A Subdigression on Religion in San Sebastian (& More on Divorce, et al.)
The San Sebastian Chronicles, Part XXV
Before I get back to the divorces, why so many Jesuits, you may wonder? A lost letter. You see, San Sebastian’s sovereign in 1773, Gran Markgraf Stefan Wilhelm Antonini Augusto von Cotta-Gottorp et Bonarossi, did not receive from Pope Clement XIV the brief Dominus ac Redemptor Noster, which abolished the Society of Jesus (and which was issued reluctantly only to avoid the secession from the church of the numerous large, Catholic nations that had secularly suppressed the Jesuits beginning in 1759).
Continued from…
How could such an important letter be lost, you might ask? Well, according to legend, the loss involved a Reichspost bergamaschi utterly lost on San Sebastian’s mountain roads during his first day on the job, an unlocked satchel, and a notorious and somewhat legendary gang of Sebastiana mountain highway-women, known as Die Thamnatalithani. [Incidentally, this is a term now contracted into a Sebastiano slur sometimes used to by chauvinist men to disparage a lautnitza, e.g., ‘I was swindled at the confectioner’s this morning. Small wonder, though: it is owned by a scheming tham’talitha.’]. As it was, this band of belle brigands were known to use their powers of seduction and guile to rob their victims by posing as randy roadside damsels in distress, and it is said that this misguided Postbotini became another of their victims. The formerly full flagon of wine found on him when he was discovered by a shepherd the next day, missing his horse and all his mail, obviously did little to aid in any resistance he might have offered. But it is doubtful he offered much for mountain couriers, then and now, are usually young bachelors, and the sight of a wagon load of fair maidens sweating and straining in gossamer gowns under the bright sun to pull an oxcart out of the mud was usually too much to resist for a man so inclined, especially on concealed bends in little-traveled roads where the lithe thieves would lay their supple traps. And so many a mail man succumbed to the sybaritic syndicate despite the many warnings concerning the Die Thamnatalithani put out by the Reichspost and the local bailiffs and constabularies. To make matters worse for the high sheriffs, quarter-session judges, postmasters, and gendarmeria of San Sebastian and its alpine neighbors, legend has it too that the buxom bandits often made good on their intriguing and licentious lures before robbing their victims, who, it should be said again, were usually virile young men who had not yet tasted of the female fruits that were for most of them, then and only barely less so now, closely guarded inside high-fenced orchard of marriage. As a result, Die Thamnatalithani roamed the roads for decades without a single victim willing to testify as to what had happened to him. In fact most of them, even after being dismissed from their employment, would walk out of the sheriff’s court with a broad smile on their faces. It is thought that this is why to this day, less pious Sebastiano men and boys will talk happily and furtively of getting “robbed” on their wedding night, or on a trip to Venice or Vienna to celebrate their graduation.
And speaking of wedding nights, I shall endeavor to return to the subject of divorce, which is to return to the subject of Jesuits, which is to return to the subject of the loss of a papal brief abolishing them, which letter never reached San Sebastian’s head of state. In that vein, it is lost to history why such an important letter — from the Pope himself no less — was placed into the hands of such an inexperienced and concupiscent courier and not a celibate papal emissary or a eunuch night rider (such castes of couriers being the preferred countermeasures to Die Thamnatalithani, but the latter being the only one that worked). Blame for that misjudgment cannot be laid at the feet of Thurn und Taxis Post, per se, which was not formed until 1806, but instead must rest within the formal responsibility of the Holy Roman Imperial Reichspost (“H.R.I.R.”), an institution that was T&TP’s predecessor-in-duty but otherwise mostly different to it. I must at most say mostly because the H.R.I.R. was hereditarily headed by the chieftain of the Briefadel House of Thurn und Taxis, the same noble house that even today is the namesake of, ostensibly operates, and outright owns (albeit by the intermediary of modern, liability-limited corporate shareholding) T&TP, Thurn und Taxis Post, the relict postal service of (and only) San Sebastian. Accordingly, it is not entirely unreasonable for Sebastianos today to blame (or thank) the mailman for the Jesuits of San Sebastian, or for their recent divorce, ‘Thank the mailman,’ or, Gratzia d’posto, being a common retort when one half of an unhappy couple finally relents and informs the other of an intention to seek tur capra thruna. Then you might hear the same thing when leaving a confession with a particularly light penance.
