Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/773

 IMPOTENCE

703

IMPROPERIA

the Divinely-crowned descendant of King David and ruler of the world (c. 1792), to the miracle-working claims of Anna Lee (d. 1784), the foundress of the American Shakers, we will pause only to say a word of Joseph Smith (1S0.5-1S4-1), the first apostle of Mor- monism. It cannot be doubted that this man, who after a ilissolute youth professed to have visions of a golden book, consisting of metal plates inscribed with strange characters, which he dug for and found, was a deliberate impostor. Smith pretended to decipher and translate these mystic writings, after which the " Book of Mormon " was taken liack to heaven by an angel. The translation was printed, but a flood of revelations was still vouchsafed to the seer. Follow- ers, who adopted the name of " The Latter Day Saints", gathered round him, and after some rather brutal treatment in Missouri provoked by their po- lygamy and other doctrines, the sect finally settled in Nauvoo, IlUnois. In this State Joseph Smith and Hyrum his brother were lynched on 27 June, 1S44, arnid circumstances of great barbarity. A revulsion of feeling followed, and Brigham Young, Smith's suc- cessor, achieved a corresponding success when he transferred the head-quarters of the sect to Utah (see Lynn, "Story of the Mormons"; and Nelson, "Scien- tific aspects of Mormonism"). An English analogue of Mormonism was afforded by the Agapemonists from 1S48 onward, who under their founder, H. S. Prince, combined a fantastic belief in a reincarnation of the Deity in Prince and his successors with the grossest laxity of morals. But leaving out of account the class of criminal impersonations for motives of gain (like that of .\rthur Orton in the celebrated Tichborne case, where the pretender, we may note, seriously damaged his case by his ignorance of the life and Catholic practice of the Jesuit College of Stonyhurst in which Roger Tichborne was brought up), anti-Catho- lic prejudice is still responsible for a large proportion of modern impostures. Famous among these are the supposed revelations of Maria Monk, who professed to have been a nun for some years in the convent of the Hotel-Dieu, at Montreal, and who published in 1835 a wild and often self-contradictory story of the murders and immoralities supposed to be committed there by priests and nuns. Though this narrative was fully refuted from the very first by unimpeachable Protes- tant testimony, which proved that during the period of Maria Monk's alleged residence in the convent she was leading the life of a prostitute in the city, and though tliis disproof has been in a hundred ways con- firmed by later evidence, the " Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk" is a book still sold and circulated by various Protestant societies. Maria Monk died (1849) in prison, where she had been confined as a common pickpocket (see "The True History of Maria Monk", Catholic Truth Soc. pamphlet, Lond., 1895).

Not less famous is the case of Dr. Achilli, an ex- Dominican and anti-popery lecturer, whose long career of deljauchery, first as a Catholic and then as a pre- tended convert to Protestantism, Dr. (afterwards Cardinal) Newman exposed in 1852. In the libel action which Achilli was forced to bring, a verdict was given against Newman on certain counts, but almost the whole Protestant press of the country described the trial as a gross miscarriage of justice. Achilli's credit was in consequence completely destroyed. In the case of many of these purveyors of "awful revela- tions" on both sides of the Atlantic, the previous record of the lecturer is of the most scandalous kind. The men calling themselves "ex -monk Widdows" and " James Ruthven ", as well as the " escaped nun ", Edith O'Gorman, may also be specially mentioned in this connexion. Hardly more creditable is the history of Pastor Chiniquy (1S09-1S99), who for many years denounced in highly prurient books and pamphlets, notably that called " The Priest, the Woman and the Confessional", the alleged abuses of the Catholic

Church. It is admitted that he had been twice sus- pended by two different bishops before he seceded from the Church, and there is no room to doubt that these suspensions were motived by grave moral lapses of which the bishops in question had full and convincing information, though, as often happens in such cases, the girls he had seduced could not be persuaded to face the exposm-e involved by substantiating the charge publicly upon oath. Certain it is that, while in his early books after leaving the Church he makes no charge against the moral character of the Catholic clergy but rather on the contrary attributes his change of faith to doctrinal considerations, in his later works, notably his "Fifty years in the Church of Rome" (1885)^ he represents himself as forced to relinquish Catholicism by the appalling scandals he had wit- nessed (see S. F. Smith's " Pastor Chiniquy", Catholic Truth Soc. pamphlet, Lond., 1908). But by that time he knew what the Protestant public demanded, wliile all who could effectively confute his statements were dead.

Of a different type is the most notorious imposture of modern times," that of " L('-o Taxil " and " Diana Vaughan". L<"0 Taxil, whose true name was G. Jogand-Pages, had long been known as one of the most blasphemous and obscene of the anti-clerical wi-iters in France. He had been repeatedly sentenced to fines and imprisonment for the filthy and libellous works he published. For example, on account of his atrocious book " Les Amours de Pie IX " he was sentenced to pay 60,000 francs at the suit of the pope's nephew. He' had also founded the "Anti-Clerical", a journal which fanatically attacked all revelation and religion. In 1885 it was announced that Leo Taxil had been converted, and he soon proceeded to publish a series of pretended exposures of the practices of Freema- sonry, and particularly of the " Satanisme " or Devil- worship with which he declared it was intimately bound up. Amongst other attractions he introduced a certain "Diana Vaughan", the heroine of " Pallad- ism ", who was destined to be the spouse of the demon Asmodeus, but clung to virtue, and was constantly visited by angels and devils. Various other WTiters, Bataille, Margiotta, Hacks, etc., exploited the same ideas and became in a measure Taxil's confederates. In 1896-1897 the imposture was finally shown up and Taxil cvnically admitted that Diana Vaughan was only the name of his tvpist. [See Portalie, " La Fin d'une mystification", Paris, 1897, and H. Gruber (H. Gerber), " Leo Taxils Palladismus Roman", and other works, 1897-8.] Of Dr. Dowie, who professed to repre- sent a second coming on earth of the prophet Elias, and of liis followers the "Zionists", of the Christian Scientists, of the late Madame Blavatsky and A. P. Sinnett, the prophets of Esoteric Buddhism, of Mrs. Annie Besant and the believers in reincarnation, there is no need to say more here than that the existence of such cults proves conclusively that the age of credulity is not yet over.

No book or article of note seems to have been specially de- voted to the general subject here treated. A number of refer- ences have been given in the course of the article, and it will be sufficient to add here that most of the statements made can be verified in any good biographical dictionary, notably in the Dictionary of National Biography, so far as concerns the English impostors mentioned.

Herbert Thurston.

Impotence. See Divorce; Impediments, Canoni- cal; M.^HRIAGB.

Improperia are the reproaches which in the liturgy of the Office of Good Friday the Saviour is made to utter against the Jews, who, in requital for all the Divine favours and particularly for the delivery from the bondage of Egypt and safe conduct into the Prom- ised Land, inflicted on Him the ignominies of the Passion and a cruel death. It is during the Adoration of the Cross that these touching remonstrances are rendered by the choir. In all they consist of three