Books: Irish Race in the Past and the Present

A >> Aug. J. Thebaud >> Irish Race in the Past and the Present

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Many Protestant writers have attempted a weak and flippant
solution of the question, and we are continually told of the
superior enlightenment of the northern races, of their
attachment to liberty, of their higher civilization, and other
very fine and very easily-quoted things of the same kind, which,
at the present moment, are admitted as truths by many, and
esteemed as unanswerable explanations of the phenomenon.
According to this opinion, therefore, the southern races were
more ignorant, less civilized, more readily duped by priestcraft
and kingcraft; above all, readier to bow to despotism, and
indifferent to freedom.

Catholic writers, Balmez principally, have often given a
satisfactory answer to the question; yet, the replies which they
have made to the various sophisms touched upon, have seemingly
produced no effect on the modern masses, who continue steadfast
in their belief of what has been so often refuted. It would be
presumptuous and probably quite useless, on our part, to enter
into a lengthened discussion of the question. But, when confined
to England, it is a kind of test to be applied to all those
subjects of civilization and liberty, and is so clear and true
that it cannot leave the least room for doubt or hesitation:
moreover, as it necessarily enters into the inquiry which forms
the heading of this chapter, it cannot be entirely laid aside.

All that we purpose doing is, discovering why the northern
nations fell a prey more readily to the disorganizing doctrines
of Protestantism than the southern. The general fickleness of
the human mind, which is so well brought out by the great
Spanish writer, does not strike us as a sufficient cause; for
the mind of southern peoples is certainly not less fickle, on
many points at least, than that of other races.

In our comparison between the North and the South, we class the
Irish with the latter, although, geographically, they belong to
the former, and, indeed, constitute the only northern nation
which remained faithful to the Church.

First, let us state the broad facts for which we wish to assign
some satisfactory reasons.

After the social convulsions which attended the change of
religion had subsided somewhat, it was found that Protestantism
had invaded the three Scandinavian kingdoms, to the almost total
exclusion of Catholicism, to such an extent, indeed, that, until
quite recently, it was death or transportation for any person
therein to return to the bosom of the mother Church.

The same statement is true, to almost the same extent, of
Northern Germany, where open persecution, or rather war, raged
until the establishment of "religious peace" toward 1608. Saxony,
whence the heresy sprang, was its centre and stronghold in
Germany; and the Saxons were Scandinavians, having crossed over
from the southern-borders of the Baltic, where, for a long time,
they dwelt in constant intercourse with the Danes, Norwegians,
and Swedes.

Saxon and Norman England was found to be, at the end of the
sixteenth century, almost entirely Protestant, and the
persecution of the comparatively few Catholics who survived
flourished therein full vigor.

A singular phenomenon presented itself in the Low Countries.
That portion of them subsequently known as Holland, which was
first invaded and peopled by the Northmen of Walcheren, became
almost entirely Protestant, while Belgium, which was originally
Celtic, remained Catholic.

Bavaria, Austria, and Switzerland, were divided between
Protestantism and Catholicity, and the division exists to this
day.

In France a section only of the nobility, which was originally
Norman as well as Frank, and under feudalism had become
thoroughly permeated by the northern spirit, was found to have
embraced the new doctrines, which were repudiated by the people
of Celtic origin. It is true that, later on, the Cevennes
mountaineers received Protestantism from the old Waldenses; but
we are presenting a broad sketch, and do not deny that several
minor lineaments may not fall in with the general picture.

In Italy only literary men, in Spain a few rigorist prelates and
monks, showed any inclination toward the "reform" party.

On the whole, then, it is safe to conclude that the Scandinavian
mind was congenial to Protestantism.

We say the Scandinavian mind, because the Scandinavian race
extended, not only through Scandinavia proper, but also through
Northern Germany, along the Baltic Sea and German Ocean; through
Holland by Walcheren; through a portion of Central and Southern
Germany, as far down as Switzerland, which was invaded by Saxons
at the time of Charlemagne, and after him, until Otto the Great
gave them their final check, and subdued them more thoroughly
than the great Charles had succeeded in doing.