Conversely, though, the loss of a papal letter and the generally abated, anarchic, and archaic arrangement of San Sebastian’s current postal service has left T&TP largely an object of scorn, ridicule, or pity among Sebastianos. As such it is not uncommon for an acerbic Sebastiano upon finally receiving a letter expected weeks before to say to the T&TP Postbotini, “Don’t worry, I’m just glad it wasn’t a papal bull,” or for a more good-humored one in the same circumstances to wink and say, “I was beginning to worry you’d been robbed!”
However and why-ever Bonarossi’s copy of Pope Clement XIV’s abolition of the Jesuits was lost, it was, and so the Jesuits were never abolished in San Sebastian, just as was the case in Poland, Prussia, Russia, Silesia, and other countries where the sovereign had left the church but many of the people had remained. What about the bishop, you might ask? Oughtn’t he have gotten word of the fact that there were still banned Jesuits roaming in his diocese? Well, yes. Probably. But San Sebastian was then even smaller than it is today (some more territory having been gained in the interim by small wars, nobles’ marriages, and counts’ and margraves’ Baden-Baden betting bouts) a small and remote corner of the Bishopric of Bolzano, and an even more small and remoter corner of the Archdiocese of Trent. The bishop then too was old, lived mostly on Capri, and happened to be Bonarossi’s uncle. And in any case it would not have been out of the question for no one in the ecclesiastical hierarchy to think to check up on San Sebastian and make sure they’d abolished the Society of Jesus and expelled or otherwise dealt with its priests and novitiates. It may have struck locals as odd. And some neighboring priests and bishops might have spoken up or asked questions. But the mail was unreliable(!) and moved slowly and the roads were closed all winter, and how much did anyone really care? In any event, nine years later, Pope Pius VI had allows the S.J.s to keep existing in Poland and Russia (he might have included San Sebastian in that edict had he been aware of the circumstances) and by 1814, Pius VII had put the Jesuits back in business by the bull of Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum, which was timely delivered by special papal emissary, much to the curiosity of Bonarossi, then quite old, who’d never known the Jesuits had been abolished to begin with as he’d never gotten notice and in any case had spent most the intervening forty years looking for the legendary “Last Auroch” in Ruthenia and hunting wisents in Poland, where they were everywhere (Jesuits, that is; the aurochs were long extinct and the wisents nearly so).
So even after the order was restored country by country beginning in the early 1800s, many of the Soldiers of Christ stayed on in San Sebastian, their longtime and lone refuge in central Europe, having thereby become by far the dominant order of priests in the country both politically and arithmetically. Indeed, their station only became more prominent when the Jesuits were expelled from neighboring Switzerland after the Sonderbund War in 1847.
And that is why the Company is so entrenched in San Sebastian to this day.
And what did all of these followers of Ignatius, especially the mass of later-arrived Swiss ones, find but, to their scandal, streets teeming with surreptitiously divorced Sebastianos (and a handful of self-righteous prudes who informed on them)! Faced with widely disobedient congregants and an inflexible church teaching, the Spiritually Exercised first sought to preach and teach against the dissolution of the holy union of matrimony for any and all reasons (save the numerous and wide-ranging reasons that could impede the union from having been lawfully and properly contracted to begin with, rendering it void ab initio and justifying an annulment). But all that got them was emptier pews. So God’s Soldiery took a new tack and approached the secular government in Lucho to propose a change in the law to provide for a kind of divorce a mensa et thoro that would, if not condone, at least contend with tur capra thruna, by then known popularly as a “kitchen table” divorce. With the support of San Sebastian’s then feudal lord-regent (the grandson of a step-son of a second cousin of Bonarossi), Count Hermann Giorgio Vittorio Albrecht Albano Grisschetchen-Hecht von Apfelnheim (who, apropos of something, was married to a Lutheran countess!) the law was enacted.
