第一百三十一章 二 修道院的历史事实
从历史、理智和真理的角度来看，修道制度理应受到谴责。修道院在一个国家里泛滥时，便成了国家流通的障碍，累赘的机构，本应是劳动中心的地方却成了懒惰的中心。修道团体对于庞大的社会团体来说，犹如槲寄生对于橡树，疣子对于人体。它们的繁荣和肥胖意味着国家的贫困。修道制度在文明初期是好的，对用精神力量驯服野蛮人是有用的，但当人民进入成年时期时，它便不好了。此外，当它松弛下来，进入其混乱时期时，它之所以变坏，恰恰是由于它在纯洁时期曾使之有益的那些原因，因为它仍继续树立榜样。
修院制度已经过时了。修道院对于现代文明的早期教育是有用的，但它们阻碍了它的成长，并且有害于它的发展。就制度和人的形成而言，修道院在十世纪是好的，在十五世纪是可疑的，在十九世纪则是可憎的。修道制度的麻风病已经把两个卓越的民族——意大利和西班牙——啃噬得几乎只剩一副骨架；一个曾是欧洲几个世纪的光明，另一个曾是欧洲几个世纪的辉煌；而在今天，这两个显赫的民族才刚刚开始康复，这全靠一七八九年那健康而有力的卫生措施。
修道院——尤其是古老的女子修道院，正如它在世纪之初仍呈现的那样，在意大利、奥地利、西班牙——是中世纪最阴沉的凝聚物之一。修院，那种修院，是恐怖的交叉点。天主教的修院，严格说来，完全充满了死亡的黑色光芒。
西班牙的修道院是最为阴森的。在那里，在幽暗中，在充满阴霾的穹顶下，在朦胧阴影的圆顶下，矗立着像大教堂一样高大的巴别式的厚重祭坛；在那里，巨大的白色基督像用链子悬挂在黑暗中；在那里，赤裸的象牙大基督像平躺在乌木上；比流血更多——鲜血淋漓；可怖而壮丽，肘部露出骨头，膝盖骨显出皮肤，伤口露出肉，戴着银荆棘冠，用金钉钉住，额头上有红宝石的血滴，眼中有钻石的泪珠。钻石和红宝石似乎是湿的，使下面阴影中蒙着面纱的人哭泣，她们的两侧因穿苦衣和带铁尖的鞭子而伤痕累累，她们的胸部被柳条筐压碎，她们的膝盖因祈祷而磨破；这些自以为是妻子的女人，这些自以为是六翼天使的幽灵。这些女人思考吗？不。她们有意志吗？不。她们爱吗？不。她们活着吗？不。她们的神经变成了骨头；她们的骨头变成了石头。她们的面纱是用编织的夜色做成的。她们面纱下的呼吸酷似死亡的难以形容的悲惨呼吸。院长嬷嬷，一个幽灵，使她们神圣化也使她们恐惧。纯洁无瑕者在那里，非常凶猛。这就是古老的西班牙修道院。可怕虔诚的谎言，处女们的洞穴，凶残的地方。
天主教的西班牙比罗马本身更罗马。西班牙的修道院，尤其是天主教的修道院。它有一种东方的味道。大主教，天国的太监总管，锁住并看守着这个为上帝预留的灵魂的后宫。修女是宫女，神父是太监。狂热者在梦中被选中并占有了基督。夜晚，美丽的裸体年轻人从十字架上下来，成为幽居者的狂喜。高墙保护着这位神秘的苏丹王妃，她的苏丹是受难者，使她远离一切世俗的干扰。对外面世界的一瞥就是背信。_in pace_（死牢）取代了皮袋。东方投入大海的东西，在西方被扔进地里。两方面，妇女都绞着她们的双手；前者是波浪，后者是坟墓；这里是淹死，那里是埋葬。怪异的平行。
今天，过去的维护者们，无法否认这些事情，便采取了对其一笑置之的策略。一种奇怪而轻易的方法流行起来，即压制历史的启示，取消哲学的评论，删去所有令人尴尬的事实和所有阴郁的问题。“不过是夸夸其谈，”聪明人说。夸夸其谈，愚人跟着重复。让-雅克是个夸夸其谈者；狄德罗是个夸夸其谈者；伏尔泰关于卡拉斯、拉巴尔和西尔万，也是夸夸其谈。我不知道最近是谁发现塔西佗是个夸夸其谈者，尼禄是个受害者，而“可怜的霍洛芬尼斯”无疑应得到怜悯。
然而，事实是令人难堪的东西，它们很顽固。本书的作者曾亲眼看见，离布鲁塞尔八里远的地方——那里有中世纪遗迹，人人都可到达——在维莱修道院，在曾是修道院院子的田野中央，在蒂尔河畔，有四间石造地牢，一半在地面下，一半在水里。它们就是_in pace_。每间地牢都残留着一扇铁门，一个拱顶，和一个带栅栏的窗口，这个窗口在外面高出河面两尺，在里面高出地面六尺。四尺深的河水沿着外墙流过。地面总是湿漉漉的。_in pace_的囚徒就以这潮湿的泥土为床。在其中一间地牢里，墙上铐着一截铁颈圈的残片；在另一间里，可以看到一个由四块花岗石板组成的方形箱子，长度不够人躺下，高度不够人站直。一个人被放进去，上面盖上石盖。这个东西仍然存在。可以看到。可以触摸到。这些_in pace_，这些地牢，这些铁铰链，这些颈圈，那个与河水平齐的高高的窥视孔，那个用花岗岩盖子盖着的石盒子，像一座坟墓，区别只在于这里的死者是个活人，那只是烂泥的地面，那拱顶上的洞，那渗水的墙壁——多少夸夸其谈啊！
From the point of view of history, of reason, and of truth, monasticism
is condemned. Monasteries, when they abound in a nation, are clogs in
its circulation, cumbrous establishments, centres of idleness where
centres of labor should exist. Monastic communities are to the great
social community what the mistletoe is to the oak, what the wart is to
the human body. Their prosperity and their fatness mean the
impoverishment of the country. The monastic regime, good at the
beginning of civilization, useful in the reduction of the brutal by the
spiritual, is bad when peoples have reached their manhood. Moreover,
when it becomes relaxed, and when it enters into its period of
disorder, it becomes bad for the very reasons which rendered it
salutary in its period of purity, because it still continues to set the
example.
