This has not stopped Sebond’s method of teaching the Catholic faith from being thought of as somehow dangerous. Even the New Catholic Encyclopedia (which ought to know better) calls it heretical. It is not. But it was clearly a disturbing book – a good defence against heresy yet, for many, a work somehow not to be trusted. There were contemporaries of Montaigne who shared that opinion: hence his apology for it.
When Montaigne published his translation in 1569, he included with it a translation of the Prologue which proved quite acceptable to the Roman Catholic Church. No censor has ever said a word against it. He had clearly taken theological advice and had adapted the Prologue to meet the needs of the Faith. A comparison of his version and the original shows why the Latin Prologue appeared among the prohibited books, while the French version never did.
Sebond’s original Prologue is dense and interesting. It is emphatic, trenchant and absolute. Its claims are such as were bound to appeal to intelligent Catholic ladies deprived of formal education and to laymen such as Montaigne’s father. It claimed to ‘illuminate’ Christians with a knowledge of God and themselves. It required no previous knowledge of Grammar, Logic, nor any other deliberative art or science, nor of Physics nor of Metaphysics – no Aristotle, therefore. It offered a method applicable to both clergy and laity. It promised certain results, ‘in less than a month, without toil and without learning anything off by heart. And once learned it is never forgotten.’ The Natural Theology was said to lead not only to knowledge but to morality, making whoever studied it ‘happy, humble, kind, obedient, loathing all vice and sin, loving all virtues, yet without puffing up with pride’.
Montaigne did not essentially lessen this appeal but introduced changes in the Prologue (and, indeed, in the work itself) which show a sensitivity to theological distinctions. Where the Prologue was concerned, his changes were few but vital enough to restore it to undoubted orthodoxy. For example, where Raymond Sebond had written of his art as ‘necessary to every man’, Montaigne made it merely useful. When Sebond claimed that his method taught ‘every duty’ required for the student Montaigne changed that to ‘nearly everything’. Sebond wrote:
In addition this science teaches everyone really to know, without difficulty or toil, every truth necessary to Man concerning both Man and God; and all things which are necessary to Man for his salvation, for making him perfect and for bringing him through to life eternal. And by this science a man learns, without difficulty and in reality, whatever is contained in Holy Scripture.
*
Montaigne tones that down:
In addition this science teaches everyone to see clearly, without difficulty or toil, truth insofar as it is possible for natural reason, concerning knowledge of God and of himself and of what he has need for his salvation and to reach life eternal; it affords him access to understanding what is prescribed and commanded in Holy Scripture.
The words in italics are vital. In Montaigne’s hands the work of Sebond is presented as a means of access to truths and duties prescribed in Scripture. Sebond’s original Prologue could be taken to mean that his method stood alongside Scripture, independently. That of course would have been heretical if Sebond had been arguing from fallen natural reason. But he was not.
Today we are so used to commercialized religious charlatanism that the claims of Sebond risk sounding like some slick, patent road to an illusory salvation. That is far from the truth. The Natural Theology is a cogently written work in scholastic Latin seeking to anchor the reader firmly within the Roman Catholic Faith, free from all wavering and doubt. The Prologue (in both the original and in Montaigne’s translation) ends with an uncompromising act of submission to the ‘Most Holy Church of Rome, the Mother of all faithful Christians, the Mistress of grace and faith, the Rule of Truth’.
The method of Raymond Sebond is sufficiently complex to be misunderstood, not least by the many who were long deprived of his Prologue by the folly of censorship. Obviously even quite a few moderns writing on Montaigne have never been able to study it.5
Sebond firmly bases his method on ‘illumination’. He does not claim that human reason by itself can discover Christian truths. Quite the reverse. Without ‘illumination’ reason can understand nothing fundamental about the universe. But, duly illuminated, Man can come to know himself and his Creator as well as his religious and moral duties, which he will then love to fulfil. It is a method of freeing Man from doubts; it reveals the errors of pagan antiquity and its unenlightened philosophers; it teaches Catholic truth and shows up sects as errors and lies. It does all these things by teaching the Christian the ‘alphabet’ which must be acquired if one is to read Nature aright. The science ‘teaches Man to know himself, to know why he was created and by Whom; to know his good, his evil and his duty; by what and to Whom he is bound. What good are the other sciences to a man who is ignorant of such things?’
