Biographical Notice of the Author
The nature of the
questions discussed in the following work would
ordinarily lift them above all personal considerations
and require that the argument be left to take care of
itself in the honest vindication of Catholic truth.
There attaches to the present treatise, however, an
interest quite separated from its merits as an argument,
in its identification with the history of a man of whose
remarkable career and labors it is one of the most
valuable fruits. It is believed, therefore, that it can
scarcely fail to derive additional force from the
account which it is proper here to give of the author.
Réné-François Guettée was born at Blois, on the banks of
the Loire, in the Department of the Loire et Cher,
on the first of December, 1816, of worthy parentage, but
with no other inheritance than a good name and fair
opportunities for education. Self-devoted from the
beginning to the Church, his studies were pursued
regularly and entirely in his native city. From a very
early age his mind seems to have revolted against the
wearisome routine that ruled the system of instruction,
under which the seminarist becomes a mere receptacle in
quantity and quality of the knowledge judged by the
Church of Rome to be the needful preparation for the
instruments of her despotic rule. Guettée, without
comprehending then the evil results of such a system,
felt only its restraints and insufficiency. His mind, in
its ardent desire for knowledge and its rapid
acquisition, worked out of the prescribed limits with an
instinctive appropriation of the whole domain of truth,
and read and studied in secret. He consecrated to study
the time devoted by others to amusement, and thus stored
his mind with knowledge both varied and accurate. But
such predilections, never viewed with favor by the
Church of Rome, disquieted Guettée’s professors, and
marked him as an independent young man, a
character always regarded with jealousy and suspicion.
All possible obstacles were accordingly thrown in his
way, and had not his scrupulous regularity of conduct
and unquestionable piety counterbalanced these
unfavorable impressions, he might have found difficulty
in obtaining orders.
At the age of twenty-one
M. Guettée was admitted to the sub-diaconate; at
twenty-two he was made deacon, and at twenty-three years
he was advanced to the priesthood, receiving his
ordination on the twenty-first day of December, 1839, at
the hands of Mgr. de Sausin, Bishop of Blois. He began
at once the faithful exercise of his ministry, first as
vicar, then as curé. Mgr.de Sausin was succeeded in the
see of Blois by Mgr. Fabre des Essarts, a man of liberal
mind and of strong Gallican predilections. He soon
perceived in the young curé qualities that inspired him
with warm interest in his welfare. M. Guettée’s studies,
directed by a mind unshackled by prejudice, spurred by
an ardent love of truth and insatiable thirst for
knowledge, had led him, soon before his ordination to
the priesthood, to conceive the idea of writing a
History of the Church of France. To this work he
gave himself with characteristic ardor immediately after
his ordination. Having been appointed in 1841 to the
curé of a small parish distant about twelve miles from
Blois, where the duties left him the larger portion of
his time for study, he frequently rose at daybreak, and
walked to the city for the purpose of studying in the
public library, which is very rich in religious
literature, and where he found all the great historical
collections and monuments of learning in France. After
devoting six hours to close study, he returned on foot
to the solitude of his own chamber, where a large part
of the night was consumed in work upon the materials he
had gathered. Absorbed thus between the cares of his
ministry and his literary labors, he at length attracted
the notice of his bishop, who remarked that he never
presented himself at the episcopal palace, although
coming frequently to the episcopal city. He accordingly
sent to him a request to know the subject of his
laborious study at the library; and having learned the
truth, asked to see the manuscript of the first volume,
then nearly completed. This he caused to be carefully
examined by his Vicar-General, M. Guillois, the most
learned man in the diocese, whose report was of the most
flattering character. Mgr. des Essarts thereupon
resolved to encourage the young writer and give him
every facility for his work. M. Guettée was accordingly
transferred to another parish very near the episcopal
city, and where the charge of the ministry upon his time
was equally light. The episcopal library was placed at
his service and the emoluments of his post enabled him
to go from time to time to Paris for such researches in
the great libraries as became necessary.
