Pope Pius XII in his allocutions to the Roman Patriciate and Nobility shares a well-known fact. "Society progresses and raises itself up when the virtues of one class are spread to the others; it declines, on the other hand, if the vices and abuses of one are carried over to the others. Because of the weakness of human nature, more often it is the latter that are spread..." (1)
The refulgent Christian society, which we call Christendom, enjoyed stability not because there was no evil, but because there was an adamantine bulwark against it— the virtuous example of the Nobility and their imitation by the lower classes. But when they grow lax and society crumbles, what is to be done to restore its former splendor and stability?
Aberrations in Custom that Weakened the Bulwark Against Vice in Society— the Nobility
As the Nobility waned in its zeal and grew soft evils began to infiltrate society. The noble class losing its vigilance allowed aberrations in its customs— the devotion to the Church become replaced with devotion to power and luxury; the austerities of a temperate and refined etiquette were mutilated; and so on. These abuses naturally infected the lower classes.
The sickness that afflicts a strong man will do greater violence to a weaker man. The lower and weaker class, such as the bourgeois, which was the affluent merchant class followed the Nobility's craving for power and money over service to the Church and Christendom. During the Renaissance, many families of this class started banks wherein the people's money could be stored at an attractive interest rate the capital of which they used on colossal speculations, which amassed great wealth often loaned out to nobility making them dependent on the bourgeois. Indeed, an inversion.
Many popes, emperors, kings, and princes sought the friendship of these bourgeois families in order to win loans to satisfy their cravings. (2) The Fugers family's offspring, of the bourgeois class, for instance, were made princes and counts solely because of their great wealth by Nobility— titles reserved for those who were renowned for their service to the Church and Christian Civilization. Thus we see the general spread of devotion to power and money which supplanted devotion to the Church and Christendom.
The austerities of a temperate and refined etiquette were also mutilated. If we compare St. Dominic, who came from a noble family, to Cardinal Fleury we see a decline in bearing, an integral part of etiquette.
In Dr. Plino Corrêa de Oliviera's article, "The Decline of Gravitas in the Clergy," he comments on these aberrations in bearing. In St. Dominic, as portrayed by Blessed Fra Angelico, we see a "gravity [that] is accentuated and completed by the great serenity of the ensemble. His intellectual effort is serious, calm and detached, without any pretense of assuming imaginary roles. He is who he is, alone before the eyes of God and desiring to find the truth." (3)
A couple of centuries later we arrive at Cardinal Fleury, the tutor of King Louis XV during the 17th century, who is, indeed, a distinguished man but only that— what he lacks is the gravitas characteristic of St. Dominic and men and women during his century. "By his time personages," Dr. Plinio comments, "were no longer grave, but distinguished. They did not mind dealing with a thousand silly matters, so long as those things were presented in an agreeable and elegant way; this is what the French call badinage: a light, agile and courteous way to banter about trifles." (4)
Considering that appearance is a reflection of the soul, when we compare these two nobles we see the former elucidating a purity of custom and the latter an aberration. St. Dominic's soul was imbued with the God of gravitas and thus manifested it in his bearing. Cardinal Fleury's was imbued with a thousand pleasantries and trifles and thus manifested it.
We see a man of the wood of the cross and one of the syrups of the world. These customs, devotion to the Church by placing at her service temporal power and wealth, and the etiquette of bearing, are but a few of the customs mutilated. Nonetheless, they are evidence of decline.
What is to Be Done When the Upper Classes Grow Lax?
If we wish to have a course of action to arrive at a virtuous society, we must restore the former customs but not only that we must restore tradition of which customs are only an element.
Tradition, Msgr. Henri Delassus, a Counter-Revolutionary of the 19th and 20th centuries, states in the "true sense of the word... is the legacy of the ideas of the ancestors and their sentiments, as well as their organic practices and customs." (5)
When the upper classes grow lax it can be simply said that they abandoned tradition as we have defined. And the lower classes, as noted by Pius XII, unfortunately, because of human weakness follow. St. Francis de Sales, I was once told, said that those who follow a bad example commit spiritual suicide, and those who set it commit spiritual murder.
When the upper classes commit spiritual murder and the lower suicide, such as the Nobility and bourgeois, for instance, Catholics belonging to either must not follow.
If they shall say: Come with us, let us lie in wait for blood, let us hide snares for the innocent without cause: Let us swallow him up alive like hell, and whole as one that goeth down into the pit. We shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our houses with spoils. Cast in thy lot with us, let us all have one purse. My son, walk not thou with them, restrain thy foot from their paths. ~ The Wise Man (6)
Yet it is not merely enough to reject a bad example but to continue setting a good one and refining it. That is to say to continue living out the "legacy of ideas of the ancestors and their sentiments, as well as their organic practices and customs," or in a word, tradition.
It is beyond the scope of this article to lay out all the practicalities of restoring the elements contained in tradition. My aim rather was to demonstrate that when the upper classes grow lax and the lower alongside them, especially in the area of customs, what is to be done is to restore tradition in the sense that it has been defined by Msgr. Henri Delassus and holdfast.
Let us then seek to restore reasonably the tradition that has been lost— to adopt and live out the noble ideas and sentiments of old which are ever-new, and adapt with indefatigable fidelity, patience, and labor the organic practices and customs of the old aristocracy, and a new civilization with the fragrance of the Immaculate Heart will bloom.
Sources:
(1) Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII by Plinio Corrêa de Oliviera, Pg. 46.
(2) The Renaissance by Frantz Frunck-Brentano
(3) The Decline of Gravitas in the Clergy I by Dr. Plinio Corrêa de Oliviera
(4) The Decline of Gravitas in the Clergy II by Dr. Plinio Corrêa de Oliviera
(5) Restoring the Family by Dr. Marian T. Horvat
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