Nobility and Clergy
The nobility and clergy play the main rôles in the novels of Marquis de Sade. Princes, dukes, counts, marquis, and chevaliers accompany popes, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, monks of all orders, abbesses and nuns as erotic and atheistic monsters. All the corruption of the ancien régime passes before our eyes in his works. The nobility and clergy formed indeed only one class in France for the clergy were mostly recruited from the nobility. The oldest son of the nobleman became an officer, the second son a priest or monk, the daughters, who for lack of dowry could not be married, nuns. The parsonage of the nobility by the state reached unheard of dimensions in the eighteenth century. All state officers, judgeships and military positions were usually given to the nobility. At eighteen to twenty the young noblemen, without having the slightest idea of military tactics, were given regiments. They passed their youth in luxury and debauchery with women.
A noted intermediary between clergy and nobility was the institution of abbés, that degenerate mixed breed which one found everywhere without any fixed official duties. Mercier declared that Paris was full of abbés, priests with tonsure, serving neither the church nor the state, passing their time in utmost sloth but playing no unimportant role as "friends of the house," pedagogues, writers, etc. They were at home in all bordellos, although at an early period every courtesan who could prove the visit of an abbé received 50 francs. But that ceased under Louis XVI. An excellent description of the abbé of the eighteenth century was given by that celebrated gastronomist, Brillat Savarin: "If a family of the nobility had many sons, one of them was set aside for the church. He first received simple prebends which sufficed for the costs of his education; he later became a canon, abbot or bishop according to his talent for the spiritual calling. That was the true type of abbé. But there were also many false ones, and many welltodo youngsters appeared in Paris as abbés. Nothing was simpler and so convenient: by a slight change of attire the appearance of a benefice was simulated. One had friends, lovers and hosts, for every house had its abbé. They were small, fat, round, welldressed, bland, obliging, curious connoisseurs, lively and insinuating." De Sade has drawn this type in Abbé Chabert, the friend of Juliette and teacher of her daughter (Juliette 111, 280). The abbés also figure in the police reports of Manuel on the vice of the clergy in Paris which we shall quote in a later section.
A second characteristic phenomenon of the eighteenth century was the "knight," the chevalier. He also has found a loving commentator in Brillat Savarin: "Many knights had found it advantageous to present the fraternal kiss to each other. They were mostly pretty men. They carried their swords vertically, their heads high, their noses up, their bodies stiff; they were gamblers, seducers, squabblers and really belonged to the train of a lady of fashion. At the beginning of the Revolution most of the knights entered the army, others left the country and the rest lost themselves in the crowd. The few survivors can be recognized by their features. For now they are skinny and walk laboriously. They have the gout." The champions of the cloth were, in de Sade's novels, the perpetrators of the most abominable outrages. With a special preference de Sade described the vices, hypocrisy, and the ungodliness of the clergy of every rank. He overwhelmed the cloth with the most vulgar insults. And he had excellent justification. In the discussion of the wickedness of the French clergy we will present authentic historic documents. The discoveries of the police speak of and justify de Sade, whose works were placed on the Index Expurgatorius as much for their anticlerical contents as for their obscenity. Thus Juliette called the pope an "old ape" (Juliette IV, 285); and the other prelates, monks, etc., did not fare much better. The tribade Clairwil cried (Juliette II, 336): "Who are the only true destroyers of society? The priests! Who daily seduce and rape our women and children? The priests! Who are the greatest enemy of every reign? The priests! Who continually deceive us with lies and frauds? Steal our last penny? Work most for the destruction of the human race? Defame themselves most with crimes and infamies? Who are the most dangerous and horrible persons?... And yet we hesitate to put an end to these pestilent worms of the earth? Then we really deserve all these evils."
All the troubles of France were the work of the Jesuits (Juliette III, 169). Numberless were the orgies and debaucheries, which the priests arranged in de Sade's novels. Therein appeared all the pathologic sexual types. The pederast, the pathicus, the lécheur, the sanguinaire, etc., etc. We here call attention only to the dreadful orgies of the Carmelites (Juliette III, 143), the Archbishop of Lyons (Juliette I, 234); the orgies in the catacombs of the Panthémont monastery between monks and nuns (Juliette I, 96); of Pope Pius VI and the Cardinals Albani and Bernis in Rome (Juliette IV, 100 ff.). All these clergymen were atheists and blasphemers. De Sade repeated---unique in his works---two obscene and blasphemous poems of Cardinal Bernis in Juliette.
We shall next present contemporary reports as proofs that de Sade was not unjust when he exposed the clergy in such an abusive manner in his works.
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