(62.) However, the inner life of the Duke of Lerma and his sovereign, and the entire character of the nobles and literary men of the period, will not be exhibited without turning to another page of the records. It was the age when the congregations of St. Philip Neri enrolled among their members some of the most distinguished literary men of Italy and Spain. The King and the Duke, the Primate, and many nobles of the Court, entered themselves in these holy brotherhoods. The Duke's gifts, says Davila, to convents, churches, colleges, hospitals, and professors' chairs, amounted to a million and a hundred and fifty thousand ducats. This was about the latest revival of the Religious Orders. It began to be already felt as doubtful, whether so many of these foundations were beneficial, whether they were not tending to encourage idleness rather than to promote piety. Memorials were drawn up, and advice was offered to the King by the Council of Castille, not long after the Duke's retirement, that some limit should be set to the numbers of religious persons, and a restraint imposed on the license of founding new convents. The historian Davila, whose history was written about the beginning of the reign of Philip IV., in 1624, was himself a clergyman; but he very honestly states his conviction of the exorbitant number, not only of friars, but of secular clergy * Navarrete, Vida de Cervantes, 121. The hearts a testimony of long-surviving sorrow. countries which resisted that tide of Reformation were yet warned and provoked to zeal in reviving ancient discipline. Something had been effected in the previous century in Italy by the movement which instituted the Capuchins and Theatines; but none of those changes were comparable to what was done in Spain by St. Teresa and her fellow-labourers. Teresa was indeed no ordinary person. The excellent Juan de Palafox spoke with a just discrimination of her character when he compared her with good Queen Isabella. Both were gifted with talents for command, shrewd discernment of men and times, strong good sense, a strong will, but still stronger benevolence. Those who have spoken of Teresa as a visionary, and those who fancy, with the late Richard Ford, that she was a tool in the hand of the Jesuits, have no conception of her practical energetic spirit and independence of soul, which qualified her to be rather a guide to her Confessors, than to be guided by any. Working with a good heart and entire honesty of purpose, undeterred by any difficulties, she prevailed not only with persons of all ranks in private life, but with the first politician of the Court of Madrid, Ruy Gomez, and his courtly wife, the Princess of Eboli, and with Philip II. himself. "The most prudent of Virgins," as her followers said of her, "prevailed, where few could prevail, with the most prudent of Kings." (65.) Having become at an early age a professed 66 But things remained much the same till the eve of the moral earthquake at the close of the eighteenth century. When Townsend, the English traveller, was at Oviedo in 1787, he asked the charitable bishop of the place whether he was not doing harm by feeding so many beggars. Undoubtedly," said he; "but then it is the duty of the magistrate to clear the streets of mendicants: it is mine to give alms to those that are in need." The art of government had not yet devised means to repress the unprofitable multitude of these idlers in the land. Not that it is altogether to be attributed to the indolent temper of the people. It was rather the result of unhappy laws, and taxes which discouraged industry, and fettered alike the sinews of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce. "What could people do," as Gandara asks in a calm retrospect on the history of these times, "but retire to the sanctuary of the cloister, flying from misrule and misery?"* It was in charitable concern for the prevailing misery that pious churchmen and nobles and gentry of the age of Philip III. continued to support the old foundations and to build new ones. The state of society seemed to demand it. (64.) In that part of Europe which embraced Protestantism, the monasteries had been ruthlessly swept away, and the marks of the laceration in those countries were such as to call forth from many feeling * El Bien y el Mal de España, sec. 31. Translator's MS. The hearts a testimony of long-surviving sorrow. countries which resisted that tide of Reformation were yet warned and provoked to zeal in reviving ancient discipline. Something had been effected in the previous century in Italy by the movement which instituted the Capuchins and Theatines; but none of those changes were comparable to what was done in Spain by St. Teresa and her fellow-labourers. Teresa was indeed no ordinary person. The excellent Juan de Palafox spoke with a just discrimination of her character when he compared her with good Queen Isabella. Both were gifted with talents for command, shrewd discernment of men and times, strong good sense, a strong will, but still stronger benevolence. Those who have spoken of Teresa as a visionary, and those who fancy, with the late Richard Ford, that she was a tool in the hand of the Jesuits, have no conception of her practical energetic spirit and independence of soul, which qualified her to be rather a guide to her Confessors, than to be guided by any. Working with a good heart and entire honesty of purpose, undeterred by any difficulties, she prevailed not only with persons of all ranks in private life, but with the first politician of the Court of Madrid, Ruy Gomez, and his courtly wife, the Princess of Eboli, and with Philip II. himself. "The most prudent of Virgins," as her followers said of her, "prevailed, where few could prevail, with the most prudent of Kings." (65.) Having become at an early age a professed Nun of the Carmelite Order, her reforming spirit first directed itself to the associates of her own household; and it ended in her founding, under the usual sanctions, a separate Order of Reformed Nuns and Friars. This was not done hastily; but after she had lived twenty-five years in a convent of one hundred and eighty nuns, so as to see sufficiently the hubbub and confusion of such large religious houses, and the impossibility of maintaining regular discipline within them.* Her plan at first was to limit her own convents to thirteen maidens: this number was subsequently increased so as not to exceed twenty-one. The Friaries were allowed to admit from thirty to fifty inmates. Careful seclusion, mental prayer, penitential self-denial, plain simplicity in food, clothing, and household furniture, were points of discipline earnestly enjoined. The sisterhoods were to be supported by small annuities, or to maintain themselves by the produce of their handiwork: there was to be no begging. She rather discouraged solitary meditation, and taught her associates that self-knowledge was better attained in active employment. She had little tenderness for what is commonly called religious melancholy, regarding it not so much as a morbid temperament, as a disguised form of self-indulgence. She desired, as she says, that her rule should be one of rigour combined with gentleness, following the pattern of the gospel; but she would have no * S. Teresa, Cart. vol. ii. 350. |