‘The other sciences’, when this basis is lacking, are but vanity. They lead to error, men not knowing ‘whither they are going, whence they came’ nor what Man is. Sebond shows Man how far he has fallen and how he can be reformed.
Raymond Sebond believes that God has given Man two Books, a metaphorical one and a real one. The first is the ‘Book of all Creatures’ or the ‘Book of Nature’. The second is Holy Scripture. The first Book to be given Man – at the Creation – was the Book of Nature. In it all created things are like letters of the alphabet; they can be combined into words and sentences, teaching Man truths about God and himself. But with the Fall, Man was blinded to the sense of the Book of Nature. He could no longer read it aright. Nevertheless, that book remains common to all.
The Second Book, Holy Writ, is not common to all – ‘to read the second book one must be a clerk’. Yet (unlike Scripture) the Book of Nature cannot be falsified; it cannot lead to heresy. Yet in fact both Books teach the same lesson (since the same God created all things in due order and revealed the Scriptures). They cannot contradict each other, even though the first is natural – of one nature with us Men – while the other is above all Nature, supernatural.
Now, Man was created in the beginning as a reasonable creature, capable of learning. But at his creation, Man – Sebond means Adam – knew nothing whatever. ‘Since no doctrine can be acquired without books’, it was most appropriate that Divine Wisdom should create this Book of Creatures in which Man, on his own, without a teacher, could study the doctrines requisite for him. It was the visible ‘letters’ of this Book – the ‘creatures’ placed in God’s good order, not our own – that Man was intended to read, using the pre-lapsarian judgement which God had bestowed on him when he was newly created.
But since the Fall all that has changed. Man can no longer find God’s truths in Nature, ‘unless he is enlightened by God and cleansed of original sin.6 And therefore not one of the pagan philosophers of Antiquity could read this science, because they were blinded concerning the sovereign good, even though they did read some sort of science in this Book and derived whatever they did have from it.’ But the solid, true science which leads to life eternal – even though it was written there – they were unable to read.
In Montaigne’s hands Raymond Sebond’s method shows enlightened Christians that the revealed truths about God and man are consonant with the Book of Nature properly read. It reconciles observed nature with revealed truth and so can lead men to accept it without doubt or hesitation.
Montaigne’s ‘Apology’ is a defence of this doctrine, and corresponds to the two assertions of Sebond: i: Man, when enlightened, can once again read the Book of Nature aright; ii: Man when not enlightened by God’s grace can never be sure he has read it aright: Mankind has read ‘some sort of science’ in this Book of Nature but is ‘unable to read’ that ‘true science which leads to life eternal’. This means that unenlightened Man, Man left to his own devices, can no longer ‘read’ God’s creatures – and creatures covers not only plants and animals but the Universe and everything in it – the letters of that alphabet appe
ar all jumbled up. No longer can Man be sure he has any knowledge of himself or of any created thing or being, from the highest heavens to the tiniest ant.
The two main sections of the ‘Apology’ are of widely different lengths. Montaigne dismisses fairly curtly, though courteously, the first of the two criticisms made of Sebond.
The first charge is… that Christians do themselves wrong in wishing to support their belief with human reason: belief is grasped only by faith and by private inspiration from God’s grace.
Montaigne’s reply is to accept ‘that purely human means’ are not enough; had they been so, ‘many choice and excellent souls in ancient times’ would have succeeded in reaching truth. But despite their integrity and their excellent natural faculties, the Ancients all failed in their ultimate quest: ‘Only faith can embrace, with a lively certainty, the high mysteries of our religion’ (‘Apology’, p. 492).
