Marquis De Sade: His Life and Work, by Dr. Iwan Bloch

Possibly the world's most popular inclination, the impulse to export your suffering to another seems to be near-universal. Not confined to any race, sex, or age category, the impulse to cause pain appears to well up from deep inside human beings. This is mysterious, because no one seems to enjoy pain when it is inflicted on them. Go figure.

Marquis De Sade: His Life and Work, by Dr. Iwan Bloch

Postby admin » Wed Oct 09, 2013 8:07 am

MARQUIS DE SADE: HIS LIFE AND WORK
by Dr. Iwan Bloch, 1889

Translated by James Bruce, © 2002

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Table of Contents:

THE AGE OF MARQUIS DE SADE
o General Character of the Eighteenth Century in France
o French Philosophy
o French Royalty in the Eighteenth Century
o Nobility and Clergy
o Paris Police Reports on the Immorality of the Clergy
o The Jesuits
o The Black Mass
o Convents
o Woman
o The Erotic Literature
o Art
o Fashion
o Bordellos and Secret Pornologic Clubs
o The Prostitutes
o The Palais Royal and Other Public Places for Prostitution
o Onanism
o Tribadism
o Pederasty
o Flagellation and Phlebotomy
o Aphrodisiacs, Cosmetics, Abortions and Quackeries
o Gastronomy and Alcoholism
o Crime and Murder
o Poisoning
o Public Executions
o Ethnological and Historical Examples
o Conditions in Italy
THE LIFE OF MARQUIS DE SADE
o His Ancestors
o The Childhood of Marquis de Sade
o Youth
o His Prison Life
o Imprisonment in Vincennes and in the Bastille
o Participation in the Revolution and Literary Activity
o His Death
THE WORKS OF MARQUIS DE SADE
o Justine and Juliette
o The Preface
o Analysis of Justine
o Analysis of Juliette
o Philosophy in the Boudoir
o Other Works of Marquis de Sade
o Character of the Works of Marquis de Sade
o The Philosophy of Marquis de Sade
THEORY AND HISTORY OF SADISM
o Introduction
o Anthropophagy and Hypochorematophily
o Other Sexuo-Pathologic Types of De Sade
o Arrangement of Erotic Individualities
o Lying and Sexual Perversions
o De Sade’s View of the Nature of Sexual Perversions
o Definition of Sadism
o Judgment of De Sade According to His Life and Works
o The Spread and Effect of Marquis de Sade’s Works
o Sadism in Literature
o Some Sadistic Moral Crimes
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Re: Marquis De Sade: His Life and Work, by Dr. Iwan Bloch

Postby admin » Wed Oct 09, 2013 8:18 am

THE AGE OF MARQUIS DE SADE

General Character of the Eighteenth Century in France


De Sade called the eighteenth century "the age of complete corruption" (Justine 1, 2) and in another place had Noirceuil say: "It is dangerous to desire to be virtuous in a corrupt century" (Juliette 1, 261). The consciousness of the general evil of the century was sufficiently impressed upon him as on others. Hegel in his Philosophy of History has the most pertinent expression for this epoch: "The whole state of France at that time was a dissolute aggregation of privileges against idea and reason; in general, a mad state with which, at the same time, was bound the highest depravity of morals and spirit—an empire of injustice with the growing consciousness of that state."

The eighteenth century belongs to that frivolous era, whose essence was masterfully described by a student of Hegel, Kuno Fischer, in his Diotima: "Frivolous times are those which always conclude a moribund era and completely destroy the life of mankind so that it can start afresh." Fichte once called it "completed sinfulness." In all great turning points of history the traits of the different ages resemble one another. They are weakened and appear so flabby and impotent, that one despairs of new ones. And in fact, when an era has completely lived itself out, there remains from its customary life but the external shell, and this needs artistic charm to excite it again, for the inward power is lacking which alone can bring it forth in its youthful freshness.

"It is unrestrained and yet a feeble life; it is unfettered, and yet dull powers which complete the drama of life. There is no character, no formation in such times; everywhere the prose of selfishness without its power; the impotency of pleasure without its poetry." The world of the Caesars, the age of expiring popery, the French monarchy before the Revolution were all such periods. The second was the complete sinfulness of Catholicism; the last, the complete sinfulness of the monarchy.

Pleasure, à tout prix, was the watchword in the eighteenth century. But the man who wants enjoyment at any cost is the egoist. Never was egoism so prolific in France as in the ancien régime and during the Revolution. The minister Saint Fond, a true copy of a minister under Louis XV, said (Juliette 11, 37): "A statesman would be a fool if he did not let his country pay for his pleasures. What matters to us the misery of the people if only our passions arc satisfied? If I thought that gold might flow from the veins of people, I would have them blood-let one after the other, that I might cover myself in their gore."

De Sade found this expression characteristic of the ancien régime. Before the Revolution this egoism was encountered only in the ruling classes, monarch, nobility and clergy. In the Revolution it seized all ranks of the populace. Adolf Schmidt, who drew his description of the Revolutionary days from authentic contemporary documents, said: "It was the sharp expressed egoism, the selfishness and avarice, which not only pierced the higher ranks of society, but all classes of people and, foremost of all, the overwhelming number of peasants; indeed it was so powerful, that all other feelings, even those of country and of humanity, were deeply submerged and forgotten. It is astonishing and dreadful when one perceives how, amid all the gleaming declamations on liberty, equality and fraternity, on the rights of love and man, on sacrifice for the well-being of society, greatness and fame of the country, there was in almost all classes a race for wealth and property, a cold-blooded reckoning on taking advantage of the circumstances, an avaricious speculation on the misfortunes of the state and the misery of their fellow creatures. Each wanted to outwit and impose on the other." We will have to study this egoism, this chief trait of the eighteenth century, in its various forms.

For it brought to a head the search for pleasure which reached its summit in sexual abandonments. The eighteenth century was the century of the systematizing of sexual pleasures and pursuits. Paul Moreau distinguished three epochs in the history of sexual debauchery and aberration. The first is the epoch of the Roman Empire; the second embraces those great epidemics de névropathie de toutes sortes in the middle ages, especially the belief in the existence of the incubus and succubus, the cult of the so-called "Devil's Church" with its horrible sexual monstrosities. The third period falls in the eighteenth century, luminous in its peculiar French individuality by the saturnalias of the regency and Louis XV.

Debauchery! That is the word for the eighteenth century, declare the best savants of that time, Edmond and Jules de Goncourt. "That is its secret, its charm and its soul. Debauchery is the air on which it breathes and lives. It is its atmosphere, its element, its inspiration, its life and its genius. It circulates in its heart, nerves and brain. It gives its own peculiar charm and savor to in customs, morals and works. Debauchery proceeds from the innermost being of the age and speaks from its mouth. From there it flies over this world, takes possession, is its fairy, its muse, the dictator of custom, style and art. And nothing has remained from this time, nothing from this century of woman, which was not created, moved and protected by debauchery."

What the French eighteenth century delineated, above all, in a manner never before nor after seen, was the systematizing of sexual love. It remained for this century to draw up a codex of machlosophy.

"The entire life strives for the sexual act: science, art, fashion, literature, gastronomy. Everything permeates the languishing breeze of purely physical love and leaves behind that heavy languor which enervates all spiritual energy. And as this arose in the great, glorious and unforgettable Revolution, which the new age had given birth to, that heavy perfume still hung on, carried the people again down, enslaved them and tuned the heavily yoked forces into wild ferocity and pitiless bloodthirstiness."

