Doctrines of Hatred, Part II: Anti-Protestantism

Doctrines of Hatred, Part II: Anti-Protestantism by Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu (AD 1842-1912) was originally published in 1902, under the French title of Les Doctrines de haine: lʼanti-sémitisme, lʼanti-protestantisme, lʼanti-cléricalisme.   

Although written for a particular people of a particular nation at a particular time in their history – the French in France at the height of the Dreyfus Affair – thirty years after the Franco-Prussian War and twelve years before World War I, this book on Anti-Protestantism is also pertinent to all peoples of all nations at all periods of time, if not since the time of Christ, at least since the time of the Reformation. Modern readers should approach it as both a historical document from over 120 years ago, but also as a wake up call and warning for those of us today, in the 21stcentury, at a time when religious tensions (not to mention political and racial tensions) seem to be on the rise. 

“War summons war, and intolerance, intolerance. If we wish to find religious peace, the first thing is for Authority to show itself free from every denominational passion, free from every sectarian, religious, or anti-religious spirit.”  

Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu was a French historian and essayist. As a practicing Christian, he was in favor of the separation of Church and State. He was the last president of the National League Against Atheism, an association founded in 1886 initially to combat anti-clericalism and socialism. Politically a liberal, in addition to being a French patriot, Leroy-Beaulieu was opposed to all forms of anti-religious sentiment. Thus this book, which could have easily been entitled “What is Anti-Protestantism?” 

Antisthenes: The Founder of Cynicism by Charles Chappuis is a little gem of a book; translated from the French, it puts Antisthenes (444-365 BC), the founder of the Cynic school of Greek philosophy, in his rightful place beside Socrates, his teacher for twenty-four years; beside Plato, a fellow pupil of Socrates and competitor in ideas to Antisthenes: while Plato was teaching at the Academy, Antisthenes, a νόθος [illegitimate child], was teaching at the Cynosarges; beside Diogenes, his own pupil and the subsequent head of Cynicism; and so on and so forth, in a long line of esteemed philosophers from Diogenes to Crates to Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, and later to Epictetus and even to Marcus Aurelius...   

The earliest known nominalist in antiquity, Antisthenes developed a logic that “denies rational knowledge and general ideas,” “suppresses all definition,” and “rejects contradiction and error.” He is consequently about as philosophically far from Plato as a philosopher can get. It may not be surprising to know that the two of them became enemies later in life.  
 

As for ethics, Antisthenes “puts wisdom in behavior, virtue in actions, and makes exercise, work, and toil the condition of the good.” While “the school of the Cyrenaics conflates the good with pleasure, Antisthenes identifies it with virtue, and virtue with effort and toil.” 

Style (Theory and History), written by Ernest Hello, and published in 1861, is a collection of essays on the subject of... style; it is page after page of keen psychological insight into men, minds, God, art, life, and other things.

Helloʼs style itself, – contrary to what one might think from the rather boring title – runs the gamut from trenchant, mocking, playful, masterly, to brilliant. He takes a particular pleasure in laying into not a few of Franceʼs eighteenth century great luminaries – such as Voltaire, Rousseau and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre – like a man with a pitchfork rushing at a pig. No one escapes the pen unscathed. They all scamper away bruised, bloodied, with their tails between their legs.   

His critical assessments of Greek poetry, prose, and drama are brilliant, invigorating, novel and worth the charge of admission on their own: “...in order to penetrate Greek tragedy, one must seize it at its source, in Homer. Greek tragedy is a comment on the Iliad...” From the Greeks he proceeds to Rome eventually: “Virgil was actually incapable of imitating Homer; he wrote a parody...” and “Tacitus is not only the greatest writer of the Latin language, he is the greatest writer of classical antiquity.”   

Bloyians will see in Ernest Hello a germ that sprouted in his brain; he had a huge influence on Léon Bloyʼs style and thought, particularly as a critic, but also as an artist and as a Catholic writer. Take this for instance: “What does not kneel before God kneels before the devil.” Sound like anyone we know? After you read Style (Theory and History) by Hello, go back and re-read Bloyʼs Je MʼAccuse and see if you canʼt hear the echoes from this book bouncing off its pages, as from a source.  

Ten Years a Bohemian by Émile Goudeau, 1888; translated by Richard Robinson, 2021. Dix ans de bohème , in French, first published in 1888, is the autobiographical account of a young man, Émile Goudeau, who moves to Paris from the French countryside in the mid- to late-1870s, with high ambitions of becoming a poet. Would that it were so easy! Whimsical and endearing, it tells the story of the Bohemian life of not just one young man, but countless other struggling artists in the Belle Epoque period of Paris, many of which artists are now famous (and more not) – a whoʼs who of sculptors, painters, musicians, performers, poets, writers, and comedians, you name it – living, struggling, drinking, laughing, – somehow managing to survive, with stiff upper lips and on shoe-string budgets – in the Latin Quarter and Montmartre.   

Émile Goudeau, a recognized poet, is best known today as the founder the Hydropaths Club, a wildly-successful literary club in Paris from 1878-1880, and subsequently as the influential editor-in-chief of the Chat Noir journal, the mouthpiece and vehicle for the world-famous eponymous cabaret, which he helped found with Rodolphe Salis. Rodolphe Salis, the “gentleman cabaret owner,” often gets the credit for the idea of the Chat Noir journal and cabaret – but after one reads this story, one will quickly realize that the true genius behind both of them is probably... Émile Goudeau, poet, editor, journalist, novelist, and finally... shepherd, in Asnières. 

On the cover is a scene from Parce Domine, 1884, by Adolphe Willette, the full version of which was painted on the walls of the original Chat Noir cabaret.  

Available in book format and for Kindle.