I am not saying that these things prove that
Burton was a Catholic, but they afford strong presumptive evidence
that he had leanings in the direction of Catholicism; and undoubtedly
they go to prove that he did not "loathe" the Catholic religion. One
thing is certain, he was too much of a scholar to indulge in any vulgar
prejudice against the Roman Catholic Church, and too much of a gentleman
to insult her priests.
After all there is nothing inherently improbable in Burton's conversion
to Catholicism. Most of his life had been spent in countries where
Catholicism is practically the only form of Christianity; and such a
mind as his, if on the rebound from Agnosticism, would be much more
likely to find a refuge in the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church than
in the half-way house of Evangelical Protestantism. To a temperament
like Burton's, steeped in Eastern mysticism and Sufiism, Catholicism
would undoubtedly have offered strong attractions; for the links between
the highest form of Sufiism and the Gospel of St. John, the _Ecstasis_
of St. Bernard, and other writings of the Fathers of the Church who
were of the Alexandrian school, are well known, and could hardly have
been ignored by Burton, who made a comparative study of religions.
This, however, is by the way, and has only an indirect bearing on his
wife's action. She, who knew him best, and from whom he had no secrets,
believed that, in his later years at least, her husband was at heart a
Catholic.
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