Thus M. Guettée passed
several years in the successful prosecution of his great
work. In 1847 Mgr. Fabre des Essarts proposed to his own
publisher to begin the publication of the History of
the Church of France. No sooner had the first
volume appeared than the author received from a large
number of the French bishops lettera of the warmest
commendation; while on the other hand there was formed
against him in his own diocese a hostile party, composed
of priests immediately surrounding the bishop, who were
rendered jealous by the marks of episcopal favor
lavished upon the new writer, and of the directors of
the seminaries, who could not forgive one who had shown
so little reverence for their narrow prescriptions, and
who owed so little to them. The bitterness of this party
could only acquire intensity in the steady progress of
our author in the path of distinction. In 1849 M.
Guettée, with the approbation of the Bishop, resigned
his curé, and came to Blois to accept the editorial
charge of a political journal which had been offered to
him by the authorities of the department. After the
public excitement caused by the proclamation of the
Republic in 1848 had somewhat, subsided, the sincere
democrats of the country who did not sever the cause of
order from that of liberty, felt the necessity of
creating such organs of a true democracy as should
enlighten the people upon their duties as well as upon
the question of their rights. With this aim was founded
Le Republicain de Loire et Cher, and some
surprise was caused at seeing the editorship of the
journal confided to a priest by democrats, who had until
then passed for enemies of the clergy and of the Church.
The confidence of his friends was fully justified in the
influence which M. Guettée obtained for this journal by
his earnest defense of the principles to which it was
devoted, founding and strengthening them upon the
authority of the Gospel, and showing them to be in
harmony with the principles of revealed religion.
By this service he
attached more firmly to him the regard of the Bishop of
Blois, who then conceived the design of drawing the Abbé
into closer relations with himself by giving him a
residence in the episcopal palace; but before this plan
could be executed the Bishop was prostrated by the
disease that was destined to remove him from life in the
following year. M. l’Abbé Garapin, a vicar-general, an
intelligent and learned man in the episcopal
administration of Blois, who, like the Bishop, felt a
strong regard for M. Guettée, informed him secretly of
the Bishop’s kind intentions, but counselled him to
decline them and thereby escape the machinations of his
enemies in the administration, who would be certain, as
soon as the Bishop’s approaching death should put the
power into their hands, to signalize it by driving him
from the palace. M. Guettée followed this friendly
advice, and having resigned the charge of the journal he
had edited for eighteen months, because by this change
of regime he could no longer edit it with independence,
and seeing his friend the Bishop at the point of death,
he resolved to quit the diocese of Blois, and demand
permission to establish himself at Paris, where he might
enjoy more facilities for the completion of his
History of the Church of France. Knowing that the
first vicar-general would very joyfully seize the
opportunity of ridding the diocese of one for whom he
cherished so cordial a dislike, he asked and readily
obtained a full letter of credit certifying to his
learning and piety.
Thus furnished, M.
Guettée arrived in Paris, and made no other request of
the archiepiscopal administration there than to be
authorized to say mass within the diocese, attaching
himself at the same time to an ecclesiastical college as
professor. Mgr. Sibour, then Archbishop of Paris, having
been apprised of the residence of M. Guettée in the
capital, invited him to present himself at the episcopal
palace, and offered him a chaplaincy with such warmth of
manner that he did not feel at liberty to refuse so
evident a desire to serve him. In 1851 six volumes of
the History of the Church of France had already
been published, and the author had received for it the
approbation of more than forty of the French
bishops. This success caused great uneasiness to the
ultramontane party. M. Guettée, it appeared, while so
treating his great subject as to win the high suffrages
just referred to, manifested so sincere a love of truth
that his work became dangerous to a party with whom this
was no recommendation. The design was immediately formed
of gaining over the author, and accordingly Mgr.
