Much has been written on the refusal of the curé of Saint-Eustache to accord Molière Christian burial, and on the conditions imposed by the Archbishop of Paris after the official intervention of the king; and the bigotry and inhumanity of both priest and prelate have been denounced in scathing terms. But the majority of those who have treated of the incident were better acquainted with the theatre than the Sorbonne, for, though the souvenirs of _Tartuffe_ and _Don Juan_ no doubt counted for much in the matter, Harlay de Chanvalon and his subordinate were, after all, only putting into force a rule of the Church which had existed for centuries, though in recent times it had, happily, been more honoured in the breach than the observance. As, however, the question is of great interest, and one, also, to which we shall have occasion to return more than once in the course of the present volume, it may be as well for us to give here a brief sketch of the doctrine of the Church in regard to the actor. The hostility of the Christian Church to the theatre may be traced back to very early times. The Fathers of the Church--Tertullian, Saint-Cyprian, Saint-Chrysostome, and others--had been unsparing in their condemnation of the actor,[33] whilst Saint-Salvien, a priest of the fourth century, went so far as to declare that "comedy was worse than blasphemy, theft, homicide, and all other crimes, and that the spectator was the accomplice of the performer." Nor was this hostility by any means confined to treatises and sermons. The Council of Elvira, in 305, enacted that no actor was to be received into the Church unless he had solemnly engaged to renounce his profession; if he failed to keep his promise, he was to be immediately excommunicated. At the Council of Arles, held five years later, all circus-performers and actors were excluded from the Sacraments, so long as they exercised their profession; and the third Council of Carthage (A.D. 397) denied them baptism or absolution. Henceforth, the Church regarded actors as beyond her pale, and, imitating the severity of the Roman Law, placed them on the same footing as prostitutes. She refused them baptism; she refused them absolution; she refused to marry them; she refused to accept them as sponsors at the baptism of the children of their relatives and friends; she refused them the Holy Communion, in public or in private, in life or on their death-beds; finally, she refused them even Christian burial.