Byron, Catholicism, and Don Juan XVII

IT seems to me that Catholicism appealed to Byron for three reasons. First, it satisfied his lifelong love of tradition. He calls Catholicism "the best religion" because "it is assuredly the oldest of the various branches of Christianity" (BLJ 8:98) and because it is "the most ancient of worships" (Guiccioli I:202). As was the case for Edmund Burke, ideas and modes were to Byron proven and affirmed by their endurance through time, by their having imbued themselves long enough and deeply enough in a society to become genuine traditions. The longer we find a practice is followed, the more reason there would be to assume there is virtue in it. The longer an idea endures, the more reason there will be to believe this idea to be true. And while Byron detested sycophants such as "turncoat Southey" (DJ XI.56), who shift and re-shift their views according to fashion, Byron adored men "of principle" such as Burke (BLJ 6:48), who stick with their convictions through tough times. In Don Juan, Byron's ideal Catholic, Aurora Raby, is a model of courageous resilience.

The second reason for Catholicism's appeal to Byron is the fact that its doctrines bring manifest functional boons to its practitioners. Unlike mere "Cant religious" and "Cant moral" which are "without the smallest influence upon human actions" (Prose 128), and unlike "drowsy frowzy" mystic speculation which diffuses itself in useless abstraction rather than in "The public mind" (DJ III.94-95), Catholicism's teachings actually do something real in the real human world. As Byron writes (to Thomas Moore, in March 1822): Catholicism

is by far the most elegant worship, hardly excepting the Greek mythology. What with incense, pictures, statues, altars, shrines, relics, and the real presence, confession, absolution,-there is something sensible to grasp at. Besides, it leaves no possibility of doubt; for those who swallow their Deity, really and truly, in transubstantiation, can hardly find any thing else otherwise than easy of digestion. (BLJ 9:123)

Sensing that he sounds sarcastic here, Byron quickly adds:

I am afraid that this sounds flippant, but I don't mean it to be so; only my turn of mind is so given to taking things in the absurd point of view, that it breaks out in spite of me every now and then. Still, I do assure you that I am a very good Christian. Whether you will believe me in this, I do not know. (BIJ 9:123)

The tone of this letter is quiet and sincere. There is a reverence not merely for beautiful altars and shrines but for the creeds which have inspired the creation of these objects and for the practices which employ them. Material elements are an appeal, but they are to Byron a means; they are what helps the religion work. And the fact that it works is, of course, the whole point. Altars, shrines, and transubstantiation may be "elegant"; but, more importantly, they give us "something sensible to grasp at" in real life, and they leave us with "no possibility of doubt." Guiccioli confirms that, because Byron was never swayed merely by his imagination and could not help exercising his reason, it was not "the poetry" or the "pomps and gorgeous ceremonies" of Catholicism that appealed to him, but, rather, the religion's genuine effectiveness (I.202). Thus, says Byron, "That Purgatory of theirs is a comfortable doctrine," much more so than the transmigration of souls taught by Shelley's "wiseacre philosophers" (Medwin 80). Again, it is the functionality of the doctrine that makes it praiseworthy. Like the relics in the Catholic churches, concepts such as Purgatory are strong not because they are poetic or pretty, not because they are efficient or scientific, not because they hold together abstractly in themselves, but-rather-because they have worked and continue to work for real people, because they consistently provide the comfort and the inspiration that a religion is supposed to provide.