The main characteristics of this century of injustice, egoism and sexual immorality, are to be observed at their highest in the life and works of Marquis de Sade; we must henceforth always seek, in relation to the personality of de Sade, the origin of that frivolity, and to investigate the factors which combined to form the general character of the century.
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Re: Marquis De Sade: His Life and Work, by Dr. Iwan Bloch

Postby admin » Wed Oct 09, 2013 8:19 am

French Philosophy

The spirit of an age is most clearly and decidedly shown in its philosophy. French philosophy was the scientific expression of the egoism, the search for pleasure and sexual desire of that time. It was thoroughly sensualistic and materialistic. De Sade had Dubois say very definitely (Justine 1, 122): "The principle of philosophy is the search for pleasure." Philosophy plays an important role in de Sade’s works. Very often is this expression met: "The fire of passion is always ignited on the torch of philosophy." (e.g. Juliette 1, 92, 158, 319, etc.). A good part of de Sade’s works embraced long-winded philosophic excursions, which we will evaluate in a later section. Therein de Sade acted very eclectically and uncritically. He named, e.g., in one breath Spinoza, Vanini and Holbach, the author of The System of Nature (Juliette 1, 31); then Buffon (Philosophy in the Boudoir I, 77), who made an attempt to soften the stark materialism. The names of Voltaire (Juliette I, 88), and Montesquieu (Juliette IV, 8) were, of course, present. But Montesquieu was a mere "demi-philosophe." Reminiscent of Rousseau sounds the expression: "Men are pure only in the natural state; as soon as they depart therefrom, they lower themselves." (Juliette IV, 242). La Mettrie appeared to have had the greatest influence on de Sade. At least it seems to us that the philosophic system of Marquis de Sade, if one may so name his eclectic potpourri, showed a preference for the thoughts of La Mettrie. Both sought to legitimize and exalt sexual pleasure in a philosophic analysis. In this connection La Mettrie was expressly mentioned (Juliette III, 211).

Montesquieu and Voltaire had acquainted France with the sensualistic philosophy of Locke; already the skepticism of Pierre Bayle had opposed the Christian belief as the higher and truer philosophy. As with English philosophers, so with Voltaire and Montesquieu: the sensualistic views were only developed theoretically; the sensualism remained essentially a theory of knowledge. But influences were being felt which tried to carry sensualism and its natural consequence, materialism, over to the practical field. Knowledge is a function of mind. The foundation of morals is personal well-being, egoism. The only eternal thing is movement which brings forth all other things and requires no creator. Free will and immortality of the soul, as well as the conception of God, are hence utopian. Matter alone is certain. There is no soul. Atheism is the only religion and finds its gratification in the adoration of nature, in a happy life and physical pleasure. From these representative formulae and propositions of La Mettrie and Holbach, the natural result was the special characteristic of French philosophy in the eighteenth century: the opposition to church and religion, the espousal of freedom for individuals.

Never had philosophy turned its attention with such vigor to all the life-relations and with such conscious desire to reform them. The French Revolution was preeminently the work of the philosophers; this was recognized very early. Barruel, a fanatic supporter of the ancien régime, said in 1793: "The Revolution was brewing for a long time and was planted by men who under the guise of philosophers had assumed the task of destroying throne and altar." There were hence political and religious philosophers. The chief representative of political philosophy was Mirabeau, the passionate attorney of the Third Estate. He wrote, however, that famous dictum: "If you want a revolution, you must first decatholicize France." How deeply imbedded in the people was the atheism of a La Mettrie and a Holbach is shown by an actual case reported by Dotard. Three priests were returning from a pious performance of their official duties. The foremost shoved out of his way with his silver cross a heavily laden porter who was walking by with a friend. "Say," called out the porter, "you there, clear out with that cross!" "Sh," cried his friend, "it is the good God!" "Aw, the good God!" answered the other, "there's no good God any more!"

There was consistent progress to the practical execution of the abolition of the hated religion. In the meeting of the Convention, November 17, 1793, Cloots declared that religion was the greatest hindrance to happiness; there was no other God than nature; no other master than the human race; the God of the people, Reason, must unite all men. Feirlich, on November 7, 1793, with a small body of clergy, in the pale of the convent of Bishop Gobel, abjured Catholicism and Christianity. The clergymen of the convent immediately followed his example. On November 10th in the Notre Dame church the strange cult “Reason” was initiated. Reason became flesh in the form of a pretty young girl whom the president of the convent embraced with a fraternal kiss. Abstract Reason became Concrete Sensualism. It is thus seen that the atheism which took such frightful forms with de Sade was not peculiar to him but customary of the time. It is further seen how conclusively this whole atheistic conduct terminated in sexual pleasure, which took on enormous dimensions at the time of the Revolution.

De Sade mentioned La Mettrie’s work On Lust with which The Art of Enjoyment was apparently joined (Juliette IV, 198). Here La Mettrie developed the rules for the enjoyment of physical love, which he prized as the most beautiful and valuable conduct in the world, for thereby was derived the satisfaction of all the "caprices de l’imagination."

Philosophy, in which the spiritual movement of that time found the universal and most intense expression, fought for political, religious and moral freedom. It aligned itself against state, church and traditional custom. Marquis de Sade also made these factors subjects of his weightiest attacks. We therefore essay an investigation of individual relations in state, church, literature and public life, insofar as they may shed light on the personality of Marquis de Sade.
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Re: Marquis De Sade: His Life and Work, by Dr. Iwan Bloch

Postby admin » Wed Oct 09, 2013 8:19 am

French Royalty in the Eighteenth Century

Louis XV ruled in the youth of Marquis de Sade; Louis XVI at his maturity. In 1774 when de Sade was thirty-four years old the most corrupt monarch that ever ruled France, Louis XV, died. We pass over the following facts as too well known: the political misgovernment of the French rulers in the eighteenth century, the great scandal involving John Law, and the loss of the most important colonies under Louis XV, the revolution under Louis XVI and the marked patronage of the nobility and clergy. The search for pleasure and the sexual debauchery of the monarchy were especially stigmatized by de Sade. Here, too, he had his prototypes in reality. "When a prince of the blood walks the way of vice he is accompanied by the entire society." The example given by the French rulers must have had the most corrupt effects on the out-and-out materialistically minded society of the ancien régime. The time of the Regency created the name and type of roué, which became a characteristic phenomenon of the whole century. The roué par excellence was King Louis XV, famous for the number of his mistresses and for his Deer Park. His life, as Moreau says, was a "steadfast prostitution." Hence, his mistresses, in spite of their great number and frequent exchange, could not keep him satisfied. In his famous Deer Park he had built the original of private bordellos, which played an important rôle in the works of Marquis de Sade. Imagine! A king maintaining a whole bordello for his private use! The Deer Park was built in 1750 in the hermitage at Versailles in the quarter called Parc-aux-Cerfs, by the Marquise de Pompadour who, in order to retain the reins of government, created this new sort of enjoyment for the king. The administrator of the bordello was a certain Bertrand; the purveyor of the young girls was called Lebel. In the beginning there were only two or three inmates in the house. After the death of Pompadour it became very crowded (très peuplée). According to another version (Mouffle D'Angerville), "the Marquise de Pompadour, since she was superintendent of his (the king's) pleasures, had incessantly to levy new and fresh beauties, in order to stock the seraglio, wherein she was sovereign; therefrom developed the so-called Deer Park (Parc-aux-Cerfs), that grave of innocence and virtue, swallower of masses of victims, who, when returned to human society, brought with them depravity, debauchery and all those vices, which they must have been infested with by the infamous keepers of that pleasure resort.

"Apart from the evil which this dreadful place did to the morals of society, it is horrible when one reckons the immense amount of money that it cost the state. And who can reckon the costs of this legion of master and minor pimps and pimpesses who were constantly on the go even to the farthest bounds of the empire to track out the objects of their investigations; the costs of conveying the girls to their destination; the necessary polish, dress, perfume and all the other means in the world for making them alluring? To this must be added the gratuities presented to those who were not successful in arousing the complete passions of the sultan, but had nevertheless to be paid for their submission, for their discretion, and still more for their being eventually despised. There were also the rewards for those nymphs who were more fortunate and received the monarch for a time in their arms and caused the fire of passion to burn in his veins. Finally there were the sacred undertakings to those girls who bore in their womb the precious fruit of their fecundity."

It was deduced that each girl cost the public treasury a million Livres. "If only two a week came (little enough), this mounts up in ten years to a thousand and the result is thus ten thousand million Livres. And even then the great number of children born in the Deer Park is not figured, a matter of no little account." It is accordingly viewed by many historians that the initial cost and upkeep of the Deer Park was the main cause of the financial ruin of Louis XV. Many rumors flitted about concerning the organized orgies in the Deer Park, which in any case have not been unduly exaggerated.

