Bossuet also asserted that actors had always been excommunicated. "The constant practice of the Church," he wrote, "is to deprive those who perform plays of the Sacraments, both in life and death, unless they renounce their art; and to repulse them from the Holy Table as public sinners." This statement, as M. Maugras points out, in his able and interesting work, _Les Comédiens hors la loi_, was quite untrue. Up to the time of _Tartuffe_, the Church had shown the greatest indulgence towards the theatrical profession, and the old canons had remained a dead-letter.
Bossuet was followed in his campaign against the theatre by all the most eminent of the French clergy. Massillon, Fléchier, Bourdaloue, and Fénelon vied with one another in denouncing the unhappy actor in their sermons and writings.[57] Père Caffaro was compelled by the Archbishop of Paris to publicly disavow his letter, which, in fear and trembling, he now protested had been extracted from a work of his, written "in the levity of youth," and published without his knowledge or consent; and the persecution, encouraged by the fact that the gloomy bigotry of the old King had led him to withdraw his protection from the theatre, grew more rigorous than ever.
Strangely enough, at the same time that the Church was mercilessly proscribing the French actors, it received with open arms the Italian players, who had definitely established themselves in Paris in 1660, admitted them to the Sacraments, allowed them to be married in church, and buried them in holy ground. This distinction appears the more inexplicable, as the French theatre was at this period as reserved and decent as the Italian was the reverse. The licence of the foreigners, indeed, knew no bounds, and finally their plays assumed so objectionable a character that, in 1697, they were expelled from France.[58] The probable explanation is, that the Gallican Church did not dare to proscribe the same persons whom the sovereign pontiffs tolerated in their realm, and whose performances were freely patronised by the Roman prelates and clergy.[59]
By another inconsistency, the indulgence shown to the Italian players was extended to the singers and dancers of the Opera. The reason given for this exemption was that the members of the Opera were not actors, as they did not bear the name. But, as we have seen, the canons of the early councils, upon which the bigots relied for their authority, made no distinction whatever between the different classes of public performers: actors, singers, dancers, mountebanks, jugglers, and circus performers were all included in one common anathema.[60]