Grey Eminence: A Study in Religion and Politics

by Aldous Huxley

a young man still in his twenties, but enjoying already a high reputation for ability and reforming zeal.

The name of this precocious ecclesiastic was Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu.

regent,

an opinion which she retained until that day in 1630 when her flight to Brussels finally removed her from the French scene.

Once again, circumstances were conspiring to draw the missionary away from his preaching into the world of high politics.

Congregation of Our Lady of Calvary.

the road of mortification, mystical orison and the intensive, hallucinatory practice of the passion of Christ.

To imagine themselves in the position of Mary at the foot of the cross, to feel themselves into her thoughts and the emotions she had felt during her son’s long agony

Father Joseph’s treatises and spiritual letters to the Calvarians would fill, if published, thirty octavo volumes of five hundred pages apiece.

but which Richelieu and the affairs of state made it impossible for him to lead in person.

The glory of France, the humiliation of the House of Austria – these meant a great deal to a patriot who was convinced that a triumph for his country was also a triumph for God.

During this period of his life he must have walked literally thousands of miles.

The country was dark with great forests, hardly less wild than those which Caesar had traversed during the Gallic wars.

Wolves abounded; and in some parts of the country bears were still met with, and beavers.

still und...

He might be set upon by wolves, might contract malaria or typhus, might be drowned while trying to cross a flooded river;

but it was very unlikely that he would be killed by bandits.

‘the discernment of spirits’.

He saw visions, received revelations, passed into ecstasy.

There were times when he could hardly speak of the sufferings of Christ without falling into a rapture.

Richelieu, when consulted, shook his head and enumerated the obstacles which would have to be surmounted.

More than that, he had made the acquaintance of some of the highest dignitaries of the Roman Curia, and had left them all profoundly impressed by his zeal, his integrity and his outstanding talents.

From this time forward we find him exchanging letters with nuncios, legates, cardinals, even the papal secretary of state.

In the autumn of 1616, Richelieu had been made a member of the Council of State and appointed minister for war and foreign affairs.

Then, suddenly, the Queen-Mother’s system of education bore fruit, and the fruit was terrible.

The boy who had been whipped every morning was now legally as well as in name the King of France.

His mother, however, still continued to treat him as a child and to keep all the power in her ...

Louis...

Concini was shot as he entered the Louvre, and a few hours later his naked and mutilated body was hanging by the heels from the gibbet on the Pont Neuf, while the mob danced around, howling with bestial glee.

and the future cardinal was given ample opportunity to observe what happens to unpopular ministers when they lose the King’s favour.

‘If ever you get political power,’ that poor gelded and gutted carcase proclaimed, ‘take very good care to stick to it.’

the Bishop of Luçon followed the Queen-Mother into exile.

Father Joseph remained loyal to his exiled friend, and patiently awaited the opportunity to bring him back to power.

The Emperor’s representatives in Bohemia had been thrown out of a third-storey window of the palace at Prague.

The long-anticipated war had begun – the war that was destined, though nobody dreamed that such a thing was possible, to last for thirty years.

Father Joseph found that he was dealing, not with obedient sons of the Church, but with Spanish nationalists.

To Lerma and his master it was abundantly obvious that, though the friar sincerely believed that a crusade would be highly pleasing to God, he was also convinced that France should lead the crusade and derive the chief benefits from it.

France had played the chief part on earlier crusades – had played it because it was evidently the will of Providence that she should do so.

It seemed an irrefragable argument, to a Frenchman.

To the Spaniards, unfortunately, it was less convincing.

perfectly ineffective negotiations, the friar was forced to return home,

Father Joseph’s zeal for a crusade was too burningly hot to be extinguished by anything short of a sea of other people’s blood.

Few political idealists have spoken so frankly about the consequences of their idealism.

And when the sea of blood had been spilled, what then?

The results of any plan of action are always unknown and unknowable;

the plan must be pursued for its own sake, as an end in itself. This is the bald truth about politics;

but how few politicians have ever had the perspicacity to see it, or the courage, if they have seen it, ...

The reasons for this abandonment were the troubled state of Europe and the persistent opposition of the two branches of the House of Hapsburg.

Because a Hapsburg triumph would be dangerous to France and an obstacle to the launching, under French auspices, of a great crusade against the infidel.

The most ardent of Catholics, he came to believe that Catholic Austria and Catholic Spain were a menace to the best interests of Catholicism.