"The Saturnalia of the Romans at the time of the Caesars, the horrible Lupercalia of Tiberius, Caligula, Nero or of Agrippina, Messalina, Locusta and other human monsters were but pale copies of the scenes that took place in the Deer Park. Intoxication was here multiple; induced by play, spices, wine and other beverages, perfumes, scenes from magic lanterns, music and every conceivable kind of animal pleasure." Moreau, from authentic sources on the connection between religion and debauchery, wrote: "Every time Louis XV wanted to spend a night in the Deer Park he not only fulfilled his religious duties with fervor, but also could not bear the young priestesses of another cult to fail in the application of their Christian belief. As soon as he was closeted with one of his odalisques he commanded her to undress behind a curtain, while he did the same.

"Then clad in Adam's costume they genuflected on the carpet and said the daily prayer, while they wet their forehead with holy water, which was contained in a crystal flask at the head of the bed. After they had prayed and crossed themselves, the king stroked the naked bosom of his co-worshipper with his pious finger. Then they arose, stepped in bed, drew the drapes together, and the names of the Father, Son, Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary were whispered again and again until the rites of love brought forth another vocabulary."

Louis XV also had his own official for the arrangement of his orgies in the person of La Ferte, Intendant de Menus-Plaisirs (the Minister of Dainty Pleasures). This cabinet-member was abolished by Louis XVI. On Thursday, May 19, 1774, when Louis XVI, nine days after the death of his predecessor, was strolling with his queen and child in the Bois de Boulogne, La Ferte presented himself. The king looked at him from top to bottom and asked: "Who are you?" "Sire, I am La Ferte." "What do you want of me?" "Sire, I am here to take the orders of your Majesty." "But why?" "Since—since I am the Intendant—of the Menus—” "What is that?" "Sire, it is the Menus-Plaisirs of your Majesty.” "My Menus-Plaisirs consist in walking in the park. I do not need you." Thereupon the king turned his back on him and left.

Louis XVI and his consort, Marie Antoinette, are personally absolved from the reproaches of immorality. Still, under their rule the same sensual life at court continued and his brother, Prince d'Artois, was indeed a noted libertine. It was impossible for the private life of the king and especially of the queen, who as an Austrian princess enjoyed small sympathy, to be free from suspicion. The well known necklace story was strongly taken advantage of, much to the queen's dismay. Indeed five years after Louis XVI's coronation there appeared an obscene poem, The Loves of Charlot and Toinette, later reprinted in numberless editions. The poem treated of the alleged love between Marie Antoinette and her cousin D’Artois (later King Charles X). The queen was here described in the most obscene verses as a true Messalina, whom the impotent king could not satisfy!

"Charlot," the Prince d’Artois, was indeed a chief participant in the orgies of the court nobility in the Residence, as was the Duke of Orleans, Philippe Egalité. At the famous nightly promenades in the Palais Royal the appearance of Prince d'Artois was a daily occurrence. In the Nights of Paris Restif de Ia Bretonne tells of a bordello in Saint Antoine, which the Duke of Orleans, the Prince d'Artois and others, frequently visited. "There took place all the infamies and bestialities which were later described by de Sade in his horrible novel Justine or the Misfortunes of Virtue."

De Sade called (Juliette IV, 16) Marie Antoinette "la première putain de France" (the first public prostitute of France) and allowed no opportunity to go by without insulting her (Juliette V, 235, 252, etc.). In general he cherished an overwhelming hatred against the House of Austria. He indeed wanted to wipe out all the kings of the earth and found a "république universelle" (Juliette V, 119).
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Re: Marquis De Sade: His Life and Work, by Dr. Iwan Bloch

Postby admin » Wed Oct 09, 2013 8:20 am

Nobility and Clergy

The nobility and clergy play the main rôles in the novels of Marquis de Sade. Princes, dukes, counts, marquis, and chevaliers accompany popes, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, monks of all orders, abbesses and nuns as erotic and atheistic monsters. All the corruption of the ancien régime passes before our eyes in his works. The nobility and clergy formed indeed only one class in France for the clergy were mostly recruited from the nobility. The oldest son of the nobleman became an officer, the second son a priest or monk, the daughters, who for lack of dowry could not be married, nuns. The parsonage of the nobility by the state reached unheard of dimensions in the eighteenth century. All state officers, judgeships and military positions were usually given to the nobility. At eighteen to twenty the young noblemen, without having the slightest idea of military tactics, were given regiments. They passed their youth in luxury and debauchery with women.

A noted intermediary between clergy and nobility was the institution of abbés, that degenerate mixed breed which one found everywhere without any fixed official duties. Mercier declared that Paris was full of abbés, priests with tonsure, serving neither the church nor the state, passing their time in utmost sloth but playing no unimportant role as "friends of the house," pedagogues, writers, etc. They were at home in all bordellos, although at an early period every courtesan who could prove the visit of an abbé received 50 francs. But that ceased under Louis XVI. An excellent description of the abbé of the eighteenth century was given by that celebrated gastronomist, Brillat Savarin: "If a family of the nobility had many sons, one of them was set aside for the church. He first received simple prebends which sufficed for the costs of his education; he later became a canon, abbot or bishop according to his talent for the spiritual calling. That was the true type of abbé. But there were also many false ones, and many well-to-do youngsters appeared in Paris as abbés. Nothing was simpler and so convenient: by a slight change of attire the appearance of a benefice was simulated. One had friends, lovers and hosts, for every house had its abbé. They were small, fat, round, well-dressed, bland, obliging, curious connoisseurs, lively and insinuating." De Sade has drawn this type in Abbé Chabert, the friend of Juliette and teacher of her daughter (Juliette 111, 280). The abbés also figure in the police reports of Manuel on the vice of the clergy in Paris which we shall quote in a later section.

A second characteristic phenomenon of the eighteenth century was the "knight," the chevalier. He also has found a loving commentator in Brillat Savarin: "Many knights had found it advantageous to present the fraternal kiss to each other. They were mostly pretty men. They carried their swords vertically, their heads high, their noses up, their bodies stiff; they were gamblers, seducers, squabblers and really belonged to the train of a lady of fashion. At the beginning of the Revolution most of the knights entered the army, others left the country and the rest lost themselves in the crowd. The few survivors can be recognized by their features. For now they are skinny and walk laboriously. They have the gout."

The champions of the cloth were, in de Sade's novels, the perpetrators of the most abominable outrages. With a special preference de Sade described the vices, hypocrisy, and the ungodliness of the clergy of every rank. He overwhelmed the cloth with the most vulgar insults. And he had excellent justification.

In the discussion of the wickedness of the French clergy we will present authentic historic documents. The discoveries of the police speak of and justify de Sade, whose works were placed on the Index Expurgatorius as much for their anti-clerical contents as for their obscenity. Thus Juliette called the pope an "old ape" (Juliette IV, 285); and the other prelates, monks, etc., did not fare much better. The tribade Clairwil cried (Juliette II, 336): "Who are the only true destroyers of society? The priests! Who daily seduce and rape our women and children? The priests! Who are the greatest enemy of every reign? The priests! Who continually deceive us with lies and frauds? Steal our last penny? Work most for the destruction of the human race? Defame themselves most with crimes and infamies? Who are the most dangerous and horrible persons?… And yet we hesitate to put an end to these pestilent worms of the earth? Then we really deserve all these evils."

All the troubles of France were the work of the Jesuits (Juliette III, 169). Numberless were the orgies and debaucheries, which the priests arranged in de Sade’s novels. Therein appeared all the pathologic sexual types. The pederast, the pathicus, the lécheur, the sanguinaire, etc., etc. We here call attention only to the dreadful orgies of the Carmelites (Juliette III, 143), the Archbishop of Lyons (Juliette I, 234); the orgies in the catacombs of the Panthémont monastery between monks and nuns (Juliette I, 96); of Pope Pius VI and the Cardinals Albani and Bernis in Rome (Juliette IV, 100 ff.). All these clergymen were atheists and blasphemers. De Sade repeated—unique in his works—two obscene and blasphemous poems of Cardinal Bernis in Juliette.