This law provided that by a proceeding in the civil courts, instituted by either the husband or wife, and upon sufficient grounds, including adultery, cruelty, lack of support, desertion, abandonment, religious disagreement, public disparagement, and, crucially, “open, obvious, widely accepted, demonstrable, incontrovertible, and uncompromisable incompatibility,” a married couple could, in the eyes of the law — though not the church — be split asunder.
If the last of the above-mentioned grounds were proven, then the moving party had to leave behind all marital property to the other spouse and provide half all future income to the former spouse, unless and until the latter remarried. If any of the other grounds were proven, the the guilty party had to deed over all the marital property to the other, along with all future income. If both parties were found guilty the property was split evenly with no claims by either party on future income of the other.
After such a decree, the spouses were freed from one another and any duty of support, comfort, cohabitation, or affection, and could licitly set up separate residence and carry on their own affairs. The wife in particular then being free to own property and transact business as if she were unmarried. Both parties were also then free to civilly remarry. In the eyes of the church they remained married though they might live apart. Children were provided for as the court might decree, taking into account the children’s wishes if they were of age. This arrangement was not endorsed but was also not opposed by the local bishop, a Jesuit, and has remained the law of the land ever since, placing San Sebastian in quite a different position to its orthodox Italian neighbor.
As a consequence of this concordat, known as The Civil Marriage, Reparation, and Separation Resolution of 1868, San Sebastian was, in relative terms at least, teeming with women of their own residences, property, income, and other means. A position, most agreed, most befitting of the strong and independent reputation of Sebastianas since the times of their spear-wielding Etruscan foremothers.
Of course, one heard condemnations from time to time — from priests and bishops imperious and well-meaning, scolding busybodies, and chauvinist Swiss, Italian, and Austrian neighbors (not as much from the Liechtensteiners, who I’ve found to hold a laissez faire attitude on affairs and affaires of the soul and the heart) — of the fickle wedded couples, wandering spouses, independent women, and wild sexual proclivities brought about by San Sebastian’s 1868 quasi-divorce law. I can say for certain the wild sexual proclivities are not rampant in San Sebastian, at least among those I consort with. As for the law’s effect on the stability and sanctity of Sebastiano marriages generally, I cannot say. But there do appear to appear to be more Sebastianos living unconventionally in their later years and in happier states than those of similar ages in other places I have visited, or, at least, there are fewer older Sebastiano couples living in misery or silence or abuse than you might encounter elsewhere.
Are there more women left penniless by such kitchen table divorces by husbands who have no property to leave behind and a willingness to disappear thereafter? Perhaps. But here too, the Jesuits have stepped in to create communities for those in such situations, which include not a small number of men whose divorces were instituted by their younger, better looking wives after their fortunes took a turn for the worse. For that, thank the mailman. Still, you could point to some bad effects.
But those can only be viewed relative to the alternative. In that regard, I do find it curious that I have heard of no evidence, academic or anecdotal, concerning the positive effect of Italy’s more draconian marriage laws on the marital fidelity of its inhabitants, many of whom, I have seen first hand, take it as a given that a husband shall have a new mistress each year, and, for good measure, that a wife shall have a certain man who shall pay visits to the house during the day some days a week while the husband is at work. The same Italy where spousal stabbings, drownings, poisonings, and abandonings seem to occur with shocking regularity. One would think such things would be unheard of where marriage is so comparatively sacrosanct and divorce, even a mensa et thoro, so strictly forbidden.
[As for me, I think every married couple should get divorced on their fortieth anniversary, and then two years later decide if they want to remarry. — ed.]
Of course, you should take all this with a grain of salt, for I am neither a husband, a historian, nor a lawyer, and learned most of this over a pile of tobacco and a bottle of Michelberg with Father Koblenza after a party thrown by my mother upon my graduation from Universitädte de San Tommaso d’Aquino in Lucho. Before my celebratory trip to Venice. Where I was robbed.
Continued…