Common opinion traces the Scandinavians and Germans back to the
same race. In the generic sense, this is true; and all the Indo-
Germanic nations may have originally belonged to the same parent
stock; but, specifically, differences of so striking a nature
present themselves in that immense branch of the human family,
that the existence of sub-races of a definite character,
presupposing different and sometimes opposite tendencies, must
be admitted.

Who can imagine that the Germans proper are identical with the
Hindoos, although by language they, in common with the greater
part of European nations, may belong to the same parent stock?
In like manner, the Germanic tribes, although possessing many
things in common with the Scandinavian race, differ from it in
various respects.

The best ethnographic writers admit that the Scandinavian race,
which they, in our opinion improperly, name Gothic, differed
greatly in its language from the Teutonic. The language of the
first, retained in its purity in Iceland to this day, soon
became mixed up with German proper in Denmark, Sweden, and even
in Norway to a great extent. The languages differed therefore
originally, as did, consequently, the races. Even at this very
moment an effort is being made by Scandinavians to establish the
difference between themselves and the Teutons with respect to
language and nationality.

How far the religion of both was identical is a difficult
question. We believe it very probable that the worship of Thor,
Odin, and Frigga, was purely Scandinavian, and penetrated
Germany, as far as Switzerland, with the Saxons. Hertha,
according to Tacitus, was the supreme goddess of the Germans.
She had no place in Scandinavian mythology. Ipsambul, so
renowned among the Teutons, was quite unknown in Scandinavia.
The Germans, in common with the Celts, considered the building
of temples unworthy the Deity; whereas, the Scandinavian temples,
chiefly the monstrous one of Upsala, are well known. Many other
such facts might be brought out to show the difference of their
religions.

The Germans showed themselves from the beginning attached to a
country life; and we know how the Frankish Merovingian kings
loved to dwell in the country. The Scandinavians only cared for
the sea, and manifested by their skill in navigation how they
differed from the Germans, who were less inclined even than the
Celts for large naval expeditions.

All this is merely given as strong conjecture, not as proof
positive amounting to demonstration, of the real difference
between the two races--the Germanic and Scandinavian.

But how was Protestantism congenial to the Scandinavian mind?
This second question is of still greater importance than the
first.

In the earlier portion of the book, we passed in review the
character of the tribes, once clustered around the Baltic, with
the exception of the Finns, who dwelt along the eastern coast;
and, grounding our opinion on unquestionable authorities, we
found that character to consist mainly of cruelty, boldness,
rapacity, system, and a spirit of enterprise in trade and
navigation.

When they embraced Christianity, it undoubtedly modified their
character to a great extent, and many holy people lived among
them, some of whom the Church has numbered among the saints. But
the conquest of these ferocious pirates was undoubtedly the
greatest triumph ever achieved by the holy Spouse of Christ.

Yet, even after becoming Christian, they preserved for a Iong
time--we speak not now of the present day--deep features of
their former character, among others the old spirit of rapacity,
and that systematic boldness which, when occasion demands, is
ever ready to intrench upon the rights of others. They soon
displayed, also, a general tendency to subject spiritual matters
to individual reason, and the great among them to interfere and
meddle with religious affairs. The Dukes of Normandy, the Kings
of England, and the Saxon Emperors of Germany, seldom ceased
disputing the rights of spiritual authority; and the learned
among them were forward to question the supremacy of Rome in
many things, and to argue against what other people, more
religiously inclined, would have admitted without controversy.
That spirit of speculation, to which the Irish Four Masters
partly ascribed the introduction of Protestantism into England,
was rampant in the schools of these northern nations, when a
superior civilization gave rise to the erection of universities
and colleges in their midst.

But over and above that systematic philosophical spirit, their
character was deeply imbued with a material rapacity which,
after all, has always constituted the great vice of those
northern tribes. It is unnecessary to remind the reader that, in
England chiefly, Protestantism was particularly grateful to the
avaricious longings of the courtiers of Henry VIII. and
Elizabeth. The confiscation of ecclesiastical property and its
distribution among the great of the nation was the chief
incentive which moved them to adopt the convenient doctrines of
the new order, and subvert the old religion of the country. This
rapacious spirit showed itself also in Germany, though not so
conspicuously as in England; and certainly, in both countries,
the universal confiscation of the estates of religious houses,
and the robbery of the plate and jewels of the churches, are
prominent features in the history of the great Reformation.

