For some time an impure and feverish wind had blown from the South, both from Italy and Spain: Italy was already too lifeless, too deeply entombed to be able to produce even a doctrine of death. It was a Spaniard, established at Rome and imbued with Italian languor, who invented this theory and drew it forth into practice. Still it was necessary for his disciples to oblige him to write and publish. Molinos had, for twenty years, been satisfied with sowing his doctrine noiselessly in Rome, and propagating it gently from palace to palace. The theology of Quietism was wonderfully adapted to the city of catacombs, the silent city, where, from that time, scarcely anything was heard but the faint rustling of worms crawling in the sepulchre.
When the Spaniard arrived in Rome, it had hardly recovered from the effeminate pontificate of Madame Olympia. The _crucified Jesus_ reposed in the delicate hands of her general Oliva, among sumptuous _vines_, exotic flowers, lilies, and roses. These torpid Romans, this idle nobility, and these lazy fair ones, who pass their time on couches, with half-closed eyes, are the persons to whom Molinos comes at a late hour to speak--ought I to say _speak_? His low whispering voice, sinking into their lethargy, is confounded with their inward dream.
Quietism had quite a different character in France. In a living country, the theory of death showed some symptoms of life. An infinite measure of activity was employed to prove that action was no longer necessary. This injured their doctrine, for noise and light were hurtful to it. This delicate plant loved darkness and sought to grow in the shade. Not to speak of the chimerical Desmarets, who could but render an opinion ridiculous, Malaval seemed to have an idea that this new doctrine outstepped Christianity. Concerning the words of Jesus, "_I am the way_," he uses an expression surprising for this century: "Since He is the way, let us pass by Him; _but he who is always passing never arrives_."
Our French Quietists by their lucid analysis, their rich and fertile developments, made known, for the first time, what had scarcely been dreamed of in the obscure form which Quietism had prudently preserved in other countries. Many things, that seemed in the bud hardly developed, appeared in Madame Guyon in full bloom, as clear as daylight, with the sun in the meridian. The singular purity of this woman rendered her intrepid in advancing the most dangerous ideas. She was as pure in her imagination as she was disinterested in her motives. She had no need to figure to herself the object of her pious love, under a material form. This is what gives her mysticism a sublime superiority over the coarse and sensual devotion of the _Sacré-Coeur_, established by the _Visitandine_, Marie Alacoque, about the same period. Madame Guyon was far too intellectual to give a form to her God; she truly loved a spirit; hence sprang her confidence and unlimited courage. She attempts bravely, but without suspecting herself to be brave, the most perilous paths, now ascending, now descending into regions that others had most avoided; she presses boldly forward past the point where every one had stopped through fear, like the luminary which brightens everything and remains unsullied itself. These courageous efforts, though innocent in so pure a woman, had nevertheless a dangerous effect upon the weak-minded. Her confessor, Father Lacombe, was wrecked in this dangerous gulf, where he was swallowed up and drowned. The person and the doctrine had equally deranged his faculties. All we know of his intercourse with her betrays a strange weakness, which she, in her sublime aspirations, seems hardly to have condescended to notice. The very first time he saw her, then young, and tending her aged husband, he was so affected by the sight that he fainted. Afterwards, having become her humble disciple, under the name of her director, he followed her everywhere in her adventurous life, both in France and Savoy. He never left her side, "and could not dine without her." He had succeeded in getting her portrait taken. Being arrested at the same time as herself, in 1687, he was for ten years a prisoner in the fortresses of the Pyrenees. In 1698, they took advantage of the weakness of his mind to make him write to Madame Guyon a compromising letter: "The poor man," said she, laughing, "is become mad." He certainly was so, and, a few days after, he died at Charenton.
