The Jesuits
In Persian Letters Montesquieu had Rica visit a monastery library where a monk described the contents of the works. Under the theologians were named especially the casuists, who bring the secrets of night into the daylight; who create in their fantasies all the monsters that the demon of love can produce, collect, compare and form as eternal objects of their thoughts. Yet fortunate if the heart is not enmeshed and does not become the plaything of the many delusions which are so naively described and so nakedly painted!
In this field of "sexual casuistry" we find the Jesuits masters in the eighteenth century. No order understood so well how to legitimize pleasure by religion and how to clothe their own immoral actions with a cover of mysticism and piousness. It was not necessary for the Jesuits to find their pleasures in bordellos (Manuel found only one Jesuit in these resorts, explained also by the fact that they were too clever to be caught in such traps). In his dual rôle as father confessor and teacher it was easy for him to satisfy his, by no means weak, sexual feelings which were protected from police inspection as "divine inspiration." Early in the seventeenth century Cornelius Jansen inveighed against the Jesuit father confessors, ``who regulated the gallant sins of the household and permitted the nuns to be fingered lewdly on their bosoms and thighs by their comforters." For the Jesuit Benzi taught expressly: to pinch checks, bosoms, and to shamelessly handle the genitals. As a result of these precepts, de la Chaise, father confessor of Louis XIV, violated the ladies of the court and had mistresses sent to the King of England. Young ladies in Holland let themselves be whipped by the Jesuits for their pleasure. Similarly the ladies in the court in Lisbon under Nunez. The Jesuit Herreau in 1642 taught that it was permissible to use abortive medicines. In the sixteenth century in Lyons the Jesuits influenced the ladies to wear open chemises; this practice was copied in 1789.
The notorious "Theology of Murder" of the Jesuits, in no way inferior to the apology of murder by de Sade, may be originally blamed to the treatise of their founder, J. de Mariana (1599), as well as the famous work of Blaise Pascal, Provincial Letters (1657), describing the entire immorality of the Jesuits. In the eighteenth century the commanders of the order allowed the father confessors obscene tracts, insofar as it was favorable to the order. Thus the last commander of the order before the Revolution, Lorenzo Ricci, wrote on how the young Jesuits ought to act to the young---and rich---widows. They took every possible care to keep them from a second marriage, pointing out indefatigably the inconveniences of such a state, the danger to the soul, etc., etc. "But when in spite of all this the young widows have a great yearning for a second marriage, when they find themselves in the state: it is better to marry than to burn, then a clever and discreet father may offer his services against the seductions of the flesh." World famous was the scandal of the relation between the Jesuit, Jean Baptiste Girard, and his penitent, Catherine Cadière, which started at Toulon in May, 1782. The affair occasioned an immense literature and served as a model for many pornographic novels. The case was fully documented in The Girard Case (1791). A folio volume of etchings portrayed the most piquant situations; its collection has been variously ascribed to Marquis d'Argens, Count Caylus and Mirabeau. It has also been asserted that Marquis de Sade was moved to write Justine by the above work.
The Jesuit Girard, as rector of the seminary and as naval chaplain at Toulon, had started a private penitential school for women, in which Catherine Cadière, the pretty and pious daughter of a merchant, entered. Girard, by the application of the most cunning sexual mysticism, succeeded in seducing the innocent maiden and utilized fully her visions and dreams for his lustful desires. Carnal flogging, indecent embraces, and the horrible mental prostitution soon lead to acute hysteria and in the course of time she became pregnant, but by reason of Jesuit precepts abortive drugs stopped the process. Finally action was brought against him, but, to the wrath of the public, he was freed.
Voltaire, under a picture of Girard and Cadière, wrote the following verse:
The beauty saw God, Girard saw the beauty:
Ah! But Girard is happier than she.
.......................................