QUICKSILVER, a common name for mercury (q.v.). QUIETISM, a complicated religious movement that swept through France, Italy and Spain during the I7th century. Its chief apostles were Miguel de Molinos, a Spaniard resident in Rome; Fenelon, the famous French divine, and his country woman, Madame Jeanne Marie Guyon. Quietism was essentially a reaction against the bureaucratic ecclesiasticism always latent within the church of Rome, though it had come more especially to the front during the struggles of the counter-Reformation car ried through by the Jesuits. Like their contemporaries, the French Jansenists, and the Quakers and Anabaptists of northern Europe, the Quietists fell back on a doctrine of immediate in spiration of the individual conscience. To the many God spoke only in general terms through the Church ; but to the few He made His will directly known. But how did He do so? How dis tinguish the voice of God from the vagaries of our own imagina tion? Quietism offered an easy test. The less "sense of proprietor ship" a man had in his own good actions—the more they came from a source outside himself—the surer might he be that they were divine. If, on the other hand, they were the fruit of his deliberate thought and will, that was enough to show that they did not come from God, but from his sinful self. Hence the first duty of the Quietist was to be "passive." The Spanish monk, Juan Falconi, who is generally reckoned as the father of Quietism, died in the odour of sanctity in 1632 some thirty years later his fellow countryman, Molinos, transported his doctrines to Rome, where they gained unbounded popularity with bishops and cardinals, and even with pope Innocent XI. In 1675 Molinos published the Guida Spirituale, the great text-book of his school. But his success soon aroused the suspicion of the Jesuits, the great champions of militant ecclesiasticism. "Passivity" accorded ill with a zealous frequentation of the confessional, their chief centre of influence. Failing to turn public opinion against
Molinos in Rome, they brought pressure to bear on Louis XIV. through his confessor, Pere La Chaise. At the instance of the French ambassador Molinos was arrested (1685) ; his papers were seized, and his chief disciples examined by the Inquisition. Two years later he was convicted of heresy, and sentenced to imprison ment for life.
The later stages of the Quietist drama were played out in France. Here Quietist ideas had long been spreading under the leadership of enthusiasts like Francois Malaval (1627-1719), a blind layman of Marseilles. A more romantic figure was Jeanne Marie Guyon (1648-1717), a widow of good family and remarkable personal charm, who devoted her life to missionary journeys on behalf of "passivity." In 1688 fate brought her to the French court, where she made a great impression on Mme. de Maintenon and other persons of quality. But her most illustrious convert was Fenelon, then tutor to the duke of Burgundy, eldest son of the Dauphin. Mme. Guyon and Fenelon made Quietism famous. In 1697 Bossuet was at work on an Instruction sur les etats d'oraison, which was intended to distinguish once for all what was true in Quietism from what was false. Fenelon, feeling sure that Bossuet would do the Quietists less than justice, determined to be before hand with him. While Bossuet's book was still in the press, he suddenly brought out an Explication des maximes des saints. The little volume raised a violent storm. For two years Fenelon was at feud with Bossuet ; he was banished from Versailles ; finally, he was censured by the pope (1699), although in very measured terms. This condemnation, and Fenelon's bitter controversies with Bossuet, proved the death-blow to official Quietism.