William Cobbett has written eloquently on this subject, and
marshalled an immense array of facts so difficult of denial that
the defenders of Protestantism were compelled to resort to the
petty subterfuge of retorting that the great English radical was
a mere partisan, who never spoke sincerely, but always supported
the theory he happened to take up by exaggerated and distorted
facts, which no one was bound to admit on his responsibility.
Such was their reply; but the awkward facts remained and remain
still unchallenged.

But, since Cobbett, men who could not be accused of partisanship
and exaggeration have published authentic accounts of the
unbounded rapacity of the Reformers of the sixteenth century, in
England particularly, which all impartial men are bound to
respect, and not attribute to any unworthy motive, since they
are supported even by Protestant authorities. We quote a few,
taken from the "History of the Penal Laws" by Dr. R. R. Madden:

"The Earl of Warwick, afterward Duke of Northumberland, was the
first of the aristocracy in England who inveighed publicly
against the superfluity of episcopal habits, the expense of
vestments and surplices, and ended in denouncing altars and the
'mummery' of crucifixes, pictures and images in churches.

"The earl had an eye to the Church plate, and the precious
jewels that ornamented the tabernacles and ciboriums. Many
courtiers soon were moved by a similar zeal for religion--a lust
for the gold, silver, and jewels of the churches. In a short
time, not only the property of churches, but the possession of
rich bishopries and sees, were shared among the favorites of
Cranmer and the protector (Somerset): as were those of the See
of Lincoln, 'with all its manors, save one;' the Bishoprie of
Durham, which was allotted to Dudley, Duke of Northumberland; of
Bath and Wells, eighteen or twenty of whose manors in Somerset,
were made a present of to the protector, with a view of
protecting the remainder."

A number of similar details are to be found in the pages of the
same author.

Dr. Heylin, a Protestant, says: "That the consideration of
profit did advance this work--of the Reformation--as much as any
other, if perchance not more, may be collected from an inquiry
made two years after, in which (inquiry) it was to be
interrogated: `What jewels of gold, or silver crosses,
candlesticks, censers, chalices, copes, and other vestments,
were then remaining in any of the cathedral or parochial
churches, or, otherwise, had been embezzled or taken away? '. . .
The leaving," adds Dr. Heylin, "of one chalice to every church,
with a cloth or covering for the communion-table, being thought
sufficient. The taking down of altars by command, was followed
by the substitution of a board, called the Lord's Board, and
subsequently of a table, by the determination of Bishop Ridley.

"Many private persons' parlors were hung with altar-cloths,
their tables and beds covered with copes, instead of carpets and
coverlets, and many made carousing cups of the sacred chalices,
as once Belshazzar celebrated his drunken feasts in the
sanctified vessels of the Temple. It was a sorry house, not
worth the naming, which had not something of this furniture in
it, though it were only a fair large cushion made of a cope or
altar-cloth, to adorn their windows, and to make their chairs
appear to have somewhat in them of a chair of state."

Could such scenes as these have been surpassed by what took
place during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, in the
rude towns of Norway and Denmark, at the return of a powerful
seakong, with his large fleet, from a piratical excursion into
Southern Europe, when the spoils of many a Christian church and
wealthy house went to adorn the savage dwellings or those
barbarians? Adam of Bremen relates how he saw, with his own eyes,
the rich products of European art and industry accumulated in
the palace of the King of Denmark, and in the loathsome
dwellings of the nobility, or exposed for sale in the public
markets of the city.

But rapacity formed only one characteristic of the Scandinavians;
the mind of the people, moreover, showed itself,
notwithstanding the intricate and monstrous mythology which it
had created when pagan, of a rationalistic and anti-supernatural
tendency. Their mind was naturally systematic and reasoning; it
discussed spiritual matters in all their material aspects, and
thus gave rise to those speculations which soon became the
source of heresy. Hence, in England and the north of Germany,
the power of Rome was always called in question; and as the
English mind was altogether Scandinavian, while that of the
Germans was mixed with more of a southern disposition, the chief
trouble in Germany, between the empire and the Roman Church, lay
in the question of investitures, which combined a material and
spiritual aspect, whereas, in England, the quarrel was almost
invariably of a pecuniary nature, as, for instance, Peter's
pence.

