Descartes: A Biography

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 Descartes: A Biography

liturgical ceremonies, they were encouraged to revert to simple prayers

in the vernacular that they had learned in childhood.Francis de Sales

wrote one of the standard manuals of religious devotion in,An Intro-

duction to the Devout Life. During the following decades, devotion to the

Eucharist was fostered by the church, attendance at Mass was required,

and the requirements of the Council of Trent for the use of the sacra-

ments were widely implemented. The Jesuits were foremost in the design

and dissemination of devotional practices. They were not alone, however.

The Franciscans, Capuchins, Oratorians, Carmelites, and many others all

joined in a concerted effort to turn France into a homogeneously Catholic

kingdom. In this context, belief is spiritual realities was as uncontentious

as belief in natural phenomena. It was accepted without question that

there were both good and evil spiritual forces at work in the world, and

that the real issue was not to establish their existence or otherwise but to

join the battle between good and evil on the side of God and his angelic

legions.

One option available to Descartes, therefore, was to establish a clear

distinction between spiritual realities of any kind and the familiar phe-

nomena of the natural world, and to focus his quest for understanding

exclusively on the latter. This could best be done by adopting an official

agnosticism with respect to spirits. Another way of doing the same thing

was to consign the discussion of spiritual realities to theology and to avoid

any entanglement with the seductive subtleties of its practitioners. It was

not easy to do that in France. One of the reasons why Descartes may have

looked north, then, was to find the intellectual freedom to pursue the

inquiries about the natural world that most interested him. However, it

was impossible even in the United Provinces to escape the intrusive atten-

tion of theologians who were constantly on hand to test the orthodoxy of

all opinions. Descartes was therefore to find, during the subsequent two

decades, that he was frequently under pressure from both Catholic and

Calvinist theologians, and that his geographical isolation was a completely

inadequate protection against their demands for conformity. It remains to

be seen whether his religious faith was as central to his life as he claimed,

or whether he retained his allegiance to the church of his nurse for other

reasons.