Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/658

Rh 630 M O L M L Le Monde oit, Von s enmiie, by M. Pailleron. On the 17th February Madeleine Bejard died, and was buried at St Paul. She did not go long before her old friend or lover, Moliere. His Manage force, founded, perhaps, on a famous anecdote of De Gramont, was played on 8th July. On 7th August La Grange notes that Moliere was indisposed, and there was no comedy. Moliere s son died on the llth October. On 22d November the preparations for the Malade Imaginaire were begun. On 10th Feb ruary 1673 the piece was acted for the first time. What occurred on 17th February we translate from the Registre of La Grange : &quot;This same day, about ten o clock at niglit, after the comedy, Monsieur de Moliere died in his house, Rue de Richelieu. He had played the part of the said Malade, suffering much from cold and inflammation, which caused a violent cough. In the violence of the cough he burst a vessel in his body, and did not live more than half an hour or three-quarters after the bursting of the vessel. His body is buried at St Joseph s, parish of St Eustache. There is a gravestone raised about a foot above the ground. &quot; Moliere s funeral is thus described in a letter, said to be by an eye-witness, discovered by M. Benjamin Fillon : &quot;Tuesday, 21st February, about nine in the evening, was buried Jean Baptiste Poquelin Moliere, tapissicr valet du chambre, and a famous actor. There was no procession, except three ecclesiastics ; four priests bore the body in a wooden bier covered with a pall, six children in blue carried candles in silver holders, and there were lackeys with burning torches of wax. The body. . . was taken to St Joseph s churchyard, and buried at the foot of the cross. There was a great crowd, and some twelve hundred livres were distributed among the poor. The archbishop had given orders that Moliere should be interred without any ceremony, and had even forbidden the clergy of the diocese to do any service for him. Nevertheless a number of masses were commanded to be said for the deceased.&quot; When an attempt was made to exhume the body of Moliere in 1792, the wrong tomb appears to have been opened. Unknown is the grave of Moliere. Moliere, according to Mile. Poisson, who had seen him in her extreme youth, was &quot; neither too stout nor too thin, tall rather than short ; he had a noble carriage, a good leg, walked slowly, and had a very serious expression. His nose was thick, his mouth large with thick lips, his com plexion brown, his eyebrows black and strongly marked, and it was his way of moving these that gave him his comic expression on the stage.&quot; &quot; His eyes seemed to search the deeps of men s hearts,&quot; says the author of Zelinde. The inventories printed by M. Soulie prove that Moliere was fond of rich dress, splendid furniture, and old books. The charm of his conversation is attested by the names of his friends, who were all the wits of the age, and the greater their genius the greater their love of Moliere. As an actor, friends and enemies agreed in recognizing him as most successful in comedy. His ideas of tragic declamation were in advance of his time, for he set his face against the prevalent habit of ranting. His private character was remarkable for gentleness, probity, generosity, and delicacy, qualities attested not only by anecdotes but by the evidence of documents. He is probably (as Menander is lost) the greatest of all comic writers within the limits of social and refined as distinguished from romantic comedy, like that of Shakespeare, and of political comedy, like that of Aristo phanes. He has the humour which is but a sense of the true value of life, and now takes the form of the most vivacious wit and the keenest observation, now of melan choly, and pity, and wonder at the fortunes of mortal men. In the literature of France his is the greatest name, and in the literature of the modern drama the greatest after that of Shakespeare. Besides his contemplative genius he possessed an unerring knowledge of the theatre, the knowledge of a great actor and a great manager, and hence his plays can never cease to hold the stage, and to charm, if possible, even more in the performance than in the reading. There is no biography of Moliere on a level with the latest re searches into his life. The best is probably that of M. Taschereau, prefixed to an edition of his works (LEuvres Completes, Paris, 1863). To this may be added Jules Loiseleur s Lcs Points Obscurs de la Vie de Moliere, Paris, 1877. We have seen that M. Loiseleur is not always accurate, but he is laborious. For other books it is enough to recommend the excellent Bibliographic Moliercsque of M. Paul Lacroix (1875), which is an all but faultless guide. The best edition of Moliere s works for the purposes of the student is that published in Lcs Grands ficrivains dc la France (Hachette, Paris, 1874-1882). The edition is still incomplete. It contains reprints of many contemporary tracts, and, with the Registre of La Grange, and the Collection Moliercsque of M. Lacroix, is the chief source of the facts stated in this notice, in cases where the rarity of docu ments has prevented the writer from studying them in the original texts. Another valuable authority is the Recherchcs sur Moliere et sur sa Famille of Ed. Soulie (1863). Lotheisen s Moliere, sein Lebcn und seine Werke (Frankfurt, 1880), is a respectable Ger man compilation. LeMolieriste (Tresse, Paris, edited by M. Georges Monval) is a monthly serial, containing notes on Moliere and his plays, by a number of contributors. The essays, biographies, plays, and poems on Moliere are extremely numerous. The best guide to these is the indispensable Bibliographie of M. Lacroix. The English biographies are few and as a rule absolutely untrustworthy. (A. L. ) MOLINA, Luis (1535-1600), a Spanish Jesuit, whom Pascal s Lettres d un Provincial have rendered immortal, was born at Cuenca in 1535. Having at the age of eighteen become a member of the Company of Jesus, he studied theology at Coimbra, and afterwards became professor in the university of Evora, Portugal. From this post he was called, at the end of twenty years, to the chair of moral theology in Madrid, where he died on 12th October 1600. Besides other works he wrote Liberi arbitrii cum gratis donis, divina prsescientia, providentia, prsidestinatione et reprobations, concordia (4to, Lisbon, 1588); a com mentary on the first part of the Summa of Thomas Aquinas (2 vols., fol., Cuenca, 1593); and a treatise De Justitia et Jure (6 vols., 1593-1609). It is to the first of these that his fame is principally due. It was an attempt to reconcile, in words at least, the Augustinian doctrines of predestina tion and grace with the Semipelagianism which, as shown by the recent condemnation of BAJUS (q.v.), had become prevalent in the Roman Catholic Church. Assuming that man is free to perform or not to perform any act whatever, Molina maintains that this circumstance renders the grace of God neither unnecessary nor impossible : not impossible, for God never fails to bestow grace upon those who ask it with sincerity ; and not unnecessary, for grace, although not an efficient, is still a sufficient cause of salvation. Nor, in Molina s view, does his doctrine of free-will exclude predestination. The omniscient God, by means of His &quot; scientia media &quot; (the phrase is Molina s invention, though the idea is also to be found in his older contemporary Fonseca), or power of knowing future contingent events, foresees how we shall employ our own free-will and treat His proffered grace, and upon this foreknowledge He can found His predestinating decrees. These doctrines, although in harmony with the prevailing feeling of the lloman Catholic Church of the period, and further recommended by their marked opposition to the teachings of Luther and Calvin, excited violent controversy in some quarters, especially on the part of the Dominicans, and at last rendered it necessary for the pope (Clement VIII.) to interfere. At first (1594) he simply enjoined silence on both parties so far as Spain was concerned ; but ultimately, in 1598, he appointed the &quot;Congregatio de Auxiliis Gratis&quot; for the settlement of the dispute, which became more and more a party one. After holding very numerous sessions, the &quot;congregation&quot; was able to decide nothing, and in 1607 its meetings were suspended by Paul V., who announced his intention of himself pronouncing judgment in due time. He contented himself, however, in 1611,