Even in the most Catholic times, the English made a bitter
grievance of the levying of Peter's pence among them, and of the
giving of English benefices to prelates of other nations, which
also resolved itself into a question of revenue or money. And so
characteristic was the grievance of the whole nation that it was
restricted to no class, churchmen and monks being as loud in
their denunciations of Rome as the king and the nobles; and thus
the theological questions of the papal supremacy and of
ecclesiastical authority generally took with them quite a
material form. The diatribes of the Benedictine monk Matthew
Paris are well known, and their worldly spirit can only excite
in us pity that they should have been the chief cause of the
destruction of his own order in England and Ireland, and of the
total spoliation of the religious houses in whose behalf he
imagined that he wrote.

If the harms done by those contemptible wranglings about Peter's
pence and benefices had been confined to depriving the
pontifical exchequer of a revenue which was cheerfully granted
by other nations to aid the Father of the Faithful, the result
was to be regretted; but, after all, Christendom would not have
suffered in a much more sensible quarter. But in England the
question passed immediately to the election of bishops and
abbots, and thus the opposition to Rome gradually assumed much
vaster proportions.

The nation, also, in the main, sided with the kings against the
popes. Every burgher of London, York, or Canterbury, got it into
his head that Rome had formed deep designs of spoliation against
his private property, and purposed diving deep into his private
purse. In such a state of public opinion, respect for spiritual
authority could not fail to diminish and finally die out
altogether; and, when the voice of the Pontiff was heard on
important subjects in which the best interests of the nation
were involved, even the clearest proof that Rome was right, and
desired only the good of the people, could not entirely dispel
the suspicious fears and distrusts which must ever lurk in the
mind of the miser against those he imagines wish to rob him.

It is not possible to enter here into further details, but, if
the reader wish for stronger proofs of the "questioning spirit,"
"reasoning mistrust," and "systematic doggedness," natural to
the Scandinavian mind, he has only to reflect on what took place
in England at the time of the Reformation. Every question
respecting the soul, every supernatural aspiration of the
Christian, every emotion of a living conscience, appears to be
altogether absent from all those English nobles, prelates,
theologians, learned university men, even simple priests and
monks often, save a very few who, with the noble Thomas More,
thought that "twenty years of an easy life could not without
folly be compared with an eternity of bliss." The reasoning
faculty of the mind, nourished on "speculations," had replaced
faith, and, every thing of the supernatural order being
obliterated, nothing was left but worldly wisdom and material
aspirations for temporal well-being.

By reviewing other characteristics of the Scandinavian race, we
might arrive at the same conclusion; but our space forbids us to
go into them. After what has been said, however, it is easy to
see how well prepared was the English nation for accepting the
change of religion almost without a murmur.

There was, indeed, some expression of indignation on the part of
the people at the beginning of the reign of Edward VI., when the
desecration of the churches began. "Various commotions," says Dr.
Madden, "took place in consequence of the reviling of the
sacrament, the casting it out of the churches in some places,
the tearing down of altars and images; in one of which tumults,
one of the authorities was stabbed, in the act of demolishing
some objects of veneration in a church.

"The whole kingdom, in short, was in commotion, but particularly
Devonshire and Norfolk. In the former county, the insurgents
besieged Devon; a noble lord was sent against them, and, being,
reenforced by the Walloons--a set of German mercenaries brought
over to enable the government to carry out their plans--his
lordship defeated these insurgents, and many were executed by
martial law."

But this remnant of affection for the religion of their fathers
seems to have soon died out, since at the death of Edward the
people appeared to have become thoroughly converted to the new
doctrines. At the very coronation of Mary, a Catholic clergyman
having prayed for the dead and denounced the persecutions of the
previous reign, a tumult took place; the preacher was insulted,
and compelled to leave the pulpit. What wonder, then, that, at
the death of Elizabeth, England was thoroughly Protestant?

