisms; and being Spirit and Life, it wills them all resurrected—washed in its light, purified by its love, transfigured in glory.

What are Earth’s ethnic Churches but spiritual bodies of peoples slain by pagan Rome, resurrected like so many Lazaruses by Christ’s Church? These glorified bodies guard their Nations’ past, present and future history. But woe to those who drive out these Angels, for exorcised Demons return sevenfold worse, bringing death.

If Humanism’s outcome wasn’t inevitably pagan, what made it so? Will—the free choice of Clergy and Clergiate literati (especially the latter)—with full responsibility and penal sanction by Laws manifest in Facts, and the Principle speaking through them.

Yet can we fault Roman Pontiffs for opening arms, heart, mind, palaces and treasures—our whole Church—to their venerated Eastern brethren: monks and abbesses fleeing Byzantium before Turkish scimitars? Having vainly begged Europe—incorrigibly anarchic—for a Crusade, they found her deaf, embroiled in internal wars. How then blame Popes for helping Byzantine Patriarchs rescue erudite monks who salvaged—pell-mell from Slav-Greek and Ionian monasteries—not only pagan ancestors’ manuscripts but their own Church Fathers’ writings from Muslim sectaries’ fire and sword? How can we fault these Shepherds of European peoples for embracing, with equal enthusiasm, in the face of an insolent anti-Christian Asian invader’s triumph, the entire chronological solidarity of our Continent—including its Mediterranean idolatry subdued by the Cross!

This cry: Humanism! How beautiful it was, fundamentally, at that historical moment and in the living Spirit of this crisis of shame and pain! On the lips of saintly scholars, it meant: Charity. Indeed, this majestic Latin Church became the charitable sister of her noble yet unfortunate sibling. Oh, these two sisters! In prosperity, they rival in beauty, vie for power, even grow hostile; but should one buckle under adversity, the other takes up the cross, their love shines forth—and so it shall be from age to age.

This first-hour Humanism is ours at its initial degree; yet we hold two more in reserve, born of the same spirit: Remembrance and Hope. The masterworks of all Humanity testify to the same City of God, the same past and future civilization. All belong to the divine source of every truth, being within Truth—yet only through the diamond droplets they received therefrom; and the pure rays, the human-divine ones gleaming in these ever-living waters, all emanate from the same Sun whence proceed all human reasons and tongues: the Word-God.

So let those among us who, in these Popes’ and Cardinals’ place, would not have done likewise cast the first and last stone into their own mouths. Protestant outcries on this matter—against Papism and the great Babylon—are but ejaculations of frenzied humanists or illiterate biblical drunkards; political rantings, if not the braying kicks of scholastic asses.

The issue lies not in the Popes’ act concerning Humanism, but in how it might be used. The act itself stands beyond all praise or blame, and all Europe can only venerate the pontifical Rome like a child its mother, for restoring the Greek authors. The Jesuits merit equal gratitude for revealing Chinese Kings (Jings) to us, and Anglicans—priests, nobles, faithful scholars—for sharing Sanskrit texts, the Vedas, Puranas, and their interpretations then made in agreement with Brahmins.

We push not just as far but farther than anyone this sense of human Universality—which fundamentally mirrors celestial Infinity. In us, it commands like our faith in the Universality of the Primordial Word; yet no less imperiously speaks within our spirit the sense of Unity, the Absolute, the Divine whose polar axis is the Word’s direct Action—His eternal Christianity, at the beginning, middle and end of all Cycles, not only on Earth but throughout Heaven.

We shall further clarify by descending from the superlative to the positive. History has two known spirits, of which the spirit of the staircase is not the least—judging by modern writers’ multitudes and their interpretations’ dissonant chorus. Let them continue at their pleasure this music of varied tunes, played simultaneously but without ensemble. As for us, we have inaugurated for our precise understanding a third spirit. It preserves intact the first—that of facts; it removes from our consciousness, insofar as we are concerned, the second—that of subjective reflections; but replaces it with a third: that of Laws.

Laws—but not in Montesquieu’s individualistic, legalistic, political and pagan sense. Our meaning is the objective—that of pure Science. Now this Science is inseparable from the Life that implements it, and this Life—the Life of the Legislating Word—is Religion itself, and all three together constitute sacred Wisdom.