Gousset, Archbishop of Rheims, who was at the head of
the ultramontane party, made overtures to him,
intimating that honors and ecclesiastical preferment
would not be tardy in rewarding his unreserved devotion
to the ultramontane doctrines. But this dignitary
quickly saw that he had to deal with one who could not
be brought to traffic with his convictions, nor be
intimidated by threats. From this moment began that war
against him which issued in his present entire
withdrawal from communion with the Church of Rome as a
branch of the Catholic Church schismatical in position
and corrupted in doctrine. This alienation, however, was
gradual, the fruit of his growing convictions and deeper
insight into the principles of the complicated and
powerful system with which now he had to grapple. The
struggle called for all the resources of his thoroughly
balanced and severely disciplined mind, as well as of
his extensive learning. He saw at first far less clearly
than did the ultramontane party, the steady divergence
of his views from the Papal doctrine. The Gallican tone
that pervaded more and more his History of the
Church of France proceeded not from a deliberate
point of view from which he wrote, but was the
scrupulous and truthful rendering of history by his
honest mind, the impartial and logical use of the
materials out of which his history was to be made. To
such a mind, therefore, the forced revelation of this
divergence from the doctrines of a party who for that
reason solely demanded his retractation and
unquestioning submission, could only increase the
dissidence, and so it proved. The first seven volumes of
the History, approved by more than forty
bishops, and six of them published under the direction
and with the sanction of the Bishop of Blois, were
placed in the Index of books prohibited by the
court of Rome. Mgr. Sibour gave his approbation to the
resistance made at once by M. Guettée to this decree.
The author was immediately attacked with great violence
by the Univers and other Jesuit journals, and
defended himself with great spirit and ability, all his
replies being first submitted to Mgr. Sibour and
approved by him. During this struggle the eighth and
ninth volumes of the History appeared. Mgr.
Sibour charged one of his vicars-general, M. l’Abbé
Lequeux, with the mission of submitting them to the
"Congregation of the Index," with the request that its
objections might be made known to the author before they
were censured. The author had furnished M. Lequeux with
letters bearing a similar petition. This ecclesiastic
had himself suffered by the censure of the Congregation,
passed upon his Manual of Canon Law, a classic
of many years’ standing in the seminaries. He had
submitted, and was on his way to Rome for the purpose of
learning the objections of the Congregation and
correcting his work. But he obtained no satisfaction
either for himself or for M. Guettée, whose two new
volumes were placed arbitrarily in the Index
without a word of explanation as to the grounds of
censure. Thus M. Guettée was baffled in his many
respectful and patient endeavors to obtain the desired
communication with the Congregation at Rome. He
resolved, therefore, to pursue his work without
concerning himself about censures so tyrannical and
unreasonable. But matters were about to change their
aspect at the archiepiscopal palace. In the course of
the year 1854, the bishops were called to Rome to be
present at the promulgation of the new dogma of the
Immaculate Conception, Mgr. Sibour was not invited. He
had addressed to Rome a paper in which he proved that
this dogma, or belief, was not definable, because it was
not taught either in Holy Scripture, or by Catholic
tradition. To punish him for this act he was not
included among the bishops invited. Deeply mortified at
this omission, he wrote to the Pope touching it, and in
a manner so submissive that he was at once rewarded with
an invitation couched in the most gracious terms. The
character of Mgr. Sibour was well understood at Rome as
that of a weak and ambitious man, full of vanity and
without fixed convictions, who could be won by
flatteries and bought with promises. He was, therefore,
received with studied politeness and lodged in the
Vatican. His namesake and friend, M. Sibour, curé of the
church of St. Thomas Aquinas in Paris, was made Bishop
of Tripoli in partibus, and his friend, M.
l’Abbé Darboy, the present Archbishop of Paris, was
appointed Prothonotaire Apostolique. For
himself he received the promise of a cardinal’s hat. In
return for these kindnesses he was constrained to
sacrifice his Gallican friends among the clergy of
Paris, and the promise made to that effect was well
kept. M. l’Abbé Lequeux, his vicar-general, found
himself dismissed to his old place among the Canons of
Notre Dame; M. l’Abbé Laborde was persecuted and finally
found no better refuge than the hospital, where he soon
after died; M. l’Abbé Prompsault, who had been for
nearly thirty years chaplain of the Hospice of les
Quinze Vingt, was deprived of his position, left
without resources, and subsequently died in the hospital
not long after. Finally, forgetful or regardless of all
the encouragement he had given to M. l’Abbé Guettée in
his resistance to the action of the Congregation of the
Index, and of his repeated proofs of regard and
confidence, he withdrew his support, deprived him of his
place, and reduced him, like the others, to poverty.