We shall next present contemporary reports as proofs that de Sade was not unjust when he exposed the clergy in such an abusive manner in his works.
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Re: Marquis De Sade: His Life and Work, by Dr. Iwan Bloch

Postby admin » Wed Oct 09, 2013 8:22 am

Paris Police Reports on the Immorality of the Clergy

Pierre Manuel has left us in his famous work The Parisian Police Exposed (Paris, 1794), a photographically true picture of the moral conditions of Paris before the outbreak of the great Revolution. Adolf Schmidt, one of the best savants of the history of France in the eighteenth century and who, like Manuel, collected similar reports, in his Tableaux of the French Revolution, called Manuel's book one of the most reliable sources for the Eighteenth Century.

Manuel, in his famous work, had a chapter "Police, Priests and Prostitutes." He repeated in bitterly satiric words the vow of chastity of the priests and said: "I will reveal the lascivious actions of these missionaries of heaven, who themselves damn to Hades the passions of noble and sensitive persons. Naming these failings is not doing away with them. For the pure man is he who sleeps with his wife."

The following laconic records refer to the reports of the police inspectors and commissioners, to the confessions of the culprits and their accomplices. We give verbatim same of the striking reports.

Franciscans:

February 12, 1760. Brother François Lortal, House of Toulouse. He reversed the maxim of Virgil in practice: nudus ara, sere nudus! Commissioner Thierion, Inspector Marais.

July 2, 1766. George le Payen, vicar in Cerny, lover on lover in the garden. Commissioner Grimperil, Inspector Marais.

Bernardines:

March 30, 1764. J. Ignace Xavier Dreux, licentiate, Professor of Theology, at Agathe, under the bed. Commissioner Mutel, etc.

Carmelites:

February 8, 1763. Jacques Brebi, from Maubert Place. He was under the name Jacques Mazure with the guards; he thought it was a church. Report of Prior Martin, etc.

Dominicans:

Pierre Simon, 46 years in the cloth. He described his pleasures with trembling hands. Commissioner Mutel, etc.

Capucines:

December 14, 1762. Laurent Dilly, mendicant friar from Rue St. Honoré, at the Boyerie, where he sang: tirez-moi par mon cordon! Report of the Father Guardian Grégoire, etc.

November 9, 1765. Joseph Biache, called Brother Constant, and Joseph Etienne, called Brother Constantine, from the monastery at Crépy; both in the inn, The Mounting Deer, where they asked for a bed for three, although they only had the image of the Virgin Mary with them. Commissioner Mutel, etc.

Recollects (strictest branch of Franciscans):

June 30, 1763. Noel-Clément Berthe, called Brother Paul, whipped at Leblanc. Com. Fontaine, etc.

March 1, 1765. Gabriel Anheisser, called Father Gabriel, in his nightshirt under the bed of Agnes Viard. He lived together with this former sutler for seven or eight years. Com. de Ruisseau, etc.

February 19, 1767. Father Constance between Victoire and Emilie, like the ass of Buridon. Com. cle Ruisseau, etc.

Minima (Paulines):

January 17, 1760. André Carron, while writing on the wall of the room of Zaire: "I am always ready for whipping." Com. Sirebeau, etc.

Feuillantines:

December 30, 1762. Dom Claude Jousse, 63 years old, at Marie la Neuve, where he was not abashed with the maidens. Report of Prior Jean Baptiste of St. Marie-Magdalene. Com. de Ruisseau.

Augustines:

November 5, 1763. Bernard-Nicolas, from Palais-Royal House, in the Avenue de Vincennes, with them Franciscans and Rosalie, who was a match for a dozen of them. Com. Mutel, etc.

October 26, 1765: "I, the undersigned, Honoré Regnard, 53 years old, canon of the holy Augustine order, procurator, House of St. Catherine, confirm that Inspector Marais found me at the St. Louis, rue do Figuier, to which I went yesterday of my own desire, in order to satisfy myself with Félix. I had her undress and caressed her with my hand concealed under the cloak. And today I played with Félix and her friend Julie, who took off my vestment and dressed and painted me as a woman. The inspector surprised me in this condition. I declare that I have had this desire for many years but which I have never been able to satisfy until today. As proof of authenticity I sign the following declaration, which contains the whole truth and nothing but the truth, with my name Honoré Regnard." Com. Mutel, etc.

July 18, 1768. Simon Boucel, with the Prévilles, Louise and Sophy.

Praemonstratenes:

March 17, 1760. François de Maugre, from rue Haute-Feuille, between Desirée and Zaire, all three happy. Com. Sirebeau, etc.

Penitents of Nazareth:

May 2, 1766. Brother Nicephorus, with Laville, who showed him every part of the body, including some internal ones. Com. Mutel, etc.

Celestines:

December 3, 1760. J. D. Tordoir, Prior of Nanites, at Mausy, in the garb of the prophet who awaked the son of the Sunamites.

Brothers of Mercy:

October 19, 1762. Jacques François Boulard, former overseer of novices and priors, at Lagarde, with Victoire and Julie, trying to take in as much as possible. Com. de Ruisseau, etc.

Order of St. Genevieve:

May 8, 1761. Jean Pierre Bedosse with Zephire, per ipsam, cum ipsa et in ipsa. Com. Sirebeau, etc.

August 2, 1752. Father Bernard, famous preacher. He chose two or three prostitutes at Lasolle. This cost him the wealth of a duchess. He gave six and a half Louisdors. And the surgeon, as a result, charged him forty Thalers and three Livres. for the visit.

Eremites:

August 5, 1773. Brother Camille, from the monastery at Hayet, at Therese's where he described himself as “The Porter of Chartreux.” Com. Mutel, etc.

Christian School:

September 14, 1763. Brother Firmin at Royer’s, who compared him with those bad readers who begin a book and don’t finish it. Com. Mutel, etc.

Order of St. Antoine:

September 28, 1765. François Vanova, at Lamourette’s, in flagrante delicto by Commissioner Mutel and Inspector Marais.

Jesuits:

November 5, 1764. François Terrasse-Desbillon, 52 years old, at Mouton's, where he was enjoying himself in reversed rôles. Com. Mutel, etc.

Deans, Dignitaries and Canons:

April 3, 1764. Blaise Messier, Canon of Beauvais, at Blampié’s. He appeared to have the same views as Rubens, liking his beauties around the 200 pound class. Com. Rochebrune, etc.

August 14, 1761. Marc-Antoine Manuel, of the holy church, at Provençale's, working away. Com. de Ruisseau, etc.

July 8, 1760. Marie Mocet, Bishop of Tours, 60 years old. Gasping away. His hands doing the work of four men.

June 20, 1765. Jean Pierre Pelletier, curé, at Lambert’s, devouring the work of God. Com. Mutel, etc.

August 22, 1760. Pierre Louis Thorin. Zaire in a three-quarter turn. Com. Sirebeau,, etc.

Abbés:

October 27, 1763. Charles Marie Thibault was sent to St. Lazarre, having been found at Aurora's for the third time. A poem was found in his pocket praising what Hebe showed the goddesses.

Doctors of the Sorbonne:

May 9, 1765. J. Baptiste R. who lay inert with his useless firepiece at Guerin’s.

May 23, 1763. Fel. Auguste Tomalle turning over the pages at Denoyer's. His third thesis.

Teachers:

February 24, 1761. P., Teacher of the children of Marquis de P. at Pearl’s. Looking for gems at the altar of Venus. Corn. Sirebeau, etc.

These are some out of a long, long list. A commentary would be superfluous. Facta loquuntur. These facts from authentic documents afford a satisfying proof and justification for the description in de Sade's novels of the orgies of the clergy; and also for the hatred which the priests were looked on not alone by de Sade. Manuel remarked at the end of his tale that no Bishop was named therein. He explained it from the fact that one may not even speak of the illnesses of a Bishop, let alone his sexual adventures.

Besides these reports of Manuel there exists a very great work on the immorality of the French clergy. After the storming of the Bastille in 1789 there were found in that prison two volumes on The Chastity of the Clergy Exposed. Louis XV had the reports of the visits of the clergy in bordellos sent to him every morning. These bulletins were called the Paris Nights. The two volumes contained 189 reports from April 10, 1755 to June 7, 1766. They appeared more to have served "the revival of the dead libido of the king" than the interests of morals and the honor of the king.

