vigour, living or lively qualities or movements, the word got its chief current meaning of possessing rapidity or speed of movement, mental or physical. It is thus used in the names of things which are in a constant or easily aroused condition of movement, e.g. “quicksand,” loose water-logged sand, readily yielding to weight or pressure, and “quicksilver,” the common name of the metal mercury (q.v.).
QUIERZY [Kiersy], CAPITULARY OF, a capitulary of the emperor Charles the Bald, comprising a series of measures
for safeguarding the administration of his realm during his
second Italian expedition, as Well as directions for his son
Louis the Stammerer, who was entrusted with the government
during his father’s absence. It was promulgated on the
14th of June 877 at Quierzy-sur-Oise in France (dep. of Aisne),
the site of a Carolingian royal palatium, before a great concourse
of lords. In this document Charles takes elaborate
precautions against Louis, whom he had every reason to
distrust. He forbids him to sojourn in certain palaces and
in certain forests, and compels him to swear not to despoil
his stepmother Richilde of her allodial lands and benefices.
At the same time Charles refuses to allow Louis to nominate
to the count ships left vacant in the emperor’s absence. In
principle the honores (benefices) and the office of a deceased
count must be given to his son, who would be placed provisionally
in possession by Louis; the definitive investiture,
however, could be conferred only by Charles. The capitulary
thus served as a guarantee to the aristocracy that the general
usage would be followed in the existing circumstances, and
also as a means of reassuring the counts who had accompanied
the emperor into Italy as to the fate of their benefices. It
cannot, however, be regarded as introducing a new principle,
and the old opinion that the capitulary of Quierzy was a legislative
text establishing the hereditary system of fiefs has been
proved to be untenable. A former capitulary of Charles the
Bald was promulgated at Quierzy on the 14th of February 857,
and aimed especially at the repression of brigandage.
See E. Bourgeois, Le Capitulaire de Kiersy-sur-Oise (Paris, 1885), and “L’Assemblée de Quierzy sur-Oise” in Etudes d’histoire du moyenâge, dédiées à Gabriel Monod (Paris, 1896). (R. Po.)
QUIETISM, a complicated religious movement that swept through France, Italy and Spain during the 17th century. Its chief apostles were Miguel de Molinos, a Spaniard resident in Rome; Fénelon, the famous French divine, and his countrywoman, Madame Jeanne Marie Guyon. Quietism was essentially a reaction against the bureaucratic ecclesiastic ism always latent within the church of Rome, though it had come more especially to the front during the struggles of the counter-Reformation carried through by the Jesuits. A Catholic cut to the orthodox pattern did not look, and would have thought it wrong to look, beyond the spiritual fare provided for him by the ecclesiastical authorities; all his relations with his Maker were conducted through the intermediary of the Church. In the dogmatic sphere he believed whatever the Church believed, because the Church believed it; to the Church’s institutions—the sacraments and the confessional—he looked for guidance in the practical affairs of life. Protestantism had tried to put an end to this state of things by sweeping away the Church altogether, but the Quietists were more tolerant than Luther. They did not wish to abolish the Church; they admitted that it was a necessary stage in the evolution of the human soul; but' they insisted that it could only bring a man on to the lowest slopes of Paradise. Those who aspired to be really holy must learn to look beyond the Church, and enter into immediate, personal relations with their Maker. But how were they to do so? Like their contemporaries, the French Jansenists, and the Quakers and Anabaptists of northern Europe, the Quietists fell back on a doctrine of immediate inspiration 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 distinguish the voice of God from the vagaries of our own imagination? Quietism offered an easy test. The less “sense of proprietorship” 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.” So far as was possible he must numb all his spontaneous activities of every kind; then he could fold his hands, and wait in dreamy meditation until inspiration came. And since all our activities have their root in desire, the shortest road to passivity was to suppress all desires and wishes of every kind. Thus the great object of the Quietist was to “sell or kill that cruel beast, self-conscious will.” Then he would be dead to hope and fear; he would be icily indifferent to his fate, either in this world or the next. Thenceforward no human tastes or affections would stand in the way of his performing the will of God. He was, as Fénelon said, like a feather blown about by all the winds of grace. His mind was a mere tabula rasa, on which the Spirit printed any pattern that it chose. Hence arose the great Quietist doctrine of disinterested love. “The Quietists maintain,” says a contemporary writer, “that Christian perfection means a love of God so absolutely free from all desire of happiness that it is indifferent to salvation. The soul is moved neither by hope nor fear, nor even by the foretaste of eternal bliss. Its only motive is to do the will and promote the glory of God. Other things are of no account: neither grace, nor merit, nor happiness, nor even perfection, in so far as it attaches to us. Nay, the soul must be ready to renounce its hopes of heaven, 'and the scrupulous will often feel themselves bound to do so; for in the last and fiercest trials they are invincibly persuaded of their own damnation. In this sentence of condemnation they generously acquiesce; and thenceforward, having nothing more to lose, they stand tranquil and intrepid, without fear and without remorse. This is what the Quietists call the state of holy indifference. Their soul has lost all wish for action, all sense of proprietorship in itself, and has thereby reached the summit of Christian perfection” (André, Vie du Père Malebranche, ed. Ingold, Paris, 1886, p. 271).
Quietism is an outgrowth from the mysticism of the great 16th-century Spaniards, St Teresa and St John of the Cross, though it would be unfair to hold them responsible for all the utterances of their disciples. Certainly St Teresa made much of “passivity,” but she only regarded it as a refuge for a few specially constituted souls; whereas the Quietists designedly brought it within the reach of everyone. In St Teresa the passivity itself was balanced by a strong attachment to the virtues of the active life, and an equally strong devotion to the Church. Among the Quietists both these checks disappear, and passivity becomes the one and only test of holiness. But if passivity is all in all, there is no room for the Virtues of the active life; all Quietists cherished the ancient saying that one moment’s contemplation is worth a thousand years’ good works. Still less room had they for the Church. It only professed to guide men to God; but those who had already found God stood in no need of a guide. Nay, they did not even stand in need of revelation. “If Christ be the way,” wrote the Quietist Malaval, “let us certainly pass by Him to God, but he who is always passing never arrives at his journey’s end.” Such utterances go far to explain the severity with which the Roman Church tried to stamp out the later developments of Quietism. In its earlier stages, before it had crystallized into a definite doctrine, the ecclesiastical authorities had been tolerant enough. 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