Here, however, he found a less submissive spirit. Roused
by the injustice and tyranny of this act, M. Guettée
printed a letter to Mgr. Sibour which proved a
home-thrust to this vacillating prelate. It recounted
all the facts of his past relations with the Archbishop,
his patient endeavors to be at peace with the court of
Rome, his offers of every reasonable submission, and
earnest application directly to the Congregation of the
Index, and afterward to Mgr. Sibour himself, to have his
obnoxious work examined by a commission; how this was
refused when proceeding from himself as an overture of
conciliation, but was subsequently suggested by the
Archbishop himself, in the form of a menace, to induce
the Abbé Guettée to withdraw from Paris voluntarily, and
save himself from the threatened censure and disability;
that he declined the latter course and opened himself
and his work with every facility to the scrutiny of his
judges. He set forth the action of the Council of
Rochelle in 1853—the same which proposed to censure
Bossuet—which attacked the eighth volume of the
History of the Church of France, and did not spare
even the Abbé’s personal character; that when he had
prepared his defense and asked permission of the
Archbishop to publish it, lest it should be seized as
the pretext for depriving him of his functions, he was
answered that before such permission could be accorded
he must resign those functions in the diocese of Paris;
that he refused to do this, and that by agreement
certain copies of his defense were deposited with the
Archbishop, and an agreement made that it should not be
published; that though this defense was not made the
occasion of his premeditated removal, the pretext for a
measure so determined upon was soon after made out of a
petty difference of a personal kind between himself and
a confrere, without any regard to the
importance or the justice of the case; that Mgr. Sibour
finally deprived him of the poor office of hospital
chaplain, with the evident design of withdrawing from
him such means of subsistence as alone prevented his
quitting Paris.
This letter, addressed to
Mgr. Sibour, protesting against his action and fully
exposing the motives that could alone have operated to
these persecutions, was printed and a copy sent to the
Archbishop before it was published. Under the
impression, however, that it had been published, the
Archbishop immediately replied by depriving the Abbé of
the permission to say mass in Paris, thus completing the
disability cast upon him. But upon the Abbé’s informing
him that the letter had not been published, that it was
designed as a defense of himself, not as an attack upon
the administration of the diocese, and offering to
deposit the edition of the letter at the archiepiscopal
palace, to avoid the evils of publicity, Mgr. Sibour
next day sent, a very kind note to M. Guettée,
expressing himself touched by the terms of his response,
restoring to him the authority to celebrate mass,
accepting the deposit of the copies of his printed
letter, and desiring to see him to give him some further
proof of his satisfaction. At a personal interview the
same evening, Mgr. Sibour promised him shortly new
ecclesiastical functions.
It would seem, however,
that the Archbishop’s eyes were beginning to be opened
toward Rome. His submission and absolute conversion had
so satisfied that court that it was in no haste to
confer the promised cardinal’s hat; and Mgr. Sibour
feeling that he had been amused with words, repented of
his acts of injustice and was meditating some
reparation, of which his gentler disposition toward M.
Guettée was a sign, when these better intentions were
arrested by the tragic death he so suddenly met at the
hand of the assassin Verger, in the church of St.
Etienne du Mont.
His successor, Cardinal
Morlot, was a man of political ideas and aspirations,
astute and scheming, who never lost sight of the
importance or neglected the means of maintaining the
best relations with the powerful. He made every needful
concession to the successive governments in France, and
at the same time conciliated Rome, feeding its
insatiable greed of riches by sending large sums of
money for its necessities. Such a man could have no
thoughts to bestow upon the trivial work of repairing
the wrongs of his predecessor. On the contrary, he was
not long in showing himself yet more severe against M.
Guettée, and at the close of the year 1855 finally
refused to renew his permission to say mass in Paris.
From this moment began the war in earnest which ended in
the separation of our author from the Church of Rome.