In the same category was the affair of the Vicar of Bagnolet with Mademoiselle Mimi. In the autograph collection of Lucas Montigny there is a letter from the Archbishop of Paris to Police Superintendent Le Noir: "I have been informed that the Vicar of Bagnolet when in Paris visits a prostitute, Mimi, who lives in the me Pierre Poissons. If you can verify this, I would be extremely grateful, for I am very interested in discovering the truth."

The letter had the following notation by Le Noir: "Get Quidor to verify the fact immediately and send me his report."

Further interesting details on the conduct of the Parisian clergy are found in the Confessions of a Young Girl. We are introduced to the bordello of Madame Richard. Sapho, (for so the young girl is called), looks through the peephole at the tête-à-tête of the madame with a priest. The madame takes out a cuirass of doubled horse-hair, bordered by a mass of blunted iron nails, enfolds the breast and back of the priest with it, ties him tightly on all sides with heavy cord, fastens an iron chain around his belly, which supports some kind of suspensory around his groin. This suspensory is also braided with strong coarse hair, in a way not preventing the use of the hands on the sources of pleasure. Similar "bracelets" are placed on the wrists. Tumescence then follows. Now the madame begins the flagellation and the other incitations of love.

Sapho tells further how she becomes the mistress of a bishop, whose vicarage follows him in his mode of life and presents a lively picture of the immoral conduct of the clergy in this diocese. She has an adventure with four priests, one of whom is a pederast, having a motto: tout est connus dans une femme.

The sexual dissoluteness of the clergy is also found in poems and pictures. The following verse is to the point:

One has chosen five bishops,
All marked by syphilis,
To reform the gay monks.
Can one whiten ebony with black ink?

This poem refers to a Board of Morals composed of the Archbishops of Rheims, Arles, Narbonne, Bourges and Toulouse. This Board of Censorship was indeed a mark of the age! But how they were judged by public opinion these verses best show.
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Re: Marquis De Sade: His Life and Work, by Dr. Iwan Bloch

Postby admin » Wed Oct 09, 2013 8:22 am

The Jesuits

In Persian Letters Montesquieu had Rica visit a monastery library where a monk described the contents of the works. Under the theologians were named especially the casuists, who bring the secrets of night into the daylight; who create in their fantasies all the monsters that the demon of love can produce, collect, compare and form as eternal objects of their thoughts. Yet fortunate if the heart is not enmeshed and does not become the plaything of the many delusions which are so naively described and so nakedly painted!

In this field of "sexual casuistry" we find the Jesuits masters in the eighteenth century. No order understood so well how to legitimize pleasure by religion and how to clothe their own immoral actions with a cover of mysticism and piousness. It was not necessary for the Jesuits to find their pleasures in bordellos (Manuel found only one Jesuit in these resorts, explained also by the fact that they were too clever to be caught in such traps). In his dual rôle as father confessor and teacher it was easy for him to satisfy his, by no means weak, sexual feelings which were protected from police inspection as "divine inspiration." Early in the seventeenth century Cornelius Jansen inveighed against the Jesuit father confessors, “who regulated the gallant sins of the household and permitted the nuns to be fingered lewdly on their bosoms and thighs by their comforters." For the Jesuit Benzi taught expressly: to pinch checks, bosoms, and to shamelessly handle the genitals. As a result of these precepts, de la Chaise, father confessor of Louis XIV, violated the ladies of the court and had mistresses sent to the King of England. Young ladies in Holland let themselves be whipped by the Jesuits for their pleasure. Similarly the ladies in the court in Lisbon under Nunez. The Jesuit Herreau in 1642 taught that it was permissible to use abortive medicines. In the sixteenth century in Lyons the Jesuits influenced the ladies to wear open chemises; this practice was copied in 1789.

The notorious "Theology of Murder" of the Jesuits, in no way inferior to the apology of murder by de Sade, may be originally blamed to the treatise of their founder, J. de Mariana (1599), as well as the famous work of Blaise Pascal, Provincial Letters (1657), describing the entire immorality of the Jesuits. In the eighteenth century the commanders of the order allowed the father confessors obscene tracts, insofar as it was favorable to the order. Thus the last commander of the order before the Revolution, Lorenzo Ricci, wrote on how the young Jesuits ought to act to the young—and rich—widows. They took every possible care to keep them from a second marriage, pointing out indefatigably the inconveniences of such a state, the danger to the soul, etc., etc. "But when in spite of all this the young widows have a great yearning for a second marriage, when they find themselves in the state: it is better to marry than to burn, then a clever and discreet father may offer his services against the seductions of the flesh."

World famous was the scandal of the relation between the Jesuit, Jean Baptiste Girard, and his penitent, Catherine Cadière, which started at Toulon in May, 1782. The affair occasioned an immense literature and served as a model for many pornographic novels. The case was fully documented in The Girard Case (1791). A folio volume of etchings portrayed the most piquant situations; its collection has been variously ascribed to Marquis d'Argens, Count Caylus and Mirabeau. It has also been asserted that Marquis de Sade was moved to write Justine by the above work.

The Jesuit Girard, as rector of the seminary and as naval chaplain at Toulon, had started a private penitential school for women, in which Catherine Cadière, the pretty and pious daughter of a merchant, entered. Girard, by the application of the most cunning sexual mysticism, succeeded in seducing the innocent maiden and utilized fully her visions and dreams for his lustful desires. Carnal flogging, indecent embraces, and the horrible mental prostitution soon lead to acute hysteria and in the course of time she became pregnant, but by reason of Jesuit precepts abortive drugs stopped the process. Finally action was brought against him, but, to the wrath of the public, he was freed.

Voltaire, under a picture of Girard and Cadière, wrote the following verse:

The beauty saw God, Girard saw the beauty:
Ah! But Girard is happier than she.
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Re: Marquis De Sade: His Life and Work, by Dr. Iwan Bloch

Postby admin » Wed Oct 09, 2013 8:23 am

The Black Mass

The height of religious sexual mysticism was reached in the cult of the so-called "Satan’s Church." Satan here became the "Personification of the Physical Mysterium of Copulation" as a protest against the exclusive mastery of the "Metaphysical Mysticism of Idolization." The history of this remarkable sect has been written for all time by Stanislaw Przybyszewski in his The Cult of Satan's Church. Satan-Satyr, Satan-Pan, and Satan-Phallus was the ancient "God of instincts and corporeal passions, equally honored by the highest and lowest in spirit, the inexhaustible source of joy in life, enthusiasm and intoxication.

"He taught women the art of seduction, men to satisfy their feelings in their double sexual desires, he ran rim in color, discovered the flute and set the muscles in rhythmical movement, until the divine mania embraced the heart and the divine Phallus with its opulence sowed the fruitful womb."

That was the age of the pagan mysteries of motherhood. Then came the Judeo-Grecan Christianity and preached the supernatural, ascetic mysticism of fatherhood. The church tore man forcefully from nature. "She destroyed the unconscious selection of nature, which expressed itself externally in beauty, power and splendor; she protected everything that nature would uproot: din, ugliness, sickness, cripples and eunuchs." But nature did not allow itself to be rejected. And so the church had to give in and amalgamate the pagan creed with its own. "The bacchanalias at the feasts of Ceres Libera were celebrated with greater freedom than ever before on Lady-day, and until the thirteenth century the people celebrated in common with the priests, lascivious and orgiastic festivals, the feast of the Ass, the feast of the Idiots.

While they were voraciously dispatching everything in sight they started to deliberate about our punishment and their revenge. As usual in such an unruly crowd there was lively disagreement. One wanted the girl to be burned alive, another said she should be thrown to the beasts, a third thought she should be crucified, and a fourth was all for torturing her to death; the one point on which they were unanimous was that die she must. Then, when the hubbub had died down, one quietly took up the running. 'It is repugnant,' he said, 'both to our principles as professionals and our humanity as individuals, not to mention my own ideas of moderation, to allow you to punish this crime more savagely than it merits. Rather than invoking the beasts or the cross or fire or torture, or even giving her a quick death, if you will be guided by me you will grant the girl her life -- but in the form that she deserves. You won't, I'm sure, have forgotten what you've already decided to do with that bone-idle ass that does nothing but eat; deceitful too, shamming lame and aiding and abetting the girl's escape. My proposal therefore is that tomorrow we slaughter him, remove his insides, and sew the girl up in his belly naked -- since he prefers her company to ours -- with just her head showing and the rest of her hugged tight in his bestial embrace. Then we'll leave this dainty dish of stuffed donkey on some rocky crag to cook in the heat of the sun. In that way both of them will undergo all the punishments to which you have so justly sentenced them. The ass will die as he richly deserves; the girl will be torn by beasts when the worms gnaw her, she will be roasted when the blazing sun scorches the ass's belly, and she will be gibbeted when the dogs and vultures drag out her entrails. And think of all her other sufferings and torments: to dwell alive in the belly of a dead animal, to suffocate in an intolerable stench, to waste away and die of prolonged fasting, and not even to have her hands free to compass her own death.'