We are very far from ignoring the noble examples of attachment
to their religion displayed by Christian heroes of every class
in England during those disastrous days. The touching
biographies of the English martyrs, told in the simple pages of
Bishop Challoner, cannot be read without admiration. The feeling
produced on the Catholic reader is precisely that arising from a
perusal of the Acts of the Christian martyrs under the Roman
emperors, which have so often strengthened our faith and drawn
tears of sorrow from our eyes. At this moment, particularly when
so many details, hitherto hidden, of the lives of Catholics,
religious, secular priests, laymen, women, during those times,
are coming to light in manuscripts religiously preserved by
private families, and at last being published for the
edification of all, the story is moving as well as inspiring of
the heroism displayed by them, not only on the public scaffold,
but in obscure and loathsome jails, in retreats and painful
seclusion, continuing during long years of an obscure life, and
ending only in a more obscure death, when the victim of
persecution was fortunate enough to escape capture. There is no
doubt that, when the whole story of the hunted Catholics in
England shall be known, as moving a narrative of their virtues
will be written as can be furnished by the ecclesiastical annals
of any people.

Nevertheless, what has been said of the nation, as a nation,
remains a sad fact which cannot be doubted. Those noble
exceptions only prove that the promptings of race are not
supreme, and that God's grace can exalt human nature from
whatever level.

How different were the nations of the Latin and Celtic stock!
With them the attachment to the religion of their fathers was
not the exception, but the rule, and it is only necessary to
bear in mind what the Abbe McGeoghegan has said--that, at the
death of Elizabeth, scarcely sixty Irishmen, take them all in
all, had professed the new doctrines--in order at once to
comprehend the steady tendency toward the path of duty imparted
by true nobility of blood. Nor did the Irish stand alone in this
steadfastness; it is needless to call to mind how the people
generally throughout France, and particularly in Paris, acted at
the time when the Huguenot noblemen would have rooted in the
soil the errors planted there before, and already bearing fruit
in Germany, Switzerland, and England.

It looks as though we had lost sight of the interesting question
proposed at the outset, and of which so far not a word has been
said--whether Protestantism spread so readily in the North,
because it found that region peopled with races better disposed
for civilization, if not taking the lead already in that respect,
and men ardent for freedom and impatient of servitude of any
kind. We stated that the solution of this question, particularly
in the case of England, is clear, and consequently not to be
discarded on account of previous solutions of the same question,
which have scarcely met with any attention from the adverse side.

One thing certainly undeniable is, that neither in its origin,
nor even in its consequences, can Protestantism be esteemed as
in any sense the promoter of freedom and civilization in the
British islands.

It has always struck us as strange that sensible men, acquainted
with history, could maintain that an aspiration after freedom
and a higher civilization gave to Germany and England a leaning
toward Protestantism. We can understand how the state of Europe
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries may give a coloring
to the statement of a partisan writer, desirous of explaining in
these modern times the greater amount of freedom really enjoyed
in England, and the advanced material prosperity visible
generally among Protestant Northern nations. So much we can
understand. But, to make Protestantism the origin of freedom and
civilization, and ascribe to it what happened subsequent to its
spread indeed, but what really resulted from very different
causes, passes our comprehension.

As far as freedom goes, the most superficial reader must know
that there was not a particle of it left in England when
Protestantism commenced; and it were easy to show that there was
less of it in Germany than in Italy, Spain, and even France.

Who can mention English freedom in the same breath with Henry
and Elizabeth Tudor? How could the actions of those two members
of the family advance it in the least degree, and was it not
precisely the slavish disposition of the English people at the
time which prepared them so admirably for the reception of
German heresy? The people were treated like a set of slaves, and
stood for nothing in the designs of those great political rulers.
In the very highest of the aristocracy, there lingered not a
spark of the old brave spirit which wrung Magna Charta from the
heart of a weak sovereign. The king or queen could fearlessly
trample on every privilege of the nobility, send the proudest
lords of the nation to the block, almost without trial, and
confiscate to the swelling of the royal purse the immense
estates of the first English families. There is no need of
proofs for this. The proofs are the records, the headings, as it
were, of the history of the times which one may read as he runs;
it constitutes the very essence of their history; and events of
the sixteenth century in England scarcely present us with any
thing else. This state of things was the natural result of the
general anarchy which prevailed during the "Wars of the Roses."