A Historian of the Soul
A Literary History of Religious Thought in France from the Wars of Religion down to our own Times. By Henri Bremond. Vol. I. Devout Humanism. Translated by K. L. Montgomery. (S.P.C.K. 16s.)
IT was perhaps not without a certain malice that the Abbe Bremond observed of one of his many fortunate discoveries, the seventeenth century religious poet Bribeuf, that " had he been an Anglican, the Entretiens would to-day be published and republished by the S.P.C.K." But he could hardly have foreseen that this same fate would overtake his own master- piece ; to the immense benefit of all who are unable to tackle the great Histoire Litteraire in its original form. These must
be profoundly grateful to the translator who has embarked on this vast undertaking with such devoted courage, and has so admirably executed the first section of it. They will eagerly look forward to further instalments, and trust that fortitude and zest may continue to support the pen that provides them.
The Histoire Litteraire du Sentiment Religieux en France (a title which is much reduced in accuracy by the replacement of Sentiment by " Thought ") is probably the greatest historical work which the twentieth century has so far given us. It obtained for its author his seat in the Academie Francaise, where he succeeded Monsignor Duchesne in 1923: and constituted his chief title to the degree which Oxford conferred upon him this year honoris causa. Eight volumes have already appeared in France, and two more are in preparation. The complete project is intended to bring this amazingly rich and various Spiritual History of Catholic France up to the beginning of the twentieth century ; and will include a special study of the part which has been played in it in modern times by the humble labours of the village cure. Thus a vast panorama will be spread before us, showing the movement through history of the religious sense nurtured within one particular branch of the Catholic Church ; its expression in literature, institutions, ideas and devotion, and above all in countless great and saintly personalities. Whilst certain epochs and individuals stand out with special brilliance— the stories of S. Francois de Sales, of Madame Acarie and her daughters, of the coming of the Carmelites, of the Oratory and Port Royal, or the life of that intrepid mystic Marie de 1'Incarnation, " the Teresa of France "—yet the main interest and value of M. Bremond's work does not lie here. It lies rather in his discovery and presentation of a crowd of forgotten saints and teachers, who yet made a vital contri- bution to the spiritual history of their time ; and his power of exhibiting them, not merely as " historical " or " literary " figures, but as living and experiencing souls. His aim, as he tells us in his preface, was to set forth " the truth of their inner lives . . . their personal individual experience of the realities of which they speak."
It is the successful fulfilment of this aim, together with the richness and interest of the material drawn upon, and its author's literary genius, which combine to set the Histoire Litteraire apart from all other works of the kind. It weaves into one richly coloured fabric, history, biography, and religious experience ; compelling us to realize that the true masters of the spiritual life lived what they taught, and taught in order to share their discoveries. The mark which they left upon history witnessed to the greatness and vigour of their souls. Thus we are shown Berulle's doctrine of " adherence " as the reflection of his own interior life, and the foundation of the Oratory not as a mere episode in Church history, but as the necessary self-expression of a group of heroic souls ; whilst the intricate story of Port Royal, its fervours and its extravagances, is traced to its origins in human character. Here, too, devotions which the modern critic is inclined to dismiss unexamined with a certain con- tempt are shown first to have arisen as the fruit of a deep intuition ; and to have carried for their own time a significance which has since become obscured. In the last two volumes of the Histoire, just published in Paris, and bearing the significant title " La Metaphysique des Saints," this emphasis upon the spiritual aspect of history is increased. Here M. Bremond defends, by an appeal to the overwhelming testimony of the saints and spiritual writers he kmws so well—and sometimes too with a biting wit—the mystical as against the ascetic and utilitarian view of the nature of prayer : thus laying out the plan of a complete philosophy of the spiritual life, which shall be solidly based upon history and religious experience.
The Abbe Bremond does not come as a stranger to English readers. Though they have had to wait some time for his masterpiece, several of his shorter works have been already translated. These include the brilliant and profound Prayer and Poetry, lately reviewed in these pages, and his early study of Newman ; but not those sympathetic essays on Keble and other English religious personalities, which were the result of interests fostered during two periods of residence here. Coming to England in 1882 as a Jesuit novice, M. Bremond remained for six years ; then acquiring an under- standing of English life and literature which was deepened during a later visit. Those with a keen memory of the events surrounding Father Tyrrell's last days and death in 1909 will remember him as the priest who then stood, at his own risk, at the deathbed of his excommunicated friend, and said at the graveside the funeral prayers. The eccle- siastical censure and deprivation, which inevitably followed these deeds of charity, were met by a prompt act of submission in which the Abbe disavowed " anything reprehensible which he may have said or done " on this occasion. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to regard M. Bremond as a Modernist in the heterodox sense, on account of the part that he played in these unhappy events. Though his religious sympathies are wide as well as deep, he is—as he said when his too vivacious biography of Ste. Chantal was placed on the Index —a Catholic " For better and for worse, pour le meilleur et pour le pire, pour la lune de mid et pour les scenes de ménage, comme dit la formule anglaise du mariage ! " His profound historical sense is allied to a loving understanding of the true riches of Catholic spirituality, and their intimate connexion with the tradition from which they spring. Thus we have in him that most valuable of all types in a period of theological unrest and reconstruction ; a philosopher both speculative and historical, who combines a true " sense of the past " with an adherence to those unchanging realities which it is the ever-recurring duty of the present to incarnate
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