***

In the hall of my house I shall dedicate a picture of this flight of ours. People will come to see it, and the artless story of 'The Princess who escaped from Captivity on the back of an Ass' will be told around the world and immortalized in the pages of the learned. You too will join the catalogue of the Wonders of Old, and your true example will lead us to believe that Phrixus really did make his crossing on the ram, that Arion rode the dolphin, and that Europa perched on the bull.

-- The Golden Ass, or Metamorphoses, by Apuleius, translated by E.J. Kinney


The remainder of the Phallus cult stole away to the church; the columns and pillars swarmed with obscene figures, a favorite theme for the reliefs in the church was Noah sleeping with his daughters." But the real cult of "Satan’s Church" was founded by the Manichees in southern France. "From here began the monstrous triumphal procession of Satan through all Europe." The secret societies of "Perfect Beings" formed everywhere, serving exclusively the most obscene sexual vices. "They insulted and stoned the priests, violated the holy objects with their obscene purposes and parodied the Catholic services in their rites." In spite of the persecution of the church the sect and its motto persevered: Nemo potest peccare ab umbilico et inferius [Google translate: No one can not sin, from the navel and the lower]; it found command support from "unsatisfied" priests. Sins slay sins! That was the great principle of their sexual orgies. The priest sanctifies all women who sin with him. The nuns are "consecrated," i.e. they become the mistresses of the priests. The black death in the fourteenth century, flagellation, dance-mania, famine, all heightened immeasurably the sexual hysteria. Now the sect of devil worshippers enjoyed their triumphs. Since then, in spite of persecution, they remained in the self-same position and further celebrate their public masses. Even in modern times they have appeared in various forms. The "Adamites" or "Nicolites," "Picards," who congregate nude and enjoy wives in common, were founded by John Ziska on an island in the Luschnitz River. They appeared again in 1848 in five villages as "Moroccanes." The name was chosen due to their expectation of the extirpation of all Catholics by an enemy coming from Morocco. Similarly the name "Oneida" or the older name of "Perfecti," later "Perfectionists" in New York State (since 1831). Even today the Satan cult is carried on in Paris, as is described by J. K. Huysmans, in Là Bas:

The sacrifice ceased. The priest descended the steps backward, knelt on the last one, and in a sharp, tripidant voice cried:

"Master of Slanders, Dispenser of the benefits of crime, Administrator of sumptuous sins and great vices, Satan, thee we adore, reasonable God, just God!

"Superadmirable legate of false trances, thou receivest our beseeching tears; thou savest the honor of families by aborting wombs impregnated in the forgetfulness of the good orgasm; thou dost suggest to the mother the hastening of untimely birth, and thine obstetrics spares the still-born children the anguish of maturity, the contamination of original sin.

"Mainstay of the despairing Poor, Cordial of the Vanquished, it is thou who endowst them with hypocrisy, ingratitude, and stiff-neckedness, that they may defend themselves against the children of God, the Rich.

"Suzerain of Resentment, Accountant of Humiliations, Treasurer of old Hatreds, thou alone dost fertilize the brain of man whom injustice has crashed; thou breathest into him the idea of meditated vengeance, sure misdeeds; thou incitest him to murder; thou givest him the abundant joy of accomplished reprisals and permittest him to taste the intoxicating draught of the tears of which he is the cause.

"Hope of Virility, Anguish of the Empty Womb, thou dost not demand the bootless offering of chaste lions, thou dost not sing the praises of Lenten follies; thou alone receivest the carnal supplications and petitions of poor and avaricious families. Thou determinest the mother to sell her daughter, to give her son; thou aidest sterile and reprobate loves; Guardian of strident Neuroses, Leaden Tower of Hysteria, bloody Vase of Rape!

"Master, thy faithful servants, on their knees, implore thee and supplicate thee to satisfy them when they wish the torture of all those who love them and aid them; they supplicate thee, to assure them the joy of delectable misdeeds unknown to justice, spells whose unknown origin baffles the reason of man; they ask, finally, glory, riches, power, of thee, King of the Disinherited, Son who art to overthrow the inexorable Father!"

Then Docre rose, and erect, with arms outstretched, vociferated in a ringing voice of hate:

"And thou, thou whom, in my quality of priest, I force, whether thou wilt or no, to descend into this host, to incarnate thyself in this bread, Jesus, Artisan of Hoaxes, Bandit of Homage, Robber of Affection, hear! Since the day when thou didst issue from the complaisant bowels of a Virgin, thou hast failed all thine engagements, belied all thy promises. Centuries have wept, awaiting thee, fugitive God, mute God! Thou wast to redeem man and thou hast not, thou wast to appear in thy glory, and thou sleepest. Go, lie, say to the wretch who appeals to thee, 'Hope, be patient, suffer; the hospital of souls will receive thee; the angels will assist thee; Heaven opens to thee.' Imposter! thou knowest well that the angels, disgusted at thine inertness, abandon thee! Thou wast to be the Interpreter of our plaints, the Chamberlain of our tears; thou wast to convey them to the Father and thou hast not done so, for this intercession would disturb thine eternal sleep of happy satiety.

“Thou hast forgotten the poverty thou didst preach, enamoured vassal of Banks! Thou hast seen the weak crushed beneath the press of profit; thou hast heard the death rattle of the timid, paralyzed by famine, of women disembowelled for a bit of bread, and thou hast caused the Chancery of thy Simoniacs, thy commercial representatives, thy Popes, to answer by dilatory excuses and evasive promises, sacristy Shyster, huckster God!

"Master, whose inconceivable ferocity engenders life and inflicts it on the innocent whom thou darest damn—in the name of what original sin?—whom thou darest punish—by the virtue of what covenants?—we would have thee confess thine impudent cheats, thine inexpiable crimes! We would drive deeper the nails into thy hands, press down the crown of thorns upon thy brow, bring blood and water from the dry wounds of thy sides.

"And that we can and will do by violating the quietude of thy body, Profaner of ample vices, Abstractor of stupid purities, cursed Nazarene, do-nothing King, coward God!"

"Amen!" trilled the soprano voices of the choir boys.

Durtal listened in amazement to this torrent of blasphemies and insults. The foulness of the priest stupefied him. A silence succeeded the litany. The chapel was foggy with the smoke of the censers. The women, hitherto taciturn, flustered now, as, remounting the altar, the canon turned toward them and blessed them with his left hand in a sweeping gesture. And suddenly the choir boys tinkled the prayer bells.

It was a signal. The women fell to the carpet and writhed. One of them seemed to be worked by a spring. She threw herself prone and waved her legs in the air. Another, suddenly struck by a hideous strabism, clucked, then becoming tongue-tied stood with her mouth open, the tongue turned back, the tip cleaving to the palate. Another, inflated, livid, her pupils dilated, lolled her head back over her shoulders, then jerked it brusquely erect and belabored herself, tearing her breast with her nails. Another, sprawling on her back, undid her skirts, drew forth a rag, enormous, meteorized; then her face twisted into a horrible grimace, and her tongue, which she could not control, stuck out, bitten at the edges, harrowed by red teeth, from a bloody mouth.

Suddenly Durtal rose, and now he heard and saw Docre distinctly.

Docre contemplated the Christ surmounting the tabernacle, and with arms spread wide apart he spewed forth frightful insults, and, at the end of his forces, muttered the billingsgate of a drunken cabman. One of the choir boys knelt before him with his back toward the altar. A shudder ran around the priest's spine. In a solemn but jerky voice he said, "Hoc est enim corpus meum," [Google translate: This is my body] then, instead of kneeling, after the consecration, before the precious Body, he faced the congregation, and appeared tumefied, haggard, dripping with sweat. He staggered between the two choir boys, who, raising the chasuble, displayed his naked belly. Docre made a few passes and the host sailed, tainted and wiled, over the steps.