Claustration has had its day. Cloisters, useful in the early education
of modern civilization, have embarrassed its growth, and are injurious
to its development. So far as institution and formation with relation
to man are concerned, monasteries, which were good in the tenth
century, questionable in the fifteenth, are detestable in the
nineteenth. The leprosy of monasticism has gnawed nearly to a skeleton
two wonderful nations, Italy and Spain; the one the light, the other
the splendor of Europe for centuries; and, at the present day, these
two illustrious peoples are but just beginning to convalesce, thanks to
the healthy and vigorous hygiene of 1789 alone.
The convent—the ancient female convent in particular, such as it still
presents itself on the threshold of this century, in Italy, in Austria,
in Spain—is one of the most sombre concretions of the Middle Ages. The
cloister, that cloister, is the point of intersection of horrors. The
Catholic cloister, properly speaking, is wholly filled with the black
radiance of death.
The Spanish convent is the most funereal of all. There rise, in
obscurity, beneath vaults filled with gloom, beneath domes vague with
shadow, massive altars of Babel, as high as cathedrals; there immense
white crucifixes hang from chains in the dark; there are extended, all
nude on the ebony, great Christs of ivory; more than bleeding,—bloody;
hideous and magnificent, with their elbows displaying the bones, their
knee-pans showing their integuments, their wounds showing their flesh,
crowned with silver thorns, nailed with nails of gold, with blood drops
of rubies on their brows, and diamond tears in their eyes. The diamonds
and rubies seem wet, and make veiled beings in the shadow below weep,
their sides bruised with the hair shirt and their iron-tipped scourges,
their breasts crushed with wicker hurdles, their knees excoriated with
prayer; women who think themselves wives, spectres who think themselves
seraphim. Do these women think? No. Have they any will? No. Do they
love? No. Do they live? No. Their nerves have turned to bone; their
bones have turned to stone. Their veil is of woven night. Their breath
under their veil resembles the indescribably tragic respiration of
death. The abbess, a spectre, sanctifies them and terrifies them. The
immaculate one is there, and very fierce. Such are the ancient
monasteries of Spain. Liars of terrible devotion, caverns of virgins,
ferocious places.
Catholic Spain is more Roman than Rome herself. The Spanish convent
was, above all others, the Catholic convent. There was a flavor of the
Orient about it. The archbishop, the kislar-aga of heaven, locked up
and kept watch over this seraglio of souls reserved for God. The nun
was the odalisque, the priest was the eunuch. The fervent were chosen
in dreams and possessed Christ. At night, the beautiful, nude young man
descended from the cross and became the ecstasy of the cloistered one.
Lofty walls guarded the mystic sultana, who had the crucified for her
sultan, from all living distraction. A glance on the outer world was
infidelity. The _in pace_ replaced the leather sack. That which was
cast into the sea in the East was thrown into the ground in the West.
In both quarters, women wrung their hands; the waves for the first, the
grave for the last; here the drowned, there the buried. Monstrous
parallel.
To-day the upholders of the past, unable to deny these things, have
adopted the expedient of smiling at them. There has come into fashion a
strange and easy manner of suppressing the revelations of history, of
invalidating the commentaries of philosophy, of eliding all
embarrassing facts and all gloomy questions. _A matter for
declamations_, say the clever. Declamations, repeat the foolish.
Jean-Jacques a declaimer; Diderot a declaimer; Voltaire on Calas,
Labarre, and Sirven, declaimers. I know not who has recently discovered
that Tacitus was a declaimer, that Nero was a victim, and that pity is
decidedly due to “that poor Holofernes.”
Facts, however, are awkward things to disconcert, and they are
obstinate. The author of this book has seen, with his own eyes, eight
leagues distant from Brussels,—there are relics of the Middle Ages
there which are attainable for everybody,—at the Abbey of Villers, the
hole of the oubliettes, in the middle of the field which was formerly
the courtyard of the cloister, and on the banks of the Thil, four stone
dungeons, half under ground, half under the water. They were _in pace_.
Each of these dungeons has the remains of an iron door, a vault, and a
grated opening which, on the outside, is two feet above the level of
the river, and on the inside, six feet above the level of the ground.
Four feet of river flow past along the outside wall. The ground is
always soaked. The occupant of the _in pace_ had this wet soil for his
bed. In one of these dungeons, there is a fragment of an iron necklet
riveted to the wall; in another, there can be seen a square box made of
four slabs of granite, too short for a person to lie down in, too low
for him to stand upright in. A human being was put inside, with a
coverlid of stone on top. This exists. It can be seen. It can be
touched. These _in pace_, these dungeons, these iron hinges, these
necklets, that lofty peep-hole on a level with the river’s current,
that box of stone closed with a lid of granite like a tomb, with this
difference, that the dead man here was a living being, that soil which
is but mud, that vault hole, those oozing walls,—what declaimers!
