Books Fatal to Their Authors | Page 4

Latin, and together with a treatise on The Daily Communion was
printed with this title: A Spiritual Manual, releasing the soul and

leading it along the interior way to the acquiring the perfection of
contemplation and the rich treasure of internal peace. In the preface
Molinos writes: "Mystical theology is not a science of the imagination,
but of feelings; we do not understand it by study, but we receive it from
heaven. Therefore in this little work I have received far greater
assistance from the infinite goodness of God, who has deigned to
inspire me, than from the thoughts which the reading of books has
suggested to me." The object of the work is to teach that the pious mind
must possess quietude in order to attain to any spiritual progress, and
that for this purpose it must be abstracted from visible objects and thus
rendered susceptible of heavenly influence. This work received the
approval of the Archbishop of the kingdom of Calabria, and many other
theologians of the Church. It won for its author the favour of Cardinal
Estraeus and also of Pope Innocent XI. It was examined by the
Inquisition at the instigation of the Jesuits, and passed that trying ordeal
unscathed. But the book raised up many powerful adversaries against
its author, who did not scruple to charge Molinos with Judaism,
Mohammedanism, and many other "isms," but without any avail, until
at length they approached the confessor of the King of Naples, and
obtained an order addressed to Cardinal Estraeus for the further
examination of the book. The Cardinal preferred the favour of the king
to his private friendship. Molinos was tried in 1685, and two years later
was conducted in his priestly robes to the temple of Minerva, where he
was bound, and holding in his hand a wax taper was compelled to
renounce sixty-eight articles which the Inquisition decreed were
deduced from his book. He was afterwards doomed to perpetual
imprisonment. On his way to the prison he encountered one of his
opponents and exclaimed, "Farewell, my father; we shall meet again on
the day of judgment, and then it will be manifest on which side, on
yours or mine, the Truth shall stand." For eleven long years Molinos
languished in the dungeons of the Inquisition, where he died in 1696.
His work was translated into French and appeared in a Recueil de
pièces sur le Quiétisme, published in Amsterdam 1688. Molinos has
been considered the leader and founder of the Quietism of the
seventeenth century. The monks of Mount Athos in the fourteenth, the
Molinosists, Madame Guyon, Fénélon, and others in the seventeenth
century, all belonged to that contemplative company of Christians who

thought that the highest state of perfection consisted in the repose and
complete inaction of the soul, that life ought to be one of entire passive
contemplation, and that good works and active industry were only
fitting for those who were toiling in a lower sphere and had not attained
to the higher regions of spiritual mysticism. Thus the '[Greek:
Aesuchastai]' on Mount Athos contemplated their nose or their navel,
and called the effect of their meditations "the divine light," and
Molinos pined in his dungeon, and left his works to be castigated by the
renowned Bossuet. The pious, devout, and learned Spanish divine was
worthy of a better fate, and perhaps a little more quietism and a little
less restlessness would not be amiss in our busy nineteenth century.
The noblest prey ever captured by those keen hunters, the Inquisitors,
was Bartholomew Carranza, Archbishop of Toledo, in 1558, one of the
richest and most powerful prelates in Christendom. He enjoyed the
favour of his sovereign Philip II. of Spain, whom he accompanied to
England, and helped to burn our English Protestants. Unfortunately in
an evil hour he turned to authorship, and published a catechism under
this title: Commentarios sobre el Catequismo Cristiano divididos en
quatro partes las quales contienen fodo loque professamor en el sancto
baptismo, como se vera en la plana seguiente dirigidos al serenissimo
Roy de España (Antwerp). On account of this work he was accused of
Lutheranism, and his capture arranged by his enemies. At midnight,
after the Archbishop had retired to rest, a knock was heard at the door
of the chamber. "Who calls?" asked the attendant friar. "Open to the
Holy Office," was the answer. Immediately the door flew open, for
none dared resist that terrible summons, and Ramirez, the
Inquisitor-General of Toledo, entered. The Archbishop raised himself
in his bed, and demanded the reason of the intrusion. An order for his
arrest was produced, and he was speedily conveyed to the dungeons of
the Inquisition at Valladolid. For seven long years he lingered there,
and was then summoned to Rome in 1566 by Pius V. and