After having in vain endeavored to procure from the
Archbishop in writing the refusal to sanction the
continuance of his ministry in the diocese of Paris—a
refusal that was prudently communicated to him verbally
by the proper official—he published his appeal to the
Pope against the decision as a gross violation of canon
law, and another to the government, as an abuse of
authority and an invasion of his civil-ecclesiastical
rights. These appeals, firm in their language and
unanswerable in their facts and arguments, were not
published with any hope of answer or justice, but for
the purpose of exposing clearly the outrageous violation
by his adversary of the ancient liberties of the
Gallican Church, and the arbitrary and despotic
character of the whole proceeding. He did not imagine
that the Pope would ever be permitted to hear of his
wrongs, or if he were, that he would listen to them at
the expense of his own friends and of the principles
upon which the power of the Papacy is built. Nor was it
to be expected that the State would embroil itself with
an individual confiict with the Church upon a question
of canon law. Thus M. l’Abbé Guettée, innocent of the
smallest offense against good morals, and with a
character free from all taint, without any
ecclesiastical censure resting upon him, or any
proceedings directed against him, was deprived of the
exercise of his ministry, with the evident purpose of
driving him from Paris, where his enlightened views
caused too much inconvenience to,the ultramontane party.
It is unnecessary to say
that the scheme failed, or to follow the controversy
that ensued upon this open rupture. It had the natural
result of disclosing more clearly than ever to M.
Guettée the principles of the Church of Rome and the
despotic usurpation of the Papacy. The energy and
industry with which he answered the attacks upon him
developed his views, defined his objections and
thoroughly awakened the latent protest of his
enlightened conscience against the pretensions of Rome.
He became finally the watchful and open antagonist of
the Papacy, and shortly after found himself the editor
of the Review called l’Observateur Catholique,
which had, and still has, for its object the resistance
of Papal usurpations and corruptions in the Church by
the principles of primitive truth and a pure
Catholicity. He has published successively a History
of the Jesuits, in three volumes; the Memoirs
et Journal de l’Abbé Le Dieu sur la Vie et les Ouvrages
de Bossuet, in four volumes; also a refutation of
Renan’s Vie de Jesus. His latest and most
important work is the Papauté Schismatique, now
presented in English. Six years ago he founded, in
conjunction with the Rev. Archpriest Wassilieff, titular
head of the Russo-Greek church in France, and especially
attached to the Russian Church in Paris, l’ Union
Chrétienne, a weekly publication in quarto form,
having for its specific object the diffusion of
information upon the principles of the primitive Church
as those of a true Catholicity, upon which the non-Roman
branches of the Church should be recalled to a renewal
of their outward unity, and thus a resistless influence
be opposed to the invasions of the Papal principle and
the corruptions it has introduced into the primitive
faith. It is natural that such a consecration of his
labor and such associations, should have led M. Guettée
into close and increasingly devoted relations with the
Oriental Church, and especially with the Orthodox Church
of Russia. His views ceasing to be Roman and Papal only
because more intensely Catholic, he sought a home in the
East, where the Papal power could never seat itself, and
especially in the Orthodox Russian Church, where its
pretensions are held in abhorrence. All that is
venerable, pure, and Catholic in the faith and form of
the Church of Christ, our author believes he has found
in the Russo-Greek branch, and he has therefore attached
himself warmly to it, making it the platform for his
earnest and pure-minded labors for the restoration of
visible unity. He is in turn held in high esteem by the
authorities and learned men of the Russian Church, and
has recently received from it the high and rare honor of
a doctorate in theology. His labors for union are warmly
appreciated aud encouraged there as they are everywhere
by all who understand them. M. Guettée is no enthusiast;
he is fully aware of the difficulties and magnitude of
the work to which his life is consecrated, and looks for
no marked progress or fiattering results to show
themselves in his lifetime, but is content to sow wide
and deep the seeds of truth, leaving them to germinate
and become fruitful in God’s good time. He has a warm
and intelligent appreciation of our American branch of
the Church, and looks to its activity in the great
endeavor as of the highest importance, believing that
her catholic character and free and mobile structure
peculiarly mark her as a powerful instrument to promote
the interests of the Catholic faith. M. Guettée has in
preparation a work of much interest and importance,
designed to bring into a single view the harmonies and
differences of the various branches of the Catholic
Church. It forms a careful survey of the ground, and is
likely to become a valuable help to an enlightened view
of the work of unity, to which the providence of God
seems to be directing all Christian minds. This new
production of M. Guettée will be translated without
delay, and published simultaneously in French, Russian,
and English.