Durtal felt himself shudder. A whirlwind of hysteria shook the room.

While the choir boys sprinkled holy water on the pontiff's nakedness, women rushed upon the Eucharist and, groveling in front of the altar, clawed from the bread humid particles and drank and ate divine ordure.

Another woman, curled up over a crucifix, emitted a rending laugh, then cried to Docre, "Father, father!" A crone tore her hair, leapt, whirled around and around as on a pivot and fell over beside a young girl who, huddled to the wall, was writhing in convulsions, frothing at the mouth, weeping, and spitting out frightful blasphemies. And Durtal, terrified, saw through the fog the red horns of Docre, who seated now, frothing with rage, was chewing up sacramental wafers, taking them out of his mouth, wiping himself with them, and distributing them to the women, who ground them underfoot, howling, or fell over each other struggling to get hold of them and violate them.

The place was simply a madhouse, a monstrous pandemonium of prostitutes and maniacs. Now, while the choir boys gave themselves to the men, and while the woman who owned the chapel, mounted the altar, caught hold of the phallus of the Christ with one hand and with the other held a chalice between "His" naked legs, a little girl, who hitherto had not budged, suddenly bent over forward and howled, howled like a dog. Overcome with disgust, nearly asphyxiated, Durtal wanted to flee. He looked for Hyacinthe. She was no longer at his side. He finally caught sight of her close to the canon, and, stepping over the writhing bodies on the floor, he went to her. With quivering nostrils she was inhaling the effluvia of the perfumes and of the couples.

"The sabbatic odor!" she said to him between clenched teeth, in a strangled voice.

The Marquis de Sade gave evidence in his novels of being a fanatic Satanist. Many black masses appeared in Justine and Juliette. A mass in a monastery was fully described in Justine (II, 239). A Maiden, as the Holy Virgin, with arms raised to heaven, was bound in a niche in the church. Later she was laid naked on a great table, candles were lit, a crucifix decorated her buttocks, and "they celebrated on her buttocks the most absurd mysteries of Christianity." Then a mass was read on the same place. As soon as there was a Host of God, she seized the monk Ambrose and held fast to his member, whereby the believers in the Host were derided with the maddest expressions.

Two black masses were read in the privates of two tribades, (Juliette III, 147), then the Host was placed in the dung, after which the main altar became the place of the wildest orgies.

Pope Pius VI, himself, read a black mass in St. Peter's church, the Host being placed in the anus of a young girl.
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Re: Marquis De Sade: His Life and Work, by Dr. Iwan Bloch

Postby admin » Wed Oct 09, 2013 8:23 am

Convents

So many comments have already been made on the life of nuns in the eighteenth century that we can be content with a short description. The Panthémont Convent in Paris described by de Sade (Juliette I, 1 if.) actually existed! "The great convent of the eighteenth century, after the convent at Fontevrault, is Panthémont, the royal convent where the princesses were educated and where the greatest nobles sent their daughters." Panthémont was the most expensive of all convents.

In the eighteenth century the convents were becoming more and more secularized. "The motto of the convent of the Nouvelles Catholiques, vincit mundum fides nostra, had for a long time been a dead letter. The world had stepped into the convent." Of course, the secular students lived separately from the nuns. But nevertheless intercourse between them easily sprung up and the nuns were informed as to the events of the outside world by the lay-sisters. Gossip and scandal were never far from the convent; then, too, the intercourse with the father confessors and the intimate companionship of so many young and old women did not allow the sexual aberrations of the previous centuries to cease in the convents. The brothers de Goncourt wonder how a book like Mademoiselle d'Albert's Escapades of a Jolly Girl could have ever been written at the Panthémont convent. We rather wonder how the de Goncourts in their expressed preference for the eighteenth century, for "the good old times," failed to recognize the immorality in the spiritual convents. It is true we haven't many reliable reports on the French convents. We can find, for example, only a few scandalous stories about the Panthémont convent. But what does that show? The entire spiritual corruption was open as day. From the beginning of the century till the French Revolution clear-seeing minds condemned it with grave reproaches. One reads, for example, the account of this situation, derived from reliable reports, in Buckle's History Of Civilization in England. Or the other citations, the dissolution of the Jesuit order, the historically confirmed intercourse of the confessors with the nuns. Tocqueville says: "The clergy preach of morals but they are compromising by their actions." Buckle calls special attention to this state of affairs in his authoritative work.

What the de Goncourts have further overlooked is the decisive proof: the affairs in the convents became objects of public ridicule in contemporary drama, represented in Lanjon's Nunnery, Papers Johanna, The Dragoon, The Convent Girls, etc. That is shown further by the enormous spread of tribadism in France in the eighteenth century, which we shall later investigate, and which found its favorite center in convents. It is proven finally by the famous novel of Diderot, The Nun, and the many pictures of the corruption in the convents, as well as the erotic writings of the eighteenth century.

So we can well believe de Sade when he said (Juliette, I, 1): "The prettiest and most immoral girls in Paris are those that come from the Panthémont convent" and also when he had the tribade, Zanetti, say (Juliette VI, 156); "The churches serve as bordellos," and when he described an instrument of pleasure, much used by women, as the "jewel of the 'sisters' ".

At any rate, immorality in the convents of neighboring Italy had reached a very high degree. Gorani, whose reliability is well known, reported wild orgies in the Neapolitan convents. The discovery of sexual debaucheries of the nuns at Prato (near Florence) brought to light one of the most noted spiritual scandals of the eighteenth century. Reumont related: In Prato as well as in Pistoia there were firmly entrenched in the Dominican convents disorders of the worst kind, a mixture of pietism and physical aberrations that bordered madness, and which had been no secret to the spiritual leaders for a long time. Some sort of order was established in Pistoia, but in Prato, where most of the compromised nuns were sent, there was an outbreak at Easter in 1781. The Grand Duke led an investigation by the police commissioner, the two principal culprits were locked up at Prato, then sent to Florence for trial. The Dominicans were forced to break all connections with the convent and were threatened with expulsion in case of disobedience. The entire affair made a grand sensation because of the vice and the fact that the nuns who were incriminated came of highly respected parents. A detailed description may be found in the biography of the Bishop of Prato, Scipione de' Ricci, by Potter.
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Re: Marquis De Sade: His Life and Work, by Dr. Iwan Bloch

Postby admin » Wed Oct 09, 2013 8:26 am

Woman

The eighteenth century is, at least in France, the century of women. Georg Brandes rightly believes that the de Goncourts, those refined worshippers of women, felt drawn to the history of the eighteenth century, since "the influence of women was highest at that time." Woman in the Eighteenth Century by the de Goncourts is one of the most pleasant historical works, dealing with the highlights instead of the sidelights of its subject.

There is an unequalled description of the powerful influence of women in the chapter The Mastery and Intelligence of Women of the above work. "The soul of this age, the center of this world, the point from which everything radiates, the mount from which everything descends, the pattern that forms everything else, is the Woman." From the beginning to the end of the century woman ruled: Mesdames de Prie, de Mailly, de Châteauroux, de Pompadour, du Barry, de Polignac. Woman ruled in state, politics, and in society; her influence was felt in every field of life. War and peace were decided by the caprice of a woman, and not by the welfare of France. And in the famous salons of Do Deffand, Necker, Lespinasse, Geoffrin, Grandval, women set the fashion in the discussions of questions of the day and scientific affairs. Here was formed the modern "cultured society."

The age also showed that where the influence of women became predominant, the family broke up, love took on immoral forms, and was accompanied by a contempt for the feminine sex. Love in this age was thoroughly sensual. It had become debauchery. Passion was recruited from the curious; the husband taught his wife all the tricks of love of a mistress. Philosophy aided in justifying debauchery and in apologizing for its shame. "At a supper in the house of a famous actress, at the table of a Quinault, among the obscene talk of a Duclos and Saint-Lambert, one heard women in all stages of sweet drunkenness speak of modesty: Pretty virtue! It should be fastened with pins." Convenient sophisms confused all moral conceptions of the woman. The purely physical love, which was proclaimed as the ideal by naturalism and materialism, finally appeared in woman "in all its brutality."