The spirit of Facts is purely and simply the observation within man of human experience across all its historical degrees and of its solidarity throughout time. It is the How. Then comes the Why. Why the existence of Peoples and Races? Why their birth, growth, longer or shorter apogee, decadence, decrepitude, death? Finally, why their survival in the Word through their speech; why their resurrection in a new body glorified by Him? These glorious bodies are the Churches of Nations—without prejudice to those of Races, and finally, of the whole of Humanity itself.

This recurring Why, degree after degree, is the Spirit of sociological Laws intrinsic to Facts, and this science is sacred like all true science. The Principle of Sociology is found in all sacred Books—those of the Aryas, those of the Iranians, those of the Mongols, those of the Egyptians, those of Orpheus, those of the Druids—in all, from the Patriarchs to the Gospel. But amid this whirlwind of Universality, one must firmly grasp Unity—the absolute Center and polar Axis passing through it—lest centrifugal force sweep one away. This Center is the Word-God; its Axis runs from the patriarchal pole to that of the Last Judgment, passing through all the Patriarchs, through Moses, through the Prophets, through the Incarnate, Crucified and Risen Word, through the Apostles and their successors past, present and future.

It is useful to reiterate this, for the pagan Essence of contemporary Intellectualism—child of the Renaissance—will soon hold its Sabbath again at the expense of Sociology as of all else. Every bachelor will carry his own in his pocket—his personal socialism—which is the opposite of true sociology.

Without the key—both scientific and religious—to the latter, History is a lighthouse without light. It is as enlightening as the Falaise lantern^[*]. Thanks to this key, the beacon is lit, and it serves statesmen as much as churchmen—not as dilettante scholars but as conscious and responsible guides of human progress. This is why we stained our fingers black twenty years ago writing our Missions; and why today—in an age when so many sorts of people wield pens that soon one will need tongs to handle them—we take ours up again, though Pharisees and pagans and all their sub-reptiles may hiss louder than ever.

Let us then examine the regulatory Laws of Humanism—if by this term we mean classical Studies. The Laws in action are Christianity itself in its primal Mastery over the Gentiles, as we shall show in this book’s second part—an intellectual no less than spiritual Mastery, for by what right separate the two in Apostles and Disciples since Pentecost?

For this sacred mastery—through its unceasing control over the Renaissance’s rising neo-Paganism—to stem the catastrophes that have already struck and will yet strike Humanity, a twofold intervention would have been required: in secular understanding and in collective will.

In the intellect, the preventive remedies indicated by theological Mastery were the three degrees of Teaching of the Tri-Regnum, corresponding to the three Persons of the Trinity: Father, Son, Holy Spirit; Essence, Existence, and Substance.

In the collective will, the Gospel prophylactic indicated the three social orders corresponding to the three degrees of Teaching⁽¹⁾. Below is the relationship between these degrees and orders, from lowest to highest.

1° The Clergiate of the economic order corresponds to the primary degree of Catechization, supplemented by a Communion solidarity and an ever-open Selection, connecting upwards to:

2° The Clergiate of the Judicial Order—those of sword and robe. It corresponds to the secondary degree, which unlike the previous one is not commonplace but initiatory. It connects through solidarity of Communion and Selection to:

3° The Clergiate of the University Teaching Order. It answers to the supreme degree of the Society of the Faithful—the initiating degree—itself linked to the Teaching Church: the regular mitred abbatial and secular episcopal, through a chain of communion and selection: 1° Private priesthood, ad missam; 2° Abbatial mitre, Canonry; 3° Cardinal purple.

Ultimately, Greco-Latin secondary and higher studies—suited to the second degree—should lead only to stronger studies still, with Sanskrit as proto-classical Aryan language. This would quickly create a vacuum, leaving on the benches only true elites seeking Truth for its own sake—not vain Instruction for advantage, an abnormal means of existence, or parasitic and corruptive ends.

The other mentality would become more objective by extending proportionate education to supreme Study—of which we shall speak later—which is that of the dual visible and invisible Life and their amphibian: Humanity.

(1) For developments, see Mission des Français. (Note by the Friends of St-Y.) ↩