That is quite orthodox. At least from the time of Thomas Aquinas it was held that natural reason ought to bring Man to the preambles of the Faith – that there is one God, that he is good, that he can be known from revelation – but that specifically Christian mysteries are hidden until revealed.7 Montaigne may seem to put even those preambles in doubt, only to vindicate them triumphantly at the end of the ‘Apology’ with the aid of Plutarch.
But Montaigne contrasts the routine practising Christian, merely accepting the local religion of Germany or Périgord in casual devotion, with what illuminated Christians are really like when ‘God’s light touches us even slightly’. Such Christians emanate brightness (‘Apology’, p. 493). The apprentice Christian may not rise so high but, once his heart is governed by Faith, it is reasonable for Faith to draw on his other capacities to support him. Sebond’s doctrine of illumination helps us to do so effectively and to draw religious strength from a knowledge of God’s creation:
[God] has left within these lofty works the impress of his Godhead: only our weakness stops us from discovering it. He tells us himself that he makes manifest his unseen workings through those things which are seen. (‘Apology’, p. 498)
Montaigne turns to a key text of Scripture which he suitably cites. Sebond could toil to show that, to the enlightened Christian, ‘no piece within this world belies its Maker’ precisely because Scripture gives Man that assurance:
All things, Heaven, Earth, the elements, our bodies and our souls are in one accord: we simply have to find how to use them. If we have the capacity to understand, they will teach us. ‘The invisible things of God,’ says St Paul, ‘are clearly seen from the creation of the world, his Eternal Wisdom and his Godhead being perceived from the things he has made.’ (‘Apology’, p. 499)
That quotation, adapted from the Vulgate Latin text of Romans I:20, is the foundation of all natural theology in the Renaissance. That can be seen from author after author, since Montaigne had chosen his scriptural authority well. He had selected the obvious text. In 1606, for example, George Pacard published his own Théologie Naturelle and placed Romans I:20 firmly on his title page, lending its tone to his whole book. A generation later Edward Chaloner could defend the general thesis of Montaigne here, with precisely this verse, in a sermon preached at All Souls College in Oxford.8
To make this point clear, Montaigne uses an analogy taken from Aristotelian physics, in which any object is composed of inert matter and a form which gives it its being.
Our human reasonings and concepts are like matter, heavy and barren: God’s grace is their form, giving them shape and worth. (‘Apology’, p. 499)
Since men such as Socrates and Cato lacked God’s grace, even their most virtuous actions are without shape or ultimate value; in the context of salvation they ‘remain vain and useless’. So too with the themes of Sebond. By themselves they are heavy and barren. When Faith illuminates them, they become finger-posts setting man on the road which leads to his becoming ‘capable’ of God’s grace.9 In the light of the closing words of the ‘Apology’ that is a vital consideration.
The Renaissance thinker, like his forebears from the earliest Christian times, had to decide what to do about the great pious men of Ancient days. Were they saved by their loyalty to the Word (the Logos) before he was incarnate in Christ? One of the earliest theologians, Justin Martyr, thought they were. Or were they inevitably destined to eternal reprobation, since even their good actions were not directed to the right End? Were some, such as Socrates or Plato, vouchsafed special saving grace? Erasmus would like to think that God would make the same kind of understanding, graded concessions that he himself made to those Ancients who were pious, moral and sensitive to metaphysical realities.
Montaigne’s admiration for the virtuous heroes of Antiquity was boundless: the moral system he was teasing out for Christian laymen like himself to supplement the Church’s teaching owed nearly everything to them. He insisted nevertheless that they were great with human greatness only and in no wise proto-Christians. Yet the ‘Apology’ also shows by the careful use of theological language that Montaigne did not look on all the Ancients as an undifferentiate ‘mass of damnation’. This is brought out by the way he cited Romans I:20, without the final clause, ‘so that they [the pagans] are inexcusable’.