The sexual relations followed wholly sensual purposes, and those which tried to beautify love were confined to making more pleasant and lasting the coarsest curiosities by light hindrances and by a mixture of such embellishments, which had more appeal to the mind than to the heart. The word "gallantry" received an entirely new meaning. It signified immoral manners and conduct which only differed from the wantonness of common whores by such forms as would increase the pleasure and serve as preservation of the appearance of esteem before the public. Bernhard's famous imitation of Ovid's Art of Love preached conventional behavior in the greatest lewdness. Not much better were the "platonic loves," the "liaisons of society," the "private affairs" of that time. The Abbé Baliani says; "The women did not then love with the heart but with the head." Love was "complete freedom in the making." One realized in it the dirtiest dreams of a decadent artist, the temptations of spiritual corruption, the strangest fancies of an insatiable lechery. Love became an exciting play in which all the refinements of spiritual prostitution were essayed in order to increase the pleasure.

They prepared themselves for these pleasures by indulging in the most obscene conversations. Repeatedly de Sade mentioned in his novels how the pleasures of love were increased by conversations employing the dirtiest words and topics. This experience was taken directly from reality. Mercier tells that the great number of public whores had incited the youths to a very free speech which they used in addressing the most honorable women. The conversation with the most respected women was seldom delicate but reveled in dirty jokes, puns and scandals.

Therefrom resulted an unheard of immodesty in women. At thirty, woman lost the last particle of feeling of shame. There remained but "elegancy in vice," grace in debauchery. The woman took all the counterparts of a male libertine; her great pleasure was "to enjoy fully the shame of her calling." So also the women in de Sade's novels rejoiced and exulted that they were prostitutes, that they belonged to the whole world and could bear the honored name of "whore." Even so pious a soul and so tender a heart as Madame Roland knew no feeling of modesty and reserve. She described herself and her body in all details in her Autobiography; she told of her breasts, hips, legs, etc., so cold-bloodedly that it would avail for a criticism of a statue. Shall we wonder then that de Sade had Juliette describe her own charms with a boundless cynicism (Juliette IV, 103)?

Gated women carried their immodesty so far as to rent petites maisons, just like male roués. Indeed even women from the aristocracy went so far as to seek their pleasure in bordellos. Rétif de la Bretonne recognized Princess d’Egmont as a prostitute in a bordello. Conversely, it was no rarity for a prostitute to marry into polite society. In his Contemporaries, de Ia Bretonne says further: "I have indeed seen something far worse than this: a daughter of a hunchback, after she had passed through the hands of the madames, had a child, lived in the St. Honoré as a public prostitute, etc., etc.; she then married a rich man, had children by him and moved in polite society." Yet another example: Do Barry! Daughter of a low tax-collector, first a model in Paris, then a prostitute in the house of Madame Gourdan, of whom we shall speak more later. Here in the bordello he met Count Jean du Barry, to whose brother she was later married on her advancement to the position of the mistress of Louis XV. No wonder that the aristocracy eagerly copied such an example and inaugurated a true hunt of the beautés populaires. Thence arose a new fashion-word s'encanailler.

Thus the nearer one approaches the time of the Revolution the more moral corruption lay hold of the women of the country. It was prepared and nourished by the famous "convulsions," that remarkable, hysterical epidemic of convulsions lasting from 1727 to 1762 and attacking mainly the lower classes. Its center was the courtyard of the St. Medardus church. "From all quarters of the city the crowds turned to St. Medardus in order to participate in the trances, fits, amps, convulsions and similar ecstasies. The entire courtyard and even the neighboring streets were packed tight with girls, women, invalids of all ages, etc., who strove to outdo one another in convulsions." Women, lying stretched out, begged the spectators to beat their bellies and were not satisfied until the weight of ten or twelve men were piled high on them with full force. Passionate dances, like the famous "saut de carpe" of Abbé Bécherand, soon gave an erotic color to these "convulsions." Dulaure told what final rôle lust played in this notable form of hysteria and how these convulsions assisted in spreading sexual licentiousness. One can recognize the erotism in these convulsions in that the young maidens in their "fits" "never called to women for aid, but always to men, and to young, strong men at that." Hence they dressed very indecently, always showed an inclination for adamite nudeness, assumed lascivious postures, threw longing looks at the young men running to help them. Indeed, some cried out loudly: Da liberos, alioquin moriar! Thus vice and debauchery did not wait in abeyance; when the women in their orgasms invited the men "to use as a promenade their belly, bosom, thighs, etc., to fight with them," there was, of course, the natural result from the absolvement of morals by the convulsions.

Hysteria (Vapeurs) was prevalent with the French women throughout the century. Sauvages rightly holds that the origin of this hysteria was the crass egoism (amour excessif de soi-même), the weak, vicious life of the women of that time. The hysteria libidinosa then also brought to a head notable eccentricities.

Woman in the eighteenth century created what a later age designated as "sadism," and which we shall later define in a significantly broader meaning. The méchanceté, the evil, and the noirceurs, the malicious tricks, became fashionable in love; the sinful sentiment (scélératesse) became a necessary ingredient of sexual pleasure. "Debauchery became an art of cruelty, perfidy, treachery and tyranny. Machiavelli was the master of love." Shortly before the Revolution, after the petits maîtres of love there appeared the grands maîtres of perversity, the heartless advocates of theoretical and practical immorality. With some women debauchery even reached satanism. They tormented respectable women, whose virtue was offensive to them; they also dastardly and with evil joy had the objects of their hate and also their love removed. They embodied the lustful pleasure in evil, the "libertinage des passions méchantes."

Real people gave the stamp to this society; their existence was confirmed by numerous personalities. The de Goncourts named the Duke of Choiseul, the Marquis de Louvois, Count de Frise, etc., as such lustful devils. And a respectable Dame of Grenoble, the Marquise L.T.D.P.M. was the feminine counterpart of these heroes, perhaps the pattern for de Sade’s Juliette. The age of terror for love had broken out long before the reign of terror of the great Revolution, even before de Sade, intoxicated by the flowing blood from the guillotine, depicted in the most notable literary documents: The Terror of Love! And as in the age of terror under Chaumette’s leadership the "theosophical orgies of lust" were celebrated, as the "goddesses of reason” were honored by a Maillard, a Moncore, an Aubry, in their bestial fashion, there suddenly appeared the "tricoteuses de Robespierre," the "flagelleuses" and the horrible "furies de guillotine."

The four greatest thinkers of France in the eighteenth century: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire and Diderot all taught contempt for women. One has only to think of Voltaire's bitterly sarcastic expressions on his true friend Madame Du Chatelet. Woman, according to Rousseau, was created only for man's enjoyment. For Montesquieu man has power and reason, woman only gracefulness. Diderot saw in woman only an object of passion. "So a woman to Diderot is a courtesan, to Montesquieu a graceful child, to Rousseau an object of pleasure, to Voltaire—naught." In the Revolution Condorcet and Sieyès appeared for the family and political emancipation, but their protests were quickly stifled by the “mighty voices of the three great continuers (continuateurs) of the eighteenth century, through Mirabeau, Danton and Robespierre." The reason for this contempt is clear. Marriage, as Westermarck has shown in his classical work, is that institution to which humanity owes its moral perfecting; it is the absolute moral institution. In marriage the woman is of equal rank with the man, since she completes him. Outside of the marriage the woman cannot compensate him and consequently appears inferior.

We close with an almost unbelievable example of the contempt of women. The reference will be found in Buckle's History of Civilization in England, Pact I, Chapter XII: "In the middle of the eighteenth century, there was an actress on the French stage by the name of Chantilly. She, though beloved by Maurice de Saxe, preferred a more honorable attachment, and married Favert, the well-known writer of songs and of comic operas. Maurice, amazed at her boldness, applied for aid to the French crown. That he should have made such an application is sufficiently strange; but the result of it is hardly to be paralleled except in some eastern despotism. The government of France, on hearing the circumstance, had the inconceivable baseness to issue an order directing Favert to abandon his wife, and entrust her to the charge of Maurice, to whose embraces she was compelled to submit (Grimm, Corresp. Lit., Vol. viii, pp. 231-233)."
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