Many did attach this clause to St Paul’s assertion that the invisible things of God are accessible through the visible: George Pacard did precisely that in the title page of his Théologie Naturelle. But many did not; to cite only one example: Allessandro della Torre, Bishop of Sittià, cited this text of Romans three times in his Italian work, The Triumph of Revealed Theology (Venice, 1611): each time he omits that damning clause. By doing the same Montaigne and others could stress the human limitations of Socrates or Plato, while avoiding the Jansenist rigour which Pascal read back into the ‘Apology’:
There is enough light [Pascal wrote] to lighten the Elect and enough darkness to make them humble. There is enough darkness to blind the Reprobate and enough light to damn them and render them inexcusable. St Augustine, Montaigne, Sebond.10
Montaigne follows Sebond in dwelling on the errors and the chaotic jumble of ideas expounded by those unenlightened wise men, vainly seeking certain truth with their human reason from the Book of Creatures: but he does not consider their opinions to be all equally ‘inexcusable’. Nevertheless he asserted that ‘human reason goes astray everywhere, but especially when she concerns herself with matters divine’ (‘Apology’, p. 581). Christian mysteries they never grasped as Christians can. But what about God’s ‘Eternal Wisdom and his Godhead’?
A standard doctrine was, that a grasp of the elements of good morality was possible for all men, Christian or otherwise, though grace was always required for Salvation (even the Mosaic Law would not suffice by itself). That good morality was achieved by pagans is shown by Socrates or by other heroes of Montaigne, such as Epaminondas. (The great moral platitudes are never put in doubt anywhere in the Essays.)
Montaigne specifically finds pagan monotheism at its best not ‘true’ (in the sense of attaining with certainty to the Christian revelations) but nevertheless ‘most excusable’. This is not a correction to St Paul’s teaching in Romans I:20, but a gloss on it.11
Montaigne touches so lightly on some crucial theological points that readers may miss their import. Yet they can be vital, not least in the ‘Apology’, which is centred on religious knowledge and doubt. In at least one respect, Montaigne’s conception of God was that of St Augustine, of many medieval and Renaissance thinkers, and of Pascal: God is a Hidden God, a Deus absconditus who hides himself from Man and therefore can only be known from his self-revelation. Montaigne lightly but specifically attributes that concept to St Paul. When in Athens, Paul saw an altar dedicated to ‘an unknown God’ – Athenian philosophers could get that far. In the ‘Apology’ those words appear as ‘a hidden, unknown God’. That enables Paul (in the ‘Apology’) to find the Athenian worshippers to be ‘most excusable’ (‘Apology’, p. 573). The same doctrine appears in the medieval theologian Nicolas of Lyra.12<
br />
Such deft and telling use of words should scotch the notion that Montaigne was theologically naïve. (No theologians who had studied his translation of Sebond could make such a gaffe.) And in this case it should help to undermine the curiously coarse interpretation of the ‘Apology’ as a work championing ‘fideism’, one, that is, which denies that there ever can be any rational basis for Christianity since all depends on unfettered faith – faith as trust and faith as credulity. For Montaigne there is a hierarchy of religious opinion among the pagans. (The ‘Apology’ ends with one of the most impressive of them all: Plutarch’s.) Yet Montaigne held with Sebond that even the best of pagans failed to penetrate through to most of the vital truths contained in the Book of Creatures.13
The defence of Raymond Sebond against the second charge – that his arguments are weak – falls into several parts, all marked by varying degrees of scepticism. By turning his sceptical gaze on Man and his cogitations, Montaigne denies that it is possible to find better arguments than Sebond’s anywhere whatsoever. This assertion is governed (as are all the long answers to the second objection) by a declaration of intent which applies to all the many pages which are to follow:
Let us consider for a while Man in isolation – Man with no outside help, armed with no arms but his own and stripped of that grace and knowledge of God in which consist his dignity, his power and the very ground of his being. (‘Apology’, p. 502)